Philosophia Christi

Vol. 20, No. 2 © 2018

Theistic Evolution, Intelligent

Design, and the Charge of Deism

Robert Larmer
Department of Philosophy
University of New Brunswick
New Brunswick, Canada
rlarmer@unb.ca

Curiously, Christians who identify as theistic evolutionists and Chris-

tians who identify as proponents of intelligent design are each inclined to
criticize the other’s position as inherently deistic. My goal in this paper is to
examine the accuracy of these respective charges. To do this, it is first essen-
tial to contrast three fundamental models of divine agency. Only when this
is done is it possible to evaluate fairly these competing allegations. These
three models are distinguished by what they claim concerning the existence
of secondary created causes, and the role such causes play in the outworking
of divine purposes in creation.

Three Models of Divine Agency

Occasionalism

The core tenet of occasionalism is that God is the sole cause of all that
happens. At its heart is what Alvin Plantinga has termed the “sovereignty-
aseity intuition.”1 Occasionalists interpret this intuition as requiring that
there exists no secondary causation in nature. Created things on this view are
purely passive, having no causal powers, contributing nothing to what hap-
pens in the world. What appear to be instances of causal interaction between
created entities are really occasions of the exercise of direct divine pow-

Abstract: Christians who are theistic evolutionists and Christians who are proponents of in-
telligent design very frequently criticize one another on the basis that the other’s position is
theologically suspect. Ironically, both camps have accused the other of being deistic and thus
sub-Christian in their understanding of God’s relation to creation. In this paper, I consider the
merit of these charges. I conclude that, although each position has both deistic and nondeistic
forms, theistic evolution in its treatment of life’s history is typically deistic, whereas intelligent
design typically is not.
1. Alvin Plantinga, Does God Have a Nature? (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press,
1980), 61.
394 Philosophia Christi

er.2 For the occasionalist, there exist no real natural propensities or causal
powers, there is “no ‘nature’ in the sense of an order of causally efficacious
natural agents with individual powers and liabilities stemming from their
natures.”3 Created things do not act upon one another. To think that fire burns
or that masses attract one another is simply mistaken. There are, to be sure,
regularities within what we call nature, but these regularities are in no way
related to the constitution of created things, being rather expressions, so to
speak, of the habits of God.

Deism

Like occasionalism deism affirms that God is the Creator and constant
Sustainer of the universe, such that at every moment of its existence the
universe depends upon God willing it to be. Unlike occasionalism, deism is
firmly committed to the existence and efficacy of created secondary causes.
On the deistic view, although created things depend upon God constantly
sustaining their very existence, they possess genuine causal capacities such
that it makes sense to talk of the operation of secondary causes, which is to
say of causal interactions between them. Indeed, for the deist, all that occurs
in nature is the result of such interactions. God is the author and sustainer of
nature, but He never directly acts within nature.4 Divine purposes in creation
are pursued solely through the indirect instrumentality of secondary causes
and never involve direct primary causation in the form of miraculous inter-
vention into the course of nature. For the deist, God’s operation in the natural
world is exclusively confined to the creation and conservation of secondary
causes.

2. Thus Malebranche, asserts “that is a contradiction . . . for one body to be able to move
another . . . it is a contradiction for all the angels and demons together to be able to move a wisp
of straw . . . No power can convey [an object] to where God does not convey it, nor fix nor stop
it where God does not stop it” (Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion, ed. Nicholas Jolley,
trans. David Scott (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 115–16).
3. Stephen S. Bilynskyj, God, Nature, and the Concept of Miracle, PhD dissertation, Uni-
versity of Notre Dame, 1982, 31.
4. Eighteenth-century deist, Thomas Morgan, provides a typical expression of deism assert-
ing that “[God’s] Government and Direction of Nature [is] by general Laws, [that] . . . obtain
and secure the best Order and Constitution of things upon the Whole, without obliging the Deity,
or author of Nature, to suspend his Laws, or alter his prescribed Rules and Measure of Action,
by frequently interposing on particular incidents and emergencies” (Physico-theology: Or, a
Philosophico-moral Disquisition Concerning Human Nature, Free Agency, Moral Government,
and Divine Providence (London, 1741), 76).
Robert Larmer 395

