A review of THE GREAT DIVIDE – Christianity OR Evolution, by Gerard Berghoef and Lester DeKoster. Grand Rapids, The Christian Library Press , c1988 ; 176 pages.
Just what is wrong with theistic evolution? This question is often asked. And frequently it is asked with a hint of prejudice in favor of what may seem to some to be a legitimate position for a Christian to take. After all, so the feeling goes, if the sovereign God is said to be in charge of the evolutionary process, then why can’t such a view be perfectly proper for a Christian who seriously wants to be true to the Bible and who at the same time wishes to do justice to scientific evidence?
Those who think they can be comfortable with a theistic evolutionary view should consult this very readable book by Berghoef and DeKoster. Written in brisk and articulate language conveying the ring of conviction and contemporaneity, it is a compact treatment of a subject that has become crucial in the Christian community, particularly in the Christian Reformed Church.
The subtitle says what the book is about-Christianity OR Evolution. Most Christians are, it maybe presumed, ready to say that evolution as it is most commonly espoused is incompatible with Christianity. The authors argue the case that theistic evolution is just as incompatible with Christianity. “Theistic evolution, also called ‘creationomic science,” say Berghoef and DeKoster, “perverts Christianity into just another man-tailored religion. This is the thesis of this book” (p. 13). (“Creationomic science” is the term H. Van Till uses in his book The Fourth Day).
The book has an interesting and helpful format. Each chapter is preceded by a brief three-point summary stating what Genesis teaches, what Evolution teaches, and then what Theistic Evolution teaches. Chapter 1, entitled “In the Beginning . . . ,” has the following three-point introduction:
GENESIS
Reveals that in the beginning there was the God who further reveals Himself, as we confess in the Apostles Creed, as “God the Father Almighty.”
EVOLUTION
Theorizes that in the beginning there was a burst of energy called the Big Bang.
THEISTIC EVOLUTION
Attempts to tie God and the Bang together, and in so doing begins its reduction of Christianity to the status of just another religion.
Not surprisingly, a good many of these chapter introductions represent Evolution and Theistic Evolution as teaching the same thing. The authors leave us in no doubt as to their rejection of Theistic Evolution, it being just as unacceptable as other types of evolutionary teaching. The “Great Divide . . . separates Christianity from evolution, all brands” (p. 122).
How do the authors argue their case? They do it in a manner that may seem a bit surprising to many. Early in the book the question is raised as to how we go about choosing among Genesis or Evolution or Theistic Evolution. ‘“The answer to that crucial question,” Berhoef and DeKoster go on to say, “is not to be found in arguing the ‘case’ for or against evolution, nor in trying to prove the reliability of Genesis. Such arguments always bog down somewhere short of conviction” (p. 27). The observation is most likely correct.
Significantly the book’s line of argumentation turns around God’s Plan of Redemption. This approach is as astute as it is significant. After all it is generally agreed among Christians that God’s redemptive plan in and through Jesus Christ is the very heart of the Bible. THE GREAT DIVIDE demonstrates on many counts how this plan of redemption is set forth throughout the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, with important elements of that plan anchored in the book of Genesis. We cannot reject or compromise the teaching of Genesis and still think we can embrace God’s plan of redemption in Christ, who in many ways certified the teaching of Genesis.
And this line of argumentation is astute for another reason. Those who subscribe to theistic evolution often stress their personal allegiance to Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. The authors put the question very directly, “How can the theistic evolutionist, who rejects Jesus’ certification of Genesis, still lay claim to being Jesus’ disciple?” (p. 72). On pages 172–173 a chart displays “some of the Genesis elements of the Plan ofRedemption.” This chart makes “vividly clear,” the authors declare, “that theistic evolution (including ‘creationomic science’ distorts Christianity into just another man-made religion, as does secular evolution” (p. 171).
In this review two segments of this discussion are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness ofthe authors’ line of approach.
The creation was brought into existence by God’s Word “And God said . . .” (Gen. 1:3, 6, 9 etc.) This Word, the New Testament tells us in the first chapter of the gospel of John, was Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior who “became flesh and dwelt among us.” “Your salvation depends on the creating Word who became flesh and lived and died for us. St. John identifies Jesus the Savior with Jesus the Agent of God’s creation as revealed in Genesis. Only this Jesus is the heart of Christianity” (p. 35).
