The Creation Story of Genesis "From the Dust" Series @ Biologos

A Conversation About Genesis (RJS)
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/10/11/a-conversation-about-genesis-rjs/

 

by RJS

October 11, 2012

Comments

 

We’ve been looking at the question of beginnings from the perspective of the early church fathers using Peter Bouteneff’s book. The post Tuesday concentrated on Basil – and his Hexaemeron. But it is also useful to listen to what contemporary Christian thinkers and biblical scholars have to say about Genesis.

 

This twelve minute clip comes from the new BioLogos DVD From the Dust directed by Ryan Pettey. An abbreviated version of this clip is contained within the film, the entire clip is included in the bonus footage on the DVD. The film is intended as a conversation starter – and is aimed at a Christian audience addressing the questions that many Christians wrestle with when it comes to science and the Christian faith. In this clip a number of different scholars, biblical scholars, scientists, and theologians comment on Genesis. It is a pretty good line up: Alister McGrath, John Polkinghorne, John Walton, Karen Strand Winslow, Chris Tilling, Nancey Murphy, Peter Enns, Ard Louis, and N. T. Wright.

 

Science and Genesis
N.T. Wright, John Polkinghorne, Allister McGrath

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5bKa92eLkQM

 

 

Biologos "From the Dust" Series

http://biologos.org/resources/from-the-dust

 

 

A couple of highlights. John Walton points out the importance of culture in translation (6:18-6:35):

We’re well aware that people have to translate the language for us. We forget that people have to translate the culture for us. And therefore if we want to get the best benefit from the communication we need to try to enter their world, hear it as the audience would have heard it, as the author would have meant it, and to read it in those terms.

N. T. Wright at 8:17-9:05 reflects on the intent of Genesis 1 – he agrees with Walton, but also takes it in a his own direction.

Telling a story about somebody who constructs something in six days … it’s a temple story, it’s about God making a place for himself to dwell and this is heaven and earth and what you do with that is the last thing is you put an image of the God into this temple and suddenly Genesis 1 instead of it being “were there six days?” or “were there five?” or “were there seven?” or “were they 24 hours?”, it’s actually about when the good creator God made the world he made heaven and earth as the space in which he himself was going to dwell. And putting humans into that construct as a way of both reflecting his own love into the world and drawing out the praise and glory from the world back to himself. And that’s the literal meaning of Genesis.

And again at 10:32-11:05:

This world was made to be God’s abode, God’s home, God’s dwelling. He shared it with us and he now wants to rescue it and redeem it. So that we have to read Genesis for all it’s worth and to say either it’s history or myth is a way of saying I’m not going to study this text for all it’s worth. I’m just going to flatten it out so that it conforms to the cultural questions that my culture today is telling me to ask. And I think that is a form of actually being unfaithful to the text itself.

The whole clip is great – but if you only have time for a small bit the stretch from 8 or 9 minutes to 11 minutes shouldn’t be missed.

 

Basil looked at the text of Genesis 1 in the terms of his day. He didn’t read it with a consciousness of 21st century science, although he did have a sense of the futility of reading it in terms of 4th century science. He and Wright are on the same page in at least one respect, and probably more. The point of Genesis 1 is not science. It is not about concordance with science of the 4th century or the 21st century. It is about God, the glory of the creator and his creation.

 

What do you think of Wrights symphony analogy?

 

Do we tend to read the notes without experiencing the music when we read Genesis, or much of the rest of scripture for that matter?

 

From the Dust is available for purchase from Highway Media or from Amazon, ($20 DVD, $25 Blu-Ray).

 

A study guide for From the Dust has been prepared by David Vosburg, associate professor of chemistry at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. The guide was developed especially for use with college students, but can be used with a much broader group.

 

If you would like to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net.

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

 

 

 

N.T. Wright: "Love Is the Name of the Game"

 

 

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/10/16/love-is-the-name-of-the-game-rjs/

by RJS

October 16, 2012

Comments

 

As I was preparing last week’s post A Conversation About Genesis, I came across the YouTube video of this extended reflection by Tom Wright put out by World Vision as part of a Faith Effect campaign in Australia. This is an excellent clip – well worth the 11 to 12 minutes or so it takes to watch it. In fact, it is well worth the 20 to 30 it takes to listen more than once and mull over some of the ideas.

 

The reflections here draw on the ideas in Wright’s book How God Became King as well of many of his earlier books. (I’d say his latest book, but it is already seven months old – so I am sure there are several since.)

 

NT Wright - extended interview for The Faith Effect

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iTAO74i0eW0

 

 

A few quotes to whet the appetite:

The vision which we find coming into full focus through Jesus actually goes right back to the beginning. It’s there in Genesis. When Jesus talks about what God is doing right now he is constantly invoking the sense of the ancient human vocation. God calls human beings to be his image bearers. (1:40-1:58)

This is how the Kingdom of God comes to earth. Wright goes on to reflect on the way Jesus approached the world and the people around him. The way of Jesus was …

…showing that God is running the world by healing, by bringing hope, by transforming, by bringing justice, by challenging the people who were doing the oppression and the wickedness and then by his own death taking the problems and the pains of all that into himself so that then these people who follow him can be the world transformers. (3:58-4:14)

 

The spread of Christianity …

The way Christianity spread over the first three centuries when the Romans were doing their best to stamp it out, was not simply by people going into the market place and saying Jesus is Lord you must believe in him, they did that too, but by people seeing that here was a community of people who lived in a totally different way. The Christians were known for going and helping people who were not their kith and kin, who were not part of their ethnic group or part of their business interests. If somebody was sick, if somebody was poor, the Christians would go and look after them. They’d say “why do you do that you’ve got nothing to gain by it” and they’d say “well, its because we follow Jesus and this is the way that Jesus does stuff”. So that it is what you do that generates the question to which the answer is Jesus is becoming king through his death and resurrection etcetra. (5:40-6:32)

As we are living as Christians we need to remake our categories and realize that heaven and earth really did come together in the incarnation, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. We are not pinning our flag on God’s map – God did it. Grace transforms us so that we can be transformers. Wright uses this to go on and suggest that we should all be thinking about what God is calling us to do in the whole body of Christ.

