Macroevolution Contingency And Divine Activity

What are the things that God values in the creative process? How does one define God's activity in such a world? How is God's involvement different from a contingent--what this author labels contingentist--instance? Why do we need a God-idea at all? Herein, Bradford McCall addresses how divine, amorepotent love works with and within a contingentist (i.e., radically contingent) evolutionary theory and worldview. Within the course of this project, he reaches a via media between the (somewhat) radical formalist position of Simon Conway Morris and the veritably radical contingent position of Stephen Jay Gould. But . . . how is the contingentist amorepotent and uncontrolling love of God understood as purposeful? McCall argues in detail that there in fact is some sort of purposiveness that is nevertheless working in a chastened Gouldian position, and he distinguishes between contingency and veritable divine involvement. He contends that God does not insist upon a particular outcome but merely allows propensities to work themselves out. God amorepotently loves the population of the natural world into greater forms of complexity, relationality, and beauty in varied and multifarious forms, along with the extension of diversity.

This brief title will pursue a triangulation of chance, divine involvement, and theology through a fundamentally Peircean lens—at least epistemologically and semiotically. The argument proceeds over five distinct chapters, and a conclusion that constitutes a sixth chapter. In Part I, I discuss the Modern Synthetic theory in evolutionary biology. In particular, I refer to what I have labeled the secular evolutionary worldview (SEW). Also in Part I, I dismiss the French physicist Pierre-Simon de Laplace’s claim that a sufficiently informed intelligence could forecast everything that is going to happen in the whole universe—and, working backwards, tell you everything that did happen, not by direct citation and rebuke, but rather by implicit argumentation and demonstration of the God of Chance. In Part II of this book, I explore the God of chance and purpose, with theological assists provided by Philip Clayton and Alister McGrath over two chapters. So then, we live in a world of both chance and purpose. One may even go so far as to state that this world is designed for both chance and purpose.

Sanctification is not merely a “practical” and isolated doctrine but should permeate the whole horizon of theology: dogmatics, ethics, practics, as well as the sciences and the arts. The essays are collected under the twin convictions that theology can be sanctified and sanctifying. The whole of theology is inflected by holiness, and so theology should aim to share in God’s sanctifying work. Sanctifying Theology contributes new possibilities in Wesleyan-holiness theology and explores their contribution to various Christian doctrines and contemporary issues. Written in honor of the work of Thomas Arthur Noble, the essays in this book are attentive to the streams of theology that have most influenced him: the fathers, the Wesleys, and the Torrances. Both constructive and exploratory, the topic of the essays cover, among other things, (1) consideration of how Wesleyan-holiness theologies contribute to ecumenical theological discussions, (2) readings of Wesleyan-holiness theology through the lens of the church fathers and the Torrances, and (3) explorations of how these conversations and sources might shape contemporary practical and ethical concerns. The essays work both for the Wesleyan tradition and from the Wesleyan tradition for the church catholic, showing how recent trajectories in Wesleyan-holiness theology might contribute to broader discussions.

"This book examines the implications of the Judaeo-Christian claim for our understanding of the universe that it is contingent: freely created by God out of nothing, and having an existence, freedom, and rational order of its own while still dependent on him. Professor Torrance argues that this claim made possible the development of western empirical science, but that Newtonian physics obscured the connection between the rational order of nature and the Christian doctrine of creation. He shows how modern relativity and quantum theories have once again drawn attention to the significance of contingence, and imply that the universe is found to be consistently rational only if it is dependent on a creative rationality beyond it. He considers finally the disorderly elements in the universe, both physical and moral, and argues that the doctrine of incarnation as well as of creation is necessary to deal with the intellectual problems which they raise."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

