The Philosophy of Creation/Chapter 1
CHAPTER I.
THEORIES OF CREATION.
The theories of creation may be classified under two divisions. In the first division are those holding that nature in herself is sufficient to create and to evolve by the unaided operations of her inherent forces. Those who so believe are distinguished as Materialists. In the second division are the theories maintaining that nature unaided is incompetent to create or to evolve, and which therefore advocate the existence of a supernatural first cause. Their adherents are properly called Supernaturalists. The term is sufficiently broad to comprehend all who have any idea of God, even when He is conceived of as a universally diffused substance higher than nature.
The popular theory of the Materialist is that of Evolution. The theory of Evolution generally understood when the word is used without modification as the name of a system of thought, is the doctrine of the descent of all species and genera of plants and animals from a few primary forms, or from one, through the inherent forces of nature, or from the workings of what are called laws of Natural Selection or of the Survival of the Fittest.
Under the second division, that of the Supernaturalist, are embraced many shades of opinion, which I have classified in four subdivisions. First: there are those who deny that nature unaided is able to create or to evolve, yet otherwise they concede the reasonings and claims of Evolution. These accept Evolution generally, but only as God's method of creating; and they hold that His intelligence and directing power are ever present as the first cause.
Second: there are the Creationists, who believe in the individual creation of all things by the fiat of the Almighty, substantially as they are now.
Third: there are those who do not believe in a personal God, yet advocate the existence of a universal intelligence. The forms of thought under this head are too mixed and indefinite to admit of classification. Some hold that the universal intelligence is an inner realm of nature. This would bring them under the first general division, that of Materialists. Others hold that the universal intelligence is a kind of pervading spirit superior to nature; and others that it is not a substance natural or spiritual. What then it is, they must answer.
The philosophy here to be set forth, creation by Correspondence, adds a fourth distinct subdivision. The doctrine of creation by Correspondence, while admitting all of the actual facts upon which Evolution is based, thoroughly repudiates its philosophy root and branch, and every phase and accommodation of it. Yet it happily explains the apparent truth of Evolution. The facts used to confirm the two theories may often be the same, the process of reasoning may be similar, their courses may often seem parallel; still, because creation by Correspondence is based upon the acknowledgment of God through Divine revelation, the two theories are in essence exact opposites.
The theory of creation by Correspondence is equally separated from the Creationist's theory, because it substitutes for arbitrary fiat the natural operation of law, and permits no conclusions that are not confirmed by reason.
The theory of creation by the fiat of the Almighty has failed to satisfy inquiring minds of deeper discernment. Law, order, and development are so related and conjoined that the mind will not bring its searchings to an end, and rest its reasonings in the belief that God, without the observance of laws as revealed in nature, by word of mouth called out of nothing the varied forms in the universe into existence.
Though the Creationist says that God did not create out of nothing, but rather out of unorganized matter, yet whence came that unorganized matter and what the laws are by which that creation took place remain unexplained.
The Creationist having failed to throw a satisfactory light upon this phase of the question, or having substituted arbitrary fiat for law, it is not surprising to see this theory being abandoned so generally in an age of freedom of thought and thirst for knowledge.
The theory of Evolution qualified by the supposition of the preëxistence of a primal germ, being practicably inconceivable and the legitimate conclusions impossible, imposed greater difficulties than Evolution pure and simple, without offering any satisfactory explanation. Consequently it is not without some visible reason that to-day we see Evolution in its unqualified form, which holds that all species are derived from a common source through modification in descent, displacing all accommodations of the theory.
The doctrine that God from Himself as a progenitor evolved all forms of life from a primal form, using successively the next lower form as a matrix from which the next higher was brought forth, is not incompatible with Christianity, because there is the acknowledgment of God as Creator and Redeemer, further differences being mostly in details of method. Yet as any error must lead to some disastrous effect, the theory of Evolution however modified, if wrong, must work injury.
The perplexities into which evolutionary reasonings lead may account, in a degree, for the absence of clear and consistent views on the subject of creation as well as for the darkness that conceals the realm of interior causes. Therefore, before proceeding to consider the theory of creation to be advanced, it may be well to review some of the inadequacies of the theory of Evolution.