Evil, Evolution, and Original Sin-scholarly article

EVIL, ORIGINAL SIN, AND EVOLUTION

RICHARD J. PENDERGAST, S.J.

Fordham University, Bronx, U.S.A.

This article has three sections. The first discusses the problem of evil; the second, the sins of both angelsand men that originally introduced evil into the world; the third, a teleological theory of evolution thatclarifies the relationship between the first two sections. At present there is a great deal of discussion aboutthe nature of the evolutionary process. Some argue that ultimately it is a strictly random one. But it isquite impossible to prove scientifically that evolution is strictly random. From a Christian point of viewthe best way to view it is to see it not only as the result of divine intelligence, but also as due to a ferociousconflict between superhuman powers – the biblical angels and demons to whom God in the beginninggave the power to guide and develop his creation.

I. THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

In Christian theology, the benevolent and omnipotent God is the principle of unity andorder in the world. How is it, then, that the world has so much disorder and suffering? Andwhy are organisms, and indeed the whole biosphere, so clumsily designed? The world isgood and beautiful but it is also evil and ugly. In a Christian culture the existence of good isthe subject of praise and thanksgiving, but intellectually it can be taken more or less forgranted as something obvious in view of the Creator’s perfect goodness. However, theproblem of evil is difficult. Someone has said that the problem of evil is the great rock onwhich Christian faith founders. Its classic formulation was given by Epicurus andreformulated in modern times by Hume:

Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is hemalevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?1

This classic atheistic claim is that divine omnipotence, divine goodness, and the existenceof evil are incompatible. Christians know, of course, that this cannot be true. Their faith inGod is founded on divine revelation and personal religious experience, not on abstractreasoning. Nevertheless, the question remains, how can atheistic skepticism be refuted in acoherent, strictly intellectual way? Before Darwin it was thought that this had already beendone, at least partially, by the doctrine of original sin. In my opinion the original sins ofangels and men is indeed the answer to the problem of evil, but in our age it needs to bereformulated in a way that takes account of modern science. Otherwise, in an age ofscience the Christian worldview loses some of its convincing force.

Evil is, of course, a problem not only for Christians but also for every human being.However, it is especially acute for Christians because they believe that the world wascreated ‘out of nothing’ and is now sustained by an infinite and omnipotent God who islove itself. How can omnipotent love that is responsible for everything permit the atrociousevils we see in the world? Indeed, how can he tolerate the many clumsy designs one finds in

r The author 2009. Journal compilation r Trustees for Roman Catholic Purposes Registered 2009. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

HeyJ L (2009), pp. 833–845

the biosphere? Darwin devoted an entire book to such mechanisms in the case of orchids.These contrivances are, from one point of view, extremely ingenious, but as Stephen JayGould pointed out:

Orchids were not made by an ideal engineer; they are jury-rigged from a limited set of availablecomponents. Thus, they must have evolved from ordinary flowers. . . . Odd arrangements andfunny solutions are the proof of evolution – paths that a sensible God would never tread but that anatural process, constrained by history, follows perforce.2

As Gould said, evolution seems, prima facie, to be more like an ingenious tinkerer than anomniscient and omnipotent designer. At one time the Christian explanation of evil seemedfairly persuasive to most Western people. I do not mean, of course, that they found it easyto put up with evil. No one does. But unlike agnostics and atheists they were able to situateit in a positive context that made it easier for them to endure it. This context was essentiallyconstituted by faith, but faith was supported by a seemingly rational and coherentunderstanding of evil. Nowadays, however, the discoveries of modern science, especiallyevolution, casts doubt upon the validity of that traditional understanding. As a resultChristians find themselves left with a naked faith that is harder to sustain because of theirinability to rationalize evil as well as before. Consequently it is worthwhile trying toformulate an adequate understanding of evil and its origin. Christian tradition has theresources to do so. In fact, I believe that the traditional explanation only requires updatingand some additional clarification of the issues.

II. THE DOCTRINE OF ORIGINAL SIN

Catholic doctrine about the origin of evil is stated in a number of passages of the Bible andin authoritative statements of Popes and Councils over the centuries. Notable among thelatter are the solemn profession of faith of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 and thedecree of the Council of Trent regarding the original sin of Adam, the first Man, in 1546.3

The Lateran Council intended to affirm directly the traditional doctrine of the one Godwho is the first cause of the universe and created it out of nothing, as well as the doctrinethat responsibility for evil is entirely due to creatures.4 Thus, it tells us that moral evil, orsin, entered into the world through the original rebellion against God by Satan and someof the angels who followed him; and that later the human race also sinned at theirinstigation. Although the explicit teaching of this decree was concerned more about moralrather than physical evil, it was aimed against heretics of the day, the Cathars, whobelieved that matter is ontologically evil and was created by the evil god, Satan. Incombating this heresy the Council Fathers must have had in mind the teaching of Genesisthat the world as God first made it was ‘very good’ (Gen 1:31).5 In that context theimplication is that matter was not created intrinsically evil, but has been corrupted by sin.

