Roberts, Jon H. Darwinism and the Divine in America: Protestant Intellectuals and Organic Evolution, 1859-1900. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001.
In this extensively researched survey of Protestant responses to Darwinism in the nineteenth century, Jon H. Roberts offers an assessment of the period that both draws upon and moves beyond earlier studies of the subject. By focusing on the materials that made it directly to the public, such as quarterly theological journals, Roberts provides an assessment of the period from the standpoint of the public posture of the intellectuals involved. He found that the public discourse could be divided into two main stages, hinging on the mid-1870’s. Prior to 1875, Protestants did not perceive Darwin’s The Origin of Species (1859) as a threat to the Christian faith, but largely viewed it as an unscientific work that would continue to be rejected by the scientific community. After 1875, however, the scientific community was increasingly embracing organic evolution and forcing Protestant intellectuals to come to terms with it. Roberts’ account of the period follows these two stages in succession.
Part One. Building on previous studies such as that of J.R. Moore, Roberts further debunks the notion that the relationship between science and religion had always been one of two enemies fighting it out to the death. At least prior to 1875, the relationship between theology and science was anything but antagonistic. Theologians, in combatting the prospect of unbelief among some intellectuals, rejected metaphysical speculation and made arguments for the existence of God from the design of the universe. Strict, scientific observation of the natural world would, they were certain, always yield results that were consistent with the biblical view of the world and humanity, testifying to the existence of God and the veracity of Christian theology. In fact, the theologians of this era had much to do with popular trust in the findings of science. Their commitment to Baconianism and Common Sense Realism ensured that scientific observation was a dependable means of gaining knowledge of reality. For instance, when the fossil record was found to demonstrate that speciation took place at different times – the record at the same time having significant gaps – the result was clear: God created the different species himself, specially. Careful and exhaustive empirical observation would always yield the need for God to have acted supernaturally to explain the data.
Many early Protestant responses to Darwinism follow easily from the above premises: Darwin’s theory was simply an unproven hypothesis that lacked true scientific merit, and by theoretically investing the natural order with the mechanism of speciation, Darwin has done away with a providential God. More careful science, rather than wild speculation, would yield different results in line with basic Christian teachings such as special creation. With such confidence in the unscientific nature of Darwin’s theory, most Protestants did not perceive Darwinism to pose a great threat. They could still trust the scientific community to agree (which, at first, it did), and they could continue to put their trust in more careful science.
There was some diversity among the early responses from the scientific community. Enormously influential was the negative assessment of the transmutation hypothesis given by the eminent scientist Louis Agassiz. Although Agassiz himself was an Idealist whose views were quite different from the common sense realism of many Protestants, his rejection of Darwinism and support for special creation bolstered the stance of religious intellectuals who were convinced that Darwin’s theory was unscientific. Asa Gray, a Harvard colleague of Louis Agassiz, gave Darwin’s theory a more favorable reading. Although he admitted there were significant holes in Darwin’s theory – notably no scientific account of the origins of the variations themselves – Gray shared a predilection for describing phenomena in terms of natural causation, i.e. he was not in principle opposed to a physical theory of speciation. Gray did, however, reserve special creation for humans, a notion he found allowable within Darwinism on account of Darwin’s avoidance of the whole issue in The Origin of Species. In time, however, Darwin revoked his silence on the question of the origin of humanity and confirmed the suspicion of many American religious thinkers. In 1871, he published The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, in which he made clear that humanity was not exempted from the process of the transmutation of species by natural selection. Still, the dominant response among Protestants was one of rejection on account of the unscientific basis of Darwin’s theory; as long as confidence could be maintained that Darwin’s theory was not generally accepted among scientists, theologians could forego the task of rethinking the nature of humanity and its special relation to God.
Prior to 1875, quite a number of Protestants did begin to suspect that there was some broader agenda behind the growing attention to Darwinism. If it was clearly insufficient based on Baconian method, why was it getting so much attention? Popular figures such as Thomas H. Huxley, who conflated the transmutation hypothesis with scientific naturalism, confirmed these suspicions. The battle, seen from this vantage point, was not a battle between religion and science, but a battle between supernaturalism and naturalism, two fundamentally opposed ways of viewing the world and the potentiality for divine activity within it. Eventually Darwin himself seemed to think that a scientific view of the universe was synonymous with a naturalistic view, all but ruling out a God actively involved in the world. Not surprisingly then, many Protestants came to view the Darwinian theory as inherently naturalistic and opposed to Christian supernaturalism. At the same, Protestants found that the scientific community was increasingly accepting at least some theory of organic evolution. Scientists who had long had a predilection for assigning natural causation welcomed the expansion of their domain by adopting evolution. Protestants would thus find it increasingly difficult to argue for evolution’s implausibility on grounds considered scientific by the scientific community itself.
