Philosophy & Theology 22, 1–2 235Evolution and Emergence:AParadigm Shift for

Theology

Augustine ShutteUniversity of Cape Town

AbstractSince the time of Darwin the conception ofevolution has developed beyond the boundariesof science to include philosophy and nowtheology in its scope. After noting thepositive reception of the evolutionary ideaby theologians even in Darwin’s time, thearticle traces its philosophical developmentfrom Hegel to the work of Karl Rahner. Itthen uses the philosophical anthropologydeveloped by Rahner to reformulate theessentials of Christian faith (“Christologywithin an evolutionary view of the world”) ina way that is consonant with a scientific andsecular world view. It is the author’s viewthat secularity—understood as in the recentwork of Charles Taylor—is the result of anevolution in the sphere of culture andprovides both a standard for truth inreligion and a basis for dialogue between thereligions of the world.

It is an extraordinary thing that an idea that inDarwin’s time (and to Darwin himself) appeared soalien to and indeed destructive of Christianityshould now prove so fruitful for the purpose offinding an expression of Christian faithappropriate for a scientific and secular age. The

idea of evolution and the emergence of new formsof being—not simply in the biological sphere butin the cosmos as a whole and in human historyitself—has in fact provided Christian theologywith a new paradigm within which to conceptualisesuch basic elements of faith as the notion ofcreation, the doctrine of God’s incarnation inJesus, the indwelling in us of the Holy Spirit,and the function of the Church in the world. Myaim in this article is to outline the steps takenthat have made this possible, and to provide asketch of the theology that results. In my recentwork I have relied on many thinkers in this

236 Shutte: Evolution and Emergence: A Paradigm Shift for Theologyproject, especially on the work of Karl Rahnerand his ‘Christology within an evolutionary viewof the world,’ but also visionaries such asTeilhard de Chardin and, in more recent times,Brian Swimme.

The opposition to Darwin’s ideas when theyfirst appeared, particularly that of publicfigures such as the Bishop of Oxford, has becomeso notorious that any sympathy with them fromthose who felt them to be compatible withChristian faith has been largely overlooked. Yetfrom the very first this was forthcoming, inspite of public opinion. One must remember thatat the time Christian orthodoxy was almostuniversally held to imply what is now seen to bea seriously mistaken view of biblical inerrancy,as well as being bound up with the soundness ofthe design argument as advanced by Paley andothers. Hence any acceptance of evolutionaryideas had somehow to be fitted in to the notionof design as well as requiring a revision ofone’s attitude to scripture. One even findsDarwin himself writing, in a letter to Asa Graythe Harvard botanist, “With respect to Design, Ifeel more inclined to show a white flag than tofire my usual long-range shot. . . . If anythingis designed, certainly man must be” (Clark 1984,121). And in the Origin itself: “There is agrandeur in this view of life, with its severalpowers, having been originally breathed into afew forms or into one.” To which, in the secondedition, he added “by the Creator” (Clark 1984,150).

Very soon after the publication of Darwin’s‘dangerous idea’ attempts began to be made to seein evolution God’s method of creation, or at leastas God-directed, whether by intervention or not.And some thinkers, such as Alfred Wallace inparticular, made a distinction between theevolutionary origin of the human body and theimmediate creation by God of the human soul. Aletter from Sir Charles Lyell, the famousgeologist, to Darwin is very revealing in boththese respects:

“I reminded him [Alfred Wallace] that as to theorigin of man’s intellectual and moral nature Ihad allowed in my first edition that itsintroduction was a real innovation, interruptingthe uniform course of the causation previously atwork on the earth. I was therefore not opposed tohis idea that the Supreme Intelligence mightpossibly direct variation in a way analogous tothat in which even the limited powers of manmight guide it in selection, as in the case ofthe breeder and horticulturalist. In other wordsI feel that progressive development or evolutioncannot be entirely explained by naturalselection. I rather Philosophy & Theology 22, 1–2 237

hail Wallace’s suggestion that there may be aSupreme Will and Power which may not abdicate itsfunction of interference, but may guide theforces and laws of Nature” (Clark 1984, 134).

It would be some time before Christian theologywas able to detach itself from the argument fromdesign, and even longer before it felt able toabandon the idea of an intervention in worldprocess by God in the case of the creation of thehuman soul, let alone the Incarnation. But thecompatibility of the evolution of new species andChristian faith was an idea that onlystrengthened with the passage of time. This isexemplified by the following passage from asermon given to the University by Charles Gore,later Bishop of Oxford, in 1894.

Objection to the idea of evolution on thegrounds of the argument from design, hasbeen, in the main, removed. In part it hasbeen through the theologians abandoning falseclaims and learning, if somewhat unwillingly,that they have no “Bible revelation” inmatters of science; in part it has beenthrough its becoming continually moreapparent that the limits of scientificexplanation of nature are soon reached; thatthe ultimate causes, forces, conditions ofnature are as unexplained as ever, or ratherpostulate as ever for their explanation aDivine mind. Thus if one “argument fromdesign” was destroyed another was onlybrought into prominence. No account whichscience can give, by discovery or conjectureof the method of creation, can ever weakenthe argument which lies from the universalityof law, order and beauty in the universe to

the universality of mind. The mind of manlooks forth into nature and finds nowhereunintelligible chance, but everywhere anorder, a system, a law, a beauty, whichcorresponds, as greater to less, to his ownrational and spiritual intuitions, methodsand expectations. Universal order,intelligibility, beauty, mean that somethingakin to the human spirit, something of whichthe human spirit is an offshoot and areflection, is in the universe before it isin man. (Clark 1984, 235)In this passage we find already a clear

appreciation of the limits of science and thebiblical writings, as well as of the originalforms of the argument from design. And, moreimportantly, we also find an albeit somewhattentative appreciation of two ideas that havesince become quite central to the theologicalannexure of the evolutionary idea. The first isthat of the unity and solidarity of a world-process in which humanity (and hence ourdistinctive mental capacities) is by no 238Shutte: Evolution and Emergence: A Paradigm Shift forTheology

means an exception but an integral part. Andsecondly, it is this mental or spiritual aspectof evolution—rather than a mechanistic regularityor order—that is the clearest indication of aworld-transcendent source. These ideas are soimportant to the story I am telling that I wantbriefly to indicate their origins in nineteenthcentury European thought, not indeed scientificor theological thought but philosophy. Of coursethe argument from design was itself philosophicalrather than scientific. And its popularity in ascientific culture had an immediate theologicaleffect. It gave rise to the idea of a ‘naturalreligion’ as opposed to a ‘revealed’ one likeChristianity, a religion that was supported by,in fact based on, the discoveries of science. Thefact that the scientific world view at that timewas a thoroughly materialistic and deterministicone tended to be overlooked.

