Theistic Evolution

Is it is truly the case that God and evolution cannot coexist? This is an important claim. If true, it would mean that if we became persuaded that evolution is true, we would have to give up our belief in God.

The stakes are high. It is therefore worth taking a careful look at arguments that claim belief in evolution is incompatible with belief in God. In short, what we want to know is this: could evolution have possibly been used by God to create the diversity of life we see today, perhaps with some divine interventions? If this is even possible, then Christians need not worry about evolution, whichever way the evidence ends up pointing. The Christian is free to follow the evidence where it leads.

Guided Randomness?

In the chapter about the doctrine of creation in his book Systematic Theology, Professor Wayne Grudem offers a critique of theistic evolution. According to Grudem, theistic evolution is the view that “living organisms came about by the process of evolution that Darwin proposed, but that God guided that process so that the result was just what he wanted it to be.”¹ Grudem offers several points of critique of this view, but by far, the longest and most substantial of these is, not a biblical, but a philosophical point, stemming from the fact that “the driving force that brings about change and the development of new species in all evolutionary schemes is randomness.”² Grudem notes that the central problem for theistic evolution is that “without random mutation of organisms you do not have evolution in the modern scientific sense at all.”³

According to Grudem, this is a problem because theistic evolution is the idea that “God intervened in the process and guided it at many points in the direction he wanted it to go.”⁴ However, once this is allowed then “there is purpose and intelligent design in the process” and so “we no longer have evolution at all, because there is no longer random mutation (at the points of divine interaction).”⁵ In short, Grudem’s critique of theistic evolution is that it implies evolution was both “random” and “guided,” which involves a contradiction in terms.

However, despite the fact that Grudem’s critique of theistic evolution relies crucially on the notion of randomness, he never carefully defines what he means by that term. Contrary to Grudem, I want to suggest that there is no philosophical problem with evolution being guided by God if we understand the difference between a process being truly random and only seemingly random, and furthermore, if we understand how random mutations are actually understood in evolutionary theory.

Two Kinds of Randomness

In The Big Question: Why We Can’t Stop Talking About Science, Faith and God, the theologian Alister McGrath aptly summarizes the concerns of those such as Grudem. McGrath observes that “a common religious concern is that Darwin’s evolutionary theory led to the elimination of God from any role within the world.”⁶ It is commonly thought that evolution “does not require divine action in order to take place” and that “the random nature of variation is inconsistent with the idea of creation and providence, which are linked with the ideas of design, purpose, and intentionality.”⁷ However, according to McGrath, the force of this point is open to question:

B. B. Warfield (1851-1921), perhaps one of the most influential conservative Protestant theologians of the late nineteenth century, pointed out that evolution could easily be understood as a seemingly random process which was nevertheless divinely superintended.⁸

In short, there is an important distinction between a truly random process and a seemingly random process. We often think something is random because we do not yet have an explanation for it. However, at a deeper level, we also know that a sequence of numbers can appear random because we do not yet discern a pattern, yet to a mathematician or someone with sufficient knowledge, those numbers can be the precise result of a sophisticated encryption algorithm. So, something is seemingly random if someone with limited knowledge cannot yet discern a pattern or reason for it, but it is truly random if it is random even to an omniscient being such as God. Given this distinction, we can see how random genetic mutations could be seemingly random and so satisfy the biologists, and yet not be truly random, and thus there is no problem with their being caused by God. So, it is simply not true that “guided evolution” is a contradiction in terms.

And in any case, it is doubtful that the biologists have anything like this nuanced of a definition of randomness anyway. A genetic mutation being seemingly random, in our sense, should therefore be enough to satisfy both the theologians and the scientists.

Being Even More Precise About Randomness

The distinction between a process being seemingly random and truly random should generally suffice to refute Professor Grudem’s claim that a random mutation, if caused by God, is no longer random. However, perhaps we can be even more precise. The philosopher Alvin Plantinga has pointed out that, in fact, biologists do not use the term “random” in this philosophical of a way at all. He says, “if these mutations are random, aren’t they just a matter of chance? But randomness, as construed by contemporary biologists, doesn’t have this implication.”⁹

Plantinga points to Elliott Sober, one of the most respected contemporary philosophers of biology, who defines random mutations in a much more careful way: “There is no physical mechanism (either inside organisms or outside of them) that detects which mutations would be beneficial and causes those mutations to occur.”¹⁰ But, as Plantinga points out, mutations “being random in that sense is clearly compatible with their being caused by God.”¹¹ This is because God is not himself a physical mechanism which is part of an organism or its environment.

