Through Him All Things Were Created

Rather than this being an either/or question, it really should be approached as a both/and topic. As Pope Francis stated, “The evolution of nature is not opposed to the notion of Creation, because evolution presupposes the creation of beings that evolve.” Thus, the agent and designer of creation is always God while the method of creation can involve natural processes like evolution.

However, to consider evolution as an independent autonomous process wherein living creatures randomly come into existence based on mere chance and circumstance is a fundamentally atheistic perspective and incompatible with the Christian belief in God as Creator.

The paleontologist and Jesuit Priest Teilhard de Chardin famously articulated the divine intentionality of the universe in his book entitled “The Phenomenon of Man.” In short, he describes how the history of the world and the evolution of living beings leads to the summit of God’s creation in the human person.