Abstract
In Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love, Johnson acknowledges the empirical truth of evolution and conveys profound respect for the distinction between scientific and religious realms of human questioning and discovery. Yet she does see a place for fruitful dialogue, integration, and practical cooperation—in this case between Darwin’s theory of evolution and Christian faith in the God of biblical revelation. Johnson asks of Darwin’s beasts: what can Christians learn from the origin of species on planet earth about the wondrous ways of divine creativity and love? She discovers in this line of questioning neither an intelligent designer nor a “God of the gaps,” but rather a holy Mystery that both empowers and respects the freedom of the cosmos to go forth on its dynamic and unpredictable journey towards ever-richer forms of complex diversity and eventually, after many billions of years, life.
For creationist Christians, the theory of evolution presents an either/or challenge to theism. It is a zero sum game: either you “believe” in evolution or you believe in God. Johnson demonstrates that evolutionary science does indeed pose a challenge to Christian faith, but the challenge is a positive one. The science of evolution challenges faithful Christians to dig deeper into our scriptures and tradition in order to better understand the nature of divine love and power in light of what we now know to be empirically true about both the origins of life on earth and the threat that human activity poses to life’s continued existence and flourishing. Johnson therefore allows Darwin and his beasts to pose at least three challenges to conventional Christian theology, in the hopes of re-generating a deeper, richer, more spiritual and biblically-based faith in the God of love.
First, Johnson challenges her readers to a more thorough understanding of the theory of evolution itself, as distilled by Darwin in his literary-scientific masterpiece, On the Origin of Species, and as his theory is carried forward and developed over the next 150 years. A detailed exegesis of Darwin’s famous text offers Christians the opportunity to look at evolution not as a mechanistic and starkly competitive process devoid of meaning and purpose, but as a stunningly beautiful and dynamic progression of life from its simple beginnings to the most beautiful and wondrous array of species that exists, and continues to evolve, on our small blue planet today. With Darwin, Johnson urges us to appreciate the “grandeur in this view of life” (p. 99). Appreciation for the splendor of creation is not lessened, but heightened and deepened, by taking the long view and understanding the intricacies, contingencies, and costs (in suffering and death) of the origins and evolution of species.
Second, in light of this deep appreciation for the science of evolution, Johnson offers an alternative to the anthropomorphic and monarchial concept of God that characterizes most classical and conventional Christian theism. The challenge here is not to reject theism by any means, but rather to come to a more mature Trinitarian faith in the Creator God whose love is the vivifying source of all that is, who continually empowers the free existence and evolution of creation, and who compassionately accompanies creation through its travails and suffering on the way to ever-more complex and diverse forms of existence. The paradigm shift that Johnson suggests in Ask the Beasts, and in her other writings on God, moves Christian theology away from thinking about God within the narrow terms of monarchial human power and anthropomorphic agency. Such limited (and arguably idolatrous) conceptions of God are not only incompatible with the science of evolution; they also fail to reflect the rich biblical roots, creedal formulations, and theological interpretations of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Three aspects of this paradigm shift—ontological, pneumatological, and christological—are particularly worth noting here. In terms of ontology, Johnson challenges Christian believers to think about God not as a being alongside other beings, but rather as the ground and source of all being, or as Being itself. The God of Love who empowers the existence and freedom of all reality is not a person out there (or up there) who designs the universe or unilaterally directs the evolutionary process. Rather, the holy Mystery of Love is the underlying source and sustenance of all that exists. This ontological insight points to the need for a robust retrieval of pneumatology in Christian theology and in the life of the Christian community. The Holy Spirit is a decidedly non-anthropomorphic and non-coercive dimension of the divine life that can be particularly revelatory of how the God of love dwells within the created world and empowers its free agency in evolution. Johnson takes a christological cue from the doctrine of the incarnation to argue that the spirit of love does not overpower creation to accomplish its purposes, but rather enters into solidarity with the joy and sorrow, the beauty and pain, of all created beings in an evolutionary universe.
Third, Johnson’s faith in a God of love who desires the full flourishing not only of human beings, but of all creation, presents a challenge to the anthropocentric imagination of conventional Christian theology. “Ask the beasts,” Johnson echoes the book of Job, “and they will teach you” (Job 12:7–10): the universe does not revolve around human beings. Plants, animals, and ecosystems were not created for our pleasure and utility; the tree of life does not culminate once and for all in the emergence of Homo sapiens. Johnson fully acknowledges the biblical paradigm of human dominion over creation, and nods her head in gratitude to those Christians who have interpreted dominion as a divine command for stewardship and creation care rather than as a divine justification for domination. However, she brilliantly retrieves the more prevalent biblical theme of the “community of creation,” in which the interdependence of the whole created world takes precedence over the needs and potentially sinful desires of one species prone to self-aggrandizement. Johnson’s view here is decidedly religious and theocentric, in that it stresses the dependence of all created existence on the breath of the living God. Nevertheless, her theocentric vision of evolutionary ecology integrates beautifully with what modern science has demonstrated to be empirically true about the tree of life: we are all part of one interdependent community, and human beings, in particular, are both profoundly dependent on the rest of creation for our survival and uniquely threatening to non-human species and entire ecosystems.
At the end of the day, the paradigm shifts that Johnson gleans from her dialogue with evolutionary science all add up to an urgent ethical challenge: how can human beings live as morally responsible members of the community of creation at a time when human activity is in the process of bringing about the mass extinction of thousands of glorious species that have taken millions of years to evolve? I can think of no greater, more pressing challenge for our time.
Ask the Beasts is a must-read that I suspect will become a classic in the fields of religion and science, eco-theology, and systematic theology more broadly. Upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in any of these disciplines would benefit greatly from including this text, as would courses in religion and the environment, theology of God/Trinity, pneumatology, and eschatology. As ever, Johnson’s prose is highly accessible, beautifully composed, and poetically prophetic. Her arguments are well-grounded in Christian scriptures and tradition and, while her theology of divine immanence is steeped in the Catholic sacramental imagination, the appeal of her work is widely ecumenical. I give this text my highest recommendation and can only hope that its message might achieve prevalence in popular culture as an alternative to the commonly held divide between religion and science.