The Christadelphian August 1965, L G Sargent

“The Origin of Man”

“It cannot be too strongly emphasized that only the content of the Bible is authoritative.” So says the writer of The Origin of Man, the notes summarizing studies given to a London Bible Class in the autumn of 1964. All who know bro. R. T. Lovelock will be convinced of his sincerity in so writing, of his devoutness, and of his genuine desire to provide help for those who are troubled at the relation between religion and modern science: the doubt must be whether he has succeeded in his aim, or indeed, whether he has approached it in a way which could hope to succeed.

These notes have aroused keen and sometimes bitter and highly emotional controversy; and it is for that reason, and not with any view to giving them further publicity, that they are here considered. I express a personal view, and shall therefore write in the first person and over my own signature.

The words above are quoted from the prologue, in which the writer says he will “seek to ignore all the suppositions which have built up in our own mind a detailed picture of earth’s earliest ages”, and endeavour to “return to the brief records in Genesis to analyze exactly what they do state and necessitate”; and to place alongside the witness of the Word of God “the facts of the new discoveries divorced from the theories built upon them by agnostics” in the belief that then “the problems are seen to melt away . . .” The first doubt is how far “facts” can be divorced from theories even by those who have scientific training (as bro. Lovelock has), and indeed what “facts” mean in a scientific sense. The doubt grows in reading the book; and with it a doubt of the wisdom of offering at all what he admits is “a mere human structure . . . (which) may well have to give way in its turn to align with further facts . . .”

Inspiration

Discussing inspiration, bro. Lovelock affirms his wholehearted acceptance of 2 Peter 1 : 20–21, but he argues from variations in parallel passages in the Gospels and from the use of the Septuagint Version in the New Testament that “the sense rather than the actual words is preserved by inspiration”, and that we “are not intended to erect an argument on a word”. A good deal could be said on the instances he gives, but however these variations may be explained it must be recalled that resting an argument on a word is precisely what Jesus and Paul do. Apart from the Lord’s use of Psalm 82 : 6 (“I have said, Ye are gods”), we may instance Paul’s characteristic way of building up an argument on the repetition of a word from a quotation, as, for example, the word “hearing” (akoē), taken from Isaiah 53 : 1 (“report”), in Romans 10. Indeed, any close expositional study of scripture is bound to turn on the precise words used, and the shades of meaning conveyed by the choice of this rather than that alternative.

One would like to discuss the application of every quotation in this first chapter. Do we, for instance, interpret figuratively “the sun shall be darkened” (Matt. 25 : 29) because “reason” tells us so or because the use of the heavens and earth in Old Testament prophecy demands it?

The main function of the chapter, however, is to prepare for the mode of interpretation to follow: and the conclusion is arrived at in three stages. (1) Micaiah’s satirical vision of the council in heaven is intended to teach, not that God sent lying prophets, but only in the most general way that the prophets of Ahab were speaking lies which should lure him to ruin (but the close parallel with 2 Thess. 2 : 11–12 is missed); (2) by analogy with this, the colloquy with the Adversary in the prologue to Job is a purely symbolic picture of a council in heaven (which I doubt); (3) that by further analogy with Job the first eleven chapters of Genesis constitute a symbolic prologue based on historical fact. Summarized in that way (which I believe to be not unfair), the conclusion built on a succession of analogies is breath-taking. It is supported by the argument that the “world” which was destroyed by the Flood was so different from the “present heavens and earth” which succeeded that we “must expect that these early records will have a strangeness and ‘other-worldness’ about them, and will not be capable of yielding to a detailed analysis on the basis of present thought and customs”. This argument is rather difficult to follow in the light of later contentions which limit the extent of the Flood and the completeness of the destruction of human life. More important is the fact (with which bro. Lovelock will agree) that here we have the foundation for all subsequent revelation of the saving hope of the Gospel: is the foundation so shadowy and elusive, so difficult to distinguish between fact and symbol? It was after all meant for us as well as for them. That prophets (as bro. Lovelock points out) reflect in their style their own personalities and circumstances cannot justify such a far-reaching speculation.

Growth, Spiritual and Natural

The basis of the argument in the rest of the book is found in the second chapter, which leads up to a comparison between spiritual growth and growth in nature, and argues from this that creation is a continuous process, a revelation of the active Word of God going on from the beginning to the consummation of God’s purpose.

