EVOLUTION AND THE BIBLE 



animals is regarded as securely established; a host of structural 

 similarities, which are particularly notable in the skeletal 

 remains of primitive men, leaves no room for doubt in the 

 scientist's mind. Man entered the world of living creatures 

 without the slightest noise. 



On the other hand, faith asserts a gap between animal 

 nature and human nature. The latter, in that which makes the 

 nature specifically human, is spiritual, dedicated to immortality, 

 and capable of personal friendship with God. Hence we are 

 faced with two alternatives. One of them breaks the continuity 

 of the upward movement of life in the universe. In this 

 hypothesis we interpret the poetry of the biblical image to 

 mean that man's body was formed from pre-existent, lifeless 

 matter; like a sculptor, God fashioned a statue from the earth, 

 and then immediately and completely transformed it by in- 

 fusing into it a spiritual soul. The other alternative, which 

 acknowledges the ascensional biological movement of the 

 cosmos, represents the human body as derived from a pre- 

 existent but highly evolved organism. Yet something entirely 

 new is produced, the spiritual, immortal soul, which can come 

 into being only by way of creation from nothing. It is made 

 for union with a body, but surpasses the whole order of bodily 

 causality. This spiritual soul introduces a profound ontological 

 discontinuity into the series of continuities with which science 

 is concerned; because of it, the body of the first human being, 

 even if it resulted from the infusion of a soul into a pre- 

 ordained animal organism, was, metaphysically speaking, an 

 absolute beginning, and was caused by God alone. 



The situation seems rather embarassing. Science asserts a 

 real continuity; theology asserts a definite cleavage, beginning 

 with a definite individual known as Adam, who really existed, 

 even though we are unable to identify him historically. If we 

 insist on confronting the two positions with each other on the 

 same plane, the scientific view and the religious view of human 

 origins must appear incompatible. 



However, the incompatibility is only superficial. If we dis- 

 tinguish clearly the object of each and the limitations which 

 each must impose on itself to state its case legitimately, the 

 two assertions are perfectly reconcilable. Science thinks of an 

 observable continuity. This kind of continuity does not at all 



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