The decree of the Council of Trent on original sin focused on the fall of the human race,which was attributed, of course, to the sin of Adam, the first man. Like Lateran IV, thisCouncil was also mainly concerned about moral rather than physical evil. However, itstated explicitly that the sin of Adam left the human race subject to suffering and deathand in a worse condition in body as well as soul. This teaching is coherent with the theoryof the original human sin that had been worked out by Augustine and others. Withoutspelling out the precise connection between moral and physical evil, Trent seemed to implythat most, if not all, human suffering, moral and physical, is due to the sin of the first

834 RICHARD J. PENDERGAST, S.J.

human being, Adam. In any event this was the common belief of Christians before themodern period.

It seems, then, that before Darwin, Christians generally supposed that if Adam had notsinned his descendants would have been able to live without evil, either moral or physical.On the other hand, modern science seems to tell us that physical evil is deeply rooted in thefundamental constitution of matter, and originated long before the human race existed.Therefore it is hard to believe that all the physical evil that afflicts humanity is due tohuman sin. Indeed it is easy to understand how one might think that sin is due to priorphysical evil, which was in turn due to the will of the Creator himself.

Some modern theologians have tried to accept the current opinion of evolutionarybiologists and at the same time to preserve the essential elements of the traditionaldoctrine. But some have taken a more radical approach to the problem. Outstanding wasthe attempt made by a school of north European theologians,6 who at about the time ofthe Second Vatican Council developed the ideas suggested by Teilhard de Chardin.7 Thisradical approach takes seriously the new knowledge science has given to us about thehistory of the universe. As Teilhard pointed out, evil seems to be not a mere accident in theuniverse but a necessary element in the structure of the system. Apparently, it is somethingwritten into the basic laws of nature and the history of cosmic and biological evolution. Tosay that at the beginning of our race God intended to exempt us from all, or at least most,evil, means that he planned to work a never-ending series of miracles in order to avoid theconsequences of the system that he himself had set up. His intentions written into thenature of the world and the fundamental physical laws that govern it are, according to thisview, in conflict with the traditional account of his providential intentions towardhumanity. Furthermore, supposing that he intended to exempt humanity from evil, whydid he not carry out his decision? Surely the sin of one or a few human beings does notseem to be an adequate reason for not doing so. Once again the traditional theory makesthe providential guidance of God appear contradictory and inconsistent.

Therefore, according to the radical revisionists, we must assume that some evil does notcome from sin but from the physical nature of the world. It seems to be inevitable. They tellus that our dream of perfect happiness must be projected into the future rather than thepast. Perfection is the goal of development, the supreme achievement of the evolutionaryproject in which God, the world, and humanity are involved. It is not somethingwhich was real in the beginning and was lost, but the hope that inspires us and every beingin our striving for the future. They argue that the ancient theory of original sinwas the best explanation of evil at a time when the human race had a static worldview.But now, supposedly, it is counterproductive and obscures the greater and moreinspiring explanation which is ours, thanks to the dynamic worldview science has given tous. Thus, it is argued, dynamic science has given the human race the great gift of adynamic theology which enables us not to blame God for evil but to praise him forsustaining us in the painful but magnificent project of spiritual progress in which we areengaged.

It is well remembered that before the Second Vatican Council the conservativementality of Rome rejected the thought of Teilhard. In the more open climate thatfollowed the Council the position of the revisionists was able to get a hearing. It was notofficially accepted, but nevertheless the cogency of their position did not allow it to beforgotten. It is said that many Catholic intellectuals, perhaps even a majority, no longerbelieve in the traditional theory of original sin. (I have never taken a poll, but many claimthis to be the fact.) Official doctrine and the beliefs of many of the Catholic intelligentsia

EVIL, ORIGINAL SIN, AND EVOLUTION 835

seem to be in conflict on this point, and this situation is not good for the health and unityof the body of Christ.

Many will conclude that the magisterium of the Church should change its mind andthus reestablish harmony between doctrine and scientific reason. However, I believe thatthere are excellent reasons for not doing so. The doctrines about the original sins ofcreatures are inextricably linked with the problem of evil. If one eliminates them, one is leftwith no satisfactory explanation of evil. Some radical revisionists will doubtless reply thatthere is no need to answer the problem of evil anyway. It is a mere pseudo-problem, so whyworry about it? But it is hard to think that the problem of evil is a mere pseudo-problem.Earlier ages believed the existence of evil to be a real and serious one. Original sin is at leasta partial explanation of it, and one of the factors responsible for the growth of modernatheism is the weakening of belief in that doctrine. I believe that to reject it is to forget partof the revelation that gives us truth about the world that science can never discover. Whatis needed is not rejection but a deeper understanding, one that, as we shall see, iscompatible with a proper understanding of modern science.

