CREATION AND EVOLUTION

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (10/16/05)

Fundamentalists and evolutionists have worthwhile concerns. The fundamentalists are concerned with the sacred value of human beings and a purposeful world. The evolutionists are concerned with the integrity of the scientific method. However, their conflict is based in a confusion of types of knowledge.

The confusion lies in categories of knowledge or types of knowledge. These categories are answers to basic questions inevitably asked about anything important. As Bertrand Russell pointed out an idea or term has meaning only within a framework of understanding. Evolution as a type of knowledge or scientific theory tries to answer the question "how" human beings developed. Such a question leads to other questions, such as, "what", "when", and "where."

Theology is different. It deals with the "why" question of the mystery of the human condition, the mystery of human’s grand potentialities and deplorable actualities.

For instance, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the former director of the Manhattan Project, the producer the atomic bomb, wondered after the first atomic explosion at Alamogordo, New Mexico, about the consequences of such a bomb. He became deeply disturbed after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology he said, "physicists have known sin." The potential for good in atomic energy produced the mass slaughter of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He spent his life answering "how" questions but then had to ask the "why" question. He answered the "why" question with the classic theological term "sin."

Comparing the scientific and theological questions is akin to asking the question "what’s the best way to get from Chicago to Los Angeles" and getting the answer, "To make big it in Hollywood." It gives a "why" answer to a "how" question. They are different types of knowledge as is controversy between the creationists and evolutionists.

The modern scientific method did not arise until the 17th century while the second narrative of creation in the Book of Genesis dates from about 1,300 B.C. With about a 3,000 year difference any attempt to compare one with the other is a fallacy of irrelevance. The ancient Hebrews who wrote Genesis 2-4 had no concept of science. They were telling a story about the mysteries of the human condition, as in a parable.

The fundamentalists make another mistake when they insist on literality as a test of divine inspiration. Such an insistence eliminates the Psalms, the Parables of Jesus, and the Apocalypse as being divinely inspired. For an unknown odd reason, many of the evolutionists suffer the same literal affliction when they try theology, but then the scientific method requires literality.

The two narratives in Genesis are not about the "how" of creation at all. The first narrative (Gen 1:1-2:4a) dates from about the 5th century B.C., some twenty-one centuries before the rise of modern science. The second narrative (Gen 2:4b-5:32) dates about 1300 B.C. or thirty centuries before the rise of modern science.

The difference between the two narratives is easy to see. The first narrative uses ‘elohim which is translated "God." The second narrative uses the phrase yahweh ‘elohim which is translated "LORD God" and the word yahweh which is translated "LORD." Yahweh was the Hebrew’s name for God, as the word "John" is a name while the word "man" is a noun.

The name yahweh, often called the Tetragrammaton, YHWH, was thought so sacred by the ancient Hebrews that they wouldn’t pronounce it for fear of blasphemously mispronouncing it. They used the word ‘adhonai instead and still do today. When they came across the word yahweh, they would say‘adhonai. As a way of reminding them to say ‘adhonai, they wrote the vowels for ‘adhonai underneath the consonants for yahweh. Ironically, this produces the non-word Jehovah. In the English versions yahweh is translated "LORD" with all the letters in upper case while ‘adhonai is translated "Lord" with the last three letters in lower case.

Yahweh is derived from the verb hayah, "to be." When God called Moses in the wilderness to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt, Moses asked God for his name, reflecting an ancient Semitic belief that if one knew a person’s name, one had power to influence the person. The reply was, "I AM WHO I AM (Ex. 3:13)," which was an elegant way of saying, "none of your business." In a sense the name yahweh is subtly points to the mystery and unknowablity of God.

Another difference between the narratives is style. The first narrative follows a repetitive formula which indicates the mind of a priest. The second is a set of highly figurative stories which indicate the mind of a story teller who’s writing in parables.

The first narrative was probably a litany with a series of antiphonal chants used in the worship of Second Temple. One can hear in it the echoes of priests, choirs, and congregations.

