Issues in Science and Theology: Nature – and Beyond (Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology, 5) 3030311813, 9783030311810

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Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology

Michael Fuller Dirk Evers Anne Runehov Knut-Willy Sæther Bernard Michollet Editors

Issues in Science and Theology: Nature – and Beyond Transcendence and Immanence in Science and Theology

Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology Volume 5

Series editor Michael Fuller, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13495

Michael Fuller • Dirk Evers • Anne Runehov • Knut-Willy Sæther • Bernard Michollet Editors

Issues in Science and Theology: Nature – and Beyond Transcendence and Immanence in Science and Theology

Editors Michael Fuller University of Edinburgh Edinburgh, UK Anne Runehov Faculty of Theology Uppsala University Trelleborg, Sweden

Dirk Evers Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenber Halle (Saale), Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany Knut-Willy Sæther Volda University College Volda, Norway

Bernard Michollet Chaire Science et Religion Lyon Catholic University Lyon, France

Printed with the generous support of the Templeton World Charity Foundation and the Catholic University of Lyon. ISSN 2364-5717     ISSN 2364-5725 (electronic) Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology ISBN 978-3-030-31181-0    ISBN 978-3-030-31182-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31182-7 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

From 17 to 22 April 2018, ESSSAT, the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology, arranged the 17th European Conference on Science and Theology (ECST XVII) in Lyon, France, in collaboration with the Catholic University of Lyon (UCLy) and with the International Society for Science and Religion (ISSR), which sponsored our public main lecture. Over 140 participants from Europe and beyond were attracted to the conference, and ESSSAT members and other conference participants alike were inspired to present and discuss over 90 papers in the conference’s paper sessions. ESSSAT conferences thus continue to promote the study of the interactions of science and theology by creating opportunities for scholars from a wide diversity of backgrounds, geographically and linguistically, and from different disciplines and religious and non-religious traditions to engage in conversation and debate. The theme of the conference was Nature and Beyond: Immanence and Transcendence in Science and Religion. Our conference raised the following questions: how scientific, pragmatic perspectives on nature are, or might be, related to perspectives pointing beyond natural phenomena? Is nature, in a purely scientific, naturalist understanding, all we have? Is nature itself transcending empirical categories when it brings about living and self-reflective beings? And what kind of answers do religious traditions provide when they refer to what is transcendent to our natural world? Or is the ‘divine’ fully immanent within the natural world? These and related questions were discussed during the inspiring days we had in Lyon. The plenary lectures of the conference covered a broad spectrum of disciplines and approaches and are printed in this volume in revised and edited versions. In addition, the editors chose a selection of short papers presented at the conference and thus composed this volume of Issues in Science and Religion (ISR). As ESSSAT’s President it is my pleasure and duty to take the opportunity of the publication of this issue to thank organisers and sponsors of the conference. ESSSAT expresses its gratitude to the local organisers Fabien Revol (ESSSAT Vice-President for the conference) and Bertrand Souchard (Chair for Science and Religion) and their team from the Catholic University of Lyon (UCLy). Special thanks go to Peter Bannister (UCLy) for all his work as registration officer before and during the conference. ECST XVII was also the final conference for the project ‘Divine Immanence v

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and Transcendence’ run by the Catholic University of Lyon and sponsored by the Templeton World Charity Foundation. We thank the rector of the University, Thierry Magnin, and the Foundation for making this joint venture possible. The ESSSAT prizes were sponsored graciously by the John Templeton Foundation and were given in cooperation with the Center of Theological Inquiry, Princeton. Other members of the Organising Committee were Lotta Knutsson Bråkenhielm, Ingrid Malm Lindberg (ESSSAT Secretaries), Knut-Willy Sæther (Scientific Programme Officer) and Roland Karo (ESSSAT Treasurer). We express our gratitude to the International Society for Science and Religion (ISSR) and the Archdiocese of Lyon for their support. Financial and logistic support was also received from Réseau Blaise Pascal, Fondation Saint-Irénée, the University of Lyon, the Community Mission de France, the webpage sciencesetreligions.com, Radio Chrétienne en France broadcasting before and during the conference and Fondation Teilhard de Chardin. Finally we thank the staff from Springer and especially Cristina dos Santos for their cooperation on this volume and our book series. Halle/Saale, Germany

Dirk Evers

Introduction

On hearing the theme of transcendence and immanence in science and religion an obvious temptation might be to assume that science (being concerned with the natural world) is concerned with that which is immanent, whilst theology (being concerned with things which go beyond the natural world) is concerned with that which is transcendent. But as the contributors to this volume swiftly demonstrate, the situation is rather more complicated than that. Notions of transcendence impinge on the origins and even on the practice of science, whilst Christian theology, having as its basis the Incarnation, is very much rooted in the immanent, natural world. For the sake of convenience this book is divided into four parts, looking first at some preliminary philosophical considerations, second at some theological perspectives, third at some scientific insights and finally at the ways in which historical reflections can offer helpful nuances to our contemporary understandings of transcendence and immanence. Many contributions cross over the boundaries of these categories, so that there is a certain arbitrariness to the arrangement of chapters, but this itself bears witness to the thoroughgoing interdisciplinarity which surely must characterise discussions of transcendence and immanence if they are to take advantage of all that contemporary wisdom has to offer.

Philosophical Considerations In all investigations it is of course important to give careful consideration to the terms one is using. Philip Clayton tackles what we mean when we talk about ‘transcendence’, and asks: ‘what is the least that humanity might know about transcendence, and in particular about God as transcendent being, and still be able to use the term in meaningful ways?’ Clayton explores transcendence in relation to the concept of emergence, the phenomenon by which new realities are generated by sufficiently complex substrates without being reducible to them. He notes that emergence neither requires nor excludes the idea that something might lie ‘beyond’ nature, and he concludes that transcendence may be compatible with both theistic and vii

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n­ aturalistic perspectives on the universe and that holders of these two perspectives need not necessarily be in conflict with one another over their respective beliefs. Transcendence and immanence are often thought of as in some sense polar opposites. But is this the case? Are they at opposite ends of a scale, or are there gradations between them? Luis Oviedo suggests that transcendence and immanence are a key part of the semantic framework which is crucial to understanding what we mean by ‘religion’, but he finds such binary categories inadequate in approaching modern social and cultural trends concerning religion, and in thinking about religion from social-theoretical perspectives. In particular, Oviedo notes that if attempts to understand religion scientifically operate solely within an immanentist perspective (as would be appropriate for a scientific approach), this neglect of the transcendent can only lead to a highly impoverished understanding of what religion actually is. Oviedo concludes that there are advantages and disadvantages both to seeing transcendence and immanence as opposites and to seeing them as on a sliding scale, but that the task of developing religious semantics beyond binary opposites demands serious engagement and discussion. Another important term in the discussions in this volume is ‘naturalism’. Willem B. Drees carefully distinguishes three different types of naturalism, which he designates ‘science-inspired naturalism’, ‘philosophical naturalism’ and ‘religious naturalism’. He suggests that theistic naturalism and naturalistic theism are further possibilities for thinking about what a ‘naturalistic’ stance might look like; and he makes the important point that, ultimately, each one of us considering these metaphysical positions will be drawn to one or another by a mixture of our upbringing, our heritage, our relationships, our aesthetic sensibilities, and the stories which shape us and motivate us. Where life choices in general are concerned, there remains something irreducibly personal in the directions we take, and this is something which goes beyond any argumentation or logical reasoning.

Theological Perspectives If transcendence and immanence are held to designate incompatible qualities, then the idea that one thing can possess them both might seem paradoxical. However, from a theological point of view, a paradox is not something to be eschewed as meaningless but rather something to be pondered as a potential source of insight, not least when we are contemplating the nature of the Divine. Lydia Jaeger affirms the Biblical witness to God as transcendent and immanent, linked through the theological concept of creation: she argues that in the light of this concept, which Christians may legitimately take as core to an understanding of the relationship between God and the physical world, perceived tensions between the transcendence and immanence of God effectively dissolve away. Drawing on the ‘cognitive pluralism’ of the philosopher Steven Horst, she notes that within the sciences, too, it is possible to affirm simultaneously things which might on the surface appear to be mutually incompatible.

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For Christopher Southgate the theological concept that can ‘bridge’ ideas of transcendence and immanence is ‘glory’. Southgate notes the ways in which an undue stress on either the transcendence or the immanence of God can give rise to problems, in making God either too remote from the world or in blurring the distinction between the Creator and the created. He insists that avoiding these pitfalls is essential if we are to give an adequate account of God’s providence, and hence even begin to devise an effective theodicy. Southgate suggests that ‘what the language of divine glory tends to connote is a sign or array of signs of the depths of the divine reality’: and it is through a focus on this unifying concept of glory that we may come to a richer understanding of the apparently contradictory notions of divine transcendence and immanence. Jana Gonwa begins with the premise that theological models of human persons are bound up with the way(s) in which we model God. She argues that ‘pure immanence’ and ‘pure transcendence’ understandings both fail as ways of framing human identity and urges that ‘A theology that envisions a dynamic responsiveness between immanence and transcendence has greater potential to support a theory of personal identity that is cohesive’. The Christian theological tradition has understood the Universe, and the role of humankind within it, in a variety of ways over the past two millennia. Reflecting on this history, Andreas Losch notes that those ideas about the integrity, or preservation, of the created order, which have been very much a part of recent ecclesiastical discourse, need to be considered not just with respect to our planet but also with respect to the wider Universe. This, Losch suggests, means that we need to preserve transcendent, as well as immanent, perceptions of the cosmos which we inhabit, if we are to take seriously the integrity and the preservation of nature. Ernst Conradie further explores the concepts of divine immanence and transcendence in the context of ecotheology. He notes the way in which transcendence has traditionally been seen as necessary in order to maintain a distinction between the Creator and the created, but urges that this does not mean that God is somehow ‘removed’ from the world, still less that the idea of God has nothing to say to us in our current ecological crisis. Rather, the ‘scandal’ of the cross means that the Christian God, in entering into human history, points us towards a divine initiative which can heal the rift between God and the created order. Conradie notes that this observation does not offer a ‘quick fix’ to problems like global warming, but it does generate perspectives which might assist us in thinking about the likely futures which lie ahead of us. Ecological concerns also inform the contribution of Fabien Revol to this collection. Noting that an overemphasis on the immanence of God in creation can lead to pantheism, Revol traces the history of the alternative concept of panentheism and critiques expressions of that concept in the thinking of Whitehead and Peacocke. He goes on to advocate a form of relational panentheism which is based on the idea of God’s continuous creation, and the indwelling of God in the created order through the Holy Spirit. This leads to the idea of the Creation as the oikos of the Spirit, lending extra urgency to the requirement that humans exercise ecological responsibility in their actions.

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Continuing the ecological theme, Ian Barns asks: Can the recovery of theological ideas of transcendence help us in addressing pressing current issues like anthropogenic climate change? Barns addresses this question by exploring the writings of Clive Hamilton relating to the current ecological crisis. Barns suggests that in addition to the ‘immanent frame’ (Charles Taylor) assumed by Hamilton, a ‘transcendent frame’ also needs to be considered in order to arrive at the fullest possible response to the dangers presented by the Anthropocene era. Such a frame, Barnes suggests, might be accessed through an engagement with the ‘theodrama’ narrated in scriptural texts. The Christian tradition offers many resources for thinking about nature, and the relationship of humankind to nature. Physicist Tom McLeish explores the idea of the ‘book of nature’ which has historically inspired thinkers to engage with the natural world in order to come to a better understanding of it. Finding difficulties with this idea in the modern scientific context, he turns to the Wisdom tradition as found in the book of Job in the Hebrew Scriptures. In the light of this, McLeish argues that the relationships between humans and nature can be construed in a ‘second person’ sense, enabling a reframing of those relationships  – and, indeed, of science itself – seen from the perspective of a theology of nature. McLeish hints that such a perspective has the potential to cast a fresh light on what the theological category of ‘transcendence’ might mean. Discussions of the kind being undertaken in this book generally presuppose Western philosophical and theological understandings to obtain, such that (in the present case) ‘immanence’ and ‘transcendence’ are generally assumed to be non-­ overlapping qualities. But are there resources elsewhere in the Christian tradition which can enable us to gain new perspectives on such matters? Christopher Knight, a priest within the Greek Orthodox tradition, urges that within the Eastern Christian tradition the tension between divine immanence and divine transcendence simply does not exist. Unpacking the writings of Maximos the Confessor and Gregory Palamas on the issue of divine action (another topic which has caused considerable difficulties for Western science-and-religion commentators), Knight suggests that the ‘radical sense of divine immanence’ in the Orthodox tradition leads to the possibility of a ‘strong theistic naturalism’ which resists the idea that God is somehow ‘outside’ nature, affecting it only through interventions. Given the ways in which Western theological assumptions so often go unchallenged, Knight’s perspective offers a way of re-thinking the relationship of God to the world which promises to be hugely fruitful.

Scientific Insights Whilst in practice the sciences might generally eschew the concept of transcendence in pursuing their goals, that is not to say the actual practice of science might not provoke its practitioners to the experience of emotions commonly associated with the transcendent. In a thoughtful and nuanced chapter, Helen de Cruz focusses

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on awe and wonder as experienced by scientific practitioners. She notes that such experiences are widespread amongst scientists and that a variety of interpretations have been placed on them. She reviews contemporary understandings of emotions, such as those which relate them to evolutionary processes, and argues that awe and wonder have important functions in diminishing our sense of self-importance and helping us to focus on the ‘other’, in drawing us out of our comfort zones and in offering a mode of understanding that helps us to comprehend our ignorance. DeCruz suggests that non-religious scientists may experience a form of ‘non-­theistic spirituality’ and that this is perhaps not vastly dissimilar to theistic awe and wonder, both having their origins in ‘cognitive technologies that help us to transcend the self, and to find out about the world around us’. Turning to the various scientific disciplines themselves, how might these offer perspectives on the ideas of immanence and transcendence? A number of papers in this collection examine helpful insights which the sciences have to offer on this question. Philippe Gagnon explores the concept of information as it has been developed in the sciences, and how this might relate to God, to God’s interactions with the world, and to the problem of evil. Taking on board insights from the relationship between matter and form, and from Bayesian probability theory, Gagnon looks also at how the evolution of information might relate to the evolution of organisms. Although this ‘information-turn’ represents a fascinating new way of thinking about many phenomena, Gagnon is ultimately cautious about the extent to which new ways of thinking about the divine, and about the categories used in thinking of the divine in relation to the world, may be derived from this source. Might there be physiological mechanisms, mediated through neurologically active chemicals, that can engender an experience of the transcendent in human beings? Sara Lumbreras surveys instances in which self-transcendent experiences (STEs) have been reported by those under the influence of such chemicals and raises an important, hitherto-neglected point. It is not only psychoactive drugs which have been reported to generate such experiences – some peptide neurotransmitters like oxytocin can have a role in STEs, too; and, moreover, oxytocin is strongly implicated in the bearing and rearing of children. Lumbreras suggests that this can lead women to a particular awareness of an external, transcendent reality to which they may relate, and notes that this is an experience which is particularly associated with giving birth, and with nursing an infant. Exploring the possible links between psychological states and perceptions of transcendence has also proved to be a rich field of study. Fraser Watts looks at research which has been prompted by the observation that people often feel a sense of there being something ‘more than’ or ‘beyond’ the everyday world around them. He proposes a ‘two-factor’ theory in understanding this phenomenon: an experiential factor, which may or may not be susceptible to naturalistic interpretation, and an interpretive factor, which will depend on the background of the individual having such a sense of the ‘beyond’, and on their capacities to unpack it further. As a means of moving beyond strictly naturalistic understandings of this sense of ‘beyond’, Watts proposes an ‘emancipated monism’, which ‘rejects the sharp divide between the everyday and the beyond, and instead recognizes that the “everyday” has the

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potential to extend beyond its usual parameters without becoming something completely different.’ This allows Watts to move beyond the simple equation of mystical and psychotic states which has been advanced by some researchers in the past. What about the idea that encounters with nature can themselves conjure up visions of transcendence in the individuals having such encounters? In a fascinating piece of carefully constructed empirical research, Mark Graves, Helga Synnevåg Løvoll and Knut-Willy Sæther worked with those undertaking arduous five-day outdoor expeditions in Norway in order to understand more about the concept of friluftsliv, a term which ‘captures core Nordic values related to contemplative, aesthetic, and meaning-making dimensions of active immersion in unmanipulated nature’. Using results obtained using established psychometric questionnaires, they note the ways in which such immersion can lead to experiences of beauty and also to experiences of awe and wonder, and they suggest that this in turn may lead us to fresh understandings of the sublime, and of transcendence.

Historical Reflections When focussing on particular faith traditions which speak of transcendence and immanence, it is clearly important to explore the history which lies behind the ways in which those traditions understand those concepts. Paul Allen sets such exploration against the backdrop of the recent notion of ‘Big History’, an interdisciplinary movement uniting insights from the sciences and the humanities, which attempts to view human history as a part of cosmic history. Carefully teasing out different understandings of history, and the assumptions that lie behind them, Allen contrasts the thinking of Wolfhart Pannenberg and Bernard Lonergan in the ways in which they relate a Christian understanding of revelation to history. Allen concludes that it is too simple to think of God as transcending nature: the incarnation demonstrates the importance of considering history as playing a key role in any understanding of God’s transcendence which we may wish to advance. Historically, scientists saw themselves as pursuing an agenda which harmonised well with theological understandings of the universe. Roomet Jakapi looks at two early modern scientists, Robert Boyle and William Whiston, exploring the former’s ideas about resurrection and the latter’s ideas about the Genesis account of creation. He thereby shows the ways in which both of them ‘combined the study of nature with biblical exegesis in order to defend specific truths of revelation’. The use of natural philosophy to establish and defend traditional Christian ideas effectively harmonises concepts of immanence and transcendence to produce a homogeneous understanding of the natural world as established and maintained by God.

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A further fascinating set of historical insights is provided by Bertrand Souchard, whose chapter explores the changing ways in which the word ‘energy’ has been understood. He looks at the use of the term in three separate contexts: the writings of Aristotle, the thinking of the patristic period, and the modern-day natural sciences. Souchard notes that in Aristotle, ‘Transcendence is expressed by the fact that God is energy separated from potentiality. Immanence is manifested by the fact that all energy is suspended by love from the energy of God.’ The early Church, in writing of two ‘natural energies’, divine and human, also effectively expressed ideas of transcendence and immanence. And with the arrival of modern physics, Souchard suggests, Aristotelian understandings of energy have resurfaced, in order to counter the mechanistic thinking of Descartes. If (as is often maintained) the modern view of the cosmos has desacralised it, has it also made it impossible for the stories we now tell about the natural world to convey any moral implications, not least in terms of ethical precepts which should govern our relationships with that world? Alfred Kracher argues that even if pre-­ modern stories which imbue the universe with moral significance can no longer command general assent in the West, it is still possible for us to see morality as a feature of the natural world. Kracher outlines the constraints within which any such vision of the cosmos must be framed, and concludes that moral reality, as a part of human reality, is necessarily a part of the cosmos within which human beings have evolved. He suggests that this reality may be seen as both naturalistic (immanent) and as transcendent, and that the reintegration of these two perspectives might engender in humans a new humility in our relationship with the universe which is our home. Ending this collection of essays on an ethical note is perhaps appropriate, in underlining that all these discussions of transcendence and immanence are of practical, as well as theoretical, importance. How we think about the world around us informs and shapes how we behave within it, too. The theological and scientific insights offered by the contributors to this volume show how these two disciplines can unite effectively in addressing some of the pressing issues of our day, not least those concerning the relationships between ourselves and our precious natural habitat. Michael Fuller Michael Fuller is a Senior Teaching Fellow at New College, University of Edinburgh, UK. He has authored and edited numerous books and papers in the field of science and religion. He is a Fellow of the International Society for Science and Religion, a Committee Member of the Science and Religion Forum and VicePresident for Publications of ESSSAT.

Contents

Part I Philosophical Considerations 1 Nature: And Beyond? Immanence and Transcendence in Science and Religion����������������������������������������������������������������������������    3 Philip Clayton 2 Immanence and Transcendence: On/Off Difference or Gradation? Implications for Science-and-Theology��������������������������������������������������   19 Lluis Oviedo 3 Why I Am a Science-Inspired Naturalist But Not a Philosophical Naturalist Nor a Religious Naturalist�������������������������   31 Willem B. Drees Part II Theological Perspectives 4 The Twin Truths of Divine Immanence and Transcendence: Creation, Laws of Nature and Human Freedom����������������������������������   41 Lydia Jaeger 5 Beyond the Disguised Friend: Immanence, Transcendence and Glory in a Darwinian World������������������������������������������������������������   57 Christopher Southgate 6 Divine Determination or Dynamic Indeterminacy? Transcendence, Immanence, and the Problem of Personal Identity����������������������������������������������������������������������������������   69 Janna Gonwa 7 Preserving the Heavens and the Earth: Planetary Sustainability from a Biblical and Educational Perspective����������������������������������������   79 Andreas Losch

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8 The Ecological Significance of God’s Transcendence? ������������������������   87 Ernst M. Conradie 9 A Critical Approach to the Concept of Panentheism in the Dialogue Between Science and Theology: Distinguishing Between Divine Transcendence and Immanence in Creation��������������������������������������������������������������������  101 Fabien Revol 10 Revisioning the Anthropocene in a Trinitarian Frame: A Theological Response to Clive Hamilton’s Defiant Earth����������������  117 Ian Barns 11 Beyond the ‘Book of Nature’ to Science as Second Person Narrative: From Methodological Naturalism to Teleological Transcendence����������������������������������������������������������������  131 Tom C. B. McLeish 12 Radical Transcendence and Radical Immanence: Convergence Between Eastern Orthodox Perspectives and Strong Theistic Naturalism?������������������������������������������������������������  143 Christopher C. Knight Part III Scientific Insights 13 Awe and Wonder in Scientific Practice: Implications for the Relationship Between Science and Religion�������  155 Helen De Cruz 14 A Contingency Interpretation of Information Theory as a Bridge Between God’s Immanence and Transcendence ��������������  169 Philippe Gagnon 15 The Transcendent Within: How Our Own Biology Leads to Spirituality��������������������������������������������������������������������������������  187 Sara Lumbreras 16 Beyond the Everyday Self������������������������������������������������������������������������  199 Fraser Watts 17 Friluftsliv: Aesthetic and Psychological Experience of Wilderness Adventure ������������������������������������������������������������������������  207 Mark Graves, Helga Synnevåg Løvoll, and Knut-Willy Sæther

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Part IV Historical Reflections 18 History and Evolution in Pannenberg and Lonergan��������������������������  223 Paul Allen 19 Early Modern Natural Philosophy Allied with Revealed Religion: Boyle and Whiston������������������������������������������������������������������  233 Roomet Jakapi 20 How Can Energy Help Us Think Divine Immanence and Transcendence in the Universe?������������������������������������������������������  245 Bertrand Souchard 21 The Cosmos Considered as a Moral Institution������������������������������������  261 Alfred Kracher Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  281

Part I

Philosophical Considerations

Chapter 1

Nature: And Beyond? Immanence and Transcendence in Science and Religion Philip Clayton

Is emergence leading nature beyond itself? Is it a variant of traditional theism or an extended version of modern naturalism? Or is this difference obsolete?

Abstract  In science-and-theology scholarship much attention has been paid to possible routes from nature to God. Some argue for a robust natural theology; others are skeptical of any inferences from the one to the other. By contrast, I ask: what is the least that humanity might know about transcendence, and in particular about God as transcendent being, and still be able to use the term in meaningful ways? Methodologically, I will argue, claims that connect nature and transcendence must be tested by all the relevant communities of inquiry (RCEs), including naturalists, and not only by whether (say) theists find the inferences compelling. Judged by this standard, no rationally justified inferences can by drawn from the world as described by the contemporary physical sciences to a robust theology of a transcendent God. The less one’s notion of the transcendent is intertwined with the natural world, the more difficult it is to show its compatibility with science. And conversely, the more one’s account of transcendence or one’s doctrine of God inherently includes immanence, the less difficult it is to show its compatibility with science. The chapter concludes with a proposal for conceiving the relationship between transcendence and immanence in ways that maximize the connection between natural emergence and that which is beyond science.

P. Clayton (*) Claremont School of Theology, Claremont, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Nature – and Beyond, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 5, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31182-7_1

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P. Clayton

Keywords  T. Aquinas · P. Berger · Emergent complexity · Emergentist naturalism · Immanence · Natural theology · Panentheism · C. S. Peirce · Relevant communities of inquiry · Science and beyond · Signals of transcendence · Theology of nature · Transcendence · J. Wisdom

1.1  Introduction The papers in this collection focus on issues of immanence and transcendence – on the study of nature, and the ways that nature may point beyond itself. The ESSSAT organizers have linked this question to the scientific commitment to methodological naturalism, because, as they write, ‘any scientific object of investigation must be identified by reference to natural entities, and any scientific explanation can only refer to natural causes.’ This would seem to be bad news for causal claims about God, angels, and souls. So what of the hypothesis that God exists? Imagine that one affirms only that God is a being that is not less than personal, that preceded the universe, and that will survive its final ‘heat death.’ This means a being who could exist before (and without) the big bang, which means a being that is not wholly dependent on natural laws. I take it that such a being, if it exists, would be the paradigm case of transcendence. Human beings, by contrast, appear to lack all of these properties. That means that we are quintessential examples of immanent entities. In short, even if we work with only the most minimal description of God and remain agnostic about the all other divine attributes that theists have affirmed, we are already confronted with the paradox of the immanent and the transcendent. I recommend, then, that we begin with the phrase ‘Nature – and beyond?’ with the question mark included. One cannot take it as established that there is a ‘beyond’ or, as the German names it, ein Jenseits – something on the other side. But if there is, what would have to be the case for it to be knowable to humans … in any sense? It’s not hard to imagine what might produce a strong sense that one has knowledge of God. A person might possess a direct awareness of a divine presence. Perhaps there is a clear and non-mediated voice that she can hear inside her head, one that correctly predicts the future and guides her in what is the best thing to be done. Or perhaps there is a scripture that to her seems to provide infallible knowledge of God’s eternal nature. But what should one conclude about immanence and transcendence when she is unable to base knowledge claims on any of these foundations?

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1.2  Signals of Transcendence In these pages, then, instead of beginning with strong theological claims that I treat as unproblematic, I would like to ask: what is the least that humanity might know about transcendence, and in particular about God as transcendent being, and still be able to use the term in meaningful ways? Clearly this question is significantly related to another one: what do we affirm, beyond what science can offer, when we speak of a transcendent being or dimension? What kind of knowledge claims are we making? And if these knowledge claims stand up to examination, how will they be related to the methods and results of the sciences? The inquiry is not difficult at the start. If there is in fact a ‘Beyond,’ then the universe must be open to it; put differently, it must be connected with some way of speaking about the universe, and it should add something to other ways that the universe is understood. For many of us, talk of transcendence must be compatible with science; it must be consistent with the possibility and the doing of science. But must a transcendent realm of being be detectable by science, inferable from empirical results in the sense of traditional natural theology or, for that matter, in any other way? Should science provide some reason to think that something transcendent exists? The Christian sociologist Peter Berger affirms something like this when he writes of signals of transcendence. He notes, ‘By signals of transcendence I mean phenomena that are to be found within the domain of our ‘natural’ reality but that appear to point beyond that reality’ (Berger 1970, 70). Berger must be right in at least one sense: if language about the transcendent does not connect with that language of immanence, that is, language about the world around us, then the idea of transcendence does not seem to do anything; it becomes an impotent notion. Such a notion might be comforting in private contexts, but in this case it would not be admissible in philosophical arguments. Think of John Wisdom’s famous parable of the invisible gardener: Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, ‘Some gardener must tend this plot.’ So they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. ‘But perhaps he is an invisible gardener.’ So they set up a barbed-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds… But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry. Yet still the Believer is not convinced. ‘But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves.’ At last the Skeptic despairs, ‘But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?’ (Flew 1968).

One can of course still speak about a transcendent that is ‘invisible, intangible, and eternally elusive,’ but to most people, even to religious believers, talk of transcendence without an immanent dimension connects little, if at all, in discussions with science.

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Many authors in this volume are interested in particular in the question of signals of transcendence in the sciences. Scholars know how difficult this issue is and what a quantity of material has been written on it. So let us specify the question more carefully: Does the scientific picture of the natural world offer signs of the existence of a transcendent dimension and, if so, what kind of knowledge claims are being made? Are they only visible to those who are already people of faith, so that they serve as a sort of subjective confirmation of their faith, in the sense of fides quaerens intellectum? Or do the ‘signals’ require some sort of divinely inspired inner intuition to be efficacious? Or are they perhaps valid arguments, even though many resist them? (This seems to be the position of Alvin Plantinga, for example, who says that God is ‘properly basic’ but that the eyes of most unbelievers are ‘blinded by sin,’ so that they do not see this [Plantinga 1994].) Or should the signals persuade every unbeliever who considers them – even Richard Dawkins?

1.3  Emergent Complexity An open-ended universe is one in which new systems evolve and new phenomena emerge. The sciences show us not only that emergence pervades the universe; they tell us much about how it works, and in particular about the exponential growth in complexity once brains evolve to the complexity of human brains. Even apart from the theological question, it is fascinating to study the scientific questions: what kinds of phenomena emerge? How they are related? Why do they occur in this order? When does it mean for a system to be ‘emergent’? If an organism, system, or structure at a particular level or stage of evolution is emergent, it is not fully explainable in terms of the phenomena and laws at a lower level of complexity or at an earlier stage of evolution (Clayton 2004). To discover unexpected emergence in this sense is not a failure of science. Of course, it may well be seen as a failure from the standpoint of one particular philosophy of science. On that view, often called reductionism, science succeeds only when a given set of phenomena (observations at some level) is fully explained by laws and initial conditions at a more foundational level. For reductionists, the real causes don’t lie in the objects we observe but in the genes, or better: in the physical chemistry or, even better, in microphysical waves and particles. For emergentists, by contrast, non-reducible, emergent systems are a feature of the biosphere that actually deepens the explanatory power of science.1 In many cases we can identify differences in the dynamics of physical systems at different levels of complexity (and hence in different specific sciences). The causal properties of a biological agent, for example, are crucial for explaining its behaviors, and evolutionary dynamics are often responsible for explaining new structures, forms, and

 One would need to consider whether this is true in physics, since it is not clear that emergent phenomena not explainable in terms of physical laws should count as a success. 1

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functions. Goals differ here. The goal of physics is (in general) to formulate fundamental laws and to use them to predict phenomena. Thus the ability to explain the composition of the periodic table at the level of quantum mechanics, the Pauli Exclusion Principle, is a paradigm case of scientific success. So also is the Schrödinger wave equation (in its time-dependent one-dimensional form),



i

˜ ∂Ψ 2 ∂ 2 Ψ =− + V ( x ) Ψ ( x ,t ) ≡ H Ψ ( x ,t ) 2 ∂t 2 m ∂x

(1.1)

which describes the propagation of a wave at quantum scales (Weisstein 2018); and its status as a scientific achievement is not reduced by the fact that its predictions are probabilistic. But now consider how different the situation is in biology. Imagine that we want to predict the effects of social status on the behaviors of a particular gorilla. The fundamental laws of physics won’t suffice, and predictions based on lower-level laws in biology would be probabilistic at best. For example, differences in social status of particular males fall within the undetermined (and presumably indeterminate) region of the probabilities. From an evolutionary perspective, however, this is the region that is of the greatest interest – just ask a primatologist about which features of gorilla behavior are the most salient to her research. She wants to know why one male has lower social status than another, why he is assigned this status, what he is likely to do when forced to play this role, and what he would have to do to change his role within the social group. One thinks of Jane Goodall’s groundbreaking work with a large social group (community) of chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. Only when she assigned names to the individual chimpanzees – something that had never been done before in mainstream primatology – was she able to formulate the hypotheses that led to the major conclusions published in The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior (1986) and In the Shadow of Man (1971). In short, what is a virtue in quantum physics may be an explanatory failure in primatology. Other ways of explaining do the heavy lifting here. The increasing complexity of natural systems across biological evolution give individual agency a larger role; without understanding the influences on the individual’s behavior one cannot provide the explanations that primatologists need. As agency becomes more complex, a new set of explanatory paradigms moves to the center: the emergence of top-down causality, group dynamics, sociality, culture in animal species, and the awareness of the perspective of other animals (a theory of other minds). And we already know what happens when one moves to the emergence of human social systems, or traces human culture as it develops from hunter-gatherers to the arts and sciences of advanced modern civilization.2 Considering these levels gives one a sense of the vast range of naturalistic explanations that can be given, even where physical equations play a minimal role. And  Ideally, one would also follow the phenomena of religion and spirituality as they emerge across the history of human culture, from indigenous religions through the so-called Axial Age and on to the ‘religions of the book’ and the more recent popularity of ‘spiritual but not religious.’ 2

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herein lies the crucial question: would one not expect that another set of emergent naturalistic explanations can be found for the existence of religions, spiritual experiences, and beliefs in transcendence? One immediately sees three options: spirituality can be explained in terms of its biological or social or psychological functions; or we can show that the explanations must be given in terms of spiritual beings or realities; or the existence of such realities is consistent with the process of scientific explanation but is not required by it. In what follows I defend the third option.

1.4  Implications for Knowing the Transcendent What, if anything, do the phenomena of emergent complexity tell us about the Beyond – about metaphysics and theology, about continuities and discontinuities, about the knowable and the limits of the known? Initially, at least, I fear we must draw some skeptical conclusions from natural emergence regarding proofs of the transcendent. The long tradition of Christian natural theology faces challenges in the late modern context that are different to those in previous centuries. Probably the closest parallel one can find is Christian thought in the Hellenistic age, up to 400 CE at the latest; and yet what might have been called natural theology at the time was very different from, for example, the five viae of St. Thomas. Note also, by the way, that ‘natural theology’ entails a very different kind of argument in the history of Muslim and Jewish thought – if ‘natural theology’ is even the right term for those traditions.3 The contemporary skeptic about science-based natural theology does not need to argue that it is impossible to infer anything about a transcendental ground or source from the phenomena of emergent complexity. Rather, her argument is that the theist will need to establish some metaphysical framework in order to ground inferences that begin from inside science and move beyond science. Remember, these must be inferences that point toward a Jenseits, a realm or dimension ‘beyond the boundary.’ The skeptic admits that many people, including scientists, do make these sort of metaphysical assumptions, and they are thus drawn to theistic arguments. The skeptic’s point, however, is that the grounds for these metaphysical assumptions should not be taken as compelling. Science qua science does not need them. In fact, he points out, there is a kind of circularity in natural theology today: if one already affirms the metaphysics of transcendence, then one can use it as a framework for inferences from (say) patterns in evolutionary biology to divine reality. But if the scientist does not already begin with the plausibility of a metaphysics of transcendence, then the arguments for the existence of God do not compel her assent.

 The Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology (Manning 2013) covers both of these topics in the first two Parts, but I am not sure that vast differences are given enough weight. At least it’s true that the same words, ‘natural theology’, are used in all these diverse cases. 3

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One way to see the force of the skeptic’s objection is to imagine submitting one’s arguments to representatives of the relevant community of experts (Clayton and Knapp 2011, Chapter 7). In the scholastic period in Rome or Paris, one’s relevant community of experts (RCE) would be (at the very least) sympathetic to the metaphysical assumptions that support the traditional arguments of Christian natural theology; only a very small percentage of the RCE would challenge them. Today, by contrast, when it comes to theistic arguments based on and drawn from the natural world, the RCE would have to include representatives of each of the relevant natural sciences, philosophers of science, naturalists and non-theists, secular religious studies scholars, and of course some theologians. The conclusions of such a community of experts would certainly be different than if the evaluation were being completed 750 years ago. The skeptic’s objection assumes that rationality is in some ways linked to the evaluations of experts in a particular field (see Peirce 1982–2009; Corrington 1993; Buchler 2011). Peirce’s formulation of this connection offers the strongest response to the question of justification; after all, how could one make rational inferences from the sciences when one doesn’t know and understand them? Moreover, bias is diminished by discussing with a RCE that is fully representative of the range of positions actually held. (Think of the RCE suggestion as a combination of democracy and expertise, demos and aristos.) Finally, the main alternatives to the RCE standard are far less credible – for example, the idea that rationality is based on an inner sense of certainty, or on what one’s particular religious community holds. If my argument to this point is correct, we have reason to begin with a fair dose of skepticism about the traditional arguments of natural theology, however personally compelling they may be for a number of people. One can of course find specific, more narrowly defined communities of inquiry that will be comfortable with inferences from science to theology, from immanence to transcendence. But this fact by itself does not overcome the skeptical concerns. One can only be aware of the potential criticisms of one’s own position, and hence come to a rational evaluation of one’s beliefs, if one includes potential critics in one’s discourse community. If I surround myself only with people who believe as I do, I will always find affirmation of my truth claims, but I will not be able to test them for their accuracy. And if I do not test my beliefs, how can I know that it is rational for me to believe them? Of course, this line of argument must also hold up to criticisms from the relevant communities of inquiry.4 If it does, then natural theology faces a higher bar than many (most?) natural theologians today acknowledge. This will not mean that faith is irrational. But if the traditional arguments are no longer compelling, perhaps natural theology is better understood as a form of ‘faith seeking understanding’ – in short, a theology of nature.5

 We spell out the standards in Clayton and Knapp (2011). Differing views on what natural theology demands can be found, e.g., in Manning (2013). 5  It is an interesting question to ask whether the RCE would condone agnosticism about inferences from the natural world as studied by the natural sciences to a transcendent, quasi-theological reality. My own sense is that the RCE would be more likely to be skeptical than agnostic. 4

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Up to this point I have developed this objection as a philosophical argument. But it can also be tied more directly to the sciences of emergence. Imagine the following dialogue between a theist and a naturalist. The theist affirms the reality of a nature-­ transcending dimension, including God as a non-embodied personal Creator, whereas the naturalist studies natural processes of emergence as the best explanations of the appearance of transcendence. Theist (T): Emergence points beyond science because emergent levels are not determined by the laws and systems that underlie them. Emergentist Naturalist (EN): It’s true that I am not a reductionist. But if emergence is to be a scientific view, it must portray a universe that is fully open to scientific study. That means it must be a form of naturalism, albeit it one that is not reductionistic. T: But look: the tendency across cosmic evolution is emergent complexity of the sort we would expect if God is guiding the process. EN: Actually, the tendency across cosmic evolution is increasing entropy. Whatever you may observe short term  – say, over the next 40 billion years  – does not undercut the final victory of the second law of thermodynamics. T: Fine. On this planet, however, we see an evolutionary process that produces more and more complex organisms, culminating with persons who are conscious, rational, moral, and spiritually oriented beings, which is consistent with the hypothesis of theistically guided evolution. EN: ‘Consistent with’ is not sufficient. You are trying to argue that biological emergence actually points to a transcendent dimension. But everything that Clayton has argued here is fully consistent with an expanded naturalism. It’s fascinating that one can trace the evolution of biological, social, and cultural systems, explaining scientifically how one arises out of the other. But doesn’t studying emergent systems actually produce a naturalistic view of the world par excellence? T: No, because the whole process points beyond itself to its transcendent ground. It is teleological, goaldirected. I can see, behind the process of emergence as a whole, the hand of God.

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EN: And I see nothing of the sort. You speak of ‘behind’ and ‘beyond.’ Nothing in emergence compels me in these directions. I urge you to appreciate the process itself and what is has produced and is producing. Of course, you may have your private experiences of awe and wonder  – as do I.  But the fact that your experiences take theistic form does not mean that mine must as well.

1.5  Interim Assessment One encounters this debate between theists and emergentist naturalists in many forms around the world; many readers will have participated in similar debates on the one side or the other. I find the debate fascinating. For the theist to make his case, he needs a metaphysical framework that meets two conditions: (a) if it is accepted, it will support the inference from natural emergence to a transcendent ground or telos, and (b) it ought to be accepted by scientists and others who understand emergence in the natural world. I agree that we can meet (a), the first goal. But a close study of emergent systems across (the different kinds of) evolution does not provide grounds for the ought, so that (b), the second goal, is not met. Remember that, if he fails to win support from the RCE for the ‘ought,’ he and his fellow theistic believers can continue to maintain that science depends on there being a God, but they must also admit that they are unable to defend this claim outside the circle of their own religious community. My thesis is that, even for the theologian, the movement from a purely natural world to the transcendent dimension has become problematic. It’s harder to find a middle ground than one might think. (The analogy to American politics is too obvious to need mentioning.) Contemporary science is in many ways a self-contained endeavor. It works because we focus our attention on the kinds of systems where one can make successful predictions. For example, we assume that the ideal system is one where we can subsume a variety of what look like diverse phenomena under a set of relatively simple laws. One could of course indicate a preference for views of the natural world where God regularly intervenes to directly bring about outcomes that God wills. But here’s the problem: Imagine you are in the lab and find variance in your data across multiple trials. Imagine that your lab partner suggests that this variance can be explained by God intervening in the natural order in some cases and not in others. Even if you are positively disposed toward theism, you should still resist his suggestion. It’s not just the strangeness of the thought that God might be changing the acidity of the liquid in your test tube, so that the next time you measure the pH factor you will get a different reading. It’s that we simply could not do science if it is even possible that the correlations between natural causes and their effects may suddenly cease to hold, that is,

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that they might be set aside at any time. Such a world would not be one in which we could do science in anything like the way that modern science actually functions.

1.6  Emergent Complexity and a New Theology of Nature So what is a theologian to do? I suggest that this line of inquiry leads us to a clear conclusion: theologians must shift away from the traditional understanding of natural theology, which holds that scientific conclusions ground rational inferences to the existence of a transcendent being or dimension, and instead approach the question from the standpoint of a theology of nature. Emergent evolution undercuts most of the viae that were a part of traditional natural theology, that is, theistic arguments based on the regularities of physical laws, the explosion of complexity in biological evolution, the emergence of the sense of moral obligation over human history, or the growth of ideas of God in multiple cultures of the world. Of course, people can and do build arguments from these phenomena. But, given emergence, it no longer seems that the arguments validly show the emergentist naturalist that she ought to embrace theism as a rational implication of today’s best science. What then would a theology of nature look like? Robert Russell (2012) has famously argued for one that is involved in a ‘creative mutual interaction’ with the sciences. Critics sometimes claim that a theology of nature can only be an exercise carried out within the confines of a particular faith community or theological tradition, without much analytic rigor or scientific sophistication. But one can also develop a sophisticated theology of nature that learns from the sciences and also has interesting and relevant things to offer in return. Here’s the argument: Even given our results so far, there are better and worse ways to conceive the transcendent. Some are more compatible with naturalist accounts of emergent complexity and some less so; and some conceptions are strongly undercut by science (such as the example of the God who changes the pH of a liquid). Let’s see if we can determine which is which. Let’s begin with a premise that most readers will find intuitive: the less one’s notion of the transcendent is intertwined with the natural world, the more difficult it is to show its compatibility with science. Or, conversely: the more your metaphysical theory of transcendence – or your doctrine of God – inherently includes immanence, the less difficult it is to show its compatibility with science. Actually, matters are a bit more complicated than this. Picture a spectrum, with the identity of transcendence and immanence on the left, and the utter separation of the two on the right. 1. If transcendence and immanence are completely identical (the extreme left), as they seem to be in Spinoza’s deus sive natura (God, that is, nature), then there is no difference to be overcome and therefore no need of an argument. One has established the complete connection of (say) science and religion, but at the cost of not really asserting anything at all.

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2. On the far right end of the spectrum, if transcendence and immanence are completely separate, with no point of contact whatsoever, then there is also no conflict with science. But this God – the absent God, deus absconditus – also has nothing to say to science and science nothing to say to him. Victory has been won at the cost of irrelevance. 3. There is a third region of the continuum that is problematic; it is the one just in from the far right-hand side. This is the position that God is transcendent by nature, rather than intrinsically present in the world, but that God enters into the world from outside to do things. This is the miracle-working God – not in the sense of St. Thomas (Summa Contra Gentiles III, 100–103), but in a particularly modern sense. C. S. Lewis puts it this way, Nature (at any rate the surface of our own planet) is perforated or pock-marked all over by little orifices at each of which something of a different kind from herself – namely reason – can do things to her … If God annihilates or creates or deflects a unit of matter He has created a new situation ... Immediately all Nature domiciles this new situation, makes it at home in her realm, adapts all other events to it (Lewis [1947, 1960] 2015).

On this view, science correctly describes the orderly nature of the world as God has created it, but God also intervenes in that world from time to time to bring about divine goals. This one involves the negation of science, as I argued in my test tube example; it breaks the condition of the possibility of scientific inquiry as we know it today. There is also a fourth position. The strongest position on transcendence and immanence, I suggest, is a theology in which the divine is understood to be metaphysically, ontologically immanent in the strongest possible sense, immanent ‘in, with, and under’ the world. Think of it as transcendence in (or as) radical immanence. On the spectrum, this position is on the left, but it cannot move all the way to the Spinozistic (or Dawkinsian) endpoint. That is, the immanence cannot be so strong that transcendence is eliminated. The theologian must therefore provide a cogent account of how immanence and transcendence are related, compatible, and coherent. (In five conferences in Europe over the last year, groups of scholars have endeavored to work out this position under the heading of panentheism – the view that the world is ‘located’ within God, although God is also more than the world. Nothing turns on the term, of course, but panentheists do in fact seem to be working to meet the criteria formulated here.)

1.7  T  he Immanent Transcendent from the Standpoint of Natural Emergence Consider for a moment how the emergentist naturalist whom we considered above might respond to the research program I have just outlined. The first two positions do not concern her because they do not affect her work as a scientist in any way. She might respond:

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According to your first option, the world I study is divine; it just is God. I have no need of the G-word, but if you wish to use it as a synonym for what my colleagues and I in the various specialized sciences study, it doesn’t really matter to us. According to the second, God is so ‘transcendent,’ so utterly separate from this universe, that he has nothing to do with it at all. If this is true, then I can’t complain either; this God by definition can never get in the way of science! By contrast, as we have already seen, the emergentist naturalist could never affirm the third option, the miracle-working God, since that God is incompatible with the core methodological assumptions of her science. But now consider the fourth position, the intrinsically immanent transcendent. Remember that our goal here is not to do natural theology; we are not asking the relevant community of experts to condone an inference from the world to God, nor are we arguing that they are rationally obligated to become theists. Instead, we are asking the RCE for its feedback as to whether our position on transcendence and immanence is coherent for those who affirm a transcendent being or dimension; we also want to know their judgment on whether this position does or does not undercut the relevant sciences. I would like to think in some detail how the emergentist naturalist might respond: You affirm with me [the EN responds] that there is a natural, lawlike order. Your God, you say, does not intervene in this order to change physical outcomes. That means that scientifically accessible cause and effect relations are sufficient to account for biological emergence as a natural phenomenon. At the same time [she adds], you believe that there really exists a transcendent reality, which permeates the natural world. As far as I can tell, for you the natural world is something like the body of God, in the sense that natural laws and the dynamics that they describe are like the autonomic functioning of the human body. So far there is nothing here that I as a scientist need to deny, even though I also do not affirm it. Some of you maintain that this transcendent reality is ‘not less than personal,’ and that it exercises something like an ‘axiological lure,’ a tug toward the good, on persons and other organisms. This makes me a bit more uncomfortable. But as long as you do not claim that such a lure is scientifically discernible, or that a god intervenes to break natural laws or change physical outcomes, I do not need to fight against your view. In your metaphysics you develop specific theories of the relationship between immanence and transcendence. Theories of this kind, you tell me, can be more or less coherent, more or less rationally acceptable. Here I am not really competent to judge, since this is not a field that I either know or care about.6 But if you are  Richard Dawkins ([2006] 2016), by the way, lacks this humility; he wants to use science to falsify metaphysical arguments. As an example, he argues that the early, non-complex cosmos could not come from a God who is more complex than the cosmos. 6

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right and there really are criteria for judging better and worse positions concerning the transcendence-immanence relation, then it’s certainly possible that metaphysical debates are more than merely subjective preferences or expressions of emotions. Even though they are non-empirical, some positions in this debate could provide better answers to long-term theological questions and could solve conundrums that competing theories have not solved. I recognize [she continues] that a theory of transcendence and immanence matters to those who take up metaphysical questions; it answers real questions that are raised by members of multiple religious traditions and many different metaphysical schools. They are not my questions, of course; but I can see that they do produce a different view of the world. For example, you ask what the phenomena of the natural world communicate about the Beyond. I don’t speak that language, so I don’t ask that question. But my work is not undercut by those who do. Finally, I note that you call me a ‘methodological naturalist.’ That is not a word that I need; it’s enough for me to say that I study emergence in natural systems. But in another sense I find this term useful. It helps remind people that I am not a metaphysical naturalist; in fact, I am not a metaphysician in any sense. If ‘methodological’ expresses my view that I don’t need a metaphysical defense for what I do as a scientist, then the term is helpful. You disagree with metaphysical naturalists [she concludes] on whether a transcendent dimension really exists. The metaphysical naturalist tells me that I need for him to be right in order to do my science, and of course you disagree. On this question I agree with you, not him. Naturalism is what science does and has to do, but I don’t need any metaphysical position to do science – neither your transcendent God, nor the metaphysical naturalist’s so-called death of God. In sum, if you theologians wish to affirm that there is a depth dimension, a transcendent dimension or God, of which all causes of natural events are parts, then we are not in conflict. I have allowed the emergentist naturalist to speak at such length in order to challenge some common mistakes. For example, it’s not true that emergentist naturalism will inevitably conflict with transcendence language, at least if the two are developed as I have done here. What then are we to say to those who affirm an intrinsically self-transcending nature, and/or a transcendent divine reality that is radically immanent? Understood properly, neither of these two affirmations is required in order to do science. Yet, I think I have shown, they are also not antithetical to science. Nor are their (metaphysical) distinctions meaningless, even though they clearly transcend science and cannot be decided on scientific grounds alone.

