When we consider the Abrahamic traditions in relation to the wisdom traditions of South and East Asia, and even in relation to those of Greece, we are struck by their radically historical character. God is understood as active in history, and what happens in history changes the relation between humanity and God. The human story has a beginning and moves toward an end. To a large extent the differences among these traditions are over just how the story is best told.

Evolutionary thinking is the extension of this historical thinking to the natural world. To a small extent that is already part of the biblical account. In the beginning things come into being successively. In the end there will be a new earth. But of course, that only points in the general direction of evolutionary thinking. Our spiritual ancestors knew very little about the way humanity emerged in a long process of development and even less about the history of the cosmos.

Some Christians have, nevertheless, tried to adjust their understanding of the natural world to the pre-scientific worldview of the Bible. The Bible does not invite that kind of use, but some have not accepted its historical understanding. In their imagination some have transformed the Bible into a once and for all inerrant expression of God’s knowledge. Fortunately, overall most of those whose vision is formed by the Bible understand that its historical character invites continuing openness to new knowledge. Thought and understanding developed and changed over time in Israel. Christian theology has had a long development, greatly influenced by new information about history and about the natural world. To live and think in the authentically Christian tradition is to participate in the continuing evolution of faithful thought.

In the past century and a half faithful thinking has involved appropriating the evolutionary understanding of life on this planet and setting it in the context of the evolution of the whole universe. Evolutionary Christianity is Christianity that continues to be faithful to the God who about whom we learn in the Bible and especially in the person and teaching of Jesus.

Learning from the best thinking of the day is being faithful to the God who is Truth. But the best thinking of the day may not be that which is most celebrated by the culture of any generation. It is not faithful to God simply to accept what persons who are not informed by our tradition say and then try to make some aspects of our tradition fit into the ideas these celebrated leaders teach. The most accepted thinking in the late middle ages was that of Aristotle, and it was right for Christians to learn from it. But the church suffered from giving too much authority to Aristotle. Certainly the church Christianized his thought to some extent, but not sufficiently. The deep insight we have received from our scriptures was compromised. Protest was needed.

The Enlightenment may have broken too sharply with Aristotle, and in any case the worldview with which it replaced Aristotle’s had serious problems. That worldview’s dominance threatens Biblical wisdom. We learn from science because as Christians we know that all truth is God’s truth and that science provides us with a vast amount of useful and exciting information. But if we are faithful, we incorporate that information into a biblically- informed understanding. We do not adopt the seventeenth-century metaphysics still shaping so much scientific theory.

We affirm the evolutionary understanding of all creaturely things. That is a wonderful extension of our historical consciousness. But in our biblical perspective what happens takes place out of interaction between God and creatures. The purposes of both are important. The systematic exclusion of the purposes of both God and creatures from the dominant forms of evolutionary theory taught in our universities does not result from the information for which we are so indebted to scientists. It results from their metaphysical assumptions to which they hold despite the empirical evidence against them.

For evolutionary Christianity the facts of evolution guide us in our evolving understanding of God’s purposes and direct our human ones. They heighten our sense of the importance of what we have learned from our scriptures about the evolution of thought in Israel. They do not, however, lead us to necessarily accept the teachings of some of the leading scientific evolutionists of our day.