For instance, a possible liturgy might be:

Priest: And God said, "Let there be light."
Chorus: And there was light.
People: And God saw that the light was good.
Chorus: and God separated the light from the darkness.
Priest: God called the light Day and the darkness he called Night.
People: And there was evening and there was morning, one day.

The liturgy was developed by priests in response to the catastrophic experiences of the Israelites. After returning from the Exile in Babylon about 500 B.C. and building the Second Temple, they were subjugated again by a series of tyrants who tried to wipe out their faith and identity. It’s liturgical profession of faith in God’s providential power, not about a method of creation. Such a faith in God’s providence in large part accounts for the survival of Judaism and Jews over the centuries.

In addition to being a powerful affirmation of God’s sovereignty, the first narrative is also a powerful affirmation of human value. In an age of a technological disvaluation of human beings such as ours, any affirmation is counter-culture. The priests used the word for mankind, ha’adham, in the liturgy, meaning mankind or Everyone. The phrase "image of God" literally means shadow, as in a connection between God and human beings.

The second narrative is a couple of well-told stories, something like parables. As we have seen,‘adham in Hebrew is not a name as in a person, but a noun meaning mankind. The definite article ha, as in "the man" (Gen. 2;15), turns the figure into something like the figure of Everyman in medieval English. In today’s rhetoric we would say Everyone. As in a parable, when we read about "the man," we are reading about ourselves, not an ancient, mythic figure. The story invites a look in the mirror.

The story of the man’s creation in which the LORD God forms him out of the dust of the earth is not at all alien to the theory of evolution. The parabolic story of the LORD God first shaping the man as a mud pie and then breathing the breath of life into the mud pie conveys the great irony of human earthiness and the possibility of spirituality. Some Hebrew linguists believe there is a connection between the word ‘adham and the word for red earth.

The man and the woman are not tempted by immorality, as in the ordinary meaning of temptations, such as lying, cheating, adultery, or killing. The temptations in Genesis symbolize the human reach for ultimacy as a means of achieving security. It is as though the temptation were for immortality rather than for immorality. The fruit of the tree was good for food, a delight to the eyes, and desired to make one wise, in other words, goodness, beauty, and truth. They are a means of becoming like God, knowing everything, which is the meaning of the ancient idiomatic phrase,"knowing good and evil." The purpose of the temptation was to make the God irrelevant, either by means of a practical atheism or a deicide.

This is the very problem with which J. Robert Oppenheimer wrestled at the explosion of the first atomic bomb. He quoted the Hindu text about the god Vishnu, "I am become death, destroyer of worlds." Human achievement was a means of rendering God unnecessary or irrelevant.

The meaning of the narratives in Genesis is often missed in tedious arguments about the origins of the earth and of human beings. The fundamentalists do the Bible great disservice by torturing it into a false interpretation and thereby missing the messages of God’s providence and human malaise.

As far as evolution is concerned, the significant issue is whether or not evolution can include within its meaning a purposeful universe, that is to say, God’s providence. The answer to that question does not lie within evolution itself, but in assumptions brought to evolution. The fact is that some biologists believe in a purposeful design brought to pass by evolution and some believe in a random chaos and chance. As always, belief is not a matter of proof, but an assumption brought to the facts to organize them or make sense out of them.

The concepts of chaos, chance, and randomness have no meaning in themselves in that they point to something known. They point to something not known, as no pattern or design has been observed. As such, they are words to cover ignorance, not knowledge, much as the word mystery.

As much as many moderns do not like the idea, everyone begins with a faith or a set of presuppositions. We do not begin with a tabula rasa. The most obvious one is that the world is a universe, not a multiverse. The chemist’s Periodic Table is the same throughout the world, even in space. Physics does not change from place to place, or planet to planet. Everyone assumes without proof that we live in a universe about which we have incomplete knowledge. Chance and chaos are as much presuppositions or articles of faith as is design. As a matter of fact, since the concept of chaos does not mean anything other than no design has been detected, the article of faith is unknowability.

