Re: [asa] concurrence, co-operation, etc.

George:

I like this passage of yours:

"I hesitate to speak of the "autonomy" of creatures because that would suggest that they could exist apart from God, and that of course would contradict the belief that God keeps all that is not-God in existence - the aspect of "preservation" in providence. (Tillich, who of course spoke of God as "Ground of being," used the word "theonomy in distinction from both "autonomy" and "heteronomy" of creatures.) OTOH, the doctrine of creation does mean that God causes something to exist that is not God, so that creatures cannot be regarded merely as "emanations" or extensions of God. That implies, in part, that creatures can have a real causal efficacy."

Yes -- in my view the doctrine of creation implies a real causal efficacy. So the question is whether, when one billiard ball collides with another billiard ball, God has to do anything -- beyond "preservation" -- to make the second billiard ball move with the velocity it does, with the angle it does, etc., or whether "nature" takes care of all those details.

I find that both David Campbell and Terry Gray are incredibly vague on this question. I am not. My opinion is that God created nature with the intention that it should be (most of the time) self-governing, and that in the case of the billiard balls he does nothing beyond "preservation" (i.e., sustaining the existence of the billiard balls and the laws of nature), and that Newton's laws and so on do all the rest. To me, if the word "nature" does not imply this, then "nature" is a useless term which should be removed from our vocabulary, along with the corollary term "natural laws". But Terry and David seem to be saying either (1) that God simultaneously does nothing and everything in the motion of the billiard balls, or (2) that he does something extra and mysterious in the case of each collision, which is somehow necessary (in addition to the natural laws) to make the second ball move away from the first ball in the way that it does. (I can't tell which they mean, and I find the first option incoherent and the second one nebulous.) It is this sort of equivocation which make ID/TE dialogue very difficult, and makes it very hard for people in the general public to understand exactly what TE is saying about divine action.

I admit that talking about God and divine action is often difficult and that sometimes finding the right expression can be hard, but I think that Terry and David are inventing difficulties that are not intrinsic to the subject matter. Whether these difficulties spring from their Calvinism I cannot tell.

I realize, George, that you cannot speak for Terry and David, but as a TE you may perhaps have an interest in the minimizing of unnecessary difficulties in speaking about divine action, so if you have any ability to "translate" their terminology into language that makes sense to me, I would be grateful. You seem to understand the language that I am using, and perhaps, though Lutheran, you know enough of Calvinism to bring their idea across to me.

Cameron.
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: George Murphy
  To: Cameron Wybrow ; ASA
  Sent: Wednesday, July 08, 2009 10:51 PM
  Subject: Re: [asa] concurrence, co-operation, etc.

  Cameron -

  I appreciate your detailed argument here. Right now several things keep me from replying as fully as that argument deserves but will try at least to contribute to the discussion.

  I hesitate to speak of the "autonomy" of creatures because that would suggest that they could exist apart from God, and that of course would contradict the belief that God keeps all that is not-God in existence - the aspect of "preservation" in providence. (Tillich, who of course spoke of God as "Ground of being," used the word "theonomy in distinction from both "autonomy" and "heteronomy" of creatures.) OTOH, the doctrine of creation does mean that God causes something to exist that is not God, so that creatures cannot be regarded merely as "emanations" or extensions of God. That implies, in part, that creatures can have a real causal efficacy.
  That rules out what Barbour calls the "classical" theology of divine action, which amounts to God moving inert "stuff" around like pieces on a chessboard.

  "Concurrence, or the co-operation of God, is the act of Divine Providence whereby God, by a general and immediate influence, proportioned to the need and capacity of every creature, graciously takes part with second causes in their actions and effects." So David Hollaz (One of the Lutheran "orthodox dogmaticians" circa 1700) defined the idea in question. This language of "second causes" makes clear the connection with what Barbour calls the Neo-Thomist theology of divine action, which can be modelled by a human worker using a tool. In that case both the worker and the tool do something. If I use a saw to cut a board, both I and the saw work. I don't cut the board with my bare hands, but OTOH if I do nothing the saw just sits there & does nothing. Of course the model/metaphor/analogy is limited because God is the one who (perhaps indirectly) has brought creatures into being, preserves them and has endowed them with their properties, while those actions can apply only in limited ways to human beings and their tools. But if the limitations are observed, I think that this provides a very good analogy for divine action. It does need to be supplemented by the concept of kenosis, the idea that God limits action to what conforms to the laws of physics (which are ultimately God's creations too). One might argue that that is implied by Hollaz' "graciously takes part with second causes ..." but I don't think that's exactly what he had in mind.

