by Joe Fitzpatrick

I have been reading William Joseph’s In Search of Adam and Eve: A case for a theology of evolution (2011), and found myself reflecting on a stream of theological thinking that is likely to grow over the coming decades, namely a theology of evolution.

This is a difficult book but one worth reading. The author holds degrees in science as well as in philosophy and theology and for twenty years taught religion, physics, mathematics and computer science. In this book he explains how and why it is important for theologians to take science, and the theory of evolution in particular, very seriously indeed. He would agree with Teilhard de Chardin who said, ‘I am convinced that there is no more substantial nourishment for the spiritual life than contact with scientific realities, if they are properly understood.’ ‘Science’, Joseph quotes someone as saying, ‘is thinking God’s thoughts after him’.