 

But it all comes down to Love.

One day, in God’s new heaven and earth reality, Love is the language that we’ll be speaking, and we get to learn it and practice it in advance. It is like learning the songs that they will sing in God’s new world. We learn them and sing them here because we are supposed to people through whom a taste of the new world comes into the present. And again, if you think that that is just private and not something that goes out into the wider world you’ve missed the whole point. The whole point of love is that it is generous and outgoing. And so for Paul and for the other early Christian writers love is not just as it were one virtue among others. Love is almost the name of what it means to be a Christian. (11:24-11:36)

I don’t think Wright goes far enough in that last statement. He leaves some “wiggle-room.” But love is the name of what it means to be a Christian. No qualifier, no "almost." Wright doesn’t use this example – but I will: Living as though God is king means living in and reflecting out love. Love is the name of the game. Love God, love others. This theme runs through the gospels, it runs through Paul and the other New Testament writers. This theme gives a whole new perspective on the entire Old Testament. This isn’t the soft and wimpy approach, diminishing the gospel, it is the whole game. As God loves us so are we to love others.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:43-45)

 

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40)

 

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34-35)

And on, and on, and on (see something of a compilation in this post).

 

Wright’s reflection on the spread of Christianity is particularly important here. Scot put up a graphic on Saturday afternoon that illustrated a Decline in Religion. Some may doubt the reality of this trend – but it is self-evident in my world. Religious faith is viewed by most as unnecessary at best, irrational and dangerous at worst. We will not make a difference by having a better Sunday morning service, by serving better coffee, by having a more extroverted and energetic staff, by avoiding the hard questions, by keeping things shallow and palatable. Nor will we make a difference by focusing on precision in theological expression or the glory and sovereignty of God. We will make a difference by being the people of God such that his love is evident in us and through us. We must first care for the family of the people of God in our local church (why would any one join a family that rejects or marginalizes its own?) and we must also care for others locally and globally, not as an evangelistic gimmick to reel people in and keep churches stocked, but out of genuine love as a reflection of the very love of God. It is what we do and how we reflect God’s love in the world that will generate the questions to which the answer is Jesus is Lord. I am not a pessimist, I think that the Church will thrive through the power of the Spirit, but Christendom is behind us, and if it forces us to focus on the essence of being the people of God, that may be a good thing.

 

Is Love the name of the game?
 

If not, why not? Is the “almost” a justified qualifier?

 
 

If you would like to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net.

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

 

The Death of Poetry by 20th Century Modernism, Part 2/2

We move from what I considered a favorable analysis of 20th Century Modernism's rationalism to a deeply flawed discussion about Postmodernism and Process Theology. Poe and Davis come up short here and this is an instance where "science meets philosophy/theology and each are as large and demanding as the other..." which, to me means, that a good scientist cannot be expected to be a good philosopher/theologian, try as they might (though I applaud any-and-all efforts attempted). Nor do we usually find that "good philosophers/theologians make for good scientists" generally (although John Polkinghorne may be the exception here). And it seems that this book is an instance of these general observations of a theologian and a scientist trying to make sense of science and the bible (God in the Gaps) and a little known theological perspective about God and ourselves called process theology.

Whereas in part 1 after having made a good start with their discussion of Rationalism and the Church, we move into part 2 that is less than steller to find a poor grasp of two subjects. The first is the typical evangelic short-sale of process theology and then the confused-sale of the God-in-the-gaps theology attempting to bridge science with faith by making it a quasi-science. Causing me to make notations within the body of the article below of my observations and disagreements - which are many - in a review that was especially long and not fun to write because of its many erroneous statements and errors.

However, the value of this discussion does show that:

(i) conservative evangelicalism may be now admitting to their dependency and causal relationship upon Modernism. However, until evangelicalism's correspondent placeholds are lifted from their over-abundant dogmatic assertions and systematic doctrines there can be no moving forward for this faith group as a whole. (One that I think Emergent Christianity better validates through its postmodernistic approach to science, philosophy, and theology).

(ii) It also tells of evangelicalism's gross misunderstanding of process theology, which I found revealing and have thusly included my remarks within the body of the text as shown below. I did not expect less but I would've been encouraged to have found a better analysis of process theology than what is laid out here by two "experts" in their fields of theology (Poe) and chemistry (Davis).

(iii) The last value I found is that even in evangelical Christianity we now may find admission that God is as actively "entangled and enmeshed in our world" as we are in "His creation and divine personage." Not that evangelicalism has not been saying this all along. But because they are now trying to speak it from a postmodernistic, process-like version using open theology and an admixture of Emergent Theology as their new, formative voice. And from that attitude can we then find a more generous evangelical admission towards scientific studies and assertions (perhaps even towards brethren that hold a more open view towards an evolutionary understanding of creation).  Along with the absorption of some kind of process-like theology in the future (but more probably in the direction of a revisement of classical and open theology). Time will tell. Or is it, the timing will be telling?