  "But," some will argue, "That worker-tool thing is just a model or an analogy. How is God really supposed to 'work with' creatures?" I think, however, that that's about as far as we can go. There has been a good deal of discussion among science-theology folks about a "search for the causal joint" - i.e., how do we described the interaction between God and creatures. I think that this search, if it's supposed to go beyond the type of analogy I mentioned, is misguided. Theology isn't physics. In physics we can summarize the behavior of, e.g., an electron by writing down its Hamiltonian (essentially its energy) in terms of the variables that characterize that system, He. Similarly, we can describe an electromagnetic field by its Hamiltonian Hf. If we then want to know how an electron interacts with an electromagnetic field we look for an expression for the interaction Hamiltonian, Hi. The total will be He + Hf + Hi, and standard procedures allow us to work out the equations of motion for the combined system. The "search for the causal joint" seems to me to be a search for at least a qualitative form of the interaction Hamiltonian between God and the world, and this is basically wrong because God simply isn't a creature.

  I agree that a good discussion of "theistic evolution" by a competent philosopher could be very helpful. I do not,however, think that it's as necessary as you probably do. The old saying - at least among Lutherans - that philosophy (or "reason") is to have a ministerial, not a magisterial, role in theology doesn't mean that philosophy is of no importance. It does mean, however, that a philosophy that's going to be of theological use must be willing to accept basic Christian faith claims as presuppositions. & I think something similar should be said for science.

  Shalom
  George
  http://home.roadrunner.com/~scitheologyglm

    ----- Original Message -----
    From: Cameron Wybrow
    To: ASA
    Sent: Wednesday, July 08, 2009 2:14 PM
    Subject: [asa] concurrence, co-operation, etc.

    George:

    Yes, I agree with you that the term "concurrence" has the connotations that you suggest. That's why I have never found the notion, whether with reference to the Medieval Latin "concurro" or the English "concur", very convincing. Concurrence always reminds me of the role of the Governor-General in my own country, who gives "royal assent", i.e., signs all laws into existence, but does nothing to produce them -- does not think them up, work out the details, debate them, administer them, etc. Further, in practice sometimes the law is put into effect a few days or weeks or months before it is "proclaimed" by the Governor-General, and there is not a whit of difference between what happens in the country whether the law is operating before the Governor-General proclaims it, or afterward. (I am not arguing that the office of the Governor-General is of no value -- there are reasons to maintain it -- but as far as the contents or operation of the laws go, we could get along without a Governor-General just fine.) The term "concurrence", then, suggests to me a passive God who merely "goes along with" the laws of nature, laws which function by the very fact that nature is what it is. It suggests to me a Deistic God who nods approvingly at the steady working of the clock he has constructed.

    The question is, if there is to be a "nature" at all -- if occasionalism is to be avoided -- does nature not have to be in some sense autonomous? This is a nettle which neither David Campbell nor Terry Gray has been willing to grasp. Even their hero Calvin was (unless I am mistaken) no occasionalist, but granted nature a set of powers of its own. So if we say that the sun rises and sets (or that the earth orbits the sun) due to "nature", are we not saying that God has endowed nature with the power to carry on in a certain way? And what is the point of God endowing nature with the power to carry on in a certain way, if it needs something else beyond what he has endowed it with? And what would the extra element be? For example, does he endow planets with the "natural" ability to travel around the sun, but does he have to do something extra to make the orbit an ellipse rather than a circle? I doubt very much that any TE -- or any scientist -- would conceive of God as doing something "extra" in that way. I think that all TEs, and all scientists, conceive of nature as operating in a more integral way than that.

    Also, there is this strong TE theme about God respecting or honouring the creative powers he has given to nature, that it would be unfitting for God to, say, give nature the power of microevolution, but then have to do something extra for macroevolution. There is the strong sense among many TEs that God would have given nature the power to generate the whole sequence of macroevolution by itself. People here have said this, and Ken Miller talks about God treating nature as a grown-up, with creative responsibility, able to do things on its own. So the question is: how can God do *anything* without disrespecting the adulthood of his created world, or without implying that his created world is somehow defective, that it needs supplementation?

