When I embraced Catholicism one of the things I loved about it was how it allowed for the faithful to hold the theories of evolution as valid and not contradictory with Scripture because the Creation account in Genesis is not necessarily meant to be taken literally, even though it can be.
At my LCMS school we began a unit on evolution today. The pastor said that you cannot be Christian and believe in theistic evolution, and he gave proof for this which was pretty outstanding. He said that if animals evolved into the bodies of humans over a course of millions of years how could death be allowed in this equation? Death, he said is a direct result of original sin, why was there death if the sin had not occured yet? Because, obviously, the earth isn’t capable of holding unlimited amounts of animals for this great amount of time between Creation and the Fall, there are some serious flaws in this theory. He said if Christians still believe in theistic evolution in spite of this fact it erases the need for a Savior and everything that Jesus did on the Cross.
Up until today I have been a very avid supporter of theistic evolution, but the point my teacher raised did seem to make a lot of sense. Ever sense he said it I really have been trying to come up with a good argument for it. I’ve come up with a weak one but it’s an argument. It goes as follows: Sin is something that does not confine animals, our teacher even mentioned today that animals do not go to heaven. If sin does not control animals maybe death would have been natural for them? I know this is a very weak argument.
I’d like your insight on the topic because I very much would like to believe in theistic evolution! Thanks!
The two Doctors of the Church who I turn to when facing such questions are Augustine and Aquinas. (You might be asking yourself, “what can someone from the 4th and 13th Centuries tell me about evolution?” The answer is a lot, because there is a lot of philosophy involved in science.)
Augustine, in his writings on Genesis (Against the Manichees), interprets Gen. 3:17 “I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing” as a way of demonstrating physical death in humans. He basically writes that God is essentially telling Eve that she will die as do the animals, and that death is something necessary of beastly existence. So, how do we explain the reason for animals dying? One theory is “reverse engineering” as one poster has already mentioned.
Aquinas also deals with “death and other defects” and whether they are natural to man. In this he states that in the state of innocence, man’s matter was subject to his rational soul or form. At the fall, however, his rational form (which was responsible for his immortality) became subject to his material makeup. Therefore, man could die just as the beasts. From what I can glean from Aquinas as well as Catholic Tradition, only man was created for eternal communion with God. Therefore only man was ever immortal.
Death, quite possibly, is a necessary component of material being that is not informed by rationality. One might ask how a good God could be permissive of death in animals. Well, animals are not self-conscious (as far as we can tell) and therefore there existence is one of “here and now.” For them to die is not good, but not morally evil.
It boils down to a simple idea: For something to have a body means it is mutable. Mutability without rational form means corruption. Therefore, all that is not rational is liable to corruption and hence animals die even without original sin.
I think your teacher needs to make a distinction between death of humans and death of animals. Death entered the world FOR MAN because of original sin, but for the beasts, it is possible that they were created only to serve the higher orders of being (aka rational being.)
I say, believe away in theistic evolution, for God can do all that is possible.
