Divine Guidance of Natural Process:

Is natural process guided by God?
Divine Guiding in a process of Creation,
in Evolutionary Creation or Progressive Creation

by Craig Rusbult, Ph.D.

This page contains Part 1 (plus an appendix) of a page with three parts — Divine Action (natural & miraculous) in History, Can we be scientifically certain? Can we be theologically certain? — that compares Evolutionary Creation and Progressive Creation.

1. Divine Action (natural and miraculous) in History

Theistic Action — What does God do?
When we look at origins, our worldviews (our theories about reality, our views of the world that we use for living in the world) play an important role. In a worldview that is theistic (not deistic), God's theistic action has two aspects: foundational and active.
foundational theistic action: God designed and created the universe using initial theistic action, and "keeps it going" through sustaining theistic action.
active theistic action changes "what would have happened without the active theistic action" into what actually happens. With natural-appearing "guiding" theistic action everything appears normal and natural because God's guidance blends smoothly with the usual workings of nature. In miraculous-appearing theistic action an event differs from our expectations for how things usually happen.

a note about terminology: In my web-pages, the actions of a divine God — if they occur as believed in a theistic worldview — are called divine action and also (with the same meaning) theistic action.

Does "natural" mean "without God"?
In our everyday experience, natural events are just "the way things happen," and God doesn't seem necessary. Does this common assumption mean that God actually is not involved?
A normal-appearing "natural event" can be interpreted theistically (as being produced by God), atheistically (happening without God), or in other ways: deistic, pantheistic, animistic,... or agnostic.
For a Judeo-Christian theist, natural does not mean "without God" because we believe that God initially designed nature, then created nature and now constantly sustains nature, and can guide nature (in a natural-appearing way that blends smoothly with the normal operation of nature) so one natural result occurs instead of another natural result. (*) Whether natural process is guided or unguided, the result is natural, but the cause is supernatural. / * We cannot use observations to distinguish between natural events that are guided and unguided due to lack of a “control history” since there is no way for us to compare one history (without guiding) and another history (with guiding).
Later [in the full-length page], we'll return to the idea that “natural events occur without God” because this is one of two "either-or" false dichotomies.

naturalism and NATURALISM
Confusion is caused by the common use of "naturalism" with two meanings: in a narrow meaning, naturalism is a claim — which is compatible with Christian theism — that "only natural process" occurred for a particular event, sequence of events, or historical period of time; in a broad meaning, NATURALISM (or naturism) is a claim — which is not compatible with Christian theism — that "only nature exists."
Thus, there are two major differences between methodological naturalism and atheistic philosophical naturism, although it can be useful to ask "what are the relationships between them?" and "is there a tendency for either to cause the other?" { more about naturalism and NATURALISM }

Views of Creation
What theistic action was used in creation? God may have decided to create everything by natural process (perhaps partially or totally guided), or create everything by miracles, or create some things by natural process and others by miracles. The links-page for VIEWS OF CREATION describes "three basic creation theories, plus variations, that are compatible with a basic Judeo-Christian doctrine of theistic creation."
• One view is a young-earth creation in which "everything in the universe was miraculously created in a 144-hour period less than 10,000 years ago; later, most of the earth's geology and fossil record were formed in a global flood."
In this page we'll look at views of those who think there is abundant evidence that the earth and universe are billions of years old:
• In one old-earth view, progressive creation, "at various times during a long history of nature (spanning billions of years) God used miraculous-appearing action to create. There are two kinds of progressive creation: one proposes independent creations ‘from scratch’ so a new species would not necessarily have any relationships with previously existing species; another proposes creations by modification of genetic material (by changing, adding, or deleting) for some members (or all members) of an existing species. Each of these theories proposes a history with natural-appearing evolutionary creation plus miraculous-appearing creations (independent or by modification) that occur progressively through time." { Compared with independent progressive creations, I think progressive creations by modification has strong scientific support and (when we examine biblical miracles) also theological support, as explained in the appendix [of the full-length page]. }
• In another old-earth view, evolutionary creation (also called theistic evolution), natural evolution was God's method of creation, with the universe designed so physical structures (galaxies, stars, planets) and complex biological organisms (bacteria, fish, dinosaurs, humans) would naturally evolve. / This view is described by Howard Van Till, who thinks "the creation was gifted from the outset with functional integrity — a wholeness of being that eliminated the need for gap-bridging interventions to compensate for formational capabilities that the Creator may have initially withheld from it" so it is "accurately described by the Robust Formational Economy Principle — an affirmation that the creation was fully equipped by God with all of the resources, potentialities, and formational capabilities that would be needed for the creaturely system to actualize every type of physical structure and every form of living organism that has appeared in the course of time."

