The article below (from "A Symposium on Creation" Vols. 1-5 @ http://www.creationism.org/english/symposium/) is used by permission of Baker Books, a division of Baker Book House Company, copyright ©1968-1975.  All rights to these materials are reserved.  Materials are not be be distributed to other web locations for retrieval, published in other media, or mirrored at other sites without written permission from Baker Book House Company.

Dr. McCone is Associate Professor of Anthropology at California State College. Prior to accepting this position, he taught at Michigan State University, and South Dakota State College, and served as pulpit supply or pastor of a number of churches of different denominations in South Dakota and Montana.

Dr. McCone holds a B.A. in Religion from Wessington Springs College, a M.S. in Sociology from South Dakota State College, and a PhD. in Anthropology and Sociology from Michigan State University.

Essay-VII

EVOLUTIONARY TIME: A MORAL ISSUE

Introduction

The concept of “evolutionary time” is one that will not be clear to some, and others will take strong opposition to its use. It is necessary, therefore, to introduce this paper with a few words of explanation. What is meant by the term “evolutionary time” is simply the time structure which is an integral part of an evolutionary explanation of man and the universe. This time structure is formed by interlocking, chronologically arranged ages identified by biological, geological, meteorological and cultural concepts. The biological sequence of five ages begins some 1+ billion years ago with the Archeozoic (first or primitive life) and is completed with the Cenozoic (recent life). Thus, 1+ billion years of time begins with an age of the lower forms of marine invertebrates and is climaxed by one of mammals, the last of which is man. These biological age concepts are paralleled by geological age concepts beginning with Precambrian. The Cenozoic is paralleled by seven geological ages. The last two of these are the Pleistocene and the Holocene, which cover “roughly” the last million years of time on earth. At least until recently, man’s origin was placed at the beginning of the Pleistocene. Therefore, this age was subdivided into three cultural evolutionary stages based on kinds of stone technology and tools, i.e., Lower Paleolithic, Middle Paleolithic, Upper Paleolithic. Glacial periods serve as a parallel system of subdividing the Pleistocene, geological age. The Holocene is post glacial and is organized into cultural stages known as Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron. The Holocene, relatively speaking, is a mere speck of time, being only 25,000 years in duration.

The many attempts to reconcile this system of evolutionary time with the Bible have taken at least two directions. The “gap” theory places an age of chaos of undeterminate length between the first and second verses of the first chapter of Genesis. The six days then become days of re-creation. Another effort has been to regard each of the six days of creation as geological ages which makes room for almost any time system one would choose. Both of these courses take the direction of placing the evolutionary time scale within the process or act of creation itself. The second direction applies the evolutionary time scale to a measurement of the length of time since creation. Hence, we run into such problems as trying to establish whether Adam was Paleolithic or Neolithic man. From the perspective of the creationist the act or process of creation and the length of time since that completed event are two separate problems. This distinction cannot hold for the perspective of the evolutionist since there is one continuous ongoing process that has produced the forms in nature and is in operation today producing the forms of tomorrow.

The first direction of reading temporal-natural processes into the creative act violates Scripture because Genesis presents us with a divine act that brought the whole time-space-matter system of nature into existence. The second direction of using the evolutionary time concepts to measure the time since creation, violates the meaning of which these concepts are integral parts.

I wish to make one more explanatory remark by way of introduction. The approach which will be taken to this topic will be from the position of a believer in Christ and the thought shall be organized within the intellectual framework of cultural anthropology. The Christian is often challenged to defend his position on materialistic grounds, implying that these are the only grounds on which scientific problems can be solved, and that no problems are validly resolved unless they are scientifically resolved. What is often the case is that the problems themselves are outside the sphere of science and the issues are spiritual rather than scientific. I hope to show that such is the case in the problem of the acceptance of “evolutionary time.” I have felt free therefore to tum the tables on that so frequently unfruitful conflict of struggling with spiritual issues on materialistic grounds and have chosen rather to deal with the problems of the antiquity of man in the framework of cultural systems of belief and in terms of the moral and spiritual issues which are involved.