But not by Kant! He saw his whole philosophicalendeavour as an attempt to justify our faith inhuman freedom, the immortality of the soul and,ultimately, the existence of God, all of whichbeliefs seemed threatened by the mechanisticNewtonian world-view. He did this by what hehimself called his “Copernican revolution.” Forjust as Copernicus had shown that the Sun and notEarth was the centre of our cosmic system, soKant argued that the order science discovered inthe world was the order of our minds rather thanthat of things in nature. Science itself was thecreation of the knowing, choosing humansubjectivity of the scientist and not somethingimpressed by an objective nature on a passivehuman mind. Not that the truths of science wereillusory, but they were partial, aspectual,

provisional insights into the much richer andstill not completely understood reality of theworld. The importance for our purposes of this‘subjective turn’ of Kant’s is not so much itsimproved understanding of science as its focus onthe scientist, and in general on the humanperson, as the knowing, choosing subject whocreates and judges science, and who thereforetranscends scientific study because alwayspresupposed by it. In doing so Kant revealed boththe inherent limitation of any actual or possiblescience, and at the same time a transcendentaspect of human nature that was the source ofscience, as well as morality and art—andreligion. It was thus humanity itself, or atleast this aspect of human nature, that came toprovide grounds for a rational faith in humanfreedom, the immortality of the soul, and theexistence of God.Philosophy & Theology 22, 1–2 239

Unfortunately so strong was the hold that thedeterministic, mechanistic Newtonian world-viewhad on the eighteenth century mind that Kant wasonly able to carry through his ‘Copernican revo-lution’ by virtue of a thoroughgoing dualism ofbody and mind. By virtue of our rational powersof intellect and will we transcend thedeterminisms of nature, of which as bodily beingswe are an inextricable part. Philosophy in themodern period developed in two mutuallyinteracting traditions, an empiricist cast ofthought that was born from the influence of thenatural, and especially the physical sciences,and a rationalist one that emanated from thecomplex phenomenon of secularization. Theempiricist tradition was materialist, stressingthe causal links discovered by the differentsciences that bound humanity to the determinismsof both nature and society. Rationalist thinkerssuch as Descartes and Kant, to name only the mostinfluential, influenced by secularization’s focuson humanity’s capacity for self-determination asthe central fact about human nature and the mostimportant value for human life, stressed ourtranscendence of all such dependencies. It wasonly in the early nineteenth century, at aboutthe time that Darwin’s own ideas were beginningto take their epoch-making shape, that aphilosopher overcame this sterile opposition oftwo half-truths in a synthetic vision in whichthe post-modern age was born.

It was Hegel who managed to combine the other-dependence of empiricist materialism with theself-determination of rationalistic dualism in acomprehensive view of humanity, both asindividuals and as a species, as being

essentially in a state of becoming through aprocess of transformation and transcendence.Hegel’s conception of humanity as Spirit (thecapital is necessary to denote its differencefrom the common idea of spirit that opposes it tomatter) was a genuine novelty in Europeanphilosophy, and perhaps the philosophicalexpression of what could be called the ‘spirit’of the age. It is so easy to read back into itmany things that science—in its discoveries ofemergence in world-process—and theology—in recenttheories of creation continua—have since developed,that one must be careful to identify the noveltyprecisely. I think it consists in the idea ofreality, whether human or cosmic, as a process ofself-realization through transformation andtranscendence. Whether this happens in a singlecell or in a person, or in a transition frominorganic to organic being, or from consciousnessto human self-240 Shutte: Evolution and Emergence: AParadigm Shift for Theology

consciousness, the structure of the dynamism isthe same: there is a finality involved, afinality of self-realization through self-transcendence. Although it is most manifest inhuman life, where it takes many paradoxicalforms, it is present in the simplest form ofphysical being. At all events it presents aworld-view that is evolutionary in a very deepand comprehensive sense, going well beyond bothwhat the special sciences could authorise andChristian orthodoxy would allow.

Perhaps the most important aspect of Hegel’sthought as far as theology is concerned is thefact that he applied his evolutionary conceptionto humanity, to the lives of human individuals andalso to human history itself, and did so withgreat thoroughness and in great detail. Here, inthe human sphere, he is concerned with theevolution of culture and consciousness and formsof human community. His account culminates in adescription of the evolution of art, religion andphilosophy, as the most developed forms of Spiritin which humanity progressively attempts torealise its capacity for self-consciousness andself-determination. Although Hegel is concernedto describe accurately the history he is notafraid to judge the forms that human culturetakes, negatively as well as positively. But likemany nineteenth century thinkers he is convincedof the fact of progress. And for him Christianityis the highest because the most human religion.Its only lack is the fact that it still holds itstruth in mythological form, believing stories ofGod’s interventions in history, in revelationsand miracles and sacred writings fixed for alltime. As a consequence, in his Lectures on the

Philosophy of Religion, he undertakes a radical projectof demythologization, translating all the centraldoctrines of Christianity into the language ofhis philosophy of Spirit. In this he wasfollowing Kant’s pioneering work ofdemythologization, in his Religion Within the limits ofReason Alone.

Hegel thus applied the evolutionary idea notonly to the history of religion, tracing adevelopment through all the forms of religionthen known to him, but also to the history of aparticular religion, namely Christianity, givingit a formulation he felt was more adequate to theage in which he lived. This was at a time whenscholars in many different fields were studyingthe past, using the methods of science onhumanity itself. And there was no human productthat received more critical attention than theChristian scriptures.Philosophy & Theology 22, 1–2 241

I think I have said enough to identify whatamounted to a revolution in thinking, arevolution that brought the ‘modern’ period ofEuropean history to an end. Darwin’s thinking wassimply part of it. John Dewey, speaking at thecelebration of the centenary of Darwin’s birth atColumbia University in 1909, summed up his in-fluence as follows: “In laying hands upon thesacred ark of absolute permanency, in treatingthe forms that had been regarded as types offixity and perfection as originating and passingaway, the “Origin of Species” introduced a modeof thinking that in the end was bound totransform the logic of knowledge, and hence thetreatment of morals, politics and religion”(Clark 1984, 254). This is a judgment with whichTeilhard de Chardin would have whole-heartedlyagreed: “Is evolution a theory, a system or anhypothesis? It is much more: it is a generalcondition to which all theories, all hypotheses,all systems must bow and which they must satisfyhenceforward if they are to be thinkable andtrue” (Teilhard de Chardin 1959, 219). Teilhard’swork was originally viewed with suspicion byChurch authorities; it is now no longer. And itis time for us to turn to consider how theologyhas shaped itself to the new evolutionaryparadigm, and how it might with profit continueto do so.

1In the intellectual development whereby thenotion of evolution has become central to theexpression of Christian faith in a scientific andsecular culture there are a number of salientthemes. First is that of the position of humanityin the universe, both as regards the nature of

human persons and the direction of human history.Various traditional dualisms had to be overcome:that of humanity and the rest of nature, and thedualism of matter and spirit that is bound upwith that. Then there is the dualism of body andmind or body and soul in human individuals.Secondly there is the question of God and hisrelationship to the universe, the idea ofcreation as creation continua, the creation of reallynew forms of being, especially that of life frommatter, human consciousness from life, and whatis traditionally called grace in human hearts andminds. Finally there is the sphere of history, ahistory seen by theology as a dialogue betweenhumanity and its god. As far as humanity isconcerned, history is seen as involving an 242Shutte: Evolution and Emergence: A Paradigm Shift forTheology

evolution of culture and consciousness, andtherefore of religion too, an evolution that fortheology culminates in the person and teaching ofJesus. With regard to God there are new ways ofunderstanding God’s ‘special actions’ within theuniverse in human history, what is traditionallycalled ‘the history of salvation’. These attemptto avoid the notion of ‘intervention’ by God inthe course of history, as well as any appeal tothe ‘supernatural,’ whether in the form ofmiracle or authoritative inspiration orrevelation.

