Evolution and God's Sovereignty (and the BioLogos view)

[Christy (Christy Hemphill)]

@Eddie

Some Christians are Arminians and some are Calvinists. Are these two camps “guessing”?

I think they are guessing, yes. Some people don’t really see the point in trying to be all that specific about exactly how much of our faith is what we choose with our free will and how much is God choosing us. I don’t know on that one either. I’ve worshiped in Real Presence churches and in “it’s just a symbol churches” and I didn’t feel the need to commit to a firm belief either way. Both are ways of trying to understand something that is at its essence not something you can pin down. Not everything requires a theological commitment, not that there is anything wrong with having one. Also, natural selection can be investigated in a way that predestination and the mysteries of the Eucharist cannot, so it’s not exactly apples to apples here. Conceptual models of spiritual realities are fundamentally different in some ways from conceptual models of physical realities. What relevant passage would you suggest we exegete to build our spiritual conceptual model for natural selection?

@Eddie

By the way, do you know for certain, from personally canvassing every TE/EC leader, that none of them have an opinion on the questions I’ve asked? Do you know for certain that all of them would answer “I don’t know” or “Maybe” to both questions?

This cracked me up, but then I wondered if maybe you weren’t trying to be funny.

Nope. I have not. It’s not on my bucket list either. All I said was that “I don’t know” and “maybe” are satisfactory answers for me, if they are the answers people give. I don’t assume that someone not giving a “straight answer” is hiding their true opinions. Though, I’m sure that a lot of people’s public answers are political and guarded to some degree. Christians are notoriously tribalistic and judgmental to those who fail their pet litmus tests, so I don’t negatively assess the character of any Christian professors or writers with networks in Evangelicalism who don’t subscribe to the Donald Trump school of public discourse. I don’t blame anyone for wanting to avoid misunderstandings and keep their paycheck and good name.

I don’t share your disappointments and discomfort with people’s lack of explicitness, and I don’t think discussing natural processes in natural terms without reference to theology is unacceptable. I don’t think of myself as that liberal, so I think you are projecting quite a bit when you say that all theologically conservative people share your discomfort and frustrations and the reasons for them.

On the list of “things Christians should be outraged about” the fact that some EC writers have not explicitly distanced themselves from atheists frequently enough or in the contexts you wanted to see them do it is going to be a tough sell in the currently bloated outrage market.

[Christy (Christy Hemphill)]

Thanks for the heads-up, but I’m content with the potentially dumbed-down and un-nuanced lay-person version. I have a long reading list of things I’m supposed to read for the field I’m supposed to be working in, which isn’t evolutionary biology. Speaking of which. I have 100 pages + of journal articles about bilingualism I need to get cracking on for a class, so I must bid adieu for awhile.

[Christy (Christy Hemphill)]

@Eddie

I’m talking about the case where the TE leader has an opinion and suppresses it.

I don’t have a problem with that either. No one is obligated to answer all my questions, just because I wonder something. People are allowed to have personal boundaries and decide not to put everything they think and believe out there to be dissected and evaluated and judged (which seems to be exactly what you want to do.) for whatever personal reasons they have, and it doesn’t really matter if you or I think they are good reasons or not. There is no social contract that says if you write something you have to explain yourself to every critic who demands more from you.

@Eddie

And when I bring up the good secondary sources and the primary texts, the discussion ends; the TE biologists, physicists, etc. quickly exit the discussion.

Well, most people don’t really enjoy those kind of peeing contests on online forums, especially when the topic is outside their field of expertise, so I can’t say I blame them. It takes a special kind of person who prefers to spend their precious free time here and not on Netflix. I find it amusing, but I admit to being weird.

@Eddie

People shouldn’t talk in public about subjects they don’t understand. It’s that simple.

Hmm. It seems to me that the whole point of dialoguing with other scholars is to help you clarify, refine, and at times change your thinking. The point is not to keep quiet until you can pontificate on what you understand perfectly so as to bless the world with your wonderful understanding. There are enough people in academia who hold this misunderstanding to make the average conference painful, but just because it’s “normal” doesn’t make it good.

@Eddie

It isn’t enough to have a good argument. One’s argument must be perceived in the right way by one’s opponents, to have any effect on them.

