16th–20th centuries

Creation, Science and Evolution: from the Scientific Revolution to Tennant, Teilhard de Chardin and Ramm

Copernicus's discoveries destroyed the three-tiered medieval picture of the world, and the culmination of the scientific revolution was Newton's universe as an orderly mechanism subject to laws; humanity ceased to be the center of creation. Lane distinguishes three responses of theologians to Darwin's theory: to reject it, to adapt it to traditional theology, or to reinterpret theology in the light of evolution. Tennant understood the impulses inherited from animals as merely the "material" of sin, and sin itself as an act of the will against conscience. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin saw all reality evolving according to the "law of complexity-consciousness" toward the "Omega point" – Christ; for him sin and evil are an inevitable imperfection and by-product of evolution. Bernard Ramm (1954) denied any contradiction between true science and the Bible and preferred to speak of "progressive creation".