A New Project

The Creation and Evolution controversy is threatening to become an issue again in the SDA church. The catalyst is a letter sent by Pastor David Asscherick to church leaders regarding the teaching of evolution at La Sierra University.  It is important because evolution has become the organizing principle in the teaching of science, not just biology, but psychology also.  And not only the life sciences but geology and  astronomy and astrophysics as well.  As a psychologist, I cannot avoid the growing influence of evolutionary theory in my own discipline, and its value as an organizing principle for understanding the empirical data in biological and cognitive psychology and neuroscience -- areas of particular interest to me.   Yet the basic tenets of evolutionary theory are in direct conflict with Christian and Adventist presuppositions.  And it is not just the literal word of Scripture that is in conflict.  Evolutionary theory places in question cardinal Christian doctrines such as the origin of sin,  and thus, the plan of salvation; and for Adventists, the Sabbath must stand on a different foundation. A dilated time period of salvation history also causes the second advent of Christ to lose its imminence. 

So what is the Christian to do? The easy answers are: (a) to abandon faith as a Christian and embrace the evolutionary framework as Truth; or (b) to deny the evidence of science and hold on to faith with the expectation that evolution would be proven false in the end.  I find the first option a hasty retreat that denies my personal religious experience as a Christian, and that gives to science a role as arbiter of ultimate things that it cannot fulfill.  The second option I find lacking intellectual integrity.  It is not honest to accept only the evidence that fits our beliefs and deny what does not fit because it happens to be uncomfortable. Further,  as a Christian I believe that our senses and our ability to think are gifts of God -- marred by sin, to be sure, but not obliterated.  To ignore the evidences of science and logic is to spurn God's gift.  

And so I suggest a third, more complex and difficult option.  It requires that we hold on to faith, yet seek a way of engagement and synthesis that currently does not exist.  This third way is the approach  suggested by Charles Scriven, President of Kettering College, in a thoughtful essay published online on the Spectrum Magazine site.  You may read it here.  Scriven lays out his own position on the issues.  While admitting its scientific power, he asserts what he sees as the philosophical limitations of evolutionary theory. But he also suggests that though the Bible clearly affirms that God is Creator, it may be less definitive regarding the time and means of creation than some suppose.  Then he suggests that both scientists and other thinkers within the church embark on a new approach to the issues, in the absence of "mutual disdain", as he put it, and with a deeper sense of humility.  

That seems like good advice, and probably the only way forward in our present situation.  Yet in an otherwise balanced article, Scriven let slip his own bias by referring to Asscherick's letter as "breathless fulmination". If this project is going to succeed, Scriven's call for the absense of mutual disdain would have to be scrupulously followed by all sides, as also his call for humility. Humility means an admission of our limitations, not just in what the methods of science can teach us, but also in our ability to interpret scripture.  To think Christianly is to admit that we are not God, that the Truth is always beyond our grasp, and that all of our attempts to know are limited by that fact.  But it is also to keep searching, in this spirit of humility and  in a sincere desire to understand those with whom we disagree, with the hope of coming closer to the One who is the Truth, and in so doing, to come closer to the Truth itself.  Let us begin.