David Campbell wrote:
.....................
> > Has anyone seen a good critique of C.S. Lewis's ideas on human evolution and
> the Fall, one that would allow retention of Lewis's important theological
> insights without requiring one to slight evolution? My son is well aware of
> evolution, and is asking some very good questions, likely better than my
> answers will ever be, but I'm trying.
>
> Actually, my impression was that he was generally accepting evolution. E.g.,
> in Perelandra, when Ransom sees the human-like aquatic creatures while riding
> the fish after Weston, he speculates a bit on the evolution of inhabitants of
> Venus and whether it was like ours. Mere Christianity has some evolutionary
> speculations, suggesting that becoming a Christian could be viewed as an
> evolutionary next step for humanity. This is sort of an orthodox use of de
> Chardin's ideas although I do not know if there was direct influence.
Lewis was arguing against ideas of evolution that saw it as an expression of a
"life force" which had a religious or semi-religious sense - as in Bergson's _Creative
Evolution_ & popularized by people like G.B. Shaw. Lewis certainly was willing to
accept evolution as a matter of biology. He goes into some detail on this in _The
Problem of Pain_. In a passage which I've cited several times from _Miracles_ he
connects the idea of embryological recapitulation (yes, I know, Haeckel exaggerated
this) with christology:
"He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space,
down into humanity; down further still, if embryologists are right, to
recapitulate in the womb ancient and pre-human phases of life".
Lewis doesn't (anywhere, as far as I know) go on to relate this to Irenaeus'
idea that Christ recapitulated all phases of _human_ life in order to sanctify and save
them, but the step is easy. & it's worth making because Irenaeus represents a quite
different view of the initial state of humanity from the notion of the first humans
created in a perfected state of wisdom, beauty, &c which we owe to Augustine. Irenaeus
says (in _The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching_) that Adam "was a child, not yet
having his understanding perfected. It was necessary that he should grow and so come to
his perfection." That clearly provides much more scope for an evolutionary
understanding than does the Augustinian view.
David's reference to "an orthodox use of de Chardin" implies that Teilhard
wasn't orthodox. He wasn't orthodox Augustinian but Augustine (pace much of the western
tradition) isn't the standard of truth. Teilhard's views are in some ways closer to
those of Irenaeus & others of the Greek fathers, and I think we could learn a lot which
would be useful in the whole creation-evolution discussion if we would pay more
attention to them.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Feb 22 2000 - 09:02:38 EST