The order of the world as revealed by current science apparently requires the existenceof natural evil, ‘not by accident . . . but through the very structure of the system’.8 Yet, aswe have seen, the Bible seems to suggest the opposite. At the end of the sixth day ofcreation the Creator ‘saw everything he had made, and indeed, it was very good’ (Gen1:31). Then, in the second chapter of Genesis, we see him putting Adam and Eve in a lovelygarden that had no evil. In the third chapter evil is introduced by their disobedience to adivine command. Moreover, in the book of Wisdom we are told that ‘God did not makedeath, and he does not delight in the death of the living’ (Wis 1:13). It was ‘through thedevil’s envy [that] death entered the world’ (Wis 2:24). Thus, in the biblical perspective,natural evil should not exist. It is in opposition to God’s original intention.

Attributing natural evil to Godmay change one’s attitude toward him in an unfortunateway. Indeed, many may be inclined to agree with Albert Camus’ metaphysical rebel thatGod is ‘the father of death and . . . the supreme outrage’;9 or with Ivan in Dostoevsky’snovel, The Brothers Karamazov, that he is not just and one should not accept this universeof his in which the innocent suffer.10 Yet, as Christians believe, God is love itself. As such,would he not love all his creatures and hate all the evils that afflict them, including naturalevils? Is he not much more sympathetic than Ivan Karamazov to innocent children whosuffer them? Like the biblical authors, a person who loves God will be inclined, at leastprima facie, to believe that he created a world without natural evil and that all its presentills are due to the sins of both angels and men.

There is an important distinction between God’s absolute will and his conditional will.The future of any free being includes alternatives, including evil choices that God permitsbut does not want. He wants rational beings to love him freely rather than simply beingcompelled to do what he wants them to do. Both angels and human beings are truly free,and the evil we do is our responsibility rather than God’s. God sees the physical evilsresulting from sin as genuine evils, but given the present sinful order of the world, hetolerates them as instruments for good. They are genuine evils because they reflect the evilof their sinful origin. Nevertheless, those consequences of sin are not chosen either by God,or by contemporary men and women, and so with God’s help they can be overcome andwork for good in the end.

The objection can be raised that if God can use evil for good in the present order of theworld, why could he not have made use of it in his original plans for the world? I reply interms of a medical metaphor. Surgery can be very beneficial for a patient suffering from


cancer, but to operate on a healthy one is malpractice. The evil of surgery opposes thecancer that is already there, but in the case of the healthy, there is no evil to be opposed. Inthe present sinful world order, evil can be limited by evil. In an order that has no evil, itwould be absurd to introduce it. A loving parent would not allow a surgeon to attack hischild with a scalpel if it were not necessary.

In his remarkable book entitled The Prophets, Rabbi Abraham Heschel contrasts theportrait of Yahweh drawn by the Old Testament prophets with the concept of Godconstructed by philosophers and theologians.11 The prophetic portrait is based on intimatepersonal experience, the philosophical-theological concept on seemingly profound butabstract and sometimes defective thinking. ‘What is the primary content of propheticexperience, the thought immediately felt, the motive directly present to the prophet’smind?’12 Heschel tells us that ‘divine pathos is the key to inspired prophecy.’13 Godexperiences ‘pathos’ and conveys a certain participation of it to the prophets. ForChristians it is best understood by prayerful meditation on the personal attitudes of Jesus.In the gospels we read how time and time again he healed people who were suffering. Andas he tells us, to see him is to see the Father (Jn 14:9).

Roughly speaking, pathos means something like conscious, intelligent, loving feeling ina world that has gone astray. It is a complex act that includes perception, intellectualunderstanding, affective response, and personal resolve. Though pathos is not simplysuffering, in the present world it involves suffering. It is a response of the whole person.Divine pathos and divine suffering are as exalted above the human as is divine existence.Yet the Jewish scriptures portray the relationship between Yahweh and Israel as one ofintimate personal love, indeed, in a certain sense, a marriage relationship. The Lordrejoices and suffers in that relationship. The ontological gap between the two parties isinfinite, and yet somehow it is bridged by infinite divine love. Because that loverelationship between God and humanity is not what it ought to be, God suffers. Yet he isfaithful and intends to heal us and bring us to fulfillment.

God’s original commands to angels and men were for their own good. Paul wascertainly right in saying that all things work together for those who love God. But itcertainly is not better for those who do not love him. It seems that there is a karmic law inthis universe by which those who do evil lose the good that was originally destined for themand is now given instead to those who do good. God was not surprised about what hashappened in his creation. He knew from the beginning what the possibilities were, andbesides being infinitely loving, he is also perfectly just. His warnings to creatures are notempty threats. He is the Lord, and we cannot ignore him without suffering theconsequences. In a world without sin there would have been no suffering because creatureswould have chosen to love him from the beginning. Had they chosen to serve him ratherthan themselves, the good offered to the world would have been distributed in a differentway than it is now. Now sinners learn only by painful experience where our true good lies.

