“In the beginning, God created a universe in which evolution, acting according to His laws, produced all the life forms we see today, with no need for further intervention,” you’d get very little argument. But it seems that, for some reason, you can’t bring yourself to say that.”
Spirited: The early Church Fathers are the organic connection between Jesus Christ, His apostles and our own time. In conforming to evolutionary theory modern Christians break that connection.
Evolutionism was not unknown to the Church Fathers. In their time though it was mainly taught against as reincarnation, transmigration, and metempsychosis.
The Triune God’s miraculous creation has its’ foundation in the fact that He spoke all things into existence from nothing. Early Church Father Augustine fully embraced creatio ex nihilo, as did others. Church Father Irenaeus comments,
“God, in the exercise of his will and pleasure, formed all things…out of what did not previously exist.”
Over and against creatio ex nihilo is evolutionism, one of the principle doctrines of ancient evolutionary cosmogonies such as the Enuma Elish.
In 1907 Pope Pius X dubbed Modernism and its principle doctrine Evolution “the synthesis of all heresies” in his encyclical Pascendi Dominici gregis.
Modernism was inspired by tendencies prevalent in liberal Protestantism and secular philosophy:
“It was influenced by nineteenth-century studies by Kant and Hegel, by liberal Protestant theologians and biblical critics (such as Schleiermacher and von Harnack), by the evolutionary theories of Darwin, and by certain liberal political movements in Europe. The centers of Modernism were in France, England, Italy, and Germany. Two of its leading figures were Fr. Alfred Loisy, a French theologian and Scripture scholar, and Fr. George Tyrrell, an Irish-born Protestant who became a Catholic and a Jesuit, though he was dismissed from the Jesuits in 1906.” (Modernism, James Akin)
Forty-three years later, Pius XII cautiously stepped away from Pius X’s position even as he advised that his opinion not be adopted as though it were a certain, proven doctrine.
Despite Pius XII’s warning, large numbers of Catholics, Protestants and Evangelicals have nevertheless heedlessly embraced Evolutionary Theory from the time of Pius XII to our own.
That they ‘leaped without looking’ is the cautionary message delivered by Msgr. Charles Pope of the archdiocese of Washington. They have accepted the Theory of Evolution uncritically, noted Msgr. Pope. They hold a “rather simplistic notion” that the Theory of Evolution,
“… can be reconciled easily with the Biblical accounts and with our faith. Many will say something like this:
“I have no problem with God setting things up so that we started as one-celled organisms and slowly evolved into being human beings. God could do this and perhaps the Genesis account is just simplifying evolution and telling us the same thing as what Evolution does.” (Can A Christian Accept Evolutionary Theory Uncritically? Joe Carter, First Things, Oct. 18, 2010)
Catholics and other Christians who accept Evolutionary Theory uncritically have given no thought to whether theological and scientific claims are compatible. For instance said Joe Carter, to be a “theistic evolutionist”
“..in the sense that modern science will accept, requires one to adhere to polygensism (the theory that Adam was not one historical man but, rather, a euphemism for “mankind”). That position, however, is not compatible with the teachings of the Bible, the Church, or of Jesus. The polygensism problem is, for me, the biggest stumbling block to uncritically accepting the theory of macroevolution…” (ibid)
Polygensism is not the least problem. The uncritical acceptance of Evolutionary Theory places theistic evolutionists in the position of having to compromise Genesis. And to compromise the Genesis account is to compromise the whole Bible, which in turn compromises the Bibles’ main theme: man’s need of redemption.
The Genesis account speaks of man’s relationship with God starting at the pinnacle of Creation week in the Garden of Eden after which degeneration commences. Theistic evolution turns the Genesis account upside-down by teaching that man started out at the bottom and evolved his way to the top via the old amoeba-to-fish-to-dinosaur-to-ape-to-man story, meaning that possibly millions of lifeforms arose and died before man finally appeared. But if this account is true, then Gnostics are right to say that God the Father is a God of death, not life. As such, man needs to be saved from Him, not by Him.