I agree. Maybe it’s different for your generation, but in my generation and those younger than me, you get points for being perceived as kind and open-minded and gracious and intellectually humble. So BioLogos wins points for that. I’m betting they’re aiming for a younger demographic than most of the people who fuss about their communication belong to.

@Eddie

Do you think that the Bishops at the Council of Nicaea were “guessing” when they formulated the doctrine of the Trinity?

I’ll treat this as a serious question, and not just a distracting rhetorical move. I think the bishops at Nicaea were using their sanctified imaginations and the spiritual gift of discernment to solidify a conceptualization of the meaning they constructed from special revelation and the tradition of the apostles. I don’t think the doctrine of the Trinity is “fact” in the usual sense of the word. It’s not an observation, it’s not a logical deduction. It’s a theological truth claim that we accept by faith was revealed in a spiritual way to the Church.

So again, what passage do you suggest we exegete to arrive at a spiritual imagining of how God works in the process of natural selection? That’s where your argument breaks down as far as I see it. Doctrines are established through a process of spiritual discernment in conversation with special revelation and the body of Christ. I retract the word “guessing” but I don’t know a good English word for a process that involves faith and enlightened imagination to arrive at knowledge. You don’t study DNA and come up with doctrine.

@Eddie

You might as well say that Rousseau was “guessing” when he opposed Hobbes with serious argument, or that Aristotle was “guessing” when he opposed Plato with serious argument. You might as well say that Newton and Leibniz were only “guessing” in their arguments against each other, or that Newton and Goethe’s arguments regarding light were just “guesses.”

See, it’s this kind of thing that make people not want to engage with you sometimes. We get it you read lots of books and can name drop all the smart people throughout history. What is the point of this paragraph? I personally think it is more amusing than intimidating, but some people are insecure.

@Eddie

And if he does hold that view, then he has to explain whether such sovereignty is compatible with the indeterminate evolutionary outcomes which are the logical implication of Darwinian theory. If Collins has nothing to say about that question, then he is ducking one of the most important theoretical issues in evolution-theology discourse. That is why I am right to ask TE/EC leaders to answer the questions I specified; they should not be allowed to continue to duck the important theoretical issues.

No, he doesn’t have to explain anything. You want him to. That’s different. And it seems to me that we’ve already covered the ground in other threads that what you think can be thought and reasoned to is not what everyone on earth agrees can be reasoned to. How are you supposed to come up with a textual/traditional position on natural selection when natural selection is a foreign concept to the text and the tradition? And the text and tradition have led people to come up with some truly mind-bending conjectures about sovereignty. We had to invent words like infralapsarianism. Don’t pretend “sovereignty” is a settled topic that we all hold hands and sing cum-ba-ya over.

[Relates (Roger A. Sawtelle)]

@Eddie
@Christy

Excuse me for butting in (but it is my blog and you have refused to stay on topic.)

Eddie, when you talk about sovereignty you are talking about God’s relationship to God Creation.

There are traditionally two ways to see God’s relationship to the Creation. The first is to say that God has absolute control. That seems to be the way Eddie tends to cast this problem, but absolute control borders if not becomes monism or pantheism and determinism.

In his recent response to Albert he toned down this view and said that God does not have absolute control, just general control.

The other view is Western dualism which no one likes but everyone basically practices, if not espouses, especially modernists. God controls the spiritual, while nature has its own realm. Christians claim that God is sovereign over nature, but how we have not worked out. It just is.

A new view is the triune view of reality. God and Nature are separate, but related. Just as God created humans with a triune nature, God created the universe with a triune nature. God governs humans by divine moral law and the Spirit. God governs nature by natural law and the Spirit.

God does not govern by direct control, even though God could govern by direct control, thus it is a triune system or systems.

Eddie, if you are going to make the question that of Sovereignty, you have not changed it. The question is still cosmology/world view or monism, dualism, or triune.

It is an important question, but it is not one that you have solved. You need to solve it before you can expect Christy to address it.

