One of the most interesting questions raised by the average theistic evolutionist is that of the ‘method’ God employed in creating the cosmos and life within it. It is offered as an apparent challenge to the reading of Genesis 1 that takes the direct meaning of the text as substantiated, proposing, it would seem a flaw in the content that prevents the direct reading from credibly recounting events as they occurred. Or, in other words, it might be the truth, but it cannot be the whole truth. What is missing, the question implies, is information about the method by which God brought about his creation. Without a method, it seems, the text is not acceptable, can be set aside, in its detail, if not in its generality, and requires other information to lend it any credibility.
It appears that it is held, that in the face of Genesis 1, where no ‘method’ is evident to produce the creation, and the postulations of contemporary science (or what is accepted as contemporary science) which makes out that it has identified a method by which life was brought into the cosmos (which it has not, but that’s another matter and there’s plenty of material elsewhere on this, so I’ll not touch on it), there appears to be a need in some minds for a method of creation to be found or surmised for the creation account to gain our attention, and that method is supplied by the substantial materialist dogma of biological evolution.
It is said, in this line of thought, that because no method is evident in Genesis 1, one is needed, or must be assumed, or is possibly unstated allowing, in this instance, the introduction of a method from what is considered to be the conclusions of modern science to fill out the account in Genesis 1 and blend its lofty language, taken to be restricted to a theological sphere, with the concrete facts brought to us by science. Hey presto, the two are now one and together satisfy the questions of science and the demands of theology.
But, of course, this is a confused line of reasoning.
It confuses fact and idea, it considers theology to be like philosophy, or even like poetry or mythology (a striking confusion for Christians to encourage), it confuses science and philosophy, or even religion, and it confuses God with his creation.
I’ll elaborate my thoughts on the ‘four confusions’ later.
My interest in the question arises from the its supposing that there is a need to have a method underlay the bare words of Genesis 1. Similarly there is an occasional quest for the method behind the parting of the Red Sea and the plagues in Egypt. Oddly, there is less frequently a quest for the methods Jesus might have used in stilling the storm (although some might put this down to foresight, which is not quite what we are told in the gospels), walking on water, raising the dead, healing the sick, or converting water to wine; his first recorded miracle. I have heard some explanations of the Cana miracle, but against the text they are lame.
In fact, it was a striking illustration depicting Jesus walking on water questioned by one of my children that leads to this short essay. Seeing the illustration for the first time lead to a spontaneous exclamation “What’s that?” in an amazed tone of voice. I explained what it was, and there followed a question “How did he do it?”, as though knowledge of method might enable replication; or it might have been a guileless enquiry as to how this act, so contrary to our experience could come about.
I think the only explanation, and the one that I used was that he wanted to, and what he wants to do he does without restraint.
Cana allows a similar observation. There is nothing special about water turning into wine: it is done frequently and the method is well known: plant vines, ensure they have adequate water, harvest grapes, crush them, extract juice, ferment it, and there we are: wine. What is special at Cana is that there was no ‘method’. It was the bare direct response of the creation to the will of the creator. If you want a method, it is the exercise of will and nothing more.
To propose that there are subsidiary methods underlying the exercise of will threatens the simplicity of God, making him a complex of parts and motions, of will and methods, one who must fabricate using fundamental components. If there were any such components to the exercise of will (or its expression in word, which amounts to the same thing: a direct extension of the will arising from the self-ness of God), they would have to be either already in God simply, and therefore having the same locus as the will, or be a complex within God (the possibility of which I have already disregarded), or external to God, and if not created by him (method rises its head again in a fatal infinite regress), then created by another, or self existent, and if so, God evaporates in a puff of logic. If something apart from God can be self-existent, then either it is God, and God whom we know is a creature, or there is no God at all. But we know of nothing self-existent that has a beginning, and all things we know, apart from God do have a beginning, so until this is unwound, the proposal fails.
