Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Jesus Creed

Home
Evangelical
The Spirit of God in Evolutionary History (RJS)

The Spirit of God in Evolutionary History (RJS)

Last updated on: January 21, 2014 at 5:28 am by RJS

The Spirit of God in Evolutionary History (RJS) 2014-01-21T05:28:10-06:00 RJS

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The second chapter in The Spirit in Creation and New Creation: Science and Theology in Western and Orthodox Realms was written by Denis Alexander, a molecular biologist, the emeritus director of the The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion in Cambridge (UK), and the author of many scientific articles in molecular immunology, as well as the book Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose?. I’ve had the privilege of meeting Denis a few times and of hearing him talk about science, faith, and evolution. He has much to say worth engagement and conversation.

In his essay Denis looks at the role of the Spirit of God in scripture and in evolution. Although we cannot get from a reductionist study of evolution to the work of the Spirit … “the characteristics of the work of the Spirit known to us through revelation can provide a magnifying glass through which the biological story can provide a richer theological narrative. (p. 12-13)” By this he means that the ways in which we see the work of the Spirit in scripture provide insights into the way in which the Spirit worked in creation through evolution. He starts with the notion of the ruach of God, the wind, breath hovering over the waters in Genesis 1:2, the breath of Genesis 2:7 and moves to the personal Spirit of the New Testament. There are three features Denis draws out from the work of the Spirit throughout scripture, in a very broad brush overview. These features also run through evolutionary history.

Unity and Separation. Denis sees unity and separation as a key thread running through God’s creative work in Genesis, and through the work of God in redemption. Genesis 1 is a separation of waters, a separation of light and dark, and a separation of mankind from the rest of the living creatures as made “in our image”. The creative work of God is a process of diversifying and separating. The creative process of evolution is also a flowering of diversity from a unified source. Biology isn’t a collection of isolated facts and classifications, but a unified whole.

Biology as a diversified whole is not a theological problem. In fact, Denis notes that the theological resources have long existed in the church. Here he quotes from John Wesley in “A Survey of the Wisdom of God in Creation.”

There are no sudden changes in nature; all is gradual and elegantly varied. There is no being which has not either above or beneath it some that resemble it in certain characters, but differ from it in others. … From a plant to a man … the transition from one species to another is almost insensible. … The ape is this rough draft of a man; an imperfect representation which nevertheless bears a resemblance to him, and is the last creature that serves to display the admirable progression of the works of God! There is a prodigious number of continued links between the most perfect man and the ape.

We do not need to make John Wesley into a crypto-evolutionist to see that these comments are remarkably prescient of Darwin’s theory, showing in great detail how the whole of God’s great ‘chain of being’ demonstrated the connections and similarities, since all stemmed from the handiwork of the same creator God. (p. 14)

Wesley wasn’t an evolutionist before his time and Denis isn’t claiming that he was. Wesley saw the ‘chain of being’ as static. But Denis is suggesting that the step from a static connectedness to a historical progression does not require a theological revolution. It merely adds a history through the creative work of God to the connectedness of the present ‘chain of being.’ There is a unity and a unifying history underneath the apparent diversity.

Order and Disorder. In Genesis 1 God brings order out of disorder, yet the work of the Spirit is not always orderly from human perspective. This is true in the work of the Spirit in the early church (Denis refers to several incidents in Acts), in the church today, and in the act of creation.

God’s rauch sweeping over the waters certainly brought order out of tohu vebohu, just as Genesis 1 depicts. But God’s rauch also brought creativity, unpredictability, and incredible variation, so that “from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.”[1] The Spirit in creation blows where He wills. Evolution is nothing like a human engineering project. There is no fixed blueprint for evolution, although in the dynamic relationship between chance and necessity, it is clear that ultimately necessity has the upper hand. If it were not so, then from a biological perspective the earth would forever have remained in a state of tohu vebohu. (p. 20 – 1with the quote from On the Origin of Species)

In scripture from beginning to end the move bringing order out of disorder isn’t some idealized engineered process creating a mechanical reality. Perhaps the contrast is something like the contrast between engineering and art.

