This excerpt from "The Creed" explains Luke Timothy Johnson's stance on the compatibility of the theory of evolution and the biblical understanding of creation as an ongoing process. This is the first time I am reading a biblical scholar whose orthodoxy is well attested in the same book holding the biblical account of creation as the supreme truth concerning the origin of creation and at the same time holding the theory of evolution as a credible scientific explanation of the ongoing process of creation. He has not explained in detail which part of the theory he believes is compatible. I think that is not the purpose of the book. Nonetheless he has a point worth pondering.
This vision of creation [the Christian confession of God as creator is not a theory about how things came to be, but a perception of how everything is still and is always coming into being] - which is simply the vision supposed by the entire weight of Scripture - is entirely compatible with theories of evolution, including the evolution of species. Such a view of God's creation is perfectly compatible with the evolutionary sense of the world as constantly becoming, constantly in process. The theories of the natural and biological sciences address, and can only address, the interconnecting causes of beings that have been or are now already in existence. They cannot account for the existence itself. But concerning the sequence of becoming, the theories of the natural and biological sciences concerning the expansion of the universe and the evolving of species - the hypothetical character of which all genuine scientists firmly maintain even when they are substantially verified - are full of important insight that Christians neglect or deny at the cost of intellectual integrity.
It should also be clear that the peculiar exercise called "creation science" or "creationism" is a failed enterprise lacking such intellectual integrity. Trying to read the account of origins in the Book of Genesis as a source for scientific knowledge is both bad science and a disastrous misunderstanding of Genesis as a literary and religious text. Whatever else Genesis might be, it is not a scientific tract, not even by ancient standards. Only those desperate to save the "inerrancy" of the biblical text, and lacking any sense of how stories can be true without being accurate, will engage in such a dubious misuse of intelligence.
Genesis speaks the truth about the origin of the world, but not according to the standards of the natural and biological sciences. It speaks truth through literary and religious myth. It tells us plainly that everything existing comes to exist from a God who is not part of the world but who brings it into being by his power of knowing and loving (that is, by his "word"). It tells us that everything that has so been brought into being is good, and that humans particularly represent the creator among all other creatures because they bear God's likeness and image.
In short, the creed's statement that God is the creator of heaven and earth is not based on the natural science of antiquity but on the enduring truth glimpsed in part both by philosophy and religion, and magnificently attested by the prayers of Israel and the good news concerning the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ: God creates heaven and earth new everyday.
Taken from The Creed by Luke Timothy Johnson pp 96 -97
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