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- Herausgeber: IVP Academic
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
Christians often have a complicated relationship with science—especially when it comes to evolution. In recent years there has been an explosion in scientific understanding of evolutionary theory and its implications for human nature. Yet many Christians still see evolution as at best irrelevant to their faith and at worst threatening to it. Is it possible that adopting an evolutionary view of human origins can actually help us cultivate a relationship with God and a holy life? In Embracing Evolution, Matthew Nelson Hill invites readers into a constructive conversation about why contemporary science matters for Christians. Bringing clarity to an often fraught conversation, he provides an accessible overview of evolutionary concepts and takes on common concerns about tensions with Christian theology. He then explores what insights and practical benefits await the Christian who adopts an integrative approach to evolution and Christianity. The more we are aware of the complex milieu of instincts, acquired traits, and environmental influences humans find themselves in, the better equipped we can be to overcome tempting urges and adopt life-giving habits. From food cravings and addictions to altruistic impulses, understanding our biological heritage gives us power to change for the better. What's more, as scientific evidence affirms, the transformation process cannot take place in isolation. Drawing on the work of John Wesley, Hill considers the questions, What kind of community will best encourage individuals to live godly lives, and how do we practically form such communities? At some point, every Christian will have to grapple with scientific evidence related to evolution. Full of stories and real-life examples, this book will help church leaders, small groups, students, and anyone curious about science and faith discover how Embracing Evolution can assist them toward a fulfilling, virtuous Christian life.
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FOREWORD BY J. RICHARD MIDDLETON
This book is dedicated to
Helene—with all my love—and to my children:
Connor, Anna, Lucas, and Eva.
May you always know where you come from
and what kingdom you belong to.
Contents
FOREWORD
J. Richard Middleton
MANY CHRISTIANS TODAY are on a journey of understanding, trying to make sense of evolution in light of their faith. This is particularly difficult in our polarized cultural climate in North America, where religion and science are often portrayed as opposed to each other.
For that reason, I am delighted to be able to write this foreword to Matt Hill’s Embracing Evolution. Whereas many books on Christian faith and evolution either view the two as antithetical to each other or struggle to make significant connections between them, Embracing Evolution shows that understanding human evolution can be positively helpful for Christians seeking to be faithful to Jesus Christ.
MY JOURNEY OF UNDERSTANDING THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE ON ORIGINS
Unlike those Christians who started out as young earth creationists and became convinced of the validity of biological evolution later in life, I have no memory of ever dismissing evolution as fundamentally incompatible with biblical faith. Having become a Christian at a young age, I not only accepted in my teenage years that the earth was very old (based on what seemed to be reasonable scientific research) but as a young adult read widely about the evolution of Homo sapiens and our various hominin relatives.
Thankfully, my home church in Kingston, Jamaica (Grace Missionary Church), never insisted on young earth creationism. And when I began my undergraduate studies at Jamaica Theological Seminary, I took two courses in my first semester that made such a view of creation untenable.
The first was a course on the Pentateuch, where one of the textbooks assigned was Bernard Ramm’s The Christian View of Science and Scripture. Here I found an evangelical theologian outlining multiple views of how the Bible related to a variety of scientific issues. Although Ramm articulated his own opinion on the issues he discussed, he noted that there was no single obvious “biblical” answer for questions such as the age of the earth, the great flood, or even evolution. In each case, this was a matter not of biblical authority but of scientific evidence.
In my first undergraduate semester I also took a course on hermeneutics, or biblical interpretation, where the textbook was A. Berkeley Mickelsen’s Interpreting the Bible. While this was a bit of a dense read for an eighteen-year-old, I never forgot Mickelsen’s point that since there was no human observer at creation and since the eschaton is still future, biblical language describing the beginning and end must be largely figurative; these descriptions inevitably transcended human experience. Therefore, just as it would be inappropriate to read eschatological imagery in the book of Revelation as a journalistic account of what a movie camera might record (which seemed obvious to me), I came to realize that it would likewise be a misreading of Genesis to treat the six days of creation as a scientific account of origins.
