Growing and Going: Q & A- Why Couldn’t God Have Used Evolution?

Question: Why Couldn’t God Have Used Evolution?

Answer: This is an excellent question, especially in light of the days in which we live! Sadly, both creationist and evolutionist groups alike have surmised that if He wanted to, God could have used evolution as His creation process. Unfortunately, even young earth creationists have often said that God could have used evolution, but He simply chose not to.

The first point here is that God’s Word is crystal clear that He used no such process. He spoke His Word and things were created maturely with perfect complexity and all the genetic information necessary to produce a plethora of varieties within their God-appointed kinds. Which, incidentally, is what we observe and can repeat in the present.

Even though they may not believe what the text actually says, Hebrew scholars have rightly concluded that the context of Genesis 1 is written as literal history, not allegory. Genesis 1 is plain in its language. It clearly states that God created by His Word in six literal day and rested on Day 7. And as we’d suspect, the whole of Scripture supports this historical account, i.e. Exodus 20:11, 31:17.  Although the validity, reliability, and sufficiency of God’s Word from the very first verse is absolutely essential, there is perhaps an even deeper point to be made on this subject.

When examining whether or not God could have ever even used evolution (death and suffering over millions of years), we must move beyond the earthly, and look to the Lord Himself. Absolutely everything the Lord does is constrained by His very character. For example, we know that God doesn’t lie simply because He won’t, but because He CAN’T. (Titus 1:2, 2:13) Why can’t He lie? Because His very nature of perfection and truth precludes Him from ever doing so. And praise Jesus for that!

I believe the same can be said for God using the process of evolution. It’s not that God could have, but chose not to use evolution. I believe His very character prevented Him from ever doing so. Even some godless evolutionists have been honest enough to admit that the process of [macro] evolution is, at its core, barbaric and cruel, the most inefficient, disorderly, and wasteful process for bringing about all that we have today.

The Scriptures are clear. God is a God of order and peace, not of randomness, destruction, and disorder. (1 Cor. 14:33) He is Life, not death. (John 1:4) He is perfect and good, not imperfect and cruel. (Deuteronomy 32:4) Everything the Lord does reflects His character for the simple and glorious reason that He can do no less. It’s not that God could have used a cruel, chaotic, random, meaningless, inefficient, imperfect, disorderly, and death and suffering-filled process to glorify His name, but then randomly chose not to. I believe that our great and glorious God COULD NOT have chosen to create in any manner less than the one in which His Word rightly records.

He created in such a way that truly and rightfully reflected and glorified Jesus Christ, magnifying His goodness, peace, love, order, life, and perfection. Anything less is simply out of the question and out of the Bible.

“And God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good.” Genesis 1:31a

1 Comment

  1. Alan on October 2, 2018 at 10:30 am

    Even more important and to the point, Common Descent, as in mud to man, and the term “evolution” as they use it, embodies the idea that no God was necessary.

    Meaning, God using evolution is self-contradictory. On one email list I was in, one “creationist” proposed an idea of “something mediate creation”, by which he conceded common descent but where God kept on creating new kinds from old as time marched along. I don’t remember how he handled the Garden of Eden. I think he did concede

    Scofield & his successor commentators like this Drake guy said there was a world before Genesis blahnik blahnik. Baloney.

    God’s word is true.

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