Article December 13, 1982 Issue

God's child, not His great ... great-grandchild

STIG KIÆR CHRISTIANSEN

Do you believe that in reality you are God's own child, created by Him alone, in His image, after His likeness, as the first chapter of Genesis puts it? If so, you know that God's man is therefore spiritual and perfect in all eternity, and that on the basis of this unshakable fact you can wipe out, step by step, whatever would seem to hide this truth. Christlike strength supports your efforts.

Or do you believe what the second chapter of Genesis tells us: that God created Adam and Eve through some strange processes—forming one of clay and the other out of a rib of Adam—and that these two, not too successfully, started their own creation process, eventually becoming the ancestors of innumerable generations of human beings? Or do you rather believe in Darwin's theory of evolution, according to which human beings trace their origin back through the lower primates?

The Adam theory and Darwin's have caused heated debates between theologians and natural scientists for more than a century. But fortunately, no one need side with either the Adam story or with Darwin's theory, both of which attempt to explain a material creation. And why not? Why can we refuse to give validity to the theories of creation that are based on matter? Because our Way-shower, Christ Jesus—in his words and works—cut right through any materially based theory of the origin of man.

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