A Thinking Reed

Category: Science and Religion

  • Schleiermacher on the historicity of the creation stories

    In the part in The Christian Faith on creation and preservation, Schleiermacher takes a surprisingly (to me, anyway) modern-seeming approach to the biblical creation stories. He argues that the doctrine of creation is intended to safeguard two points: (1) that everything that exists other than God is ultimately dependent on God and (2) that God was under no “external” constraints in creating, such as being limited by some pre-existent “stuff.”

    Consequently, Christians have no religious stake in any particular scientific or speculative account of the origins of the world. Schleiermacher notes that

    further elaboration of the doctrine of Creation in Dogmatics comes down to us from the times when material even for natural science was taken from the Scriptures and when the elements of all higher knowledge lay hidden in Theology. Hence the complete separation of these two involves our handing over this subject to natural science, which, carrying its researches backward into time, may lead us back to the forces and masses that formed the world, or even further still. (Christian Faith, 40.1)

    He concedes that the “Mosaic” account of creation was accepted as historical by the Reformers, but notes that the various Protestant confessions do not commit the church to that view. He also observes the allegorical interpretation of the “six days” was offered by the Jewish philosopher Philo and that “there always survived a somewhat obscure but healthy feeling that the old record must not be treated as historical in our sense of the word” (40.2).  Even if it was conceded, however, that the account in Genesis was historical, “it would only follow that in this way we had attained to a scientific insight we could not otherwise have acquired” (40.2). This would not be an article of faith in the proper sense, because it does not provide a greater elucidation of the feeling of absolute dependence.

    Schleiermacher takes this route in part because of his separation of philosophy and natural science from religion. Religion is rooted in the experience of absolute dependence, and everything related to dogmatic theology is an elaboration of that experience, as it occurs in the community of faith. But even if we don’t go all the way with Schleiermacher here, we can still agree that what faith says about the dependence of the world on God is a different kind of claim from the theories offered by science about the world’s origin and development.

  • Human origins, sin, and “fiduciary” atonement

    This article by theologian George L. Murphy today is a very helpful discussion of how an evolutionary understanding of human origins affects the Christian doctrines of sin and salvation. Murphy begins by arguing that the evolutionary account is more consistent with a broadly “Eastern” view of original sin (Irenaeus) than with a “Western” one (Augustine). That is to say, humanity was not created perfect but rather was made good but immature. The fall into sin consisted of a deviation from the path God intended us to travel toward the new creation:

    We have then a picture of a divinely intended growth of humanity rather than the appearance of fully mature persons. But once sin comes into the world that growth is distorted. […] The picture that we get in the early chapters of Genesis is not so much one of a single abrupt “fall” from perfection in Genesis 3 but of a gradual “falling away” that begins there and worsens in succeeding chapters, which is the point made in Genesis 6:5-7 as it introduces the Flood story.

    The root of this “falling away” is a failure to trust God and that our good consists in following the path God intends for us:

    Humanity could, with difficulty, have followed the path of development that God intended, for we are not hardwired, either through genes or enculturation, to behave in particular ways. Temptations would, however, have been strong. Sin was, in words of Reinhold Niebuhr, not “necessary” but “inevitable.”

    Refusing to trust and obey God, humanity turned from the goal that God intended and chose another path. Soon we had gone astray. Moving away from God, we were lost in the woods and night was falling.

    The longer this goes on, the more deeply successive generations are mired in sin, due to a combination of genetic endowment and social-cultural environment. And our idols proliferate as we put our trust in finite things instead of God.

    In light of this understanding of sin as departure from the divinely willed path of development, Murphy proposes an account of salvation that emphasizes new creation. “Since the basic problem as I’ve sketched it is that sin has gotten human history off course, new creation can be spoken of as reorientation of the trajectory of creation.”

    Drawing on the thought of Lutheran theologian Gerhard Forde, Murphy sketches an account of the atonement that focuses on how the death and resurrection of Jesus concretely bring reconciliation (at-one-ment) between humanity and God by creating trust (i.e., faith).

