On the Compatibility of Christian Theology and Darwinism
Author: LIU Boyun, Ph.D. candidate, English Department, Peking University
Abstract:
There is a common but mistaken notion that Christianity is completely incompatible with Darwinism, because Christianity has a supernatural theory of the origin of species through God’s miraculous creation, while Darwin put an end to it with his revolutionary materialism. This notion holds that the Book of Genesis in the Christian Bible and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species are two books at war, and that Darwin has vanquished the outdated myth with modern science. However, this is far from the real picture. First, there has been a tradition of non-literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis in Christian theology. Secondly, Darwin still believed in a personal creator God when he wrote On the Origin of Species and did not write it from an atheist standpoint. Thirdly, there were many positive responses from British theologians after the publication of Origin, stating that the God described by Darwin as a God who creates by natural law is indeed superior to one who creates piece by piece. Some theologians even believed that Darwinism had made a great contribution to Christian theology.
Keywords:
Christian theology; Biblical interpretation; Darwinism; natural law; British theologians
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