Evolutionary Dogma And Christian Theology -- By: Philip Edgcumbe Hughes

Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 18:1 (Nov 1955)
Article: Evolutionary Dogma And Christian Theology
Author: Philip Edgcumbe Hughes


Evolutionary Dogma And Christian Theology*

Philip Edgcumbe Hughes

[* This is the second of two lectures delivered at Westminster Theological Seminary on November 16 and 17, 1954. The first dealt more specifically with the philosophic aspects of the subject.]

THE admonition uttered with such solemnity by the evolutionary leaders of last century, that all things, including Christianity, must change or perish, has, it would seem, been taken seriously by many theologians. It is, indeed, true that even prior to the epiphany of Darwinism theological circles had not been entirely free from feelings of embarrassment because of the prominence of the supernatural element in historic Christianity. The humanism of the Renaissance and later the rationalism of the Enlightenment had not failed to plant seeds of uneasiness in theological breasts. The German theologian Schleiermacher, for example, who died in 1834, a quarter of a century before the appearance of The Origin of Species, while attributing the holiness of Christ to the perfect union of the human and the divine in His person, denied that Christ had been miraculously born, explained away Christ’s resurrection on the third day as an awakening from a state of lethargy, and suggested that subsequently, so far from having ascended into heaven, Christ had succumbed to death like all other men.

It was the promulgation of the Darwinian doctrine of Evolution, however, which was greeted as having at last rendered the old belief in the miraculous altogether obsolete. D. F. Strauss, who had listened with critical interest to Schleiermacher’s lectures in Berlin, and who, shortly after Schleiermacher’s death, had published his Life of Jesus—a violent assault on supernatural Christianity, in later years extolled Darwin as one of mankind’s most notable benefactors. “We other philosophers and critics”, he said, “had vainly decreed the downfall of miracle; our sentence made no

impression, because we did not succeed in rendering miracle superfluous by putting in its place a natural force wherever its presence hitherto appeared indispensable” (The Old Faith and the New, 1872).1 Strauss was captivated by the conception of the whole history of nature as a gradual and imperceptible ascent, an inevitable and unspectacular advance, from inorganic matter to organic life, crowned by the grand achievement of the human species. The evolutionary thesis was, for him, proof sufficient that nothing happens except in accordance with natural law. This being so, it became obligatory to discard the articles of the Christian creed, which were supernatural through and through, as bein...

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