These two courses at the start of my theological studies combined to convince me that there was no conflict, in principle, between science and the Bible on the question of origins. More than that, these courses (along with the rest of my seminary education) encouraged me to be open to the scientific exploration of God’s world.
During my undergraduate studies I was also developing an interest in a holistic theology that affirmed the goodness of creation (in the beginning) and God’s intent to redeem the cosmos (in the end).1 By the time I graduated with my bachelor of theology degree, I was on a track to take seriously what the sciences were telling us about how this world, including biological life, came to be.
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE ABOUT EVOLUTION
Then as a graduate student in philosophy working as a campus minister for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at the University of Guelph in Canada, I found myself avidly reading books on hominin evolution—including Lucy, the account of the discovery of Australopithecus afarensis (nicknamed Lucy) by Donald Johanson and Maitland Edey.
Although I had no real doubts about the scientific evidence for evolution, including the evolution of Homo sapiens, I was somewhat troubled that evolution didn’t seem compatible with the biblical notion of the fall, the origin of evil recounted in Genesis 2–3. I had always been taught that this text portrays Adam and Eve (an original couple) forfeiting a primal paradisiacal state through a single act of disobedience, which led to the introduction of death for both humans and the natural world. I couldn’t get my head around how this might fit with what scientists claimed about human evolution, including the obvious fact that animal and plant death preceded the origin of humanity on earth. So I did what many Christians do when confronted with cognitive dissonance—I put it out of my mind and concentrated on other things.
In my case, these other things were my graduate studies, first a master’s degree in philosophy and then course work in Old Testament, followed by a doctoral dissertation on humans as imago Dei in Genesis 1 (published as The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1).
In the years leading up to my dissertation, I taught often on the imago Dei in both church and academic settings, and I’ve now written some dozen articles and blog posts on the subject. I have also regularly taught on the garden story of Genesis 2–3, both in churches and in a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses.
My teaching on the first three chapters of Genesis was developed without any explicit reference to evolution. Rather, my focus was on how these texts should be read for their theological discernment of God, the world, and the human calling. Instead of referencing the modern scientific context, I was focused on how the theology of ancient Israel, gleaned from the Bible itself, along with the “cognitive environment” of the ancient Near East, contributed to the meaning of these texts for the life of the church.2
EVOLUTION AND THE FALL
But everything changed in 2013, when I was invited by James K. A. Smith to join an interdisciplinary team of scholars (united by a commitment to the classic orthodox creeds of the church) who would connect their scholarly expertise to the subject of human evolution and the fall. The invitation to participate in this project set me on a path to address the very questions that my cognitive dissonance had previously led me to avoid.
As I began working on how the narrative of Genesis 2–3 might relate to the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens, I discovered that paying attention to evolution did not detract from reading the text but actually helped me notice nuances that I had previously overlooked. For example, I had simply assumed that the first humans lived in a paradisiacal state of perfection before the entrance of sin. Yet immediately after the creation of humanity in Genesis 2, we have the account of human disobedience in Genesis 3. Might that lack of narration of a paradisiacal state be significant for relating the text to evolutionary history?
In the essay I wrote on Genesis 2–3, published in a volume called Evolution and the Fall, I attempted to hold together an evolutionary account of humanity with a real historical origin of evil (which I believe is a nonnegotiable Christian doctrine), yet without claiming that the Bible and science are saying the same thing.3
In doing so, I was rejecting the classic idea that we can easily correlate or harmonize the Bible and science. Yet I also found Stephen Jay Gould’s famous idea of nonoverlapping magisteria (NOMA) inadequate. This view is usually taken to mean that the Bible and science describe different realms of reality—and so cannot, in principle, contradict one another. However, I have now come to formulate the relationship between the Bible and science as two different lenses or perspectives through which we may view the same world.