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1.8  Concluding Thoughts Is emergence leading nature beyond itself? Is it a variant of traditional theism or an extended version of modern naturalism? Or perhaps emergence is the place where these two different traditions can now meet?7 The goal of my argument has been to examine the complex relations between emergent natural systems and talk of the transcendent. We found, perhaps surprisingly, that the study of emergence neither demands nor excludes a Something beyond nature. On the one hand, it’s tempting to turn increasing complexity into a natural theology, a proof of God. Yet nothing in emergent systems compels scientists to this conclusion. On the other hand, nothing in science needs to exclude the language of transcendence. If one is to establish their mutual compatibility, immanence and transcendence cannot stand on opposite ends of the spectrum. Only if they are ontologically related can one speak of all of reality as ‘God-infused.’ Only then can one possibly think together an intrinsically self-­ transcending nature and an intrinsically Immanent Divine. I add, in closing, that there are at least three places where immanence and transcendence may be fused more fully than in the conclusions we reach here. One of those is in language that is internal to a given religion, for example in a theology that grows out of one’s scriptures or communities of practice. Another is in poetry and art, for reasons that I think are not difficult to see. And the last is in mystical experience. In the unitive mystical experience the dualism of self and other disappears. It’s just that, when one returns to language, the distinctions reappear. As long as we remain tied to language and thought, the immanent and the transcendent are not simply the same or simply different; they exist in dialectical connection. Only as long as the both/and of immanence and transcendence is preserved can the open boundaries between science and the ‘beyond-science’ be maintained.

Bibliography Aquinas, T. 1975. Summa Contra Gentiles, Book Three: Providence, Part II. South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press. Berger, P. 1970. A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural. Garden City: Doubleday & Company. Buchler, J., ed. 2011. Philosophical Writings of Peirce. New York: Dover Publications.

 Broader issues are also raised, which we could not explore here: what, if anything, do emergent phenomena tell us about the Beyond  – about metaphysics and theology, about continuities and discontinuities, about the knowable and the limits of the known? We also explored the question whether the natural world points to, or is evidence for, transcendent reality beyond the human. That raises the question: can spirituality be explained in terms of its biological or social or psychological functions, or does its explanation need to be given in terms of some reality beyond the empirical? 7

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Clayton, P. 2004. Mind and Emergence: From Quantum to Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clayton, P., and S.  Knapp. 2011. The Predicament of Belief: Science, Philosophy, and Faith. London: Oxford University Press. Corrington, R.S. 1993. An Introduction to C.  S. Peirce: Philosopher, Semiotician, and Ecstatic Naturalist. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Dawkins, R. [2006] 2016. The God Delusion, 10th Anniversary edition. Boston: Mariner Books. Flew, A. 1968. Theology and Falsification. In Reason and Responsibility, 48–49. Belmont: Dickenson Publishing Company. Available from: http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/flew_ falsification.html. Accessed 12 Apr 2018. Goodall, J. 1971. In the Shadow of Man. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ———. 1986. The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior. Cambridge: Belknap Press. Lewis, C.S. [1947, 1960] 2015. Miracles, Revised edition. New York: HarperOne. Manning, R.R., ed. 2013. The Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology. London: Oxford University Press. Peirce, C.S. 1982–2009. Writings of Charles S.  Peirce, A Chronological Edition, vols. 1–8. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Plantinga, A. 1994. Warranted Christian Belief. New York: Oxford University Press. Russell, Robert J.  2012. Time in Eternity: Pannenberg, Physics, and Eschatology in Creative Mutual Interaction. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press. Weisstein, E.W. 2018. Schrödinger Equation. Available from: http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/ physics/SchroedingerEquation.html. Accessed 17 Sept 2018. Philip Clayton is Ingraham Professor at Claremont School of Theology and an affiliated faculty member at Claremont Graduate University. The author or editor of some 24 books and several hundred articles, Clayton received a joint doctorate in philosophy and religious studies from Yale University and has held guest professorships and fellowships at the University of Munich, the University of Cambridge, and Harvard University. Within the natural sciences, his publications have focused on emergent dynamics in biology and the neural correlates of consciousness. Other research areas have included the nature of scientific explanation, the realism debate, theory of human personhood, the divine action debate, open theism, the models of God across the world’s religions, and doctrines of the God-world relation, especially panentheism. More recently he has focused on environmental philosophy and eco-theology.  

Chapter 2

Immanence and Transcendence: On/Off Difference or Gradation? Implications for Science-and-Theology Lluis Oviedo

Abstract  The distinction between an immanent and a transcendent realm reflects intuitions of contrasting and mutually exclusive dimensions; they can be seen as ‘discrete units’ in opposition to continuous or gradual ones; the observer can adopt either an immanent or a transcendent view, but not a mix of them. This allows for better communication, greater clarity, and hence, for an enhanced survival in the religious system. The opposite view would take such distinction as gradual, or placed in a continuum between extremes, where perceptions could move along a spectrum covering many levels or stages; in that case, we could observe more or less transcendence, not just its presence or absence. This second view would allow for more flexibility and would enrich the communication code with many more possible positions. The religious code has moved in recent times from a discrete or on/off position, towards a more gradual one, in which more fuzzy perceptions of transcendence may be conceived. Such a trend implies deep changes in the way that religious semantics are built and in how religion is conceived, giving place to a widening of such a concept, and at the same time to a reduced clarity and comprehensibility. A discussion of this trend is clearly needed. Keywords  Complexity · Contingence · Gradation · Incarnation · Science · Secularization · Semantics · Social systems · Spirituality · Transcendence

L. Oviedo (*) Pontifical University Antonianum, Rome, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Nature – and Beyond, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 5, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31182-7_2

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2.1  Introduction Religion is – admittedly – a concept which it is hard to define. Many attempts have been made, and their characterization of religion strongly depends on the contexts, interests and theoretical frameworks which are applied to deal with it. This perception is surely linked to religion’s special status, as something which has to do with ultimate interests and values, with what is of the highest importance and with religion as a purveyor of meaning. Unavoidably religion implies putting into play one’s own central reasons and motives, or what is most at one’s heart, perhaps not just from the side of the observed subject, but – even more – from the one who is observing and tries to find a convincing explanation of what religion is about. In these conditions, the study of religion has inevitably to choose an approach among the many which are available and to decide which is the most fitting instrument to analyze it, or the method which can deliver a better view, or higher ‘heuristic power’, or which can solve more conundrums or better address ongoing challenges and unresolved issues. When science deals with religion, we just add some new items to a long list which is open and growing, and try to produce something new and alternative following the many previous attempts through a long history. In the context of science-and-theology we probably need a manageable concept of religion, which can afford some clarity and be tailored to deal with science, i.e. something which is not too metaphysical and elusive for that purpose, otherwise science would avoid any encounter or even ignore religion as something observable and accessible. To some extent, the question about how much religion might become a science interlocutor or partner, is related – but does not overlap – with the issue about religion becoming an observable subject, or a research topic. Religion can work as a reliable partner for science – in the way that interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary methods work – if we can clearly identify its contours and limits, if we can distinguish what religion is and is not about. Possibly, an approach that could work and better serve these conditions is the social systems theory proposed by the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. In that framework ‘religion’ becomes a subsystem inside the whole of society which can be described using the communication code that builds such a subsystem and performs functions useful for the entire system’s survival. In that sense, religion is part of a whole and so its relationships with science – another social subsystem – and other parts of that broad set can be easily identified and described. I take Luhmann’s theory to be axiomatic as a possible framework in which we can essay an approach to religion and its relationship to science and society, and through which we may assess to what extent religion really helps to deal with current issues and to solve pending problems. In this short paper I attempt to review the semantics that help to fix religion’s meaning and to establish its social place and implications for science. To that end the proposed path starts with a proposal about religion’s code and its implications, moving on to discuss whether such a code works or becomes problematic in some disciplinary settings; and then to what extent it applies to the field of theology-and-science, and its usefulness to that field.

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2.2  P  roposal: Religion Arises as a Basic Distinction Between Transcendence and Immanence Luhmann’s theory of religion identifies the code on which such a social subsystem works: through communications in which transcendence is distinguished or is identified as something distinct; or through a distinction between what is ‘undetermined’ and what is ‘determined’ (Luhmann 1977). Here the theory moves into communication studies and logic: a message makes or transmits meaning when it is able to distinguish or to introduce a distinction, an idea basically developed by G. Spencer-­ Brown and his Laws of Form (1969). Such a description allows us to identify how different social systems arise and work, through specific sets of communications with their own code. The advantage that such an approach represents is that it helps us to fix and differentiate every social subsystem and to offer a formal structure on which each social sector can be conceived – in an abstract way – and placed inside a general model. Now, Luhmann’s inspiration can be followed and widened, trying to better specify that distinction and its contents, even if that move entails a great difficulty: by definition, we cannot determine or specify what is ‘undetermined’. Nevertheless, the suggestion is that communication requires a binary code and so it is built on distinctions. The distinction between transcendence and immanence being the broadest, surely other related pairs or semantic oppositions could help to enrich such a basic code. It is possible, for instance, to connect to that basic one several or most of the following list: • • • • • • • • • • •

Absolute – relative Salvation – damnation Nature – grace Sin – forgiveness Temporal – eternal Infinite – finite Worldly – extramundane Natural – supernatural/mysterious Body – soul Hope – desperation Order – chaos

Indeed, the religious code builds on more than just a distinction, and it is relatively easy to identify complementary semantics, always using a binary code. The basic code that resorts to identifying transcendence can be linked to the one that stresses absoluteness and the one that looks for salvation – in absolute terms –when dealing with religion, and not just with some cognitive gain. Now, the logic described here mostly implies distinctions of kind and not of degree, or, in other words, views associated with on/off positions, and less with gradation or continuity inside a spectrum between extremes. This claim becomes rather problematic, since the semantic clarity may demand neat distinctions, ones

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that do not gave place to ‘third possibilities’ (a sort of tertium non datur principle, or the ‘law of the excluded middle’), but this could mean a useless constraint on a very complex reality, where things usually are not black or white, and many shades of gray can be perceived and accounted for. Following the pattern described, and put roughly: you can have transcendence or immanence, or by the same token, something absolute or relative, salvation or damnation, but not both, or not something in between. You can find in your life experiences that are saving or pertain to eternity, or experiences that are damning and negative. Apparently, we can talk about something in between, which is positive and negative at the same time, or which is only a little bit positive, but mostly negative; this is usual when we are reasoning inside the moral code, where such nuances are quite normal. But this is not how religion usually operates: here positive (or salvific) and negative (or damning) are used in absolute, contrary and excluding terms, or we do not have more religion, but something else. This can work with other suggested pairs: sin and forgiveness, for instance. Even if sin admits a moral gradation, the distinction this term introduces is exclusive: you can have sinned or not; you can offend God or not, but religious semantics avoid gradation except in the sense that applies to offence levels. Such a contrast has nourished no minor theological and philosophical problems when trying to relate moral standards and theological measures, where ‘you cannot offend God just a little bit!’; God being the absolute reality, any offence or sin against Him appears as something of extreme gravity and reach, as the Anselmian view has claimed since early medieval theology. This approach helps us to avoid confusion and to enforce clarity and an efficient transmission of information. A different question is to what extent a language that is more articulated, and tries to better grasp our reality, requires more gradation and subtler nuances. In my opinion, subtlety and higher complexity applies in this case more to ‘subtler distinctions’ and less to more gradual views. Theology builds by extending the code with new and subtler distinctions, or connecting distinctions in a more complex way, and less by simply changing the nature of the basic distinctions to render them more gradual, and less exclusive.

2.3  D  iscussion: Do We Really Need Neat Distinctions When Dealing with Religion? Besides the doubts already expressed at the methodological level, many more arise when trying with a closed and exclusive semantics to account for contrasting transcendence and immanence, or absolute and relative. The point is that such an approach appears as too strict, and unable to account for the great richness present in today’s spiritual world without the use of less differentiated expressions, or where the spiritual realm becomes one less defined, or more fuzzy and flexible. Several issues come to mind that could contest and even damage the strategy described here. First, we can adduce arguments de facto, or show social and cultural trends that

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apparently challenge this approach; then we can move to social theory to discern the consequences and problems there entailed; next, theology needs to be interrogated, especially after some recent developments; then, science or philosophy of science surely has a word to say in all this; and last the study of beliefs discloses a similar discussion on their graduality.

2.3.1  S  ocial and Cultural Trends Regarding Religion and Spirituality Starting with the current social and cultural environment, we find plenty of expressions that would hardly fit into such a rigid schema, and nevertheless they claim to be expressions of transcendence. Just to review some, Thomas Coleman and his colleagues have coined the term ‘horizontal transcendence’  – as opposed to the ‘vertical’ sort – to describe a set of experiences, like awe and some deep emotions, that are naturalistic but phenomenologically similar to those that religious people describe, and assume to be properly religious (Coleman III et al. 2014). Then, a long and mature tradition in the sociology of religion has identified many forms of ‘fuzzy spirituality’ by many other names, which could militate against a too sharp distinction giving place to a clear-cut sense of transcendence (Voas 2009; Yaden et  al. 2017). For instance, all the religious expressions termed as ‘invisible religion’, ‘latent or implicit religion’, ‘vicarious views’ and similar, appear as a wide grey area in which many individuals in secularized societies cannot define themselves as believers or as non-believers, but find themselves somewhere in between (Luckmann 1967; Bailey 2001). Obviously, this section has to reckon with the plethora of spiritual expressions in which the applied distinction would be simply inadequate, or too poor to describe what is going on in that broad and plural world. Is mindfulness meditation opening a transcendent realm, or it is just a practice that remains on subjective immanent ground? Perhaps the last would be too little, and the former too much! Spiritual experiences as we observe them today often transcend such a simple distinction and move towards other semantics, or simply render the idea of transcendence as nothing, contrasted with immanence or the material, physical world. Besides this, we should not ignore the many attempts to find ‘transcendence in science’, or in nature, or in art. Again, in these cases the new semantic use they find does not match the traditional one, and nevertheless they speak about a ‘transcendence without religion’ or about its ‘secular’ version, or some fitting substitute. That point has been the object of critical review in a book by Terry Eagleton, denouncing a sort of semantic appropriation, as happens with some humanist visions (Eagleton 2014: see also Ferrara 2015; Van Roermund 2015). A similar trend is suggested in the works of some contemporary high-profile literary figures, described by Albert Weale in a review as an expression emerging in post-Christian cultural milieux: ­ ‘…post-­ Christian thinkers and writers like Thomas Hardy or Julian Barnes, for whom the experience of love shows a transcendent dimension to humanity’ (Weale 2017).

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2.3.2  Social Theory, History and Alternative Models The next field we shall discuss is less empirical and resorts to social theory. Doubts appear regarding the proposed schema even in the same field in which it has matured. Some issues have to do with a program that is probably unable to manage and fix some ambiguities and tensions arising between social systems. Then, historical social evolution looks more complex than the simplified code proposed for religion could warrant. Furthermore, some difficulties arise when the religious binary code is placed close to other social systems, and this can give rise to some confusions. For example, take the case of science, which is described as a social subsystem that works on the distinction between truth and falsity, between true and wrong knowledge. When we try to distinguish religion and science based on their respective codes, some problems unavoidably emerge: religion could hardly renounce a claim to the semantics of truth – despite voices in the recent scientific study of religion claiming the opposite (Feierman 2016). A believer cannot assume that his/her faith is less true than what scientists claim is true about what they observe; besides this, scientists require some levels of faith on their own side. For science then, the sense of absoluteness is by no means strange to their semantic code, even if some views after Popper and others raise doubts on keeping anything absolute (even the speed of light!). Similar forms of semantic or code contagions and interferences can be found in more social subsystems, such as those comprising politics (with its attempts to transcend and sacralize social bounds), family (where children become the highest good), or art (as the realm of the sublime). Such perceptions invite us to a broader understanding of religion and its semantics which discourages too clear-cut boundaries. Something similar happens when social evolution is considered. For many social historians, modern processes of secularization did not mean a sharp leap and rupture between former religiously oriented or inspired social spheres and new ones which are completely secular. Indeed, the process has been slow and has known many expressions in which religiously driven forms have gradually lost Christian references and symbols, and have been replaced entirely or in part by secular references which can play a similar role. However, the discussion at this level still persists concerning to what extent secularization can be ‘complete’ or religion can be entirely washed away in a social system and in cultural expressions (Olivetti 1976). To further complicate things, so called post-secularization tendencies seem to confirm that religion never dies and can be reborn from its ashes and embers, perhaps because it has never fully gone away. Again, such perceptions seem to disconfirm a model that plays the game of on/off positions when religion is at stake (Beckford 2012).

2.3.3  Theology and Its Perplexities The third field in which the proposed approach could raise doubts is theology. The recent debate regarding divine action and how to conceive it in a world that can be explained through physical laws, has motivated some answers that criticize tradi-

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tional views in which we tried to distinguish between autonomous realms and some areas where God could intervene in a mysterious way. Several voices in recent theology have blurred the distinction and pushed towards a more integral view, in which God is present in the whole of reality, and not just in some ‘special realms’ like consciousness or some mysterious  – quantum like  – processes. Theologians like Christopher Knight (2007), James Smith (2010) and Amos Yong (2011), among others, can be listed as voices inside theology urging views that do not exclude anything from divine gracious reach, and which renders meaningless the distinction between immanence and transcendence (for a deep review: Ritchie 2017). This movement clearly connects with a strand in twentieth century Catholic theology, and discussion on the ‘supernatural’, with the claim that a sheer ‘natural’ realm separated from the supernatural cannot be conceived (De Lubac 1946). Several current theological views discourage conceiving the natural world as distinct from the divine, or disconnected from divine grace and influence. However, that view does not mean that the distinction between grace and sin makes little sense, it is simply that the theological gaze cannot conceive any aspect of the world as God’s absence, or as removed from divine mysterious work and action: everything transcends immanent or material status and is liable to participate in the divine. This move renders the concepts of immanence and transcendence theologically interchangeable, and their distinction and possibly all the code that operates applying it irrelevant, at least when seen as a theological radicalization or even as an extension to encompass and include everything.

2.3.4  The Scientific Method Some further objections can arise from scientific method and style. If science has to deal with religion – both as dialogue partner and as object of study – it cannot allow itself to engage with strange categories, still less to permit privileged treatment, after claiming that religion has to do with the absolute, what transcends everything, the infinite (another term not exclusive for religion) or the ultimate. The feeling is that scientists cannot deal with something with such pretensions, or which places itself beyond reality and its limits. Then, on the other hand and being realistic, we have plenty of approaches to religion that blur such distinctions and render it much more available for scientific study: religion, indeed, can be perfectly translated into immanent material terms, like biological, cognitive and social processes, which can be well observed and accounted for, giving place to some interesting theories with great heuristic power, or which are at least quite able to explain several phenomena linked to religion. It seems that we do not need to complicate things by introducing a distinction that could discourage any scientific engagement with religion as something intractable, or going beyond what science can allow or observe. From the scientific method, where empirical and experimental approaches become standard procedures, the described distinction could have little sense, since transcendence  – by definition  – cannot be measured or accounted, and does not contribute to enriching scientific observation, which deals with a reality that can be

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understood through testable models, and which cannot accommodate pointing to something beyond, as this would open up esoteric realms, very far from a serious engagement with scientific practice.

2.3.5  The Scientific Study of Beliefs A last field that could nourish further doubts is the recent scientific study of beliefs. Several authors studying beliefs state that ‘beliefs come in degrees’, and less in an on/off schema (Huber and Schmidt-Petrim 2009). For them, beliefs appear with more or less intensity and reflect greater or lesser conviction or are more or less strong and able to mobilize personal action. However, this position – that could be deemed as standard – has been recently discussed to claim that beliefs can come only in an ‘all or nothing’ format, and only ‘confidence’ admits levels or degrees (Moon 2017). It is apparent that the discussion of religious semantics overlaps with the debate on beliefs and their varieties. What is at stake is not just a philosophical question related to logic or epistemology, but more one related to psychological states, or degrees of conviction. Believing a thing does not admit degrees: you can either believe or not believe it, but then you can be more or less convinced, and it is possible even to rank in percentiles the level or intensity with which someone holds a belief. The distinction appears pertinent to the discussion we have proposed, and adds some convenient nuance to the suggested model. Such a nuance helps to clarify how transcendence and immanence are exclusive, but our commitment to one or other of these dimensions can be gradual.

2.4  B  ack to the Proposed Distinction: Persisting with Religion and Transcendence Despite the five discussion threads begun here, which could motivate a move away from the sharp distinction between transcendence and immanence, some other reasons still encourage us to persist and explore such choice. The first reason is clarity and univocity. This is a point we have learned from the Franciscan medieval master Duns Scotus, which still makes sense today: if we are unable to propose a discourse in which religion – and obviously the concept of God – cannot be clearly described and distinguished, then we will hardly be able to build a case for religion. If religion is everything and God is in everything, then it is nothing, and only confusion can be expected as a consequence. What science needs as an interlocutor is not something fuzzy and undefined, an all-encompassing idea, since that will appear as strange for the standard religious person, who probably will become unable to recognize such

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approaches as reflecting his or her own identity. In my opinion science will feel more comfortable dealing with a reality in terms which their subjects recognize and assume, and less with a reality adapted and reduced for scientific treatment, but which a believer can no longer identify as his or her own experience. The former arguments give place to an ulterior reason: reducing the contrast between transcendence and immanence, we risk a forced ‘secularization’ – in this case academic or scientific – of religion that would prevent any access to ‘the real thing’. In that case science would not meet religion on its own terms, but as an Ersatz or surrogate; in this way the relationship and dialogue would become flawed and bogus, even if it is easier. Before the plurality and fuzziness in the perception of transcendence in our current social and cultural setting, we probably need to keep a standard model of religious faith, and then consider all the rest in relationship with it. That ‘golden standard’ would be one in which the semantic that distinguishes between transcendence and immanence can stand up, and help to preserve religion from dissipative fuzziness or from ambiguity and semantic confusion. Surely, we need to admit a gradation both in the way secularization or religious decline proceeds, and the interaction between religion and other social systems, with different levels of interference or – as Luhmann claimed – inter-penetration. However, that gradation does not touch the identity of religion: the progressive loss of religious social salience and its influence in related areas – like politics, economics or science – does not mean a reduction of transcendence levels, except in the sense of an increased secularization and, hence, less religion in absolute terms. This is not just about semantics but about reality. In any case, the argument should hold: if the semantic intensity pointing to a transcendent realm dims, then religion is no longer in play. The questions raised at the interface between religion and science are serious and touch on the heart of the proposed semantic. It seems that religion has to adapt to an immanent condition, leaving aside its transcendent dimension, as a condition which is demanded by science of religion as a serious interlocutor and as a research topic. Well, in the second case the required ‘appeasement’ may be justified, however only with the condition that the scientist is aware about such reduction. Science operates through such reductions, and reductionism belongs to its usual method, as a condition for obtaining more detailed, analytical and testable knowledge. The problem arises when the scientist becomes convinced that his or her reduced version is the real thing, or is all that we need to understand religion and to explain it. Such a difficulty posits a serious challenge in the new wave of scientific study of religion, in its cognitive and biological or evolutionary versions: explaining some aspects of religion that were reduced just to get better access to them, or to deal with them in a way available to empirical observation and experimental treatment, should not induce the confusion that what has been explained is all that religion is about. Probably these conditions entail a limit to the scientific study of religion, which will be unable to account for what is unavailable to its observing tools and, as a conse-

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quence, that implies another general limit to science, as a knowledge model or a cognitive procedure that is able to provide very useful insights but not a complete and sufficient understanding of everything. As already stated, what science needs when dealing with religion – at least from my own experience in the field of the new scientific study of religion – is less a very fuzzy concept, where everything comes in, from secular versions of mindfulness to devout expressions of catholic rites, and more a univocal term that can be defined in a concise way and with recognizable boundaries. Most authors in that field prefer the reference to ‘beliefs in supernatural agents’, again a description that avoids ambiguity and puts into play a transcendent or supernatural dimension. Questions about beliefs, as were raised in the fifth section of our discussion, reveal the complexity and the need to better know the world of beliefs, which deserve a sub-disciplinary area of their own. The point is that such research has introduced distinctions that become very helpful when trying to deal in a nuanced way with religion and the beliefs expressing it. Gradation is associated with some psychological states or levels of conviction, and less with the semantic content that a belief usually declares or means. The specific theological issues raised in the discussion above need to be contextualized and put in the right perspective, since the described movement that could mean a complete blurring or even deletion of any distinction between transcendence and immanence, was looking for a solution to the thorny issue of divine action, with its complexities, and for a way to vindicate – against secularizing trends – the right to re-sacralize and recover entire social realms into the realm of divine reference, where they have always been before suffering secular expropriation or reduction. However, that move makes sense when that secularizing background is considered, and theology becomes an observation style able to render transcendent the immanent realm, or declaring every aspect of reality – except evil – to be divinely instilled. The problems raised above are serious and they deal with hard questions about the way to approach religion fruitfully, but such difficulties invite us to a deeper engagement, making choices about trying different approaches or solutions. My point is that we – those moving in science-and-theology dialogue – will have more to gain than to lose when keeping the neat distinction between transcendence and immanence as the basis for thinking about religion and relating it to science, instead of reducing it to the point of rendering these concepts less operative, through a system that comprises gradations, levels, and fuzziness – and, consequently, creating difficulties in dealing with religion. We need surely to pay more attention to recent debates on the formation and dynamics of beliefs, the role played in them by probabilities, and how the believing mind works, as a promising way to better assess these matters. Beliefs come and go, arise and go extinct; they can suffer some process of dimming down; but holding a belief or not seems to be the most fitting approach when religion is at stake.

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Bibliography Bailey, E. 2001. Implicit Religion in Contemporary Society. Leuven: Peeters. Beckford, J.A. 2012. Public Religions and the Postsecular: Critical Reflections. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 51 (1): 1–19. Coleman, T.J., III, C.F. Silver, and J. Holcombe. 2014. Focusing on Horizontal Transcendence: Much More Than a ‘Non-belief’. Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism 21 (2): 1–18. De Lubac, H. 1946. Surnaturel. Paris: Aubier. Eagleton, T. 2014. Culture and the Death of God. Yale: Yale University Press. Feierman, J. 2016. The Biology of Religious Belief, Emotion and Behaviour: A Natural Science Perspective. In Is Religion Natural? ed. D.  Evers, M.  Fuller, A.  Jackelén, and T.  Smedes, 41–62. Dordrecht: Springer. Ferrara, A. 2015. Varieties of Transcendence and Their Consequences for Political Philosophy. The European Legacy 20 (2): 109–119. Huber, F., and C. Schmidt-Petrim. 2009. Degrees of Belief. Dordrecht: Springer. Knight, C. 2007. The God of Nature: Incarnation and Contemporary Science. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Luckmann, T. 1967. The Invisible Religion: The Problem of Religion in Modern Society. New York: Macmillan. Luhmann, N. 1977. Funktion der Religion. Suhtkamp: Frankfurt a.M. Moon, A. 2017. Beliefs Do Not Come in Degrees. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 47 (6): 760–778. Olivetti, M.M. 1976. Il problema della secolarizzazione inesauribile. Archivio di Filosofia: 81–90. Ritchie, S.L. 2017. With God in Mind: Divine Action and the naturalisation of Consciousness. University of Edinburgh, unpublished PhD. Smith, J. 2010. Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Philosophy. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Spencer-Brown, G. 1969. Laws of Form. London: Allen & Unwin. Van Roermund, B. 2015. Kelsen, Secular Religion, and the Problem of Transcendence. Netherlands Journal of Legal Philosophy 44 (2): 100–115. Voas, D. 2009. The Rise and Fall of Fuzzy Fidelity in Europe. European Sociological Review 25 (2): 155–168. Weale, A. 2017. Against the grain of the world. Times Literary Supplement, 12 April. https://www. the-tls.co.uk/articles/private/against-the-grain-of-the-world/. Accessed 31 Mar 18. Yaden, D.B., J. Haidt, R.W. Hood Jr., D.R. Vago, and A.B. Newberg. 2017. The Varieties of Self-­ Transcendent Experience. Review of General Psychology 21 (2): 143–160. Yong, A. 2011. The Spirit of Creation: Modern Science and Divine Action in the Pentecostal-­ Charismatic Imagination. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Lluis Oviedo is full Professor for Theological Anthropology at the Pontifical University Antonianum of Rome and Fundamental Theology at the Theological Institute of Murcia (Spain). His research focuses on the dialogue between Christian anthropology and the human and natural sciences, and the developments in the new scientific study of religion and its theological application. He has been Editor of ESSSAT News and Reviews, and Co-Editor of the Encyclopedia for Sciences and Religions (4 vols, Springer), and many papers in the interface between science and theology.

Chapter 3

Why I Am a Science-Inspired Naturalist But Not a Philosophical Naturalist Nor a Religious Naturalist Willem B. Drees

Abstract Ever since I published a book with the title Religion, Science and Naturalism (1996), some have considered me a ‘religious naturalist’. However, I decline this label for myself. In this contribution, I seek to articulate my position more clearly. I advocate science-inspired naturalism. I will argue that this need not imply philosophical naturalism and religious naturalism. If not, as I will argue, why not? When one considers the interpretation of science and of mathematical objects and moral values, one cannot just turn to science. More is needed. A question is whether that ‘more’ falls within the ambit of ‘naturalism’, as a philosophical naturalist seems to hold. As I see it, for all practical purposes one might take a science-­ inspired naturalistic stance in daily life (e.g. when needing medical assistance), consider Kantian constructivism an attractive strategy when it comes to philosophical justification of values, appreciate the motivating and identity-defining power of religious and personal narratives that integrate ethos, loves, and one’s worldview, while considering oneself agnostic on matters of ultimate explanations and values. Keywords  Constructivism · Naturalism · Naturalistic theism · Negative theology · Philosophical naturalism · Pluralism · Religious naturalism · Science · Science-­ inspired naturalism Some colleagues in ‘religion and science’ consider me a ‘religious naturalist’. However, I decline this label for myself (Drees 2006: 121). This paper will seek to clarify my position, by distinguishing (1) science-inspired naturalism, (2) philosophical naturalism, and (3) religious naturalism, and articulating my stance with respect to each of these naturalistic orientations.

W. B. Drees (*) Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Nature – and Beyond, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 5, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31182-7_3

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3.1  Science-Inspired Naturalism All entities in the world consist of the same constituents, best described by physics. If ingredients seem to be missing (once neutrinos, and currently ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’), specialists develop the physics further. For macroscopic phenomena we may need concepts which do not belong to the vocabulary of fundamental physics (emergence), even though these phenomena are realized by physical processes (reduction). We, humans, are no exception to the natural world. Our mental and cultural life, made possible by our brains and social environments, reveal the possibilities of the natural world. Matter, properly organized, has been Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein, Henrik Ibsen or Rembrandt van Rijn, Siddhārtha Gautama, Jesus of Nazareth, or Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdullāh, and all those other humans, women and men, who have contributed, significantly or modestly, to our intellectual, cultural and religious history. A science-inspired naturalist can consider epithets such as the Buddha, the Christ, or the Prophet as honorific titles, given by humans. However, these terms do not set them apart from the natural, human community. Alternatives to this understanding of reality are not convincing to me, given the way the natural sciences have provided a coherent understanding of reality, corroborated by very precise measurements, an understanding of reality that has allowed for impressive applications. As I see it, we should accept a ‘science-inspired naturalism’, at least as naturalism about the world. Such acceptance is not only an intellectual obligation, but also a moral one; we need to draw upon the best available knowledge to serve each other and counter unnecessary suffering.

3.2  Philosophical Naturalism Science-inspired naturalism seems to me correct, but also incomplete. Science allows for different philosophical interpretations, it is unable to address questions about ultimate origins, and there are issues that are categorically of a different kind. Scientific theories are open to multiple interpretations. Predictions of quantum physics have been confirmed with great accuracy, but the interpretation of quantum physics as a theory about reality has remained open to dispute. Similarly, though less obvious, for other theories. Hence, even if scientific theories are accepted as true, they do not deliver a well-defined, unique understanding of reality. Scientific theories underdetermine our worldview. Not only do current theories allow for multiple interpretations, but future theories may offer us radically different ways of understanding of reality. While Newtonian physics treated gravity as a force working at a distance, Einstein’s General Relativity Theory treated the same phenomena as consequences of the curvature of space-time. Newton’s formulae are still useful, but these can no longer be

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taken to describe reality. Einstein’s theory need not be the final word on reality either. Future theories may support rather different views of reality. Given a plurality of interpretations and the expectation of future theories that are continuous with current knowledge in practice but not in ontology, a problem for a science-inspired naturalist might be that we do not really know what nature is like, deep down, even though we have very well-established knowledge at more mundane levels of existence. Questions about ultimate origins also push us beyond science-inspired naturalism. Why is the world the way it is? The Big Bang theory is a very successful theory about the evolution of the universe, but it does not explain the real or apparent ‘initial’ state nor the laws of physics. If a quantum cosmology would integrate all known physics in a coherent whole, there would still be the contingency of existence: Why is there something rather than nothing? We never see the universe ‘from outside,’ but always from within. Thus, any condition within the universe, including the origin as seen from within, could be envisaged as ‘creation’, just as whenever a world is described in a book or a movie, it could be assumed to have a maker beyond the book or film. Thus, even though cosmology makes it clear that the universe is vast and old, by human standards, it can be seen as created. That we see the universe from within, might be a problem for a theist who would like to be able to draw on cosmology as evidence for a Creator. However, it is also an opportunity for theists who in their theism acknowledge the limitations of knowledge, and thus incorporate elements of negative theology. That we see the universe, including its apparent origins, only from within, leaves us scientifically in ignorance about ultimate origins; there might be a Creator who vastly surpasses the creation. A philosophical naturalist does not do much better than a science-accepting theist, with respect to ultimate origins. Both accept the Big Bang theory and more recent ‘quantum cosmologies’ as insights about the history of our universe, perhaps even as providing insight about other domains or ‘universes’ within the Universe. However, given that we only see the universe from the inside, a naturalist has no resources based on science to explain that reality itself. With respect to such questions, any science-inspired naturalism is incomplete. Mathematics, values, and ultimate origins seem to be facets of existence that are categorically different from those treated in science. Mathematics is odd if one comes at it with an empiricist mindset. Within a science-inspired naturalistic ontology, pure circles and triangles do not exist. Nonetheless, we can make claims about their properties. We can make mathematical existence claims such as that there is (or that there is not) an even integer greater than 2 that is not the sum of two primes (Goldbach’s conjecture). One response might be to envisage that mathematical realities exist ‘out there’, in an immaterial realm. As an ontology such a ‘Platonic’ realm is so distinct from the material reality that it is hard to envisage where it might be. And given the categorical difference between material reality and this Platonic realm, one might wonder how we ever might have access to those immaterial lands. One can also treat mathematical objects as human creations, but if just a construction, why do mathematicians agree on mathematical insights, across cultural and

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ideological divides? Perhaps one might take inspiration from Immanuel Kant’s approach by treating mathematics as a construction that abstracts universal, ‘transcendental’ features of reasoning from human practices such as counting and measuring. Philosophical naturalists, Platonists, and transcendental constructivists might all accept science and the science-inspired naturalism described above, but disagree on the philosophical implications. Hence, philosophical naturalism is not the only option for someone who accepts science-inspired naturalism. Values involve similar categorical challenges. Any naturalist can appreciate the emergence of the human practice of making normative evaluations as a feature of our history (e.g., Kitcher 2011). However, unless one accepts that values and norms are social constructs without further standing, our moral values seem to aspire to universality. Here too, like for mathematics, an option might be a transcendental constructivism (e.g., De Maagt 2017). Thus, a scientific-inspired naturalist might be a philosophical naturalist, but need not be. One can be a pragmatist about the significance of the scientific insights one lives with, and a Kantian constructivist on values and mathematics, while other philosophical approaches on existence might be among the alternative options.

3.3  Religious Naturalism It might seem that naturalism by definition excludes what is typical of a religious view. However, Jerome Stone claims that there are experiences which ‘elicit responses that are analogous enough to the paradigm cases of religion that they can appropriately be called religious’ (Stone 2003: 89). In theism God is understood to be the creator of all that exists. One might ask of any religious view that it offers a frame to speak of the character of existence. And God provides the point of reference for evaluating our behaviour from an impartial perspective that transcends all human interests and biases. In order to be religious, rather than metaphysical or meta-ethical, we might require that these two dimensions are interwoven. This is in line with Clifford Geertz’s anthropological definition of religions as systems of symbols that shape moods and motivations by presenting us with an understanding of reality that is taken as true, thus supporting those moods and motivations (Geertz 1966: 3; Drees 2010: 68; 76–82; 136–139). Religions intertwine models of the world and models for the world. Speaking of religious naturalism I consider justified if a particular version of naturalism provides a language to speak of fundamental reality and fundamental values. If one considers ‘religious naturalism’ as a life orientation to be a genuine option, one might wonder whether it is an attractive one. That depends, of course, on one’s criteria. Religious naturalism shares fundamental philosophical problems with more traditional religious positions. Intertwining facts and values, worldviews and ethos, may well be in tension with the categorical difference between values and facts, the ‘is-ought’ distinction. Inferences that dismiss forms of behaviour as ‘unnatural’ as

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if thereby ‘immoral’, are unwarranted. The motivational efficacy of religious stories and visions, whether theistic or naturalistic, often draws on a problematical combination of worldviews and values, of what is and what ought to be. Religious naturalism draws on the natural sciences. This avoids the historical contingencies typical of religious traditions – a temple as the center of the world, a chosen people, a guru or saint, or a particular revelatory event. The ‘evolutionary epic’ or ‘cosmic story’ could be the way to create a common ethos (e.g., Rue 1999). This might be considered an advantage, if one finds the particularity of religious traditions, reflected in contingent but normative elements, to be problematical. However, one might wonder whether such an appeal to science for an evolutionary epic as our common creation story is desirable (Sideris 2017). A science-based religious naturalism has difficulties in handling human identities, which are always particular. Morally, I am convinced of the importance of human rights, for all humans. However, I care existentially about my wife, my children and grandchildren, and specific others. Susan Wolf (2010: 4; similarly Frankfurt 2004; Van Stee 2017) made a distinction between ‘reasons of love’ and reasons that would qualify as moral or selfish. ‘When I visit my brother in the hospital, or help my friend move, or stay up all night sewing my daughter a Halloween costume, I act neither for egoistic reasons not for moral ones. (…) Rather, I act out of love.’ My relation to particular humans and pursuits is important to who I am. I never speak ‘language’; it is always a particular language. Adherents of a religion do not believe in ‘religion’, but are involved in a tradition, with its rituals and stories, with its community and its convictions. Religious naturalism, with its universalist orientation that seems supported by scientific naturalism, risks bypassing the particularities that define human identities and lives. There is at least one substantive alternative to religious naturalism, naturalistic theism. Theism emphasizes the uniqueness of God’s mode of being and activity. Creatures are temporal, but perhaps God is not. Accepting the whole natural world as the creation of a timeless transcendent God may be consistent with science-inspired-naturalism. A less dualistic variant is theistic naturalism, a label I use for the position of those who speak of God as Ground of Being (Wildman 2016). Such a position has more deeply ingrained naturalistic presuppositions by avoiding the dualism of a transcendent God and the natural world, even though it maintains a concept of God as surpassing the world—and thus still might be considered a species of theism. Other metaphysical-religious schemes may be consistent with science-inspired naturalism as well. Responses to philosophical limit questions may be quite different for theists and naturalists. If naturalism is defined as including the assumption “that nature is necessary in the sense of requiring no sufficient reason beyond itself to account either for its origin or ontological ground” (Hardwick 1996: 5–6), a religious naturalist by definition excludes a transcendent ground of reality. In my opinion, however, naturalistic theism and theistic naturalism are genuine and attractive alternative possible points of view, consistent with science-inspired naturalism.

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3.4  Concluding Comments Science-inspired naturalism about the world seems to be a minimal requirement for someone who takes the sciences seriously. This does not imply that science is the only source of knowledge. There is common sense knowledge – I know the names of my children – and one can also speak of mathematical knowledge. The section on philosophical naturalism above considered some issues that are beyond the scope of science. On such issues, scientific naturalism need not imply philosophical naturalism. I value this multitude of possible philosophical positions; reality and imagination are so rich that none of our models can be considered exclusive and final. With respect to religious naturalisms, one concern is that these tend to root values in ‘nature’. Too often, humans have criticized others with an appeal to what is natural (white and male dominance), or what seems counter-natural (same sex relationships), while later generations challenged those value judgements. Religious naturalisms tends to emphasize universal ambitions, bypassing the particularity of human identities. In more traditional theologies, a plurality of voices is unavoidable, because theologies not only take into account our understanding of reality and our values, but also our particular identity, a historical narrative, our loves, the heritage dear to us, the repertoire of stories that we use to educate and motivate, the music that moves us, the rituals and symbols we might use. In theologies, we express in symbolic language our ideas on reality and values, universal and personal. In the end, I consider myself an agnostic on ultimate metaphysical issues, the ground of values and of existence; I do not think that we can reach that high. As a wondering human, I find ‘naturalistic theism’ as described above personally attractive (see also Drees 2016). As I see it, for all practical purposes it is wise to take a science-inspired naturalistic stance in daily life, e.g. when needing medical assistance. I consider Kantian constructivism our best hope when it comes to a philosophical justification of values. And as a wandering human, living his life, I appreciate the motivating power of religious narratives that integrate ethos and worldview, and especially some of the Christian parables and hymns that have stayed with me from my liberal protestant upbringing. Acknowledgments  In writing this chapter, I have liberally adapted passages and arguments from earlier publications, especially (Drees 2017 and 2018).

Bibliography De Maagt, S. 2017. Constructing Morality: Transcendental Arguments in Ethics. Utrecht: Utrecht University. Drees, W.B. 1996. Religion, Science and Naturalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2006. Religious Naturalism and Science. In The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science, ed. P. Clayton and Z. Simpson, 108–123. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2010. Religion and Science in Context: A Guide to the Debates. London: Routledge.

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———. 2016. The Divine as Ground of Existence and of Transcendental Values: An Exploration. In Alternative Concepts of God: Essays on the Metaphysics of the Divine, ed. A.A. Buckareff and Y. Nagasawa, 195–212. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2017. Science, Values and Loves: Theologies as Expressive Constructions. Theology and Science 15 (3 August): 249–259. ———. 2018. Religious Naturalism and Its Near Neighbors: Some Live Options. In The Routledge Handbook of Religious Naturalism, ed. D.A. Crosby and J. Stone, 19–30. London: Routledge. Frankfurt, H.G. 2004. Reasons of Love. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Geertz, C. 1966. Religion as a Cultural System. In Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. M. Banton, 1–46. London: Tavistock. Hardwick, C.D. 1996. Events of Grace: Naturalism, Existentialism, and Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kitcher, P. 2011. The Ethical Project. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rue, L.R. 1999. Everybody’s Story: Wising Up to the Epic of Evolution. Albany: State University of New York Press. Sideris, L.H. 2017. Consecrating Science: Wonder, Knowledge, and the Natural World. Oakland: University of California Press. Stone, J.A. 2003. Varieties of Religious Naturalism. Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 38: 89–93. Van Stee, A. 2017. Understanding Existential Self-Understanding: Philosophy Meets Cognitive Neuroscience. Leiden: PhD thesis. Wildman, W.J. 2016. Reframing Transcendence: Ground-of-Being Theism and Religious Naturalism. In Naturalism and Beyond: Religious Naturalism and Its Alternatives, ed. N.H. Gregersen and M. Stenmark, 123–150. Leuven: Peeters. Wolf, S. 2010. Meaning in Life and Why It Matters. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Willem B. Drees is philosopher of the humanities at the Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences, Tilburg University. He served as the editor of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science (2008–2018) and dean of the Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences (2015–2018). He taught philosophy of religion at Leiden University (2001–2014) and served as president of ESSSAT (2002–2008). Publications include Beyond the Big Bang: Quantum Cosmologies and God (1990), Religion, Science and Naturalism (1996), and Religion and Science in Context: A Guide to the Debates (2010).

Part II

Theological Perspectives

Chapter 4

The Twin Truths of Divine Immanence and Transcendence: Creation, Laws of Nature and Human Freedom Lydia Jaeger

Abstract  The concepts of divine transcendence and divine immanence are often taken to be antithetical. It seems that the more one is stressed, the greater the difficulty in allowing for the other. But there is no apparent tension between these twin truths in the biblical accounts, and classic Christian tradition has affirmed them both. In order to resolve the felt opposition between divine transcendence and immanence, the biblical Creator-creature pattern has to be taken as the starting-­ point to understand the God-world relationship. As the transcendent Creator, God is intimately present and active in his creation. Taking creation as the starting-point is not a fideistic manoeuvre. In fact, fully acknowledging divine transcendence excludes any framework that would include God and the world in the more general context of being. Such an overarching framework would constitute a reality over and above God – a perspective which cannot be accommodated by theism. Instead, we have to learn who God is, and how the world relates to him, from the biblical texts. The fruitfulness of the concept of creation for science is reflected in the fact that it provides a relevant framework to reconsider certain questions raised by a scientific description of the world: the distinction between science and scientism, reductionism, laws of nature, human freedom and determinism. Keywords  Augustine of Hippo · Creation · Determinism · Human freedom · Immanence · Laws of nature · Providence · Reductionism · Scientism · Thomas Aquinas · Transcendence

L. Jaeger (*) Institut Biblique de Nogent-sur-Marne, Nogent-sur-Marne, France e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Nature – and Beyond, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 5, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31182-7_4

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4.1  D  ivine Transcendence and Immanence Conjoined in Classic Christian Theology At first glance, divine transcendence and immanence seem to be conflicting truths. Stressing the distinction between God and the world, the radical otherness of the divine, may make it harder to allow for God’s active and caring involvement in the world. If we emphasize instead God’s intimate presence in nature, his pervading of all that exists, then the pantheistic confusion of the deity and the world lurks round the corner. Notwithstanding, the best of Christian tradition has always firmly held together both truths. It is sufficient for our purposes to mention two representatives of the joint confession of divine immanence and transcendence in the great Christian tradition.