The rest of this section, before the appendix, looks at theistic guidance in theistic evolution.

Could unguided evolution achieve God's goals for humans?
To be theologically satisfactory, a process of evolutionary creation would have to be functionally sufficient (to produce complex physical and biological structures) and also theologically sufficient (to achieve the goals of God). We should ask: 1) How precisely defined were the goals for creation? Did God want to create exactly what occurred in nature's history, or would something slightly different, or very different, have been satisfactory? 2) How reproducible is unguided evolutionary history? If the history of natural evolution was allowed to "run freely with unguided natural process" a hundred times, would the outcomes be divergent (with widely varying results) or convergent (with similar results)?
Even if evolutionary history was more convergent than most scientists think, some guidance seems necessary to achieve the goals of God, unless these goals — which only God knows (we can just make biblically educated speculations) — were extremely flexible. This guidance, which would produce a desired natural result, would be especially useful in creating humans with the characteristics (physical, mental, emotional, ethical, spiritual) and environment (planetary, ecological,...) desired by God. { A guiding of natural process can also be proposed for progressive creation, since it combines "natural-appearing evolutionary creation plus miraculous-appearing creations." }

What is theistic about theistic evolution?
In what ways does theistic evolution (with God actively involved in evolutionary creation) differ from deistic evolution (with God setting nature in motion and then just "letting it run")? What kinds of theistic action (TA) did God use during creation? Were the creative actions of God restricted to foundational TA (with initial-TA determining the characteristics of nature, and sustaining-TA letting nature continue) that allows history, or did God's actions also include active TA (either guiding-TA or miraculous-TA) that makes a difference in history? Evolutionary creationists think miraculous-appearing TA was not needed, and was not used, but what types and amounts of active guidance do they propose?

Divine Guidance of Natural Process (in evolutionary creation)
The following ideas about natural process and theology are from an excellent multi-author book, Perspectives on an Evolving Creation.
The book's editor, Keith Miller, says: "The Bible describes a God who is sovereign over all natural events, even those we attribute to chance such as the casting of lots or tomorrow's weather. This perspective has been placed into a modern scientific context by some theologians who see God's action exercised through determining the indeterminacies of natural processes. God is thus seen as affecting events both at the quantum level and at the level of large chaotic systems. Regardless of how one understands the manner in which God exercises sovereignty over natural process, chance events certainly pose no theological barrier to God's action in and through the evolutionary process." And in other chapters:
Terry Gray, who "comes from a fairly conservative Calvinistic theological perspective," says, "I believe that Scripture teaches that God is absolutely sovereign over all his creation. Whatever comes to pass was ordained by him. ... Thus all of the events envisioned by an evolutionist are under God's oversight (as are all events). This includes random events such as mutations, chance encounters of particular genomes, recombination events, mating events in populations, which sperm actually fertilizes a given egg, and so forth. From a human perspective these are all random events. From God's perspective, exactly what he ordained to occur occurs. ... God is as much in control of the outcome of the process as he is if he had zapped things into existence without any process. Obviously, this is not the random, undirected evolution of atheistic naturalists."
Loren Haarsma: "The Bible proclaims that God is equally sovereign over all events, ordinary or extraordinary, natural or supernatural. ... If something happens “naturally,” God is still in charge. ... It is incorrect to say that natural laws “govern.” God governs. ... God can supersede the ordinary functioning of natural laws [that he designed and created] any time he chooses, but most of the time God chooses to work in consistent ways through those natural laws. ... The Bible teaches that God can precisely select the outcome of events that appear random to us. It is also possible that God gives his creation some freedom, through random processes, to explore the wide range of potentials he has given it. Either way, randomness within natural processes is not the absence of God. Rather, it is another vehicle for God's creativity and governance." { Later, there is more from Haarsma and Russell about divine control of quanta and chaos. }
Robert John Russell "starts with theistic evolution and attempts to press the case for divine action further. Along with creation and general providence (or continuous creation), can we also think of God as acting with specific intentions in particular events? ... God does not act by violating or suspending the stream of natural processes or the laws of nature but by acting within them. ... Indeed these laws and processes are open to God's action because God made them that way. ... Quantum processes, created by God, provide the ontological openness for God's action. ... The laws that science discovers, at least at [the quantum] level, would suggest that nature at that level is open: there are what could be called “natural gaps” in the causal regularities of nature that are simply part of the way nature is constituted. ... We can view nature theologically as genuinely open to objective special providence. ... Not only is God's action here to be understood in terms of general providence, God's providing evolution as a whole with an overall goal and purpose, but it is also understood in terms of special providence, God's special action having specific and objective consequences for evolution. These consequences would not otherwise have occurred within God's general providence alone, and they can be recognized as due to God's action only through faith.

