“…when Theodore Roosevelt, to his lasting discredit, referred to Thomas Paine, without having read him, as ‘a filthy little atheist,’ he was slandering someone whose belief in the traditional doctrines of the existence of a Supreme Power and the immortality of the Soul was much more unqualified than the belief of two thinkers who have been characterized as the leading Protestant theologians of the twentieth century–Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr.” –Sydney Hook, from his introduction to Common Sense, Rights of Man, and Other Essential Writings of Thomas Paine
Category: Theology & Faith
-
Is theistic evolution incoherent?
At the First Things blog, Joe Carter has a post challenging the coherence of “theistic evolution.” This view, held by people like Kenneth Miller, accepts the orthodox Darwinist position that the evolution of human beings did not require any special intervention by God (contra both old-school creationists and Intelligent Design proponents). Further, according to an article that Carter quotes, Miller denies that God has human beings specifically in mind. Instead, God “set up” the evolutionary process so that some intelligent creatures capable of offering praise to their Creator would emerge, but not necessarily human beings.
Carter writes:
If God did not have a plan for the specific outcome of evolution, as MIller contends, then he must have at least had a general plan for the process to create some form of creature with “exceptional mental capabilities.” But then the process would no longer be undirected, which means that it is not compatible with the Darwinian view of evolution.
Ironically, the view held by [Francis] Collins and Miller shares much in common with the position of creationists. If evolution is random and undirected then the probability of a “creature capable of praising Him” (i.e., a being similar to humans) coming into existence is extremely low. God would likely need to run the experiment a number of times to get the desired outcome and then select that instantiation (maybe that’s why we have the multiverse). This special selection of results, however, is not so different than creationist’s view of special creation—in each God simply chooses the outcome he desires. Also, Collins’ view of God making evolution appear undirected is similar to the idea that he planted dinosaur fossils and created geological strata to fool us into thinking the earth has been around more than 6,000 years. Creationists have to interpret the evidence to fit their theological preconceptions; Collins has to interpret the evidence to fit his theoretical preconceptions.
I think Carter goes astray here by taking the language of “random and undirected” too literally. Clearly, evolution is not random in any absolute sense: it operates within the constraints provided locally by the environment and the qualities possessed by organisms, and globally by the fundamental constituents of the universe (e.g, the laws that govern the behavior of subatomic particles). There are reasons–which have been widely canvassed–for thinking that the emergence of intelligent life is, if not inevitable, then at least intelligible given the nature of our universe. All a theistic evolutionist is committed to is that God set up those fundamental constraints in such a way that He could foresee–at least with a high degree of probability–that intelligent life would emerge at some point.
The difference between the theistic evolutionist and the ID proponent is that the former doesn’t think we need to appeal to special divine intervention to explain how life (including human life) evolved. We can ask why the universe has the fundamental constituents it does and not others, and this is where the theistic evolutionist might bring in God. But it’s important to note that this doesn’t present a conflict with orthodox Darwinism; biologists qua biologists don’t ask, much less answer, the question of why the universe has the basic features it does. That’s a properly philosophical (and perhaps theological) question. The fact that a high percentage of evolutionary biologists are atheists isn’t particularly relevant. The theistic evolution position is an interpretation of the process as a whole, not an appeal to God as one causal input among others.
I should add that I’m not personally dogmatically committed to the view that God never intervenes in the evolutionary process. There are a variety of models on offer for thinking about how God might do that without giving up the idea of a basically law-like process. Nevertheless, the methodological naturalism of biology is entirely appropriate; I just don’t see how ID constitutes a research program. What we can and should do as Christians is offer a way of integrating the findings of the sciences with a richer picture of reality that takes account of all our experience (moral, aesthetic, religious, etc.). Reality is a many-layered thing.
It also strikes me that Kenneth Miller’s statement that human beings are “an afterthought, a minor detail, a happenstance in a history that might just as well have left us out” is a salutary and properly humbling one. Christian theology has been entirely too anthropocentric, and a more theocentric and creation-centric perspective is urgently needed.
UPDATE: See also this post from the ubiquitous John Schwenkler who, in addition to his other gigs, is now blogging at “dotCommonweal,” the Commonweal magazine blog. I should note, in clarification, that I was assuming, for the purposes of this post, that God is not eternal in the traditional sense of being “outside” of time altogether. I have some problems with the traditional view of God’s timelessness, and I think attributing temporality to God can be combined with a sufficiently robust notion of divine transcendence. I recognize that this is a minority position in the tradition, and John’s approach is certainly a legitimate one to take.