Supernaturalism

As a model of divine agency in creation, supernaturalism is best under-

stood as constituting a via media between occasionalism and deism. Like
these two models it affirms that God is the Creator and Sustainer of the uni-
verse. It avoids, however, the extremes of these two models. Contra occa-
sionalism, it refuses to denature nature to the extent that it is impossible
to speak of the operation of created secondary causes and, contra deism, it
refuses to insulate nature from any possibility of divine intervention.
On the supernaturalist model, the things which make up nature have, in
virtue of God’s creation of them, their own natures and causal powers. The
interaction of these things gives rise to a regular order of nature. Bearing in
mind that the ultimate explanation of such causes existing is God’s willing
them to be, most events within nature are explicable by reference to these
secondary causes. Supernaturalism holds, however, that in addition to such
events God, in pursuing His purposes for creation, sometimes acts directly
upon created things, thereby producing events which are not wholly expli-
cable in terms of the operation of secondary causes.5
These three models encompass the possible ways in which God may be
conceived as achieving His purposes in creation.6 Either one holds that God
works in creation entirely through direct primary causation, in which case
one is an occasionalist, or one holds that God works in creation entirely in-
directly through secondary causes, in which case one is a deist, or one holds
that God works in creation both directly and indirectly, in which case one
is a supernaturalist. If one is a supernaturalist then one is committed to the
claim that there are events in nature which cannot be explained entirely in
terms of the operation of secondary causes. Whether such explanatory gaps
in purely natural explanations of certain events will be recognizable is a dif-
ferent question, though there is no a priori reason to think they would not be.7

5. E.g., Charles Hodge distinguishes between physical events which are the result of the
“ordinary operations of second causes” and physical events which “are produced or caused
by the simple volition of God, without the intervention of any subordinate cause.” Systematic
Theology, vol. 1 (Scribner 1871) rpt. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1940, 594.
6. I am assuming what I take to be Aquinas’s understanding of the relation between God
and created things, namely that created things depend entirely upon God for their existence, but
have, in virtue of their existence, genuine causal powers sufficient to bring about events in the
world. Views of divine agency, such as Molina’s and Suarez’s, which claim that the powers of
created things to bring about events in the world are never sufficient themselves but must be
supplemented by a further contribution from God are difficult to make logically coherent and
involve a slide towards occasionalism.
7. It is conceivable, of course, that supernatural intervention might happen at a level below
what science can see and thus not be recognizable as such. The implications of this regarding
theistic evolution will be explored later in the paper.
396 Philosophia Christi

Intelligent Design and Deism

Some intelligent design theorists are willing to take seriously the pos-
sibility that the design apparent in living creatures could be entirely front-
loaded by God.8 Others argue that, while the apparent fine-tuning of the laws
of nature is evidence of intelligent design, such laws provide only necessary
conditions for life, not sufficient conditions. They argue that for life to origi-
nate and develop there must have been subsequent input of information into
the world.9
Intelligent design theorists who accept the frontloading view may be
justly viewed as deistic in their understanding of the origin and development
of life. Whether or not they may accurately be described as full-blown deists
will depend upon whether they are prepared to countenance divine interven-
tion in what can be termed “salvation history.” Accepting that God has not
intervened in the origin and development of life, does not commit one to
denying that God has intervened in human history, and thus does not commit
one to deism. It is fair to conclude, though, that to the degree that an intelli-
gent design theorist accepts the frontloading view he is deistic in his outlook.
Most intelligent design theorists, however, do not think the frontload-
ing view can withstand rational scrutiny.10 Intelligent design as a movement,
therefore, is very friendly to the idea of divine interventions in the process of
life’s origin and development.11 Such commitment to direct divine involve-
ment in the natural world would seem to absolve it of any suspicion that it is
inherently deistic in nature.
Nonetheless, some theistic evolutionists have charged that intelligent
design tends towards deism. Oliver Barclay, a theistic evolutionist featured
on the BioLogos website, is very critical of intelligent design proponents on
the basis that their views are deistic or semideistic. The aim of such propo-
nents, he writes “is to encourage belief in a divine power or intelligence that
has influenced the world directly only from time to time, and then only in
8. See, e.g., Michael Behe, “God, Design and Contingency in Nature,” Faith and Science,
https://evolutionnews.org/2009/11/god_design_and_contingency_in.
9. Stephen Meyer makes this case in detail in both his Signature in the Cell (New York:
HarperCollins, 2009) and Darwin’s Doubt (New York: HarperCollins, 2013).
10. This is so for at least two reasons. First, the information required to produce a functional
gene does not seem to have been present in the initial arrangement of elementary particles at
the beginning of the universe. Second, there seems no plausible physical means by which such
information, if it existed, could be stored until the later origin and development of life. See, e.g.,
Stephen Meyer, “The Difference It Doesn’t Make: Why the ‘Front-End Loaded’ Concept of De-
sign Fails to Explain the Origin of Biological Information,” in Theistic Evolution: A Scientific,
Philosophical, and Theological Critique, ed. J. P. Moreland, Stephen Meyer, Christopher Shaw,
Ann Gauger, and Wayne Grudem (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017), 217–36.
11. This has led theistic evolutionist, or, as he prefers, evolutionary creationist, Denis
Lamoureux, to claim that “ID Theory should be termed Interventionist Design Theory” (“Evo-
lutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution,” note 1, https://biologos.org/files/mod-
ules/lamoureux_scholarly_essay.pdf).
Robert Larmer 397

