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Implicit in the question and its answer is the strange compound of smallness and greatness that is the essence of our human nature. As creatures we will never grasp the fullness of Creation, but as creatures made in the Creator's image we are designed to learn, to seek to understand, even (as Tolkien put it) to be "sub-creators." And as we think explicitly about Creation, we must keep in mind that tension between our limitations and our high calling. Let either end slacken and we are sure to go awry.

This suggests priorities. As Christians we all acknowledge that God made us. But we may differ—we will differ—in our understanding of how that making unfolded. Some of those differences may be significant (though we must remember our limitations, the fallibility of our knowledge, even as we forcefully argue our case). They may have far-reaching implications. And yet they must be seen as subordinate to the affirmation that unites us, the recognition of the source of our being.

Seen in this light, one of the most unsatisfactory aspects of the evolution debate is the acrimony between ID proponents and theistic evolutionists (some of whom, notably Howard Van Till, don't like that term; let their objection be duly noted). Both sides, it should be obvious, see "intelligent design" at work in the universe. Van Till's "robust formative economy principle" is a case in point: The creation is endowed with the capacity to evolve. Moreover, Van Till and some others in his camp—like the ID thinkers—emphasize God's ongoing action in the world. (Their God doesn't simply build in complexity at the moment before the Big Bang and then take himself off, like the Absentee Landlord of the Deists.)

To note these affinities is not to trivialize the differences between the two factions (in which there are further internal differences: neither side is monolithic). Let them pursue their differences with passion and rigor. But it is time for the ID crowd to stop suggesting that their "accommodationist" rivals are largely driven by fear and careerism and other craven motives rather than by intellectual conviction. ("The path of least resistance," Phillip Johnson writes in The Right Question
in a typically patronizing analysis of biology professors at Christian colleges, "is to pretend that there is no conflict between evolutionary naturalism and Christian theism.") It is time for the iders to stop suggesting that theistic evolutionism is functionally equivalent to Dawkins's rabid naturalism. It is time, on the other side, for the theistic evolutionists to stop treating the ID movement as either a conspiracy or a joke—or simply ignoring ID as beneath contempt. And it's time for them to mount more sustained critiques of naturalistic dogmas.

The mutual slanders exchanged in this ongoing debate are especially harmful as they are absorbed and further dumbed down by a larger audience of Christians who want to know what side they should take. Again, there is no need to apologize for sharp disagreement. But the disagreements should clarify, not obscure, what is really at stake.

Neither Intelligent Design nor theistic evolutionism, alas, is the most influential position among the evangelical rank and file, where Young Earth creationism still holds sway. Hence another unsatisfactory aspect of the current debate is the strategic refusal of the ID movement to engage in constructive criticism of the Young Earth view.

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September 2004, Vol. 48, No. 9