Classic and contemporary excerpts.

Forget the numbers

There never has been a power so dramatically opposed to Christianity as the daily press. Day in and day out the daily press does nothing but delude [people] with the supreme axiom of this lie, that numbers are decisive. Christianity, on the other hand, is based on the thought that truth lies in the single individual.

—Søren Kierkegaard in Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing

What if God is ugly?

The question “What if God is ugly?” has been going through my brain for about a year. The more I think about it the more sense it makes to me. Whenever we see something we think is beautiful (based on our own concept of beauty), we think of God. But we all have a different (cultural, individual) sense of beauty. So in heaven a lot of people will be disappointed.…

In my creativity class, students have to make a list of ugly and beautiful items. And the lists always surprise me. Under the heading “ugly” I will find the words “spider” and “feet”! How can they claim these are ugly?… What we call ugly is only our appraisal. My lifelong sermon message has been to acknowledge life wherever you are and whatever it is. For the ordinary is special.

—Reinhold Piper Marxhau in a letter to Martin Marty (Christian Century, March 23–30, 1988)

What’s the difference?

The standard of practical holy living has been so low among Christians that very often the person who tries to practice spiritual disciplines in everyday life is looked upon with disapproval by a large portion of the Church. And for the most part, the followers of Jesus Christ are satisfied with a life so conformed to the world, and so like it in almost every respect, that to a casual observer, there is no difference between the Christian and the pagan.

—Hannah Whitall Smith in The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life

A losing race

Technology is so far ahead of human relations! As for the latter, we are still in the Stone Age. Why do we human beings learn so much, so soon, about technology, and so little, so late, about loving one another?

—Henri Nouwen in New Oxford Review (June 1987)

God and the media

It could not possibly be the case that something men have invented, like the media, could never be serviceable to God.… For instance, once when I was standing waiting for a train in an underground station, a little man … came up to me and asked permission to shake my hand. I gladly, and rather absentmindly, extended a hand.… As we shook hands, he remarked that some words of mine in a radio program had prevented him from commiting suicide. The humbling thing was that I couldn’t remember the particular program he had in mind; doubtless some panel or another, to me buffoonery, and yet a human life had hung on it.

—Malcolm Muggeridge in Christ and the Media

APSALMON TWA FLIGHT 81

High above the clouds

six miles over earth

I think of Time

and Life

not timeless life

of coffee tea or milk

not living water

bread of life

of landing

on hard concrete strip

not flying on to meet

You.

I guess I fear that.

Earthbound in the

heavens

Lord not heavenbound.

Lord have mercy.

—Joseph Bayly in

Psalms of My Life:

Calligraphy by Tim Botts

What is the creation account trying to tell us?

Evangelicals agree that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. And they reject in unison any approach that treats Scripture with a profound skepticism regarding its historical credibility. Yet when they read Genesis 1:1–2:3, there is anything but unanimity.

While there seems to be great variety of opinion, we can generally divide evangelical scholars who study the early chapters of Genesis into two groups: concordists and nonconcordists.

The concordists try to harmonize (or find concord between) Genesis 1:1–2:3 and scientific descriptions of Earth’s origins. Some (called scientific creationists) harmonize science with their straightforward reading of the Bible. Others (called creation scientists) harmonize the Bible with science.

The creation scientists, in turn, are composed of various subgroups: progressives (who construe the “days” of Genesis as immense periods of time) and re-creationists (who reckon with more than one creation). In addition, there are transformationalists, who argue for a pre-Genesis Earth and time. They may belong to either kind of concordist. Re-creationists and transformationalists reject the traditional reading of Genesis 1:1–3, which understands those verses to describe the beginning of Earth-time, when God created the Earth from nothing.

The second group, nonconcordists, may disagree about the meaning of “days” and the syntax of Genesis 1:1–3. But they agree that Genesis teaches neither straightforward history nor science, and needs no reconciliation with the kind of history and science devoted exclusively to what can be observed and measured.

Which of these groups you find yourself in depends on how you answer three big questions about the biblical Creation account:

• What kind of literature is Genesis 1:1–2:3?

• What does the author mean by the word day?

• How are the phrases and sentences of Genesis 1:1–3 related?

Let us examine them in reverse order.

How Is Genesis 1:1–3 Put Together?

Knowing how the various parts of a statement are related can make a big difference in our understanding. For instance, I might write: “I went to my office today. The telephone system wasn’t working right. I felt discouraged. I went home early.” That is rather inelegant writing, in part because I did not explicitly connect the ideas with words that showed time relationships or cause-and-effect patterns. You would probably read some relationships into that passage—that the malfunctioning telephones caused my discouragement—and you might be right; but you might be wrong.

Likewise, the first few sentences of Genesis are not connected in a clear way. Thus, scholars suggest relationships between the sentences and come to different understandings of the text.

• One group of scholars sees Genesis 1:2 as contemporaneous with Genesis 1:1. This is a traditional view in which 1:1 recounts God’s original creation of the Earth, and 1:2 gives us three situations belonging to the same time period: (a) the Earth was “formless and empty”; (b) there was “darkness over the surface of the deep”; and (c) “the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.” Following this line of thought, Calvin commented: “For Moses simply intends to assert that the world was not perfected at its commencement …”

All schools of thought see God’s activity of 1:3 (“Let there be light”) as later than the situation in 1:2. But this school sees all of 1:1–5 (from “In the beginning” right through the end of the first day’s creation) belonging to the same chronological grouping.

In its favor, this view has the support of the classic Hebrew grammar, Gesenius-Kautzsch-Cowley. And theologians prefer it to a transformational theory that reads God’s “In the beginning” creation of 1:1 as earlier creation attempts than the one described in the six days recounted in the rest of the chapter.

But there are insurmountable problems with this traditional interpretation. This passage contains pairs of words called syntagmes, words that occur together in various contexts to denote one unique notion. One scholar explained it this way: “In language, as in chemistry, a compound may be found to possess qualities absent from its constituent elements. For example, anyone who does not know what ‘broadcast’ denotes, will not be able to guess the connotation of the word from its separate elements ‘broad’ and ‘cast’ ” (U. Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis).

Let us take the word-pair heaven and earth. Like our phrase night and day, it is a statement of opposites to indicate totality. Night and day means “all the time.” Likewise, heaven and earth signifies “the entire organized universe” or “the cosmos.” Brevard Childs of Yale Divinity School concludes that this syntagme never stands for disorderly chaos, but always for an ordered world. And John Skinner says it “is a Hebrew designation of the universe as a whole … the organized universe, not the chaotic material out of which it was formed.”

Next let us look at empty and formless. This word pair (which reads tohu wabohu in Hebrew) is a rhyming syntagme, something like the English phrase hanky-panky. It stands for “chaos,” and it is the antithesis of the “cosmos” of verse 1. Logically, the disorderly chaos and the orderly cosmos cannot be applied to the same thing and the same time—and thus verses 1 and 2 simply cannot be contemporaneous.

• Another way to understand the relationship between the sentences of Genesis 1:1–3 is to see verse 2 as following verse 1 in time.

According to re-creationists, verse 2 tells of a second Creation that happened after the original Creation recorded in verse 1. The first Creation, they say, may have occurred millions of years ago but was reduced to chaos by divine judgment on disobedient spiritual beings; and the second Creation happened around 4000 B.C. According to this so-called gap theory, most fossils are relics of the first Creation.

Although it was the Scofield Reference Bible that popularized and sanctioned this view in 1909, it has its roots in early Jewish tradition and has been held throughout the history of the church. Moreover, the verb translated “was” in verse 2 may mean “became”—“The earth became formless and empty.” Finally, the condition “formless and empty,” when it occurs in other Old Testament contexts (Jer. 4:23, Isa. 34:1), is the result of divine judgment.

But this interpretation faces an insurmountable problem: the “and” that introduces the “formless and empty” description of verse 2 does not imply a subsequent situation (unlike the “and” introducing verse 3: “And [then] God said: ‘Let there be light’ ”). Also, although the formlessness and emptiness in Isaiah and Jeremiah result from God’s fury, it is not logically necessary (or even likely) that this chaos arises from his wrath. Peter knows of only two divine judgments on the whole Earth: a past flood and a future fire (2 Peter 3:5–7).

• A third way to understand the relationship between the Bible’s first sentences is to see verse 1 as a dependent clause, with verse 2 as either a parenthesis or the principal clause—as in several recent translations:

When God began to create the heaven and the earth—the earth being unformed and void …—God said …

(Jewish Publication Society, 1962)

In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland.… Then God said …

(New American Bible, 1970)

In the beginning of creation, when God made heaven and earth, the earth was without form and void.… God said …

(New English Bible, 1970)

All three endorse a transformational view of Creation, entailing a pre-Genesis time and chaotic space.

The eminent scholar of Hebrew Scriptures, Harry Orlinsky, argued that the cumulative evidence—from the study of lexicons, syntax, context, and comparable Near Eastern stories of how the universe began—favors this interpretation. Indeed, no lexical or grammatical objections can be raised against it. But the context and the comparisons with other Near Eastern creation stories favors the next view we shall examine. Moreover, with two notable exceptions, Jewish and Christian traditions have understood verse 1 as an independent clause.

• A fourth way of understanding the relationships in these verses (and perhaps the best way) is to see verse 1 as a summary statement that matches the concluding summary statement of Genesis 2:1: “Thus the heavens and the earth were completed”; and to see verse 2 as a circumstantial clause modifying verse 3.

Thus understood, Genesis 1:1–3 could be translated: “In the beginning God created the cosmos. Now [this is how it happened]. The earth was chaotic …, and then God said …” Like the third option, this reading also entails a pre-Genesis time and Earth.

Read this way, Genesis 1:1–3 would be similar in structure to the introduction of the other Creation story in Genesis 2:4–7, as well as with other ancient Near Eastern tales of how it all began.

An obvious theological objection will be raised against this transformationalist view. Where did the negative conditions originate? The question is best answered with another question: Where did Satan originate? The origins of both moral evil and natural evils (like tornadoes and malaria) remain a mystery in monotheism, and Genesis offers a relative beginning with respect to each. Nevertheless, by comparing Scripture with Scripture, transformationalists should conclude that both evil and matter are temporal in contrast to the eternal (see Jer. 10:16; John 1:3; Col. 1:16).

Since Genesis seems to presume pre-existent matter and time, scientific creationists would do better to argue for an old Earth rather than a young one.

How Long Are The “Days” Of Genesis?

Part of the problem science poses for the interpreter of Genesis is the long periods of time required to lay down the fossil record. Obviously, those who wish to harmonize Bible and science must in some way read the seven days of Creation as something other than 24-hour days.

Progressive creationists—who tend to minimize divine, special intervention and to maximize the operation of natural law—make room for the long ages in two ways:

First, some interpret the days of Genesis as successive days on which God revealed his creative process to Moses. Back in the last century, J. H. Kurtz wrote that God revealed to his prophet, Moses, through visions seven progressive scenes of pre-Adamite creation. And in 1936, P. J. Wiseman suggested that God told Moses the story over six days. In this approach, the six visions are presented in logical, but not strictly chronological, order. Wiseman embellishes the theory by noting that Babylonian Creation accounts were customarily put on six tablets with a concluding colophon. And so in Genesis, he alleges, there was a day of revelation for each tablet followed by “the colophon of Genesis 2:4.”

This interpretation of “day” faces the objection that it adds to Scripture. Genesis 1:1–2:3 contains nothing comparable to the introduction in Genesis 15:1: “And the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision.” And in any case, the verb “made” cannot be changed into “showed” in Genesis 2:2: “And on the seventh day, God ended his work which he had made, and he rested on the seventh day.”

