The Hump of the Camel

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 a classical kind of theism in which God is not “just like us, only more so,” but the One who dwells in inaccessible light.

Still, theodicy must exist if only because anti-theodicy exists, and since the latter has become one of the “undeniables” in the origins debate, it’s worth at least showing that it can be denied, at least in part. 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 nature, like our unchristian glorification of autonomous free will, comes from the same stable. 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) teaches that Christ emptied himself (Greek kenosis). This means he emptied himself of divinity and became a man. Therefore self-emptying is the very nature of Christ. We see God in Christ. Therefore self-emptying is the very nature of God. Therefore Creation was performed by self-emptying, which must mean God’s limiting his divine attributes by allowing autonomy to his creation. QED.

By a small further building extension, kenosis in relation to man means God’s allowing him complete autonomy of will, which requires God’s voluntarily (or in some versions ontologically) giving up his omniscience so as to leave the universe open to human choice: this is the substance of Open Theism, a fringe position in Evangelical Christianity, but a major one in theistic evolution. You’ll maybe notice that the nature of God in all this is mainly, it seems, not to act according to his own nature – a unique phenomenon! It may also be doubted if it is a possible, still less a desirable, phenomenon. In classical theology, God doesn’t know – he is knowledge, just as he is love, wisdom, power and so on. For him to “choose not to know” is for him to choose not to be what he is. More incoherence.

To build an entire theology of God, creation, and salvation on one verse is, perhaps, a little foolhardy. The danger is realised (though I hesitate to speak it aloud, given the reverence with which kenoticism is held) because it relies on a complete misinterpretation of the key text. I’ve written in some depth on that[xvii] , and could have added three or four further lines of argument. The central point, though is that Philippians refers not to the Son of God giving up his divine attributes and becoming an error-prone man at all, but to the man Jesus Christ, fully aware of his true divinity, choosing not to vaunt it but to “make himself nothing” (the usual meaning of kenosis in Paul) and submit to servanthood and death… as a result of which he immediately becomes exalted by God above all other names and every knee bows before him as Lord, to the glory of the Father. That half of the story is always omitted.

In truth, a case need not be made from Philippians for God’s ongoing exercise of sovereignty, which is actually essential to, and coterminous with, his love. It is the warp and woof of the whole Bible, as is his sole role in the act of creation, secondary causes notwithstanding. As a token example to check out, there are few titles amongst the many used for the Father or Jesus that do not carry connotations of sovereignty. Even “Christ” is a term of kingship.

Yet TEs, like other modern Evangelicals, have a rather ambiguous respect for Scripture. In part this may be because kenosis has now been used to undermine the trustworthiness of the Bible, and even the teaching of Christ: both, having emptied themselves of divinity, are to be seen as human and fallible. This conceit is not new – it’s just new to Evangelicalism. As old-fashioned liberal teaching it was bog standard. As Warfield said 120 years ago:

We are told that authority is limited by knowledge, and that Christ’s knowledge was limited to pure religion. We are told that even in matters of religion he accommodated Himself, in the form at least of His teachings, to the times in which he lived. Thus all “external authority” is gradually evaporated, and men are left to the sole authority each of his own spirit, whether under the name of reason or under the name of the Holy Spirit in the heart.

Does that not have a familiar ring?

[xvii]http://potiphar.jongarvey.co.uk/2012/10/25/and-kenotic-model-of-creation/

Benjamin Warfield

B B Warfield was not just a Princeton Presbyterian theologian, but one of the leading theological scholars of his age. A sign of how superficially we consider matters now is that he was the person most responsible for the modern Evangelical doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy, and yet considered that Charles Darwin took too literal a view of the Bible. Go figure, as they say! Continue reading →

Charles Kingsley

The usual pull-quote from the English Anglican clergyman Charles Kingsley is from his somewhat effusive reply to the pre-publication review copy of Origin of Species Darwin sent him:

…I have gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble a conception of Deity, to believe that he created primal forms capable of self development into all forms needful pro tempore and pro loco, as to believe that He required a fresh act of intervention to supply the lacunas which He Himself had made. I question whether the former be not the loftier thought. Continue reading →

This is the first part of a 7,500 word essay on historic and modern theistic evolution, which I hope to upload over the next week.

It is seldom appreciated that the earliest Christian response to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, even preceding its publication, was theistic evolution. A number of important thinkers held, and developed, this view during the nineteenth century until it was eclipsed, for reasons not due to any weakness of the position(i), for most of the twentieth. Through the work of the science and religion community of (mainly non-evangelical) scholars(ii), and secondarily through the American Scientific Affiliation and BioLogos, it has experienced a resurgence, particularly amongst Christians in the biological sciences(iii).

It is my contention, though, that in that second, late twentieth century phase, the theological position of theistic evolution has sheared away from historic evangelical teaching in a number of important respects. This would be a serious issue in itself, but it also has a detrimental effect (in the case of BioLogos) on its ambition to forge a rapprochement between conservative believers and science. I will also argue that the theological novelties have created a degree of internal incoherence which affects TE’s credibility overall as an intellectual position. Continue reading →

My apologies for continuing to pursue the prevalent theological view in Evolutionary Creation (aka Theistic Evolution) about a universe given freedom by God to create itself and so on, as I’ve done in recent posts and many others before. My main arguments have been, and remain, its incompatibility with the scriptural witness to creation, and the incoherence of the concept itself. But a further aspect occurs to me which may be worthy of some comment. Continue reading →

Freedom, in both human free-will terms and in the rather nebulous “free nature” view of modern theistic evolution, has some kind of integral relationship with God’s law. God’s moral law, especially with regard to judgement, seems largely a no-go area in the science-faith field. But “God’s law” in terms of “the laws of nature” is often referenced regarding nature’s freedom, and it’s not immediately clear how they relate. I think the mental picture is of scientific laws providing a regulated environment in which nature can prosper, much as the laws of a civilised nation, written in parliamentary statutes or town hall resolutions, permit a society free to be productive and fruitful. Continue reading →