21 January 2017

How do I tell my evolutionist minister about creation?

Firstly, I'd ask why he or she sees a difference in the Scriptures between God's action in respect of the physical world, and his action in the spiritual world when God integrates the two from the start.

If God can't tell us what really happened and the factual basis for relationship with him (and each other) and what his love 'really' did, then how can we have any faith, given that God as creator is the basis and starting point of faith? The creation account demonstrates our link with God, it doesn't merely assert it in story-book fashion, or as an illustration with a tenuous link with the real world, but tells us how it came about, with objective clarity and detail that dismisses any attempt to 'paganise' it.

Many ministers split the two, in a move that has more to do with philosophical Idealism than the 'concrete realism' of the Bible. This allows them to follow pagan philosophy and split the 'world' into a 'really real' spiritual world, and an unimportant physical world, where God is not as serious as he is in the spiritual world. But, they have to tell us what the real really is: is it as per evolution, where material is the final basis for reality, and love, relationship, and moral meaning are just stuck onto it for no particular reason, or is it as per creation, where the personal God: wisdom acting in loving relationship is the starting point of all being and the one in whom all being makes sense and coheres together.

The Scriptures belie any attempt to graft the personal onto the material, but turn this over and make the material reliant on the personal God. The Genesis creation account, aside from anything else, puts God's creative intention in the very physical world where his spiritual intent plays out. The two are intertwined.