Of course, the connections between the lenses of the garden story and human evolution aren’t seamless. As Matt Hill himself admits, it isn’t always easy to correlate what the Bible tells us theologically about suffering and death with the history of animal predation and extinctions long before humans came along. And how exactly does a biblical perspective on human sin relate to the development of moral consciousness among Homo sapiens—or even among earlier hominins?
EVOLUTION AND THE CHRISTIAN LIFE
But Embracing Evolution does not focus on the Bible and science generally. Instead, the book addresses how knowledge of evolution can aid us in the quest for holiness and moral transformation in the Christian life.
Matt helpfully builds on his earlier (more technical) book, Evolution and Holiness: Sociobiology, Altruism and the Quest for Wesleyan Perfection, but with a wider purview. Drawing on what we know about our common genetic inheritance as human beings, and even the specific proclivities we may have because of our particular ancestry, Matt gives practical advice on how this knowledge can help us make better moral decisions as we seek to be faithful to the God of the Scriptures.
Having done more and more speaking of late for church groups and conferences on how a biblical approach to questions of human identity and the origin of evil might be related to what the sciences are telling us about human evolution, I’ve found a hunger among Christians (and interested others) to come to a deeper understanding of biblical faith in a way that opens us up to learning from God’s other book, the empirical world that the sciences address.
I am delighted to recommend Matt Hill’s Embracing Evolution as a wonderful addition to the literature on this subject.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
OVER THE YEARS I’VE MET dozens of people who have turned away from their faith—unnecessarily so—because they were told they had to choose between faith and science. As believers, we often add extra epistemological requirements to people’s faith that are not biblical and are otherwise disingenuous to the gospel. Having seen too many friends and acquaintances leave a God that they cannot see for scientific evidence that they can measure, I became wholly fed up with this false choice. We can certainly do better—we have to do better—for the sake of our children.
When IVP extended an invitation to me to be part of this project, I was a bit intimidated to write for a popular audience. After several drafts, false starts, wasted months, and mini-meltdowns, I reflect back on the work of this manuscript with much gratitude to the individuals and institutions that have helped me along the way.
I would like to thank David Congdon for initially asking me to write this book and for starting me on this project, and for Jon Boyd for keeping that momentum going. Many thanks to the folks who helped me brainstorm ideas for chapters, including but not limited to Brent Cline, Robbie Bolton, Cameron Moore, Barsanuphius and Ben Keaster, Ken Brewer, Robert Moore-Jumonville, Tom Holsinger-Friesen, Elisee Ouoba, and the theology department at Spring Arbor University, as well as Michael Dowd, Denis Lamoureux, Darrel R. Falk, Peter Enns, Tom Oord, Jim Stump, Curtis Hotlzen, and Howard Snyder. And to Richard Middleton for his generous foreword and helpful comments.
I would also like to thank David and Janet McKenna and the McKenna grant that enabled me to fund this project—not to mention their endorsement and support. Thanks also to my bishops in the Free Methodist Church for their encouragement. To early readers of my drafts, Kyle Poag, Andrew Smith, Craig Welkener, Tom Corbett, and Steve Castle, I appreciate your honest critiques, criticisms, and reassurances. Thanks also to Destiny Sykes for copyedits and help with the study guide.
I am particularly grateful to Jack Baker for his tireless edits and critiques. Every suggestion he made—every hour he spent on this manuscript—made it stronger and more focused. I have learned so much from his teaching and encouragement.
I would also like to thank my parents, Nelson and Karen Hill, for their unending support. I feel so grateful for their model of how Christians should live in this world.
Last, and by far most important, I would like to thank my family: Helene, Connor, Anna, Lucas, and Eva. My wife, Helene, has shown me what real Christianity looks like with her unending faith, her relentless optimism, and her limitless altruistic spirit. I can’t imagine what life would be like without that living witness to follow. And to my children: may you always ask the hard questions. And may you always remember that Christ’s sacrificial and incarnate love isn’t just the greatest story that has ever been, it’s the greatest story that could have ever been. May you always find the truth in it. May you always tell others about the truth in it. And may you not be afraid of your biological roots and, somehow through the community of other believers, nurture your natural proclivities for the glory of God and for the hope of your neighbor.
