On July 21, 1925, a Tennessee jury convicted John Scopes of teaching evolution. The “Scopes Monkey Trial” has gone down in American history as the caricature of the fight between “religion” and “science.”
Why a caricature? Because there is no such conflict. Except, perhaps, on the fundamentalist terms that both Scopes and his “scientific” opponents played it out.
Catholic theology long recognized that the Book of Genesis teaches that God created, not how God created. Those are two separate questions.
That said, Catholics need to be wary about the residual effects of the Scopes Trial on our thinking. Catholic theology recognizes that creation is an unfinished work. And that it is unfinished in at least five ways.
It’s unfinished, first and foremost, because God sustains His Creation. Creation is not a self-standing reality: God created, and everything just goes on. There is no necessary being in this universe other than God. There is no self-sufficient source of life and being other than God. Without God supporting and keeping things in existence, they would collapse into nothingness. No creature can give itself life. That does not take “scientific proof”—we know it.
A second unfinished aspect of creation is that God Himself did not make the world complete. He made a world in which man is called upon to “co-create” with Him. He does that in two ways: by giving personal life through procreation (in which only God can create a soul; hence, again, God’s sustaining involvement) and by work (in which raw material is transformed into more sophisticated things for human needs). Genesis itself makes this clear when, made in God’s image and likeness (1:26-28), man receives a two-fold blessing and command: be fruitful and have dominion over the world.
Such co-creation means that God’s creative work also continues through secondary causes, such as human ingenuity, which turns that piece of copper ore into the copper wire that lights and powers a wooden house made from the forest.
A third unfinished aspect of creation is that creation has its own “autonomy”; it has its own rules and laws by which it normally functions. Those rules and laws are also divinely instituted. That means two things: creation is orderly, not haphazard. Causality is generally dependable, which means science can develop because results can be replicated.
A fourth unfinished part of creation is God’s work of salvation. Creation and salvation history are not divisible. It’s not that God created, then man sinned, and God had to conclude, “I was planning to rest after creation, but now I’ve got to do something about ‘salvation,’ too!” No. Creation was always part of salvation history. When man sinned, salvation history took a different turn, but creation was never simply about making a universe because, in Genesis, God only made man in His image and likeness. Man is the only creature God wanted for his own sake. Salvation–being on proper terms with God–was always in the cards from the moment God decided “let us make man in our image” (Gen 1:26).
This last idea is not my insight. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger developed it in a series of talks he gave at an Austrian monastery, which were subsequently published as The Divine Project. In it, he stresses that creation and salvation are inseparable.
That is also a telling warning to moderns who sometimes elevate creation over man and get excited about a world of babbling brooks and forests primeval, but deplore the human “carbon footprint.” That approach separates creation from salvation, and it is not what God intended.
That unfinished nature of creation and its relationship to salvation leads us to a fifth point: Providence. Judaism and Christianity are religions in which God is active in history. Human history is not closed off from God. It is not a sealed compartment, run only by its own rules, from which God is excluded.
If that were the case, God’s covenant with Israel would be senseless. And the utter absurdity would be imagining the Incarnation of God in a given moment in human history. And its ongoing absurdity would be believing in Providence–that God remains actively interested in you and me.
I mention Providence specifically because I fear some Catholics might imagine God was active back in Biblical times, but that “modern people” certainly don’t believe He does much these days or that miracles still occur.
Part of that bias comes from deism, which had no small influence on the Anglo-American mind. Deism basically maintains that God created a universe that is now self-managed by its own rules. He then removes Himself from the picture, allowing the cosmos, like a self-correcting clock, to run itself.
Deism, of course, was always a counterfeit Christianity because it inherently rejected the Incarnation. But the belief that God became man is the supreme proof that God intervened in human history. At least Thomas Jefferson was honest in his cut-and-paste New Testament when he turned Jesus into a Semitic Confucius who pronounced morally elevated sayings but never multiplied any loaves, cured any sick people, or rose from the dead.