highly limited and particular aspects, such as the origin of the genetic code or
the Cambrian explosion.”12 He goes on to assert, presumably in counterpoise
to intelligent design theorists, that “far from being a remote draughtsman
who designs things without later involvements, we should always present the
biblical creator God as he is, the one who cares for and is intimately involved
in every aspect of the created order.”13 Those in the intelligent design move-
ment, he claims, have a weak view of God’s providence.14
Ironically, other theistic evolutionists insist that intelligent design falls
into occasionalism. Stephen Meredith, for example, argues that although
“the Intelligent Design movement has not used the term ‘occasionalist’ to
describe itself . . . it is an occasionalist philosophy nonetheless.”15 He does so
on the basis that the movement “does not credit natural or physical law with
enough causal power to enact evolution on its own.”16 Intelligent design, he
claims, requires the suspension of ordinary natural law and is thus occasion-
alist in its theorizing.17
Barclay’s and Meredith’s very different charges arise from them both
erecting an identical strawman, namely the claims that intelligent design
theorists do not allow for God acting indirectly through secondary causes
and that God’s direct action in nature would involve the suspension of natu-
ral laws. These two claims are clearly false. It has already been noted that
some intelligent design theorists are willing to allow that the design involved
in the origin and development of life might be entirely frontloaded. Others
who maintain that there have been divine interventions in life’s origin and
development do not claim that natural processes play no role, only that such
processes are incapable of providing a complete explanation. Regarding the
oft-made claim that divine intervention involves the suspension of natural
laws, it needs to be stressed that this is simply not true. Natural laws allow
us to predict what will take place given a certain set of initial conditions and
no intervening causes. One does not, for example, suspend the law of grav-
ity if one causes an object to move away from the earth’s surface—gravita-
tional, attraction between the earth and the object continues. Equally, if God
causally intervenes in natural processes He brings about states of affairs that
would not otherwise obtain, but such action in no way suspends the laws of
nature.18 It is fair to conclude, therefore, that, although intelligent design in

12. Oliver Barclay, “Design in Nature,” Part 2, https://biologos.org/blogs/archive/design-

in-nature-part-2.
13. Oliver Barclay, “Design in Nature,” Part 4, https://biologos.org/blogs/archive/design-
in-nature-part-4.
14. Barclay, “Design in Nature,” Part 2.
15. Stephen Meredith, “Looking for God in All the Wrong Places,” First Things, February
2014, https://www.firstthings.com/article/2014/02/looking-for-god-in-all-the-wrong-places.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. Daniel Von Wachter, “Miracles Are Not Violations of the Laws of Nature Because the
Laws Do Not Entail Regularities,” European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 7, no. 4 (2015):
398 Philosophia Christi

its frontloading version could be considered deistic, in its most usual form
it is neither deistic nor occasionalist, but rather supernaturalist in its under-
standing of life’s history.