Ideas about angels, demons, and, in particular, Satan, developed during the OldTestament and intertestamental periods and were taken over by Jesus and the NewTestament writers. Many sayings of Jesus take the existence of angels for granted,including some of the characteristic or ‘difficult’ ones most likely to be authentic (Mt24:36; Lk 15:10). Especially noteworthy is Jesus’ career as an exorcist, about which therecan be no reasonable doubt.14 In Luke 11:20 (¼Mt 12:28) Jesus uses his power ofexorcism to prove the validity of his proclamation of the Kingdom of God, as well as toillustrate its nature. It entails the overthrow of the rule of Satan. In all the gospels Jesusshows himself aware that he is locked in a struggle with Satan. His followers share in that


struggle. The consciousness of being engaged in spiritual warfare against superhumanpowers was an important part of the awareness and the spirituality of the early Church.

The opposition between Christ and Satan is particularly stressed in the gospel of John.Satan is the center of solidarity in sin, the father of those who refuse to believe in Jesus. Heis a ‘murderer from the start . . . a liar and the father of lies’ (Jn 8:44), in contrast to Jesuswho is life and truth itself. Satan is at the center of the darkness that opposes Jesus the light(Jn 12:35–36; 13:27–30). The ministry of Jesus is a struggle with Satan that reaches itsclimax in the Paschal Mystery, when the latter is overcome and cast out (Jn 12:31, 14:30,16:11, 17:15). Satan is not the only one opposed to Christ, but John focuses on theirultimate source, the Adversary par excellence.

Also very important is the testimony of many Saints through the centuries. They speakof their own experience, of their struggles against the personal powers of evil who attackedthem just as they had attacked Jesus. Especially noteworthy is the teaching of IgnatiusLoyola about the need to recognize the influence of evil spirits upon us in order to discernclearly the will of God.15 The experience of these great human beings, who are keenlyaware of the spiritual dimensions of human existence, must be taken seriously. Theirtestimony about aspects of the world, which are largely beyond the experience of theaverage person, provides some of the best evidence we have about the proper way ofinterpreting the Scriptures. The reality of their struggles with Satan makes it clear how thewords of Jesus about the personal nature of evil are to be understood. He was not merelyaccommodating his language to the culture of the times but was telling us about the realspiritual warfare in which our race is involved. He was calling to our attention the enemywho is out to destroy us andmay well do so if we insist on regarding him as an empty myth.

Belief in the existence and role of angels and demons has a certain philosophical andaesthetic appeal. St. Thomas Aquinas held that because God, who is purely spiritual,created the universe to participate in his own being, goodness, and beauty. It is thereforefitting that there be creatures which do so in a more purely spiritual way than we, who are amixture of the spiritual and the material.16 In a similar vein Karl Rahner believed thatwhenever we find in the world forms of unity and coherence, of beauty and value, which gobeyond the human in scale, depth and intensity, we have reason to wonder whether theremay not be some superhuman, created, spiritual principle at work.17

But because God himself is also a superhuman spiritual principle of coherence andunity, it is difficult to resolve his influence from that of the good angels. However,distinguishing it from that of the demons is much easier. It is in the atrocious evil whichafflicts our human world that we see most clearly what is at its center – malevolent beingswho are not God but are more powerful and intelligent that we. We of the twentieth andearly twenty-first centuries should be (but often are not) better able than other generationsto recognize this.

When one reflects upon the sins of ordinary people, they seem to commit them not somuch from sheer malice, as from weakness and inability to understand or to resisttemptation. As Paul Ricoeur has pointed out, this intuition is expressed in the Genesisimage of the serpent.

If we follow the intention of the serpent theme [in Genesis] all the way to the end, it must be saidthat man is not the absolute evil one, but the evil one of second rank, the evil one throughseduction; he is not the Evil One, the Wicked One, substantivally, so to speak, but evil, wickedadjectivally; he makes himself wicked by a sort of counter-participation, counter-imitation, byconsenting to a source of evil that the naı̈ve author of the biblical tale depicts as animal cunning. Tosin is to yield.18


Our sin is dependent, ‘Adamic’ evil. The sin which entered the world in the beginning wasevil of another sort, ‘Satanic’, absolute evil. It could be committed only by a being strongerand more self-sufficient than ourselves, one whose power and intelligence provided himwith the basis for an act of absolute pride, the evil act that had no evil antecedents. (SomeChristian spiritual writers have conjectured that Satan’s sin was to refuse allegiance to thecomingMessiah, one who would possess a human nature, which seemed to him to be muchinferior to his own.)

In the same appendix of The Phenomenon of Man that I mentioned above, Teilhard deChardin also speculated that in spite of evil being a necessary feature of the world, it mayalso be true that there may have been some ‘catastrophe or primordial deviation’ thatresulted in ‘a certain excess’ of evil. I believe that his speculation is partially correct. Theoriginal disaster, due to the sin of Satan and his demons, has been made even worse bytheir seduction of the human race.

