Evolution and Creation

            This is an important question, and one that has been asked by many Christians since Charles Darwin’s ideas became popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  Some Christians initially responded by ridiculing the idea that we descended from primates.  The most famous example of this response was the Scopes trial in 1925, where a Tennessee schoolteacher was put on trial for teaching evolution, which, in that state and at that time, was illegal.  Since then, scientists researching the theory of evolution have massed a great deal of evidence in its favour.  Although the Catholic Church does not demand that anyone believe the theory of evolution, it does, however, maintain that nothing revealed though faith contradicts sound human reason (CCC 159).  Evolution has so much sound research behind it, that, to deny it, at this point in time, would border on the irrational.  So, that leaves us, as reasonable and responsible persons of faith, with the task of reconciling the science surrounding human beings (anthropology) with the revealed account of God’s creation of Adam and Eve as given in the Bible.  
           
The central revelation in the account of Adam and Eve’s creation is that the human person, as body and spirit, is created in the image of God.  “The biblical account expresses this reality in symbolic language when it affirms that ‘then the Lord God formed man of the dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being’” (CCC 362).  Although the language in Genesis is symbolic, it does represent real, historical truths.  One is that all human life begins with God in a special way that makes it unique in all creation. 

So, at what point did God breathe this breath of life into two human beings, male and female?  Was it during the homo habilis stage of evolution, or the homo sapiens stage?  In a way, the question is analogous to asking at what point in your life you became self-conscious.  Your present experience as a self-conscious person tells you that it must have happened, but it is impossible for you to designate a specific date and time when the event occurred.  Similarly, we know from our life experience and from God’s revelation that we are persons who can think and choose, persons who possess spiritual souls.  We also know that, as humans, we have come from another form of life that was not human.  We have no way of knowing exactly when this occurred in our history, we only know that it must have happened in order for us to be who we are now.  In other words, we don’t know when Adam and Eve came into existence.  We only know that, in order for human beings to be who we are, they must have existed.

Our species, Homo sapiens, has a long genetic history, which scientific research in evolutionary theory attempts to reconstruct.  Scientists want to discover what its relationship is to other extinct species within the same genus, such as homo erectus, or homo habilis, and also to other primate genera and species.  We, as human beings, are all members of the species homo sapiens.  Some anthropologists advocate a theory (called the “Eve Hypothesis”), which states that all present members of homo sapiens are descended from a single female.  This theory, which has its share of controversy, comes from attempts to interpret certain similarities in genetic material found in samples of DNA taken from people around the globe.

Regardless of the scientific merits of the Eve Hypothesis, the Creation story teaches us that human beings all share a common origin.  Our bodies, although an integral part of our person, are the products of a long genetic development and evolution.  Providentially, and mysteriously, throughout this long history God was preparing the human body.  Our common bodily origin, however, involves more than simply sharing those things characteristic of the human genome (our common genetic material).  It involves having a body that shares in the dignity of the image of God.  Our bodies are human because they are animated by spiritual souls.  Although our bodies share in the characteristics of many other forms of life, especially those of primates, because of their long evolutionary development, they are human bodies because they are united with our souls in one nature.  We are not spiritual beings with bodies.  We are persons in the image of God whose one nature is to be both bodily and spiritual.

            Although we share much in common with the rest of the biological world on account of our evolutionary history, we are also very different, a unique creation of God, each and every one of us.  Our spiritual souls do not find their ultimate origin in the evolutionary process.  “The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God – it is not “produced” by the parents…” (CCC 366).  Adam and Eve, therefore, received their spiritual souls directly from God.  Thus Adam and Eve, although most probably descended from primates in their biological constitution, were, as the first people, not simply products of the evolutionary process.  They had human bodies, which God had willed to receive his image and to be united in one nature with their spiritual souls, into which God breathed the breath of life.