Just goes to show … you never know what people are going to bring to BioLogos! This idea would have never occurred to me!
From a brother:
George
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Tom,
I am glad that you a4re4 concerned about this post. I hope that you will post a separate essay to make your point.
Please look at my response to the essay above also. We must do out theology in the context of science if we are really talking about the problems of evolution.
Finally I have become aware that we have been using the words of random and determinate as if they were the only two words that describe reality. In truth reality is ambiguous. If our dualistic understanding of reality keeps us from using the best words to describe it, then indeed we will be confused about science and God.
Life and evolution are ambiguous. That mans that it contains both determinate and indeterminate aspects. This is how God empowers humans to be free beings able to make real choices. We live in a complex/one world.
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George, it’s not that people haven’t being trying to tell you about it for some months. I wrote about it five years ago.
I suppose my problem is that if belief in an eternal, omniscient and omnipotent God who creates all things can exist under the same organisational umbrella as belief in a God who is within time, ignorant and impotent - and at the mercy, to boot, of an uncaused randomness that is ontologically prior to him … then what’s the big beef against minor differences like Young Earth Creationism or Intelligent Design?
@Jon_Garvey… I think your point is an excellent one!
But notice that it is not YEC’s who are proposing a God “within time, ignorant and impotent”…
The same creative thinkers who support BioLogos are sometimes so creative it boggles the mind.
Months ago, when I first read mentions of a God “within time and not omniscient” … I was so surprised by it, I just couldn’t comment on it. It seemed to be such a minority position, I didn’t even want to make a fuss. Nothing about that idea has changed my mind.
Nor any OECs or IDists that I’m aware of, George. I came to the conclusion a few years ago that it’s an EC distinctive. If not a universal one, it’s a significant one that lessens the appeal of theistic evolution in the Evangelical churches…
I think one can have, at most, two of the above options before philosophy packs it in and gives up.
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…Now all one has to decide is which one got evicted, standard theology or human philosophy?
Neither? Both? Can either offer complete and consistent description of ‘reality’? 
Well … yeah. There are all sorts of options really. I was just reacting to a visual of one party storming off because they don’t like what the other party has committed themselves to. It goes to show that human philosophy and human theology both are pretty limited ventures. If one particular kind of philosophy decides it can’t abide the paradoxes of a loving, omnipotent, omniscient God, then I just don’t accept it as a given that theology must be the one to give, or that philosophy (in general) cannot. Maybe certain [probably modern] components of philosophy or theology would need to go.
I regretfully agree with you. Would I be too severe if I said that it makes zero sense to me?
No - but you would find yourself labelled as part of the oppressive conservative establishment stifling academic freedom. In real life the kid in the Hans Anderson story who shouted “The emperor has no clothes!” would have been vilified on Facebook as a Regiphobe.
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Hi Mervin,
I doubt we can escape the seemingly logical paradoxes in either philosophy or systematic theology. I suspect our grasp of the basic terms are limiting. The God of philosophy is hard to overlay with the God of Abraham and vice versa. Still, some people feel obligated to try, perhaps seeking the imprimatur that philosophy and logic would seem to provide. Thank the influence of Greek thought on early Christian consolidation for that…
Jon, Depending on what exactly you have in mind, I might agree with you, but I’m not presently coming up with a specific place in which Gray actually makes Bilbo’s argument. In general, Gray believed that Darwin had made it more difficult to put forth the design argument, But, he still felt that the whole panorama of the universe made more sense if it were the product of intelligence than otherwise. I don’t think he was making the sort of “in your face” inference that Bilbo seems to suggest (I apologize to Bilbo of I have overstated the sense of his comment). Rather, he was making a more cautious claim.
I’ll eventually reach the point of presenting Gray’s approach to this, as my (interrupted) series on American religion and science continues. I won’t try to guess right now just when we’ll get to Gray, but we will. At that point we can (I hope) have a lively discussion about his attitude toward design arguments.
Thank you for sharing your view directly with readers here. As you say, your view has much in common with other proposals, but I would point out to our readers that the four people you name here do not all take the same overall theological approaches to questions about God, nature, and humanity.