    The fundamental problem that got humanity going on the wrong road, moving away from God, is failure to put our trust in the true God. Instead, as Paul argues in Romans 1, people place their confidence in all kinds of idols. That is why humanity was estranged from God, and that is what God had to correct in order to turn the course of history back to his intended goal—that is, to reconcile humanity with himself. God must destroy our faith in idols and create faith in himself.

    In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God acts to destroy our trust in these idols and create trust in him. The cross shows us that those things we put our trust in (e.g., governments, religion, morality) can become the instruments by which God-in-the-flesh is killed! But the resurrection shows that God returns as the crucified one who brings not condemnation, but peace.

    Murphy calls this a “fiducial influence” theory of the atonement. Like the more familiar “moral influence” theories associated with Peter Abelard, this account emphasizes that it’s humans who need to be reconciled to God, not vice versa, and that the cross of Christ is what makes possible that needed transformation. It differs, however, in emphasizing that it’s faith, not morality, that saves us.

    The “Christ-event” creates this trust/faith, which makes possible our re-orientation onto the path God intended for us:

    God’s initial work of bringing sinners from spiritual death is followed by continual renewal of faith and sanctification throughout life. The lives of people are turned back toward God, part of the process in which God reorients the course of creation toward accomplishment of his plan spoken of in Ephesians 1:10, to unite all things in Christ.

    This re-orientation has social and even cosmic implications, as “a renewed humanity taking seriously God’s call to care for the earth as God’s garden and to exercise responsible stewardship for creation.” Being rightly related to God allows us to be rightly related to each other and to the rest of creation.

    I’ve long found Forde’s discussion of the atonement to be helpful because of its focus on how the concrete actuality of the cross effects reconciliation (rather than on some metaphysical “transaction” happening behind the scenes). And I agree with Murphy that his “fiduciary” theory is more consistent with an evolutionary understanding of human origins than certain traditional atonement theories–for example those which presuppose that physical death is a result of human sin.

  • Evolution and “making God the author of evil”

    I’ve argued before that the question of a “historical” Adam and Eve and the related question of a “historical” Fall is not a “gospel issue.” That is to say, universal human sinfulness is such a self-evident fact that the question of its origin is secondary. The gospel speaks to this phenomenon of universal sinfulness with its offer of universal grace.

    But as Richard Beck points out in a thought-provoking post, the hard problem evolution poses for orthodox Christian theology isn’t one of soteriology (what are we saved from and how are we saved) but one of theodicy (how can an all-good God permit such evil as we see in our world). Beck is responding to a critique of evangelical scholar Peter Enns’ book The Evolution of Adam by neo-Calvinist theologian James K.A. Smith. Briefly, Smith doesn’t think Enns takes seriously enough the importance of the orthodox doctrine of the Fall. And Beck thinks that Smith may be right that Enns, by focusing on the origin of humanity, may overlook the broader context that brings the theodicy issue to the fore.

    The problem is this: if the evolutionary story of how life came into being is right (and it’s cleary the best account going), then it looks like evil (suffering, death, sickness, predation, etc.) is built into creation so to speak. In other words, if God uses evolution to bring life into existence–as “theistic” evolutionists contend–then it seems that God is directly responsible for the evil that attends this process. And if that’s so, then can we say that God is truly wholly good?

    Beck argues that the point of the traditional doctrine of the Fall isn’t so much to account for human sinfulness as it is to safeguard God’s goodness by exculpating God from responsibility for the existence of evil. He goes on to point out, however, that the orthodox story isn’t quite as air-tight in safeguarding God’s goodness as we might think. He notes, for instance, that in the Bible the serpent (representing evil?) is already present in the garden, tempting Adam and Eve. No account is given of its origin. Only much later was the story of a “fall” of Satan and his angels from heaven posited as a kind of prequel to the Adam and Eve story. And needless to say, this just pushes the problem back a step–after all, whence comes the angels’ propensity toward sin? St. Augustine, for one, rather famously wrestled with this question and never reached a wholly satisfactory solution.

    Beck concludes:

    At the end of the day, theodicy doesn’t really boil down to the origins of evil. It boils down to this: Why’d God do it in the first place? Why, given how things turned out, did an all-knowing and all-loving God pull the trigger on Creation? Why’d God do it?

