David N. Livingstone. Darwin’s Forgotten Defenders: The Encounter Between Evangelical Theology and Evolutionary Thought. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1987.
Darwin’s Forgotten Defenders is about evangelical Christian
reactions to the theory of evolution in the United States during the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It profiles many figures,
including James Orr, B.B. Warfield, and Charles Hodge.
Livingstone essentially argues that, until the early twentieth
century, many evangelical Christian thinkers did not object to evolution
on biblical grounds. Some may have believed that there was not
sufficient evidence for evolution, or that questions were unresolved.
Some objected to attempts to present evolution as something that
undercuts the idea that the earth and life on it had a designer. But
many evangelical Christian thinkers believed that there was no
contradiction between the truth of Christianity and evolution. Some
said that the days of Genesis 1 could have been longer than 24-hours and
that God could have used evolution as his method of making the
different animals. Some maintained that God creating human beings in
his image could have entailed God providing humans with a soul at a
particular point in time, meaning that Genesis 1 was not necessarily
incompatible with the existence of early man. In the early twentieth
century, however, a greater commitment to literalism emerged, as many
Christians in America sought to protect their culture from certain
trends. Interestingly, Livingstone notes that a book by prominent
young-earth creationist Henry Morris about scientists who believed in
creation actually (maybe unknowingly) favorably profiles scientists who
accepted evolution.
From my summary above, some may think that the book rehashes a debate
that many already know. Many of us are aware that there are Christians
who try to reconcile Genesis 1 and science by saying that a day could
have been longer than 24-hours, or that some (such as Pope John Paul II)
posit that God could have put a soul into a form of human beings at a
particular point in time. While the book does repeatedly present people
who held to those ideas, it has so much more. There was the difference
between William Paley’s model of design (the divine watchmaker) and
other models of design (i.e., did God fashion animals according to their
environments or simply use common models for them? Should we focus on
the structure of animals or laws?). There were those who believed that
God performed unique creations throughout history. There were those who
sought to reconcile evolution with original sin, saying that evolution
does not necessarily imply progress, or that evolution’s emphasis on
heredity is consistent with human beings passing down original sin to
their descendants. Some believed that there were parallels between
evolution and Calvinism, since evolution could inspire thought about
determinism and freedom. There were different versions of evolution:
Darwin’s model, which saw mutations as random and not necessarily
heading in a specific (or better) direction, and Lamark’s model, which
held that evolution was innately progressive and that animals could
consciously adapt to their surroundings. (What’s more, according to
Livingstone, Darwin actually came to lean towards the Lamarkian model!)
There was the relevance of evolution to racism; while evolution was
used to support racism, so was creationism, and some Christian thinkers
actually critiqued racism by appealing to evolution. There was the
question of whether Christ could have died for pre-Adamic man or space
aliens, as some maintained that Christ’s atonement could have been
extended to them, even if they were not involved in the Fall of Adam.
There were people who criticized evolution from a perspective that was
not even distinctly Christian; one person did so on the basis of German
idealism. And there is Livingstone’s thoughtful final chapter that
reflects on creationism, arguing that creationists raise valid concerns
about the application of evolution to non-scientific realms (i.e.,
politics, philosophy), and referring to an article questioning whether
the Left should side with the scientific establishment over
creationists, with all that the scientific establishment does that is
inimical to its aims.
If I had a favorite character in this book, it was Charles Darwin.
Darwin was someone who had tried and failed at many things in his life,
but he met an academic who saw his potential and believed in him.
Darwin was willing to reach out to those who did not entirely agree with
him. And Darwin honestly admitted that his own theory was not perfect
and contained unanswered questions at the time (i.e., missing links, the
question of how a mutated animal can bring about mutation in the body
of animals, etc.), even if he believed that it had enough evidence and
explanatory power to be valid.
The book did not really address, as far as I could see, the question
of whether evolution was inconsistent with Adam’s Fall bringing death
into the world, when death is an important aspect of the theory of
evolution. After all, the evolutionary model holds that there was death
millennia before Adam supposedly lived. Maybe the Christian thinkers
did not address such questions. I will not rule out that they did,
though.
Good book!