The Origins of the Bible, Part XXIII: Job, the Icon of New Consciousness

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 26 March 2009 1 Comments

Three books of the Bible, Jonah, Job and Ruth, are known as "protest literature". We treated Jonah in the section of this study on the prophets. We turn now to Job and Ruth.

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Question

The Church of England apologized to Charles Darwin last fall, nearly 150 years after he published his most famous work, for its initial rejection of his theories. The church conceded that it was over-defensive and over-emotional in dismissing Darwin's ideas, and it called "anti-evolutionary fervour" an "indictment" of the Church.

The bold move is certain to dismay sections of the church that believe in creationism and regard Darwin's views as directly opposed to traditional Christian teaching. The apology, which was written by the Rev. Dr. Malcolm Brown, the Church's director of mission and public affairs, says that Christians in their response to Darwin's theory of natural selection repeated the mistakes they made in doubting Galileo's astronomy in the 17th century. The statement read, "Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still. We try to practice the old virtues of "faith seeking understanding" and hope that makes some amends."

Opposition to evolutionary theories is still "a litmus test of faithfulness" for some Christian movements, the Church admits. It says that such attitudes owe much to a fear of perceived threats to Christianity.

Answer

Thanks for your e-mail and the news that the Church of England has apologized to Charles Darwin for rejecting evolution. It is better late than never. My sense is that this action is more embarrassing than helpful. Darwin doesn't need the Church's apology. His thesis is now accepted academically across the world. Evolution is taught in fourth-grade science books. Medical science assumes its truth and the discovery of DNA took away the last vestige of the suggestion that it was still "an unproved theory." The fact that there are some benighted souls in the world who believe that quoting the book of Genesis can somehow counter the insights of Charles Darwin, or that it is their Christian duty to resist Darwin, is hardly determinative in the debate.

It is a tragedy that the Church officially resisted Darwin for the last 150 years, but that is quite typical of church leaders' behavior. Recall that it was in December of 1991 that the Vatican finally admitted that Galileo was correct. This was about 40 years after space travel had begun. If Galileo had not been correct, our spacecraft would have collided with the sky that separated heaven from earth.

I would suggest the leaders of the Church of England must now practice what that apology to Darwin suggests that we believe. For Darwin attacks the basic Christian myth of a perfect creation, the fall into sin, the divine rescue carried out by Jesus and the restoration through faith to our status as those created in the image of God. If we evolved from single cells into complex self-conscious creatures then there was no perfection from which to fall, no fall into sin, no need for a divine rescue and no capacity to be restored to something which we have never been. This means that the whole way of telling the Jesus story must be rethought, and this reformulation will threaten church leaders deeply. Clergy on Sunday mornings can no longer address "fallen sinners." The mantra that "Jesus died for my sins" will have to be retired. The traditional meaning of the Eucharist will have to be revised. We will have to recognize that we are now addressing not those who need to be rescued from a fall but those who have not yet achieved the status of being fully human. Jesus must then empower us to be fully human; he cannot rescue us from sin.

I'm glad to see the Church of England begin to enter the 20th century. I will be happier when they finally begin to enter the 21st century.

– John Shelby Spong
 

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