    No one knows of course. Not Smith. Not Enns. Not me. My point here is simply to note that this is a live and acute question for everybody. So I think it right and proper for Smith to point this out for Enns. But the same question is pointed at orthodox theology and it doesn’t have any better answers, just a “mystery” that allows it, often in cowardly ways, to retreat from answering the questions directly.

    Theodicy has always been the root problem of Christian theology, orthodox or heterodox. There’s no getting around that. The problem is no less acute here than there.

    Readers may be aware of my ongoing interest in this problem. For instance, in my blogging on Christopher Southgate’s book on animal theodicy, I discussed his “only way” argument. This is the argument that creating by means of an evolutionary process–with all that entails in terms of evil and suffering–was the only way for God to get creatures like us in the context of a law-governed universe. God is “off the hook” as it were because there was no other way for God to achieve his ends. Whatever problems there may be with this view (and there are some), it does try to account for evil in a way that doesn’t make God the author of (avoidable) evil. But as Beck says, this is a challenge for all theology, whether it accepts evolution or not.

  • Is belief in a historical Adam a “gospel issue”?

    I came across this post by James McGrath–“Ten Really Bad Reasons to Believe in a Historical Adam“–which was a response to a post by Reformed blogger Kevin DeYoung arguing for the necessity of belief in a historical Adam.

    One reason DeYoung offers that I’ve seen emphasized elsewhere is that without belief in a historical Adam and a historical “Fall,” there is no need for the gospel.

    Here’s DeYoung:

    9. Without a historical Adam, Paul’s doctrine of original sin and guilt does not hold together.

    As James McGrath points out, there’s a bit of sleight-of-hand going on here when DeYoung refers to “Paul’s doctrine of original sin and guilt.” The traditional Reformed doctrine of original sin and guilt is one–and certainly not the only–interpretation of what Paul thought.

    That traditional Reformed view holds that from Adam’s original sin of disobedience the rest of humanity has inherited both a propensity toward sin and the guilt of that sin, which merits eternal damnation. Only, the story continues, by pleading the Atonement of Christ can we be delivered from that guilt and its attendant punishment.

    But if you don’t think this is an appropriate interpretation of the biblical teaching, then the alleged necessity of positing a historical Adam disappears. For example, the Eastern Orthodox churches don’t teach the doctrine of “orignial guilt” as formulated by, say, Augustine and the Reformers. They acknowledge that humanity has an innate tendency toward sin, but this isn’t the same thing as saying that we’re guilty for something Adam did.

    In fact, even leaving aside historical or biological considerations, the idea that God “imputes” Adam’s guilt to the rest of humanity is objectionable on moral grounds. How can it possibly be just for God to hold people accountable for–to the extent of condemning them to eternal hellfire–something over which they had no control and in fact happened before they were even born? You can avoid this problem by embraciing a voluntarist conception of divine goodness, but that’s a price many people aren’t willing to pay.

    What’s really puzzling to me about a view like DeYoung’s, though, is that it seems to imply that we need a historical Adam in order to recognize our need for salvation. But people don’t respond to the gospel because they’ve already accepted some theory about original sin; they respond to it because it addresses our experience of evil, suffering, and guilt. In other words, if someone asks “How do you know we need saved?”, the answer is “Look around!”

    You don’t need to believe in a historical Adam to see that the human situation is in need of healing. The human predicament is one of subjection to suffering and evil, and complicity in the ongoing cycle of victimization and violence. And the Christian gospel is that, in Jesus, God has done something about this situation: specifically, God has revealed and enacted the divine love and forgiveness, has come to share our life and our sufferings, has reconciled humanity to the divine nature, and has raised human nature to eternal life. As far as I can see, the truth of this doesn’t depend on accepting a particular theory about the historical existence of Adam or the origin of sin.

  • Making Sense of Evolution: God of the future

    John Haught concludes Making Sense of Evolution with some reflections on how an evolutionary picture of the world should inform–and even transform–our view of God. As we’ve seen, Haught thinks that evolutionary science reveals a creation that is unfinished and in process, analogous to an unfolding drama rather than a perfectly engineered machine. And how we think of creation has implications for how we should think of God.