Evolutionary Time -A Foundation of Sand for Faith and Morals

There are certain problems very rarely made explicit which both directly and indirectly show that the acceptance of evolutionary time is a sandy foundation for faith and morals. It is a foundation of sand first of all because of a wide gap in knowledge which exists between the professional who presents with authority these ideas and the layman who is expected to be the acceptor of the beliefs. This gap exists, of course, in many areas of our highly specialized culture, but when the issues involved are concerned with the layman’s faith, then it is time for some warnings to be issued. One theologian expressed in my hearing the confidence that he without question could accept the authority of the anthropologists in the areas of human antiquity and of human evolution because that is their field. But what if I as an anthropologist should say I will accept the authority of the theologian in regards to the knowledge of God? To which one shall I listen? Some will tell me that God has so predetermined all things that my will or knowledge of Him really makes no difference; others say that God is beyond the reach of human knowledge, and so it is no use trying to know Him; and still others declare to me that He is dead. Anthropologists, too, are not in complete agreement even with regards to evolution or the time involved in it. Where the sandy element for faith and morals comes in is that the layman is expected to accept on the basis of the professional that which he is not in a position to know by any test. Further, the line of communication attempting to bridge the gap to the laymen, itself has many uncertain links. It is usually made up of semi-laymen who write articles for the lay audience, by professionals themselves who attempt to directly influence the lay audience and by the go-between professionals who are professional only in the business of writing text books for elementary and secondary children. An example of the first type is found in an article this past year in the Long Beach Press Telegram. Phyllis Battelle wrote an article on the editorial page about Louis Leakey under the title, “Digging Up Man’s Origin.” In glancing through this article I was somewhat startled when she said that the finds of Leakey were 400,000,000 years old. Leakey claims a mere 1.75 million years age for his finds. So then I read on a little more carefully and found a few sentences later that they had increased to 4 billion years. Perhaps these specific errors of the popular writer are not characteristic. What is more serious is that the popular writer usually speaks with absolute authority while the professional more often structures his statements in terms of the qualifying conditions within which he is thinking and working.

An example of the second type of professional-layman communication is the professional himself writing a semi-popular article for the lay reader. An example of this is the Life Magazine publication by Howell. In the introduction the professional physical anthropologist extends his authority as a professional to statements about the Bible and people's beliefs about the Bible - an area in which he is not a professional – in which he is very much in error.

Perhaps the most critical of these attempts to bridge the professional authority-laymen gap in the communication of knowledge is in the writer of textbooks for elementary and secondary schools. Here the layman is a child. The child is not in a position by the use of critical faculties and criteria of judgment to come to a knowledge of what is presented to him. He is expected to receive it by faith in authority. He is confronted with such baseless arguments as, “authorities are agreed,” “all intelligent people now believe,” etc. He has the additional social pressure of the teacher and his peers. My point is that irrespective of the content truth or untruth of what is being taught, this is not a foundation for faith and morals, nor even for that matter of intelligence. Not even God makes this kind of authoritarian claim on the mind and life of child or adult. He makes the appeal, “Seek and ye shall find.” “Taste and see that the Lord is good,” “Be still and know that I am God.” The faith of the Bible is not a blind leap into the dark, it is rather a clearly directed step into the light. The result is the knowledge of experience, which is not true for the blind acceptance of authority with respect to evolutionary time.