But in whatever case, the point has been made that our modernistic western civilization has been the death knell to poetry and to the storied narrative. One that can be recoverable within postmodernism as it continues to proceed forth in participatory and authenticating ways. Ways that will bear with postmodernism its own forms and versions of obstacles no less than Modernism has experienced. We expect this but can also embrace its turmoil within the ever-expanding worlds of multi-ethnic globalism, the rich and variegated experiences of pluralism and societal individualities, and the technological solidifications portending to our many diversified societies.

Only some form of postmodernism seems most able to allow this diverse symposium of culture, heritage, religion, and humanism. But we are nonetheless assured that above all, in all, and through all God will be there enlightening mankind to His ever steady presence, plans and ministries through the Church of Jesus Christ (aka Stanley Hauerwas!) by the power of His Holy Spirit working above us, within us, and through us to the glory of God's salvation remaking all things new. Amen and amen.

R.E. Slater (res)

May 17, 2012

ps - the usage of the phrase God in the Gaps is new to me. So we will together read of it together and see what it is about. However, we should likewise defer opinion b/c it may be as well mis-analyzed here as process theology was mis-analyzed. Consequently I can only react in proportionate response and conjecture and must save theological credulity for a later discussion should this same sophistry arise and give us more cause for a better informed response to its quasi-theological perspective.

Continued from Part 1 -

The Death of Poetry by 20th Century Modernism, Part 1/2

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/05/death-of-poetry-by-20th-century.html

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Beyond the God of the Gaps

http://musingsonscience.wordpress.com/2012/05/17/beyond-the-god-of-the-gaps/#more-1808

by rjs5

posted on May 17, 2012

Part One of the new book by Harry Lee Poe and Jimmy H. Davis God and the Cosmos: Divine Activity in Space, Time and History asks questions about the way humans have conceived of God and the way this impacts ideas about God’s action in the world. The last two chapters in Part One Poe and Davis consider process theology and God of the Gaps thinking. These chapters delve more deeply into the question that frames this portion of the book – what kind of God interacts with the world – and how does he interact.

Process theology and intelligent design are two [very] different ways of wrestling with the idea of God in the context of the materialism and naturalism that has captured Western thinking. These assumptions of materialism and naturalism are, it seems to me, in the air we breath and the water we drink. They are simply the unreflective, unexamined starting point for much of Western intellectual engagement, both in the academy and in the broader culture. Poe and Davis explore the positives and negatives of process theology and then move on to God-of-the-gaps arguments and finally to the way to get beyond these philosophical arguments to a more robust theological view.

Process theology

Allows natural theology to take a cue from evolutionary theory with all of being, including creation and the nature of God, evolving in time. There are rather unChristian, deistic, [my edits here, if any thing process is more panentheistic - res], philosophical forms of process theology that invoke, perhaps, a spiritual nature to life, but have no room for a personal God of the sort revealed in scripture, or for a God who acts in his creation [perhaps I've missed something in process theology but it seems that process is all about a personal God revealed in scripture and as an active actor in creation - res]. This is interesting, but need not really concern us in the search for ways to think as Christians about the interaction between God and his creation.

Is process theology a valid option to think about the role of God in the world? [yes - res]

[see relevancy22's sidebars under "theism" - res]

There are also some forms of process theology that are more clearly Christian. Here Poe and Davis outline the thinking of William Temple and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. These two have put some ideas forward that are worth pursuing. Poe and Davis acknowledge this, but seem to view the strength of process theology as lying in the way it underscores the inadequacy of a purely material outlook rather than its positive suggestions, although their comments about the inadequacy of natural selection leave me scratching my head. I expect the questions on natural selection will come up again in Part Two of the book. Poe and Davis sum up this discussion emphasizing the impact of process theology on one’s view of the interaction of God with the world:

Process theology makes the same error as the reductionist monarchical model makes when it assumes that God must always act in only one way. Rather than think God must always do the same thing, we may think of God relating differently but appropriately to every level of organization of the universe. He may operate in a deterministic way at some points and in an indeterminate way at other points. Like Calvinism and Arminianism, process theology would have God always do it the same way, which leaves God less free than the people who think about God. (p. 120) 

Poe and Davis quixotically argue the issue of freedom in the doctrine of Arminianism that is nothing but about the freedom of God, man and nature. And then they throw in process theology to boot. Consequently I find their arguments specious. The only value that can be allowed here is that they actually may be referring to the nature of these viewpoints as a closed-system. But there again process theology was formed to open-up church doctrines that appear closed. So again I find this summary statement invalid. - res

Some claim God must know and determine everything, his omniscience and sovereignty demand this[sic, the view of  Calvinism - res]; in contrast many process theologians claim that God must leave everything free, action by God would deny the universe the freedom to become [another gross misrepresentation of process theology; ultimately God's sovreignty does grant this kind of freedom, and does not remove it by determinism and reductionisti,c or mechanistic, process as classical theology would teach - res], and becoming is the core of process theology [amen. this is a true statement. - res]. Poe and Davis suggest that both these extremes are lacking.

[Consequently I find Poe and Davis' knowledge of process theology uninspiring. We have here at relevancy22 been working through a synthesis between process theology, on the one hand, and conservative theism, on the other hand, something that I've been calling relational theism. For more on this subject please refer to "theism" under the sidebars here. - res]

God-of-the-gaps Provides

Another approach to natural theology. In this case a metaphysical framework is at play that views events as either of God or simply natural.

