I’m no kin to the monkey and the monkey’s no kin to me. I don’t know much about your ancestors but mine didn’t swing from a tree.

It’s a ditty I learned in Sunday School. It was also the extent of my knowledge of evolutionary biology, except a few things I learned in Jack Chick’s comic books. When I was fifteen, I did read Science Speaks by the late Henry Morris. My pastor gave it to me to counter my agnostic grandfather’s arguments but it reflected a very selective sampling of data and evidences that confirmed a certain reading of the Bible.

When I took a biology class at my local community college my professor asked that dreaded question: Is there anybody here who believes the earth is only 6,000 years old?  I was the only one to raise my hand. The professor snickered a little but was kind. After class, a couple of girls thanked me for speaking up.  They said they believed what I did too but were afraid to say anything.  That semester, I then proceeded to write a paper defending my position and my primary resource was another book by Henry Morris called The Genesis Flood written in the 1950’s. It’s embarrassing as I look back but it’s all I knew.

I learned a few more things about young-earth creationism in Bible College but, again, it lacked serious engagement with what most science professionals with Ph.D.’s believed. There also was no priority given to provide potential pastors and other Christian leaders with basic literacy like some of the “three views of” and “four views of” books attempt to do. Instead, there was the same old “us versus them” mentality with a new name, Biblical Catastrophism, where the geological evidence for an old earth is explained away by a global flood.

One good thing about my toxic church upbringing was it resulted in my being drawn to mainstream rather than novel or extreme views within evangelicalism. Most of my favorite scholars held to an old earth and some like C.S. Lewis, Bernard Ramm, James Boice, and John Stott embraced theistic evolution.[1] This made it less scary and easier to give views like “intelligent design” and what is now called “evolutionary creationism” a respectful hearing.

Still, my knowledge of evolution was more informed by novelist Frank Perretti’s cute descriptor “from goo to you by way of the zoo,” than serious study. One of the most helpful things I read in seminary was a chapter called “Thinking About Science” in Mark Noll’s The Scandal for the Evangelical Mind. In it, Noll gives a historical sketch where I learned that:

• Many early fundamentalists from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s—including “Old Princeton” scholars like Charles Hodge and great defenders of biblical inerrancy like B.B. Warfield—held views consistent with mainstream science.
• “Scientific Creationism” originally championed by Creation Research Institute (CRI) led by Henry Morris (the Ken Ham of his day) is a recent fear-based and anti-intellectual trend that began in the 1950’s as a reaction to being found scientifically wanting by mainstream evangelical scientists. They literally walked out of a meeting hosted by the American Scientific Association (ASA)!

Continuing to work toward my M.Div., I leveraged several research projects to explore some of my questions. Gordon Wenham’s commentary on Genesis opened my eyes to the original ancient Near Eastern (ANE) audience of Genesis 1. Instead of being a textbook about science, Wenham showed that Gen. 1 was written to discredit rival cosmologies.[2] But, Wenham said, “Gen. 1 is more than a repudiation of contemporary oriental creation myths; it is a triumphant invocation of the God who has created all men and an invitation to all humanity to adore him who has made them in his own image.”[3] Here were the big ideas that Genesis 1 communicated to its original audience:

• God is without peer and competitor. Sea monsters and astral bodies are not gods that compete with Yahweh; “the sun and moon are not gods in their own right but are created by the one [true] God.”[4]
• The creation of man is not an afterthought, something to relieve the gods of work or keep them supplied with food. Man is unique, special, and distinct from the rest of creation.

John Walton, in his excellent work The Lost World of Genesis One, gets at this same rich theology regarding humanity with the following contrast statements:[5]

• In other ANE documents, humans are slaves to the gods. In Genesis, we are special to God—the climax of the six days.
• In other ANE documents, people meet the needs of the gods. In Genesis, God has no needs and desires relationship with us.
• In other ANE documents we are employees in the plant serving in the manufacturing process. In Genesis, we are employees engaged in sales and marketing who represent the company to the outside world!

Again, for the first time, I saw that Gen. 1 was an ancient text about worship, not science. I shared my learnings with the congregation I was serving in in Middletown, KY and these were my key points (notice how they have nothing to do with the “days” of creation or how old the earth is):

1. The wonder we experience in nature should be directed toward God.
2. Humanity, the highest creation, was created for blessing and responsibility.
3. God’s plans and workings, though not understood by us, are full of love and order.

Here are this week’s take-ways:

• Genesis 1 is an ancient text about worship, not science, yet one that leaves lots of room for scientific exploration and a consideration of a variety of views. Enjoy the freedom, don’t be afraid, be humble, and learn.
• Genesis 1 is an ancient text about witness, not winning the modern culture war of the either-or debate:

“Some people reading… are deeply suspicious of evolution. Perhaps they’ve seen Richard Dawkins, that ardent defender of evolution, sneer at religion and call it ‘a virus of the mind.’ Or maybe they’ve heard Ken Ham, a young-earth creationist with an audience of millions, warn that ‘evolution and millions of years’—what he summarily dismisses as ‘man’s word’—are baseless ideas that contradict the clear message of Genesis and inevitably lead down the slippery slope to atheism, or worse, liberal Christianity.”[6]

Next week, we’ll begin to talk about how science relates to Genesis. I hope to do so in a nuanced way that is often drowned out by the polarizing rhetoric of the two extremes just mentioned above. 

[1] Fast forward to today and this is still true. My favorite pastors and scholars like John Ortberg, N.T.Wright, James A.K. Smith, Tremper Longman III, Tim Keller, J.I. Packer, and Richard Mouw all hold some form of evolutionary creationism.

[2] Gordon Wenham, Word Biblical Commentary- Gen. 1-15 (Waco: Word, 1987), 9.

[3] Ibid., 10.

[4] ESV Study Bible, 49.

[5] John Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology & the Origins Debate (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009).

[6] Kathryn Applegate & J.B. Stump, How I Changed My Mind about Evolution (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2016), 15-16.