nature, and over each other.
Thus, theology coevolved with science in the nineteenth century. There is a commonplace view which holds that a crucial difference between science and religion is that religion is rigid, but science changes. Thus, a “fundamental difference between religion and science is that the former is all about the celebration of certainty, whereas the latter is all about the quantification of doubt.”4 But that simply isn’t true. Not only does “religion” change over time, but “science” can be pretty darn dogmatic as well. They are not at all so readily separable that way.
Theology and Evolution
There is in fact a rich literature by modern Christian scholars on the meaning of evolution for modern Christian life, or on being a Christian in a post-Darwinian world. They all agree that denying evolution is a stupid way to tackle the problem. Smart ways generally invoke God’s action through evolution, and generally try to unpack the many possible meanings of “create.” As one eminent Christian theologian recently put it:
creation science is largely ignored in most mainstream contemporary theology, which is much more interested in what the doctrine of creation says theologically about the world and the place of human beings in it … The reason it is rejected in theology is not primarily because it is bad science, but because it is bad theology: In particular, it tends to assume a competitive relation between divine action and natural secondary causation, such that God and nature are taken to be alternative possible explanations of events, thereby denying the immediate dependence of all creation on the Creator for the gift of its existence.5
If your goal is to make the natural realm meaningful by recourse to a supernatural realm that is inaccessible to science, then you might as well regard them as complementary, rather than as antagonistic.
But if the history of life does have meaning, unfortunately scientists are not the people to ask about it, because they know about the history of life, but not about its meaning, since that is a question not for science, but for semiotics and metaphysics. ‘Metaphysics’ is a word that is usually articulated scornfully by scientists, most likely, as a philosopher once noted, because they are afraid of having their metaphysics questioned.
There have been, nevertheless, thoughtful approaches taken by Christian scholars toward rendering evolution meaningful. One influential trajectory was followed by the Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955). Teilhard worked with a teleological theory of evolution – seeing the emergence of our species as the unfolding of a cosmic plan – a genre of theory that is generally rejected by science but is nevertheless frustratingly impossible to disprove. Teilhard then went on to describe the details of that plan, involving the co-evolution of life, mind, and spirit (which we generally tend to treat separately in science, except for spirit), and their ultimate optimistic realization at the mystical Omega Point sometime in the distant future. The eminent evolutionary geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky found Teilhard’s spiritual thought intriguing. On the other hand, the eminent paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson (himself the son of missionaries) once told me it was the only substantive matter he ever disagreed with his great friend Dobzhansky about. But some theologians find Teilhard’s evolutionary ideas valuable; he was quoted at length, for example, by Bishop Michael Curry in his sermon at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle (see endnote 4, Chapter 4).
Another influential approach was taken by the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, who, for a nonbeliever (and erstwhile collaborator with the greatest atheist of all, Bertrand Russell), certainly expended a lot of effort on thinking constructively about God. Whitehead invites you to imagine a universe continually being created, and full of possibilities. In this universe the units of nature are not objects, but transformations; not beings, but becomings. God may nudge you toward certain ones, but this is a universe fundamentally in flux, and its Creation marked not the end but rather the beginning of creating. As a modern theologian asks rhetorically, “But what if God is not just an originator of order but also the disturbing wellspring of novelty? And, moreover, what if the cosmos is not just an ‘order’ … but a still unfinished process? … And suppose also that God is less concerned with imposing a plan or design on this process than with providing it opportunities to participate in its own creation?”6
There are, of course, many other intellectual paths toward reconciling Christianity and evolution. One obvious route is to parse the word “create” – particularly when you consider that it can mean various things simply in English. One can create a book by composing it or by printing it, which are quite distinct activities. One can create a diamond by crystallizing carbon, or by cutting and polishing a stone. One can create a pot by molding it into shape, or create a riot by inspiring others into action. One can create a monster literally (like Victor Frankenstein’s creature) or metaphorically (like Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News). And that is without even considering what nuances might exist in the Hebrew or Greek cognates.
And once you settle on what “created” might mean, you can start thinking about what the Bible might mean by the phrase “in the image of God.” Indeed, this has been fertile ground for theological discussion for centuries. The modern theologian Wentzel van Huyssteen argues for thinking about the imago Dei “as having emerged from nature by natural evolutionary processes.”7 Theologian/biologist Celia Deane-Drummond draws on evolution and the imago Dei to develop a multi-species morality for the modern age.
Clearly Christianity and Darwinism are not antithetical, although there are also prominent scientists who willingly take the bait, elaborate on their own weirdly joyless metaphysics, and proclaim that life is meaningless, there is no God or ultimate justice, “just blind, pitiless indifference” in the universe.8 So there! Obviously this might be true, but to confuse it with a scientific statement is certainly a mistake. Rather, it is an offensive salvo in a frustratingly defensive war over our ancestry. As the sociologist Bruno Latour acknowledges, “it is certainly a great pity that the only religious minds that neo-Darwinians ever encounter come from creationism.”9
Ancestry and Relatedness
There is a broad intellectual frame available to us to help make sense of the vigor and longevity of the rejection of evolution. That frame is kinship, the sense people make of their place in a social and moral world by conceptualizing their descent and relatedness to others. This is a particularly human thing to do, as the apes do not (as far as we can tell) have relationships homologous to spouse, in-law, father, grandma – much less kissing cousin, baby daddy, heir, adopted child, step-child, or remote ancestor. These relationships are what structure the course of our lives; for a notable example, in Game of Thrones Jon Snow is reminded continually that he is Ned Stark’s bastard son (before tragically falling in love with his aunt).
In case of human evolution, though, the passion is focused on whether our ancestors were apes. The ancestors, as noted earlier, are always sacred, in the broad anthropological sense of “special.” If you think the apes in our ancestry aren’t special, try denying them to a biologist. Benjamin Disraeli made the options clear in 1864: “Is man an ape or an angel? My lord, I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence the contrary view, which is, I believe, foreign to the conscience of humanity.”
Of course as a prominent Jew-turned-Anglican, Disraeli was particularly sensitive to the presumption that our descent is a primary determinant of who and what we are. (Indeed, a few decades later, Franz Kafka would use the ape-turned-human as a metaphor for the assimilated European Jew in his story “Report to an Academy.”) Disraeli wanted us not to be descended from apes, so that we may be angels. He articulated this crude but widespread ultimatum only a few years after the publication of The Origin of Species, when the idea of ape ancestry was still fresh. But why this idea should