The God-of-the-gaps phenomenon arises as people try to fix the place in nature where God may be found to act. This understanding of divine activity is consistent with every other kind of real event in a closed material world. If the activity of God cannot be shown to be of the same kind as other events in the material world, than it cannot be understood as real. Of course, if the activity of God can be described within nature, then it must be a natural event rather than divine action! (p, 131-132)

But the view that puts divine causality on the same plane as physical causality is necessarily limited. It leads to a limited view of God and of his action, or room for action, in the cosmos. One example Poe and Davis use to illustrate there point is the incarnation.

At the heart of the Christian faith lies the ultimate expression of this conflict: the incarnation. Was Jesus fully man or fully God? We ask God to show himself in ways we can perceive, but when he does, we say he is just a man. The central event of Christian faith demands that Christians employ a metaphysic that allows for multiple levels of experience. Any activity of God in the world that can be observed can necessarily be described according to the categories of nature. Does this make divine activity and natural laws mutually exclusive? (p. 132)

I would refer the reader to consider the hypostatic union of Christ as discussed in the Athenasian Creed found here at this link discussing the creeds of the church (about midway down) - http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/05/short-history-of-church-creeds-and.html. It can be seen that because various forms of pelagianism and gnosticism had occurred in the early church we were then able to get to a more complete understanding of Jesus' divinity and humanity as a result of those egregious errors. It is an important doctrine to understand as it is trotted out again for review in the breeches and bellows of science. This same can also be said of Jesus' virgin birth found here at this link - http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/search/label/Virgin%20Birth. But one I found less than satisfying when reviewing John Polkinghorne's scientific understanding of it (as discussed in that article), though he is a favorite of mine. - res

Intelligent design – looking for empirical evidence for divine causality separate from physical causality – is a search for a God-of-the-gaps. This doesn’t mean that the world is not designed, all Christians believe that God designed the world intelligently and for a purpose, but that divine causality and physical causality can and do coexists in the same phenomena.

I think what is here trying to be said is what we've described in a Biologos article of God's involvement in evolution - even until now, and even into the futures of mankind and the Earth. More probably b/c Calvinism's Sovereignty of God worldview has such a strong hold on evangelicalism has this kind of thinking arisen to further explain an austere God's presence in humanity's and Earth's subsequent "evolvement...." - res

I will list below at the end of this article five (5) links to articles that I think better bridges the "gap" in the God-in-the-gap kind of thinking. They come from an evolutionary perspective but they better describe the closeness of God's Sovereignty from the perspective of scientific discoveries. And thus make for a better integration between theological observations about God involvement with man and the Earth than I can find here in this type of thinking.... - res

Beyond the God-of-the-Gaps

Poe and Davis proceed here to muse a bit about topics like methodological naturalism (for which they have some negative comments); naturalism of the gaps (by which they mean the imposition of philosophical naturalism beyond the limits where science can speak); and the ability of humans to manipulate nature (heat or cool our houses, build dams, harness electricity, fly to Australia, and so forth). Some of the discussion gets a little off track (for example I would say that we have not learned to overcome the laws of nature, and we certainly don’t violate the laws of nature, but we can and do utilize the laws of nature to achieve a desired goal). By and large, however, the point is a good one. The human mind can conceive of ways to manipulate nature. Certainly the mind of God can do the same and more.

The more intelligent we become, the more we realize just how open the universe really is. As Polkinghorne has observed, “science’s description of physical process is not drawn so tight as to condemn God to the non-interactive role of deistic spectator.” God is at least as free and able as humans to interact with the universe. (p. 137)

A Trinitarian God

Poe and Davis consider the nature of God as a relational being, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to be significant for a proper understanding of the God who acts in his creation. Taking any one of these alone as a model for the interaction of God with the cosmos will be limited and flawed.

Theological systems from classical theology to Calvinism to process theology have in common the tendency to conceive of God as acting in the same way at all times, a view unsustainable from Scripture but perfectly consistent with a philosophical approach to faith. Polkinghorne has argued that “God’s utter perfection lies in the total appropriateness at all times of the Creator’s relationship with creation, whether that creation is a quark soup or the home of humanity.” (p. 137)

The Trinity allows for this appropriate interaction at all times. God can be in time, transcend time, localized in space, and everywhere at once. The Father is, they suggest, “constantly aware yet forever removed from the world of space and time.” Transcendent, eternal, perfection, absolute holiness are attributes of the Father. The Father interacts with his creation through the Holy Spirit and through his messengers (angels). The Holy Spirit is the most significant here as it proceeds from the Father as part of the Godhead. The Holy Spirit extends into time and space and exercises the power of God in time and space. The Holy Spirit is extended, wave-like. The Son on the other hand is particular. The Son entered into space-time in the incarnation.