There is a second and more subtle sense in which the belief in “evolutionary time” proves to be a sandy foundation for faith and morals. That is, “evolutionary time” is not what on the surface it appears to be. Some Bible scholars have been concerned with attempting to reconcile evolutionary-geological-biological-chronology with Biblical chronology by attempting to fit into the evolutionary time scheme the length of time since God created Adam. As the British archeologist, Piggot, has pointed out in his article “Prehistory and Evolutionary Theory” “...the past-as-known which is based on archeological evidence is not, and cannot of its nature be, the same as the past-as-known based on evidence which involves the written record in lesser or greater degree” (1960:84). If we follow the position that the Biblical record is also a different frame of reference than that of modern historiography, though nonetheless reliable truth, then the effort to translate or trans-migrate Adam across two boundaries from Biblical record to history and then carry history with him into the domain of archeology is not only impossible, it is completely invalid. I have made reference to this idea only to say that the basic problem with evolutionary time, or the antiquity of man, is not to be found in a seeming lack of parallels which it presents to a Biblical chronology correctly or incorrectly perceived. What then is this sub-surface character of “evolutionary time” that is irreconcilable with Christian faith and morals? It is a time system which by its very nature must ultimately deny ultimate origins. The entire scope of this chapter could well be devoted to the clarification and support of this position. Instead, I am only going to give you two or three sentences designed to ferment some thinking within your own mind and leave you to develop your own clarification. In order for any evolutionary system to be complete and consistent it cannot speak of the origin of nature, it cannot speak of the origin of the evolutionary process in nature, and it cannot speak of the origin of time. If from this basic position the evolutionist assumes the origin of life and the origin of man, he has the problem that non-living nature existed eternally without producing life and then it produced life and eventually man. How or why did it get started doing that which it had not done through an eternal existence? The only alternative to this dilemma that I see is that nature has been eternally in the process of creating and destroying life. In either case evolutionary time, great antiquity, or whatever term you choose to use are only deceptive terms for the hidden underlying character which is an eternal time. Some evolutionists are aware of this. Loren Brace of the University of California, Santa Barbara, spoke to an informal gathering of an anthropology faculty and students. One statement made by him is very pertinent here. “Darwin opened up a time scheme that is effectively equal to infinity.” It is this that innocent, unsuspecting Christian laymen are not aware of and some Christian scholars appear to be naive about. If what I have said is valid or true, continued research carried on in the framework of evolutionary tỉme will find an increasing antiquity for man. Leakey's work is an example in point.

It is this eternal time that is irreconcilable with Biblical faith. God does not seem to have been as concerned as some people are, or would like Him to be, in establishing the length of time from now to the origin of the world or of man. What is beyond controversy is that, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” There was a beginning, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was God, and He created the universe.

We may conclude then that evolutionary time provides a sandy foundation for faith and morals, first, because of the professional-layman gap which does not lead the layman to what can be called a knowledge of what it claims to teach, and second, because evolutionary time is not what it appears to be. However, evolutionary time has an affect on faith and morals in still another manner because it is itself the basis of a system of values.

Evolutionary Time as the Basis for a System of Values

That person who lives only for the immediate present gratification of his desires with no perspective from the past and no projection into the future is one who is living without a socially provided structure of values. Every social order of man is a moral order in which certain behavior is regarded as good or right and other as bad or wrong and in which the members of the society are motivated according to the common understanding of the past and its focus on their present and in terms of how they see the implications of their present behavior in terms of the future. It is in this sense that every culture has a time structure for values and morals. The significance of a cultural time perspective can perhaps be best seen in the contrast offered by a primitive culture. People with a culture such as the Dakota Indians have a time perspective that is very difficult for Western man to conceive. The meaningful world in which they live is a world without beginning and without end. Miss Deloria, a full-blood Dakota with a Ph.D. in Anthropology, said in a letter to me, “You see we Indians lived in eternity.” Furthermore, the past, present, and future are not distinguished and related as they are for Western man. The mythical past has never passed away and is the essence of present reality. This does not make possible the emphasis on a future goal orientation with its important motivation that we know. The Dakota Indian was not striving to get somewhere in this world or the next, he was already there and life was a matter of being, being a Dakota. The Dakota culture was nonetheless a moral order, even though its focus was on the present; it was a present that was significant or meaningful in the manner in which the past and future focused on the present. It was not the valueless life of a sensual present with no concern with past and future. This is the anomic situation of those Indians who have lost the time perspective of their own culture and have not obtained that of Western civilization. I have given this contrasting basis of values of a primitive culture only to more clearly point out that Western man also has a system of values but built on a vastly different time perspective. The early Greek foundation of Western civilization has built into it assumptions about origins, hence we ask questions about origin. The Judeo-Christian tradition, of course, greatly reinforced and concretely defined what among the Greeks was limited to a metaphysical basis for understanding reality. The Christian influence became highly traditionalized in the Middle Ages until there developed a world view and set of values that was built upon a rather specific recent date for the origin of the universe including the world and man. The earth though sinful and imperfect was the center of a universe that was otherwise perceived, since it was the heavens, as being perfect and separated in character as well as space from the earth. The reformation and the renaissance brought liberation to the human mind from the traditionalized restrictions of this world view. It did not, however, develop a system of values that challenged those of the Bible. This direction was taken later when the resources of science were diverted to answer the questions of origins. In 1785, James Hutton wrote in his Theory of the Earth:

