What's Evolving at the Vatican?

By

Martinez Hewlett & Ted Peters

(authors of Evolution: From Creation to New Creation, Abingdon, 2003)

 

As the heat gets turned up on the public schools to teach alternatives to Darwin's theory of evolution, will the temperature rise also in Roman Catholic parochial schools? The temperature is still cool. Yet we know that when Rome gets hot, so do Catholic institutions the world around. We ask: what's evolving at the Vatican? Nothing, we hope. However, random variations in theological opinion are appearing; and we wonder which will get selected.

The July 7, 2005 edition of the New York Times carried an Op-Ed by Christoph Cardinal Schönborn of Vienna, "Finding Design in Nature." This article looked as if it could have been written by the Discovery Institute, a national sponsor of the anti-Darwinian movement known as Intelligent Design. It just might have been. "Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true," wrote the Cardinal, "but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense—an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection—is not." The brief article used the word "design" frequently and hinted in the direction of supporting the Intelligent Design position. Mark Ryland, a vice president of the Discovery Institute, said in an interview that he had urged the cardinal to write this essay.

Evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala, former president of the American Academy of Sciences and a Roman Catholic philosopher, said that the Op-Ed is "an insult" to the late pope, John Paul II. He objected to the cardinal for drawing an unnecessary line between the Darwinian model of evolution and the Christian faith. The cardinal sees "a conflict that does not exist."

It is our opinion that nothing in recent Roman Catholic theology would require any leaning in the direction of anti-Darwinian models of evolution such as Intelligent Design, let alone Scientific Creationism. Pope John Paul II delivered an elocution to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in October 1996 in which he said that "evolution is more than a hypothesis." He recognized that this scientific theory is becoming more widely accepted. He granted that "we should speak of several theories of evolution," so as to resist endorsing a materialist or reductionist or spiritualist interpretation before engaging in philosophical and theological analysis. The former pope's essay appears in the book, Science and Theology: The New Consonance, edited by Ted Peters (Westview 1998) along with other commentary chapters by Roman Catholic scholars.

During the summer of 1996 just prior to the above mentioned elocution, Pope John Paul II hosted a conference co-sponsored by the Vatican Observatory and the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. The conference included some of the world's leading evolutionary biologists and theologians, both Protestant and Catholic. His Holiness himself contributed to this event, offering another elocution on the subject of evolution. No sign of any reticence regarding the best Darwinian science was suggested. The conferees published a scholarly book under the Vatican City State imprint, Evolutionary and Molecular Biology: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, edited by Robert John Russell, William R. Stoeger, S.J., and Francisco J. Ayala (Vatican Observatory, 1998), that includes the pontiff's essay in the original French as well as the English translation.

Among the issues taken up by these scholars was the question of purpose. There is no doubt that from the point of view of Christian faith our creation has a purpose, a divine purpose. We who are writing this editorial like to say it this way: God has a purpose for nature, even if science cannot see purpose in nature. Although biologists can discern design in complex organisms, they attribute this design to nature's ability to organize itself. God's purpose comes from God, from God's love for all of creation.

Now, according to these Vatican scholars, this commitment to God's purpose does not preclude studying evolution through the lenses of random or chance variation combined with natural selection. Some theologians actually said that randomness and chance are God's gift to the natural world; God's providential care leads to nature's own creativity and self-organization. God creates by asking nature to create. No one in 1996, including the pope, denied to natural processes the ability to produce its own complexity. No intervening transcendent designer is called for within evolutionary theory. To the contrary, self-organization in nature was celebrated as God's will. Not the slightest hint of the Intelligent Design position appeared.

In the October 1996 elocution, Pope John Paul II added a point that is quite interesting, though in itself not relevant to the current controversy over evolution. Evolutionary theory as a science cannot on its own establish human dignity, he said. Furthermore, the concept of evolution cannot account for the appearance of the human soul. Human dignity comes from the presence of a spiritual soul; and "the spiritual soul is created immediately by God." That is, what we know as the human capacity for relationship with God could not arise indirectly by natural physical processes alone. Rather, the spiritual soul which provides this capacity is created directly by God for each human person.

Curiously, and by near coincidence, the late pope's view is called creationism. This use of the term creationism goes back at least as far as St. Augustine in the fifth century. Augustine wondered whether we inherit part of our soul from our parents, a view then known as traducianism. Or, asked Augustine, does God create a special or unique soul for each individual. The fifth century saint could not make up his mind. Pope John Paul II could. He endorsed creationism.

Note that this Roman Catholic use of the term creationism differs from the way the term appears in the evolution controversy. For the Vatican, the term refers to the creation by God of an individual soul. For the Protestant Scientific Creationists, the term refers to God's creation of the entire physical world out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo). Now, of course, virtually all traditional biblical theology, Protestant and Catholic alike, holds to God creating the world at the beginning out of nothing. What distinguishes the Protestant Creationists of today is their belief that this original creation includes fixing the species—that is, it includes denial that one species could evolve into another species. In contrast, one could in principle hold that God created the world at the beginning (ab initio) and then ordered that nature continue the creative process (creatio continua). Those belonging to the camp of theistic evolution would hold this position.  Significantly, in summary, neither the pope's version of creationism nor the classic idea of creation of everything out of nothing necessarily forbid Darwinian natural selection.

The two authors of this opinion article—one a biologist and the other a theologian--belong in the camp of theistic evolution. We hold that faith in the God who created our world in the beginning and continues to provide creative and redemptive care is compatible with scientific methods that are blind to divine purpose within natural processes. What natural scientists study we call "secondary causes," whereas God is the "primary" cause. Science can contribute immensely to understanding the created world replete with secondary causes, and indirectly contributes to our understanding of the creator, the primary cause.

We further believe that children of every religious persuasion should be taught the best science in their schools, whether public schools or Roman Catholic parochial schools. We believe that the Darwinian model of evolutionary biology represents the best science, because it is fertile—that is, it leads to new knowledge through research. None of the alternatives—Scientific Creationism or Intelligent Design—have fertile research programs. These alternatives should not be taught in science classes. This exclusion is not because they are religious. Rather they are excluded because they are not, in principle, science. Religious faith, when it is healthy, embraces the truth wherever it is found, including science. To our reading, despite what the Vienna cardinal has said, Pope John Paul II allowed for the commitment we make here. We wait now to see what Pope Benedict XVI will say.