WHAT SHOULD WE BELIEVE ABOUT CREATION? PART 2 Andrew Sampson

 PART 2: BLOOD, INK AND PENCIL

The only time I’ve been no-platformed was many years ago after I’d been invited to lead a seminar at a Christian conference on science and faith. The conference organisers asked that I send them a copy of my notes ahead of time. Then one of them phoned me to let me know that my invitation to speak had been withdrawn.

The problem the organisers had with my seminar was that I planned to leave open questions which they felt should be closed. The approach that I was taking diverged too much from the view taken by the founders of their movement. In response to what they perceived as the encroachment of secularism and liberalism in the Church, the movement founders had contended for a particular view of creation which they regarded as the biblical view. As far as they were concerned, that view was non-negotiable and clear-cut. My approach was different. I held (and still hold) that aspects of what the Bible teaches about creation are of secondary importance and permit a variety of different interpretations.

One of the questions we need to deal with up front, then, is “which issues are open and which are closed?” Many church leaders of my generation learned years ago from the American church pastor and controversialist, Mark Driscoll, that issues in church life and teaching can be open- or closed-handed. Open-handed issues are those things on which it’s fine for Christians to disagree. They’re not “gospel issues”. They don’t define orthodoxy. But other issues are clearly closed-handed. They’re not up for discussion or debate. Things like the triune being of God, the human and divine natures of Christ and his atoning death on the cross aren’t negotiable. They’re essential to Christian belief.

Now, when it comes to creation, are we talking about an open- or closed-handed issue? The answer is, “It depends on what you’re talking about”. For the biblical concept of creation covers a vast body of Christian thought, not a single idea or two.

That’s one of the reasons why, I think, we need a more sophisticated framework to help us negotiate the tricky question on whether and when it’s okay for Christians to believe different things. Andrew Wilson[1] (following Keith Drury) advocates for, not just two categories of issues (open- and closed-handed), but three. Neither Wilson nor Drury specifically apply this framework to the kinds of questions that I’m going to be addressing in these articles but I’ve found the framework to be an extremely helpful one.

The idea is that some things are written in blood, some things are written in ink, and other things are written in pencil. Those things which are written in blood are the things that are non-negotiable in the Christian life. I’ve mentioned a few examples already but there are plenty more. Written-in-blood truths are the things on which we can’t afford to compromise. They are the things which define Christian belief as being distinctly Christian.

At the other end of the scale there are things which are written in pencil. These are the things on which it’s okay to be a bit sketchy. They’re things on which we’re open to being corrected at any time. The Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann remarks in his commentary on Genesis that “the Bible is not an answer book to all of the curious questions we may ask”.[2] It’s silent on a whole bunch of matters which may interest and intrigue us. What about the existence of intelligent life on other planets? I don’t know. I have some thoughts, but I don’t hold to any of them with anything approaching deep conviction. I’m content to write them in pencil.

Then there’s a third category in the middle and, for many of us, this will perhaps be the largest category of the three. “Written in ink” is where I put those things where I carry a degree of conviction – perhaps even a high level of conviction – but about which I’ve decided, “I’m not going to die on that hill”. They’re not of universal importance, even if they happen to be of importance to me.

Of course, it isn’t always easy to distinguish between what’s important for everyone to accept because it’s of cardinal significance and what’s simply a conviction which I happen to hold but isn’t necessary for everyone to believe. The vocation of a preacher is fraught with dangers and failing to recognise this distinction is one of them.

Then there’s the problem that different Christians will put different issues in different categories. Some young-earth creationists, for example, hold that creation in six twenty-four-hour days is written in blood because it’s what Scripture plainly teaches and believing anything different represents capitulation to the spirit of the age. If that’s your settled and sincerely-held view, then these posts may not convince you to change the substance of what you think, but I do hope that I can persuade you to re-categorise it.

For what it’s worth, here’s how I apply the blood-ink-pencil framework to creation. This informs not only how I teach about the subject on the Theology Matters course but also how I preach the relevant passages in the church where I pastor.

Written in blood. There are various questions we can ask about creation – Why? When? How? – but all Christians are united on the Who. God is the creator of all that is seen and unseen. “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being” (Revelation 4:11).

This is important because it means that, in the Christian community, there’s no debate between creation or evolution. “All Christians are, by definition, creationists”.[3] Among Christians, there’s no argument over whether everything is created by God. That’s settled. The debate is over the mechanism used by God to accomplish his creative purposes. 

That means that the term “evolutionary creationist” isn’t a contradiction in terms. It’s perfectly possible to believe in God as creator and that he uses evolutionary processes to create. I’m not saying that you should believe that – there may be strong biblical or scientific grounds for saying that you shouldn’t – but it’s an entirely logical position to hold.  

I have another written-in-ink conviction which will become important in a later blog even though it isn’t a “creation issue” per se. It’s a conviction about how we read and understand the Bible. I hold as a cardinal principle that we should always allow the Bible to address us on its own terms and never seek to impose our own meaning on the text. That’s another hill that I would die on.

Written in ink. As I’ve already suggested, this is where most of my beliefs and convictions about creation tend to end up. The substance of many of those beliefs and convictions will become clear over the course of this series of articles. It’s where I put my beliefs about such things as evolution, the age of the earth and how best to interpret the Genesis creation accounts. But here’s the important point: I don’t teach any of these written-in-ink things as gospel. When preaching on these matters, I’m careful to ensure that people don’t think that I’m telling them the biblical view on things. Where appropriate, I’ll set out the different views that Bible-believing Christians hold before explaining my own view. And I’ll be careful to distinguish between my personal conviction and divine revelation.

In the congregation where I pastor, we don’t have a church position on things that are written in ink. I rejoice in the fact that there are people in my church who hold to different views on a whole bunch of things, including the mechanism of creation and the age of the earth. From time to time, I enjoy getting into dialogue with members of the church who think differently to me about what they believe. When the discussion is conducted in the right spirit, the result is mutually edifying. Sometimes we’ll have a good old debate and I’ll try and convince someone to come round to my point of view. But I pick my moments carefully. Doing this on a Sunday morning from the pulpit is neither the time nor the place.

Written in pencil. This is where things get very personal. It’s where I currently put a whole bunch of things concerning Adam and Eve, the Fall and the incursion of sin and death into the world. That doesn’t mean that I don’t hold any views on these things. You could say that I’m working these things through. Some of those things are close to being inked in, so there’s progress for you, but I’m open to the possibility that I may never get complete answers to all the questions that I’m asking.

Remember Walter Brueggemann? “The Bible is not an answer book to all of the curious questions we may ask”.  I’ve always had the kind of head that’s brimming with questions, and the more that I’ve learned and studied, the more the questions that have suggested themselves. The details of some of those questions may not be answerable in this age and that’s okay. I’m fine with living with pencil with some of the Why, When and How when the Who is written in blood.

[1] Andrew Wilson, Spirit and Sacrament: An Invitation to Eucharismatic Worship (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2018), p. 135.

[2] Walter Brueggemann, Genesis (Interpretation series) (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1986), p. 44.

[3] Denis Alexander, Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose? (Oxford: Monarch, 2008), p. 15