[GJDS]

@Christy

The main ‘sticking point’ that BioLogos has not dealt with in terms of their stated goals (i.e. ‘faith and science’ and ‘evolution is not contrary to God as creator’), is the notion that evolution is truly random - if we think this through, it removes God as creator in a formal theological sense. What at times seems to me is this; articles posted on this forum seem to skirt the issue (e.g. stochastic as random, or God uses chance, and so on). An interesting article (I hope my cut and paste works) that gives a somewhat subtle treatment of God and the creation is by BRIAN D. ROBINETTE, THE DIFFERENCE NOTHING MAKES: CREATIO EX NIHILO, RESURRECTION, AND DIVINE GRATUITY, Theological Studies 72 (2011). This article also examines claims by some who believe God is weak. is sometimes ‘stumped’ by His creation, and perhaps He gets into trouble with evil, and so on - putting these somewhat humorous outlooks to one side, I think BioLogos has real theological problems in this area - it is not a bad thing to remind BL of this.

[Relates (Roger A. Sawtelle)]

@Christy
@Eddie

@Eddie

I’m merely reporting what is universally agreed upon by all the Fathers, all the Scholastics, all the Reformers, and even Arminius and Wesley – that God’s sovereignty – at least over nature (free will is a more complex question) – is complete. If you have a problem with that view, your problem is with the Christian tradition, not with me.

First of all I never said that traditional theology was wrong, even though it is flawed. Its problem is that it does answer some of the key questions that people have today, in large part because it is based on outdated philosophy.

Second, you cannot hide behind tradition. That is what the Pharisees said, and they were dead wrong. If you insist in living before 1800, that is your decision.

Third, before Paley and Darwin were theologians really concerned as to how God created the platypus. If they thought that God created species individually, then of course God willed each one into being.

Four, however once it has been determined that God works through scientific natural laws, then the idea that God wills individual events life causing the sun to shine and the rain to fall to happen. That does not mean that God is not behind these events, but God doe not need to micromanage or micro-will.

And God saw that there was something missing in His plan. So God made some dinosaurs bipedal and gave some of these feathers, not for flying, but for insulation. Then God willed that these dinosaurs shrink in size, while He made the others grow quickly in size.

Then God caused an asteroid to hit the earth so the large dinosaurs without feathers would slowly die out. God willed that the small dinosaurs with feathers to develop their upper limbs as wings and their dinosaurs bills into beaks for eating insects, seeds, and small animals. And so God willed birds into existence.

Five, what I keep telling you is that you have break out of your dualist view, that life is either random or determined. That is a false dichotomy. There is a middle ground, and that middle ground is “freedom,” which is both structured and not determined.

You continue to associate TE’s and me with Wesleyan theology, because it does assert freedom over against predestination of your friend Calvin. However neither theology is adequate to justify freedom. This is why I suspect your opponents except for me are silent an sovereignty.

Six, Sovereignty has traditionally meant predestination, but nature ruled by divine natural law is too
complex to be understood that way, which is the reason that Lou gives for rejecting God. Thus it is understood as ruled by freedom or random chance. The right understanding is freedom, but this can only be explained by the complex/one cosmology, that you refuse to consider.

Seven, I am critical for scientists for rejecting scientific evidence contradicting Darwinism. I am critical of philosophers and theologians for rejecting philosophical and theological reasons for questioning Darwinism.

Please respond rather than just asserting that your views are traditional.

[Relates (Roger A. Sawtelle)]

@Christy

@Christy

Over many generations the dog population in that area has a much higher concentration of corn digesting dogs in it than in populations of dogs where meat is available.

Even using this example the dogs in this situation who able to adapt by whatever way to a corn diet, are selected in by Natural Selection. No one says that they asked for this gift. Usually a species is malleable to some extent and those who have the right genes or right abilities are selected in by Natural Selection because they are BETTER ADAPTED to take advantage of the resources found in the ENVIRONMENT.

My point is that it is the environment that determines which genes will survive, Without the environment of poverty, the tortilla gene would not be selected in.

[Christy (Christy Hemphill)]

@Eddie

I’m not at all “insecure” as you suggest.

Sorry for the misunderstanding, but I wasn’t suggesting you were insecure. Just that sometimes your argumentation style brings out other people’s insecurity, and that may be one reason why they drop out of conversations. If someone feels like they have to spend an hour on Wikipedia and check out and read a few library books in order to be worthy of responding to your points (not saying you made them feel that way on purpose, it’s their issue) they will probably just bow out. It’s my impression that most people are pretty insecure and defensive and tend to take things more personally than was intended, and that makes communication a challenge.