The argument rests, therefore, on an analogy from the spiritual back to the natural: and apart from the question whether the process itself is legitimate, it must be asked whether there is a sound basis for the comparison in an accurate description of spiritual life. The answer must be that it is partial and one-sided. Biological metaphors for the spiritual life are many, and include birth and death. One passage quoted to illustrate growth (1 Peter 2 : 1) follows directly on one of the most powerful descriptions of the new birth (1 Peter 1 : 22–25). Begettal is the beginning of a new life, and birth is the coming into existence of a new individual; and in spiritual birth there is no biological continuity—it is an act of God. But that which is called “birth” can also be called “death”: “For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God” (Col. 3 : 1, R.V.). There is neither growth nor continuity in death: whatever decline leads up to it, when it comes it is abrupt and total. But the new birth can also be called “resurrection”—“you hath he raised”—after the pattern of the resurrection of Christ and by the “working of the strength of God’s might” (Eph. 1 : 19–20).

Such are the dangers of reasoning from analogy: like allegory, it can be illuminating where the basis of the comparison is already accepted, but it is not logically admissible in seeking to establish a ground which remains to be proven. And where the analogy rests on a metaphor it is insubstantial indeed.

Use of Scripture

Bro. Lovelock’s is a serious scripture study, and he brings to bear a wealth of quotation, but it seems as though almost every passage is viewed in a mirror which reflects it with subtle distortion. In Eph. 4 : 13, for instance, the immediate point is the building up of the infant church to maturity by the ministry of men with gifts of the spirit (gifts which we would all agree were to be withdrawn when revelation was complete). The contrast which the Apostle draws is between a developed church which is one in its Lord, and inchoate individuals who are like children each in a cockle-shell boat blown about by “every wind of doctrine”. It is true that “the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” is an ideal only to be fully reached in the coming age, but this does not justify an interpretation which would imply continuity of growth into immortality (and if that is not what bro. Lovelock means, it is what he might easily be taken to mean). The greatest fact of life in God is resurrection after the pattern of the greatest fact in history: and, even though Paul shows that raising to life can only be understood in the light of a sowing in mortality, resurrection itself, the actual “standing up again”, is clearly an interposition of Divine power at a point in time. On the third day the tomb was open and the rocky couch forsaken: there was a point in time when it became useless to seek the living among the dead.

The Meaning of “To Create”

The chapter opens with a discussion on the Hebrew root translated “create” in which the prophets are quoted to show that creation is viewed as a process, and this, it is argued, may be a guide to the meaning of the word in Genesis. To take one instance, Isaiah 65 : 17–18: “For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth . . . I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy.” This is quoted to show that this creation has been proceeding since the days of Abraham. Yet while the purpose of God which is thus to be fulfilled has been at work in all ages, the event itself is to come cataclysmically with the return of the Lord, and it will be so complete that “the former things shall not be remembered nor come into mind”. John borrows these words of Isaiah when he sees “the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband”; and nothing could more vividly symbolize an act of intervention from outside the earth in contrast to a process within it. It is of this that God proclaims: “Behold, I make all things new.” We must not confuse the preparation for an event with the event itself.

The fact is that the working of God combines both the slow and unseen process and the swift, dramatic intervention: it is the latter which is the manner of God’s great, crucial acts, whether in the Flood, in the Exodus, at Sinai, in the resurrection of Christ or in resurrection to come, and it is this aspect which bro. Lovelock underrates. That creation could be of this kind is shown by the use of the word in Num. 16 : 30: “If the Lord make a new thing (Heb., create a creation), and the earth open her mouth, and swallow them up . . .” With such a catastrophic use of the word in the mouth of Moses himself, one almost feels as if the ground had opened and swallowed up this thesis (though not, pray Heaven, its author!). The natural emphasis of the word bara is upon newness; it carries the implication of discontinuity rather than continuity; and though this does not in itself tell us the manner in which God worked in creation, at least it does not favour the idea of a continuous process.

That the works of creation were spread over vast periods of geological time we have no need to dispute, though the summary of the evidence in the third chapter takes no account of the difficulties in the geological evidence even for the succession of the strata, or of the inconsistency with which the age of rocks is determined by the fossils they contain and the age of the fossils by the succession of the strata. What is disturbing is the acceptance almost without argument of the supposition that species have developed from one another (the word “evolution” is avoided). One of the greatest difficulties in the way of evolutionary theory is smoothly passed over in the following sentences: “Many millions of years pass with only continuous minor variations within the existing species, and then, suddenly, a burst of entirely new forms will appear and, after a period of establishment, begin their long period of variation within the species. So definite is this record that it has given rise to the term ‘explosive evolution’ in the standard textbooks.” This is nothing less than an admission that the attempt to trace the origin of species is met with a succession of gaps, and in the “standard textbooks” the gaps are filled with words—a proceeding logically no better than and spiritually inferior to that charged against Christians of filling gaps with God. There is no evidence that any such “explosion” occurred, nor has it been established how it could occur, since the vast majority of mutations are degenerative and even lethal.