For example, suppose that God causes a ray of sunlight to bump into a leaf at just the right angle, producing a copying error in one of its DNA molecules, and thus causing a beneficial mutation to occur. This mutation was not the result of any physical mechanism in the organism or its environment which detected that this would be a beneficial mutation, and so it is perfectly compatible with Sober’s definition that this be caused by God. We can therefore see that there is no compelling reason to think that God could not guide evolution. Any claim that random mutations cannot be caused by God is a philosophical add-on, and not part of evolutionary theory itself.

New Definition, No New Problems

However, perhaps my critique of Professor Grudem’s critique is still incomplete. In his contribution to a more recent work, Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique, Grudem attacks theistic evolution in a new way, by defining it slightly differently as follows:

God created matter and after that did not guide or intervene or act directly to cause any empirically detectable change in the natural behavior of matter until all living things had evolved by purely natural processes.¹²

This new definition adds two subtle changes. Firstly, it has the implication that God can act in nature, but if he does, there is no empirical way to tell that he did. Secondly, there is the addition that all living things have evolved by “purely natural processes.” Does Grudem’s new definition of theistic evolution reveal new problems with the idea that random evolution could be guided by God? Let us consider each of these changes to the definition in turn, and see if we have missed something.

Empirical Detection

The first problem that Grudem’s new definition brings to light is that theistic evolution entails we cannot always empirically detect when God acts in nature. Is this a problem for theistic evolution? Upon reflection, not at all. In fact, this idea is even biblically defensible. However, before I show why, it is important to point out that according to theistic evolutionists, the idea that God’s activity is not empirically detectable is limited to the context of all living things having evolved in the remote past, and to God’s general activity in nature. In other words, neither Grudem nor theistic evolutionists would understand the phrase “empirically detectable change” to apply to miracles such as the resurrection (obviously they think this was detectable!).

With this caveat for miracles aside, there is clearly support in Scripture for God acting in the world in ways we cannot discern or understand. In Romans 11:33, for example, Paul declares this fact in a positive light, suggesting that it should cause us to praise God: “How unsearchable his judgements, and his paths beyond tracing out!” (NIV). In Proverbs 16:33, too, we see Scripture affirming that God is even in control of (seemingly) random phenomena: “We may throw the dice, but the LORD determines how they fall” (NLT). Furthermore, all throughout Scripture, we see that God is acting within nature all the time in ways not necessarily empirically detectable by us: every lion eating its prey, every drop of rain from the skies, every motion of the planets; God causes them all (cf. Psalm 104; Job 37-39). Yet nobody thinks it is reasonable that we be able to discern whether God caused it to rain or whether this happened by normal weather patterns! As Plantinga puts it, drawing upon the story of Job:

God will intervene (if that’s the right word) when he has a good reason for doing so; but why suppose we humans would be in a position to know when he does and when he doesn’t? Perhaps we are in a position like the Biblical Job; what happened to him was a result of mysterious transactions among beings some of whom were wholly unknown to him. Couldn’t something similar hold for us?¹³

So, I do not see any new problems raised by Grudem’s first change to the definition of theistic evolution. The fact that we may not be able to discern whether a random mutation was caused by God is not a problem for the idea that evolution was guided by God. In many cases, God’s activity in nature might not be empirically detectable by us, such as for normal weather patterns or random mutations, but in other cases it clearly is, such as for the resurrection or the parting of the red sea. This is a characterization of the theistic evolution view that its proponents would welcome, and it seems to me that there is no new problem here.

Purely Natural?

What about Grudem’s second change to the definition of theistic evolution, which adds that all things evolved by “purely natural processes”? Here the change to the definition seems confused, as it tries to directly place evolution in conflict with God by adding the phrase “purely natural.” Frankly, I don’t know what Grudem means by “purely natural” here, but surely if God acts in nature to guide evolution (even if this is not detectable by us), then evolution cannot be a purely natural process.

