Polkinghorne Quotes #13: Divine Action, Evil, and Slandering God

This is the 13th post in a series on the writings of John Polkinghorne.

Last Sunday morning Dave Toycen, president of World Vision Canada, was interviewed by our pastor. Dave had just returned from Haiti and was providing us with some first hand accounts of the devastation caused by the earthquake that had rocked Haiti a couple of weeks earlier. The stories were heartrending.

The first song we sang that morning was Indescribable. Now, this isn’t my favourite worship song and I usually simply stop singing when the second verse starts with “Who has told every lightning bolt where it should go …”. I’m always surprised that more people don’t find this line a little uncomfortable (Anyone here been hit by lightening? Anyone have someone they love killed by lightening?), but given current events, I was sure others must also see the problem.

Apparently not. The song continued without even a hint of irony. Ok, how about we change that line to “Who has told every tectonic plate when is should slide …”. Does that help illustrate the problem? Maybe we need to be a little blunter: “Did God kill all those people in Port-au-Prince?”

Divine Action and Evil
Polkinghorne is acutely aware of the problem of Divine action and evil. As he indicates:

The more strongly one is able to speak of God’s particular action in the world, the more firmly one asserts that world to be subject to his purposive will, so much the more forceful becomes the problem of the widespread evil within it. (Science and Providence, page 59)

As orthodox Christians (and in opposition to those who hold to process theology), we believe that God acts: he upholds his creation, he is continually creating, and he has acted in very particular ways in history (most notably the incarnation). But must we speak of particular “natural” disasters as “acts of God”? Was it “God’s will” that all those Haitians died? If God is good, why is there “natural” evil?

Free-Process Theodicy
I doubt that the “Problem of Evil” will ever fully make sense to us, at least this side of paradise. However, I do think that Polkinghorne’s free-process defence is the closest we may get. As he says:

I think the only possible solution lies in a variation of the free-will defence, applied to the whole created world. One might call it ‘the free-process defence’. In his great act of creation I believe that God allows the physical world to be itself, not in Manichaean opposition to him, but in that independence which is Love’s gift of freedom to the one beloved.
…
The Cosmos is given the opportunity to be itself. (Science and Providence, page 66)

Just as God gives humanity the freedom to be itself and to make choices (even when those choices are not the one’s God wishes his children would make), so too God gives the whole of his creation the freedom to be itself. And the evil in this world (both moral and natural), is the price of this freedom. I suspect the same reasoning that applies to the free-will defence (See Plantinga's “God, Freedom, and Evil” ) applies for the most part to the free-process defence.

Actually, that is NOT God’s Will
When evil occurs, Christians often say “It must be God’s will”. But I am not sure this is necessarily true. In fact, I am sure that many of the choices that God’s creatures make are not the choices God would make. As Polkinghorne notes:

God no more expressly wills the growth of a cancer than he expressly wills the act of a murderer, but he allows both to happen. He is not puppetmaster of either men or matter. (Science and Providence, page 68)

So in the face of tragedy, maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to opine “It must be God’s will”. And just as we shouldn’t accuse God of causing the genocide in Rawanda, neither should we accuse him of causing the earthquake in Haiti.

And while we are at it, maybe we should make sure our worship songs do not slander God.

Polkinghorne Quotes #10: The Creator as Author, Producer, Director, and Actor in the Cosmic Drama

Explaining divine action in an evolutionary creation model (or any model for that matter) is notoriously difficult. Many analogies and explanations have been attempted; none are entirely successful. All of them are limited since there is no parallel to the transcendent God and thus no parallel to divine action. If pushed too far, many analogies lead to a view of God that is either deistic, panentheistic, or pantheistic. Some explanations portray God as little more than a powerful demiurge, an almost natural deity that is more similar to Zeus than Yahweh. That being said, I think Polkinghorne’s comparison of divine action to roles in a theatrical production is helpful:

[The Christian] Creator is as far as possible from any idea of a demiurge. The latter is a cause among causes, an agent among the many agencies at work in the world, even if he possesses power and intelligence greatly superior to the other actors on the cosmic stage. The Creator God, on the other hand, is the author and producer of the whole play.

