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Book Review16 February 2012, Review by Denis AlexanderDogma, dominoes and darwinChristianity in Evolution: an explorationJack MahoneyGeorgetown University Press, £18.75 Tablet bookshop price £16.90 Tel 01420 592974 The greatest strengths of a human personality can sometimes be, on the other side of the same coin, their greatest weaknesses. The same can be true of books. The author has a straightforward thesis, which may be summarised as follows. Catholic responses to evolution have often been lukewarm and the implications of evolution for Christian doctrine have not been taken sufficiently seriously (Chapter 1). God working through evolution has instilled notions of altruism into humanity, but a fuller theology of divine altruism depends on Jesus’ moral teaching, “a major evolutionary step in the moral advancement of the human species”. The Augustinian notion of Original Sin is incompatible with evolution and should be discarded. A domino effect on other doctrines is entailed by this rejection. “The Resurrection of Jesus was an evolutionary breakthrough for humanity”, and it is from death that Jesus saves us, not sin. The understanding of Christ as a sacrifice for sin is mistaken. A new paradigm is therefore required. The Eucharist is not a sacrifice, but instead a memorial meal, and the eschatological hope “may be accessible at least to some through the evolutionary achievement of Jesus in himself conquering death”. Those not so identified with the hope of the “evolving Church” most likely face extinction at death. The domino effect does not stop there. The Immaculate Conception, baptism as a washing from sin, concupiscence and a male “sacrificing priesthood” all require fresh evaluation as the evolutionary wind sweeps through the churchyard of now defunct doctrinal shibboleths. Humanity’s role is to “learn how to act from Jesus” who “offers a programme of moral altruism to counter the sinful self-centredness associated with the evolutionary process …” This stark summary does not nearly do justice to the vigour with which the author argues his case, nor with the extensive and often fascinating forays into historical moral theology which are used to give texture to the arguments. The collection of dominoes that remain standing at the end of the purge bear a more than passing resemblance to certain traditional forms of liberal Protestantism. The strengths of the book lie in its passion and in its firm avowal of the reality of evolution, which does need to be taken on board more robustly by the Church. Indeed, public pronouncements by church leaders on the topic often lack conviction, and more in-depth theological reflection is required. On the other side of the same coin, however, two significant weaknesses are apparent. First, the book extrapolates too quickly from biology to theology. The “new atheists” are often critiqued, and rightly so, for generating an ultra-Darwinian narrative in order to invest evolution ideologically with an atheistic rhetoric. It is equally important that theologians do not employ a similar strategy, albeit with very different goals. Scientific theories are simply not up to the Herculean task of justifying theological beliefs. It is much safer to let biology do its task of explaining the scientific data without deploying it for non-scientific agendas. Christianity in Evolution jumps straight from a discussion of the evolution of altruism to the “evolutionary achievement of Jesus”, where the word suddenly switches in meaning from biology to theology. But putting the adjective “evolutionary” in front of something does not thereby make it so. In reality, the metaphor in this context is profoundly non-Darwinian with its suggestion of Jesus representing a “saltation”. The adjective “evolutionary” is used liberally throughout the book but without any obvious linkage to biological evolution. The test is to remove the appeal to evolution and then see if it makes any difference; the answer in this case is: not really. The theological arguments should stand or fall on their own merits without appeals to science. The second weakness of this book is a tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Certainly the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin is incompatible with evolution. But alternative pre-Darwinian mainstream theologians have for long bypassed the idea anyway, and oddly the author gives no space to Origen or Irenaeus on this point. Adam is the Everyman who typifies the alienation from God that arises from disobedience. Nowhere in the New Testament does it say that Jesus died for the sin of Adam, but John the Baptist does point to the Messiah as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Why not just accept that Christ’s death is indeed a sacrifice for the sin of humankind, as the New Testament repeatedly insists, and that “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19)? Salvation from sin and death is seen as a “package deal” in biblical thought, and there is nothing in evolution that renders this less so. Giving up on the inheritance of Original Sin need not have the domino effect that the author implies. Evolution’s gift is big frontal lobes with the capacity for moral decision-making. The fact that we often make the wrong decisions means that we need help. In reality, evolution leaves most of the dominoes standing and those that fell were never really that crucial anyway. |
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