@Eddie

Or rather, studying DNA and coming up with a veto on doctrine, a ruling on what Christian theology is allowed to say?

It’s not the first time a doctrine has been reevaluated. Is it really that awful to say you think Christian theology is only “allowed” to say true things? I don’t think of that as imposing an unwarranted hierarchy of science over theology so much as applying the definition of Christian theology. Theology is the pursuit of the truth about God and his actions in the world. By definition, it can’t assert demonstrably false things. That’s not telling theology what it’s allowed to do, it’s being coherent. So yes, if traditional doctrine asserts that women are less human than men or Africans are less human than Europeans and we come to believe that is demonstrably false, we “veto” the traditional thought on the matter. I understand primageniture is more central and reevaluating it creates bigger theological waves, and the whole thing should be approached with appropriate caution and humility. I understand not everyone accepts that the traditional doctrine is demonstrably false. But no, I don’t agree that just because a pattern of thought has a long tradition in the church, it can never be “vetoed” by something true.

I think the discussion of sovereignty is important and interesting. But it will inevitably involve some conjecture and lack of clarity, because there is a lot about sovereignty that is not clear from Scripture. And unlike science which has continually developing avenues of investigation, theology has a finite revelation and a finite tradition. So there should be room in the discussion for people to admit that their way of conceiving things and relating an objective discipline to a subjective discipline is not airtight. Pretty much every attempt to describe sovereignty consistently will fall apart somewhere under scrutiny.

@Eddie

Rather, the claim is made, but the working definition of the term is not revealed. And that is just not the way theology is done. “Defining your terms” is as important a procedure in theology as in any other subject.

Good point. Though sometimes easier said than done. And a lot of time the conversation derails on the definitions.

@Relates

Excuse me for butting in (but it is my blog and you have refused to stay on topic.)

Sorry. You could see if Brad can make it a new topic. I agree that we need a more robust conception of sovereignty than the ones that are currently available.

@GJDS The discussions of how random is still subject to sovereignty have hurt my brain sometimes. I think the word is used in different senses too often and it muddies the waters a bit. It seems to me there is random as a mathematical term (not able to be predicted by us) and random as a naturalistic philosophical claim (not controlled by God) and it is not always clear in what sense the word random is being used by a particular writer or commenter.

@Relates

what I keep telling you is that you have break out of your dualist view, that life is either random or determined. That is a false dichotomy.

Yes, I think so too.

@Relates

My point is that it is the environment that determines which genes will survive, Without the environment of poverty, the tortilla gene would not be selected in.

Yes, that is my understanding too.

[Relates (Roger A. Sawtelle)]

@Christy

@Christy

Yes, that is my understanding too.

Good, so we agree that natural selection and thus evolution is based on adaption.

[BradKramer]

@Christy @GJDS @Eddie @Relates

Your wish is my command.

@Christy

You could see if Brad can make it a new topic.

[GJDS]

@Christy

You attracted many comments - I think you have more stamina for these discussions than I, but getting back to random. I suggest a random/sovereignty approach again avoids the issue, which is that “God is the Creator”. Such a phrase is not simply a matter of tradition that is subject to revision, but a dogma that defines the Christian faith. Put simply, all Christians will agree with the phrase, but making that into an article of faith, a core belief, can lead to outlooks that eventually contradict the meaning of God as Creator. Random becomes one issue that we can obsess and argue. The notion of creation goes back to all major philosophies and beliefs - Christianity shows the creator has acted in a way that cannot be related to anything we know and can test. This approach takes us to the dogmatics of the Church and eventually we are left with discussions on human agency, and some erroneous views emerge to attribute agency to God. When people reach such a point, they indulge in further error, in that they put forward ‘how God’ has done this or that, placing God in either a causal chain, or as someone who is more powerful, but only in degree, than us (and on and on it goes, we are in the image of God, we too can create, nature is free to become, process theology, knowledge from science provides proof, etc. etc). My short remarks show why such outlooks develop into notions that the theology of the Church may be wrong, and become part of great confusion and error (not a personal remark Christy, simply a response to your comments).