In God’s incarnation, however, God comes to grips with a fundamental problem posed by a universe in which people can have freedom: theodicy, or the problem of suffering. A trinitarian God experiences this problem from the inside and not merely from the vantage point of ultimate wisdom and knowledge. As Father, Son, and Spirit, the trinitarian God becomes part of his own physical creation as the Son while never ceasing to be distinct from it as the Father. God experiences the pain and suffering through participation in the cosmos. (p. 141) [Again, this is better said, or un-said, through reference to this link here on the church's creeds and confessions within the lower body of that article - http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/05/short-history-of-church-creeds-and.html. - res]

The Holy Spirit interacts with the universe, the material creation from quark to black hole and everything between in its openness and process. The Son interacts personally with humans created in the image of God by becoming one of us. The Father transcends space and time. [Affectively, the Trinity as a whole does all this together or, interacts with all of this together. It is not necessary to artificially divide the Trinity into these type of qualifiers. Please refer to the sidebar under Trinity for further discussion of this subject. - res]

The chapter finishes with a brief reflection on the world to come – the eschaton [please refer to the sidebar under Trinity again as well as under Kingdom Eschaetology. - res]. This will be something new and different with the disappearance of the apparent contradictions between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and a new physics allowing for resurrection, new heavens, new earth, in continuity with the resurrection of the Son of God.

Does this trinitarian view of God’s action in the world make sense to you?

Do you agree that theological systems limit the role of God, and thus inevitably miss part of the picture?


If you wish to contact me directly, you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net.

If you have comments please visit Beyond the God of the Gaps at Jesus Creed

 

 

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BELOW WILL BE FOUND BETTER WRITTEN ARTICLES TO HELP

THE SEARCHING CHRISTIAN BETTER UNDERSTAND THE ROLE BETWEEN

SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE KNOWN AS EVOLUTIONARY CREATIONISM.

 

 

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God's Role in Creation

Is God Just Playing Dice?

How Could God Create Through Evolution?

What Is Evolution?

Misconceptions about Evolutionary Theory and Process

For Even More Information

Go to the "Science" sidebars -->

And to http://biologos.org/

 

Select Comments

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/05/17/beyond-the-god-of-the-gaps-rjs/#comment-333297

No.3 - JJ says:

May 17, 2012 at 10:19 am

As a Whiteheadian, I must say that the authors do not seem to understand process theology all that well (although we are used to being misrepresented/misinderstood, especially by fellow Christians). There is more to process theology’s theory of divine action than what is presented here.

First, the statement “action by God would deny the universe the freedom to become” is false. It seems to be saying that God doesn’t really do anything in process. Not so. Just because freedom is inherent in all levels of creation does not mean that divine action is insignificant in any way. Without it, nothing would be able to become. God provides various possibilities for each moment of becoming, lures toward a particular possibility that aligns with the divine vision, and responds accordingly depending on which possibility is chosen.

Also, the author’s statement that the process God can only act one way is very misleading. For one, depending on the level of complexity of a particular actuality in creation, divine action may indeed be basically deterministic while at other levels (e.g., human consciousness) be highly indeterministic. And process thought affirms variable divine action, contrary to what the authors seem to be implying (see David Ray Griffin on this point).

Lastly, there is also a statement in the post saying God’s nature changes like everything else. Yes and no. Process theism is famously dipolar. While I will skip the technical details here, one pole of God changes in response to the world while the other is the eternal divine vision that provides the world with infinite possibilities. Because of this dipolar structure, God becomes like everything else but in another sense remains the same: God is always creative, loving, persuasive, redemptive, etc.


No. 7 - Tripp Fuller says:

May 17, 2012 at 1:01 pm

I haven’t read the book yet but I do wonder what scientific argument there is against some kind of consistent relationship between God and the world. The critique above of Process thought (& determinism) seems to imply it’s problematic – why? Aqunias, Calvin, & John Cobb reject the notion. Seems weird to have that as a the main criticism.


No. 10 - Russ says:

May 18, 2012 at 11:04 am

Poe and Davis show evangelicalism’s belated relization of modernity’s affects upon the church and its doctrines but don’t go far enough, if at all, with postmodernity’s relevance to the church. I was thoroughly unimpressed by their analysis of process theology.

And their God in the gaps philosophy cannot even begin to bridge the “gap” between the evangelical understanding between science and faith. As has been observed in the comments above, there is just too much here that is not spoken well. By their estimation good evangelical science is quasi-science at best.

Overall, this book impresses me with evangelical theology’s benighted state of affairs. In terms of a sports illustration, "unless a team can see itself for what it is there can be no improvement to what it can become." Which means for evangelicalism, that it cannot become a better interactor with today's contemporary societies without first understanding its own deficencies. Which is what postmodern Emergent Christian is all about – first deconstruction, then reconstruction. Evangelicalism’s foundation has become thoroughly fragmented by today's postmodernism, and is no longer orthodox except in its own opinion of itself.

Generally, this has been a poorly written topic by Poe and Davis to which the reviewer RJS has allowed too many discrepancies.


 

The Death of Poetry by 20th Century Modernism, Part 1/2

Many of the ideas and comments contained in the following article are not new to this website. We have discussed each one at length and have so notated those discussions per the sidebar index to the right side of this site. This would include Deism, Darwinism, Augustine-Aristotle-Reformation, Creedal Development and Church History, the Literature of the Bible, and even Process Theology.

However, being a poet who likes to write with a prose style, I did find the last section contained in this article quite interesting... that poetry has died due to no small influence by that of 20th Century Western Modernism. It's an observation that I myself have felt these many years will listening to formulaic assertions about God, my faith, the church, our human societies, and just about anything else that our Western rationalism has affected and maintained to the death of our present modernistic culture.