These themes characterise especially the nowwell-developed dialogue between theology and thenatural sciences, where the evolutionary world-view and its satellite themes occupy centre-stage. A particularly impressive example of thisdialogue is the nearly twenty-year long series ofseminars organised by the Vatican Observatory andthe Centre for Theology and the Natural Sciencesat Berkeley, which has just culminated in thepublication of its sixth and final “capstone”volume of papers by participants. The writerswere drawn from the ranks of highly respectedscientists, philosophers and theologians, and metregularly to discuss and revise theircontributions at Castelgandolfo and inCalifornia. The series as a whole bore thegeneral title “Scientific Perspectives on DivineAction.”

As can be imagined the scholars involved werefrom many different backgrounds and with verydifferent outlooks. Yet in the course of themeetings, and due to the method of discussion andrevision employed, a remarkable consensusemerged. Keith Ward, in his article in the

capstone volume that ended the series, describesthis as follows: “there is a sort of metaphysicalview that has arisen out of this series ofdiscussions between scientists and theologians.It puts in place a background world-view for arestatement of religious doctrines that isprobably as important as Aristotle was for theChristian church in the thirteenth century.”

“The scientific understanding of a universe ofintelligible law and emergent creativity changesthe perspective within which one sees divineaction. God will not be seen as an interferingdesigner correcting a partly incompletemechanism. God will be more like a universe-environing field of Spirit, setting theparameters of nature, guiding its emergentdevelopment, and ensuring the eventual fulfilmentof the divine intention for its existence”(Russell et al. 2008, 298).Philosophy & Theology 22,1–2 243

In this, the final volume, the acronym NIODA isused to identify this consensus. It stands for“Non-interventionist Objective Divine Action” inworld process and applies both to God’s creativecausality in nature and also to his ‘special’activity in human and ‘salvation’ history. Thisway of understanding God’s action in the world isso important for the way we express Christianfaith in a scientific and secular culture that Iwill quote William Stoeger’s account of it atsome length. Stoeger, incidentally, is not only ascientist (an astronomer), but a philosopher andtheologian as well, and has been one of theeditors—and a moving spirit—of this project fromthe beginning.

Certain events or sequences of eventsinitiated by secondary causal agents [Stoegeris employing the traditional distinctionbetween the primary causality of God ascreator whereby God is the ultimate cause ofall that happens in the universe, and thesecondary causality of things in the universewhereby the integrity of nature is main-tained] (either those which are freely andconsciously chosen, or those which are not)are turning points within creation, or withinhistory, and thus are specially revelatory ofGod’s immanent creative presence. As such,these are in deeper harmony with God’sintended purposes and with the essentialstructures and relationships alreadyestablished with creation itself. Theseevents or sequences of events would indeed be“God’s special salvific acts,” even thoughthey were not direct acts of God (i.e., notwithout the intermediary of a secondary

cause). Nor would they lack a sufficientcause within the manifold of dynamisms andpotentialities of creation or of history,presupposing the universal primary creativeaction of God. They would nonetheless, bespecial, salvific and revelatory, preciselybecause they are clear expressions of whatGod intends, and/or fulfil God’s purposes andintentions in a particularly unambiguous orexemplary fashion. (Stoeger 2008, 245)This way of conceiving God’s special salvific

acts in terms of God’s overall creative actionhas definite advantages, Stoeger believes, bothfrom the point of view of science and oftheology. “It connects directly with the richlydifferentiated, transcendently immanent presenceand action of the creator God within creation andwith God’s radically kenotic, deeply effectivebut hidden availability within nature.Furthermore, it emphasizes that what isfundamental is no so much God’s action, oractions, but rather God’s ongoing relationshipwith creation. Again, 244 Shutte: Evolution andEmergence: A Paradigm Shift for Theology

the divine creative relationship is highlydifferentiated with respect to each entity andsystem within the universe—and God’s action flowsfrom the character of that relationship” (Stoeger2008, 245).

As far as science is concerned, and the world-view that is the result of science, this is to mymind an essential way of conceiving God’s actionin the world. It is also a new way, and a new waythat the development of science has itselfsuggested. Stoeger himself is in no doubt aboutthis “Thus, we can also say, in a way we couldnot have before the advent of the naturalsciences, that God’s universal creative action,though unique, is also realized in a highlydifferentiated and evolving way throughoutnature. This evolutionary, emergent andunfinished character of creation revealed by thesciences serves to emphasize the continuingcharacter of God’s action through theregularities, processes and relationships Godsustains” (Stoeger 2008, 230).

2The evolutionary character of the scientificworld-view is perhaps not sufficiently stressedin the rather general picture I have beenpainting. I now propose to deal with thatdirectly, and first philosophically in itsimplications and fruitfulness for ‘naturaltheology’ and then, in some detail, with itsplace in theology as such. The classicaltreatment of the evolutionary origin of humanityas a theological issue is Karl Rahner’s 1958monograph Hominisation. Rahner’s early work, Spirit inthe World and Hearers of the Word in particular, hadprovided a new philosophical foundation, derived

from the history I have recapitulated above, forthe traditional Christian view of humanity andits place in the world.

For Rahner, as for Kant and Hegel, human beingshave a dimension that transcends anything thesciences can know since it is what produces andjudges the sciences. It is what makes us self-aware, self-determining subjects of thought andaction, and is the source not only of science,but of morality, art, religion and, in general,culture. It is what makes us persons in thetechnical sense, spiritual as well as materialbeings. To say that we are spiritual is to drawattention to the peculiar internal relation humanbeings have to themselves (self-awareness andself-determination) that is not merely some partof us related to another part, but of ourselvesas a whole in relation to the whole of ourselves.This is contrasted with our materiality whichrefers to the Philosophy & Theology 22, 1–2 245

equally constitutive relationship in which westand to all that is other than ourselves, thewhole universe in fact, personal and impersonal.As spiritual beings we transcend the whole of theimpersonal universe in the sense that it does notexplain our existence and cannot fulfill thosedesires that we have precisely as spiritualbeings. It must however be pointed out that weare unable to exercise, develop or fulfill ourspiritual capacities except through ourrelationship to the rest of the universe, bothpersonal and impersonal, and in dependence on it.

This insight into our human nature does not, inRahner’s view, depend on faith but onphilosophical reflection on experience. Butunless one recognizes this character of our humannature it is not possible to understandadequately the essentials of Christian faith. Andwhat is more it makes possible the integration ofour understanding of humanity into anevolutionary view of the world. The well-foundedtheories of contemporary science have enabled usto understand that the universe is anevolutionary process in which, over time,progressively more complex forms of being comeinto being through a real transformation of whatpreceded them. Humanity is the most complex (inits materiality) and the most simple (in itsspirituality) being known to us. As such wecontain in a transformed unity all the precedingforms of being discovered by the sciences. Thoughthese are part of us we cannot be reduced to thembut transcend them in the way Rahner makes clear.In addition we are able to contain the universeas such in our minds and endow it with meaningand value in our decisions and our acts. Thus the

universe as a whole is most properly understoodas a plurality of human persons. It is the objectof our thought and choice, and its impersonalaspects constitute the milieu in which aplurality of persons can exist and a medium inwhich interpersonal transactions can bring aboutour development and fulfillment. Put simply,there is more of reality in a person than afundamental particle or physical force.

Again it must be stressed that such aconception of humanity and the world is a purelyphilosophical one and owes nothing to Christianfaith. Nevertheless it provides a way ofunderstanding the Christian conception of our godas our creator that is consonant with ourcontemporary scientific and secular culture. Weexperience our transcendent subjectivity in allour cognitive and volitional activity. 246Shutte: Evolution and Emergence: A Paradigm Shift forTheology

And at the same time, according to Rahner, weexperience our openness to and inclinationtowards something absolutely transcendent that isimmanent in our activity. I say ‘something’because it is not any specific object ofknowledge or desire; nor is it simply weourselves as the knowing, acting subjects. It ishowever inherent in our conscious free activityas the condition that makes it possible, notmerely as a ‘logical’ condition but as a realitythat is essentially mysterious.

