Christian Faith Requires Accepting Evolution

 — May 21, 201321 mai 2013

Recently, Jonathan Dudley has argued that Creationists have “abandoned a central commitment of orthodox Christianity.” You can read Dudley’s commentary on Huffington Post. Raised in Evangelicalism, Dudley is the author of Broken Words: The Abuse of Science and Faith in American Politics. He is a graduate of Yale Divinity School and currently an MD student at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. In addition to the Huffington Post, he has also written for CNN, Salon.com, Religion Dispatches, AlterNet, and the Yale Daily News.

Dudley’s argument is simple. Until the modern controversy among Fundamentalist Evangelicals over creation and evolution, Christianity has always held to a belief that the natural world is a revelation of God. Implicit in the doctrine of creation is the understanding that God is revealed by God’s works. Good science is that which seeks knowledge from the natural world encountered by humanity. As Dudley reminds us: “Augustine castigated those who made the Bible teach bad science, John Calvin argued that Genesis reflects a commoner’s view of the physical world, and the Belgic confession likened scripture and nature to two books written by the same author.” Christians are therefore bound to accept the best science of our day. Charles Hodge, one of the greatest Evangelical theologians, insisted “Nature is as truly a revelation of God as the Bible; and we only interpret the Word of God by the Word of God when we interpret the Bible by science.” In other words, the use of reason is essential to make sense of God’s revelation, whether in scripture or the natural world. Pope John Paul II said as much in his encyclical Fides et Ratio. Dudley’s conclusion, however, is somewhat more pointed: “Christians must accept sound science, not because they don’t believe God created the world, but precisely because they do.”

Dudley argues that those who reject modern scientific study of biology and human evolution “might as well rip dozens of  pages out of their Bibles.” If nature is God’s revelation, then rejecting the evidence from the study of nature is akin to ignoring the study of scripture. It is for this reason that Dudley argues that Creationists have led us “astray on questions ranging from the value of stem cell research to the etiology of homosexuality to the causes of global warming. They’ve also abandoned a central commitment of orthodox Christianity.”

Posted: May 21, 2013 • Permanent link: ecumenism.net/?p=4579
Categories: OpinionIn this article: creation, evolution, science
Transmis : 21 mai 2013 • Lien permanente : ecumenism.net/?p=4579
Catégorie : OpinionDans cet article : creation, evolution, science


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