    Specifically, he argues that we should think of God as the world’s “Absolute Future”–the power of new possibilities, of liberation and promise. God is not one cause among others within the world; rather, with classical theology, Haught affirms that God is the ground of all possible being, and the one who underlies and envelops the entire drama of cosmic evolution, drawing it toward its final consummation. As with any dramatic narrative, its meaning and significance can’t be fully grasped until the end. The world doesn’t point unambiguously to the omniscient designer of high-modernist natural theology; we can only discern meaning and direction partially because we are in medias res.

    Drawing on the work of Alfred North Whitehead and Teilhard de Chardin, Haught proposes that God beckons or lures creation forward, continually presenting it with new possibilities for greater complexity and beauty.

    The ultimate explanation of evolution is the coming (or advent) of God into the world from out of an endlessly expansive future. For Christians, the God who comes from the future becomes incarnate in Christ; in the ongoing evolution of life, the Spirit of Christ–the Holy Spirit–animates the whole of creation so that all things anticipate a final convergence in the wide embrace of God the Father. In the depths of evolution and cosmic process, what is really going on, therefore, is the Trinitarian drama: God the Father speaks the Word that becomes the incarnate center and goal of the universe, and the whole universe is now being transformed into God’s bodily abode by the power of the Holy Spirit. (pp. 138-9)

    This story of “what is really going on” isn’t in conflict with the story that natural science tells, Haught maintains. Theology deals in ultimate explanations; science in penultimate ones. Evolutionary naturalists sometimes take Darwinian science to entail a materialistic worldview, but this is, Haught says, to confuse levels of explanation. He contrasts a “metaphysics of the past” with a “metaphysics of the future.” The former says that what’s “really real” are the basic physical particles, and everything else is to be explained as nothing but a rearrangement of these particles over time. A metaphysics of the future, however, sees the ultimate explanation of things as coming from their ultimate end–which is an increasing complexity. From the very beginning matter is latent with the potential for mind and spirit. “The domain of thought has its proper home in nature, and this places in doubt the evolutionary materialist’s assumption that the universe is essentially mindless and hence devoid of purpose” (p. 145). The idea of matter without mind or spirit is a kind of abstraction from the fullness of experienced reality. This inward, spiritual aspect is what allows the Spirit of God to call forth creation’s potential for new and richer forms of existence.

    If a theology of evolution questions the materialist dogma that only matter is “really real” while mind and spirit are essentially epiphenomena, it also takes issue with certain theologies that treat the physical world as at best a backdrop to the human story and at worst as a prison from which human souls need to be “harvested.” Whether in the lurid “Rapture” mythology of popular apocalypticism or in more sophisticated versions, this theology agrees with materialism that mind is essentially not at home in the universe. By contrast, Haught-ian evolutionary theology takes a much more holistic view. This has implications for spirituality and ethics: our task is not to maintain our moral or doctrinal purity so we can escape this perishing world into a heavenly afterlife. Instead, our task is to contribute, in our own small way, to what could be called the “divinization” of creation–“the noble enterprise of bringing a whole universe closer to unity and fulfillment in God” (p. 148).

    (Previous posts on John Haught’s Making Sense of Evolution: 1|2|3.)

  • Evolutionary theology as theology of the cross

    Though he doesn’t use the same language, John Haught argues, in effect, that Intelligent Design is an example of what Lutherans call the “theology of glory” because it purports to discern God in obvious and outward ways (in this case, by finding “scientific” evidence of design in nature). For a theology of the cross, by contrast, God is hidden and is most present under the signs of weakness and suffering, preeminently in the cross of Christ. Similarly, Haught argues that God can be discerned in the natural processes of evolution not in obvious instances of design, but as the abysmal depth that underlies or grounds the entire process–as the compassionate God who enters into solidarity with the sufferings and travails of creation. This requires a different kind of discernment than that offered by ID’s theology of glory:

    [D]epth has two faces. It is not just abyss but also ground, terrifying at first, but ultimately liberating and redemptive. Looking earnestly into the depth of everything involves a kind of death, but it also promises resurrection. The breakdown of our narrow human ideals of design, as the book of Job had already made clear, is an abysmal experience. Yet it is the first step toward a wider and deeper sense of creation’s beauty than we ever could have reached otherwise. Hence, challenges such as Darwin’s to our constricted religious and ethical ideals of design should not come as an insurmountable difficulty, at least to a biblically grounded spiritual vision.

