Rooting Evolution in Grace

Rooting Evolution in Grace

Sighs, Signs and Significance Conference

March 15, 2008

Rebecca J. Flietstra

PointLomaNazareneUniversity

Modern biology and Christian belief are often portrayed as antithetical to each other, particularly when considering creation and evolution. Supporters of evolutionary theory typically claim that the evolutionary process—indeed all of life—is rooted in, and formed by, selfish competition. According to this paradigm, all purported love (including the concept of a loving god) and sacrifice exist as a delusion and as means to gain advantage. On the other side, many Christians claim thatevolution is the delusion, that such a bloody and cruel process could never be used by a loving Creator. For those of us who both believe in a Creator God and accept evolutionary theory, such stark options are discouraging. Instead of choosing sides, we instead seek to find compatibilities and to build bridges between our faith commitments and our scientific paradigms. Much of this bridge building has focused on re-statements of creation theology. While this work has been invaluable, it has also been criticized for forcing theology to always follow biology’s lead. In this paper, I will look at both theology and biology, and then propose ways we might think about evolutionary theory that might be more compatible with Christian belief.

Darwin’s Five Theories

Before discussing how we might re-frame evolutionary theory, we should first look at how evolution is commonly presented. Ernst Mayr, a zoologist who was instrumental in the development of neo-Darwinism, effectively argued that Darwin’s “one long argument” was actually a combination of five different theories:

1.Evolution as such

2.Common descent.

3.Multiplication of species.

4.Gradualism.

5.Natural selection.

In the 1800s, as well as today, these theories—while overlapping—can be distinguished from each other and separately considered; individually accepted or rejected. For example, one of Darwin’s contemporaries, Jean Baptiste Lamarck, would have recognized a gradual change in species, but utterly rejected common descent, multiplication of species, and natural selection. Today, biochemist and Intelligent Design advocate Michael Behe accepts common descent, but appears to reject gradualism.

The theories themselves are fairly basic, but it’s worth taking the time to briefly describe each of them here, using Mayr’s own words:

(1)Evolution as such. This is the theory that the world is not constant nor recently created nor perpetually cycling but rather is steadily changing and that organisms are transformed in time.

(2)Common descent. This is the theory that every group of organisms descended from a common ancestor and that all groups of organisms, including animals, plants and microorganisms, ultimately go back to a single origin of life on earth.

(3)Multiplication of species. This theory explains the origin of the enormous organic diversity. It postulates that species multiply, either by splitting into daughter species or by “budding,” that is, by the establishment of geographically isolated founder populations that evolve into new species.

(4)Gradualism. According to this theory, evolutionary change takes place through the gradual change of populations and not by the sudden (saltational) production of new individuals that represent a new type.

(5)Natural selection. According to this theory, evolutionary change comes about through the abundant production of genetic variation in every generation. The relatively few individuals who survive, owing to a particularly well-adapted combination of inheritable characters, give rise to the next generation.[1]

Evolution as Such & Gradualism

While strict, six-day creationists would object to all five of these theories, some of these elicit more of a “visceral” response than others. To some extent, then, “evolution as such” and “gradualism” are not as problematic as the others. Certainly the word “evolution” itself can raise the blood pressure of many “Bible-believing” Christians, but the idea that the world has changed over time, especially if all the biological change has been gradual, seems fairly reasonable. Creationists, for example, readily acknowledge that all the various breeds of dog have gradually risen over time with selective breeding. Even more broadly, many creationists readily accept the changes that would have been necessary after Noah’s Flood in order to produce the variants we see around the globe. For example, they would argue that a single pair of bears would have produced offspring as diverse as polar bears, sun bears and grizzlies.

The big objection here would be the length of time required for significant changes in living organisms. For someone who insists on a literalistic reading of scripture,[2]the age of the earth and the universe is automatically limited to a few thousand years—a fraction of the billions of years required by evolutionary theories. Even beyond this matter of fact insistence, however, there is also a sense that excess time is wasteful. As the late Henry Morris wrote:

Evolution is inconsistent with God’s omnipotence; since He has all power, He is capable of creating the universe in an instant, rather than having to stretch it out over aeons of time.[3]

And,

Evolution is inconsistent with God’s purposiveness. If God’s purpose was the creation and redemption of man, as theistic evolutionists presumably believe, it seems incomprehensible that He would waste billions of years in aimless evolutionary meandering before getting to the point.[4]

Many secular scientists would agree: for them, nearly endless time and space proves that there is no purpose to this universe, and certainly no Creator who might have a purpose for this universe. Human existence—indeed the entire history of terrestrial life—is merely an inconsequential blip in the universe’s time line.