One motive for deism was to account for apparent order and design in creation. The Divine Clockmaker built a precisely tuned device that runs according to internal rules, said the deists. Nonsense, claim many critics today, who insist that it is all happy and accidental coincidence, the entire Shakespearean opus fortuitously pounded out by monkeys at typewriters. Intricate order and harmony are happy “accidents.”
To this, I offer the explanation I used to give my undergraduates. Simply put: you did not have to be. If you were not conceived when you were, you would be a different person. But on that night, your dad could have had the flu or your mom a headache. Millions of sperm began a race, only one possibly achieving their mutual goal. And that was assuming there was an ovum to fertilize there anyway, as during most of the month, your mother is infertile. Then that fertilized ovum had to implant, a phase in which there are losses often not even known. And survive for nine months.
All those things took place for you to be you, and that’s a pretty tall miracle. So, you need to decide: are you the human equivalent of Shakespeare-by-monkey, the serendipitous result of a lucky spermatozoon? Or do you exist because there was a plan by Someone for you to exist, without which creation would be less complete? In other words, do you believe that the unfinished, intervening element in human history (including your own) is not a blind force, but Love (1 Jn 4:8)?
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It is vey interesting
Beautiful and enlightening. Thank you
Beautiful, thank you!
In addition to the Scopes trial, in 1925 (later on December 11) also was instituted the alternative Feast of Christ the King: https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_11121925_quas-primas.html The feast day, in response to the rise of secularism and in Europe, Fascism, Socialism and Communism—all on the heels of World War I and on the eve of World War II…the “monkey” thing in ideological garments.
Pope Pius XI’s encyclical calls out: “…the seeds of discord sown far and wide; those bitter enmities and rivalries between nations, which still hinder so much the cause of peace; that insatiable greed which is so often hidden under a pretense of public spirit and patriotism, and gives rise to so many private quarrels; a blind and immoderate selfishness, making men seek nothing but their own comfort and advantage, and measure everything by these; no peace in the home, because men have forgotten or neglect their duty; the unity and stability of the family undermined; society in a word, shaken to its foundations and on the way to ruin” (n. 24).
I think that there are science-based reasons (e.g., the Theory of Human Genetics) to question the validity of the kind of evolution in which one species “evolves” into another. There are plenty of legitimate scientists working at secular and religious universities and doing good research who have questions about the Theory of Evolution (and yes, it is still a THEORY, not proven fact).
I don’t think that people who question what is considered “proven” science should be reviled or ignored. There are plenty of “proven facts” that were considered “science” at one time that have since been proven beyond a doubt as “bunk”! (e.g., the Theory of Eugenics).
I think that those who reject the Theory of Evolution deserve respect and an open-minded “hearing” of their arguments against the theory. After all, we have been misled by many supposed “scientific” theories; e.g., that smoking cigarettes is GOOD for us!
But I think that Catholics need to try to keep the peace rather than starting “fires” and stirring up conflicts over theories about human origins. “In the beginning, God created…” THAT’s what we all have to keep in mind no matter which “theory of origins” we advocate.
No legitimate scientist uses the word “proven,” and there is no such thing as “settled science.” Science doesn’t work that way.
About what we call different “species,” Bishop Sheen offered an insight:
“[….] If the nature [of a thing] remains, as in accidental transformation, it is still identical to itself [from an early and tiny horse to a large horse]. If the nature is completely lost, it ceases to be THAT THING [italics] and it becomes THAT OTHER THING, in which case the intellect knows it as such. When Scholastics say that essences change, they merely mean that, if ‘A’ sustantially changes, e.g., ‘3’, from a given number, you change the number. If a cow should evolve into a horse [or a reptile to a feathered bird], it is no longer a cow, but a horse. The intellect is measured by things, it draws its knowledge from reality, and thus even with a transformation of species it knows things as THEY ARE, VERITAS EST ADAEQUTIO REEI ET INTELLECTUS” “God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy,” 1925/Image 1958, p. 160).