In fact, it is by speech that God reveals himself and his works. He is the sovereign divine person who “is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him.” This is the mark of God’s personhood and his freedom, and by speech he called the universe into being, he sent forth his Son as the Word become flesh, he gave his written Word, he stilled the storm at sea, he called Lazarus from the grave, and by his Word he stirs living faith in the hearts of believers. It all began with “And God said . . . .” Indeed, “The Bible is unrelenting witness to Word creation, and thus weaves the Genesis revelation into Christianity” (p. 35).
A second segment of the book’s line of discussion has to do with man’s sinfulness and the salvation he gains in Christ. Genesis reports man’s creation by God, after or in God’s image, and God declared that his work was “very good.” And then came man’s fall from his “very good” status, as reported in Genesis. But this Genesis account is not that of theistic evolution. According to the evolutionary scheme “God is Evolutionist-in-Charge of man’s development from the Bang to the present. Man is the product of God’s work. Whatever God finds wanting in man is His own doing. How could God, then, condemn human misbehavior? Man is what God’s evolutionary ‘strategy’ has so far made us. Why all the fuming and threatening in the Bible over sin and evil? God is denouncing His own handiwork-on theistic evolutionary ground” (p. 80).
This compelling line of thought moves on as we read that “evolution makes the death of Christ a kind of dramatic gesture, an act detached from any Plan of salvation. Why, on evolutionary grounds, should God’s Son die to atone an original sin and guilt which, for evolution, man never incurred? Indeed, what, for evolution has death to do with sin at all? But, if death is not a penalty on sin, then Christ’s dying cannot pay that penalty. And evolution thus negates the whole Plan of Redemption” (p. 107).
These samplings from the book’s manner of dealing with the subject should be enough to show that the authors present their case in devotion to the Bible and with language that is clear and often arresting. These samplings should, I trust, prompt the reader of this review to get the book for himself, and for his growing children, so that many in the church may be better equipped to deal with a matter of great concern to the thoughtful Christian today.
Is the language of the book too blunt, too abrasive, at times? It may seem so to some. One of the authors (DeKoster) is well known as a student who has immersed himself in the writings of the great Reformer, John Calvin. Any one who has done any reading at all in Calvin’s writing knows that Calvin could use sharp language in dealing with views he thought were false. Compared with some of the language used by DeKoster’s mentor, this book’s wording is fairly mild. If the conviction of Berghoef and DeKoster is valid, that evolution, also theistic evolution, constitutes a serious threat to Christian thought and life, then their language anent that threat is hardly excessively sharp. Surely a book’s language should never be personally abusive, nor should the style of writing be dull or diffuse or murky. The book in hand violates on none of these counts.
This pointed critique of theistic evolution is not narrowly focussed. It does not single out the writing that has recently caused a stir in the Christian Reformed Church, namely, The Fourth Day by H. Van Till of Calvin College. This is good, lest some dismiss the study of Berghoef and DeKoster as being just part of a limited family squabble in a particular denomination. At the same time it is obvious that the writers are well acquainted with Van Till’s book. They refer several times to the term “creationomic science,” Van Till‘s description of what is more commonly called theistic evolution. More than that, they make clear that they are very much aware of a facet of Van Till’s argument that is most vulnerable.
In pressing the point that the Word of God, active in creation, remains active in God’s universe, Berghoef and DeKoster refer to Christ’s use of the word to still the waves of the storm-tossed Sea of Galilee. “Observe well,” say the authors, “this divine intrusion on the evolutionist’s cherished principle of uniformity. His God is supposed to remain ‘external’ to the universe. But that is not the God of Christianity, nor the Word who is the Christ” (p. 36).
The word “external” is Van Till’s word (The Fourth Day, p. 195). The Calvin professor ofAstronomy says plainly, “we believe the patterns of material behavior to be spatially universal and temporally invariant: they are the same everywhere and ‘every–when’” (p. 116). The universe and its system of material objects are to be thought of in terms of “rigorously patterned behavior” (The Fourth Day, p. 205), of “very strict patterns which can be precisely described and mathematically represented” (ibid, p. 221). These rigid patterns of behavior have been going on invariantly “everywhere and ‘every-when’” for an alleged fifteen billion years, since the original “Big Bang.”
