IV. Integration
3. Systematic Synthesis
Mover, but instead interacts reciprocally with the world, an influence on all events though never the sole cause of any event. Process metaphysics understands every new event to be jointly the product of the entity’s past, its own action, and the action of God. Here God transcends the world but is immanent in the world in a specific way in the structure of each event. We do not have a succession of purely natural events,
interrupted by gaps in which God alone operates. Process thinkers reject the idea of divine omnipotence; they believe in a God of persuasion rather than compulsion, and they have provided distinctive analyses of the place of chance, human freedom, evil, and suffering in the world.
Christian process theologians point out that the power of love, as exemplified in the cross, is precisely its ability to evoke a response while respecting the integrity of other beings. They also hold that divine immutability is not a characteristic of the biblical God who is intimately involved with history. Hartshorne elaborates a "dipolar" concept of God: unchanging in purpose and character, but changing in experience and relationship.52
In The Liberation of Life, Charles Birch and John Cobb have brought together ideas from biology, process philosophy, and Christian thought.
Early chapters develop an ecological or organismic model in which (1) every being is constituted by its interaction with a wider environment, and (2) all beings are subjects of experience, which runs the gamut from rudimentary responsiveness to reflective consciousness. Evolutionary history shows continuity but also the emergence of novelty. Humanity is continuous with and part of the natural order. Birch and Cobb develop an ethics that avoids anthropocentrism. The goal of enhancing the richness of experience in any form encourages concern for nonhuman life, without treating all forms of life as equally valuable. These authors present a powerful vision of a just and sustainable society in an
interdependent community of life.53
Birch and Cobb give less attention to religious ideas. They identify God with the principle of Life, a cosmic power immanent in nature. At one point it is stated that God loves and redeems us, but the basis of the statement is not clarified. But earlier writings by both these authors indicate their commitment to the Christian tradition and their attempt to reformulate it in the categories of process thought. Writing with David Griffin, for example, Cobb seeks "a truly contemporary vision that is at he same time truly Christian."54 God is understood both as "a source of novelty and order" and as "creative-responsive love." Christ’s vision of the love of God opens us to creative transformation. These authors also
show that Christian process theology can provide a sound basis for in environmental ethics.
I am in basic-agreement with the "Theology of Nature" position, coupled with a cautious use of process philosophy. Too much reliance on science (in natural theology) or on science and process philosophy (as in Birch and Cobb) can lead to the neglect of the areas of experience that I consider most important religiously. As I see it, the center of the Christian Life is an experience of reorientation, the healing of our brokenness in new wholeness, and the expression of a new relationship to God and to the neighbor. Existentialists and linguistic analysts rightly point to the primacy of personal and social life in religion, and neo- orthodoxy rightly says that for the Christian community it is in response to the person of Christ that our lives can be changed. But the centrality of redemption need not lead us to belittle creation, for our personal and social lives are intimately bound to the rest of the created order. We are redeemed in and with the world, not from the world. Part of our task, then, is to articulate a theology of nature, for which we will have to draw from both religious and scientific sources.
In volume 2, I will advocate a view of Christian ethics as response to what God has done and is doing. Traditionally this has been developed primarily as response to God as Redeemer, but I will suggest that today our response to God as Creator and Sustainer is equally important in elaborating an ethic for technology and the environment. The
reformulation of the doctrine of creation in the light of science in the current volume will thus play a major role in the subsequent volume.
In articulating a theology of nature, a systematic metaphysics can help us toward a coherent vision. But Christianity should never be equated with any metaphysical system. There are dangers if either scientific or religious ideas are distorted to fit a preconceived synthesis that claims to encompass all reality. We must always keep in mind the rich diversity of our experience. We distort it if we cut it up into separate realms or watertight compartments, but we also distort it if we force it into a neat intellectual system. A coherent vision of reality can still allow for the distinctiveness of differing types of experience. In the chapters that follow I will try to do justice to what is valid in the Independence position, though I will be mainly developing the Dialogue position concerning methodology and the Integration thesis with respect to the doctrines of creation and human nature.
Footnotes:
1. For this parable I am indebted to Ted Peters, speaking at a symposium at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago on Nov. 17, 1988.
2. Carl Sagan, Cosmos (New York: Random House, 1980), p. 4.
See also Thomas W. Ross, The Implicit Theology of Carl Sagan," Pacific Theological Review 18 (Spring 1985):24-32.
3. Francis Crick, Of Molecules and Men (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1966), p. 10.
4. Jacques Mound, Chance and Necessity (New York: Vintage Books, 1972), p. 180.
5. Monod, BBC lecture, quoted in beyond Chance and Necessity, ed. John Lewis (London: Garnstone Press, 1974), p. ix. This book includes a number of interesting critiques of Monod,
6. Arthur Peacocke, Creation and the World of Science (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1979), chap. 3.
7. Edward O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), p. 4.
8. Edward O. Wilson, On Human Nature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), chaps. 8, 9.
9. See the essays by Marshall Sahlins, Ruth Mattern, Richard Burian, and others in The Sociobiology Debate, ed. Arthur Caplan (New York: Harper & Row, 1978).
10. Cited by Ernan McMullin, ‘How Should Cosmology Relate to Theology?" in The Science and Theology in the Twentieth Century, ed. Arthur Peacocke (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), p.21.
11. Origins: NC Documentary Service 13 (1983): 50-51.
12. Origins: NC Documentary Service 16 (1986): 122. See
Cardinal Paul Poupard, ed. Galileo Galilei: Toward a Resolution of 350 Years of Debate, 1633-1983 (Pittsburgh: Duquesne
University Press, 1987).
13. Henry Morris, ed., Scientific Creationism, 2d ed. (El Cajun, CA: Master Books,. 1985). The text of the ruling, McLean v.