The fact the you talk about evolution being a “still a THEORY, not a proven fact” just shows that you don’t understand what either scientific theories or a proofs are. Mathematical theorems are proven, scientific theories are supported by the available evidence or not, useful or not, but always subject to change or reinterpretation. They are never considered a “proven fact”, even if generally accepted to be true and unlikely to change.
Where are the examples of transitional species in the fossil record? When did scientists replicate the big bang in a laboratory? Theories aren’t facts. They are models that are either confirmed or not based on experimental evidence.
Thank you for your thoughtful contribution. It’s refreshing when these debates are approached with both reverence and reason. If I may offer a perspective in the same spirit:
Much of what is popularly called “science” today—especially in discussions of evolution—is less Galilean than Galenic. That is, it often relies more on statistical inference, historical narrative, or philosophical framing than on observable, reproducible, and falsifiable data, which is the standard for true scientific demonstration.
Saint Albert the Great advised that for the healing of the body, we should consult Galen, and for the healing of the soul, Augustine. Following this, I’d argue that evolutionism belongs to the realm of empirical science—not theology, not literary anthropology, not cultural myth. And certainly not the kind of Protestant modernism that has, at times, too eagerly baptized Darwin.
In fact, as clinical genetics and molecular biology show, macromutations are typically lethal or render individuals infertile. The law of entropy hardly supports the spontaneous emergence of higher complexity. And hominids, however ancient, remain non-human and extinct—there is no empirical evidence that they were rational beings made imago Dei.
It’s ironic: believers are scolded for believing in miracles—especially the “miracle” of species transformation—while non-believers are content to posit such a leap without a miracle-worker.
But here is the grace of it: Catholic theodicy remains untouched by paleoanthropology. The origin of evil lies not in simian ancestry or prehistoric violence, but in the metaphysical fall of angels. Sin entered not by biology, but by will—first angelic, then human. Thus no fossil, however ancient, can explain or undo what we mean by grace.
As Professor Jérôme Lejeune wryly put it:
“Many professors believe their children descend from apes. But I’ve never met a monkey mother who believed her son would grow up to be a professor.”
Amen. Thanks.
“We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees?”
Romans 8:22-24
“All are therefore children of wrath from the coming of the curse of death. Believe in Christ made mortal for you, so that you may receive Him, Immortal. And when you shall have received His immortality, you shall no longer be mortal. Christ is living, you are dying; He died that you should live. Christ has brought us the grace of God, and has taken away the wrath of God. God has conquered death, so that death should not conquer us.”
St. Augustine, Tractate 14 on the Gospel of John (John 3:29-36)
Grondelski’s recognition of the autonomy of creation is important to understanding the how as different from the fact. Faith and reason offers the cause of created things, the First Principle of all creation God.
That makes room in the mind to rationally contemplate the how [it allows the theorem of evolution recognized by Pius XII].
It’s possible Man evolved as a lower species until God decidedly created the human soul. A soul with intellect that transcends degrees of intelligence because it is intellect with apprehensive capacity that is entirely different in kind from the remainder of creation].
“Salvation–being on proper terms with God–was always in the cards from the moment God decided let us make man in our image” (Grondelski citing Ratzinger). God is pure act. No sequence within although sequence without, that is, within creation. All that is and will occur is known by God – the miracle is Man’s free will in his participation with the creation suggested by Grondelski.
Our teleology is consistent with the essence of the First Principle who created us in his own image. Of all the pursuits and responsibilities God gave Man in recreating creation the unmitigated requisite is Man’s interior transformation of his image likeness to God, consistent with Grondelski’s bottom line, by its realization within the essence of God, which essence is love.
Added to my comment is the infusion of the human soul created by God in his own image. Infused by God because the human soul, unlike all of the remainder of created could not have evolved from that which is distinct to it. That is to say that a process of perfection toward an end cannot produce that which is entirely distinct to its capacity to improve a species.
The human soul is distinctly spiritual, radically different in kind in its likeness to God, who is other than his creation. We might say that in creating Man in his own image God, beyond our understanding, imparted something of himself in creating us in his image. Which is why the demands placed on Man to complete that relationship in a spiritual comportment that identifies with his creator God is an absolute requisite. And the reason why those principles of morality revealed to Man are eternal and unchangeable in cohesion with God himself.