4.1.1  Augustine of Hippo In the opening prayer of the Confessions, Augustine considers the relationship between divine transcendence and immanence. He asks the question: ‘Is there any part of me capable of encompassing you? Or is it the case that heaven and earth, which you made, and in which you made me, encompass you?’ The answer can only be no, precisely because God is the ‘God who made heaven and earth’. Yet, ‘I would not exist at all, unless you existed in me. Or rather, I would not exist unless I existed in you, by whom everything is, and through whom everything is, and in whom everything is [Rom 11:36]’ (2014: 5). The very fact of being created implies existing in God and being filled by God’s presence. Thus the twin truths of God transcending the world and of God being present in all that exists both flow from creation. It is because God stands over and above the world as its Creator that nothing exists outside Him. Holding together divine transcendence and immanence is not theological speculation: Augustine reflects on this mystery in the context of prayer. The re-reading of his whole life up to his conversion, which is the topic of the Confessions, is rooted in this. God was present at every stage of his journey, secretly directing him towards salvation, in spite of his many detours: ‘Even if I go down into Hell, you are there’ (2014: 5, alluding to Ps 139:8). The biblical God cannot be assimilated to any of the pagan conceptions of the divine, which lack the radical transcendence of the Creator and Saviour whom Augustine loved so late in life. Instead the true God, who finally found him, transcends the world  – and it is precisely by His transcendence that everything exists in Him: Late have I loved you, O Beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you! And look! You were within me, and I was outside myself; and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created; … Those created things kept me far away from you; yet if they had not been in you, they would have not been at all (Augustine 2016: 135).

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Or to quote Augustine’s inimitable aphorism bringing together both divine immanence and transcendence: ‘You were deeper within me than the most secret part of me, and greater than the best of me [Tu … eras interior intimo meo et superior summo meo1]’ (2014: 110–111).

4.1.2  Thomas Aquinas When Aquinas asks in his Summa theologica the question: ‘Whether God is in all things?,’ his answer is unambiguous: ‘As long as a thing has being, God must be present to it, according to its mode of being. But being is innermost in each thing … Hence it must be that God is in all things, and innermostly’ (2017: Prima pars, Q.8, art.1). Once again, it is creation that leads him to hold together divine transcendence and immanence: ‘God is above all things by the excellence of His nature; nevertheless, He is in all things as the cause of the being of all things’ (ibid., reply to obj. 1). God being the Creator of all, he is both different from everything else that exists and present in all things as their cause ‘not only when they first begin to be, but as long as they are preserved in being’ (ibid., response). In analogy to the soul containing the body, God is not only ‘in things containing them’, but also, ‘by a certain similitude to corporeal things, it is said that all things are in God; inasmuch as they are contained by Him’ (ibid., reply to obj. 2). His presence in the world is immediate: ‘It belongs to the great power of God that He acts immediately in all things. Hence nothing is distant from Him, as if it could be without God in itself. But things are said to be distant from God by the unlikeness to Him in nature or grace; as also He is above all by the excellence of His own nature’ (ibid., reply to obj. 3).

4.2  Divine Transcendence and Immanence in the Bible It should not come as a surprise that the great Christian tradition has held firmly to both divine transcendence and immanence. In fact, Augustine, Aquinas (and many more) learnt from Scripture that these two truths are not in tension with each other, but that they can be understood within the common framework of creation. A locus classicus is Paul’s speech to the Areopagus (Acts 17). Creation occupies centre stage when the apostle confronts his Greek audience with the biblical God: ‘What … you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it …’ (v. 23–24).2 From creation, the apostle deduces different aspects of God’s transcendence: (1) his sovereign lordship (v. 24); (2) the  The classic translation by William Watts provides a more literal rendering: ‘Thou at the same time wert more inward than my most inward part; and superior then, unto my supremest’ (Augustine 1946: 121). 2  All biblical quotes are taken from the English Standard Version (esv.org) 1

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impossibility of limiting his presence to specific places (v. 24); (3) his aseity (v. 25). This transcendent Creator God is, at the same time  – and by virtue of being the Creator – the God who is near: he is ‘not far from each one of us’ (v. 27). Paul perhaps quotes a verse known to his audience, without fearing the pantheistic overtones that such a statement may well have had in the ears of those who listened to him: ‘In him we live and move and have our being’ (v. 28).3 Stressing divine immanence is not a concession to his pagan audience in Athens. Divine transcendence and immanence are also intertwined in Paul’s teaching in his letters. The most concise statement is to be found in Ephesians 4:6: ‘one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all’. The same twin truths can be predicated of the Son: ‘All things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in4 him all things hold together’ (Col 1:16–17).5 Confessing divine transcendence and immanence, connected through creation, is not a theological invention of the apostle to the Gentiles. With his teaching, Paul sits squarely within the tradition of the Hebrew Bible. The most beautiful poetic expression of divine immanence is certainly to be found in Psalm 139: Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol,6 you are there! If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me (v. 7–10).

God’s immanence, his being present everywhere and actively involved in everything and everyone, is but the corollary of his transcending the world: he is omniscient (v. 1–3), beyond human understanding (v. 6, 17–18), nobody can escape his rule (v. 7–12), he foresees the psalmist’s future in its entirety (v. 16). Once again creation is not far from the biblical author’s mind. It is as a creature that he is totally open to God’s presence: You formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.

 Isho’dad of Merv (following Theodore of Mopsuestia) considered that the sentence comes from an address to Zeus by his son Minos, of which the second line is quoted in Titus 1:12 (Bruce 1990: 384). 4  In Greek: en (with dative), which could also mean ‘by’. 5  Augustine, in the opening pages of his Confessions, quotes the similarly structured statement in Rom 11:36: ‘by whom everything is, and through whom everything is, and in whom everything is.’ His rendering follows the Vulgate, whereas the third element in the Greek original is introduced by eis (with accusative); and not en (with dative), which is found in Eph 4:6. Thus it is better to give it a teleological meaning: ‘for him’, so that Rom 11:36 cannot be taken as a proof text for divine immanence. 6  The Vulgate (in the standard version of the so-called Psalterium Gallicanum) translates: ‘si descendero in infernum, ades’: Biblia Sacra: Iuxta Vulgatam Versionem, Stuttgart, Württembergische Bibelanstalt, 1969, p. 942. This is the text which Augustine follows in his Confessions (2014: 4). 3

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I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. … Wonderful are your works (v. 13–14).

For the psalmist, holding divine transcendence and immanence together is not theological conjecture. It is the grounds for awe and wonder. Granted, God is beyond everything that the believer can control or comprehend, but this unsurpassable knowledge and power is a sure source of comfort and joy, even in the face of those who oppose the Lord (v. 19–22). Many other texts in the Hebrew canon express the same assurance. Some of the most moving examples can be found in Isaiah, bringing together the highest exaltation of the Lord and his mercy towards the lowliest persons (Isa 57:15; 66:1–2). So, far from being a pantheist, impersonal pervasion of the world, the Lord’s immanence is an active presence, ready to save all those who rely on him (Ps 103:11–14; 104:27–28.33).

4.3  N  o Tension Between Divine Transcendence and Immanence It is a remarkable feature of the biblical teaching on divine transcendence and immanence that there is no hint of any tension between those affirmations, no need felt to tinker with transcendence in order to allow for a robust notion of immanence or to water down immanence in order to get a stronger concept of transcendence. Quite the contrary: some of the most impressive biblical affirmations of divine immanence come in contexts which also heavily emphasize divine transcendence. Take Psalm 139 and its poetic pondering of God’s all-pervasive presence. In the very same psalm, divine omniscience (v. 2–4) and incomprehensibility are affirmed (v. 6). God’s foreknowledge of the future includes future acts of free agents, for example the words of the psalmist himself (v. 4). The metaphor of the scroll even suggests divine determination of the whole course of the psalmist’s life: For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. … Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them (v. 13, 16).7

In an equivalent manner, the texts quoted above from Isaiah bring together God’s exaltation above the whole universe and his compassionate presence with those who

 The ESV adopts a rather literal rendering of v. 16, which respects well ‘the rather cryptic Hebrew’ (Kidner 1975: 466). Kidner sees two possible meanings: ‘either that the days of my life were mapped out in advance …, or that my embryonic members were likewise planned and known before the many stages (‘day by day’) of their development’ (ibid.). The first reading is more straightforward. For the second, ‘my members’ as the implicit subject needs to be inferred from the singular noun ‘my unformed substance’; but it fits better with the immediate context which is about pre-natal development (ibid., n. 1). 7

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are most in need. In fact, the second part of the book of Isaiah contains some of the strongest statements on divine transcendence in the whole Bible. Again and again, it stresses the difference between Yahweh, the Creator of all that exists, and all the other gods, which are but human inventions (Isa 41:6–7,28–29). These cannot do anything (46:1–2); they do not know either the past or the future (Isa 41:21–24; 44:7). But Israel’s God is the sovereign Lord of history who works out his plans (Isa 41:4; 44:24–26; 45:5–7, 12–13). He is eternal (Isa 43:10; 44:6; 48:12). He knows history from beginning to end (Isa 44:7–8). He foretells what will happen long before it comes to pass  – not only because of his unsurpassable knowledge, but because his plans will be accomplished (Isa 46:9–10; cf. 43:10–13). The same harmony between divine transcendence and immanence can be observed in Paul’s speech to the Areopagus. When he agrees with his Athenian audience that ‘in him we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:28), he mentions in the same breath God’s aseity, not depending on anything or anyone (v. 24–25), his determination of the nations’ destinies (v. 26), and the final judgement day (v. 31).

4.4  C  reation as the Key to Hold Together Divine Transcendence and Immanence These biblical treatments of divine transcendence and immanence show that it would be wrong to pit one against the other; rather, they support one another. It is as the transcendent Creator, absolutely distinct from, sovereign over and non-­dependent upon his creation, that God is upholding the universe, intimately and actively involved in its history, and in particular in human life. The idea that God would have to withdraw, to limit himself, in order to allow creation to be, would be utterly foreign to the biblical authors. I doubt they would understand why Jürgen Moltmann (born in 1926) resorts to the cabbalistic concept of zimsum (Hebrew for ‘concentration’, ‘contraction’) in order to account for creation. Moltmann strives to set forth a thoroughly ‘Trinitarian doctrine of creation’. He considers that too much of traditional thinking started ‘from an antithesis between God and the world … (“God is not-worldly and the world is not-divine”)’, 1985: 14–15. But such a dualistic outlook cannot properly account for divine immanence. Instead, the so-called Trinitarian doctrine of creation ‘proceeds differently, starting from an immanent tension in God himself: God creates the world, and at the same time enters into it. He calls it into existence, and at the same time manifests himself through its being’8 (ibid.: the italics are in Moltmann’s text). But does Moltmann  Moltmann stresses that both divine transcendence and immanence are taught in the Bible. He considers that it was in response to ‘an environment moulded by pantheistic, matriarchial, animist religions’ that the Old Testament ‘laboriously and perseveringly taught the difference between God and the world’ (ibid., 13). This aspect of the biblical teaching was then isolated from divine immanence because it was more akin to the modern, scientific outlook: ‘This distinction between God and the world was … seized on by modern theological apologetics as a way of adapting the biblical traditions to the secularizing processes of modern European times’ (ibid.). 8

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really overcome dualism between God and the world? Why consider that God has first to retreat, to ‘make room’, in order for the world to really be? It is certainly not a slip of the pen when Moltmann speaks of a ‘tension in God’. No such tension can be perceived in any of the biblical treatments of divine transcendence and immanence.9 Instead of speculating on how creation is possible, on how God can be at the same time the transcendent, sovereign Lord of all and intimately immanent in the world, the biblical authors (from the very first sentence onwards) reflect on the relationship between God and the world in the context of creation. Creation is a given; it is a fundamental metaphysical category which does not need any explanation, but which sheds light on all of (natural and human) existence: Instead of the natural world, theology finds its starting-point in God, the semper agens; it tells of his acts, before asking about being. This insight may free us from the dilemma of monism [everything is in God] and dualism [God is distinct of the world] dialectically opposed or related. The starting-point, taught by Scripture, is the Creator-creature pattern. We cannot raise ourselves higher and dominate the constitutive structure, we cannot subsume it under an all-embracing notion of being. It involves a real duality, non-symmetrical: absolute independence on one side, total dependence on the other. The obedience of faith, in receiving this orientation as the principle of sound thinking, does not boast that it has solved the monistic-dualistic antinomy, but humbly refuses it (Blocher 1990: 16).10

Or to use Wittgensteinian language: instead of solving the puzzle of how God can be both transcendent and immanent, creation dissolves it and leads us to affirm both truths, as strongly as we possibly can. Concerning transcendence, God is truly the eternal, omniscient and omnipotent Creator, wholly distinct from the world and sovereign Lord over history – along the lines of what is sometimes (slightly disparagingly) called ‘traditional’ theism. Concerning immanence, there is no need for any form of divine self-limitation whatsoever – in him truly, ‘we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:28).

4.5  The Legitimacy of Taking Creation as Foundational But is it not arbitrary to simply affirm that divine transcendence and immanence go together on the basis of creation? Is it not a fideistic manoeuvre to just take creation for granted? I would like to argue that this is not the case: that Christians are warranted in taking creation as the starting point of their understanding of the God-­ world relationship, which then dissolves the perceived antinomy between God’s transcendence and immanence. We have learned from the failure of (strong) foundationalism that there are no evident, infallible or incorrigible truths from which human reflection could start. All  When there is some sort of ‘tension’ to be observed in God, it is always in relationship to evil (i.e. Gen 6:5–6; Jer 31:18–20). Evil is what should not be. Thus it brings in real complications, which are not part of God’s good creation. 10  For a critique of Moltmann’s use of zimzum, see Blocher (1990: 14–15). 9

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philosophical systems use unproven axioms. Neocalvinists, such as Abraham Kuyper, Herman Dooyeweerd and Cornelius Van Til, had argued that faith precedes knowledge, long before the failure of foundationalism became received wisdom in epistemology, with Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Therefore, choosing creation as the starting point for our thinking about the relationship between God and the world is not taking a fideistic posture, over against ‘scientific’ rationality. Rather, it is a matter of consciously adopting one fiduciary framework (in Polanyian language) among several competitors. Alvin Plantinga has convincingly argued that Christian academics are within their epistemic rights to use a different basis for their reasoning than their non-­ Christian colleagues. As there are no neutral ‘facts’, why restrict ourselves to what is currently deemed to be ‘academically correct’? Obviously, this does not mean that anything goes: Christians and non-Christians alike are held to high standards of methodological rigour. But whatever we have come to rationally believe can be part of a valid argument: It is not the case that rationality, or proper philosophical method, or intellectual responsibility, or the new scientific morality, or whatever, require that we start from beliefs we share with everyone else ... In trying to give a satisfying philosophical account of some area or phenomenon, we may properly appeal, in our account or explanation, to anything else we already rationally believe – whether it be current science or Christian doctrine (Plantinga 1984: 253-271).

In fact, taking creation as the starting point is not only legitimate, but is required by theism itself. If we fully acknowledge God’s transcendence, any general framework which subsumes God and the world is excluded. Such an overarching framework would constitute a reality over and above God – a perspective which cannot be accommodated by theism. Therefore the distinction between the Creator and his creation should not be confused with an antithesis between God and the world, as if ‘God’ and ‘world’ were notions at our disposal, of which we knew the definitions before interacting with the biblical data. If that were the case, it would make sense to inquire into their relationship and to try to elaborate a metaphysical system which could somehow accommodate both transcendence and immanence. But if God is the foundation of all being, we should not expect to be able to comprehend him, nor to fully grasp his relationship with the world, by our own thinking. Instead, we should be prepared to learn from the biblical texts themselves who God is and how the world relates to him. We then come to see that divine transcendence and immanence are not antithetical considerations, but two sides of the same coin.

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4.6  D  ivine Transcendence and Immanence and Scientific Practice Any reasoning occurs inside a fiduciary framework. But that does not imply relativism, because the choice between frameworks is not arbitrary. Contending paradigms differ in the degree of warrant they enjoy. Coherence, ability to account for the data and fruitfulness are three important criteria by which to judge their comparative value. This is not the place to attempt a wholesale justification of the biblical worldview. In what follows, I will concentrate on the implications of the biblical understanding of divine transcendence and immanence for the practice of science. In particular, I want to show that creation provides an illuminating framework in which to reconsider some of the questions that are raised by a scientific description of the world: the distinction between science and scientism, reductionism, laws of nature, human freedom and determinism.

4.6.1  Science Without Scientism As is well known, creation provides a framework which is conducive to the scientific endeavour as several of the fundamental presuppositions of modern scientific method flow from theism. In addition, divine transcendence guards against scientism, the illusion that science can explain everything. God being transcendent, he is beyond scientific exploration. And the world, being his handiwork, also partakes of his incomprehensibility. This theme occurs frequently in Old Testament texts dealing with nature (Job 28:20–28; 37:14–16; 38:16–24; 39:1–2; 40:1–2; 42:1–3; Isa 40:12–14; Jer 31:37; 33:22). It does not foster global scepticism, as humanity is created in God’s image and therefore (partly) shares God’s privilege of knowing the world. But it highlights the fact that human knowledge is always partial. Historically, the conviction of nature’s incomprehensibility underpinned Newton’s empiricism: humans cannot hope to attain an exhaustive, rational knowledge and therefore need to perform experiments, in order to see how God created the world (cf. Jaeger 2017: 64).

4.6.2  A Richly Diverse World The legitimacy, and even necessity, of multiple forms of inquiry comes as a twofold consequence of divine transcendence, combined with the creation of humanity in the image of God. Firstly, human beings are the image of God, not God themselves.

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Humanity reflects something of the transcendence of the God whose image they bear. They are part of the created world (created on the sixth day together with the land animals, Gen 1:24–30), but at the same time they transcend the material world (cf. Gen 2:7; 2 Cor 4:16; Col 2:5a; 1 Pet 3:4). Therefore, any methodology developed to describe non-human entities (which would include physics and chemistry), cannot provide a complete picture of human beings. In particular, the notion of personhood extends beyond the scope of the natural sciences’ objectifying method (cf. 1 Cor 2:10), so that even biology is inadequate for describing humanity. Thus divine transcendence, reflected in humans as the image of God, proscribes scientific reductionism. Once we have acknowledged the difference between the human and the non-­ human, it becomes likely that there are more than just these two realms, but that the created world is composed of many facets. The opening chapter of Genesis contains several clues that suggest plurality: the theme of separation (Gen 1:4, 6, 9, 14, 18); the creation of plants and animals ‘according to their kinds’ (Gen 1:12, 21, 24); the six creation days. Non-reductionism has lately become fashionable in philosophy of mind, but also more generally in philosophy of science. Reductionist models have patently failed to make good on their grandiose promises to offer reductionist (mainly physicalist) explanations for basic aspects of our experience, such as consciousness, intentionality of thought and rationality. Different emergentist accounts have been proposed, among which non-reductive physicalism features prominently. But note that God’s transcendence, as reflected in his human image, encourages a more radical departure from reductionism than standard emergentist models, in which higher levels supervene upon a (typically physical) base level.11 Methods of inquiry developed to describe the inanimate world do not enjoy any privileges over more personally involved interactions with reality. Why try to deduce the latter from the former? Instead, creation as the handiwork of the transcendent God leads to a clear acknowledgement of multiple dimensions. The contribution to our knowledge of each particular science (both natural and human) is valuable, but partial. Physics, biology, neuroscience, psychology, sociology, philosophy, theology, etc., each adopts a specific angle of inquiry, a method which is fitting for certain questions, but not for others. Like a spatial projection, each form of exploration captures one dimension of reality, but does not provide a complete description (cf. Jaeger 2018: 231–253).

 O’Connor and Wong (2015) assess the prospects and difficulties of a great variety of emergentist accounts. The same authors argue that standard non-reductive physicalism is doomed to fail, as are all emergentist accounts relying on supervenience (O’Connor and Wong 2005). They argue instead for non-supervenient emergent properties (and individuals), so that causal closure of the physical fails to apply. Their account is not physicalist insofar as physical objects have the inherent disposition to give rise to emergent non-physical (mental) properties in the appropriate circumstances. 11

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4.6.3  S  cientific Laws Describing Partial Causal Contributions: Steven Horst’s Cognitive Pluralism The perspective just outlined bears some similarities to the conception which the philosopher Steven Horst (at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut) has developed under the name of Cognitive Pluralism. It is cognitive in the sense that it takes into account the constructive role of the mind in model-building: our models (in science or elsewhere) ‘are idealized representations of particular features of the world’. It is pluralist in the sense that it is inclined to take the plurality of existing models in the current sciences not as a transitory feature, but as a consequence of ‘facts about how the mind models the world’12 (Horst 2011: 9). Believing otherwise would come down to the ‘Rationalistic assumption that everything about the world must be intelligible to us in the form of a single theoretical framework’ (ibid., 118). Not only does this assumption seem ‘quite hubristic’ (ibid), but also our best available scientific theories do not support it: general relativity and quantum mechanics are inconsistent with each other (ibid., 117). Applied to scientific laws, Cognitive Pluralism takes them to be ‘idealized descriptions of the real world that highlight the dynamic principles that underlie real-world kinematics’ (Horst 2016: 175). This conception is both realistic (laws are invariants in the real world) and cognitivist (laws are part of our representations of the world). The second trait is the basis for there being multiple sets of laws, or theories, because they are part of different representations, depending on the invariants studied in a given context. Unless the Rationalist assumption is true, our ‘mind necessarily understands the world in a fragmentary way’, so that the plurality of scientific models is irreducible13 (Horst 2011: 9, 117f, 132–134). Therefore we should not expect any one particular science (or even the sciences as a whole) to provide an exhaustive description of reality. On the contrary, ‘dynamic laws express potential partial causal contributors to real-world kinematics’ (Horst 2016: 178). Such a pluralist view of scientific laws has immediate implications for reductionism. However successful a certain scientific model is in a certain domain, it does not preclude the possibility that there are other causal factors at work. Take as an example the law of gravitation. It does not say anything at all about the question of whether, in addition to gravitational forces, other causal factors are present, which can be described by other laws, for example electromagnetic forces. It does not even exclude the existence of extra causal factors which cannot be described by scientific

 On an autobiographical note: I had come to the conclusions expressed in the preceding section before discovering Steven Horst’s work. His book provided me with rigorous philosophical argument and thorough elaboration for my embryonic intuitions. 13  I am less inclined than Horst is to postulate ‘“forced errors” – ways in which we are architecturally constrained to misrepresent the world’ (Horst 2011: 139; italics in the original). This probably indicates that I have somewhat more realistic leanings than Horst. As long as we do not absolutise our partial models, I do not see why they need to include error. 12

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laws, as would be the case for agent causation. Thus it is simply wrong to assume that a scientific description of the world necessarily leads to reductionism, or excludes free will.

4.7  D  ivine Transcendence and Immanence and Human Freedom The considerations above show that contemporary science, rightly understood, does not exclude free-will. But so far we have only established that they are compatible. The fragmentary character of scientific descriptions does not prove in itself that humans are capable of significantly free actions. It is therefore noteworthy that creation, with its particular understanding of the God-world relationship, provides a sure foundation for human freedom. Not only this, but it also allows us to understand the relationship between human freedom and the natural sciences, instead of positing them side by side, as a more fragmented view of reality would do.

4.7.1  The Freedom of Created Humankind Creation differs from other worldviews in that it places the origin of the world in the free act of the transcendent God. Creation does not stem from the nature of God, but from His will (1 Cor 15:38, Rev. 4:11). The distinction between divine will and divine nature expresses the personal character of the biblical God: only a personal God can will something into being that is different from his nature. The freedom of the Creator is not a mere metaphysical presupposition; it pervades the whole of biblical religion. In this regard, we note the rejection of all forms of magic. No rite is effective in itself; divinity cannot be manipulated by magic formulae or acts (cf. Jer 7:4–5). Prayer must be an expression of trust from the heart and not a vain repetition of words (Isa 29:13; Matt 6:7). Samuel reminds us that ‘to obey is better than sacrifice’ (1 Sam 15:22). Faced with the personal God, nobody can be content with ritual obedience; responsible and just action is required (cf. Amos 5:21–24) (cf. Oswalt 2009: 75–76). Human action thus finds its place in a world born of divine freedom. As the image of God, humanity participates in the power to act of their Creator and therefore in his freedom. Otherwise, they could not stand as a covenantal partner before God, nor fulfil their role as co-workers in the earthly creation. Gregory of Nyssa, in the fourth century, expresses it thus: He made human nature participant in all good; for if the Deity is the fulness [sic] of good, and this is His image, then the image finds its resemblance to the Archetype in being filled with all good. Thus there is in us the principle of all excellence, all virtue and wisdom …: but pre-eminent among all is the fact that we are free from necessity, and not in bondage to any natural power, but have decision in our own power as we please (1994: 405).

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4.7.2  The Father’s Providence Not only does the freedom of the Creator have as its corollary the freedom of humanity created in his image, creation also establishes a world order which is an appropriate environment for human action. One’s conception of the origin of the world will inevitably influence one’s conception of the order (or absence of order) in the world. Creation being a free act, providence as its twin doctrine bears the marks of free action. The world is neither governed by an impersonal law nor left to chance. In fact, though opposed, these two conceptions have similar implications for human action: they place humanity in an impersonal environment. Human freedom would be an illusion, or at most a desperate attempt at action in the face of an indifferent order. Personalist providence instead provides a context in which human action can make sense. It is only in a world created by the personal God of the Bible that human freedom is truly at home, as the neo-Calvinist apologist Cornelius Van Til pointed out: ‘A finite personality could function in none other than a completely personalistic atmosphere, and such an atmosphere can be supplied to him only if his existence depends entirely upon the exhaustive personality of God’ (1969: 97). Modern reductionist accounts are not the first to propose an understanding of humans in impersonal categories. From the first centuries of Christianity, the Church Fathers fought any conception which would diminish human freedom and moral responsibility. Against all Greek conceptions of the natural order, be they deterministic or random, Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic or Epicurean, ‘the first Christian thinkers … rightly felt themselves in a new world’ (Gilson 1936: 153). The providence of the Creator God is neither fatum nor fortuna. On the one hand, it is transcendent and personal so that it does not enclose created beings in an iron law inherent to the world that would prevent freedom. To use Calvin’s words: ‘We do not … contrive a necessity out of the perpetual connection and intimately related series of causes, which is contained in nature; but we make God the ruler and governor of all things’ (2011: 207). On the other hand, what happens is not random, and humans are not the products of pure chance, which will erase them as surely as it gave rise to them. Some base this Epicurean conclusion today on neo-Darwinian evolution. But it should first be noted that such a metaphysical implication would only be warranted if neo-­Darwinism delivered a complete picture of reality. Taking such a stance is scientism, which goes beyond science. Second, evolution does not amount to pure chance: probabilistic evolutionary processes occur in the context of natural regularities described by laws. Third, Simon Conway Morris, professor of evolutionary ­ palaeobiology at the University of Cambridge, has shown that (neo-)Darwinian evolution does not imply the absence of design in the universe. Convergent evolution, that is the fact that similar structures evolve through different evolutionary paths, supports the view that the emergence of intelligence, resembling the human mind, was inevitable. The similarity between human intelligence and certain aptitudes in higher animals, not all of which are on the same branch of the evolutionary tree (such as the great apes, dolphins, and even some birds) supports a Christian Platonist view of reality. It implies universal rational principles, rendering an atheist interpretation of life very tenuous (Conway Morris 2003).

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4.7.3  A Multidimensional but Integrated View of Humans In conclusion to our reflections on how creation accounts for human freedom, let us point out that this perspective has the advantage of offering a multidimensional but integrated view of humankind, providing space for our freedom, without treating it as a foreign element or as opposed to the scientific description. Admittedly, it is acknowledged that natural science cannot fully comprehend this freedom, any more than it can provide moral grounds for personal dignity or grasp humans’ openness to transcendence. The methodologies used in physics, chemistry, or biology are not attuned to these aspects of human beings; in fact, they do not even have the appropriate concepts for them. Immanuel Kant famously tried to solve the problem by including human freedom in the realm of noumena, things as they are in themselves [Ding an sich], beyond the phenomena, things as we experience them. Scientific knowledge is only possible of the phenomena, although we must assume that the noumena exist: ‘Otherwise, we should require to affirm the existence of an appearance, without something that appears – which would be absurd’ (Kant 1787: III, 17). That implies that human beings qua free and rational agents are not accessible to scientific description. Therefore we cannot know, but only believe that we are free. Nevertheless this is not an optional belief: we would renounce our dignity as moral subjects if we gave it up. When we act according to the moral obligation under which we are placed, we are free from scientific determination. In this way, ‘the contradiction disappears: … the unconditioned does not lie in things as we know them, or as they are given to us, but in things as they are in themselves, beyond the range of our cognition’ (Ibid). Kant’s answer to the question of how we can reconcile the natural scientific description of humans with their freedom is a special case of what Stephen Jay Gould would later call NOMA, ‘non-overlapping magisteria’ (Gould 1997: 16–22), the conception that science and religion concern domains that are totally distinct from each other. Such a view has the obvious advantage of ensuring that no scientific progress whatsoever can threaten human freedom. But it comes at a high price: it isolates our experience of being free from all that can be scientifically examined. However, as soon as we recognize that scientific descriptions are always partial, singling out specific aspects, there is no need to relegate the moral and spiritual aspects of human beings to the mystical domain of noumena. For in that case, one can recognize physiological causalities and, at the same time, consider that human beings act freely (sometimes). The integrated view provided by creation makes it possible to address the important question of the interactions between freedom on the one hand and scientific determinations on the other. Not only must NOMA-like approaches treat as illusory our experience that the will can have scientifically describable consequences

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(I decide, of my own free will, to raise my arm, and I manage to do so.14) They also cannot account for the fact that we experience our freedom as non-absolute, shaped by many physiological, environmental, social and other influences. In fact, our actions are on a continuum between completely involuntary, unconscious actions (like breathing) and deeply considered choices that engage our whole person. But such a continuum which involves, in varying degrees, our freedom as morally responsible agents and scientifically describable factors, cannot be understood using a model that has isolated human free actions from science, as does the Kantian distinction between phenomena and noumena, and more generally any NOMA-like approach. Instead, creation offers a more integrated perspective, without conflating humans with their scientific description. Obviously, this does not save us the painstaking work of elaborating multi-dimensional models in order to understand selected aspects of human behaviour and the interactions between these aspects.15 Creation provides a productive theological starting-point; it is not meant to be the end point in our exploration of the world. Rather, it sets a framework which opens up promising avenues for research.

Bibliography Augustine of Hippo. 1631. St. Augustine’s Confessions. Trans. W. Watts, 1631. ‘The Loeb Classical Library’. Reprinted 1946. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 2014. St. Augustine’s Confessions, vol. I, books 1–8. Trans. J. B. Hammonds, 2014. ‘The Loeb Classical Library’. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 2016. St. Augustine’s Confessions, vol. II, books 9–13. Trans. J.  B. Hammonds, 2016. ‘The Loeb Classical Library’. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Blocher, H. 1990. Divine Immutability. In The Power and Weakness of God: Impassibility and Orthodoxy, ed. N.M. de S. Cameron, 1–22. Edinburgh: Rutherford House. Bruce, F.F. 1990. The Acts of the Apostles: The Greek Text with Introduction and Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Calvin, J. 1559. Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. J.T. McNeill, 2011. Translated from Latin by F. L. Battles. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. Clarke, P.G.H. 2013. The Libet Experiment and its Implications for Conscious Will. Faraday Papers 17. Available online at https://faraday-institute.org/resources/Faraday%20Papers/ Faraday%20Paper%2017%20Clarke_EN.pdf. Accessed 8 Oct 2019. Conway Morris, S. 2003. Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 On the Libet experiments, which were designed to prove that the brain initiates movements which we perceive as voluntary before any conscious decision, Peter Clarke concludes that ‘at the neurophysiological level, it has not been shown convincingly that a neural ‘decision’ sufficient to cause the movement occurs before the time of awareness of the decision to move. Even if this could be shown, it would not undermine the conceptions of free will that are defended by most philosophers’ (2013: 4). 15  I consider Steven Horst’s work to be an important step in the right direction. Without referring explicitly to a Christian worldview, he discusses detailed ‘case studies of explanation in the sciences of mind’ in the general framework of his Cognitive Pluralism (Horst 2011: 141–262). 14

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Gilson, Étienne. 1936. The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy, Gifford Lectures 1931–32. Trans. A.H.C. Downes. London: Sheed & Ward. Gould, S.J. 1997. Nonoverlapping Magisteria. Natural History 106: 16–22. Gregory of Nyssa, 379. 1994. On the Making of Man. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Volume 5, Gregory of Nyssa: Dogmatic Treatises, etc., P. Schaff and H. Wace, ed., Trans. H.A. Wilson. Peabody: Hendrickson. Horst, S. 2011. Laws, Mind, and Free Will. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ———. 2016. From Laws to Powers. In Rethinking Order: After the Laws of Nature, ed. N. Cartwright and K. Ward. London: Bloomsbury. Jaeger, L. 2017. The Contingency of Creation and Modern Science. Theology and Science 16 (1): 62–78. https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2017.1413813. ———. 2018. Beyond Emergence: Learning from Dooyeweerdian Anthropology? In The Future of Creation Order, Volume 1: Philosophical, Scientific, and Religious Perspectives on Order and Emergence, ed. G. Glas and J. De Ridder, 231–253. Dordrecht/New York: Springer. Kant, I. 1787. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated from German by J. M. D. Meiklejohn, 2003. Project Gutenberg [e-book]. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4280/4280-h/4280-h.htm#chap02. Accessed 13 Mar 2018. Kidner, D. 1975. Psalms 73–150: A Commentary on the Books III-V of the Psalms, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries. London: Inter-Varsity Press. Moltmann, J. 1985. God in Creation: An Ecological Doctrine of Creation, Gifford Lectures 1984– 85. London: SCM Press. O’Connor, T., and H.Y. Wong. 2005. The Metaphysics of Emergence. Noûs 39: 658–678. ———. 2015. Emergent Properties. In E.N. Zalta, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed.. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2015/entries/properties-emergent/. Oswalt, J.N. 2009. The Bible Among the Myths: Unique Revelation or just Ancient Literature? Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Plantinga, A. 1984. Advice to Christian Philosophers. Faith and Philosophy I:3. http://www. faithandphilosophy.com/article_advice.php. Accessed 25 Aug 2018. Thomas Aquinas. 2017. The Summa Theologiæ of St. Thomas Aquinas, ed., K. Knight. Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Online edition. http://www.newadvent.org/ summa/1008.htm. Accessed 5 Mar 2017. Van Til, C. 1969. In Defense of Biblical Christianity, Volume II, A survey of Christian Epistemology. Ripon: Den Dulk Christian Foundation. Lydia Jaeger completed her postgraduate studies in physics and mathematics at the University of Cologne (Germany) and in theology at the Seminary for Evangelical Theology in Vaux-sur-Seine (France), and her Ph.D. in philosophy at the Sorbonne on the possible links between the concept of laws of nature and religious presuppositions. She holds a permanent lectureship and is academic dean at the Institut Biblique de Nogent-sur-Marne (France). She is an associate member of St. Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge (Great Britain) and of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion. Lydia Jaeger is the author of seven books and several articles on the relation between Christianity and the natural sciences. She has edited five collective volumes, the most recent being La science est pour Dieu: de nouveaux arguments scientifiques pour la foi (2017).

Chapter 5

Beyond the Disguised Friend: Immanence, Transcendence and Glory in a Darwinian World Christopher Southgate

Abstract  This paper takes as its starting point a quotation from the Anglican theologian Aubrey Moore, writing at the end of the nineteenth century: ‘Darwinism … under the disguise of a foe, did the work of a friend’. I use this to discuss the problems for a scientifically-informed Christian theology that come from overstressing divine transcendence (which can lead to a sense of divine distance, even absence, from creation) or overstressing divine immanence (which can blur the distinction between God and the world). To achieve an appropriate balance between transcendence and immanence is also very important for an ecological theology. The Christian Scriptures say little directly about transcendence and immanence, but they speak a great deal about God’s glory. I present an understanding of divine glory as a sign of the divine reality, and show that this offers a way of speaking about both transcendence and immanence. In particular, the Incarnate Christ shows how God’s immanence can take intense and particular form. As Christians are ‘transformed from one degree of glory to another’ (2 Cor. 3:18), they become signs of Christ the great sign of God. A Trinitarian God who draws believers into intimate fellowship with the divine life is transcendent in the radical character of God’s immanence. Keywords  Christology · 2 Corinthians · Darwinism · Ecofeminism · Ecotheology · Glory · Immanence · Incarnation · Providence · Semiotics · Transcendence · Trinity Many will recognise in the title of this chapter an echo of the famous quotation of Aubrey Moore in the collection of Anglican essays, Lux Mundi, edited by Charles Gore and published in 1889. Moore in his essay was exercised about how both divine transcendence and divine immanence could be preserved. He celebrated the C. Southgate (*) University of Exeter, Exeter, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Nature – and Beyond, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 5, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31182-7_5

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rise of Darwin’s theory, which had at first seemed like an enemy of faith, as being congenial to a theology that saw God’s power as continuously immanent in creation. Moore writes: The one absolutely impossible conception of God, in the present day, is that which represents Him as an occasional Visitor. Science had pushed the deist’s God farther and farther away, and at the moment when it seemed as if He would be thrust out altogether, Darwinism appeared, and, under the disguise of a foe, did the work of a friend. It conferred on philosophy and religion an inestimable benefit, by shewing us that we must choose between two alternatives. Either God is everywhere present in nature, or He is nowhere (1904 [1889]: 73).

This passage from Lux Mundi was much deployed by the late Arthur Peacocke (see e.g. Peacocke 2004). For 30 years until his death in 2006 Peacocke was an undisguised friend of theology in dialogue with science. He like Moore very much wanted to recover a sense of divine immanence, perceiving that theologians of physics tended to work with a transcendent designer, and that such a model would not do adequate justice to the biological world, evolving as that world has in a long process informed by the interplay of law and chance. But Moore’s claim has always puzzled me. What he was determined to resist was a God of fitful creation, who had given rise to biological creatures through ordinary absence and occasional intervention. Darwin’s proposal included the suggestion that one process, descent with modification under natural selection, could give rise to the great diversity of creatures on earth, and account for the extent of biological extinction. Moore saw this as congenial to a divine panimmanence. But the reason this claim puzzles me is that the Darwinian scheme is equally consonant, it seems to me, with a transcendent designer who designed the process and let it run without further involvement. Of itself, the world of evolution does not speak of divine immanence, and indeed the extent of the suffering in evolution, and the sense that the suffering of the weak drives the process of creaturely refinement by natural selection (Southgate 2008: 9), seems to sit uncomfortably with the immanent power of which Moore speaks. That all serves as an opening parable to illustrate the struggle Christian theology can have with transcendence and immanence. Transcendence is very often imagined in spatial terms, and so easily connotes remoteness, lack of direct relationship with an evolving world. Indeed historically it easily moved into a deism in which God’s loving engagement with the world is altogether absent. Immanence, on the other hand, too easily leads to blurring of the vital distinction between creator and creature. Deism and pantheism, then, are for the Christian theologian the Scylla and Charybdis of this debate (cf. Moltmann 1985: 98). But why should this matter? Is this not just a game for systematicians to play in panelled seminar rooms while the great world spins on past them? There are two reasons in particular why all confessional theologians should care about this issue and struggle to articulate right understandings of transcendence and immanence. First, a right balance between affirmations of divine immanence and transcendence seems to me essential for the giving of an account of divine providence – how God is thought to interact with the flow of events. A strongly transcendent model of God tends to lead to a sense of divine absence, or to fitful intervention of the sort

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Moore so deplored, or to a model in which God is utterly temporally transcendent, present simultaneously to every moment of time, past, present and future. Although that latter model has many defenders I have always struggled to see how it gives rise to the sort of interactive engagement with the flow of history of which the Scriptures speak. Likewise it’s difficult to develop a model of particular providence out of a model of God based on panimmanence. Of course, a good model is not transcendence or immanence but both/and, yet this balance remains very hard to strike. And this matters enormously to the articulation of Christian faith, because the question, What on earth is God doing? lurks behind so much questioning of God, among believers and non-believers alike. That classic question in response to suffering – how could God allow this? – is at once a question about theodicy and a question about providence. In theology, providence and theodicy are inseparable twins. So: the right articulation of divine transcendence and immanence can help form the springboard for articulating understandings of providence that take theodicy with all the seriousness it deserves. But my second reason for stressing the importance of this subject is if anything even more pressing. Questions of transcendence and immanence have been of vital importance in ecotheology. Over-emphasis on divine transcendence can be a distortion in the dialogue between theology and physics, but in ecotheology over-emphasis on transcendence has been identified by many authors, especially ecofeminists, as deeply destructive of healthy understanding of the relationships between God, human beings, and the non-human creation. An overly transcendent, distanced model of God, absent master of the universe, can seem to license a view of human beings, created in the divine image, as themselves transcending creation; not quite a part of it, but rather the mastering representatives of the absent master. In a recent essay responding to climate change Sallie McFague describes traditional models of divine transcendence as ‘no longer credible’. She goes on: ‘Who can believe a supernatural, imperialistic, all-controlling super-person, imagined after a comic-book superhero?’ (McFague 2017: 101). And as Clare Palmer pointed out long ago, even the innocent-sounding and very widely adopted image of humans as stewards of creation can carry connotations of divine absence and human mastery (Palmer 1992). And this language of mastery rather than relationship has all too often gone hand-in-hand with mastery of men over women. It is 25 years since McFague published The Body of God: an ecological theology, an essay on immanence and transcendence that still bears re-reading today. After a fierce critique of what she calls political transcendence, extrapolating God as a kind of super-monarch, and negative transcendence, a series of abstractions trying to define God as without limit as to power, knowledge, benevolence, etc., McFague argues for radical transcendence-in-immanence. Because the world is as it were the body of God, every detail of it, rightly contemplated, reveals the transcendent awesomeness of the divine. The universe, she writes, ‘serves as a deep reflecting pool of divine magnificence and grandeur’ (McFague 1993: 154). To this ‘organic’ model of God’s immanence McFague adds a component of divine agency (1993: 140).

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This has always seemed to me an uneasy fusion of models. How does generalised immanence generate particular agency?1 I can however endorse McFague’s sense that divine immanence cannot be confined to the historical event of the Incarnation of the divine Son in Jesus, but must extend to all universes, indeed all multiverses, and within them to the indwelling of all created entities. The agential component of McFague’s model of divine immanence can be seen in her appeal to ‘the incognito appearance of Christ wherever we see human compassion for the outcast and the vulnerable’ (1993: 195). Beyond McFague’s critique, we may note that two of the central planks of orthodox Christian doctrine are potentially problematic for the balance of transcendence and immanence. The affirmation that God created ex nihilo, out of absolutely nothing, is seen by theologians as disparate as Catherine Keller, Whitney Bauman and Tom Oord (Keller 2002; Bauman 2009; Oord forthcoming) as being problematic for creation care. The underlying reason is that such a doctrine seems to privilege divine distance, divine transcendence. And Rosemary Radford Ruether identifies another source in Christianity of a tendency to accord superiority to transcendence over immanence. The divine principle immanent in the world became identified with the Logos, and through that, the Son of the Father. Ruether writes: ‘This “Son-Father” metaphor is used to represent the immanence of God as “under” and derivative from divine transcendence’ (Ruether 1998: 83). So we find in ecotheologians and particularly ecofeminists a great wariness of divine transcendence, a fear that its superiority, spatially, politically, temporally, is embedded in the Christian tradition in deeply unhelpful ways. We tend to find therefore a desire in ecotheology to affirm rather a non-mastering immanence of the creator, with much emphasis on the feminine in God, and the role of the Spirit. Indeed the language of the Spirit does perhaps offer the most promising way to speak of the immanence of God, in a way that, to borrow the terminology of McFague, can be agential as well as organic (see McFague 1993: 139–40). H. Paul Santmire is also exercised by the language of a God spatially transcendent, ‘up there beyond’, to whom human souls are drawn, out of this world of sin. But Santmire draws back from what he regards as the radical ‘reconstructionist’ approach he sees in much ecofeminism (Santmire 2002: Chapter 1). He prefers a ‘revisionist’ approach, re-reading the Scriptures and re-raiding the tradition to give rise to a more eco-appropriate model, which nevertheless remains in evident continuity with the tradition. Interestingly he takes Luther as his exemplar of a theologian who took issue with an emphasis on the soul ascending to be with God in the above. Santmire writes: ‘For Luther, God is always “God with us”, immanent in our world, immediately active in the world of creation where we live, on our level’ (Santmire 2008: 107). Luther’s phrase about God’s presence being ‘in, with and under’ was also a favourite phrase of Peacocke’s, and influenced the way Arthur

 A problem also experienced by Peacocke in his formulations of divine action (e.g. Peacocke 2001: Chapter 5; 2007: 45–7; Clayton 2007). 1

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ended up formulating the co-suffering of God with all creatures that suffer (Peacocke 1998: 372). Santmire uses Luther’s phrase as part of his critique of a ‘theology of ascent’ (2008: 92–105). He wants to insist that the Ascension of Christ should not make us think of God up and beyond. As God the Father is in, with and under all things, so is the ascended Son of God (Santmire 2008: 115). Santmire is led to propose a modification of the ancient Sursum Corda which opens the Eucharistic prayer in so many Christian churches. In place of the bidding ‘Lift up your hearts’, Santmire proposes the alternative ‘Open your hearts’, with the response ‘We open them to the Lord’ (2008: 162). This is a thought-provoking modification aimed at reinforcing a sense of God immanent in our midst, did we but have, spiritually, eyes to see and ears to hear. Anne Primavesi, in her moving writings on gift exchange as the way the earth system (‘Gaia’) ‘works’, wants to move away from one of the key movements of the eucharist, the continual thanking of God for the gifts of the Earth (Primavesi 2003: 133). She claims that we lack the intuitions and concepts to model God in a post-­ Copernican, ecosystemically-aware world. Instead we should focus on gift-exchange with other elements of Gaia, aware that the affluent, food-glutted world of the West has lost a sense of the blessing attached to ‘daily bread’. What Primavesi insists on is God’s epistemological transcendence; we cannot rightly discern what it would be to thank God in thanking Gaia, so we should rather learn how to thank Gaia properly. I want now to explore a different approach to the formulation of a helpful model of God and God’s ways with the world. I note that actually the Christian Scriptures contain relatively few direct affirmations of God’s transcendence, or yet of God’s immanence, but they have plenty to say about God’s glory. I came to the study of God’s glory out of years of wandering in the wastelands of theodicy. I began to see that ultimately all theodical schemes, even the less obviously flawed ones, are at best only partially satisfactory. I also noted that the Scriptures offer little in the way of theodicy, beyond the Deuteronomistic impulse to blame all misfortune on the sins and covenant-unfaithfulness of the people of God. The experience of the wisdom-teachers of Israel moves them beyond that neat and always tempting formulation, but it does not lead them to a better theory. The great drama on the theme of suffering that is the Book of Job does not lead to a nice formulation of the relation of God to suffering. And Jesus when asked about suffering is recorded by the Gospel writers as answering very enigmatically. In John 9 we read: His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him’ (Jn 9:2–3).2

And two chapters later we read in the story of Lazarus: So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, ‘Lord, he whom you love is ill.’ But when Jesus heard it, he said, ‘This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it’ (Jn 11:3–4).  All biblical quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version unless otherwise stated.

