Does God "intervene"?
Sunday 4 January 2009
A friend suggested that Christians, who are scientists, tend to argue that rather than God intervening in supernatural ways, God is immanent in everything and thus can be seen in all aspects of creation. They then, however, admit that the resurrection (and perhaps also the virgin birth and
certain miracles of Jesus) represent exceptions to this non-
interventionist rule. The problem with this kind of thought, I suggest, is two-fold: it implies a "low view" of God´s immanence and it still involves the idea of God intervening or not intervening. As soon as you allow talk of intervention you imply (a) that God is "up there" or somehow outside of the universe he has
created and (b) that there are some times when he is absent from his
world and some times when he is present.
Here are two alternative ways of thinking: first Coyne himself who
has said, "... theologians (must) develop a more profound
understanding of God´s continuous creation. God in his infinite
freedom continuously creates a world which reflects that freedom at
all levels of the evolutionary process to greater and greater
complexity. God lets the world be what it will be in its continuous
evolution. He does not intervene, but rather allows, participates,
loves." The second is Herbert McCabe who argues that God does not
intervene in the universe, since he would have to be an alternative
to, or alongside, what he was intervening with. Being the cause of
everything, however, there is nothing that he is outside of. Hence
(pace IDers or those who like to think of God as a designer)there is
no feature of the universe which indicates that it is God-made. What
God accounts for is that the universe is there instead of nothing.
No doubt many readers of my blog will think all this is close
to pantheism -- but I understand why these two Christian thinkers are
drawn to this line of argument. One of the problems underlying it
all, which advocates of TE have to face, is why God chose to produce
biological diversity (even if this is seen as continuous creation)
using a "method" which looks automatic and independent rather than
depending on an "interventionist" God. Some have suggested that when
Jesus tells the parable of the growing seed, recorded in Mark 4, he
describes a man who scatters seed on the ground. "Night and day,
whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he
does not know how. All by itself the soil produces corn – first the
stalk, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear." The Greek word
translated "all by itself" is the word automatos. Jesus is
recognising that a process which he of all people would attribute to
God´s activity can take place, in one sense, all by itself.
Triggered by light, heat and moisture, the seed contains within
itself all that is needed to grow. But that doesn´t mean that the
process isn´t sustained by God. Words like "automatic" don´t
eliminate the idea of the sustaining hand of an immanent God.
You cannot understand Herbert McCabe´s thought unless you grasp his
take on Aquinas (about whom he has written extensively). McCabe
thought of Aquinas as, in one sense, the most agnostic theologian in
the Western Christian tradition -- not agnostic in the sense of
doubting whether God exists, but agnostic in the sense of being
certain that God is a mystery beyond any understanding we can now
have.
Aquinas was sure that God *is* because he thought there must be an
answer to the question "Why is there anything instead of nothing at
all?" But he was also sure that we do not know what the answer is.
To say it is God who made the whole universe, and holds it
continually in existence from moment to moment (as singers hold their
songs in existence from moment to moment) is not to *explain* how the
universe came to exist. For we do not know what we mean by "God".
McCabe, following Aquinas, thinks of the word "God" as a convenient
label for something we do not understand. For Aquinas only God
understands who God is. Aquinas thought that in the Bible God has
promised us that one day he will give us a share in his self-
understanding, but not yet. Until that day. although God has begun
to reveal himself in the Word made flesh, we grasp his self-
communication not by coming to know, but only by faith. Faith is an
illumination that appears as darkness: we come to know that we do not
know. Aquinas thought we know God only by trying to understand the
things he has done and does for us -- the marvellous works of his
creation, the even more marvellous works of his salvation -- the
whole story that he tells us in the Bible.
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