Category: Science & Technology

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Biblical Studies Interviews Science & Technology Theology

Nature's Witness: Conversation With Daniel Harrell

This continues my conversation with Daniel Harrell, author of “Nature’s Witness: How Evolution Can Inspire Faith.” Daniel is a long-time Pastor at Park Street Church in Boston, MA. Park Street is an historic evangelical church.

Dave: Concerning the image of God, you mention Wolfhart Pannenberg. I notice that in the book you make a few references to Jourgen Moltmann. Most evangelical readers will be unfamiliar with these names. I suspect that the few who have heard of them will associate them with theological liberalism, and worse, with panentheism and process theology. But anyone who serioiusly studies Christian faith and the natural sciences will need to grapple with Pannenberg and Moltmann. So:

Do you see any dangers in Pannenberg’s and/or Moltmann’s concepts of God and creation? How (if at all) would you distinguish your understanding of God and His relation to creation from their views? Or, maybe a better way to put this: do you think Pannenberg and Moltmann’s views of God and creation are consistent with Nicene orthodoxy, or is some version of patripassionism required for a Christian understanding of evolution?

Daniel: You might want to elucidate which views of Pannenberg and Moltmann you mean (they write pretty extensively on God and creation!). As for patripassionism, its rejection, I think, presumes too strong a categorical understanding of the Trinity than is demanded. In other words, that Jesus is God who dies on the cross while the Father is God who receives his prayer and expends his wrath is nevertheless both God who atones and God who satisfies. Moltmann, to my recollection, does not suggest that God the Father is crucified, but rather God the Son who is one with the Father is crucified. (If this isn’t Moltmann’s position then it is mine and one that squares with Nicene orthodoxy . “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself” (2 Corinthians 5.19). ). This is an important distinction as well as one of those Trinitarian realities that defy logic.

That this is necessary for embracing evolution entails recognizing that death has been part of organic life from the beginning (whether you believe in six-days or six billion years). And thus nature as characteristic of God entails a God for whom death is part of his character. I think Moltmann’s “crucified God” (albeit in the ways I interpret above) would provide for such a God.

Dave: Specifically on the image of God in humanity, Pannenberg says in his Systematic Theology that “[i]n the story of the human race, then, the image of God was not achieved fully at the outset. It was still in process. . . . If we think of the divine likeness as being already achieved in Adam’s first estate, we cannot view it as our final destiny in a process of history.” Can you explain a little more how you apply this sort of theory from Pannenberg to your theology of human nature?

Daniel: Not having Pannenberg in front of me, I nevertheless read the quotation as emphasizing that the image of God cannot be attained as a process of history because it is an act of God. “New creation” can never be a product of evolution. I assert that our ultimate “image of God” is attained by the redemptive work of Jesus, which was part of the original plan (Rev 13:8–KJV). Evolution points to a very good but incomplete creation that groans as it awaits its redemption, even from the beginning. God created a free process creation that resulted in free willed creatures who freely rejected God’s overtures and thus made redemption necessary. As a God who loves sacrificially, he always had redemption in mind, even at creation. (Just don’t ask me why. Although it does help explain how it is that Adam could have ever sinned in the first place.)

Categories
Biblical Studies Interviews Science & Technology Theology

Nature's Witness: Conversation With Daniel Harrell

This continues my conversation with Daniel Harrell, author of “Nature’s Witness: How Evolution Can Inspire Faith.” Daniel is a long-time Pastor at Park Street Church in Boston, MA. Park Street is an historic evangelical church.

Dave: Let’s consider a question that’s the “Big Kahuna” for many evangelicals — and I admit, a tough one for me: the evolution of human beings and the Biblical account of Adam and Eve. A friend of mine reminds me that Genesis 2:4 describes what follows as an “account” — a tol’dot or “generational history” — though of course I remind him that it’s a different history chronologically than Gen. 1! Theologically it seems that the literal-ness of Adam has been a line in the sand, particularly for folks committed to a Reformed understanding of original sin. You seem to lean towards a “recent representatives” view in your book. A few specific questions here:

Is it difficult or uncomfortable for you to come to a view that’s not strictly monogenistic? Does this mess significantly with your theology of scripture, the image of God, and original sin?

