EVOLUTION AND THE BIBLE 



alarm. The Christian is sure that science and faith cannot 

 contradict each other. The world and everything in it is God's. 

 The God of nature is also the God of revelation. God's 

 manifestation of Himself in revelation vastly surpasses His 

 self-manifestation in creation, but does not oppose it. In the 

 problem of human origins frictions and even clashes perhaps 

 had to develop between science and religion. But this tense 

 situation — if there still is tension — relaxes in the measure 

 in which each avoids encroaching on the domain of the other. 

 On some points we are not yet able to perceive a positive 

 accord between theology and science; but the recognition that 

 there is no discord is a tremendous gain. More important than 

 forcibly premature solutions is the intellectual attitude we all 

 ought to make our own, an attitude arising out of intellectual 

 open-mindedness and honesty, of reception of every authentic 

 truth no matter whence it originates, as well as of filial sub- 

 missiveness to the guidance of the teaching authority of the 

 Church that is assisted by the Holy Spirit. 30 



The experience of the past begets confidence for the future. 

 Occasions for misunderstandings and apparent conflicts 

 between science and religion have steadily decreased. Many 

 of the old issues have become musty museum curios. New 

 ones will perhaps take their place. Scientists, philosophers, and 

 theologians must come to one another's aid in an endeavor to 

 master such problems in areas that are common to all of them. 

 In this enterprise they are partners and collaborators, not 

 adversaries or competitors — just as evolution itself is not in 

 competition with creation, for creation is dependence on God, 

 and evolution does not alter this basic relationship. 



Certainly the thought of an evolution of organisms is rich 

 in sublimity, and Charles Darwin expressed his appreciation 

 of this fact in the closing lines of his Origin of Species: 

 "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, 

 having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few 

 forms or into one; and that, while this planet has gone cycling 

 on according to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a 

 beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful 

 have been and are being evolved." Whether an evolution on 



3° Cf. C. Baumgartner, "Bulletin de theologie dogmatique," Recherches 

 de Science Religieuse 46 (1958) 577. 



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