For having seen, in the natural history of the earth a succession of worlds we may conclude that there is a system in nature... But if there is a system in nature, it is in vain to look for anything higher in the origin of the earth. The result, therefore of this physical inquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning - no prospect of an end (Greene l961:86).

Hutton did not deny creation or a beginning or an end; it was just scientifically out of sight. Following Hutton, Playfair developed the idea that knowledge of the origin of things was not essential to man; it was enough for him to recognize the handiwork of his Creator in the design of creation. From this he concluded:

It is but reasonable, therefore, that we should extend to the geologist the same liberty of speculation, which the astronomer and the mathematician are already in possession of; and this may be done, by supposing that the chronology of Moses relates only to the human race (Greene 1961:89).

This strategy of reasoning gained acceptance for belief in the indefinite antiquity of the earth by shunting the objections that would otherwise be raised against it in the name of Scripture. Subsequent to an increasing degree of acceptance of the antiquity of the earth was the acceptance of the idea of the antiquity of life on the earth. Scriptural objections were silenced by (1) accounting for the appearance of life upon the earth as distinct creative acts of God and by (2) making the appearance of man the final, climaxing and most recent of the Creator's creative acts. As Gruber states:

On one conclusion... all were agreed: The most important of these creations was the last, that in which man appeared, that which Genesis described (Spiro 1965:377).

It remained only for the discovery in Brixham Cave in England, to extend the idea of great antiquity to man. Here in this cave under a stalagmite floor – which would make it of extreme age as understood by Hutton's principles – were found human implements, stone knives and axes in association with animals long extinct and believed to be of great antiquity. In the context of the accepted beliefs this fact constituted evidence that man is, also. of great antiquity. It was this evidence that converted Charles Lyell to the acceptance of the antiquity of man. Glyn Daniel in the Scientific American writes that as a result of the discoveries at Brixham Cave:

The catastrophist theory was once and for all discarded and with it the Biblical notion that the world and man represented unalterable acts of special creation (1959:173).

Later in this same article Daniel concludes that as a result of Lyell's and others' acceptance of the Brixham Cave evidence:

The battle was over: the great antiquity of man was an established fact. Victorian thought had to adjust itself not only to organic evolution but also to the antiquity of man, 4004 B.C. was forgotten (1959:174).

Lawrence K. Frank in his book, Society as the Patient, shows how these changing concepts of time are related to moral problems of modern man.

Astronomy, geology, paleontology and biology have, during the past 300 odd years, given us a totally different time and space perspective in which our earth no longer occupies the central position of a recently created universe. The earth has been displaced, relegated to an insignificant place in the cosmos, but with a past history so vast we scarcely can comprehend it, since temporal remoteness attenuates our understanding more drastically than spatial remoteness. Moreover, man himself has been given a radically changed history, in which he no longer appears suddenly upon earth by divine creation a few thousand years ago, but slowly emerges and evolves from an incredibly long ancestry of mammalian prototypes and these in turn from an ever receding horizon of living forms. We are today struggling to revise our time perspectives of the past and timidly beginning to explore for the inevitable revisions that they involve in our time perspectives of the future. Already the focus of personal immortality in an eternal heaven has begun to shift and therefore change the dimensions of the present. The ascetic conduct that addressed to the immediate present, seen as but a proving of our virtue for eternity is beginning to lose its coercive appeal. When the present is no longer attenuated by the focus of eternity, reinforced by the expectation of everlasting punishment or bliss, human conduct is bound to change... Morals and ethics focused upon the older time perspectives lose their authority with every change in the dimensions of time that undermines the cosmic sanctions and necessitates new standards of conduct more consonant with these altered perspectives (1948:354-3 55).

