Should Christians Hold to any form of Theistic Evolution then?

[JesusFan]

As that seems to deny was a Creator, or at least that Mankind was a special creation in His own image?

 

[Jerome]

The seven 'days' of Genesis is a time-compressed description of the evolution that took place over millions of years, according to a lecture by 9Mark Dever and his mentor Roy Clements to the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union:

(right click, save link as, for direct download of audio file) CICCU • Dever and Clements on Christians and Science

38:30-39:55
CLEMENTS: "In fact if you think about it, Genesis chapter One does portray an evolutionary model. It would have been very easy for the ancient author, knowing nothing at all about evolution, to have simply said the whole of the universe suddenly sprang into being by a single divine fiat, with no progress, no development at all, but no, he spreads it out over seven days, and he says that material things emerged first: light, and the earth, and the heavens, and then plants before animals, and marine animals come before land animals, and the human race comes only at the very end.
In an astonishing way, he anticipates the general sort of evolutionary scheme, without any of the evolutionary details. So I don't have any great difficulty in accepting that if evolution was the way it happened, that God might have used such a mechanism for the production of the variety of species that we see, and I don't find any great difficulty harmonising that with Genesis One. But there are some Christians who feel that the seven days have to be taken with a greater degree of literalness than I feel is necessary, and they must look for another solution to the problem."

1:12:00-1:13:20
DEVER "The word Yom there in the Hebrew is used very similarly to the way we use the word Day, and it means many different things. I'm not sure I want to say exactly what Roy said on that, but I think, as a Christian who certainly believes in the truth of scripture there's nothing he's said that's inconsistent with that."
CLEMENTS: "If it were a twenty four hour day, I favour the view that it was a twenty four hours of revelation, maybe the prophet saw the vision over the space of seven days, but I don't think the prophet could possibly have been given an actual time scale to set against the things he was seeing happen. They had to have taken place in a time-collapsed way. He couldn't possibly have seen them, in my view, across the spectrum of the time the took, if they took millions of years, as science would say. He would have to have seen it in a time-collapsed way."
DEVER - "And I would say of course He could have done it in that way, and of course the prophet could have seen it that way, but the point is the word doesn't necessitate, the word Yom, doesn't necessitate you or me or Roy looking at it any one of those —"
CLEMENTS - "There are a whole host of ways of harmonising Genesis One with scientific accounts of origins. Some are seven-day Creationists, Young Earth view, I respect that view, but I don't hold it myself."

 

[JesusFan]

The seven 'days' of Genesis is a time-compressed description of the evolution that took place over millions of years, according to a lecture by 9Mark Dever and his mentor Roy Clements to the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union:

(direct download of audio file) CICCU • Dever and Clements on Christians and Science

38:30-39:55
CLEMENTS: "In fact if you think about it, Genesis chapter One does portray an evolutionary model. It would have been very easy for the ancient author, knowing nothing at all about evolution, to have simply said the whole of the universe suddenly sprang into being by a single divine fiat, with no progress, no development at all, but no, he spreads it out over seven days, and he says that material things emerged first: light, and the earth, and the heavens, and then plants before animals, and marine animals come before land animals, and the human race comes only at the very end.
In an astonishing way, he anticipates the general sort of evolutionary scheme, without any of the evolutionary details. So I don't have any great difficulty in accepting that if evolution was the way it happened, that God might have used such a mechanism for the production of the variety of species that we see, and I don't find any great difficulty harmonising that with Genesis One. But there are some Christians who feel that the seven days have to be taken with a greater degree of literalness than I feel is necessary, and they must look for another solution to the problem."

1:12:00-1:13:20
DEVER "The word Yom there in the Hebrew is used very similarly to the way we use the word Day, and it means many different things. I'm not sure I want to say exactly what Roy said on that, but I think, as a Christian who certainly believes in the truth of scripture there's nothing he's said that's inconsistent with that."
CLEMENTS: "If it were a twenty four hour day, I favour the view that it was a twenty four hours of revelation, maybe the prophet saw the vision over the space of seven days, but I don't think the prophet could possibly have been given an actual time scale to set against the things he was seeing happen. They had to have taken place in a time-collapsed way. He couldn't possibly have seen them, in my view, across the spectrum of the time the took, if they took millions of years, as science would say. He would have to have seen it in a time-collapsed way."
DEVER - "And I would say of course He could have done it in that way, and of course the prophet could have seen it that way, but the point is the word doesn't necessitate, the word Yom, doesn't necessitate you or me or Roy looking at it any one of those —"
CLEMENTS - "There are a whole host of ways of harmonising Genesis One with scientific accounts of origins. Some are seven-day Creationists, Young Earth view, I respect that view, but I don't hold it myself."

One cannot hold to evolution and believe in a literal historical biblical account of Genesis, would have to see it as myth or allegory

 

[Wesley Briggman]

Theistic Evolution - a product of mans imagination?

(Gen 6:5 KJV) And GOD saw that the wickedness of man [was] great in the earth, and [that] every imagination of the thoughts of his heart [was] only evil continually.

Enough said.

 

[Deacon]

Should Christians Hold to any form of Theistic Evolution then?​

As that seems to deny was a Creator, or at least that Mankind was a special creation in His own image?

How would Theism deny a Creator?
~~~~~~~~

There are many different models of Theistic evolution, every one expresses belief in a Creator God.

FYI, the more acceptable, modern expression for Theistic Evolution is Evolutionary Creationism.

BioLogos is a leading organization which expresses support for an Old Earth and Evolutionary Creationism. Their website answers many questions that people have.

John H. Walton's book, The Lost World of Genesis 1 was an eye-opener for me, and finally put the Creation Debate in a context that brought me rest.

Walton maintains that the Genesis creation narrative is focused on functional order rather than physical/material objects.

"In the ancient world, creation stories begin with the default condition of nonorder. This default condition is not bad, corrupt, flawed or damaged but it is undesirable. Then the creator brings order into the world, though not thereby dispelling all nonorder. ... For those who accept evolutionary models, God's actions can be described in every minute step in the evolutionary process. Regardless of the scientific models one accepts, in God, as in Christ, all creation coheres (Col 1:17)". (New Explorations in the Lost World of Genesis, John H. Walton. 2025. p.73-74

Rob

 

[Marooncat79]

So we believe that God can do anything except create according to the Biblical model of 6days and the Sabbath?

That’s a very accommodating view of scripture and it’s not good