Second, some progressive creationists interpret the days as ages, which they correlate with the successive epochs recorded in the geological column. These advocates of the “day age” theory (which W. B. Riley called, “The Devil’s Counterfeit”) argue that the Hebrew word yom can have other meanings than “a 24-hour period.” For example, in Genesis 2:4, we find the phrase “in the day,” referring to the whole creative process recorded in Genesis 1:1–2:3. Gleason Archer of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School also argues cogently that the events recorded in 2:4–25 (the making of Adam, the planting of the garden, the naming of the animals, and the gift of a bride) cannot be squeezed into a sixth 24-hour period.

This view, however, satisfies neither the text nor science. Terence E. Fretheim of Lutheran Northwestern Theological Seminary linguistically validates the assertion that the author of Genesis intended to write of 24-hour days. And Robert C. Newman of Biblical Theological Seminary shows that they were intended to be chronologically successive. Moreover, in Genesis, against scientific understanding, plants precede marine organisms and even the sun, and birds precede insects. Problems, such as the chronological tension of so much happening on the sixth day, are better explained by an artistic-literary approach.

What Kind Of Literature Is Genesis 1:1–2:3?

The strongest evidence that Genesis 1:1–2:3 should be read as a historically and scientifically accurate narrative is that this traditional interpretation seems to be the plain, normal sense of the passage. When the fourth commandment gives God’s six days of creation and one day of rest as a pattern for human work and Sabbath, it seems to clinch the argument (Exod. 20:11).

But there are two acute contradictions between Genesis and normative science about terrestrial origins: How long the process took, and in what order events took place. These contradictions have driven some biblical scholars to suspect that the passage was not intended to be taken in so straightforward a manner. They have asked just what kind of literature it is, and have compared and contrasted their own preunderstandings with those of the biblical writers. Even if the prodigious research, debates, and diligent publications of the scientific creationists should fully harmonize science with Genesis, Bible scholars can never again read the text through uncorrected lenses.

Former Barrington College President Charles Hummel noted that Genesis 1:1–2:3 is unlike science in these ways:

• Its subject is God, not the forces of nature;

• Its language is everyday speech, not mathematics and technical jargon;

• It is prescriptive (answering the questions who, why, and what ought to be), not descriptive (answering the questions what, how, and what is);

• It is written for the covenant community and is validated by the Spirit, not for a scientific community or validated by empirical evidence.

To pit the biblical claim of Ultimate Cause (“God created the heavens and the earth”) against scientific claims of immediate causes is as mischievous as pitting David’s theological assertion “You created my inmost being” (Ps. 139:13) against genetics. The Bible shows a marked disinterest in the mechanics of Creation (compare the one chapter devoted to the origins of the Earth and life to the numerous detailed chapters in Exodus, Leviticus, Chronicles, and Ezekiel devoted to recounting the formation of Israel’s formal worship system). And certainly science cannot answer questions of the creation’s purpose or value.

In addition, nonconcordists say Genesis 1 conflicts with the aims of modern historians, who exclude ultimate cause and stress brute fact. In contrast to that kind of history writing, the Bible editorializes to the point that it rearranges the order of events in order to make theological points. For example, D. J. A. Clines of Sheffield University shows that the Table of Nations in Genesis 10 (which must chronologically follow the scrambling of languages at the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11) was dischronologized for theological reasons: The author wants to present mankind under God’s blessing to be fruitful and to fill the Earth. And while Exodus (7:14–11:10) reports that God inflicted ten plagues on Egypt, beginning with blood, the poet-theologian of Psalm 105 (vv. 28–41) feels free to reduce the number to seven and begin with darkness (to contrast with God’s three miracles in the desert that begin with light). Similar rearrangements of events in the synoptic Gospels are well known.

Ronald Youngblood of Bethel Seminary West has demonstrated that Genesis 1:1–2:3 has also been dischronologized. In brute history, he argues, it seems unlikely that God created light and “separated light from darkness” on the first day, and then created luminaries as the means “to separate light from darkness” on the fourth day, or that evening and morning existed on the first three days before he created the heavenly lights to mark off days.

These obvious incongruities in the text suggest to more and more evangelicals that a literary reading of Genesis 1:1–2:3 is called for. Systematic theologian Henri Blocher of the Faculté Libre de Théologie Evangélique labels the genre as “historico-artistic.” According to him, the interpreter should understand “the form of the week attributed to the work of creation to be an artistic arrangement … not to be taken literally.” “It is possible,” he adds, “that the logical order [the author] has chosen coincides broadly with the actual sequence of events of the facts of cosmogony; but that does not interest him. He wishes to bring out certain themes and provide a theology of the sabbath.” This approach not only relieves tensions within the narrative itself and with science, but also with the second Creation story (Genesis 2:4–25).

Australian scholar N. Weeks offers a plausible objection: “There is no logical reason why the presence of a structure should prove that a passage is not to be taken literally.” But Weeks fails to address the tensions within the text as well as the figurative elements we shall note later. And Blocher argues against this objection by applying the philosophical principle that prefers simple solutions to multiplied hypotheses.

R. Clyde McCone, professor of anthropology and linguistics at California State University, also objects to a literary approach. He complains, with some justification, that literary theories shift the focus of study away from God to the text and “present little substantive revelation of God.” This may be true of many literary approaches, but it certainly is not necessary.

Even as exegetes call for a literary rereading of the text as an artistic achievement, theologians, professional and self-taught, are calling for a figurative approach. Howard Van Till of Calvin College notes that God’s actions in Creation “are presented in highly figurative and anthropomorphic language.” Even the eminently conservative commentator E. J. Young points to the repeated formulae, “God said,” and “God called,” and reminds us that “God did not speak with physical organs of speech nor did he utter words in the Hebrew language.” These expressions and others portray the transcendent God and his activity in human forms so that earthlings may understand him. So nonconcordists ask: In the light of these obvious and numerous anthropomorphisms, is it not plausible to suppose that the first week is also an anthropomorphic representation of the Creator’s work and rest, so that the covenant people could bear witness to him and imitate his pattern?

If Moses did not intend to write a straightforward history, but an artistic literary account in anthropomorphic language (so that God’s people might imitate him), this would also give us a clue to the meaning of the fourth commandment.

While calling Genesis 1:1–2:3 a literary work, nonconcordists shy away from using the word myth. For most people, that slippery term implies a fanciful, untrue story. Besides, there is actually very little similarity between this story and pagan accounts of the beginning and ordering of the universe. Indeed, some have pointed out that Genesis 1:1–2:3 reads like a polemic against pagan cosmogonies.

Having surveyed the answers to the three big questions, we can draw some conclusions. Perhaps it is best to regard Genesis 1:1–2:3 as a creation story in torah (“instruction”), which is a majestic, artistic achievement, employing anthropomorphic language. As H. J. Sørenson said in the New Catholic Encyclopedia: “The basic purpose is to instruct men on the ultimate realities that have an immediate bearing on daily life and on how to engage vitally in these realities to live successfully. It contains ‘truths to live by’ rather than ‘theology to speculate on.’ ”

Moses intended no distinction between historical data and its theological shaping, and Bible students should resist the temptation to separate the two. Historical critics evaporate history, but nonconcordist evangelicals must take history seriously and compare Scripture with Scripture, a task that some accomplish better than others: In Literary Approaches to Biblical Interpretation, for example, Westminster Theological Seminary’s Tremper Longman helps readers walk gingerly between the promise and pitfalls of the literary approach to the Old Testament. In The Fourth Day, however, Howard Van Till seems to lose his balance when he writes that the primeval history in Genesis 1–11 is not concerned with whether the events actually happened.

This literary approach may unsettle some who cling to the Reformers’ claim that Scripture is perspicuous. But note: The literary approach to Genesis 1:1–2:3 changes no doctrine of the church while it helps us to see some of them more clearly.

Bruce Waltke is professor of Old Testament at Westminster Seminary, Philadelphia. He is coauthor of the newly published Obadiah, Jonah, Micah volume in the Tyndale Old Testament Commentary series (InterVarsity Press).

Why can’t evangelical scientists agree?

The camera moves gracefully through a brilliant cloud of stars. Classical music swells, providing a majestic audio carpet for the journey. The voice of the astronomer purrs reverently, “The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.”

Carl Sagan’s vision of an eternal material universe wins a large audience, but does not correspond to the current scientific picture of a universe that began, will end, and likely not recur. Sagan’s is a vision more religious than scientific.

Is There Room For God In The Scientific Enterprise?

“There is a kind of religion in science,” declares astrophysicist and self-styled agnostic Robert Jastrow. “It is the religion of a person who believes there is order and harmony in the universe. Every event can be explained in a rational way as the product of some previous event; every effect must have its cause; there is no First Cause.”

Christians can surely account for belief in an orderly universe, but presupposing an eternal machine of cause and effect cut off from God is clearly opposed to belief in Creation. Jastrow’s point, however, is that twentieth-century science has shaken faith in an eternal mechanism. “The religious faith of the scientist is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning in which known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover.”

“Here is evidence,” says astronomer Allan Sandage about the big bang*, “for what can only be described as a supernatural event. There is no way to predict this in physics as we know it.” And “as for the first cause of the universe,” British theorist E. A. Milne adds in his book on relativity, “that is left for the reader to insert, but our picture is incomplete without Him.”

Since scientists are “possessed by the sense of universal causation” (Einstein), the search continues for the “mechanism of creation,” for a scientific explanation of the “initial conditions.” But in that search, science appears to open several doors to the Creator.

• Alexander Viliken of Tufts University, for example, constructs a model of the world emerging from “nothing.” He notes that “the idea is very old in the context of theology.”

• In addition to the question “Why is there something and not nothing?” scientists now wonder, “Why this particular something?” “The present arrangement of matter,” says physicist Paul Davies, “indicates a very special choice of initial conditions.” “In fact,” adds leading theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, whose latest theory pictures a finite universe of no beginning, “if one considers the possible constants and laws that could have emerged, the odds against a universe that has produced life like ours are immense.”

• Life epitomizes this wonderfully precise combination of constants that makes our particular world possible. British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle, who once postulated a “Steady State” or continuous creation model for the physical universe to avoid the implications of a beginning, now leads the effort to explain evidence of intelligent design in the world. “A common sense interpretation of the facts,” he says, “suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.”

• Biologist Dean Kenyon once assumed that molecules had some “built-in” tendency to form the special complexity of life. He is now convinced that life originated from “an intelligence capable of generating an enormous amount of complex information rather quickly.”

• When it comes to intelligence, neuroscientist and Nobel laureate Sir John Eccles sees the “interaction” between mind and brain as leading “to the extraordinary doctrine that this world of matter-energy is not completely sealed, which is a fundamental tenet of physics, but that there are small ‘apertures’ in what is otherwise a completely closed world.”

Sagan’s vision of a self-contained material cosmos blurs as science itself begins to fine-tune a new image. The universe we inhabit is not completely necessary or self-explanatory—it could have been something else. It could not have happened by accident. The special design of its internal structures—from vast galaxies to microscopic proteins—indicate a “createdness,” to use historian of science Stanley Jaki’s word. Our world appears dependent upon a context beyond itself.

It seems ironic that at the same time that scientists in general are increasingly open to the idea of a Creative Intelligence, evangelical Christian scientists seem to be unable to speak with a unified voice on the relationship between faith in a loving Creator involved in the world and an understanding of his orderly creation; between acceptance of revelation and confidence in cause and effect; between the biblical truth of Creation and the scientific account of nature.