OPENING A DIALOGUE
AFASCINATING EXPERIMENT, the Marshmallow Test, was designed by Walter Mischel of Stanford University in the 1960s. The study involved six hundred kids (four to six years old) and sought to assess levels of self-control and delayed gratification. It went something like this: Each kid was asked to sit down at a table, where a single marshmallow was placed on a plate. The researcher told the child that if she waited to eat the marshmallow until the researcher came back, then she could have two marshmallows to eat—a real reward for a preschooler! The researcher left the room for about fifteen minutes, and—though the decision to eat the marshmallow varied from child to child—they all shared the fundamentally same experience: pure agony! Some kids stared incessantly at the treat; some turned around and couldn’t even look at it; most picked it up, smelled it, took little bites out of it, and tried to get as close as they could to eating it without actually doing so. Only a third of the kids resisted the temptation and made it the whole fifteen minutes without eating the tempting indulgence. Interestingly enough, Mischel found that the children who could delay gratification in this experiment ended up having better SAT scores (about 12.5 percent higher), healthier future body mass indexes, and went on to achieve higher education; put frankly, they generally had a more promising future than those who gave in to the temptation.
While this experiment possesses a good deal of entertainment value (search for it on YouTube and find hilarious videos of kids trying to resist the sugary snack), it also teaches us how to nurture our human nature. It’s true that the kids who could not delay gratification were tested twelve years later and found to be more easily frustrated, indecisive, and disorganized, while the kids who waited for two marshmallows were more confident and self-reliant. But one thing Mischel clearly articulated—and this was the purpose of the original study—is that self-control and delayed gratification can be taught. Yes, some children are more naturally prone to be unlikely to delay gratification, but they also have the capacity to learn otherwise, which invariably helps them in the future. In other words, we can teach and cultivate our behavior—nurturing positive proclivities while learning to avoid rather detrimental instincts. Thus, it would seem reasonable to conclude that the knowledge we gain about our human behavior and where certain of our tendencies come from can help us to improve as individuals, perhaps even to become holier.
In addition to this endeavor—and in light of the tension between our evolutionary instincts and our freewill—this book will address the following question: How do I live a holy life while I’m being pulled in so many directions by my biology, by my evolutionary past? And this tension leads to other questions: What does all this “science stuff” have to do with my Christian faith? In what ways can adopting an evolutionary view of human origin actually help my personal relationship with God and be compatible with my Christian faith?
WHERE I’M COMING FROM
Christians—and evangelicals in particular—have always had a funny relationship with science. We love it and we hate it, but more often than not, we don’t quite know what to do with it. On the one hand, like most people, we love all the benefits that come from cutting-edge research—things like medicine, helpful technologies, and unprecedented communication networks. On the other hand, we often get a bit nervous when scientists tell us things that might not be found in the Bible or may, at first glance, even seem to contradict it. Take for instance the relatively new concept in human history of reproductive technologies. A few hundred years ago a man and a woman had to have sex to have a baby. In the twentieth century, people could have sex without having a baby. Now, in the twenty-first century, we have developed the technology to viably create a baby without having sex. It’s understandable that a holy text that is thousands of years old did not anticipate such specific scientific developments.
Most people often find themselves in another odd relationship to science: namely, they are not scientists, though they are shaped by science every day of their lives. In the same way that most of us have no idea how our computers work or what is going on under the hood of a car, most of us don’t know why human nature works the way it does. We have thoughts, emotions, proclivities, and desires. We typically take these phenomena to be given and leave it at that. While there’s nothing wrong with living our lives this way, we should at least acknowledge that our lack of training in complex scientific fields probably does preclude us from commenting about their veracity. If I take my minivan to the shop for an oil change but the mechanic tells me there’s something wrong under the hood, I’m at his mercy; I have to trust his assessment because, even though I am capable of driving the van and benefit from the technology every day of my life, I’m still not a mechanic and can’t tell you the first thing about combustion engines. And maybe our relationship with mechanics is not too unlike our relationship with scientists—we want to trust them until they tell us something we don’t want to hear, because then we have to have faith in what they’re telling us, and this faith can seem costly.