For example, where Clayton (wasn’t he your mentor at Claremont?) is committed to panentheism, a view that Polkinghorne takes only when considering the new heaven & earth (the eschaton), not the present creation, where he takes a much more classical monotheistic approach, sharply distinguishing between the Creator and the creation. Jack Haught is often seen as a process theist (such as yourself, if I am not mistaken), but actually he’s not–according to testimony he gave at the Kitzmiller v Dover trial, and in private converations I’ve had with him, Haught sees himself as having been influenced most by Henri Bergson (who is famously associated with the notion of “creative evolution”) and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. While both of those men had some common ground with process theists, they weren’t quite process theists. Nor is Haught very close to Polkinghorne or even Ward, who is a philosophical idealist.
Of the four people you named, IMO the one least like your own thinking in general would be Polkinghorne. As you know, he’s a classical theist in many ways. For example, he believes in creatio ex nihilo, and to the best of my knowledge you do not. He also believes in the bodily Resurrection, where his views of the biblical texts, of the event itself, and of its greater theological significance are essentially the same as those of his friend Tom Wright (who is also close to BioLogos). I understand that you also affirm the bodily Resurrection (isn’t this correct, Tom?), but it’s wholly unclear to me how a process theist such as yourself can give a coherent account of something like that–an event which IMO absolutely requires God to act “coercively,” relative to nature, basically changing the nature of nature locally so that what took place simply cannot be accounted for by what the medieval and early modern theologians and philosophers would have called “the ordinary course of nature.” Likewise, P believes that God will someday act again in new ways that go beyond created nature to transform this creation into the new creation.
As I say, in all of these ways Polkinghorne is quite classical. That’s a major reason why I like his ideas so much–he takes modern attitudes and knowledge and places them within a classical framework.
The one place where P is more similar to your thought, and that of the other folks here, would obviously be his embrace of open theism. But, even here, it’s not exactly the same kind of open theism held by process theologians. In his case, God voluntarily chooses not to know certain things, a view that P arrived at partly b/c he believes that genuine human freedom simply contradicts classical divine omniscience. One might fairly differ with him on that premise, but if one holds that premise one can see why he lands where he does. But, at the same time, if God can determine the outcome of certain QM events (as Polkinghorne and Robert Russell believe), then God obviously must know the outcomes of those particular events in advance. I think all of this nuancing on my part is important, and I invite your replies, especially (but not only) if I have not accurately stated your own views.
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Thanks for chiming in, Ted. I always enjoy engaging with you.
Instead of replying line by line, I’ll just ramble a bit…
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I listed those four scholars, because they take the same view of randomness that I take. The issue of randomness was the point of the discussion thread.
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Clayton wasn’t at Claremont when I was a student there, nor was he my mentor.
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Panentheism is defined in various ways (see the book edited by Clayton and Peacocke “In Whom We Live…”), and Polkinghorne’s views fit with some definitions and not others.
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I call myself an open and relational theologian. Like Haught, I draw from process theology but have my own theological scheme I call essential kenosis.
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Metaphysically, I’m closest to Polkinghorne and farthest from Ward (whom you rightly say is an idealist). The main difference between Polkinghorne and me is our different views of divine power. He thinks God voluntarily self-limits, I think God’s nature involuntarily limits God’s power.
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All of the four mentioned scholars affirm creatio ex nihilo, which I do not. My next book will likely explain why I reject creatio ex nihilo and why I think an alternative view should be more plausible to Christians.
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I affirm the bodily resurrection of Jesus, accomplished through divine persuasion. I explain this at the conclusion of my book, The Nature of Love.
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I find it odd that you call Polkinghorne’s theology “classical.” He denies the classical view of God’s relation to time, denies the classical view of omniscience, denies the classical view of simplicity, denies Calvinist/Augustinian views of predestination and election, denies Thomistic views of primary and secondarily causality, denies classical views of eschatology, affirms kenotic Christology, etc.
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Can you cite a reference to support your claim that Polkinghorne believes God voluntarily chooses not to know the future? I don’t believe you are correct. To be capable of determining the outcome of an event is not the same as voluntarily choosing not to know the future exhaustively.
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May I recommend The Polkinghorne Reader, which I edited?
Thanks, Ted!
