Re: [asa] Saving Darwin: What theological changes are required?

Let me comment about the imago dei. It seems to me that, until such
time as we can all agree on exactly what the Imago dei refers to, we
must refrain from saying that it is present only in the human species.
 If, for example, we think that empathy or altruism are a part of the
imago dei, then we must think about what this means for other species
that exhibit these traits. My comment, which was not verbally
inspired by God, was simply that we must consider this issue. Perhaps,
upon consideration, we will do nothing. But we cannot be as glib as
Christians of yesteryear in thinking that there is some simple
distinction between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom. Fran De
Waals recounts many provocative stories of primate behaviors that,
were they performed by humans, would be considered exemplary of
kindness and generosity.

2008/6/9 Ted Davis <TDavis@messiah.edu
> My turn now to vote and to comment on this question, which I've been
> thinking about for a long time. I'll keep my response short, however, or
> I'd never have time to write it.
>
> I know Karl Giberson quite well, and have known him for many years.
>
> Overall, as should be well known here, my approach to religion/science
> interaction is probably closer to the "complementarity" model than to any
> other specific model, including concordism, conflict, confirmation, and some
> others I won't label. I don't necessarily think that Karl's use of the word
> "must" is improper, in this context, though I would not use that word here
> myself. In some historically famous instances, such as the controversy
> about heliocentrism, I do believe that the church "must" respond by giving
> up cherished interpretations of certain passages of scripture. But when,
> how, and why should all be in our minds. In the Copernican case, for
> example, there was no direct "proof" of the earth's motion before the
> discovery of the aberration of starlight in the early 18th century, but by
> that point many Protestants had already accepted heliocentrism and the
> debates about the Bible and the earth's motion were mostly already over--I
> ignore here the fact that even today, one can still find believers in
> geocentricity. Catholics weren't yet allowed officially to believe it, but
> I find it hard to believe that numerous Catholic scientists did not believe
> it at that point. When, then, did heliocentrism become pretty obvious to
> those with working knowledge of astronomy? When did it become pretty
> obvious to theologians and biblical scholars that something had to be done?
> By the early 19th century, to be sure, the logic that Galileo employed
> against his own opponents concerning the interpretation of scripture was
> being used widely to support the acceptance of a similar logic concerning
> the age of the earth. Modern creationists mostly accept Galileo's logic in
> astronomy, but deny its validity on the earth's age. "Must" they accept the
> latter, esp if they accept the former? "Must" thoughtful Christians now
> accept common descent? Is the evidence for it now comparable in strength to
> the evidence that the earth moves or that the earth is billions of years
> old? Both Mike Behe and Francis Collins have recently argued that the
> genetic evidence is a slam dunk (and please note, ID critics, that Behe has
> been saying this for a long time). If so, then maybe the time is now for a
> rethinking. But "must" seems a stretch, at least to many.
>
> If the time is now, then what about the "how"? How should the evangelical
> church do this rethinking? IMO, this has to come mostly from the inside,
> and be done mostly by theologians and pastors and biblical scholars who
> decide on their own that maybe the scientists are right about this.
> Historically, it's sometimes been the scientists who take the lead on this,
> and then the others follow along. The key point here now is that we have
> today a group of scientists who accept the divinity of Jesus and the bodily
> resurrection -- that is, their christology is orthodox on crucial
> points--but who then also accept common descent driven by natural selection.
> That's new territory in the past 100 years, and reason to think/hope that
> the theologians will indeed take positive notice. Time will tell, and
> historians aren't in the business of predictions. At least this one isn't.
>
> At the same time, I agree strongly with Polkinghorne's affirmation (Belief
> in God in an Age of Science, p. 87) that "theology is as entitled as science
> to retain those categories which its experience has demanded that it shall
> use, however counterintuitive they may be. [for example] Jesus Christ will
> continue to be understood in the incarnational terms discussed [above]."
> There are some non-negotiables here, IMO, although my judgment of what those
> are may differ from the judgments of others. Jesus isn't a bad place to
> start looking for those non-negotiables: unlike some of the leading
> science/theology people (fill in Barbour, Peacocke, and Haught, e.g.), I
> think that the full divinity and bodily resurrection of Jesus (the former
> indeed partly an inference from the latter) are absolutely crucial to any
> dialogue with science that is to go by the adjective "Christian." On the
> other hand, a theory of the fall (if I may call it that), like a theory of
> the atonement, is not the same thing IMO as the fact of the fall and the
> fact of the atonement. We are sinful creatures, responsible for what we
> choose to do and capable of great moral depravity (if I keep going with that
> I'll start to sound like Calvin, who IMO had this part mainly right),
> whether or not there was a first couple who "fell" from innocence; and we
> needed and still need the sacrifice of the crucified God to redeem us,
> whether or not the details of that transaction are precisely as Anselm
> conceived them to be. The dangers of denying the fall and atonement, in the
> factual sense I am referring to, are not merely theological--though "merely"
> here is not meant to suggest that theology isn't very important. Rather,
> they are also deeply cultural, social, and intellectual. We tend to start
> believing in salvation by our own works, or even that salvation is not
> necessary because we are not really sinful to begin with. Eugenics was so
> widely popular with liberal Protestants 80 years ago in no small part b/c of
> this fundamental heresy.
>
> Now my votes.
>
> 1. We must abandon thinking of Adam and Eve as real people or even
> surrogates for groups of real people
>
> PROBABLY, though this may depend on how we conceive of them. There are two
> main empirical problems with an historical, separately created Adam & Eve
> ca. 6000 years ago (note please I am talking about the antiquity of
> humanity, not the antiquity of the earth). One, the genetic evidence
> (above) makes it really, really hard to support their separate creation.
> Two, the biblical context of cities and agriculture makes it really, really
> hard to push the first couple back as far as hominids seem to go--some tens
> of thousands of years, at least. They painted the walls of caves, made
> tools, and buried their dead long before cities and agriculture, when Adam &
> Eve show up in Genesis. I know there might be clever ways to work all of
> that out, but I find them quite unpersuasive myself.
>
> 2. The Fall must disappear from history as an event and become, instead, a
> partial insight into the morally ambiguous character with which evolution
> endowed our species
>
> SEE ABOVE. The fall must be a fact, a crucial and non-negotiable fact,
> about who we are and what we are capable of doing. Regardless of how we got
> here, here we are and here we find ourselves. I'm starting here to sound
> like Harry Emerson Fosdick, of all people (I'm not usually so friendly to
> his ideas), and as he once said, "Origins prove nothing in the realm of
> values." Amen. Otherwise, mentally and physically handicapped persons
> really are not worth as much as the rest of us. This is profoundly
> important.
>
> 3. We must consider extending the imago dei, in some sense, beyond our
> species.
>
> WHY? For starters, let's define as clearly as we can what the "imago dei"
> is, and what it is not. Is it the gift of creating, as the Renaissance
> artists and writers surely believed? Is it rationality? Dignity (itself
> pretty vague)? All of these things? None of them? Whatever it is, only
> humans have it, according to Genesis, and I believe that the theological
> content of Genesis *is* its revelational content, so I could be very hard to
> persuade on this one. (But, don't ask me precisely what the imago dei is,
> b/c the Bible doesn't say and I don't know either.)
>
> Ted
>
>
>
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-- 
Karl Giberson, Ph.D,
www.karlgiberson.com
Professor of Physics, Eastern Nazarene College, Quincy, MA
Director of the Forum on Faith & Science, Gordon College, Wenham, MA.
Phone: 781-801-2189
Fax: 617-847-5933
 "A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs --
jolted by every pebble in the road." Henry Ward Beecher
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