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Darwin, Creation and the Fall

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This is a collection of eight essays written by Evangelical Christians: four theologians and four scientists, who accept both the authority of Scripture and the contemporary scientific picture of the world. They are edited versions of papers given at meetings of the Christian Doctrine Study Group of the Tyndale Fellowship and Christians in Science in 2008.

The focus of this book is not on the age of the earth or the meaning of "day" in Genesis, but rather on "the relationship of human origins as told by modern science and the story of human origins and of the Fall told in Holy Scripture." The essays are:

"Worshipping the Creator God: the doctrine of creation," by David Wilkinson
"Did Darwin dethrone humankind?" by R. J. Berry
"Theological challenges faced by Darwin," by Darrel R. Falk
"God and Origins: interpreting the early chapters of Genesis," by Richard S. Hess
"Original sin and the Fall: definitions and a proposal," by T. A. Noble
"Irenaeus on the Fall and original sin," by A. N. S. Lane
"The theology of the Fall and the origins of evil," by Henri Blocher
"Blocher, original sin and evolution," by Richard Mortimer

In summary, the contributors established three critical principles: "1) An insistence that as new information emerges, Scripture, while God-given and authoritative, must be re-examined and may require reinterpreting, 2) An awareness of the compelling genetic and fossil evidence that human beings have descended from an ape-like line, and that we are therefore related to other living beings, and 3)The uniqueness of human beings as the only creatures made in God's image, albeit `fallen' so that life in fellowship with God is now possible because of Christ's redeeming and reconciling death."

The editors put these principles together and conclude that "there must have been a `Fall' in time and that we cannot rule out the existence of a historic Adam."

I recommend this book for Christians who reluctantly accept biological evolution as a process that God used in creating us but struggle with how to integrate this into their Christian faith.