But Frank realizes that this loss of perspective can lead to the sensual, but utter valueless and meaningless outlook on life expressed in “Let us eat, drink, and be merry.” He recognizes that that which he calls the Christian time perspective worked for the people who possessed it; and that we need in our day something like it to take its place, since the time perspective of the antiquity of man has destroyed it. His suggestion goes something like this: Man for the first time in his long evolutionary history has reached the place where because of his knowledge of psychology he is able to change human nature. But this becomes achievable through our children whom we can guide to the future achievement of values. Then in a crucial statement he says:

Instead of sacrificing the child, as we have from time immemorial, to the values of our other-worldly and superhuman time perspectives, we create a time perspective that expresses the potentiality of childhood as its supreme dimension, to be realized in and through conduct that recognizes the worth of human life, of mating, child bearing and child rearing and the fulfillment of man's physiological and psychological needs (1948:357).

Frank then suggests in place of a belief in the immortality of the human spirit, we substitute a belief in the immortality of the human germ plasm; values are to be biologically and socially based, not spiritually anchored in the supernatural. Here from the pen of one who is a devoted evolutionist is surely a clear and unmistakable testimony to the value structure and its threat to the social values of modern man that is inherent in the evolutionary time perspective.

I believe, however, that Frank does not see beyond a cultural system of values. What he describes is quite an accurate picture of the moral disorganization that characterizes our modern society, and the role that evolutionary time has played in it. As a believer I have to go beyond what Frank is saying and say that the moral character of the followers of Christ is something other than a cultural system of values whatever its time perspective. In place of a time perspective based system of values, a follower of Christ has a Person that is the anchor of his values as is expressed in both the Old and New Testaments. The Psalmist said that “God is good to [in the eyes of] Israel even to such as be of clean heart.” The Apostle Paul testified that “All things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose.” Not only is a changeless and timeless God the focus of the result of the work of the Holy Spirit rather than a word view structured in terms of time; “The Holy Spirit also is a witness to us.... This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds I will write them.” The moral values of the Christian are not a social product with its culturally defined time perspective, but are rather a spiritual product resting on a God perspective. The point which I wish to emphasize is this: that while there is a conflict between the values of the evolutionary time perspective and the traditionalized system based on a time perspective of some six or ten millennia, the moral disorganization which Frank observed is chiefly a social phenomenon. Basic issues for the follower of Christ must necessarily be spiritual issues. I shall attempt as the final point of this chapter to show that evolutionary time is itself an ultimate value system that is spiritually antithetical to and irreconcilable with the ultimate moral values of the Christian.

The Spiritual Character of Evolutionary Time Values

It may seem rather uncommon to deal with the subject of evolution in terms of values since it claims in contrast to the Biblical position to be scientific. The evolutionist claims for his ideas two of the necessary criteria of natural science, facts and theory. Some have opposed evolution saying that it is a theory but has no facts. The position which I wish to present must sound to many a bit radical. It is that evolution with its time perspective is neither fact nor theory but is basically a system of values. One can find a number of expressions among evolutionists that implicitly betray the fundamental value character of this system. Simpson (1949:137) protests that some have distorted the evolutionist’s “proper values.” A reviewer of Molecules and Evolution (Williams 1967:308 ) says “Indeed, one might come to the conclusion that the last genuinely open mind observing and pondering evolution was Darwin’s.” However, the thesis that evolutionary time is a value structure has much more valid support than these kinds of inferences.

