Christ and Evolution
A Sermon by Rev. H. Samuel Fritsch, pastor of Congregational Church, Medina, OH from 1911-1918

“When the fullness of time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman.” -Gal. 4:4

“All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made that hath been made.” -John 1:3

“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” -Rev. 22:18

These three scriptures, expressive of the advent, the function, and the cosmic position of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, unconsciously (or dare I say prophetically?) speak the language of the Theory of Evolution. These three scriptures may be reduced to scientific propositions, with these respective results: Christ is the supreme product of evolution; Christ is the central cause of evolution; Christ is the ultimate goal of evolution.

1. Evolution and Christ.

What is Evolution? It is but the name that scientific men have given to God’s way of working.

There was a time when the theory of evolution was mentioned in the Christina pulpit only by way of denial and denunciation. The reason for this was that the theory of evolution was only partially understood. To most people evolution meant the rather humiliating doctrine that man descended from the monkey. Any one who has ever spent ten thoughtful minutes in front of a monkey cage can readily appreciate the natural revulsion of feeling on the part of those who had been schooled to think of man as the special and crowning handiwork of God’s figures. It was felt that the theory of evolution ruled God Almighty out of the origin of man and put a gibbering monkey in his place. It was natural that the theologians would feel that the evolutionists were “monkeying” with the Lord’s business.

But all this antagonistic attitude was the result of misunderstanding. No reliable advocate of the theory of evolution ever maintained that man descended from the monkey—  if any ancestral relationship between monkey and man was ever proposed by a reliable evolutionist, it was the relation of ascent rather than descent—man ascended from the monkey. But even this theory was never held by accepted advocates of evolution, except, perhaps, in the very first stages of the theory- the most that ever was claimed by scientific evolutionists was that man and monkey had a common ancestry, not that one evolved from the other. Furthermore, today no reliable evolutionist maintains that you can make a cross-section of existing animal life and trace therein the successive stages of evolutionary development from the microscopic amoeba, which by thousands inhabit a drop of water, to majestic man who populates the earth and has dominion over the fullness thereof. There are too many gaps in the cross-section, too many missing links in the evolutionary chain, to make it safe to propose such a sweeping assertion. All that the sober evolutionist of the present day insists upon concerning the origin of man is that man in the movements of the millenniums and in the cycles of the centuries has come up from the original protoplasmic cell to his present upright physique through a succession of stages similar to, but not necessarily identical with, the gradation of animal life in the world today. In other words, the only difference between the writer of Genesis and the modern evolutionist concerning the origin of man is a difference of time. Both agree that man came from the simplest material elements. The write of Genesis calls it “dust” the evolutionist calls it “protoplasm” -each in his own tongue tries to give expression to the though that man’s origin is from the primal elements. The writer of Genesis says that man was “Formed” the evolutionist says that he was “developed” –each in his own tongue is trying to say that man is the effect of a cause. The writer of Genesis says that there was “Breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul;” the evolutionist says that by “natural selection” man was pushed up out of the plane of animalism to the plateau of intelligence—each in his own tongue is trying to say that there came a time in the production of man when he was more than a lump of clay or mass of flesh, when he became an intelligent being. Practically the only difference between the writer of Genesis and the evolutionist is that the former confines the process within the space of a few hours, while the latter talks of a billion of years, more or less. But what is a billion of years to God, a God who thinks in eternities as we think in minutes?

But suppose that the honest thinking insists upon a literal acceptance and interpretation of the Genesis account of the creation of Adam and Eve—must he therefore repudiate the whole doctrine of evolution? Not at all, for no mater how Adam and Eve came into the world, the fact is that every boy and every girl in the world today are here as a product of evolution. It is a physiological fact that the body of a child in its prenatal development passes through a quick succession of stages strikingly similar to a miniature cross-section of the scale of animal life from the protoplasmic cell to the perfectly formed human body—no identical, but strikingly similar. The life of a human being after birth is also a process of evolution—helpless infancy weighing seven pounds and gaining half and ounce a day on a milk diet; then come teeth, and with them the requirement of more substantial food; then the organs of speech and the organs of locomotion develop; then with the passing of years comes adolescence when the individual becomes a new creature; then manhood and womanhood; then prime of life; then old age and decline. Though we may grant that Adam and Even had nothing to do with evolution, and evolution had nothing to do with Adam and Eve, we cannot get away from the fact that every single human being, as we know human beings today, is the product of a process of evolution.

But the origin of man is only a very small corner in the realm of evolution. If evolution could be personified and given a tongue it might say with truth, “All things are mine.” The tree that stands without is the product of evolution—a seed, a germ, a sprout, a stem, a twig, a tree. The bread that you will eat for your dinner is the product of evolution—first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear, then the garnered grain, then the flour, then the dough, then the bread. The book from which you read is an evolution—away back in old Egypt some scratches on a bare rock, then the papyrus and stylus, then the scroll and quill, then the page and the pen, then the woodcut and the hand press, then the power press and the movable type, and now the linotype and rotary press. The clothes that we war, the food that we eat, the books that we read, the machinery that we use, the houses that we live in, the conveyances that we ride upon, in fact everything we have or use it he product of evolution. If evolution were given a tongue it might truthfully say, “I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.” If evolution were personified and deified it could reverently and truthfully said, “All things were made by It; and without It was not anything made that was made.”

