Newspaper Page Text
Thursday, April 27, 2000
The Southern Cross, Page 8
A way of viewing evolution
through a Christian lens
By John F. Haught
Catholic News Service
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V-^an science be reconciled with
Christian faith in a loving, powerful,
creative and redemptive God? Some
would say no, others would be doubt
ful. But most of us have a hunch that
science and religion can live together.
Still, it is not always clear how to
make the science-faith connection,
a*nd much confusion comes from not
doing it thoughtfully. Superficial li
aisons are worse in the long run
than an indefinite standoff. How
ever, a standoff is hardly ideal ei
ther.
But won’t exposure to new scien
tific information undermine my faith?
Isn’t it simpler to keep the timeless
truths of faith carefully quarantined,
sealed off from contact with the tran
sitory views of scientists?
Can the most interesting scientific
ideas, especially those having to do
with evolution, ever be reconciled with
religious belief? Finally, what does the
evolution of life, or of the whole Big-
Bang universe, possibly have to do
with my trust in God?
Actually, when carefully sepa
rated from the materialist ideology
in which some scientists package it,
evolution may prove to be not so
n jch a “danger” as a great gift to
theology.
■ ■ a
No matter how difficult the pursuit
of truth is — and often it is difficult —
believers can trust that it always will
lead back to God. Embrace the truth,
no matter how initially shocking it
might be, and, as the French writer
Simone Weil put it, you will fall into
the arms of Christ.
In 1 past, prominent leaders in
the eh ch at times resisted genu
ine er mnter with new scientific
ideas. e need only recall the reac
tions 1 some to Copernicus, Galileo
and D »vin. Even today many reli
gious mple turn away from the
idea of volution.
What fundamentally is at issue in
the case of evolution is whether we
any longer plausibly can think of the
universe as a purposeful creation of
God.
At first sight, the meandering,
apparently blind and experimental
character of life’s lumbering terres
trial journey, along with the im
mensity of time it took for life and
humans to emerge on this planet,
might make us wonder what is go
ing on in such a strange world.
Would an intelligent God have
“fooled around” for 3.8 billion
years after the first appearance of
life before creating intelligent be
ings? Why so much cruelty and
suffering, wasteful extinctions,
discarding of the ill-adapted and
survival of the reproductively “fit”
along the way?
Evolution, we know today, is
not unambiguously cruel and
heartless. It also could be said to
involve a wonderful cooperation of
life with life; and Earth’s life-
story, viewed in its entirety, ex
hibits a breathtaking “grandeur”
that enraptured Darwin himself.
Still, evolution is not always be
nign, and a sound Christian theology
must face the harsh facts along with
all the marvelous beauty nature has
brought forth.
» b a
What I believe a theology of evolu
tion will find is that the notion of
God can be deepened and expanded
by its encounter with biological evo
lution. The understanding of nature
implied in Darwinian evolution de
mands that people abandon any
view of God that ignores the self
giving and self-effacing character of
the divine mystery.
This understanding affirms that
all of the struggle and suffering in
life’s evolution is God’s struggle and
suffering too. Nature itself is cruci
form.
According to this understanding,
the God whose image radiates from
the humble, self-giving, suffering love
of Jesus is not one who overpowers the
world, forcefully cramming it into a
prefabricated frame. Instead the Cre
ator wants a world that will flourish
in a way that renders it distinct from
God. Only such a world can enter into
loving relationship with an infinite
love.
Divine power, therefore, includes a
measure of loving self-restraint in
which the world is permitted to
emerge over the course of time as
something other than God. A world
truly loved by God must have room to
wander about, experimenting with
various possibilities.
Love allows the universe to remain
unfinished for now. If God had com
pleted creation in such a way that the
world was frozen into a deadness with
no future, it would have been an ex
tension of God’s being rather than an
independent creation.
Evolution, therefore, seems to me
to be essential to a world truly loved
by God. And this means that the
life-story is permitted to be experi
mental. To be alive at all, life must
have room to wander as it finds its
way into God.
Christian faith gives us a sense of
God as self-abandoning, self-giving
mystery. The evolutionary picture of
nature invites us to embrace, in a
wider way than ever before, this sur
prising, disturbing and powerfully
salvific image of God.
(Haught is chairman of the theol
ogy department at Georgetown Uni
versity. His most recent book is “God
After Darwin: A Theology of Evolu
tion.” Westview Press, 2000.)
All contents ccpyright©2000 by CNS
RTHOUGHT
Rr-
cience and faith need each other, and each may suffer by “going it alone.” The Jubilee Day for Scientists May
25 u 7 accent that point.
Ac ually, this day now has become known as the Jubilee for Men and Women From the World of Learning
because, as one Vatican official explained, by science is meant every exercise of human intellectual activity directed
io the search for truth in a rational and methodical way.
Cardinal Paul Poupard, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, announced plans for this jubilee day,
calling for “a new season of dialogue between science and faith.”
The jubilee for science “will take place in a profoundly different climate” than existed at the time of Galileo in the
17th century, the cardinal said.
A Vatican scientist, Jesuit Father George Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory, said in a 1996 speech that
today religious and scientific leaders ought to be able to appreciate each others’ benefits.
And Pope John Paul II said — also in 1996 — that “the need for dialogue and cooperation between science and
faith has become ever more urgent and promising.”
18 David Gibson, Editor, Faith Alive!
V^hristian faith gives us a sense of
God as self-abandoning, self-giving
mystery The evolutionary picture of
nature invites us to embrace ... this
surprising, disturbing and powerfully
CNS photo by Bill Wittman