It is necessary first of all to make clear what a scientist means by the terms fact and theory. As Goode and Hatt have pointed out there is the popular usage of these terms in which theory means speculation while fact is proven theory. These authors point out that for the research scientist fact is an empirically verifiable observation, and theory is the meaningful order or relationship existing between facts. Fact is not to be contrasted to theory as certainty is contrasted to guesswork. Facts are observable events or entities in the world, theory is a system of perceived relationships which constitute an explanation that makes the facts meaningful or understandable to man. Parenthetically I might observe that the Bible lays no claim to being a theoretical explanation of the facts of nature. It is rather a revelation by God of Himself to man. In an article in Science George Gaylord Simpson made the claim that evolution was both fact and theory. His position that evolution is fact was supported by his contention that there is consensus or agreement among evolutionists that it had occurred. “No evolutionist has since (Darwin) seriously questioned that man did originate by evolution. . . No one doubts that man is a member of the order of primates” (1960:969 ), and so therefore it is a fact. His position that evolution is theory was based on the existence of a large number of differing explanations of how it came about. If evolution were in the strictest sense both fact and theory, it would then be a self explaining fact that would need no explanation – a fact that speaks for itself – which is contrary to the position of science about facts. Perhaps because this claim is made may be the reason why evolution is seldom if ever presented as a theory to be tested or as facts to be explained, but, like values, something to be accepted or rejected.

The position that the ideas of the antiquity of man and of evolution are an integral aspect of a value system rather than scientific theory or empirical fact, is to be understood only in the sense that will be briefly outlined in this chapter. I wish first to point out that for facts to be facts of evolution they have to be facts of transition. Otherwise they are no more than facts of an existing order. It is just such facts that are totally absent. Within the past year a paleontologist commented to me on some of his research that he has been doing in an area in which a continuous sequence of layers of the earth are exposed representing millions of years of geological ages. Then he said, “There is no development of life in any layer in the direction of life above it.” His explanation was that on each layer life must have entered from the outside. If there were here examples of transition or development these would be facts of which evolutionary theory would be at least a reasonable explanation. In the absence of these facts the value system generates facts in terms of “what must have taken place.”

What is meant then by the statement that evolution is not a theory? One might argue since it has no facts to explain, how can it be a theory? Nevertheless, it does attempt to give explanation to the facts which it generates. In the classification of fossil man in an evolutionary framework from the Australopithicines to Homo Erectus to Homo Sapiens there are assumed to be, though not observed, two great transitional facts in the evolutionary history of man. Allow me to quote from an article entitled “Fossil Man” by Loren C. Eisley:

Now let me make plain why I chose to remark at the start of this article that man's origin has been greatly clarified but not, paradoxically, the mystery of man. Two facets of that mystery deserve our particular attention:

(1) How did man achieve his upright posture? and,
(2) How did the human brain arise, and what carried it to its present peak of achievement?

Neither of these questions has in my opinion, been satisfactorily answered (1953:69, 70).

In other words, theoretical explanation of the “generated facts” has never been adequately accomplished. But without evolutionary facts and without evolutionary explanation and with considerable disagreement regarding both the processes and course of human evolution, there is still an unquestioned faith in and commitment to the general idea that it occurred, and that it took “millions” of years to accomplish.

Perhaps the value structure is seen most clearly in the writings of G. G. Simpson who in an article in Science magazine speaks of “The world into which Darwin led us.” It is also found in his book, The Meaning of Evolution, the final chapters of which are devoted to such titles as, “The Search for an Ethic” and “Knowledge and Responsibility.” Simpson recognized the need of a new system of values for modern man. He points out that to try to build an ethic on the doctrine of the survival of the fittest simply means that it is good to survive in a tooth and claw struggle for existence. T. H. Huxley concluded from this reasoning that while evolution is a fact, it is ethically bad. But Simpson, after confronting many of the value problems, comes to what he calls the evolutionary ethic. Though evolution in its long process has had no goal and is not purposeful, yet it has produced a creature who does have purposes and goals and who is a morally responsible being. The ethic must then take into account the kind of being which man is, not that from which he has come. Yet it becomes an ethical obligation upon man to make known the truth to his fellow homo sapiens concerning that process which has produced him. How parallel, but irreconcilable, this is to the Christian ethic which says that man is created in the image of God who did have a purpose and that he should glorify his Maker in the knowledge of Him and in making Him known.