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What is going on in this language of revelation and glory? I come to the conclusion that what the language of divine glory tends to connote is a sign or array of signs of the depths of the divine reality (Southgate 2018: 8). Those depths are always to some extent hidden, but manifestation of glory is what makes them momentarily, partially, visible. This is very evident in the great theophanies of the Hebrew Bible, in Exodus, in Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel 1. In this last passage, fascinatingly, the sign of the glory of God takes human form. Ezekiel’s vision no doubt influenced not only the visions in the Book of Daniel but also intertestamental writings such as the Book of Enoch, and arguably also the incarnational theology that emerges in the Gospel of John. At once I need to enter a certain caveat. There are passages in which the glory of the Lord, the kavōd Yahweh, seems to connote not so much a sign of God as something much closer to the actual Godness of God in Godself. I think particularly of Ex 33:18f, where Moses, having seen all the theophanic manifestations of the divine kavōd, and even spoken to the Lord as a man speaks with a friend, still asks ‘Show me your glory.’ So the meaning of divine glory has to be seen on a spectrum from the purely semiotic to something much more ontological (Southgate 2018: 23–4). But here I shall pursue mainly the semiotic understanding of glory – glory as sign of the depths of the divine reality. Incidentally, if glory is understood in this way, then what Job receives in God’s great speech from the whirlwind (Job Chs 38–41) is effectively a lecture on glory, a list of all the signs by which God’s unique creative power can be recognised, a lecture indeed complete with powerpoint illustrations and plenty of opportunity for student interaction. In this understanding of divine glory Jesus functions as the quintessential instance of such a sign. The Fourth Gospel tells us that Christ’s glory is of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth. In his ministry, and very particularly when he is lifted up on the Cross for the world’s sake, Jesus shows us the character of God in the most powerful and direct way possible. And Jesus himself performs signs which reveal him as God’s great sign – beginning, according to John, with changing water into wine, and leading as we have seen through the healing of the blind man and the raising of Lazarus, and ultimately to Jesus’ ‘hour’ of being handed over to the powers of oppression and lifted up on Calvary. At this point I need to introduce some of the categories of sign articulated by C. S. Peirce, and here I am much indebted to the work of my colleague and collaborator Andrew Robinson, whose application of Peircean semiotics to Trinitarian theology is both innovative and generative (Robinson 2010, 2014). The nature of signs in themselves Peirce classified according to whether they are qualisigns, representing their objects by virtue of their sheer quality (the classic example being ‘a colour-­ sample of paint or cloth’), sinsigns (singular occurrences, ‘such as a leaf blown by the wind’) or legisigns (‘a sign replicated according to some rule for the purpose of signifying, as when a letter or word is written on a piece of paper’) (Robinson 2010: 39–40). Peirce also categorized signs according to the relation of the sign to the object, which can be that of an icon – a direct likeness – or an index, which ‘represents its object by virtue of some direct relationship between the two such that the character that makes the index a sign would be lost if the object were removed’ (2010: 119). A simple example would be a pointing finger. The third category of

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sign-object relations is what Peirce called a symbol. Note that this is a specific and technical use of the term ‘symbol’, meaning that the sign-object relation was by convention. Scripture functions as a symbolic ‘legisign’ – Christians read it as sign of the divine reality because of the established convention that it is Scripture, ‘God-­ breathed’ (2 Tim 3:16). The great theophanies of the Hebrew Bible are most easily thought of as indexical ‘sinsigns’  – once-off occurrences pointing to what is signified  – though they may also have been interpreted to have some iconicity, the remote and terrifying fire on the mountaintop actually being a likeness of the awesome holiness of the Lord. One of Robinson’s most creative moves is to propose that, while particular incidents in Jesus’ life reflect a range of sign-types, the overall quality of his life represented the life of God by virtue of its sheer quality. The ‘colour’ of that life is what can be most truly known of the ‘colour’ of God’s own life (Robinson 2010: 123–8). So we begin to see indications here of a journey of the divine glory. In the formation of Israel’s relationship with its God, those theophanies pointing to the awesome presence of the divine reality are profoundly important, terrifying as is the kavōd Yahweh as it appears in the cloud. Transcendence is pointed to – a transcendence of power and might as well of utter remoteness, utter holiness. Whereas in the New Testament, if we follow Robinson’s suggestion, the sheer quality of the divine life is immanent within the quality of the life of the Incarnate Son, which therefore is iconic of the life of God. And perhaps this sort of immanence starts to solve our problem about how divine immanence can be associated with agency. The immanence of God is intensified and particularised in the quality of the life of Jesus, and that life is active in drawing disciples into that quality of life. (Not that I am limiting divine action to this, but it does seem to me a very important locus of providence, operating as the hymn has it, ‘soul by soul and silently’.) And we can extend this as McFague does to whatever human action is performed in love for the vulnerable, and (in terms of Matthew 25) thereby serves Christ. Apart from the Gospel of John our other great New Testament source of insight into divine glory is the work associated with the Apostle Paul. And the classic locus of Paul’s discussion of glory is the third and fourth chapters of his Second Letter to the Corinthians. Paul’s complex reflection on Exodus 34 in the context of his new Spirit-filled communities culminates in this verse: And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another (apo doxēs eis doxan); for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit (2 Cor 3:18).

In interpreting this verse in the context of my theory of signs I do not underrate its exegetical complexities, which I address in much more detail in my monograph on glory (Southgate 2018: Chapter 5). With the majority of commentators I take ‘the Lord’ whose glory is contemplated to be the risen Christ. A big quandary in this verse is: what does it mean for believers to be transformed from one degree of glory to another? And what that strange phrase of Paul’s apo doxēs eis doxan suggests to me is that believers are, as they contemplate Christ crucified and risen, the quintes-

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sential sign of the divine reality, in a process of becoming more and more truly signs of that sign of God that is Christ. That re-expresses what Paul articulates in that other seminal text for his understanding of glory, Rom 8:29–30: For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.3

Being ‘conformed to the image of’ seems to me close to ‘becoming a sign of’. Especially since in a number of Pauline passages the terms eikōn and doxa are very close, almost interchangeable (Savage 1996: 147–50). So that is the journey of the Christian believer, putting on – to use another Pauline image – Christ, in such a way as to become a truer and truer sign of Christ, whom Paul calls ‘the image of God’, and I am calling the great and utterly faithful sign of God’s nature. The conference that led to this collection of essays took place in Lyon, famous as the base of the great second-century theologian Irenaeus. One of Irenaeus’ most famous sayings is rendered in Latin Gloria enim Dei vivens homo, vita autem hominis visio Dei. The first part of this saying is usually (if controversially) translated ‘The glory of God is a human being fully alive’. In the interpretation of glory being offered here, this might be paraphrased: the glory (true sign of deep reality) of God is a human being become fully alive, as an authentic sign of the divine life within him or her. Less often translated is the second half of the saying, that the [authentic] human life is the contemplation of God. This saying then picks up the dual meaning in 2 Cor. 3:18 of the participle translated ‘seeing [the glory of the Lord] as though reflected in a mirror’; that word (katoptrizomenoi) can also carry the connotation of reflecting that glory. Irenaeus offers us the same dual thought reversed  – first he mentions the authentic human being’s ‘reflection’ of the glory of God, and second the contemplation. For further discussion see Southgate (2018: Chapter 5). I return here to Robinson’s idea of Jesus’s life as a qualisign of the life of God. In Jesus’ case his actions functioned as various types of sign of the nature of God, but it was the overall quality of Jesus’ life, its ‘colour’, that functioned most eloquently as a sign of the divine life. Roy Harrisville notes that in the Fourth Gospel ‘the entire life of Jesus is described as a theophany’ (Harrisville 2006: 216). And Hans Urs von Balthasar writes: ‘Jesus bears witness to God as a man, by using the whole expressional apparatus of human existence from birth to death’ (1982: 29). This is very helpful as we try to see how the believer can become progressively a truer sign of Christ, the great sign of God, when humans’ individual actions are so full of muddle and mixtures of motives. The overall quality of human lives can still start to take on the colour of Christ’s life. In a local community a single action may be very influential, it may serve as an indexical sinsign, a once-off pointing to the importance of God in that community, but over time it is the overall quality, the overall character of a life that speaks of God’s life to that community. Frances Young  For a new study of glory in Paul working from this passage see Goranson Jacob and Wright (2018).

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quotes Gregory of Nyssa as writing, ‘mercy and good deeds are works God loves; they divinize those who practice them and impress them into the likeness of goodness, that they may become the image of the Primordial Being’ (Young 2013: 16).’ It is as qualisigns that we are being transformed apo doxēs eis doxan. Paul’s imagery is consistent with believers acting as a ‘colour-sample’ of Christ. He writes: ‘For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’s sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh’ (2 Cor 4:11). What is this ‘colour’ of life that Jesus evinced and is the goal and destiny of believers’ (individual and corporate) transformation? From all the Gospels we know that it will be infused by a continual turn to prayer. That key moment of disclosure at Emmaus suggests that the blessing of God’s gifts will be absolutely characteristic, so much so as to give rise to instant recognition (Lk 24:30, cf. also Mk 8:6; 14:23, and Jn 6:11). From John we know that the ‘colour’ is ‘full of grace and truth’ (Jn 1:14), and so close to God through prayer as to be in the very ‘bosom of the Father’ (1:18). From Paul we know that it is a quality of life both cruciform and ‘anastiform’  – that is to say, it bears, indissolubly, the colours of Cross and Resurrection (Finlan 2007: 78). In her very moving reflections on her life with her profoundly disabled son Arthur, Young makes clear that she believes Arthur’s life can also be such a sign. She writes ‘Surely persons with even the most profound limitations have a vocation; they are ‘sign’ in the biblical sense, pointing beyond themselves’ (Young 2013: 285). She goes on to conclude that she has made ‘the move from struggling with theodicy to seeing that, through Arthur, I have privileged access to the deepest truths of Christianity’ (2013: 404). As Michael Gorman puts it, a life of faith, hope, and love; of Christlike self-giving… above all is something [believers] do, something indeed they are. And people actually are something – something that stands in some sense in contrast to normal living – they will provoke reactions: sometimes quite positive, sometimes more negative (Gorman 2015: 48, emphasis in original).

This is a timely reminder that the human response to signs of the redeeming divine reality may well be rejection. ‘He came to his own and his own received him not’ (Jn 1.11, KJV). So we are developing a picture of an intensified divine immanence in the world, spreading with the spread of Christlike self-giving (note not necessarily of the institutional Christian Church, but of those lives that are authentically Christlike). That culminates in Pauline eschatology in the consummated state of creation when to an unprecedented degree ‘God will be all in all’. In that eschatological state, there will be no need for God to communicate Godself through signs; glory will be the direct manifestation of Godself. The world will be transparent to the immanence of God (Southgate 2018: 29–30). As the Fourth Gospel continually emphasises, Jesus lived as one sent by the Father, the quality of his life always pointed beyond himself. To contemplate, through the work of the Spirit, the quality of the life of the one sent is to be led into all truth, to know (at least ‘in a glass darkly’, 1 Cor 13:12, KJV) the quality of the life of the sender.

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How does that relate to our theme of immanence and transcendence? I am suggesting that the intensified and particular immanence that we see in the Incarnation can be communicated, through the mediation of the Spirit, to human beings. Human persons can be signs of that immanence. More, they can even come to share in it. At the climax of Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer in the Gospel of John we read: As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me (Jn 17:21–23).

What might this model of missional immanence through the Incarnation and Christ’s signification of the quality of the divine life suggest about divine transcendence? First, it insists, with Primavesi, on the epistemological transcendence of God, who will always be beyond our understanding. In the face of that mystery all our doctrinal syllogisms are as Aquinas saw, ‘so much straw’. But here at least is a possible direction of travel. Immanent in all creation is the Trinity of self-giving love whose overflow gave rise to creation in the first place. God, in John Haught’s words, ‘pours the divine self into the world in an act of unreserved self-abandonment’ (Haught 2000: 48). Thus creatio ex nihilo can be configured not as arbitrary mastery but as uttermost gift (Oliver 2017: 143–56). Also, the perfect mutuality of Son and Father subverts Ruether’s concern about the subordination of immanence to transcendence. Mutual indwelling is the property of the whole Trinity from before the foundation of the world (cf. Jn 17:5). Our problem then starts to seem like the recovery of transcendence, rather than its over-dominance. I suggest we look for transcendence precisely in the self-giving that is the internal dynamic of this model of Trinity. We might think of the image and likeness of God as being the human self-giving response to the self-giving love of God (Southgate 2011). That is why the Pauline letters can call Christ the true image of God (Col 1:15; 2 Cor 4:4). His response to the Father’s poured-out love was perfect. But self-giving that is only human is limited by all sorts of factors, not least the deep self-interest that is a necessary property of our evolutionary inheritance. Divine transcendence may be thought of as the unimaginable perfection of that self-giving that is immanent in the life of the Trinity, and hence perfectly immanent in the life of the world. Denis Edwards, drawing on Khaled Anatolios’ work on Athanasius, says that because of the divine attributes of loving kindness and mercy, God can transcend God’s transcendence (Edwards 2018). But I am suggesting something slightly different, namely that the crucial form of God’s transcendence is precisely in that loving kindness and mercy. Yes, God is ontologically, epistemologically, spatially, transcendent, transcendent also in terms of lordliness and glory, but where transcendence is truest to the Christian vision is where it is seen in the uttermost of s­ elf-­giving. That is the sense in which divine transcendence, in the Christian vision, genuinely can be good news for the world.

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The giving of the divine Son for the life of the world, as immanent sign but also as the one who draws disciples into the life of God, that which Christians confess as the supreme divine communication and gift of intensified immanence, is a hint to us that transcendence is to be found in that very immanence. Thus transcendence, in the Christian vision, can be found not only in unknowability, but also in Trinity, in that relationship of love between Persons that is perfectly transcendently self-­giving. And the true human vocation is a quality of life in the image of that transcendent self-giving, made possible by the immanent gift of Christlikeness after the example of the Incarnate Son. I began by outlining the difficulty in holding divine transcendence and immanence in healthy relationship in Christian theology, a difficulty particularly emphasised by ecofeminists such as Sallie McFague. Starting from a very different place from McFague’s recent essay, in terms of glory as sign rather than the predicament of global climate change, I have come in this brief sketch to a very similar place to the one she outlines – divine transcendence to be found in immanence, and through the relationships Christians confess as Trinity.

Bibliography Bauman, W. 2009. Theology, Creation and Environmental Ethics: from Creatio ex Nihilo to Terra Nullius. London: Routledge. Clayton, P. 2007. On Divine and Human Agency: Reflections of a Co-Laborer. In All That Is: A Naturalistic Faith for the Twenty-First Century, ed. P. Clayton, 163–175. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Edwards, D. 2018. Christopher Southgate’s Compound Theodicy: Parallel Searchings. Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 53 (3): 680–690. Finlan, S. 2007. Can We Speak of Theosis in Paul? In Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Traditions, ed. M.J. Christensen and J.A. Wittung, 68–80. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. Goranson Jacob, H., and N.T. Wright. 2018. Conformed to the Image of His Son: Reconsidering Paul’s Theology of Glory in Romans. Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press. Gorman, M. 2015. Becoming the Gospel: Paul, Participation and Mission. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Harrisville, R.A. 2006. Fracture: The Cross as Irreconcilable in the Language and Thought of the Biblical Writers. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Haught, J. 2000. God after Darwin: A Theology of Evolution. Oxford: Westview. Keller, C. 2002. The Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming. New York: Routledge. McFague, S. 1993. The Body of God: An Ecological Theology. London: SCM Press. ———. 2017. Reimagining the Triune God for a Time of Climate Change. In Planetary Solidarity, ed. G.J. Kim and H. Koster, 101–118. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Moltmann, J. 1985. God in Creation. Trans. M. Kohl. London: SCM Press. Moore, A. 1904 [1889]. The Christian Doctrine of God. In Lux Mundi, ed. C.  Gore, 41–81. London: John Murray. Oliver, S. 2017. Creation: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Bloomsbury. Oord, T.J. forthcoming. God’s Initial and Ongoing Creation. In Christian Theology and Climate Change, ed. H.P. Koster and E.M. Conradie. London: T.&T. Clark.

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Palmer, C. 1992. Stewardship: A Case Study in Environmental Ethics. In The Earth Beneath: A Critical Guide to Green Theology, ed. I. Ball, M. Goodall, C. Palmer, and J. Reader, 67–86. London: SPCK. Peacocke, A.R. 1998. Biological evolution – A positive theological appraisal. In Evolutionary and Molecular Biology: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, ed. R.J. Russell, W.R. Stoeger, and F.J. Ayala, 357–376. Vatican City/Berkeley: Vatican observatory/Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences. ———. 2001. Paths from Science Towards God: The End of All Our Exploring. Oxford: Oneworld. ———. 2004. Biological Evolution and Christian Theology. In Evolution: The Disguised Friend of Faith? Selected Essays, ed. A.R.  Peacocke, 22–49. West Conshohocken: Templeton Foundation Press. ———. 2007. In All That Is: A Naturalistic Faith for the Twenty-First Century, ed. P. Clayton. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Primavesi, A. 2003. Gaia’s Gift: the Earth, Ourselves and God After Copernicus. London: Routledge. Robinson, A. 2010. God and the World of Signs: Trinity, Evolution, and the Metaphysical Semiotics of C. S. Peirce. Leiden: Brill. ———. 2014. Traces of the Trinity: Signs, Sacraments and Sharing God’s Life. Cambridge: James Clarke. Ruether, R.R. 1998. Introducing Redemption in Christian Feminism. Sheffield: Academic. Santmire, H.P. 2002. Nature reborn: The ecological and cosmic promise of Christian theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. ———. 2008. Ritualizing Nature: Renewing Christian liturgy in a Time of Ecological Crisis. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Savage, T.B. 1996. Power Through Weakness: Paul’s Understanding of the Christian Ministry in 2 Corinthians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Southgate, C. 2008. The Groaning of Creation: God, Evolution and the Problem of Evil. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. ———. 2011. Re-reading Genesis, John and Job: A Christian’s Response to Darwinism. Zygon 46 (2): 370–395. ———. 2018. Theology for a Suffering World: Glory and Longing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. von Balthasar, H.U. 1982. The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics Vol. 1, Seeing the Form. Trans. E. Leivà-Merikakis, ed. J. Fessio and J. Riches. Edinburgh: T&T Clark. Young, F. 2013. God’s Presence: A Contemporary Recapitulation of Early Christianity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Christopher Southgate is Associate Professor in Interdisciplinary Theology at the University of Exeter. He is currently investigating the impact of sudden tragedy on Christian congregations (tragedyandcongregations.org.uk), as well as being part of a project contributing to the science of the origin of life (interpretationandcooperation.org). He is the editor of God, Humanity and the Cosmos (3rd edn T&T Clark 2011), a prominent textbook on the science-religion debate, and the author of The Groaning of Creation (WJK 2008) and Theology in a Suffering World: Glory and Longing (CUP 2018). He is also the author of eight collections of poetry, most recently Rain Falling by the River (Canterbury Press 2017).

Chapter 6

Divine Determination or Dynamic Indeterminacy? Transcendence, Immanence, and the Problem of Personal Identity Janna Gonwa

Abstract  This paper draws a distinction between two different ways of imagining the natural universe and the divine, if anything divine exists, as closed to one another. A ‘pure immanence’ perspective holds that the immanent frame of the universe is not affected by anything outside it, while a ‘pure transcendence’ perspective holds that divine activity towards the world is unilateral, without ontological responsiveness. It then discusses the obstacles that each of these perspectives raises for an account of meaningful personal identity. Pure immanence accounts tend to create a problematic disjunction between one’s experience of oneself as a ‘self’ and the systemic explanations for one’s behavior. Conversely, pure transcendence accounts tend to deny that individual identity really develops through a process that is actively creative, rather than being solely a function of obedience or disobedience towards a fully fleshed-out divine idea of who one is supposed to be. A theological account of personal identity should therefore begin by envisioning a more complex inter-­ relationship between divine transcendence and the processes immanent to the universe. Keywords  Dynamic systems · Emergence · Haecceity · Immanent frame · Personal identity · The self · Transcendence

J. Gonwa (*) Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Nature – and Beyond, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 5, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31182-7_6

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6.1  Introduction Theologians have always known that they do not construct their theoretical models of the human person in isolation from their models of God. To say nothing of the traditional Judeo-Christian claim that human beings are made in God’s image, ­theologians  – like their philosophical counterparts  – have found it necessary to understand human beings by specifying our place in relation to the rest of the universe and anything that stands outside it (if anything does). Are we the highest of the animals or the lowest of the rational beings? What makes us different from the beasts or like the gods? (More pessimistically, what makes us like the beasts or unlike the gods?) As one might expect, different theological convictions about God’s transcendence over creation or immanence within it produce correspondingly different models of the human creature. So, too, does the belief that there is no God at all. Similarly, assumptions about the extent to which God is immanent in the world and its processes, and responsive to those processes, affect our conceptual models of the individual person and her personal identity, if we believe that she has such a thing. (I will specify the sense in which I am using the terms ‘immanence,’ ‘transcendence,’ and ‘identity’ below.) In this chapter, I argue that the challenge of constructing a coherent account of personal identity is exacerbated if one believes either that personal identity is completely specifiable within an immanent frame or else that it is entirely determined by a transcendent cause such as the will of a divine being. Our habitual practices of exploring, developing, and valuing a sense of individual selfhood are rendered questionable by either of these positions. These selfhood-­practices may make better sense against the backdrop of a belief in a natural universe that is responsive to the transcendent, which responds to it in turn.

6.2  Defining the Terms In raising the question of personal identity in this paper, I do not have in mind the problem of logical or numerical identity as it is usually raised within analytic philosophy and then subsequently applied to the human individual, i.e., ‘Is a strictly identical to b?’ or ‘Is a at t1 identical to a at t2?’ Classic discussions of personal identity within analytic philosophy often include thought experiments about fission, fusion, brain swapping, or reduplication. In an attempt to select a decision criterion for personal survival, these discussions focus on the question of how to re-identify a unique individual from among multiple potential close contenders (Williams 1956–1957; Shoemaker 1963; Wiggins 1967; Perry 1975; Rorty 1976; Noonan 1993). If personal identity is equivalent to logical identity – that is, if establishing one’s self-identity is simply a question of determining a unique identifier that distinguishes oneself from all other individuals – then I agree wholeheartedly with Derek

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Parfit’s often-cited observation that, when it comes to questions of deep existential concern, ‘personal identity is not what matters’ (1984: 255). The personal-identity question that this chapter has in view is not the question of how to re-identify a specific person; it is, rather, the question we are aiming at in popular parlance when we ask what makes a person ‘the person who she is.’ The phrase ‘practical identity,’ favored by moral philosophers, gets us closer to the point than the phrase ‘logical identity’ did, but it does not yet take us all the way there. After all, as Marya Schechtman (2014: 2) observes, In everyday life we use the word ‘person’ in many different ways. Sometimes it means ‘human animal,’ sometimes ‘moral agent,’ sometimes ‘rational, self-conscious subject,’ sometimes ‘possessor of particular rights,’ sometimes ‘being with a defined personality or character,’ and there are many other senses as well. Each of these conceptions of person has its own corresponding criterion of personal identity, and there is no reason to assume that we can find some single relation which underlies our judgments about the identity of a ‘person’ in every context.

There are, then, several different practical ways of construing personhood. Instead of asking whether (for instance) the child is the same moral agent as the old woman she will become, or whether certain medical or psychological conditions necessitate a rupture in legal personhood, I am asking about the sort of deep self-identification that Sartre had in mind when he famously claimed in ‘Existentialism is a Humanism’ (2007: 43) that human individuals have radical freedom of self-determination. (We need not necessarily accept Sartre’s claim about radical freedom.) I am asking about the sense of selfhood that many or most of us have and value having, the sense concerning which it matters deeply to some of us that we are ‘true to ourselves’ or, if we are unfortunate, it troubles us to think of who we are becoming. If a person considers whether she owes her identity more to nature or to nurture, or if she wonders whether there is some truth about who she is ‘supposed’ to be, then she is considering personal identity in the sense that I have in mind. Personal identity in this sense is not so much a matter of logical identification as it is a matter of meaning and value. Crucially, it is also a matter of development over time, though we must not beg the question by assuming that this development is teleological. Development enters into the conversation about personal identity because when most of us first try to figure out who we are, we are trying to figure out whom we are developing into, who we could or should be, and to what extent that decision is up to us. To some continental philosophers, these questions can only be addressed by speaking about authenticity. To some biologists, we must speak about epigenetics. To some theologians, we must speak about the will of God. The issue of divine transcendence is, as I have said, relevant to how one considers the problem. Before arguing for my thesis – that neither a pure immanence perspective nor a pure transcendence perspective provides a fully satisfying framework for imagining meaningful personal identity over time – it will be helpful to give an initial explanation of the way that ‘immanence’ and ‘transcendence’ are being used within this contrast. ‘Immanence’ refers to the natural universe and the people, objects, and events within it, by contrast with any presumed supernatural beings or occurrences

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that surpass the natural world in some way; such surpassing is indicated with the term ‘transcendence.’ As with Charles Taylor’s (2007: 542–543) use of the term ‘immanence’ in his conception of the ‘immanent frame,’ the primary distinction that I draw between immanence and transcendence is not the distinction between different ways of imagining the relation of divinity to the world (e.g., the contrast between immanent gods and transcendent gods) but rather the distinction between the universe itself and whatever (if anything) could be explained without reference to the universe. Thus, speaking of an immanent event does not necessarily imply – nor does it rule out  – any supernatural being acting within the natural world; it just refers to something that happens in that world. Furthermore, speaking of an existing immanent natural order by no means implies that the origins of this order could not have been supernatural. The phrase ‘pure immanence,’ then, has nearly the same meaning in this discussion as Taylor’s (2007: 548) ‘closed immanent frame.’ A pure immanence worldview takes immanence to be all there is, or at least it takes the natural order to be entirely self-sufficient such that (excluding the question of its origins) no reference need be made to anything that transcends it in order to completely describe what currently goes on within it. The most common kind of pure immanence perspective is scientific naturalism as a metaphysical materialism. However, Peter Gordon (2008: 670–671) has argued that Taylor’s discussion of a closed immanent frame tends to occlude the possibility that one might also combine a denial of transcendence with the conviction that the natural universe or certain parts of it are sacred. Accordingly, I include non-supernaturalistic beliefs in the sacrality of the world, and pantheistic beliefs in a divine that is entirely immanent with no transcendent remainder, as alternate kinds of a pure immanence perspective. Since we have postulated the real existence of a natural universe, whether open or closed to transcendent activity, a ‘pure transcendence’ perspective cannot mean that the transcendent is all there is. Instead, I use this phrase to indicate any view that acknowledges the existence of something that transcends the natural world and further specifies that all of its activities toward and decisions concerning the immanent frame are unilateral. The ‘pure transcendence’ thinker will deny that any ontologically creative divine activity can be partially determined by, or even responsive to, any immanently-caused events that were not themselves divinely pre-­determined. A pure transcendence position might, for instance, be motivated by an extreme interpretation of divine immutability to say that God directly considers only God’s own ideas of and will for natural objects, and not the objects themselves, since a changing natural object would otherwise seem to provoke a change in God’s knowledge (Craig 1987; Noone 1998: 308–309). It would follow that all the ontologically real qualities that natural creatures possess over the entire period of their existence are pre-contained in God’s intellect and will. In the discussion that follows, I will not consider the overall coherence of pure immanence or pure transcendence perspectives as metaphysical positions; I will only highlight the difficulties they present for addressing the topic of personal identity. Those who see the physical, biological, cognitive, and social sciences as having a monopoly on the question of selfhood will at best achieve a sort of constructive

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illusion of a ‘self,’ and those who think that a theological account of God’s sovereignty can answer the relevant questions without any need to think about the numerous finite systems that structure human life processes will find that their account has lost phenomenological plausibility; it simply will not track with the way that we do find ourselves developing as selves and attributing meaning to that development. Instead, we must do the messy theological work of keeping immanence and transcendence together in tension.

6.3  Immanent Identities? Significant challenges arise if we attempt to find a sustainable theoretical basis for meaningful personal identity within a framework of pure immanence, i.e., if we wish to find a theoretical grounding that can support a robust self-concept while denying that anything exists outside finite cosmic processes. These challenges persist whether or not one believes, with Ernest Nagel (1949), that the laws of the higher sciences are reducible to the laws of physics. The difficulty faced by the reductionist is, perhaps, most intuitively apparent. If even human behavior is explicable in theory – given a level of information and computational power that we will never possess in fact – through a complete description of material starting positions and physical forces, then it becomes difficult to sustain our conviction that we are actually the creative, self-directing agents that our phenomenal experience makes us out to be. Our psychological explanations of how we think we have acted, according to reasons that are based on values, seem to map poorly onto a reductionist picture of first-order physical cause and effect. This picture suggests that the ‘selves’ that we are so fond of are nothing but an illusion generated by the brain, a ‘wonderful fictional object’ (Dennett 1992: 104). Difficulties remain for theories of personal identity that rely on a non-reductive but still purely immanentist picture. The leading alternative to a reductionist picture of the relation between the laws of the various sciences is an emergentist picture: at higher levels of systemic organization, new laws emerge that harmonize with laws at lower levels but cannot be generated from them by applying some sort of translation procedure or ‘bridge principle’ (Morowitz 2002). Emergentism is compatible with belief in divine transcendence but does not require it (Gregersen 2003: 224). Even without affirming supernatural transcendence, it becomes possible for the theorist of emergence to affirm emergent systems of self-organization, such that one can more plausibly speak of a self that is more than the sum of its low-level physical processes. This promising development quickly runs into a new problem, however. As it turns out, the human person is not a single self-organizing system but rather a complex composite of a number of different systems that interact with each other and with a host of environing systems, both micro and macro (Connolly 2010: 25–27). Natural causation occurs through the alternatively clashing and reinforcing intersections of multiple centers of agency and proto-agency that do not harmonize. Development proceeds through discontinuity. While such a picture supports

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emergent complexification, it does not support the existence of an essential form (i.e., a meaningful truth about who one is), not even an immanent form. It may not point to any distinctly isolable individual at all, much less one with unified, efficacious agency (Metzinger 2011). Radical skepticism about objective selfhood – the claim that each ‘person’ is an assemblage, a multiplicity of multiplicities, or a cacophony of dynamic systems – has been expressed, influentially, by Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus (1987). How is one to assess this claim about the person-as-assemblage from a pure immanence perspective? Is it satisfying, or – to borrow another phrase from Dennett (1984) – is there another variety of personhood ‘worth wanting’? We should note, perhaps, that from the pure immanence perspective the problem of personal identity is an odd sort of problem. As far as we can tell, it is unique to the human animal. Though some higher primates may have a capacity for ‘self’-recognition (Chang et  al. 2017), only the human creature has the cognitive capacity suitable for advanced abstract thought, self-reflection, and existential crisis. Furthermore, our complex technology, cultural variability, and adaptability to a wide range of suitable habitats provide us with a uniquely vast set of possibilities for ways of life. In the face of a staggering set of choices, we may find that abandoning the idea that one is an identifiable self with (at minimum) a partially specifiable self-identity initiates a disorientation, the loss of a guiding thread. Put simply, we may need to organize ourselves around a sense of personal identity. If there is no objective immanent unifier of selfhood, the alternative might be to accept that we construct one ourselves. Some measure of constructivism about personal identity is an element in many narrative identity theories (Schechtman 2007, 2011, 2015; Hutto 2007). The narrative identity theorist claims that we tend to read our disparate life-events through the lens of a meaningful story that we tell ourselves about a continuous self. A self-narrative may not span one’s entire life from birth to death, but at the very least each self-narrative is long enough to provide a way of contextualizing one’s behavior and attributing one’s actions to a centered self with an identifiable set of motivations and values. Depending on the version of narrative identity theory that you hear, the meaningful story may be a benign, spontaneously occurring illusion or a blatant construct that is grafted (albeit clumsily) onto the chaotic reality of the human-person-as-assemblage. The pure immanentist could argue for the evolutionary or social advantages of having a self-narrative, regardless of its objective validity (Dennett 1992). However, a mismatch between narrative and reality is at least potentially self-defeating for those who come to notice it. Another pure immanence alternative championed by some secular humanists would be to embrace one’s diffusion into the world’s dynamic systems and take meaning and direction from this inter-connectedness. The conviction that one is connected to all that exists can, of course, provide ways of orienting oneself vocationally and ethically. The difficulty with this perspective is that, given the inefficient, discordant, and frequently oppositional flux of natural systems, the whole may not itself have the kind of immanent unity that encourages a meaningful sense of harmony rather than discordance. There is no entirely satisfying ground of self-­ identity to be found here.

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6.4  Will a Transcendent Narrator Save the Day? Is the theorist of pure divine transcendence in a better position? As I said earlier, this is not the place to consider the general coherence of such a theological position. Let us set aside all the frequently-discussed theological difficulties with articulating a theory of God’s knowledge of or action in the world if God is conceived as strictly incapable of being affected by finite processes (apart from Christ’s incarnation, perhaps). Instead, we can ask whether God might transcendently bestow a determinative unifying identity to the human person such that this identity is itself in no way altered by chaotic immanent processes. Could there be, so to speak, a prevenient divine idea of a person’s identity that is determinative of who she becomes over her lifetime? In place of an Aristotelian form imparting teleological direction, could we substitute a divine conception that is individuated for each human being and that acts efficaciously despite the indeterminacies and discontinuities of the natural processes that undergird our lives? (By the rules of this game, a person’s successful growth into her identity might be derailed by her sinful resistance but not by the inevitable messiness of her finitude. Further, her God-given identity need not explain everything that happens to her over a lifetime, but under all the biographical ‘noise’ it would need to pick out an essential core that represents the truth of who she is.) The general difficulties with imagining divine knowledge and action without any trace of divine responsiveness have specific variants in the case of individual identity. Take, for instance, Scotus’ haecceitas, one prominent theological candidate for a metaphysical essence providing personal individuation. A Scotan haecceitas originates in God’s transcendent creative will and thus stands removed from immanent flux. As such, it is not open to change or development through an individual’s experiences and choices. Disadvantageously, haecceity is entirely un-specifiable in terms of qualitative content, since any quality that might be proposed to elaborate an individual’s haecceity would be a property that the individual shares with certain others. More disadvantageously, the theorist of pure transcendence who wants to find security in the notion of a God-given individual form will have difficulty explaining how a formal ‘thisness’ might be existentially elaborated over a person’s life experiences without affirming its entanglement with all sorts of sheer immanent contingency. Consider how a pure transcendence theorist might narrate the process by which God reveals God’s transcendent will for a person’s life development by, say, giving her a particular vocation. The individual might discover her vocation over time, through circumstances and amidst contingency, but those immanent realities must not shape the vocation. At least, they must not alter it, though its manifestation might look different depending on circumstantial accidents. The modality of the individual’s response to her vocation is fundamentally passive here: to the extent that she has any freedom in this process, it is the freedom of obedience. She does not self-determine in any substantive way. She has no active role in self-development except, again, the role of obedient conformity to God’s transcendent will. At least three objections to this kind of picture are readily apparent. First, many will find it an unpalatable way of imagining one’s relationship to God and to one’s

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own life. Second, it is suspect from a phenomenological perspective: it does not map well onto our common experience of making decisions concerning who we are to become out of a number of equally available and equally positive possibilities. It does not seem, at least, that in each of these choices we are facing a spiritual choice of obedience or disobedience (even to those of us who profess belief that God exists and that God wills certain things with respect to our lives). Finally, given the picture of dynamic immanent processes presented above, the claim that a divine idea could be teleologically determinative may seem philosophically untenable.

6.5  Entangled Alternatives In light of all this, I propose that the best hope a theist has of making sense of meaningful personal identity is to abandon pure immanence and pure transcendence for a view of God as immanently involved in world-processes yet not reducible to them and, correspondingly, a view of the immanent frame as open to transcendent involvement.1 On this view, God would be seen as working in and through emergent levels of organization while having purposes for creation that are not fully expressed in natural laws. A theology that envisions a dynamic responsiveness between immanence and transcendence has greater potential to support a theory of personal identity that is cohesive  – not entirely reducible to the causal forces of potentially conflicting natural systems – and yet responsive to history, experience, and change. Here, in regrettably brief form, are some initial intuitions about how such a theological account of personal identity might proceed. Developing a dynamic account of the relationship between God and world might not mean abandoning all classical theological talk of divine ‘ideas,’ but it might mean articulating a more dynamic picture of what a divine ‘idea’ looks like, such that God’s idea of a person is not so much temporally completed ‘before’ her birth as it is contemporaneous with her life. This might also mean developing a more dynamic picture of God’s interaction with time. Many descriptions of God’s ‘timelessness’ really seem to imagine God standing at the starting point of our cosmic timeline and directing God’s will forward from that unique point; how might we rethink God’s involvement with temporality in such a way that we do not locate the nexus of God’s activity towards cosmic time primarily at the cosmos’ beginning? The Spirit may work from the bottom up, as well as from the top down (Moltmann 1993: 93–103). The personal specificity that emerges within this divine entangling might not be best envisioned as a teleological narrative of development with a linear, unbroken trajectory and an essential guiding thread that is unaffected (or at least not derailed) by inter-systemic white noise. What if the emergent unity of a human life before God is less like that of a

 Recent noteworthy examples of such immanent/transcendent theorizing include Clayton 2008; Wegter-McNelly 2011; Revol 2015; and Keller and Rubenstein 2017. 1

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story and more like that of, say, a painting, with an organically unfolding shape that can countenance a fair degree of contingency, reversal, playfulness, and dead-­ ending while still ultimately manifesting as something beautiful?

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———. 2014. Staying Alive: Personal Identity, Practical Concerns, and the Unity of a Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2015. Art Imitating Life Imitating Art: Literary Narrative and Autobiographical Narrative. In The Philosophy of Autobiography, ed. C.  Cowley, 22–38. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Shoemaker, S. 1963. Self-Knowledge and Self-Identity. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Taylor, C. 2007. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wegter-McNelly, K. 2011. The Entangled God: Divine Relationality and Quantum Physics. New York: Routledge. Wiggins, D. 1967. Identity and Spatio-Temporal Continuity. Oxford: Blackwell. Williams, B.A.O. 1956–1957. Personal Identity and Individuation. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 57: 229–252. Janna Gonwa is a doctoral candidate in Religious Studies at Yale University, with specializations in theology and the philosophy of religion. She has research interests in theological anthropology, the doctrines of creation and the Trinity, the problem of suffering, and theories of personal identity/ selfhood. Her publications include ‘Sacrament and Self-Construction: Augustine and Kierkegaard on Love for the Finite’ (2017) and ‘Eros, Agape, and Neighbour-Love as Ontological Gift’ (2015).

Chapter 7

Preserving the Heavens and the Earth: Planetary Sustainability from a Biblical and Educational Perspective Andreas Losch

Abstract  Light and air pollution make it hard today to see the stars of the night sky. Yet the ‘starry sky above us’ inspired Immanuel Kant to soaring flights of intellect and morality. Maybe today images from the Hubble space telescope are more likely the cause that makes us feel the shivers of greatness and ultimate scope. The development of mankind makes the relocation of astronomical observation into space not only possible, but also necessary. In this article, I sketch the biblical perspective on the heavens and some of their history, before I move to the topic of ‘preserving heavens and earth’ and the idea of a planetary sustainability. Some didactic deliberations on the importance of discerning transcendence and immanence conclude the paper. The heavens are a wonderful concept to explore the fruitfulness and importance of this distinction. Keywords  Biblical theology · Didactics · Earth · heavens · Immanence · Planetary sustainability · Transcendence My first experience of a clear starry night, as I remember, was on Texel, an island in Holland. We walked just after nightfall from our holiday home to a viewing tower in the nearby woods. And between the treetops the stars shone like sparkling jewels in the firmament. For a city child it is not a matter of course to see the starlit sky in all its glory. Light and air pollution make that difficult nowadays in some places. But the ‘starry sky above us’ was already inspiring Immanuel Kant to moral heights. These days, it is perhaps rather images from the Hubble space telescope that give us this idea of greatness and breadth. The development of the human species or ‘race’ has made it possible, and even necessary, to displace the observation of the skies into outer space. A. Losch (*) Faculty of Theology, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Nature – and Beyond, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 5, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31182-7_7

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I would like to begin this paper by presenting the Biblical perspective on the heavens and outlining a little history of the heavens, before addressing specifically the subject of ‘preserving the heavens and the earth.’ I will end with a few reflections on education.

7.1  T  he Biblical Perspective on the Heavens and a Little History of the Heavens As far as the heavens are concerned, the Bible tends towards a ground-based perspective. In this world, the ground constitutes, as it were, the imagined ‘outer space’, from which the heavens hold back the ancient waters of chaos. This sky is imagined not like a cheese dome over a flat earth, but like a level roof over it (Schwindt 2006: 3–34). In this context, people often think of a copper engraving by Flammarion, which is supposed to illustrate the alleged former notion. This image, however, is erroneous in several respects: for one thing, in Biblical times, pre-dating the Greeks, the idea of the sky as a hemisphere was not yet conceivable. It was left to the philosophers to discover the spherical form of the sky. From Aristotle onwards, at the latest, it was as a result assumed that the earth was also spherical, which in turn means that by the Middle Ages the shape of the terrestrial sphere was already long known, and this was also different to the way Flammarion represents it. The terrestrial sphere took centre stage in the worldview of Ptolemy, although this was by no means a position of honour, but rather the lowest point in the whole cosmos. The planets and the stars, on the other hand, belonged to the celestial spheres, which Aristotle imagined as perfect concentric spherical shells. The heavens had something divine, a legacy of platonic mythology. On the other hand, as early as the second century B.C. Hipparchus of Nicaea had detected irregularities in the sky of fixed stars (Schwindt 2006: 29); better known is that Tycho Brahe in the sixteenth century had corrected his worldview on the basis of observing a new, very bright star. And before Copernicus’ ideas of the revolution of the heavens gained acceptance, it was naturally assumed that the sun orbited the earth and not the other way around. This was because, on the one hand, the ground-­ based perspective made it seem that way, and on the other hand, Aristotelian/ Ptolemaic scholarly opinion also supported this view. As Biblical evidence in support of this view, a passage in the Book of Joshua (10:12–13) was always cited (some say also by Luther1): ‘Then spake Joshua to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed ….’ Since the sun stopped moving, it seemed obvious that it was in motion around the earth.  Critically opposed to this view is Andreas Kleinert (2003: 101–111).

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Now, the Bible certainly contains some reflections on natural philosophy, but it is not a natural history book in the modern sense. In the case of the modern question of creation and evolution, in particular, there is only a potential conflict here if one wishes to pit the modern understanding of evolution against the old understanding of the creation of the world in a naively creationist way. While there are, unfortunately, literal believers on this issue, who believe that the Bible, as a scripture of revelation, must retain its authority on matters which it hardly ever addresses, as early as the seventeenth century there was a pious man who held a more nuanced view: ‘Holy Scripture can never lie or err, and … its declarations are absolutely and inviolably true. … though Scripture cannot err, nevertheless some of its interpreters and expositors can sometimes err in various ways’ (Galilei, Letter to Castelli, in Finocchiaro 1989: 49). The man who here to some extent lays the foundations for modern critical hermeneutics was none other than Galileo Galilei. At the same time, a thorough reading could have given anyone an indication that the Bible does not mean this passage quite literally. ‘Is not this written in the book of Jasher (Sefer Hajashar)?’, as it says in Joshua 10:13. The Hebrew Bible also quotes from this book a second time and the Septuagint even a third time. This book contains, for example, the lament of the bow. It was ‘apparently a collection of songs ascribed to famous ancestors of Israel’ (Dietrich 2017: 257). That the sun and the moon stood still in the valley of Ajalon is, it seems to me, poetic language: I would like to interpret this verse to mean it was as if time stood still. The Bible is not making a statement relating to natural history here, but depicting the relative experience of time in a poetic way. Looking back, it can be said that the surface of the earth at first formed the ‘centre of life and the orientation element of ancient man’. The heavens ‘are only a boundary, and not yet a sphere of numinous powers’ (Schwindt 2006: 33). I would like to endorse this view, but also to ask, with Silvia Schroer, whether the understanding of creation as a work of art by God, as it is expressed in Genesis, does not also leave room for the numinous. It is a different thing to speak of the sun and the moon as God’s lamps, or, like Anaxagoras, to conceive of them simply as ‘fiery stones’ (Schroer and Keel 2009: 537–590). Thus, the dissolution of the boundaries of the living space on earth also leads Plato ‘to the discovery of a true earth and a true heaven as places of eternal blessedness … The mysteriousness of the heavens as a location of the divine or as a boundary between being and non-being [thereby] also remained in existence in the spherical model’ (Schwindt 2006: 34). And when Pope Pius XII declares what was later known as the ‘big bang’, postulated by priest and physicist George Lemaitre, to be to some extent equivalent to the act of creation, I would like to note that this ambivalence of the word ‘the heavens’ between the cosmological and the theological interpretation, its oscillation between ‘sky’ and ‘heaven’, remains to this day (Losch 2012: 169–186).

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7.2  T  he Heavens and the Earth: Integrating, Preserving or Cultivating Them? ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth’ (Genesis 1:1). The heavens are therefore also a created thing, although I would say relatively unresearched from this angle in terms of theology. Better known is their transcendent dimension as the seat of God or of the gods, which gives them something numinous. But if the heavens are created, they must be kept integral or preserved just like the earth. The idea of the integrity or preservation of creation came out of the Conciliar Process in the World Council of Churches – the common learning path for ‘justice, peace and the integrity of creation’. The German version of the third part of slogan about integrity translates as ‘preservation of creation’.2 Although I would like to agree with this interpretation to a certain extent here, I would like to ask three brief questions about it. Firstly (1), I would ask whether, in the era of modern genetic engineering, in agriculture as well as elsewhere, the description of human action as violating a given sacred integrity is not rather old-­ fashioned and to some extent outdated as a model. Secondly (2), I would ask whether, in addition to the dominium terrae, there could or may not also be a similar dominium coeli (dominion of the heavens by humankind), since we have been reaching for the stars since the twentieth century. Thirdly (3), I would ask whether the expression ‘integrity of creation’ (or ‘preservation’) is even appropriate, and whether it is not rather a question of the relationship between nature and culture, which in turn – if we put it somewhat provocatively – challenges talk of the integrity of creation as mere romanticism. 1. In Anglo-Saxon theology-and-science discourse a different model to that of the stewardship or the preservation of creation is often used, and that is one which sees humans as ‘created co-creators’. It refers on the one hand to the emergence of a creature, Homo sapiens, who is completely a creature of nature and of its processes of evolution – hence the term created – and on the other hand at the same time, through the same processes, is created as a creature of freedom (cf. Losch 2011). Freedom, therefore, is said to describe the condition of existence in which humans unavoidably create culture, amongst other things.