I.O.U. — In the near future, by the end of January 2009, there will be a commentary (with quotations) about another view, from Graeme Finlay, proposing a minimal amount of guidance by God.

Theistic Interpretation of Naturalistic Theories
Theologically, theistic evolution is a theory of divine creation.
Scientifically, theistic evolution agrees with conventional neo-Darwinian evolution, which ignores the possibility of divine guidance.
The main difference between theistic evolution and atheistic evolution is their nonscientific interpretation of scientific theories. A nonscientific atheistic interpretation claims that the process of biological evolution was not designed by God, not guided by God, and used matter not created by God. {an example: the "unsupervised evolution" of a prominent educational organization, NABT, in 1997} But a nonscientific theistic interpretation can disagree with these atheistic claims by proposing that an evolutionary process was designed by God, guided by God, and used matter created by God. Terry Gray says, about his theistic view of evolution, "obviously this is not the random, undirected evolution of atheistic naturalists."

APPENDIX

Divine Guidance of Natural Process — Part 2

Here is a summary, from earlier, of Loren Haarsma describing divine guidance: "God is equally sovereign over all events, ordinary or extraordinary. ... The Bible teaches that God can precisely select the outcome of events that appear random to us. ... It is also possible that God gives his creation some freedom, through random processes, to explore the wide range of potentials he has given it. Either way, randomness within natural processes is not the absence of God. Rather, it is another vehicle for God's creativity and governance." Here is more from Haarsma:
"Some people use the word “chance” as an alternative explanation to God. When they say that something happened by “chance,” they believe that it had no purpose, no significance of any kind, nothing guiding it, nothing that cares about the final results. ... Some scientists do use the word “chance” this way in their popular writings,... [but] they are adding philosophical overtones that go way beyond the scientific meaning. When scientists use the concept of chance scientifically, they mean simply this: They could not completely predict the final state of a system based on their knowledge of the earlier states. In a scientific theory, the term “chance” is not a statement about causation (or lack of causation); rather, it is a statement about predictability." / This scientific meaning "is entirely compatible with a biblical picture of God's governance. Many Bible passages describe God working through apparently random events. ... God could select the outcome of scientifically unpredictable events in order to achieve particular outcomes. God could do this subtly, interacting with creation in ways that are significant but that we could not detect scientifically. God could also do this dramatically upon occasion, choosing an outcome that is scientifically possible but extremely improbable, something that might even appear miraculous to us. Another way God might use random processes is to give the created world a bit of freedom. Through the laws of nature, God has given the material creation a range of possibilities to explore, and he gives his creation the freedom to explore that range."

Earlier [in the full-length page], Peter Rüst says: "Both theological and scientific indications point to a continuous, active, but usually hidden involvement of the Creator in all that happens. ... The spontaneous occurrence of a specific combination of mutations required for the emergence of a certain enyzme activity may, in context, be transastronomically improbable. Even so, we can never prove it impossible, as the tails of the Gaussian probability distribution extend to infinity. Yet God may have chosen to actively decree it to occur. ... Selecting specific events means feeding information into the system."
More from Rüst: "The demonstration of stochastic [probabilistic] distributions characterizing chance events cannot eliminate the possibility of a precise providential predetermination by the Creator, should he choose to do so. In any case, science has no way of finding out what causes individual elementary events. The claim that there is “nothing but chance” behind mutations is non-scientific. It is a matter of personal belief. Such a use of the concept of chance masquerading as science is an abuse of the popular respect for science. (1992)" / God could either "determine the outcome of each elementary event individually, or manage them collectively, e.g. by specifying Gaussian normality, mean and standard deviation, or higher level principles, not caring about individual events as such. Or he might imperceptibly guide chaotic dynamic systems by means of a few disturbances. Chance is not an alternative to God's action: it may be the usual way his creative activity “manifests” itself to us. (1992)"
And later, in 2005: "For each adaptive mutation successfully fixed, there are, in principle, two possibilities. In the first case — the only one accessible to science — the mutation is truly random (God's providence at the quantum level), the probability of selection is extremely low, the time to fixation extremely long, succesful fixation very improbable, and the increase of information is due entirely to selection by the environment. In the other case, the particular mutation is determined by God's selective choice (quantum event guided by God), selection and fixation occur according to God's predetermined schedule (maybe through other quided quantum events), success is certain, and God's guidance is the source of the information increase. In both casess, scientists rightly see such events as random. In principle, the first case is repeatable and could be shown to be randomly dispersed. The second case is unique, and so its repeatability cannot be investigated. On the other hand, both cases are the outcome of God's design, either providential or creative." {more about divine guidance from Peter Rüst}

