The Church, the Schools and Evolution

by J. E. Conant

[p 27] That is indeed true. We are all aware of the fact that there are various kinds, shapes, and colors of evolution, from theistic to atheistic; but the fact still remains that every theory is still evolution, and that any theory of evolution whatsoever, if it means anything at all, means steady progress from lower to higher. Progress is certainly the one thought that is vital to any definition of evolution, and progress downward is excluded by the very meaning of the word, and so evolution under any theory can mean nothing but progress upward.

But the Word of God says that man has gone down from a condition of purity and innocence into a condition of such sinful enmity against God, that he is not only not subject to the law of God, but is utterly incapable of bringing himself into subjection to it. And the experience of every Christian gives sorrowful but certain evidence to that fact.

This condition the Bible describes as being dead in sin. And since death is not death at all until it is total, man, therefore, being dead, is totally dead—and this is total depravity.

This means that the only progress possible to man in his natural state is progress in corruption. For total depravity, which is total spiritual death, does not mean that the last limit of corruption has been reached, but that while death is total, corruption may have just begun.

The reality of the natural man’s spiritual death is abundantly illustrated in human history. After man fell into sin, and died, he was given fullest opportunity to recover himself and to demonstrate thereby that he was still spiritually alive. But the corruption [p 28] of spiritual death worked until man was so far down in the filth of his moral putrefaction that the only way God could save the race from extinction was to save the one family that had accepted spiritual life from Him, and blot the rest of the race out in the flood.

Then, starting out again under more favorable circumstances than before, man went from bad to worse until, in one great universal brotherhood, he rose up and defied God at the Tower of Babel, and God had to smash the brotherhood into fragments by the confusion of languages.

Time after time God tried man and found his progress downward always, no matter how favorable the circumstances that surrounded him, until finally he came to earth Himself in the Person of His Son. This brought both the reality and the completeness of man’s spiritual death to a demonstration that can never be refuted, for at the cross man displayed, to its eternal uncovering, the awful corruption of that spiritual condition that could not tolerate in its presence incarnate purity and holiness, even though he had to become the murderer of God manifest in the flesh to get away from it.

Even in his worship man’s progress is steadily downward. Beginning with God, he progresses downward until he is worshipping birds, then beasts, and then creeping things.

But evolution says that man is coming up from primitive conditions into fuller life. And so the evolutionist cannot tolerate such doctrines as these which the Word of God sets forth. To a consistent evolutionist, man is not spiritually dead, for that would [p 29] make progress out of the question. And if progress upward is denied—if the only progress possible to the natural man is progress in corruption, then the whole doctrine of evolution is gone.

This is why it becomes necessary for Canon E. W. Barnes, of Westminster Abbey, when he accepts evolution, to reject the Bible. He says: The inevitable acceptance of evolution means giving up belief in the fall and in all the theology built upon it by the theologians from St. Paul onward. Man was not made perfect and then marred; his evolution is still proceeding.