There is an unlimitedness to humanconsciousness and desire that indicates anunlimited reality and value as its source, anabsolutely transcendent reality and value that isnevertheless immanent in our experience ofourselves as knowing, choosing subjects. There isthus philosophical space that a Christian god cancome to occupy.

A reflection on our capacity for free choicewill make this clearer. When we deliberatelyaffirm something as true or choose something asgood our act transcends all the causal networksthe universe contains and the sciences are ableto discover. Not that the laws of nature breakdown in us, or the social influences that haveformed us cease to operate. Indeed they areabsolutely necessary if we are to act at all. Butthey are not sufficient. If they were we wouldnot be free. And what holds for the free actionmust also hold for the capacity to act freelythat is part of normal human nature as outlinedabove. It follows that causal networks of theuniverse (such as are necessary to produce humanbeings from pre-human nature), though necessaryare themselves insufficient to produce beings

like us with the capacity for free action. Theremust therefore be another kind of causality atwork, within the evolutionary process thoughbeyond the reach of science, that is absolutelytranscendent of the universe though immanent inits processes to bring us into being.

The production of beings with the capacity forfree acts such as ourselves is only the clearestcase of a feature that is universal in theevolutionary process uncovered by modern science.This is a process in which really new forms ofbeing are continually coming into existencethrough a transformation of what preceded them.The most dramatic examples, apart from theemergence of humanity, are those of consciousnessfrom preconscious being, of living from non-living, and of the universe itself from aninitial singularity. In general cosmic evolutionis from the simple and dispersed to the complexand centred. And at every stage the new form ofbeing is not simply the product of Philosophy &Theology 22, 1–2 247

what previously existed. Though necessary,physical things and forces are insufficient toproduce biological organisms. Something more isrequired, a causality that transcends the cosmicprocess our science can investigate thoughimmanent in it.

Rahner’s philosophical anthropology thus notonly provides one with a conception of humanitythat is thoroughly at home in an evolutionaryworld-view. It also brings to light a moregeneral feature of a world-view such as this.Emergence of new kinds of being through atransformation of the kinds of being thatpreceded them is only possible by virtue of theoperation of a different kind of causalityaltogether, one that is incommensurable with thecauses science can deal with. Rahner’santhropology amounts to a new form of an argumentfor the existence and action in the world of acause that would satisfy the classical Christiandefinition of a creator, namely one that that istranscendent of the universe but is immanent inall that it is and does. The evolutionary world-view is a perfect exemplification of this. AndRahner’s account also satisfies the legitimaterequirements of the traditional doctrine of God’s‘immediate creation of the human soul’ withoutlapsing into any dualism of body and mind.

There is a final part of Rahner’s philosophicalanthropology which is of the utmost importancefor understanding Christian faith in terms in anevolutionary world-view and that is his treatmentof the personal development of individuals. Ifevolution continues in humanity it is because itis borne by human individuals themselves, in whomthere is either development or decline. For human

beings, though transcending impersonal reality,are nevertheless dependent on it for all we areand do. There is no thought without images, noimages without sensations, no sensations withoutsense organs sensitive to a spatio-temporalenvironment in which alone we can exist, expressourselves and communicate with others. This iswhat is known as our historicity. As transcendentbeings we are able to develop an inner life, tolive by meanings and values. But we can only dothis in a process that unfolds in time and in amilieu that identifies us in space. We developourselves only in dependence on what is otherthan us. And, most importantly, through ourrelations with other persons, in a social andcultural milieu that humanity itself hasconstructed. Historicity is a feature of the lifeof individuals and of humanity as a whole.248Shutte: Evolution and Emergence: A Paradigm Shift forTheology

For beings such as we are our relations withother persons are crucial for the exercise,development and fulfilment of our distinctivelypersonal capacities of self-consciousness andself-determination. And a philosophicalphenomenology of intersubjectivity shows thatcertain definite kinds of relationship withothers are necessary for this. It reveals thestartling fact that the more we are influenced byother persons in whom these capacities arealready developed, the more self-determining weare enabled to be. Apart from such influence weare unable to grow as persons. This can appear tocontradict the fact that the capacity in questionis that for self-determination, for action thatis free. But careful analysis of experienceproves the contrary: the more I am influenced bythe other in a certain way, the more the act ismy own.

This is in fact what our philosophicalanthropology should lead us to expect. For we sawthere that the existence of beings with acapacity for self-determination was only possibleas the effect of an absolutely transcendent causeimmanent in the evolutionary process. And in ourexperience of ourselves as knowing, choosingsubjects we are conscious of an apprehension ofreality that is absolute and of a desire forsomething of absolute value. This experience ishowever not objective; the transcendent source ofour knowing and valuing is only implicit in ourexperience of ourselves. Here however, in therelationships with others in which we exercisedevelop and fulfill our capacities for self-knowledge and self-affirmation, we actuallyexperience in an objective way the power and

presence of an absolutely transcendent personalreality immanent in the very relationshipsthemselves. It is precisely this that explainsthe paradoxical ‘interpersonal causality’ wherebythe more we are subject to the influence of theother, the more self-determining we become. Ifthe influence exercised on us was simply that ofa finite cause other than us, the more it causedus to act, the less the act would be our own. Butthe opposite is the case. We are thus bound torecognise that within the relationships in whichmy capacity for self-determination is developedthere is a truly transcendent personal cause atwork, whose influence is incommensurable withthat of finite causes, personal or impersonal.

This understanding of the necessary conditionsfor the exercise, development and fulfilment ofhuman persons thus provides the basis for a‘natural theology,’ a new natural theologymoreover that is consoPhilosophy & Theology 22, 1–2249

nant with a scientific and secular world-viewand closer to the reality of religious faith thantraditional arguments for the existence of God.It also provides, in my view, a fruitful approachto the problem of death.

In the sketch of the history of religion that Iwill presently be providing I make the point thathowever differently different religioustraditions conceive the nature of the predicamentfrom which their gods are understood to be ableto save us, it is always characterised by twoelements: conflict between human beings anddeath. The account just given of theinterpersonal relationships required for personalgrowth provides a theoretical solution to thefirst of these, a solution that can only berealised through power from a fully transcendentsource. And it is only power of this kind thatcan provide an answer to the problem of death. Ifmy account of the necessary conditions forpersonal growth is accurate, and these conditionsexist, then they also are able to answer theproblem posed by death.

If it is true that human persons aretranscendent in the sense that the causes scienceis able to identify are insufficient to bring usinto being, then it follows that those samecauses are insufficient to make us cease to be.But, more positively, the dynamism of personalgrowth through the influence of the other, is oneof self-gift from and so to the other. Within thecircumstances of ordinary life it is alwayspossible to fool oneself as to whether this hasbeen achieved; a habitual fear and self-centredness can always provide an impediment.Death however confronts one with an unavoidable

choice. For human beings death means the limit ofhuman power to control. But the experience ofpersonal growth through the gift of the other canhelp us to recognise the same feature in death.Self-assertion is futile; self-surrender to apower we have learnt to trust robs death of itsthreat. Instead it becomes the climax of a lifein which we only fully possess ourselves bygiving ourselves away.

