Response to Ilia Delio’s Christ in Evolution, chapter 2, and Denis Edwards’s The God of Evolution, chapters 1 and 2
he face of science is ever evolving. As new facts make themselves evident, it modifies the paradigm and as such it can affect conclusions drawn from earlier data sets. When the planet Earth was thought to be the center of all creation, interpretation of all evidence pointed to proof of this ‘truth’. People were slaughtered, tortured and maimed all in the name of the perception of biblically interpreted truth. We can become so attached to our version of the truth that we are blind to other perspectives and the dogma can drive us to heinous acts. And when new information comes to light it is important to be receptive to this information. Ironically the biggest opponents of new truth are often scientists themselves.
As our depth of understanding of the world increases the more and more accurate a picture we have of how our universe is assembled. Aristotelian naturalism gave way to Newtonian physics which gave way to quantum physics which will very likely give way to some even more insightful form of physics. Aristotle’s view of spontaneous generation and his archaic classification system of living organisms gave way to modern biologists and Linnaeus’s system of binomial nomenclature for classification. The understanding of the original and ongoing creation of life was once interpreted as a single act of God as in a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. I fear that this fantasy was and is a way of explaining away something that was and still is often beyond the comprehension of most people. The writings of the early framers and drafters of the scrolls resulting in the Bible that we use today must pass through a hermeneutic lens in order to comprehend their writings.
Over time, great observers of the natural world such as Jean Baptiste Lamarck, Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin turned the world on its head and developed the Theory of Evolution. Later the theory was modified by Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldridge and expanded it to include the idea of Punctuated Equilibrium (rapid changes). But today we are beginning to discover that there is a lot more to creation than we ever thought. A lot more. And the implications of that new knowledge are theologically relevant. I am referring to Horizontal Gene Transfer. Understand that this idea does not replace the theory of evolution, it embellishes it and expands it into far more than we could ever have imagined.
We are not who we have thought we are. Scientists love to categorize and put things into neat little boxes in order to better understand it. There is this idea that scientists have worked with that is the premise that species are individuals, however, we are better thought of as part of a spectrum and a spectrum that is shaped more like a sponge than a linear path. The idea of individuals is central to the whole idea of evolution but we’re beginning to find that it is not so clear cut. Darwin’s entire theory is predicated on the survival and reproduction of ‘individuals’.
The truth is our genes show us to be a mosaic of every form of life there is on the planet (archaea, bacteria, Protista, fungi, plants, animals + viruses). At one point in our evolution, bacteria (with their own DNA) invaded our cells and took up residence there to become mitochondria which process oxygen and carbohydrates in order to give us our energy. Cyanobacteria (the photosynthetic bacteria that produces most of the oxygen we breathe) collaborated with plants and became chloroplasts. Endogenous (self-replicating) retroviruses make up something like 8% of the human genome. One of them contributed viral DNA syncytin-2, which repurposed itself to enable human conception and the development of the placenta. Something like 60% of our genome is the same as a banana. We are not separate, but rather we are one. However, our ego desires to separate our false self from our unitive self. It you think you are an individual and not dependent on a massive biome of microbes living in you and on you, go ahead and eliminate them and see how long you live. Each person is unique and yet each person is a dynamic and complex ecosystem of entities working in harmony.
One of the architects of this new understanding was Carl Woese. He was not an atheist. He firmly believed in God and his mosaic model of life resonates more fully with God’s creation just as all of life resonates with this idea. He came to discover that there were three basic forms of life – bacteria (used to be called prokaryotes or essentially cells without a nucleus) eukaryotes (cells with a nucleus) and archaea (extremophiles or organisms that lived in extreme environments eg. too hot, too cold, too acid, too alkaline, etc. and are different than either of the other two). Lynn Margulis was an associate of his that worked on uncovering the discovery of HGT (horizontal gene transfer). She is credited with positing that mitochondria in eukaryotic cells were actually captured bacteria. On the face of it, this doesn’t seem like much as it relates to scripture. But dig deeper and look at the patterns and you will see something incredible unfolding.
One of the things about patterns in nature is that they tend to manifest themselves on a variety of scales and find themselves in the roots of everything in the formed world. The shape of a spiral galaxy is the same as a whirlpool in the ocean or in your bathtub. The curves of the whirlpool match what is known as the Fibonacci ratio, aka the Golden Mean or Golden Ratio. The same ratio describes the placement of seeds on a sunflower, the curve of a parrot’s beak, the shell of a Nautilus, the distribution of branching on a tree, the creation of a bird’s egg, and on and on and on. Some have called it the God Ratio or the God Number because it shows up everywhere throughout creation. Its expression in Nature is legion.
My thought is that patterns that consistently show themselves are clues to our creation and reveal the hand of the creator. Denis Edwards in The God of Evolution talks about relevance of salvific truths in the Bible and relevance of a trinitarian view. This as opposed to using the Bible as a reference to the creation of life. References in scripture that point to our salvation are exemplified through the term ‘abiding’ or dwelling within and he equates this to friendship or relational love. He quotes John and Richard of St. Victor as support for his argument. The pattern in the new science of HGT is all about this abiding in, collaboration and relationships in what turns out to be an expression of singularity and unity. It is far more resonant than the old Theory of Evolution. The other aspect of trinitarian provenance being resonant with creation is the fact that there are three basic forms of life. Possibly a coincidence but it sure is suspicious.
Ilio Delio in Christ in Evolution quotes the Franciscan theologian Bonaventure who says, “All things are said to be transformed in the transfiguration of Christ in as far as something of each creature was transfigured in Christ. For as a human being, Christ has something in common with all creatures. With the stone he shares existence; with plants he shares life; with animals he shares sensation; and with angels he shares intelligence. Thus, all things are transformed in Christ since in his human nature he embraces something of every creature in himself when he is transfigured.”
For being a 13th century mystic Bonaventure was incredibly insightful. He was writing from the perspective of what is referred to as a flat-earth paradigm and an Aristotelian perspective as it relates to biotic systems. His insights are more in line with a modern sophistication. When Bonaventure references stones, he says ‘shares existence’ which is to say matter, which is to say we have mass and take up a physical and tangible space. When he refers to plants and says ‘shares life’ he could be talking about the dance of oxygen and carbon dioxide that allows us to live. When he refers to animals and sensation he is talking about consciousness due to the input we receive from our senses. And as far as intelligence derived from angels, it is my thought that he is referring to our soul consciousness which resonates from a deep understanding rooted in love.