The Rise of Theistic Darwinism – Discovery Institute

Photo: Charles Kingsley, by Charles Watkins via Wikimedia Commons.

Editors note:We are delighted to present a new series by Neil Thomas, Reader Emeritus at the University of Durham, Origin of Species: From Discussion Document to Nihilist Dogma.This is the fourth article in the series.Find the full series so far here. Professor Thomass recent book isTaking Leave of Darwin: A Longtime Agnostic Discovers the Case for Design(Discovery Institute Press).

Charles Darwins backtracking emendations to his theory, noted in my last post, indicate that the unresolved tensions in his mind remained with him right up to the time preceding his death in 1882. In fact, asignificant reason that his 19th-century peers were but little inclined to accord theOriginthe kind of non-negotiable canonical status foisted upon it by many 20th-century legatees lay with some of Darwins own prevarications and ambiguous statements. He had for instancefamously concluded hisOriginby referencing the ancient doctrine of the divinepneuma, writing that life had been breathed into simple forms, and that from those beginnings there had come about an evolution of more complex forms by dint of laws impressed upon matter by the Creator.

Since such statements are clearly inconsistent with purely natural processes, it was easy for those with more traditional opinions to deduce from themthat everything owed its existence ultimately to a power transcending the natural order. Oxfords bishop, Samuel Wilberforce, arraigned Darwin for committing a grand category error, charging that Darwin was in effect deifying the phenomenon he had chosen to hypostatize under the name of natural selection. Darwin, Wilberforce averred, was illogically imputing the same ontological status to evolving Nature that theists bestowed upon the Christian God that is, of an entity capable of bringing about transformative miracles.

This form of objection inevitably left the door ajar to the kind of hybrid interpretation favored by some in both Britain and America in the later Victorian period. This involved a tacit grafting on to Darwins text of a thin but crucial layer of theistic evolutionism, as James Moore documented in his standard study of post-Darwinian controversies.1In other words, the deity (being regarded as more hands-on than was allowed for in the minimalist conceptions of deism) emerged as the ultimate choreographer of all evolutionary selection. In such ways did some recipients weave advances in biological understanding into an overarching theological interpretation.

Some, like author Charles Kingsley and future Archbishop Frederick Temple actually professed to find their religious faithstrengthenedby Darwinism since it appeared to them as a form of progressive revelation science coming through for humanity by illuminating what had previously been hidden.Kingsley even seems to have viewed biological evolution as a branch of what German theologians callHeilsgeschichte,that is, salvationhistory, according to which God constantly works behind the scenes to promote the human potentialities and ultimate salvation of His subjects.

Indeed, for Kingsley this hidden hand approach seemed more satisfactory than the deist position which postulated a God who had made a once-and-for-all effort of creation but had since that time supposedly retired from his exertions with little more care for his Creation. For Kingsley, by contrast, evolution took on the spiritually reassuring aspect of underscoring Gods tutelary and pastoral role as the unwavering guardian and promoter of his Creation. Surprisingas it may seem today, Darwin was seen by Kingsley and others as making a contribution to theological understanding every bit as important as his contribution to biology.

Next, AsMany Opinions as There Are Men?

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The Rise of Theistic Darwinism - Discovery Institute