-
Clergy and theological/liturgical experimentation
Derek has a good post on those he calls spiritual adventurers/seekers in the Episcopal Church, in the context of debates about messing around with the liturgy. As Derek points out, the liturgy (including, I’d emphasize, the creeds) provides guard rails for the life of the church. A priest or pastor who ignores these for the sake of following his or her own spiritual bliss is doing a disservice to the congregation he or she has been called to serve.
For whatever reason, this seems to be a more prominent phenomenon in TEC than in the ELCA. I don’t know if this is because Lutheranism has a more defined theology, or because the Episcopal priesthood attracts more free spirits, or if it’s some other reason altogether. Personally, I want my pastor to be more theologically conservative than I am. As a layperson I prize my freedom to explore theological possibilities and entertain outlandish and even heterodox theories. Not to say that we should have a double standard for laypeople and clergy, or that laypeople don’t have responsibilities to uphold the faith–we do, as part of our baptismal covenant. But someone who is called to the pastorate/priesthood carries a much heavier and more public burden to hew to orthodoxy in preaching, teaching, and leading worship.
And yet, many of the great reformers, saints, and mystics of the church who were also ordained clergy have pushed the envelope of what’s acceptable and orthodox. (A certain Augustinian monk comes to mind.) If anything, the church has often erred on the side of suppressing the spirit of freedom that allows new insights to be unearthed. This is probably not the biggest problem in mainline churches today where, if anything, an overly-liberal, anything goes attitude holds sway in many quarters. One of Derek’s concluding points strikes the appropriate note:
On one-hand, I’m open to legitimate spiritual adventurism on the part of the clergy in so far as it reflects necessary growth and listening to the Spirit and transformation into the Mind of Christ. On the other hand, I believe that much of it reflects a failure of our discernment and formation processes. Yes, it’s fine to deepen, but I’m seeing a lot more wandering around than rooting down.
I guess the question–which is hard to answer in particular cases–is whether someone’s theological, spiritual, or liturgical gyrations are occurring because they’re on a quest for self-fulfillment or self-expression, or because of a deepening fidelity to Christ and his gospel. I think Derek is right that formation is a prerequisite here–both for clergy and laity–to ensure that we are grounded in the tradition before proposing changes to it. And community discernment is necessary to “test the spirits” of any proposed innovations.
-
Debating Celtic Christianity
There’s a lively conversation going on downblog on the “Use and abuse of Celtic Christianity” post from a few weeks back. Welcome to any new readers! I don’t have much to contribute to the discussion at this point, but I’m happy to see it keep going.
-
Priorities
I like this, from Brandon:
Here and there over the past few years I’ve seen a great many Christians who are of the opinion that argument with the so-called New Atheists should be a major priority among Christians, and I recently saw another instance of this. They don’t generally ask my advice, but whenever people do, I always suggest that this is exactly the wrong way to go. The fact of the matter is, however important they may seem to themselves, and however visible they may be, they are of extraordinarily minute importance in the vast concerns of the Church. Our relations with Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, and Buddhists are all vastly more important, and our relations with our fellow Christians more important still. And of all the foes we fight in our fight against the World, the darkness of the Zeitgeist, the New Atheists are puppy dogs; it is foolish to spend our time focusing so much on the little pups that we ignore the wolves. And of all the problems we face, we ourselves are more of a problem for us than they are; particularly the absurd ease with which we all are distracted from what is truly important by the fact of who happens to have made it to the bestseller list recently, or by some other utterly frivolous thing. And what is truly important, of course, is clear: Love God and neighbor, and when we somehow fail to do so, set out again and again until with God’s grace we succeed. Everything else is hobby.
When’s the last time you saw a serious Christian engagement with Sikhism?
-
Wrestling with the Bible
Via Lynn, a post written from a Jewish perspective on interpreting the Torah/Bible:
Those of us who study seriously, and those of us who do not reject the plain facts of history, are forced to acknowledge that the Bible as we know it is a complicated amalgamation of texts, edited and organized by imperfect human beings, frequently in the service of imperfect human purposes. It is a huge collection of books, containing a great range of perspectives, a great range of agendas, which frequently contradict one another.
One response to this is to say that if Torah bears the marks of the hands of human beings, if it cannot be said to be an inerrant divine document, then there is no point at all, and all interpretations are arbitrary. Another is to argue that, contradictions and gruesome horrors aside, the Bible is nonetheless the perfect and infallible word of God. Perhaps those who believe the latter are willing to believe that God is a hypocrite; more likely, they’re willing to turn a blind eye to difficult passages, willing to excuse themselves from the obligation of study, willing to quote passages to others when it’s convenient but not willing to struggle with difficult passages themselves.