 From a Biblical point of view, this is supposed to present a synchronous interpretation of Genesis 1:28, of what is known as the dominium terrae (the task given by God to humans to deal with the earth and all living things), in the light of Genesis 2:15, which says: “And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.” Wilfried Härle points out: “The dominion which is permitted and assigned to humans in the Bible, in addition to cultivating and preserving, is to be understood as the action through which humans preserve the living environment for themselves and for the rest of creation” (Härle 1995: 438), cf. https://www.ekd.de/EKDTexte/98358.html 2

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From a Biblical viewpoint, cultural work can be seen as a basic element in creation itself. The erection of the tabernacle by humans in Exodus 24ff. reflects God’s creation of the world, as Benno Jacob has so aptly observed (quoted in Janowski 1990: 37). The special thing about the account of this process is the reciprocity with divine action in which the cultural achievement of humans is presented here by the priestly source. Through culture, humans thus participate in the continuous creation of the world. In this Biblical interpretation, divine and human creativity correspond to each other. I personally find the expression ‘co-creator’ too strong, however. In both testaments (Rothgangel 2013: 109) the Bible makes a distinction between divine creation and human creative work by using two different verbs, and our choice of words should follow this as far as possible. However, proponents of this concept are right in terms of the broken reflection of divine creation in human conduct, and I would like to say more about this when I come to my third point. 2. In Biblical terms, the heavens are also a created thing and, in the ecological order of creation in Gen 1 (Link 2012), they are a living environment: that of the birds. The image of the earth as a blue marble in space, however, is new, and the associated overview effect, the view of the globe, and the resulting awareness of the fragility of our homeland, has only become possible due to modern space travel. Outer space itself, in the modern sense of the universe, does not come into view in the Bible, unless we count the mention of the sun, the moon and the stars. The ‘final frontier’ so popularly challenged today (Star Trek) is to some extent a persisting obstacle in the Biblical world. If the description of nature in Genesis 1 is hardly understood within our modern framework of knowledge, or using modern vocabulary, perhaps this also means, on the other hand, that we need not apply the ‘earth’ created in Genesis to our planet. In Biblical terms, ‘earth’ means something like living environment, or habitable land, and why should that not for example – thinking ahead to the future – also be on other planets? Since the first planets outside our solar system were discovered over 20 years ago, people have been looking for a second Earth in the universe. And what about all the space in between? Luxembourg already has near-earth objects in its sights for proposed space mining (www.spaceresources.lu). Just like a dominium terrae, it is therefore worth discussing a kind of dominium coeli, if we want to examine this issue on the basis of Biblical motifs. 3. This brings me back to the first question. Can the integrity of Creation actually be violated? Or is this understanding and terminology a mix-up of ‘titanic’ proportions, as the critic Friedrich Wilhelm Graf (quoted in Link 2012: 199 f.) has stated regarding the German translation of it, which has ‘preservation of creation’ instead of the idea of integrity?

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I think that we humans can only preserve nature and keep the integrity of the ecosystem, but in our days, we have not only to preserve it, but also to cultivate it, or else a majority of people would starve. I believe that it is particularly in the cultural creativity of mankind, including science and technology, that this finds expression. In the relationship between creation and integrity, on the other hand, an aspiration is expressed that cannot be upheld in this way, which is also one-sided and to a certain extent attempts to reverse the dismantling of taboos surrounding nature in Judeo-Christian culture, and it is this latter process of dismantling taboos which contributed to the development of science and technology (Hooykaas 2000). There may be reasons for this, in view of the ecological crisis in the Anthropocene (the current geological era, which is so strongly influenced by humans that it has been named after them). However, I think that a better choice of language here (as also used, by the way, in the federal constitution of Switzerland) would be to speak of a responsibility for creation, because this allows the theological categories to correspond to one another again. What is needed is a preservation of nature, (responsibly) acknowledging its character as creation (Bedford-Strohm 2001: 154).3 I would like to interpret this here with the idea of planetary sustainability in the economic, ecological, social and cultural sense. Which means, in short, working with nature, using our cultural means in such a way that the integrity of the biosphere is preserved sustainably, goods are distributed to the advantage and for the welfare of all, and also the cultural heritage of humankind is preserved.

7.3  Closing Reflections Relating to Education Thus far I have interpreted the title phrase ‘preserving the heavens and the earth’ immanently. But ‘preserving the heavens and the earth’ also and above all means – and the confusing and naturalising talk of ‘integrity’ or ‘preservation’ of creation does not mean this – preserving the dimensions of the transcendent as well as the immanent. Even the term ‘the heavens’ alone lends itself, in its ambivalence, to practising one, if not the religious key skill, the distinction between transcendence and immanence (Büttner et al. 2015). The heavens are, due to the very ambivalence that the term has, the dimension of our temporal world that at the same time embodies a hereafter. Practising the key skill of making this distinction seems to me extremely important. It is no coincidence that in an age that is shaped by science people are asking for evidence for faith (which, of course, equally betrays an ill-considered understanding of science); specifically, an article on the subject of ‘evidence for the existence of God’ was the most often viewed of the content of a relevant website (www. theologie-naturwissenschaft.info.). The theologically trained thinker knows, of

 I thank Gerhard Liedke for pointing me to this interpretation (see also Liedke 2009: 34 ̶ 40).

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course, that no such evidence can be provided; all we have is witness and indications of transcendence, or possible ‘eye-openers’ in this life (Büttner et al. 2015: 13). The need for feeling safe and secure is enormous, but certainty is everything that true faith can find. I believe that it is eminently important to learn and to teach this, and to do so is, in my view, also to provide the key insight into the misunderstanding of creationism, which aims to some extent empirically to protect assumed truths relating to salvation, leading in turn to a strange understanding of science. I am convinced that making a successful distinction between transcendence and immanence allows both science and religion the space that they are due. Can this be substantiated empirically? Martin Rothgangel has categorised the attitudes of school pupils to the relationship between science and theology, and distinguishes between three types, each explained here with a short quote (Rothgangel 2015): (1) Science refutes God, or in summary: ‘If he proves something, only then will I believe in him.’ (2) Science and faith conflict: ‘Science is also making more and more people doubt the existence of God, along the lines of “I don’t believe in something I can’t see”.’ (3) Strategies for mediation between science and belief in God: ‘You can’t see love, but it is there, we’re influenced by it, it makes us do things, but no-one can prove it scientifically. You can measure pulses etc., but not the feeling, and in the same way you can’t prove the existence of God.’ I think the pupils’ testimony makes it clear how fundamental it is to practise the key skill of making a distinction that I explained earlier, because it is only through making this distinction that it becomes possible to create a relationship between the disciplines again. And for teaching sustainability, as Kai Niebert (2016: 4-17) says, a good basic understanding of science is essential. How is someone to grasp the global concept of climate change without scientific knowledge about planet Earth? It is just as important to turn away from naively realistic textbook knowledge in terms of scientific theory in favour of an understanding of science as ‘science in the making’. Learners must understand not only ‘what we know, but in particular how we know’ (ibid.: 11). Finally, a third desirable outcome is to develop students’ ability to shape the future, in order to change sustainably the views and attitudes of the participants in a lesson. When gazing up at the heavens, humankind has connected thinking, seeing and belief in God (Schwindt 2006: 3). Humans trained their powers of observation in the phenomena of the sky and developed geometry, mechanics and mathematics (Evers 2006: 36). In the heavens we learn both to marvel about the world and to gain insight into its complex natural correlations, which we should preserve in the heavens as on earth.

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Bibliography Bedford-Strohm, H. 2001. Schöpfung. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck + Ruprecht. Büttner, G., V.-J. Dieterich, and H. Roose. 2015. Einführung in den Religionsunterricht. Eine kompetenzorientierte Didaktik. Stuttgart: Calwer. Dietrich, W. 2017. Samuel (BKAT VIII/3.4). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck + Ruprecht. Evers, D. 2006. Chaos im Himmel. Die Entwicklung der modernen Kosmologie und ihre Tragweite für die christliche Rede vom Himmel. In Der Himmel, ed. M.  Ebner, 35–58. Neukirchener Verlag: Neukirchen. Finocchiaro, M.A. 1989. The Galileo Affair. Berkeley: University of California Press. Härle, W. 1995. Dogmatik. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. Hooykaas, R. 2000. Religion and the Rise of Modern Science. Vancouver: Regent College Pub. Janowski, B. 1990. Tempel und Schöpfung. Schöpfungstheologische Aspekte der priesterschriftlichen Heiligtumskonzeption. In Schöpfung und Neuschöpfung, ed. L.  Alonso Schökel and I. Baldermann, 37–70. Neukirchner Verlag: Neukirchen-Vluyn. Kleinert, A. 2003. Eine handgreifliche Geschichtslüge. Wie Martin Luther zum Gegner des kopernikanischen Weltsystems gemacht wurde. Berichte zur Wissenschafts-Geschichte 26: 101–111. Liedke, G. 2009. Auch die Schöpfung wird befreit werden. In Und Gott sah, dass es gut war. Schöpfung und Endlichkeit im Zeitalter der Klimakatstrophe, ed. H. Bedford-Strohm, 34–40. Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag. Link, C. 2012. Schöpfung. Ein theologischer Entwurf im Gegenüber von Naturwissenschaft und Ökologie. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchner Verlag. Losch, A. 2011. Jenseits der Konflikte. Eine konstruktiv-kritische Auseinandersetzung von Theologie und Naturwissenschaft. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. ———. 2012. Die Erforschung des Himmels als Gegenstand der Kosmologie und der Theologie. In Gibt es eine Ordnung des Universums, ed. F. Vogelsang, 169–186. Evangelische Akademie im Rheinland: Bonn. Niebert, K. 2016. Nachhaltigkeit lernen im Anthropozän. Wie Schule und Unterricht zu einer nachhaltigen Menschenzeit beitragen können. In Bildung für nachhaltige Entwicklung in pädagogischen Handlungsfeldern, ed. Martin K.W. Schweer, 4–17. Frankfurt a.M: Peter Lang. Rothgangel, M. 2013. Schöpfung. In Handbuch Bibeldidaktik, ed. M.  Zimmermann and R. Zimmermann, 106–112. Mohr Siebeck: Tübingen. ———. 2015. Naturwissenschaft und Religion in der Schule. Empirische Einblicke und bildungstheoretische Konsequenzen. In Wissenschaft und die Frage nach Gott, ed. A. Losch and F. Vogelsang. Evangelische Akademie im Rheinland: Bonn. Schroer, S., and O.  Keel. 2009. Die numinose Wertung der Umwelt in der Hebräischen Bibel. In Der Mensch im Alten Israel. Neue Forschungen zur alttestamentlichen Anthropologie, ed. B. Janowski and K. Liess, 537–590. Freiburg: Herder. Schwindt, R. 2006. Weltbilder im Umbruch. Himmelsvorstellungen in der Antike. In Der Himmel, ed. M. Ebner, 3–34. Neukirchner Verlag: Neukirchen. Andreas Losch is an award-winning theologian, specializing in the dialog between the sciences, philosophy and theology. He was managing editor of the Martin Buber edition, coordinated the project ‘Life beyond our planet?’ at the Center for Space and Habitability (CSH) Bern and he is now working as an independent researcher affiliated with the Theological Faculty of the University of Bern on ‘Ethics of Planetary Sustainability’. As such he was active participant of the UNISPACE+50 preparatory event. Losch is a member of the Center of Theological Inquiry, Princeton, New Jersey and he serves in the council of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology. His latest book is Andreas Losch (ed.), What is Life? On Earth and beyond, Cambridge University Press 2017.

Chapter 8

The Ecological Significance of God’s Transcendence? Ernst M. Conradie

Abstract  In Christian ecotheology there has been an understandable emphasis on the ecological significance of God’s immanence, through Christ’s incarnation and the Spirit’s inhabitation. This theological emphasis on God’s immanence in creation may be helpful to guard against a deist separation and alienation between God and creation. However, it has to be noted that this distinction between Creator and creatures is not necessarily an alienating one. In fact, it is vital precisely for the sake of the integrity of creation. The stress on God’s otherness is crucial because it reminds us that the immanence of God can be understood in such a way that it would deprive creation of its freedom. The distinction between Creator and creature requires some notion of God’s transcendence. In this contribution I explore views on God’s transcendence in current discourse on science and theology. I defend a semiotic notion of transcendence and then consider the ecological significance of such transcendence in terms of the category of (soteriological) transformation. I argue that (human) constructions of transcendence are hermeneutically inevitable and that, at times, they really matter. Keywords  Ecology · Colin Gunton · Immanence · Jürgen Moltmann · Semiotics · Transcendence · Transformation · Trinity

E. M. Conradie (*) Department of Religion and Theology, University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Nature – and Beyond, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 5, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31182-7_8

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8.1  The Ecological Significance of God’s Immanence In Christian ecotheology there has been an understandable emphasis on the ecological significance of God’s immanence, through Christ’s incarnation and the Spirit’s inhabitation. As a result the distinction between Creator and creation tends to be underplayed. This is for example evident in the English title of Jürgen Moltmann’s seminal work ‘God in creation’ (1985). Moltmann responds to what he perceives to be the ecologically disastrous consequences of an overemphasis on divine transcendence that stripped God of God’s connection with the world and increasingly secularised the world. Instead, as Moltmann suggests, there is a need to recognise God’s presence in the world (and, as he adds, the presence of the world in God). This overwhelming emphasis on God’s immanence is prevalent in feminist theologies (e.g. with reference to the notion that the world is God’s body), in several exponents of process theology (John Cobb, John Haught, Jay McDaniel), in the contributions by Arthur Peacocke, Philip Clayton and others (see 2004) to discourse on science and theology, and in the panentheism of leading ecotheologians such as Leonardo Boff, Ivone Gebara, Catherine Lacugna and Sallie McFague. The emphasis on God’s immanence in Christian ecotheology has been so overwhelming that it may be time to address the question whether there is then no ecological significance to God’s transcendence. This is the question that I first raised more than a decade ago in proposing an agenda for ecotheology (see Conradie 2005b) and that I will now address in this contribution.

8.2  Distance Is Not Necessarily Alienating This theological emphasis on God’s immanence in creation may be helpful to guard against a deist separation and alienation between God and creation. However, it has to be noted that this distinction between Creator and creatures is not necessarily an alienating one.1 Colin Gunton (2003: 42, 50) insists that the primary distinction between God and everything which is not God does not imply an ontological dualism but a duality because this otherness is constituted by a set of trinitarian relations. In fact, this otherness is vital precisely for the sake of the integrity of creation. Gunton emphasises that the first feature of human existence is that humans have been created. This implies a primary distinction between Creator and creature: ‘The triune God has created humankind as finite persons-in-relation who are called to acknowledge his creation by becoming the persons they are and by enabling the rest of creation to make its due response of praise’ (Gunton 1991: 61). Creation, Gunton (1991: 56) argues, may be understood as ‘the giving of being to the other and that includes the giving of space to be: to be other and particular … the world’s otherness from God  I am drawing in this section on some of my earlier contributions (see Conradie 2005a, 2009).

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is part of its space to be itself, to be finite and not divine.’ The stress on God’s otherness is crucial because it reminds us that the immanence of God can be understood in such a way that it would deprive creation of its freedom (Gunton 1992: 91). The earth is not simply an extension of God. The Christian tradition has rightly refused to call nature divine. Instead, the otherness of Creator and creation is affirmed. Together with the rest of the cosmos, the earth comes forth from the being of God, but thereafter remains distinct from God. The otherness of Creator and creation should therefore be affirmed and not underplayed. Or, as Joseph Sittler (in Bakken and Bouma-Prediger 2000: 83) suggests, ‘God is not identical with but is present in what he creates, is present in the redemption of what he creates, and is present in all restoration, uniting, and upholding of his redeemed creation.’ Elsewhere Sittler observes in one of his typical aphorisms: ‘God is not identified with the world, for he made it; but God is not separate from his world, either. For He made it’ (as quoted in Bouma-Prediger 1995: 88). Likewise, a composition is qualitatively different from its composer. It nevertheless discloses something of the character of the composer. The distinction between a composer and her composition does not imply that she has no interest in the way in which the composition is performed (see Wilkinson 1991: 280). In his interpretation of the notion of God’s primordial self-restriction or self-­ withdrawal (zimzum) Moltmann too recognises the need for such distance. Moltmann (1985: 75f, also 1996: 306) suggests that God allowed room within Godself for the emergence of something that is different from Godself (extra Deum), a world that exist in front of, with and in Godself. Moltmann (1981: 110) even describes the doctrine of zimzum as ‘the only serious attempt ever made to think through the idea of ‘creation out of nothing’ in a truly theological way.’ This very act makes God vulnerable to the otherness of the other – creation. Accordingly, the act of creating may itself be understood as kenosis. The self-withdrawal of God also implies that creation is devoid of divine characteristics and is therefore finite. God created the world in Godself, giving it time in God’s eternity, finitude within God’s infinity, space within God’s omnipresence, freedom within God’s love (Moltmann 1981: 109). Indeed, ‘time is an interval in eternity, finitude is a space in infinity’ (Moltmann 1981: 111). Moltmann concludes that human beings are both inhabitants and inhabited. This provides an analogy for the Christian affirmation that Christ is ‘in’ us but that we are also ‘in’ Christ. On this basis he develops a perichoretic concept of space, understood as mutual indwelling. Elizabeth Johnson (1992: 234) rightly criticises Moltmann’s exclusive use of male metaphors to portray God’s self-withdrawal as a ‘blatant anomaly’. Instead, she offers a quintessentially female perspective on the notion of zimsum: ‘Quite literally, every human person yet born has lived and moved and had their being inside a woman, for the better part of the year it took for them to be knit together. This reality is the paradigm without equal for the panentheistic notion of the coinherence of God and the world. To see the world dwelling in God is to play variations on the theme of women’s bodiliness and experience of pregnancy, labor and giving birth’ (Johnson 1992: 234). She also notes that this symbol restores the female body

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and procreation, much abhorred in Christian theology, to evoke the mystery of creative, generative love (1992: 235). The Creator’s distinctness from creation therefore does not imply a lack of involvement or concern in the same way that the distinctness of a mother from her daughter (after birth) does not necessarily imply alienation but is indeed necessary as a sign of respect for the otherness of the daughter. To extend this ecofeminist metaphor: The foetus (that is not the mother) grows for 9 months ‘in’ the mother. When the mother gives birth to the child she allows the child a certain independence, but this also implies the first pains of separation. Nevertheless, the child continues to experience the mother’s presence for years to come. She has to grow up and become a mature human person in her own right. The daughter cannot remain an extension of the mother forever. The mother has to allow the daughter the freedom to become distinct from her. The relative independence of the daughter from the mother is a condition for a relationship of mutual love and respect which will emerge between mother and daughter. This does not diminish the nourishing, nurturing, protecting love of the mother for the child in any way. Moreover, the mother will always remain ‘present’ in the daughter  – genetically, through the mother’s upbringing and through their lifelong companionship. Likewise, God’s loving care for creation does not imply that creation has to remain merely an extension of Godself (Gunton 1993: 161). The metaphor of the world existing in God’s womb suggests that God encompasses the world, nourishes it and protects it. One could also argue that God acts upon the foetus in the womb – through the food the mother eats, through her exercise, through the music that the mother listens to and through caressing. Here divine action and the reception of such action would typically be less than verbal. The world may be understood in terms of the model of the world as God’s body, much discussed in feminist discourse, although the relationship between the womb and the mother is not the same as the one between body and soul or between brain and mind. Literally, the mother could live without a womb, but cannot become a mother without that. Creatures do not have dignity and integrity only because they are extensions of the divine being or because the divine being is present in them. Creation has a worth in and of itself. Likewise, there has to remain distance between the lover and the beloved if the one is not to be subsumed, sadistically or masochistically, under the other. Distance is required to make room for the otherness of the other. God has to stand back, as it were, to allow the creature to be itself. Distance therefore does not necessarily imply alienation. It logically forms a presupposition for all relationships, including relationships based on reciprocity and respect. To be a person is to be given space to be, by others, in community (Gunton 1991: 59). As Moltmann (2003: 63) suggests, ‘A love which gives the beloved space, allows them time, and asks and expects of them freedom is the power of lovers who can withdraw in order to allow the beloved to grow and to come’. Likewise, the distinction between various creatures does not necessarily lead to alienation but allows for a celebration of the joy and beauty of nature in the fellowship and company of others. As Moltmann (1996: 306) has it:

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Through the space conceded by God, creation is given detachment from God and freedom of movement over against him. If God were omnipresent in the absolute sense, and manifested in his glory, there would be no earthly creation. In order to make himself endurable for his earthly creatures, God has to veil his glory, ‘since he who looks upon God must die’. Remoteness from God and spatial distance from God result from the withdrawal of God’s omnipresence and the ‘veiling of his face’. They are part of the grace of creation, because they are the conditions for the liberty of created beings.

Such distance is also important epistemologically and hermeneutically. Since Heidegger it has become axiomatic to critique the modernist objectifying distance between the investigating subject and the scrutinised object. The distance created can indeed be alienating and ecologically destructive since it can easily become a tool for domination in the name of the difference (distance) that is introduced. Nevertheless, as Paul Ricoeur rightly insists, distance is not necessarily alienating but hermeneutical necessary to respect the otherness of the interpreted object, e.g. the otherness of a classic text. It is important not to assume that the text is merely an extension of oneself since that would prevent the ability of a classic text to challenge the assumptions of the reader. At the same time, it is impossible to approach the otherness of the text without presuppositions shaped by race, gender, class, culture and language. This allows for a dialectic between appropriation and distanciation (see Ricoeur 1976: 43–44).2 Admittedly, the distinction between Creator and creature does pose the problem of knowledge of God. How can we know a God who is transcendent? From a theological perspective, it is important to emphasise that our lack of knowledge of God is not so much the result of the distinction between Creator and creature. As Luther has realised, the finite can bear traces of the infinite. It is here on earth, that we can discover transcendence. For Christians, our lack of knowledge of God is the result of sin which has alienated us from God. If we do know God, this is because the Mother has entered into a new relationship with the world, in the world, through Wisdom and Spirit.

8.3  A Few Statements on Notions of Transcendence The distinction between Creator and creature requires some notion of God’s transcendence. It is indeed necessary to emphasise God’s presence in creation but also to recognise God’s presence. I have explored views on God’s transcendence in current discourse on science and theology elsewhere and defended a semiotic notion of transcendence.3 In order to build on such earlier contributions here, I will capture

 Ricoeur (1976: 43) explains: “Reading is the pharmakon, the ‘remedy’, by which the meaning of the text is ‘rescured’ from the estrangement of distanciation and put in a new proximity, a proximity which suppresses and preserves the cultural distance and includes the otherness within the ownness.” 3  See the discussion in Conradie (2013, 2015: 144–166). 2

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the argument in a number of brief statements without much elaboration. In the next section I will then consider the ecological significance of such transcendence in terms of the (soteriological) category of transformation. 1. Experiences of immanent transcendence are quite common. Whenever we gain new knowledge, make new friends, visit places where we have not been before, or encounter cultural otherness, that constitutes an experience that transcends our existing horizons. The same applies when we are surprised by intimacy, by the otherness of the intimate partner. There are also immanent experiences of awe, wonder and reverence, of the sublime that stretches our imaginations. Such experiences will register as brain functions and are accessible for studies in the cognitive and social sciences, in literature, art and religion alike. 2. The question is not whether we can experience something that transcends us; we evidently can. The more significant question has to do with what it is that transcends us (the transcendent) and whether there is any way of grasping that. Knowing the other is a frontier experience – one that is explored in a wide variety of recent hermeneutical (Ricoeur), phenomenological (Levinas), post-­ structuralist (Derrida) and feminist (Irigaray) philosophies. 3. If all experiences of transcendence are immanent, it is equally important to recognise that all notions of the transcendent are socially constructed and therefore also part of immanent reality. We cannot and do not know what transcends us, but we can indeed construct that. We humans are hardwired to use symbols to construct the whole and whatever may transcend the whole. We uncover our identity by discovering the otherness of the other. We know what is inside as being inside only by guessing about the outside. We discover limits only by reaching borders that we cannot cross and by surmising what lies beyond such frontiers. 4. Although it is indeed possible to surmise what it may be that transcends us, any notion of a transcendent referent remains elusive, as Kant’s distinction between the noumena and the phenomena already suggests. That applies even more to a referent that transcends reality as such. The question is therefore whether it is possible to speak of and even know a referent (e.g. a divine creator) that transcends reality as such (which is awkwardly termed vertical or radical transcendence by some4). It is fair to say that there is a tendency towards the sublimation of such a notion of transcendence under the cultural conditions of modernity and postmodernity alike. It may be true that our only access to the world is mediated through language (a set of signifiers). However, to say that there is nothing outside language seems counter-intuitive, especially if cosmic and evolutionary history is factored in. Language enables us to refer to that which presumably exists outside of language. The social construction of Ultimate Reality/Mystery and the implied referent is evidently possible but forms part of immanent reality.  For a proposed typology and comprehensive discussion of contemporary notions of transcendence, see especially the recent volumes edited by Stoker and Van der Merwe (2012a, b). See also Nürnberger 2011: 144). 4

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5. There are different clues that one may follow to speak about that which may transcend reality as such. This yields distinct models of transcendence, besides the self-transcendence of the human subject that forms the dominant Enlightenment notion of transcendence (but hardly suggests transcending reality as such) and evolutionary change (that also does not transcend reality as such). Five of these models may be mentioned, namely (a) the ultimate origin/source or cause of reality, (b) the ultimate destiny of reality, (c) the elusive core or centre of ­reality (viz. the critique of essentialism), best understood in terms of debates on the meaning of this very moment, the meaning of this life, the meaning of history, (d) notions of what constitutes ‘the whole’ (a ‘Theory of Everything’?) as something that is bigger than the sum of its parts but that cannot be seen or captured, and (e) the tension between seeing what something is and sensing what it should be, that a different world is possible. This is witnessed in the ‘ethical turn’ to transcendence as alterity. 6. One of the distinguishing characteristics of the human species is its ability to use signs to refer to something that is not immediately present. Homo sapiens is a symbol-making and symbol-carrying species (see Deacon 1997 and many others). This ability to communicate through the use of symbols has given us an evolutionary advantage over other primates and hominids. Signs may carry a rich set of connotations (the so-called signified) that are not fully captured by the material signifier, but which the signifier connotes. By contrast, symbols participate in that which they symbolise. Through human imagination signs may also refer to a vision for the future, to a society that does not exist yet, but which may come about through dreaming that ‘a different world is possible’. 7. On the basis of a semiotic notion of transcendence one may argue that almost anything can be or become a locus where some form of transcendence could be recognised and traced. In each case such an awareness of transcendence evokes notions of the transcendent. Yet, in each case our metaphors, images, concepts and models of the transcendent cannot be equated with what is transcendent. Such concepts necessarily form part of the world in which we live. What is transcendent necessarily remains elusive. This is of crucial significance for entertaining the question, ‘Who is God?’ We do not have any direct access to God. Any knowledge of God cannot come straight from ‘above’, but can only come from below, from within the world in which we live, from that which is material, bodily and earthly. Also if one claims that such knowledge was revealed by God, one would only know that through our human experience, not in any direct way. Any claim for divine intervention, for the occurrence of ‘miracles’, could only be recognised as such from within our world. Again, we do not have any direct access to God. For anyone to claim that we do, would be to reduce God to something in our world. It would be to create our own idols, to read our own views into symbols or to claim authority for private, so-called immediate illumination. To prevent and discipline such claims we have to recognise the path through which knowledge of God may be discerned, namely through the use of symbols. Again, the meaning of the symbol can only be discerned on the basis of the mate-

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riality of the symbol (the signifier) – also because the symbol itself participates in that which it symbolises. 8. At the same time, the meaning of symbols transcends their materiality by far. The connotations (signified) attached to the signifier ‘Cape Town’ are of an exponentially higher order than the eight letters of the alphabet employed. That the sign (signifier and signified) point to a referent can hardly be denied, but to circumscribe that referent is well-nigh impossible. When we employ metaphors for God (as rock, anchor, wind, hen, friend, father or mother) we have to ­recognise, therefore, that we cannot grasp such connotations fully. We cannot capture or contain God through the metaphors and symbols we employ. Every metaphor illuminates some aspects that may have remained hidden previously, but every metaphor also remains limited. One may also employ the word ‘transparence’ (derived from Teilhard de Chardin 1960: 130–131) to overcome the sometimes arid tension between immanence and transcendence. The symbol opens up new horizons of meaning if one would dare to look through the ‘window’ of such symbols. The physicality and ‘literality’ of the sign has to be taken seriously, but only in order to be guided by the sign to the signified and the referent. It would be a shame to confuse the signpost ‘Cape Town 1000 km’ with the city of Cape Town itself.

8.4  The Ecological Significance of Transcendence Even though the transcendent is necessarily elusive (because it transcends us), any awareness of transcendence influences how we think, speak and act, how we form habits and cultures, how we shape societies and indeed civilizations. This applies to all five the models of transcendence identified above, i.e. in terms of origins, destiny, core identity, sense of belonging to a large whole and the difference between what is and what ought to be. For example: we do not know what will happen to us when we die, but the always provisional answers that we do give to that question shape the way in which we live our daily lives, for better or for worse. In the discussion below I will explore a further model of transcendence (that assumes and extends the others) namely in terms of transformation. This is related to the ethical distinction between what reality has become and what it should be, although the term transformation does not by itself indicate the direction of change. However, even if one has clarity on what should be, the transformative power to change the world around us is not necessarily available. To use one pertinent ecological example: even though humans know (or should realise) that we need to reduce carbon emissions drastically, such emissions are still increasing annually.5

 See the Global Carbon Project’s most recent Carbon Budget 2018 (published 5 December 2018) at http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/ (accessed 13 December 2018). 5

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Collectively, we find ourselves unable to do what we must do, despite the grave repercussions of failing to act timeously. Social transformation entails a form of transcendence. Through processes of transformation we bring into being a world (or an institution) that has never existed in that form before. Such transcendence is clearly of an immanent nature. Transformation cannot happen and be effective without being immanent. The power to bring about such transformation is of a varied nature but also has to be immanent. Such power includes material (e.g. energy, resources), technological, economic (e.g. infrastructure), financial, political, social (e.g. institutional), psychological and, sometimes also military dimensions. The direction in which social transformation is channelled typically also includes philosophical dimensions. Ideas, ways of seeing things, can and do change the world even though such ideas rely on lower levels of complexity to exert the necessary power. The process of social transformation is necessarily highly complex, especially in societies in transition, but there can be no doubt about the impact of such an (immanent) notion of transcendence in human history and therefore also on ecosystems. There is of course considerable debate on how the interplay between material and ideal forces is best understood. Amongst Marxists, positivists, Darwinists, Freudians, sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists alike, the tendency may be to emphasise material forces but contemporary discourse on emergence allows room to recognise the role of information at higher levels of complexity. One does not need to be a closet Platonist to see how ideas can and do change the world. On the basis of the above argument I suggest that we may provisionally conclude that there need not be any controversy over the ecological impact of notions of transcendence. Note, however, that the impact may be destructive, restorative or constructive. This is evident from climate change as an unintended consequence of the current global economic order with its reliance on fossil fuels since the advent of industrialisation. Climate change discourse entails policy making as witnessed by the annual Conference of the Parties where scenarios regarding the impact of envisaged policies are discussed. A changing climate will bring about a world that has never been, while climate change discourse on mitigation and adaptation likewise seeks to construct a society that has never been. In the Anthropocene what will become of the world transcends what has become of the world, for better or (more likely) for worse. What about the ecological significance of God’s transcendence then?

8.5  God’s Transcendence and Its Ecological Significance What difference does God make to processes of social transformation? Even if ‘God’ is nothing more than an (immanent) metaphor that humans employ to re-­ describe such processes, to articulate an understanding of what the world should become, then God would indeed make a difference in the same way that metaphors and symbols can and do change the world. The Christian faith typically entails more

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than that though, namely that God in Jesus Christ and through the Holy Spirit has saved, is saving and will save the world from self-destruction and is steering the course of history towards the consummation of all things. This implies a soteriological notion of transcendence. By itself, there is no need to contest such a claim any more than the structurally similar activist campaigns to ‘save the earth’ or environmental policy making in the UN-context. What is contested is the claim that God’s presence and engagement in history, more specifically the Triune God confessed by Christians, is the factor that makes the difference in attempts to ‘save the earth’. There are two aspects of this claim that require further scrutiny. Firstly, the claim is easily misunderstood as a claim about superior power that induces change from the outside in a miraculous or interventionist way. Instead, the Christian claim is that the way in which the world is to be saved is through the strange power of the cross. What makes the difference is vulnerability, love, reciprocity, solidarity with the weak, poor and oppressed, a willingness to die for others. This is the true scandal of Christian particularity, namely that the power of the cross exceeds the political, economic and military power of empires. The God confessed in Christianity has an identity and character that continues to surprise and shock its own adherents. It is not as if one first needs to understand what being divine entails only to then get clarity on the identity of such a divine being. Throughout the history of the Jewish-­ Christian tradition it had to unlearn whatever it took for granted about a generic notion of god. One may say that the identity of this God lies more in the future than in the past, always challenging premature attempts to grasp who this God is, also in Christian orthodoxy. Secondly and inversely, the claim is equally misunderstood if reduced merely to one martyr’s willingness to die for a cause that may serve as an inspiration to others. The claim is, instead, that we are unable to save ourselves and that we rely utterly on God to save us from self-destruction. Some notion of God’s transcendence is therefore implied. In Christian theology this claim follows a Trinitarian logic. If the deepest diagnosis of the underlying problem is that of alienation between Creator and creature,6 then the attempt by creatures to save themselves remains part of the problem. Creatures cannot heal this relationship unilaterally. God the Creator can only save us through the presence of Jesus Christ in our midst (the incarnation). The mere presence of the Messiah can indeed be transformative. However, his death and resurrection is ‘for us and our salvation’. It takes place on our behalf, in our place, extra nos, once and for all (the Christian doctrine of atonement). This would still make no difference ‘for us, today’ (Bonhoeffer) without the inhabitation of the Holy Spirit. The work of the Spirit takes place ‘in’ us, by transforming us and the world around us. The Spirit’s work may be described in many ways, but (using reformed categories) includes the work of justification, sanctification (including justice) and consummation. However, none of this would make sense without the elusive presence

 For this emphasis on “social diagnostics” and a discussion of the category of sin, see my Redeeming Sin? (Conradie 2017). 6

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of God as Father (or Mother) with whom the Son intercedes on our behalf and from whom the Spirit proceeds. If this claim can be sustained, then there can be no doubt about the ecological significance of God’s transcendence. Such transcendence is then understood soteriologically as the transformative power of God’s presence in history, also amidst a changing climate. Without some immanence (God’s presence) such power cannot be transformative, without transcendence (God’s presence) such power is not present and makes no difference. Can this claim be sustained though? This is of course highly contested for at least three reasons. First, this requires an account of non-interventionist, objective divine action in the world. How does a transcendent God act in and through that which is immanent? There is a long-standing debate in science and theology discourse on this question (see Russell et al. 2008; also Conradie 2010, 2015: 175–220). Here I can only add that this debate is crucial also for an affirmation of the ecological significance of God’s transcendence. What is required here is an understanding of multi-levelled agency (going beyond the paradox of two agents) in such a way that divine agency is not merely a re-description of human agency, where God’s agency makes a decisive difference in the world, in the course of history, in saving the world from human self-destructiveness. Second, the question from sceptics outside and inside the Christian tradition has to be: Can this God really do something about climate change, the rapid loss of biodiversity and ocean acidification? Can God somehow undo human self-­ destruction in the Anthropocene? What would that take? Or, from the Southern African context: If droughts and water shortages result from El Niño and are therefore anthropogenic, what may Christians expect from the God of the exodus and the resurrection in such a context? Would it help to pray for rain (see Chitando and Conradie 2017)? There remains the sobering but trembling possibility that God has abandoned us (see Ellul 1973) and perhaps does not plan to save us from self-­ destruction in order to start anew with a small remnant beyond a few skipped ice ages. What notion of God would that imply though? Can we trust such a God? For believers the question has to be: What is God really up to? While Adventists may welcome the end of the world and liberals seek to ameliorate industrialised capitalism, there is no emerging clarity on this question in ecumenical circles. This comes as no surprise as it is incredibly dangerous to detect the finger of God in human or cosmic history. The only thing that may be more dangerous is to abandon the question altogether. Third, if God’s transcendent presence operates through the logic of the cross, is such a modus operandi not all too slow and imperceptible and hence unable to induce the rapid social transformation that is required to avert climatic catastrophes? Such slowness is not foreign to biological evolution or ecological restoration but it does not recognise the sense of crisis where a transformation of the energy basis of the global economy is required within a few decades to avoid runaway climate change. This requires a reading of the signs of the time, a Kairos moment or era, and the ability to perceive what God is up to. There are biblical analogies here

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from the time of Moses, Jeremiah and Jesus of Nazareth – where catastrophe was not always avoided but where diagnosing the root causes for catastrophe facilitated a qualitatively different future. I regard this last contestation as theologically and ecologically more pertinent than the first two forms of contestation, but this takes us beyond dialogue between theology and the natural sciences. It may also illustrate the inherent limitations of such dialogue.

Bibliography Bakken, P., and S. Bouma-Prediger. 2000. Evocations of Grace. The Writings of Joseph Sittler on Ecology, Theology and Ethics. Grand Rapids: WB Eerdmans. Bouma-Prediger, S. 1995. The Greening of Theology: The Ecological Models of Rosemary Radford Ruether, Joseph Sittler, and Jürgen Moltmann. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Chitando, E., and E.M. Conradie, eds. 2017. Praying for Rain? African Perspectives on Religion and Climate Change. The Ecumenical Review 69 (3): 311–314, 315–435. Clayton, P.D., and A.R.  Peacocke, eds. 2004. Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God’s Presence in a Scientific World. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Conradie, E.M. 2005a. An Ecological Christian Anthropology: At Home on Earth? Aldershot: Ashgate. ———. 2005b. Reformed Perspectives from the South African Context on an Agenda for Ecological Theology. Ecotheology: The Journal of Religion, Nature and the Environment 10 (3): 281–314. ———. 2009. The Earth in God’s Womb? In Ragbag Theologies: Essays in Honour of Denise Ackermann, A Feminist theologian of Praxis, ed. M. Pillay, S. Nadar, and C. Le Bruyns, 233– 244. Stellenbosch: SUN Press. ———. 2010. Lewend en Kragtig? In Gesprek oor God se Handelinge. Wellington: Bible Media. ———. 2013. A Semiotic Notion of Transcendence. Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae 39 (Suppl): 39–54. ———. 2015. The Earth in God’s Economy: Creation, Salvation and Consummation in Ecological Perspective. Berlin: LIT Verlag. ———. 2017. Redeeming Sin? Social Diagnostics amid Ecological Destruction. Lanham: Lexington Books. Deacon, T.W. 1997. The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Ellul, J. 1973. Hope in a Time of Abandonment. New York: The Seabury Press. Global Carbon Project. 2018. Carbon Budget 2018. http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/. Accessed 13 Dec 2018. Gunton, C.E. 1991. Trinity, Ontology and Anthropology: Towards a Renewal of the Doctrine of the Imago Dei. In Persons, Divine and Human: King’s College Essays in Theological Anthropology, ed. C. Schwöbel and C.E. Gunton, 47–64. Edinburgh: T & T Clark. ———. 1992. Christ and Creation. Carlisle: Paternoster Press. ———. 1993. The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2003. Flesh and Spirit after Darwin. In Beyond Determinism and Reductionism: Genetic Science and the Person, ed. M.L.Y. Chan and R. Chia, 36–55. Adelaide: Australia Theological Forum Press. Johnson, E.A. 1992. She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse. New York: Crossroad.

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Moltmann, J. 1981. The Trinity and the Kingdom. San Francisco: Harper and Row. ———. 1985. God in Creation: An Ecological Doctrine of Creation. London: SCM Press. ———. 1996. The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. ———. 2003. Science and Wisdom. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Nürnberger, K. 2011. Regaining Sanity for the Earth. Pietermaritzburg: Cluster. Ricoeur, P. 1976. Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning. Texas: Texas Christian University Press. Russell, R.J., N.  Murphy, and W.  Stoeger, eds. 2008. Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action: Twenty Years of Challenge and Progress. Vatican City: Vatican Observatory Publications/ Berkeley: Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences. Stoker, W., and W.L.  Van der Merwe. 2012a. Culture and Transcendence: A Typology of Transcendence. Louvain: Peeters. ———. 2012b. Looking Beyond? Shifting Views of Transcendence in Theology, Art, and Politics. Amsterdam: Rudopi. Teilhard de Chardin, P. 1960. The Divine Milieu. San Francisco: Harper and Row. Wilkinson, L. 1991. Earthkeeping in the Nineties: Stewardship of Creation. Grand Rapids: WB Eerdmans. Ernst M.  Conradie is Senior Professor in the Department of Religion and Theology at the University of the Western Cape where he teaches systematic theology and ethics. His most recent monographs are The Earth in God’s Economy: Creation, Salvation and Consummation in Ecological Perspective (2015) and Redeeming Sin? Social Diagnostics amid Ecological Destruction (2017).

Chapter 9

A Critical Approach to the Concept of Panentheism in the Dialogue Between Science and Theology: Distinguishing Between Divine Transcendence and Immanence in Creation Fabien Revol

Abstract  Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution invites us to rethink our understanding of divine action in creation: we move from the thought of a supernatural or miraculous type of action by an external and distant God to that of an immanent and continuous type of action. The concept of panentheism is an attempt at a philosophical and theological answer to this problem: how to think about the transcendence of God while at the same time affirming his presence, his immanence in creation. This paper offers a critical perspective regarding the different approaches to contemporary panentheism in theology. The proposition put forward here is expressed via the concept of continuous creation, that is, continuous creative divine action in the temporal order. This concept invites us to think about the presence of God in creation by the very fact that it occurs within time as part of a creative dialogue between the world and the Holy Spirit, Creator and giver of life. It is a question of developing, following Jürgen Moltman, a panentheism of the indwelling of the Creator Spirit, according to the analogy of ecological habitat. Keywords  Articulation · Continuous creation · Ecology · Evolutionary theory · Emergence · Habitat · Holy Spirit · Immanence · Panentheism · Transcendence

F. Revol (*) Interdisciplinary Centre for Ethics, Catholic University of Lyon, Lyon, France e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Nature – and Beyond, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 5, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31182-7_9

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9.1  Introduction The problem of the relationship between immanence and transcendence is the philosophical and theological formulation of a question that everyone may be led to ask in the context of their spiritual life: how are we to find God in creation? Or how are we to think about the presence of God in creation? Here is an important theological question for reflection on integral ecology. This is one of the themes that Pope Francis uses in chapter 2 of his encyclical letter Laudato si’ devoted to the gospel of creation. He says to us in paragraph 80: ‘God is intimately present to each being, without impinging on the autonomy of his creature, and this gives rise to the rightful autonomy of earthly affairs. His divine presence, which ensures the subsistence and growth of each being, continues the work of creation’ (Pope Francis 2015: 80). What then is the import of this theological question from the perspective of integral ecology? The Pope’s conviction is that human beings can only enter into the ecological conversion of their ways of life if they are able to change their outlook regarding natural beings. For the Holy Father the point is to make everyone understand that creatures are not just a stock of raw material to be consumed for human utility (Pope Francis 2015: 190). Francis wants us to understand that creatures have their own value in the eyes of God (Pope Francis 2015: 16), and if this is the case, then the human creature cannot do with them what it likes, nor use them indiscriminately. The whole purpose of this second chapter of Laudato si’ is to bring us into a new way of looking at creatures,1 a view that is also God’s view of creation. The tool therefore proposed in paragraph 80 for acknowledging this dignity is the acknowledgement that God dwells in his creatures. If this is so, it means that he deems them worthy of such a presence, because he loves them. God did not create things so that they would be destroyed. It is not easy to speak of the presence of God in all things because the spectre of pantheism is not far away. Pantheism is the theological system that consists of asserting that the world is God, that the world is divine in nature and that there is an equivalence between the world and God. There is a fine line to be respected when one wants to speak of the presence of a transcendent God in his creation. Indeed, the Magisterium of the Catholic Church tends to be wary of any type of speech that might lean towards pantheism (Pope Pius IX 1864; see Pope Francis 2015: 90). A natural reaction on the part of theologians wishing to protect themselves against magisterial wrath might then be to focus on the transcendent pole of God. We should note that in this paragraph 80, Francis associates the presence of God with continuous creative action, which connects the theme of divine immanence with that of continuous creation. The present contribution wishes to deepen what the Pope suggests in Laudato si’ on the philosophical and theological levels in dialogue with scientific ecology, the discipline that studies the relationships of living beings with one another and with their environment (Haeckel 1866: 286). The framework of continuous creation involves God’s permanent action in the temporal order. This  Pope Francis 2015: 36, 59, 96ff, 114, 135, 137, 141, prepared by the Homily of March 19, 2013, the General Audience of Wednesday May 21, 2014 and Pope Francis 2014: 71. 1

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is why continuous creation implies the presence of God in creation by the very fact that it occurs within time. Yet the most explored contemporary path in the dialogue between science and religion for speaking of this presence is that of panentheism. Is it the best suited for taking account of the divine presence in the process of continuous creation? I would like to answer this question in the affirmative, setting out the origins of the question in the history of Western thought, then defining what we call panentheism, the Tractarian current of which will then be discussed in greater detail, finishing with a personal proposal of a panentheism of indwelling from the starting-­ point of the concept of continuous creation.

9.2  E  xplaining the Need for a Distinction Between Immanence and Transcendence 9.2.1  A Need for Reconciliation The consequences in theological circles of Darwin’s action in proposing the theory of evolution lead us to rethink our understanding of divine action in creation. New representations of the God-world relationship are imagined, going from the thought of a supernatural or miraculous type of action to a type of immanent action. The alternative image of God that developed among Darwin’s disciples such as Ernst Haeckel (1906: 32, 52, 113–115; 1902: 291–314) is a monistic pantheism rooted in Spinozism. Nature is ‘naturing’ (natura naturans, after Spinoza 1954: 96): it transcends itself by the mechanisms of evolution. Two alternatives therefore exist to the vision of the world inherited from natural theology and deism, bearers of representations of a God who is absent through being eminently transcendent: ontological materialism or pantheism. Neither one nor the other, nor even deism, is satisfactory for the Christian, who must uphold the presence and absence of God in creation, whence the necessary intellectual mobilisation regarding a recurrent question. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Anglican Aubrey Moore was one of the first to take seriously the theme of divine immanence in order to bring the theory of evolution into dialogue with Christian faith. He notes that in the history of philosophy, immanence and transcendence have always been opposed within parallel streams of thought. On the immanent side, the particular starting-point is the idea of an immanent and also organising reason in nature, which is inspired by Stoic thought. He referred to Aristotle, who thought that organisational reason was present in every natural being. Reason is present everywhere and its malfunctions are due to materiality, which induces imperfection. ‘[N]ature does the best she can and always aims at a good end’ (Moore 1890: 69). This perspective sees in nature a principle of internal rather than external growth, as happens in the case of an artist in relation to her/his work. Moore opposes this view to that of Anaxagoras, who had the idea of an external reason only intervening extrinsically in order to direct nature. This vision of nature was extended by modern science starting with Descartes. The first approach is the organic vision of nature; the second is a mechanistic view of

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nature. Without mediation or precaution, he translated this into theological language: the first is pantheism and the second is deism (Moore 1890: 69). Implicitly repeating Pascal’s arguments against deism (Pascal [1670] 2003: 193), Moore claims that the abstract god of philosophy has no meaning for religion because it says nothing about the relationship that everyone is called to have with the true God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob, and even of St. Augustine and St. Bernard (Moore 1890: 71). This god of philosophy has no more interest for the believer than a general principle for the specialist of a specific branch of a science of nature such as biology or chemistry. Within this opposition, pantheism is perceived as an intermediate term and a logical enough aid to compensate for the excesses of deism. But it appears to be a failure of reason. Moore also criticises deism as the product of reflection on God starting from scientific knowledge: a distant God who does not interact with his creation and leaves it in the autonomy of the laws of its functioning. God is relegated to inactivity, he is even forbidden the ability to contravene the laws of nature that he himself has set, and debates therefore turn on the possibility of miracles as a place of the exercise of power of God, or not (Moore 1890: 71–73). The question of immanence is thus concealed by both scientists and theologians.

