Darwinism and Theology in America: Natural selection and divine election

Download or read book Darwinism and Theology in America: Natural selection and divine election written by Frank X. Ryan and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the mid 19th century academic theologians in America faced an unprecedented challenge. Once the sole proprietors of the nation's finest colleges, they now found themselves beleagered by an onslaught of secularism and empirical science. Darwin's Origin of Species, which challenged the notion of a Divine plan with an evolutionism based upon chance variation and natural selection, exacerbated this crisis and left theologians scrambling for an adequate response. Some joined Charles Hodge in attacking Darwin's views on scientific grounds. Others, such as James McCosh, Alexander Winchell, and Henry Ward Beecher embraced evolution as God's way of working out His purposes for the world. Others again, like Edward Hitchcock and James Woodrow, promoted a Kantian-type separation of the natural and the supernatural. And at the other end of the spectrum were free thinkers who welcomed Darwin's theory on its own terms, and pressed it into the service of humanism and naturalism.