Many of these compromising Christians profess allegiance to Christ and the Scriptures, and perhaps are quite sincere in thinking theirs is the only way that Christians can be intellectually reputable. Nevertheless, they are also quite wrong. The Bible is God’s Word, verbally inspired by the Holy Spirit, free of error (God cannot lie!), and God the Holy Spirit means exactly what He says. The foundational nature of the doctrine of creation makes it supremely important for the Scriptures to be plain and clear on this subject, of all subjects! In fact, they could hardly be more clear than they are, just as they stand.
However, since so many professed Christians have been tempted to compromise on the subject of creation, we shall in this chapter summarize the reasons that such compromises are invalid and harmful. We shall try to avoid any ad hominem remarks, however, since we are more concerned to refute these harmful theories than to criticize their advocates.
Theistic Evolution
According to Scripture, all things were specially created by God in six days. Is it possible that God’s method of “creation” might really have been what the modern evolutionist means by “evolution”? (The question as to the exact length or nature of these days of creation will be discussed later.) A popular cliché of neo-orthodox and liberal writers is to the effect that God has revealed in Scripture the fact of creation, but has left the method of creation to be worked out by scientists. This is merely a circuitous way of saying that the fact of evolution should be accepted in the hope that the scientists will allow the belief that God is the one controlling the process.
There are various forms of theistic evolution, and different terms that have been used. These include “orthogenesis” (goal-directed evolution), “nomogenesis” (evolution according to fixed law), “emergent evolution,” “creative evolution,” and others. None of these concepts are accepted among modern leaders of evolutionary thought, for they are all quite atheistic. The evolutionary scheme that is least objectionable to Christians is, of course, simply the idea that Jehovah used the method of evolution to accomplish His purpose in creation, as described in Genesis. This theory might be called “biblical evolution.” Any sound approach to Bible exegesis, however, precludes this interpretation.
1. Creation of Distinct Kinds Precludes Transmutations between Kinds
The Scriptures are very clear in their teaching that God created all things as He wanted them to be, each “kind” with its own particular structure, according to His own sovereign purposes. The account of creation in Genesis 1, for example, indicates that at least ten major categories of organic life were specially created, each “after his kind.” These categories are, in the plant kingdom: (1) grass, (2) herbs, (3) fruit trees. In the animal kingdom the specific categories mentioned are these: (1) sea monsters, (2) other marine animals, (3) birds, (4) beasts of the earth, (5) cattle, (6) crawling animals. Finally, man “kind” was created as another completely separate category. The phrase “after his kind” or its equivalent occurs ten times in this first chapter of Genesis.
Even though there may be uncertainty as to what is meant by “kind” (Hebrew min), it is obvious that the word does have a definite and fixed meaning. One “kind” could not transform itself into another “kind.” There is certainly no thought here of an evolutionary continuity of all forms of life, but rather one of definite and distinct categories! Furthermore, the sense of the passage is that a great many different kinds were created in each of the nine major groups (excluding man) that are specifically listed. There is certainly room for variations within each kind, as is obvious from the fact that all the different tribes and nations of men, with all their wide variety of physical characteristics, are within the human “kind.” The same must be true for the other kinds. Many different varieties can emerge within the basic framework of each kind, but at the same time such variations can never extend beyond that framework.
Remember that evolution teaches that all “kinds” of life descended from other “kinds,” ultimately all descending from a common ancestor. The creation of plants and animals “after their kind” implies that the omniscient God knew what form each should take, and in His omnipotence created them that way from the start. Note that each “kind” was not commanded to reproduce “after their kind,” even though we know from genetics that there are natural limits to variation. But what this phrase specifically says, repeated ten times in one chapter, is that plants and animal categories did not evolve from any other category. Evolutionary change was not involved in their origin.
This clear teaching of the creation chapter is accepted and confirmed in other parts of the Bible. For example, consider 1 Corinthians 15:38–39: “God giveth . . . to every seed his own body. All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.”
Not only is such distinctiveness true in the organic realm of plants and animals, but also in the inorganic realm. “There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another” (1 Cor. 15:40). That is, the earth is quite different from the stars and the other planets (as has been abundantly confirmed in this age of space exploration), and therefore must have been the object of a distinct creative act by God. It was, in fact, created by God on the first day (Gen. 1:1–5), whereas the heavenly bodies were not made until the fourth day (Gen. 1:14–19).
Furthermore, even the stars (and this term in the Bible includes all celestial objects except the sun and moon), were each created with its own particular structure. “There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory” (1 Cor. 15:41). The tremendous variety of heavenly bodies revealed by modern astronomy — planets, comets, meteors, white dwarfs, red giants, variable stars, star clusters, binary stars, dark nebulae, interstellar dust, radio stars, quasars, neutron stars, etc. — also confirms this statement. No two stars, out of the innumerable host of heaven, are exactly alike, even though they look alike superficially, as mere points of light. Each was created with its own structure and purpose (though these matters are presently beyond our knowledge, perhaps awaiting exploration and utilization in the eternal ages to come). Although there are many theories to explain how the many “species” of stars and galaxies may have evolved from one into another, there is no observational evidence whatsoever of such imagined evolution.
Perhaps the most striking biblical statement of the absolute uniqueness of each of the foregoing created entities is found in 1 Corinthians 15:42–44: “So also is the resurrection of the dead. . . . There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.” That is, the radical difference in kind between man’s natural body and his glorified resurrection body (And obviously the one does not by natural processes evolve into the other!) is taken as analogous to the unbridgeable gaps between the created kinds of things in the present universe.
Numerous other passages in the Bible also clearly prove special creation, but those discussed above should be adequate to demonstrate that so-called “biblical evolution” is a semantic confusion, about like “inorganic metabolism” or “Christian atheism.” The Bible simply does not permit evolution in its hermeneutical system.
2. Evolution Contradicts the Bible Record of a Finished Creation
The fundamental premise of evolutionary philosophy is that the origin and development of all things can be understood in terms of basic natural laws and processes that can be studied in operation right now. This assumption flatly contradicts the biblical statement that “He rested from all his work which God created and made” (Gen. 2:3) after the six days of creation. “In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed” (Exod.