The doctrine of providence, which states that God guides his creation, has been widely conceived in action terms in recent theological scholarship. A telling example is the so-called divine action debate, which is largely based on two principles: (i) providence is best conceptualised in terms of divine action; and (ii) divine action is best modelled on human action. By examining this debate, and especially the Divine Action Project (1988-2003), which led to the 'scientific turn' of the debate, this study argues that theo-physical incompatibilism, as a corollary of this 'framing' of providence, can be identified as the main reason for the current deadlock in divine action theories-namely, the assumption that just as human (libertarian) free action presupposes causal indeterminism, so, too, does divine action in the world presuppose causal indeterminism. Instead of recalibrating the much-discussed non-interventionist objective divine action (NIODA) approaches, Simon Maria Kopf advocates a 'reframing' of providence in terms of the virtue of prudence. To this end, this book examines the 'prudential-ordinative' theory of Thomas Aquinas and contrasts it with the prevalent 'actionistic', or action-based, model of providence. In this process, Kopf discusses, among other topics, the doctrine of divine transcendence, primary and secondary causation, natural necessity and contingency, and teleology as essential features of this 'prudential-ordinative' theory. The final part of the book addresses how these two approaches fare when applied to the question of biological evolution, which includes the revisiting of the controversy between Stephen Jay Gould and Simon Conway Morris over what would happen if one were to rerun the tape of life.

Why has Christianity been around for a mere 2,000 years when Earth life has abounded for 3.8 billion years and even humans for nearly 300,000 years? What was God doing all this time? And what if humans are not the center of God’s universe? In Amending the Christian Story, Ron Rude asserts that current versions of the Christian faith are inadequate, and more than this, are fueling humanity’s assault on Earth’s biosphere. Through the window of nature’s natural sciences—especially astronomy, geology, evolutionary biology, paleoanthropology—Rude provides a fuller and more expansive view of God’s story of life and God’s story of Jesus. Can humans continue the lived-out assumption that we are separate from, superior to, the reason for, and the rulers of everything? With new perspectives into ancient stories and current narratives, Rude compels us to urgently shift Christianity’s claim and conduct in order to unite with God’s more sustainable and just world.

Since antiquity, theology has frequently gone hand in hand with the study of the heavens. Speculation regarding the plurality of worlds, and the possibility of intelligent life beyond Earth, has posed questions for, and been stimulated by, Christian theology. Advancements in astronomy and astrophysics now reveal a vast universe containing trillions of galaxies. Each new exoplanet discovered brings with it a new context in which to consider the place of humanity, and the role of divinity in relation to creatures. In particular, the Christian doctrines of the incarnation and redemption must be understood afresh in light of the likelihood of extraterrestrial life. In Exotheology, Joel L. Parkyn examines the twin historic developments in scientific and theological thought on extraterrestrials from antiquity to the twenty-first century. In doing so he demonstrates a consistent pattern of theological formulations that allow for a distinct relation between Christianity and extraterrestrial life, but this has so far been without sufficient resolution. Applying concepts from anthropology, psychology and sociology to putative extraterrestrials, he explores in new depth the implications of contact, and argues for a 'divine pedagogy' of potential modalities of supernatural presence and action with extraterrestrial intelligences.

In The Boiler Room Boys: An Underground Story of Science, Religion, and the Faith that Fuels Both, Tim Smith describes how from too-young an age he followed two seemingly alternate paths, religion and science, only to find that they are not alternate at all. His so-called "yellow brick road" began with a group of boys meeting independently in his grade school's boiler room. Conflicting teaching by religious and scientific fundamentalists led him toward a PhD in biomathematics and toward atheism. His attraction to theology and philosophy and the events of his life drew his path back toward the connection between science and his childhood Christianity. However, it wasn't the intellectual pursuits that showed him the nature of God. Rather, it was life's experiences that allowed him to hear God's voice and to sense God's spirit. In The Boiler Room Boys, Smith reconciles his faith in religion and science, describing how science and theology support one another. In doing so, he also identifies where he sees that both theology and science have taken bad turns that get in the way of people young and old understanding and experiencing the world as it really is. There are many questions that couldn't be addressed in The Boiler Room Boys, questions that Smith continues to write about from his own boiler room (www.theboilerroomboys.com).