First, I would like to say that I find Professor Murphy’s reinterpretation of the Christian account of creation very compelling, especially in light of the stress placed upon emergence in contemporary evolutionary biology. This model or one like it may be very important for negotiating the relationship between science and religion in the future. However, I would also raise some objections to this model.
In a post published last year, Peter Blair discussed the four causes, namely, the material, formal, efficient, and final causes. In short, these are the substance of which something is made, the design according to which it is made, the process by which the substance is shaped to the design, and the end to which it is created. Peter concluded that science can certainly account for the material and efficient causes of most things, but, at least in the case of humans, not for the formal and final causes.
According to secular evolutionary thought, no design or purpose inheres in anything. Professor Murphy seems to adopt this framework. This raises two questions. If we are not made according to a design, what makes us human? If God did not purposefully create us, how can it be that we have a purpose? On both points, Scripture seems clear. God created humans for a purpose. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” If science cannot investigate the metaphysical reality of formal or final causes, then we are justified in learning about those realities from other sources (such as the Scriptural account of design and purpose). Moreover, there need be no conflict between our acceptance of these aspects of our being and the scientific account of our evolution. Professor Murphy’s analysis is partly predicated on the idea that the traditional model of creation has become untenable, but this conclusion seems unnecessary. We can accept both modern science and the traditional creation model.
Furthermore, the biblical account of creation seems to reflect God’s intentionality in the creation. As St. Augustine says, “It must therefore be that you spoke and they were made. In your Word you created them.” In Genesis 1, God speaks the world into existence. “God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light.” This implies that God knew what light was even before he had created it. In other words, there existed in the mind of God a design for light. Indeed, all substances and forces, even all true forms and purposes, must inhere in the being of God, even prior to their creation in the physical world. Therefore, it should cause us no difficulty that he creates by bidding them to come into being.