3Seeing creation in terms of emergence, ratherthan as the act of starting the universe or evenas the activity of conservation that keeps itgoing, though a purely philosophical development,thus provides a firmer foundation for theologyproper to build on. On this basis I want now tosummarise the aspects of the theory of evolutionand emergence which have direct relevance forChristian theology as such.250 Shutte: Evolution andEmergence: A Paradigm Shift for Theology

The first of these is the idea of the unity andintegrity of world process such that anymetaphysical dualism is avoided. And so is ma-terialism, since the unitary process culminatesin the mind and will of human beings. Eachindividual recapitulates in the womb the wholeevolutionary process that has led to humanity,and then continues it in a specifically human wayin their own life. Humanity thus appears as amicrocosm of the universe as a whole, containingall other levels of reality within itself; it isa paradigm of reality and not just one speciesamongst others. At the same time the universeitself appears as our true home, the only place,in spite of its imperfections and incompleteness,in which we can be real. Whatever the theologicalnotion of ‘salvation’ means it cannot mean ourbeing saved ‘out of’ the world. There is no otherplace! The evolutionary world-view suggests abetter alternative in a further transformation ofthe human world (and thus the universe), in theline of those transformations that have broughthumanity into being and still continue, as weshall see, in human history to this day. In aperspective such as this, the struggle to ‘makethe world a better place,’ to overcomedehumanising poverty and injustice and to takegood care of the natural environment, can makebetter theological sense.

The second aspect of evolutionary theory ofdirect relevance to theology is the notion ofenergy it embodies, and in particular the ideathat the basic energy of the universe is a ‘form-producing’ energy (to borrow Brian Swimme’sfelicitous expression) whereby every kind ofbeing manifests over time a capacity for self-

transcendence, and always in the direction ofgreater complexity with the increasing‘centredness’ that that entails. The notion thatevolution has a direction (in spite of, orperhaps even because of the annihilations andextinctions that have occurred at regularintervals during its 14 billion year history), adirection defined by the production of truly newkinds of being through a transformation andtranscendence of what has gone before, is perhapsthe single most important feature of the theoryas far as theology is concerned. Not only does itoffer a new model for the idea of creation, as wehave already noted; it also helps one to see theIncarnation in a new way, as well as the ideas ofsalvation and grace and the notion of the Church—as I presently hope to show.

Extending the notion of evolution to humanityitself, to human history, is a third aspect onemust take into account. This must not Philosophy &Theology 22, 1–2 251

be confused with a facile idea of progress;even if the newest science is usually the best,the same cannot be said of morality. Butevolution, at every level of reality, is neversimply progress. It involves experiment, trialand error, though always in the end, new beingthrough transformation and transcendence. Inhuman history evolution takes the form oftransformations of culture and consciousness andthe communities in which individuals develop. Thedirection taken by these transformations in thehuman sphere is similar to that in the evolutionof living beings, and indeed to that of thecosmos as a whole. It is an evolution fromsimplicity and homogeneity towards diversity andcomplexity. In human culture Eric Voegelin callsthis the movement from compactness todifferentiation. In primal societies politics andreligion, philosophy and theology, economics andspirituality are not distinguished but form anintegrated largely unconscious whole. Thentechnology supersedes magic, philosophy replacesmyth, theology is distinguished from philosophy,eventually religion is seen as a distinct sphereof human life and contrasted with secularity.Finally the history of each of these spheres oflife comes to be written. This evolution ofculture, consciousness and community takes placewithin the sphere of religion itself, as in allthe other spheres of human life. We will examinethis in more detail presently. And then withinChristianity there is an evolution in thedevelopment of doctrine, spirituality andliturgy.

A final, but possibly the most important,aspect of an evolutionary world-view is the idea

of the necessity of a causal factor in world-process that is incommensurable with any causediscoverable by the sciences. This notion ofincommensurability is of the utmost importancefor dealing in a theological way with Christianfaith. It arises, as we have seen, through aninsight into our experience of our capacity forself-determination, and is given a morecomprehensive and concrete character in ouractual experience of personal growth inrelationships with other persons. The fact thatthis experience is something universal availableto humanity and not exceptional should not blindus to its essentially mysterious character. If myaccount is accurate then it is indeed the casethat we have real experience of somethingabsolutely transcendent, and thereforeincommensurable with human persons, in ourordinary interpersonal relations.

Rahner corroborates this insight and itsimportance in a theological way in his treatmentof the notion of creatureliness and ourexperience 252 Shutte: Evolution and Emergence: AParadigm Shift for Theology

of this. Being a creature in this contextentails a unique relationship to our transcendentcreator, a relationship that is traditionallyexpressed by the notion of incommensurability.The notion of the incommensurability of creatureand creator is central to classical theism andtaken for granted by Aquinas. One cannot add Godand the universe and make two. This is notbecause either is unreal, or that God and theuniverse are identical, but because there is nocommon measure in terms of which they could beadded to or subtracted from one another Thereality of each is too different. An analogywould be that of a poet composing a poem abouthimself. One cannot say there are two poets, theone composing and the one in the poem. But to saythere is only one is misleading because the poemalready exists in the poet’s mind. Rahner makesuse of this idea in his discussion of ourcreatureliness. The following quotation servesthe purpose of making the connection with theidea of ‘interpersonal causality’ outlined above.

The radical dependence and the genuinereality of the existent coming from God varyin direct and not in inverse proportion. Inour human experience it is the case that themore something is dependent on us, the lessit is different from us, and the less itpossesses its own reality and autonomy. Theradical dependence of the effect on the causeand the independence and autonomy of theeffect vary in inverse proportion. But when we reflect upon the realtranscendental relationship between God and acreature, then it is clear that here genuinereality and radical dependence are simply

just two sides of one and the same reality,and therefore they vary in direct and notinverse proportion. We and the existents ofour world really and truly are and aredifferent from God not in spite of, butbecause we are established in being by Godand not by anyone else. (Rahner 1978, 79)The best example of this apparently

contradictory, but in reality paradoxical,relation is that of the human capacity for self-determination. In our discussion of Rahner’sphilosophical anthropology it was pointed outthat only an infinite cause could be sufficientto bring beings with the capacity for freedominto existence, albeit through the causalmechanisms of evolution. It follows that even theexercise, development and fulfillment of ourcapacity for self-determination is the effect ofthe creative causality of God. Human freedommeans freedom from total determination by worldlycauses, not freedom Philosophy & Theology 22, 1–2 253

from God. It is precisely this paradoxicaltruth that my analysis of interpersonal causalityis intended to substantiate.

Christian theology grows from the reflection ofhis first followers on their experience of Jesus.The fruits of this reflection are documented inthe writings of the New Testament. We are now ina position to appreciate these against thebackground of an evolutionary view of the worldand the evolution of religious thought, in thehistory of Israel in particular.

4Religion is as old as humanity and is theexpression of a deep desire natural to humanityfor a comprehensive and enduring fulfilment toall our most basic capacities and needs,especially those beyond our own powers. The godsof all religions are seen as sources of powertranscending our own that can do this. Thus allreligions see life as a predicament, the generalform of which is that we are conscious of deepdesires that only power transcending our own isable to fulfil. The history of religion offersmany different accounts of this predicament andcorrespondingly different conceptions of the godsthat are able to overcome it. Two elementshowever stand out as present in all traditions:the desire to overcome sickness and death, andthe desire to overcome human conflict of everykind.