According to Simpson the evolutionary ethic is to declare the truth that man has risen, not fallen. It is an ethic that claims not to be absolute but is subject to the new development of cultural, i.e., ethical evolution which makes the process of evolution the absolute in the determination of values. It is an ethic that requires the acceptance of the authority of specialists but the rejection of any absolute authority. It is an ethic which requires “the rejection of revelation or of emotional reaction when knowledge is available.” The spiritual challenge which this ethic makes to the faith and morals of the Christian does not need further comment.

We have observed that the values of a Christian find their focus in God – more than that, in a God that is known to the believer – not a God of blind faith. God makes Himself known by expressing Himself, and we have found that the God who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke unto the fathers by the prophets hath in these last days spoken to us by His Son. He it is who hath shed forth His Spirit into our hearts crying Abba Father. I am not here contending that one merely must subscribe to the doctrine of the Trinity. I am stating rather that no God has made himself known to man other than the Triune God of divine revelation. The faith of the Christian is not just believing that there is a God or accepting a God, or the development of a concept of deity. It is rather a mutual faith between a specific person, Jesus Christ, and the believer that produces knowledge based on experience. We often read and sing, “I know in whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.” This is the testimony of every believer. It is just such knowledge, faith, and moral values with their focus in the Christ of a Triune God with which evolutionary time as a competing system is irreconcilable.

Earlier in this chapter another trinity was suggested. We pointed out earlier that evolutionary theory inherently could not speak of the origins of nature, the evolutionary process, and time. Hence, it must regard each of these as eternal. These are integral and inseparable units in a trinity of absolute values. Though not explicitly deified as in primitive cultures, a number of characteristics identify nature as the father in the anti-Biblical godhead. In the first place, running through all of the literature, that which for the primitive was Mother Nature is now Father Nature. Nature is the active and sole responsible agent for the production of life and of man. Furthermore, hidden within its mysterious confines resides the unexplainableness of deity. Listen again to Simpson:

The ultimate mystery is beyond the reach of scientific investigation and probably of the human mind. There is neither need nor excuse for postulation of nonmaterial intervention in the origin of life, the rise of man, or any other part of the long history of the material cosmos. Yet, the origin of that cosmos and the causal principles of its history remain unexplained and inaccessible to science. Here is hidden the First Cause sought by theology and philosophy. The First Cause is not known and I suspect that it never will be known to living man. We may, if we are so inclined, worship it in our own ways, but we certainly do not comprehend it (1949:135).

It seems as though we have constructed here a modern counterpart to that ancient Athenian idol “To the unknown God.” The deity of Father Nature is further recognized by Simpson in its changeless authority of the reign of natural law over the processes in it:

The doctrine of geological uniformitarianism, finally established early in the 19th century widened the recognized reign of natural law. The earth has changed throughout its history under the action of material forces, only, and of the same forces as those now visible to us and still acting on it (Simpson 1960:967).

Implicit in this statement is also the changelessness of the forces operating within the framework of the realm of nature bringing about all change and development. The analogy here is clear with the Son as the Word by whom all things were created and through whom all things subsist, and also as “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and forever.” Evolution as a process in nature in many ways has the relationship parallel to that of the Son to the Father. It is presented as the way - the way all things have come to be, the way that points into the future and even the secret of the way to live and solve our modern problems. Simpson's demonstration of the evolutionary ethic as the foundation for the solution of the problems of modern man makes it no less than a Messiah. It is not only the way, but it is the truth in contrast to which all opposition is referred to as superstition; the worst of it is Evolution is also the life since all life is the product of nature only through the evolutionary process. As we have previously observed, the evolutionary process is without change. The process of evolution is regarded as so absolute and changeless by some that even the ideas about it cannot change. Leslie White protested his being called a neo-evolutionist saying:

Neo-evolutionism is a misleading term: it has been used to imply that the theory of evolution today is somewhat different from the theory of eighty years ago. We reject any such notion (1959:ix).

