Earlier Posts in the Series: 1
What is Evolutionary Christianity?
I am an evolutionary Christian, which means many things, among them the following:
- I consider both faith and science as paths to truth and God. There is a revelation of faith so far as it provides the existential meaning for the reality of the world, but I also consider science to be divine revelation. As Catholic, I do believe in St Thomas Aquinas’ statement that a misunderstanding of creation leads to a misunderstanding of the Creator. As it has always been held by Catholicism and many Christian denominations reason and faith are both paths to God. A faith which rejects science is not worth having. In this sense, I do agree with Carl Sagan who said “Science is, at least in part, informed worship”. I worship God in the Church, in nature, in science, in philosophy, and try to worship Him in everything I do and write (not always successfully). From this standpoint, the whole religion vs. science debate makes little sense to me.
- I do not see God and creation to be static, but always evolving in some way. In this sense, I reject much of the idea of “perfection” as it was understood by Hellenistic philosophers, and whose doctrine were integrated to the Judeo-Christian understanding of God. Not that all of Hellenistic philosophy should be rejected, many of them must be kept in Christianity, but the particular notion of “perfection” as conceived by Parmenides and Plato are no longer adequate to be understood in the realm of matters-of-fact (as David Hume understood the term).
- I do believe in a Trinitarian God, but Who is not divorced from its creation. I am a panentheist (notice that I didn’t say “pantheist”), which means that I believe that God is ontologically different from His creation, but is not separate from it, but He is integrated to creation (He is immanent to it), but is more than creation (He is transcendent). This is perfectly consistent with the Pauline statement that in the Lord we live, we move and have our being (Acts 17:28). in God we find our ultimate reason for being.
- I do not see divine revelation as dictation of divine words in tablets of stone (metaphorically speaking). Although many Christians believe that, such belief is actually contrary to Scripture itself. Truth is always the same, but the way God gradually reveals Himself, and the way we have understood such revelation, how ever imperfectly, has changed over time.
- I think of the Bible, Christianity, and all world religions as forming part of what Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry have called “The Great Story” of the cosmos, of the universe. In this sense, the Bible should be placed within an evolving story, and its texts should be placed in a historical context, but without dismissing all of its important contributions with which it reveals the life-giving reality of God.
This is a very short summary of where I come from, although my thoughts on these issues are pretty much more complex, but this is my position thus far. These are the premises of what I am going to discuss in these series on the Bible from an evolutionary standpoint. Today and always, I will thank God for evolution in the broadest sense of the word, because He made the cosmos in such a way that life emerged out of it gradually, to the point of evolving an ever emerging consciousness … until we, each one of us, became the universe being conscious of itself.
The evolutionary epic is probably the best myth we will ever have. ~ Edward O. Wilson
The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins–star-stuff pondering the stars. ~ Carl Sagan
I am the eye with which the Universe beholds itself and knows it is divine. ~ Percy Shelley
From Simplest Societies to More Complex Societies
Many people ask why did I add to this discussion a reference to Steven Pinker’s book, The Better Angels of our Nature, on the gradual decline of violence. Other people (the vast majority) responded with great disbelief. Here is a conference about the matter if you don’t have access to the book, but want far more detail than I offered in my earlier blog post.
Yet, the trend to non-violent societies worldwide (not just in Christian countries) is evident. This does not mean at all that violence, rape, slavery, and other evil aspects of humanity have disappeared, but it does mean that they have been reduced significantly throughout history. Part of the reason why this peace is taking place and increasing is the fact that our societies keep growing towards complexity.
Gradual complexity is not only a trait of societies, but of all of evolutionary process. Although we cannot say that blind-guided evolution is not progressive in the sense that it will always lead to something “better”, it does have an arrow in the sense that it is directed towards increased gradual complexity. I recommend you the book Evolution’s Arrow, by John Stewart, if you wish to investigate more on the matter. Again, this complexification of reality is not only a trait of living beings, but of all of the universe (the “nested reality” which Michael Dowd talked about in the video in the earlier section). A side effect of a complex and diverse society is precisely the process of peace which Pinker talks about.
No religion is exception to this rule of complexification. These blog series are all about how this happened, and how we can understand the Bible (a complex object) as the result of an evolutionary process.
Three Sorts of Stories which the Bible Tells
When people open their Bible, it is evidently telling us a story … from Genesis to Revelation. The story is not always consistent, some parts of it are beautiful, some sublime, some horrifying, some make you think, and some are contradictory. Yet, traditionally people read it from beginning to end as if it is a single logically-linear argument.
Yet, I want to distinguish three sorts of stories which Bible tells us in different ways:
- The Literal Story: It is as basic as to read the Bible and understand the events as they happen.
- The Different Meanings of Passages: Regardless of whether the Bible is taken literally or not, it must be interpreted. This is the sort of reading heavily interpreted by religions as such. I will not discuss that here.
- The Story Behind the Literal Stories
The last one is the focus of these series, especially regarding the way the Bible came to be over time.
In order to understand what this distinction is about, I want to use a specific biblical passage which has been both admired and rejected by believers and non-believers respectively. By the way, the underline you will see is an important emphasis, not accidental.
It happened some time later that Elohim put Abraham to the test. ‘Abraham, Abraham!’ he called. ‘Here I am,’ he replied. Elohim said, ‘Take your son, your only son, your beloved Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, where you are to offer him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I shall point out to you.’