As a step toward unity, the Christianity Today Institute sponsored a forum on origins, bringing together Christians of contrasting viewpoints and different scholarly perspectives to discuss divine revelation and scientific understanding. The participants were:

John Meyer, professor of science at Baptist Bible College, Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania, who stresses the need for evangelical scientists to read the Genesis account as providing reliable historical and scientific information. Meyer received his doctorate in zoology from the University of Iowa. His current research interests include computer simulation of putative evolutionary processes.

Howard J. Van Till, professor of physics and astronomy at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan, who stresses the theological truth of Genesis, the source and meaning of the creation. But he believes science can and should ask questions about the mechanics of origins independent of the Genesis account. Van Till is coauthor of Science Held Hostage and author of The FourthDay, as well as several articles that offer a biblical understanding of the evolutionary process.

Pattle Pun, associate professor of biology at Wheaton College, who looks for a middle ground in which science and biblical interpretation inform each other. Pun has written Evolution: Nature and Scripture in Conflict.

Two theologians were present to critique and help clarify the scientists’ ideas: John Woodbridge, professor of church history and history of Christian thought at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois; and Kenneth S. Kantzer, dean of the Christianity Today Institute and professor of biblical and systematic theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

Meyer: Separating The Routine From The Unrepeatable

“I started out,” says John Meyer, “as a person who was very interested in science and who came from a very conservative theological background. I went off to graduate school, and, in the zoology department, I found that every course I was taking was taught from a macroevolutionary perspective.”

Meyer, whose present work on squirrel populations in the Grand Canyon confirms for him a scientific model of recent and sudden creation, explained how his youthful adjustment to evolutionary teaching was particularly distressing. He toyed with “theistic evolution,” but finally returned to his initial position.

“As I began to think my way carefully through what was being said, I became more and more convinced that I could accept anything from a scientific standpoint that could be demonstrated in the laboratory. The molecule-to-man type evolutionary scenario is simply not possible scientifically, and it violates everything I understand about a clear, straightforward evaluation of the Book of Genesis.”

To clarify what he means by “possible scientifically,” Meyer distinguishes between two types of science: a science of origins and a science of operations. Theories of origin-science describe unique or rare natural phenomena that occurred in the past. Such events Meyer lists as the origin of the universe, the Earth, life in all its various forms, and human beings. These events happened only once, and are no longer observable in the field, nor are they repeatable in the lab.

Operation-science, on the other hand, investigates the regular and repeatable processes of nature. Theories about these recurring processes can be tested and either verified or falsified. Theories about origin events, however, are not susceptible to the same kind of verification.

The distinction between origin-science and operation-science is gaining some favor, and stirring some controversy, in Christian circles. Theologian Norman Geisler, coauthor of the book Origin Science, explains that “there is no observational evidence in the present that can adequately account for the cause of the origin of the universe by operational laws alone.” Likewise, to accept the “genesis of life” as a product of random processes and natural law does not coincide with the facts and is rather a matter of faith. His conclusion: “It is arbitrary and unscientific to limit the quest for causes to only natural ones.”

“All we can do,” says Meyer, “is look at the products [of origin events], and on our presuppositional basis make inferences back into the past about how we think that came about. And I believe that is all any view of origins can do—except in cases where I would claim we have divine revelation from the Creator himself as to what he did.”

Meyer is forthright about his own presuppositions regarding the processes of origins. A “straightforward” (that is, “historical, grammatical, literal”) view of Genesis provides him an authoritative “theoretical framework” for the study of nature’s “singularities.” Such a framework incorporates supernatural cause into scientific description.

That framework of “scientific creationism” includes “special creation (by a Creator)” of the universe and life; the stability of “original kinds” of living organisms with limited variation over time; no common ancestry between apes and man; an application of the law of entropy, or increasing disorder in the universe, to indicate both the deterioration of the natural world as predicted by the Fall and the requirement of supernatural intervention to attain the special order of living organisms; a catastrophic flood to account for many significant features of the “geological column”; and a recent creation of Earth and life.

Meyer is convinced his approach gives a “fresh perspective” on the data. And given the apparent evidence of a Designer at work in our remarkable universe, it is the evolutionist who appears closed-minded.

There is also a profound sense in recent-creationism that questions about origins are not fundamentally scientific or secular questions at all.

“The problem of origins,” Meyer writes, “is primarily a spiritual problem, as suggested by 1 Corinthians 2:14. Thus, it should not come as a surprise that unregenerate man, looking at a sincursed nature, will not come to a correct conclusion regarding its supernatural origin.”

Professor Meyer lays on the table, then, a philosophy of science that admittedly “limits” the authority of science as it deals with origins while allowing for “divine cause.” He also employs a certain view of Scripture, which anchors the authority of Genesis in the literal truth of its account of natural history. It is clear as well that, from Meyer’s point of view, the theory of macroevolution—that all of life’s great diversity developed in a continuous line of natural causes from a common ancestor—is scientifically suspect and a fundamental threat to biblical authority.

Such are the dimensions of this zoologist’s resolution to dilemmas first encountered in graduate school. Howard Van Till, the astronomer from Calvin College, is wont to criticize such an adjustment on nearly every level, except one.

“I think we owe a great debt to the creation-science movement,” Van Till concedes, “for calling attention to the abuse of public education and public media by evolutionary naturalists.” The ideology or “religious world view” of naturalism, Van Till explains, presupposes that Nature, with a capital N, is an autonomous system of cause and effect for which a Creator is irrelevant.

Evolution here becomes more than a scientific model of population changes over time. Darwin’s natural selection is no longer a metaphor or an analogy but is mistaken for the reality it only represents. As historian of science David Livingstone writes, the process of evolution has come to be regarded “as a fully creative agency comparable to divine creativity.” Evolution takes on the qualities of “cosmic myth … an all-encompassing system of belief which provides an explanation for the structure of reality and gives meaning to human existence”—in this case, the meaninglessness of survival of whatever happens to survive. The world view of evolutionary naturalism replaces the God of creation with the god of happenstance, just as Darwin sought to replace special creation with a theory of organic evolution.

Van Till: Distinguishing Meaning From Mechanism

While Meyer seeks to reassert direct divine intervention into the mechanism as the only proper biblical response to naturalism, Van Till proposes to distinguish the religious quest for purpose from the limited scientific effort to understanding natural processes at work over time.

He does not draw a boundary between two types of science, but rather between two types of questions about origins. Questions of “formative origins” are properly scientific questions and involve how the physical world was formed over time. They deal with the properties, patterns of behavior, and history of material systems—processes subject to the Creator’s constant governance. These scientific matters involve the “internal affairs” of creation.

Questions of “ontological origins” are properly religious questions. They deal with the “external relationship” of the cosmos, with why we are here, with the cause of the world’s beginning and its continuation in existence, with its “source of being.” Answers to both sets of questions—those of mechanism and process and those of purpose and meaning—complement each other, together providing a “richer understanding of reality.”

For Van Till, presupposing that answers to questions about the world’s “formative origins” can be explained in terms of an unbroken chain of natural causes does not exclude the Creator, nor deny the truth of Genesis. On the contrary, the doctrine of Creation calls for such completeness and continuity. Biblical revelation provides the “basis of belief” that science is possible, that a coherent picture of the natural world can be drawn, from start to finish. Creation gives the reason for the harmony that the scientist holds as the hallmark of his professional faith.

It is not surprising, then, that Van Till sees no threat to the Christian faith if scientists should discover the “mechanism of creation.” Nor would he be concerned with Stephen Hawking’s theoretical model of a finite universe of no beginning and no end: “What place then, for a creator?” Hawking asks.

Since the doctrine of creation describes a relationship rather than a process, says Van Till, “the natural scientist may be able to reconstruct much of the formative history of the physical universe and describe the processes and events that that history comprises, but neither the existence of any universe at all nor its governance according to a pattern is self-explanatory.”

To Hawking’s lament after a lifetime of work, “Now I have some idea of how the universe works, but I still do not really understand why,” Van Till replies: “Science has no hold on purpose. The transcendent Creator is just as necessary now as ever.”

To understand Genesis properly, then, says Van Till, is not to read it as a “chronicle of creative acts,” but as the “preamble to the covenantal canon,” specifying the participants in the relationship that the Creator has established with his creation. “The essence of the doctrine of creation is found not in mechanisms or timetables, but in specifying the identities of, and interrelationships among, God, humanity, and the universe.” Throughout the discussion, Van Till stresses this “covenant view” of Genesis.

From Meyer’s biblical starting point, “the mechanism of creation was ‘and God said,’ which was a decree rather than a process, thus ruling out any macroevolutionary scenario.” Van Till, on the other hand, stresses that “the creation is functionally complete.” Theologically, “God need not act as if he were a component within creation; rather the Creator is the one on whom rests the existence and governance of all phenomena.” Scientifically, introducing supernatural cause is a “god-of-the-gaps” approach, says Van Till, a Christian apologetic that “has failed thoroughly. I resist it with full vigor.”

By the same biblical and scientific perspectives, Van Till sees that the hyphenating of science into origin and operation types “drives a wedge between the character of the present and the character of past,” both in terms of natural processes we see today and scientifically infer for the past, and in terms of “the way in which God operates.… I hope the Christian concept of God as Creator and the whole world as his creation does not depend upon a certain sort of functional incompleteness in the economy of the created order.”

Finally, in sharp contrast to Meyer’s view of unregenerate man incapable of coming to the truth about origins, Van Till says that scientists have gained considerable skill in “reconstructing formative histories.” Evidence drawn “from independent concerns and a multiplicity of disciplines,” including his own field of astrophysics, provides the theory of macroevolution with a “degree of certainty beyond a reasonable doubt.” Furthermore, he says, the Christian community ought to “respect the good, honest job that is being done by the natural scientists.” It is a point of view at least partially grounded in the influence of his own father, who, though he only had a sixth-grade education, was “a person who valued curiosity and candor and integrity in seeking answers.”

In general, Van Till agrees with Meyer that the presumption that the universe is a closed, self-explanatory, self-regulating system of material cause and effect is a philosophical presupposition that must be challenged. He disagrees with the recent-creationist’s strategy, however, because he disagrees with its low view of the credibility of professional science, with its assumptions concerning the agenda of early Genesis, and with its concept of the way God works to form his creation and his creatures.

“ ‘Creation-science’,” he concludes, “which reduces the wholly theological concept of Creation to a particular picture of recent instantaneous inceptions, is, in my judgment, a tragic blunder.”

Pun: Providential Involvement With Natural Selection

“In the evangelical spectrum of this discussion,” says Wheaton College biologist Pattle Pun, “I’m right in the middle.”

Professor Pun became a Christian in college, he says, “not through a whole lot of intellectual searching, just through the love of Christians.”

“The first challenge I faced was from my anatomy professor. He was talking about evolution, and challenged what he called old-time religion that talked about a Creator. I asked him, ‘Why are you so sure that man was an evolutionary descendant of apes?’ He said, ‘Wait till you get into biochemistry.’ ”

Pun took the challenge, intent upon addressing the difficult questions of special creation and organic evolution from the inside. He is now a molecular biologist whose perspective is critical of both scientific creationism and theistic evolutionism.

Pun begins by distinguishing origin and operational science, like Meyer. But he does so in order to stress the limitations of the scientist’s understanding rather than to uphold a literal interpretation of Genesis that specifies recent Creation by divine fiat. He accepts scientific conclusions about an ancient Earth, for example, and regards Meyer’s approach as “imposing” on science a “narrowly defined view of the Scriptures not necessarily exegetically sound,” akin to the medieval defense of an Earth-centered universe.

Operational or empirical science, he says, is a precise, though limited, method of understanding the natural world. At its core is the testable hypothesis. By observation, theory, experiment and verification, science establishes “explanations of natural phenomena strictly in terms of other natural phenomena.” Here is Jastrow’s “religion of a person” who presumes natural cause and effect; what Owen Gingerich of Harvard means when he says that “science is, by its very nature, godless.” Even the atheist, says Pun, can discover “valid information about God’s creation.”