Christian teaching about the origin of evil comes to us largely in terms of ‘myth.’ Iunderstand myth, in accord with the definition of Norman Perrin, as ‘a complex of stories– some no doubt fact, and some fantasy – which, for various reasons, human beings regardas demonstrations of the inner meaning of the universe and of human life.’19 The mythsgiven to us in the word of God express the truth but sometimes in an ambiguous way withregard to their concrete meaning. For these expressions of truth have two aspects, a formaland a material. This is in analogy with the formal and material causes of Aristotle.According to the latter, a statue is the union of a material cause, namely, the stone or othermaterial it is made of, and a formal cause, which is the shape imposed upon the stone bythe sculptor. Similarly, let us say that the material aspect of a truthful expression conveysconcrete facts about the world, while its formal aspect is its abstract significance. When weexpress the truth, our expression can embody these two aspects in varying degrees and indifferent ways. Almanacs tell us many facts about the world, but convey comparativelylittle about their pattern. In contrast, great poetry can convey profound truth formally, butwithout revealing its material aspects to any notable degree.

In the case of religious myths, their formal truth is always important but its materialtruth can vary greatly. The myth of the Resurrection is not only significant but alsocommunicates factual knowledge of great importance. With regard to original sin, formaltruth is very important but the status of its material aspect is ambiguous. In particular, theprecise significance of the figure of ‘Adam’ is ambiguous. Is he a historical individual, or ahistorical group, or the entire species in its early evolution (‘mankind evolving’), or abiblical ‘corporate personality,’ or a personified abstraction (‘everyman’)? Again, was the‘fall’ of our race an event which occurred at a definite moment, or at least in a short periodof time, or was it a whole evolutionary epoch, or was it even something quite different?Were the deleterious consequences sustained by our race spiritual or physical or social orsome combination of these? Were these harmful consequences transmitted to Adam’sdescendents by spiritual or physical or social processes? Did evolution and genetics play arole or did what happened take place on a higher plane that is unknown to science?

We can think of the questions raised above as defining the dimensions of a space ofquestions within which the full truth must be sought. To answer these questions we mustinterpret both the data of modern science and the biblical myths, notably those of Genesis2–3, Romans 5, and authoritative Church interpretations like those of the Fourth Lateranand Trent. The biblical texts are often myths that convey very important formal truthwhile remaining relatively ambiguous as to their material meaning. Church pronounce-ments through the centuries attempt to clarify those texts but more with regard to their


formal rather than their material truth. These pronouncements are sometimes, if notmyths, at least myth-like. In my view, we do not possess a high degree of certainty aboutthe material aspect of the biblical teaching on original sin, and we convey its formal aspectin terms of the rather ambiguous material one. The myths of the beginning are true, just asthe myths of the end are true. But we know no more about the material circumstances oforiginal sin than we do about those of the Last Judgment.

The Fathers of the Council of Trent knew nothing about evolution. Some of the detailsof their interpretation of the biblical story about Adam and Eve were understood in a waythat seems quite alien to many men and women of the twenty-first century. But in any case,the fall of the human race is part of the fall of the universe. It is not the full explanation ofevil, nor does the human race bear full responsibility for its sin. Human beings areresponsible for human sin but at the same time our conduct is partially excusable. Unlikethe fallen angels, we can be redeemed.

One can argue that God’s omnipotent will cannot be resisted and that therefore evilmust be a part of his original plan rather than something opposed to it. The answer is thatGod is love and love is omnipotent, not in a mechanical way but in a way characteristic oflove. Love desires love in return. But love is essentially free and even omnipotent lovecannot guarantee a free return of love. An omnipotent lover can only overcome barriersthat might prevent the beloved from loving him. Thus God reveals himself to the belovedas fully as possible under the circumstances, and seduces her in any way that he reasonablycan. But love is dangerous and even divine love can be rejected. Nevertheless, he can makeuse of such rejections to prevent further evil and to produce good that otherwise would notbe possible.20

The only thing God cannot do is to contradict himself. One contradiction would be tomake a creature free and at the same time determine his inner freedom. However, God canalways determine the final effects of our actions in spite of what we may choosesubjectively. Sometimes what we choose to do produces effects that end in the opposite towhat we expect. There is no danger of the world escaping from God’s hand. Yet at thesame time he leaves angels and men free to choose, and thus determine their own Heavenor Hell.

