Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: evangelicalism

  • Book: Thank God for Evolution

    Dowd, Michael. Thank God for Evolution. New York: Plume, 2007. 380 pages + front and back matter. ISBN: 978-0-452-29534-6.  (All numbers in parentheses are page numbers from this edition of the book.)

    I was interested in this book from the moment I saw the title, not because I immediately expected to agree, but because it, along with its blurbs and description, takes a celebratory approach to evolution. My own position is that evolution is a fact and a valid theory, but it requires some theological work to deal with that. So a book that claims that evolution is not only compatible with Christianity, but something that Christians should thank God for, sounds pretty challenging to me.

    The early pages of the book set some pretty high standards. In the “Author’s Promises” Dowd makes some very strong promises, claiming that he is bringing forth a new form of Christianity. For example, speaking to “devoutly committed Christians” he says that “. . . whether you consider yourself conservative, moderate, or liberal, my promise to you is that the sacred evolutionary perspective offered here will enrich your faith and inspire you in ways that believers in the past could only dream of” (xxvi). He also expects that his exposition will be enriching to atheists and freethinkers, amongst many others. That’s a tall order, and if you read the complete section of author’s promises, you’ll find the mission gets even more daunting.

    I was reading this book along with my Sunday School class, and I tried to look at it in two ways. First, I wanted to see how much it challenged my thinking and made me reconsider things I already believe. Second, I wanted to see how well it fulfilled the author’s own stated mission.

    So how does he go about his task? He divides his presentation into five sections:

    1. The Holy Trajectory of Evolution
    2. Reality is Speaking
    3. The Gospel According to Evolution
    4. Evolutionary Spirituality
    5. A “God-Glorifying” Future

    The first section lays out the view of evolution that underlies the rest of the book. I would summarize this by saying it’s a very directed and goal-oriented view of evolution. The evolutionary process is not just natural laws being laws; it is a process that is leading the universe, and of course our world, to ever greater heights. The second section attempts to relate the concept of revelation with science, and deals, in a sense, with epistemology. The third section attempts to restate basic Christian doctrines in terms of evolutionary theory. The fourth expands this into a more general spirituality, including presenting some ideas of spiritual disciplines. In fact, the fourth section goes so far as to discuss speaking in tongues and relating it to this evolutionary spirituality. The fifth section, to be honest, started to feel rather redundant, but I’d summarize it by saying that it restates the evolution of the entire universe such that it is leading to the fulfillment of the dreams of an American 21st century liberal. Many of these dreams are not at all bad–the question that remains is whether evolution is inevitably pushing in that direction.

    As usual, let me state the positives of this book. I’m afraid my reaction is not all that positive, so this is harder than usual. The author’s style is engaging, though I must temper that note by noting that it seems redundant from time to time. The section of spiritual disciplines and some on evolutionary psychology were interesting, though understandably a bit basic. I’m not sorry I read the book, but it doesn’t go onto any of my “you ought to read this” lists.

    There are a some things this book is not. It is not an outline of evolutionary theory. There are some basic descriptions of evolutionary processes, but nothing that I find challenging, and I am not trained in any of the natural sciences. (I should note, however, that I’ve been reading books on creation and evolution since I was about 10 years old.) It is not a deep book of theology. While it runs through a number of theological concepts, the major contribution, in my view, was in redefining terms. It does not deal extensively with scripture. If you want to look at how to interpret scripture in the light of the principles expressed here, your guidance is limited to telling you not to take the Bible literally, and to look for revelation of God in the ongoing, evolutionary story of the universe around you.

    Before I discuss the success of this book at attaining its stated goals, I want to write a note on accommodationism. Accommodationism is the view that science and religion can be accommodated and need not conflict. The problem with this is that it doesn’t define “religion” and “science.” My religion and mainstream science can be accommodated, but let’s say someone believes that the only way to faithfully read Genesis 1 & 2 is as historical narrative description the creation of the world, then that particular form of religion and mainstream science cannot be accommodated.

    I might want to suggest that this view of Genesis 1 & 2 is less important or less essential, but it’s not my place to tell others what about their belief system is essential. I can suggest, but obviously the decision is theirs. I cannot claim to have accommodated their faith to science unless, in the process, I have respected what they regard as important.

    Similarly one must define what one means by science. I see science as a way of studying the natural world. If something is supernatural, it can only be observed by science as (and if) it impacts the natural world in a measurable way. So I don’t understand science as the one and only way to know. Yet there are those who do. If one believes science is the one and only way to know, then accommodation with religion will again be impossible.

    Thus accommodationism itself tends to become a scientific and religious position on its own, rather than a reconciliation of other positions. In accommodating science and religion, proponents often alter the components in ways that will not be acceptable to adherents of the supposedly accommodated views.

    Note that I distinguish a form of political accommodationism, in which proponents of the teaching of evolutionary theory work together even though their positions on religious and philosophical issues may differ greatly. This is simply agreement on certain goals, something much different, in my view.

    What Michael Dowd has done, in my opinion, is to create an accommodationist religious position, with some prejudice to both Christianity and evolution. It’s hard to say which takes the bigger beating, though I think Christianity in any orthodox form comes in for the worst treatment.

    Evolutionary theory, it seems to me, loses as well, by being presented as a teleological process. It is a very optimistic view, which essentially holds that all the competition and death and suffering of biological evolution leads ultimately and (almost) inevitably to cooperation, enlightenment, peace, and joy. It’s not that I disagree with the kinds of goals that Dowd expresses. His hopes are very attractive. I actually wish I could believe they are as inevitable as he seems to think. I just don’t think it’s so.