9.2.2  The Mediation and the Openness of Biological Evolution The originality of Moore’s approach lies in thinking that the Christian doctrine of God seeks to reconcile these approaches: ‘Religion demands as the very condition of its existence a God who transcends the universe; philosophy as imperiously requires His immanence in nature’ (Moore 1890: 69). He however notes that the doctrine of God’s immanence is biblical, referring to Ps 103(4) to illustrate this. He thinks that he has found an effective form of mediation for linking immanence and transcendence with the theme of God’s omnipotence, which necessarily implies omnipresence. He develops a Christian immanentism from the Johannine theology of the Creator Word begun in the Prologue of St John’s Gospel and extended by Clement and St Athanasius of Alexandria. The Word is thus the guarantor of all the harmony of creation, both in the eternal procession of the Son from the Father, and in the organization of creation according to the Father’s will (Moore 1890: 69–71). As a Christian, Moore cannot conceive of God as an occasional visitor! ‘In nature everything must be His work or nothing’ (Moore 1890: 74). The theory of evolution plays a pivotal role for the question of the presence of God and his creative activity. The sciences, having introduced a false conception of God in deism, bring us back to another which according to him is much more Christian, and above all, which brings us back to the true tradition of the Fathers, in particular to the theology of the creative Word (Moore 1890: 74). It is precisely via the theory of evolution that we have this long-awaited union between religion and philosophy, the union between transcendence and immanence.

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The dissociation of the two leads to dead ends: the depersonalisation of God in a process of religion’s maturing leads to the destruction of religion, or else leads to a form of pantheism. Moore thus argues in favour of a God who is continually present to his creation, at the very heart of natural processes. He defends an idea of immanence that does not deny transcendence and seeks a balance that is inspiring. This beginning of a theological proposal for relating science and Christian faith opened up a well-trodden path of research, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon world, for thinking about divine immanence in creation. But it was in the meeting of this stream with that of romantic panentheism that it bore the most fruit.

9.3  Definitions and Origins of Panentheism 9.3.1  The Traces of Panentheism in the History of Thought Niels E. Gregersen traces the history of panentheism, pointing out that the idea is not new. He distinguishes three forms of panentheism that succeed one another, although the last two come in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The first is an eschatological and soteriological panentheism advocated by the Fathers of the Church. This is linked with the traditional idea of deification: creation is integrated with God who communicates to it his divine life through the operation of Salvation in the perspective that God might be all in all (1 Cor 15:28) (Gregersen 2004: 21). It should be noted that Gregersen forgets to quote the approach of St. Theophilus of Antioch with whom we already find an expression stating that God contains everything (Theophilus of Antioch 1948, I, 4, 61). Similar remarks are to be found in other Fathers such as St Athanasius of Alexandria, who affirms that everything is in the Word but that the Word is in everything (Athanasius of Alexandria 1973: 17, 1, 325). In the same way, Saint Augustine thinks of the omnipresence of God in all things (Augustine of Hippo 1972: IV, 23, 40, 339). This first eschatological panentheism nonetheless has contemporary progeny, particularly in a Teilhardian vein. Present-day authors such as Keith Ward continue to believe that the world must be understood as the body of Christ, but only in an ecclesial and eschatological perspective (Ward 2004). John Polkinghorne (1997: 168) and Ted Peters are also to be located in this school. According to the latter, ‘God will not be fully God until the kingdom comes in its fullest and God’s will for the creation is fulfilled. In this respect I could support eschatological panentheism’ (Peters 2002: 132). The second mode of panentheism, called ‘expressivist’ (Gregersen 2004: 21), is that which developed following Hegelian philosophy during the nineteenth century as part of German idealism, for which the Spirit of God experiences the world and finds itself enriched in its return to God. It is in this context that the word ‘panentheism’ appeared. It was coined by Karl Christian Friedrich Krause (1829: 484) in 1829, an idealist and contemporary of Hegel (Brierley 2004: 2; Gregersen 2004: 28). From a romantic perspective, the point was to open up a third way between

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Leibniz’s supernaturalism and Spinoza’s pantheism, in order to regain a renewed intimacy between humanity and nature. The third is Charles Hartshorne’s dipolar panentheism, following Alfred N. Whitehead. God is conceived according to the two aspects of eternity and temporality, two poles of the divine being: the primordial nature of God and the consequent nature of God. Whitehead’s theism is a form of panentheism: the world is in the divinity and the divinity is in it. It needs the world in order to be itself, and the world needs it in order to be itself. This has as a consequence the rejection of the concept of ex nihilo creation, and leads to thinking that the Big Bang is not an absolute beginning but a modality of the universe within measurable time and space, a certain type of social ordering of the universe (Griffin 2008: 382) that another one has preceded and that another one will succeed ad infinitum. Thus in Whitehead there is a coeternity of the world and God.

9.3.2  Contemporary Perspectives on Panentheism The Whiteheadian stream of panentheism is undergoing a strong contemporary expansion, but there are other forms. In the context of the dialogue between science and religion, and according to Ted Peters, panentheism is the ‘Belief that the being of the world is in God and the being of God is in the world; but the world does not exhaust the being of God. God here has no aseity; rather, God is as dependent on nature as nature is dependent on God’ (Peters and Hewlett 2003: 204). And with Ian Barbour we have the following definition: ‘[T]he world is in God, a view that does not identify God with the world (pantheism), nor separate God from the world (theism). God includes the world but is more than the world’ (Barbour 1997: 295). Immanence is to the fore in this theology: nothing can come into being without being originated in God. Panentheism is described as being the conception that the universe is a part of God. The divine substance is not exhausted by the world (York 2008: 1260). There are 13 positions in all that make it possible to think of panentheism in one or other of its forms (these are presented and discussed in Brierley 2004, as well as in Brierley 2006: 636–638). According to Michael Brierley, it is possible to summarise this theme according to three premises. ‘God is not separate from the cosmos; […] God is affected by the cosmos; […] God is more than the cosmos’ (Brierley 2006: 639–640). This is an approach that differs from classical theism, which affirms a radical separation between God and the cosmos, and the impossibility for God to be affected by it. It also breaks with pantheism, which establishes a perfect match between God and the cosmos (Brierley 2006: 640). The current representative of this approach is the theologian Philip Clayton, whose panentheistic theory is set out in extenso in Adventures in the Spirit (Clayton 2008). His perspective is that of an emerging panentheism, specifying that throughout the world and its development, the divine quality increasingly expresses itself. Emergent phenomena are the examples on which he relies in order to think this

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(Clayton 2004). Panentheism is an analogy for thinking the emergence of God throughout the world as the mind emerges from matter through the brain. But it is with Arthur Peacocke that the theme of divine immanence is associated with that of continuous creation. Let us see if it is possible to follow him on the ground of relating immanence and transcendence.

9.4  Panentheism: The Tractarian Path 9.4.1  The Analogy of Emergence Some authors today claim Aubrey Moore’s direct inspiration in the context of the Anglican Tractarian tradition. One of them is Arthur Peacocke who developed a particular idea of panentheism, giving the image of a God accompanying natural processes from within, but with, in addition, the understanding of God’s action according to the analogy of the functioning of complex systems and emergence – in other words, according to the play of downward causality of higher-level constraints in the direction of the lower level of physical systems. Indeed, Recent insights of the natural sciences into the processes of the world, especially those on the whole-part constraint in complex systems and on the unity of the human-brain-in-thehuman-­body, have provided not only a new context for the debate about how God might be conceived to interact with and influence events in the world, but have also afforded new conceptual resources for modelling it (Peacocke 2004: 21).

The world is not constituted as a body strictly speaking, but as a system that is in God although ontologically distinct from him. God acts on the world at all scales of complexity because they are all immediate to him in their being. God’s action on the system is reflected on the lower levels without interfering with the laws of nature, and can therefore be observed in the most neutral way possible by the scientist. God affects the state of the world to the extent that it is a whole, which has effects on its parts at different scales. This kind of action allows him to act intermittently in order to create an event that would not have happened without him. It is through this that Peacocke introduces the theme of providence. God acts transcendently in immanence. According to Peacocke, the interaction of God with the world is to be conceived in terms of information communication rather than in terms of energy influx. This information has the advantage of respecting God’s transcendence, which an influx of energy or matter would not do (Peacocke 2004: 15–20).

9.4.2  Two Metaphors: The Mother’s Womb and the Musician Panentheism therefore means that the world is in God but is nevertheless radically and ontologically different from God (Peacocke 2004: 80). Peacocke tries several metaphors to explain this, such as the feminine metaphor of a god gestating creation

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(Peacocke 1984: 64). God is constantly giving birth to a world that in spite of everything will go out of the divine matrix on which it depends. This metaphor emphasises the difference between the baby and its mother, but also the necessary interaction and dependence of the baby on its mother for its survival. Thus the cosmos depends on God as on a surrogate mother. He also uses the analogy of Mozart as a musical creator. Mozart is present in his music as a creator (he applies a form to sounds). In this case, there really is distinction of substance. The creation of God becomes the vehicle of the one who makes creation: the Word who became flesh in Jesus Christ. This incarnation assumed the same components as all the other things in the universe, and after a fashion, the Word was already present to the universe in his immanent creative action (Peacocke 1984: 35–36).

9.4.3  Strong Panentheism Peacocke says in the continuation of his exposé that the world does not exhaust the being of God whose metaphysical limits exceed it. It is possible, however, to point out a form of contradiction in Peacocke’s statement concerning the difference of nature between God and creation. He tries to account for the transcendence of God by metaphors that express it well. But he later adopts a posture that identifies the cosmos as being an integral part of God. This leads us to adopt a certain critical distance. In other texts, Peacocke indeed identifies God with the creative order. God is the creative modality of creation: the order of creation insofar as it is active through natural processes (Peacocke 1984: 37). ‘We wish to say that all that is in its actual process is God manifest in his mode as continuous creator’ (Peacocke 1984: 35). In saying this he confuses the essence of God and his action outside himself. The action of creation is then here a modality of God as creator. The process of continuous creation is God himself, inasmuch as he is a continual creator, and in this sense he is understood according to the mode of his immanence. By contrast, the mathematical order of nature translates the transcendence of God, whose divine rationality exceeds the order of this universe (Peacocke 1984: 64). This is a strong panentheism similar to that of Whitehead: the world is in God but there is, in spite of everything, more in God than in the world which is a defined divine modality (Peacocke 1984: 35). We can level the same criticism at him as we did at Whitehead. This panentheism is not a solution that allows for a distinction between the radical transcendence and immanence of God. The transcendence in question is that of a modality of being of God: a fundamental modality that transcends a consequent modality. But the two modalities are divine substance. We therefore remain in a pure immanence which is in fact a true pantheism because strong panentheism uses a concept of transcendence as a façade. It gives the illusion of transcendence, but it is only relative to two modalities of the same substance.

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The analogy of emergence is also to be criticised, but from another perspective. Although the communication of information at all levels of complexity is the option chosen by this work, the comparison with the downward causation of emergent phenomena is unfortunate because it gives the impression of a God who acts in competition with natural causation. God is numbered together with secondary causes and acts incognito on the whole world system by the introduction of information which is also translated by emergent phenomena. This idea is only acceptable in the context of a creation that is a partner of its own creative evolution. It is the only possible solution in order for divine causality not to be a juxtaposition but rather a collaboration by co-penetration. This ambiguity in Peacocke shows the lack of a metaphysical basis for his analogy. However, panentheism also poses some doctrinal questions to Christian faith, especially in its strong version.

9.4.4  Elements of a Critique of Panentheism Although this notion would seem to be of great interest for contemporary environmental ethics (cf. Zimmerman 1988: 23 and Bulkley 1991: 152: ‘Just like quantum physics, religious panentheism deplores the modern world’s violence against the environment as a crime against the spiritual power animating and permeating all the universe’), it must also be said that it presents a number of stumbling blocks with regard to Christian theology. Jacques Arnould sees in particular this panentheism as coming from the approach of the cosmic Christ, perfect image of the Father and author of creation, in the writings of Teilhard de Chardin, who is also known for his influence in the interreligious field and on the New Age movement (Arnould 1998: 257; see also McFague 1993: 140–141 for a panentheist interpretation of Teilhard). This doctrine is particularly present with the ex-Catholic theologian2 Matthew Fox, whose influence in New Age circles is very marked (Fox 1990: 26). For North American Christian ecofeminism, creation can even be understood as the body of God, a first incarnation of the Word (McFague 1993: vii); whereas for theologian Mark Wallace, creation is the embodiment of the Holy Spirit, and the ecological crisis is its passion (Wallace 2000). In as much as these aspects are concerned, the criticism is that of ambiguity in distinguishing between pantheism and strong panentheism, as we have just seen with Peacocke and Whitehead. All of this led the Pontifical Council for Culture jointly with the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue to specify in a recent report that panentheism appears strongly connected to the New Age, against which this report warns (Pontifical Council for Culture and Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue 2003). This ambiguity leads Michael Brierley to think that the scholastic approach is not panentheism (Brierley 2006: 639–640), precisely because for him ‘God’s presence’  Matthew Fox was a U.S. Dominican. Condemned by the Holy See on several occasions, he chose to become an Episcopalian in order to continue his theological and pastoral activities from a New Age perspective. See Introvigne 2005, 229–240. 2

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does not imply the relationship of substance implied by panentheism. One might think that the immanence of God in creation refers in the first instance to the classical idea of divine co-operation: the primary cause that activates, animates and supports the secondary causes and their activity (Frins 1907, col. 781). Thomas Aquinas, Suarez, and the contemporary Dominican theologian Jean-Michel Maldamé in their wake, have treated this in depth. As God works in all beings Thomas Aquinas thinks that it is normal for God to be in all things (Aquinas [1274] 2012: Q. 8, a. 1, sed contra). He is present in the mode of an agent with respect to that upon which it acts. And because of conservation, God acts on creatures. This presence of activity is therefore a presence at the heart of creaturely intimacy (Aquinas [1274] 2012: Q. 8, a. 1 resp.), an intimacy that allows thinking of the radical otherness of God and creation. ‘God is in things as containing things. However, by analogy with the corporeal world, it is said that all things are in God inasmuch as God contains them’ (Aquinas [1274] 2012: Q. 8, a. 1, ad 2). God is present through the three modes of power, presence, and essence, for nothing escapes divine power. As everything is subjected to providence, God is in all in the mode of presence, from which nothing escapes, and finally God is present in the mode of essence because he is the permanent cause of the existence of things without the divine essence’s being confused with created ones (Aquinas [1274] 2012: Q. 8, a. 2). Outside the scholastic perspective, John Polkinghorne joins John Haught in his refusal of panentheism for different reasons. Supporters of panentheism say that God is infinite and cannot be limited by something that is not him or not in him. Panentheists, as we have seen with Peacocke, think that creation is in God. Polkinghorne responds by appealing to the notion of the kenosis of God, who gives himself a limit in order to allow otherness to be for its own sake (Polkinghorne 2004: 96–97). The immanence of God in creation does not require the inclusion of panentheism. He thinks it is important to remember that God is present in, and acts for and with, his creature (Polkinghorne 2004: 98). But we must reply to Polkinghorne that this criticism insists too much on the analogy of spatiality that would be introduced into God. This represents an anthropomorphic approach to divinity. The line that is followed here is rather that of Hans Urs von Balthasar, who takes up the Thomistic approach in other terms. According to him, the presence of God is also expressed according to a dialectic of immanence and transcendence. According to Wisdom 43:27 f., God is in all his creation and his creation in him, but he is above all in a perfect otherness: ‘The more God must be in all things in order that they might exist, the more he is in them as him who is wholly other than them; the more immanent he is, the more transcendent he is’ (von Balthasar 2000: 89). This double movement therefore refers to the refusal of all pantheism and greatly relativizes strong panentheism to the point of rejecting it, thus removing ambiguity regarding the notion of transcendence. This invites us to look for a new model to express this dialectical relationship between transcendence and immanence, which could then be translated into a concept of ‘weak’ panentheism, but more accurately in order to honour the intuitions of Aubrey Moore.

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9.5  Divine Indwelling: Creation as oikos of the Holy Spirit 9.5.1  A Summary on Continuous Creation Below is a summary of the important elements for thinking about continuous creation as genuine creative activity inscribed within the time of creation. Based on the biblical tradition of a creation in the course of being organised, and on a Patristic tradition emphasising the non-cessation of God’s creation on the seventh day, but adding to the metaphysical system what it lacks for thinking about natural innovation, continuous creation can be affirmed thanks to six theological and philosophical pillars: • a creative act at two levels or moments (co-creation), one of which is timeless, by the procession of metaphysical principles from which temporally proceed an intelligible and sensible world in which novelty finds a status of creation; • at the metaphysical level, a modification of the concept of genre allowing us to think about the plasticity and mutability of timeless forms that express themselves through arrangement and the possible configuration/reconfiguration of metaphysical principles and organisational plans; • whose procession, by the action of the creator Spirit in the intelligible and sensible world, is realised in a contingent manner, according to a dialogue or creative partnership, an interaction between a divine creative act and a collaboration on the part of the creature; • a partnership, or collaboration, which takes the form of a selection, from which appropriate novelties, inscribed within metaphysical principles, can proceed; • a concept of novelty whose ontological consistency is achieved by the effect of interactions that link natural entities to one another in the context of networks of interaction at the ecological level; • the affirmation of the two axes of continuous creation, distinguishing the two main aims of creation: (1) to reflect the perfection of the Creator within diversity and its generation; (2) to bring about the creature that is capax Dei, radical novelty if ever there were, by the introduction of the image of God among creatures, making possible the Incarnation of the Divine Word (Revol 2017).

9.5.2  Relational Panentheism The panentheism that this work proposes to draw out from the concept of continuous creation is necessarily of the relational type, as this concept insists on the relationship of God with the creation, and the fact that creative action continues is an action of putting natural beings in interaction. It is articulated in six points that Denis Edwards offers for our reflection:

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• The Trinitarian dimension. The Trinity as a whole is creative according to the various modalities of the divine processions. Moreover, the Holy Spirit is the internal vivifier of creation, especially in its evolution. He is the actor, creating interactions. • As in Balthasar, the radical otherness of God makes it possible to understand his presence in all creatures. Transcendence presupposes immanence. God’s transcendence is radical in this kind of panentheism, but it is precisely this which allows him to be the most intimate element of the creature’s intimacy. • The spatial analogy for talking about panentheism is useful but quite limited. God in everything and everything in God must not be taken in the literal sense. • Creative action provides creatures with autonomy and integrity. God acts through all natural processes, making them autonomous. Therefore, • Creation is a free act of the self-limitation of power – and not of substance – on God’s part. This is the condition for creatures’ deployment of their potentialities within their limitations. • Finally, creation is a relationship that has as much influence on creatures as it does on God himself, to the extent that this relationship may cause the partial failure of the creative project (Edwards 2004: 200–201). God is immutable, but this does not mean that he is impassible. This approach insists on relationship, in agreement with what St. Thomas Aquinas says of the mode of presence of creation by relationship. The mode of presence by creation is therefore associated with the definition of creation as relationship (Maldamé 2011: 183–197). But for God, to be is to be in relationship and not to be alone. For Edwards there is thus an effect of God’s relational being on reality which also manifests itself as a place of relating (Edwards 2004: 204). But the creative relationship is particularly attributed to the Holy Spirit in his power of dynamisation and becoming (Edwards 2004: 203). ‘The Spirit of God is at work in evolutionary emergence whenever something radically new occurs, whenever nature reaches ecstatically beyond itself in the unfolding of the universe and in the dynamic story of life’ (Edwards 2004: 208–209). The Spirit makes novelty within time possible.

9.5.3  Panentheism of Indwelling The theme of the presence of the Creator God could still find a Trinitarian expression following Ps 103(4), especially through the mediation of the person of the Holy Spirit. The theme of the indwelling of the Spirit in creation then offers an alternative path to strong panentheism: God in all, and all in God, but God is never identifiable with all, nor is all a part of God (Moltmann 1997: 212). This theme of the indwelling of the Spirit has been particularly developed by Jürgen Moltmann. With him there is a move towards an ecological theology of divine indwelling and in particular of the Holy Spirit who animates creatures and, I would add, activates their desire for form and therefore acts as the donor of life and diversity within the creation. Through his Spirit, God himself is present in his cre-

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ation. Indwelling is a concept with ecological resonance. Ecology is the science of habitat. I therefore propose to conceive the presence of the Holy Spirit, continuous creator, in these terms. As for Edwards, this indwelling is based on relating, and through continuous creation, the Holy Spirit is in continual relationship with creation from various angles. First of all, this approach is in keeping with what John Scotus Eriugena says about the role of the Holy Spirit in relation to the primordial causes in his interpretation of Gn 1, 2. In the process of continuous creation, the Spirit activates the processions of primordial causes, like a bird warming its brood (Eriugena 1995: 554 B 324; Roques 1975: 179; Wohlman 1983: 246), in order to make them hatch into a variety of forms of beings in the world. The Spirit is thus in permanent relation with the order of metaphysical principles of creation which he infinitely reconfigures and which he makes proceed in intelligible and sensible existence. From a second angle, in the complementary model that I have just developed, the Spirit proposes to creation the possibilities of forms that, once validated by creation, can enter the phase of procession into the intelligible and sensible world. This is a mode of dialogical relationship between the Spirit and the creation. The Spirit is proposing novelty that is constantly renewed in order to satisfy the desire for form in creation. And from a third angle, the Spirit continues to make the configurations of primordial causes proceed in creation in order to preserve it. And in this sense, it is possible to reintroduce the traditional concept of conservation and divine concourse of scholastic theology. The immanence of the Spirit in creation is the means of Divine concourse through the continuity of the procession of primordial causes. This gives us the image of creation as the house of the Holy Spirit, or his habitat, his habitual ecological environment; except that the divine nature of the Spirit does not depend on the creative relationships that he sets in place, and this is the limit of the analogy of the ecological relationship for thinking about the immanence of the Spirit. However, with this last idea, I propose that we consider that God is present in the creation without confusing created and uncreated substances. This indwelling of God in his creation, and in particular this representation of the Holy Spirit activating the primordial causes for the welling up of novelty and their preservation, makes it possible to compare Gen 1: 2 with another biblical verse. St Paul did not necessarily have such a direct link in mind, but when he said to the Athenians, ‘In him we live, move and have our being’ (Acts 17: 28), we can understand that this is the work of the Spirit, supporting, vivifying and energising the continuous creation. I therefore appreciate and approve a form of weak panentheism in which God is present in the creation as his habitat through the mediation of his creative Holy Spirit, according to the suggestion of Pope Francis in paragraph 80 of Laudato si’.

Bibliography Aquinas, T. [1274] 2012. Summa Theologica Part I (‘Prima pars’). Altenmünster: Jazzybee Verlag. Arnould, J. 1998. La Théologie après Darwin. Paris: Cerf.

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Athanasius of Alexandria. 1973. Sur l’incarnation du Verbe/Oratio de incarnatione verbi (Coll. Sources chrétiennes 199), ed. C. Kannengiesser. Paris: Cerf. Augustine of Hippo. 1972. Œuvres de Saint Augustin, La Genèse au sens littéral en douze livres (Coll. Bibliothèque augustinienne 48–49), ed. P. Agaësse and A. Solignac. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer. Barbour, I. 1997. Religion and Science, Historical and Contemporary Issues. New York: Harper San Francisco. Brierley, M.W. 2004. Naming a Quiet Revolution: The Panentheistic Turn in Modern Theology. In In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God’s Presence in a Scientific World, ed. P. Clayton and A. Peacocke, 1–15. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ———. 2006. The Potential of Panentheism for Dialogue between Science and Religion. In The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science, ed. P. Clayton and Z. Simpson, 635–651. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bulkley, K. 1991. The Quest for Transformational Experience: Dreams and Environmental Ethics. Environmental Ethics 13: 151–163. Clayton, P. 2004. Panentheism in Metaphysical and Scientific Perspective. In In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God’s Presence in a Scientific World, ed. P. Clayton and A. Peacocke, 73–91. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ———. 2008. Adventures in the spirit: God, World, Divine Action. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Edwards, D. 2004. A Relational and Evolving Universe, Unfolding Within the Dynamism of the Divine Communion. In In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God’s Presence in a Scientific World, ed. P. Clayton and A. Peacocke, 199–210. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Eriugena, J.S. 1995. De la division de la nature, Periphyseon, Livre I La Nature incréée, Livre II La Nature créatrice créée. Introduction and notes by F. Bertin (Coll. Épiméthée, essais philosophiques). Paris: PUF. Fox, M. 1990. A Mystical Cosmology: Toward a Postmodern Spirituality. In Sacred Interconnections, ed. D.R. Griffin, 15–33. Albany: SUNY. Francis, Pope. 2014. Apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium. Vatican City: Vatican Press. ———. 2015. Encyclical Letter Laudato si’ of the Holy Father Francis on Care for Our Common Home. Vatican City: Vatican Press. Frins, V. 1907. Concours divin. Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique. Vol. 3, 781–796. Paris: Letouzé et Ané, col. Gregersen, N.H. 2004. Three varieties of Panentheism. In In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God’s Presence in a Scientific World, ed. P. Clayton and A. Peacocke, 19–35. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Griffin, D.R. 2008. Whitehead’s Naturalism and a Non-Darwinian View of Evolution. In Back to Darwin: A Richer Account of Evolution, ed. J.B. Cobb Jr., 364–390. Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans Publishing Company. Haeckel, E. 1866. Generelle Morphologie der Organismen, allgemeine Grundzüge des organischen Formen-Wissenschaft, mechanisch begründet durch die von Charles Darwin reformierte Deszendenz-Theorie. Vol. 2. Berlin: Reimer. ———. 1902. Les énigmes de l’univers, Comment se posent les énigmes de l’Univers. Origine et descendance de l’homme. Développement de l’Univers. Commencement et fin du monde. Croyance et Superstition. Science et Christianisme. Anathème du pape contre la Science. Fautes de la morale chrétienne. État, École et Église. Solution des Énigmes de l’Univers, French translation C. Bos. Paris: Schleicher Frères. ———. 1906. Religion et évolution, trois conférences faites à Berlin les 14, 16 et 19 avril 1906, French translation C. Bos. Paris: Schleicher Frères. Introvigne, M. 2005. Le New Âge des origines à nos jours, courants, mouvements, personnalités, translated from Italian to French by P. Baillet. Paris: Devry. Krause, K.C.F. 1829. Vorlesung über die Grundwahrheiten der Wissenschaft. Göttingen: Dietrich.

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Maldamé, J.M. 2011. Création par évolution, Science, philosophie et théologie, Coll. Théologies. Paris: Cerf. McFague, S. 1993. The Body of God: An Ecological Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Moltmann, J. [1985] 1997. God in Creation: An Ecological Doctrine of Creation. Trans. M. Kohl. London: SCM Press. Moore, A. [1889] 1890. The Christian Doctrine of God. In Lux Mundi, ed. C.  Gore. London: Murray. Pascal, B. [1670] 2003. Pensées, ed. P. Sellier (Coll. Agora). Paris: Pocket. Peacocke, A. 1984. Intimations of Reality, Critical Realism in Science and Realism, The Mendenhall Lectures, 1983. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. ———. 1989. Theology and Science Today. In Cosmos as Creation: Theology and Science in Consonance, ed. T. Peters, 28–43. Nashville: Abingdon Press. ———. 2004. Evolution, the Disguised Friend of Faith: Selected Essays. Philadelphia/London: Templeton Foundation Press. Peters, T. 2002. God  – The World’s Future: Systematic Theology for a New Era. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Peters, T., and M. Hewlett. 2003. Evolution from Creation to New Creation, Conflict, Conversation, and Convergence. Nashville: Abingdon Press. Pius, Pope, IX. 1864. Syllabus, or Catalogue of Errors Which Have Been Condemned in Various Declarations by Pius IX. Vatican City: Vatican Press. Polkinghorne, J. [1994] 1997. Science and Christian Belief: Theological Reflection of a Bottom up Thinker. London: SPCK. ———. 2004. Science and the Trinity: The Christian Encounter with Reality. London: SPCK. Pontifical Council for Culture and Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. 2003. Jesus Christ The Bearer of the Water of Life: A Christian Reflection on the ‘New Age’. Sydney: St Paul’s Publications. Revol, F. 2017. Théologie de la création continuée. Revue des Sciences Religieuses 91 (2): 251–367. Roques, R. 1975. Libres sentiers vers l’érigénisme. Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo. Spinoza, B. 1954. Court traité. In Œuvres complètes, Coll. La Pléiade, 108. Paris: Gallimard. Theophilus of Antioch. 1948. Trois Livres à Autolychus (Coll. Sources Chrétiennes 20). J. Sender and G. Bardy, eds. Paris: Cerf. von Balthasar, H.U. 2000. La Vérité est symphonique, aspects du pluralisme chrétien. S. Maur: Parole et Silence. Wallace, M.I. 2000. The Wounded Spirit as the Basis for Hope in an Age of Radical Ecology. In Christianity and Ecology, ed. D.T. Hessel and R. Radford Ruether, 51–72. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ward, K. 2004. The World as the Body of God. In In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God’s Presence in a Scientific World, ed. P. Clayton and A. Peacocke, 62–73. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Wohlman, A. 1983. L’Homme et le sensible dans la pensée de Jean Scot Érigène. Revue Thomiste LXXXIII: 243–273. York, M. [2005] 2008. Pantheism. In Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, vol. 2, ed. B. R. Taylor. London/New York: Continuum. Zimmerman, M.E. 1988. Quantum Theory, Intrinsic Value, and Panentheism. Environmental Ethics 10: 3–30. Fabien Revol is the current director of The Interdisciplinary Center for Ethics, holder of the Jean Bastaire Chair on integral ecology, and the assistant coordinator of the Chair on Science and Religion. He is a member of the ESSSAT council, and an ISSR fellow. He is interested in theology of creation and ecotheology. He has recently published several works including: Avec Laudato si’, devenir acteur d’écologie intégrale (Lyon, Peuple libre, 2017), and Penser l’écologie dans la Tradition Catholique (Genève, Labor et Fides, 2019).

Chapter 10

Revisioning the Anthropocene in a Trinitarian Frame: A Theological Response to Clive Hamilton’s Defiant Earth Ian Barns

Abstract  Australian public intellectual Clive Hamilton has been an active contributor to recent debates about the naming, timing and appropriate responses to the advent of the Anthropocene. Whilst in his recent book Defiant Earth Hamilton demonstrates an awareness of theological dimensions of this escalating planetary crisis, in the end he considers that mainstream theology has little to contribute to enabling an effective response. In this paper I argue that it is his presumption of what Charles Taylor has characterised as the ‘immanent frame’ of secular humanism that prevents him from engaging seriously with an alternative theological vision, particularly in relation to the challenge that the ongoing ‘technologisation of the world’ (manifest most notably in the rapid diffusion of the digital economy as well as in the anthropocenic modification of the earth system) poses for the taken-for-granted immanent frame itself. In response I argue that a constructive theological response to the issues Hamilton raises is to articulate an alternative ‘Trinitarian frame’ (tentatively explored by Taylor in A Secular Age). Keywords  Anthropocene · Divine ‘creation project’ · Earth systems science · Clive Hamilton · Immanent frame · Charles Taylor · Theopolitical imagination · Trinitarian frame

10.1  Introduction Ever since Paul Crutzen exclaimed at a conference in Mexico in 2000: ‘we are no longer in the Holocene: we are in the Anthropocene’ the challenges posed by the impact of human development on the earth system have become a major focus for scientific research and for wider inter-disciplinary discussion. Whilst similar notions

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had been canvassed previously, Crutzen’s assertion has been the catalyst for globally coordinated earth systems science investigations (Angus 2016) and for a range of critical commentary by philosophers, social scientists, historians – and theologians. One of the key contributors to this wider debate has been Australian public intellectual Clive Hamilton. Hamilton has been a forthright participant in several debates about the meaning of the proposed Anthropocene with several books, including Requiem for a Species (2010), Earthmasters (2013) and most recently Defiant Earth (2017), as well as high profile engagement in debates about the notion of a ‘good anthropocene’. Hamilton’s contributions have been distinguished by his close attention to the development of earth systems science and an open-ness to the deeper theological and metaphysical issues raised by the advent of the Anthropocene. However whilst Hamilton gestures towards a theological perspective in Defiant Earth he is ultimately dismissive of Christian theology. I suggest that he does so because he remains embedded within what Charles Taylor has called ‘the immanent frame’ of contemporary western modernity and is thus closed to the possibilities of an alternative ‘transcendent frame’: an alternative explored somewhat tentatively by Taylor in the final chapter of his book A Secular Age. Following Taylor, in this paper I outline a ‘Trinitarian frame’ implicit in Taylor’s discussion and briefly discuss its incorporation of ecological challenges over the past half century, before reflecting on how it might shape theological responses to the emergent challenges of the Anthropocene identified by Hamilton.

10.2  The Major Themes of Defiant Earth In Defiant Earth Hamilton certainly makes some strong claims. He argues that the advent of the Anthropocene, as conceptualised by the coalescing of earth system sciences, represents a major (epochal!) rupture in both the earth system itself and in the project of modernity that is responsible for this rupture, particularly with respect to its entrenched dualism between nature and culture. Hamilton is dismissive of the responses of both hyper-technological modernists and ecocentric greens. He also argues that we need to embrace a ‘new anthropocentrism’ that, whilst it disavows the anthropocentrism that sees nature only in relation to human interests, recognises the pivotal role that humanity as a ‘super agent’ must now play in navigating a radically humanised planet. To support this we need a new human ontology, which overcomes the transcendentalism of enlightenment humanism and fully recognises that we are the emergent products of the immanent potentialities of matter realised through the increasing complexity of material forms. It also requires a new story (beyond that of enlightenment modernity) that locates our present human condition within the larger context of planetary history. Finally, in the face of the daunting challenge posed by the advent of the Anthropocene, Hamilton fears that we (as a collective ‘super agent’) lack the ethical and spiritual resources needed to sustain the deep cultural, political and technological changes needed for a peaceful transition.

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10.3  Critical Questions These are big claims and whilst provoking various criticisms they have helped to open up a productive inter-disciplinary dialogue about the deeper meanings of, and appropriate responses to, the advent of the Anthropocene. Some of the critical questions needing further exploration include: ∗ Does Hamilton confuse epistemological and ontological issues when he links the advent of the Anthropocene itself with the emergence of earth system science? ∗ In his appeal to the authority of earth system science and his dismissal of social constructivism, does Hamilton lack a sufficiently hermeneutical approach that can better articulate the relationship between science and its social contexts? ∗ Does he overstate the extent to which the Anthropocene represents a displacement of, rather than a shift within, the culture of technological modernity? ∗ Does his focus on humanity as a super agent blur the differentiated responsibility of different nations and classes? ∗ Do his ‘Irenaean’ reflections on human freedom adequately address the moral predicament of late modernity, including the depth of human evil driving the world towards the edge of destruction? ∗ In his discussion of the spiritual and ethical resources needed, why has he failed to consider the perspective of virtue ethics and its institutional expressions? There are two further questions that I suggest are particularly relevant for theological engagement with Hamilton’s account of the Anthropocene. The first is Hamilton’s account of the role of technology. On the one hand he is clearly aware of the need to go beyond a purely instrumental view of technology and to recognise the imaginative power of the ‘technocratic paradigm’ (with reference to Laudato Si’). Yet on the other he doesn’t adequately address the unfolding ontological nihilism inherent in the progressive ‘technologising of everything’ most dramatically evident in the Anthropocene and in the roll out of pervasive digital technology. There is now a considerable literature (including theological literature) on this point, much of it drawing on Heidegger’s account of ‘the question of technology’ (Heidegger 1977; Thiele 1995: 192–204). As Neil Turnbull observes: In the 20th century technology emerged as a taken-for-granted background to many traditional forms of human life. As such, it formed a new habitus that was formative of attitude and character and became the basis for the emergence of ‘the new man’ of Henry Ford and his Marxist celebrants. By these lights, at the beginning of the 21st century we can see that our century will almost certainly be the first century of ‘ubiquitous technology’, the era when technics becomes universalised for the first time as the new measure of all things. Although the overall philosophical significance of this shift remains unclear what does seem readily discernible is that it signifies that the older Kantian a priori (of the modern transcendental subject) is now emerging as a technical a priori; and as it becomes prior rather than posterior to human action modern technology presents itself as a transforming ontology that takes human thought action away from the simple instrumentalities and practicalities of mundane tool use. As something transcendental rather than empirical, as what conditions rather than as a simple condition, modern technics has emerged as a basis for a new sense of history as an ordered chaos of accelerating technologically-conditioned

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events, a history where cultural value is increasingly measured in terms of modern technology’s ability to create new senses of transcendence associated with speed, power and precision (Turnbull 2015: 9–10).

The second question is why, given Hamilton’s open-ness to religious transcendence particularly evident in Requiem for a Species (2013) and in various subsequent occasional essays, is he so dismissive of a Christian vision, notwithstanding his significant engagement with theological ideas in Defiant Earth?

10.4  C  harles Taylor and the Importance of ‘Interpretive Frameworks’ In response to this latter puzzle I want to draw on Charles Taylor’s account of ‘inescapable frameworks’ in Sources of the Self (1989: 3f) and social imaginaries in A Secular Age (2007: 171f). In his interpretation of modern secularity in A Secular Age Taylor probes beyond ‘secularisation’ as a decline of religious belief and practice and the separation of church and state to focus on the shift in what he calls ‘the conditions of belief’ in which the once taken for granted centrality of God has been replaced by the immanent frame of secular humanism: a social imaginary centred on the notion of human autonomy and embedded assumptions of a disenchanted world, a buffered self, a contract view of society, and a linear view of time (2007: 542). Taylor’s approach helps us to both appreciate the depth of modern secularity, inasmuch as the deeply embedded immanent frame constitutes the taken-for-granted setting for believers and non-believers alike (2007: 594), and yet to also recognise the continuing ‘eruption’ of the collective desire for transcendence within seemingly radically secularised cultures (2007: 530). His genealogical account of the emergence and diffusion of the immanent frame is also useful in challenging the widely held ‘subtractionist’ claim that this has been the result of the triumph of secular reason (2007: 22, 157, 573), although his claim that the imaginative beginnings of the emergence of the immanent frame are to be found within a reform movement within Christendom itself have been challenged by various historians (Jager 2010; Butler 2010; Sheehan 2010). What is not clear in Taylor’s account of our modern secular condition is whether he simply wants to defend a place for religion  – or transcendental experience  – within the hegemonic conditions of the immanent frame, or whether he wants to open up the possibility of an alternative frame centred on a renewed vision of the transcendental sources of life and being. It is only after arguing that inhabiting the immanent frame does not necessarily entail a commitment to the closed world system of exclusive humanism (2007: 555f) that Taylor rather tentatively explores efforts to imagine an alternative ‘transcendent frame’ (2007: 729f). I suggest that in accepting the hegemony of the immanent frame, Taylor also fails to adequately recognise the ontological significance of modern technology and in particular the ways in which the ongoing technologising of the world, evident in both the advent

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of the Anthropocene and an emerging techno post-humanism (Allenby and Sarewitz 2011), makes visible the deep nihilism of the immanent frame of technological modernity (Brassier 2007). Recognising this makes reframing modernity beyond the immanent frame not a utopian possibility but an urgent task.

10.5  T  he Recovery and Renewal of an Alternative ‘Trinitarian Frame’ Of course, the task of re-imagining modernity within an alternative theological frame has been an important strand of the theological enterprise for some time. In recent years it has been actively pursued by a range of contemporary theologians, which includes (among others) those associated with ressourcement Catholic theology and the Communio journal (Schindler 1996); the so-called radical orthodoxy network associated with John Milbank, Graham Ward and Catherine Pickstock (Milbank et al. 1999); the post-liberal approach to Christian social and political ethics promoted by Stanley Hauerwas, and drawing in particular on the thought of John Howard Yoder (Berkman and Cartwright 2001; Weaver et  al. 2014); and various neo-Kuyperians such as James K. A. Smith (2009, 2017) and others with links to the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. What these diverse theologians have in common is the way they want to contest the presumed epistemic primacy of the ‘secular’ and to recover an alternative vision of reality grounded in a Trinitarian specification of the unseen Creator God (Marshall 2000). Following Taylor, I shall describe this project as one of recovering the ‘Trinitarian frame’ integral to Christian faith (cf. Torrance 2015). As such this frame is best understood, not as a ‘worldview’ but as a theological imaginary (Smith 2009: 63) involving three inter-dependent elements: the story (or theodrama) of salvation that unfolds in the Scriptures (Bauckham 2003); the embodied interpretation of this story within the practices of ecclesial life (Buxton 2007; Sanders 2010); and the traditions of doctrinal formulation which guide the process of ongoing improvisory narration (Bockmuehl and Torrance 2008). An important exemplar, in my view, of the recovery of the Trinitarian frame grounded in Bible’s big story that reflects the balance between immersion in the narrative text, ecclesial embodiment and doctrinal reflection has been N. T. Wright (1991, 2016).

10.6  I nterpreting the Ongoing Development of ‘Modernity’ Within a Trinitarian Frame The Trinitarian frame of Christian faith has never been dogmatically self-enclosed but has always been articulated through an outgoing improvisory engagement with the diverse worlds in which it has been incarnated (Torrance 2015). This of course has been particularly true in the context of western modernity, as the people of God

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have been challenged by developments in scientific understanding, economic and technological progress, and dramatic shifts in social and cultural life, including fundamental conceptions of human selfhood and community. The ongoing communal narration of God’s story has involved the judicious assimilation of these changes: in the reading of the central story, in the shape of its ecclesial embodiment and in doctrinal adaptation.

10.7  R  esponding to the Multi-level Challenge of the Ecological Crisis Over the past half-century, the ecological crisis has posed a major challenge to the Christian movement’s interpretation of the Bible’s story, particularly in relation to the effective marginalisation of (and implicit disregard for) ‘creation’ by the predominant focus on human salvation. In responding to this challenge many have focused on the (re-) interpretation of the Genesis dominion mandate. Others have developed an alternative creation-centred theology. In my view, the response that has been most faithful to the Trinitarian frame of the gospel has been to recover the integral place of ‘creation’ within the theodrama of salvation: an approach exemplified by (e.g.) Paul Santmire, Ernst Conradie, Richard Bauckham, Jürgen Moltmann, Celia Deane-Drummond, Dennis Edwards and many others (Conradie et al. 2014).

10.8  The Narrative Vision of an Eco-Trinitarian Frame Following the example of Conradie et al. I suggest that the challenge of ecology has been a catalyst to recover the broader vision of the unseen Creator God’s ‘creation project’ encompassing, though not restricted to, human beings (Conradie 2008). This creation project is marked by the following key elements: ∗ The key to this project is the figure of Jesus, who through the tumultuous events of his life, death, resurrection and ascension is disclosed not only as the long-­ expected Messiah of the covenant people of Israel and the true ‘lord’ of all peoples, but also as the embodiment of that creative divine action that brought into being and continues to sustain all of creation (Colossians 1; John 1; Blowers 2012; Gregersen 2015); and also the one through whom the creation project will in the fullness of time be ultimately realised. ∗ The Christ event thus underpins and discloses the fundamental theological terms in which we understand the nature and purpose of created reality: its sacramental ontology (Boersma 2011), teleological open-ness (Gunton 1993) and eschatological promise (Moltmann 2009). In particular, the evident entropic and creative

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dynamism of the world of matter, space and time is best understood in terms of a teleological open-ness towards its ultimate perfection rather than its ‘fallen-­ ness’ resulting from human sin. ∗ Within the drama of the divine economy, humans have been given the honour of being the ‘image-bearers’ (or a ‘royal priesthood’) of the Creator God and in so doing have the task of shaping the created world as a dwelling place (as ‘temple’) for the realisation of the divine glory (Middleton 2009). In the providence of God the historical outworking of this vocation has entailed a fraught drama framed within the opposing paradigmatic figures of an autonomy asserting ‘Adam’ and the Creator-worshipping Jesus (Philippians 2). ∗ The death, resurrection, ascension of Jesus and the subsequent outpouring of the Spirit is the pivotal moment in which the destructive violence of the dark powers unleashed by Adam’s way of being human is overcome and the capacity of humans to live out their creational vocation is restored. ∗ The subsequent historical unfolding of the divine creation project ‘after Pentecost’ is characterised by the entangling dialectic (both creative and conflictual) between the re-constituted people of God (no longer restricted to the people of Israel but now anticipating an inclusive reconciled human and more than human world (Romans 8: 19f)) and the diverse communities, polities, economies and ecologies in which they have found themselves. ∗ The unfolding of the divine creation project in human history is thus neither merely conservative, nor one of steady progress to its intended goal. Rather it is intrinsically disruptive and revolutionary, characterised by the escalating conflict between the deeply entangled opposing cities of God and Man (Ellul 1970). Arguably the eventual realisation of the divine purpose will not be by an escape of the saints from the apocalyptic climax of this conflict but through it, and in which it will be the faithfulness of the crucified one (and his people) that ultimately prevails. ∗ The promise of a renewed creation or renewed heaven and earth in which the disfiguring effects of Adam’s rebellion are overcome in some kind of resurrection life remains the horizon of Christian hope. Of course what this means in relation to the ultimate destiny of this material world of which we are a part is hard to imagine, in particular whether it involves the realisation of the still latent possibilities of transcendence within the creation itself or a further sovereign act of the triune Creator God. Of course any doctrinally-based re-narration of the Biblical theodrama is only one dimension of the task of renewing a Trinitarian frame. What is particularly crucial is that it is ‘made flesh’ in and through the eco-praxis of the people of God (cf. Jenkins 2008): both in the ‘gathering’ for eucharistic worship and in the ‘scattering’ of everyday ‘image-bearing’ lives within the structures of our late modern world (Emeleus 2016; Buxton 2007; Sanders 2010).

