"Mere Theistic Evolution" and the Importance of Definitions

Getting definitions right is vitally important. People talk past one another for a lot for many reasons, but one of the big ones is a failure to define precisely the important terms they are using. Michael J. Murray and John Ross Churchill have presented a rather lengthy paper attempt to define "Theistic Evolution", which they call "Mere Theistic Evolution". I applaud serious attempts to get precise definitions as an aide to understanding, and this is one such attempt.

 That doesn't mean that I am a theistic evolutionist- by their very definition, as clarified by William Lane Craig, I am not. I also cringe a bit at the idea that they named their paper this as a nod to C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity". He chose that title out of modesty. That is, he wasn't trying to tell anyone what sort of Christian they should be, just making a defense of Christianity in general. Murray and Churchill on the other hand, are attempting to say who is in and who is out of "the club" - who can be considered "theistic evolutionists". And  this whether they want the label or not, because that is how defining things works. 

The work of proposing definitions which bind others is noble and necessary work, but it is not modest. I say that as someone who will take up where they left off. I will accept their definition of Theistic Evolution (with one small change suggested by William Lane Craig) and end this post by proposing some definitions to various forms of belief about creation. All in an attempt to clarify the definitions so that we don't talk past one another when arguing for our position, not (here) in an attempt to advance one position over another. 

Here is how Murray and Churchill define "Theistic Evolution" so that if one believes this, then they are a Theistic Evolutionist, if they don't, per Murray and Churchill, then they aren't .

First and foremost, they are all theistic positions: they assume the existence of a Creator who bears all and only those attributes that are fitting to ascribe to God (for example, omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence).

Second, all theistic-evolutionary accounts agree that the created universe as a whole, and the earth as a part of this creation, have existed for eons. (Reasonable estimates are approximately fourteen billion years for the age of the universe and four billion years for the earth.)

Finally, all versions of theistic evolution affirm that the complexity and diversity of life are best explained by appeal to evolutionary processes that have been operative over long periods of time, where the relevant processes include (note: this is the word that Craig says should be changed) those that constitute what is often called “the modern evolutionary synthesis.” (One key process in this synthesis is natural selection, acting on random mutations. But it need not be the only important biological process.) Included in this affirmation—and implicit in what follows—is an endorsement of evolution as a very good explanation of these phenomena, and not simply the best among a rather poor set of candidates.

Their paper was important enough for William Lane Craig to write his own response to it. I have panned Craig's musings on Adam, but here he is in his element. He zeroed in on exactly the loophole that blurs distinctions between what most people think of as "Theistic Evolution" and other categories. I will excerpt from his response the relevant portion:

Notice, the relevant explanatory processes include but are not limited to those of the modern synthesis. This is “mere” indeed! Even a Michael Behe, who thinks that the mechanisms of random mutation and natural selection explain very little of the origin of biological complexity, counts as a theistic evolutionist on this characterization, since he would agree that the mechanisms of the modern synthesis are included in the evolutionary processes. So would a classical progressive creationist like Bernard Ramm, who posits sequential miraculous intervention on God’s part to drive evolutionary advance.

So Murray and Churchill’s statement of the third plank of theistic evolution needs to be tightened up a bit if we are to exclude from its fold Intelligent Design (ID) theorists and progressive creationists. Something like their gloss “a confidence in the explanatory power of the evolutionary approaches employed in current biology” might do the trick.7 That would seem to preclude a Michael Behe’s counting as a theistic evolutionist.

 I agree with Craig here. To say that the best explanation would only "include" modern evolutionary synthesis would be to make backdoor theistic evolutionists out of almost all theists. After all, even many Young Earth Creationists think that the living things which came off of the ark had a rapid evolution into life's current diversity after the flood. Any definition or description that broad is unhelpful (except at convincing people who have qualms about accepting that the label applies to them too even when it should not).  

I will take out the word "include" from the definition of Murray and Churchill.  I will substitute "are" so that it states "where the relevant processes are those that constitute what is often called “the modern evolutionary synthesis.” This change is justified because their definition itself calls for evolution as described by naturalistic science to be only "the best" explanation for life on earth even if God acted here and there. They describe a situation where God's interventions look like no more than noise or static, which do not change the message of the signal. Therefore, from the perspective of people who wanted to understand how life diversified, His intervention would not be "relevant" to the answer. Here is their quote so that you will see this is a fair description of their position. This is a long excerpt to put in a blog post but their article is almost book-length, and so these quotes (italics mine) are only a small but critical fraction of their thoughts on the matter..

...miracle claims of this sort will be fully compatible with theistic evolution so long as they are consistent with the affirmation that the complexity and diversity of life are best explained by appeal to evolutionary processes over long periods of time. This is only puzzling if we forget that the best explanation of some target phenomena is not always a comprehensive or exclusive explanation of those phenomena. In keeping with this, claims that God acted miraculously, and outside of evolutionary processes, in order to effect or alter some species or biological feature, may be entirely consistent with mere theistic evolution. Whether they are so consistent or not will depend entirely on whether they are the kinds of claims that are compatible with an endorsement of evolutionary processes as the best explanation—not exhaustive or exclusive, but best—for the complexity and diversity of life. Given this, theistic evolution could easily be consistent with the claim that, say, the development of a single biological feature, or a small set of such features, is due to God’s acting via extraordinary providence and through nonevolutionary processes. For these kinds of claims need not rise to the status of a challenge to evolution as the best account of the diversity and complexity of life. In contrast, and as noted above, theistic evolution would not be consistent with the claim that all species originated in this way. Nor would it be consistent with any other position on which miraculous activity is deemed crucial to explaining much of the world’s biological complexity and diversity in light of alleged explanatory deficiencies in evolutionary theory.