Daniel: No, not necessarily. As for the image of God, if you are willing to assert that God creates with evolution (which I am willing to do), then the image of God becomes a result of that, and thus people evolve as a reflection of God’s own creative and free character. However, in line with Pannenberg, I see the imago dei as destiny rather than starting point. So God creates people in his image; that is, he makes us with the potential to become (as with creation itself). At the same time, God’s plan includes redemption from the beginning. In Christ we are fully the image of God.

I’ve never been one who thought of original sin as genetic (and clearly neither could have the Reformers). Once Adam and Eve go for it, the human race is tainted to be sure, but remember, I see creation as something started and not yet finished, not something perfect that then went awry.

Dave: More than a few people have suggested to me that accepting a non-literal or semi-literal view of Adam is a rejection at least of evangelical Christianity, or worse, the loss of something essential to any sort of authentic Christian faith. How do you respond to such concerns?

Daniel: I do think that an historic Adam and Eve seem to be as essential as an historic Jesus, at least given Paul’s treatment. I grant that adam could be a metaphor for humanity as a whole. But if your concern is the authority of Scripture, having Adam as a person (chapter 2 account) describes what Gen 1 does poetically as a prologue. Still, if Adam turned out to be fictitious (and how would we ever know this?), I don’t think all would be lost. In the end, Christianity rises and falls on the resurrection, not on the garden of Eden.

Dave: How persuaded are you really that the “recent representative” view might be true? I have to confess, it seems to me a stretch to suggest that Adam was a Neolithic farmer or something along those lines.

Daniel: I do think it “might” be true and surely as well as anything at preserving a reading of Scripture in line with a reading of evolutionary biology. And yet it is, like all of this, provisional. If it is the case that people emerge as evolution teaches, having God inject homo sapiens into creation seems just as odd given all that would be required to mask its injection as natural rather than supernatural. But, if Adam is a precursor of Christ, I guess God can do whatever pleases him. My point is that we don’t have to get caught up in defending a literal Adam. We have options.

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Science & Technology

GPS Golf for Smartphones

This application looks awesome.  You can even enter your own courses using Google Maps.

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Science & Technology Theology

Catholics on Science and Human Nature

Here is an excellent summary of a recent conference at the Lumen Christi Institute on the relation of the natural sciences and Christian faith concerning human nature.  Why do moderate-conservative Catholics always seem so far ahead of us evangelicals in developing nuanced, careful, thoughtful interactions with cultural products such as the natural sciences? 

HT:  The Catholic Thing, a really excellent online journal of Catholic social thought.

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Interviews Science & Technology Theological Hermeneutics Theology

Nature's Witness: Conversation With Daniel Harrell

This continues my conversation with Daniel Harrell, author of “Nature’s Witness: How Evolution Can Inspire Faith.” Daniel is a long-time Pastor at Park Street Church in Boston, MA. Park Street is an historic evangelical church.

Dave: Daniel, one of the things I appreciate most about your approach is your focus on integrity and truth as key theological values. But the first response from many evangelical readers is likely to be: “exactly — and only in the Bible can we find inerrant truth. If supposed ‘truth’ from science conflicts with claims in the Bible, we must presume that the scientists are operating with inadequate presuppositions. The only ‘true’ science will be science that begins with the belief that the Biblical record is true.” Many evangelicals who follow this line of argument insist that young earth creationism is the only viable option, while others accept an old earth but believe the Biblical references to the creation of separate “kinds,” and particularly to the special creation of Adam and Eve, rule out Darwinian evolution.

