Charles Darwin

Most people have an opinion of Charles Darwin. And those that don't will have by this time next year.

As the Natural History Museum opens its doors to a new Darwin exhibition, a year of lectures, events, publications, debates, and exhibitions gets underway. Even the most devoted Darwinist might be a little tired by December 2009.

For some, Darwin is the great liberator, a scientific Moses leading his benighted people out of the intellectual slavery of superstition and ignorance. For others, he is the great Satan, architect of a theory that led to atheism, materialism and genocide.

Neither picture is remotely accurate.

Darwin himself was a rather ordinary man. He did have extraordinary gifts of observation, patience, association and speculation. And he was also remarkably courteous and respectful (qualities not immediately obvious in some of his modern disciples). But beyond that, he lived a somewhat conventional, mid-Victorian life.

He did lose his Christian faith but, in truth, that faith owed rather more to the ordered, rational, natural theology of William Paley than to any personal, Christ-centred conviction. 'I do not think that the religious sentiment was ever strongly developed in me,' he admitted in his Autobiography.

Moreover, he lost it for a good reason - not so much his theory of evolution (although that played a part) but more because he witnessed his favourite child, Annie, aged ten, die a slow, painful and degrading death. Few people, no matter how strong their faith, could endure such a loss without severe doubts. In this, as in so much else, Darwin has much to teach us.

Darwin's Christianity was more philosophical than theological, built on the seemingly secure foundation of universal human reason, rather than on the particularities of the Christian story, let alone the counter-intuitive scandal of the incarnation and crucifixion. Yet, as soon as Christianity moves away from the foot of the cross and loses sight of the crucified God, it became defenceless against accusations of suffering and injustice. No amount of philosophical justification or arguments for the immortality of soul is enough. The pain, the sense of injustice, the sense of loss becomes overwhelming. Christianity stands by the cross or it doesn't stand at all.

In truth, Darwin's own faith never stood anywhere near the foot of the cross. But which of us can say ours does?

Nick Spencer (LICC)