In fact, through postmodernism's enhanced philosophic paradigms has come a (post)structural framework that can remove modernism's philosophical gaps and restore more of an integrative approach and balance (or symmetry) to all human and scientific disciplines. Some few of those approaches have also been discussed at length including:

• the gradual detachment of Christianity from Calvinism's more systematic forms of theology (as well as other forms of systematizing Church dogmas and creedal assertions);
 
• the assimilation of language and culture back into our reading of Paul (described as NPP, the New Perspective of Paul approach via Sanders, Dunn and Wright);
 
• the re-connection of science to faith, and faith to science;
 
• the heightened awareness of our human journey and its importance to the reading of the Bible giving back to it an authority and authenticity (contra the doctrines of inerrancy's rationalisms on the one hand and blatant Christian mysticism on the other);
 
• the re-absorption of human anthropologies, sociologies, linguistics into the text of Scripture;
 
• the re-awakening of our ecological responsibility to the care of both the Earth and humanity through ecologically sound practices;
 
• and finally, the renewal of justice and compassion as a general human endeavor as based upon the practices of Jesus' ministry to the poor, the oppressed, and the neglected.

Through postmodernism's promise we are being led towards a participatory and authenticating form of faith and worship to our Creator-God-Redeemer which thusly provides hope for humanity's dreams by enabling and empowering increasingly connected civilizations towards peace, good will among all men, many forms of consensus leadership, and a formative sense of responsible world citizenship.

R.E. Slater

May 16, 2012

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The Death of Poetry?
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/05/15/the-death-of-poetry-rjs/

by RJS
May 15, 2012
Comments

I was recently sent a copy of the new book by Harry Lee Poe and Jimmy H. Davis God and the Cosmos: Divine Activity in Space, Time and History. Harry Lee Poe (Ph.D., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is the Charles Colson Professor of Faith and Culture at Union University in Jackson TN, Jimmy H. Davis (Ph.D. University of Illinois) is University Professor of Chemistry at Union University.

In God and the Cosmos Poe and Davis explore the interaction of God with his creation. There are two parts to their approach. Part One explores ideas about the kind of God who interacts with the world and the ways humans have considered this across cultures, religions, and time. Part Two turns this around and asks about the kind of world that allows God to interact.

Part One: What kind of God interacts with the world?

This section of the book does not address this question directly – but rather asks questions about the way humans have conceived of God and the way this impacts ideas concerning God’s action in the world. Poe and Davis begin with a survey of the way that God or divinity is understood in major world religions including Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam. This is an interesting survey – although the discussion of Judaism makes such a break with Christianity that it left me scratching my head at times.

How do we think about God?

How does this affect the way we think about God’s interaction with the world?

Turning primarily to the West and the development of science in Europe, Poe and Davis put forth a few ideas that drive much of the discussion in the rest of this section. The notion of a God who is rational combined with a break from the Platonic philosophical underpinning derived from Augustine gave rise to the reformation and the scientific revolution. Poe and Davis see the key developments and conflicts as more philosophical than theological.

Thomas Aquinas set the stage by breaking with Augustine and his reliance on Plato, turning instead to Aristotle. This allowed a view of nature more conducive to the development of science. But even Aristotle had to fall. Philosophical underpinnings that found the ground of knowledge in rational thought without [scientific] experimentation, not “the God Hypothesis,” had to fall before the scientific revolution could flower. The conflict over Galileo was not theological but philosophical – a rejection of Aristotle.

Question Authority

Poe and Davis also suggest that the reformation, including the cultural changes that preceded the reformation, led to the scientific revolution.

In the Reformation the principle issue at stake was one of authority.… The University was a monastic community. All disciplines were subdisciplines of theology. Theology was the “queen of the sciences” and philosophy was her handmaiden. The Protestant reformation was not only a debate about authority in matters of religion but also authority in politics and all areas of scholarship, including what we now call science.

Scripture and tradition. The change of mind that we call the Reformation began to take place at least 150 years before Luther’s posting of his ninety-five theses, and it would continue to unfold 150 years afterwards.… this way of conceiving authority had begun at least by the time of John Wycliffe (d. 1384) , long before the observations of Copernicus (d. 1543). (p. 60)

The revolution in the view of authority enabled the scientific revolution, which required something of an open view toward tradition and traditional authorities. This also led to a view of scripture as the authoritative foundation for faith [and not the state - res].

Either-Or

According to Poe and Davis, with the publication of A Golden Chain (1590) William Perkins (1558-1602) set into motion a process that led to an either-or dichotomy describing God’s work in the world. A Golden chain is a text that popularized the theology of Calvin with a famous diagram that outlined the causes of salvation and damnation.

The idea of conceiving theology as a massive dichotomy represents a major innovation by Perkins to the earlier theology of Calvin.

Like Plato’s hierarchy or Aristotle’s chain of being, Perkins’s Golden Chain provides his audience with a way to conceive of God’s causal involvement in the world. God is the King who issues decrees, and from these decrees there issues forth an unbroken chain of cause and effect. (p. 79)

The problem with Perkins and the theology that followed Perkins is that it keeps the Holy Spirit safely in heaven or eternity. There is no real role for God or the Spirit in the day to day processes in the world. This either-or mode of thinking became the dominant assumption as men thought about the nature of God’s role in the world.

By the end of the eighteenth century, William Perkins’s model of reducing things to two alternatives [dualism] had become the dominant way of thinking in the English-speaking world.… 

In the natural world observed by scientific investigation, scientists were faced by the two alternatives that their worldview allowed them: (1) phenomena occurred by the direct action of God, or (2) phenomena occurred as the result of the laws of nature. 

