Overman, Richard H. Evolution and the Christian Doctrine of Creation: A  Whiteheadian Interpretation. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1967.

Abstract

This definitive study arrives at an understanding of evolution that is acceptable to the best of both scientific and Biblical scholarship today and one that allows for the belief that God is literally the Creator and Sustainer of the world. Why do we find it so hard to speak now of God as Creator? Dr. Overman feels it is because the scientific world view fails to nourish a lively apprehension of God. He bases his book on a belief that biological evolution must be explained by using both the objective categories of modern, scientific thought and the subjective, personal categories of Biblical thought. Substantiating this belief, his discussion shows that nature includes final causation as well as the efficient causation which scientists have studied so fruitfully for centuries, and thus the purposes of a real God are partially determinative of every event. He describes the decline of the Aristotelian outlook, which overstressed the role of purpose or final creation in nature, and its gradual replacement by the modern scientific vision, which recognizes neither natural nor divine purpose. In contrast, he proposes an understanding of evolution that attempts to give proper expression to the fullness of both scientific and Biblical experience, allowing for the belief that God is literally the Creator and Sustainer of the world. Here the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead has proved to be an indispensable tool, one which Dr. Overman believes surpasses all rival concepts as a vehicle for allowing the depths of human experience to reach expression in the form of ideas. Turning to the Christian doctrine of Creation, Dr. Overman sketches its development from the Old Testament to Macquarrie and Gilkey and evaluates it from the Whiteheadian perspective. He then proposes a concept of divine Creation which incorporates three major points: (a) God creates a purposeful real world and sustains it from lapsing into chaos; (b) Creation and the realization of God's purposes in history are linked together; (c) Human personality is the part of nature where God's aim for beauty in the world may be most fully realized. Thus he points a way to a faith tenable to modern science-oriented minds.