A friend at church this week noted that my thoughts about Jesus and evolution are similar to those of C.S. Lewis in the conclusion of Mere Christianity, Chapter IV. 11 The New Men. So if you prefer to just read that instead, he’s a much better writer. But I re-read it quickly (ok, skimmed it) this morning and there are some differences, if not in essence, then in emphasis.

Lewis highlights 5 key features of Christianity as revolutionary evolution. Unlike “natural selection”, the evolutionary adaptation Jesus presents is 1) non-genetic, (not through sexual reproduction), 2) voluntary or intentional, 3) teleological (my word, not his, but the idea is that Jesus is the perfect or complete culmination of the human evolutionary process accessible, in part, before the process has worked itself out in human history), 4) instant (but also gradual, though much faster than strictly biological evolution), and 5) transcendent of Nature (since it deals with the survival of soul, not body).

I agree with all that, with just a few quibbles about language and labels. The differences aren’t all that important, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t interesting.

On 3), the idea that Jesus is the final evolution of humanity is confusing. Jesus is an individual, while evolution is regarding species. Of course, we would want to say that Jesus is the perfect and complete individual human. But it is more accurate to say that the evolutionary process itself is not perfected nor completed in a single individual human.

Christianity posits an ‘end state’ that is a perfect and complete community – a new human species inhabiting a new heavens and new earth. And we do not have a perfect and complete model for that ‘end state’. We have yet as a species to get there. Also, interestingly, the best approximations available to us in the meantime are what we might call ‘the church’ – not in any institutional sense, but in the sense of diverse communities of divine – not merely familial or friendly or romantic – love.

This is also interesting because, as a fully evolved individual human, Jesus is an outlier of the still-evolving human species. He is fully adapted to the ‘end state’ but not to the current state of humanity, which makes his rejection even more inevitable and ironic. And it also makes the immaturity and normality of the church even more tragic.

On 5), I don’t have much to say other than to reassert my ongoing confusion over how to meaningfully define ‘nature’ if ‘nature’ includes the activity of a creator. I understand the distinction between what-seems-to-happen-without-divine-intervention (the natural) and what-seems to-happen-with-divine-intervention (the supernatural, e.g. ‘miracles’) but that is an epistemic and not a metaphysical distinction. The ‘seems-to’ is doing all the heavy lifting. If we are open to the possibility of any divine intervention at all then we are also open to the possibility that we might fail to correctly observe or interpret or attribute it.

If divine intervention had some necessary property that we could unfailingly detect, then we might maintain the distinction, but I don’t think it does. On the contrary, I think the expectation of such a property is what often accounts for our failure to detect it. If divine intervention must necessarily possess some quality that cannot be explained or understood or interpreted in any other way, then by virtue of its apparent absence God doesn’t seem to be doing very much, if anything, at all. And God’s so-called activity must necessarily be revised away as our ability to explain, understand, or interpret our experience in more ways than as ‘acts of God’ increases. ‘God of the gaps’ is only persuasive until the gaps start shrinking or disappearing altogether. If God is only a way to explain what we can’t otherwise explain, then what happens when we can, or think we can (in theory, if not ever in practice), explain everything?

The ‘obvious’ answer to that question is we abandon ‘God’. Why posit an entity to explain what no longer needs explaining? Unless God is interested in being something other than a rationally necessary entity. It would be in God’s interest, I think, for humans to be able to explain everything without relying on God just so we could finally get over it and move on to what God really wants, which is to befriend us. If God is interested in a relationship with us, the role of God as ‘rational justification’ might be getting in the way.

Imagine I believed that my happiness depends on my job. Surprise! Now I’m unemployed but no less happy. Does that mean I never want to work another day in my life? Well, it might. But I might also want to work because of the happiness it brings to others. Imagine if I thought the existence of God was rationally required to explain X. Then, I discover that X can be rationally explained without requiring the existence of God. I might still want God in my life. Imagine how God might feel. I no longer need God, but I love God anyway? That is the most excellent way.

Paul makes this argument about human love in 1 Corinthians. First, we love each other because we realize that we need each other. But then imagine a situation in which we realize that we no longer need each other, and yet we still love each other. That’s the most excellent way because then love is not conditioned by nor dependent on anything to motivate it other than love itself. That is the kind of love God wants to have with us. And so, God would be happy that we no longer need God but simply want to be with God anyway.

Of course, I don’t actually believe that we don’t need God. That’s my whole point. My reflections are so dim I can’t tell if or when I need God and if or when I don’t. Although it is probably most accurate to say that I always do and always have and always will need God, even when I no longer believe that I do or did or will.