Although the gods of the different religionsare always seen as having powers that transcendhuman power, the way these powers are understooddepends on the view held of human nature and itscapacities, its needs and powers. There is alwaysan intrinsic connection between the conception of

our god and the conception of humanity itself.This connection is illustrated in the case ofIsrael by the idea that humanity is the ‘image’of Yahweh. For the historian of ideas it is alsotrue that Yahweh is the ‘image’ of humanity. Andas human culture evolves and conceptions of humannature change, so too do conceptions of our gods.There seems to be a measure of agreement amonghistorians that during what came to be called theAxial period (roughly 800 to 300 BC) in all themajor centres of civilization, a similardevelopment in outlook took place, a developmentthat one can call (following Voegelin) ‘thediscovery of transcendence.’ All cultures of thetime were religious so one could call this adevelopment in 254 Shutte: Evolution and Emergence: AParadigm Shift for Theology

religion. However it occurred in Greece as wellwhere it took the form of a rejection of theGreek gods in the name of an absolutely transcen-dent element in humanity itself as well as anabsolutely transcendent sphere that was itssource. Plato, for instance, saw the human soulas possessed of a transcendence of anythingmaterial, and identified what he called the Formof the Good as the transcendent source of allreality, the gods included.

Be that as it may, in the history of Israel,especially in the time of the later prophets suchas Second Isaiah and Ezekiel, it was a de-velopment in religion. Yahweh, originally atribal god among other tribal gods, came to beseen as the god above all gods, and eventually asthe only god, transcending not only human powersbut all powers absolutely, of whatever spiritualbeings the universe contained. The final step wasto see that Yahweh was not part of the universeat all but its creator. This absolutetranscendence of a god was a novelty in thehistory of religion. And, as the history ofreligion would lead one to expect, it wasconnected in the thinking of Irael’s prophets andsages to a similar, though derived, transcendencein humanity itself as Yahweh’s image. Theuniverse, though necessary for human existenceand fulfilment, was neither sufficient to produceor fulfill beings like us who had capacities, andthus needs and desires that only an absolutelytranscendent being could fulfill. Hence theendless hostility of the authors of the OldTestament writings towards the ‘gods of thenations’ who were not to be treated as gods at

all since they were powerless to fulfill thetranscendent needs of beings such as we.

This conception of humanity and its god gave aspecial character to the understanding of thehuman predicament in the later thought ofIsrael’s prophets and sages, an understandingthat is spelled out in mythical form in the firsteleven chapters of the book of Genesis. Thesestories, especially those of Adam and Eve in thegarden and the Tower of Babel, are stories ofidolatry. The human predicament is depicted as astate of conflict within the human family, theconsequence of which is death. The cause ofconflict is sin. And sin is simply idolatry.Idolatry is self-worship, the desire to be likeour transcendent god without dependence on it.And this is almost inevitable for us since wehave a godlike capacity for transcendence andcreativity, but one that can only be developedand fulfilled by our transcendent creator.Philosophy & Theology 22, 1–2 255

The solution developed in the history of Israelto this predicament lay in Yahweh himself takingcontrol of human history, overcoming humandisunity by transforming the hearts and minds ofhis people so that they would accept and engagewith him as their saviour and their king. Thenthey would be a community of love and peace, auniversal community that would last forever.

This then is the background of the historicevent documented by the writings of the NewTestament. In summary: the disciples’ experienceof Jesus and his effect in their lives,culminating in the mysterious experience ofmeeting with him after his death and of hiscontinuing presence amongst them, led them tobelieve that God himself was present in Jesus andin them in such a way that they shared in his ownsin-and death-transcending life. This vision andspirit had come to them from Jesus and so theycalled him ‘saviour.’ This interpersonalinteraction with Jesus is the event from whichall Christian theology derives. It is this which,in our scientific and secular culture, we need tounderstand in terms of the evolutionary view ofthe world.

5Traditionally this foundational event is called,in the case of Jesus, the Incarnation and, in thecase of his disciples, Salvation or Redemption.And traditionally it is understood as anintervention by God in human history for thepurpose of our salvation from a situation more orless like what I have just sketched above. CurDeus homo? theologians from Anselm to Aquinas haveasked. And the answer given to this question wasinvariably “To save us from sin and the effects

of sin.” No sin, no Incarnation, no need! In anevolutionary perspective however everything looksdifferent. We have learnt to see creation as acontinuing process, a process that produceshumanity and continues in human history as anevolution of consciousness, culture andcommunity. From the standpoint of Jesus and hisfirst followers this can now be seen in thehistory of Israel culminating in them. God iscreating a new consciousness in humanity, a newinsight into human nature and into God himselfthat is to permeate our culture and itsinstitutions so that a new community of humanitywill result. In this perspective human history isessentially a history of revelation and a historyof salvation. And what is more, the mysterioussecret finally revealed and 256 Shutte: Evolutionand Emergence: A Paradigm Shift for Theology

realised in his followers’ relationship withJesus, is that this will be a community with Godhimself, God present in our minds and hearts andin our lives. As Karl Rahner would put it, thewhole of human history is a history of God’sself-communication to us. And it reaches anunsurpassable climax in the life of Jesus.Subsequent history is to be the spelling out ofthe implications of this vision and theimplementation of this spirit universally.Evolution has now a new direction, theconstruction on this foundation of a hospitablehome for humanity where they can live as a lovingfamily with God.

I want now to show how this basic outlookaffects the way we understand the centraldoctrines that have developed in the history ofthe Church to explain the nature of Christianfaith. I will use the work of Karl Rahner to dothis since he has explicitly situated histheology within an evolutionary framework. Inparticular he sees human evolution asrecapitulating that of the cosmos: it is theuniverse itself that continues to evolve in us,in our thoughts and actions. “The history ofnature and of spirit form an intrinsic andstratified unity in which the history of naturedevelops towards man, continues on in him as hishistory, is preserved and surpassed in him, andtherefore reaches its own goal with and in thehistory of man’s spirit” (Rahner 1978, 187).Rahner sees this evolution as God’s creativeachievement and as a moment within that self-communication of God that culminates in theIncarnation and its effects in us: “Now accordingto Christian teaching, this self-transcendence of

the cosmos in man towards its own totality andtowards its ground does not really and fullyreach its ultimate fulfilment until the cosmos isnot only something established in existence byits ground, is not only something created, butalso receives the immediate self-communication ofits own ground in the spiritual creatures whichare its goal and its high point. This immediateself-communication of God to spiritual creaturestakes place in what we call ‘grace’ while thisself-communication is still in its historicalprocess, and ‘glory’ when it reaches fulfilment.Not only does God create something different fromhimself, but he also gives himself to this other.The world receives God, the infinite and theineffable mystery, in such a way that he himselfbecomes its innermost life. The always uniqueself-possession of the cosmos, which isconcentrated in each individual spiritual personin its transcendence towards the Philosophy &Theology 22, 1–2 257

absolute ground of its reality, takes place bythe fact that the absolute ground itself becomesimmediately interior to what is grounded by it”(Rahner 1978, 190).

In this evolutionary understanding ofChristianity God (as the one Jesus called Abba)has a quite distinctive character andrelationship to us. In the first place it is Godwho is now recognized as the source of ourexistence and the one whom we experience in ourexperience of ourselves as knowing, choosingsubjects involved with other persons in a milieuof culture and of nature. And it is God whom weexperience especially in those relationships withothers in which we exercise, develop and fulfillthose capacities that make us subjects, and, inparticular, our desire for the fullness ofpersonal community and death-transcending life.For Rahner nobody is without this experience, andit is in this sense that he uses the term‘anonymous Christian.’ Of course experience isnot knowledge, and primal cultures had only inad-equate ideas of God, as are expressed in theirreligion. But for Rahner the whole of humanhistory can be seen as an evolution towards thetrue understanding of the power that moveshistory towards its goal through the insights andfreedom of humanity. And this is because hebelieves that human history is the history ofGod’s self-communication to humanity. The notion ofGod’s self-communication to humanity is thefundamental conception in Rahner’s theology. Itis this idea that defines both salvation andrevelation for him.

