As mentioned in my previous posts, Part 1 and Part 2, I will now take up issue 2, the Image of God, or to be more specific, “How does evolution affect our self understanding as being made in the image of God?”
There are several problems that evolution seems to create for the concept of humans as made in the image of God, but I think the big ones are,
1) If humans evolved from lower forms of life, then this means humans are not radically different from animals… does this mean we are but one kind of animal among many?
2) If humans appeared on the scene through the process of evolution, then what are we to make of Adam and Eve and, consequently, the doctrine of Original Sin? (more…)
To continue from Part 1, the first theological issue I want to look at which I believe is critical to the process of talking about God in the context of our knowledge of evolution is the issue of creation, or the creator God. How can it be said that God created everything if everything is in a constant state of change, constant evolution? Personally, I don’t think this particular issue is problematic from within a thomistic framework, which is a theological framework in which God is on a different ontological plane than the rest of reality. In other words, a reality that is in a constant state of change was already a part of the classical thomistic understanding of created reality. God as such was not a part of created reality but rather was the source of all created reality and as such did not enter into the constant state of change. I suspect that it would take very little effort to re-vision a thomistic theological understanding within our current framework of evolutionary reality. There are other aspects of thomistic thought that would make it a difficult framework to work within, however… but I do think it’s possible. It is but one among many, I think. There are also possible ways of conceptualizing God that would include God on the same ontological plane as the rest of reality.
As I argued in my article The Church and the Cosmological Revolution, the opposition by the Catholic Church to Galileo and the cosmological revolution in general, was due to a pastoral concern. To summarize my argument, the news that the Earth was NOT the center of the universe shattered the common understanding of how everything was put together. In that understanding, the new vision of the sun at the center of the universe and Earth as one body among many that circled the sun was tantamount to saying that there was no God. The church leaders knew very well that such a radical change in world views would leave the vast majority of believers without a framework for understanding who God was and where we stood in relation to God. They may not have articulated it quite this way, but they understood the threat. It would take a very long time for theologians to articulate an understanding of God within this new vision… and in fact, to this day the struggle to do so continues. It’s not only the Catholic Church nor even Christianity that struggles with the new vision… many religions are still going through the same struggle. The modern day version of this struggle is being played out in the so-called “Intelligent Design” debate.
I’ve discovered the musical group The Low Anthem, thanks to Letterman. They played a song on his show the other night from their second album, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin. I’ve embedded the official video for it from YouTube below.
It’s an intriguing, as well as hauntingly beautiful, song. Theologians take note: I believe this captures the spirit of the Intelligentsia regarding the cultural aftershocks left by Darwin’s theory of evolution. I think evolution is well established and efforts to disprove it are in vain… mainly because these efforts are mostly non-scientific. If there were scientific arguments against evolution that would be one thing… but so-called challenges to evolution such as Intelligent Design are not scientific… they are religious objections that, very awkwardly, try and use science to bolster a conclusion already held: evolution is anti-God and therefore must be wrong.
Theologians, I say take note because I think the sadness of this video comes from the loss of God that evolution brings to most. I myself don’t think God is lost as a result, but I would agree that it takes a real bit of effort to get to this understanding. I also agree there are plenty of folks out there that are all too happy to conclude that atheism is the only response. I don’t fault them for their atheism, but I do fault them if they insist that we all be atheists… that’s just fundamentalism and intolerance of it’s own kind.
But we do, as theists, face a real loss of God for most people. I like this video and song because it states this fact poignantly. If theologians are to do their job aright, then this is where we start.
As mentioned in my previous posts, Part 1 and Part 2, I will now take up issue 2, the Image of God, or to be more specific, “How does evolution affect our self understanding as being made in the image of God?”
To continue from 