Personal and Impersonal. Here Denis emphasizes the arrow of evolution. The progress of evolutionary history moves from impersonal to personal. He invokes the development of social structures from the very early mats of photosynthetic bacteria (fossils dating some 3 to 3.5 billion years ago) to multicellular organisms to social insects and the social structures and capabilities of primates.

So it seems that personhood was incipient all along, waiting, as it were, for the rauch of God, to keep blowing until the inevitable happened: personhood emerged out of lifeless matter, a 3.8 billion-year-old narrative. With the benefit of hindsight, knowing now that the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, the emergence of personhood through the Spirit’s immanent work in the created order is precisely what one might expect. (p. 25)

There is nothing intrinsically inconsistent with a view of evolutionary creation. Rather, Denis suggests that we seem the same processes of development in creation before and after the beginning of human history and God’s call of humans from Genesis 2 through Revelation.

So what might this tell us? These three contrasts – unity and separation, order and disorder, personal and impersonal – summarized above don’t really do justice to the whole argument. Perhaps to get a feel for the thrust of the argument it is best to turn to Denis’s conclusion (annotated as I quote).

Had we started with the evolutionary narrative alone, without any other inputs, we would have been forced to the conclusion that “something very organized and special is going on here.”

While the secular scientist might argue that there is no purpose or intention in the process of evolution, there are most definitely constraints and convergences. There is an indisputable direction to the evolutionary arrow of time from simple to more complex.

We might have concluded that there was some force, impersonal, or perhaps even personal intelligence or power, that had brought about such a remarkable history.

But as Christians we do not start with the evolutionary narrative alone.

Starting with the known work of God’s Spirit in both the created order in general, and in human history in particular, however, provides a much a much richer narrative, one in which the resonances can be more finely nuanced. The work of the Spirit in evolutionary history in unity and separation, order and yet disorder, and in both the impersonal and the personal, increases our hope and expectations for our new life in the eschaton. (p. 25)

The work of the Spirit in evolutionary history and in human history leads us forward in the expectation of an entirely new stage of life in the age to come with new creation.

Does this description agree with the way the Spirit has worked in human history described in scripture?

How do you think of the Spirit at work in creation?

If you wish to contact me directly, you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

January 21, 2014

Confessing the Sins of Our Fathers and Mothers

Next Post

January 21, 2014 Surfing and the Benedictines

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Acts of the Apostles Adam Advent Anabaptism Angels Anglican Apologetics Atonement Baptism BCP Prayers Bible Biblical Studies Birds Blogging Bloglossary Bonhoeffer Books Calvinism Christianity Church Church History Coffee Colossians Commentary Recs Conversion Creation Creeds Culture Death Ecclesiastes Economics Education Embracing Grace Emergent Emerging Movement Eschatology Essays Ethics Eucharist Evangelicalism Family Fasting Fathers Fellowship of Differents Footsteps Tour Fun and Whimsical Gospel Grace Happiness Heaven Hell Holy Spirit Irenaeus James Jesus Jesus Creed Job Justification Kingdom of God Law Lectures Lent Liberalism Love and Marriage Mabanteneni Manhood Mary Miracles Missio Alliance MissioLife Missional Missional Jesus Movies and Film New Perspective Northern Seminary OneLife Origins Project Orthodox Parables Pastor's Spouse Pastoring and Leading Pastoring and Preaching Patristics Paul Paul-John Tour Pharisees Pietism Political Theology Prayer and Formation Preaching Problems for Faith Psalm 119 Psalms Public Issues Purgatory Religions Resurrection Revelation Romans Rule of JCreed Science and Faith Sermon on the Mount Sports Ten Commandments Theology Third Way Top Ten Lists Translations Uncategorized Universalism University Ministry Way Out Weekly Meanderings Wisdom Women and Ministry Work Worship Writing & Blogging Youth Ministry

Select a Month July 2021 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 0000

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What small part of the body does James say is a restless evil, full of deadly poison?

Select your answer to see how you score.

The eye The hand The heart The tongue