The salvation of humanity consists in thecreation of “the unity of humanity in union with

God,” to paraphrase the expression used by theSecond Vatican Council. For Rahner the way tothis is God’s self-communication to us throughouthuman history, but finally and fully in the lifeof Jesus. For a union between God and humanity toexist it must be achieved in our human world, theworld God created for this purpose. It cannottake place anywhere else, for human beings cannotbe real anywhere else. We are ‘evolution becomeconscious of itself.’ However transformed, it isthis universe that is our eternal home. And ithas been created by God with the purpose ofmaking it a home in which God can be with us. Wedon’t go to God; God comes to us. This is theimport of Rahner’s idea of God’s self-communication. And so the Incarnation (thecomplete and therefore unsurpassable form ofGod’s self-communication) is seen as the purposeof creation, and salvation 258 Shutte: Evolution andEmergence: A Paradigm Shift for Theology

as the purpose of the Incarnation. One must ofcourse add that the notion of salvation is onlyappropriate because of sin; it is God’s con-tinuing creation and self-communication in theprocess of overcoming sin and the effects of sinin us. Finally, salvation can only be achieved ifGod’s self-communication is accepted. ForChristian faith it is, and completely, by Jesus.The acceptance of God’s self-communication, byJesus or by us, is also always the result ofGod’s freedom-creating power in human acts,‘grace’ in Rahner’s terminology.

Revelation, as Rahner understands it, is notprimarily the revelation of truths but therevelation of God himself. It is an aspect ofGod’s self-communication, that which imparts thepersonal knowledge of God. This knowledge ispersonal knowledge, the knowledge ofacquaintance, not knowledge of truths about God,not something that can be written down. It isthus not to be identified with scripture, whetherJewish or Christian. It is that which ispossessed by the persons—prophets, apostles,Jesus himself—who write or are written about inthe scriptures. Rahner, as I have alreadyindicated, sees the history of God’s revelationof God as coinciding with the whole of humanhistory. And, as with salvation, revelationproceeds by fits and starts, developing indifferent ways and to different degrees in everyculture and religion. It reaches an unsurpassablecompleteness only in Jesus.

Because Christian faith in God is faith in theone revealed in the person and life of Jesus itdepends on a knowledge of that person and thatlife. This is as true for those who were intimate

with him before his death as it is for us. Butfor us this knowledge is mediated to us by thatoriginal community as it has expanded through twothousand years. And it is complicated by the factthat the original community (and its extensionthrough time and space) was formed by a faith inJesus’ resurrection. So there is no way ofgetting to know anything (or anything ofimportance) about Jesus apart from those whobelieved in his resurrection. Certainly all thewritings of the New Testament are written fromthe point of view of this faith. Modernscientific study of these has helped a great dealto form an objective picture of what Jesus saidand did and of the effect this had on hisfollowers. But the project of building up adetailed biography of Jesus is doomed to failure.That does not matter however from the point ofview of Christian theology. As theologians wewant an accurate picture of Philosophy & Theology 22,1–2 259

the faith of Jesus’ followers and, if possible,the faith of Jesus himself. Since the authors ofthe New Testament writings believed that theirfaith in God was the same as that of Jesus—sincethey had acquired it through their intimacy withhim—they are providing us with first handinformation about the nature of that faith. Andthat is what we really want. Rahner (though nothimself a biblical scholar in the strict sense,had studied more works of biblical scholarshipthan most who are) certainly believed that we arein possession of sufficient knowledge of what thefirst followers of Jesus believed, and of whatJesus himself believed, to be able to share theirfaith. He is supported in this conviction both bythe philosophical insights into the capacitiesand deep desires of our human nature that I haveoutlined, as well as by the history of religion Ihave sketched above. And he certainly believedthat if a person was not in touch with his ownhumanity, but had a mind full of contemporaryillusions or ancient myths, then authenticChristian faith would be virtually impossible.

Rahner felt that one can say something aboutJesus’ own self-understanding. Jesus certainlysaw himself as standing in the historic line ofJewish prophets, but with this difference: he wasbringing this line to an end. All other prophetssaw themselves as bearers of God’s word toIsrael, but that word was not seen as God’s finalword. The prophets saw their words as God’s words(“The Lord your God says this” and “Thus says theLord”), but still expected God to say more.Jesus, on the other hand, had a message whosevery content implied that it was the final one,final because complete and unsurpassable. Rahner

sees Jesus’ gospel of the kingdom of God asimplying God’s self-communication to the world,not just a message. And not even God could domore than that.

So the first stage of human history was comingto an end; the final stage was beginning. “Wasbeginning”? Rahner believes that Jesus did notknow, perhaps even was mistaken, about the ‘timesand seasons’ of God’s full and irrevocable entryinto human history, his ‘kingdom.’ But he alsobelieves that Jesus saw himself as in some way orother responsible for its inauguration. And thathe felt this responsibility because of hisexperience of God’s extraordinary closeness tohim. Here is how he puts it: “Jesus experienced arelationship to God which he experienced as newand unique in comparison with other men, but 260Shutte: Evolution and Emergence: A Paradigm Shift forTheology

which he nevertheless considered to beexemplary for other men in their relationship toGod. . . . Jesus experienced in himself thatradical and victorious offer of God to him whichdid not exist before in this way among ‘sinners,’and he knows that it is significant, valid andirrevocable for all men. According to his own self-understanding he is already before theresurrection the one sent, the one whoinaugurates the kingdom of God through what hesays and what he does in a way that did not existbefore, but now does exist through him and in him.At least in this sense the pre-resurrection Jesusalready knew himself to be the absolute andunsurpassable saviour” (Rahner 1978, 253–54).

Certainly his followers saw him in that light,and even before the resurrection experience ofhis being with them although he had died. Unlessthey had his death would not have been thecatastrophic disaster it clearly was. And norwould their experience of the resurrection havehad the meaning that it did.

What the followers of Jesus came to see, andwhat later theology has tried ever since to findappropriate words for, was that the immanence ofthe transcendent god of Israel in historicalevents, and especially in the words and acts ofthe prophets, had reached an unsurpassable climaxin Jesus and his relationship with them. In thisexperience they saw God as uniting Jesus tohimself by taking his human nature into himselfin such a way that the incommensurability ofcreator and creature found full expression inJesus’ character and life, and in the influencehe had on his disciples. As they came to put it,they experienced Jesus as being ‘without sin,’ in

virtue of the unity between God’s Spirit and hisown. God’s self-communication had always providedthe ultimate environment of humanity; neverbefore had it been fully accepted.