White goes on to point out that one can no more speak of neo- evolution than of neo-gravitation. And so, one with the Father nature, evolution, the Son who is the way, the truth, and the life, is also without beginning and without change and we may add without end.

The chapter has, however, been focused on time, but a special kind of time, evolutionary time. We have found that it cannot be understood apart from the Trinity of which it is an integral part. It too is without beginning. Time is the spirit of the anti-Biblical Trinity occupying a position opposed to the Holy Spirit of God. It was the Spirit that moved on the face of the waters in the creation account as told in Genesis. At the climax of this sublime disclosure the Triune God said, “Let us make man in our image and after our likeness.” It was the breathing of the Spirit into the formed dust of the earth, that one creative act which spanned the line between the non-living and the living and the non-rational and the rational. It is the Spirit, the effective servant, one with the Father and the Son, speaking not of Himself but of the Son and the Father, that is nevertheless the indispensable participant mover in the great act of Creation. But what can be said of the third member of the other trinity that we have called evolutionary time? The parallel role is quite clearly seen in an article by George Wald entitled “The Origin of Life.” Here Wald points out two alternatives with which man has confronted the problem of the origin of life: (1) An account of supernatural creation, or (2) a belief in spontaneous generation. He feels that the more rational elements of society prefer to “take a more naturalistic view” which is the latter. But he goes on to point out that modern science through the efforts of Pasteur has discredited the mystical notion of the spontaneous generation of life. He goes further to observe. the complexity of life so that the "most complex machine which man has made is but child's play compared to the simplest of living organisms. He goes on still further to show the unbelievable impossibility statistically that the elements of non-living nature could have spontaneously come together to have formed life. But what is his position? “Yet here we are as a result I believe of spontaneous generation” (1954:46 ). His faith accepts the possibility of the impossible and of the scientifically disproven process. But let Wald give to us the secret of his faith:

The important point is that since the origin of life belongs in the category of the at-least-once phenomena, time is on its side. How. ever improbable we regard this event, or any of the steps which it involves, given enough time it will almost certainly happen at least once. . .

Time is in fact the hero of the plot. The time with which we have to deal is of the order of two billion years. What we regard as impossible on the basis of human experience is meaningless here. Given so much time, the “impossible” become possible, the possible probable, and the probable virtually certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs the miracles (1954:48).

For the Christian it is the Holy Spirit who is the miracle worker and who establishes the credibility of the entire record in the Word of God. By contrast it is time - evolutionary time - that has wrought the wonders of the universe and makes the evolutionary record of nature credible to the evolutionist. The incongruence of trying to bring them together is seen by the question which would result: How long did it take God to breathe His Spirit into man? Time in no sense can be a factor here. The question how long ago did God create man, whether answerable or not is a question utterly unrelated to the concept of evolutionary time and cannot be approached within its frame of reference.

Conclusion

The spiritual character of evolutionary time leaves the Christian no room for compromise. The follower of Christ needs to be assured that he is the only professional authority with regard to his own experience as a child of God. In this one thing all others are at best, laymen. His experience as a reconciled child of the Father through faith in the sacrifice of His Son Jesus Christ has through the Spirit wrought a miracle in his heart with which evolutionary time cannot compete, nor against which it can make any authoritative challenge. Long ago Joshua challenged Israel with the words: “Choose you this day whom you will serve.” Modern man is equally confronted with a moral and spiritual choice that he cannot escape. My choice can be expressed in the words of Joshua, “As for me and my house we will serve the Lord.” The inspired author of the majestic, thrilling and wholly credible account of creation had made a similar choice, for it is said of him, “By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God." ... esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches...

Bibliography

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