Summary: A study of Genesis identifying both remarkable continuities and important discontinuities with Darwinian and modern evolutionary theory.

Dru Johnson takes a very different approach to how we read Genesis in light of Darwinian evolution. He takes the key concepts of scarcity, fit, and sex in Darwin and explores how these selection pressures are evident in scripture, as well as asking important questions about how the accounts diverge.

He explores first of all the question of scarcity and how it may lead either to competition and violence, or collaboration. Johnson notes continuities with the murder of Abel, the violence of Lamech, the violence leading to flood, and urban Babel as a buffer against scarcity. At the same time, in Abraham, the man of faith, and in the pre-fall Eden, there is abundance where scarcity is prevalent, under God’s care. Johnson carries this study beyond Genesis noting scarcity, competition, and violence and the providential care of God when his people trust God.

Second, he considers the idea of fittedness to habitat. He surveys a variety of evolutionary examples of fittedness and again turns to Genesis. We consider the habitats of the first three days and the creatures that fill them during the second three. He notes the name of the man is “dirtling” because he arises from the dirt. He notes the fittedness of the garden and this dislocation of exile and the arc of the biblical story toward new creation.

Finally, he considers sex. And here he notes a disjunct between evolution, where the focus is on males copulating with as many females as possible, a focus on reproduction, and the concern in Genesis, especially among women, for generation, the perpetuation of a family through one’s descendants. Certainly, there are examples of profligacy and even rape as evolution would predict, but also a distinctive focus upon a family line, and family lines, reflecting the promise of God.

In his conclusion, Johnson proposes that these continuities and discontinuities only make sense if there is some intersection of the metaphysical with the physical, which is the deeper issue between Darwin and scripture. He is hopeful that evolutionary and Hebraic conceptual worlds might be reconciled. The strength of what he proposes is that the approach takes both seriously as well as the expectation that if there is the possibility of reconciliation, continuities will be found. Yet Johnson also shows the anomalous in Genesis and throughout scripture that evolution-only explanations cannot reckon with. Might this help lead to a paradigm shift to a different and better faith-science conversation? One can only hope.

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