It seems to me that this line of argument touches on a seam in evangelicalism that runs close to the boundary between groups historically considered evangelical or not-evangelical — the inspiration and authority of the Bible — which in turn hits on an underlying fault line concerning epistemology. We see in contemporary evangelicalism ongoing ferment about precisely how to define the implications of Biblical inspiration and authority, and the appropriate use and limits of human reason in exploring the ‘human’ aspects of the Bible, evidenced by the row over Peter Enns’ book Inspiration and Incarnation.

In your book, you say “[t]he Bible says ‘six days,’ but there’s no way that’s right unless astrophysics and geology are patently false . . . correctly interpreted scientific discovery will always agree with correctly interpreted Scripture and vice versa.” Can you elaborate a bit on the epistemology and theology of Biblical inspiration and authority that underlie your approach?

Daniel: When we speak of the authority of Scripture, we speak of Scripture and not our interpretation of it. An infallible Bible does not make its readers infallible too. Therefore, any stance on Biblical truth is always a provisional one. We see through that glass darkly (!) and we walk by faith. To me, this is where science can be of enormous assistance. If science correctly perceives nature, and nature bears witness to God, then science can assist in those places where Scripture is ambiguous or disputed because all truth is from God. As for “correct” interpretation, correctness in the case of Scripture depends on corroboration from history, experience and ultimately eschatology, while in science, correctness depends upon further discovery, replication and corroboration across disciplines. In both cases, revelation relies in some part on a consensus of many people across culture and time (which is why evolution and the resurrection are both so influential today).

Dave: Well, ok, but let me push back a little more, if I may, with a long-winded follow up question. Sorry it’s a long question, but I know it’s important to me and to many of my readers who above all crave authenticity in how we respond to questions like those you deal with in your book.

Let’s take the example of when the Biblical writers speak in terms of Ancient Near Eastern cosmology — a three tiered universe, a disk shaped earth with pillars supporting a solid-dome sky, etc. Is the hermeneutical task vis-a-vis the contemporary sciences here a matter of interpreting what they really meant notwithstanding surface appearances to the contrary? Or is it more fair to say that they most likely really mean what everyone else in the ANE would have meant, which we now know is inaccurate?

It seems to me that this question sits on top of some important fault lines in evangelical theology. Does contemporary science in this instance (a) help us understand the true intention of the Biblcal writer; (b) help us understand that God accommodated the writer’s incorrect background assumptions in communicating an infallible message; (c) help us understand that the historical-literal-grammatical hermeneutic is too flat for discerning the revelatory content of the text, (d) vindicate Barth’s notion that “revelation” and “text” are not coeextensive; (e) all of the above; or (f) something else?

I have to be honest — I have a hard time swallowing that the Biblical writers and redactors really intended to communicate that life on earth, including human beings, evolved over billions of years, and that contemporary science illuminates that intent. It seems clear to me that the Biblical text reflects a distinctive Hebrew version of the prevailing ANE creation myths, and that the authors / redactors had no notion at all of a slowly evolving universe. I tend to think that if an evangelical theology of the inspiration and authority of scripture can’t deal with this, then it’s not a theology that is dealing in reality.

So the question: accepting the scientific reality of biological evolution has to impact evangelical theologies of Biblical inspiration and authority beyond just the old concordist approaches, doesn’t it?

Daniel: I wish I typed better…

Let me begin by asserting that the “word of God is living and active” meaning that revelation through that word is not static. Getting to original intent is extremely problematic in my view.

Nevertheless, I would argue that the as far as the ANE is concerned, I would hold that the genres in which Scripture come to us allow for a] a factoring out of acculturated terminology– whether that’s a three-tiered universe or any other artifact of that period in which the Bible was written, and/or b] interpretation that remains true to what we believe the authors (may have) intended while incorporating contemporary understanding and further revelation/illumination.

I like Barth, and I’d probably add as to c] the caveat that the h-l-g hermeneutic is partial rather than “too flat.”

