The apostle Paul gets his fair share of stick. He’s not always the most popular of writers. So, it’s with some trepidation I want to suggest his letter to the church at Corinth is well worth some thoughtful consideration. What I like about this letter is that it is grounded in reality. It is writing through which the church in Corinth comes alive. Here we meet a group of ordinary Christians struggling to make sense of what it means to be church. Many recognisably 21st century issues are spelt out as Paul deals with problems which threaten to split groups of believers. Just to mention a few of those that have raised their ugly heads in Corinth — sectarian divisions in which both sides claimed to be more spiritual than the other, sexual immorality, lawsuits within the congregation, the rich been advantaged over the poorer members, chaos in worship services, and predatory pseudo-preachers who masqueraded as super-apostles. It’s all there – and more. Amongst other things, the letters of Paul to the Church at Corinth remind us that from its very earliest beginnings (1 Corinthians is probably the earliest Christian written material – earlier than any of the Gospels) right from the start, there were differences of opinion in the Christian community.
There are many things which divide us. Sometimes, that can be very destructive; other times, it is in the dynamic energy found at the heart of disagreements, something fresh, something creative can emerge that enables growth and new life.
One of the things which divide Christians in North America at the moment else is the so-called science and religion debate. At times it’s ugly and it seems to growing worse – in a debate centring on what should – or should not – be taught in public schools, particularly in the realm of creation and evolution. A few years ago, Michael Zimmerman, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Butler University indiapolis, sought a creative way forward for those who did not want to separate their faith from their growing awareness of scientific knowledge. Zimmerman developed what has become known as the “Clergy Letter Project” – a letter signed by over 11,000 US clergy. The letter reads:
“Within the community of Christian believers there are areas of dispute and disagreement, including the proper way to interpret Holy Scripture. While virtually all Christians take the Bible seriously and hold it to be authoritative in matters of faith and practice, the overwhelming majority do not read the Bible literally, as they would a science textbook. Many of the beloved stories found in the Bible – the Creation, Adam and Eve, Noah and the ark – convey timeless truths about God, human beings, and the proper relationship between Creator and creation expressed in the only form capable of transmitting these truths from generation to generation. Religious truth is of a different order from scientific truth. Its purpose is not to convey scientific information but to transform hearts.
We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as “one theory among others” is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children. We believe that among God’s good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator. To argue that God’s loving plan of salvation for humanity precludes the full employment of the God-given faculty of reason is to attempt to limit God, an act of hubris. We urge school board members to preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge. We ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth.”[1]
This Clergy Letter project birthed an international group of congregations around the world, who celebrate Evolution Sunday – usually on the Sunday closest to 12 February, Darwin’s birthday. This year, there are 642 congregations from every state in the US and from 13 different countries who will focus on evolution – one way or another.
Michael Dowd reminds us “Two thousand years ago, it was widely believed that the world was flat and stationary, and that the sun and stars revolved around us. The biblical writers reasonably assumed that mountains were unchanging, that stars never died and that God placed all creatures on Earth (or spoken them into existence in finished form.) How could they have thought otherwise? The idea of a spherical Earth turning on an axis and orbiting the Sun, or of Polaris as an immense bundle of hydrogen gas fusing into helium quadrillions of miles away, or of mountains rising and eroding as crustal plates shift, or of creatures morphing over time: all these would have seemed absurd to anyone living when the Bible was written. Had anyone felt inspired to write about such things then, the early church leaders would never have considered the document authoritative. They would have thought it bizarre and dangerously misleading, and would have ensured that any such proclamations were discredited and quickly forgotten.
Many Jews, Christians, and Muslims still regard the early history of the Hebrew people, as recorded in the Torah, to be the history of humanity as a whole. We now, however, know a great deal more about what was happening in the worldwide, cross-cultural, self-correcting enterprise of archaeological and anthropological science. Although none of this world history is mentioned in the Bible, no historian alive today would deny [that before the story of Adam and Eve was written], southeast Asians were boating to nearby Pacific islands; Indo-European charioteers were invading India; China, under the Shang Dynasty, entered the Bronze Age; indigenous peoples occupied most of the Western Hemisphere; and the Egyptian empire’s age of pyramid building had come and gone.
..To interpret the early chapters of Genesis – or any of the world’s creation narratives – as representing the entire history of the Universe, or to imagine them as rival rather than complementary views of a larger reality, is to trivialize these holy texts... The ancient religious paths are aching for coherence with the great discoveries born of the quest to understand this vast Universe...”[2]
Refusal to enter this conversation with science, refusing to enter the Bigger Story, seems a little like those in Corinth, whom Paul admonishes because they have allowed their limited, childish approaches to cloud the possibilities of a more mature faith.
“I could not speak to you as spiritual people”, Paul writes, “but just as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not letting yourselves be seduced by a lesser story? For when one says, "I belong to Paul (or I’m a creationist)," and another, "I belong to Apollos," (or I’m an evolutionist) are you not merely human? What then is Apollos? What is Paul? (what is Darwin?) Servants through whom you came to believe...
“Francis Collins, one of America's leading scientists, who directed the human genome project and was selected by President Obama to head the National Institute of Health, happens to also be a devout evangelical Christian who believes that evolution is simply part of God's truth. ...Collins writes: the work of a scientist involved in this project, particularly a scientist who also has the joy of being a Christian, is a work of discovery, which can be a form of worship. As a scientist, one of the most exhilarating experiences is to learn something that no human has understood before. To have a chance to see the glory of creation, the intricacy of it, the beauty of it, is really an experience not to be matched. Scientists who do not have a personal faith in God also undoubtedly experience the exhilaration of discovery. But to have that joy of discovery mixed together with the joy of worship is truly a powerful moment for a Christian who is also a scientist.”[3]
“Francis Collins, one of America's leading scientists, who directed the human genome project and was selected by President Obama to head the National Institute of Health, happens to also be a devout evangelical Christian who believes that evolution is simply part of God's truth. ...Collins writes: the work of a scientist involved in this project, particularly a scientist who also has the joy of being a Christian, is a work of discovery, which can be a form of worship. As a scientist, one of the most exhilarating experiences is to learn something that no human has understood before. To have a chance to see the glory of creation, the intricacy of it, the beauty of it, is really an experience not to be matched. Scientists who do not have a personal faith in God also undoubtedly experience the exhilaration of discovery. But to have that joy of discovery mixed together with the joy of worship is truly a powerful moment for a Christian who is also a scientist.”[3]
Michael Dowd tells of an 82 year old farmer and amateur astronomer, who, gazing at the Milky Way, whispers to his minister “You know, Reverend, the more I learn about this amazing Universe, the more awesome ..God becomes.”[4]
May it be “the more that we come to know and understand about evolution, the natural process of creation and the complexity -- the incredible complexity -- of living things, the more we will know about God, the mystery of the universe, and the awesome beauty of life.”[5] May it be that we too will partake of the solid food of our faith.
[1] http://blue.butler.edu/~mzimmerm/Christian_Clergy/ChrClergyLtr.htm
[2] Michael Dowd Thank God for Evolution (2007/9), p.11-12.
[3] Daniel E. H. Bryant First Christian Church, Eugene, Oregon “Evolved Wisdom” Feb 7, 2010 http://www.heartofeugene.org/Sermons/2010/EvolvedWisdom.htm
[4] Michael Dowd p.11
[5] http://www.heartofeugene.org/Sermons/2008/WisdomsDesign.htm
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