The idea that God could be active within nature was not an alternative allowed to them by their prevailing worldview. (pp. 87-88)

Poe and Davis trace this development through Newton, Boyle, Laplace and other early scientist to Darwin. In the thinking of Darwin, and in the way evolution has been thought of since Darwin, we see a full flowering of the idea. If there is a natural explanation then God was not at work. He is relegated to some deistic first cause or eliminated from the picture entirely.

The Death of Poetry

Poe and Davis see the loss of poetry as another major piece of the puzzle in understanding the modern conflict between science and the action of God. In fact they put it rather bluntly: “Modern Western culture is unique in world history for having lost its poetry. All cultures, except modern Western culture, appreciate poetry.” (p. 96) This they see as a unique development of the 20th century … and it is not only poetry, but the arts as well that we have lost: painting, sculpture, opera, ballet, classical music. These no longer belong to the broad western culture. The loss of poetry goes hand-in-hand with a literalism that permeates our reading of scripture and our understanding of God. And this devastates the ability to understand God.

Humans have no frame of reference for understanding God because the language of the bible uses analogy, comparison, and poetry. Only by using creative license in the form of poetic language can we even begin to describe God and his action in the world.

Without a sense of poetry and the way analogies work, people lose the ability to use models, whether in theology or in science. The model, whether scientific or theological, is not the reality. A theological system is never more than a human constructed model of God. It may be useful for understanding an aspect of God that it affirms, but it is always woefully inadequate as a total understanding of God. (p. 100)

The last two chapters in Part One consider with process theology and God-of-the-Gaps-thinking. These chapters delve more deeply into the question that frames this portion of the book – what kind of God interacts with the world – and how does he interact. I’ll turn to these two in the next post on this book – but today I would like to stop here and consider the scenario that Poe and Davis have outlined.

Do you think that Poe and Davis are right in the time-line they’ve sketched?

Does the either-or dichotomy represents the common view of the action of God in the world?

And perhaps most important of all:

Have we lost the ability to appreciate poetry and thus to think constructively about God?


If you wish to contact me directly, you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net.

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

Part 2 continues here -

The Death of Poetry by 20th Century Modernism, Part 2/2

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/05/death-of-poetry-by-20th-century_18.html

Stephen Hawking, The Grand Design of God and the Cosmos

As an aside, I am currently re-reading Stephen Hawkings book, The Grand Design (2010), wherein he affirms the mechanistic, reductionist view of the form and frame of science. As a Christian, especially as one understanding the entanglement of the Godhead in our created world (sic relational/process theology: How Should We Read the Bible?), this type of assertion rings hollow for me. But one that I will allow from a non-Christian viewpoint because, in the case of natural scientific law, natural phenomena does run with a regularity unnecessary for a supernatural intervention as noted by the mathematician LaPlace to Napoleon when asking of God's necessity if physical laws run themselves (scientific determinism). Quipped LaPlace, "Sire, I have not needed that hypothesis." (pg 30, Hawkings).... And this on the heels of Sir Isaac Newton's earlier discoveries of the foundational classic laws of physics yet believing that God was somehow in the machine that He had built and now maintains.

Yet, this is the very method by which God had chosen to create in order to maintain His creation. In essence, God lies "behind" the process. And when these processes are looked into further, we see a "lively dance of chaotic, complex structure dynamically interacting with itself." That is, "there is an intrinsic openness in nature - seen in quantum phenomena, chaos, even [biological] epigenetics" to loosely quote from Poe and Davis. It is this very "freedom" within nature's inherent structure that testifies to God's imprint and interaction (sic, God's Role in Creation).

"If we were somehow able to fully explain the operation of the physical universe,

we would not have explained God out of the picture. Rather, we would have

explained the regular and repeatable sustaining activity of God." - Biologos

A "freedom" bent towards death and destruction (because of sin) that God has likewise enlivened (or re-invigorated) with a bent towards creative renewal and rebirth unto life and light. But a type of "freedom" that is a necessary consequence of creation's mystery that can allow for reconstruction from chaos (or, for that matter, evolutionary natural selection) by the intent and will of a God intimately involved in this re-creative process as Sovereign-Redeemer-Creator (sic, Evolution: Is God Just Playing Dice?).

Not only did God create, but even now creates, as He ever will - and always will - create until creation becomes one with His mind and will. Enmeshing the trinity of the cosmos, earth and world to the trinity of the Godhead (Father, Son, Spirit, three-in-one) till all becomes a rhombian fellowship in singular eternality (to put it in Hawking paradigm).

Consequently, though I have a very high respect towards Stephen Hawkings and his labor within the quantum physics world (besides being a favorite read of mine), a simple atheistic, reductionist/dualistic view towards science and the world is not satisfactory for a Christian holding a theology that is non-reductionistic/non-dualistic on the very same interpretive basis as the same science used. Nor can it be a helpful theology for biblical discovery and teaching, when thinking through God's interaction with man cosmically, ecologically, anthropologically, and spiritually.