My own relationship with science is not much different from what I’ve just described. I took scientific advances for granted and didn’t think much of them, even though I have benefitted from them throughout my life. It was much the same way in my life with regard to evolution, the particular concern of this book; I grew up never really having thought about it one way or another. It’s not like I was surrounded by antiscience people in my church; nor was I encouraged to cast a leery eye toward science. Yet somehow I was suspicious of evolution, perhaps owing to broader Christian culture. Years later I started asking difficult questions that led me to a place where I could accept both evolution and Christianity as being compatible truths. But accepting such doesn’t mean the struggle and questions go away.
I say all this to express my affinity with the reader who may be suspicious of evolution even if cautiously accepting it. I get why it might feel threatening to one’s faith. In addition to this book’s purpose of demonstrating how understanding evolution can be an advantage for one’s faith, I also hope the book helps some of its readers know that it’s okay to ask hard questions about evolution, our faith, and how all these pieces fit together.
PICKING UP THE RIGHT BOOK
Have you ever eaten turkey bacon? It’s often disappointing—especially if you’re expecting to eat real bacon. Sometimes I wonder, however, if the only reason turkey bacon is so unsatisfying is because we expect it to be different than it is. It was never real bacon. It was always something different. We can’t blame our frustrating culinary experience on turkey bacon but rather on our expectations. If you’re coming to this book hoping to be convinced of evolutionary theory, then you’re going to have a challenging experience. Likewise, if you’re coming to this book with an entrenched six-day-creation perspective, then things will taste like turkey bacon to you. There are more appropriate books out there that are located in the middle of the evolution-creationism debate.1 I would be equally disappointed if an individual walked away from this book either upset because I didn’t write much about the evolution debates or triumphant that whatever perspective they came with to this book—whether it was creationism or evolution—was reinforced. While I have one chapter dedicated to evolutionary theory and its compatibility with the Christian faith, I’m not totally trying to convince people of the veracity of evolutionary theory; instead, that chapter simply attempts to get the reader up to speed with theistic evolution—the notion that belief in God and evolution by natural selection are compatible—so that we can get to the heart of the book: understanding evolution can help us to be more virtuous and even holier.
While this book isn’t written for everyone, it is written for a particular kind of reader: someone who doesn’t get squeamish at the mention of evolution, someone who is maybe even curious about it but doesn’t know why believing in that theory matters for the Christian faith. In other words, I am hoping to address an audience mostly comfortable with an evolutionary account of human origins, anthropology, and modern-day genetics who doesn’t yet see its relevance to Christian life.
My intention was to write this book in a manner accessible to a broad audience of nonspecialist readers, recognizing all the while that many might not share my perspective. I hope you find this book to be welcoming, encouraging, and engaging. If you’re interested in going a bit deeper, please note that I purposely relegated scholarly arguments to footnotes for those readers who may want to investigate my claims on their own. What is more, each chapter ends with a series of questions to help guide further conversation within a Christian formation group setting. I have also kept the chapters to a manageable length so it is easy for groups to read on a weekly basis.
MY HOPES FOR THIS BOOK
In recent years there has been an explosion in the understanding of evolutionary theory and its implications for human nature. The whole concept of what it means to be human is in a state of flux. Yet in spite of all this new knowledge, most Christians either see evolution at best as irrelevant to their faith and at worst as threatening to their faith. These contrary positions often sow discord among Christian communities, precluding any sort of healthy conversation we might have. The aim of this book, then, is to bring these contrary positions into conversation with each other by having two primary goals: (1) to offer a cogent, accessible understanding of basic evolutionary concepts —from natural selection to anthropology, from genetics to the environment—while acknowledging the aspects of evolutionary theory that create tensions within basic Christian theology, and (2) to articulate what practical benefits await the Christian who adopts an integrative approach to evolution and Christianity.