From Science and Creation, page 68

This is good as far as it goes (and really Polkinghorne should have assigned the role of director to the Creator as well). It implies (correctly) that the Creator has planned the universe’s entire historical narrative for a purpose, and that every creature (from atoms to Adams) receives its part from him. The Creator provides guidance to the actors, but does not micromanage every action, posture, breath, and facial expression. Within the play, creatures are given genuine freedom to act within the limitations of the parts they are given.

However, to complete the analogy, one must also acknowledge that God is more than just the author, producer, and director, but is also an actor. He is the God who revealed himself to the patriarchs, spoke to the ancient Hebrews through the prophets, launched the Church at Pentecost, and leads us today by his Holy Spirit.

And then there is Jesus Christ, the character scripted to endure ultimate unfairness, ultimate suffering, ultimate death, ultimate judgment, and damnation. For this central character, God chose to play the part himself.

Other Polkinghorne Quotes in this Series: [Introduction] [Previous]

Creation, Evolution and the Nature of Science

This is a guest-post by geologist Keith B. Miller, and is the second installment in our “Evangelicals, Evolution, and Academics” series. Keith edited the book Perspectives on an Evolving Creation and has written numerous articles on science and faith including Theological Implications of an Evolving Creation.

Despite the long theological dialogue with evolutionary theory, many people continue to view evolution as inherently atheistic and inseparably wedded to a worldview that denies God and objective morality. Although this understanding of the meaning of evolutionary theory is strongly promoted by some, it is widely rejected as philosophically, theologically, and historically false. Science is a methodology, a limited way of knowing about the natural world. Scientific research proceeds by the search for chains of cause-and-effect, and confines itself to the investigation of "natural" entities and forces. This self-limitation is sometimes referred to as “methodological naturalism.”

The Limitations of Science
The first detailed use and discussion of the term “methodological naturalism” (MN) was in 1986 by Paul deVries, an evangelical Christian philosopher at Wheaton College. He used the term to describe the legitimate purview of science as one limited to explaining and interpreting the natural world in terms of natural processes and causes. Furthermore, deVries embraced this understanding of the nature and limitations of science because he saw it as consistent with, and supportive of, a vibrant and vital role for theology. In his view, to broaden science to include the supernatural would be yielding to a culture of scientism.

Science restricts itself to proximate causes, and the confirmation or denial of ultimate causes is beyond its capacity. Science does not deny the existence of a Creator -- it is simply silent on the existence or action of God. Methodological naturalism simply describes what empirical inquiry is. It is certainly not a statement of the nature of cosmic reality. Science pursues truth within very narrow limits. Our most profound questions about the nature of reality (questions of meaning and purpose and morality), while they may arise from within science, are theological or philosophical in nature and their answers lie beyond the reach of science.

From the perspective of scientific inquiry, a supernatural agent is effectively a black box, and appeals to supernatural action are essentially appeals to ignorance. A supernatural agent is unconstrained by natural “laws” or the properties and capabilities of natural entities and forces -- it can act in any way, and accomplish any conceivable end. As a result, appeals to such agents can provide no insight into understanding the mechanisms by which a particular observed or historical event occurred. Belief in the creative action of a supernatural agent does not answer the question of how something happens. “A miracle occurs here” is no more an answer to the question of “How?” than is “We don’t know.”

Divine Action and Scientific Explanation
One commonly held perspective that tends to reinforce a conflict view of science and faith is that God's action or involvement is confined to those events which lack a scientific explanation. Meaningful divine action is equated with breaks in chains of cause-and-effect processes. This view has been called a "God-of-the-gaps" theology. God's creative action is seen only, or primarily, in the gaps of human knowledge where scientific description fails. With this perspective, each advance of scientific description results in a corresponding reduction in the realm of divine action. Conflict between science and faith is thus assured. However, this is a totally unnecessary state of affairs. God's creative activity is clearly identified in the Bible as including natural processes, including what we call chance or random events. According to scripture, God is providentially active in all natural processes, and all of creation declares the glory of God. The evidence for God's presence in creation, for the existence of a creator God, is declared to be precisely those everyday "natural events" experienced by us all.

Some people will argue that MN arbitrarily excludes supernatural agency from scientific explanation and unnecessarily restricts the search for truth. It does nothing of the sort. If God acted in creation to bring about a particular structure in a way that broke causal chains, then science would simply conclude -- "There is presently no known series of cause-and-effect processes that can adequately account for this structure, and research will continue to search for such processes." Any statement beyond that requires the application of a particular religious worldview. "God did it" is not a scientific conclusion, although anyone is of course free to draw such an inference. However, if God acted through a seamless series of cause-and-effect processes to bring about that structure, then the continuing search for such processes stimulated by the tentativeness and methodological naturalism of science may uncover those processes.