To your point about direct infusion of the personal soul–and not blurred by my above above response to Sharon Whitlock–St. John Paul II uses the philosophical term “ontological leap” (“Message on Evolution to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences,” October 23, 1996).
He explicitly affirms that “the theory of evolution is more than a hypothesis” (n. 4). AND, then, also affirms the ontological leap of the human person as more than evolutionary:
“The moment of transition to the spiritual cannot be the object of this kind of observation [meaning natural science and evolution], which nevertheless can discover at the experimental level a series of very valuable signs indicating what is specific to the human being. But the experience of metaphysical knowledge, of self-awareness and self-reflection, of moral conscience, freedom, or again of aesthetic and religious experience, fall within the competence of philosophical analysis and reflection, while theology brings out its ultimate meaning according to the Creator’s plans.”
In some follow-up commentaries, lesser writers sometimes interchange JP II’s “ontological” with their own “evolutionary”–the meddling of either die-hard Teilhardians or more spongy minds incapable of making even elementary distinctions.
Yes. Saint Albert the Great Aquinas’ mentor taught man is also a moral animal. Our inherent ability to distinguish good from evil definitively separates us from the remainder of living creatures. That ability of the intellect, which differs in kind from the exigencies of animal life, breaking the mold of evolutionary development – is God given.
One other thing that comes to mind post-writing this article: Protestantism. Protestant “Sola Scriptura” bends towards literalism, as it did with the fundamentalists in this case. But it’s not even what the Bible said: God put man in the garden to tend and care for it, not to receive a ready-made creation. But I wonder if the problem here is not so much Protestant literalism as it is its allergy to human work as contributing to salvation: if you put all the onus on God and man remains corrupt, then you can’t talk about co-creation. You kind of then default towards a finished world to which man contributes nothing.
Not sure history agrees that Protestant fundamentalism “is…an allergy to human work”. The Calvinist Protestant Ethic is all about work, alone, with the favorable outcome serving as evidence that one is counted among the elect. Sola Opus!
An observation of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam above. As God’s finger touches Adam and gives life his left arm embraces what appears a woman, perhaps Eve, his next creation.
Google AI says art historians do indeed consider her Eve waiting to be born. Others say she represents the soul, still others Sophia or Wisdom. Some Mary. Although the majority say Eve. As such it’s consistent with Man’s mission to create.
In the complete depiction of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, possibly more significant than God’s left arm “embrac[ing] what appears to be a woman” is Adam’s left knee and thigh which resemble very much the torso and legs of a woman. As if woman emerged not so much later from a rib, but from the whole man and from his non-solitary personhood. The Sumerian cuneiform is either “rib” or “life” (according to St. John Paul II in the “Theology of the Body,” General Audience of 11-07-79, n. 4).
Speculating even further, one embryonic theological theory back in the day was that, prior to the Fall (the complication of original innocence now with original sin), human reproduction might not have been accomplished sexually—such that the male member might still have been, shall we say, diminutive. Some keen observers wonder if this interpretation is the case with Michelangelo’s depiction of the creation of Adam at the very beginning.
So, about a possibly simultaneous creation of Man and Woman, see the two different accounts in Genesis: Gen 2:18-23…plus Gen 1:27 where “The Creator from the beginning created them male and female”. St. John Paul II then recalls Gen 2:20-22:
“So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh; and the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman.” A deep sleep (?)— JP II continues: “Perhaps, therefore, the analogy of sleep indicates here not so much a passing from consciousness to subconsciousness, as a specific return to non-being (sleep contains an element of annihilation of man’s conscious existence), that is, to the moment preceding the creation [!], in order that, through God’s creative initiative, solitary ‘man’ may emerge from it again in his double unity [!] as male and female.”
SUMMARY: Less ambiguous than parts of Amoris Laetitia, from “the beginning” the unity of co-creating marriage is an indissoluble double-unity of person(s).