I take for granted that nature has always operated under the same principles it currently operates (which is what evolution teaches) and had the Biblical writers had access to modern science, their work would have read differently while communicating the same “word of God.” So yes to your view. Concordism is mostly a dead end. But I don’t think that means that the Bible is locked in its ancient timeframe which is why it remains such an amazing book and a powerful “sword.” Heb 4:12.

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Interviews Science & Technology Spirituality Theology

Nature's Witness: Conversation With Daniel Harrell: Motivation and Reception

Following is the start of my conversation with Daniel Harrell, author of Nature’s Witness (things in italics are my questions).

1. What motivated you to take on this project?

Theological integrity demands that whatever we think about faith and life correspond to the way things actually are as opposed to how we want or wish things to be. God is the God of reality. If evolution is real, then to reject it presents difficulties for Christian faith and theology. A proposed alternative is to assume that ultimate truth resides in the heart and mind of God and to assume evolution to be part of that truth (“all truth is God’s truth”). Based upon confirmed scientific data, a flourishing, robust Christianity stays faithful to the Biblical narrative as its source for theological reflection, while at the same time heralding scientific discovery as an accurate description of the universe on which theology reflects.

2. What sort of responses / reactions did you encounter from other Christians as you were exploring your approach? To the extent there were positive responses, how did they encourage you? To the extent there were negative responses, how have you manged them?

Overall, I have a received very positive responses. This may be a result of living and working in Boston with so many universities where people of faith are motivated to find areas of convergence between their beliefs and their academic interests. The most encouraging responses are those form people who are excited about being able to think theologically about evolution. The most negative from those for whom evolution=godlessness. Inasmuch as those folks are open to discuss, the conversations have been excellent.

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Interviews Science & Technology Spirituality Theology

Nature's Witness: Conversation with Daniel Harrell About Evolution and Faith — Why Do This?

This post introduces a series in conversation with Daniel Harrell, author of “Nature’s Witness:  How Evolution Can Inspire Faith.”  Daniel is a long-time Pastor at Park Street Church in Boston, MA.  Park Street is an historic evangelical church.

Some readers of this blog, or other friends, colleagues or fellow church members who might stumble across it, might wonder why I’ve been diving into this topic.

First, let me say that I hope I can discuss the relationship between Christian faith and the natural sciences without being divisive.  Obviously, many people within the evangelical tradition, which I claim as my own, including some friends and family members, hold strong views that differ from mine.  I don’t write to dismiss those people, whose fellowship I greatly value.

At the same time, I understand my calling, training, and life’s work to be about exploring Christian faith and culture.  This involves dialoguing with people oppose or are indifferent about the Christian faith concerning the truth and relevance of the gospel, as well as contributing to the spiritual and intellectual vitality of the Church, as God enables me.  If the Church is failing to live up to some of the cultural challenges presented to it, or is not engaging questions of truth with integrity, I believe it’s part of my calling to offer whatever small contribution I can, relating to areas God has prompted and enabled me to study, towards reforming how we as the Church contextualize the gospel and represent Truth.

I hope it doesn’t appear that I have some delusion of grandeur about my own role in this process.  It’s easy to come across as condescending when one has developed strong opinions after a period of careful study.  There is a great array of Christian scholars and writers who are far more diligent and capable than I on any faith-and-culture issue you might name, some with perspectives different than mine, from whom I hope to continue learning.

Yet — I do believe that the evangelical tradition I love so much is facing something of a crisis of legitimacy because of the natural sciences.  Our posture towards truth discovered in the natural sciences has too often been defensive, disingenuous, and dishonest.  These are obviously strong words, and I use them, as we lawyers like to say, “advisedly.”  But I think we need to be clear-headed about what is at stake.

As Christians we believe in Truth, with a capital-“T”.  We should, of course, be appropriately chastened in our epistemic claims about what we think we know of ultimate Truth.  Indeed, I think the “strong foundationalism” of some kinds of evangelical theology is part of our problem.  Nevertheless, we are not after mere existential fantasies or illusory emotional states.  We believe and proclaim that Jesus Christ is the center of a reality created by God, not of our own making.  If we tie that proclamation to untruths about the nature of the material creation, we at best dilute our message and at worst make ourselves into hypocrites and liars.