From my perspective the second aim is the most important. I truly believe that having knowledge of our human ancestry can benefit our Christian life in a multitude of ways. One way in particular centers on understanding where our proclivities and desires come from. When those kids with the marshmallow were agonizing over the treat, they were acting on normal and natural instincts. As they get older, those proclivities won’t go away and could possibly get even stronger. A parent that takes seriously full humanity—both our evolutionary roots, with their complicated instincts, and our sinful spiritual nature— can more effectively guide their children through life’s temptations rather than denying that human history affects our behavior. We also have helpful opportunities to sit down with those in our communities who struggle with addictive behavior and encourage them to be cautious about both the physical and spiritual side of cravings and dependencies. In the same way that family medical history helps predict future medical problems, remembering our evolutionary past can provide warning signs of destructive lifestyle formations.
Besides helping us be on the lookout for negative behavioral traits, recognizing our evolutionary roots can be a positive boon for our Christian life. Our past connects us to the whole of humankind—in addition to the material and organic world—in a unique and intimate way. When we acknowledge the full picture of human origins, we can learn to nurture positive traits such as altruism, kindness, and empathy.
Over the years that I’ve served as both an ordained pastor in the Free Methodist Church and as a professor at a Christian university, I have met countless parishioners and students who find that accepting evolutionary theory can be empowering to their Christian faith. And I can also speak from my own experience, in which taking a serious look at human origins motivated me to get off the couch and surround myself with groups of people who could help foster holy habits in my daily Christian life.
WHERE WE’RE GOING TOGETHER
The book consists of eight chapters that are arranged in three sections: (1) “Understanding Our Biblical Lens,” (2) “Understanding Our Scientific Lens,” and (3) “An Integrated Approach to Evolution and the Christian Faith.”
Because I realize that some readers of this book will likely be leery about the implications of evolutionary theory, I thought it would be helpful to acknowledge and discuss the difficult parts of evolution for our Christian faith early in the book. In this way I hope to put readers at ease by addressing their potential fears. While I personally hold an evolutionary creationist perspective, that doesn’t mean I haven’t had to wrestle with particular biblical passages.2 Some specific concerns revolve around the historicity of Adam and Eve and the role of the fall of humanity into sin. Other concerns center on the eons of predation and death in the organic world before Homo sapiens ever emerged.
One of my major priorities in this book is for the reader to understand very clearly the terminology and language that I’ll be using throughout. The last thing helpful to the church is further miscommunication regarding basic evolutionary and biblical terminology. Chapter two, “Reading Scripture Faithfully,” will introduce readers to both of the basic creation narratives and the common methods of interpreting them. A primary aim of this chapter is to help readers understand that everyone reads Scripture from a particular position; in other words, everyone uses a specific lens by which to understand the Bible. I consider the various creation stories (Genesis 1, Genesis 2, Job, and Isaiah) as short case studies into inductive Bible study. I take a Socratic approach in this early chapter, helping readers to ask certain questions about biblical literacy such as, Should we read all sections of Scripture the same way? If we are to read certain sections literally, poetically, or metaphorically, by what authority are such interpretations made? I hope we will come away from this chapter with a sense of the broader readings of the creation narratives within Christian communities as we look to major Christian thinkers through history who have not read Genesis literally (e.g., St. Augustine).
As previously mentioned, the first section of the book addresses what I believe to be the two main problems of evolutionary theory for the Christian faith. It is my hope that in this section I can both gain your trust and establish a context for truthful dialogue. By not shying away from what are the most difficult problems with connecting evolutionary theory to Christian theology, I work to put some readers at ease and encourage them to be open to what I have to say in the remaining chapters.
