Primary and Secondary Causes – How Are They Different?
Theistic evolution (or creation-evolution) is based on the idea that God is a primary cause who used evolution as the secondary cause for the origin of all things.
In this belief, God has either been guiding evolution through natural processes or He has endowed a kind of limited self-assembling ability to things within creation.[1] God is actively involved as the primary cause, ensuring that things reach the end He determined (teleos) by means of secondary causes.
See this illustration:
Logically speaking, if God has used cosmic, chemical and biological evolution to create life,[2] then He would still justifiably be called the Creator. In this case, God would be the remote Cause, while forces within nature would be the proximate cause.[3]
However, I do find great difficulty with this view considering the items above. To me, it seems there is no way to embrace evolution without destroying identity. Yet, understanding how a theistic evolutionist looks to God as Creator really does help me understand where they are coming from, and helps me have charity regarding this secondary issue (as one who rejects theistic evolution).
Why is this topic important? It is relevant to the discussion surrounding the different views of creation. Knowing the different between primary and secondary causes can help us understand Christians who hold a different view of creation from our own.
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- The self-assembling ability of matter cannot be emphasized to the point where God is completely transcendent or this view collapses to deism, and this is not fitting for Christians, as already explained. ↑
- There is more to naturalistic evolution than merely biological evolution. There is cosmic evolution (the origin of matter), chemical evolution (origin of life from non-life) and biological evolution (origin of complex life from “simple” life). See Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2004). ↑
- Norman L. Geisler, Systematic Theology, Volume Two: God, Creation (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 2003), 505, 506. ↑