Thoughts of Evolution?

Hi Jack, thanks for your questions, I have broken up the answers below…

Is Genesis – to you – a literal description of the origin of man? Or perhaps its meaning is metaphorical?

What Pope Pius XII in his encyclical, Humani Generis in 1950 said has been repeated by all the popes since then. That is, that the Church has no problem with a theory about the evolution of the human body, but that the human spirit can’t evolve (since it’s not material), so its coming into existence isn’t covered by evolutionary theory. While the Popes are speaking from the viewpoint of revelation, a philosopher who understands that human beings are material-spiritual unities would fully agree with that on the basis of reason.

As regards Genesis, St Augustine 1500 years ago pointed out that there were something like six levels the Genesis account could be read – including theologically and morally, and only one of these levels was literal. The first thing to sort out is, what was in the mind of the author(s) of Genesis. Pope Benedict XVI comments that the writer was deliberately combating the widespread notion in the ancient middle east that the sun, moon and stars were gods. That’s why Genesis speaks of the creation of light before the heavenly bodies show up at all. And of course the core emphasis is on the world being created by one God, not with physical power like the gods were thought to do, but by his word, we would say, by his mind, by divine reason. Then the notion of a creation over 7 days was to bring out to a Jewish audience that all of creation aimed at the day of rest, the Sabbath – the whole of creation was part of a cosmic liturgy. Did the author think that God literally needed to take a rest? Of course not. So the writer brilliantly gets across the key message – God has created everything that exists, through his own rational power, and that existence which comes from God is also meant to go back to its Creator again. You can do similar work with the description of the creation of man and woman, and their fall – again, unlike all previous accounts, human beings are created in ‘the image of God,’ so, in some way they’re like God. Yet, they can fall, and that fall, even when helped on its way by the devil’s temptation, is due to their own fault. Remember, the writer doesn’t have words like person, conscience, freedom, responsibility. Yet he still manages to convey the key truths of creation and human existence. Did he mean what he wrote to be read literally?

I’d say the meaning he put into the text was much deeper than, say, the notion that God needed to take a rest on the Sabbath. So for me, every word in Genesis is true, but with a truth much greater than mere literal truth. Remember too that Genesis wasn’t asking questions that come from modern astronomy or biology or paleontology – it was asking much deeper questions than that!

Secondly, do you agree with the majority of schools teaching evolution in class textbooks? Most subjects assume the model of a very old Earth (for example, physics and half lives; geography and land forms/geological eras).

No problem with evolution being taught provided it’s not a vehicle for misguided anti-Christian propaganda. So there’s absolutely no contradiction between biological science and the notion of a world created by God, which is what Christians believe, and can be also defended philosophically. If we accept the Big Bang hypothesis as the best science we have at the moment (it’s a theory first developed by a Belgian priest-physicist called George Lemaitre in the late 1920s), then we’ve always got the key question, why is there something rather than nothing? And similar questions come regarding the emergence of life on earth sometime around 3.7 billion years ago. The questions about existence and the questions of astronomy and biology are quite different, but ultimately complement each other (as you say yourself in your 3rd question). As someone has remarked, biologists sometimes try to smuggle in their atheism through their biology, but biology has nothing to say about God’s existence or non existence. And some Christians try to smuggle in their theism through a form of biology they call Intelligent Design. I think both approaches are misguided.

And finally, do you personally believe that evolutionary theory is relevant to a majority of Catholic followers? Perhaps, as said by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, religion and science are complementary; not contradictory.

John Paul II in his 1991 ‘Message to the Director of the Vatican Observatory’ said that: ‘Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and from false absolutes. Each can help the other to enter into a more complete world, where both can prosper.’ He speaks of ‘a progress towards mutual understanding and a gradual discovery of shared interests,’ noting that today ‘we have an unprecedented opportunity to establish a common interactive relationship where every discipline maintains its own integrity while remaining radically open to the discoveries and intuitions of the other.’

And in his 24th of July 2009 homily at Vespers in Aosta, Pope Benedict, referring to the priesthood of all the faithful, said that ‘The role of the priesthood is to consecrate the world so that it may become a living host, a liturgy: so that the liturgy may not be something alongside the reality of the world, but that the world itself shall become a living host, a liturgy. This is also the great vision of Teilhard de Chardin: in the end we shall achieve a true cosmic liturgy, where the cosmos becomes a living host.’

Hope that’s a help, very best, Fr Brendan Purcell

Replied at 02:27 am on June 30th 2015