Christoph Schonborn on evolution

[mike182d]

JKirkLVNV:

God created it, but the mechanism He used remains a mystery. Sound fair?

The problem is that there aren’t mechanisms that God “used.” Deists believed that God got the world spinning then sat back and let it spin on its own. This is not what Catholics believe. God was not just the first cause, but continues to be the sole cause of every moment in the course of time; He holds the whole of the universe in His creative hand. There are no processes that He puts on “auto-pilot” and just watches unravel.

 

[buffalo]

JKirkLVNV:

I thought this was an interesting read onthe topic:catholic.com/thisrock/2004/0401bt.asp

Esp. the last two paragraphs, which I quote:

"Until such time as the magisterium would either reverse its twentieth-century finding that human evolution is not precluded by the deposit of faith or would make a new finding that it is required by the deposit, human evolution as a matter that is free with respect to the sources. It is a matter that must stand or fall on its own scientific merits; it is not a matter of Catholic teaching.

The sooner both sides in the evolution debate within the Catholic Church recognize this, the better for all concerned."

Why Human Evolution can never
become part of the Deposit of Faith

**ABSTRACT
**
**In this essay several definitive reasons are given why an evolutionary creation of our first parents can never become part of the Deposit of Faith. This being so, it is imperative that the Catholic Church should without delay not only reject the possibility of such a creation but should also re-affirm those teachings of the Church that hold that our first parents were created as described in the Book of Genesis, Chapter 2.**

 

[buffalo]

Steve Andersen:

Thanks Phil

I still don’t understand what “neo-Darwinism” is supposed to mean or how it is different from regular, plain-old vanilla biology

It means that you have to reconcile the evidence with the presumption that life evolved from nothing. To a scientist it leaves two choices only, not three. God exists or atheism. There can be no third alternative. Because of this atheists now have their own faith - that is, God does not exist. Their data has to fit this belief.

 

[Diddi]

Steve Andersen:

Genesis is a great allegorical work describing the creation of the world, the existence of evil, the differences between the sexes, the existence of other cultures, etc. etc.

But to claim that it has any scientific validity does it a great disservice.

That is not what it was written for.

To hold that it does sets us up for the classic “God of the gaps” dilemma.

Science, sitting on its islands of empiricism, gazing out upon oceans of infinity, dares to mock “the God of the gaps.”

 

[HagiaSophia]

From John Allen’s current column:

A recent article by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn in The New York Times, asserting that “unguided, unplanned” evolution is inconsistent with Catholic faith, should be read with caution warn a number of Catholic scientists and theologians, including the head of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

Most of the experts interviewed said the article can offer a useful alert if taken at a theological level. Evolution, they point out, has sometimes been invoked to justify atheism, as well as immanentism (that God is a vague life force) or deism (that God set the universe in motion and has nothing more to do with it).

To the extent Schönborn’s point is that Christianity cannot accept a universe without an active, personal God, they say, there’s little to dispute.

If taken as a scientific statement, on the other hand, these observers warn that Schönborn’s insistence on seeing “purpose and design” in nature could steer the Catholic church towards creationism in the bitter cultural debate, especially prominent in the United States, between evolution and intelligent design. Doing so, they say, risks overstepping the bounds of the church’s competence, as well as reopening a divide between science and the Catholic church that had seemed largely overcome.

Several said Schönborn’s July 7 piece should be read in the context of a 2004 document of the International Theological Commission, an advisory body of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the most recent Vatican document to treat evolution.

The document, titled “Communion and Stewardship,” argues that Catholic theology does not commit the church to one side or the other in the strictly scientific dispute between evolution and design. Even if evolution appears “random” and “undirected” from an empirical point of view, the document asserts, it could still be part of God’s providence.

That view is welcomed by many Catholic scientists, who say the problem with evolution is not so much the theory itself, but the philosophical applications some make of it.

“The theory of evolution can be disturbing to Christians because it seems to clash with the idea of divine creation,” said Nicola Cabibbo, president of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, a 78-member body of academics who advise the pope on scientific matters. Cabibbo is a professor of particle physics at Rome’s La Sapienza University.

ncronline.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2005c/072905/072905h.php

 

[HagiaSophia]

Keeping ‘divine causality’ in the process

Excerpt from the Vatican’s International Theological Commission document, “Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God.”

1. The current scientific debate about the mechanisms at work in evolution requires theological comment insofar as it sometimes implies a misunderstanding of the nature of divine causality. Many neo-Darwinian scientists, as well as some of their critics, have concluded that, if evolution is a radically contingent materialistic process driven by natural selection and random genetic variation, then there can be no place in it for divine providential causality.