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10.9  R  esponding to the Critical Challenges Posed by the Anthropocene in a Trinitarian Frame There is a long way to go before this kind of eco-Trinitarian frame becomes the embodied theological imaginary of the contemporary Christian movement. Yet the advent of the Anthropocene both increases the urgency of doing so and also deepens the challenge of the ecological crisis in the ways helpfully identified by Hamilton in Defiant Earth. In the following brief reflections it is important to remember, in the light of the inherently eschatological orientation of a Trinitarian frame, that our task as Christians is in the first instance not to find ‘solutions’ (Yoder 1984) but to embody a creative engagement in and through our narratively-based ecclesial life (Emeleus 2016), whilst at the same time recognising that in the unfolding drama of post-Pentecost human history the incarnate presence of the kingdom continues to both disrupt and to heal the ordering of human affairs (O’Donovan 1999). ∗ A cosmological challenge: The dominant theme of the ecology movement over the past half-century has been that we need to see ourselves as embedded within the web of life and to respect and protect the integrity of threatened ecological systems. The advent of the Anthropocene reinforces this, but also locates us within a larger geological and cosmological horizon. In so doing it confronts us more forcibly, not just with a disrupted global ecology, but with our insignificance within a universe that is incomprehensively vast in space and time (Davies 2016) and with the fact that that we are the contingent products of a seemingly profligate and purposeless cosmic and biological evolutionary processes. This challenge to human significance is tempered by the diffusion of an emergentist world view that points to a very different understanding of materiality itself (cf. Torrance 2005) and which has prompted the development of ‘big history’ accounts that seek to integrate human history within the larger history of an evolving cosmos (Christian 2011). These cosmological challenges have of course long been the focus of rich reflection and debate within scholarly theology and science circles. Perhaps the most prominent advocates for a progressive evolutionary cosmology have been Thomas Berry and his contemporary interpreters Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim. More recently and in response to the ‘big history’ project, Ted Peters (2017) and John Haught (2017) have also taken up the challenge of locating human affairs within the larger narrative of cosmic history. Others, most notably Lisa Sideris, have been much more critical of the ‘sacralising’ of the epic of evolution and of the ‘big history’ project (Sideris 2015a, b; Hesketh 2014). However, these scholarly discussions have had limited impact at the level of congregational life where either fundamentalist or NOMA responses prevail, severely inhibiting the ongoing development of a biblical ‘cosmic imaginary’ integral to the Christian drama. Perhaps a fruitful way of overcoming this is through a clearer recognition of how the larger cosmic frame expressed in Genesis 1 and elsewhere actually functions within the covenantal ordering of the people of God (Enns 2012). As well being more faithful to the way in which the Bible’s story actually

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works, this also points to the need to engage with our contemporary cosmic challenge within the particular places and circumstances in which a congregation is situated: a ‘grounded-ness’ exemplified by Australian writer Ann McGrath in her approach to big history through engagement with the recognition of long-term indigenous habitation of this continent (McGrath 2015). ∗ An anthropological challenge: For Hamilton the advent of the Anthropocene both reinforces the need not only for a post-Cartesian (and post-enlightenment) recognition of our ecological embeddedness both practically and ontologically, but also for assuming our crucial role as a collective humanity (a ‘super agent’). As I have indicated earlier, a parallel shift has been taking place in eco-­theological thinking in terms of what it means to be ‘formed in the image of God’, such that the traditional notions of ontological distinctiveness have been modified by a focus on our particular calling within the community of created beings to be God’s image-­ bearers (Wright 2010; Moritz 2013): a shift in theological anthropology that also foregrounds our ontological continuity with the wider world of living things (Deane-­ Drummond 2012). Hamilton’s argument about the special responsibility of humans within the Anthropocene helps to draw out what is implicit in this shift: the inherently technological nature of human being (Graham 2006), and thus to recognise that technological world-building is central rather than peripheral to our human vocation as God’s image-bearers (cf. Drees 2002). This has significant implications for the ways in which the diverse practices of ‘ordinary’ Christians in their everyday domestic and professional lives might be re-imagined more sacramentally (Borgmann 1992; Gaillardetz 2000) and thus be able to counter the pervasive technologisation of life that lies at the heart of the pathology of the Anthropocene. ∗ A geo-political challenge: Hamilton’s argument about the responsibility of ‘humanity’ as a ‘super agent’ both for producing the emergence of the Anthropocene and for collective adaptive responses has been criticised for blurring the particular responsibility of the affluent capitalist west (should it be called a ‘Capitalocene’?). Yet the practical reality is that some more effective form of global governance beyond the present UN system is urgently needed, perhaps building on the UNFCCC and UNSDG processes and the Future Earth-based proposals for ‘earth governance’ (Griggs et al. 2013) and framed within a more genuinely cooperative ‘global imaginary’ (Pope Francis 2015). This is a daunting challenge, not only because of the gridlock of the present system of global governance, but also because of the tectonic shifts taking place within the US-centred post-WW II international order (McCoy 2018). We don’t need ecotheologians to remind us that a global imaginary is an integral aspect of Trinitarian faith. Indeed, the outworking of the global vision of the gospel has been an important feature of the Christian movement, particularly over the past two centuries (Walls 1996; Jenkins 2011). Yet the constructive witness of this missionary-­driven Christian globalism has been undermined and inhibited by: the legacy of past conflicts within Christendom (Radner 2012); the problematic association of various Christian traditions with European colonialism and, in our

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more post-colonial times, with expressions of reactionary nationalism; and the de-­ politicising interpretation of the gospel that has meant accommodation to, rather than prophetic witness against, vested interests that impede ‘the care of our common home’ (Eggemeier 2014; Pope Francis 2015). This means that the development of a post-colonial ‘theopolitical imagination’ within congregational life will need to go beyond support for traditional forms of ‘overseas missions’ to address the constructive task of shaping a more equitable and ecologically sustainable world order (Cavanaugh 2003; Waalkes 2010). This may seem to be too abstract for parochially oriented congregants, yet it doesn’t take much to become aware of the deep entanglement of our everyday lives in the present global system: for example in the endemic presence of exploitative supply chains in the production of the array of consumer goods we take for granted. Perhaps deeper engagement with these issues can be the catalyst for a re-discovery of the anti-imperial nature of the global kingdom of our crucified lord. ∗An ethical/moral challenge: Along with many others, Hamilton rightly highlights the critical importance of the moral and ethical resources needed to motivate and sustain an emerging global civil society able to catalyse an effective response to the Anthropocene. I suggested that in going beyond his inadequate response we needed to consider two critically important issues: the discursive and institutional conditions needed to foster the development of (eco-) civic virtues (Dobson and Bell 2005); and what to make of the increasing nihilistic destructiveness of endemic human evil. With respect to the second issue, many Christians still view ‘sin’ in moralistic and individualistic terms and are thus blind to the entrenched systems of evil that have their deeper roots in the idolatrous failure to honour and worship the triune Creator God, the consequent distortion of humanity’s vocation, and the significance of the death of Jesus as the overcoming of the ‘dark powers’ of human history and the liberating restoration of this vocation (Wright 2016). With respect to the first, despite the renewed theological focus on the ecclesial development of the virtues (Hauerwas 1981; Wright 2010; Fitzmaurice 2016; Williams 2011), the theological emphasis placed on being saved by grace alone and the clerically-centred nature of ecclesial community has inhibited the intentional fostering of ecclesial virtue, both personal and political, in much of the Christian movement. ∗ An existential challenge: There is a very real possibility that the advent of the Anthropocene, manifested in runaway climate change and collapsing aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, will be a catalyst for the collapse of industrial civilisation (Tonn and Don MacGregor 2009). Whilst the dominant discourse continues to be optimistic about humanity’s collective capability to adapt, there are also many who believe that some form of civilisational collapse is now inevitable (Ophuls 2012; Motesharrei et al. 2014; Ahmed 2010; Oreskes and Conway 2014; Wallace-­ Wells 2017). Whilst many recognise that we live in a time of increasing ‘existential risk’ (Bostrom 2001; Spratt and Dunlop 2018), of course no one can be sure about what

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lies ahead: whether global civilisation will collapse, and what forms of post-­collapse human habitation might emerge. Neither is it clear as to how to respond to the dreadful prospect of an impending ‘perfect storm’ that may destroy the conditions of civilised life. Most continue to hope and work for a successful ecological transition whilst others advocate preparing for a post-civilisation world (cf. Monbiot and Kingsnorth 2009). Notwithstanding significant theological reflection on ‘what lies ahead’ (Skrimshire 2010), neither of the main popular Christian responses to the prospect of civilisational collapse – a fundamentalism that welcomes the apocalypse as the gateway to the return of Christ and the rapture of the saints, or a complacent providentialism that assures us that God is in control – are at all helpful. By contrast, the vision of a Trinitarian frame finds hope in the unfolding biblical theodrama with its escalating ‘apocalyptic’ conflict between the presence of Christ’s kingdom and the reactive dark powers in which God’s kingdom will prevail, not by escape from a ruined earth, nor by divine intervention from above, but through the ongoing faithful and suffering witness of the people of God continuing to make present the triumph of the crucified (Moltmann 1974).

Bibliography Allenby, B., and D. Sarewitz. 2011. The Technohuman condition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Angus, I. 2016. Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System. New York: Monthly Press. Bauckham, R. 2003. Reading Scripture as a Coherent Story. In The Art of Reading Scripture, ed. E. Davis, 38–53. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Berkman, J., and M. Cartwright. 2001. The Hauerwas Reader. Durham: Duke University Press. Blowers, P. 2012. Drama of the Divine Economy: Creator and Creation in Early Christian Piety. New York: Oxford University Press. Bockmuehl, M., and A. Torrance, eds. 2008. Scripture’s Doctrine and Theology’s Bible: How the New Testament Shapes Christian Dogmatics. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. Boersma, H. 2011. Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Borgmann, A. 1992. Crossing the Postmodern Divide. London: University of Chicago Press. Brassier, R. 2007. Nihil Bound: Enlightenment and Extinction. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Butler, J. 2010. Disquieted history in a secular age. In Varieties of secularism in a secular age, ed. M. Warner, J. VanAntwerpen, and C. Calhoun, 193–216. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Buxton, G. 2007. The Trinity, Creation and Pastoral Ministry: Imaging the Perichoretic God. Eugene: Wipf and Stock. Cavanaugh, W. 2003. Theopolitical Imagination: Christian Practices of Space and Time. Bloomsbury: T&T Clark. Christian, D. 2011. Maps of time: An introduction to big history. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Conradie, E. 2003. An ecological moral to the story of the universe? http://www.angelfire.com/ct3/ uctrs/conradieanecologicalmoral.html. Accessed 5 April 2012. ———. 2004. Towards an Ecological Biblical Hermeneutics: A Review Essay on the Earth Bible Project. Scriptura 85: 123–135.

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———. 2008. The Earth in God’s Economy: Reflections on the Narrative of God’s Work. Scriptura 97: 13–36. Conradie, E., S. Bergnann, C. Deane-Drummond, and D. Edwards, eds. 2014. Christian Faith and the Earth: Current Paths and Emerging Horizons in Ecotheology. London: T&T Clark. Crutzen, P., and E. Stoermer. 2000. The Anthropocene. IGBP Newsletter 41 (May): 17–18. Davies, J. 2016. The Birth of the Anthropocene. Oakland: University of California Press. Deane-Drummond, C. 2012. God’s Image and Likeness in Humans and Other Animals: Performative Soul-Making and Graced Nature. Zygon 47 (4): 1–15. Dobson, A., and D. Bell, eds. 2005. Environmental Citizenship. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Drees, W. 2002. “Playing God? Yes!” Religion in the Light of Technology. Zygon 37 (3): 643–654. Eggemeier, M. 2014. A Sacramental-Prophetic Vision: Christian Spirituality in a Suffering World. Collegeville: Liturgical Press. Ellul, J. 1970. The Meaning of the City. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Emeleus, T. 2016. Divine and Human Creativity and the Blessing and Curse of Fossil Carbon. Unpublished PhD thesis, Charles Sturt University. Enns, P. 2012. The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say About Human Origins. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Fitzmaurice, J. 2016. Virtue Ecclesiology: An Exploration in The Good Church. London: Routledge. Francis, Pope. 2015. Laudato Si: On the Care of Our Common Home. Encyclical Letter of the Supreme Pontiff. Rome: Vatican Publishing. Gaillardetz, R. 2000. Transforming Our Days: Spirituality, Community and Liturgy in a Technological Culture. New York: Crossroad Publishing. Graham, E. 2006. In Whose Image? Representations of Technology and the ‘Ends’ of Humanity. Ecotheology 11 (2): 159–182. Gregersen, N. 2003. From Complexity to Life: On the Emergence of Life and Meaning. Oxford: OUP. ———. 2015. Incarnation: On the Scope and Depth of Christology. Augsburg: Fortress Press. Griggs, D., M. Stafford-Smith, O. Gaffney, J. Rockstrom, M. Ohman, P. Shyamsundar, G. Glaser, N. Kanie, and I. Noble. 2013. Sustainable Development Goals for People and Planet. Nature 495: 305–307. Guardini, R. 1994. Letters from Lake Como: Explorations on Technology and the Human Race. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Gunton, C. 1993. The One, the Tree and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hamilton, C. 2010. Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change. Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin. ———. 2013. Earthmasters: Playing God with the Climate. Crows Nest. Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin. ———. 2017. Defiant Earth: The Fate of Humans in the Anthropocene. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hauerwas, S. 1981. A Community of Character, Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethics. South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press. Haught, J.  2017. The New Cosmic Story: Inside Our Awakening Universe. New Haven: Yale University Press. Heidegger, M. 1977. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. New York: Harper and Row. Hesketh, I. 2014. The Story of Big History. History of the Present 4 (2): 171–202. Jager, C. 2010. This detail: This history: Charles Taylor’s romanticism. In Varieties of secularism in a secular age, ed. M. Warner, J. VanAntwerpen, and C. Calhoun, 166–192. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Jenkins, W. 2008. Ecologies of Grace: Environmental Ethics and Christian Theology. New York: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, P. 2011. The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Marshall, B. 2000. Trinity and Truth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McCoy, A., 2018. The Hidden Meaning of American Decline. Tom Despatch, May 22. http://www. tomdispatch.com/blog/176426/. Accessed 22 May 2018. McGrath, A. 2015. Deep Histories in Time, or Crossing the Great Divide? In Long History, Deep Time: Deepening the Histories of Place, ed. A. McGrath and M.A. Jebb, 1–31. Canberra: ANU Press. Middleton, R. 2009. The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Milbank, J., C.  Pickstock, and G.  Ward. 1999. Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology. London: Routledge. Moltmann, J. 1974. The Crucified God. London: SCM Press. ———. 2009. Sun of Righteousness Arise: God’s Future for Humanity and the Earth. London: SCM Press. Monbiot, G., & Kingsnorth, P. (2009). Is there any point in fighting to stave off industrial apocalypse? The Guardian, August 17. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/ aug/17/environment-climate-change. Accessed 29 Aug 2009. Moritz, J. 2013. Deep Incarnation and the Imago Dei: The Cosmic Scope of the Incarnation in Light of the Messiah as the Renewed Adam. Theology and Science 11 (4): 436–443. Motesharrei, S., J. Rivas, and E. Kalnay. 2014. Human and Nature Dynamics (HANDY): Modeling Inequality and Use of Resources in the Collapse or Sustainability of Societies. Ecological Economics 101 (May): 90–102. O’Donovan, O. 1999. The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ophuls, W. 2012. Immoderate Greatness: Why Civilisations Fail. North Charleston: CreateSpace. Oreskes, N., and E. Conway. 2014. The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future. New York: Columbia University Press. Peters, T. 2017. God in Cosmic History: Where Science & History Meet Religion. Winona: Anselm Academic. Radner, E. 2012. A Brutal Unity: The Spiritual Politics of the Christian Church. Waco: Baylor University Press. Sanders, F. 2010. The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything. Wheaton: Crossway. Schindler, D. 1996. Heart of the World, Center of the Church: Communio Ecclesiology, Liberalism, and Liberation. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Sheehan, J. 2010. When was disenchantment? History and the secular age. In Varieties of secularism in a secular age, ed. M. Warner, J. Van Antwerpen, and C. Calhoun, 217–242. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sideris, L. 2015a. Science as Sacred Myth? Ecospirituality in the Anthropocene Age. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 9 (2): 136–153. ———., 2015b. The Problems with Big History and Turning Science into Myth. The Conversation, October 26 (https://theconversation.com/the-problems-with-big-history-and-turning-science-into-myth-48225. Accessed 22 Aug 2018. Skrimshire, S. 2010. Future Ethics: Climate Change and Apocalyptic Imagination. London: Continuum. Smith, J.K.A. 2009. Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview and Christian Formation. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. ———. 2013. Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. ———. 2017. Awaiting the King: Reforming Public Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. Spratt, D., and I. Dunlop. 2018. What Lies Beneath: The Understatement of Existential Climate Risk. Melbourne: Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration. Taylor, C. 1991. Sources of the Self. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 2007. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Thiele, L. 1995. Receiving the Sky and Awaiting Divinities. In Timely Meditations: Martin Heidegger and Postmodern Politics, ed. L. Thiele, 192–217. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Tonn, B., and D. Don MacGregor, eds. 2009. Human Extinction. Futures 41 (10): 673–774. Torrance, T. 2005 [1980]. Man the Priest of Creation. In Ground and Grammar of Theology, ed. T. Torrance, T&T Clark, 1–T&T Cla14. Edinburgh. ———. 2015. The Christian Frame of Mind: Reason, Order, and Openness in Theology and Natural Science. Eugene: Wipf and Stock. Turnbull, N. 2015. Modern Technology Within the Western Theological Imaginary. Imago 6 (December): 7–26. Waalkes, S. 2010. The Fullness of Time in a Flat World: Globalization and the Liturgical Year. New York: Wipf & Stock. Wallace-Wells, D., 2017. The Uninhabitable Earth. New York Times Magazine, July. http://nymag. com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html. Accessed 7 Oct 2017. Walls, A. 1996. The Missionary Movement In Christian History. Edinburgh: T&T Clark. Weaver, D., E. Zimmermann, Z. Walton, and G. Mast, eds. 2014. John Yoder, Radical Theologian. Eugene: Cascade Books. Williams, R., 2011. Character, Civic Virtue and the Big Society. Respublica, August 2. https:// www.respublica.org.uk/. Accessed 10 Aug 2011. Wright, N.T. 1991. How Can The Bible Be Authoritative? Vox Evangelica 21: 7–32. ———. 2010. Virtue Reborn. London: SPCK. ———. 2016. The Day the Revolution Began. London: HarperOne. Yoder, J. 1984. The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel. South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press. ———. 1992. Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community Before the Watching World. Nashville: Discipleship Resources. Ian Barns, after retiring from his academic position at Murdoch University in 2011, Ian Barns has been involved in several research projects exploring the connections between theology, technology and sustainability. His recent publications include chapters in Celia Deane Drummond et  al., Religion and the Anthropocene (Wipf & Stock, 2017), and John Hinkson et al. (eds) Cold War, Hot Planet: 50 Years of Arena (Arena Publications, 2016). He is currently completing a book manuscript, ‘Good News for a Planet in Crisis’, to be published by Morning Star Press.

Chapter 11

Beyond the ‘Book of Nature’ to Science as Second Person Narrative: From Methodological Naturalism to Teleological Transcendence Tom C. B. McLeish

Abstract  The metaphor of nature as a book, and its reading, has arisen in many forms in theological discussions of natural philosophy from ancient to modern periods. It is far less fixed in form than often assumed, however, but reflects cultural contextual shape. It is also too often recruited without challenge, although the implied analogies of authorship, narrative shape, and hermeneutic contain many pitfalls. I explore four flaws in the ‘Book of Nature’ narrative, finding that they are connected with two related and troublesome tensions  – that of ‘methodological naturalism’ within a theistic framework, and the redundancy of ‘natural theology’ in its nineteenth century form. Approaching a theology of science from the perspective of the Wisdom tradition offers a fresh conception of who does the writing, and reading, of nature’s living book. Keywords  Book of Job · God’s two Books · Methodological naturalism · Second-­ person narratives · Teleology of Science · Theology of Science · Wisdom tradition

11.1  Introduction Transcendence is not, at least not only, an abstract theological category or a tradition of discourse. Its traditions and questions earth themselves in the most imminent set of relations – between the human and the material. They weave through most of the ‘dialogue of science and religion’, and share the tangles and problems of its current, unsatisfactory, framing. In this paper I will examine one of the traditional metaphors

T. C. B. McLeish (*) Department of Physics, University of York, York, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Nature – and Beyond, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 5, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31182-7_11

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of a transcendent interpretation of nature, the story of ‘God’s Second Book’, and one of its current problems, the status of ‘methodological naturalism’, proposing that a fresh critical reframing of the first can resolve hermeneutical issues around the second.

11.2  The Story of the Second Book A metaphorical story of reading has dominated the theological framing of science, or more properly natural philosophy, since the high Medieval period. It is the dual narrative of the Two Books: that of a twin revelation though the Book of Scripture and the Book of Nature. The twelfth century scholar Hugh of St Victor in his De Tribus Diebus, wrote (Poirel 2002: 9–10): For the whole sensible world is like a kind of book written by the finger of God – that is, created by divine power  – and each particular creature is somewhat like a figure, not invented by human decision, but instituted by the divine will to manifest the invisible things of God’s wisdom.

Reading the two books became a dominant metaphor for the application of human sense, reflection, and insight into nature. As Peter Harrison (2015) points out, the analogy is by no means arbitrary – it accompanies the understanding that a reading of nature was a virtuous discipline analogous to the reading of scripture, a spiritual exercise rather than its early modern reorientation as an epistemology. The Two Books metaphor surfaces in the thirteenth century in reflections on the seven liberal arts of the English polymath Robert Grosseteste in the tersest of summaries, ‘grammar informs sight’ (cf. Gaspar et  al. 2019), and in the Franciscan scholar Bonaventure, who hints at some of the hermeneutical difficulties such a book would present to an aspirant reader (quoted in Brague 2009: 80): The whole world is a shadow, a way and a trace; a book with writing front and back. Indeed, in every creature there is a refulgence of the divine exemplar, but mixed with darkness …

The notion of God’s second book reappears in the early-modern era, notably in Galileo, who refers not to its medieval usage but quotes Tertullian directly. But by the early seventeenth century his well-known account indicates that nature’s symbols have metamorphosed from Hugh’s creatures into the notation of mathematics (Burtt 2003: 75). Philosophy is written in the grand book of the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood until one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles and other geometric figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these one wanders about in a dark labyrinth.

Remarkably, the metaphor is modified once more through the transformational process of the Reformation. For if a central tenet of the reformers was that the reading and interpretation of scripture, once the prerogative of the priesthood, becomes the

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personal task of every vernacular reader, then a similar democratisation of the reading of the second ‘book’ might also be expected on the grounds of cultural history alone. So it proves to be. Towards the end of the seventeenth century the narrative of God’s second book of Nature is central to the emerging hermeneutical stance of early modern science, in protestant jurisdictions at least. An important example is found in Boyle’s advocacy of the early form of citizen-science known as ‘Occasional Meditation.’ He writes (quoted in Hunter 1990: 284): The World is a Great Book, not so much of Nature as of the God of Nature, … crowded with instructive Lessons, if we had but the Skill, and would take the Pains, to extract and pick them out: the Creatures are the true Aegyptian Hieroglyphicks, that under the rude form of Birds, and Beasts etc. conceal the mysterious secrets of Knowledge and of Piety.

The context is key: Boyle is encouraging his lay readers to keep a notebook always to hand, to record their impressions of nature through everyday encounters, and to ponder on their meaning. Both reading and interpretation of nature become the task of everyone, within the same daily rhythm as Bible reading and private meditation. The reading of scripture and the reading of nature have both undergone a reformation. The metaphor finds its final flourishing in the natural theology of Paley and the authors of the Bridgewater Treatises (Topham 1992). Their series subtitle is less frequently reproduced: it is on the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God as Manifested in the Creation. To follow Paley in his deduction of a personal creative agent of interventionist design in the structure of a biological lensed eye is precisely to read and interpret the text of the Second Book in terms of its author. Yet as Topham (1992) points out, the Treatises themselves track a growing tendency to emphasise scientific content at the expense of the level of theological hermeneutic that Paley had included in his Natural Theology (Paley 2006 [1802]). They progressively de-emphasised the import of their series subtitle. The book of nature was already distancing itself from the book of scripture as the nineteenth century’s disciplinary fragmentation and disassociation developed. In a final contextual twist to the transformation of the metaphor before the twentieth century, the great mathematical physicist Maxwell noted the potential consequences that publication was no longer confined to the form of the codex and the book, as Matthew Stanley has pointed out (quoted in Stanley 2015: 41): Perhaps the ‘book’, as it has been called, of nature is regularly paged; if so no doubt the introductory parts will explain those that follow, and the methods taught in the first chapters will be taken for granted and used as illustrations in the more advanced parts of the course; but if it is not a ‘book’ at all but a magazine, nothing is more foolish than to suppose that one part can throw light upon another.

The narrative of the Two Books is compelling for aesthetic, cultural and theological reasons. For those reasons, however, the metaphor is fluid, taking on the shape of the significance of books and their writing and reading in all three corresponding domains of practice. The parallel growth of literacy and science in Europe from the medieval period onwards, the emergence of printing, widespread education, and the new forms of writing and publication that accompany early modern science, also

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render the metaphor itself almost irresistible. As the cultural frame around the production, reading and significance of books changed, so does the interpretation of the idea of a second divine volume. But simplistic adherence to the metaphorical reading of the Book of Nature as a conceptual framing for science generates a set of irresolvable problems at its nexus with theology. It is well to heed the warnings with which Augustine characteristically hedged its use long before any of the examples quoted above (Augustine Contra Faustum XXXII, 20): But had you begun with looking on the book of nature as the production of the Creator of all, and had you believed that your own finite understanding might be at fault wherever anything seemed to be amiss, instead of venturing to find fault with the works of God, you would not have been led into these impious follies and blasphemous fancies with which, in your ignorance of what evil really is, you heap all evils upon God.

11.3  Four Flaws in the Metaphor of the Second Book Augustine anticipates the first flaw in the Two Books metaphor – that the understanding of nature, and its representation in current forms of natural philosophy, will be culturally constrained, and subject to the projection of ethical values onto material form. Strong advocate of the universal accessibility of the natural world as reflecting God’s creative power as he is, Augustine knows that overinterpretation of nature as a message in itself is a wrong turning. The long story of theodicy (Southgate 2008) raises questions that humans have always wanted to ask of the apparent disorder of nature (see below on Job) but when they do, what they see in nature is more likely to pattern the phenomenon of a mirror than a book. A second structural flaw in the natural-theological reading of the second book became increasingly visible during the nineteenth century, and was exposed in the greatest clarity by the ascent of the theory of evolution by natural selection. The passivity of written text simply fails to follow faithfully the emergent explorative potential of the tree of life. A written word is written once, and implies an immediate and proximal author. Yet an evolved species, perfectly accommodated to its environmental niche, did not require a pen to inscribe it there. Once Hugh of St. Victor’s ‘figures’ start taking on lives of their own, speciating and exploring new ‘texts’ within the code of life, the metaphor begins to add inadequacy to a tendency to mislead. A third implication of the metaphor of the second book is that its readers may deduce the character and purpose of its author through more or less sophisticated levels of reading. Nature becomes a veiled or coded message from, and concerning, its Author. So if the Sacred Page can say of itself (Ephesians 3: 4–5 [NIV]) In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to people in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God’s holy apostles and prophets

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then nature also becomes a once-veiled but increasingly transparent mode of insight into the person and nature of God. In the developed form of reading nature that became Natural Theology, we look through nature towards a vision of its Creator. Wary as Luther was of the findings of early modern science, he was no critic of the second book analogy (Bornkamm 1958: 179): All creation is the most beautiful book or bible, for in it God has described and portrayed Himself.

Attractive though such neo-oracular, albeit Christianised, interpretation of how to read nature might be, it runs as rapidly as the projection of the first problem into the thicket of theodicy – what must we deduce, in this mode of reading, about the creator of catastrophes and carnivores? We hear echoes of Augustine’s warning that readers will find evils as well as glories on the face of a reading of nature, and attribute both to the intentional fiat of its Writer. This reading also elicits Maxwell’s astute observation that books are written in order, with sequential explanation and development. Attempting to read a work more organic and fluid as if it were written as a single book leads to irresolvable hermeneutical problems. A fourth issue, delayed until it appears on the beach of the late-modern period as the tide of near-universal theism retreated, is a problematizing of scientific method itself. If the effective practice of science is unaffected by any personal stance of belief, and if both its methods and conclusions align with a material metaphysics, namely the set of practices and assumptions termed ‘methodological naturalism’ (Okello 2015), what value theistic belief and practice? To summarise the issue: the daily practice of scientific research is pursued etsi deus non daretur – the existence of, or belief in, a creating deity does not affect the laboratory or theoretical practice of science, or the likelihood of its success. Transcendence is not a scientific category, and science is pursued within an ontology of the material only. It is important to note the weakness of the claim: the extent of ‘naturalism’ is restricted to the methodological, not by extension to an entire worldview. Methodological naturalism does not imply metaphysical naturalism. Yet the adoption of methodological naturalism has sat uncomfortably with some believers, and some theologians (e.g. Plantinga 1997), because its deployment of a method that ostensibly ignores the divine seems to imply the irrelevance of a position of faith. However, attempts to reintroduce particular differences in scientific methodology with an ostensibly theistic methodology of science run into insuperable problems at the experiential and epistemological levels. A recent, and thorough, debate on the theological admissibility or otherwise of methodological naturalism has recently played out in the journal Zygon (Torrance 2017; Ritchie and Perry 2018). There is not the space here to revisit the arguments of that debate, but I wish instead to develop the discussion of alternative metaphors to clarify the possible alternatives for the starting point of such a discussion. Before the issues even arise there is a tacit assumption that when we do science we are ‘reading’ nature, together with all the metaphorical baggage that the second book analogy hauls with it over two millennia.

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11.4  A Joban Wisdom Approach The impasses generated by the confrontation of an uncritical use of the metaphor of the Second Book within debates on methodological naturalism can be traced to the progressive narrowing of a philosophy of science to epistemology, ontology and methodology  – ironically the very categories that would be employed in literary criticism (of reading), ignoring another essential human category of teleology. The gradual silencing of the category of purpose from academic discourse is itself a potential source of its marginalisation, and plays to the pretence of a human viewpoint onto nature abstracted from it, rather than embedded within it. Within Christian theology it has become necessary to look for another narrative metaphor, that more faithfully frames the relational, immersed and interactive aspects of the human condition to the natural world. Such a reframing should be able to account for the success of methodological naturalism within a theodicy, and place science within a coherent setting in relation to the narrative of creation-fall-­ election-incarnation-resurrection-new-creation. In particular, its relational content must be at the same time faithful to our experience of nature, and to the theological story with which we make sense of our human condition. In complementary terms, late-modern discourse has tended to categorise narratives about nature as ‘third person’. In her magisterial reworking of theodicy by example, Eleanor Stump (2010) points out that much Biblical narrative is inherently ‘second person’, and that the category-error of forcing ‘third person’ structure onto it leads to artificial hermeneutical problems, similar to the four flaws we have identified in the ‘Book of Nature’ metaphor for nature and its concomitant approach to science. A vital case in point is found in the Book of Job, which adopts not only a second-person approach to theodicy, and to the relationship between God and humans (through the example of Job himself), but also introduces a second-person approach to the relationship between humans and the natural creation (McLeish 2014). I have contended that, within the Biblical Wisdom tradition, the Book of Job constitutes the best Biblical starting point for a narratology of the human relationship of the mind with physical creation, reading from the point at which God finally speaks to Job (after 37 chapters of silence) in chapter 38: 4–71: Where were you when I founded the earth? Tell me, if you have insight. Who fixed its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched the measuring cord across it? Into what were its bases sunk, or who set its capstone, when the stars of the morning rejoiced together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

The writer delineates a beautiful development of the core creation narrative in Hebrew wisdom poetry (a form found in Psalms, Proverbs and some Prophets that

 We take quotations of the text from the magisterial new translation and commentary by David Clines, Vol. 3 (2011). 1

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speaks of creation through ‘ordering’, ‘bounding’ and ‘setting foundations’ – Brown 2010), but now in the relentless urgency of the question-form, throughout its history the imaginative core of scientific innovation. The subject matter of the poetic question-­catalogue moves through meteorology, astronomy, zoology, finishing with a celebrated ‘de-centralising’ text that places humans at the periphery of the world, looking on in wonder at its centre-pieces, the great beasts Behemoth and Leviathan. This is an ancient recognition of the unpredictable aspects of the world: the whirlwind, the earthquake, the flood, and unknown great beasts. Long recognised as a masterpiece of ancient literature, the Book of Job has attracted and perplexed scholars in equal measures for centuries, and is still today a vibrant field of study. David Clines, to whom we owe the translation employed here, calls the Job ‘the most intense book theologically and intellectually of the Old Testament’ (Clines 1989). Job has inspired commentators across vistas of centuries and philosophies, from Basil the Great, to Kant, to Levinas. Philosopher Susan Neiman has recently argued the case that the Book of Job constitutes, alongside Plato, a necessary source-text for the foundation of philosophy itself (Neiman 2016). Although readers of the text have long recognised that the cosmological motif within Job is striking and important, it has not received as much comprehensive attention as the legal, moral, and theological strands in the book, with a few notable exceptions (see Habel 1985 and Brown 2010). Arguably the identification of a direct link of the subject matter of Job to the human capacity for natural philosophy goes back at least as far as Aquinas, who refers at several points to Aristotle’s Physics in his extensive commentary on the wisdom book, but these connections are rare in preference to metaphorical readings. Contemporary reflections on the relevance of the nature wisdom of Job for science, especially by scientists, are rare; for exceptions see the limpid reflections on the practice of science as interpreting messages from the Joban whirlwind by anthropologist Loren Eisely (1978), or the scientific theological reading of Job in physicist Tom McLeish (2014). There are, however, earlier instances of direct attribution of motivation for scientific investigations to the nature poetry in Job, and in particular to the extended questions posed by Yahweh to Job over successive realms of nature (chapters 38–42), known as the ‘Lord’s Answer’ from which is extracted the quotation above. Theodoric of Freiberg pursued experiments in the early fourteenth century on the refraction of rays of white light by water-filled glass spheres, as models of raindrops, and published the first satisfactory solution to the cause of rainbows at the level of geometric optics, his De Iride, between 1304 and 1310 (Crombie 1953). In his earlier work on the nature of light itself, De Luce et eius Origine, Theodoric begins with the question, ‘By what way is the light scattered and heat distributed upon the earth? (Job 38) This difficult question the Lord proposed to holy Job’ (Crombie 1953: 243). Theodoric takes up the challenge by a discussion, within Aristotelian physics to be sure, of the double-­ nature of light within transparent media. The progressive de-emphasising of connections between ancient and modern discussions of cosmology that accompanies the distancing of the ‘two books’ over the last two centuries might partly explain why The Lord’s Answer to Job has had such a problematic history of reception and interpretation. The traditional

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i­ nterpretation challenges repeatedly whether the text, assumed to be tackling theodicy as its principal topic, really does answer Job’s two questions about his own innocence and the meaninglessness of his suffering. Finding ‘The Lord’ of chapters 38–40 inadequate in this regard, it questions whether the voice in the creation hymns really corresponds to the creator Yahweh of the Psalms, the Pentateuch and the Prophets, and challenges the coherence of the textual transmission (Clines 2011). Some scholars have found the Lord’s Answer to Job spiteful, a petulant put-down that misses the point and avoids the tough questions (Robertson 1973). But are these interpretations justified? Even looking at the text through the fresh lens of science today resonates with the difficulty of questioning nature, even its painfulness, as well as its wonder – that is how scientists respond at a first reading time and again. To begin to answer, at a textual level, the charge that the ‘Lord’s Answer’ isn’t an answer, we need to observe that the intense nature imagery of the Book is by no means confined to Yahweh’s voice. On the contrary – nature imagery is employed from the very outset of the prologue, and throughout the disputations between Job and his friends. Indeed, every theme picked up in the Lord’s Answer has already appeared in the cycles of dialogue between Job and his friends. The entire book is structured around the theme of wild nature. There is, furthermore, an ordered pattern in the realms of creation explored predominantly in the three cycles of speeches, moving from inanimate, to living, then to cosmological nature, as the tension between Job and his friends reaches its crescendo of personal invective in the third cycle (McLeish 2014). Between the speech-cycles and the Lord’s Answer is a third vital strand of material. For the question to which chapter 38 is the answer, is found in the equally magisterial ‘Hymn to Wisdom’ of chapter 28, which begins with a remarkable metaphor for human perspicuity into the structure of the world  – that of the miner underground: Surely there is a mine for silver, and a place where gold is refined. Iron is taken from the soil, rock that will be poured out as copper. An end is put to darkness, and to the furthest bound they seek the ore in gloom and deep darkness. A foreign race cuts the shafts; forgotten by travellers, far away from humans they dangle and sway. That earth from which food comes forth is underneath changed as if by fire. Its rocks are the source of lapis, with its flecks of gold.

The underground world takes a reader completely by surprise – why did either an original author or a later compiler suppose that the appropriate step to take in the text at this point was the descent of a mineshaft? Reading on, There is a path no bird of prey knows, unseen by the eye of falcons. The proud beasts have not trodden it, no lion has prowled it …

There is something uniquely human about the way we fashion our relationship to the physical world. Only human eyes can see the material world from the new viewpoint of its interior. The writer refers to the technologically-assisted sight of the miner, both dug into a subterranean shaft, and illuminating it artificially. But the comparison with beasts endowed with acute vision points beyond, to the sight of the

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creative imagination that in respect of the hidden structures of nature is uniquely human. It is an enhanced sight that asks questions, that directs further exploration, that wonders. The Hymn then reveals its intent – it is a search for lost Wisdom, but neither depths nor oceans nor the busy marketplace can provide any clue to its whereabouts. The conclusion of the hymn makes a shocking parallel between the human wisdom of the miner, and the divine wisdom of the Creator (28: 23–27): But God understands the way to it; it is he who knows its place. For he looked to the ends of the earth, and beheld everything under the heavens, So as to assign a weight to the wind, and determine the waters by measure, when he made a decree for the rain and a path for the thunderbolt – then he saw and appraised it, established it and fathomed it.

It is by no means true that the hymn concludes that wisdom has nothing to do with the created world, for the reason that God knows where to find it is precisely because he ‘looked to the ends of the earth, … established it and fathomed it’. It is, as for the underground miners, a very special sort of looking  – involving number (in an impressive leap of the imagination in which we assign a value to the force of the wind) and physical law (in the controlled paths of rain and lightning). This is an extraordinary claim: that wisdom is to be found in participating with a deep understanding of the world, its structure and dynamics. A reading of the entire Book of Job reveals a continual navigation of alternatives in possible relationships between the human and the material. This question threads throughout the cycles of speeches, the Hymn to Wisdom and the Lord’s Answer (McLeish 2014). From ‘nature as eternal mystery’ to ‘nature as moral arbiter’, alternatives are rejected. Remarkably, the interpretation of ‘God’s Second Book’ is one of a sequence of at least six possible framings of human relationship with the natural world. This is the theme of Job’s fourth, and youngest companion, who reserves his words (and even his presence) to the very end of the discourses (36: 22–25): Behold, God is exalted in his power; who is a teacher like him? Who prescribed for him his conduct? Who said to him, ‘You have done wrong’? Remember to extol his work, which mortals have praised in song. Every person has seen it; humans have gazed on it from afar.

Nature is (as Eiseley 1978 affirms) a Teacher, but one whose lessons are hidden in coded and chaotic form. The conclusion of the Hymn to Wisdom itself (ch. 28), as well as the Lord’s Answer (ch. 38–42), points to a new notion of relationship with nature, beyond those of judge, mystery or book. This new voice hints at a balance between order and chaos rather than a domination of either. It inspires bold ideas such as a covenant between humans and the stones, thinks through the provenance of rainclouds, observes the structure of the mountains from below, wonders at the weightless suspension of the earth itself. It sees humankind’s exploration of nature as in Imago Dei, and a participation in the creative force of Wisdom herself, and in her penetrative and perpetual gaze into the structure of nature as a dynamical, exploratory process of creative potential.

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11.5  A Renewed and Reversed Natural Theology The story of the search for wisdom through the perceptive, renewed and reconciliatory relationship with nature, begins to look like a potential source for a new theological narrative of nature in our own times. It is rooted in creation and covenant, rather than Aristotelian tradition, yet recognises emergent causation, including the divine; it recognises reasons to despair, but undercuts them with hope; it points away from stagnation to a future of greater knowledge, understanding and healing; it is centrally teleological. Furthermore, it offers a stark opposition to the stance of traditional natural theology. Rather than reading into (the book of) nature in the hope of perceiving God, or learning principally about divine attributes and action, we look with the Creator into creation, participating in his gaze, his love, and his co-creative ability to engage in nature’s future with responsibility and wisdom. The ‘geometry’ of this natural theology is entirely reversed from that implied by the framing of its nineteenth century instantiation. Nature is not now a veil through which humans peer, albeit with an enhanced and scientific perspicuity, to read dimly the outlines of divine nature and purpose. Instead, and with the same theological shock as the proximity and similarity of the gaze into subterranean nature by the miner and Yahweh in Job 28, human regard of material nature is from a perspective shared with its Creator, albeit clouded. The relational, epistemological and ethical consequences of this radically-revised natural theology are of considerable consequence. It is immediately apparent that humanity is de-centred from nature but in an unforced way and without diminution of a status in imago Dei or a downplaying of covenantal relationship in regard to a mandate of responsible dominion. A Joban-­ wisdom natural theology is radically non-anthropocentric while elevating human potential for creation, understanding and creation-care. The creative gift to the natural world of freedom, complexity and self-expression (Page 2009) calls humankind not just to read, but to participate in response to the divine. As Normal Habel (Habel 2001: 77) similarly concludes his outline of an ‘inverse cosmology’ from Job, ‘Earth is a complex combination of creations, each of which has a designated way, place and wisdom. The function of Earth is not first and foremost to serve the interests of humanity or heaven.’ The notion of ‘second person narrative’ (Stump 2010) takes on a wider significance within a relational theology of nature that takes Job’s experience of the Voice from the whirlwind as a starting point. For the second-person structure of the trinity of relationships between God, nature and humankind breaks free of any particular interaction, and becomes an invitation to those of Job’s descendants who will engage in finding the answers to the Lord’s questions about light, the cosmos, ice and snow, the animal world and more. It is an invitation that blurs the third-person distinction of subject and object as much as it urges a theological anthropology that is both immersed in and above the world. The divine is both unseen and transcendent – we are ‘looking the other way’, into creation in the light of God rather than through creation towards a reflection of God – and imminent, from a human proximity to the divine through election, image and a shared perspective onto the world. The ‘Second

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Book’ metaphor dissolves before such a free, dynamic, responsive and interpersonal theology of nature. The analogy has broken down long before the time we have agreed that nature’s text is really interlinked hypertext, and is not fixed but is continually re-edited, by itself and by its human readers who are both embedded within its pages and co-authorial. The critical reframing of the Two Books metaphor from the perspective of Joban wisdom is by no means the only possible approach. An alternative, and appealing, starting point is from a Trinitarian view, a version of which, based within the Lutheran tradition, has very recently been given by Schwöbel (2018). Intriguingly, a very similar relational structure emerges, with a stress on open potential in nature in which participation in the divine word becomes creative act. There is clearly strong potential to compare alternative critiques of the metaphor, as apparently distinct starting points may reflect a common deeper structure. In the case of Wisdom and Trinity, such a finding is not, perhaps, surprising. As a final corollary, the uneasy discussion around methodological naturalism is strongly modified within a ‘science engaged theology’ (Ritchie and Perry 2018) that develops from such a wisdom perspective. The set of practices and communities of practice that we term ‘science’ are now, whether their practitioners know it or not, engaged in a second-person response to Creator and creation is wrapped up in purpose. The question of whether a theistic worldview ought to make a difference in the methodological pursuit of scientific knowledge indicates a sort of category error. The very possibility of science, and the human mandate to observe and to understand nature, is itself already entirely ‘theological’. Methodological naturalism is unproblematic within a theistic worldview because it is God’s own gift of insight to humans, as creative chaos becomes the gift to nature of freedom in possibility.

Bibliography Aquinas, Thomas. Expositio super Iob ad litteram. Trans. Brian Mulladay and available on the web here: http://dhspriory.org/thomas/SSJob.htm#382. Accessed 12 Dec 2018. Augustine, Contra Faustum, XXXII, 20 trans. http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/140632.htm. Accessed 12 Dec 2018. Bornkamm, H. 1958. Luther’s World of Thought. Trans. M. H. Bertram. Saint Louis: Concordia. Brague, R. 2009. The Legend of the Middle Ages: Philosophical Explorations of Medieval Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Trans. L. G. Cochrane. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Brown, W.H. 2010. The Seven Pillars of Creation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Burtt, E.A. 2003. The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science. New York: Dover. Clines, D.J.A. 1989. World Bible Commentary Job, 1–20. Nashville: Thomas Nelson. ———. 2011. World Bible Commentary Job, 28–42. Nashville: Thomas Nelson. Crombie, A.C. 1953. Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science, 1100–1700. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Eisely, L. 1978. The Hidden Teacher in The Star Thrower. New York: Times Books. Gaspar, G.E.M., C. Panti, T. C. B. McLeish, and H.E. Smithson. 2019. The Scientific Works of Robert Grosseteste, Vol. 1 Knowing and Speaking: Robert Grosseteste’s De artibus liberalibus ‘On the Liberal Arts’ and De generatione sonorum ‘On the Generation of Sounds’. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Habel, N.C. 1985. The Book of Job. London: SCM Press. ———. 2001. Earth First: Inverse Cosmology in Job. In The Earth Story in Wisdom Traditions, ed. N.C. Habel and S. Wurst. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Harrison, P. 2015. The Territories of Science and Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hunter, J.P. 1990. Robert Boyle and the Epistemology of the Novel. Eighteenth Century Fiction 2: 275–292. McLeish, T. 2014. Faith and Wisdom in Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Neiman, S. 2016. The Rationality of the World: A Philosophical Reading of the Book of Job. http:// www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2016/10/19/4559097.htm. Accessed 7 Dec 2016. Okello, J.B.O. 2015. A History and Critique of Methodological Naturalism. Eugene: Wipf and Stock. Page, R. 2009. God and the Web of Creation. London: SCM Press. Paley, W. 2006 [1802]. Natural Theology, eds. M. Eddy, and D. Knight. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Plantinga, A. 1997. Methodological Naturalism? Philosophical Analysis Origins & Design 18 (1): 18–27. Poirel, D., ed. 2002. Hugo de Sancto Victore, De tribus diebus, CCCM, 177, Hugonis de Sancto Victore Opera, II. Turnhout: Brepols. Ritchie, S.L., and J.  Perry. 2018. Magnets, Magic, and Other Anomalies: In Defense of Methodological Naturalism. Zygon 53 (4): 1064–1093. Robertson, D. 1973. The Book of Job: A Literary Study. Soundings 56: 446–468. Schwöbel, C. 2018. ‘We are all God’s Vocabulary’: The Idea of Creation as a Speech-Act on the Trinitarian God and its Significance for the Dialogue between Theology and the Sciences. In Knowing Creation, ed. A.B. Torrance and T.H. McCall Jnr, vol. 1. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Southgate, C. 2008. The Groaning of Creation. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. Stanley, M. 2015. Huxley’s Church and Maxwell’s Demon. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Stump, E. 2010. Wandering in Darkness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Taylor, J. 1991. The Didascalion of Hugh of St. Victor: A Medieval Guide to the Arts. New York: Columbia University Press. Topham, J.  1992. Science and Popular Education in the 1830s: The Role of the Bridgewater Treatises. The British Journal for the History of Science 25: 397–430. Torrance, A.B. 2017. Should a Christian Adopt Methodological Naturalism? Zygon 52: 691–725. Tom C. B. McLeish , FRS, is Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Department of Physics at the University of York, England, and is also affiliated to the University’s Centre for Medieval Studies and Humanities Research Centre. His scientific research in ‘soft matter and biological physics,’ draws on collaboration with chemists, engineers, and biologists to study relationships between molecular structure and emergent material properties, and was recognized by major awards in the USA and Europe. He currently leads the UK ‘Physics of Life’ network, and holds a 5-year personal research fellowship. Other academic interests include the framing of science, theology. Society and history, and the theory of creativity in art and science, leading to the recent book The Poetry and Music of Science (OUP 2019). He co-­leads the Ordered Universe project, a large interdisciplinary collaboration re-­examining scientific treatises from the thirteenth century. Two recent books, Faith and Wisdom in Science (2014) and Let There Be Science (with David Hutchings, 2017), articulate a theological narrative for science, recognised by the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lanfranc Award in 2018. Dr. McLeish has been a Reader in the Anglican Church since 1993. He is currently Chair of the Royal Society’s Education Committee, and a trustee of the John Templeton Foundation.  

