Book Review – Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique
Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique
Ed. Moreland/Meyer/Shaw/Gauger/Grudem
Crossway
Scientific and Philosophical Introduction
Notes:
*Due to the size of this book, I will be reviewing each section or chapter as I go.
*Much of the contents of Meyer’s essay is repeated in his section on Intelligent Design (ID) in the book Four Views on Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design (Four Views).
*Although the title of the book is Theistic Evolution (TE), most TE adherents prefer the label Evolutionary Creationists (EC). In this review, the terms will be used interchangeably.
*Ebook format is available directly from the publisher’s website.
The book is introduced with 2 essays, the first by Stephen Meyer, introducing the scientific and philosophical issues with Theistic Evolution, the second by Wayne Grudem, introducing the Biblical and theological issues.
In the first of these two introductions, Meyer defines the various ways the term “evolution” is used. His categories are 1) Evolution as change over time due to mutations and natural selection; 2) Evolution as Universal Common Descent; and 3) Evolution as a self-directing process, as creative source.
He then evaluates the consistency of each of these uses of the term with the term theism, detailing the problems of each. He judges the problems with 1) as trivial, 2) as logically coherent, but not consistent with the Biblical record, and 3) as self-defeating (incoherent) and unBiblical, as follows.
1) Meyer sees nothing incoherent or unbiblical about microevolution, and since there is ample evidence in our present world for microevolution, he concludes any obstacles to Christian acceptance are trivial to nonexistent.
2) Meyer sees nothing incoherent about believing God could have created via universal common descent, but he believes the Biblical witness contradicts it, as well as evidence in the current natural world.
3) Meyer believes that the common view of evolution as a self-directing process is not Biblical, and that theistic evolutionists who affirm this while denying intelligent design are either logically incoherent, or scientifically vacuous. Essentially, he views “theistic evolution” as an oxymoron.
Since 1) is a non-issue, and 2) will be covered in detail in future chapters, I will limit my critique here to 3).
Meyer groups theistic evolutionists into several possible categories. Those who affirm evolution as self-directed, while simultaneously affirming God as the First Cause, and those who affirm evolution as directed by God, but reject Intelligent Design he considers to be logically incoherent or vacuous. Those who affirm God initially created the laws of evolution, as well as those who affirm God’s continued sustenance of these laws, but deny His active involvement in mutations and natural selection he considers theologically unorthodox.
The main problem that I see with all of this is how Meyer classifies specific EC groups and individuals. Francis Collins and the BioLogos organization that he founded represent the most well-known EC stream of thought, and Meyer spends a fair amount of time critiquing it. Meyer classifies Collins et al in the logically incoherent/vacuous category. But this is based on what I believe to be misinterpretations of the BioLogos position on Meyer’s part.
1) Intelligent Design – Meyer accuses Collins of rejecting ID, but he (Meyer) is conflating intelligent design principles, some of which Collins does affirm, with the specific ID movement that holds to a set of very specific beliefs. Collins’ rejection of the movement is specifically related to irreducible complexity and its tendency to be a “God of the gaps” theory (Language of God, pp 182-196). As will be noted below, BioLogos does affirm God creates and sustains the universe using both natural and supernatural processes.
2) Guided process – Meyer asserts that Collins never explicitly says whether or not he believes evolution is a guided or unguided process. But this is based on Collins’ discursive writing style in the citation provided by Meyer. It is patently obvious that Collins does believe God both created and sustains evolutionary processes when he names his discursus as “solution” at the beginning of the paragraph cited (Language of God, p 205).
3) Logical convolution – Meyer takes issue with Collins’ solution as being logically convoluted, saying that it doesn’t make much logical sense that an appearance of design could be caused by an apparently undirected process. But this misses the point that Collins makes about God being outside time and space. Meyer even excludes a key part of the quote from Collins, in at least two places: “…while from our perspective, LIMITED AS IT IS BY THE TYRANNY OF LINEAR TIME, this would appear…” He does not interact with the real basis for Collins’ position, God as a different kind of Being, at all.
Deborah Haarsma (President, BioLogos) provides clear responses to Meyer’s rather specious arguments in her responses to Meyer in Four Views:
“EC joins ID in believing that an intelligent designer crafted the universe and life with purpose and intent…ID shares with EC a belief that this Intelligent Designer is the God of the Bible” (p 221).
“EC argues that we can perceive design in nature even when scientists have a complete natural explanation…natural explanations never negate God as the designer (p 222).
“All of us (at BioLogos) believe that God planned, created, governs, and continually sustains the process of evolution; this is an active role for God, not a passive or distant one. God in his sovereignty has chosen to use random processes as part of his design, but that does not require God to explicitly determine the outcome of every random event” (p 175). Haarsma goes on to point out that God’s providence in creation, long an accepted and orthodox tenet of Christianity, allows for non-supernatural activity that in no way diminishes his activity or sovereignty.
As a free will proponent, I am not uncomfortable with the idea that God in his sovereignty both allows natural processes free rein, and intervenes supernaturally at times as well. I don’t personally find this to be logically convoluted or scientifically vacuous. As Roger Olson has been quoted (Seedbed tweet, 1/26/2018), God is in charge of everything without controlling everything. It’s an important distinction. The real vacuity is the implication that the infinite and Sovereign God is subject to the same causal limitations as finite human beings.
On the whole, at this point, I perceive that most of Meyer’s objections to EC, at least as presented in this introduction, are contrivances, not real objections, but I shall endeavor to keep an open mind as these objections are fleshed out in detail in the chapters to come.
Resources
Language of God, Francis Collins, Simon & Schuster, 2006.
Four Views on Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design, J.B Stump, ed., Zondervan, 2017.