Either man started at the top and fell, as God’s Word and His prophets who long ago declared the fall of man and his need for a Savior declare, or he started at the bottom and rose to the top, as evolution indicates. Both cannot be correct.
Scripture teaches that man’s fall is the reason for sin, degeneration and death. But if man is not fallen, then Gnostics are again correct to claim that Original Sin does not exist, meaning Lucifer did not fall and there is no need for Jesus Christ, the Son of God, to come to this planet and suffer a cruel death on the cross.
Additionally, Scripture emphatically declares that time has a beginning and an ending. In this view, history is the unfolding of time and events that will end with the Kingdom of God. Evolutionary Theory turns all of this upside-down by placing time, events and man on an eternal Escalator going “up, up, up.” Mary Midgley coined the phrase “the Escalator Myth” to refer to the idea that humanity is everlastingly riding an evolutionary escalator smoothly, progressively, ever upward toward some imagined state of perfection. (Scientific Mythologies, James A. Herrick, p. 100)
Now Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God Himself. But if evolution is true, then what becomes of Jesus Christ? Is there to be a future being greater than Him?
“Surely evolution will not have to reverse itself and concede that it reached its zenith with the birth of the Christ child a long, long time ago. Surely this colossal system will not have to concede that it is less able now to produce a greater than Jesus than it did produce two thousand years ago. If evolution is not now able to produce a greater than Jesus, then it seems the system has ceased to be evolution and has become devolution, at least in one sense (Taylor, 1974, quoted in “Can a Christian Still be an Evolutionist? Brad Harrub, Ph.D. ApologeticsPress.org)
Finally, if Evolutionary Theory is true, then man is a mixed-stew of genetic material, making him a close relative of every life form that preceded him. Additionally, since some of mans’ prior ‘kin’ were neither male nor female, then it stands to reason that no man or woman is really either male or female. Once again we see the inversion and destruction of the Genesis account:
“Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.” KJB
Jesus Himself stated in Matthew 19:4 (cf. Mark 10:6): “Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female.” But if Evolution Theory is true then Jesus Christ is a liar. And as long as we are tossing aside the Genesis account and Jesus Christ, then why not toss out all references to the Creation, starting with the gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John:
” … we also would have to throw out John, because the first few verses of chapter one review the beginning and Creation. Other scriptures such as Acts 4:24, Acts 17:25, Romans 1:20, Colossians 1:16, 1 Timothy 2:13, Hebrews 1:2, 1 Peter 4:19, and Revelation 4:11 also would be called into question if the Creation account is merely a “nice story,” but not historically accurate. As a matter of fact, the only books that do not refer to the first eleven chapters of Genesis in some form are the books of Philemon, and 2 and 3 John.” (Can a Christian Still be an Evolutionist? Brad Harrub, Ph.D. ApologeticsPress.org)
In the end we are left with two choices. Either God’s Revealed Word, creatio ex nihilo and Jesus Christ or Evolution Theory, which inverts creation, destroys God’s Word and turns Jesus Christ into a liar.
As it turns out, Pope Pius X was right to define Modernism and its’ principle doctrine evolution “the synthesis of all heresies.”
Mans’ mind is finite, not infinite. Try as it might it cannot know of things that took place before its’ own existence.
Pride refuses to accept the limitations that humility accepts, which is why humility keeps God’s question to Job in mind at all times:
“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if you have understanding”. Job 38:4
Indeed, dear spirited irish — you put your finger on the very crux of the problem of the personal and social division/disorder that seemingly manifests in outcomes of all public questions nowadays; the tendency of which is to emasculate the individual person, confiscate his wealth, reduce him to de facto slavery — all in the Name of, and to the greater Glory of, the State, the embodiment of the (current) Dictator and the claque of lackeys that supports him (and expects to receive benefits in return, at third-party — that is, our— expense, of course).
When the moral core of a society becomes rotten, destruction, disintegration comes upon that society as night follows day.
If history can teach us anything, it would seem to be this.
Thank you so very much, dear sister in Christ, for your simply beautiful essay/post! I feel pretty sure our friends of Darwinist persuasion haven't seen anything like it before. I only hope they will try to engage and if possible understand it.