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

Gregory

The main problem with a discussion on PT on this list is that none hold to PT so wont be the best to lead a discussion on it.

For myself I would have to go away and read it up to have a decent discussion on it. On PT I have been there (not as an exponent of it!) done that and couldn't be bothered to buy a T-shirt.

Michael
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Gregory Arago
  To: Ted Davis ; AmericanScientificAffiliation ; David Opderbeck
  Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2008 3:42 PM
  Subject: [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 14:53:20 2008