One of the most respected advocates of Theistic Evolution within evangelical circles is Howard J. Van Till of Calvin College. Van Till is known for two claims regarding this position. He argues first that the creation was “gifted” by God in the beginning to evolve in a Darwinian fashion. Further, Van Till contends that an order created by God must have “functional integrity.” By this he means a quality of the creation that renders it without “gaps or deficiencies in its economy that need to be bridged either by words of magic or by the Creator’s direct manipulation.”¹

The Creator endows the creation with this quality in the beginning, and, thus, the creation unfolds accordingly, realizing its teleological and eschatological ends. “Creaturely capacities” are defined as “what matter and systems are capable of doing” within the framework of this functional integrity. Let’s begin with the first claim, which assumes that Darwin was right about a gradual uninterrupted evolution of all species

Darwin claimed in The Origin of Species that

“the number of intermediate transitional links, between all living things, must have been exceedingly great [because] if the theory be true, it is indisputable that before the lowest [Cambrian] stratum was deposited, long periods of time elapsed, as long as, or probably far longer than, the whole interval from the [Cambrian] age to the present day; and that during these vast, yet quite unknown periods of time, the world swarmed with living creatures."

But such links are missing from the fossil record, and the record shows a sudden appearance of most animal phyla in what has come to be known as the Cambrian Explosion over five million years ago. Missing links mean everything to Darwinism. If not, why have paleontologists been so passionately (and unsuccessfully) searching for them for the past 160 years? The links must be found if Darwin's theory of evolution is true, yet the fossil record is silent regarding such links. The truth of Darwinism (that is, gradual evolutionism) cannot be established on an argument from silence. It can only be supported by a fossil record that actually exists. Otherwise, it remains only speculation. That means that there is room for other views that may provide a better explanation.

As to Van Till’s argument from functional integrity, is there a biblical basis for his thinking? I believe it can be argued biblically that there is a functional integrity to creation in that its behavior is law-like according to God’s providential wisdom. And certainly within the framework of these laws and God’s providence, matter and systems realize innate capacities according to their essential natures as created by God. Van Till adds the notion of a gapless and self-sufficient economy as a necessary entailment of the creation’s functional integrity, a notion that seems more consistent with deism than Christian theism, and a notion that would thus seem to be philosophically inconsistent with any anticipation of God’s miraculous intervention.

If the creation’s gapless, self-sufficient economy better exemplifies the glory of God than creationist models, as Van Till argues, then it would seem that any intervention by God that violates the fabric of this economy would be counterproductive to God’s self-glorifying objective. Furthermore, why must we believe that a creation with “gaps” is necessarily one that is in some way “deficient” and therefore unworthy of the God of the Bible? How do “gaps” translate into “deficiencies”? The notion of “gaps” in the economy of God’s creation may be distasteful to Van Till, but what is distasteful to him may be delightful to God. Hence, Christians will need to successfully defend Darwinism and Functional Integrity on both empirical and philosophical grounds if they are going to fight for Theistic Evolution as their preferred paradigm.

There is another option, however, known as Progressive Creationism. This paradigm has been compellingly defended by Christian astrophysicist Hugh Ross. The word "day" in the Genesis account may be legitimately translated as "epoch" or "eon," in short, a long period of time (“the Day of the Lord” or “in the day of our Fathers” or see Ps. 90:46 for a thousand years being as a day in God’s eyes and “evening" and “morning” being used metaphorically). As a result, many biblical theologians have put forth the “Day-Age Theory” which argues that each of the “days” in the Genesis creation account represents hundreds of thousands of years.

At the end of each epoch occurs a catastrophic extinction event followed by a new period of creation and providential development by God. This fits well with the patterns located in the geological record of the earth. That is, what has been interpreted as evidence of Darwinian gradualism can be just as easily interpreted as periods of intense creative activity by God, followed by long periods of time, followed by extinction events, a cycle repeating itself several times as God prepares the earth for his ultimate creation: Man and Woman.

Those who critique Progressive Creationists like Hugh Ross point to passages that the critics believe Progressive Creationists apply too literally. For example, Ross claims that the “continuous universal cosmic expansion” and “Big Bang fundamentals" are taught in Scriptures that speak of God “stretching out the heavens” when these Scriptures are only to be taken as poetic metaphors.² Be that as it may, Progressive Creationism would seem to me to offer more promise than Theistic Evolution as a paradigm Christians may embrace when seeking to integrate the evidence of nature with an old earth interpretation of the Scriptures. May we prayerfully walk in the Spirit as we seek the truth, “test everything,” and “hold fast what is good” (1 Thess. 5:21). And may we honor each other in the debate.

Blessings,

Arnie Gentile

¹See Van Till, "The Fully Gifted Creation", in Three Views on Creation and Evolution featured below; "When Faith and Reason Meet," in Man and Creation: Perspectives on Science and Theology (Hillsdale, MI: Hillsdale College Press, 1993), pp. 141-64; "God and Evolution: An Exchange with Phillip E. Johnson", First Things, Issue Archive, June/July 1993.

²See Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos, Navpress, 2001, Chapter Three.