Part two. This new circumstance of the mid 1870’s found Protestants needing to make a difficult choice. Their presuppositions had been that the findings of science would verify biblical exegesis, but they were now pressed to address discontinuities about the origins of humanity, the historicity of the fall, and the nature of God’s activity in the world. They had to choose: alter Christian doctrine in deference to the scientific community, because scientific truth is truth indeed, as they had long thought; or, demonstrate the fundamental incompatibility – now on the basis of Christian theology, not just strict Baconianism – between Darwinism and the tenets of biblical faith.
Those who did not seek to change Christian doctrine in the face of evolution did turn, after 1875, to critiques based on more biblical rather than scientific grounds. Numerous Protestants continued to hold that increased emphasis on secondary causality was a move to reduce God’s activity in the world. To accept evolution was tantamount to Deism at best, atheism at worste. Other crucial issues included the status of humanity as created in the image of God, all the implications such status has for humanity’s relation to the rest of creation, its special relation to God, and the basis for its hope in immortality. In addition, the whole scheme of redemption was predicated on an historical fall. Evolutionary theorists stated that humans evolved from having savage instinct to having a moral sense that benefited the evolutionary process. No original perfection – quite the reverse – or divinely given conscience was to be ascribed to humanity. In such a scheme, Christian ethics, based on a Moral Governor who guides humanity by God-given conscience, was ruled out. All of these issues were set out by Protestants who sought to demonstrate the fundamental irreconcilability of Christianity and Darwinism. It would be these very issues that more progressive Protestants would have to address in their attempts to wed organic evolution with Christian theology.
When Roberts turns to his discussion of those Protestants who endorsed the evolutionary hypothesis, we come upon several of his distinctive contributions to this field of study. According to Roberts, rather than discarding the argument from design, many evolutionary Protestants before 1900 actually asserted that evolution only made sense within a theistic framework (contra, e.g., Russett and Hovenkamp). In addition, Roberts contends against J.R. Moore that one does not need to make theological objections the basis for Protestant evolutionists’ rejection of Darwin’s mechanism for evolution. Because most scientists at the time did not even accept natural selection as the mode of evolution, it is no surprise that the Protestant intellectuals followed suit. In other words, we need not search for an explanation peculiar to Protestant theology; they were simply adopting the consensus of the scientific community.
Indeed, this can be seen as an extension of the fact that Protestant evolutionists were such because of their deference to the scientific community. In the popular conscience, science had become a primary arbiter of truth (thanks in no small part to support from earlier theologians), and any fundamental disagreement between science and religion would be devastating for religion. Organic evolution, in the eyes of many, must be reconciled with Christian theology.
There were several different ways of solving the issue of divine and natural causality. One way was to stress the radical immanence of God, such that God so chooses to work through natural causality that the distinction between divine causality and natural causality connote “differing angles of vision rather than meaningful ontological categories” (140). Neo-Lamarckian Joseph Le Conte is one prominent scientist who took this position. On the other hand, some Calvinist evolutionists like George Frederick Wright insisted, in the 1880’s and 90’s, that such radical immanentism would quickly drift into pantheism. One must retain, Wright insisted, the distinction between primary and secondary causality. In either case, whether or not all causality was in effect primary, most Protestants abandoned notions of special providence and retreated to a doctrine of “General Providence.” We should expect God to work through the natural patterns or laws he has created, rather than in any special or sporadic manner. Of course, to many others this seemed like a much less personal God, even if the immanentists made God all the more directly active.
On the issue of the basis for knowledge of God, including the nature of revelation, biblical inspiriation, etc., the responses ran the gamut. Some evolutionists, such as George Frederick Wright, maintained a view of plenary inspiration and insisted that when authorial intention was the guide to biblical interpretation, there was no inconsistency with theistic evolution. Some maintained infallibility but only for matters of “faith and life.” Others, such as Henry Ward Beecher, were certain that accepting evolution (which he did) entailed rejection of the whole notion of biblical infallibility. Historical criticism and various forms of liberal Protestant conceptions of cultural immanentism contributed to an evolutionary model of revelation itself, whether coming through the Bible, the culture at large, universal religious sentiment or private experience. All of these positions seemed to be put forth in various combinations. Needless to say, the level of certainty in doctrinal matters decreased significantly, whether by necessity or by design.
