Biblical Side of Evolutionary Creationism
Henry Neufeld, my favorite “moderate Christian”, muses today about the new books looking at evolution from a Christian perspective:
The good news is that there are so many new books looking at evangelical Christianity and evolutionary theory from a positive perspective. The bad news is that it is all coming from scientists.
This comes as slightly surprising news to me since my own journey from young earth creationism to theistic evolution started from a change in my understanding of the Biblical materials, a change that resulted from things I learned form conservative professors in Biblical studies classes. They may not have intended the result, but it happened.
Neufeld is the founder of the Pacesetters Bible School and a self-described “passionate moderate Christian” who is often called a “liberal charismatic”. In many ways, we are very different, as I come from a lay background and consider myself a conservative Christian doctrinally. But my experience is the same as his in this one respect: I abandoned young earth creationism because of a more detailed study of Genesis, rather than immersion in science. It was the realization that the original author of Genesis didn’t mean the passages to be taken literally in our modern sense … as evidenced by the language itself … that started me on the journey of discovery of “worship through understanding” of God’s creation.
The book list Neufeld references if found at the excellent An Evangelical Dialog on Evolution blog:
The Ten Books
1. Richard Colling, Random Designer (2004)
2. Darrel Falk, Coming to Peace with Science (2004)
3. David Wilcox, God and Evolution (2004)
4. Stephen Godfrey and Christopher Smith, Paradigms on Pilgrimage (2005)
5. Owen Gingerich, God’s Universe (2006)
6. Francis Collins, The Language of God (2007)
7. Gordon Glover, Beyond the Firmament (2007)
8. Deborah and Loren Haarsma, Origins (2007)
9. Karl Giberson, Saving Darwin (2008)
10. Denis Lamoureux, Evolutionary Creation (2008)
Looks like I have several books to add to my reading list!