It was in reference to this that Professor W. R. Thompson, F.R.S., wrote in the preface to the 1956 edition of The Origin of Species, that Darwin “was not able to produce palaeontological evidence sufficient to prove his views, but that the evidence he did produce was adverse to them; and I may note that the position is not noticeably different today. The modern Darwinian palaeontologists are obliged, just like their predecessors and like Darwin, to water down the facts with subsidiary hypotheses which, however plausible, are in the nature of things unverifiable.” Later he says: “To establish the continuity required by theory, historical arguments are invoked, even though historical evidence is lacking. Thus are engendered those fragile towers of hypotheses based on hypotheses, where fact and fiction intermingle inextricable confusion.” I can only deplore that an esteemed brother should offer with such assurance what an eminent biologist could describe as “fragile towers of hypotheses”. The fact is that the geological evidence would well accord with successive acts of creation: by what means we do not know, except that there is no evidence of continuity with earlier forms of life. That these should be followed by periods of development and adaptation would not, to me, present any problem.

Continuity or Discontinuity?

Discontinuity, one would think is the particular mark of the account of the creation of man in Genesis 2: the man specially formed, the Garden specially prepared, his companion specially provided because no other was found as “an help meet for him”. One does not need to picture the Lord God actually moulding a figure in clay to see this speciality as the purpose of the narrative. Yet bro. Lovelock brings it all within a continuous process by interpreting it symbolically. True, he says there was a specific act of God in producing the man from an earlier form of life in a way which he compares with the Virgin Birth: but apart from this there is no reason to understand from the narrative “any difference in manner of formation from that in which the beasts were formed”. As to man being formed of the dust, this teaches that “man was taken from the common source of life and that his origin was lowly and common”. Though the Scripture shows that the mode of formation of the woman was such that Adam was able to distinguish her from all other creatures by saying, “This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh”, bro. Lovelock can say: “Whatever the details behind the taking of woman out of man, this phraseology was used, not primarily to describe, but prophetically to prepare the mind of man, in contemplation, for the later and greater phase of the creation of Man and the Church.” To most of us it will seem only possible so to read the narrative if one comes to it with a mind conditioned by prior assumptions. It is characteristic of this mode of thought that symbol or allegory should be based upon itself.

Allegory or History?

An example of the peculiar twist of mind which this induces is seen in the reference to the Lord’s teaching on divorce. To most of us it seems plain that in saying “From the beginning it was not so” Jesus is appealing to the recorded facts of creation as revealing the Divine intention for man and setting the standard: this is how God made them, and the pattern for all time was shown in one man and one woman cleaving to one another as one flesh. Yet bro. Lovelock argues that since with two persons alone there could be no adultery the account in Genesis took this form for the purpose of teaching. There is a certain naive ingenuity in the argument, but it results in the fact being dissolved into a lesson instead of the lesson resting solidly on the facts.

Yet this kind of allegorical view is difficult even for the author to maintain: when in the next chapter he has some good things to say on the significance of Eden, one would scarcely realize that he was not treating it as fully history. Yet even here there is a twist, small in itself, but significant: according to this it is “in the eyes of man, blinded by deceit of evil” that the tree appeared desirable; Adam proved unequal to the struggle, and “he stretched forth his hand, and ate”. Where does Eve come in“let alone the serpent? “Adam was not deceived: but the woman being deceived was in the transgression” (1 Tim. 2 : 14). Is this slip a symptom of the ambiguity, the uneasy wavering between the actual and the pictorial, which throws a mist over the interpretation of these chapters?

Early Man

It is in the chapter on “Chronology” that we come fully to grips with the effort to reconcile the Biblical account with the archaeological evidence. Let two things be granted. First, that bro. Lovelock accepts fully the Biblical evidence as to chronology, after allowing for the uncertainty which results from the divergence between the Massoretic and Samaritan texts and the Septuagint. Secondly, that there is abundant evidence of early “man” at a time which certainly appears to be far beyond the limits allowed by Bible chronology. This must be admitted even after discounting the slender and uncertain remains claimed for a still more remote antiquity, about which there have been such notorious blunders and even downright fraud. There is a problem here, but is the solution offered genuinely reconcilable with Scripture?

Bro. Lovelock’s solution is that Adam was “a selected and divinely modified member of a race already numerous in the earth”, that he was selected by God to be His witness to this race, and given such extra powers as marked him out as a leader and assured the successful spread of his way of life. Adam, like Christ, was a “representative man”, and this did not exclude the incorporation among his descendants of those who were not physically of his race.

Against this we have the words of Paul at Athens: “He made of one every nation of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17 : 26, R.V.); and as was recently pointed out, while this can mean “of one man” or “of one race”, it cannot mean anything else. Nor can there be any doubt that Paul was referring to the Biblical account of man’s creation in Genesis 2, and it is not enough to say that the whole race is from one pre-Adamic interbreeding stock.

