by Fr Neil Broom
Many students pursuing the geological and biological sciences, and wanting their Christian faith to square soundly with the Bible, often struggle to see how the Creation texts in Genesis can be reconciled with the evolutionary science they encounter during their studies.
Often the temptation is to do a “double think” by keeping the biblical and scientific accounts entirely separate, so as to avoid any embarrassing misfit between belief and evidence. So here is an approach I have found helpful when thinking about these issues as both a Christian and a scientist.
First, the creation narrative was written probably around 1400 BC, and long before there was such a discipline as science. The writer’s concerns would have been primarily religious, certainly not scientific in the sense that we understand the term today, and his target audience was the Israelite people. God had called them out of a pagan, polytheistic culture with a spectacular deliverance from the “iron furnace” of enslavement in Egypt, thus providing compelling evidence that the One they were called to worship, and whose laws they were to obey, was truly God above all gods.
However, the Israelites, despite their experience of God’s mighty hand, were in constant danger of sliding back into their polytheistic past, becoming enslaved again to “gods that were not gods” — a quick read of the fourth chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy will give you a pretty good idea of what some of these gods were. There were those carved in the image of humans, there were gods in the form of land animals, sea- and winged-animals, and there were the gods of sun, moon and stars. These were the “stuff” of those pagan polytheistic religions, and were to be utterly rejected by the Israelites, who were called to follow the one true God.
So what was the main point of the Creation story? Well, each “day” lists the creation of the primary domains of the visible cosmos and the occupants that would inhabit each, and with the resounding declaration that they were created by God. Therefore, because they were created, they could never be given divine status. No part of nature was to be the object of human worship. No part of the created realm, including the heavenly bodies, was to shape human destiny. God alone was the source and sustainer of all things.
There isn’t space in this short article to list each creation “day”, but let’s consider just two of them. On day four, all of the heavenly bodies — the sun, moon, stars — are set in place as created elements, thereby destroying any pagan notion that they could rule as gods with power over human destiny; which was a lethal blow to astrology. If we jump to day six, we find that humans, although bearing (mysteriously) the image of God, are still created beings, and this surely robs polytheism of its attempt to elevate any human to the status of god.
The seven-day week would have been encoded already in the daily life of the Israelites before the Creation story was written down. So what we have in the description of the six days of creation is a literary framework that is used to systematically demolish the foundations of the polytheistic cultures that were so powerfully impinging on Israel. The language in the narrative is distinctly religious, addressing the all-important issue of who really is in charge of the cosmos. The narrative is not at all scientific in character, and it seems unwise to try to construct a science of creation from it. If this is so, we are set free to consider the science more objectively.
Now, while the birth of the cosmos remains a great mystery, there is much that science has revealed about the evolutionary unfolding of life forms over vast periods of time. I see no reason why this should pose a threat to our faith — it is simply the means by which the creator creates. And while many atheists will assert, with supreme confidence, that Darwinian evolution eliminates any role for a Creator, these same voices fail to account for those profound elements of purpose, intentionality, and goal-centeredness that permeate the living world; qualities pointing to a cosmos bearing the imprint of “mind” — what the Christian believes is the “mind” of the Creator.
And just one final point — the message of the Creation narrative remains hugely relevant to our own culture today. For while the advances of science and technology have brought wonderful benefits to humanity, the mini-gods generated by these advances are hugely seductive, all too often capturing our real devotion at the expense of a focus and trust in the one who is Creator of all.
Neil Broom is an Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Engineering, University of Auckland, and has a particular interest in the relationship between science and faith.
God versus gods is an ever-present struggle field. A capitalist god, a socialist god, an atheist god, a Dalit god, a high caste god, – and there are several of them vying for attention, visibility, and the appropriate and right rites.