I’ve had some further thoughts prompted by my use, in my last post, of Charles Dickens as the quasi-deity creating the world of Oliver Twist. One of the weaknesses of Dickens as a writer, especially in his earlier books, is his use of unlikely coincidence, or deus ex machina, in resolving his plots. It’s not uncommon for his characters to be rescued from difficult situations by bumping into people who happen to have been friends in far-off places and times.
In Oliver Twist, for example, Oliver’s benefactor is Rose Maylie, who takes him under her wing when he is shot whilst breaking into her house, when he is under the influence of Fagin. At the end of the book, it turns out that Rose, herself an orphan adopted into a rich family, is the sister of Oliver’s own destitute mother, and therefore his aunt, and therefore they all live happily ever after. Yeah, right… Dickens only gets away with such outrageous plot machinations because he is a brilliant writer.
There is little doubt that Dickens used these “Hey presto!” moments out of a laziness that Aristotle would have hated, believing that stories should resolve from their own events rather than magic interventions. But one could suggest that, as a matter of fact, Dickens is unconsciously promoting the kind of theistic worldview that was the subject of my last post. That is to say that, although unmentioned, divine providence was active in Oliver’s life, as the turn of events was too unlikely to be mere chance. And whilst they may be poor story-telling, such providences sometimes do occur in real life, if not in sophisticated novels.
For example, when we retired to a tiny west country village, chosen purely for the house, we joined a church in the next village. At that time, the only member from our own village turned out to be a chap who used to speak regularly at my school Christian Union in Surrey. The pianist was an alumnus of my brother’s old school in Farnham, and had worked at a government research establishment for which I’d once held a security pass. That helped my integration into the music group no end.
I later learned that the Crusader camp padre through whom I was converted to Christ (in Wales) in 1965 had been a member of the church, as also had a close friend I’d met at the same camps. Oh yes, and a neighbouring couple had been young adults in a church in Guildford when I’d been in the youth group there. Dickens couldn’t have made it all up, or if he had, his editor would have asked him to tone it down.
The God of the Bible is, throughout, that kind of God. It is no coincidence that much of the Bible consists of narrative. Once one gets past the “Flannelgraph Theology” that deludes us into thinking it pictures a mythical world of tea-towels unconnected to ours, one realises that mostly what it describes is not a wonderland of constant signs and wonders, but one in which God is simply recognised as real and active in whatever occurs.
Taking the patriarchal narrative in Genesis as an example, although there are some instances of angelic visitations and visionary experiences (which sceptics could easily understand as exaggerated or delusional), almost the only dramatic miracle is the destruction of the Cities of the Plain. Regarding this, it has recently been proposed that it corresponds to an ancient asteroid air-burst close to Tall el-Hammam in Jordan. But I noted in 2021 how an article, conceding (rightly or wrongly) that this was the case, concluded that the biblical story proves to have a “purely natural” explanation.
Materialist theology has no room for double causation, nor for special providence. Therefore “natural” means, in this case, “cause unknown, but definitely not involving God.” This is a religious and philosophical assertion, simply denying a theistic universe without evidence.
The worst of it is when Christians – who as I have suggested from the theology of the Bible ought to be definitionally theists – live in denial of the divine author’s agency. Maybe that extends to feeling incredulity at Charles Dickens’s deus ex machina moments, though it would be interesting to discuss quite why they are usually anathema in literature. Even Francis Bacon uses divine providence as the means by which his New Atlantis is discovered.
But the denial certainly reveals itself when Christian scientists long after Bacon use the “natural” word to imply there is such a thing as ontological chance in creation, but no divine choice. Note that these are antithetical alternatives, for it is incoherent to say that God acts through chance, just as it is incoherent to say that Dickens wrote Rose Maylie as Oliver’s aunt by pure luck rather than by conscious authorial choice.
I think I’ll close by quoting from a blog I wrote in 2011, regarding the origin of life.
There is a radio discussion between Stephen Meyer and Keith Fox, the Theistic Evolutionist leader of UK’s Christians in Science, and a researcher in DNA. Towards the end, having repeatedly suggested that Meyer’s position on the origin of life is in essence a God of the Gaps argument, Fox suggests that in years to come we will know a lot more. “We’re inferring events billions of years ago that may have been a fluke event,” he says. He responds to Meyer’s subsequent question about the role of God in this fluke by affirming that God would be behind it. “But there’s nothing irrational or unscientific about it.”
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The difference in the conclusions is largely semantic: Meyer says God did it, Fox says God was behind it but it’s natural, which means what, exactly?
