The Compromise of 
Theistic Evolution, Part 2

What’s Wrong With Theistic Evolution?

1. There is no theistic statement which shows theistic evolution to be true.  God never said he used evolution to create man.  In fact, he said just the opposite.  “. . . God could have accomplished the origin of life in any way he chose, by evolution or by creation, but an admission that there is a God and that he made such an accomplishment in any way, means that we are totally dependent upon his revelation to determine which way.  His revelation declares creation, not evolution” (Robert Camp, A Critical Look at Evolution. Atlanta, Georgia. 1972. pp. 205-206).  Indeed, the texts throughout the Bible (Genesis 1-2; Exodus 20:11; 31:17; Nehemiah 9:6, et. al.) plainly teach fiat creation and do not even hint of any kind of evolutionary process.  In fact, we are plainly told that the entire creation took place in six days – not over multiplied billions of years.  Furthermore, we are told that “He spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast” (Psalms 33:6-9).  Any interpretation with attempts to “stretch” the instantaneous, creative work of God over multiplied billions of years will quickly find itself speaking against the plain and simple statements of God himself.  God said he did it instantaneously – in six days!

2.  Theistic evolution is wrong because the Bible states that Adam was the first man.  Paul (1 Corinthians 15:45) and Moses (Genesis 1-2) both made it plainly clear that Adam was the first man.  Not so, says evolution.  Evolution theory says that Homo erectus or Homo habilis or Australopithecus afarensis or . . . was the first man.  Which will the theistic evolutionist accept as correct – the Bible or evolution theory?  Both cannot be correct, since they teach exactly opposite concepts.

3.  Theistic evolution is wrong  because it cannot explain Eve.  The problem of Eve has haunted theistic evolutionists since the very inception of their false theory.  The Bible makes it abundantly clear that God put Adam to sleep and took from his side material from which he made woman (Genesis 2:21-23).  Eve is even named by Paul in 1 Timothy 2:13 as being a real, historical character.  Yet evolution says that the sexes evolved, and that simultaneously, in the same geographical region, with one being male and one being female, and both being fertile and producing fertile offspring.  To the most casual reader it is plain that there is nothing similar in the two events.  How will theistic evolutionists explain this “problem of Eve”?  In reality, there is only one way to “explain” the “problem of Eve” – make the first eleven chapters of Genesis mythological or allegorical, anything but literal and historical.  There is no other way to avoid the problem.  Yet this at the same time has far-reaching consequences.  For example, Abraham, father of the Hebrew race, is first mentioned in chapter 11 of Genesis.  Was Abraham mythical?  And what about the flood of Noah in Genesis 6-8?  Was it mythical?  (Remember that even Christ himself referred to the flood, Matthew 24:37-39.)  Peter obviously didn’t think the flood was mythical.  He referred to it in both 1 Peter 3 and 2 Peter 3 as being a real, historical event.  Was the tower of Babel figurative and allegorical?  If so, whence then, the origin of languages?  Furthermore, Paul mentions Adam in 1 Corinthians 15:45 in comparison to the “last Adam” (Christ).  If the first Adam was mythical, was the last?  You see, any attempt to “explain away” the “problem of Eve” simply leads to more serious problems.  Theistic evolution cannot explain Eve!

4.  Theistic evolution is wrong because it cannot explain where man acquired his soul.  “To be consistent evolutionists, theistic evolutionists must maintain that the image of God, in man, evolved.  If they call on God and a miracle to get the image of God in man, why so hesitant to call on God and a miracle for the giving of the life of the body to a physical body formed of the dust of the earth?  Their nontheistic colleagues will not find the creation of the image of God in man any more acceptable than the creation of the body of man.  What do theistic evolutionists affirm of the origin of the image of God?” (Bales, J.D. op. cit., p. 53.)  This problem has, of course, bothered theistic evolutionists for centuries.  The Bible plainly states that God created man (not an ape or ape-like creature) in the image of God, and then gave that man a soul.  Did that soul evolve along with all the other parts of man?  How will the theistic evolutionist get a soul into man?  In attempts to deal with this serious problem, the false concepts of “progressive creation” and “threshold evolution” were invented, yet without success, to show that God “intervened” in the evolutionary process to “place” a soul in man.  But as always, error is its own worst enemy.  Evolutionary processes are based on uniformitarianism (which states that the present is the key to the past; processes now going on have always gone on, and at standard, uniform rates).  But the minute you let God “stick his hand” into the alleged evolutionary process, you have destroyed once and for all uniformitarianism.  One thing that theistic evolutionists have failed to comprehend is that supernatural (God) and uniformitarian (evolution) events are not compatible; they are instead mutually exclusive.  In the case of man’s soul, it is impossible to have both evolution and God’s intervention!

