The Uncreated Light

Some have wondered why The Light appeared on Day 1 of Creation, whereas the sun, moon and stars were not created until Day 4.  Before Day 4 the Light was not carried by any created object known from Scripture.  Only on Day 4 were objects created to give the created light.

Significantly, this interplay of lights appears in other places in Scripture, too.  When the Lamb of God, the Light of Men, died on the Cross it was dark in the Land for three hours, though the sun was up.

And, in eternity, continuing for forever, the uncreated Light, the Lamb of God, illuminates the earth and the holy city in the eternal day:

But I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light. And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it. Its gates shall not be shut at all by day (there shall be no night there). And they shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it. But there shall by no means enter it anything that defiles, or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. (from Rev 21, NKJV)

Science and Creation (Miracle)

The BioLogos Foundation and others are trying to create a stir in the evangelical and reformed churches by teaching that evolution and evolutionary thought are truly scientifically validated, and therefore that this scientific truth must be accepted in its answers to the questions of origins, regardless of what the Bible says in Genesis 1 and elsewhere.

A little thought can expose the irrationality of all this.

It's clear that science does teach and must teach, based on the applicability of its own principles of reasoning, that water did not turn into wine at Cana.  The reason science must teach this is that science is limited to investigating the workings of the apparent "laws of nature" in the divine creation, not the creative exceptions to those laws.

Of course, water did turn into wine at Cana.  But, the only business of science is to state that if it did happen, it violated the laws of nature, and was therefore a miracle, and not subject to the rule of science.

The discussion about Cana applies to the main miracle of the New Covenant, too -- the resurrection of Christ.  If science were to pronounce a "scientific" explanation of this event, it is prima facie junk science.

Science does not "compute" with miracles.  It is not supposed to. 

Now, consider the creation -- a veritable forest of miraculous creative acts, according to Scripture.  Because of this we have to conclude that science cannot "compute" creation, either.  In fact, we have to conclude that what "science" tries to teach about creation is prima facie erroneous.  Any attempt to make scientific claims about events not reproducible in the lab is likely to be junk science, especially when we know that miracles are involved.

To require the acceptance of the ideology of evolution even on scientific grounds is irrational, based on the lack of real scientific evidence.  But, so-called scientific evidence is irrelevant in the matter, because science cannot reason it's way back through the forest of miracles involved in creation.  The conclusions of such reasoning must be false.  Things simply did not happen that way.

No other reasonable conclusion can be drawn.

Interpreting the Book of Nature 

In view of all this, it is mistaken to say that the Book of Nature, interpreted in a Christian manner according to the best principles of science, must give answers that are congruent with the Book of Revelation (the Bible).  Actually, the Book of Nature, even as interpreted by Christians, in a Christian manner, according to the best principles of science, absolutely cannot provide answers to origins not given in the revealed Scripture.  In fact, the Book of Nature, interpreted according to the best principles of science, in a Christian manner, by Christians, must, in its own nature, give answers not compatible with revelation.  This has to be true because the best science cannot deal with the miraculous, which is a necessary part of the history of our origins.

The true interpretation of the Book of Nature is explained in the Scripture as being a direct testimony to the human mind of the creative power, majesty and goodness of God.  But, this is a spiritual observation. That spiritual observation is corroborated by the ingenious complexity of the creation, but it is a fact not comprehended by reason of "natural law."

"According To Its Kind"

Genesis 1 (NKJV)

A lot of time in protological controversy is spent in discussion whether the 'day' of Genesis 1 is a 24-hour 'day'.  Another aspect of that discussion must be to consider the repeated statement that all plants, beasts and men, reproduce "according to their kind."

This process of reproduction only "in kind" is a fundamental thought of the passage, and is a repeated statement of the fixity of species.

Evolutionary conceptions can find no place here.

The Special Creation of Adam and Eve - Is That All?

The current move in some quarters of the church is to make the special creation of Adam (from dust) and Eve (from Adam) into the touchstone of creationism in the church.  But, this point is actually the point of last resort, before entire capitulation to the idea of organic evolution.  The Scripture says much more.

In the Nicene Creed or Apostles' Creed, God the Father is called the "Creator (or Maker) of Heaven and Earth."  This includes the angelic realm as well as the cosmos visible to us.  The concept of "creation" means the creation of things we see from nothing (Heb 11:1-3).  Regardless of the notions of origin that have been hypothesized by believers (the Gap Theory, the Day-Age Theory, etc.) nothing explains away the Biblical testimony that the Universe is a "made" thing.  According to Scripture, what we see did not come about through natural law (even under the guidance of providence) after having been supposedly "created" as a ball of fire in the distant past.  That is not the Biblical doctrine of creation.