Early next morning, Abraham saddled his donkey and took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. He chopped wood for the burnt offering and started on his journey to the place which Elohim had indicated to him. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. Then Abraham said to his servants, ‘Stay here with the donkey. The boy and I are going over there; we shall worship and then come back to you.’
Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering, loaded it on Isaac, and carried in his own hands the fire and the knife. Then the two of them set out together. Isaac spoke to his father Abraham, ‘Father?’ he said. ‘Yes my son,’ he replied. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘here are the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?’ Abraham replied, ‘My son, Elohim Himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering.’ And the two of them went on together.
When they arrived at the place which Elohim had indicated to him, Abraham built an altar there, and arranged the wood. Then he bound his son and put him on the altar on top of the wood. Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to kill his son.
But the messenger of Yahweh called to him from heaven. ‘Abraham, Abraham!’ he said. ‘Here I am,’ he replied. ‘Do not raise your hand against the boy,’ the messenger said. ‘Do not harm him, for now I know you fear Elohim You have not refused your own beloved son. Then looking up, Abraham saw a ram and offered it as a burnt offering in place for his son. Abraham called this place ‘Yahweh provides’ (Yahweh yir’eh), and hence the saying today: ‘On the mountain Yahweh provides.’
The messenger of Yahweh called Abraham a second time from the heaven. ‘I swear by my own self, Yahweh declares, that because you have done this, because you have not refused me your own son, I will shower blessings on you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven and the grains of sand on the seashore. Your descendants will gain possession of the gates of their enemies. All nations on Earth will bless themselves by your descendants, because you have obeyed my command.’ (Gen 22:1-18).
This is a story which has been inspired by believers, and upsetting to unbelievers. It reflects how far Abraham was able to go to obey God. The first sort of reading (I talked about earlier) is the literal story as it is told in the Bible. It is enough to read it to understand its literal meaning.
Many religions or religious denominations interpret this story in very different ways, and here we can see the second sort of reading I discussed above: the meaning interpretation. Some believers think that this passage means that we should follow God unconditionally, no matter if whatever He requests can be at first sight completely reprehensible. Other believers see in it Abraham’s faith that God, in the sense that he knew that in the end God was going to fulfill His promise of having descendants through Isaac, so He knew God would spare him in the end.
Another form of interpretation comes from a humanist-antireligious standpoint, like the one Richard Dawkins expressed in The God Delusion:
God ordered Abraham to make a burnt offering of his longed-for son. Abraham built an altar, put firewood upon it, and trussed Isaac up on top of the wood. His murdering knife was already in his hand when an angel dramatically intervened with the news of a last-minute change of plan: God was only joking after all, ‘tempting’ Abraham, and testing his faith. A modern moralist cannot help but wonder how a child could ever recover from such psychological trauma. By the standards of modern morality, this disgraceful story is an example simultaneously of child abuse, bullying in two asymmetrical power relationships, and the first recorded use of Nuremberg defence: ‘I was only obeying orders.’ Yet the legend is one of the great foundational myths of all three monotheistic religions. (p. 242).
Dawkins will be Dawkins, but, from an ethical standpoint, he is right if the text is taken verbatim at face value.
Yet, there is also a third aspect, the third sort of reading, which is the one I am focused on. The reader may have noticed that I purposely underlined a part of the story. For reasons I will explain in my later posts, the original story comes from what Bible scholars have called the Elohist tradition, a tradition which was developed apparently in the northern Kingdom of Israel, by a group of priests proceeding from Shilo, one of the most sacred places in Ancient Israel. If you haven’t heard of Shilo, then don’t worry, it is almost never mentioned in Bible school nor Catechism. However, it was important, because it was the place where the Ark of the Covenant resided long before Jerusalem was built by King David (Josh. 18:1; 1 Sam 4:3-5). We know that the story comes from the Elohist tradition because it uses extensively the word “Elohim” to refer to God.
Yet, look at the underlined section. One thing that strikes us is that instead of solely calling God “Elohim”, this section uses the name “Yahweh”. Also it talks about a messenger (an angel) of Yahweh appearing all of the sudden to substitute Isaac for a goat for the sacrifice. Yet, there is one characteristic of Elohist tradition which calls the attention of scholars. First, we must point out that where the underlined passage ends, it begins by God saying that Abraham has not refused his son. Another thing that happens is that in the rest of the Elohist tradition, Isaac never appears once again later. Finally, nowhere in the Elohist tradition does God say that his descendants will come from Isaac.
This led most Bible scholars to the following conclusion: the original Elohist story did actually involve a sacrifice of Isaac to God. In other words, apparently Abraham did kill Isaac. This should not surprise anyone who knows about the Middle East at the time, before 700 B.C. Human sacrifice, especially children, was a common practice if it was “required by the deity”.
But something happened to the story. It was edited by a later author. Who was he? We don’t know. Why was it edited? For one simple reason … because much later, especially after several religious reforms in Israel, forms of human sacrifice were increasingly rejected by Israelites. Contrary to what many detractors say, the story as we have it in the Hebrew Bible is not a story to legitimize human sacrifice. It is a story illustrating God as someone rejecting human sacrifice … all forms of human sacrifice.
The moral sense of the Ancient Israelites evolved in the process. THAT is God’s Word which many religious and non-religious are not able to find in the Bible if they do not place the origins of the Bible and its content in an evolutionary context.
In my next post, I will make a brief exposition of contemporary Neo-Darwinism and how it can help us understand this process of the edition of the Bible better.
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