I’ll confess here that I once found these arguments convincing. For the first seventeen years of my life I identified myself as a creationist—more by default than out of any conviction. In the absence of any other evidence, I simply assumed that creationism was the only Christian option. My world quite literally changed when I was finally exposed to evolutionary theory during the fall semester of my freshman year at a Christian college. I found myself not only convinced by the scientific arguments, but also amazed by its simultaneous simplicity and complexity. At the same time, I discovered that my acceptance of evolutionary theory did indeed challenge my beliefs. Although I had always been taught about God’s loving patience, my belief in a God who had created everything in six days had prevented me from fully recognizing this aspect of God. The God of a six-day creation was a God who could speak and instantly get the results he wanted. Such a God certainly must find my own attempts at obedience fairly frustrating. But a God who could “waste” billions and billions of years on an evolving creation, that God most certainly had plenty of patience for my own slow journey. Scripture also suggests that God prefers to add rather than to subtract time:

But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:8-9)

Thus the time required by evolutionary theory reveals, rather than conceals, a God of grace. This grace also recognizes the “otherness” of God as opposed to creation. If God did indeed speak out every detail of every event in creation, then the universe would exist only as an extension of God. Without freedom to grow and develop, creation as creation cannot exist. God’s grace thereby prohibits us from understanding God’s “purposiveness” as described by Morris.

Common Descent & Multiplication of Species

Let’s now move to the second set of theories: common descent and multiplication of species. Again, the first objection of creationists is that these claims directly contradict scripture and, on that basis alone, should be rejected. According to their reading of Genesis, all creatures were created as distinct kinds with defined limits, limits that remove any possibility of macroevolution.

The Scriptures are very clear in their teaching that God created all things as he wanted them to be, each with its own particular structure, according to His own sovereign purposes….

Even though there may be uncertainty as to what is meant by “kind” (Hebrew min), it is obvious that the word does have a definite and fixed meaning. One “kind” could not transform itself into another “kind.”[5]

The creationists not only reference Genesis 1, but also cite 1 Corinthians 15: 38-39,

But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. All flesh is not the same: Humans have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another.

Thus when creationists describe the repopulating of the earth after the Flood, they speak of an original pair of dogs that produced all the members of the “dog kind”: wolves, foxes, coyotes, dogs, etc. This belief appears to coincide with common sense. Plants and animals are presented to us in categories. Even young children can distinguish between members of the cat family and members of the dog family. We look around the world and see “clumps” not “transitional species.”

The boundary around the human kind is particularly high and unbreachable. Unlike the other kinds, human kind contains only one species. Within this species all persons are commonly descended from Adam and Even—and that’s as far as common descent extends. A rejection of common descent protects humankind from being related to chimpanzees, whales, oak trees and pond scum. It also apparently protects our special status as image bearers.

Man was not only created in God’s spiritual image; he was also made in God’s physical image. His body was specifically planned to be most suited for the divine fellowship (erect posture, upward-gazing countenance, brain and tongue designed for articulating symbolic speech—none of which are shared by the animals).[6]

Unfortunately for the creationists, even without defending common descent, human uniqueness isn’t quite what it used to be. Every time we draw a line between humans and the other animals, another study nudges or blurs the line a bit.

Furthermore, our image bearing cannot be summarized by a list of distinguishing characteristics. As Jürgen Moltmann has written:

It is not the spirituality of men and women, and now what distinguishes them from animals, which makes them God’s image on earth. They are his image in their whole and particular bodily existence. It contradicts belief in creation if we define the human being’s essential quality, and what corresponds to God in him, by subtracting the animal and then regarding what is left as something on its own.[7]

Our image bearing is our vocation, our calling, based on our relationship with God, and not on any innate special status or features. Moreover, a boundary line between humans and the rest of creation may not be doing us any favors. This line attempts to place us alongside God, separated from the rest of creation. But the line ever and only should be placed between God and all of creation—with humans rightly recognized as created and not divine. Image-bearing viewed in this way offers us the grace that comes from not having to strive, of not having to seek and defend our status.