When practiced by the “moral scientist,” says Pun, this approach to knowledge “is self-corrective,” judging its conclusions by its own criteria. “The rigor followed by practicing scientists in establishing reproducible results and verifiable hypotheses is one of the highest human virtues.” At the crux of his disagreement with Meyer, then, Pun sees that “although carnal man does not perceive the truth of God, God’s common grace allows sinners and saints alike to perceive certain truths of his world.”

Given the nature of the scientific method, scientific theories about origin events, whether they come from creationist or evolutionist perspectives, are “more metaphysical than methodological.” Hypotheses here are “often colored by one’s outlook on life.” There is a tendency to fit the facts to the theory—theories that are not subject to the kind of “seeing is believing” test of truth characteristic of operational science.

Pun tends to discount the implication, for example, that some of his colleagues in molecular biology are “on the trail of Eve,” as the press would have it. In this case, researchers are using probability and the DNA of the mitochondrion—the compartment of the human cell that produces its life-sustaining energy—to trace the lineage of the human race back to the common primeval mother, or, more accurately, a particular group of mothers. As a gene specialist, Pun feels the theory assumes too much about the interpretive power of this one section of the cell. The guesswork quality of this type of historical scientific investigation keeps it continually speculative, he says.

From Pun’s viewpoint, the prevailing neo-Darwinian evolutionary scenario requires “a leap of faith.” Similarities between the anatomy of a chimpanzee and a human being, or between the DNA of a bacterium and an amoeba, offer only “circumstantial evidence” that macroevolutionary transitions occurred. In fact, the observational data cannot rule out an interpretation allowing for special creation of fixed “Genesis kinds,” to use Meyer’s term. There is no experiment, Pun notes, that can verify or falsify the macroevolutionary scenario. Observable processes of microevolution—limited genetic changes at the species or subspecies level—cannot account for the enormously complex transmutations involved in going from lower to higher levels of living organisms.

“The fact is that the evolution of life,” Pun concludes, “from a single origin, an assertion adamantly maintained by most evolutionists, is more an a priori assumption than an empirically falsifiable theory.” It is more a presumption that transitions occurred, because such a presumption effectively renders intelligible a vast array of data, and because, as one scientist put it, the alternative is unbelievable.

Nevertheless, as Pun points out, Darwin’s concept of natural selection in the struggle for survival “is being gradually abandoned by the more radical biologists as the major mechanism that can account for the evolution of the major groups of organisms (for example, from ape to man).” Macroevolution is in desperate need of a “holistic mechanism,” he says, an explanation for the apparent discontinuities among the diverse groups of organisms. “The stage may be set for a paradigm shift in future biological thinking.”

But he does not see creation-science as providing an alternative paradigm. Agreeing with Van Till, he sees Creation “as primarily a theological principle,” describing the truth of the world’s origin from nothing. “Creation cannot serve as a scientific hypthothesis because it is not amenable to experimental testing.” In fact, Creation is an even weaker scientific model than evolution since the latter has a testable mechanism of natural selection of random genetic mutations, which, in turn, has proved inadequate.

As a way of reconciling the revelations of Scripture and science about the natural world, and to see properly the relationship of Creator to his creation, as well as the unity of supernatural activity with natural cause and effect, Pun offers what he calls the “middle ground” of progressive creationism.

“God is involved in his creation in a dynamic way,” he says, “by shaping the variation of the biological world through mechanisms such as natural selection.” This continual, providential involvement neither precludes “methodological naturalism”—the natural scientist’s working assumption that all phenomena can be described purely in terms of natural causes—nor does it eliminate the Creator’s direct involvement in “extraordinary” cases.

In particular, this molecular biologist’s progressive creationism holds firm to the Creator’s special involvement in the mechanism when it came to making human beings in his image. The special creation of the historical couple of Adam and Eve was an “extraordinary act of God that is not explainable by known natural causes,” says Pun, and the vagaries of the macroevolutionary model of origins cannot dissuade him from this conviction.

Kantzer: Was Adam A Miracle?

It is precisely at the point of human origins that the dialogue over biblical theology and natural science becomes most delicate and most telling.

Theologian Kenneth Kantzer questions the validity of that unbroken chain of proximate cause-and-effect relationships, the regular sequence of material events that Van Till says we should expect of a functionally complete creation. Does this continual sequence “rule out divinely caused breaks?” asks Kantzer, especially where natural causes cannot apparently explain the phenomena we observe?

“No,” Van Till replies. “I don’t think we ought to rule out anything. Certainly not miracles.”

“I was hoping you would say that,” Kantzer observes. “Man, you’re saying, then, was not produced just by a series of cause-and-effect relationships within matter.”

But now Van Till “hedges,” he admits, on the difficult matter of how man’s spiritual and physical being could have united under a theory of organic evolution. The creation of humankind, he allows, surely was a “special act of God.” But, in light of what the current scientific picture envisions about the continuity of physical causes, and in light of what we would expect of a complete and lawful created order, that special act can be understood as the providential moment when the creaturely person meets his Personal Creator.

In the course of divinely directed cosmic history, Van Till suggests, “there appears a form of creature that has certain capacities”: the capacity to know right from wrong, the capacity for self-awareness, the capacity for God-awareness. “The kind of capacities that are necessary in order that God can now say: I call you to be aware of my presence. I call you to use these capacities, and put you in a position of responsibility that no other creature has ever had before.”

Meyer pointedly interjects: “Was there, in space-time history, one individual, by the name of Adam, who is the father of the entire human race? And did God historically in space-time history make woman from him?”

Citing the conflicting views among evangelical Bible scholars, Van Till expresses a willingness to give serious consideration to a variety of answers, including some nontraditional ones.

Meyer retorts: “I just find it incomprehensible that a person could possibly hedge on the issue of the historicity of the origin of the human race as indicated in Genesis.”

From Meyer’s standpoint, the credibility of the Christian revelation demands that the Bible, when it speaks of events in history, speaks authoritatively and truthfully. “Isn’t it critical,” he asks, referring to Genesis 1, “that it does deal with events that are considered historical?” The Second Adam demands the first. To accept Van Till’s distinction between biblical and scientific statements, between religious and scientific perspectives, between the spiritual and physical aspects of man’s origins, “is to drive a wedge between” the Bible and science, Meyer insists. “They are not complementary; they overlap.” Van Till’s approach promotes a “weakened view of the Book of Genesis,” he says, which threatens to “completely cut the heart out of the gospel.”

Historian of theology John Woodbridge tends to agree. Darwinism succeeded in the first place, he says, partly because it succeeded in “kicking our religious questions upstairs”—which was part of a larger cultural effort to “overthrow the divine” by “cutting the nexus between Genesis 1 and 2 and the real world.” But some doctrines are “anchored in statements about the natural world”; and “what kind of history is [Genesis 1–11] if it doesn’t deal with events that took place? How do you distinguish whatever it is from myth?”

Van Till’s response stresses again the complementary nature of the scientific story of physical processes and a biblical revelation of divine purpose. Van Till maintains that, far from producing a “weakened view” of Scripture, allowing honest science to enhance our understanding of revelation helps “recover the original meaning of Genesis.” Focusing on the covenant, and not on the mechanics of the world’s beginnings, dramatizes man’s special role and responsibility in Creation. Genesis 1 is “primeval history,” says Van Till. “It provides us with the theological basis for coming to know the meaning of all history.”

Van Till specifically suggests that the “special event” that established a creature of moral judgment on Earth is analogous to the mystery of human reproduction itself in which the moral and spiritual individual emerges from the union of ovum and sperm.

“I don’t believe,” Kantzer observes, “that the capacity to reproduce a human body with an immortal substantial spirit connected with it was purely a cause-and-effect relationship.”

“Are you saying,” Van Till asks, “that God could not have formed creatures known as the human race in that way?”

“Inside the womb of something that wasn’t human? I’m not saying that at all,” Kantzer assures him.

Separating Truth From History?

Meyer regards Van Till’s distinguishing of scriptural truth from scientific models as insidious compromise, allowing “nature to overwhelm grace.” Quoting Francis Schaeffer, Meyer wonders whether “the next generation of Christians will have the ground completely swept out from under them” in the loss of a clear-cut, “common sense” correspondence between Genesis and scientific descriptions. “For there is no reason to keep what the Bible says religiously if we have put it in an upper story and throw away that which the Bible speaks of when it speaks of history and the cosmos.”

In effect, from Meyer’s perspective, Van Till may be fighting on the same side, but he has lost the wherewithal to engage the foe. And the foe, it is generally agreed, occupies the campuses of public universities and high schools.

A case in point comes from Cornell University.

A recent alumni newsletter touts the formation of a new “broadly based general education course on evolution and its implications.” The fundamental principle is, as Prof. William Provine writes, that “evolution is the most central concept in all biology.” And this principle needs to be taught to everyone, biology students and liberal arts majors alike. It is here that we perceive what most concerns John Meyer: evidence of a trend that makes evolution the “integrative principle” or interpretive vision for all of biology.

It is not a concern for Van Till in the sense that the theory of macroevolution is a prime example of the best in scientific thinking about a complete and coherent Creation. However, Provine goes on to say that by whatever “mechanisms” this process of transition occurred—and these are admittedly the subject of intense controversy—the fact of evolution remains, and the mechanisms are “utterly devoid of purpose or design, including, of course, guidance by God.” One student comes away from the course maintaining her faith, she says, but only by “compartmentalizing.” “I have no problem believing in God,” she confesses, “although I suppose if you took evolution to its inevitable conclusion, you have atheism.”

Certainly, nature overwhelms grace here. And it is difficult to distinguish the physics from the metaphysics. If Van Till persists in his position, says Woodbridge, his challenge is to “decouple” the theory from an atheistic agenda that exploits it, to sort out the ideology from the methodology—both functioning as if nature is all there is—and to clarify for the believer how complementarity is not compartmentalization.

Taking Up The Challenge

As for strategy, each Christian teacher involved in our discussion sees Provine’s challenge as an illegitimate extension of scientific understanding. Each adamantly defends the sustaining, providential involvement of the Creator in creation. But each devises a distinct approach to relate biblical revelation to scientific reasoning based on his distinct view of what it takes to defend the truth of Scripture and uphold the integrity of science.

Van Till wants to keep science and science classrooms clear of the battleground he sees occupied by competing religions. To Provine he would reply: “Science is incapable of dealing with questions of value, questions of purpose, questions of goals, questions of destiny, questions of ultimate origin—why is there something and not nothing. Those are all fundamentally questions of great religious import. And those questions ought to be identified in the public school classroom, but not answered.”

As a specific tactic, Van Till suggests that evangelicals provide teachers with materials distinguishing scientific questions of mechanism from religious questions of purpose (or purposelessness, as the case may be). Actually, the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA), of which Van Till is currently secretary-treasurer, takes precisely this approach in a booklet called “Teaching Science in a Climate of Controversy” (CT, Sept. 19, 1986, p. 50). It recommends that discussions of origins seek to clarify how questions that arise in science can take the investigator beyond science.

Meyer would prefer to go head-to-head, to fight fire with fire, admitting the religious inspiration of his scientific framework, proclaiming its clear-cut authority. Although he has reservations about teaching Genesis in public schools, and intimates that court battles will take a back seat now in favor of improving research on the “Creation model,” he insists that if the supernatural account of origins is to be excluded, then the evolutionary scenario ought at least to come with question marks. In fact, he criticizes the ASA booklet for an illustration that shows harmony returning to a science class after the Bible is removed while a poster of the evolutionary tree remains. (In some versions of the booklet, the word evolution on the poster comes with a question mark.)

