In writing about Our Lord’s second coming, St. Peter says that despite the fact that “the day of the Lord shall come as a thief,” (2Peter 3:10) there is a sure sign that the end is near. In those days deceitful scoffers will arise saying “Where is his promise or His coming? for since the time that the fathers slept, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation” (2 Peter 3:5). He goes on to describe these scoffers as “willfully ignorant of, that the heavens were before, and the earth out of water, and through water, consisting by the word of God. Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished. But the heavens and the earth which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of the ungodly men” (2 Peter 3:6-9).
What the Scoffers are Scoffing About
A moment’s reflection on his words will allow us to realize that these “scoffers of the End Times” are living in our midst. Peter the Rock is telling us that the scoffers will be those who insist that “things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.” They are, in short, evolutionists. Evolutionists are those who believe that everything in the universe is a result of an unfolding of naturalistic processes that began with the Big Bang. There is no room for God in their view and evolution forms the philosophical foundation for their secularist vision of reality.
Given St. Peter’s caution then, it is odd that many Catholics are so quick to accommodate these scoffers by subscribing to what might be called Theistic Evolution. They proclaim that Evolution is the mechanism by which God created the world and everything in it. This proclamation comes despite the clear testimony of Scripture and Tradition that creation was not a result of the unfolding of some natural process, but a supernatural one in which God created each thing immediately. He did not create by some natural law, but created the natural law along with the rest of creation. Long before Darwin, the Church Fathers knew of evolutionary explanations for Origins and rejected them (see Summa Theologiae I q.73 a.1, obj 2-3 for a good summary of the Fathers’ explanation).
This accommodationist position usually presents in one of two forms. Because it seeks to accommodate “science” it only concerns itself with human origins specifically. These might aptly be called natural transformism and special transformism.
Natural Transformism
Those who hold the position of Natural Transformism hold that man was created through some natural process. By some “accident” of nature, two primates, through normal reproduction, prepared a body that was capable of receiving a human soul. This spontaneous generation of a human being from primate parents has been condemned by the Provincial Council of Cologne (which has approval of the Holy See):
“Our first parents were formed immediately by God. Therefore we declare that the opinion of those who do not fear to assert that this human being, man as regards to his body, emerged finally from the spontaneous continuous change of imperfect nature to the more perfect, is clearly opposed to Sacred Scripture and to the Faith.”
It also suffers from a common sense problem as well. This “accident” would also need to be met with a simultaneous “accident” of the creation of another (wo)man that would allow for reproduction or else this first human would have to mate with another non-human. To accommodate to this position, rather than synthesizing faith and reason, is destructive of the Faith and requires further setting aside of the perennial teachings of the Church related to the Special Creation of Eve and polygenism.
Special Transformism
Special Transformism is usually presented as Evolution preparing the body of some brute and then God infuses a soul into it. To at least discuss this as a possibility is not out of the question. In the most authoritative teaching on Evolution, Pius XII’s Humani Generis, the Holy Father said that it was licit to make inquiries “into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter… However, this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure, and provided that all are prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church, to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of faith.”
Most read this freedom to discuss as freedom to assert it as true. The Holy Father was quite clear that this was not the case: “Some however, rashly transgress this liberty of discussion, when they act as if the origin of the human body from pre-existing and living matter were already completely certain and proved by the facts which have been discovered up to now and by reasoning on those facts, and as if there were nothing in the sources of divine revelation which demands the greatest moderation and caution in this question.” Using this as a guideline, let us see what we can say about Special Transformism and what we can’t.
First, we cannot say, without falling into some form of dualism that the body of the primate did not also undergo a transformation. The soul is not some add-on to a body, but its form (see CCC 365), making it what it is. We have spoken previously about this type of change as a substantial change, but this position creates a metaphysical Catch-22 such that before the matter that was the primate’s body can take on the form, it must already be a human body. The only way for this to happen would be if God intervened and changed the body such that it was capable of receiving the human soul.
How this “miraculous” intervention is any different than holding a literal interpretation of Genesis 2:7 is not clear. Whether God used inanimate matter (the slime of the earth) or previously animate matter (the body of the primate) really makes no practical difference. Both stretch the limits of scientific explanations for our origins and strike down any concession that involves evolution preparing a body for man. It is probably better to stand with Moses, St. Peter, Augustine, Chrysostom, St. Basil, Aquinas, and more and stick with a literal interpretation of Genesis.
Theistic Evolution, then, rather than appearing to be an enlightened compromise, actually turns out to look really dumb. The problem is that Evolution and Christianity are completely incompatible and any attempt to reconcile them simply enables the Scoffers to keep on scoffing. Moses said one thing about our origin, Darwin said another and the two shall never meet. You are either a creationist or an evolutionist, but you can’t be both.