#150 – Human evolution and Christian theology

Many Christians can fully accept the idea of human evolution, but they use a language which betrays Young Earth Creationism. If we don’t update our language, we may lose a whole generation of Christians.

Many Christians are perfectly fine with human evolution: descent over millions of years down a family tree we share in common with the chimpanzees and orangutans on the one hand, and with Neanderthals and Denisovans on the other.  And yet they still use language that is rooted in Young Earth Creationism: referring to people as “fallen creatures” or “broken image bearers,” or saying that we need to be reconciled to God, or “we need to get back to the garden.”  These terms, and others, lose their meaning in a worldview that sees humans evolving up the evolutionary ladder.  More importantly, these terms force certain theological views and assumptions that might be problematic for making progress in the evolution of our theology (yes, Christianity has been evolving for 2000 years!).  For example, moving away from the Biblical belief that mental disease is caused by demons, and towards the modern scientific understanding that the cause is more related to neurochemical imbalances and neuronal damage, will lead to better treatment of the problem.

Our guest today — Dr. Andrew Torrance, from the University of St. Andrew’s, Scotland — helped us through this discussion.

We first talked about the words “creation” and “evolution.”  Too often, these terms are used and understood to be in diametrically opposed conflict: “creation versus evolution.”  These don’t have to be either/or …. they can be both/and.  God can create using evolution.  We looked at how the Creation accounts in Genesis themselves use evolutionary language: the plants and animals didn’t pop into existence out of thin air … Genesis says “the land produced” them.

To get around the perceived problem between creation and evolution, some Christians feel the need to refer to “theistic evolution,” rather than just “evolution” as scientists understand the word.  But we don’t refer to theistic combustion, or theistic erosion, so why do so here with evolution?  It seems the big concern is the random or unguided aspect of evolution: they want God to have control, sovereignty.  They need him to intervene in certain places; to bridge the gaps.  Not only does this become God-of-the-gaps thinking, but it also starts to sound an awful lot like Intelligent Design, both of which we at this podcast have long ago considered and rejected.

Next, we talked about the terminology used to describe the origin of humans, particularly the trajectory implied within that terminology.  

On the one hand, all explanations which try to keep the Biblical accounts in view have humans starting from an elevated position: biologically and cognitively, they’re created in the image of God; morally, they’re sinless; theologically and spiritually, they’re in complete harmony with God.  But very quickly, according to those Biblically-based explanations, we lost that preferred status. The “Fall in the Garden.”

Explanations that rest more heavily on science, on the other hand, show the opposite trajectory: humans started off from a lower position, and have been climbing up the evolutionary ladder in all these respects.  Biologically and cognitively, we came from simple life forms and up through the primate tree, and have been developing morally and philosophically along the way.  At the same time, we’ve been growing theologically and spiritually: we came from life forms that had no concept of God whatsoever, and have been creating temples and religions in our tireless quest for the divine. We didn’t rebel against God, or hide from him: we’ve always been searching for him.  Christ’s appearance in human history marks a major inflection point in that upward journey.

Critics of this new worldview always point to recent wars, and the dropping of nuclear bombs.  Those critics don’t seem to realize that the same kind of argument works against Christianity (now pointing to the  Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, and the abuse and genocide of indigenous people groups).  Those critics also have too short a timeline in view: human progress shouldn’t be measured over 50 years, but over 50,000 years.  In that more distant past, humans weren’t launching disaster relief efforts, or building schools and hospitals, or working to abolish slavery and economic inequalities.  They weren’t protesting against wars, the subjugation of women, or racial discrimination.  Our progress through these sociological issues may be too slow for some, but these are moral values that are now in our social consciousness when they weren’t in our heads even just a few thousand years ago.

This new worldview also better explains the theological concept of original sin. The Young Earth worldview tends to point to actions (biting into “an apple”, or lying, stealing, lusting, hating, etc.) and inheriting some kind of spiritual disease. But the Hebrew and Greek words used for “sin” in the Bible are both taken from archery, and literally mean “to miss the mark,” in the same way that an arrow fired at a target might land too short, too high, or to either side. That sounds an awful lot like a trajectory! Humans as a species are on that upward climb, and have been making progress over the past many millions of years, but as individuals and societies we just keep falling short of our full potential (which is to be like God).

Christianity needs to change.  If we don’t revise our terminology, and even our theology, we may lose a whole generation of Christians; recent trends in church attendance and religious self-identification, revealed by reputable polling agencies, suggest we may be witnessing an extinction event.  But the change may go in unpredictable and truly disturbing directions.  We talked a bit about how Christian groups around the world are blending their Christian theology with other ideas and worldviews that are arguably anti-Christian (exhibit A here being Evangelicalism amalgamating with the Prosperity Gospel or Christian Nationalism). 

A lot of food for thought here!

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also want to peruse our earlier episodes focusing on Young Earth Creationism, or our episode looking in more detail at this more scientific understanding of original sin (in contrast to the traditional theological understanding).

Episode image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay (and modified).

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