R.E. Slater

April 26, 2012

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continue to -

Index to past articles on "Particle Physics, Quantum Science, and the Universe"





Other related articles that I've written may be found here:

QUANTUM PHYSICS, INDETERMINACY & MULTIVERSES

Stephen Hawking: The Strangeness of Quantum Physics and Cosmic Indeterminacy, 6/27/12

Stephen Hawking, Indeterminacy, God & Quantum Physics, 5/30/12

Stephen Hawking, Multi-Universes, and God's Grander Design, 5/24/12

Process Theology - "Divine Action, Indeterminancy, and Dipolarism", 5/19/12

Stephen Hawking, The Grand Design of God and the Cosmos, 4/26/12




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God and the Cosmos

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/04/26/god-and-the-cosmos-rjs/

by RJS

April 26, 2012

Comment

I was recently sent by the publisher a copy of the new book by Harry Lee Poe and Jimmy H. Davis God and the Cosmos: Divine Activity in Space, Time and History. Harry Lee Poe (Ph.D., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is the Charles Colson Professor of Faith and Culture at Union University in Jacksonville TN, Jimmy H. Davis (Ph.D. University of Illinois) is University Professor of Chemistry at Union University. This book should prove to be something a bit different from our usual fare of late.

There are a number of different questions at play in the discussion of the interaction between science and the Christian faith. For some people the controversy over creation and evolution is driven by a desire to be faithful to scripture, and explicitly to a favored interpretation of scripture. Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis fall into this category. For others there is an appreciation for the sciences, but also a conviction that if the science is true traces of it will be found in scripture. Hugh Ross and Reasons to Believe fall into this category. But there is another set of question at play, especially within the Intelligent Design movement. Science and scientists are finding a natural explanation for all manner of phenomena formerly attributed to the work of God. This appears to squeeze God into an increasingly small corner of the universe – and many argue it removes God from the picture all together. As Laplace famously replied to Napoleon … we have “no need of that hypothesis.” Poe and Davis are addressing these latter kinds of questions in their book. Can a transcendent and personal God really act in the universe? and Can science help us answer this question?

The introduction to the book begins with reflections by Davis and Poe. Davis begins by posing the question – where is God in, for example, a chemical reaction? The reaction is the same and the explanation is the same whatever the worldview or presupposition of the person who brings together the reactants and starts the process.

Modern science assumes that all physical events have physical causes. In order to find these causes, modern science breaks down the event into parts and looks for some mechanism (pattern of connections) that give rise to the event being studied. Modern science explains natural phenomena in terms of natural events and does not invoke supernatural invention. (p. 15)

There is an assumption of methodological naturalism inherent in the processwe are quickly left with a deist view of God. He got things started, set the laws, and now steps back and lets it go.

Davis suggests that the error in this approach lies in the mechanical view of the cosmos. The models we construct are closed machines. But there is an intrinsic openness in nature – seen in quantum phenomena, chaos, and epigenetics.

This openness is an internal part of nature, not a God-of-the-Gaps ignorance that will one day be removed. We suggest in this monograph that God is there not only in the working of the “machine” but in the underlying software that tells the “machine” how to behave in a particular situation. It is an open universe providing an open vista on which the master Artist can craft what he wills. (p. 23)

Do you think explanations for observed phenomena are a zero-sum game – either there is a natural explanation or there is divine action?

Is this either-or attitude a problem in the church or in our society at large?

Harry Lee Poe provides a theological response to begin to address the question of how God relates to the world.

Answers to the question of how God acts on the universe have tended to be reductionist. As such, they have tended to be unhelpful. More complicated answers seldom gain a hearing because people prefer simple, black-and-white, either-or explanations. Politicians learned this trait of human nature long ago; thus the trait has charm both for fundamentalism and for unbelief. (p. 25)

The black-and-white, either-or explanations are intrinsically unsatisfactory. They simply cannot account for the world we see. Poe relates this to the complexity of the world and to the progression or hierarchies of complexity introduced by Arthur Peacocke. He suggests that different kinds of rules apply at different levels of existence. There is, it seems, a fundamental distinction between the laws that describe the simplicity of the atom and the laws that describe the complexity of a living cell.

Neither reductionist science nor reductionist theology help us understand this universe where one kind of rule applies at the level of human experience and another kind of rule applies at the quantum level of subatomic particles. (p. 26)

Poe sketches briefly in this introduction four theological ideas that may help to move us forward:

Freedom of the triune God. God is not just creator who says and it is, not just incarnate Son, not just Holy Spirit who animates but with no plan or goal. He is not deist, self-limiting, or undirected.

Only a truly trinitarian model of one God can help us move to a clearer understanding of how God might relate to such a complex structure as the universe in appropriate ways for different levels of physical complexity. (p. 28)

Directional universe: Simplicity to complexity. The universe is dynamic with a linear direction from energy to matter to life to consciousness. [More rather, from complexity to complexity. - res]

Progress: A value-based goal. Here Harry Lee Poe quotes Edgar Allen Poe (an indirect ancestor of his, about whom he has written a biography Evermore: Edgar Allan Poe and the Mystery of the Universe):

In Eureka (1848), Edgar Allen Poe’s original proposal of a big bang theory and the origin of life, Poe described the interaction of the elements and life forms in adaptation in terms of a grand narrative. He said, “The plots of God are perfect. The Universe is a plot of God.” (p. 29)

Open universe. Here Poe returns to the idea introduced by Davis. There is an openness in the universe at each level of complexity. A personal mind – a human mind or the mind of God – can interact with and change the course of nature without violating the laws of nature. “Rather than hiding in the gaps, God is involved in the big observables that science describes.“

The remainder of God and the Cosmos is divided into two parts – first looking at theology and asking what kind of God interacts with the world and then looking at the universe and asking what kind of world allows God to interact. It looks like this will lead to some interesting questions and, I hope, some interesting posts over the next few weeks.

Where would you look for evidence of the action or purpose of God in the universe?

How should Christians respond to the “mechanical” view of the universe that removes God from the picture?


If you wish to contact me directly, you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net.

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.