Roberts’ assessment of Protestant evolutionists’ adjustments to theological anthropology is, in my opinion, one of the more brilliant parts of the book. Many liberal Protestants who embraced evolution simply thought that God had so directed evolution that humanity would be the pinnacle of all creation and uniquely endowed with the requisite faculties to enjoy a special relationship with him. Even though the development of a human “moral sense” may have taken place through the normal process of evolution, this could be conceived as God’s way of enabling human beings to recognize the moral system of the world that was true independent of their recognition of it. In other words, moral government and evolution could wed after all. In fact, many liberal evolutionists applied evolutionary terminology to the development of human society and measured such evolution against the moral standards embodied in Christianity, making Christianity the benchmark for an advanced society. It is no surprise that such assertions matched liberal theological positions determined independent of the influence of evolution. As Roberts rightfully notes: “it is apparent that in some cases, at least, American Protestants who defended the doctrinal restatement in the name of fidelity to insights furnished by the theory of organic evolution were actually using evolutionary language primarily as a polemical device to help justify the abandonment of formulations of dogma that they found desirable on other grounds” (174). Modifications of fall and redemption took shape in similar fashion, though with greater variety. Some, like Beecher, simply jettisoned the notion. Others actually thought it was a good thing, in that it was a way of explaining the onset of the moral sense in humanity. With regard to redemption, the most popular notion among liberals who embraced evolution was an exemplarist model of the atonement: Jesus is the model after which people should pattern themselves, and in so doing they will evolve into the persons God wants them to be.
Of course, not all Protestants found it necessary to embrace evolution. Opposition to evolution did persist among “a sizable minority” of Protestant intellectuals. Roberts rebukes historians who fail to give adequate attention to the biblical arguments set forth by many Protestants who rejected evolution. Such historians have tended to treat the biblical arguments of these Protestants as reactionary anomalies rather than considered intellectual responses on the part of those committed to orthodoxy. In other words, it is not the case that those opposing evolution were simply wedded to some outmoded philosophical presuppositions to which they had subjected the Bible. Roberts’ position here is refreshing, in that he considers the self-understanding of the conservatives, rather than immediately chalking up their biblical arguments to naive self-deception.
Most biblicists “ascribed to biblical revelation three salient characteristics: completeness, inerrancy, and clarity” (213). To most of them, there was no middle point between affirming the historical reliability of the Bible – including the first chapters of Genesis – and the outright rejection of Christian orthodoxy. The radical rethinking of theology, in evolutionary terms, undertaken by many liberals seemed to confirm this position. No longer able to rely on the respectability of responsible science to bolster its theological claims, many conservatives shored up their certainty by placing increasing importance on theories of the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures. “In repudiating a theory that had become fundamental to the research program and analytical framework of natural historians, special creationists were rejecting for the first time in American history a part of the established corpus of scientific thought. This rejection, which was both a reflection and a major cause of the growing hostility of these thinkers to modern culture, destroyed the alliance that had long persisted between the work of scientists and the claims of Christian theology. It would be difficult to exaggerate the significance of this decisive cutting of the Gordian knot” (230).
Finally, in an unusually helpful conclusion, Roberts cites Protestant evolutionists with handing all certainty with respect to understanding reality over to the scientific community, and with failing to offer the American public a theology that is arousing. Biblicists, too, have failed to capture much public attention, by stressing what they perceive to be the scientific insufficiencies of a theory accepted by almost the entire scientific community. What Roberts stated in his preface applies to both groups equally: “the absence of a theological interpretation of the cosmos in the discourse of intellectuals has rendered religious belief less compelling for many Americans who have looked to these thinkers as the arbiters of truth” (xx).
In his preface to the paperback edition, Roberts makes clear the historiographical position of the book. In agreement with historians such as J.R. Moore, in this book Roberts debunks the notion that the relationship between science and religion was always one of two enemies battling it out to the death. At least before 1875, Roberts contends, the two had quite a mutually enriching relationship. Moving beyond Moore, however, is Roberts’ contention that almost all Protestants who embraced organic evolution embraced some form other than a strict Darwinian view of evolution by natural selection. (Moore had argued that the more orthodox theologians were the ones able to handle the harsher view of evolution by natural selection, whereas liberal theology could not stomach such a view and was more inclined to a modified form that cited some other mechanism). According to Roberts, these Protestants did not make such careful distinctions, and not even many scientists at the time accepted natural selection as the proper mechanism. Furthermore, he rejects the notion, apparently argued by Moore, that those Protestants who rejected evolution did so on account of philosophical commitments rather than biblical concerns.
Overall, the book is strong in conceptual clarity and in providing the development of the two major stages of Protestant reaction. One rather frustrating aspect of the book is the near constant references to “some Protestants” or “not all Protestants,” which leaves one asking whether there are any discernable patterns of reaction within Protestantism that can be more closely identified. Perhaps this riddle could be solved by studies of greater specificity, focusing on intra-denominational reactions, studies which could then be brought into dialogue with one another in an effort to create a clearer picture of the overall Protestant reaction.