    Christianity itself rose up from the ashes of a kind of design death. To his friends, Jesus’ own execution seemed, at least at first, to prove only the powerlessness of God to carry out the divine plan. Nevertheless, the early Christian community eventually came to interpret Jesus’ death by crucifixion as the decisive opening onto the final victory of life over death. The cross reveals to Christians, beneath all disillusionment with what we had taken to be a benign providential plan, the unsurpassable beauty of a self-sacrificing God, who draws near to the creation and embraces the struggles, failures, and achievements of design death, including that introduced by Darwin, as entry into the abyss of the cross that God also bears, the cross through which one can be brought to the deep experience of resurrection. In the context of Christian faith, the drama of evolution merges inseparably with the (abysmal) death and (grounding) resurrection of Jesus and, in him, with the eternal drama that is the Trinitarian life of God. (Making Sense of Evolution, p. 93)

    Creation doesn’t provide compelling evidence of a benevolent providence. But certain experiences can give us a glimpse of the inexhaustible depth at the root of the entire creative process. For Haught, when we give up the quest to demonstrate “design” in nature, we are freed to enter into a deeper engagement both with creation and with God.

  • Making Sense of Evolution: Design or drama?

    As we saw earlier, John Haught thinks it’s something of a category mistake to oppose natural selection to divine action, as though these were explanations operating on the same causal level. As he develops his theology of evolution, Haught emphasizes that a major source of this confusion is thinking of God as a “designer.” This conjures up images of creation as a perfectly engineered machine and God as an omniscient engineer. But as naturalists like Dawkins and Dennett are fond of pointing out, the natural world doesn’t look like a perfectly engineered piece of machinery. It’s far messier and apparently wasteful than anything a competent engineer would come up with, considering the vast stretches of time it’s taken for life to develop and the countless billions of organisms that have perished in the struggle for existence. For this engineering mentality, the idea that the world could be the creation of a wise and benevolent God seems incredible.

    Operating on similar assumptions, proponents of creationism or intelligent design try to salvage the reputation of God the engineer by rejecting the Darwinian account of life’s development, in part or in whole. If each species is a special creation of God, then we don’t need to posit the mind-boggling stretches of time and the vast waste that Darwinism seems to require. Once again, then, Haught argues that atheistic naturalism and creationism share a crucial premise: that God, if he exists, ought to resemble an omni-competent engineer. They differ only in whether the world can be seen as the product of such an engineering effort.

    Haught thinks we should reject this God-as-engineer image altogether. God doesn’t engineer the world according to some heavenly plan where every detail is planned out in advance. God is better thought of as establishing the conditions under which the world can unfold according to its own immanent principles. God makes the world to make itself. This allows us to see the evolutionary process as a much more open-ended affair than the design model permits. God, Haught says, is the world’s “Absolute Future,” the one who calls it into new stages and forms of being. The world is not established according to a pre-ordained plan, but instead by the interplay of continuity and novelty that occurs throughout vast stretches of time.

    Thus Haught proposes that we see evolution (including its cosmic preconditions) as analogous to a dramatic narrative unfolding “within” the being of God. Like a narrative, the meaning of the whole may not be evident until we reach the end. And like a narrative, the cosmic drama doesn’t necessarily take the shortest route between point A and point B, the way an engineer might prefer. The “waste” of evolution may in fact, Haught says, be the result of divine liberality. Life has taken the winding course it has, not because of a flawed or absent “design,” but because God allows creation to unfold according to its own principles.

    Haught contends that this picture is actually more biblical than the designer-god of creationism. The God of the Bible is a God of “liberation and promise rather than the imposition of design” (p. 64) and “whenever the idea of God is separated from the conjugate themes of freedom and futurity, it is an idolatrous distortion” (p. 65).

