(Tuesday, August 17, 2010, 2:13 PM)
God creates Adam (Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel)
The Holy Scripture asserts that "God created man in His image and likeness" (Gen 1:26-27). This, for the Church, has always been a central statement, because it qualifies in its essence the exclusive dignity that God attributes to man, unique among all creatures.
Furthermore, in a Christian perspective, to assert that humans, all humans, are an “image” of God, means that all, from the Christian who recites the Apostles’ Creed with confident faith, to the indigenous living in the most forlorn corner of pre-Columbian Amazon, are saved in Christ, that is they are worthy of being resurrected to Eternal Life.
For at least one and a half century Evolution has become for all, including Catholic Christians (excluding, obviously, the so called “fundamentalist creationists”), an explanation which not only is considered plausible, but to all effects so strongly corroborated by science that it can be declared “true”, of how life, starting from its origin, got differentiated and articulated, up to its “superior” forms, including the human species.
Differences, with regard to Evolution, are by now only the ones between those, on one side, who consider it the result of a combination of Chance and Necessity (this expression was made famous by Jacques Monod’s book “Le Hasard et la Nécessité”, but it is also an effective an synthetic definition of Darwinism, that is the “Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection”), those, on another side, who consider it moved by an “inner pulsion” (“élan vital”, “will”, etc.; this is Bergson’s position, and significantly he is one of the prime targets of Monod, who in his book, tears him apart as totally unscientific); those, to end with, who consider Evolution “driven”, at least at its main “turning points” or “bifurcations”. This latter is the position of the so called “Intelligent Design”.
There is also a position which tries to combine the notion of a Creator God with unguided Evolution, usually referred to as “Theistic Evolutionism”. I have argued elsewhere (Jacques Monod gives the lie to Theistic Evolutionism, @ servetus.newsvine.com) that it is a position intrinsically contradictory, one that tries to “have its cake and eat it too”.
Now, if humans are the result of a process (not necessarily of a “mechanism”) of Evolution, from a Christian point of view only two possibilities are given:
1. The emergence of man for “pre-human” life forms is a “jump”, a “discontinuity”.
2. The emergence of man for “pre-human” life forms is a “gradual” process: to this hypothetical process the name of “hominization” is usually given, after Karl Rahner.
In the first case, Evolution could be reconciled, if not with the letter, certainly with the substance of the Biblical text, even understood in the most traditional sense.
In the second case, the main, glaringly evident problem, is that between “pre-human” beings and human beings in a proper and full sense, we must admit a series of transition “forms” (hominids).
Now, if the statement made here at the beginning, that is that from a Christian point of view, to be made “in God’s image and likeness” implies to be worthy of being resurrected to Eternal Life, and for this latter dignity no graduality can obviously be admitted, it follows that, even in case of a “gradual hominization”, we must postulate anyway a “discontinuity” (between “not [yet] worthy” and “worthy” of eternal life).
So, in conclusion, if we do not want to deny the Equal Dignity of all Human Beings, that is, ultimately, their communal call to Resurrection to Life Everlasting, even if we admit a “morphological continuity” in the “hominization” process, we must admit that God introduced anyway, by a special act, a spiritual, qualitative discontinuity in this process:
“And the LORD God formed man [of] the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” (Gen 2:7)
God creates Adam (Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel)
The Holy Scripture asserts that "God created man in His image and likeness" (Gen 1:26-27). This, for the Church, has always been a central statement, because it qualifies in its essence the exclusive dignity that God attributes to man, unique among all creatures.
Furthermore, in a Christian perspective, to assert that humans, all humans, are an “image” of God, means that all, from the Christian who recites the Apostles’ Creed with confident faith, to the indigenous living in the most forlorn corner of pre-Columbian Amazon, are saved in Christ, that is they are worthy of being resurrected to Eternal Life.
For at least one and a half century Evolution has become for all, including Catholic Christians (excluding, obviously, the so called “fundamentalist creationists”), an explanation which not only is considered plausible, but to all effects so strongly corroborated by science that it can be declared “true”, of how life, starting from its origin, got differentiated and articulated, up to its “superior” forms, including the human species.
Differences, with regard to Evolution, are by now only the ones between those, on one side, who consider it the result of a combination of Chance and Necessity (this expression was made famous by Jacques Monod’s book “Le Hasard et la Nécessité”, but it is also an effective an synthetic definition of Darwinism, that is the “Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection”), those, on another side, who consider it moved by an “inner pulsion” (“élan vital”, “will”, etc.; this is Bergson’s position, and significantly he is one of the prime targets of Monod, who in his book, tears him apart as totally unscientific); those, to end with, who consider Evolution “driven”, at least at its main “turning points” or “bifurcations”. This latter is the position of the so called “Intelligent Design”.
There is also a position which tries to combine the notion of a Creator God with unguided Evolution, usually referred to as “Theistic Evolutionism”. I have argued elsewhere (Jacques Monod gives the lie to Theistic Evolutionism, @ servetus.newsvine.com) that it is a position intrinsically contradictory, one that tries to “have its cake and eat it too”.
Now, if humans are the result of a process (not necessarily of a “mechanism”) of Evolution, from a Christian point of view only two possibilities are given:
1. The emergence of man for “pre-human” life forms is a “jump”, a “discontinuity”.
2. The emergence of man for “pre-human” life forms is a “gradual” process: to this hypothetical process the name of “hominization” is usually given, after Karl Rahner.
In the first case, Evolution could be reconciled, if not with the letter, certainly with the substance of the Biblical text, even understood in the most traditional sense.
In the second case, the main, glaringly evident problem, is that between “pre-human” beings and human beings in a proper and full sense, we must admit a series of transition “forms” (hominids).
Now, if the statement made here at the beginning, that is that from a Christian point of view, to be made “in God’s image and likeness” implies to be worthy of being resurrected to Eternal Life, and for this latter dignity no graduality can obviously be admitted, it follows that, even in case of a “gradual hominization”, we must postulate anyway a “discontinuity” (between “not [yet] worthy” and “worthy” of eternal life).
So, in conclusion, if we do not want to deny the Equal Dignity of all Human Beings, that is, ultimately, their communal call to Resurrection to Life Everlasting, even if we admit a “morphological continuity” in the “hominization” process, we must admit that God introduced anyway, by a special act, a spiritual, qualitative discontinuity in this process:
“And the LORD God formed man [of] the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” (Gen 2:7)
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