ABSTRACT
An innocent preoccupation with design can obscure the theological riches we might recover by contemplating Charles Darwin’s “dangerous idea” in its rawness as well as its grandeur. A truly responsive theology of evolution, therefore, must bring to the fore faith’s sense of the self-outpouring God who lovingly renounces any claim to domineering omnipotence. Biblical teachings about God’s word and promise, about exodus, redemption, covenant, justice, wisdom, the Logos made flesh, the Spirit poured out on the face of creation, and the Trinitarian character of God—these are all indispensable to Christian theology. God’s gift of allowing the world to “become itself” is entirely consonant with and, in fact, renders plausible, evolution’s experimental winding through an endless field of potentialities, its random groping for relevant new forms of being, and the autonomous creativity in the life-process set forth by evolutionary science. A theology has every right to enter its own response as an alternative to materialism and intelligent design theory.
