Created from Dust… through Evolution?
I have posted in the past about the Creation Account in Psalm 104. Recall for a moment verse 29:
29 When you hide your face,
they are terrified;
when you take away their breath,
they die and return to the dust.
This is either a reference to the animals of the sea, or to all animals, both land and sea alike. Previously, I interpreted this to cover only sea creatures. However, for this discussion, either interpretation will do.
Notice that in this account of creation, the animals return to the dust. Therefore, it stands to reason that they came from the dust. However, here’s the thing. It isn’t the entire population that all returns to the dust at one time, but rather it is each individual sea creature returning to the dust that this verse is speaking of. And it isn’t talking of only the first generation of animals returning to the dust, but clearly every individual animal, up to and including those of our time, that “return” to the dust.
If each animal “returns” to the dust, then “return” is only an appropriate word if each creature came from the dust. Well, the animals alive today can be said to “come” from the dust if you go back to the very beginning of their ancestral line. Whether that be Days 5 and 6 of Creation or Evolution, it would seem acceptable to say that something that has been descended from something else has been created from the dust, whether the animal was born of the dust directly or indirectly.
Therefore, all animals are created of the dust. Therefore, so are we, and so was Adam. Therefore, Adam might have had ancestors. Therefore creation of Adam through Evolution would be consistent with creating him from the dust. And if that is the case, then the life God breathed into Adam after he was created was not his physical life, but was his spirit, his self-awareness, his free-will, that part of him that makes mankind like God in certain ways… ways in which an animal would, too if it had the same thing breathed in:
7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.