Common descent also helps us recognize the grace of relationship. The old gospel song may say “the world is not my home”, but common descent tells us otherwise. The creationists place value on humans because they are all commonly descended from Adam and Eve. As a Christian who accepts evolutionary theory, I can place value on all living organisms, not simply because we are all created, but also because we share a common genetic heritage.

Natural Selection

The most difficult theory to reconcile with Christian belief—and, actually, for even many non-fundamentalist Christians and non-Christians to accept—is the theory of natural selection. Natural selection on a small scale may be readily accepted, and may indeed feel like common sense, but natural selection as a driving force, as the foundation for evolution, repulses people. The theory of natural selection appears to be ugly and evil, describing a process centered on death and struggle, rather than on goodness and love. For many, such a process would not only make humans and the rest of creation essentially evil and sinful, but would also reveal either an unloving God, or the nonexistence of god. Both sides of the creation/evolution conflict appear, at times, to agree on this. First, Creationist Henry Morris has written:

Evolution is inconsistent with God’s nature of love. The supposed fact of evolution is best evidenced by the fossils, which eloquently speak of a harsh world, filled with storm and upheaval, disease and famine, struggle for existence and violent death. The accepted mechanism for inducing evolution is overpopulation and a natural selection through extermination of the weak and unfit. A loving God would surely have been more considerate of His creatures than this.[8]

Similarly, evolutionist Richard Dawkins has written:

If you look at the way natural selection works, it seems to follow that anything that has evolved by natural selection should be selfish. Therefore we must expect that when we go and look at the behaviour of baboons, humans, and all other living creatures, we shall find it to be selfish.[9]

Among all the objections to evolutionary theory, this one—the juxtaposition of a loving God over against a bloodthirsty process—probably packs the greatest emotional punch.

In devising his theory of natural selection, Charles Darwin drew on the economic writings of Rev. Thomas R. Malthus, as found in An Essay on the Principle of Population. This extended essay argued that all living species exhibit reproductive capacities far beyond what can be supported by their environment. Rather than respond to these limits by self-limiting the number of offspring, “the superabundant effects are repressed afterwards by want of room and nourishment.”[10] Both Charles Darwin[11] and Alfred Russel Wallace[12] found in Malthus’ writings a possible mechanism for the evolution and origin of different species. That is, the resulting competition for scarce resources leads to a “struggle for existence,”[13] a struggle that favors those who are best adapted for their current social and physical environment.[14] Such individuals can subsequently pass on their particular traits to future generations.[15] This competition is particularly “severe between the individuals of the same species, for they frequent the same districts, require the same food, and are exposed to the same dangers.”[16]

Since Darwin’s day this harsh struggle has been increasingly used to explain all life processes, including the very origin and existence of living beings. Thus even before the first cells arose out of the RNA soup, individual RNA strands competed with each other for nucleotide bases, energy and space. The genes descended from this pre-biotic struggle eventually developed larger structures—first single cells and then multicellular bodies—that enabled them to better compete against rival genes. Prey began to struggle with predator, cells struggled with viruses, and bodies struggled against parasites.

Yet the greatest struggles exist within a species. This struggle is not just for space and food, and against danger, but brings competition into even the most intimate relationships. Not only do males and females compete for mates, but they also compete with their mates. Not only do individuals struggle to produce and raise to maturity more offspring than their neighbors, but they also compete with these very offspring.[17] Fetuses seek to exploit the resources of the pregnant mother; the bodies of pregnant females battle to maintain some resources for their own strength. Postnatally, parents invest in offspring only as much as necessary, reserving resources for future offspring. Correspondingly older siblings pit themselves against younger siblings, and younger against older, trying to dominate the time, energy and protection of their mutual parents.

With all this against it, it appears difficult to imagine how we could ever think positively about natural selection, or see God’s grace in it. But natural selection has more to it than competition. Generally when I’ve taught evolutionary theory, I break down the process of natural selection into three steps:

1.Individuals of a species vary; some of these variations are inherited.

2.More individuals within each species are produced than will live to grow up and to reproduce.

3.Individuals with certain traits are more likely to survive and to reproduce than those with other traits.