The theory of evolution, therefore, far from being a substitution for God in the universe, or a supplanting of God in the universe is nothing more nor less than an attempt to discover and state how God works. The theory of evolution, far from ruling God out of the order of creation, puts him in more minutely and intimately and consecutively than any other former attempt at world explanation. “Evolution is the constant universal method of divine action.”

1. Christ and Evolution

If evolution is God’s way of doing things, then we must expect to find, first, that God’s gift of his Son was made after the manner of evolution; and second, if the Son adopts the Father’s plan of working then Christ’s function in the world development will be accomplished after the manner of evolution.

In the evolutionary history of man we see four distinct movements—might to duration, gradual as to procedure, complex as to process, but very definite as to result.

The first great movement in the development of man produced the change from inorganic to organic, when the earliest living protoplasmic cell was produced out of the complexity of chemical compounds. This is the origin of the material man.

The next movement resulted in the introduction of sensation or consciousness which constituted the fundamental distinction between animal and vegetable kingdoms. This is the original of physical man.

The third movement produced mentality, intelligence, and self-consciousness. This is the origin of the natural or mortal man. The Bible calls him Adam.

The next movement produced immortality and spirituality. Now man is more than a complexity of chemical compounds, more than a mass of sentient flesh, more than a thinking and speaking animal; now man is a spiritual being, an immortal, eternal, spiritual soul, and the supreme and perfect fulfilment of this newest and highest and best man was Jesus Christ, the first real, complete, fully developed, fully realized, fully evolved Man.

Four mighty evolutionary movements- material man, clay; physical man, flesh; natural or mortal man, Adam; spiritual man, Christ. It is to be noted that the Bible begins with the end of the third movement- the production of the natural or moral man—“The first man Adam was made a living soul.” The Bible itself is a record of the fourth movement- the evolution of the spiritual man—“The last Adam was made a quickening spirit.” The Bible is the record of the evolution of man from the natural or mortal stage to the spiritual stage- form Adam to Christ—“The first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven.” Could there be any plainer way of stating that Christ is the fulfillment of the evolutionary movement of man from the natural to the spiritual?

That Christ thought of himself as the highest attainment in the evolution of man is evidenced by the unique title that he adopted from himself. He called himself the “Son of Man” not a man among men, not a son of man, but the Son of man, the supreme, the central, the supernatural product of human evolution: supreme because he was the highest type and best example of man yet produced: central because into Him and towards Him all the mighty movements of the process of evolution tended and concentrated; supernatural, because He was the super man, Nature’s super product, above and beyond anything that Nature had hitherto produced.

Not only is Christ’s evolution’s supreme product, but He is also evolution’s supreme goal.

It is the a fact of evolution that whenever a new species is produced, that new species because of its superior equipment and endowment becomes the master of the whole order of living beings, the dominant factor in the existing complexity of life, and the determining factor in the onward evolution of creation.

Thus when once the super-man, the spiritual man, the Christ man, was produced, the material man had to take fourth place, the physical man had to take third place, the natural or mortal man had to take second place, and the spiritual man took first place; so that ever after, the determining and dominating tendency of human evolution would be spiritual.

At the climax and completion of every evolutionary movement, the divine law held over the representative product of that movement is, “Be fruitful and multiply, and populate the earth, and make it come to terms.” Adam was the supreme product of the third movement, and in the onward course of evolution, Adam should be fruitful and multiply and populate and subdue until there would be a race of all Adams, until the representative product should become the general product, by which time the race would be ready for something better and beyond. Christ was the representative product of the fourth movement, and in the onward course of evolution, Christ must be fruitful and multiply and populate and subdue until there will be a race of all Christs, until the representative product shall become the general product. We are now in that stage of evolution when a race of Christs is being produced—when shall be literally and generally fulfilled the promise of the Master, “The works that I do shall ye do also;” when shall be literally and generally fulfilled the prophecy of John, “We shall be like Him.”

Like Christ! Alas, we have made but slight progress in the last 2,000 years! But don’t get discouraged! Two thousand years is nothing to Evolution! Evolution deals not in years but in ages and eras and eons!

And what next? Will there be a next? Will evolution end when the race of Christs is produced or is the progress to be eternal? There will be a next if the Bible is true. Not only, “The works that I do shall ye do also,” but “greater works than these shall ye do.” Not only, “We shall be like him,” but above and beyond, “it doth not yet appear what we shall be!” Endless evolution! Eternal Progress!

This body, fashioned of the clay,
will turn again unto the dust;
Yon sun, whose light illumes the day,
like ancient shield of brass will rust.

Those hills, which stood since time began,
will slumber in the valley’s bed;
Those stars, bespangling heaven’s span,
like flower petals will drop dead.

But I, e’en I, my Self, my Soul,
a citizen eternal dwell;
For me there is a far-off goal
staked out beyond both heaven and hell!

And on that goal, I’ll fix today
the eager vision of mine eye,
And watch and wait and work and pray,
til I shall reach it by and by.