From Meyer’s standpoint, biology teachers ought to get materials (like Norman Geisler’s book) distinguishing between origin-and operation-science. Such a distinction would clarify the “tentativeness” of scientific theories about “singularities” (apparently excepting those taken from God’s Word), highlight the uncertainties in the macroevolutionary picture, and stipulate the naturalistic or supernatural presuppositions involved. Meyer’s course on origins at Baptist Bible College adopts such a critical approach.

He is led, therefore, to the separatist posture of creation-science: a self-conscious squaring off against the majority of origin scientists whose interpretations of the data are perceived as fundamentally flawed. “Since I am a scientist,” he says, “committed to the inerrancy and historical accuracy of the Genesis account of Creation and Deluge, and since these critical issues have come under increasing pressure and attack from many directions, I have come to the conclusion that the most important contribution I can make with my life is the study of origins research from a recent-creationist perspective.”

Both Pun and Van Till regard this separatism as self-defeating at best and, at worst, historically disastrous for science and Christianity. Both see this strategy as playing into the hands of evolutionary naturalists, ignoring both the limits and the integrity of scientific explanations. Both see fiat-creationism confining God to the gaps created by deficiencies in the scientific picture of the mechanism, failing to account for the Creator’s continuous sustaining involvement in creation. “Interventionists,” says Van Till “must be challenged to enlarge their concept of the Creator.”

Pun actually reproves “fiat-creationists” for “ignoring” data that do not conform to their biblical model of origins. He criticizes his separatist colleagues for imposing their Christian view on their science and then guarding everything they do in their scientific world by their presuppositions. In fact, he says, “I hate to hear the name [creationist] because I am a creationist, but I don’t want to be treated by my colleagues as a cultic person. I’m open-minded. I’m supposed to be following the rules of the profession.”

Pun, because of his own experience, proposes that Christians take up the challenge and jump into the mainstream. Setting up separate scientific societies and publications is fighting on the wrong front, he says. If new scientific insight about origins is to emerge, it will come from within the larger scientific community, not from “outside the scientific circle where you try to impose an idea.” As a teacher, he emphasizes “the need to make our young people realize that science is not everything, and that it’s not nothing either. We are to look at science as a way of glorifying God instead of the perversity of man dominating science.”

Van Till’s approach is also based on this deeply felt “respect”—a term he uses often—for the methods and conclusions of “the majority opinion within the professional scientific community.” He admits to a bias toward an evolutionary model of origins because it has proved an effective tool in interpreting a wide range of data left by the Creator. This posture is especially evident if the alternative model includes flood geology and a young Earth, ideas long ago discredited by the methods of science, he says.

Woodbridge: Evolution Is Not The Last Word.

John Woodbridge, in sympathy with Meyer, regards the assignment of a “hermeneutical” or interpretive role for evolutionary theory—“such that it can even contradict Scripture”—as premature at best. He calls attention to the sociological factors that keep a reigning scientific paradigm in favor, despite the empirical evidence. He notes the contribution that metaphysics necessarily plays in the formation of interpretive frameworks. Citing several non-Christian nonevolutionists, he stresses the current uncertainty over even the central tenet of macroevolution, namely, that all life forms are genealogically related, what is usually meant by the “fact” of evolution. Given the complications prevalent in neo-Darwinist theory that Pun describes, and indications of some kind of “superintelligence” at work in the mechanism, why not assert some form of creationism? A theory to account for evidence of the abrupt appearance of life on Earth? Perhaps Pun’s “holistic mechanism”? And, again, ought not the Christian to expect some concrete correspondence between scientific understanding and descriptions in the biblical revelation of the same cosmos?

As an example of the relevance of some form of “creationism”—to use the term broadly—consider chemist Charles Thaxton’s suggestion that the “specified complexity,” or very particular order, of the DNA molecule indicates that “an intelligent agent made it.” Using the scientific principle of uniform experience, Thaxton concludes that an “intelligent cause” acted in the origin of life, just as intelligence brings about a clear English sentence, or creates a Mount Rushmore. Disagreeing with Geisler’s point of view, Thaxton maintains that the scientist cannot describe this intelligent source as “supernatural” since this assertion is more apologetics than science. But the biochemist can clearly infer that matter and energy are not the only forces at work in the cosmos.

“We have not seen the creator, nor observed the act of creation,” Thaxton writes. “However, we recognize the kind of order that only comes from an intelligent being.… We cannot supply a name for the intelligent cause [though we] may be able to identify that agent in great detail by other arguments. We may, for example, gain insight from historical, philosophical or theological argument.”

Like Van Till, Thaxton distinguishes sources of answers to fundamentally religious questions from sources of scientific knowledge. Unlike Van Till, however, he would apparently dispute Provine more concretely, providing scientific inferences of transcendence and design, perceiving how the methods and principles of science point to the Creator more directly.

In this discussion over strategy, Kenneth Kantzer concludes: “If naturalistic scientists would just say that the evidence is not sufficient to show there is a uniform process that explains things, then the whole battle would be over. They could say it’s inconclusive and we make a commitment to agnosticism or materialism—a commitment not based on science, but a religious commitment—and the war would shift to where it belongs.”

As it is, Kantzer implies, more must be done to keep science clear of atheism than Van Till suggests. The theologian infers an appropriate role for an aggressive scientific-creationism intent on exposing the uncertainties and unscientific presuppositions of macroevolution, a kind of quality control implicit in creationism. There appears to be a legitimate role for separatist tactics forced by a society intent upon excluding biblical faith completely from public life.

Though Kantzer has come to accept models of a multibillion year-old universe, he supports the efforts of young Earth-creationists as a valuable service to the Christian community. Still, he says, “an interpretation of the Bible that is fair” need not necessarily push one into those positions. He indicates that issues raised by creationists may not be paramount “in a troubled world.” He recommends directing more energy into “the kind of penetration and interaction” recommended by Pattle Pun, while holding to the full truth of Scripture in all it states.

Major Differences—And A Point Of Agreement

Disagreements over strategy reflect deep divisions over central issues:

• The integrity of our scientific knowledge about the natural world and the authority of that knowledge to modify our understanding of revelation;

• The degree to which religious belief and scientific thinking should inform each other;

• The unassailable infallibility (and even the intent) of what Scripture seems to say about natural history;

• The degree of intimacy of the Creator’s personal involvement in his creation;

• The proper place for the Christian in the scientific community.

So basic are the differences that a “unified evangelical position,” though desirable, even urgent, seems particularly elusive. Woodbridge, for example, believes that “what we’re dealing with goes to the heart of the gospel, … the truthfulness of Scripture.” He concludes: “We may end up with tremendous differences that I don’t think we could paper over. They are real differences.”

Still, the need for a unified front is one of the profound agreements to emerge from this forum on origins—from teachers who see similar threats to both science and the Christian faith. There is also a strong awareness of the vocation of the scientist, that studying the handiwork of God magnifies his attributes, and that descriptions of the physical world are incomplete without reference to its Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer. Participants agree on the need for more dialogue between scientists and biblical scholars.

“The three views,” says Kenneth Kantzer, “with minor variations along the side, are rampant in what I would call evangelicalism.” And though a “harmonizing” of these views would be impossible, “there ought to be more places for interaction.”

From this particular discussion, it is clear that such interaction would thrive on shared love for a personal Creator present in his creation and active in the life of the individual scientist. Emerging from this conversation among Christians who are scientists is an abiding respect for God’s truth revealed in Scripture and in nature, and a desire to bring to light the strict limits of scientific understanding.

Underlying these common convictions, on a deeper plane, appears a bedrock humility—the prerequisite virtue, it would seem, for both scientific and biblical understanding. In Pun’s words: “Science can be used as a ministerial servant to bring us to a humble realization that we are only finite beings in this universe. We cannot answer all questions.”

Back To The Cosmos

Proceeding from such humble knowledge, believer and agnostic alike face a remarkable cosmos not of their making, unexpected yet understandable. The scientist in us all may seize the opportunity to find the reason for such comprehensible mystery. “Curiously,” said Albert Einstein, confronted with the dilemma of an evidently created order, “we have to be resigned to recognizing the ‘miracle’ without having any legitimate way of getting any further.”

The Christian can, of course, offer a way of getting further. And, in the dialogue among Christians who are scholars, the perspective of faith born of humility appears not as a leap between separate compartments of reason and faith. Instead, it is a reasonable commitment to a relationship—offering a transcendent perspective on origins that accounts for both purpose and mechanism, for humanity’s greatness and its fallenness, for the reach and the limits of our knowledge, for our nature which is neither are nor angel.

“Created in the image of God,” writes Owen Gingerich, who, as a consultant on Sagan’s Cosmos series admonished the producers about its metaphysical overtones, “we are called not to power or personal justice, but to sacrificial love. I confess that this is not the logical conclusion of my line of argument; indeed, it is the beginning, the point of departure for a way of perceiving science and the universe. But unless we can see the universe in those terms, I believe we are headed with the rest of the fallen human race to nuclear suicide.”

This perspective of childlike faith in search of understanding and a way to live emerges as the essential, redeeming Christian contribution to the give-and-take between religion and science. It is the same perspective gained by author and diplomat Claire Booth Luce, who described her conversion to the Christian faith in 1945 as involving the rejection of “ ‘evolution’ as an explanation rather than a process of life.”

“The glow of conviction,” she wrote, “can only be formed in the fire of Faith by the breath of God’s grace, as one opens one’s heart as well as mind to it. It is not that you abandon your reason at this point, but rather that having gone as far as your reason will carry you, God, at your prayerful request carries it into the realms of Faith.”

Science And Semantics

Coming to terms with the vocabulary of origins.

anthropomorphismn.A form of speech ascribing human characteristics to God, angels, or animals.

big bangn. According to one cosmological theory, the violent cosmic explosion at an infinitesimally small point from which the universe originated billions of years ago.

colophonn. An inscription at the end of a book or literary passage giving the name of the author or scribe or commenting on its contents.

cosmogonyn. A theory or story about the origin of the universe or the solar system. Like our own civilization, ancient cultures had cosmogonies, or explanations of how the physical universe began.

divine fiatn. God’s effective and creative decree. From the Latin word for “Let it be done,” as in the Latin version of Genesis 1:3, “Fiat lux” (“Let there be light”).

entropyn. A measure of the disorder in a system. Since the law of entropy states that a closed system evolves toward a state of maximum entropy, critics of evolutionary theory point out that the increasing order and complexity involved in evolution would require some kind of outside influence or intelligence.

evolutionary naturalismn. The belief that the world can be understood only through the application of evolutionary science and that no account need be taken of supernatural or spiritual forces.

flood geologyn. An attempt to explain major aspects of the fossil record and the geological column by reference to the violent upheavals that would have accompanied a worldwide deluge (Gen. 7). Conventional science posits long periods of time necessary for laying down various geological layers, while flood geologists assert that the rapidly receding flood waters could accomplish the same end in a reasonably brief time.

fossil recordn. The fossilized remains of various organisms arranged in the geological column in a manner that conventional science asserts broadly reflects the evolution of species. Creationist critics of conventional science claim that the fossil record is inconsistent and not complete enough to warrant this conclusion.

geological columnn. Strata of different varieties of rock that are thought by evolutionists to reflect the various periods of Earth’s history. Long ages are generally considered necessary to account for these strata.

hypothesisn. A provisional explanation for natural phenomena. For a hypothesis to have scientific value, it must account for most of the relevant data and, at least in theory, must be subject to disproof.

macroevolutionn. Large-scale biological changes involving transitions between species and large groups of organisms.