The requirement that there be a method in creation underneath the account we have in Genesis 1 is to say that the account is not enough to explain the creation: God’s exercise of his will is not adequate for the questioner to understand that God willed, his will was his act, and his act brought forth the cosmos and life in the manner given in Genesis 1.
If there is something deficient in this, it is a deficiency in God who must rely on processes or parts external to himself to bring forth the cosmos and its contained life; or God is not capable to produce effects by will, and must rely on intermediaries. The intermediaries are either within him and so have the same origin, and are thus not necessary, or God is not simple but of parts and having variation within, and so is not the God of the Bible or he is not God at all and relies for the effect of his will on other things.
Whatever it is, the God of the Bible is denied by the requirement that a ‘method’ is required for the creation as set out in Genesis 1 that is additional to what we are told: that God spoke, it occurred and it was good, or very good. One might also refer to John 1:3 and Hebrews 11:3.
Indeed, it could well be that one of the points that is made in Genesis 1 is that no ‘method’ was used or was necessary for God to achieve the object of his will, thus showing that the dynamic between creator and creation was unmediated.
Addendum on the four confusions.
1. Fact and idea
These two are confused because the idea of evolution is taken to be factual. In most formulations this is the fallacy of affirming the consequent writ large. That is: “life as we see it could be produced by evolution as we state it, therefore, because we see life evolution has occurred. However, the facticity of evolution must be established independently of the boosterism that normally accompanies it.
2. Theology and philosophy, or even poetry or myth
Theology seems to be given the status of philosophy at best, poetry or myth at worst. But philosophy is content with building an intellectual system on basic premises; it is derivative from our knowledge and thinking. Theology is the work of understanding the Bible and making its application to our life and experience. Philosophy starts within us and is developed through our chosen frame of view of the world; theology, while it is often influenced uncritically by philosophy, does not start with us, but with the objective content of the Bible. Any choice to set aside the objective content is a choice to move from theology to philosophy. This choice is often taken when materialism is substituted for theism in reading the Bible.
Even more contestably, is the confusion of theology with the art forms of poetry or myth, the later of which I take as a sort of culturally comforting story telling. This means that theology is less a reflection on the objective text of the Bible (the only job of theology), and takes the text on an impressionistic adventure that expresses the artistic urges of the ancient Hebrews and on a level with the dream time tales of Australian aboriginals.
3. Science and philosophy, or even religion
On the other hand, it confuses science and philosophy by conveniently overlooking the materialist bones of modern evolutionary thought (and, for that matter, of historical evolutionary thought in most cases) and thinking ‘science’, when reading ‘philosophy’; the materialist basis of much modern scientific discourse, particularly in this area where anything but the material is denied (reducing ideas to the level of material interactions, and no more), is ignored and the successes of modern science where it is doing its proper job are used to bolster its claims in this area, which is not a scientific area at all. Incidentally, modern science stands with feet firmly planted in an approach to the world that emerged from taking the creation account in Genesis seriously, and setting out for us that the world is objectively real and capable of reasonable investigation.
The science-religion confusion occurs where materialism has moved from being a philosophical matter to being a religious matter. It is an easy move to make, but I would call it a religious view rather than a philosophical one where, in Closer’s terms (The Myth of Religious Neutrality – Closer is ironically a theistic evolutionist!) the axioms of the system are taken to represent what is independently real: basic beliefs, and where those beliefs are isolated from critical evaluation. To adopt a metaphor from another context: philosophy is building a view of the world to think about; religion is when one is living by that view. A further irony here is that Christian belief is subject to intense critical scrutiny by its adherents, on the basis, I would surmise, of the apostle Paul saying that if the resurrection did not occur, we are deluded and of all men to be pitied. Try to catch a materialist making a similar observation.
4. God and his creation
The final confusion occurs when God is merged with his creation, and must use ‘method’, which only would be sought if his separateness from his creation were not understood. If this is the case, we don’t have a ‘god’ worth talking about and may as well, eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die, and dust is the end of us.
The big BUT is that no one lives as though their fate is dust. Most people live as though (their) life and others’ has a value that is independent of its material existence.