[Christy (Christy Hemphill)]

@Eddie

And it doesn’t matter what the genetic evidence says; if Paul etc. say otherwise, there is a theological problem that can’t be just swept away.

You’re absolutely right. But I don’t think most people are downplaying the fact that it’s a theological problem. Peter Enns used those exact words in that Historical Adam roundtable that was linked here a while back.

@Eddie

What I’m saying is that if genetics has proved a theological teaching false, it is important to say that openly rather than to pretend that genetics is perfectly compatible with what the tradition has taught all along.

Do you really think that is what BioLogos is doing? It seems to me that’s what AiG is doing.

@Eddie

If the BioLogos leaders would be frank about that – if they would say outright that certain past theological teachings are false and that science has proved it – I would not have a dialogical problem. I might disagree over what science has “proved,” but I would not object to the frankness and directness. What I do object to is pussyfooting around.

But those be fightin’ words, and it’s so much more gracious to say “that interpretation is less preferable.” As I see it, and I don’t have any inside information or anything, BioLogos’ main focus has been trying to expand the Evangelical tent a bit so that their view is an option on the menu that isn’t treated like fried rat or dog food, but maybe more like sushi. Not for everyone, but some people like it, and that’s okay. I don’t think they (in contrast to other groups) have been focused on arguing that their view is the best or right-est, though undoubtedly most of them believe it is. But your rhetoric is shaped by your purpose and your intended audience and the place you feel you have or don’t have in the existing structure.

@Eddie

you said “primogeniture”, presumably accidentally

Yes, I’ve been reading ethnographies and must have kinship systems on the brain.

@Eddie

I’m asking for clarity of position – and that is a very, very hard thing to obtain from the scientist-TEs who dominate BioLogos and the TE/EC movement generally.

But can you blame people for wanting to stick to their field. Kenton Sparks and Peter Enns and other NT and OT scholars whose names I have not memorized have come out and said as much. They have said in black and white that Paul was mistaken (understandably so) and so was the church for most of its history (understandably so), so now let’s talk about how that’s relevant to how we understand the Bible and the Christian message.

@Eddie

Always there is a tendency to “fuzz” things so that what modern science says is represented as what the Bible or tradition was saying all along.

I have never seen this. Do you remember a specific post you could point out as an example of what you mean?

@Eddie

Wouldn’t that apply to every orthodox Christian doctrine – Trinity, Providence, Incarnation, Eschatology, Sacraments, Election, Fall, etc.? So do we stop binding Christians of the various confessions (Reformed, Anglican, Lutheran, Catholic, etc.) to the doctrines of their confessions, because “Pretty much every” doctrine will not bear scrutiny when analyzed for consistency?

Well, I think that is one of the reasons we put our faith in the Person of Jesus Christ, not in our preferred systematic theology. In every attempt to systematize theology you end up pounding some square pegs into round holes and telling yourself it sort of fits. If we’re honest, we know the Bible is messy, and the Church is messy, and our Christian history is messy, and it’s never all going to line up in neat little rows.

@Eddie

I would hope that you are not saying: “Christian theology is far too filled with vagueness and uncertainty to be very definite on any of these big issues, so we might as well just go with what science says (because science, unlike theology, is precise and clear), and adjust our Christian theology to whatever science declares to be necessary.”

No, I think science is a lot messier and full of fallible human constructs than scientists pretend it is. That’s why science and theology need to be in dialogue. And yes, a no holds barred free-for-all where everyone picks their favorite theological flavor of the month is no good. But, I would say spiritual authority rests with the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit. That is what we are bound by and to, not by or to a tradition or a confession. I believe The Holy Spirit has been and is moving in history and through the Church to bring us more and more in line with God’s peace and justice. This whole discussion is taking place as the Church is wrestling with the questions of our time and place, as the Church has done throughout history. The Church is an organic and responsive body with a mission, not something static and decontextualized.

[Christy (Christy Hemphill)]

I’m not sure I grasp all of what you are saying, but I agree with the idea that saying God is the Creator has to have a lot of meaning in it. To affirm God is the Creator is to assert more than God is the First Cause or God is the Designer or God is the Source. If you end up with a Creator who doesn’t really do anything creative, somewhere you’ve messed things up.