microevolutionn. Limited genetic changes at the species or subspecies level.

mythn. Commonly, a legendary story not to be trusted; properly, a legendary story, true or false, that has powerfully influenced a civilization.

natural selectionn. The process, according to evolutionary theory, by which organisms with traits that better enable them to adapt to environmental factors, such as predators or scarcity of food, will survive and reproduce in greater numbers.

operation-sciencen. The study of regular and repeatable phenomena associated with nature as we know it.

origin-sciencen. The study of unique or rare phenomena associated with the origins of life or the physical universe.

paradigm shiftn. A fundamental change in the way scientists understand the natural order, such as the changes that accompanied the acceptance of theories of organic evolution or Einsteinian physics.

progressive creationismn. The belief that, at key periods interspersed by long ages, God intervened directly in the natural order to create Earth and its life forms. This model attempts to take seriously both the Genesis account and the conclusions of conventional science.

recent creationn. The belief that the origins of life and the physical universe occurred relatively recently, compared to the estimates of conventional science that the cooling of the Earth’s crust and the earliest primitive life forms occurred several billion years ago.

scientific creationismn. An attempt to read the scientific data about origins in harmony with a literal reading of the Genesis creation story. Most scientific creationists hold to recent creationism and the influence of a universal flood while denying the existence of macroevolution.

special creationn. The belief that God intervened directly in the natural order to bring about the Earth and its life forms.

sudden creationn. The belief that the formation of the Earth and the creation of most life forms took place in a relatively brief period of time. Conventional science estimates the history of the development of Earth’s life forms at about 2.5 billion years.

theistic evolutionismn. The belief that accepts the general account of organic evolution while positing the guiding providence of God at key points in that process.

young Earthn. The belief that the Earth came into existence only thousands of years ago, as opposed to the conventional belief that the Earth is over 4 billion years old.

Science writer Bill Durbin, Jr., is a doctoral student in religious studies at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. Formerly an associate producer of CBN News, Durbin has a book in progress on the dialogue between scientific and religious understanding.

Mealtimes put us at the intersection of heaven and Earth.

When I was growing up, the Christian-home counterpart of the essential Joy of Cooking was a cookbook called Food for the Body—Food for the Soul. In it, pithy Christianity in the form of Bible passages, sermonettes (with a “From My Kitchen Window” view of the world), stories with a definite message, and recipes for Christian character (“7 cups of love, 1 pint of forgiveness, a pinch of honesty”) alternated with an excellent collection of basic food recipes.

Whenever I think of that cookbook I am reminded of my grandmother, who took it so seriously. She used every meal as an opportunity for getting the lessons of life clearly in focus. She rehearsed both international and neighborhood news—from the deceit of the Russians right down to the latest woman who had painted her lips “bloody”; and each evil she then pierced with a straight and sharp (with chapter and verse) biblical sword.

The wisdom of the cookbook, in all its quaintness, was its recognition that just as the body needs biscuits and gravy, so the soul or mind needs to be fed its own nutritious mix of (as we say) food for thought. And the wisdom of my grandmother was that the mealtime is a natural focal point for communication.

The cookbook, my grandmother, and all of us human beings have taken the most animal-like, gut-driven action of each day—eating—and transformed it into the highest celebration of our humanity: our ability to interact with other minds. At this mealtime crux of body and soul we get close to a crux of Earth and heaven, for the deeper implication of both that cookbook and my grandmother’s attitude is that two sorts of nourishment meet when human beings eat together. Just as biscuits and gravy must be taken and digested in order for us to grow strong bodies, so the food for the soul must be eaten and digested in order for us to communicate well with each other.

And so, in an age that has been called the TV generation, that has been criticized for being image oriented and nurtured on the “plug-in drug,” that has been warned it is in danger of losing its own soul to the maw of superficial mass culture, we would do well to analyze carefully the nearly forgotten soul food of literature.

When we eat a meal we are doing something awfully mundane. We eat pretty much the same old foods on the same old dishes, and often enough with the same old people. And so it is with reading. We have the same old letters, the same old words, and all too often the same old plots. Without our minds there to interpret the data of our eyes, the whole mass would be a meaningless jumble. So just the bare reading of those squiggles and lines in good books is a wonderfully imaginative activity.

Our reading—our re-creation of those letters into words and those words into a plot—is, however, only a beginning. Each word we read carries memories and reminders of the history of the human family. Each word we read hangs in a balance between objective dictionary definition and subjective nuance: with our experience, we tip the scales. Phrases like “Once upon a time” and “big bad wolf” touch emotional resonances that go strong and deep.

But the imaginative activity of reading a book goes far beyond the richness of the words. Here a comparison with the visual media (television or movies) is helpful. When we watch a story translated into a movie (like E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India), we see the characters instead of imagining them for ourselves. We see in their faces and gestures and we hear in their tone of voice the actors’ and the director’s and the screenwriter’s interpretations of the story.

In fact, we see the whole story through the grid of other people’s points of view. Not only do they flatten the ambiance in a story to one line of meaning, but they may even be completely wrong. And yet, research has shown that once we see the events of a book through someone else’s eyes we will find great difficulty in finding our own internal vision again.

When we read a story, on the other hand, our minds supply highly personalized imaginative data of sight and sound for our two most vital senses. The fairy godmother in Cinderella that our mind’s eye conjures up is a marvelous combination of homey grandmotherliness and fairy glory. So any picture of her, whether by Walt Disney or Arthur Rackham, is an immense disappointment, both because it is never quite true to our fairy godmother and because we can never go back through that picture on the page or in the movie to what is, for us, the real fairy godmother. Our heavenly vision has been murdered.

Reading is, therefore, far more than just seeing meaning in words. As we turn the pages of print, our minds are busy manufacturing elaborate details for our eyes to see and our ears to hear—and for our noses to smell, our tongues to taste, and our bodies to feel. In reading, the whole imaginative activity of our minds becomes geometrically magnified.

In a way, reading comes close to dreaming. Our subconscious can choose that very configuration of truth—can create that very shape from the world of the words—that matches the fairies and dragons, the green pastures and dark tunnels, of our subliminal world. This match of story world and inner world explains the importance both of fairy tales and of Jesus’ parables. On those spare bones of story we drape the clutter and tatter of our fears and longings—the paucity of detail in fairy tales allows our minds plenty of latitude for shaping the archetypal figures of wolf, grandmother, and woodsman—and of course, we all are Little Red Riding Hood.

And so, in the end, we live happily—or at least happier—ever after. We have carried the burdens of our souls safely through to the good ending of the story. Any story in literature is like a fairy tale in that, with our imagination, we remake (or digest) the story into the image of our own experience and hopes and fears, and we thereby go through a catharsis. This catharsis may lead to healing or it may lead to hurt—but any story in which we imaginatively dwell with all our senses will be a catharsis.

And in spite of the thoroughly personal nature of reading as a food for the soul, it does not lead to a solipsistic narcissism precisely because, at heart, reading is a profoundly Christian experience. In Philippians, Paul reminds us of the central teaching of Christian life:

“Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.”

In one sense, as we read a book we are all like God looking down from some high, exalted place into the world of the story. Through the eyes of Charles Dickens we see the world of David Copperfield: gentle Dora, sturdy Agnes, ‘umble Uriah, cocky Steerforth, and those whiny Micawber kids. But as the story progresses we take on the nature of David and vicariously go with him through the events of his world. In the end we have immersed ourselves in the likeness of another being to a degree that we rarely could or would in the real world.

What is more, we have vicariously lived through the death of parents, a childhood of torture and insecurity, fickle friends, the death of a wife, and two marriages. We have, in fiction if not in fact, lived quite a hard life in which we have learned many lessons, not the least of which (for our own day) is the goodness that can come from enduring a bad marriage.

In every book we read we are new people going through new experiences. Because these characters of fiction are faceless and factually unreal, that we can in ourselves give flesh and blood to their being. And in so doing we lay aside our “selfish ambition” and “vain conceit,” and we take up the cross of their pain, the burden of their care.

And so as we read books, as we digest this feast for the soul, we realize that we have not made our world in our image; rather, our experience of all these worlds has remade us. Our digestion of literature as food for the soul is profoundly Christian in that, as we eat this food for the soul and digest it to strengthen our hearts and minds, all these books end up somehow eating away at us, biting off our selfishness, our misunderstanding, our prejudice. Eventually (if we allow ourselves to read the greatest story of the world) we may in a great communion of body and soul so eat Christ’s body and drink Christ’s blood that we may be “eaten”—or transformed—into his image.

What results from all this eating and digesting of a good book as food for the soul? Perhaps its richest result is a spiritual energy for deeply relational interaction—and now were back to the dinner table.

Around the table, our communication becomes a workout for the soul. Here it is that we use the sturdy bones and strong muscles of our soul to have communication that becomes in itself food for the soul. Literature helps us work through the weary chatter of our conversation toward meaning and patterns. Not only does literature give content and direction to our interaction, it also helps us understand the others around the table.

Because we have lived others’ lives in books, we can live others’ lives in a mealtime. Around the table we see not only our family and friends, but, having richly eaten and digested the lives of many others, we can see (for example) in this young son of ours a “Toad” of The Wind in the Willows, who may have to go off caravaning before he appreciates the value of a more sturdy stability; in this daughter we see an Anne from Anne of Green Gables who must test the strength of her own wings before she settles down; and in this dear husband we recognize a Sam Gamgee from The Lord of the Rings who gives us a sense of the comforts of home wherever we are.

And so, in ourselves and in each other, we recognize the thousand faces of the other souls of story. When we talk around the table we respond not just to son or daughter or husband, but to the complex and diverse mix of those many-storied selves in these persons who are talking with their mouths full.

At this point in the meal, or the conversation, we come back to words, the basic ingredient of that culinary concoction of the soul that is literature. From our experience in literature, from being in the likeness of another, we can begin to concoct the right recipe of love, forgiveness, honesty, kindness, and even maybe harshness that will make our words fit food for another’s soul.

So in the meal we have both our food for the body and our food for the soul. Here eating and reading come together. Our reading of good books involves us in a wonderfully imaginative activity that stretches our minds by the sheer infinite variety in that smorgasbord of the world’s words. In turn, our reading becomes a profoundly Christian experience as we vicariously digest the joys and sorrows of another’s life and make them our own. This food for the soul that we have digested is then transformed into the muscle strength for deeply relational interaction with others.

Each meal, each conversation, each word we say is (to adopt a metaphor from Fredrick Buechner) a letter in the “alphabet of grace.” The good of Buechner’s metaphor is that—as he reminds us—the alphabet of grace is full of gutturals. Our reading helps us to see that all the gutturals, even the harsh words, the noisy chaotic meals—and the silent, sullen ones—are parts of a greater glory that is the plot of our own story.

The sacrament of Communion helps us accept the imbalance in all our meals and conversations. We do not come perfect to the meal of God. We are never perfect in our communication with God or with our family and friends while we eat this meal. We may, if only figuratively, choke on the bread and cough at the wine, but the Word of our God has come to us in this bread and this wine. The meal reminds us that food for the body and food for the soul come together at the dinner table of our God and at the dinner tables of our homes.

Evening is here,

The Board is spread;

Thanks be to God,

Who gives us Bread.

Mary Ruth Wilkinson is a lecturer at Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia. This article originally appeared in Crux, a journal published by the faculty and alumni of Regent College.

It was nearing 5 p.m. on Monday afternoon, and for the first time since I learned I had cancer I felt my strength beginning to break. The previous Tuesday I had been operated on for a melanoma on my right leg. The surgeon was guardedly optimistic after the initial pathology report showed no more cancer in the area around the malignant mole. But only guardedly. I had been cautioned several times that even a provisional prognosis would largely depend on whether or not the cancer had spread to my lymph system.

