RE: [asa] Rejoinder 9C from Timaeus - to George Murphy

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From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of Ted Davis
Sent: Friday, November 14, 2008 9:36 AM
To: asa@lists.calvin.edu
Cc: George Murphy
Subject: [asa] Rejoinder 9C from Timaeus - to George Murphy

In his latest reply to George Murphy, Timaeus questions George's suggestion of "divine kenosis" as a basis for understanding God's providential work in creation. While I have read George's paper some time ago with interest, and think there is a useful paradigm of approaching the subject, I will say not without some disagreement and probably lack of understanding of the actual model or what it actually means in practice. Reading Timaeus' comments, I think there are some valuable critiques, although I think he has oversimplified and misunderstood the original idea. I will try to take this musing further as things came to mind in reading his comments, and perhaps reveal my own misunderstanding in the process.

The Biblical concept of kenosis (as I understand it) is specifically that God (in the form of Christ) emptied himself, "made himself of no reputation", and subjected himself to physical limitations of the flesh so that he might live and die to redeem mankind.

The concept of kenosis as it relates to creation is that God "empties himself" of his reputation and foregoes outward, obviously "miraculous" (in our view) intervention, in favor of working behind, below, and within the forces of nature to accomplish his will. Thus, natural forces can be outwardly observed as causes, without God getting the credit for it, while God is at work subtly behind the scenes. Thus in the same way that Christ became of no reputation, God is often ridiculed by his own creation for not being truly God because he didn't appear in the way that they expected he should.

If the analogy works this way, it should work in reverse as well. I am wondering how this concept of "kenosis in creation" work in explaining the physical creation of Christ in the flesh? My first reaction is, I would say it doesn't work well at all. When Christ was conceived, was it the result of natural forces acting naturally, with God acting kenotically behind the scenes? If so, then I would expect that Christ's conception would be the result of normal intercourse between a man and a woman, with God divinely working in hidden ways to make the result (the divine incarnation of Christ into the physical body) be accomplished according to His will. Yet this is the very thing the gospels say didn't happen. Christ's birth (the original Biblical expression of kenosis in the first place) was not the result of natural forces, but of the Holy Spirit coming upon Mary and producing a child. This seems the very opposite of the use of this principle as applied to creation, wher!
 e miracle and divine intervention are avoided and not necessary to invoke as the obvious causes.

However, in fairness, I believe the analogy does still work and is very valid -- looking at Christ's Incarnation as not just the moment of his conception, but the whole process of his coming into being, He still became an embryo in Mary's womb. She still had to carry him to term, with natural processes at work causing his body to form, her body to undergo changes in pregnancy, she probably had the normal doubts and uncertainties about the process of birth, and the physical pain in childbirth. Everything about her pregnancy (as far as we know) from a biological standpoint was "natural processes acting naturally". The only thing about the process that would appear to have been "miraculous" was the conception. I say only thing, but that is a pretty big thing.

And further, how can we say for sure that Mary's "natural" pregnancy was *simply* the action of natural forces working naturally? I don't think we can say that. God was surely sustaining her, both physically and spiritually in ways that may or may not be detectable by science, but which were real nonetheless. When her friends rejected her, God was there; when she experienced pains of body, God strengthened her; when she doubted her experience, God reassured her; when she needed a husband, God provided Joseph with a vision; when she needed a place to stay, God softened the heart of the inn keeper; and God brought the shepherds and other witnesses into her life to confirm that this was truly His Son. (Obviously, a few of these things are speculative, but very imaginable.) Can anyone describe in purely naturalistic, scientific terms how God reassured Mary when she started to doubt, or strengthened her when she was weak? Could Mary on her own (naturally) have borne the tri!
 als, without God sustaining her? Yet most of those things, even the things which could have been scientifically or historically "detectable" don't negate the fact that her pregnancy and the physical development of the child in her womb were going on more or less naturalistically.
        
If we can argue from analogy (and I'm not fully convinced we can) to the creation of the universe, we might say that the conception of the universe was miraculous (Big Bang), but everything else after that was done through natural processes acting naturally. Yet, there could have been many varied ways in which God helped, guided, or otherwise directed the course of natural processes that may or may not have been describable in purely naturalistic terms. Is this essentially what you mean, George, by God's divine kenosis acting in creation? God acting subtly rather than overtly, but acting nonetheless in ways that would lead to His purposes? It seems to me that TEs are willing to acknowledge God's hidden working but not overt intervention, but that IDists are trying to force TE's to explain in detail actual physical mechanisms through which God could have intervened. Maybe I'm wrong. This seems to be where Ken Miller was heading, using quantum indeterminacy to provide on!
 e speculative answer.

More importantly to the direct argument that Timaeus is making, does Darwinism or any of its modern scientific counterparts envision this "divine working" as part of the necessary conditions to accomplish the outcomes of evolutionary processes? Could the creation (by analogy to Mary) have carried to term and brought forth an image-bearing humanity without the continuing sustenance of God? If not, then why is Darwinism or neo-Darwinism claimed (by TEs) to be a sufficient explanation for how things came to be? Isn't this the point that Timaeus has been trying to make all along, that natural (e.g. Darwinian) processes might be real or necessary explanations on a physical level, but that they aren't sufficient explanations when looking at the total reality?

Can TEs and IDs agree fully on this statement: Darwinism might (or might not) be a sufficient *physical* explanation, but cannot be a sufficient *total* explanation for the development of life on earth?

Are the natural processes all that science can measure and study, like the developmental biology of Mary's child? Could historians and sociologists have studied the action of God in helping Mary through the peer rejection from claiming to be carrying God's child? Could psychologists have studied the effects of God's reassurance of her doubts and strengthening her to bear the persecution she may have faced? If so, could the effects of God's hidden action in creation be described and analyzed, quantified, etc. (e.g. in design detection)? This seems to be where design theories are trying to go. I'm not sure whether they can or not. I think this gets to the heart of whether ID provides any useful scientific value, or whether it's mainly of theological/philosophical value, or something else.

I hope my musings here make some kind of sense.

Jon Tandy

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Received on Fri Nov 14 18:11:24 2008