John T. Baldwin, ed., Creation, Catastrophe, and Calvary: Why a Global Flood Is Vital to the Doctrine of the Atonement (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 2000).
Baldwin and his fellow authors argue that the Biblical narrative of salvation history constitutes an integral whole; it moves from special creation, through the fall, which led to the entry of death into the world, and judgment in a global flood, but on to the incarnation and atonement of Christ and his return in glory to create a new heavens and a new earth—remove any element, and the entire framework collapses. One of the linchpins in this narrative is the question of death: was it a consequence of human sin, as a literal reading of Genesis maintains, or did it predate the rise of man, as evolutionary theory assumes? A key text is Romans 5:12, 15: “sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin … [but] how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!”
Each chapter adds to the thesis. First is the question of how to read the Genesis account of creation and fall; contrary to higher critics who would argue that they are myths, drawn from pre-existing Mesopotamian and Canaanite sources, the authors hold that they are narrative history, intending to give a straightforward telling of the story. Later authors in Scripture accept this understanding. The days are thus meant to be understood as normal days, setting the pattern for the weekly cycle (Hasel, pp. 40ff).
Younker’s chapter, considering whether Genesis 2 is a separate creation account, responds to a theory that I once accepted, and which then led me down the path to accepting theistic evolution. I was first introduced to the Documentary Hypothesis as an undergraduate at Atlantic Union College. As a student at Gettysburg Lutheran Seminary, I fully embraced it; the authors I found most persuasive included Gerhard von Rad (Old Testament Theology) and Richard Elliott Friedman (Who Wrote the Bible?). Younker’s explication of the text begins with 2:4b, which I had once assumed introduces a second creation story which occurs in one day instead of seven, and reverses the order of some events in Genesis 1, with man created before vegetation. Hasel (p. 57) disposed of the question of whether it was just one day, by noting that the Hebrew expression is best understood as “when” (as translated in the NIV). Younker then (pp. 72-73) notes the expressions identifying the plants which had not appeared (2:5) are different from the expressions in the prior chapter. Siah ha-sadeh (“shrub of the field” NIV) refers to thorny weeds, while ‘esev ha-sadeh (“plant of the field” NIV) refers to cultivated crops such as wheat or barley, which Adam will eat through “painful toil” and the “sweat of [his] brow” in Genesis 3:18. Neither weeds nor labor intensive crops were in Eden before the fall—man subsisted on the fruits of the trees of the garden/orchard. There was likewise no one to work the ground, because cultivation, too, was a product of the fall (p. 74). Thus these introductory verses tell us that the results of the sin were not yet present, and the rest of this chapter and the next, tell us how they came in.
Baldwin’s chapter, “The Geologic Column and Calvary,” likewise addresses issues that had once been occasions of doubt for me. Catholics (whether liberal or conservative) and liberal Protestants (now joined by some evangelicals), who have embraced theistic evolution, have come to accept that death existed prior to the rise of man. Catholic theology since Pius XII (Humani Generis, 1950) has allowed Catholics to accept evolutionary theory, as long as they retain the beliefs that 1) each soul is created individually by God, 2) there was a point in time when God implanted a soul in the body that had evolved from an ape-like ancestor (cf. p. 162), and 3) this first human “fell,” bringing original sin on his descendants. John Paul II reaffirmed this in his October 22, 1996, address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences; Benedict XVI repeated his own embrace of evolutionary theory in the 2006 Schülerkreis (an annual gathering with his former students). None of these showed any concern for the issue raised by Baldwin—if death didn’t come as a result of one man, neither can redemption come by one man. It is, as he notes, a “nonissue” (p. 112).
But if death is not the result of the fall, and is simply part of the natural order as created by God, then 1) God is either indifferent to or planned for the wasteful deaths demanded by evolution and 2) we are not in need of redemption, but are instead evolving toward God’s intent (with Christ as the telos point of human evolution, as in Teilhard de Chardin). If this is the case, death is not something to fear or shun, but to be embraced, as a recent author has argued. The geologic column is either a record of billions of years of death before a man could whisper, “My God,” or it is a testament to the devastation of a global disaster brought upon a sinful world by its creator, as Scripture says. If the former is true, the death of Christ is meaningless; if the latter is true, it shows the depths to which that creator would go to redeem his creation.
Finally, I want to look at the implications for Seventh-day Adventist identity and theology, the subjects of chapters 8 and 1. If evolution is true, Ed Zinke argues, then the Bible has no authority, or perhaps only a partial authority that must be subject to reason or tradition or perhaps ecclesial authority. If evolution is true, then the Bible is the result of the evolution of religious consciousness, and not inspired by God. If theistic evolution is true, then man is not a unity, and his soul can be separated from his body. If theistic evolution is true, then God’s nature is also called into question. Perhaps he has a role as a designer (as Catholic layman and evolutionist Michael Behe would argue); perhaps he simply got it all going and instilled its own inherent laws and now stands back and waits in delightful expectation to see what might happen (as many mainstream Catholic and Protestant theologians would argue); perhaps he’s simply an impersonal force, the sum total of the energies of the universe (as Jean-François Lyotard seems to suggest). How, then, could we speak of either sin or salvation? How could we affirm divine law or the permanence of marriage or the Sabbath, which trace their origins to Eden? How could we hope for the return of Christ in glory?
But the message we are called to proclaim rests on firmer ground. The three angels’ messages of Revelation 14 begin with a reference to creation and an allusion to the Sabbath commandment, as Baldwin argues in chapter 1. “Worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.” That message is needed more than ever, at a time in earth’s history when so many Christians have accepted premises that undermine creation and redemption. Even some Adventists have done so, in the name of “present truth.” As Baldwin notes, “present truth” does not supersede “past truth”; rather, it refers to “concepts whose time has arrived according to the prophetic time clock.” Clearly the authors of this volume believe that Creation is “present truth”—now is the prophetic time to call all to worship the Creator, and him alone.
