Evolution and Christianity: Darwin, Teilhard de Chardin, Ilia Delio, and the God of Becoming

In this episode of The Unintentional Heretic, Greg explores the often-contentious relationship between Christianity and evolution, tracing the journey from Darwin and the Scopes Trial to the visionary theology of Teilhard de Chardin, Ilia Delio, and process theology. Rather than seeing evolution as a threat to faith, the episode reframes creation as an ongoing sacred unfolding in which God is not preserving a static universe, but continually drawing all things toward deeper consciousness, compassion, communion, and love.

Transcript

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Welcome back to the unintentional heretic. Today we're stepping into one of the most disruptive and fascinating conversations in modern theology, evolution. And specifically, what happens when Christianity encounters Darwin? Because for many Christians, evolution has long felt threatening, a challenge to scripture, a challenge to creation, a challenge to human uniqueness, a challenge to traditional theology itself. And for some communities, evolution became almost synonymous with unbelief. In fact, Gallup recently reported that upward of one-third of the U.S. population doesn't believe in evolution. But what if evolution is not the enemy of Christianity? What if evolution actually expands Christianity into something larger, more dynamic, more cosmic, and perhaps even more beautiful than many traditional frameworks allowed? What if creation is not static, but still unfolding? What if God is not merely preserving reality, but participating in an ongoing process of becoming? And what if Christ is not simply the solution to human sin, but the deep pattern drawing the entire cosmos towards greater love, greater consciousness, greater union? That's where we're going today. To understand why evolution felt so threatening, we need to understand the theological world that existed before Darwin. For much of Christian history, especially in the West, the universe was first imagined as fixed, ordered, hierarchical, and completed. God created the world. Everything had its place. Species were stable. Human beings stood at the center. And underlying much of Western theology was Greek philosophical influence, especially Plato and Aristotle. Reality was imagined as stable and eternal. Change itself was often viewed suspiciously. Perfection was immutable. Even God became increasingly defined as unchanging, static, impassable, outside of time. And then Darwin arrives in the 19th century and detonates the whole framework. On the origin of species was published in 1859. And suddenly species evolve. Life adapts, creation is unfinished, nature is dynamic, and humanity emerges from a long evolutionary process rather than appearing fully formed in a single moment. The cosmos suddenly feels alive, unfinished, developing. And understandably, many Christians panicked because evolution seemed to undermine genesis, human uniqueness, the fall, original sin, and traditional salvation theology. If Adam and Eve were not literal historical individuals, what happens to the fall? And if there's no historical fall, what exactly is Jesus saving us from? Those are still theologically massive questions. And for many Christians, the response was defensive. Literalism hardened, fundamentalism emerged, science and faith become enemies. The famous Scopes monkey trial in 1925 became symbolic of this cultural conflict as high school teacher John Scopes was prosecuted in Tennessee for teaching evolution and violation of state law. The trial exposed the growing divide between modern science and religious fundamentalism in America and became a national flashpoint over whether Christianity would embrace or resist emerging scientific understanding of the world. And to this day, many Christians still imagine evolution and faith as fundamentally incompatible. But not everyone reacted that way. Some theologians began asking radically different questions. What if evolution changes theology itself? Enter Theyard de Chardins. Théard was a Jesuit priest, mystic, scientist, and paleontologist. And in many ways he was wildly ahead of his time. Théard accepted evolution fully, but instead of seeing it as a threat to Christianity, he saw it as revealing something profound about God and creation. He imagined the universe not as static, but as moving somewhere. Creation is not finished. It is becoming. This becomes Tahard's idea of the cosmic Christ. Christ is not simply about individual salvation. Christ is the organizing center of the cosmos itself. Tajard writes, Christ is the fulfillment even of the natural evolution of beings. That's staggering. For Tayard, evolution is not random chaos drifting nowhere. It is a sacred unfolding, moving toward what he called the omega point, the point where creation reaches full union with divine love and consciousness. He famously wrote, The world is not an object to be escaped from. It is a living milieu of divine union. That completely reframes Christianity. Salvation is no longer merely escape from earth into heaven, it becomes participation in the ongoing transformation of creation itself. Now traditional orthodoxy often viewed the material world suspiciously, especially under Platonic influence. Matter becomes lower, spirit becomes higher, earth becomes fallen, heaven becomes the goal. But Theyard reverses this. Matter itself becomes sacred. Creation itself becomes sacramental. Evolution becomes the unfolding body of Christ, not perfect yet, still incomplete, still suffering, but moving toward divine fullness. And this is one reason the