[asa] Re: on TE and PT, a response to Gregory

Thanks Ted, I appreciate your link to JP's interview and for acknowledging that both of you reject PT (he emphatically so). Your 'enormous qualifier' is well-placed too! The response is adequate indeed.
   
  There is still however one reservation in the linguistic realm. To be a TE/EC and not a process theologian, yes, I can see this possibility. However, to be a TE who doesn't believe in or focus on 'process' seems to me impossible. This is to state things simply, of course. All TE/CEs are process thinkers, it seems to me, and thus to distinguish the importance of 'origins' or first or final causes (e.g. teleology) can be easy to ignore. Dave Siemens Jr. accuses me of seeing/hearing only one definition of 'process,' yet I would ask him why not to discuss something positively and explain how 'non-process evolution' is a legitimate possibility. He will prove me wrong to show how this could be so.
   
  The distinction between TE/EC and PT I find quite interesting and would be glad to hear more about it.
   
  Ted writes: "acceptance of biological evolution need not mean the acceptance of PT."
   
  Yes, and for this I am glad for the qualifier 'biological.' In response, I wonder then if acceptance of philosophical evolution ultimately leads to the acceptance of PT? To me, the philosophy of evolution is just as strong, if not stronger than the biology of evolution, which in any case has and deserves its sovereign sphere of relevance. It may be that I am asking this in the wrong place, as natural scientists may not be concerned with the philosophy of evolution even if it may deeply undergird (even dictate) their acceptance of physical evolution.
   
  Frankly, I'm more concerned with process philosophy than with process theology (though more interested to understand the contribution of process theology). In the former topic A.N. Whitehead looms large. Though I'm not so sure that he is quite as important for process theologians, his contribution as a mathematician-turned-philosopher who crossed the Atlantic (left-to-right, up-to-down, good-to-better...) is surely significant. The text 'Religion in the Making,' which I've read in parts, is perhaps less important than his 'Process and Reality,' yet both seem to defend the territory of theism (apologetics) from within an evolutionary framework. I suppose at the time it seemed appropriate to accept evolutionary theory as the avant garde, while grappling with the eclipse of Newtonian mechanistic physics. Today, of course, things are quite different and there are new challenges.
   
  Perhaps someone here would be willing to start a thread on process theology and TE/EC, if it might have some interesting contributions? I for one would be glad to see process theology discussed at ASA, however, it may also be a case where some things are better kept behind closed doors.
   
  Warm regards,
  Gregory
  

Ted Davis <TDavis@messiah.edu> wrote:
>>> Gregory Arago 1/29/2008 5:09 PM >>> asks the
following questions:

Though I appreciate the article and Ted's willingness to accomdate,
satisfaction with the defence of TE is still lacking. Please, can you or
anyone else explain to me how a person can accept the notion of 'non-process
evolution'? This seems to me a blatant contradiction in terms! Evolution by
definition simply must proceed. (Though dis-invoke A.N. Whitehead at your
leisure.)

It would be helpful not to confate TE (theistic evolution-ism) with PT
(process theology), but for goodness sake, let's not pretend they're
un-related! Everybody in the TE camp can in reality be safely considered as
a 'process' person, can't they? If not, why not?

*******

Ted replies briefly, though a book would be required to give a fully
satisfactory answer to these excellent questions.

This morning I read the interview of John Polkinghorne in the Jan 29 issue
of Christian Century. Here is the link:
http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=4274

If you read this carefully, Gregory, especially his answers to the
questions about miracles and "a self-limiting God," you should see how
someone like Polkinghorne (there are others who agree with him) can be
accurately seen as a TE and yet also not as a process theologian. His
answer does not "pretend" that TE and PT are unrelated--of course they are,
since evolution was influential on the formation of PT. And yes, Whitehead
is invoked in this interview. At the same time, however, the acceptance of
biological evolution need not mean the acceptance of PT. Polkinghorne
rejects PT emphatically, despite his moderate tone, for two of the same
reasons that I reject PT. I quote him as follows: "My criticism of PT is
that its God is too weak. God has to be both the God alongside us, the
'fellow sufferer' in Whitehead's phrase [Ted: I insert an enormous qualifier
here, on behalf of Polkinghorne: Whitehead's 'fellow sufferer' was not in
Incarnate God, who literally suffered unto death for our sake; but
Polkinghorne's God is quite literally the crucified Christ. This is indeed
an enormous qualifier and must not be missed.], but also the one who is
going to redeem suffering through some great fulfillment. To put it
bluntly, the God of PT isn't the God who raised our Lord Jesus Christ from
the dead."

That pretty much sums it up, Gregory. Is this response adequate, in your
opinion?

Also, the issue of "self-limitation" is very significant. When PT was put
together back in the 1920s in places like Chicago, the radical theologians
there didn't like that term. It implied for them that God didn't have to be
limited at all, and they didn't like that. They wanted a God who had no
other choice, like Plato's Demiurge. But as Polkinghorne realizes, God does
have a choice--God can and will make a world unlike this one (that is what
he means by "some great fulfillment" in the passage above), but that is not
the world in which we presently live. Why did God make this choice? I
don't know--and the book of Job tells me that I am not likely to know. But
I can have faith in the God who is literally a fellow sufferer in the dying
Christ, and faith in the real power of the God who brought again from the
dead, and literally, the same Christ who had been crucified. Hence you see
why, for me also, PT isn't adequate.

My best, Gregory,

Ted

       
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Received on Thu Jan 31 10:43:04 2008