And in relation of these ongoing, rigidly patterned, invariant processes covering billions of years, God is, according to Van Till, given a place among “external, non–material entities, powers, and beings” (ibid, p. 195). Such abanishment of our sovereign, miracle-working God from His world is totally intolerable to Berghoef and DeKoster and ought to be so to any Christian. Van Till’s ascription to God of the roles of “Originator, Preserver, Governor, and Provider of the Creation” (ibid, p. 65) does not relieve the problem. Giving God such titles is much like relieving the team’s manager of his duties and kicking him upstairs to an office position with a fine sounding title, but the game goes on without him.
The book, commendable as it is in its main thrust, does reveal some incidental features that leave this reviewer somewhat uncomfortable. There is, for instance, a strain of allegorizing in the understanding of certain scripture passages. Does the making of Eve out of the side of the sleeping first Adam prefigure the making of “the new Eve, Christ’s bride the church, out of the side of the second Adam ‘asleep on the Cross?’” And do the blood and water flowing from the crucified Savior’s side symbolize the sacramental signs of the church? (p. 66). St. Augustine taught the latter idea and Calvin was not minded to reject it. But one looks in vain in later exegetes for such allegorical notions, meaning exegetes like Meyer, Alford, Godet, F. W. Grosheide and Hendriksen. Allegorizing appears also in the reference to Christ’s likening himself to the serpent of brass that Moses lifted up in the wilderness. Parenthetically the authors say “brass combines two elements as Christ combined God and human flesh!” (p.142).
Does God take risks? Very likely most thoughtful Christians have difficulty with the idea. Berghoef and DeKoster say that God took a “risk” when he created man in His image as a free age nt, a being with the freedom to disobey. In fact, God in so creating man took a “triple risk” (pp. 97–98). It would be a cheap shot to charge the authors with shabby theologizing. And I have too much respect for the debating prowess of at least one of the authors to engage in an argument over semantics with him. Yet, the word “risk” does contain an element of uncertainty which does not harmonize with the omniscience of God and with the all-inclusiveness of his decrees. I think the authors would have been well advised not to use the word.
There will be those who will express displeasure with the chapter entitled with these words: “SCIENCE” in Capital Letters (and Quotation Marks) (pp. 155–165). Some will not accept the derogatory attitude that comes through with regard to what the author§ label SCIENCE, in contrast with the positive feelings expressed toward applied science. Applied science has been made possible to a large degree because of the prior and continuing work of theoretical science.
SCIENCE is charged with being speculative, and so ought not to be taken too seriously. The advice is appropriate, but science surely must be allowed its speculative aspect. Theorizing with its components of wonderment and musing are an inescapable part of the scientific adventure.
This is not to say that the chapter is without value; by no means. Surely science has its pretensions, which are sometimes intimidating to the initiated. The authors are surely correct in reminding us that there is no such thing as a commanding entity called SCIENCE before which we must bow in awe. Science is not to be regarded as a set, objective body of fact and truth. Rather, it is something found in and produced by the minds of people, people with prejudices, foibles and limitations like those marking the lives of the rest of us. And the following commentary is worth noting as a description of the manner in which science often goes about its business:
The “scientist” has to begin with some hypothesis, some thesis which he hopes to test and validate or invalidate. His hypothesis “leads” him to “facts” which will support or contradict it. The hypothesis points to the “facts,” not the “facts” to the hypothesis. This is common knowledge. And if the “scientist” is strongly disposed to finding support for his hypothesis, oddly enough most of the “facts” he finds will do just that (p. 160).
The reader who wishes to do more study in the area of the scientific aspects to the debate over evolution can consult the book THE EARTH, THE STARS, AND THE BIBLE by Paul Steidl. The author, a student of astronomy like H. Van Till, cooly and dispassionately evaluates many of the various items of scientific evidence in the debate and comes to a conclusion quite different from that of Van Till.
The authors are to be congratulated on producing this useful and timely book. The Christian community is the better off for this presentation of a line of discussion that cannot be ignored in this ongoing intense debate. With their hearts and minds deeply committed to the redemptive Word with Jesus Christ as its living center, the authors may well declare toward the end of their study, “It is not we, but He, who set the Great Divide between Christianity and evolution” (p. 170).
Edward Heerema is a retired CRC pastor living at Cape Coral, Florida.