Darrel R. Falk

Summary: Accepting the evidence for our evolutionary origins, considers God’s providential activity through his hovering Spirit and how that shaped our evolution.

It may be helpful at the outset to say what this book is not, due to the title. It is not a polemic defending some form of young (or old) earth creationism. Darrel R. Falk spent his career as a biology professor and accepts the evidence of our evolutionary rise from some common ancestor we share with the great apes. He also believes this does not conflict with belief in God as Creator who works in and through evolutionary processes. But how specifically does that operate? Is it possible to move beyond vague claims of providence. Falk believes that is possible, based both on findings of how our species evolved, and basic Christian theological convictions about the nature of God and God’s working in creation.

Before proceeding to make his case, Falk clears some ground, distinguishing what science can and cannot know and the difference between science and scientism. This is important to discern when scientists have crossed a line, often in the denial of God, claiming science as a basis. It may have been equally helpful to discuss when Christians cross the line between good and bad science in their attempts to uphold their beliefs or show some concordance.

Chapters 2 and 3 chart the rise of our genus and species, focusing on anatomical changes, especially changes in the brain, arguing that a critical feature that distinguishes our species is our “social” brain, our capacity for cooperation, which better explains our rise than a superior fighting capacity. This is related to another significant development, that of a “theory of mind,” that we understand that others have minds and to understand the thinking and intentions of others.

This, for Falk, represents a key turning point, where it may also be possible for humans to perceive another mind, that of God, and perhaps to perceive the loving intentions of the Triune God who lives in a communally as Three in One. Particularly, Falk believes our ancestors were able to perceive the Spirit’s prompting toward loving, cooperative behavior, which had a selective advantage that may also have selected genetic variants that further enhanced cooperation. He also explores an intriguing idea that our imaginative capacities developed despite awareness of death because we could imagine, through the Spirit’s loving promptings, a reality beyond death.

Falk shows that Darwin himself identified this how cooperation, enhanced further by our language capabilities, was critical in our evolutionary development. What Falk is proposing is an explanation for this cooperative character grounded in and reflective of God’s character. Darwin, while never becoming an atheist, denied providence in creation, both disbelieving in the idea of God as a master designer and struggling with the reality of animal as well as human suffering. Falk raises the question of whether the problem is with providence, or with an inadequate understanding of the interaction of providence and evolution.

Falk’s final chapter considers the biblical story from beginning to end, from the garden-temple, to the fall and sin’s violation of cooperative relationships through the reconciling work of Christ, making one new, global body that images and extends these cooperative capacities on a greater scale than ever, anticipating the consummation of all things.

Falk offers an intriguing integration of theology and evolutionary science. In particular, Falk “makes sense” of our human cooperative character and suggests how the Spirit’s “hovering” may have contributed to the further evolution of this quality, connected to brain capacity and theory of mind, that so enabled us to flourish. Of course, none of this is scientifically provable. What Falk offers is something at once more modest and more provocative, a plausible explanation of God’s involvement in the origin of our species that is consistent both with evolutionary science and Christian belief.

This is not “evidence” that “demands” belief but something just as valuable, an account showing a seamless relationship between the science of human origins and theistic belief. Such proposals are crucial in bringing an end to the “warfare” between science and faith, a conflict that has spilled so much needless ink, and absorbed so much creative energy at the very moment our creation is groaning from the burdens we’ve placed on it, jeopardizing the very existence of so many of God’s beloved creatures.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.… (meer)