So, I do not think theistic evolutionists such as Plantinga or McGrath would accept this change to the definition. Indeed, both Plantinga and McGrath affirm not only that God acts directly in the world, but that in many cases this is empirically detectable. In short, it therefore seems that any new arguments by Grudem against theistic evolution that are based on this “purely natural processes” add-on to the definition are devoted to a critique, not of theistic evolution, but a straw man.

Concluding Thoughts

In conclusion, we have seen that Grudem’s critique of theistic evolution on the grounds that a random process cannot be guided by God fails. Grudem fails to distinguish between seemingly random and truly random processes, and also fails to consider that evolutionary theory only means by “random mutations” the idea that there is no physical mechanism in the organism that detects which mutations would be beneficial and then causes those to occur, which is compatible with their being caused by God.

Furthermore, a recent attempt by Grudem to define the theistic evolution view differently in order to highlight previously unseen difficulties fails. The change to the definition in terms of God’s actions not being “empirically detectable” is in fact not problematic when we distinguish between the normal activity by God in nature, and God’s special actions in the form of miracles. Furthermore, we have seen that Grudem’s second change to the definition of theistic evolution to attempt to characterize it in terms of “purely natural processes” turns out to be a straw man. While theistic evolution thus defined would cause a conflict with evolution being guided by God, it is in fact not how theistic evolutionists understand evolution. So, we can see there is ultimately no philosophical problem with the view that evolution was guided by God.

I now leave the reader with some final food for thought. In his book, Seven Days That Divide The World: The Beginning According to Genesis and Science, the mathematician and philosopher of science John Lennox poses a thought experiment which brilliantly takes into consideration the idea we have been discussing, namely, that we cannot always tell when God has acted in nature. Lennox deduces from this, quite a clever fact. Since he makes the point so forcefully and beautifully, I quote him here at length:

Suppose that scientists manage one day to produce life in the laboratory from nonliving chemicals… Suppose, further, that this life thrives and establishes itself as a new species, Species X, say. Now imagine that all scientific records of this are lost, and in the far distant future scientists come across Species X. If neo-Darwinism is still the reigning paradigm, these scientists will inevitably argue that Species X is related to all other life by an uninterrupted naturalistic evolutionary process. They will be wrong, will they not? The relationship of Species X to other species involves a special and discrete input of information by intelligence. What is more, that intervention of human intelligence is, by definition, invisible to neo-Darwinism — just as invisible as is the special creation of humans by God to neo-Darwinism today. But neo-Darwinism is not the only pair of glasses on the market.¹⁴

What Lennox’s thought experiment shows is that it is possible that God acted specially in nature to create Adam and Eve de novo, and there might still be no way for us to tell. While atheist evolutionists might therefore took at modern DNA evidence and believe that humans and apes descended from a common ancestor, the evidence is in fact open to another possibility. Theistic evolutionists, contrary to what some might think, are perfectly within their rights to believe that God created Adam and Eve “from the dust.” So, while I still have many doubts about evolution (as does Lennox and all of the other thinkers cited here), I think we can agree that the claim that it conflicts with belief in God has been greatly exaggerated.

Notes

¹ Wayne A. Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009), p. 275.

² Grudem, Systematic Theology, p. 276.

³ Grudem, Systematic Theology, p. 276.

⁴ Grudem, Systematic Theology, p. 277.

⁵ Grudem, Systematic Theology, p. 277.

⁶ Alister McGrath, The Big Question: Why We Can’t Stop Talking About Science, Faith and God (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015), p. 124.

⁷ McGrath, The Big Question, p. 124.

⁸ McGrath, The Big Question, p. 125; emphasis added.

⁹ Alvin Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 11.

¹⁰ Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies, p. 12; emphasis in original.

¹¹ Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies, p. 12; emphasis in original.

¹² Wayne A. Grudem et al., Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique (Wheaton: Crossway, 2017), p. 67.

¹³ Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies, p. 101.

¹⁴ John C. Lennox, Seven Days That Divide The World: The Beginning According to Genesis and Science (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), pp. 183-4.