On Evolutionary Christians
The Christian Post has an article on a series of teleconferences that are available via evolutionarychristianity.com. The post uses scare quotes to set off the word “evolutionary” and in some ways I find the title troubling, just as I do the term theistic evolution.
While I believe acceptance of the theory of evolution will have an impact on some beliefs, and while I do believe religion and science do have overlapping areas of study, the theory of evolution is a scientific theory, and qualifying it with a theological position sounds odd to me. Even so, what’s the alternative.
Evolutionary Christianity seems troubling to me in the reverse sense. Here we have a theology qualified by a scientific theory. That also seems unjustified with me. Non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA) is not entirely accurate in my view, yet one needs to keep one’s categories in some order. Science tells us about the physical world and what happens in it. To the extent that creation tells of its creator, this does impact theology, yet placing a single theory as the qualifier for a view of Christianity … seems odd.
Just some musings …
Hi Henry – if the spirit has taken on flesh, in the incarnation and in the indwelling, how can the magisteria not overlap? BTW, I have no theory on this and I don’t often even comment on the arguments – I just reason from my experience of God’s gift in Christ Jesus. I fully accept science as theory, but I think there are gaps which can never be filled because of the paradox of self-reference. These are time, consciousness, and one other I can’t remember at the moment. š But science can know functions of time, and impacts on consciousness – but hardly how they happen. I have had some positive encouragement on writing – some early drafts are at the poetry of Christ blogspot.
Well, as I see it, NOMA is useful in keeping us from mixing things up, but isn’t quite true. What happens in the real world has to impact theology, and our theology has to relate to the way the world really is, which is what science discovers for us. But we do need to be wary of simply creating conclusions in one area out of work that deries from another.