5.  Theistic evolution is wrong because it logically denies the fall of man (Genesis 3).  The Bible makes it abundantly clear that man started on the earth in a covenant relationship with God (Genesis 1-2).  Genesis 3 then tells of the breaking, by man, of the covenant, and his need for a coming Redeemer to bring him back into the covenant relationship with the Creator.  Evolution says that man did not start at the top and fall to the bottom, but instead started at the bottom as some primordial slime, and has through the eons of geological time “risen.”  As Dr. Curtly Mather of Harvard once put it:  “When a theologian accepts evolution as the process used by the creator, he must be willing to go all the way with it.  Not only is it an orderly process, it is a continuing one.  Nothing was finished on any seventh day; the process of creation is still going on.  The golden age for man – if any – is in the future, not in the past. . . . Moreover the creative process of evolution is not to be interrupted by a supernatural intervention. . . . the spiritual aspects of the life of man are just as surely a product of the processes called evolution as are his brain and nervous system” (IN: Science Ponders Religion. Harlow Shaple, Editor. Appleton-Century-Croft, Inc. New York. 1960. pp. 37-38).  The Bible says the “golden age” of man was in the past, when man was at the apex of his relationship with God.  The evolutionary system of thought says the opposite.  How can both be true?

6.  Theistic evolution is wrong because the Bible teaches catastophism; evolution teaches uniformitarianism.  Over and over again the Bible speaks to us of catastrophic events (the flood of Genesis 6-8; the plagues of Egypt in Exodus 7ff; etc.).  The miraculous is an intrinsic part of the Bible.  On the other hand, evolution requires uniformitarianism with its trite phrase, “the present is the key to the past” as its watchword.  Evolution states emphatically that all things are going on today just like they always have, and always will.  The Bible plainly denies this.  The resurrection of Christ is enough to send evolution to its grave once and for all!

7.  Theistic evolution is wrong because the Bible states that the heavens, the earth, the sea and all that in them is were created in six days.  Evolution theory, of course, says that evolution took place over billions of years.  Exodus 20:11; 31:17 and Genesis 1 state the opposite.  The creation, we are told through inspiration, occurred in a six-day period.  The Bible (Genesis 1:5, et al) even states that each of these days was a period of “evening and morning” so that there would be no doubt as to the length of each of the creation days.  Either the universe was created in six days, or it “evolved” over billions of years, but of one thing we may be certain:  both concepts cannot be true!

8.  Theistic evolution is wrong because it makes a liar out of Jesus the Savior, and his inspired writers.  Jesus stated in Mark 10:6 (cf., Matthew 19:4):  “But from the beginning of the creation male and female made he them.”  Jesus affirmed that Adam and Eve had been on earth “from the beginning of creation.”  Paul affirmed in Romans 1:20-21 that the things God had made were being “perceived” even “since the creation of the world.”  Who, Paul, was there to “perceive” these things “since the creation of the world”?  Moses told us.  Paul told us.  Adam and Eve were their names.  Jesus affirmed their status here on the earth “from the beginning of creation.”  Now if the evolutionists are correct and man has been here on the earth some 4 million years or so, it doesn’t take very much intelligence to figure out that 4 million years out of an alleged earth history of 4.5 billion years is not, by any stretch of the imagination, “from the beginning.”  Rather, it is instead “from an end.”  The choice is this:  Either Jesus Christ lied and the evolutionists are correct, or Jesus told the truth and evolution is wrong.  To accept any part of evolution makes Jesus Christ and his inspired writers liars!

Conclusion