Against this bro. Lovelock would stress the representative character he attributes to Adam, and would appeal to 1 Cor. 15 : 45–49. But Paul’s contrast of the first Adam and the last surely only strengthens the case against his view: “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive” (verse 22). Can there be any doubt that Paul means we are “in” Adam as mortal sinners because we inherit our nature from him, but we are “in” Christ on the spiritual basis of faith and obedience in baptism, so that in him “there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus”? Paul’s argument is “first the natural, then the spiritual”, and the very point of his teaching is that in the spiritual relationship the bounds of race and even of sex are transcended. It is simply not relevant to argue back from this to the natural, and suggest (as bro. Lovelock does) that because “aliens” may be incorporated into Christ “aliens” from the Adamic race might be assimilated into Adam’s descendants. And only with a wrench from anything which Paul could conceivably have meant himself can it be reconciled with Paul’s teaching on the coming of sin and death into human life, and the consequences for the whole race which followed from Adam’s transgression. “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death has passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” What happened to any pre-Adamic race, we cannot know; that there may have been such beings has never been denied; what we cannot admit is that they could have had any part in the Gospel of salvation as preached to the race of Adam.

The point which has been discussed is another example of the fallacies which pervade this work—arguing back from antitype to type; confusing the symbol with the thing symbolized; depriving the symbol of its literal basis (which must be different in kind from the thing symbolized) and then confusing the symbol with its object. To describe Christ, who comes within the Adamic race and represents it in sacrifice, as a “representative man” expresses a truth; to apply the same term to the one whom all scripture presents as the progenitor of the race is not a true comparison; it rests on a theory which is against the whole tenor of the scripture message which so clearly portrays the first pair as unique and alone, and their acts as governing the condition of the whole succeeding race.

The Flood and Babel

The further development of bro. Lovelock’s study is dependent on the line of argument so far surveyed. Whether the Flood was universal or local has been discussed among Christadelphians, to my knowledge, for at least fifty years; what is controversial in this book is the suggestion that only a part of the race was exterminated, and that some of homo sapiens, both Adamic and pre-Adamic, survived. This conception of the existence of other peoples alongside the descendants of Adam and of Noah is the basis for the whole of the argument on the distribution of peoples, the development of languages, and the comparison of myth with revealed religion. It is developed with a wealth of learning in archaeology and ethnology, but one has the impression that in these fields a great deal is being stated positively which is tentative and theoretical, and the whole construction is admittedly speculative. That archaeology presents problems, we must admit; but it is the supposed intermingling of the Adamic strain with contemporary races outside Adam which is so intractable to reconcile with the Biblical revelation; and Gen. 6 : 1–2 is a wholly inadequate basis for the structure of speculation offered here.

Exposition and Science

In scriptural interpretation bro. Lovelock starts from the belief that the first chapter of Genesis surveys the whole work of God from the beginning to the future consummation—a view which is possible but doubtful. Within this framework he develops scripture exposition which I believe to be unsound in detail because slanted throughout by a particular point of view. In this he finds justification for an evolutionary interpretation of creation and the history of man, and this underlies his approach to scientific questions.

Now, it is true that there are devout Christians such as Professor C. A. Coulson who take a strictly uniformitarian view of the universe and believe that evolution can be regarded as God’s method in creation. The objection to this does not rest only, or even mainly, on the early chapters of Genesis. It is that an evolutionary view does not fit in with essential elements of the Faith; where it is adopted there must sooner or later be changes in the Biblical conceptions of the Fall and Atonement, in the nature of revelation, in the literal fact of resurrection, and in the character of the Kingdom of God. Of this there is abundant example in the teaching of the churches around us where an evolutionary philosophy has come to be accepted. If adopted among us I am convinced that it would in time pervade the whole of our belief and change it as the doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul changed the belief of the early church.

Bro. Lovelock himself is strong in his faith in the revealed word and convinced that he is providing a genuine—if admittedly speculative—reconciliation between Scripture and science which will ease the way of those who are troubled. I heartily wish I could share his belief. His work is worthy of the kind of reasoned analysis I have attempted in seeking to show why I cannot. Some of the attacks made upon it have not been of a kind to help the case against it in the minds of the judicious. Yet I do believe, as I have said, that the introduction of an evolutionary philosophy among us would be disastrous, and that, scientifically speaking, there is less justification than ever for such an attempt at a time when scientists themselves are showing their lack of confidence, or even openly criticizing evolutionary theories. I have called it a “philosophy”, and this it is rather than science. It developed out of a particular way of looking at the world, it served to fix this angle of vision, and once it is accepted it penetrates every other field of thought and enquiry.

There are a great many things we do not know, and doubtless will never know fully until we can look on them with immortal eyes. Our best help to our young people is to show them the fallibility of scientists compared with the certainties of the Word of God, and the limitations of the scientific method, particularly in dealing with origins which cannot be repeatable. It is the Word which is sure, and the investigations of men which are uncertain.

L. G. Sargent.