A growing body of scientific critics of neo-Darwinism point to evidence of design (e.g., biological structures that exhibit specified complexity) that, in their view, cannot be explained in terms of a purely contingent process and that neo-Darwinians have ignored or misinterpreted.

The nub of this currently lively disagreement involves scientific observation and generalization concerning whether the available data support inferences of design or chance, and cannot be settled by theology.

But it is important to note that, according to the Catholic understanding of divine causality, true contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence.

Divine causality and created causality radically differ in kind and not only in degree. Thus, even the outcome of a truly contingent natural process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan for creation. According to St. Thomas Aquinas: “The effect of divine providence is not only that things should happen somehow, but that they should happen either by necessity or by contingency. Therefore, whatsoever divine providence ordains to happen infallibly and of necessity happens infallibly and of necessity; and that happens from contingency, which the divine providence conceives to happen from contingency” (Summa theologiae, I, 22,4 ad 1).

In the Catholic perspective, neo-Darwinians who adduce random genetic variation and natural selection as evidence that the process of evolution is absolutely unguided are straying beyond what can be demonstrated by science. Divine causality can be active in a process that is both contingent and guided. Any evolutionary mechanism that is contingent can only be contingent because God made it so.

An unguided evolutionary process – one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence – simply cannot exist because “the causality of God, Who is the first agent, extends to all being, not only as to constituent principles of species, but also as to the individualizing principles. … It necessarily follows that all things, inasmuch as they participate in existence, must likewise be subject to divine providence” (Summa theologiae, I, 22, 2).

 

[HagiaSophia]

From Allen’s column of 7/22/05 we get this synopsis:

In speaking to a number of Catholic scientists and theologians, the consensus seems to be that Schönborn has a valid point if his argument is read on a theological level. Christianity cannot accept the idea of a universe without an active, personal God, and evolutionary theory has sometimes been used to justify not only atheism, but also immanentism (God as a vague life-force) and Deism (that God set the universe in motion and has nothing more to do with it).

Richard Dawkins, one of the most widely read popularizers of evolutionary theory, has written that Charles Darwin “made it possible to be an intellectually satisfied atheist.”

On the other hand, if Schönborn’s statements are read as claims about science, things quickly become murkier. At face value, Schönborn seems to suggest it is a matter of Catholic faith that design and purpose can be empirically discovered in nature. If so, the widely held (though certainly not undisputed) scientific understanding of evolution as a process driven by random genetic mutation and natural selection would be, in itself, irreconciliable with Christianity, driving a serious wedge between science and the church.

In this regard, it seems important to clearly distinguish two questions:

What is the best scientific explanation for the origins and development of organic life, based on data such as the fossil record, genetic studies, and so on?​

Does evolutionary theory, whether true or not, pose a conflict with Catholic theology?​

For more on the subject see interview with Prof. N. Caibibo: [ncronline.org/ma(name removed by moderator)age/specialdocuments/cabibbo.htm](http://ncronline.org/ma(name removed by moderator)age/specialdocuments/cabibbo.htm)

 

[MichaelTDoyle]

PhilVaz:

Now if I remember your position from way back, you postulate a “Garden of Eden” in a “parallel universe” where sin did not reign, and that’s perfectly acceptable theologically it seems to me. And that can solve the theological difficulty. But of course it has nothing to do with the scientific fact that dinosaurs lived, died, and went extinct on this planet earth 65 million years ago (not to mention zillions of insects, etc) before the rise of mankind. I don’t throw these scientific facts out, neither does the Church.

Phil P

I don’t see the significance of the 65 million years if the garden of Eden was in a “parallel” place. Indeed, if it were in some kind of Carlos Casteneda like space between reality,–or some special reality of its own separate from this reality, it could be separate from this reality’s time itself. In such a case the fall could have occured “before” all the dinosaurs, “before” the big bang and the exile occured in a time differential where on exit they landed in a world of soul-less proto-humans, where Cain et al subsequently went off to interbreed passing on the capability of the soul, “the likeness of God” to future generations.

Just some fun speculation. I’m sure the reality would shock us more except we’ll be in bliss of God’s precense when we really do find out, God willing.

 

[Matt16_18]

MichaelTDoyle:

… if [the garden of Eden] were in … some special reality of its own separate from this reality …

Please allow me to clarify what I mean by the terrestrial paradise existing in a “parallel universe”.

There is only one created reality, a reality that includes both this fallen world, purgatory, hell, the uncorrupted terrestrial paradise, etc.