My physician told me the lab work on the lymph glands would be done sometime Thursday afternoon and that he would be in on Friday with the results. Friday came and went with no word on the results. I knew that meant I’d have to wait until Monday, when he came back on duty. It set the tone for a heavy weekend.

Monday seemed terribly routine, no doubt because I was anxious to receive the lab report. The food, the nurses, even my friends did not seem to reach me at the level they had until now. In the afternoon my wife came and read the mail, filled me in on what was happening at church, and talked about things our two-year-old son had said. Janie was a great strength to me, but she also knew that under pressure or anxiety I become quiet and introspective, and she respected that. She said a word of prayer, told me she loved me, and left.

I had a feeling the doctor was not going to come and I thought I knew why. The lymph glands were cancerous and the doctors were discussing with my family how to break the news to me. In the few moments since my wife had left the room, no news had become bad news. I suppose that defendants in courtrooms or prisoners on death row, or other cancer patients, also experience what I did: They had bucked up for a long time, but suddenly the inevitability of death breaks upon them.

When I was wheeled into surgery the week before, I had desperately needed my wife, my mother and father, my closest friend to go down that hallway with me. Without them I wasn’t sure I could fight back a fear I had not known before, even though I had faced death on my motorcycle and as a mountain climber.

But on that Monday it was nearing 5 o’clock and I wanted to be alone. There are some ultimate moments that one must face alone, and this was one of them. I hoped I wouldn’t get any more visitors, because I didn’t have the strength to bear them, to start conversations when they came in with their helpless looks and stood beside my bed with awkward pauses. I prayed for time alone.

About 5 p.m. the door opened gently and a figure entered the room. I didn’t look to see who it was. I looked steadily at the wall facing me, bare of everything except a crucifix. I kept my eyes on it. The figure walked across the end of my bed, and as he entered my field of vision I recognized him. He had worked for Young Life for years in the inner cities. I knew him as a tough person, but there was also an undeniable gentleness and kindness about him. I waited for him to speak, but he remained silent.

He passed out of my vision and slowly lowered himself into a chair in the corner of the room. My pulse rate picked up and I wondered how uncomfortable the silence would become before one of us would break it. Five minutes passed, perhaps even ten. It was an odd situation: There was a person in my room who had come to see me but didn’t speak, and I was somehow unable to speak. There was a strange but somehow necessary silence between us.

I continued looking at the crucifix. I felt I was going to die and I sank into self-pity. I sensed my partner in silence knew this, but he didn’t break the silence with a saccharine word of encouragement or a more-deserved word of reprimand. He just stayed there, perhaps praying, perhaps not. It had been quite a while now, and I allowed myself to think or pretend that there was some connection between him being there in silent and the crucifix on the wall.

For he past six months I had been writing a doctoral dissertation on the Son of God in the Gospel of Mark. I had been impressed by how closely Mark follows the Suffering Servant figure of Isaiah in his portrayal of Jesus’ passion and death. Somehow these ideas that had so moved me intellectually were now mysteriously bound up and present in the crucifix and the visitor and the silence of the hospital room. I began to experience in a small, quiet, and unmistakable way the nearness of this Son of God who communicates love through suffering.

“Like a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth” (Isa. 53:7) … silence. “He poured out his soul to death and was numbered with transgressors” (Isa. 53:12) … suffering. “He shall bear them” (Isa. 53:11) … the silent visitor.

The nurse came in promptly at 6 P.M. with dinner. The visitor had left only two or three minutes earlier, as quietly as he had come. He had never spoken. I believe God gave me that hour, and the crucifix, and the silence, and the visitor to bear me up on the wings of love. The next day the doctor would come and report that the lab report was negative. Yes, I was relieved, but not nearly so moved as I had been the afternoon before when I came to know that “neither death nor life …, nor anything in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:38–39).

I never asked the doctor why he was late.

James R. Edwards is professor of religion at Jamestown College, Jamestown, North Dakota. He is coauthor, with George Knight, of A Layman’s Overview of the Bible (Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1987).

Is home schooling making the grade?

In 1983, when CHRISTIANITY TODAY first reported on home schooling (“Schooling at Mother’s Knee: Can It Compete?”; Sept. 2, 1983), it was a little-known practice. Now, five years later, questions about its value are being met by a growing body of research and observation, the findings of which are surprising many of home schooling’s earlier critics.CTasked researcher Brian Ray to review the current data and update readers on the state of “kitchen classrooms.”

Home schooling may be the fastest-growing form of education in America today. Though estimates of the number of children involved vary widely—from about 250,000, according to the Education Commission of the States, to as many as one million, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal—the numbers are clearly on the rise. In one state (Colorado), the number of state-approved home schoolers increased from 54 during the 1980–81 school year to 835 during the 1987–88 school year, a 15-fold increase. “This is not an improbable estimate of the growth of the home-schooling movement in the nation,” reports the Hewitt Research Foundation, which is a major home-school support organization.

But with the growth of the home-school movement have come questions: Does home education prepare students as well academically as traditional systems? What about the social development of home-schooled children? Now, more than five years after the movement began to attract widespread attention, the questions are beginning to be answered. Research reports are stacking up, and so far the results they describe are impressive.

Several studies that consider both the cognitive and affective aspects of home learning are now available. In a national report entitled Choices in Schools, Chronicle of Higher Education correspondent Jack McCurdy found that home-school children achieved “as well or better” than those in conventional schools. Selwyn Feinstein, a writer for the Wall Street Journal, found that home-school children in New York have been scoring above average on achievement tests.

Test Scores

In addition to these anecdotal reports, there is a growing amount of empirical data that is confirming general observations. In Tennessee, for example, home-school children in grades two, three, six, and eight must pass the same standardized tests that are required of public-school pupils. Test results show home schoolers outscored public schoolers in math and reading by 4 to 16 percentile points.

At the other end of the country, Oregon requires all home-school children to take standardized tests and report their scores once a year. There, too, home-school children have outperformed public-school students. Based on the scores reported by December 1986, 24 percent of the home-school children scored in the ninety-first to ninety-ninth percentile range, and 76 percent of them scored above the fiftieth percentile mark.

More elaborate studies have also been executed:

• The Washington State superintendent of public instruction evaluated the progress of children in Washington’s experimental home-schooling program. The scores on the Stanford Achievement Tests (SAT) were compared for children in a number of cities and communities across the state. The study concluded that the majority of children (kindergarten through eighth-grade level) in the “parent as tutor” program scored average or above average in reading, language, and math.

• Jon Wartes, head counselor at Bothell High School, a large public school near Seattle, has executed several extensive studies of hundreds of home-school youth in Washington. His findings, based on achievement-test scores, indicate once again that home-school children scored better than their peers across the nation. For example, 1987 SAT scores showed that home schoolers “scored at or above the 50th percentile” in 104 out of the 120 test cells. The median score for home schoolers was at the sixty-fifth percentile on national norms.

• The Alaska Department of Education administers to its far-flung population a Centralized Correspondence Study (CCS), a program that is essentially home schooling with supervision by state education personnel. From 1981 to 1985, fourth-and eighth-grade CCS reading and math scores on the Alaska Statewide Assessment test ranged from 5 percent to 16 percent higher than those of their Alaskan peers who were not home schooled. And in a comparison based on 1985 Science Research Associates (SRA) data, home-educated students in kindergarten through sixth grade scored at least 6 percentile points higher than conventionally schooled Alaskans in all academic areas of comparison; the majority of these were above the eightieth percentile of the SRA norm. Grades 7 to 11 CCS students were 2 to 27 percentiles higher than the norm in 17 areas and equal in 3 others; the majority of these were at or above the seventieth percentile of the SRA norm.

Though such data do indicate that the academic achievement of home schoolers is equal and in many cases superior to traditional students, questions about academic quality cannot yet be put to rest, however. The data available must be considered with caution for several reasons. So far, the majority of the achievement scores come from children under 12 years of age, who often develop skills and gain knowledge more quickly and easily than those of middle-school or high-school age. These studies also do not consider, for example, that some home-school children were at one time in conventional schools. Have their achievement scores improved or worsened since being home schooled? Comparative data are not yet widely available. Nonetheless, there is as yet no indication that children suffer academically in any way from home schooling.

Home School Revisited

Five years ago CHRISTIANITY TODAY visited the home school of Pete and Char Yarema (“A Morning in a Home School,” Sept. 2, 1983). The couple spoke enthusiastically about the academic and spiritual benefits their three grade-school children were experiencing. Today, as their oldest enters high school-level studies and their youngest enters adolescence, the Yaremas are even more enthusiastic about educating their own children.

They still get lots of questions about their kids: Do they really perform as well as other children academically? What about their social skills? Do they make friends? Or play sports? Or interact with people who hold different beliefs?

However, Pete and Char don’t mind the questions. After six years of home schooling, their children—Kathy, now 15, Molly, 14, and Jonathan, 11—defy many skeptics’ notions about home schoolers.

“The people who are now our greatest backers … were in many cases wary about home schooling—until they spent time around our kids,” says Char, who assumes most of the teaching responsibility. “They see the kids are very normal and mature for their age. My mother, brother, and uncles, none of whom is a Christian and all of whom are public school teachers, are now enthusiastic about what we’re doing. It’s people who really don’t know our children who still ask questions. You can’t argue with results.”

Friends and flexibility

Kathy, Molly, and Jonathan have all made friends in the neighborhood, in church youth groups, handbell choirs, community sports teams, and bike mechanics and craft classes. And though friends and relatives expressed initial concern that much of the children’s day-to-day contact would be with older people—grandparents, women whose children they baby-sit, piano and art teachers who supplement their education—the Yarema kids see their social life as well rounded.

“People often seem to think that since I’m 15, the only people I can socialize with are high schoolers,” says Kathy. “I find that limiting. I know 27-year-olds, and they don’t just socialize with people in their twenties. They socialize with everybody. Home schooling has given us the flexibility to spend time with younger and older people, and I think that has better prepared me for dealing with people of all ages after I graduate from high school.”

As the children have grown older, Char has been able to build more and more flexibility into their schedules. On Tuesdays, for example, the Yarema children take turns spending time with their grandparents—not to take care of them, but to learn from them. During the past two years, Grandpa and Grandma have taught them to speak Polish, shown them how to change the oil in a car, and taught them about World War II from firsthand experience. On Wednesdays the girls leave home to baby-sit a set of triplets they have watched grow from five months to two-and-a-half years old.

“The child-development course I took in college could not compare to the hands-on training they’ve gotten,” says Char. “At one point Kathy and Molly were even keeping diaries to monitor the changes the babies were going through.” The children’s increased flexibility has given Char more freedom, too. “The biggest difference between home schooling now and when I started is that, though the material we’re covering is harder, the teaching is less intensive on my part,” she says. “The children have taken more initiative in their studies as they’ve grown older.”

“It was far more difficult as a young mom teaching several kids at home,” Char remembers. “Five years ago Jonathan was just learning to read, Molly was still getting her basics down, and Kathy didn’t know how to write a complete sentence. More than once I burst into tears, thinking, ‘Why did we think God was leading us to do this?’ But he was. And it was never so difficult that I seriously considered quitting.”

Has Char or Pete worried that one of the children may want or need to take a course they don’t feel qualified to teach? “The books we use present material so well that I wouldn’t be afraid of teaching anything,” says Pete. Char adds: “I’ve learned that it’s okay to run along with the kids sometimes. No teacher is required to know everything. There are a lot of great books, a lot of great libraries, and a lot of people, like the kids’ art and music teachers, who know more about certain subjects than we do.”