Hi Ted
Cautious or not, Gray wrote this (if memory serves, in reply to Agassiz’s critique of Darwin, but it may have been another review):
So the issue between the skeptic and the theist is only the old one, long ago argued out — namely, whether organic Nature is a result of design or of chance. Variation and natural selection open no third alternative; they concern only the question how the results, whether fortuitous or designed, may have been brought about. Organic Nature abounds with unmistakable and irresistible indications of design, and, being a connected and consistent system, this evidence carries the implication of design throughout the whole. On the other hand, chance carries no probabilities with it, can never be developed into a consistent system, but, when applied to the explanation of orderly or beneficial results, heaps up improbabilities at every step beyond all computation. To us, a fortuitous Cosmos is simply inconceivable. The alternative is a designed Cosmos.
And, in his review of the Origin, raising the question of Darwin’s metaphysical assumptions:
But there is room [here] only for the general declaration that we cannot think the Cosmos a series which began with chaos and ends with mind, or of which mind is a result: that if, by the successive origination of species and organs through natural agencies, the author means a series of events which succeed each other irrespective of a continued directing intelligence — events which mind does not order and shape to destined ends – then he has not established that doctrine, nor advanced toward its establishment, but has accumulated improbabilities beyond all belief.
Obviously, Gray is not exactly anticipating ID’s attempt to use probablities mathematically, but he is suggesting that, sans a directing intelligence, Darwinian evolution is improbable “beyond computation” and “beyond belief”.
Thank you for following up so nicely, Jon. If I read those passages at some point (I probably did), it was maybe 35 years ago and I’d forgotten them. I recall his commitment to design, but not the way in which he stated it.
In 1880 when he spoke to the theological college at Yale, he was still strongly committed to design, but he recognized that Darwinism allowed the non-theist an alternative path. We’ll study those comments eventually, as my series on American religion and science unfolds. So, perhaps he softened somewhat in those 20 years.
I used to own a copy of the British printing of Gray’s long review of the Origin–that’s the version Darwin himself paid for, if I recall correctly. I sold it some time ago, but I still have a pdf copy, and if you’d like one contact me privately.
Cheers,
Ted
Excellent discussion points, Tom, thank you for stating them so clearly. I’ll reply in a few separate posts below.
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I listed those four scholars, because they take the same view of randomness that
I take. The issue of randomness was the point of the discussion thread.
Agreed. I chimed in b/c I’ve talked about some of these things and read numerous comments from readers on otherthreads, and I’ve often seen much confusion about open theism vis-à-vis process
theism. I’ve also presented Polkinghorne as in many ways a classical Christian thinker, and I didn’t want our readers to come away from this thread with some of the same confusions I’ve seen before.
Clayton wasn’t at Claremont when I was a student there, nor was he my mentor.
Thank you for the correction. Was your mentor David Ray Griffin instead? Or perhaps John Cobb?
Panentheism is defined in various ways (see the book edited by Clayton and Peacocke
“In Whom We Live…”), and Polkinghorne’s views fit with some
definitions and not others.
Yes, one can define it in various ways, but I’m going off something John has told me himself—namely, that he thinks panentheism might properly describe God’s relationship to the new creation, but not to the present one. As he understands the term, at least, John is not a panentheist. In the long section you have in your reader about this, taken from his Science and the Trinity (a fairly recent work from 2004), he says (p. 192), after nodding toward the need to stress divine immanence alongside transcendence, “I do not believe that this requires us to embrace the tool-inclusive language of panentheism.”
More replies coming.
I call myself an open and relational theologian. Like Haught, I draw from process theology but have my own theological scheme I call essential kenosis.
OK.
Metaphysically, I’m closest to Polkinghorne and farthest from Ward (whom you rightly say is an idealist). The main difference between Polkinghorne and me is our different views of divine power. He thinks God voluntarily self-limits, I think God’s nature involuntarily limits God’s power.
Thank you for affirming my understanding of your position and his.
All of the four mentioned scholars affirm creatio ex nihilo, which I do not. My next book will likely explain why I reject creatio ex nihilo and why I think an alternative view should be more plausible to Christians.
Agreed, they all affirm creatio ex nihilo.
I affirm the bodily resurrection of Jesus, accomplished through divine persuasion. I explain this at the conclusion of my book, The Nature of Love.
I’m glad we’re on the same page with the central event of our faith, but I’m skeptical that “divine persuasion” can do that job—unless God can “persuade” matter to behave in ways that are tantamount to miracles, and in that case I call that “coercion” rather than “persuasion.” I’m glad you have written about this more fully, and I’ll have to make sure I read your account.