Progress from the Fall

I’m struck by a line from C.S. Lewis’ ‘Miracles.’ While discussing Nature he writes, ” … he [God] created her such as to reach her perfection by a process in time.” He continues, “In that sense a certain degree of ‘evolutionism’ or ‘developmentalism’ is inherent in Christianity.

Curiously, I only just sent an email to a friend discussing my sense of the fallness of nature. That is, my feeling that the Universe/Creation (Κóσμς) is somehow off kilter. But what I think so amazing about Lewis’ thought here is that it changes the focus from life-as-it-is being a consequences of The Fall to life-as-it-is being a process of perfecting.

One may still believe that somehow, at some point, something went wrong; that there was a Fall from some ideal/intended state of things to this somewhat fucked up state of things. I do believe this. My tendency, though, was to imagine the process of history as a progress towards full restitution of our natural state. And while this may be the case in a way, there is another way of viewing it. Specifically, we may view that primordial natural state of Eden as itself incomplete. Eden was not an end in itself, but rather the beginning of an evolutionary process, at the end of which man would fully realize his nature.

So sure, when we wonder why life was created such that it could go so far off kilter we may indeed conclude, “Because for God to create beings with any real dignity they had to be free to make choices, even those against their best interest. Adam (“Mankind”) made that choice in some way we don’t understand, and now we are working towards, and waiting for, the fix.”

At the same time we may stop to consider the possibility that God–even in allowing humans to have the agency to screw things up–is quite above being thrown off track by his own creation. He is no bumbling Demiurgos. His action in the process of history, that reached its climax in the Resurrection and shall conclude at some point in the future, is not some divine game of catch-up, or hole-plugging. Rather, it is an ongoing divine affirmation of our agency, our will, our freedom. It is a radical expression of patience and permissiveness characterized by divine adaptation. Adaptation on our behalf. But the process of Creation–even if slower than ideal–remains.

Similarly, that deep recognition that all of us at one point or another have that things ought to be otherwise, ought to be better … this recognition is our slow, uncomfortable, digestion of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. If we would have eaten our meal before rushing for a bite of over-rich desert, then maybe we wouldn’t be so painfully gassy right now. But either way, we were meant to have the desert, and we shall have our fill.