Moreover, particularly in the global North / West, we live in an age that craves authenticity.  Anyone under age fifty today in North America can smell dissembling a mile away.  I believe our failure to accept truth from the natural sciences, and our apparent inability to reflect in a theologically robust and mature fashion on such truth, is a significant reason why Christianity has become more and more marginalized in North America.  Is it any surprise that people suspect us of pulling a fast one when they realize that, in exchange for the warm comforts of faith, they have to check their brains and education at the church door, deny the reality of natural history, and buy into an incoherent alternative pseudo-science?

Finally, I think the 800-pound gorilla that is faith-and-science is unsettling to many faithful evangelical Christians in ways that represent a significant failure of pastoral care within our tradition.  A reasonably smart and informed person who digs in to the stock “answers” he or she is likely to receive regarding these questions in an evangelical context will find them lame.  For many — and I can testify that this was true for me and for many other people I’ve met — this can prompt significant spiritual and emotional turmoil.  This gorilla cannot be ignored or it eventually will squash many fine Christian people.

The good news is that, in the best tradition of evangelicalism, increasing numbers of evangelical scientists, pastors and theologians are beginning to discuss evolutionary science openly and clearly.  Daniel Harrell, I think, is one such person.  These conversations actually have a significant history in evangelicalism, going back to some contemporaries of Darwin who did not think his theory an inherent threat to faith.  Even so, church history demonstrates that it can take hundreds of years to develop a robust, widely accepted consensus on challenging questions.  There are some significant theological challenges inherent in biological evolution, and there is not yet a clear or simple solution to every challenge.  These challenges shouldn’t be feared, because retreating from Truth is not an option.  Rather, we need to try to meet them humbly with every grace God provides.

Next post:  starting my conversation with Daniel Harrell.

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Science & Technology

Exosolar Planet Image

This picture is an image of a planet orbiting another star.  Way cool.  And theologically perhaps way interesting.

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Science & Technology Theology

Rescuing Darwin: God and Evolution in Britian Today

This is an excellent, accessible report from Theos and the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion.

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Historical Theology Science & Technology Theology

Evolution and Divine Action

One of the issues Daniel Harrell deals with in his excellent “Nature’s Witness: How Evolution Can Inspire Faith” is the problem of divine action.

“Divine action” is the question of how God acts in history. Biological evolution raises questions about divine action because the process of evolution is “random.” Christians have historically believed in a God who is sovereign — that is, a God who is “in control” of history. How can “random” evolution be reconciled with a “sovereign” God?

Some Christians argue that these notions cannot be reconciled. The “Intelligent Design” movement, for example, is fueled in large part by a belief that “purpose” or “design” must be empirically detectable in order to demonstrate God’s sovereignty over creation. /FN1/

In my view, most of these “strong” Intelligent Design arguments about “randomness” are misplaced. The theological notion of God’s sovereignty has never required that all of God’s activity in history be empirically demonstrable. In fact, the Calvinistic understanding of “providence” is that God’s purposes often are hidden from human understanding. What seem like a set of “random” circumstances from the human perspective are sensible and ordered from God’s perspectives. The assertion that God is sovereign is a theological claim based on revelation and faith. This claim is supported by some important empirical data — most notably the historical resurrection of Jesus — but it is not primarily an empirically testable claim.

Thomas Aquinas wrestled with the problem of the hiddennes of providence when he addressed the problem of evil in the Summa Contra Gentiles. Aquinas wanted to show that God is not the cause of the evil acts of human beings. A standard response to this problem is the “free will” defense: human beings are free to chose or not choose evil, and God is not culpable for those choices. But if God is sovereign even over human affairs, how is it possible to claim that God did not ultimately cause human evil?

