John Haught: The Theology of Biology

The Theology of Biology

By Jim McCarville

Is there a theology of biology? A theology of evolution?

John Haught, a Georgetown University Distinguished Research Professor, thinks so. In fact, he told the Association of Pittsburgh Priests at their October Speaker Series event, that, in his mind, “theology does not make sense without them”. While most theologians look for meaning by reading scriptures, Haught wants us instead to learn to read the universe. He places theology, biology and evolution all in the unfolding “Big History” of the universe. However, unlike what he calls the oft-studied “outside stories” of biology and evolution, he calls theology the neglected or “inside story”, the evolution going on inside man from matter to life to mind. Mankind is such a recent part in the 14 billion year story of evolution, however, he says, that we shouldn’t expect to have all of the answers yet.

To understand these bold statements we have to step back to understand what he means by religion and theology.

In his book, The New Cosmic Story: Inside Our Awakening Universe, he defines religion as the pathways people seek “through the severest limits on life, not only the threat of death, but also the experience of fate, guilt, doubt and meaninglessness.” Not your traditional definition of religion.

Haught credits mankind’s “inside” evolution to our extraordinary skill to symbolize (to make one thing stand in for another) as an enabler of both language and religion. Early man, who was greatly exposed to the whims of nature, used this symbolic skill to seek appeasement of the supernatural through rituals and petitions.

Then he writes, that in an axial (or evolutionary transitional) age that took place between two thousand and three thousand years ago, a remarkable evolution in human consciousness began. It was more symbolic, more mystical than what went before. It combined our sense of “being” with “goodness, truth, beauty and unity hidden beyond, or deep within, the world of ordinary experience…. It was the birth of a new sense of rightness, a hidden realm that sometimes was called “god”. It was not just a set of interior intuitions, but a great event in the history of the universe. It was a personal awakening, a spiritual transformation. Our purpose, they taught, was for us “to awaken to this hidden realm ... and [to] allow ourselves to be transformed by it.” He says we find evidence of this awakening common in Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and many other modern religions.

Therefore, Haught looks for God’s revelation not only in reading books, but also in reading from the evolution of the universe. He wants us to look more into the process about where we are headed than in the traditions of where we have come from. Understandably, most historic religious analysis was developed before we had the insights of science. His challenge then: what we can understand today that we couldn’t understand before we had the advent of scientific analysis. Instead of fearing what science informs us, he wants us to embrace it -- wholeheartedly.

We don’t have all of the answers yet. (Haught says that is why the bible places such a high value on the virtue of patience.) But Haught also says we may be spending too much time looking in wrong places. He urges us not to seek a perfect design, but to embrace biology’s and mankind’s design flaws as essential to our evolution and unfolding of life. We don’t have all of the answers because we are still evolving.

It may be a hard concept for us to grasp, but he says evolution is the infinite slowly and continually sharing itself into the finite. This is a big part of the “inside story” of evolution and Jesus, he says, is the perfect “self-humbling, self-emptying example” of this sharing.

So, if we want to try to understand the concept of redemption, he says, look more into where we are going and less into fighting over where we have been. He calls this “faith”.

This author is a member of the TMC Board of Directors.