Theistic Evolution and Deism

There can be no question that at least some versions of theistic evolu-

tion are completely deistic, even if their proponents avoid use of the term.
Theological liberals typically assert that divine agency should be solely un-
derstood as God’s fundamental act of creating and sustaining creation. God,
they claim, is the author of history, but never directly acts within history.
Thus, for example, the late Maurice Wiles was prepared to claim that “the
primary usage for the idea of divine action should be in relation to the world
as a whole rather than to particular occurrences within it”19 and to pronounce
any suggestion that God might intervene in the natural order absurd.20 Shorn
of the theological verbiage in which they are expressed, such claims amount
to an assertion of deism.
Theistic evolutionists who are more theologically conservative are of-
ten, though not invariably,21 prepared to allow for divine interventions in
salvation history, while denying any such intervention in life’s origin and
development. This position is typical of many authors associated with the Bi-
oLogos Foundation, a conservative Christian organization founded by Fran-
cis Collins in 2007 to promote the view that there exists no conflict between
the acceptance of biological evolution and Christian faith. Denis Lamoureux
provides a typical example of this position in his article “Evolutionary Cre-
ation: A Christian Approach to Evolution” featured on BioLogos’s website.
Although accepting the reality of divine interventions in salvation history,
Lamoureux views God as having frontloaded into the big bang all the infor-
mation needed for life to originate and evolve, such that biological evolution
occurring billions of years later is an unbroken natural process.22 Lamoureux
likens God to a superb billiards player asking his readers to

37–60. Also, Robert Larmer, The Legitimacy of Miracle (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2014).
19. Maurice Wiles, God’s Action in the World (London: SCM, 1986), 28.
20. Maurice Wiles, Faith and the Mystery of God (London: Fortress, 1982), 26.
21. R. J. Berry, e.g., attempts to explain the Virgin Birth entirely in terms of natural pro-
cesses, without positing any supernatural intervention. “The Virgin Birth of Christ,” Science and
Christian Belief 8, no. 2 (1996): 101–10. Similarly, Christopher Knight, writing as a guest blog-
ger contributing to a Biologos series on divine action, embraces a “strong theistic naturalism” in
which “the distinction between ‘special’ and ‘general’ divine action no longer makes any sense;
. . . miracles are not, in this perspective, the result of divine intervention in, or interference with,
the world,” https://biologos.org/blogs/jim-stump-faith-and-science-seeking-understanding/
divine-action-naturalism-and-incarnation.
22. Denis Lamoureux, “Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution,” https://
biologos.org/files/modules/lamoueux scholarly essay.pdf.
Robert Larmer 399

imagine that God’s creative action in the origin of the world to be like
the stroke of a cue stick in a game of billiards. . . . According to this
Christian view of evolution, the breaking stroke is so finely tuned and
incredibly precise that not only are all the balls sunk, but they drop
in order. It begins with those labelled heavens, then earth, followed
by living organisms, and finally the 8-ball—the most important ball
in billiards—representing humans . . . This is how I see design in
evolution.23

Such a proposal, of course, is identical to frontloading versions of intel-

ligent design, so it comes as no surprise that Lamoureux advocates for what
he terms noninterventionist intelligent design, insisting that this is the only
scriptural and Christian form of intelligent design theory.24
A third form of theistic evolution—one, however, that is rarely, if ever,
advocated for today—is the view that God has directly intervened in evolu-
tionary processes. Early theistic evolutionist, B. B. Warfield defended this
view in a lecture titled “Evolution or Development” writing that
there is no necessary antagonism of Christianity to evolution, pro-
vided that we do not hold to too extreme a form of evolution. To adopt
any form that does not permit God freely to work apart from law and
that does not allow miraculous intervention . . . will entail a great re-
construction of Christian doctrine, . . . But if we condition the theory
by allowing the constant oversight of God in the whole process, and
his occasional supernatural interference for the production of new be-
ginnings by an actual output of creative force, producing something
new, i.e., something not included even in posse in preceding condi-
tions, we may hold to the modified theory of evolution.25

