I appreciate that in talking about the transition from Nature’s Evolution to God’s Evolution, I am challenging the basic assumption of science: that causation is universal. This originated in the Greek idea that Fate was inexorable, and more powerful than the gods; and through the Scholasticism of the Middle Ages, it ended in the debate about science ruling out our Freewill. This was finally scotched by the proof of Godel’s theory by Mr.J.R.Lucas. So causation is an inference in the minds of scientists, as they watch their experiments. To imagine that science’s equations, or laws, are somehow attached to physical particles, is surely an example of modern magic? When you will to get up out of a chair, you have creation out of nothing. In simplistic terms, I understand, the brain sends an electric current along the nerves to get the muscles into action. Where did the current come form? It is probably far more complicated than that. But where did the complicated process come from? The human will has interrupted the equilibrium that had existed a moment before. And look at it how you will, that is creation of something out of nothing. I subscribe to the traditional view that science only deals in probabilities. And that means there are always exceptions.
Jesus was one of them! Albert Schweitzer in his Quest of the Historical Jesus, one of the most famous theological texts of the modern era, reviewed a hundred or more years of German theological scholarship, and concluded that Jesus was driven by his apocalyptic consciousness to his death, a forlorn death in which he felt forsaken by God. Schweitzer recognised Jesus was one of those tremendous creative personalities in whom the eternal energies which move the world are revealed, who set world history in motion time and again, and who oblige mankind to follow the path to spiritual advancement. But Schweitzer also agreed with the view that Jesus was completely mistaken about the timing of his Second Coming, and possibly about its manner; and he himself then felt driven from the study of theology to practical love, and went to Lambarene as a doctor.
Jesus held his apocalyptic views because late-Jewish scholarship held such views. We are all children of the culture, in which we live; Jesus could not be an exception to that. He could modify such views, but not abandon them. The modern world has to say the end of all things will come with the fulfilment of Evolution. If someone says it will come by Divine intervention, he simply makes himself a laughing stock. The Church both does, and is.
Anyone who remembers the Second World War knows that we escaped defeat by a hair’s breadth. Dunkirk was not just a miracle; it was a whole series of miracles. The victory of Nazi tyranny would have been the end of everything worthwhile. Someone has to keep the secular world going. If you abolished the Law Courts, a kingdom of love would not descend. Within months the gangsters would get the upper hand, and you would have terror and chaos, as William Penn found in the early years of his administration of Pennsylvania. The Christian kingdom of love may be what the soul longs for in its relationship with God, but it fails to provide a way of life to those struggling to maintain a decent just society. The man-in-the-street sees this with crystal clarity, even if Church leaders are blind to it. So he goes off to the pub or his golf club, as his tastes lie. And nothing will change until the Church sees Jesus as a child of Evolution, as well as a participant in it, as we all are.