There is perhaps no movement in the Church that has been more destructive to confidence in Sacred Scripture than Theistic Evolution. Proponents usually defend their position by saying “truth cannot contradict truth” so that the lens of science can be applied to the biblical account of origins confidently. But the amount of exegetical gymnastics that it requires ultimately destroys faith in the truth and historicity of the first eleven chapters of Genesis. Once faith is shaken in the beginnings of the Bible, it is not long before other books fall victim to the same fate.
At first glance it seems to be a reasonable position especially with our modern disdain of fundamentalism, no matter what position they actually take. As Christians, the full evolutionary explanation, one marked by a completely material explanation of the origins of life, is unacceptable. But rather than rejecting it outright as false, they attempt to tweak it so as to avoid being lumped in the fundamentalist creationist camp. They insert God into the gaps in evolution by saying that either He guided it or stepped in at certain points. The evolutionary fence-sitting seems like a compromise but all it ends up doing is compromising the Faith itself.
Avoiding the Evolutionary Creep Deep into Genesis
I mentioned the first eleven chapters of Genesis as being in the crosshairs. We should not be surprised about this because St. Peter warned us that scoffers in the end times would deny the truth of the Flood. He even tells us how they will deny it—by saying ‘all things have continued as they were from the beginning of creation.’ (2 Peter 3:3-7). This describes what has become known as uniformitarianism. This “theory” posits that all geological features can be interpreted in terms of slow-and-gradual processes. Layers of sediment and the natural processes all proceed at exactly the same pace throughout the history of the world enabling us to somewhat accurately measure time based on the fossil record. If those processes are not uniform then really nothing can be said as far as timing. If there was, say a world-wide flood, burying the surface of the Earth for 100 days, the receding of the waters would not only profoundly change the face of the earth but also lay down layer upon layer of sediment almost all at once. This would mess up the “biological clock” and leave evolution without enough time to work itself out. Combine this with other similar catastrophes that were not as large and any dating of the Earth would certainly be overestimated.
Darwin himself recognized that the Flood must go— “Natural selection can act only by the preservation and accumulation of infinitesimally small inherited modifications, each profitable to the preserved being; and as modern geology has almost banished such views as the excavation of a great valley by a single diluvial wave, so will natural selection, if it be a true principle, banish the belief of the continued creation of new organic beings, or of any great and sudden modification in their structure” (Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species).
Even if we ignore the fact that fossils only form when something is buried quickly, uniformitarianism has been called into question as a scientific theory. Many geologists, especially those who don’t have an atheistic axe to grind, agree that it should retired. We have many recent examples of catastrophes that have resulted in an “aged” landscape. A good example that refutes uniformitarianism is near Spirit Lake in Mt. St Helens in Washington state that was created in a mere few hours and has the “appearance of being millions of years old. Nevertheless, it is nowhere near being as sure a theory as it is often portrayed.
What is sad is that many theistic evolutionists feel obligated to adjust their interpretation of Noah’s Flood by making it either a mythical event or just a small local flood because it does not fit with evolution. This is non-sensical unless you are also willing to explain away all the animals on board (why is this necessary?) and God’s promise never to do it again (there are local floods all the time). Darwin had at least this right—if the Flood really did occur then it is practically impossible that evolution is true.
Not a Science Textbook
There are those who willingly accept the historical truth of the Flood yet still claim that we should accept evolution because Genesis is not a science book. This is a bit of a non-sequitur because no one claims that it is. Science could not explain creation for the simple fact that it is a supernatural event. The Six Days of Creation describe supernatural actions performed directly by God (Wisdom 9:1). It definitely explains how it was done, even if it doesn’t do so using scientific language. It is a dogma of the Faith that each thing was created out of nothing by God’s Word (“through Him all things were made”) and not through any secondary causes (more on this in a second). Science could no more explain how God did it than it could explain how Christ turned water into wine or rose from the dead. Science can only explain natural phenomena. The fact that it is a supernatural event explains the rather oblique language, but it does not clear the way for an evolutionary interpretation. The language is meant to add clarity not obscurity. To say that the “dust of the earth” really means “ a monkey’s body” or that the birds being formed on the fifth day before the reptiles on the sixth day isn’t really meaningful since evolutionary theory has birds evolving from reptiles or the fact that the whales and other sea-going mammals were formed on the fifth day before the land animals on the sixth day from which they supposedly evolved also doesn’t matter is putting the evolutionary cart before the scriptural horse. It may not be a science textbook, but there is no reason to use oblique language when there is a perfectly understandable explanation. Truth cannot contradict truth indeed. Why would we assume that the Scriptural text should be adjusted when it is clear that there is little more than a scientific hypothesis that reptiles evolved into birds? It is almost as if God anticipated the Theory of Evolution and directly refuted it through the order in which things were created.
As promised, we will return to the dogmatic declaration that all things were created directly by God and find a rather large stumbling block for theistic evolution. The First Vatican Council declared
“If anyone does not confess that the world and all things which are contained in it, both spiritual and material, were produced, according to their whole substance, out of nothing by God; or holds that God did not create by his will free from all necessity, but as necessarily as he necessarily loves himself; or denies that the world was created for the glory of God: let him be anathema.” (Vatican I, Dei Fillius, Canon 5).
The bold text means that God did not use any secondary agents to create each new kind of living thing. This Biblical kind is distinct from biological species (a nebulous term anyway), but it does leave the door open for microevolution even broadly speaking (say for a horse to become a zebra for example). But it closes the door on is macroevolution because it does not permit any belief that one kind (say reptile) became another kind (say bird). Evolution, even guided, also necessitates on God’s part an adherence during creation to natural laws. This too draws the Church’s anathema upon the theistic evolutionist.
Ultimately then the theistic evolutionist can only subscribe to a microevolutionary theory of variation with biblical kinds and requires God to regularly intervene in creation whenever a new kind is made. What they don’t realize is that this ultimately makes them muddled Creationists. They concede that God created each new thing, but then mix in microevolution to explain all the variation. I say muddled because they are confusing what St. Thomas describes as the Creation/Providence paradigm. During the days of Creation God created each thing according to its kind. On the Seventh Day and beyond, no new kinds of creatures come into being (God rests from creating on the 7th day), but through reproduction and multiplication we might see distinct scientific species arise (think of my horse and zebra hypothetical). But this really isn’t evolution at all, at least not as Darwinists define it. Certainly, you could read Genesis literally and there would be no conflict with microevolution at all (this is why I have written about the need to not fall for the evolutionary bait and switch).
It turns out then that Theistic Evolution is nothing more than a Faustian Bargain. In order to be intellectually honest to the Evolutionary explanation, Faith in Genesis must be replaced with faith in Darwin. There is no compromise to be made between the two worldviews that does not leave the compromiser compromised.