Thinking theologically doesn't come naturally. It takes work.
A few weeks ago, around the bicentennial of the birth of Charles Darwin, I decided to lead our Confirmation Class in a theological discussion of the theory of evolution.
It's unfortunate, really, that much of what we learn of argument comes from television pundits who characterize dialogue as two people who take opposing points of view and then go at it for 6 minutes at a time, taking breaks for the network to sell you soap or beer. I'm hoping that we can teach our children that true argument is not about defending positions, but about a shared search for the truth.
To guide our discussion I employed Wesley's Quadrilateral of Scripture, Tradition, Experience, and Reason. As stated in the Book of Discipline:
"Wesley believed that the living core of the Christian faith was revealed in Scripture, illumined by tradition, vivified in personal experience, and confirmed by reason. Scripture is primary, revealing the Word of God 'so far as it is necessary for our salvation.'"
So we started with Scripture and read the first account of creation, found in Genesis 1. We recognized that the purpose of this text was not so much to describe physical creation, as the creation it describes is significantly different from the world as we know and perceive it, but to state in unambiguous terms that God creates and what God creates is blessed and called "good."
We then turned to Tradition, looking at the teachings of the church. We looked particularly at the official teachings of the Presbyterian Church (USA)...
"Our responsibility as Christians is to deal seriously with the theories and findings of all scientific endeavors, evolution included, and to enter into open dialogue with responsible persons involved in scientific tasks about the achievement, failures and limits of their activities and of ours... Unless it is clearly necessary to uphold a basic Biblical doctrine, the Church is not called upon and should carefully refrain from either affirming or denying the theory of evolution. We conclude that the true relation between the evolutionary theory and the Bible is that of non-contradiction."
and of the United Methodist Church...
"We recognize science as a legitimate interpretation of God’s natural world. We affirm the validity of the claims of science in describing the natural world, although we preclude science from making authoritative claims about theological issues."
The we turned to our own Experience and what Reason tells us. We talked about the Scientific Method and how we use our senses and our logic to interpret the world around us. I was grateful to have Roger Anderson present to talk about his own journey as a teacher of science and a person of faith and how he sees these pursuits as not only compatible, but complimentary.
We did not all agree in our discussion about what to think about evolution, but what I hope we learned by our discussion is that neither science nor theology have anything to fear from the truth.
Out of human hubris the church insisted for centuries that the earth was the center of the cosmos and used the creation story to support the claim, but now we commonly accept that the earth is not a flat disc under a dome through which the planets and stars process, but a smallish planet that hurtles around a nuclear furnace on the edge of a galaxy that is only one among innumerable galaxies. Does this impoverish our theology? Not in the least. It enriches it because it reminds us that we are but a small part of a much larger cosmos.
The Bible is not a book of science. It does not do a good job of describing the physical world. But it does do an amazing job describing our spiritual reality. We are created by God and we are blessed to live in a world that has been lovingly prepared. We have responsibilities as keepers of the garden. We are wonderfully and fearfully made.