I have found that one of the most common objections that Christians raise as to why evolution should be rejected comes from how they interpret Genesis 2:7. Because the "creation" of Adam is considered to be an "act of God", then this rules out any type of natural process. Therefore, human beings could not have evolved.
This line of reasoning is faulty, because it assumes that when the Bible speaks of God as "acting", it rules out the possibility that this action was accomplished by what we would dub a "natural process". Yet when we look at the early chapters of Genesis (or elsewhere in Scripture), the distinction between "natural" and "supernatural" is foreign to the ancient perspective, especially the perspective in Genesis. Such a distinction of categories would have made no sense to the ancient readers. Because of this, we cannot claim the Bible says something that would not be understood in the original context.
The ancient Israelites believed that God is always active in the world through numerous, and often undetectable ways. They did not have the categories of "natural" and "supernatural". This means that when certain people claim that the creation account of Genesis 2 are special acts of creation by God, and that they bypass the natural process, they are assuming that the ancient author had the intent, the language, and the concepts to support drawing such a strict dichotomy between the "natural" and the "supernatural".
When we as 21st century, scientific people look at the world, with all its regularity and predictability, we have come up with laws and theories to describe the workings of these "natural" process. When the ancients observed this phenomenon, say for example, the planting of a seed, they would have definitely understood that if you plant a seed and give it the right conditions, it will grow, but God would still be involved. This means that in Scripture, just because God is taking an active role in something, doesn't mean He is not doing it through a "natural" process. In other words, every time God is said to 'act" or "create", it is wrong for us to read into that "a supernatural event that bypasses natural process."
The issue is one of linguistics. The Hebrew language does not have words that are meant to classify differing levels of causation, such as we do today. In other words, the language of the Hebrew Bible cannot be used to either confirm or deny how we classify cause and effect as either natural or supernatural. They simply just didn't have those categories.
Let me explain it this way: When the Hebrews are seeking to describe God's involvement with creation, their intent is not to specify and distinguish a "supernatural" event over the way in which things normally work in the world. Rather, the general intent seems to be to identify certain acts as "signs and wonders." These specific acts are meant to show God's love and power towards His people. Other times, the intent of the language, as well as the context, is to show that the God of Israel, not another god, is in control of event X. Take for example the 10 Plagues of Exodus. When God sent these plagues on Egypt, it was to demonstrate that His power was superior to the Egyptian gods. The focus of the text is that God can do what these other gods cannot. There is nothing in the text that implies a distinction between "supernatural" events (God bypassing the natural, scientific process) or "natural" (God acting through the natural process).
Can God bypass normal processes? Yes, He can (more on this later), but it is wrong for us to infer that He did just because the Old Testament said that He acted. If this is the case, then how do we tell the difference between that which is "miraculous" and that which is not? By looking at the context and the logistics of what is being described in the event. For example, in the New Testament, when Jesus turned water into wine, He obviously bypassed the natural process that is used to make wine. Because of this, many YECs would have us believe that in the same way, God bypassed the natural process to create Adam. But does the creation account of Adam provide for us a scenario that made bypassing the natural process necessary? For example, at the wedding in Cana, there is clearly no time for the natural process to be applied to make more wine. They needed it now. Given this example, it means that in order for us to determine whether the natural process was bypassed in some way, we have to look at the scenario and the context. In Genesis 2, there is no distinction being drawn by the language, nor is there a scenario that rules out that natural processes were used to create human beings.
But wait a minute, doesn't the Genesis text say that Adam was formed by God from the dust of the earth? It certainly does, but what does that mean? As we will soon see in our posts on Genesis, in the ancient creation narratives, the first humans are always presented in archatypical terms, and their creation is not about their chemical make up, but meant to show both their function and their relationship between themselves, the gods, and the rest of creation. Therefore, one reason that Adam is said to be made from dust is to help us understand that we are all made from dust- designed to be weak and mortal (see also Ps. 103:14; 1 Cor. 15:47-48). The creation of Adam is not meant to show us how different Adam was, but to show us how we are all the same. Neither is it meant to show us that Adam was created in a "supernatural" manner, while the rest of us are born through natural processes. Rather, what we see is that man was made mortal from his inception, but God was going to provide a way of escape.
It is worth restating again, that the biological origin of humanity was not the concern of either the writer, nor his audience, or anyone in the ANE for that matter. They had no differing categories of causation to distinguish between God making Adam and God making the rest of us. God made Adam, and God made us. In the Hebrew language, the same verb can be used in both instances. This means that God is no less involved with one than the other.
In our modern discussions, when we try to make distinctions in Scripture between the "natural" and the "supernatural" acts of God, we are doing two things: First, we are pushing our modern categories into the Bible, which then forces the Bible to say things that it actually doesn't say. Second, we are also limiting God's action. Once we go the route of labeling one act of God as "supernatural", we imply that there are events that can be explained by normal cause and effect and are thus not the acts of God. This then drifts towards deism (God only acts some of the time) or a God of the gaps (we can't explain something naturally, therefore God). This type of thinking has done much to bring about the great division that we see today between science and God.
In closing, what all this means is that since the Bible does not insist that God bypassed scientific processes in the material creation of human beings, it is wrong to use the Bible to rule out evolution. God is involved in His creation no matter the level of natural processes we can detect. It also means that we need to rethink how we use such categories of "natural" and "supernatural" when it comes to discussing how God acts in the world.