    Christianity comes in for redefinition. All the words are there, but they come into new meanings. You can claim that resurrection or eternal life means coming back as some sort of stardust (97-100), but that’s not what it means to most Christian believers, and I suspect you’re not going to find that many who want to exchange one view for the other. Similarly, the “realization” of various miracles (Appendix B, 357-370) is going to fall flat for most evangelical or orthodox Christians.

    In fact, I would say that if you being this book as an orthodox or evangelical Christian, and substantially accept what it teaches, you will no longer be recognizable as a Christian, except in vocabulary. You’ll use some of the words that Christians use, but you will not mean the same thing. I try not to tell other people whether they can call themselves Christian; I believe God can deal with the labels issue. But these changes in vocabulary are so radical that they really no longer appear to relate to the same religion.

    In a sidebar titled “Realizing ‘the Centrality of the Cross’” (210) there is a great illustration of what I’m saying. In describing the traditional Christian understanding of this phrase Dowd says that “. . . it is often taken to mean that only Christians who believe that God’s Son suffered and died on teh cross for their sins will ascend to a place somewhere outside the universe called heaven. Everyone else will be tortured forevere in hell. . . .” In its place, evolutionary Christianity would say that this refers to “vertical integrity,” or “getting complete with the past and being responsible for the future . . .” and “horizontal integrity,” “being in right relationship with my nested world.”

    Now the vertical and horizontal components do form a sort of cross, but the only connection between those two views is in the vocabulary. Further, the orthodox position could be stated much better, and would subsume integrity, though in quite a different way. I do like the concepts of horizontal and vertical integrity, but they are not the essence of “the centrality of the cross.”

    The main purpose for which I could recommend this book would be in order to understand this evolutionary Christianity movement. Many of the theological positions would be better studied from writers expressing theological positions such as process theology or panentheism. I rate the book three stars out of five.

    I believe that both Kenneth Miller’s Finding Darwin’s God and Richard Colling’s Random Designer provide a better presentation of ways to reconcile Christianity with evolution.

    Related articles
    Enhanced by Zemanta

  • Responding to the Evangelical Manifesto

    I never refer to myself as an evangelical, but occasionally others do for reasons that are largely unfathomable to me (except a few from across the pond that make some sense), so I usually take a look at documents that come out relating to evangelicalism. I’m always interested in the potential for finding one of these documents that I could go along with 100%. Of course, I realize that if that happened, there would also be a number of evangelicals who would say that the document, statement, or in this case manifesto was inadequate.

    I have read the entire manifesto (HT: evangelical outpost) and not just the summary, and I find very little in there to which I would want to respond. First, very few evangelicals of my acquaintance would accept that manifesto as adequately expressing their own confession of faith. The few who would are in the United Methodist Church and go a bit light on some of the elements, such as penal substitution. (Note that I am using “evangelical” as a reference to those who would self-identify as such.) I would expect that the expression on the inspiration of scripture would be considered a bit weak by many. One can read inerrancy there if one tries, but it’s not terribly clear. If I wanted to interpret with great latitude, I could fit my own view of scripture in there. I imagine there will be some who will do so.

    Second, I think the idea of rescuing terms is a very hazardous business. The statement from page 4 illustrates this point. “There are grave dangers in identity politics, but we insist that we ourselves, and not scholars, the press, or public opinion, have the right to say who we understand ourselves to be.” The problem here is that I have to first decide who is a “real” evangelical before I know who to ask for a definition. You may think this is nitpicking, but I know evangelicals (by their self-identification) who believe that most evangelicals aren’t really evangelicals any more. Personally I take as a starting place those who are in the majority of a group, and thus break out of the circle, but it does create a problem. I’m left to wonder if evangelicalism as stated in this manifesto is similar to an older evangelicalism. Are they defining a new position, returning to an old one, or something between?

    Such expressions as “Yet we hold to Evangelical beliefs that are distinct from the other traditions in important ways — distinctions that we affirm because we see them as biblical truths that were recovered by the Protestant Reformation, sustained in many subsequent movements of revival and renewal, and vital for a sure and saving knowledge of God — in short, beliefs that are true to the Good News of Jesus” (pages 4-5), equivocate between recovering something old and latching on to something new at some point.

    I would have to say that if I read the affirmations on scripture and salvation as I believe the authors meant them, I could not adopt this statement as my own. I could be wrong on the way they meant those statements. They could even be trying to provide latitude to someone like me. That’s just not how I read it.

    I would add simply that I find the description of liberalism (pages 8-9) to be largely a strawman, though I’m afraid I would not be very likely to persuade evangelicals of that. I often think conservatives are just going along with the culture, while liberals are arguing against the tide, but part of each position seems to be a different perception of the tide.

    In any case, this is an interesting manifesto, as much for what it doesn’t say as for what it does. Whether it will accomplish any of the goals its authors set out to accomplish is another matter. I’m doubtful that it will.

    Here’s some reaction links from Moderate Christian bloggers. Most of it is more positive than mine.

    * = updates after initial post

    Any other members of the Moderate Christian Blogroll can leave comments if I missed your post, and I’ll promote the links to the body of the post. My observation thus far is that the bulk of the moderate bloggers are responding more positively to this than I am.