An evolution by chance does not necessarily lead to atheism or to a repudiation of design. As both modern physics and astronomy seem to say, chaos was at the beginning. Oddly, even Genesis attests to the chaos of origin. Genesis 1:2 reads: "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep." The phrase "without form and void" in Hebrew is a delightfully onomatopoeical tohu wabohu.

The word "deep" in Hebrew is tehom which is not a Hebrew word, but one borrowed from the Babylonian Creation Myth during the Hebrew’s exile in Babylon. In the Babylonian myth, the world was at first a waste and a chaos. Tiamat, the female goddess who brooded over the waste and chaos, was slain by the male god Marduk and cut in half into heaven and earth. No design appeared as‘elohim brooded over the face of tehom, but a divine purpose begins to unfold.
Paradoxically, design is a penultimate concept. Purpose is the the ultimate concept. Designs arise out of purpose.

The priestly author of Genesis 1:1-2:4a was not writing galactically, but historically about the chaos of experience. So it would seem that both the evolutionist begins and the ancient Hebrews began with a sense of chaos.

Purposes and designs seem to emerge from a primordial chaos not only in the universe, but in history as well, and finally within the human soul. Whatever they may be, they are certainly ironic, as if there is a universal law of unintended consequences. In short, purpose and design are a lot more subtle than everyone believes and are generally only perceived in retropsect.
The early theologians in interpreting Genesis 1:1-2 used the phrase ex nihilo, out of nothing, to elucidate the meaning of tohu wabohu. As a scientific friend of mine says, creation "appears to be the result of a self-organization out of chaos." "Even more miraculous, self-organization out of the void." The experience of faith begins with the experience of the Void.

The words used to understand faith either speak to the experience of God or to ideas about God or godtalk, that is to say, impersonal words and personal words. The words of the experience of God are words as "father" and "shepherd." On the other hand, the words about God are all negative in that they point to human ignorance. "Infinite" doesn’t mean anything because all humans beings know is finitude. "Eternal" falls into the same category. Human beings experience only time. Theologians have an elegant word for this unknowability. It is mystery, just as chaos covers the unknown. It sounds like something is being said, but mystery and chaos really mean nothing is known. Alfred North Whitehead called the negative words for God "metaphysical compliments" thrown at God. Finally, everything that human beings know about God is God as Void.

The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber delineated two types of relationships, both valuable if used appropriately. They were I-Thou and I-It. I-Thou is a relationship of subject-to-subject, as in a personal, internal relationship. I-It is a relationship of subject-to-object, as in a impersonal, external relationship. Scientific thought is obviously I-It, impersonal, external to the subject, and objective and thus literal. The heart of faith is an I-Thou relationship or encounter with God and uses phrases and words out of human, personal relationships. One of the best examples of this is Psalm 103:13.
As a father pities his children,
so the LORD pities those who fear him.

An I-It relationship with God is knowledge about God which inevitability leads to the experience of the Void. It is an experience of awe and wonder, as in Psalm 8:3.
When I look at thy heavens,
the work of thy fingers,
the moon and the stars
which thou hast established;
what is man that thou art mindful of him
and the son of man that thou dost care for him?

One surefire way to experience God as Void is in Monument Valley on the Navajo Nation in a thunder and lightning storm at night.

At a deeper level types of knowledge point to a paradox between the scientific world view and that of faith and belief. At first glance, these categories of knowledge appear contradictory and incompatible, but they are really dealing with two profoundly different human impulses, the desire to understand and manage the physical world in which we live and the desire to understand and manage the world within ourselves. Both begin with tohu wabohu.

Adam and Eve, that is to say, Everyone, were tempted to replace God in an act of deicide so that they would be secure without faith, doubt, or vulnerability. As a result, Everyone is a wanderer on the face of the earth (Gen. 3:23) without any security, always in doubt, and constantly vulnerable. It is hard to find a more acute analysis of the human situation than the one told by these ancient Hebrews.

Copyright © 2005 Dana Prom Smith