Warfield’s account of the type of evolution he was prepared to accept makes

clear that contemporary theistic evolutionists are disingenuous in claiming
his understanding of evolution as in continuity with their own.26
Amongst contemporary contributors to the science-faith discussion
Robert Russell appears virtually unique in explicitly embracing a form of
theistic evolution that bears some relation to earlier versions of theistic evo-
lution, insofar as he allows for direct primary causation by God to influence
the evolutionary process through quantum events. Even so, the resemblance
is faint. In contrast to earlier advocates of theistic evolution, he insists that
“direct [divine] action . . . will be hidden in principle from science even if
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. B. B. Warfield, “Evolution or Development,” in Evolution, Science, and Scripture: Se-
lected Writings, ed. Mark A. Noll and David N. Livingstone (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2000),
130–1.
26. See, e.g., Christian Barrigar, Freedom All the Way Up (Victoria, BC: Friesen, 2017), xii.
In contrast to Warfield, Barrigar espouses an entirely noninterventionist form of evolution in
which God does not know what type of agape-capable beings will emerge from the evolution-
ary process (30–2).
400 Philosophia Christi

science were to search for it” and that such action can only be affirmed by
faith, since it will never yield results that a scientist could not legitimately
interpret as the result of randomness.”27 Further, unlike earlier theistic evolu-
tionists, he is decidedly uneasy with the idea of divine intervention, insisting
that his account is noninterventionist.28
Although Warfield’s view is radically removed from that of contempo-
rary exponents of theistic evolution, it is far from an anachronism, having
numerous contemporary defenders. His understanding of evolution is identi-
cal to that of almost all intelligent design theorists, namely that, although
natural processes play a role, the origin and development of life cannot be
explained exclusively in terms of the secondary natural causes operating on
the initial conditions of the universe.29

What Distinguishes Theistic

Evolution from Intelligent Design?

We have seen that at a conceptual level there can be deistic forms of

theistic evolution and deistic forms of intelligent design, such that they make
identical claims regarding the design apparent in biological entities, namely
that it is entirely frontloaded. Also, that there can be supernaturalist forms
of theistic evolution and supernaturalist forms of intelligent design such that
they make identical claims regarding the design apparent in biological enti-
ties, namely that at least some of the design is the result of supernatural
intervention in the process of life’s origin and development. What then dis-
tinguishes theistic evolution from intelligent design?
There are at least three basic, intertwined, distinguishing features. First,
at the level of how the terms have come to be used, the term “theistic evolu-
tion” is typically adopted by individuals who embrace biological design as
being entirely frontloaded with no subsequent divine intervention, whereas
the term “intelligent design” is typically adopted by individuals who em-
brace biological design as having involved divine intervention.30 Whereas
Warfield could legitimately describe his view as a form of theistic evolution

27. Robert John Russell, Cosmology: From Alpha to Omega (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008),
128.
28. Russell takes his position to be noninterventionist but is guilty of confusing epistemol-
ogy and ontology. Affirming direct divine guidance of evolution commits him to supernatural
interventions, even if such interventions are not epistemologically distinguishable from ran-
domness.
29. Intelligent design theorists are careful to make the point that the recognition of design
is logically prior to the question of the identity of the designer. Nevertheless, the recognition of
design raises the question of the nature of the designer.
30. This is not to claim that all proponents of intelligent design are in fact theists. It is to
observe that once biological design is admitted as genuine then a plausible answer to the further
question of the identity of the designer, is the theistic one.
Robert Larmer 401

