Category Archives: Science

In my recent long essay, I contrasted the commonest modern manifestions of theistic evolution with the approach of TE’s first representatives in Darwin’s time. I showed that the latters’ central distinctive was divine teleology. This contrasts directly with the cautiously expressed undirectedness of evolution in the Origin of Species, due to Darwin’s near-atheist agnosticism, and even more with the insistent secularism of Huxley and his successors, which has become the default position in biological science. I also demonstrated that modern TE, formulated academically by the science and faith scholars (mainly liberal Protestant and Catholic) and popularised by authors often from within the biological professions (also multi-confessional but with a higher proportion … Continue reading →

A number of posts on this blog revolve around the ideas that much that is wrong with the theological origins debate is also what is wrong with contemporary Christianity, and that much of that has to do with the emphasis on personal freedom and autonomy in our culture. A related concept, in my view, is the prominence of theistic personalism, whose source is the belief, originally from the scholastic Duns Scotus, that God can only relate to us genuinely if his mode of being is the same as ours. Prior to that, the classical view of Thomas Aquinas and his theological predecessors was that God is essentially different from us, … Continue reading →

I have to sympathise with new BioLogos poster hanan-d, who is trying to discover whether theistic evolution implies or allows for God’s directive will or not. He’s mentioned on several occasions that his enquiry arises from a crisis of personal faith, not simply intellectual curiosity, and yet he continues to be met with dismissive one-liners from beaglelady, and accusations of ignorance, cowardice and bad faith by melanogaster. Admittedly those responses are what everybody gets from that particular double-act, but one might have wished for a more straightforward set of explanations, and perhaps more empathy. After all, as the survey currently headlining the forum shows, theistic evolution is the firm option … Continue reading →

PNGarrison makes some nice comments on theodicy in response to the final part of my essay on theistic evolution and design. He is, of course, absolutely right to suggest that the interest in some kind of theodicy is normal to humanity: “Why does God…?” comes even from the lips of babes and sucklings. So my main aim in devoting a section to it in the essay was to object to its becoming a controlling factor in theology. There are good reasons for the predominant attitude in Scripture, which is in essence, “Who are you to talk back to God?”. Amongst them maybe the most important is to guide us to … Continue reading →

Theodicy A third major plank of modern theistic evolution is theodicy. We saw above how Charles Kingsley rejected the prevalent theology of a fallen creation, and saw both the goodness and the harshness of nature as commensurate with the revealed character of God. I would assert that even so he, and more so Darwin, retained a view of nature that was skewed by three centuries of pessimism. Kingsley’s gloomy co-religionists got their “red in tooth and claw” view ultimately from pagan culture, via the Renaissance humanist project. Before that, Christianity had virtually no concept of “natural evil”, but only of God’s wise, if often mysterious, governance. Our own pessimism about … Continue reading →

Kenoticism Closely associated with “nature’s freedom” – whether causally or consequently is hard to say – is another commonplace of theistic evolution, divine kenosis. To Gray, Kingsley or Warfield, evolution showed the power and sovereignty of God in a new, more glorious, light. Today’s TEs are more concerned to argue for the absence of God’s power and sovereignty. Building on late 20th century theologies of suffering of those like Jurgen Moltmann, very many science and faith writers have taken the idea of kenosis and applied it to the whole creation. The theological construction project goes like this this. Philippians 2.7 (frequently specifically quoted because it is the sole biblical reference) … Continue reading →