Christian believers, as scientists, carry out their work somewhat differently from their secular colleagues. The method of inductive logic which has proven so fruitful in scientific investigation is supplemented for them by a series of "givens"—from revelation or wherever—that could not come to them merely by inductive reasoning by their very nature. From these they deduce truths not available to their secular colleagues. Christian believers may find it desirable to "test" these "givens" to be sure that they are, in fact, truly "given." But having done that, they accept them as the basis for the interpretation of this scientific investigation. These form their basic premises. Some of these premises are revisable as they go along; some are not. Those that are not revisable, at least to any great extent, are usually foundational convictions without which one ceases to be a believer. They are such "givens" as the personality of God, the creatorship of God, the goodness of God, the reality of evil, the personality of evil, what constitutes "good," what constitutes "evil," the Fall of creation and its restoration. Others might be added, but these seem to be the essential "givens" for the issue at hand.

The task of the believing scientist—as related to earth history—is to find some way of balancing facts derived from observation and those given by revelation so as to do justice to both. No one suggests that this will be an easy task. It will tax our collective, creative abilities to the limit. What is urgently needed is an intellectual climate in the church that will enable us fully to employ our best gifts to this end.

I certainly do not have the answers to the questions confronting us, but I am going to make a suggestion developed over many years of pondering the matter and talking with many esteemed friends both inside and outside the scientific community. It is based on the notion of the Great Controversy.

If we grant the conflict awesome, cosmic, and temporal proportions, it becomes plain that this battle of the Titans is finally a struggle of two competing orderings of reality. The victory of one over the other at the end comes with a demonstration that one, even though giving the appearance of success for a time (it seems to work) has within it the seeds of its own eventual destruction. It appears that God, in the course of the conflict, suffered long with Satan (time is not a problem to God), allowing him to work out the principles of his government.1 Since Satan is a universe-class contender and time is not a limitation, could it be that the working out of those principles could look very much like what we see in the natural record that is attributed by the secular scientist to the autonomous working of nature in its process of evolution?

The genetic experiments carried out by so god-like a figure as Satan would make even our most advanced ventures seem like child’s play—perhaps progressing even to the level of hominids, lacking only the "image of God." Such intelligent guidance of the process of evolution is precisely the link that is missing in the ordinary secular version. The idea of a totally random evolutionary process is utterly incredible on the face of it. It would take an almost-divine, personal intelligence to make it work. What I am proposing is that personal intelligence. And, of course, as soon as personhood is introduced, the time frames might be considerably different from those that ease the acceptance of randomness.

And then suppose that at some point in relatively recent time, after Satan’s principles had become clear to the hosts of heaven, God stepped in to demonstrate the alternative to the devil’s method—the Genesis story. With the alternatives before them, there is a choosing of loyalties and there is war in heaven to be continued here on earth until the end of time.

Fantastic? Of course. Is this the way it happened? I have no idea, although the above conjecture is not inconsistent with the record. The record certainly shows signs of the demonic kingdom at work if our characterization of the two kingdoms is anywhere near accurate. The evolutionist’s picture looks more like a painting of the devil than it does a portrait of God. Indeed, the record shows elements of both kingdoms, though the imprint of God’s kingdom was so quickly obscured by the Fall.

The advance of a model such as outlined above is mainly that it can take the "heat" off while we carefully examine the evidence. It is one with which I, for one, can live until we have more facts to go on. It leaves the Genesis story largely intact. It also allows us to take seriously the messages of the rocks and fossils. You see, both accounts could contain truth. They could just be addressing themselves to different aspects of reality—the one a record of the kingdom of darkness and the other the story of God’s kingdom. But neither, by itself, completes history. (Haven’t we been told that the two books, when properly understood, would shed light on each other?)

A final word: In the light of the Great Controversy, the one thing we cannot allow is the confusion regarding God’s character that is resulting from attempts to make God the author of the evolutionary process. This is also the implication of spreading out creation week over vast periods of time. Friederich Nietzsche’s god is not the God of Jesus Christ. Of that there must be no doubt in our minds.

In Karl Menninger’s book Whatever Became of Sin?, the author relates a variation of the biblical parable of the wheat and tares. It seems that someone sowed tares in the master’s field one dark night. When it was discovered, the chief steward did his best to find out who was guilty of so dastardly a deed—but without success. And then one day, a servant confessed to him that he knew who the culprit was. The steward in anger berated the man for not coming forward sooner. The servant replied that even now he was afraid to reveal the secret. "I saw him. When he passed me in the darkness I recognized him. It was the master himself, who sowed the tares in the field." The steward and the servant resolved never to reveal the truth to any one.2

No. That is the one thing we cannot allow—the idea that God sowed in his universe the seeds that belong to his adversary. He wouldn’t do it. Indeed he couldn’t do it and be a moral God. There must be another way to deal honestly with the evidence and we must find it. The time is late.

Notes and References

1. Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press, 1958), 42.
2. Karl Menninger, Whatever Became of Sin? (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1973), 11–12.

EMAIL THIS ARTICLE