“Satellite school”

The Yaremas are held strictly accountable to Christian Liberty Academy, a private school that provides curriculum for approximately 22,000 home schoolers in more than 60 countries. As a “satellite school” of Christian Liberty Academy, the Yaremas are sent midterms, final exams, and report cards. Course loads are demanding. Kathy’s, for example, includes math, literature, history, economics, speech, Spanish, Bible, English, and six book reports from a suggested reading list composed largely of classics. Grading scales are tough: To get all As and Bs (which she does), Kathy must maintain at least an 87 percent average. The academy also requires students to take the standardized Iowa Basic Skills Test each year, on which the Yaremas, like many home schoolers, perform at least one and up to three grades higher than the national average.

Watching the children’s academic and social progress over the years, Char has found it easier to relax in her role as teacher. “Sometimes, like when I think about teaching two high schoolers next year for the first time, I still get nervous. But the longer we home school, the more confidence we have that it’s the right thing, and that God will continue to give us the grace to do it. Though every year is different,” Char says, “most of our biggest adjustments—learning that we had to say no more often to church and community commitments, getting used to having the children home all day—were made during the first year. If we hadn’t established good patterns then, we would never have made it this far.”

In search of school spirit

For Kathy, Molly, and Jonathan, too, school is even more enjoyable now than five years ago, given their growing freedom to integrate a variety of experiences into their education. They cite one-on-one teaching, not having to stay up late doing homework, and flexibility to meet different people and participate in different activities as the biggest current advantages of home schooling.

Do they miss social activities or school spirit? Kathy proudly models her Christian Liberty Academy jacket and answers no. In fact, she says, she has made friends among students from other satellite schools who gathered for an eighth-grade graduation ceremony at Christian Liberty last year.

Molly alone could come up with an emerging disadvantage: “Getting involved in a community sports league is not quite the same as getting involved in a school setting. One thing I miss is not participating in a gymnastics program.”

The Yaremas acknowledge that, while their home-school experience has been good, it may not be best for everyone. And they admit there are indeed limits to what they can accomplish.

“We cannot offer our children everything the public schools provide,” Char says. “They don’t have all the extracurriculars. But they have many advantages that kids in public schools don’t have, too. They haven’t wasted a lot of time in school wondering whether they should follow their parents and church or their peers. And somehow they are coming out normal, well educated, and, most important of all, strong Christians who know who they are.”

By Robert M. Kachur.

Social Concerns

There are also a number of questions about the social development of home-school children that have been frequently raised. Are not these children isolated from normal social contact by being schooled at home? How will they learn to get along with others? How will they learn to deal with other view-points?

Again, the available empirical data stack up in favor of home education.

• Wartes, in his extensive poll of Washington home-school students, also surveyed socialization. He found that 52.8 percent of the home-school children spent from 20 to more than 30 hours per month in organized community activities; 40 percent spent more than 30 hours per month with age-group peers outside the family; 68 percent spent 20 to more than 30 hours per month with children of other ages outside the family (some of the categories and times overlapped). Wartes concluded that home-school youth are not being socially deprived.

• Educator John Wesley Taylor attempted to address concerns about socialization by analyzing the relationship between home schooling and self-concept of children in grades 4 through 12. Taylor used self-concept as a measure because it is “closely linked with values, social competence, and self-evaluation,” and because of the importance of positive self-concept to effective learning. Taylor found (using scores on the Piers-Harris Self-Concept Scale) that the self-concept of home-school youth was significantly higher than that of conventional school youth. The home schoolers’ overall score was 34 percentile points higher than that of the conventional school youth. “Insofar as self-concept is a reflector of socialization,” Taylor wrote in conclusion, “the findings of this study would suggest that few home-schooling children are socially deprived.” And according to Taylor, his findings agree with the observations of others who have studied home-school families.

• Psychologist Mona Maarse Delahooke compared fairly equivalent groups of 32 private school and 28 home-school children of about nine years of age. She found no significant difference between the two groups in reading, arithmetic, or intelligence scores. Likewise, both groups scored in the “well adjusted” range of the Roberts Apperception Test for Children.

One difference, however, did surface in Delahooke’s study: Home-educated children appeared to be less peer oriented than those in schools. (Children from private schools exhibited a significantly greater focus on peers and nonfamily individuals.) This finding tends to confirm that home schooling may accomplish one additional purpose many Christian parents want it to; reduce the influence of peer pressure.

However, questions of socialization also have yet to be answered completely. Again, caution is in order when examining the results of these and other studies. Measuring social adjustment is far more difficult than judging academic achievement. Many argue about the validity of the types of psychological instruments used in the studies. And not all observers like what they see in home-school students.

“I hear consistently from our [Christian] school administrators that it is difficult to take in a home schooler,” says Paul Kienel, executive director of the Association of Christian Schools International. “He’s a misfit; he’s not in stride.”

Kienel suggests that home schools should consistently work with Christian schools on activities such as field trips and Christmas programs, in using curriculum materials, and by participating in achievement testing programs. Then, Kienel asserts, home-school youth will be better adjusted to the high school or college in which they may later enroll.

Unfair Comparison?

Based on almost all of the research findings to date, the report card on home schools reveals good marks in what may be the two most important single areas: academic achievement and socialization. But the overall grade is much harder to determine. Judging the effectiveness of home schooling by comparing its children with those in conventional education may be like mixing the proverbial apples and oranges.

Home-school parents, the large majority of whom appear to be evangelical Christians, obviously hold a special interest in their children’s development. They are willing to make great personal sacrifices for their children’s total growth and development—academic, social, and spiritual. Given the parental support and commitment they experience at home, it may be that these home-educated children would have done just as well, academically and socially, in conventional schools.

It may be that all of the measuring and evaluating of home-school achievement scores, self-concept ratings, and social adjustment categorizations is a moot exercise in terms of defending and promoting this mode of educating children. Perhaps what is needed, in addition to the other comparisons, is for researchers to question home-school parents carefully to find out more precisely what their objectives are for their children. They should then follow the youth over a long term to determine whether home schooling is actually effective in meeting the home schoolers’ goals.

Research data present only one or two aspects of Christian home schooling. The love, the complex parent-child and sibling relationships, and the subtleties of learning in a home environment are difficult to describe with numbers. Even qualitative researchers find it difficult to depict accurately the interaction in the home-school family. And when they do, they have only described a handful of the thousands of families partaking of it.

“I work with parents and children on things that can’t be measured clinically,” says Gregg Harris, author of The Christian Home School and a popular home-school seminar speaker. “We’re dealing with a sense of identity and destiny in God’s purpose. Whenever you hear the saying that ‘values are better caught than taught,’ you are considering the territory in which home schools excel.”

Nevertheless, critics want data. And data are rolling in. Of all the research to date, none casts serious doubt on the effectiveness of home schooling. Home-school youth are consistently doing as well as or better than their conventional school peers in both academic achievement and social development scores.

Brian Ray is assistant professor of eduction at Seattle Pacific University. He is the editor of the Home School Researcher, a quarterly journal.

The opening song of The Witness, a musical by Carol and Jimmy Owens, made thin echoes as it bounced off the high domed walls of the “Bubble” at Collins Correctional Facility in western New York. The inmates, dressed in dark green coveralls, leaned forward in the folding chairs and strained to make out the words.

The director, Tony Chiarilli, had warned his group of 55 singers not to stare out at the captive audience separated from them by an open space of guarded floor. “It’s been really tough for us to break into prison,” Tony warned. “Let’s not spoil our professional image by being rude.”

But Tony’s eyes strayed often to the attentive audience, whose members were surprisingly young. As the choir went to work, he remembered the beginnings of the singing group in the winter of 1984. At the suggestion of another parishioner who had seen a performance of The Witness, Tony, a high school English teacher, built a cast of members from his church (Immaculate Conception, of Eden, New York).

Immaculate Conception’s pastor and assistant pastor were active in prison ministries, as were some choir members. Jesus’ words, “I was in prison and you visited me” (Matt. 25:36), served to nudge the group further. Tony called a meeting to discuss performing the play in prison. Most of the singers were willing to carry out Jesus’ instructions to visit prisoners, but they also felt nervous about performing for a large group of criminals. Would the inmates boo? Throw food? Capture the children (young singers and dancers) and hold them for ransom? These wild fears had to be talked out before the group agreed that the Spirit meant for them to sing to the inmates.

The next hurdle was permission to perform in the prison. At first the state insisted that only 20 people could sing. But eventually the authorities relented and consented to allowing the entire choir of 55 people to perform.

Time seemed an enemy on the evening of the play. Tony stressed the importance of leaving no later than 5:30 so everyone would clear security and have time for prayer and a warm-up song. The play had to begin at 7:30, ready or not. Most group members skipped supper in order to dress in their home-designed costumes, put on full stage makeup, and catch the rented school bus before it left the church parking lot. The foyer of the church that hectic evening echoed with nervous doubts.

“Does everyone have proof of identity?” Tony worried, mopping his face with a wilted sash.

“I had to pin my license to my cloak. Will the pin clear the metal detector?” one woman asked.

“I put my library card in my shoe. Hope I don’t sweat my signature off!”

“Where can I put my car keys?” A general concern.

One lady turned back the edge of her tunic to reveal three throat lozenges taped to the material. Think they’ll keep me in jail if they find these?”

“You can always swallow the evidence,” someone else joked.

The nervous group left the church parking lot on time.

A soft rain fell as the bus turned in at the prison gate. Nervous performers waited on the bus as armed guards took groups of 10 to 15 through security. The metal detector went off as one choir member stumbled through the narrow doorway. The buckles on her sandles contained too much metal. She removed them and went through again with no problem.

After everyone cleared security, they were ushered in small groups down a fenced walkway, through several gates that clanged shut behind them, past huge rolls of sharp barbed wire, and on to the Bubble, an amphitheater enclosed by plastic walls and ceiling. A revolving door admitted them one at a time to the evening’s stage—a hall big enough to play football in. The music had already started.

As the singers milled around and tried to adjust themselves to the problems of a wide-open stage, a prison host warned everyone to keep a clear distance from the inmates. (The group learned later that, had they mingled with the prisoners, the inmates would have had to undergo a strip-search before returning to the dormitories.)

The Witness Group joined hands in a large circle and offered prayers for a meaningful performance. The correctional staff members were invited into the prayer circle, but they shook their heads and adjusted the weapons and walkie-talkies that hung from each belt.

Now, the inmates listened, the correctional officers patroled, and the choir sang with gusto. The play is based on Peter’s witness to Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. During an early scene, Mary, sung by Kathleen Kopryanski, held the baby Jesus (actually a Cabbage Patch doll, since a real infant was not allowed in the prison). Later the dancers performed, most of them children 10 to 14 years old, and the prisoners watched with close attention. “Do they miss their children, their sisters, their nieces?” Tony wondered.

During the Hosanna scene, a reenactment of Christ’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem, the singers flung fresh flowers into the audience. At this moment, everyone in the group caught a glimpse of the meaning of prison. The inmates, heedless of warnings from the alarmed guards, captured the flowers with glad cries and held them up to their faces.

When the play ended, the prisoners stood, waved their flowers, and would not stop clapping and whistling.

But the group wondered later if the applause meant mere appreciation for a night’s diversion from prison boredom.

The following week, a letter arrived from Collins. Tony read it at the weekly song practice.

“Dear Brothers and Sisters,

“I was present at your play The Witness at Collins in the Bubble. I thank all persons involved in the production and actual participation of such a well-done performance.… I was very moved. You made me feel like a person again.… I sincerely thank everyone involved for bringing some joy and the word of God into my life.”

By Cecile Bauer, a free-lance writer now living in Sacramento, California.