The Church The Schools and Evolution/The Present Controversy - The Cause
The Church, the Schools
and Evolution
CHAPTER I
The Present Controversy—the Cause
IT must be so self-evident as to be axiomatic that there are two distinct realms in God's universe. One is the realm that contains the Creator, and the other that which contains His creation. Of course, if we are pantheists, we will not admit that classification; but those who believe and accept the Word of God are not pantheists.
It is inevitable, therefore, that the facts, the verities, the truths of the universe should be classified according to their realms; those having to do with the Person and relationships of the Creator being separable into one realm, and those having to do with His creation into another.
That this classification is universally recognized, is a matter of common knowledge. That class of truth which has to do with God we call supernatural, or spiritual, truth, and that which relates to His creation we call natural, or scientific, truth.
It is precisely because of this classification that there are two separate institutions in the world, each of which is working in one of these realms. The Church accepts it as her function to receive and propagate spiritual truth, as God has revealed Himself in His character; while the Schools accept it as their function to study and teach scientific truth, as God has revealed Himself in His works. This is the entire logic of the existence in the world of these two separate institutions, both of which are engaged in the investigation and propagation of truth.
But although the Church and the Schools are entirely separate institutions, and although they are engaged, one in the spread of spiritual truth and the other in the diffusion of scientific truth, yet truth is an eternal unity. This must be so, in the nature of things, for all truth proceeds from and reveals the one and only God Who is its Source and of Whom it is the consistent and perfect expression.
Conflict between these two realms of truth is, therefore, eternally impossible. Men talk of a conflict between science and the Bible, but no such conflict exists. If there is any contradiction, it is not between the statements of Scripture and the facts of science, but between the false interpretations of Scripture and the immature conclusions of science. Herbert Spencer was right when he said:
- It is incredible that there should be two orders of truth in absolute and everlasting opposition.
Not until God begins to contradict Himself will these two realms of truth ever be in conflict with each other.
The Church and the Schools, then, can never be in conflict until some abnormal condition creeps into the one or the other; for, although working in different realms of truth, each is yet receiving revelations of the one God who can never be in conflict with Himself.
When these two institutions are in normal condition, each will not only not destroy the work of the other, but each will make every possible contribution to the success of the other, and antagonism between them will be impossible. When conflict occurs, therefore, it is because the teachers in one realm or in both have not arrived at the truth in their respective realms.
And so when the Church denies the facts—not the unproven theories, notice, but the clearly demonstrated facts—of science, something is wrong with the Church. And when the Schools put forth theories that undermine the very foundations of the Church and her work, there is something wrong with the Schools.
Now it is no secret that the Church and the Schools, broadly speaking, are in serious conflict with each other today. Where lies the cause? If the Church is denying and fighting the demonstrated facts of science, then the Church is clearly at fault and ought to get right at once.
But this is not so, for the conflict is altogether over unproven theories, and has nothing to do with demonstrated scientific facts. And so this takes us at once and completely out of the realm of science and lands us in that of speculative philosophy—a fact that shows how unreasonable and even foolish the conflict is. For the thing that has set the Church and the Schools into battle array against each other is that speculative guess concerning origins called the Theory of Evolution. This lies at the heart of the opposition that each of these great institutions feels toward the other.
It is true that a certain amount of the trouble arises from misunderstanding, because the term "evolution" is used in so many loose, illogical, and unscientific ways; but back of all misuse of the term there is a fundamental cause on which this antagonism rests, and that cause is found in the nature of the theory and its effects on those who consistently believe it.
The technical meaning of the term may be said to be a structural change in the direction of development into higher forms of existence, brought about by internal force without external aid.
There is also a scientific classification of the subject, into sub-organic, organic, and super-organic evolution. Sub-organic evolution applies to the development of non-living matter; organic, to the development of vegetable and animal life; and super-organic, to the development of intellectual, moral, and spiritual life. But while the subject is thus classified for convenience, it is all one doctrine, and is meant to describe one process of development from the non-living realm to the spiritual.
There is also one theory which is called causal, and another which is called modal, evolution. According to the former, evolution is the first cause of all life, which, of course, excludes God as the First Cause; and according to the latter, evolution is the mode, or method, used by God in creation.
Now, the Church has vital reasons for fighting this philosophical guess. One reason is, that it is entirely unsupported by facts, and is therefore altogether unproven. But if this were the only reason, the Church could be convicted of the supreme folly of her entire history, for turning aside to fight an unproven guess. A more vital reason is that the theory does not stop with the natural realm, but goes right on up into the realm of spiritual truth, and assumes to pronounce on the most vital spiritual realities in such a way that the logic of the theory, if consistently accepted, utterly destroys both the foundations of the Church and the content of the Gospel. Indeed, evolution has been proclaimed to the world as the ally of a philosophy which boasts of its capacity to drive Christianity out of existence.
For the Church, therefore, to fail to fight a theory that strikes at her very vitals would be to become a traitor to the Lord who bought her and sent her into the world to preach His gospel. And so she is compelled to choose between submitting to an unproven and destructive theory, which has never saved any one who has believed it, and preaching the gospel of God's grace, which has infallibly saved every one who has believed it. The true Church is fighting the theory of evolution in order that the message she is commissioned to preach may not be rendered of none effect by a non-belligerent attitude toward it being mistaken for approval of it.
Not only the fact that the theory is entirely unproven, but also and more particularly the nature of its influence on faith in the Bible compels the Church to reckon with it. We will go into these two reasons for antagonizing this speculative guess.