III. THE ROLE OF COSMIC POWERS IN EVOLUTION

Besides the problem o f evil there is also the problem of good.More specifically, besides theevil superhuman beings we call demons, or bad angels, there are also the good ones. Thefirst thing about angels in general is that they exist. According to the Catechism of theCatholic Church: ‘The existence of the spiritual, non-corporeal beings that SacredScripture usually calls ‘angels’ is a truth of faith. The witness of Scripture is as clear as theunanimity of Tradition.’21

The good angels are servants of God and because of their love for him they are friendsand servants of the human race. The Scriptures tell us that they are messengers of God tohuman beings, that they protect us physically and spiritually, especially against Satan andhis demons, that they enlighten us and pray for us. Before the modern period it was easy tobelieve in the existence of angels and demons. However, people also believed that theuniverse is static and that its natural structure is pretty much the same as when Godoriginally created it. While a great deal of attention was given to human history, andespecially the history of salvation, the history of the physical world, beyond the bare fact of


its creation, was unknown. So in those days the concept that the cosmic powers hadanything to do with evolution was virtually unthinkable. But today, when the concept ofevolution is commonplace, it requires no great step of the imagination to think that theremay be a connection between angels and evolution.

Unfortunately, to accept that idea would fly in the face of the reductionisticunderstanding of evolution now dominant in our culture. Nevertheless, I am proposingthat not only do angels exist, but also that they are important in the evolution of theuniverse and of the human race in particular. The existence of evil in a world created by aloving, omnipotent God suggests that there must be creatures older and more powerfulthan Man who have disturbed the original order of creation. It is clear that the presentworld order is a conflicted one in which good and evil not only co-exist but also are even inviolent conflict. The world is substantially good, but it has been injured by atrocious evil.When one reflects upon what happened in the twentieth century and what is threatening tohappen in the twenty-first, it really should not be hard to believe in the reality of evilsuperhuman beings. (Somewhere Carl Jung remarked that in the Hitler era he wassurprised that many people did not believe in demons when every day in the street theywere passing individuals possessed by them.) At the same time, the way in which evil hasbeen overcome in the past should make it equally easy to believe that there are also goodbeings more powerful than Man. In the light of the Judeo-Christian tradition and theChurch’s doctrine of original sin, I conjecture that the good of evolution is partially causedby good angels just as its evil is partially caused by evil ones.

The concept of the natural is much older than modern science and it applies to morethan the material aspects of the world that science studies. Angels have natures and overthe centuries many important Christian theologians have held that, although immaterialthemselves, in some way they govern the material world. Within my evolutionary horizon,the course of evolution is partially governed by the good angels, albeit in the face of theopposition of Satan and his followers. Darwin identified correctly two important factorsthat govern the process, namely, random variation and natural selection. But he and hisneo-Darwinian followers overlooked another, more important one, namely, the down-ward influence of the Logos himself, as well as that of angelic beings subordinate to theLogos and in some ways superior to human beings.

The practice of plant and animal breeders was important in the development ofDarwin’s thought. He drew an analogy between artificial selection and natural selection.Human breeders make use of teleological selection to shape natural, random variation andthus produce useful changes within a given species. Darwin supposed that over the vastages of geological time natural non-teleological selection shaped natural random variationin such a way as to produce the far more profound and intrinsically improbable changesnecessary to produce the entire modern biosphere. The analogy is clear but it is marred bythe fact that Darwin’s natural selection is blind whereas selection by human breeders ishighly purposeful. Darwin ignored that crucial difference between the two analogates andso do his intellectual heirs.

For many contemporary biologists the foregoing discussion may seem bizarre. For thepast seventy years or so neo-Darwinism has been the accepted opinion of the scientificcommunity. Moreover, according to a survey published by Edward J. Larson and LarryWitham, in the September 1999 issue of the Scientific American, about 95% of themembers of the biology section of the American National Academy of Science whoresponded to their survey do not believe in the God of orthodox Christianity.22 I wouldguess that very many of them do not believe in angels, or in the existence of any


superhuman entity. They think that phenomena within the domain of science should beexplained by what they call ‘natural causes’ only, and that it would be wrong to accountfor them by the existence of anything greater than ourselves.

However, in recent years a minority of scientists and philosophers have been arguingthat besides chance and necessity there is another explanation of natural phenomena thatmust be considered, namely, intelligent design.23 Indeed, in many fields other than biology,intelligent design is obviously important. Detectives, lawyers, judges, insurancecompanies, quality-control engineers, communications specialists, cryptologists, astron-omers looking for signs of intelligent life on other planets, as well as ordinary peoplestruggling with ordinary situations, often have to decide whether some kind of necessity,or chance, or intelligent design is at work. The same choice ought to govern our efforts inunderstanding biological evolution.24

There is a great difference between a chronicle and a history. A chronicle tells us whathappened on the surface of things; a history explains more in detail why it happened.Modest biologists tell us some of the surface events that mark the history of life on Earth,whereas ambitious ones claim that they are telling us not only what happened but also themajor factors that caused it. I believe that the chronicle of evolution that virtually allbiologists propose is substantially correct. However, the hidden factors that caused it tooccur are quite different. Although Darwin guessed two important factors that governevolution, he missed an even more important one, namely, teleology. The positiveinfluence of God and angels on the one hand, and the negative influence of demons on theother, are the ultimate factors that have shaped evolution. These factors are known to uswith certainty only by supernatural revelation, and are beyond the scope of science. Peoplewho do not believe in personal superhuman entities cannot know them and will continueto insist that intelligent design must be wrong.