institutional church often becomes nervous about Theyard, because his theology destabilizes static frameworks. If creation is evolving, then perhaps theology evolves too. This brings us into process theology. Process theology emerges largely through the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead in the early 20th century. Whitehead argued that reality itself is not made of static objects. Reality is process, becoming, relationship, change, interconnection. Everything is dynamic. And process theologians begin asking, what if God is relational too? What if God is not a distant, unmoved mover outside history, but deeply participating within creation? Traditional orthodoxy often emphasized God's immutability. God does not change. But process theology suggests love itself requires relationship, responsiveness, mutuality. In this framework, God is not coercive. God does not control reality like a cosmic puppeteer. Instead, God lures creation towards greater beauty, greater complexity, greater compassion, greater love. The future is not fully predetermined. Creation has genuine freedom. And God participates dynamically in the unfolding process. Process theologian John Cobb says, God does not control the world, God calls the world. That's profoundly different from classical theism. And honestly, for many people, it resolves certain theological problems more effectively, especially the problem of evil. Because if God is not meticulously controlling every event, then tragedy is not secretly part of a hidden divine blueprint. Instead, God is continually working within reality to bring healing, possibility, and transformation out of suffering, not causing evil, but redeeming it. And this changes prayer too. Prayer becomes less about persuading God to intervene magically and more about aligning ourselves with the divine moment towards healing and love. And this brings us to Ilya Delio, Franciscan sister, scientist, theologian, and one of the most important contemporary voices exploring evolution in Christianity. Delio builds heavily on Theyard, and she argues that Christianity is still struggling to absorb evolution fully, because much of theology was built inside a pre-evolutionary worldview, static cosmology, static humanity, static doctrines. But evolution changes everything. Humanity is not finished. Consciousness is still evolving. The universe is still unfolding. And therefore theology itself cannot remain frozen. Delio writes, evolution reveals that creation is unfinished and open to the future. That's deeply important because traditional orthodoxy often imagines perfection as static. But evolutionary spirituality imagines perfection dynamically, always deepening, always unfolding, always becoming more whole. Delio argues that Christ is not merely repairing a cosmic mistake caused by Adam. Christ is the future of evolution itself, the deep pattern drawing creation toward greater unity and love. This radically reframes salvation. Salvation becomes less about escaping hell and more about participating consciously in divine evolution, growing into deeper communion, greater compassion, greater interconnectedness, which sounds remarkably resonant with mysticism across traditions. And this is where evolutionary Christianity begins intersecting with contemplative spirituality, non-duality, and systems thinking, because increasingly we begin seeing reality not as separate isolated objects, but as profoundly interconnected. Theologian Richard Rohr often says, we are not separate beings trying to become one. We're already one and imagine ourselves separate. Now, obviously, this perspective challenges traditional orthodoxy in significant ways. Traditional Christianity often emphasizes a historical fall, original sin, fixed doctrines, static revelation, salvation from earth, human uniqueness over creation. Evolutionary Christianity reframes many of these. Creation is unfinished. Sin is partly evolutionary self-centeredness. Revelation continues unfolding. Salvation is transformation. Humanity is interconnected with all life. Christ is cosmic rather than merely tribal or institutional. Traditional Orthodoxy often asks, how do sinful humans get into heaven? Evolutionary Christians ask, how is creation itself being transformed into divine union? That's a very different question. And for some Christians, that feels liberating. For others, threatening, because it destabilizes certainty. But perhaps certainty itself was never the goal. Maybe faith was always meant to evolve alongside consciousness itself. And honestly, I think this conversation may become increasingly important to the future because younger generations already intuitively think evolutionarily. They think in systems, interconnection, ecology, networks, process, emergence. Static religion increasingly feels disconnected from lived reality. But an evolutionary spirituality, a cosmic Christianity, begins speaking to the modern world differently. It invites awe instead of fear, participation instead of exclusion, transformation instead of mere belief management. And perhaps most importantly, it situates humanity inside a sacred unfolding cosmos rather than above it. Théard once wrote, Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then this stunning line. And then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire. That's the hope. Not merely surviving history, but evolving into deeper love, deeper compassion, deeper union, not escaping creation, but awakening to its sacredness. Because maybe God is not simply the creator of a finished universe. Maybe God is the infinite love continuously drawing creation forward into becoming.