Sunday, June 15, 2014

Grace and Evolution

The other day I purchased a fairly new book by Richard Rohr, Yes, And….Daily Meditations (Cincinnati: FranciscanMedia, 2013). I loved this meditation on page 170: "Incarnation makes evolution inevitable."

Rohr writes: "St. Bonaventure, who lived shortly after St. Francis… , and John Duns Scotus a little later yet, both observed as intellectuals what St. Francis was seeing and doing intuitively. They saw that he, exactly like Jesus, found the transcendent not 'out there' but 'in here'---the transcendent was largely revealed at the depth and 'inner' of things." He goes on to say that the contemporary author Walter Wink argues that angels "are the transcendent with things." Rohr notes, "Grace is not something you invite into the world as if it's not already there."

Rohr continues, "This is why a Christian should never have the least trouble with evolution." If you have trouble with evolution, you think of grace as "extrinsic to the universe" and thus grace (God's love) "is not organic to creation."




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