The believers need to understand that it is Creation of what we see, and not simply the hand of Providence governing natural law, which is critical.  Therefore, permitting the doctrine of creation to be reduced to a big-bang + providence (and evolution), and only letting the special creation of Adam be the essential remnant of the doctrine of creation, is the last straw before creation ceases to be a fundamental point of orthodoxy in the church.

Nature and Grace (Updated 9/10/16)

I am not a philosopher, so if I misstate some philosophical points below, you can correct me in the comments.  This post contains theses for disputation.

Somewhere in time past theological and philosophical analysts began to study the knowledge obtainable from the logical use of the mind and the observation of nature, and the relationship that this kind of knowledge has to knowledge gained in Christian revelation.  This is the analysis of the relationship between "nature" (or, "natural law") and "grace."

Generally speaking, before the Enlightenment (when the mind of man became the measure of all), it had been put forth, especially effectively by Aquinas, that grace completes nature.  That is, nature can take us a really long way in the knowledge of divine things, but the uppermost echelons of revealed knowledge available to us (the Trinity; the Nature of Christ as the God-Man; the Way of Salvation), could only be reached by revelation (grace) and were not accessible to knowledge which came by nature.

The danger in this synthesis of nature and grace is that the boundary between the two can move.  As time wore on, the boundary between nature and grace moved to include more under nature and less under grace.  Finally, in the eyes of many who saw the supreme doctrines mentioned above as useless or wrong, the mind of man took over, and nature ruled.  Grace appeared to die.  There was nothing left for grace to provide to human knowledge.

One can speculate that this process was due to the sin of man, and that the relationship between nature and grace could supposedly have been kept clear if the sinful kinds of thinking, theologizing and philosophizing had been kept out of the process.  But, this still leaves open the question where the boundary between nature and grace lies.  Things can remain unstable.

We do note in this situation, as it was left by Aquinas, that though grace is seen as supreme, nature is actually the foundation.  This is why nature is always eating away at grace.  It isn't simply that man is a sinner, and therefore always makes mistakes in locating the boundary between nature and grace.  The mistake is that nature -- the knowledge supposedly accessible to all -- is made the foundation of knowledge.  This is close to the doctrine of the Enlightenment, which hypothesized that Nature (natural law) is the foundation of all -- period.  This, I think, is why science (nature) rules in many intellectual circles. For the poor believers struggling under this load so-called science is always eating away at God's Word.

But look at the doctrine of creation.  It is impossible to conceive of the process of creation as entirely natural.  It is impossible to have overall scientific or natural knowledge of the universe as it is being created, because of the miraculous content, and yet that finished creation is supposedly made the ground of natural knowledge (and the testimony to God which is created within it is rejected).  But, the fact that the creation was made under circumstances inaccessible to the human mind implies that nature does not precede and underlie grace.  Natural understanding does not come first.  It is the other way around.  Grace underlies and explains nature.  This changes everything.  The Word of God (grace) rules nature.  The arguments from "nature" which contradict the Word of God are false arguments, prima facie.  Nature is understood in terms given by the Word of God, not the other way around.

Therefore, we must not say that the Book of Nature is a revelation of God accessible under common grace to the mind of the common man, speaking to the common man as clearly about God and nature as the Book of God speaks to the minds of believing men, in the subject matter that they share.  This makes nature superior to grace, and reinstitutes the degenerative process of harm that has been caused by this.

Actually, the Book of Nature first and fundamentally tells men what the Book of God says it tells men -- namely, that God is the creator, sustainer, and giver of all good, in sovereign control of his cosmos, that the creation which is seen and denied by the common eye is testimony to his creative power, and that things in natural revelation only actually work the way that it is said that they work by special revelation.

The idea that the Word of God can be forcefully interpreted against its own claims and intent by the Word of Nature is simply a hoax, perpetrated by a long run of success in the hard sciences, which has supplied the courage to many philosophical "men of science" to proclaim their rule over all things.

Evolution Among the Public

One can examine this link for a discussion of belief (or not) in human evolution among the American public:

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/01/survey-nearly-half-of-americans-subscribe-to-creationist-view-of-human-origins/?hpt=hp_t2

One can see from this, if these statistics are accurate and meaningfully interpreted, that the body of folks who disbelieve in human evolution is not small, and is even surprisingly large (25%) among those who seldom or never attend church.

------- The article linked to above follows here -------

Survey: Nearly half of Americans subscribe to creationist view of human origins

By Dan Merica, CNN

(CNN) – Forty-six percent of Americans believe that God created humans in their present form at one point within the past 10,000 years, according to a survey released by Gallup on Friday.

That number has remained unchanged for the past 30 years, since 1982, when Gallup first asked the question on creationism versus evolution. Thirty years ago, 44% of the people who responded said they believed that God created humans as we know them today - only a 2-point difference from 2012.

