Three cheers for your article and letters highlighting a Christian "New Universe Story" (The Tablet, 23 August).
First, an ancient cheer from August and Aquinas, both open to Truth from all sources. Turning to lay people, and approaching our own times, a second cheer from Jan Christian Smuts. His monumental Holism and Evolution (1926) introduced the terms "holism" and "holistic" into academic parlance. They are now basic to all human and soclal sciences. I suggest that a holistic stance is needed to meet the undoubted difficullty of "making sense" of Christology and the "New Universe", as Bill Wickham says in his letter.
However, we can turn to the ultra-holistic opening words of John's Gospel "No single thing was created without him" (NEB). Smuts progressed from bare-foot farmboy, in close contact with African families, to become a brilliant Cambridge scholar (law and biology), an able general in two wars, a statesman and philosopher. I believe that he had imbibed much of the typical African spiritual outlook. He clearly had no problem in harmonizing Bible and biology, though he lacked our recent knowledge of the plethora of galaxies.
A final contemporary cheer from my own cousin, a canny Scot and staunch Catholic, Anneila Sargent, Professor of Astronomy in Caltech University, California. She has been heavily involved in the successful research leading to the proven existence of possibly life-bearing planets belonging to other suns. She wrote to me in Liberia in 1994 asking for advice in dealing with complaints from fundamentalists who alledged that "federal money is being spent on research contrary to the Bible". In my reply I included a little quote from Isaiah "God made the world...he made it to be lived in" (Is. 45, 8 JB). Later I was assigned to teach philosopy in the Salesian Seminary, Moshi, Tanzania. There I included Teilhard de Chardin's views in the course "Philosophy of Nature". I found that the African students took to it very naturally. I also put a copy of Holism and Evolution into the students' library, emphasizing the African link.
Fr Brian Jerstice S.D.B., Farnborough
Fr. Joseph points to Daniel O’Leary’s question,”Who will open for us this sacramental vision of the New Universe Story?”
I am tempted to say that Francis in his exhortation Evangelii Gaudium has made a sound beginning. Francis, of course, is not the first to seek to put flesh on the bare bones of evangelization. Since we must now adjust to the new evangelization it is worth noting that many Catholics are still perplexed by the term. Evangelii Gaudium is an excellent document in many respects and it is a matter of deep regret that it remains virtually untouched in many homes and even presbyteries despite the papal entreaty that it should be the focus of all pastoral planning.
The New Universe Story would make radical changes to the emphases and content of Christian revelation and generate a reappraisal of Christian witness. Adult faith would need to focus on our creaturely existence on earth as the coming-into-being Kingdom rather than some mythical hereafter. Evolution is not some theory to debate but part of the unfolding mystery of existence and of God. I look forward to Daniel O’Leary’s further articles in your paper.
Frank Campbell, Southampton
Spirituality based on the acceptance of evolution (rightly understood) both of our species and of its moral progress can show God's continual guidance of the human race from its inception and through its spiritual growth to its readiness for the full revelation in Christ of both God's love for us and his offer of a personal resurrection - a "qualitative leap"' as Fr O'Leary puts it.
Fr O'Leary also writes in the same article that there is "so much to unlearn". It is the unlearning of the teaching on original sin and its consequences that troubles me. If the fall and original sin, as the best explanation in the Isrealitic traditions for the existence of death, is now to be set aside by an evolutionary perspective, what does this mean for the doctrine of the Holy Spirit's preservation of the church from doctrinal error? For the idea of original sin has been allowed to develop in the church from a mere theological proposition to being accepted as a fundamental doctrine (which Cardinal Muller does not want even to be questioned). Hence the Holy Spirit has allowed a teaching error to be proclaimed for over 2000 years! As a result, the pastoral difficulties of reversing this development will be immense. Admittedly, no other satisfactory theological explanation for death was available before Darwin (not even to St Paul!) and I am sure that the Holy Spirit knew what he was (or was not) doing! I just do wish I did.
John Echevarria, Bolton-le-Sands
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