Christian artists have painted images of the created reality by showing the surface of the earth as the location of the fallen world, purgatory and hell as gloomy caves located beneath the surface of the earth, and heaven as a place of located above the celestial sphere. It is possible that the artist may have meant this as a literal description of reality, but the Church does not require one to believe that purgatory and hell literally exists in caves below the surface of the earth, nor that heaven is located in a place above a dome where the stars are fixed. The Church does, however, infallibly teach that purgatory, hell, and heaven are real places, and not metaphors for psychological states of mind.

As a Catholic I am free to believe that purgatory, hell, and heaven are in “parallel universes” so to speak. But these parallel universes are not completely separate from this fallen universe, because the saints in heaven can intercede for the saints in the fallen world, and the saints in this world can intercede for the holy souls in purgatory. The important thing here is that the church is the body of Christ, and that body is not located only in the fallen world; the body of Christ also is found in other “parallel universes” such as purgatory. An all these “parallel universes” are connected to each other through Christ.

Scriptures teach that the terrestrial paradise was not destroyed by Adam’s sin - it teaches that Adam and Eve were cast out of the terrestrial paradise: “The LORD God therefore banished him from the garden of Eden …” (Gen 3:23).

My conception is that the terrestrial paradise is in a “parallel universe”, and that the terrestrial paradise is connected to this fallen world in a mysterious manner. It is St. Hildegarde that paints this image for me:
And as the body of Adam was a real body of flesh and blood, not pure spirit, so, too, paradise is not a celestial or purely spiritual region, but a material place connected with human nature and earth itself. … St. Hildegarde says on this subject in her Scivias, Lib. I., visio II. :

“When Adam and Eve were expelled from paradise, a wall of light was raised around it, and the Divine Power effaced from it all marks of their sin. It was fortified, as it were, by this great light so that no enemy could reach it; but by this God also testified that the transgression which had taken place in paradise should in time be effaced by His mercy. Paradise still exists, a region of joy, blooming in all its pristine loveliness, and imparting abundant fruitfulness to the sterile earth. As the soul communicates life and strength to the body it inhabits, so the earth receives from paradise her supreme vitality; the darkness and corruption of sin, which shroud this miserable world cannot entirely check its influence.”

Carl E. Schmöger, C.SS.R., The Life of Anne Catherine Emmerich, Volume 1, pp. 155-156, TAN Books and Publishers, INC., Rockford, Illinois​

 

[Ahimsa]

So perhaps Paradise is “right here”, but in another dimension?

 

[Matt16_18]

Ahimsa:

So perhaps Paradise is “right here”, but in another dimension?

**Catechism of the Catholic Church

1002** Christ will raise us up “on the last day”; but it is also true that, in a certain way, we have already risen with Christ. For, by virtue of the Holy Spirit, **Christian life is already now on earth ** a participation in the death and Resurrection of Christ …

1003 United with Christ by Baptism, believers already truly participate in the heavenly life of the risen Christ, but this life remains "hidden with Christ in God. "The Father has already "raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. "Nourished with his body in the Eucharist, we already belong to the Body of Christ. When we rise on the last day we “also will appear with him in glory.”

 

[MichaelTDoyle]

Matt16_18:

Please allow me to clarify what I mean by the terrestrial paradise existing in a “parallel universe”.

There is only one created reality, a reality that includes both this fallen world, purgatory, hell, the uncorrupted terrestrial paradise, etc.

As a Catholic I am free to believe that purgatory, hell, and heaven are in “parallel universes” so to speak. But these parallel universes are not completely separate from this fallen universe, because the saints in heaven can intercede for the saints in the fallen world, and the saints in this world can intercede for the holy souls in purgatory. The important thing here is that the church is the body of Christ, and that body is not located only in the fallen world; the body of Christ also is found in other “parallel universes” such as purgatory. An all these “parallel universes” are connected to each other through Christ.

SO they are not completely separate but TIME could be radically different. After all TIME is mutable in this reality, right? So these “areas” could be connected and even have some shared essence but still have rtadically different space and time qualities–purgatory, paradise, Eden, Church Militant (our space)

speculatin’ mike

 

[Matt16_18]

MichaelTDoyle:

SO they are not completely separate but TIME could be radically different. After all TIME is mutable in this reality, right? So these “areas” could be connected and even have some shared essence but still have rtadically different space and time qualities–purgatory, paradise, Eden, Church Militant (our space)

Exactly. There is no reason to think that what we perceive as time in the fallen world is how time is perceived in, say, purgatory. And there is no reason to think that time as Adam and Eve perceived it before the Fall is the same way that they perceived time after they fell.

I don’t see the significance of the 65 million years if the garden of Eden was in a “parallel” place.

Nor do I see the significance.