Arkansas, together with articles by several of the participants in the trial, is printed in Science, Technology & Human Values 7 (Summer 1982).
14. See Langdon Gilkey, Creationism on Trial (Minneapolis:
Winston Press, 1985); Roland Frye, ed., Is God a Creationist:
The Religions Case Against Creation-Science (New York:
Charles Scribners Sons, 1983).
15. In addition to the reports on the trial mentioned above, see Philip Kitcher, Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982); Michael Ruse, Darwinism Defended: A Guide to the Evolution Controversies (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1982).
16. Washington Post, June 20, 1987, p. A1.
17. A good introduction is Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline (New York: Harper & Row, 1949). See also W. A. Whitehouse, Christian Faith and the Scientific Attitude (New York:
Philosophical Library, 1952).
18. Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology (New York:
Charles Scribners Sons, 1958).
19. Gilkey, Creationism on Trial, pp. 108-16. See also his Maker of Heaven and Earth (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959).
20. Gilkey, Religion and the Scientific Future (New York:
Harper & Row, 1970), chap. 2. Also his Creationism on Trial, chap. 7.
21. Thomas Torrance, Theological Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 281.
22. Useful summaries are given in Frederick Ferré, Language, Logic, and God (New York:Harper and Brothers, 1961) and William H. Austin, The Relevance of Natural Science to Theology (London: Macmillan, 1976). See also Stephen
Toulmin, The Return to Cosmology (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1982), part 1.
23. Frederick Streng, Understanding Religious Life, 3d ed.
(Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1985).
24. George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984), p. 22.
25. Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928), p. 16.
26. Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York: Macmillan, 1925), chap. 1; Stanley L. Jaki, The Road of Science and the Ways to God (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978).
27. Thomas Torrance, ‘God and the Contingent World,’ Zygon 14 (1979): 347. See also his Divine and Contingent Order
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981). Torrance also defends contingency within the created order (that is, the unpredictability of particular events), as evident in the uncertainties of quantum physics. Here the invocation of Einstein seems more dubious, since Einstein adhered to a determinist as well as a realist view of physics. He was confident that quantum uncertainties will be removed when we find the underlying deterministic laws, which he believed a rational universe must have.
28. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976).
29. Ernan McMullin, "Natural Science and Christian Theology,"
in Religion, Science, and the Search for Wisdom, ed. David Byers (Washington, DC: National Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1987). See also his "Introduction: Evolution and
Creation" in Evolution and Creation, ed. Ernan McMullin (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985).
30. Ernan McMullin, ‘How Should Cosmology Relate to Theology?" in The Sciences and Theology in the Twentieth Century, ed. Arthur Peacocke, p. 39.
31. Ibid., p. 52.
32. Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith (New York:
Seabury, 1978); Gerald McCool, ed., A Rahner Reader (New York: Seabury, 1975); Leo O’Donovan, ed., A World of Grace:
An Introduction to the Themes and Foundations of Karl Rahner’s Theology (New York:Seabury, 1980).
33. Karl Rahner, "Christology within an Evolutionary View of the World," Theological Investigations, vol. 5 (Baltimore:
Helicon Press, 1966); also Hominization: The Evolutionary
Origin of Man as a Theological Problem (New York: Herder and Herder, 1965).
34. David Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order (New York: Seabury, 1975); also Plurality and Ambiguity (San Francisco: Harper &
Row, 1987).
35. Ian G. Barbour, Myths, Models, and Paradigms (New York:
Harper & Row, 1974); Sallie McFague, Metaphorical Theology:
Models of God in Religious Language (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982); Janet Soskice, Metaphor and Religious Language (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985); Mary Gerhart and Allan Russell, Metaphorical Process (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1984).
36. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).
37. Toulmin, Return to Cosmology, part III.
38. Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics (New York: Bantam Books, 1977).
39. Michael Polanyi, "Faith and Reason," Journal of Religion 41 (1961): 244. See also his Personal Knowledge (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1958).
40. John Polkinghorne, One World. The Interaction of Science and Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), p.
64. See also his Science and Creation (London: SPCK, 1988).
41. Holmes Rolston, Science and Religion: A Critical Survey (New York: Random House, 1987).
42. F. R. Tennant, Philosophical Theology, vol. 2 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1930).
43. See, for example, W. N. Clarke, S.J., "Is Natural Theology Still Possible Today?" in Physics, Philosophy, and Theology: A Common Quest for Understanding, eds. Robert J. Russell, William R. Stoeger, S.J., and George V. Coyne, S.J. (The Vatican: Vatican Observatory, and Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988).
44. Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1979), p. 291.
45. Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York:
Bantam Books, 1988), p. 291.
46. Freeman Dyson, Disturbing the Universe (New York: Harper
& Row, 1979).
47. John Barrow and Frank Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
48. John Leslie, "How to Draw Conclusions from a Fine-Tuned Universe," in Physics, Philosophy, and Theology, ed. Russell et al.
49. Hugh Montefiore, The Probability of God (London: SCM Press, 1985).
50. Arthur Peacocke, Intimations of Reality (Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), p. 63; see also Creation
and the World of Science.
51. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (New York: Harper & Row, 1959). I have discussed Teilhard in "Five Ways of Reading Teilhard," Soundings 51 (1968): 115-45, and in
"Teilhard’s Process Metaphysics," Journal of Religion 49 (1969):136-59.
52. Charles Hartshorne, The Divine Relativity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948).
53. Charles Birch and John B. Cobb, Jr., The Liberation of Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
54. John B. Cobb, Jr. and David Ray Griffin, Process Theology:
An Introduction (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976), p. 94.
See also L. Charles Birch, Nature and God (London: SCM Press, 1965).
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