    You use the word "co-operation", and I agree with you that it is a much better word for suggesting that God actually *does* something in the normal operations of nature, whereas "concurrence" sounds vacuous. Nonetheless, if we are strict about the usage of words -- and while metaphors can never be perfect, we should choose them with care -- "co-operation" means literally "working together". When two people or things "co-operate" to get a job done, *both are necessary*. If either of the two co-operating agents ceases to do its part, *the action does not get done*. So if the relation of God to nature in the orbit of a planet of the growth of a plant is one of co-operation, then it is necessary to have some conception of what "nature's part" is, and what "God's part" is. And this I have never clearly heard articulated, whether by the medieval theologians, or the Reformers, or the modern theologians. If God sustained the laws of nature *but did no more than that* (and people here are suggesting that in the orbit of Mars, the growth of plants, etc. he does more than that), what would nature be able to accomplish? Where would it fall short of what it accomplishes now, *with* God's "co-operation"?

    The difficulty lies in the notion of "nature" itself. "Nature" is not a Biblical concept (see the aforementioned work of mine), but a Greek one. It was "naturalized" so to speak, within Christianity, and Christians became quite comfortable with it, in a way that some Islamic theologians never did. It was precisely the belief in "nature" -- albeit a transformed notion of nature, not quite the original Greek one -- that allowed modern natural science to proceed in the 17th century. God created a natural world characterized by mathematical regularity and had *commanded* all its parts always and everywhere to follow natural laws, and he is omnipotent, so that nature cannot disobey that command but must always carry it out to perfection. This is actually a stricter notion of nature than that held by the Greeks, who allowed for some chaotic disobedience of matter, an imperfect orderliness which partly obscured the plan of the divine Mind. Within the more rigorous post-17th-century conception of nature, what is there left for God to do, other than to "power" the natural laws, so to speak? How does a "natural law" decreed by an unambiguously omnipotent God leave any room for any additional "co-operation" on God's part?

    No one here has suggested that when lightning strikes a barn, God does something special to "help the lightning down"; the laws of static electricity which he has created can entirely explain the phenomenon. If God is "co-operating" with the laws of static electricity, what exactly does his co-operation consist in? If his "co-operation" in the case of the lightning bolt is identical with his "co-operation" with the shock one gets after shuffling one's feet on a rug and touching metal, then God's co-operation is nothing more than concurrence -- mere assent to the laws. And if his co-operation in the two cases is different, uniquely personal in each case, what does he do in the case of the lightning bolt that he doesn't do in the case of the shock, or vice versa? More generally speaking, I have never heard an account of God's "co-operation" that makes sense. If "natural laws" mean anything, then God never acts in a *particular* way to accomplish electric shocks, plant growth, etc., and "co-operation" in particular cases seems a redundancy. (Would you run along beside your wife's car, pushing it, to help her get to work, as if the laws governing the internal combustion engine needed some assistance?) Conversely, if God really does co-operate in every natural action, then natural laws must be in some sense deficient. They must be incapable of particular application without a unique intelligent intervention in every case. But this goes against everyone's intuitive conception of what a "natural law" is.

    In other words, nothing is solved by switching from "concurrence" to "co-operation", unless the nature of the "co-operation" is spelled out. And that spelling out must do justice to the idea that nature is governed by "laws" -- a conception at the foundation of natural science. It must show how "natural laws" do not lead inevitably to Deism, but allow for a genuine, not merely verbal, form of co-operation between God and nature.

    For such reasons, I've found much of the discussion here unsatisfying. What does it mean to say that God is involved when Mars orbits the sun? I've suggested that this means merely that he sustains the law of gravity, inertia, etc. But David Campbell tells me no, God is doing something else. And when I ask what that something else is, he gives me an answer which is neither scientific nor philosophical, but based on Calvinistic theology. But I do not find Calvinistic theology either intellectually persuasive or religiously binding (or for that matter even religiously attractive). Further, David's account is, to put it bluntly, vague. God is involved specifically, says David, yet natural laws can produce man from slime by themselves. Or maybe that last part comes from Terry Gray, not David Campbell. It is hard for me to tell, because their two accounts blur together. They both seem to me to be saying, in different ways, that God does nothing and everything at the same time. (Except when they seem to be saying that God does neither nothing nor everything, but rather does something -- but then cannot specify what that something is.)