"Despite the many changes that have taken place in American society and culture over the past 30 years, including new discoveries in biological and social science, there has been virtually no sustained change in Americans' views of the origin of the human species since 1982," wrote Gallup's Frank Newport. "All in all, there is no evidence in this trend of a substantial movement toward a secular viewpoint on human origins."

The second most common view is that humans evolved with God's guidance - a view held by 32% of respondents. The view that humans evolved with no guidance from God was held by 15% of respondents.

Survey: U.S. Protestant pastors reject evolution, split on Earth's age

Not surprisingly, more religious Americans are more likely to be creationists.

Nearly 70% of respondents who attend church every week said that God created humans in their present form, compared with 25% of people who seldom or never attend church.

Among the seldom church-goers, 38% believe that humans evolved with no guidance from God.

The numbers also showed a tendency to follow party lines, with nearly 60% of Republicans identifying as creationists, while 41% of Democrats hold the same beliefs.

Republicans also seem to be more black-and-white about their beliefs, with only 5% responding that humans evolved with some help from God. That number is much lower than the 19% of both independents and Democrats.

According to Newport, a belief in creationism is bucking the majority opinion in the scientific community - that humans evolved over millions of years.

"It would be hard to dispute that most scientists who study humans agree that the species evolved over millions of years, and that relatively few scientists believe that humans began in their current form only 10,000 years ago without the benefit of evolution," writes Newport. "Thus, almost half of Americans today hold a belief ... that is at odds with the preponderance of the scientific literature."

The USA Today/Gallup telephone poll was conducted May 10-13 with a random sample of 1,012 American adults. The sampling error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Dan Merica - Dan Merica

"Christian" Theistic Evolution and the Pace of Time

One of the paradigmatic problems understanding the origin and development of the universe from the standpoint of "Christian" theistic evolution concerns the pace of time.

If evolution, deemed slow by theistic evolutionists today, is responsible for the origin of all the species including man, then our expectation of the pace of time is "very slow."  The origin of all the species, including man, took a few billions of years to be accomplished, according to current standards, beginning with the big bang.  It really wasn't a "creation" in the theological sense at all.

It is plausible, then, that the progress of history, under the evolutionary regime, would likewise be slow.  Perhaps it could take 10,000 years (or 10,000,000 years?) for Christ to return.

Furthermore, if the first "creation" (which isn't actually a "creation") took so long, why shouldn't the so-called "recreation" of the new heavens and the new earth also be an evolutionary process that takes just as long? If the first so-called "creation" was actually a natural process operating under the providence of God, why shouldn't the second be the same?  Why should the so-called recreation take place for us believers "in the blink of an eye," when the first creation took billions of years?

Conclusion

The whole purpose of theistic evolution is to reconcile Christianity to organic evolution, as naturalistically understand today, because of the supposed scientific proof of the hypothesis of evolution.  But, this is done by doing away with "creation."  Instead of "creation," there is only the hidden hand of "divine providence" acting to control the pace and direction of organic evolution through the workings of natural law, in directions which result in the origin of our species, and in the direction of the so-called "creation" of man.  But, it just isn't creation any more.  And, if there is no creation, then why should there be any  instantaneous recreation either?

Why is it any easier to believe in the transformation of the cosmos when Christ returns than it is to believe in the actual creation of the cosmos by Christ at the beginning?  Why is the process of creation, which stands outside the bounds of science, judged by "science"?  True science, which exists, cannot judge the bounds and limits of real creation.  That's the whole point of the concept and the doctrine of creation!

A real creation is an article of the Christian faith, not the result of scientific inquiry.

 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good testimony.  By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.  (Heb 11:1-3)

Polytheism -- Again?

Though the pagans of historic antiquity knew of the great God who made all things (Acts 17), they were much more at home putting him out of their minds, and worshiping the small gods instead.  

In fact, I suspect that the idea that one god was big enough to govern all nations must have seemed unreasonable.  The inhabited world is too big for one god.  One has much more reliable contact with the divine if one worships gods which are closely associated with one's homeland or perhaps the neighbors.

But, now that the non-divine ones can travel around the world in hours or a couple of days in subsonic jet planes, this has changed.  Perhaps one god can govern the whole world.  But, can one god govern the cosmos which has supposedly been expanding for billions of years?  Did the Fall of Adam affect the most distant galaxy?  Instantly?  Is your god big enough for that?  The preponderance of "naturalism" in the "advanced" world's thought today simply says "No!" to that.  The universe is too big for the Fall of Adam and all the other things said in Genesis to be paradigmatic for the whole thing.

See!  The change is just a matter of scale.  God has always been too small to suit the reason of man.