But there is a third response: We can accept that the Torah has been edited and organized by human beings, and is therefore incomplete and imperfect — and we can simultaneously hold that the Torah contains the word of God, and that study can allow us to contemplate and draw closer to God.
The author disclaims any application of this to Christianity, but I’m inclined to agree with several of her commenters that it’s very relevant.
Even though it was obviously written over a much shorter period of time, the New Testament contains multiple perspectives on the meaning of Jesus, not all of them obviously compatible. It further says things that seem to contradict some of what we now know (or believe). Add to this the fact that Christians include the “Hebrew Bible” among sacred scripture and you’ve got a big, unwieldy collection of literature bursting with different (though related) takes on who God is and what God is up to.
I think everyone, whether they admit it or not, has a “canon within the canon” that they use to interpret and prioritize other parts of the Bible. For Luther, the Bible was the manger in which Christ lay, and Christ was the key to understanding scripture. He found the message of God’s grace most forcefully set forth in Romans and the Gospel of John, among other places, and used this as a yardstick of sorts for making discriminations (including his notorious judgment that the Epistle of James was a “letter of straw”). This moves us away from seeing the authority of the Bible in some textual property like innerrancy and toward seeing it as belonging to the message (and, maybe, the fruits this message produces in people’s lives?). There’s obviously a kind of hermeneutic circle here, but not necessarily a vicious one. After all, the Bible as we know it owes its existence to the church, which itself is a creature of the proclamation of the Gospel.
Personally, the more I read the Bible, the more I rejoice in the different perspectives there. It’s liberating to let go of the impulse to organize it into some architectonic theological structure where every book and passage finds its neatly assigned place. The real Bible (as opposed to the mythical Bible that’s often used as a theological or political bludgeon) is a lot messier and more interesting than that. Recognizing this can allow for an ongoing dialogue or dialectic where different parts of the Bible challenge and provoke us, instead of being absorbed Borg-style into a predigested theology. At the same time, though, the core proclamation of God’s grace and liberation in Jesus can provide assurance that the God we encounter in Scripture is one who is for us and whom we can trust, even in the midst of passages that are baffling, challenging, or even offensive.
-
Eagleton on Jesus and “sprituality”
I haven’t read literary critic Terry Eagleton’s new book on the “new atheists,” and I’m frankly not that interested in the whole new atheist phenomenon period (I haven’t seen much to indicate that one wouldn’t be much better off reading, say, David Hume for razor-sharp critiques of religion). But Kim at “Connexions” has some provocative quotes from Eagleton here and here.
My one worry about Eagleton is that he just wants to use Christianity as a bludgeon to beat capitalism with, and isn’t particularly interested in whether or not it’s true. I can recommend his earlier book After Theory, though.
-
Distinctivism in practice
I spent the weekend in Boston attending the wedding of some good friends. The ceremony itself was a Hindu-Christian fusion, certainly a first for me–Hindu and Christian prayers, blessings, readings, and rituals were interspersed throughout. There was also a joyfulness in parts of the service that seems all too absent from much mainstream Christian worship, though I can hardly say whether or not that’s typical of Hindu worship.
While the service was beautiful and moving, I’m not entirely sure what to make of it theologically. On the face of things, Hinduism can probably incorporate elements of Christianity more comfortably than the reverse. It seems to me anyway that Jesus could be absorbed into the Hindu pantheon more readily than Christianity can make peace with, say, prayers to Ganesh.
On the other hand, at least as I understand it, some schools of Hinduism see the various deities as manifestations of an underlying divine reality. Could Christianity affirm the same? Parts of the Bible do portray angels as intermediaries of sorts between God and humanity, and the saints have often functioned kind of like demigods who mediate divine power (in practice if not theory).
So, is there room in Christian cosmology for seeing Hindu deities as manifestations of the divine to a particular people, alongside God’s self-manifestation to Israel? Or maybe they could be viewed as archetypal imaginative responses to divine revelation, and not necessarily entities with an independent existence. I certainly can’t dismiss a tradition as wide and deep and ancient as Hinduism. But how does that fit with the belief that God’s definitive revelation was in Jesus?
I think, as Christians, the best approach is not to start out assuming we know how other religions fit into God’s will for the world, but to be willing to learn from them, and even open to the possibility of being by transformed by them.
A Thinking Reed 