    I think that one of the problems is that very few (as far as I can tell) TEs have studied philosophy in an intense way. I have the very strong impression that TEs are mainly scientists with an interest (though often little training) in theology, and in a few cases theologians with an interest (though usually little training) in science. (And then there are cases like your own George, where the TE has advanced training in both science and theology. But those cases are rare.) But I have a strong sense that almost no TE has even an undergraduate degree in philosophy, let alone a graduate degree, and it is my impression that no TE has any academic standing in the world of philosophy. I think this is a serious problem, as the core issues we are addressing -- the nature of God, the nature of nature, etc. -- require a sustained philosophical treatment. It is not enough to pick up a bit of philosophy that some Calvinist theologian relays secondhand, and so on.

    One thing that philosophers dislike about theologians is the tendency of theologians to want to have everything both ways. Theologians seem to want God to be personally active in the fall of every sparrow, yet when they want to impress modern scientists with how much they respect science, they will argue very aggressively that everything in nature works by general natural laws, to the point where they will insist that even the origin of life itself must be explained naturalistically and so on. So they simply assert both propositions, side by side. And when pressed regarding the apparent incompatibility between the two propositions, they take refuge in the mysterious nature of divine action. "Mystery" is the great trump card which allows theologians to have everything both ways. Philosophers are not allowed that luxury, and it rankles them that theologians think they are entitled to avoid difficulties in this way.

    Another think that philosophers dislike about theologians is that theologians do so much arbitrary picking and choosing, making distinctions where no rational distinction is evident, in order to preserve a favoured theological conclusion. A TE theologian will attack Behe for allegedly suggesting that intervention was necessary for macroevolution, and the philosophical basis for preferring non-interventionist explanations of origins can be clearly traced back to Lessing, Kant, Hume, etc. Yet the TE theologian does not follow Lessing, Kant, Hume, etc. in their skepticism about the miracles of Jesus, and does not even shrink (in most cases) from saying that God actually altered the normal course of nature in the New Testament case. There is no *philosophically* coherent reason for this half-Enlightenment, half-supernaturalist account of divine action. The assertion of any difference between the two cases springs from theological preferences, and, as the history of Christianity shows, these theological preferences are conditioned by everything from the spirit of the age in which the theologian lives to current notions of Biblical interpretation to the theologian's personal taste. Many of the things asserted about divine action in nature by current TEs would be found blasphemous by Luther, Calvin, and even later scientific figures such a Robert Boyle (who according to Ted believed that living things were created by special divine action, not by a naturalistic evolutionary process). And philosophers by their nature distrust an enterprise (theology) which is so subject to the whims of prevailing taste. They find it hard to take seriously theology's claims to be a "science" or a systematic body of knowledge, when it is so evidently coloured by its historical context and the personalities of its leading figures.

    Philosophers can live with occasionalist God of Islam, who does everything himself; they can live with the God of Deism, who lets nature do everything itself; and they can live with a God who generally lets nature do everything itself, but sometimes does a few things himself. Philosophers have a problem with TE, because it is simply not clear about what, if anything, God does in the natural realm. Its "concurrence" is passive and vacuous; its "co-operation" is undefined; its appeal to both/and paradoxes (God does it *and* nature does it all by itself; God designed it *and* it all arose by chance and necessity) is theology, not philosophy, and theology of questionable merit and dubious logic at that; its methodological/metaphysical distinction is not used (to the end that TE puts it, anyway) by professional philosophers anywhere; and generally speaking, it smells of intellectual ad-hockery from top to bottom.

    I know that all of these comments are broad-brushing, and cannot be applied in every point to every TE, and not even to every TE here. For example, George, you have shown more awareness of the theoretical difficulties than many. And certainly most people here (Terry and David included) have shown more theoretical subtlety than Ken Miller or Francisco Ayala or Francis Collins. Nonetheless, TE does need a major philosophical treatment. Someone needs to write a book on TE from a philosophical point of view: "A Philosophical Analysis and Defense of Theistic Evolutionism" or something like that. And the book needs to be written by someone who knows in depth the discussions of God and nature found in Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Ockham, Scotus, Calvin, Luther, Descartes, Leibniz, Hume, Kant, Darwin, Bergson, Whitehead, etc. Without such a philosophical analysis and defense, TE will remain, to put it bluntly, fuzzy, and very much on the margins of serious academic and philosophical discourse, however popular a theme it may be at conferences of Christian scientists. So who will stand up and be TE's philosophical champion? Is such a person in the offing?

    Cameron.
       

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Received on Fri Jul 10 16:23:29 2009