This is why Christians should not argue from within the confines of the present, modern, naturalistic world-view, when they argue that creationism and Genesis must be true.  God is too big for that.  It really is true that the cosmos was made supernaturally in all its vast capacities and extent, and was all made by an infinitely more vast God who exists outside all created things.

Let us be Christian theists!  Let us believe the Word of God, that the cosmos was created from nothing by the Word of God, and let us know and believe that all attempts to bring Christianity into correspondence with naturalism in any form -- be it evolution or otherwise -- are simply futile.

The Good Creation (Revised)

It ought to be considered by those tempted to "make peace" with evolution by professing "theistic evolution," that positing such an origin of the cosmos brings up the question of the origin of evil.

For one thing, any kind of evolution calls into question what was meant when God said that what he had made was "good" at every step, and even "very good" when finished.  Did what was good, even very good, arise through mutations and the survival of the "fittest," or any other process that we would consider "natural," even if guided by the providence of God?  Is death normal -- or good?  Doesn't the creation groan in bondage, until its own resurrection?  Was it created in bondage?

Furthermore, evolutionary beliefs lead in the direction of Gnosticism or Manichaeism, since the origin and development of the universe, and the moral condition implied by the process of evolution, also implies that matter and energy, and the laws of the same as presently constituted, are not free from evil -- or else that that evil is good.

Once all this is seen, namely, that theistic evolution is an ancient heresy, then it should be rejected yet one more time, as it has had to be by the believers since time immemorial.

None of this was unknown to the writers of the Scripture, especially the New Testament.  Creation (not something else; there were plenty of options known to the Greeks) is the first article of faith (Heb 11).  Theistic evolution is just Epicurus redivivus with a little "theistic" icing.

PS:  Theistic evolution, in the manner described above, also justifies the main argument of the "new atheists," namely, that "How can there be a God, when the presence of evil is so obvious?"  In other words, the Manichaeism is evident in that the real God, if he exists, cannot cope with or do without the death-dealing evil present with matter and energy, and the laws of nature as they are currently known, and as they came into play during the process of evolution creating the universe -- or else he does not wish to have it any other way, and his "providence" is therefore corrupt.  The universe ceases to be the testimony to the goodness of God that it really is and was intended to be, though it is now fallen.

There had to be a good creation -- and then a Fall. If the "Fall" came first -- is just Nature, as science sees it, howsoever it is guided by God's providence, then the Biblical worldview cannot be maintained.  Death is then "natural."  Therefore, it must be the case that the Fall followed the finished Creation, and there must yet be an End of this fallen Creation and a Beginning of the New Heavens and the New Earth.  We did not "evolve" our way to this point, naturally or morally, and we will not "evolve" our way to the resurrection.

The inherent logic of Paul's arguments in Rom 1 and Acts 17 (on Mars Hill) is that all men know that God exists, is creator, and is good, and they also know that both they and the world are broken, that is, that there has been a Fall.  Theistic evolution militates against these evangelical arguments by teaching that what amounts to the Fall was inherent in the creation and the creating process, by God's design, from the very beginning.  Theistic evolution is thereby an anti-apologetic for Christianity.

Creation

If we take a look at the important Scripture texts about creation, we must turn not only to Genesis 1-3, or Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15, but also to Hebrews 11.

Hebrews 11:3   By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.

The theological context of this verse defines "faith" this way: 

Hebrews 11:1  Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

The act of creation therefore cannot be seen (even by science) and is an object of faith to Christians.  And, we believe that what is seen (the created order) was not made of what is seen, but was created by the word of God.

It's true that some professedly Christian writers have tried to wax eloquent about how the Bible can be supposedly harmonized with the "teachings of science" concerning evolutionary origins.  But, the leading verse in this post makes it clear that creation is an object of faith.  This means believing that direct creation by the word of God of all that is seen did really happen in space and time, and that it is not just subjectively "real to me" in my mythological belief system.  It also means that our faith is in a creation which is an act of God, by the pronunciation of his word by himself, and entirely transcending the bounds of science, with all its mechanisms, laws, and myths of origin or destiny.  Real creationism is not a story that merely describes providential operations of God upon matter, confluent with natural law. 

The apologetic for creationism taken from natural science still has its place.  After all, Darwin knew that he had to find the "missing links," which, by the way, are still missing.  (That's why there's hoopla in the press when a supposed "missing link" is discovered, and no hoopla when it's discredited.)

However, the Christian apologetic for creationism using natural science is no substitute for faith in God's word, and what he says is the case concerning his creation.  The supposedly scientific story of origins based on naturalistic principles will always be a myth, and always changing, too.  That story never happened, because what actually happened cannot be penetrated by the principles of science.  But, the story of the Bible will never change, and will always be true.