At present there is a dispute between particle and solid-state physicists. Some of theformer accept reductionism; some of the latter claim that complex phenomena can beexplained only by additional forces that arise only among large numbers of particles.25 Itseems quite clear to me that in this dispute the solid-state physicists are right. The particlephysicists accept the philosophical postulate that all complex systems are consequences ofbasic laws already found on the lowest level of nature. This postulate may please particlephysicists like Steven Weinberg, but it does not satisfy solid-state physicists like R. B.Loughlin or David Pines. Furthermore, if physicists cannot deduce on the basis of particlephysics the behavior of comparatively simple systems, how can biologists deduce thebehavior of the extremely complex systems they study? As Richard Lewontin has asserted,in our modern era many evolutionary biologists tolerate ‘unsubstantiated just-so stories’because of their ‘prior commitment to materialism’.26 Lewontin is a neo-Darwinist butapparently he holds it on the basis of his Marxist philosophy. Neo-Darwinism is acombination of what I have called ‘modest’ Darwinism (by which I mean a limitedevolutionary chronicle) and the philosophical hypothesis that the universe can beunderstood solely in terms of itself. The founders of modern science believed that theuniverse cannot be understood without a transcendent element that human beings willnever understand fully in this life. However, today it seems that most scientists believe thatthe world is its own adequate explanation and that there is no need of a transcendentelement coming from above. A person who believes this is unable to make ultimate senseout of the world.27

It is hard for a neo-Darwinist to understand that a world-order without pain and deathwas once a real possibility. In the present sinful order of things pain is necessary, for it


warns us of immediate damage to our bodies that we must avoid. But one can conceive of aworld in which human beings were completely rational, and would recognize immediately,without suffering, that they must avoid things that are harmful to them. As for death,consider that some Catholic theologians have argued that Our Lady did not die and wastaken body and soul into heaven.Whether or not this belief is true, in any case it suggests itwould be possible in a sinless world that no one would have to die but would rather livehappily here on Earth and be taken into heaven at the end of their lives here.

Neo-Darwinists sometimes persuade themselves that the mathematics of probabilityshows us how evolution has proceeded. It is true that probability theory does have arigorous mathematical foundation that is unlikely to be wrong. Nevertheless, how to applyit to complex situations is often very difficult – sometimes impossible. A person who triesto do so has to look carefully to determine whether the complex empirical situation hewants to deal with really meets the conditions that the basic theory demands. Evolutionarybiologists have not done this. Particle physicists have not yet shown that solid-statephysicists are wrong. How, then, can a biologist think that contemporary mathematics candeal with their far more complex systems? I think that what they really are doing isappealing to philosophy, indeed erroneous philosophy, usually without admitting thatthey are doing so.

Human knowledge is divided, somewhat arbitrarily, into a variety of intellectualdisciplines. Each discipline has a certain independence within its own proper domain, buteach also has ‘boundary conditions’ that govern the way it fits in with the others. Todaysome scientists assume they can employ their usual methods to solve any problem they areinterested in and feel no need for appreciating well-established conclusions from otherintellectual disciplines, especially Christian philosophy and theology. Most of all, they donot consider divine revelation, the foundation on which Christian theology is based. Theresult is hubris on the part of some and resulting confusion in a culture that values bothscience and religion. As intelligent design theorists seem to have shown, it is dubious that alargely random walk by the evolutionary process in the genetic landscape can hit upon theimprobable material configurations proper to living organisms, let alone intelligent oneslike ourselves.

In the light of Christian theology it is clear that neo-Darwinism is wrong. In spite of thefact that they ignore the teleological factor, neo-Darwinists often talk as though the BlindWatchmaker is not really blind. It seems as though their chosen model of evolution is oftenovercome by an intuitive perception they are not willing to acknowledge. As we have seen,the ‘modern synthesis’ of the 1930s and 40s persuaded most biologists that randommutation and natural selection are sufficient to explain evolution. However, to manyChristians, it is clear that they made a serious mistake. Many modern people areaccustomed to the idea that ‘science’ is the final criterion for judging intellectualdiscussions. So even though everyone admits that science is sometimes wrong and thatcurrent scientific theories are very likely to change in the future, a great number ofscientists and philosophers forget those truths when they discuss intelligent design.

What I am proposing is an analogy with artificial breeding that seems better thanDarwin’s. Cosmic powers much older, and more intelligent and powerful than man, haveshaped the potential variation inherent in natural processes to produce the goals theydesire, including the existence of the human race and its Messiah. In this case the analogydrawn from human breeders’ artificial selection retains its teleological character and is notmarred in the way that Darwin’s is. Moreover, the analogy assumes that the cosmic powersdo not merely influence selection but also influence the variation that selection shapes. In


other words, mutations and other alterations are not completely random but are moldedby the cosmic powers.