Aquinas framed his response in terms of different levels of causality. God determines the ultimate purpose, role and function of each element of creation. However, God gave some creatures, particularly humans, at least some capacity to choose among different courses of action. When creatures make choices, those choices are the secondary cause of whatever consequences result. However, God remains the primary cause in that God in His sovereignty ordained that human beings should be creatures that are free to make moral choices, and God’s will continually sustains that ability.

This notion of primary and secondary causation can help us understand how we can talk about “randomness” in nature without impinging on God’s sovereignty. As Christian theists, by “random” we don’t mean metaphysically random. We mean only “random” from our human perspective. We acknowledge that many things that appear random to us as human beings are not random to God.

In fact, the question of “random” events seems to present no problem at all to most Christians except where biological evolution is concerned. Take a pair of dice and toss them on the desk. Unless you have extraordinary skill in manipulating dice, the result will be “random.” Log onto a secure website. Your browser is using an encryption algorithm based on a “randomly” generated encryption key. Follow the stock market. Its fluctuations are “random,” or more accurately, “stochastic” — they follow no statistically predictable pattern. Observe a thunderstorm. The storm develops stochastically, which explains why predicting the weather involves so much guesswork.

In all of these cases, we have no problem asserting that God is ultimately sovereign. Indeed, scripture gives us express support for this belief: Many times in the Biblical narratives people make descions or seek to determine God’s will by “casting lots” — an activity similar to playing dice (see, e.g., Leviticus 16, Numbers 34, 1 Samuel 14, Josua 19, Esther 3, Esther 9, etc.). Proverbs 16:33 offers some wisdom about this practice: “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.”

There seems to be no reason why this can’t also be true concerning biological evolution. Though it appears “random” to us, there is no reason why it can’t at the same time happen within the boundaries of God’s sovereignty. There is no reason why God must have “intervened” at discrete points in natural history to maintain His sovereignty. /FN2/

Of course, this suggests only that a theory of biological evolution that accepts apparent randomness is consistent with classical Christian theism. Theories of biological evolution that insist on metaphysical randomness are not consistent with Christian theism (and further are “philosophical” and not “scientific”). Moreover, a Christian theist might insist on other grounds, particularly on the basis of scripture but also based on tradition, experience, and reason, that God did “intervene” in natural history at certain points — most notably, perhaps, in the creation of that which makes human beings “human.” But these are not meta-questions about God’s sovereignty.

For a longer and truly outstanding discussion of how a Thomistic understanding of creation relates to the question of divine action in evolution, see William E. Carroll, Creation, Evolution, and Thomas Aquinas.

Footnotes:

/FN1/ It’s important to note that Intelligent Design is not primarily a critique of the “common descent” aspect of evolution. Many Intelligent Design advocates, including Michael Behe, fully accept common descent. This means that Behe and others like him agree with mainstream science that the history of life on earth generally reflects a long, gradual transition from one common ancestor to all the diversity of life today. In other words, most Intelligent Design advocates argue for or at least implicity accept some form of “guided” or “front loaded” evolution. This, by the way, is one of my biggest arguments with some evangelical apologists: they improperly cite Intelligent Design as a refutation of common descent in favor of some kind of direct creationism.

/FN2/ At the same time, it’s important to note that not all theologians, even outside the Intelligent Design camp, are comfortable with this admittedly simplified Thomistic model of primary and secondary causation as applied to nature. This is a rich and very interesting area, which has spawned a variety of nuanced models. Many of these nuances also attempt to respond to the theodicy problem raised by even an apparently randomly evolving creation (why would God create a world that develops through predation and competition?). These range from making “space” for divine action in quantum indeterminacy to suggestions that move in the direction of open theism and panentheism. See, e.g., Robert John Russell et al., Chaos and Complexity: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action (Vatican Observatory Publications / CTNS 1997). In my view, however, the Thomistic model remains very useful and retains the decided advantage of falling within classical and Reformed understandings of God’s transcendence, sovereignty and foreknowledge.