The Church & Evolution

There was a time when theologians rejected the idea of evolution, but this attitude changed in the late 1800's when biblical scholars began to clarify the differences between religious truth, and scientific truth. Thus we arrive at the Church's view today, which sees the writers of Genesis, not as scientists, but as inspired authors communicating the great religious truths concerning Creation, the Fall, and Redemption.

There is no major conflict between the Church and science on this matter. God is the creator of all the processes of life, including evolutionary ones, if indeed that is how plant, animal and human life came to be developed.

The Church's main caution about evolution concerns the creation of the human soul, and those evolutionary theorists who regard the soul as simply a by-product of the brain. The Church teaches us that souls have not evolved, but at some point were created immediately by God. In addition, our soul is immortal, and will be reunited with our body at the end of time. So the sphere of evolutionary science ends where the soul begins.