Tatha Wiley, Creationism and the Conflict Over Evolution (Cambridge, UK: James Clarke & Co., 2009), 144 Pps., $42.50.
Tatha Wiley, professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas and the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, Minnesota, directly addresses the problematic assumptions that people often have regarding the supposed conflict between creation and evolution in this text. This title is short in length, but sweet in that it is hard-hitting and uncompromised. She notes several problematic presuppositions that people bring to the evolution-creation dialogue, and they are worthy of note; either they: 1. Think the term creation refers to a historical event, aptly described in Genesis; 2. That both Genesis and evolutionary theory describe the way the world began; or 3. That modern believers much choose between these two options. She contends that such a triad of available options regarding creation is a misunderstanding of both creation and evolution; the purpose of this book seeks to flesh out this contention further. She notes that the chief objective of this book is to move the debate about creation and evolution from a framework shaped by religious fundamentalism to one that adheres to an intelligent grasp of many different aspects, such as: the bible, Christian theology, evolutionary science, and church history. Let’s look at its content a little closer.
Chapters one and two discuss the biblical model of creation, as well as the meaning of creation. The third chapter outlines modern evolutionary theory, noting the elements of it that are most disconcerting to fundamentalists, including Darwin’s evolution by natural selection, the nature of theory as scientific understanding, and the scientific method. Boldly, she herein rejects the claim that evolution is incompatible with the posit of God; indeed, she notes that scientists explain the world, but do not make it per se. Chapters four and five explore contemporary resistance to evolutionary theory, particularly with regard to twentieth-century Catholicism in chapter four, and Protestant groups (e.g. Young-earth Creationists and the Intelligent Design movement) in chapter five. The sixth chapter largely addresses questions such as, ‘why do creationists cling so tightly to Genesis 1?’, and ‘why do they ignore science on this point?’. Wiley argues, quite nicely in my opinion, that the creationists cling to Genesis 1 because that narrative underlies the entirety of their faith: what was created good became marred by sin, and that as a result the Father had to send the Son into the world to redeem it. However, Wiley rejects this position of the fundamentalists (a point she also makes elsewhere in Original Sin [Paulist, 2002]).
All in all, Wiley claims to have sought to disentangle the term ‘creation’ from the negatively thought-of term ‘creationism/st’; though laudable, I do not think she has effectively done this, as there is far too much baggage related with the term create (including all its cognates) to expect that people in the scientific community (especially) would use it. Indeed, as she herself notes, ‘creation-ists face opposition from scientists worldwide’ (7, dash added), which beckons the question of why should anyone even use a word remotely similar to it (?). However, she should be heralded for what may be the most cogent – and concise – frontal assault on creationism in many years, as it is indeed a shame that anti-evolution sentiments are still preserved by various branches of the church, both Protestant and Catholic. And in the process she grounds the theological meaning of creation on the question of ‘why there is something and not nothing?’, and affirms that creation and evolution are answers to different questions about the universe. A profitable read.
Bradford McCall
Regent University