without confusing his readers as to what he would go on to elaborate, this has

ceased to be the case. Similarly, in most peoples’ minds the term “intelligent
design” suggests direct supernatural involvement in how life originated and
developed.
Second, theistic evolutionists and intelligent design proponents disagree
on whether design is directly detectable in the structures of living organisms.
For theistic evolutionists, design is not in any way immediately apparent
in living beings, but rather amounts to a “reading of the physical world as
containing rumors of divine purpose.”31 To the extent that there is evidence
for design it is based on the general “character of the physical fabric of the
world . . . as the necessary ground for the possibility of any occurrence”32
and makes no appeal to specific events or structures, such as the origin of life
or the architecture of the eye, as evidence of design.33 Thus, theistic evolu-
tionist John Polkinghorne asserts that “faith may discern the divine hand at
work but it will not be possible to isolate and demonstrate that this is so”34
advocating for “a transition from natural theology to a theology of nature.
We are not now looking to the physical world for hints of God’s existence but
to God’s existence as an aid for understanding why things have developed in
the physical world in the manner that they have.”35 For theistic evolutionists,
the way life came to exist is logically consistent with a prior faith commit-
ment to design, but in no way is itself evidence for design.
Intelligent design theorists, on the other hand, argue that design is di-
rectly detectable in the origin and development of life. They grant that the
apparent fine-tuning of the universe provides necessary conditions for the
emergence of life, but deny it provides sufficient conditions for that emer-
gence. They note that even the simplest living beings contain vast systems
of intricately interconnected, enormously sophisticated machines, such that
they can maintain and reproduce themselves. If one cannot plausibly con-
ceive of a machine such as a laptop computer arising simply through the in-
terplay of natural forces, but as requiring the intervention of a rational agent
creating a certain material structure, then it is impossible to conceive of the
exponentially more sophisticated machines found in living entities as having
arisen simply through the interplay of natural forces. They argue that design,
in the sense of a rational agent intervening on natural processes to produce
material structures that would not otherwise occur is directly detectable, not
an inference based on a prior theological commitment.36
31. John Polkinghorne, Belief in God in an Age of Science (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1998), 10.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid. 72.
35. Ibid. 13.
36. That biological organisms understood as integrated systems of machines are sophisti-
cated enough to reproduce themselves does not obviate the need of a designer to produce such
machines originally. Such machines are direct evidence for the existence of a designer.
402 Philosophia Christi

A third key difference between theistic evolutionists and intelligent de-

sign proponents concerns the role that methodological naturalism should
play in explaining how life arose and developed. Methodological natural-
ism, the view that events in the world should always be explained in terms of
the operation of natural causes, seems a well-justified approach to explana-
tion in what may be termed “nomological” science, that is to say, inductive
generalization leading to the formulation of general laws, but it is not clear
that it is a well-justified approach to “historical” science, that is to say, the
explanation of specific, nonregularly occurring events, say the origin of life
or the abrupt appearance of radically new body structures in the fossil record,
whose causal explanations do not fit a covering law model.37
Theistic evolutionists insist on methodological naturalism as the sine
qua non of investigating life’s history. No events in that history can legiti-
mately be posited as the result of direct divine activity and any gaps in purely
natural explanations of that history must be viewed as the result of ignorance,
never as genuine evidence of supernatural intervention. Intelligent design
advocates, on the other hand, reject any blanket application of methodologi-
cal naturalism on the basis that it is an explanatory straitjacket that does not
allow one to follow where the evidence leads or may lead. They note that if
there has been supernatural intervention in the process of life’s development
and origin then gaps in purely material explanations of life’s history cannot
automatically be dismissed as simply indicators of our ignorance of how na-
ture works.38 They further note that adopting a methodology which rules out
nonnaturalist explanations tout court as illegitimate carries with it the danger
of being “forced to beat the data until it offers a naturalistic confession.”39

Theistic Evolution and the Denial of Deism

The insistence of contemporary theistic evolutionists that any biologi-

cal design must be frontloaded, that design is not directly detectable in liv-
ing things but must be affirmed based on a prior belief in God, and that the
adoption of methodological naturalism in historical science is nonnegotiable
37. As Paul Draper notes, “methodological naturalism cannot be adequately defended by
describing something called the scientific method then arguing that it cannot be applied to the
supernatural . . . [since] the method described will be characteristic of nomological science,
while appeals to the supernatural would naturally be used to answer historical questions” (“God,
Science, and Naturalism,” in Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion, ed. William Wain-
wright (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 290.
38. See, e.g., Robert Larmer, “Is There Anything Wrong with ‘God of the Gaps’ Reason-
ing?,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 52, no. 3 (2002): 129–42. Also, Wayne
Rossiter, Shadow of Oz (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2015), 15–16.
39. Jeffrey Koperski, The Physics of Theism (West Sussex, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2015),
212. Koperski would not align himself with the Intelligent Design movement, but he has shown
himself willing to criticize methodological naturalism as a necessary condition of scientific
inquiry.
Robert Larmer 403