From my page about divine action: "God might influence natural process by converting one natural-appearing result (that would have occurred without theistic guidance) into another normal-appearing result (that actually occurs). One possible mechanism for natural-appearing divine guidance is for God to convert potentialities into actualities: from the multitude of quantum possibilities that might occur, God chooses to make one of these actually occur. In this way, God could influence (or determine) natural events by controlling some (or all) uncertainty at the quantum level, which could be done in a way such that events appear normal and statistically random during this theistically guided natural process. This theistic action is active, not just foundational, and it could be amplified through a natural-appearing guidance of chaotic systems, to control (partially or totally) their outcomes. Since quantum interactions occur constantly, not just during “observations” by humans, God could control — but may or may not actually control — everything that occurs. (1998)" {more about quantum mechanics}

As explained earlier [in the full-length page], "whether natural process is guided or unguided, the result is natural, but the cause is supernatural." Due to this ambiguity, when describing events I usually contrast natural-appearing with miraculous-appearing, rather than natural with supernatural, in an effort to increase precision in thinking and communicating.

Earlier, John Robert Russell says: "Nature at that [quantum] level is open: there are what could be called “natural gaps” in the causal regularities of nature that are simply part of the way nature is constituted. ... These [natural] laws and processes are open to God's action because God made them that way. ... We can view nature theologically as genuinely open to objective special providence... with God's special action having specific and objective consequences for evolution. These consequences would not otherwise have occurred within God's general providence alone, and they can be recognized as due to God's action only through faith."
More from Russell: "Quantum processes give rise to the ordinary world of our experience, and they also allow for individual quantum processes to trigger irreversible and significant effects in that world. In doing so they offer us a clue as to how things in general come to be as they are [general divine action], as well as how things in particular happen [special divine action] within the general environment. ... God created a world open to God's actions. ... Indeterminism... occurs throughout the universe wherever elementary particles [irreversibly interact with] objects ranging from complex molecules and interstellar dust to those of the ordinary macroscopic world. To me this suggests a God who acts throughout innumerable occasions in the universe. ... Quantum mechanics allows us to think of special divine action as the “providential determination of otherwise undetermined events.” Moreover, though pervasive in its effects on the world's structure, God's action will remain hidden within that structure. ... God acts in particular ways in the context of the genome, though this action may have indirect consequences at the level of the phenotype and its eventual and occasional expression in populations by natural selection, which we may also identify as acts of divine objective special providence."
He also explains that time-and-causality is different for us and for God because "God does not foresee our future from our present or foreknow our future by calculating the outcome from our present. Instead, God as eternal sees and knows the future in its own present time and determinate state. God's knowledge of what is for us the indeterminate future is God's eternal knowledge of an event in what is its own present, determinate state. Thus, theologically, God can have knowledge of the future consequences of God's actions in the present."
And he describes another level of appreciation for divine action: "Regardless of the issue of quantum mechanics, God is already present and acting ubiquitously in nature in and through all the laws of nature and as the source of nature and the laws of nature."

Here are some ideas — actually they're my paraphrased constructions, which are incomplete approximations of the original ideas — that I've heard about and want to share: Richard Bube emphasizes that God is on constant interface with everything in his creation, allowing God to intimately interact with and sovereignly govern his entire creation. John Polkinghorne draws analogy between human action (we're familiar with this in concrete ways) and divine action (usually we simply believe this based on faith); from personal experience, we know that we can decide to "do something" and make it happen; by faith, we believe that God can also do this. In a similar analogy, David Oakley compares God's actions with our actions when we write on a piece of paper, when there is communication between our brain (developing ideas about what to write) and our fingers (writing these ideas onto paper), when small-scale processes (in our brain, nerves, and muscles) are translated into the large-scale action of writing; similarly, the ideas of God are actualized through small-scale actions by God (at the levels of quanta or chaos) that become, in ways we cannot understand or even imagine, large-scale results we can observe.
But these ideas, along with other ideas in this page, should be viewed with caution, recognizing the limitations of human speculations with appropriate humility, because "now we see but a poor reflection." (Paul, 1 Corinthians 13:12)

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