    A properly biblical theology of nature will view divine wisdom, providence, and compassion less as a guarantee of the world’s safety–as the idea of design encourages–than as an unbounded self-emptying graciousness that grants the world an open space and generous amount of time to become more, and in doing so gives it ample opportunity to participate in its own creative self-transformation. A God of freedom and promise invites, and does not compel, the creation to experiment with many possible ways of being, allowing it to make “mistakes” in the process. This is the God of evolution–one who honors and respects the indeterminacy and narrative openness of creation, and in this way ennobles it. (p. 65)

    This still leaves a lot of open questions, like the how God influences the ongoing drama of life, as well as the question of theodicy (both of which I hope Haught will address later in the book). But the overall picture is, I think, appealing. When Christian theology overemphasizes “design,” the specter of divine determinism is never far away. And this always seems to result in a distorted and morally disturbing view of God. On Haught’s view, God is at work in creation, but as the empowering source of creaturely freedom, not the all-determining cause of everything that happens.

  • Making Sense of Evolution: Multi-layered explanation

    I’m reading Catholic theologian John Haught’s Making Sense of Evolution: Darwin, God, and the Drama of Life. Haught is a well-known advocate of “theistic evolution” and argues that theology hasn’t adequately come to grips with Darwin’s impact on our understanding of the world, which he thinks should have serious repercussions on key theological concepts.

    Theistic evolution represents the oft-neglected middle ground between atheistic naturalists and creationists or intelligent design proponents, who tend to hog all the attention. Despite their high profile in the science and religion debates, Haught contends that naturalists and creationists/IDers make the same kind of mistake in thinking about God and evolution. They both think that God and natural selection are providing the same kind of explanation for the development of life. Evolutionary naturalists conclude that since natural selection is scientifically well-supported, there’s no role for God to play in the unfolding drama of evolution. Creationists/IDers agree that natural selection excludes any role for God, so they try to attack natural selection as an insufficient explanation.

    According to Haught, treating God and natural selection as competing explanations is a confusion of different “levels” or “layers” of explanation. He uses the analogy of a printed page in a book, which can be explained at a number of levels: in terms of a chemical analysis of ink on paper, the mechanics of the printing press, the ideas that the author was trying to express, the intention of the publisher in publishing a book on a particular topic, etc. None of these explanations contradicts or excludes any of the others. They each operate at a different “layer” of explanation.

    Similarly, Haught argues, natural selection provides (to the best of our knowledge) a complete explanation for the development of life at its own level. But that doesn’t mean there’s no role for God. To the extent that God enters the picture, it’s at a different level or layer. An appropriate theology of evolution will deny the atheistic conclusion that evolution proves there’s no God and no role for divine providence in the development of life; but it will also avoid the “god of the gaps”-style arguments favored by creationists and IDers. Haught intends to flesh out his understanding of how God acts in a world of evolutionary change throughout the rest of the book. I’ll likely be blogging my thoughts on this as I go.

  • Friday links

    –Augustinian and Pelagian software.

    –A John Polkinghorne lecture on science and religion.

    –Batman as plutocrat.

    –Korn and Limp Bizkit: the soundtrack to nihilism.

    –Martha Nussbaum on John Stuart Mill: between Bentham and Aristotle.

    –The disconnect between the science and economics of climate change.

    –Peter Berger, who describes himself as a political conservative and a theological liberal, has some reflections on same-sex marriage.

    –The trailer for the X-Men prequel: “X-Men: First Class.”

    –Toward an agenda for the left.

    –B. R. Meyers’ moral crusade against foodie-ism.

    –Noam Chomsky on how global warming became a “liberal hoax” (and a bunch of other stuff).

    ADDED LATER: Sunken ship commanded by real-life ‘Moby Dick’ captain discovered. And here’s a link to the “Power Moby-Dick” website referred to in the article.

  • Friday links

    –Do extraterrestrials have original sin?

    –Brandon on Sam Harris’s argument for a science of morality

    –How to build a progressive tea party

    –Fox News thinks there’s only one English translation of the Bible

    –This critique of Mad Men from the New York Review of Books scores some points

    –A video (in two parts) featuring the late philosopher G.A. Cohen making the case against capitalism

    –Theo Hobson on the religious crisis of American liberalism

    –The case for casting Parks and Recreation’s Rashida Jones as Lois Lane in the upcoming Superman reboot