appears to justify the conclusion that in its modern form theistic evolution
is deistic in its thinking. This conclusion is vigorously resisted by those in
theistic evolutionist circles.
One finds, for instance, that BioLogos’s website, under the heading
What We Believe, states “we reject ideologies such as Deism that claim the
universe is self-sustaining, [or] that God is no longer active in the natural
world” and affirms that “in both natural and supernatural ways, God contin-
ues to be directly involved in creation and in human history.”40 But are these
claims that they can in good conscience make? To the extent that BioLogos
authors are willing to affirm divine interventions in salvation history they
cannot be viewed as completely deistic in their thinking.41 Such affirmation,
however, in no way validates their claim that they are not deistic in their ap-
proach to life’s history. On what basis, then, do they attempt to defend this
latter claim?
Two interrelated lines of argument are discernible in their attempted
defense. The first argument involves a mischaracterization of deism, which
allows them to claim that their position can be distinguished from deism. In
a quotation already cited, deism is characterized as the claim that “the uni-
verse is self-sustaining.”42 Philosophical deists, however, do not claim that
the universe is self-sustaining, but rather that God never directly intervenes
such as to alter what would otherwise be the outworking of secondary cre-
ated causes. We find, for example, Thomas Chubb claiming that “God, at the
creation, put the natural world under the direction of certain laws; . . . [and
that] the divine energy, or those immediate acts of God’s power, by which the
system of nature is kept together, and continually upheld and preserved . . .
[is] a part of God’s general providence.”43 Likewise, Thomas Morgan asserts
not only that the “government and direction of nature, by general laws, . . .
40. BioLogos, “About Us,” https://biologos.org/about-us/. On page 49 of his book Belief in
God in an Age of Science, Polkinghorne also wants to distance himself from deism asserting that
if “the insights of a providence at work in human lives and in universal history, are to carry the
weight of meaning that they do in Christian tradition and experience, then they must not simply
be pious ways of speaking about a process from which particular divine activity is in fact absent
and in which the divine presence is unexpressed, save for a general letting-be.”
41. Not all authors featured on BioLogos’s website are willing to grant divine intervention.
Christopher Knight advocates a form of “strong theistic naturalism” in which miracles should
not be understood as the result of divine intervention in the world, but rather as implicit nature
(“Divine Action: Naturalism and Incarnation,” https://biologos.org/blogs/jim-stump-faith-and-
science-seeking-understanding/divine-action-naturalism-and-incarnation). In a similar vein,
Amos Yong argues that “we ought to jettison the natural-supernatural binary” positing that “a
miracle signals some yet unknown although possible emergent dimension of how creation will
come to behave . . . in the resurrection of Jesus, we have a glimpse of an emergent feature
of our evolutionary world” (“Divine Action, Theodicy, and the Holy Spirit,” https://biologos.
org/blogs/jim-stump-faith-and-science-seeking-understanding/divine-action-theodicy-and-the-
holy-spirit).
42. BioLogos, “About Us.”
43. Thomas Chubb, “A Vindication of the Author’s Short Dissertation on Providence,” in A
Collection of Tracts on Various Subjects, vol. 2, part 1 (London, 1743), 50.
404 Philosophia Christi

obtain and secure the best order and constitution of things . . . without oblig-
ing the Deity or Author of Nature, to suspend his laws, or alter his prescribed
rules and measure of action, by frequently interposing on particular incidents
and emergencies”44 but that the “support and continuation of existence and
motion is as necessary an effect of God’s presence, power and authority as
creation itself.”45
Such passages make clear that deists are not concerned to deny that
God sustains the world, but rather to insist that God never intervenes in the
world’s history. They also make clear that even the most conservative of
contemporary theistic evolutions are deistic in their treatment of life’s his-
tory. Darrell Falk, past president and currently senior scholar at Biologos
writes that
natural processes are a manifestation of God’s ongoing presence in the
universe, The Intelligence [design?] in which I as a Christian believe,
has been built into the system from the beginning, and it is realized
through God’s ongoing activity which is manifest through the natural
laws. Those laws are a description of that which emerges, that which
is a result of, God’s ongoing presence and activity in the universe. I
see no biblical, theological, or scientific reason to extend that to extra
supernatural “boosts” along the way, although I also perceive no good
reason to close the door on that possibility.46

