A Bit on Evolution: From Dust to Personhood? September 22, 2007

A few months ago I made my way joyfully through Christopher Seitz’s edited volume Nicene Christianity: The Future for a New Ecumenism. The volume is a worthwhile read for more reasons than I could lay out here, but I found J. Augustine Di Noia’s article on the line from the Nicene Creed ‘by whom all things were made’ to be particularly challenging to my understanding of creation and personhood. He draws on one of the most influential theologians in my own studies, Colin Gunton, and takes the scientific data seriously in order to unpack how we understand God’s creatorship and our own identity as persons.

Di Noia’s aim in his chapter is “to recover and articulate the Christian understanding of the cosmos as a person-friendly place.” His path to this goal is mapped according to Gunton’s “theology of relatedness” as it applies to the trinitarian theology of creation. According to Di Noia, creation exists “because of the divine desire to share the communion of trinitarian life with persons who are not God” (65). Affirming Christian tradition, Di Noia says that creation is the result God’s entirely free, personal agency in Word and Wisdom. Moreover, “human persons are created in the image of God in order to become partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:3-4) and thus to share in the communion of the trinitarian life and in the divine dominion of the created universe. At the heart of the divine act of creation is the divine desire to make room for created persons in the communion of the uncreated Persons of the Blessed Trinity through adoptive participation in Christ” (68).

I quote Di Noia here at length to demonstrate to, well, myself as well as others from a similar background as my own regarding questions about Genesis 1 & 2 that Di Noia is not off his rocker in his view of who God is or who we are–so the reflections that follow can’t make me feel too crazy. In the last two sentences of the previous paragraph he affirms that humans are created in the image of God for dignified communion with Father, Son, and Spirit; we are given the task of exercising dominion over the world God has placed us in as his image-bearers; and we accomplish both this communion and dominion through Christ’s work on our behalf.

Without getting into the creatio ex nihilo discussion here, I want to lay out what I’ve found most challenging from this chapter–namely, that as the pinnacle of creation and those entrusted to represent and reflect God to creation, evolution through every stage of created matter gives us the physical history within creation to fulfill our identity as the imago dei. Could the theory of evolution heighten our status as image bearers, opposed to lower us (as often seems to be the assumption in Christian circles)? Perhaps by bringing us through a process of ascendency from dust to personhood and installing us as priests in the garden to steward and rule over creation, God made it so that we are at home with all aspects of creation–their form is in our personal history. Intrinsic to who we are, then, is a relatability to creation (being made from dust–origin as well as substance) and a relatability to God (being made into persons). We are truly priests in every place we may venture in God’s creation; as Herman Bavinck says, “Because the universe is God’s creation, it is also his revelation and self-manifestation. There is not an atom of the world that does not reflect his deity.” Or, there is not an atom of the world that does not reflect his personality, since his deity is in fact personal.  Even on this view, then, there was never a point at which humanity’s initial creation was not personal.

Moreover, beyond our hearts being idol factories, I think this perspective gives ample explanation for the propensity of humans to connect in deeply meaningful and religious ways with creation–nature is personal in that it has been created and is being sustained by our personal God, though nature is not itself person.   This is to say that there is both something in ourselves (desire for a god and a connection to creation) and something in creation (the personal touch of God) that make us desire a connection with it.  The connection we have to creation, though, is only properly put into perspective when we are put in proper relationship to the Creator.

On another note, there is no shame for humans to have evolved from apes, as the age-old evolution line goes. It seems that the Enlightenment has given animals a rather bad reputation, what with all the talk of animal instincts and uncontrollable desires; but animals hold the dignity of their position as part of the creation that God called ‘good.’ They also are personal, though not themselves persons. But instead of saying we descended from apes, perhaps it would be more accurate to say we ascended from apes as God brought us ever-closer to the specialized appointment in creation he had for his image bearers. Besides, it’s not surprising that God would spend so much time, attention, and delighted work in shaping and forming adam (humans) from adamah (dirt) before putting on the final touch of the breath of life.

I’m still unsure where I come out on this, but thinking over it for a few months has been enough to make me mutter ‘huh’ a whole lot. This is very different from what I’ve been taught–and I do have to admit how impressed I am with Di Noia’s heavy reliance on Colin Gunton (Di Noia being a Dominican priest who works for the Vatican). I recommend you check out Di Noia’s 10 page chapter since there’s much worthy insight I left out here in favor of trying to articulate some of my own thoughts on the matter.