Early Conflicts Over Darwinism
It is important not to over-stress the
static nature of Christian theology at the time of Darwin. Before 1850
Schleiermacher and those following him had already questioned whether the doctrine of creation implied any
particular point of temporal origin, whether the Fall implied a particular
event in early human history, and whether God was immutable in the traditional
sense. Probably the greatest challenges to the
mainstream of the Christian tradition in the 19th Century came from biblical
criticism rather than natural science. However, the controversy over
Darwin’s scheme is one of the great moments in the history of the ‘special
relationship’. A historical moment - it is important to grasp just how much
both Christian theology and evolutionary theory have changed since the
publication of The Origin of Species in
1859.
There were those Christian thinkers who
immediately celebrated evolution. Frederick Temple, who preached the official
sermon at the British Association Meeting in 1860 ‘was ... said by one observer
to have espoused Darwin’s ideas fully.’Charles Kingsley found that it was ‘just as noble a conception of Deity, to
believe that He created primal forms capable of self development...as to
believe that He required a fresh act of intervention to supply the lacunas
which He Himself had made.’Kingsley saw that the new science might redirect the all-important balance in
Christian theology between God’s transcendence and the divine indwelling of
creation (immanence) in favour of a greater emphasis on immanence.
Moreover, Christian theologians, reflecting
upon the great success of science, and the great tragedies to human
civilisation of the World Wars and the Holocaust, have become much more willing
to describe a God who suffers, and whose continual creative activity is within
a universe characterised by processes of law and chance, processes which God
rarely, if ever, sets aside (see law, chance and divine action). The imagery of God the Sovereign Lord, the King of
Kings, the creator of the universe out of nothing, the potter who creates
according to an inscrutable will, has now to be weighed against descriptions of
God ‘the fellow-sufferer who understands’
To investigate how Darwinism developed in
the 20th Century see some recent debates about evolution, from Darwinism to
neo-Darwinism, and punctuated equilibrium and radical contingency.
Email
link | Feedback | Contributed by: Dr.
Christopher Southgate
Source: God, Humanity and the
Cosmos (T&T Clark, 1999)
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