If you’re a theistic evolutionist, . . .
Theistic evolution is the theory that God used evolution to create life on earth as we know it today. If you’re a theistic evolutionist, please don’t do four things.
1. Don’t be a Chris. Be a Beth.
2. Don’t toss Adam out of your theology lightly. The New Testament talks about a lot of Old Testament people; a lot of theology in the New Testament depends on these folk: Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Melchizedek, Isaac, David, Zerubbabel, etc. Adam appears in passages including Luke 3, Mark 10, and Romans 5.
If you’re a theistic evolutionist, then you probably believe that Abraham, David, and Zerubbabel are historical characters, and that the theological points Paul makes in Romans 4 based on the life of Abraham are based on a historical character.
So what is it that Abraham has in Romans 4 but Adam lacks in Romans 5, or that Adam lacks in Luke 3 but Abraham and David have in the same passage?
Not believing in a historical Adam without answering this question is a little careless, at best. At worst, it undermines the authority of Scripture.
(Of course one could believe in a historical Adam and still be a theistic evolutionist. Maybe Adam was just the first person who had evolved to the point where he could make a free and morally significant choice, or the first person God spoke to, or the first person to whom God gave an immortal soul, or something. This approach to Adam is a little bit speculative and impossible to prove from Scripture, but it is possible.)
3. Watch out for deism! Don’t have a deistic region in your theology. Understand that God was involved in creation. Chance is not the father of us all. Nor are chance and a set of physical laws set up by God at the beginning of creation the father and mother of us all.
The order and beauty of creation was part of God’s plan. How excellent is His name in all the earth!
In other words, it’s better to be a theistic evolutionist than simply to be an evolutionist who happens to be a theist.
(By the way, Alvin Plantinga answers this by saying that the free choice of created beings is responsible for that death and suffering, just not the free choice of human beings. There were other, angelic beings created before humans, and they sinned first.)
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About The Author
Dr. Mark J. Boone
Dr. Mark J. Boone is a teacher and researcher in philosophy, especially the history of philosophy, primarily the ancient and medieval eras, writing his dissertation on Saint Augustine. Dr. Boone is the Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Forman Christian College. Mark is an occasional book reviewer for the journal Augustinian Studies and has written articles dealing with Plato, William James, theology and the arts, and religious epistemology. In some of his precious little spare time Mark makes animated cartoons based on famous speeches and dialogues in the history of philosophy, available on YouTube and Vimeo under the username TeacherofPhilosophy.
Just for the sake of argument, we cannot say with any certainty that death, suffering, volcanoes, (local floods), earthquakes and all other sorts of calamities did not exist before the fall. All we know is that when Adam and Eve sins, their work of tending the earth would get harder, pain associated with children would increase (apparently there was always some pain) and they would not longer have access to the tree of life.
As a theistic evolutionist, I believe that each day of creation represent a distinct epoch when God miraculously introduced something new, and then allowed millenia of evolution to spread diversity. I also believe that Adam and Eve were uniquely fashion in a manner different that everything else–Adam was formed, but the earth “brought forth” plants and animals.
That said, since I do believe that the universe is something like 13 billion years old and the earth is something like 4 billion years, I have no trouble concluding that many things must have died and presumably suffered throughout the ages. I also think that if pre-fall Adam had fallen of a cliff for example, he could have died. I don’t believe that pre-fall Adam and Eve were invincible, just that they were not separate from God and that they had some level of divine protection as result of their life in the Garden, which clearly had a separate subset of rules from the rest of creation.