 So the fact that their definition or description of "theistic evolution" only says that evolution is the "best" explanation" and not the complete or exclusive explanation for the record of life on earth already let's them "off the hook" in describing the processes responsible for life on earth. The bounds they put on God's proposed interventions would render them irrelevant to questions of biological origins. They need not fashion a third escape hatch by saying the processes that produced life on earth merely "include" modern evolutionary synthesis. As Craig rightly points out, leaving that single word "includes" in their definition makes the position encompass more systems of belief than is necessary or even logical. 

Murray and Churchill were attempting to answer very specific criticisms of theistic evolution when they wrote all this. Critics, including myself, have wondered how they justified a God who didn't intervene at all in the vast majority of the earth's history but only started literally historically intervening in the world.....when? Abraham? Moses? Jesus? 

Their answer to this is to define "Theistic Evolutionist" broadly enough so that one is not saying that God didn't intervene at all, but rather that these interventions are unnecessary to explain the history of life on earth. God could have intervened here or there, but not enough to challenge evolution as the "best" account for what we see. Divine intervention may be present, but not relevant to the question. The "best" explanation would be modern evolutionary synthesis. 

Defining terms properly is critical to understanding, and in the ordinary course of things science and reason both tend to make finer and finer distinctions. On this subject the lines often get blurred and I'd like to offer my attempt at sort them out. Since we are having trouble with overly broad labels, it would be helpful if we introduced another term or category which keeps the aspects from each adjacent category that apply while clearly being its own thing. By adding a category in the disputed region, we at least insure that overlap is constrained into a smaller definitional space. 

Fortunately we have an established term which has been lying around under-utilized which fits the bill. This is "Evolutionary Creationism." Most people I speak to, even the ones who say the category applies to them, consider it to be synonymous with "Theistic Evolutionist". It need not be, Especially after we "tighten up" as WLC puts it, the definition of "Theistic Evolution" so that it no longer encompasses even most forms of Old Earth Creationism. I would argue that the latter category should be separate from, and if anything broader than, the former. "Evolutionary Creationism" includes both "evolution" and "creation" in the moniker, making it a more natural fit to describe a category which is says that the record of life is best described by a combination of a certain category of divine acts and natural evolution. 

With that said, here are my "Seven Category" definitions for the creation debate among non-atheistic views....

God Through Nature Positions

Deism- The belief that the universe is created by God but that afterward God did not intervene in the unfolding of the universe or of life. It might be compared to setting up a long string of dominoes to fall a certain way once the first is tipped over. The design and the creating went into organizing the pattern and initiating the event. Fully compatible with naturalistic evolution and "the modern evolutionary synthesis". 

Theistic Evolution- IOW the modified Murray and Churchill definition...The belief that the universe was created by God and that regarding the universe and the emergence and development of life, no further intervention by God was necessary to best explain what we see in the record of nature. This does not exclude the idea that God acted in nature, but only that such interventions were not relevant to describing how life on earth developed and diversified. Fully compatible with naturalistic evolution and "the modern evolutionary synthesis". 

The two above are can be considered "God Through Nature" positions in that they posit that God exists, but that He either exclusively works through nature or so overwhelmingly works through nature that any exceptions to this are not relevant to understanding creation.

The categories below can be considered "God in Nature" because, while they do not discount His providential working through nature alone, they also assert that He intervened in nature post-creation, and that those interventions were essential to producing the natural world as we see it. "God in Nature" positions can further be lumped under two broad categories based on what they believe about the age of the universe. "Old Earth Creationism", A Mixture, and "Young Earth Creationism". I will start with the Old Earth positions...

God in Nature Positions 

Evolutionary Creationism - a belief that God actively intervened primarily or even exclusively through evolution to change the expression of life on earth. Nature could have substantial creative (evolutionary) power in this view, but would not be sufficient to explain what we see. God's "creative acts" throughout most if not all of this process were not done by creating new kinds of organisms in a single stroke, but rather by a series of smaller creative changes within populations which produced new kinds of organisms that nature acting alone could not have made in the time available. Thus while accepting evolution broadly it rejects the naturalistic implications of "modern evolutionary synthesis", which is deemed to be inadequate as a total explanation. 

Progressive Creationism - a belief that God actively intervened to change the expression of life on earth by making and introducing into the biome a series of different living creatures over a long period of time. Thus, while traditional evolutionary forces played a role in shaping life, the major changes in life on earth did not occur through evolution, but by God's intervention and His special creation of new forms. The major difference between this position and the Evolutionary Creationist is subtle and mostly a matter of the nature of God's creative acts.

I will next consider two positions which believe that the earth and the universe are old, but that the origination of present living forms is recent. Obviously these positions are not compatible with the "modern evolutionary synthesis" except as it pertains to the degree of change which can occur in less than 10,000 years. These positions thus straddle Old Earth creationism and Young Earth Creationism...

Young Biosphere Creationism - the belief that the earth is old, but that all living things come from ancestors created in six literal 24-hour days less than 10,000 years ago. 

 Gap Theory - is like Young Biosphere Creation except that it posits that the fossil record shows forms that existed in an earlier realm of life which was destroyed in a war, and that currently living things come from ancestors created in six literal 24-hour days less than 10,000 years ago. 

                     And then of course we have....

Young Earth Creationism - the belief that the universe and the earth, and all life on it are recently (usually less than 10,000 years) created by God. Like the two above, it is incompatible with "the modern evolutionary synthesis" except as it pertains to the degree of change which can occur within a relatively brief period of time. 

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Which of these positions do I advocate for in my book? Though there is a predominant theme, there is no one position which completely describes what the text is saying in all places. The book isn't mostly about that though, but something far more extraordinary- how early Genesis points to the work and person of Christ. This cannot be so unless of course He is the Messiah and scripture is God-breathed. 

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