Evolution, a trinitarian heresy

within time and outside of time

This article will be an objective survey on the concept of evolution and how it is a simplification of the doctrine of the Trinity. This is one of the reason it could have been accepted as easily by the modern western mind.

Monreale, Palermo, Italy

The vertical and the Horizontal

In life, there are two modes, the horizontal and the vertical. The temporal and the eternal, the causality in time and out of time.

The horizontal is two events following each other in time. A person tells another to paint, and the other does. The first person acts as the efficient cause of the first (one of the four causes of Aristotle). Efficient causes are in time, in the domain of time. You could say that the telling precedes the first event, it happens before. This is the modern conception of causality.

Then there is the vertical. This acts outside time and space. It is vertical causation. It acts outside of time. This is the causal form of Aristotle. It’s the form of a cat that holds the cat together. This is an emanation from God, which is the first cause and the final cause. There is a form, that is eternal, that holds the matter together. This is a kind of inversion of the modern mind, which sees all as emanating from matter. This is a kind of bottom-up vs top-down.

Evolution

Evolution consists of three parts: variation, selection and procreation.

Variation creates variation, different species, from an original one. It is a kind of “generator” of multiple different kinds.

From these different kinds, certain are selected. Some organisms have a certain kind of advantage in their environment. Based on these, they are selected and poorer adapted ones die.

The third aspect then, is that these “optimal” organisms then get to give their optimal aspect (to their progeny), they have offspring.

The Trinity

The Trinity consists of three Persons with one essence (homoousion). Neoplatonism describes that essence as the One, but not as how it manifests as three Persons. The Christian God manifests as three persons. This is a really important difference between the cold Islam and protestantism. Both do not have an image of God, which implicitly means God is too high, and this makes those religions cold.

The first part of the Trinity is God the father. He’s symbolised by the father, as he is the Source of all, similar like a Father gives to his Children. It’s from his all possibility generates, all that can be. He symbolises the manifested and the unmanifested. In fact, He is all that you can think of. Remember that all images of God you make in your head are too low, as God cannot be conceived off. He is uncreated and unincarnate.

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. (John 1:3)

The second part of the Trinity, is the Logos. The logos selects from all the possibilities to manifest in the world. The word Logos can be translated as reason or order. The logos creates order, it selects what can be from pure potentiality.

The third part is the Holy Spirit. It proceeds from the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit is the love between the Father and the Son. The spirit is life-giving, it brings joy and life.

Similar to the spirit giving life. If this is in something, it can proceed to live.

The relation

It is clear to see that the Father, who represents the Source of all, is comparable to the variation in Evolution. The variation of evolution creates all the possibilities. Similarly, the Father gives the source of everything. He is truly all.

The Son, the Logos, shapes from this possibility and creates order. This again is similar to the concept of natural selection.

The Spirit, is the same as procreation. This one is a bit more difficult to see. The spirit is life-giving. Similarly, if you are selected from the variation, then you act according to the Spirit. Procreation acts after the combination of variation and selection. Similarly, the Spirit acts as the love between the Father and the Son. The created Order (from the Logos) out of the potential (God the Father) then allows things to exist through the Spirit.

Within and outside of Time

Similarly, as the Trinity becomes a frame through which to interpret reality, evolution can become likewise. Evolution is the God of the modern world, influencing systems such as communism, Nazism, gender ideology, transhumanism… All of these are centered around a particular idea: that salvation will be in time.

What christianity and other ancient systems told us, is that salvation is not mainly in time, but ontologically. You climb through seeing more, and coming closer to God. This process of coming closer to God can happen in Time, but is not defined by it. This is the difference between the horizontal and the vertical.

What evolution basically is, is a cut-off version of the Trinity. All ancient civilisations had a metaphysical frame of reality, emanating from the primary Unity. This primary unity then descends into time and space. This unity exists in eternity. The lower this unity descends (into multiplicity), the more time is involved. This is clear, as the platonic forms are more eternal than our bodies for example (our bodies keep changing).

This long explanation to explain that basically, the Trinity exist outside the bounds of space and time. Evolution is a process happening within the bounds of time.

A second difference, of high importance, is that the Trinity mostly emanates, it is the primary source of all Creation. It is pure Act, as Aquinas would say. It contains all in all. It extends from outside the bounds of time and space.

This in comparison to evolution, which implicitly tells us all comes from matter. An inversed ontology.

Conclusion

It is clear how evolution takes many ideas from the Christian religion.