Just as God wants human beings to decide their eternal destinies by using the freedomhe gives them, so he wanted the superhuman beings we call angels to decide their eternaldestinies by choosing to use properly the freedom he had given them to govern the materialworld he had created along with them in the beginning.28 Human beings use their freedomto promote or injure the well being of other human beings. In like manner the cosmicpowers promoted or injured the whole order of the universe, including even the concretehumanity of the incarnate Logos himself.

Certainly, God, the Creator of the whole universe, plays the primary and decisive role inevolution. However, as Darwin and agnostics in general have shown, the limited andimperfect character of the evolutionary process proves that God is not solely responsiblefor it. Human sin contributes to the massive evil in the world. Nevertheless, human beingsare not powerful or malignant enough to be its principal causes. The malevolent influenceof Satan and the other fallen powers has created the context of concupiscence andtemptation in which human beings make their foolish and sometimes perverse choices. Onthe other hand, the benevolent influence of the good angels supports the large-scalecoherence, intelligibility, and beauty of the evolving world that makes human goodnesspossible. Cosmic evolution is a constructive project that has been and is still going on in themidst of a ferocious guerrilla war. Once one realizes the situation, one does not find itsurprising that it has not gone smoothly.

Notes

1 David Hume, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 74.2 Stephen Jay Gould, ‘The Panda’s Thumb,’ in Robert T. Pennock, ed., Intelligent Design: Creationism and Its Critics

(Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2001), p. 670.3 J. Neuner and J. Depuis. The Christian Faith in the Doctrinal Documents of the Catholic Church (New York: Alba House,

1982), no. 19; ibid., nos. 507–13.4 For Christians, moral evil and sin usually mean the same thing. Physical evil usually means something that is not in itself

sin, but is painful, destructive, harmful, ugly, etc. with respect to life, beauty, truth, goodness. Evil, both moral and physical, isa fundamental thing that is hard to define precisely. But people are usually able to recognize it and to react against it.Christianity is able to define it more accurately. My belief is that all physical evil is something that should not exist and issomehow due to sin. Natural evil is physical evil that results from the action of some natural law. As I argue in this essay, thepresent natural order of the world is imperfect and was not originally intended by the Creator.

5 All scriptural references are from the NRSV.6 For example, A. Hulsbosch, God in Creation and Evolution (New York: Sheed and Word, 1965); Piet Schoonenberg,

Man and Sin, trans. J. Donceel (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University, 1965); Pieter Smulders, The Design of Teilhard deChardin (Westminster MD: Newman, 1967); N. M. Wildiers, An Introduction to Teilhard de Chardin (New York: Harper andRow, 1968).

7 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (New York: 2nd Harper Torchbook, 1965), appendix.8 Ibid.9 Albert Camus, The Rebel: an Essay on Man in Revolt (New York: Random House Vintage, 1956), p. 24.

10 Fyodor Dostoevski, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Constance Garnett (New York: Modern Library, 1996), esp. pp.272–73 (Pt. 2, Bk. V, no. 4 [Rebellion]).

11 Abraham Heschel, The Prophets, 2 vol. (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1971), vol. 2, chap. 1.12 Ibid., 1:23.13 Ibid., 1:24.14 Normal Perrin, Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), p. 65.15 Ignatius Loyola (St.), The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, trans. Louis J. Puhl, S.J. (Chicago: Loyola Univ. Press,

1951), nos. 313–36.16 Brian Davies, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 55–6.17 Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations 19, trans. E. Quinn (New York: Crossroad, 1983), p. 267.18 Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil (Boston: Beacon, 1969), p. 259.19 Perrin, Rediscovering, p. 22.20 Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed., no 412.


21 Ibid., no. 328.22 Edward J. Larson and Larry Witham, Scientific American, September 1999, pp. 88–93, esp. p. 90.23 See Michael J. Behe, Darwin’s Black Box (New York: The Free Press, 1996); ibid., The Edge of Evolution (New York:

Free Press, 2007); WilliamA. Dembski, The Design Reference (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998); ibid.,No Free Lunch(Roman and Littlefield, 2002); ibid., The Design Revolution (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2004); Michael J. Behe,William A. Dembski, and Stephen C. Meyer, Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,2000).

24 See Dembski, No Free Lunch, chap. 1.25 R. B. Loughlin and David Pines, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 97(1), pp. 28–31; R. B. Loughlin, David

Pines, et al., ibid., pp. 32–37.26 Richard Lewontin, ‘Billions and billions of demons’, in The New York Review of Books, 9 January 1997, pp. 28–32 at 31.27 See, for example, Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Solution (New York: Pantheon, 1992), pp. 255f.28 Neuner and Depuis, no. 19.
