Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 65:259 (Jul 1908)
Article: Evolution And The Miraculous
Author: Gabriel Campbell

BSac 65:259 (July 1908) p. 572

Evolution And The Miraculous1

Prof. Gabriel Campbell

In large measure, Philosophy has to do with open questions; indeed, with discussions which there appears no prospect of closing. Here evidently a necessity is upon us. The limitations of our knowledge require us to act, to practise, although we cannot perfectly interpret. Our latest advances in self-consciousness lead us to emphasize belief as justifiable working process.2 Kant’s Practical Reason is, in the main, a determination of postulates in what we irresistibly believe, and yet cannot theoretically know. Could our present “pragmatic “reasoning reach a unity in its wide diversity of teaching, it would no doubt prove to be outcome more or less of Kant’s valuation of practice as surmounting our theoretical intellection.

One of the most difficult, not to say important, of the open questions at the present time concerns the rational validation of the Miraculous. Our decision of this question will depend upon conclusions in several widely extended fields.

Notwithstanding difficulties, let us endeavor to grasp essentials and ascertain valid inferences. Perhaps the most popular

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objection to acceptance of the miraculous is the claim that recent science has cleared away old-fashioned notions, delivering us from fraud and superstition, and establishing religious truth on a sound basis of facts. Science, of course, does not compass all truth. Physics still finds her problems vanishing in metaphysics. The natural looks beyond to the supernatural. We shall best avoid confusion by confining our discussion to recent advancement, and attending at once to the inquiry,

What Is Evolution?

The term “evolution “is not restricted to a technical, definitized import. It designates the cosmic process as recognized by our modern scholars in their field work. At the same time it has a philosophic as well as a scientific bearing. Indeed, the evolution theory is not so much a recent discovery as an idea which has itself been evolved in the course of ages. From the earliest times man’s studies of nature have involved a theory of progress, of development. Heraclitus declared that permanence is an illusion. ‘Aristotle’s familiar comparison of this law of progression in the world to the steps of a ladder was never more suggestive than at the present hour. Let us characterize evolution, then, as the highest critical method, philosophical as well as scientific, by which the world, non-living as well as living, may be estimated.

Perhaps the most noticeable effect of the acceptan...