Some non-theists see God as an unnecessary addition to a scientific description of the universe, and therefore conclude that there is no rational basis for belief in a personal God. In fact, as I have argued, God is unnecessary for a scientific description, but a scientific description is not a complete description of reality. Science excludes appeals to supernatural agents simply because the actions of such agents cannot be investigated by scientific methods. To then use this methodological exclusion to support a philosophical/religious exclusion is completely fallacious. That science does not make reference to God says nothing about whether or not God is actively involved in the physical universe or in people's lives.

Continuous Creation
I fully and unhesitatingly accept the doctrine of creation. God is the Creator of all things and nothing would exist without God's continually willing it to be. Creation was not merely a past accomplished act, but also is a present and continuing reality. The best term for this view of God's creative activity is "continuous creation." I also believe that God's existence can be known in the creation through faith. However, scientific observation provides no proof of the existence of a creator God, indeed it cannot. Neither does scientific description, however complete, provide any argument against a creator. Since God acts through process, scientific description and the theology of creation are perfectly compatible. Thus Christians should not fear causal explanations. Complete scientific descriptions of events or processes should pose no threat to Christian theism. Rather, each new advance in our scientific understanding can be met with excitement and praise at the revelation of God's creative hand.

Polkinghorne Quotes #7: Rejecting Process Theology

Polkinghorne is often accused of accepting and promoting Process Theology (PT). This theology, initially developed by Alfred Whitehead in the early 20th century, proposes that God is neither omnipotent nor directly active in his creation. To most Evangelicals, PT is heretical as its view of God can not be reconciled with the God revealed in scripture. I agree that PT is unacceptable but I strongly disagree that Polkinghorne subscribes to PT. Anyone who believes otherwise has badly misunderstood what he is saying.

God’s Omnipotence

PT rejects the possibility of an omnipotent God. To fulfill his divine purpose, God’s power is limited to persuasion. The PT divinity is a cajoling, pleading supplicant desperately trying to save his creation from itself. Thus the problem of theodicy is resolved but only by rejecting the God of the resurrection, the God who can, and will, “make all things new”. But this impotent God is not the God that Polkinghorne describes. Here is what he says in Science and Christian Belief, page 81

God remains omnipotent in the sense that he can do whatever he wills, but it is not in accordance with his will and nature to insist on total control.

The view that Polkinghorne describes is clearly not the PT God; it is in fact the God revealed in Jesus Christ who: "made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross! (Phil 2: 7, 8)

God’s Action

PT insists that either God has no power to intervene in creation, or is morally obligated not to intervene. After all, if you intervene once, why not intervene all the time to prevent evil? But the God of the Bible is certainly a God of action, something that Polkinghorne strongly affirms.

Christian theology cannot do without a God who acts in the world by more than simply keeping it in being, for it looks to the One who brought Israel out of Egypt and raised Jesus from the dead. Science and Providence, page 43

Given the insights of modern science, we must indeed rethink and rearticulate our view of divine action; the old view of a constantly intervening divinity is inadequate. At best, it reduces God to a slightly inept divine tinkerer, at worst it implies he is some sort of cosmic tyrant. But it is not necessary to swing so far towards PT. As Polkinghorne states in Science and Christian Belief, page 80

One is trying to steer a path between the unrelaxing grip of a Cosmic Tyrant and the impotence or indifference of a Deistic Spectator. I believe process theology to be impaled on the impotent branch of the horn of the dilemma.

The dilemma is real - articulating a model for divine action is indeed difficult. However, I believe Polkinghorne’s ideas are some of the most helpful ones we have. For Evangelicals to accuse him of being a Process Theologian because of God’s self imposed limits on divine action is grossly unfair and unreasonable, just as unfair and unreasonable as accusing him of being a hyper-Fundamentalist because of his insistence that God can act, has acted, does act, and will continue to act in order to fulfill his divine purpose.

Other Polkinghorne Quotes: [Introduction] [Previous] [Next]

The Incarnation within an Evolutionary Process

The incarnation is an audacious claim. That God would become a man was considered either blasphemous or ludicrous in the 1st century. Not much has changed in that regard although it probably leans more to ludicrous than blasphemous today.

