The God of Hope - and Evolution

The God of Hope - and Evolution


Every so often one of our local pastors feels impelled to write or speak out again the evil called “Evolution.” Recently, a local Baptist preacher wrote a “sermonette” for the local bi-weekly paper. He titled his sermonette, “Folly of Evolution.” I thought about writing an opposing sermonette, but decided against it, since that would accomplish little or nothing, But when I am confronted with items of this sort, I tend to think things out by writing about them. Here is, for what little it is worth, my response.

My colleague wrote that he accepted the fact of evolution, but, he said, people misunderstand it. He, of course, bases his ideas on the Book of Genesis, which has been given pride of place by long-ago Jewish scholars. My colleague writes that what we call “creation” was actually God’s “recreation” of a prior creation. The immediate problem which arises, of course, is that this implies, very strongly, that God didn’t get it right before. There have been, science tells us, five major extinction events. If my friend is correct, then God messed up multiple times. It’s as if he said, “Well, screwed that one up. I’ll try again with some different critters.” Eventually, of course, we turned out to be the next critter. But, and this is a big “but,” given what we’ve done to the planet, how can we make any claim to being the final “good” thing?

My poor literalist friends are, it seems, getting themselves trapped in a maze of their own creation for in their desire to condemn evolutionary science they create erroneous science and support this with an inadequate theology. There is, of course, an alternate explanation. I am indebted to The Reverend Canon Dr. Sir John Polkinghorne, whose book “The God of Hope and the End of the World,” has given me many hours of challenging and delightful reading in this area. I have, frankly, stolen part of his title for this little “sermonette.” The other author I must acknowledge is Dr. John F. Haught, professor of theology at Georgetown University, whose book “God after Darwin: a Theology of Evolution” is an exceptionally well written treatise on modern natural process theology (my term for it).

Dr. Polkinghorne is a former particle physicist (and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth for his work in reconciling science and religion) and is a Fellow of the Royal Society (Great Britain’s premier scientific organization). The book I am using was printed in 2002, at which time Polkinghorne was “Canon Theologian to Liverpool.”

Polkinghorne cites St. Paul, “Faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. (1 Cor 13:13)” Polkinghorne, however, focuses on hope. He quotes Jügen Moltmann, “From first to last, and not merely in the epilogue, Christianity is eschatology, is hope, forward looking and forward moving, and therefore also revolutionary and transforming the present.” (note: eschatology is the study of end things) But it is all too easy to misunderstand hope. Polkinghorne quotes Janet Soskice that “even in churches today there is a tendency to represent hope as if it were a psychological mood. ‘Lack of faith and charity can be treated by prayer, but lack of hope is treated with antidepressants.’”

Understanding the real significance of hope involves differentiating two very different components of eschatology; futurist eschatology, which focuses on the final end and transformation of this reality into the new reality of God’s realm; and realized eschatology, which focuses upon the transformations of life that take place in present history. Hope is deeply involved in both components. Polkinghorne points out that “For the Christian, hope arises out of endurance in the face of adversity, based on trust in the love of God (Romans 5:3-5).” He goes on to note that hope is, at its essence, moral in its character, “for it is a good future for which we may dare to hope.”

If we have this hope then we should be prepared to work for it. The ultimate result of this lies in the hands of God, but this must not deter us from letting ourselves be changed; letting ourselves become new creation. Hence a realized eschatology involves change, involves all of God’s creation, involves evolving in ways we do not and cannot control or direct. My pastoral colleague cited an unknown source who explained evolution as a process of sea worm deciding to go on land, land worm deciding to walk, and ape deciding to become human. This is, of course, a non-scientific statement and would never been uttered by an individual with even a modest scientific education. I often hear my fundamentalist friends say that “All biology teachers teach that man descended from an ape.” I must admit I’ve never heard this. I collect older science textbooks and my collection goes all the way back to Darwin. None ever said that.

From a theological standpoint, the statement is simply nonsense, for even theologians recognize that the ability to decide questions lies with humans. As a prayer in the Episcopal Church’s Book of Common Prayer has it, “You have blessed us with reason, memory, and skill.” That is our blessing or curse, depending upon how you look at things. But the point is that we, alone among the animals, can think and reason, and decide. Everything else is driven by more primitive processes.

Before Darwin, Natural Theology sought to seek God in nature, an effort that failed for a number of reasons. Today, natural theology is making a comeback, often among scientists, but increasingly among theologians. John Haught’s book explores this in some depth (it is a “popular” book, not one written with professional theologians as an audience). Haught writes, “Even though much of the revival of natural theology is now the work of scientists… it is an important instance of contemporary engagement of religious thought with the natural setting of evolution.” Modern natural theology is very process oriented. He also writes, “… all the moments of an evolving world are harvested into the divine experience…. Here all the suffering, struggle, loss, and triumph in evolution are finally endowed with eternal meaning.” One interesting proposal from process theologians is that “The ‘point’ of the universe [may have] something to do with the production of a beauty that is God’s experience never fades but grows increasingly wider and deeper and abides everlastingly.”

In this scheme, Darwinism is but a recent episode in a larger cosmic story. Darwin, however, has played a role in the development of the modern theological notions of creation, eschatology, revelation, divine love, divine power, and redemption.

Creation, to take just one of these notions, is “central to the faith of millions,” notes Haught. He goes on to indicate that “Taditionally Christian theology spoke of three dimensions of God’s creative activity: original creation (creatio originalis), ongoing creation (creatio continua), and new creation or fulfillment of creation (creatio nova).” Prior to the modern era only the first of these was stressed. But with the advent of modern critical analysis and modern science, the second and third areas have taken on greater emphasis. With this modern thought, Haught notes, “… the fact of evolution now allows theology to realize more palpably than ever that creation is not just an ‘original’ but also an ongoing and constantly new reality. This ongoing and ever changing reality is part of the realized eschatology previously mentioned.

Bringing the two streams of thought together, we can see that hope is inextricably intertwined with the process of creation, the continuing evolution of all of creation. It is in this hope that we can perceive that all that is, both seen and unseen, are moving. In Haught’s words, “And so the horizon of human expectations [can] begin to shift toward a future that includes the universe and the entire sweep of its evolution. This moving is a seeking for the future, it is the hope for that future. To paraphrase St. Paul, “… the whole of creation has been groaning in labor pains until now…. (Romans 8-22).” It groans as it seeks fulfillment and, after Darwin we can “speak more assuredly than ever about the inseparability of cosmic and human destiny.

Evolution is not something to fear. In fact, it appears to be the means by which God has, and is, calling creation forward into new creation. That the future will bring us closer to God, to that end-thing we cannot yet see, is an article of faith, expressed in our hope, trusting in God’s love.

Feast day of John of the Cross