The Creed – Creation and Evolution

As said in last week’s words on the Creed, believing in God the Creator is not just about how the world began but about the world’s constant and continuing origin in God. God is always giving existence to our world and to each of us.

There is no contradiction between believing in God’s creation of the world and an evolutionary understanding of the world’s coming about. Creation can happen through evolution. It can be God’s way of giving existence to his world. 

In watching programs about nature, one of the things that is obvious is that there is an incredible creativity at work in the ways species develop and adjust to differing circumstances. There is a wonderful capacity in nature for survival and flourishing even though species can become extinct along the way. There is a surge of life and for life in the whole developing wonder of the created world.

Such creativity can be seen as a trace of God on his world as he continues to create it.

Another notable feature of the longer Creed (Nicene Creed) is that it speaks of the one God: ‘I believe in one God’. This was an important point at the time in which the Creed was written. As it was a society in which people believed in many gods and each different person tended to have their own gods. The Creed has this firm affirmation that Christians only believe in one God who is at the source of all things. This faith made the First Christians different to all the people around them except the Jewish people. It was also often a source of problems for them. Some Romans thought that the Christians were to be blamed for misfortunes because they neglected to pray to the proper gods who took revenge for the neglect shown to them, and so they should be persecuted. 

By Fr Frank O’Loughlin

Published: 16 February 2024