An evolutionary world-view is a scientific andsecular one. It is therefore important thatChristianity avoids the appearance of mythicalthinking. Too often the figure of Jesus has beenpresented in this way, as a kind of ‘superman’(ubermensch) or a mere ‘humanoid’ apparition ofGod. There were indeed monophysitist tendenciesin Christianity from the start. In view of theuniversal human tendency towards idolatryoutlined above this should not surprise us. Thedefence of Jesus’ genuine humanity is stillnecessary. And this is one of the main aims ofRahner’s “Christology within an evolutionaryPhilosophy & Theology 22, 1–2 261

view of the world.” He stresses that the“hypostatic union may not be seen so much assomething which distinguishes Jesus from us, butas something which must occur once and only oncewhen the world begins to enter upon its finalphase” (Rahner 1978, 181). And this because “theintrinsic effect of the hypostatic union for theassumed humanity of the Logos consists preciselyand in real sense only in the very thing which isascribed to all men as their goal and theirfulfilment, namely the immediate vision of God”(Rahner 1978, 200). In Trinitarian terms, it isthe same presence of the Father’s Word and Spiritin Jesus and in his followers that enables themto participate in God’s sin- and death-transcendent life.

6It remains true that for Christian faith God’spresence in Jesus has a completeness that cannotbe surpassed, since it is God himself who ispresent. But according to the same faith God hasalways been present in human history though notfully experienced as such. Nor can it be thoughtthat human history, and the evolution of cultureand community that implies, is now at an end. Toooften religions, and Christianity in particular,attempt to fix their faith on some past event andthe earliest expression of its meaning. This isthe idolatry of fundamentalism. Instead, in orderto do justice to the evolutionary understandingof reality, an authentic faith can only exist inchanging forms of culture and community. Suchchanging forms are always created and carried bya small minority of believers. And it is only inthe nineteenth century that the idea of ‘thedevelopment of doctrine’ becomes fully conscious.

It is a genuine fruit of human evolutionnonetheless, as Newman saw when he observed that“to live is to change and to live perfectly is tohave changed often.” In this light it is notfanciful to see the phenomenon of secularization,in spite of all its imperfections, as a fruit ofthat unity of humanity and God identified in theIncarnation. Charles Taylor, does in fact see itin this way when he describes it in A Secular Age asthe completion of the Axial discovery oftranscendence (Taylor 2007, 774).

So human evolution is not over with theIncarnation. For Christian faith it is at a newbeginning. If the Incarnation is the ultimaterevelation of God’s saving presence in humanhistory, it is not some262 Shutte: Evolution andEmergence: A Paradigm Shift for Theology

thing that is now over and done with. Tobelieve in the resurrection of Jesus is tobelieve in his continuing ‘real presence’ in theworld. And that means that God’s Incarnationcontinues, though now in the sacramental mode wecall the Church, which is a communion of Jesuswith his followers.

Christian faith is personal knowledge of aperson, given and received in a relationshipbetween persons. For this reason it cannot beexhaustively or finally expressed in any form ofwords. For the same saving relationship to beachieved in different times and places, differentwords must of necessity be used for itsexpression. This of course is the ongoing work oftheology as fides quaerens intellectum. And if we are totake the notion of an evolution in human historyseriously we are bound to look for a developmentin theology as well. If there is an increase inour knowledge of the world and of ourselves,surely there can be an increase in ourunderstanding of our faith as well.

A word of caution: the newest science is thetruest; the same is not true of philosophy, or ofany of the other forms of knowledge thatconstitute wisdom. This more comprehensive,deeper understanding is always the achievement ofparticular individuals. And it cannot becommunicated to others in the way that theknowledge of the sciences can. Nevertheless Ithink that the achievements of science as well asphilosophy enable a deeper, fuller understanding—in our post-modern setting, beyond pre-modernsuperstition and modern materialism—of the eventon which Christian faith is based.

The account given above of the necessaryconditions for the exercise, growth andfulfilment of our capacity for self-determination, an account that provides evidencefor the presence and influence within theintersubjective relations of human persons of astrictly transcendent yet personal power, does tomy mind help one to understand better therelationship between Jesus and his disciples thatconstituted both their salvation and a revelationof God. There in an extreme form we have the‘interpersonal causality’ that reveals thepresence of the transcendent in our experience ofpersonal growth: the gift of self from and so tothe other. In this connection it is worthremarking that the consonance we pointed outbetween the self-offering dynamism involved inpersonal growth and the living of our death asthe final gift of self to God, is exhibitedperfectly in the disciples’ experience of Jesus’resurrection. Philosophy & Theology 22, 1–2 263

This is at one and the same time an experienceof union with him and an insight into the meaningof his life and death.

It can be reasonably asked of Christians whoaccept the evolutionary view what form anevolution of Christianity might be expected totake. There is no simple answer to this question.The traditional answer: missionary activity andconversion, no longer seems appropriate. We haveto look for an answer to the new social andcultural environment in which any such evolutionmust take place.

Keith Ward, in his courageous and perceptivework A Vision to Pursue argues for a criticalengagement on the part of Christians with theirown tradition, the purpose of which is to renewit. Renewal, as Ward understands it, is somethingradical in which a real transformation takesplace, so that what emerges is something reallynew though comprising all the essentialingredients of the old. Nor is it only Christianswho must engage in this creative criticism; it isa necessity for all religious traditions, anecessity produced by the evolution ofconsciousness, culture and community of which Ihave spoken. As always, renewal of a tradition isthe work of a small minority of the faithful.Ward however believes that “within each traditionthere are many who stand within the tradition,but think that they can, and should, revise someof its central ideas to take account of advancesin scientific knowledge, scriptural andhistorical scholarship, or changes in moral andphilosophical outlook” (Ward 1991, 194).

In our post-modern context we are confrontedwith a plurality of cultural and religious

traditions, and new ones are beginning all thetime. Insight into evolution should lead us toexpect this. And we should also recognise thatnot all traditions of this kind are equally trueor good, not all constitute an evolutionaryadvance. At the moment this global plurality ofcultures and religions is a theatre of conflictif not a war-zone. This is often depicted byreligious traditions as at root a conflictbetween the old and good and the new and bad:“They see the basic modern religious conflict asone between an ancient and irreformable truth,embodied in one cultural framework, anddestructive forces of secularism and materialism,which must be resisted by a return to the oldabsolute value” (Ward 1991, 206). This is amistake: “The true conflict is between a form ofEnlightenment thinking which has become, self-defeatingly, trapped in a dogmatic 264 Shutte:Evolution and Emergence: A Paradigm Shift for Theology

system of materialism and a form of religiousfaith which is open to new insights and repentantof old mistakes. It is not the opposition of onedogmatism to another, as the fundamentalistssuppose. It is the endeavour to open up theEnlightenment to its spiritual basis and goal, inthe relation of free finite spirits to theunconditioned freedom of the supreme creativeSpirit underlying all things. This does neces-sitate a criticism of all traditions; but only inorder that they may move to a wider and deepergrasp of what is implicit within them. It doesnecessitate a conversation of traditions with oneanother; but only in order that each may learnits limitations by learning the differing visionsfound elsewhere” (Ward 1991, 207).

This suggests that the way forward, thedirection to be chosen, involves developing aconversation between religious traditions andperhaps particularly between those traditionsthat have lasted, the biblical religions of theMiddle East and the Eastern religions of Indiaand China. But a condition of health of such aconversation will be its ability to recognise andexpress itself in terms of the scientific andsecular culture that is here to stay. Indeed Iwould go so far as to say that it is only a‘natural theology’ based on the insights into ourhuman nature provided by this culture that canprovide both a standard for judging the truth andvalue of any religion and also a basis for genu-ine dialogue between them. I hope I have doneenough in this paper to show that a Christianfaith expressed in terms of an evolutionaryworld-view has nothing to fear from such aconversation.

Works CitedClark, R. 1984. The Survival of Charles Darwin: A Biography

of a Man and an Idea. London: Weidenfeld andNicholson.

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