In a similar vein, Karl Giberson, another theistic evolutionist prominently

associated with BioLogos, claims that
at the deepest level of reality, the world is so simple it boggles the
mind. There are only four kinds of interactions that occur in nature:
gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear and weak nuclear. Ev-
ery event, from a thought in your head, to the chirp of a bird, to the
explosion of a distant start results from these four interactions.47

Passages such as these fail to demonstrate any difference between

Chubb and Morgan’s typically deistic view of natural history and Falk and
Giberson’s supposedly nondeistic view of that history.
A second line of argument by which theistic evolutionists attempt to
distinguish their position from deism is their claim that theistic evolution
acknowledges that God is intimately involved in the world, whereas deism
does not. Jim Stump of BioLogos takes this tack asserting

44. Thomas Morgan, Physico-theology: Or, a Philosophico-moral Disquisition concerning

Human Nature, Free Agency, Moral Government, and Divine Providence (London, 1741), 76.
45. Thomas Morgan, The Moral Philosopher (London, 1738), 188.
46. Darrel Falk, “Thoughts on ‘Darwin’s Doubt,’” https://biologos.org/blogs/archive/
thoughts-on-darwins-doubt-reviewing-darwins-doubt-darrel-falk-part-1. It is to Falk’s credit
that he includes the concluding clause, though one wonders how such a claim can be squared
with his acceptance of methodological naturalism as a prerequisite of investigating life’s history.
47. Karl Giberson, Saving Darwin (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), 217.
Robert Larmer 405

we are not deists . . . what we would claim, is that God is involved in

all of it. God’s creative power and sustaining power works through all
of creation. If we were to discover completely persuasive scientific
explanation for how life developed and even began on Earth, we don’t
think that therefore means that God had nothing to do with it.48

We find in this type of argument both a mischaracterization of deism

and an equivocation on two senses of what it means to say that God is “in-
volved” in creation. As has already been noted, deism does not deny that God
constantly sustains creation and is thus very much involved in its continuing
existence. What it does deny is that God is involved in the history of the
universe in the sense of directly intervening in the outworking of natural
processes so to produce events that would not otherwise occur. On a deistic
view, God is involved in creation in the sense of being the author and sus-
tainer of its very existence, but not involved in the sense of being an actor
within its history. Distinguishing these two senses of divine involvement in
creation makes clear that Stump and other proponents of this argument fail
to differentiate their position on life’s origin and development from that of
deism.

Conclusion

The claim that intelligent design in its most typical expression is deistic
or semi-deistic is ill-founded. The claim, however, that theistic evolution
in its most typical expression is deistic is justified. That some theologically
conservative theistic evolutionists accept divine intervention in human his-
tory absolves those individuals of the charge of being total deists, but it is
nevertheless true that their treatment of life’s history is thoroughly deistic.
It deserves stress that nothing in what has been said should be taken as
denying that the degree to which the origin and development of life can be
explained in terms of natural causes should be open to empirical investiga-
tion. Equally important to stress is that such inquiry needs to be wary of
adopting methodological and philosophical commitments that a priori deter-
mine what form conclusions must take. Unfortunately, theistic evolutionists
in their insistence on the blanket adoption of methodological naturalism and
their refusal to consider any form of design other than frontloading, routinely
embrace such commitments, raising the very real worry that their treatment
of the empirical evidence is skewed. Certainly, in the case of theologically
conservative theistic evolutionists who admit divine intervention in human
history, one wants to ask why it is not at least prima facie plausible to think
that such intervention may have taken place prior to human history. If, for
48. Jim Stump et al., “Discussing Origins: Divine Action and the Meaning of ‘Creation,’”
https://biologos.org/blogs/archive/discussing-origins-divine-action-and-the-meaning-of-cre-
ation.
406 Philosophia Christi

example, one takes seriously that God was willing to intervene in the natural
order to multiply loaves and fishes when Jesus fed the five thousand then one
can scarcely rule out in advance the plausibility of such intervention in the
originating of fish but must approach the data with a much more open mind
than do theistic evolutionists.