At Christmas time Christians talk a lot about “God coming as a baby” and accepting the vulnerability of an infant. But as Martin Labar points out, Christ did not come as a baby, he came as an embryo. At one point, the Creator of the universe (or the multiverse if it exists) limited himself to a single cell. How can we possibly talk about a single cell even being self-aware let alone omniscient? How does the unlimited author of life limit himself to a single building block of life? Given that Christians still have difficulty articulating this mystery after 2000 years, I’m not even going to make an attempt here.

So if we can accept that God at one point became part of the process of embryo development, one that began with a single cell, why do we have so much difficulty in accepting that God could also become part of the process of evolutionary development, one that traces its ancestry through primates, reptiles, fish, and yes, even single celled organisms. Gordon has a humorous little post that addresses just his point. In Evolution and Incarnation he states:

It should be known, and so it is my duty to tell you, that there are scientists who believe every person alive today can be traced back to a single-celled organism. And that all of us are actually the result of nature acting on this cell over time. And this first cell is believed to have gone through an explosive multi-cellular stage before taking on fish-like characteristics. Some have said that as time passed, the fish-like characteristics gave way to reptile-like characteristics. And after more time had passed, the reptile-like characteristics gave way to mammal-like characteristics. And these same folks also believe that we once had tails, and that we had smaller brains, and that we were naked and lacked the ability to effectively communicate. And to make things worse, this purely naturalistic view of humanity seems to leave no room for God to work wonderful creation miracles, or for Him to personally fashion mankind by His own hands. This so called, “scientific” view - even though science itself can’t fully explain it - simply asserts that we were fashioned by the impersonal laws of nature acting on the biological material of lower species. In short, we are a product of nature.

But Gordon is not referring to evolution; he is referring to the nine-month creation process we all experienced prior to our official birthday. The Psalmist describes this same process from a different perspective:

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,

your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

(Psalm 139: 13-16)

Merry Christmas.

End of Year Note:

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all my readers, particularly those that have provided feedback through comments and emails. It has been an enjoyable and stimulating experience, and I appreciate the dialogue.

I will be taking a few weeks break from blogging. A “Subscribe via email” link has been added to the right column on the blog. This will allow you to receive any new posts by email the day they are published. This also means that I can see your email address, (and so does feedburner.com which is now owned by Google) so if this concerns you, don’t subscribe. Personally, I prefer an RSS or newsreader - I now use Google Reader to follow blogs that interest me.

Polkinghorne Quotes #3: Why is the Tea Kettle Boiling?

Why is the kettle boiling? Answer#1: The kettle is boiling because the burning gas heats the water. True. Answer#2: The kettle is boiling because I want to make a cup of tea and would you like to have a cup with me? True.

There is no conflict between those two answers; they are in fact complementary. In an exactly similar way I don't have to choose between science and religion. "The universe sprang into being about fifteen billion years ago through the fiery explosion of the big bang." That is true, but it does not preclude my also saying, "The universe came into being and remains in being because of the Word of a Creator whose mind and purpose are behind all of the scientific truths that we perceive."

From Is Science Enough?, September, 1994 Lecture at The University of the South

The teakettle analogy is perhaps Polkinghorne’s most frequently repeated quote. Actually, since it seems to change with each repetition, it should probably be classified as something other than a quote. I’ve seen the analogy appear in many different forms, in articles and lectures by Polkinghorne himself, and in books, articles, lectures, emails, and blog entries by others (this one here substituting coffee for tea – something Polkinghorne as a good Brit probably considers heretical).

I believe that one's view of divine action is the most significant factor in demarcating Christians that accept evolution from those that do not. It is certainly more important than how one thinks of scripture as many anti-evolution Christians (probably most supporters of ID for example) do NOT interpret scripture literally. For those Christians whose model of divine action is restricted to God intervening in nature in a way that is unexplainable by natural causes, evolution will be forever troublesome. Evolutionary theory does not allow for gaps in the natural record, and the scientific evidence for this theory continues to bear fruit. However, for Christians who see God acting in and through nature, who see nature as simply a secondary cause and not as a final cause, who believe that a scientific description of an event or process does not diminish God’s active control of that event or process, evolution can be fully compatible with faith in a God who acts in this world.

Other Polkinghorne Quotes: [Introduction] [Previous] [Next]