Chapter 12

Radical Transcendence and Radical Immanence: Convergence Between Eastern Orthodox Perspectives and Strong Theistic Naturalism? Christopher C. Knight

Abstract  Strong theistic naturalism is the understanding in which the distinction between ‘special’ and ‘general’ modes of divine action is rejected. I describe a version of this approach which reflects two key aspects of Eastern Orthodox theology: Gregory Palamas’s understanding of the divine ‘essence’ and ‘energies’ and Maximos the Confessor’s use of the notion of the logoi of created things. The miraculous may be understood within this framework in terms of the paranormal rather than of the ‘supernatural’. The theological counterpart to this analogy is the notion that the miraculous is a proleptic anticipation of the eschatological state. Central to this model is a teleological-christological vision of the cosmos, comparable to that of Maximos, and I link the teleological element of this to both the anthropic cosmological principle and convergent evolution. This approach is discussed in terms of what Sarah Lane Ritchie – examining parallels between my own understanding and that of others working within other traditions – has called a ‘theological turn’ in discussions of divine action. In these understandings, what is called into question is the assumption of an autonomous cosmos which God must somehow enter from ‘outside’ if events usually ascribed to special divine action are to occur. Keywords  Divine action · Divine logos · Eastern orthodoxy · Eschatology · Gregory Palamas · Maximos the confessor · Miracles · Naturalism · Theological turn

C. C. Knight (*) Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, Cambridge, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Nature – and Beyond, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 5, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31182-7_12

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12.1  Transcendence and Immanence in Orthodox Thinking In Western Christian thinking, there is often assumed to be a tension between God’s transcendence and immanence, so that a strong stress on either one of these divine characteristics seems to undermine the other. For Eastern Orthodox Christians, by contrast, this tension does not exist. This is because of the continuing influence in their thinking of the panentheistic notions to be found in the work of two key figures, whose standing in the Eastern Christian world in comparable to that of Augustine and Aquinas in the West. These are Maximos the Confessor (d. 662) and Gregory Palamas (d. 1359). For Maximos, transcendence is expressed in terms of the uncreated divine Word (Logos), while immanence is rooted in what he calls the words (logoi) that he sees as manifestations of the divine Logos in all created things. For Palamas, transcendence is rooted in the divine essence, while immanence is rooted in the divine energies. As one modern scholar has put it, Maximos’s vision is one in which ‘Christ the creator Logos has implanted in every thing a characteristic logos, a “thought” or “word” which is God’s intention for that thing, its inner essence which makes it distinctively itself’ (Ware 2004: 160). Palamas’s understanding, this commentator goes on, is not contrary to Maximos’s but ‘complementary’. In this understanding, God in his essence is seen as ‘infinitely transcendent, utterly beyond all created being, beyond all participation from the human side. But in his energies – which are nothing less than God himself in action – God is inexhaustibly immanent, maintaining all things in being, animating them, making each of them a sacrament of his dynamic presence’ (ibid.).

12.2  Divine Action in the Modern Science-Theology Dialogue In this paper I shall indicate the relevance of Orthodoxy’s radical sense of divine immanence to the science-theology dialogue by focusing on the way in which it suggests an alternative to the model of divine action that is currently predominant within that dialogue. In this latter model, divine intervention – in which God sets aside the laws of nature in order to act directly – is denied. Nevertheless, while the ‘general’ divine action that occurs through the normal operation of those laws is affirmed, so also is ‘special’ divine action, in which God is seen as acting more directly in response to situations in the world. This has seemed possible to many because of the apparent plausibility of various ‘causal joints’ that have been proposed, through which it is claimed that God might be able to make such responses without actually setting aside the laws of nature. The conceptual framework for exploring this approach has relied on the non-­ deterministic universe envisaged in quantum mechanics, which seems to many to allow for ‘special’ divine action while at the same time not requiring the kind of supernatural intervention in which the laws of nature must be set aside. The simplest

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and earliest model of how this could occur was, in fact, based directly on quantum mechanical insights, with God’s ‘special’ action being seen as occurring through divine alteration of the probabilities of events at the submicroscopic level. More recently, a number of other causal joints have been suggested. It is noteworthy, however, that this causal joint scheme has been criticized from a number of perspectives. Wesley Wildman, for example, has observed, from a historical standpoint, that its presuppositions often seem to lie, not in traditional philosophical theology but in a ‘personalistic theism’ that represents a ‘Protestant deviation from the mainstream Christian view’ (Wildman 2006: 166). The coherence of the model has also been criticized by both Nicholas Saunders (2002) and myself (Knight 2007: 22–27). However, while Saunders’ critique is the more exhaustive of the two, my own is unlike his in one important respect. It is based, not simply on pointing out the inherent problems of the scheme, but on a new proposal that may be seen as a manifestation of a fascinating recent development in discussions of divine action.

12.3  The ‘Theological Turn’ in the Divine Action Debate This development is what Sarah Lane Ritchie (2017) has called a ‘theological turn’ in the divine action debate, in which the relationship between God and the world, ‘rather than presuming an ontologically self-sufficient physical world’, is based on ‘questioning the metaphysical commitments’ that lie behind this presumption. In this development, the old distinction between ‘general’ and ‘special’ modes of divine action is questioned and, as Ritchie goes on, ‘the theological turn is characterized by the question, “What does it mean for the physical world to be properly natural?”’ (Ritchie 2017: 361). My own contribution to this theological turn (Knight 2001, 2007) is rooted in what I see as convergence between an explicitly theological understanding, with its roots in the thinking of Maximos the Confessor, and a view of naturalism that is essentially philosophical rather than theological. This philosophical view defines the term naturalism, not in terms of what may be explored through a scientific methodology, but in more general terms that I describe as the cosmos’s adherence to ‘fixed instructions’. I argue that not all such instructions are necessarily susceptible to scientific investigation, since at levels of high complexity – especially that of the personal – these fixed instructions may simply not be susceptible to the repeatability criterion that is so important for scientific methodology. (We cannot, for example, put two people in a laboratory and tell them to fall in love so that we can observe the process.) This is not to deny that such processes follow what we might call law-like patterns, with identical outcomes arising from identical situations. Rather, it means that there is an epistemological barrier to our exploration, in that the criteria for identifying identical situations may, in some circumstances, simply not be available to us. This distinction – between natural processes that are straightforwardly susceptible to scientific investigation and those that are not  – may, I have suggested, be

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understood in terms of the way in which Augustine of Hippo wrote about miracles. His implicit distinction between ‘ordinary’ and ‘higher’ laws of nature (Pannenberg 2002) is comparable, I have observed, to that involved in the way in which nowadays there are some who, in a naturalistic framework, speak about the normal operation of the cosmos and the ‘paranormal’. In terms of this understanding, I have suggested that what I call strong theistic naturalism – which denies God’s temporal response to events or situations in the world – need not, a priori, preclude the paranormal. Events that seem beyond scientific understanding, and are often interpreted as ‘miraculous’, may, I have suggested, be seen as analogous to what in physics are known as changes of regime. In these changes, radical discontinuities in properties of systems occur once certain conditions are satisfied. (In the case of the onset of superconductivity, for example, the condition is simply that of lowering the temperature of a sample of potentially superconducting material to below a certain threshold value.) The difference between such scientifically explorable regime changes and what is considered paranormal lies only, I have suggested, in the way in which, in the latter, the repeatability criterion is not straightforwardly applicable because a strongly personal element is involved.

12.4  Orthodox Perspectives on ‘Nature’ This ‘naturalistic’ understanding of the paranormal is reflected in a fascinating way in two important strands of Orthodox theology. The first of these stresses the difference between ‘this world’ and both the ‘original’ Paradise and the ‘world to come’. In this strand of Orthodox thinking, these latter states are the ones regarded as truly natural in the sense of fully reflecting God’s will for the created order. The world we normally experience is, by contrast, viewed as a consequence (or anticipation) of the Fall, and as such it is seen as being in some sense unnatural (Nellas 1987: 44) or – perhaps better – subnatural (Knight 2007: 86–95, 2008, 2016a). In terms of this understanding, an anticipation of our restoration to a ‘natural’ state from our present subnatural one is to be experienced both in the sacraments (Sherrard 1964) and in events interpreted as miracles. In terms of this understanding we can, for example, see with a new clarity how the eschatological state – in which ‘the wolf shall lie down with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid’ (Is 11:6) – is anticipated in the stories of ‘miraculous’ friendship between wild animals and saints such as Francis of Assisi, Seraphim of Sarov, and Cuthbert of Lindisfarne. In terms of this approach, miracles may be seen, not as supernatural in the sense of requiring something to be added to nature, but rather as the outcome of the normal functioning of the ‘truly’ natural world. The second strand of Orthodox thinking that is relevant is Maximos’s use of the notion of the uncreated divine Logos. It is important to recognize here that the biblical use of this term (John 1:1–14) takes up earlier usage in Hellenistic Judaism, in which the Hebrew Bible’s notion of divine Wisdom (Proverbs 8) had been instrumental in both appropriating and modifying the meaning of a Greek philosophical

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term. The Logos – in this philosophical sense – was understood as that which makes the universe logical in its functioning, obedient to what we now call ‘laws of nature’. As we have noted, in the work of Maximos this aspect of the notion of the divine Logos was used to develop a sophisticated understanding of the cosmos. What is characteristic of this understanding is his sense that the logoi (words) of created things are nothing less than manifestations of the divine Logos itself. They are, as Kallistos Ware puts it, described by St. Maximos ‘in two different ways, sometimes as created and sometimes as uncreated, depending upon the perspective in which they are viewed. They are created inasmuch as they inhere in the created world. But when regarded as God’s presence in each thing – as divine ‘predermination’ or ‘preconception’ concerning that thing  – they are not created but uncreated’ (Ware 2004: 160). In my book, The God of Nature (Knight 2007), I have argued that this understanding is compatible with what I call strong theistic naturalism, in which the distinction between general and special modes of divine action becomes meaningless. My argument for this compatibility hinges on the way in which Maximos’s thinking manifests a general intuition that is implicit throughout the Eastern Christian tradition but unusual in the West: that divine grace does not involve God somehow having to ‘get into’ the natural world from some ‘outside’ supernatural realm. Indeed, Eastern Christianity tends not to make a distinction between the natural and the supernatural, but rather between the created and the uncreated. Moreover, even when it does make the former distinction, it does so in a way that is distinct from Western usage (see Knight 2016a) since, as Vladimir Lossky has observed, Orthodox theology ‘knows nothing of “pure nature” to which grace is added as a supernatural gift. For it, there is no natural or “normal” state since grace is implied in the act of creation itself’ (Lossky 1957: 101).

12.5  A Return to Teleology? I have used the term enhanced naturalism to describe the kind of naturalism that I have defended, with its openness to the possibility of paranormal events. However, if we are to compare this kind of philosophical naturalism with the thinking of Maximos, we need to be aware that there is a characteristic of his understanding of the cosmos’s logical functioning that is not found explicitly in modern science. This is the belief that the logos of each created thing does more than simply give to that thing its being and characteristics. In addition, it ‘draws it towards the divine realm’ (Ware 2004: 160). The cosmos is, for this understanding, inherently teleological: it is ‘dynamic … tending always to its final end’ (Lossky 1957: 101). For this reason I have called Maximos’s understanding a teleological-christological one. Teleology is now unfashionable, especially among those who (rightly) see the development of modern science as relying, historically, on the rejection of scholasticism’s Aristotelian teleological thinking. Maximos’s view is, however, rather more subtle than that of scholasticism, since it has an essentially eschatological focus.

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The theological instinct manifested in Maximos’s teleological understanding is, I have argued, not only entirely compatible with modern science, but is also clarified in important respects when interpreted in terms of two current scientific insights. Both of these relate to the predictability of the universe’s development from the time of the Big Bang up to the emergence of a specifically human psychology. The first of these insights arises from the apparent ‘fine tuning’ of the universe, which has for decades been discussed in terms of what is called the anthropic cosmological principle (Barrow and Tipler 1986). This discussion is based on the observation that certain factors necessary to the emergence of humanity seem to be predictable outcomes of the particular universe that we inhabit but to be impossible in other possible universes (i.e. in those obeying the same laws of nature but with even slightly different values of various ‘universal constants’). Philosophically, arguments about the significance of this observation are complex. It may well be, for example, that it is simplistic to believe (as some do) that these observations allow the formulation of a new argument for the reality of God. Nevertheless, for those who for other reasons already believe in that reality, it does seem that anthropic considerations can provide the basis for a theological view that discerns divine design and purpose in the predictability of the developmental processes through which the basic conditions for biological evolution have emerged naturalistically. In this sense, we may be seen as living in a teleologically-oriented cosmos. (This view does not, we should note, challenge naturalism by assuming the kind of ‘intelligent design’ advocated by some religious fundamentalists, since it relates the concept of design, not to the separate components of the cosmos, but to the cosmos as a whole. It assumes that, once in existence, the development of the cosmos proceeds according to purely naturalistic principles.) However, if we attempt to extrapolate this teleological view to biological evolution, and not just to the preconditions for that evolution, a second scientific factor must be considered. This relates to the widespread notion that biological evolution, being based on random processes, must be seen as unpredictable in its outcomes. (Evidence for the termination of ‘promising’ evolutionary routes is often seen as reinforcing this view.) Here, it is important to note that this view has been strongly questioned in recent years. One factor here is the recognition that, in certain contexts, random processes can make certain outcomes highly probable. The profitability of casinos, for example, may be seen as sufficiently certain to make them a good financial investment for their owners; the genuine randomness of the outcomes of well-balanced roulette wheels does not affect this near-certainty. Another factor is, as Richard Dawkins (2004: 603–606) has commented, that some evolutionary routes seem to have been ‘easier’ to follow than others. In this sense, he seems to see some routes as being initially more probable than others. The most extreme version of this latter perspective comes from Simon Conway Morris, who has emphasized the way in which certain adaptations to particular ecological niches have happened, not only more than once, but often from very different evolutionary starting points. For Morris, this underlines the notion of evolutionary convergence, which suggests that a number of evolutionary pathways may tend to converge on the same adaptive features in similar ecological environments. (Marine

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mammals and fish, for example, tend to have similar features related to locomotion.) Morris even argues that, once life has begun in any part of the universe, something rather like human beings as we know them are effectively bound to emerge naturalistically (Morris 2003). My own argument has been that teleology in the evolutionary process may be understood theologically in terms very similar to those that Morris has outlined, provided that we take as a fundamental axiom something that for him is only a scientifically-­informed guess. This is that there is ‘a deeper fabric in biology in which Darwinian evolution remains central as the agency, but the nodes of occupation are effectively determined from the Big Bang’ (Morris 2003: 309–10). Such a theological view can, I have suggested, not only clarify and expand Teilhard de Chardin’s theological interpretation of evolution (Knight 2013), but also provide important insights into the evolution of human religiosity and the process of divine revelation (Knight 2009, 2016b).

12.6  Beyond Byzantinism Since my own thinking on these issues has been so strongly rooted in the Byzantine theological tradition, it may initially seem to some that this thinking is irrelevant to those working outside that tradition. However, Ritchie’s analysis of the ‘theological turn’ in debate about divine action indicates that this may not be the case, since comparable ways of thinking have recently appeared within quite different theological traditions. Especially within the Pentecostalist/charismatic movement, important perspectives parallel to my own have appeared in what she calls the pneumatological approaches of James K. A. Smith (2008) and Amos Yong (2011). Just as for Orthodoxy there is ‘no “pure” nature to which grace is added as a supernatural gift’ (Lossky 1957: 101), so also, Ritchie notes, there is, for these approaches, no autonomous nature. Another similarity lies in the understanding of miracles. In my own way of expressing the Orthodox understanding, miraculous events are an aspect of the ‘natural’ functioning of the world that requires human response to God to be activated. In a comparable way, as Ritchie notes, the pneumatological approach is one in which the way that some events seem more supernatural than others is due the varying levels of creaturely response and openness to the Spirit. Here she quotes Smith as saying that such events are ‘sped-up modes of the Spirit’s more regular presences’ (Smith 2008: 892). This clearly parallels my own view of the way that such events may be seen as the outcome of the presence of the Logos in ‘higher’ laws of nature as well as in ‘lower’ ones. My own use of the term enhanced naturalism is, in fact, paralleled by Smith’s independent coining of the term enchanted naturalism to express his own views. Future work will, I anticipate, draw out further parallels, not only between what Ritchie calls my ‘panentheistic’ model and the pneumatological one of Yong and Smith, but also between these and another component of the ‘theological turn’ to which she draws attention: the variation on Thomism developed by Michael Dodds

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(2012). The specific scientific insights that I have highlighted will surely prove helpful in this, and cross-fertilization between the three streams of thought will no doubt suggest other avenues of research. One of the most important of these may be to explore how the somewhat abstract philosophical notion of the ‘divine’ that has dominated debate about divine action can, for Christians, be replaced by an explicitly Trinitarian understanding. In particular, the complementarity of my own focus on the second person of the Trinity and the focus of Smith and Yong on the third may well prove to be the basis of an understanding in which we can affirm, with Irenaeus, that in all divine action the Son and the Spirit are ‘the two hands of God the Father’.

Bibliography Barrow, J.D., and F.J. Tipler. 1986. The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. Oxford: Clarendon. Dawkins, R. 2004. The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Dodds, M. 2012. Unlocking Divine Action: Contemporary Science and Thomas Aquinas. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press. Knight, C.C. 2001. Wrestling with the Divine: Religion, Science, and Revelation. Minneapolis: Fortress. Knight, C.C. 2008. The fallen Cosmos: An aspect of eastern Christian thought and its relevance to the dialogue between science and theology. Theology and Science 6: 305–317. ———. 2007. The God of Nature: Incarnation and Contemporary Science. Minneapolis: Fortress. ———. 2009. Homo Religiosus: A Theological Proposal for a Scientific and Pluralistic Age. In Human Identity at the Intersection of Science, Technology and Religion, ed. N. Murphy and C.C. Knight, 25–38. Farnham: Ashgate. ———. 2013. Biological Evolution and the Universality of Spiritual Experience: Pluralistic Implications of a New Approach to the Thought of Teilhard de Chardin. Journal of Ecumenical Studies 48: 58–70. ———. 2016a. An Eastern Orthodox Critique of the Science-Theology Dialogue. Zygon: Journal of Religion and Scence 51: 573–591. ———. 2016b. The Psychology of Religion and the Concept of Revelation. Theology and Science 14: 482–494. Lossky, V. 1957. The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. Cambridge: James Clarke. Morris, S.C. 2003. Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nellas, P. 1987. Deification in Christ: Perspectives on the Nature of the Human Person. Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press. Pannenberg, W. 2002. The Concept of Miracle. Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 37: 759–762. Ritchie, S.L. 2017. Dancing Around the Causal Joint: Challenging the Theological Turn in Divine Action Theories. Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 52: 361–379. Saunders, N. 2002. Divine Action and Modern Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sherrard, P. 1964. The Sacrament. In The Orthodox Ethos: Essays in Honour of the Centenary of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America, ed. A.J. Philippou, vol. 1. Oxford: Holywell Press.

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Smith, J.A.K. 2008. Is the Universe Open for Surprise? Pentecostal Ontology and the Spirit of Naturalism. Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 43: 879–896. Ware, K. 2004. God Immanent yet Transcendent: The Divine Energies according to Saint Gregory Palamas. In In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God’s Presence in a Scientific World, ed. P. Clayton and A. Peacocke. William B. Eerdmans: Grand Rapids MI. Wildman, W. 2006. Robert John Russell’s Theology of God’s Action. In God’s Action in the World: Essays in Honour of Robert John Russell, ed. T. Peters and N. Hallanger. Aldershot: Ashgate. Yong, A. 2011. The Spirit of Creation: Modern Science and Divine Action in the Pentecostal-­ charismatic Imagination. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Christopher C. Knight is a priest of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the author of three books on the science-theology dialogue: Wrestling With the Divine: Religion, Science, and Revelation (2001), The God of Nature: Incarnation and Contemporary Science (2007), and Christianity and Science: An Eastern Orthodox View of the Science-Theology Dialogue (forthcoming). For the 10 years prior to his retirement he was the Executive Secretary of the International Society for Science and Religion, and is now a Senior Research Associate of the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, Cambridge.

Part III

Scientific Insights

Chapter 13

Awe and Wonder in Scientific Practice: Implications for the Relationship Between Science and Religion Helen De Cruz

Abstract  This paper examines the role of awe and wonder in scientific practice. Drawing on evidence from psychological research and the writings of scientists and science communicators, I argue that awe and wonder play a crucial role in scientific discovery. They focus our attention on the natural world, encourage open-­ mindedness, diminish the self (particularly feelings of self-importance), help to accord value to the objects that are being studied, and provide a mode of understanding in the absence of full knowledge. I will flesh out implications of the role of awe and wonder in scientific discovery for debates on the relationship between science and religion. Abraham Heschel argued that awe and wonder are religious emotions because they reduce our feelings of self-importance, and thereby help to cultivate the proper reverent attitude towards God. Yet metaphysical naturalists such as Richard Dawkins insist that awe and wonder need not lead to any theistic commitments for scientists. The awe some scientists experience can be regarded as a form of non-theistic spirituality, which is neither a reductive naturalism nor theism. I will attempt to resolve the tension between these views by identifying some common ground. Keywords  Awe · Epistemic emotions · Non-theistic spirituality · Scientific practice · Wonder

H. De Cruz (*) Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Nature – and Beyond, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 5, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31182-7_13

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13.1  Awe and Wonder in Scientific Practice The great religions have a place for awe, for ecstatic transport at the wonder and beauty of creation. And it’s exactly this feeling of spine-shivering, breath-catching awe – almost worship – this flooding of the chest with epiphanic wonder, that modern science can provide. And it does so beyond the wildest dreams of saints and mystics. The fact that the s­ upernatural has no place in our explanations, in our understanding of the universe and life, doesn’t diminish the awe (Dawkins 1997: 27).

Dawkins is not atypical in having experiences of awe and wonder. Other examples of descriptions of awe from scientists who were also talented science communicators include Rachel Carson, Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, and Carl Sagan. While awe and wonder are traditionally associated with religious attitudes, they also figure prominently in scientific practice, and as we will see, recent psychological research suggests they might even be a core element of the scientific mindset. In autobiographical accounts of scientists, three features of awe and wonder recur. First, awe and wonder are emotions that motivate scientists to value the objects they study and that urge them to further explore. Such experiences are a driving force in the decision to become scientists and to continue scientific pursuits. For example, primatologist Jane Goodall, reflecting on her childhood experiences, writes When I think of my childhood I remember spring bulbs pushing up pale shoots through the dead leaves, spiders in the garden carrying tiny babies on their backs, the scent of violets and honeysuckle, and the sound of the wind rustling the leaves as I perched for hours in the branches of my beech tree. It was that magic of childhood that shaped the passion that drives me to spend my life fighting to save and protect the last wild places on the planet (Jane Goodall cited in Russell 2017: 1).

Second, scientists explicitly deny that understanding takes away the sense of awe and wonder. They do not see understanding as diametrically opposed to these emotions, but as integral to them. Here is an account from the Feynman lectures: Poets say that science takes away from the beauty of the stars – mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is “mere.” I too can see the stars on a desert night, and I feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination – stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one million year old light. A vast pattern – of which I am part – perhaps my stuff was belched from some forgotten star, as one is belching there. Or see them with the greater eye of Palomar, rushing all apart from some common starting point when they were perhaps all together. What is the pattern, the meaning or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artist of the past imagined! (Feynman et al. 1963 [2010]: 3–11, footnote).

A third characteristic feature is the denial that these emotions of awe and wonder have any theistic content. For example, Einstein, who called himself a deeply religious nonbeliever said on several occasions. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it (Einstein, cited in Calaprice 2011: 341–342).

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How can we make sense of the awe and wonder that scientific research engenders in its practitioners? I will examine this question, using recent psychological findings on the connection between awe, wonder and science. Section 13.2 reviews recent scientific explanations for why we sense awe and wonder. Section 13.3 ­outlines an account of the function of awe and wonder in scientific reasoning. I will argue that these emotions help scientists to accomplish the following three goals: 1. Accord intrinsic value to the objects they study, while diminishing self-­ importance and self-aggrandizement. 2. Encourage cognitive attitudes that are conducive to scientific discovery, such as open-mindedness and critical reflection, while reducing reliance on heuristics and stereotypes, and diminishing the tendency to find quick solutions. 3. Provide a mode of understanding, in the absence of a complete grasp of the topic under investigation. A later section examines implications for the science and religion literature. Do feelings of awe and wonder for nature point to the existence of God? Can they make sense in a purely naturalistic framework? I will consider non-theistic spirituality as an alternative response. I will also identify some common ground between these positions.

13.2  W  hy We Feel Awe and Wonder: A Review of the Scientific Evidence To understand what role awe and wonder might play in scientific practice, it is useful to examine the role of emotions in more general terms. What are emotions and why do we have them? Emotions are crucial in our day-to-day lives. They motivate us, give us meaning, and play a vital role in social relationships and in our personal and interpersonal wellbeing. Many philosophers, including Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hobbes, Hume, and James have proposed comprehensive theories of emotions, what they are and what role they play in our actions. Unfortunately, there is no definition of emotion that enjoys universal support. This lack of conceptual clarity contributed to a relative neglect of the study of emotions during most of the twentieth century. However, in recent years philosophers and psychologists have shown a renewed interest in emotions. I will here use a common and relatively uncontroversial psychological definition of emotion as given by the American Psychological Association, namely a ‘complex pattern of changes, including physiological arousal, feelings, cognitive processes, and behavioral reactions, made in response to a situation perceived to be personally significant’.1 Emotions can be transient, such as a momentary burst of anger, or long-term, such as the love one feels for a romantic partner or  http://www.apa.org/research/action/glossary.aspx, accessed April 2018.

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for one’s children over decades. They usually have a positive or negative valence, e.g., happiness, pride, elation, gratitude, and love usually feel good, whereas sadness, shame, disappointment, resentment, and hatred feel bad. They have ­physiological effects, including reducing or increasing heart rate, changing one’s hormonal balance, and motivating one to engage in or refrain from action. Charles Darwin (1871, 1872) pioneered the evolutionary study of emotions. He proposed that emotions help animals to navigate their natural and social environment. Emotions provide the appropriate motivation and drive for animals, for example, to care for their offspring, to form long-term sexual partnerships, to recognize danger, and to forge strategic alliances with others to coordinate for mutual defense. Because it is difficult to hide our emotions or to feign them (a fact that actors and poker players are acutely aware of), displaying and acting on our emotions plays a key role in social interactions. This Darwinian picture of emotions as instigators of adaptive actions, especially in social contexts, is reflected in contemporary psychological theories of emotions. For example, Keltner and Haidt (1999) have argued that emotions help us to coordinate and navigate socially complex situations. Against this theoretical backdrop of emotions as motivators for adaptive action, we can consider awe and wonder. These emotions fall into two main categories: they are both self-transcendent and epistemic. Self-transcendent emotions include gratitude, compassion, and love. They help focus us on the wider world, both the natural world and social others. They motivate us to action. For example, the emotion of compassion motivates us to altruistically help people whom we think are suffering undeservedly. Stellar et  al. (2017) provide an evolutionary-grounded theoretical account of self-transcendent emotions. They argue that these emotions evolved to solve coordination problems such as care taking, cooperative hunting, and sharing food. This is not to say that altruistic actions do not occur without self-transcendent emotions. However, they have a powerful motivating force, and thus contribute critically to them. Take, as an example, gratitude, which Stellar et al. (2017) hypothesize evolved as a way to solve problems related to resource sharing. If I receive food from a group member when I am in need, I will experience gratitude toward this person. This feeling of gratitude will motivate me to help this person in the future and thus helps to cement direct reciprocity (tit-for-tat giving), but crucially, it also makes me more generous towards others. Societies in which gratitude is a regular feature of public life thus will have higher levels of cooperation, which increases the fitness of members of such societies. As we will see further on in this section, awe and wonder also direct attention away from the self and to the environment and to others. Awe and wonder are also epistemic emotions: they are triggered when we are confronted with gaps in our knowledge (Valdesolo et al. 2017). Other examples of epistemic emotions include surprise, curiosity, love of truth, meticulousness, and excitement. Neuropsychological evidence suggests that people who have damage to brain areas involved in emotion processing have diminished capacities for reasoning and judgment (Damasio (1994) provides a classic defense for the role of emotions in reasoning). This indicates that emotions play a key role not just in how we navigate social relationships, but also

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how we learn and reason about the world. Adam Morton (2010) argues that epistemic emotions help us in forming correct beliefs and rejecting false beliefs, which is important for adaptive action (e.g., recognizing the presence of danger, finding opportunities). To see why epistemic emotions are important for scientists, imagine a scientist who is well trained in research techniques, is abreast of the cutting edge of her field, and is intelligent, but who lacks curiosity, wonder, and other epistemic emotions. Morton speculates that while we can expect this scientist to do excellent work, even become eminent in her field, she will not lead her discipline in any radical new direction, because she lacks the epistemic drive to do so. We experience epistemic emotions in a wide range of contexts. They spur on our curiosity when we read a mystery novel or explore a new domain. I will now look in more detail at awe and wonder, with most emphasis on awe as the empirical literature on this emotion is more substantial compared to wonder.

13.2.1  Awe While eighteenth-century philosophers such as Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant (1790 [2000]) have written about awe and its connection to the sublime, psychological research on this emotion is relatively recent. Awe tends to be elicited by the vast and expansive, it is ‘in its chaos that nature most arouses our ideas of the sublime, or in its wildest and most ruleless disarray and devastation, provided it displays magnitude and might’ (Kant 1790 [2000], x23, 5: 246). Vast landscapes, starry night skies, wide-scope scientific theories, mathematical theorems, and large-scale artistic productions are awe-inspiring. Awe also requires an element of incomprehension; not mere ignorance, but the sense of something beyond our epistemic grasp. Abraham Heschel anticipated the psychological literature: ‘Ignorance is not the cause of reverence. The unknown as such does not fill us with awe. We have no feelings of awe for the other side of the Moon or for that which will happen tomorrow’. But completely known objects do not evoke awe either: ‘the known is in our grasp, and we revere only that which surpasses us’ (Heschel 1951: 26). Keltner and Haidt’s (2003) influential account of awe sparked a growing empirical literature on this emotion. They define awe as the feeling of experiencing something vast that is beyond our grasp or understanding, and that we have a desire to accommodate. Awe has two key components: a perception of vastness, which elicits a need for accommodation. The perception of vastness is not just sheer size, but has a cognitive component, the perception of something as a single, integrated whole is important, as well as some sense of what it means (Danvers et al. 2016). For example, the demolishing of the Berlin Wall was awe-inspiring for those who witnessed it, not because it was the smashing of a big wall, but because it symbolized the breaking down of barriers and the unification of Germany. As an epistemic emotion, awe makes people more open-minded and less reliant on clichés, stereotypes, and scripts. To test whether awe reduces the tendency to rely on scripts, Danvers and Shiota (2017) elicited awe by letting participants watch a

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video showing a stellar figure skater performing a complicated routine. Afterwards they asked participants to recall a story about a romantic dinner. This is a type of story where people tend to invent details that fit the scenario (reliance on script). People in the awe condition were less likely to invent details than those in a control condition. Griskevicius et al. (2010) tested whether awe increases critical thinking. They induced different positive emotions in their participants. For example, they induced awe by asking participants to think about a panoramic view they personally witnessed, such as the Grand Canyon. Participants were then presented with either a strong or a weak argument for making a comprehensive exam a requirement for graduation in a particular college. Compared to the neutral condition, participants who had positive emotions were more likely to be persuaded by either the strong or the weak argument. Awe and compassion  – two self-transcendent, positive emotions – were the only emotions that reduced acceptance of the weak argument. These psychological findings indicate why awe is a relevant emotion for scientific practice. People tend to rely on heuristics and will try to reduce novel information to stereotypes they are familiar with. Awe counteracts this tendency: people who feel awe are less likely to rely on stereotypes and heuristics to assimilate new information. The connection to scientific creativity is clear: if a scientist examines a novel phenomenon, she would close off many viable lines of inquiry if she immediately tried to accommodate the novel phenomenon in terms of cases she is familiar with. However, if a scientist experiences awe in response to a novel phenomenon, she will feel more comfortable with the uncertainty and the unknown, and more likely to be open to new explanations for it. Keltner and Haidt (2003) hypothesize that awe has emerged in the context of social dominance relations. By feeling awe for a socially dominant other, such as an alpha male, human ancestors would experience better group coherence, which is important in complex primate groups. Awe would originate from the sense of deference subordinate primates feel towards those that are cleverer or more powerful. If correct, this would mean that socially dominant and powerful other human beings would be the prime object for which we feel awe. However, stimuli that have emerged in the literature as most reliably eliciting awe are not social others. In a sample of western Christians, Buddhists and atheists, Caldwell-Harris et al. (2011) found that nature (54%), science (30%), and art, especially music (12%) were most likely to evoke awe. Shiota et al. (2007), on the other hand, argue that the primary function of awe might be to promote some form of cognitive accommodation (understanding) when we are faced with a vast, novel stimulus that does not fit our current image of the world. It thus provides a mode of understanding in the absence of full knowledge. This might explain that while knowledge is not fatal to awe (as authors such as Feynman insisted), a bit of mystery and a lack of full grasp is nevertheless a crucial element for experiencing awe. In agreement with the social dominance hypothesis, awe decreases feelings of self-importance and self-entitlement. Piff et al. (2015) placed participants in a grove of towering and majestic eucalyptus trees (the awe condition), or asked them to look up at a tall, plain-looking building (the control condition). Participants were subsequently tested on their prosociality and self-entitlement. The effects of awe on pro-

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social behavior were only marginal, but participants who had seen the trees responded significantly less self-entitled, for instance, they were more likely to disagree with the following statement ‘I honestly feel I’m just more deserving than others’. Science is of course not immune to egos and self-aggrandizement. Overinflated egos have a negative effect on scientific practice, they counteract epistemic humility, and may even encourage fraud and other dubious scientific practices. Awe is a useful emotion that shifts the focus away from the self, and thus counteracts this tendency.

13.2.2  Wonder Wonder is closely related to awe, and not always distinguished from it in the psychological literature. In a posthumous work on the history of astronomy, Adam Smith (1795) attempted to distinguish wonder, surprise, and admiration (the latter an emotion that has close affinities to awe). Wonder, Surprise, and Admiration, are words which, though often confounded, denote in our language sentiments that are indeed allied, but that are in some respects different also, and distinct from one another. What is new and singular, excites that sentiment which, in strict propriety, is called Wonder; what is unexpected, Surprise; and what is great or beautiful, admiration (Smith 1795: 3).

Smith (1795) sees as primary objects of wonder unusual phenomena (comets, meteors, eclipses) but also things we are little acquainted with, including single animals and plants. While it is less intense in its phenomenology than awe, it nevertheless has a few distinct traits. Research into wonder is at an even less developed stage compared to research into awe, but preliminary work suggests that wonder is associated with curiosity, and prompts people to contemplate. In his seminal study on the emotions, Frijda (1986: 18) links wonder to surprise and amazement, and describes it as a passive, receptive form of attention that we have when we experience something unexpected. Wonder is phenomenologically distinct from surprise. Take magic tricks, a situation where we tend to feel wonder, but not surprise (Lamont 2017). Magic tricks evoke wonder because they show events we know are impossible, such as people being sawed in half and emerging unharmed, or live elephants disappearing from the stage. We expect the magic to happen: a failed magic trick, where the elephant would still be standing on the stage, would elicit surprise but not wonder: a successful magic trick, where the elephant is effectively gone, evokes wonder but not surprise. This is because we expect the elephant to disappear (being in a magic show after all), but can still marvel at how the trick was done. We associate wonder with children and child-like inquiry, but the emotion is not absent in adults. Whereas awe is an emotion that engulfs us through vast and sweeping landscapes or stunning works of art, wonder is a quieter, less spectacular emotion that in part comes about due to our own receptivity and focus. As Heschel (1955

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[2009]: 39) put it: wonder ‘may be sensed in every grain of sand, in every drop of water. Every flower in the summer, every snow flake in the winter, may arouse in us the sense of wonder’. Dawkins, likewise, thinks that wonder is primarily a matter of focus and attitude: We can recapture that sense of having just tumbled out to life on a new world by looking at our own world in unfamiliar ways. It’s tempting to use an easy example like a rose or a butterfly, but let’s go straight for the alien deep end. I remember attending a lecture, years ago, by a biologist working on octopuses, and their relatives the squids and cuttlefish. He began by explaining his fascination with these animals. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘they are the Martians.’ Have you ever watched a squid change colour? (Dawkins 1998: 6–7).

A free word association task asked participants to describe an event where they felt a distinct positive emotion (awe, wonder, happiness). Compared to awe and happiness, the emotion of wonder elicited more present-tense descriptions, more words suggesting looking for causation and for insight (such as ‘think’, ‘because’, ‘cause’) (Darbor et al. 2016). Wonder also encourages humans to think abstractly; to look for deeper meaning, and to question why things are the way they are, even if it is elicited by very concrete stimuli, such as snowflakes, spider webs, an unusually-­ shaped leaf, or a single candle flame. So as a general rule of thumb, awe is elicited by the vast and spectacular, whereas wonder is elicited by smaller and unusual (although large stimuli might also elicit wonder, as long as they are not overpowering). Kevin Tobia (2015: 5) develops a core account of wonder, according to which four conditions need to be met for someone to experience wonder at something else: A person, p, feels wonder at object x if and only if: [ATTENTION] p is attending to x; [INTEREST] p is interested in x; p is disposed to continue engaging with x; [VALUE] it seems to p that x is important or valuable as an end; x seems to p to have final value; [POSITIVITY] p’s experience includes positively valenced affect.

The value condition is perhaps the most controversial of this account, and has not (to my knowledge) been subject to empirical test. Tobia uses thought experiments to make us think that wonder does require that we need to value objects we wonder at. It would be strange, for instance, to say, ‘I wonder at this artifact, and it does not seem valuable’. Just like awe, wonder has the propensity to open our hearts and minds. It is, fundamentally, an emotion that transports our focus away from ourselves to the objects we wonder about. Wonder makes things seem intrinsically valuable, but as Tobia (2015) points out, this does not mean that they are valuable. Still, wonder encourages receptivity to the world, which is a key emotion for scientific discovery. Smith (1795) argued that wonder plays a crucial role in scientific practice. It motivates us to study scientific phenomena for its own sake, deepens our understanding, and plays a role in our evaluation of scientific evidence. Since science is an open-ended endeavour, this role of wonder continues as new scientific findings open up new areas of research (Schliesser 2005).

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13.3  Awe, Wonder, and Scientific Practice We are now in a position to consider why scientists such as Dawkins, Goodall, and Feynman stress the importance of awe and wonder for their work. Awe and wonder fulfill three key roles in scientific practice. The first role relates to focus: both emotions diminish our sense of self-importance and accord value to the objects we study. The second role relates to cognitive attitude: awe and wonder encourage a receptivity to the unusual and the novel, reduce reliance on stereotypes and scripts, and increase critical thinking. Given universal human biases to rely on clichés and stereotypes, it provides scientists a way to overcome this tendency. Heschel already argued that wonder and awe diminish reliance on the conventional: The greatest hindrance to knowledge is our adjustment to conventional notions, to mental clichés. Wonder or radical amazement, the state of maladjustment to words and notions, is therefore a prerequisite for an authentic awareness of that which is (Heschel 1951: 11).

Note that Heschel conflates awe, wonder, admiration, and radical amazement (emotions that contemporary psychologists tend to distinguish). Nevertheless, Heschel correctly identifies the epistemic role of wonder and awe, and sees it as resulting from a state of maladjustment. Awe and wonder draw us out of our comfort zone, and help us to be creative. The third and final role is perhaps the most elusive: awe and wonder provide a mode of understanding, which paradoxically helps us to perceive a gap in our knowledge. Seeking to understand the world one lives in clearly is a good incentive for an investigator, regardless of whether they inhabit a prescientific world or a highly scientific one. Recent psychological studies have looked more closely at the role of awe in scientific practice. Gottlieb et al. (2018) call awe a scientific emotion, by which they mean that it motivates scientists to answer questions about the natural world. Across six studies, they find that a psychological disposition to experience awe is associated with psychological characteristics of a scientific mindset. These include a more accurate understanding of how science works, rejection of creationism, and rejection of unwarranted teleological explanations more broadly. This is particularly interesting, as teleology and creationism have traditionally been associated with religion, explicitly with natural theological arguments for the existence of God. Valdesolo et al. (2017) argue that awe and wonder play a key role in scientific transformations, particularly in precipitating paradigm shifts. As sociologists and philosophers of science have recognized since Kuhn (1962), scientists do aim to find new results, but they don’t want to stray too far from the bounds of what is generally accepted in their discipline. Kuhn called this state of affairs ‘normal science’. He speculated that paradigms eventually fall because of the accumulation of anomalies, pesky data that don’t fit established theories. Ultimately, scientists need to be open to anomalies to try to change their viewpoint, or to use unusual approaches to look at familiar domains. Major scientific discoveries resulted from scientists surveying familiar territory with fresh eyes, such as Harvey who conceptualized the heart having two clackes (pumps with one-way valves), ibn al-Haytham (aka

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Alhazen) who applied geometrical insights to human vision, or Kepler who used an analogy with light to understand how gravity operated in the solar system (De Cruz and De Smedt 2010). As we have seen, wonder helps us to see the world in fresh ways, and awe helps us to reduce reliance on stereotypes, scripts and heuristics. These emotions reduce both the need to overlook anomalies or to look at the world using the same familiar ways of thinking, thus paving the way for paradigm shifts and other deep conceptual changes. Valdesolo et al. (2017) recommend that awe be elicited in science education, and predict that it would lead to more effective learning.

13.4  A  we and Wonder in Science: Theism or Non-theistic Spirituality? The phenomenological character of awe and wonder, and the crucial role they play in science (as uncovered by recent research in cognitive science) has potential implications for the relationship between science and religion. I will explore two lines of thought on what this relationship might be. The first, defended by Heschel (1951, 1955 [2009]), holds that awe and wonder in science point to God’s existence. The second holds that these emotions are part of a non-religious spirituality, a position explored in autobiographical accounts of scientists such as Dawkins (2017). Abraham Heschel examined the role of awe and wonder in science and religion, focusing on how awe functions in Judaism. He did not argue that God exists because humans feel awe and wonder. Rather, he took the existence of God as a given and then examined what role awe and wonder might play, as a way to understand the divine aspect of the universe. To Heschel awe precedes faith, and lies at the root of it. Long before we have any propositional knowledge of God, we ‘possess an intuition of a divine presence’ (Heschel 1951: 67). Being religious (Jewish) means to be in awe of God. Foreshadowing the empirical literature, he saw the ability of awe to reduce our feelings of self-importance as a key element in cultivating a religious mindset. Under ordinary circumstances ‘we are so impressed by our intellectual power that we deny any presence beyond our power’ (Heschel 1965: 76). Awe is a necessary precondition for religious deference, which is important for Jewish religiosity, where being a religious person is almost synonymous for being in awe of God – a religious believer, yare hashem, is literally one who stands in awe of God. Heschel believed that religion could play a key role in scientific knowledge acquisition by offering what he termed ‘a legacy of wonder.’ Wonder is the ‘semen scientiae’, the seed of knowledge. Not only does scripture exhort us to wonder and awe, Heschel also believed that religious rituals – in particular, Jewish rituals – help us to cultivate a sense of awe and wonder. Daily rituals such as blessings do not make sense in a purely scientific picture of the world, because once you know some scientific fact, there is no reason to be reminded of it daily. But ritual blessings make sense as a form of training to keep our ability for awe and wonder sharp. As Heschel

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(1955 [2009]: 49) writes, ‘We are trained in maintaining our sense of wonder by uttering a prayer before the enjoyment of food. Each time we are about to drink a glass of water, we remind ourselves of the eternal mystery of creation, “Blessed be Thou ... by Whose word all things come into being.”’ Building on this account, Wettstein (2012) argues that it makes sense for a metaphysical naturalist to cultivate religious practices, as they might help her to cultivate the sense of awe. It would be very difficult and require a large transformation of one’s character to become more receptive to awe and wonder purely by willpower alone, but Jewish practices are carefully calibrated to help habituate one’s mindset. Judaism has blessings for many different occasions: on seeing the first blossoms of the year, on eating and drinking, or smelling fragrant spices, on receiving good news, on receiving bad news. Such blessings help one to maintain a reverent focus. Wettstein accords a similar role to the practice of praying three times a day, in ritualized and standardized form, which allow one to engage with enduring literature of great emotional scope, such as the psalms. The proper target of such practices, for Heschel, is God. Nature worship does not work because Heschel did not see why would anything be worthy of worship in a naturalistic worldview. Nature is surely beautiful, vast and wondrous, but it does not make sense to worship or revere a non-­ sentient entity. Heschel believed that nature worshippers have the right attitude but draw the wrong conclusions. Wettstein and Heschel argued that religion allows one to cultivate habits that afford a space for awe and wonder. However, Heschel overlooked the possibility for the naturalist to be in awe of nature, to be moved by nature, for nature’s sake. As Carroll (1993) has argued, naturalists can be moved by nature, they can have a visceral form of appreciating nature for what it is. This is not some ersatz religious sentiment (see also De Cruz and De Smedt, 2015, Chap. 7). The current empirical evidence suggests that awe and wonder are not exclusively religious sentiments, and that atheists and agnostics are capable of experiencing them (Caldwell-Harris et al., 2011). There has been a long-standing debate on whether emotions that are often experienced in religious contexts, such as awe, are specifically religious, or if they are byproducts of more general emotions. Authors such as Otto have argued that awe is a specifically religious emotion. The concept of mysterium tremendum in Otto (1923) is closely linked to the idea of numinous dread, or awe, which he links to the earliest religious beliefs in ancestral humans, and which he still thinks plays a role in people’s attraction the to uncanny. By contrast, authors such as William James (1902: 27) argued there are no specific religious emotions. Rather, awe, wonder, love, joy, fear and a wide range of other emotions can be experienced in a religious as well as non-religious context: ‘religious awe is the same organic thrill which we feel in a forest at twilight, or in a mountain gorge; only this time it comes over us at the thought of our supernatural relations’. The current empirical literature vindicates James (1902). Emotions frequently experienced in religious contexts are not exclusively religious. This does not disprove Heschel’s view that awe connects to a religious mindset, but it does open up the possibility for non-theistic spirituality.

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As we have seen, some scientists have explicitly rejected claims that the awe and wonder they experience are religious. If we take the writings of these atheist and agnostic scientists at face value, the wonder and awe they feel is a form of non-­ theistic spirituality. It is tempting for the theist (Bacon, for instance, defended this position) to see atheism as shallow and devoid from any form of spirituality. However, in recent decades, non-theistic spirituality has become more philosophically respectable, as well as a more psychologically viable option (McGhee 2011). The decline of traditional theistic religions in western culture does not mean people have become reductive naturalists, as is attested by a wide variety of nontheistic spiritual practices, such as the Burning Man festival, with their own rituals, foci of beauty, and moral ideals (e.g., the burning of the wicker man, the gift economy, and the focus on self-reliance in the Burning Man festival). Steinhart (2018) sees religions as technologies that are ultimately aimed at human ends. In the case of science and its relationship with awe and wonder, one could argue that science is a cognitive technology for cultivating awe and wonder (similar to what Heschel and Wettstein have claimed for theistic religion). By sheer willpower alone, we cannot change our habits, but practices can help us accomplish this goal. Heschel was skeptical that science could engender a sense of awe and wonder, because there would be little point in being reminded daily of scientific facts one already knows. But scientific practice is not about rehearsal, but about exploration into the unknown. Venturing into what we don’t know on a regular basis can help to instil an attitude that is receptive to awe and wonder. Speculatively, the relationship between science and awe and wonder is not a one-­ way street (as cognitive scientists have claimed, by showing the salutary effects of awe and wonder on scientific practice); perhaps they reinforce each other. As self-­ transcendent and epistemic emotions, awe and wonder focus scientists on nature, help them to value it, and provide a mode of understanding. But regularly engaging in the pursuit of knowledge may also help scientists to cultivate awe and wonder, in a way not dissimilar to the Jewish blessings cited by Heschel. Whatever their object – God, nature, or even scientific theories – awe and wonder are the result of cognitive adaptations. They help us to step outside of concern for ourselves, accord value to things outside of us. Such concern for the wider environment is important, a point emphasized by Goodall, who, as we have seen, feels compelled by her sense of wonder to fight to save the last wild places on the planet. Rachel Carson (1956) argued that we need to help cultivate awe and wonder in children. Her motivations for why it is important to keep a wondering mindset, something she regrets many people lose even before they become adults, are as follows: What is the value of preserving and strengthening this sense of awe and wonder, this recognition of something beyond the boundaries of human existence? ... Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth, are never alone or weary of life. Whatever the vexations or concerns of their personal lives, their thoughts can find paths that lead to inner contentment and to renewed excitement in living. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts (Carson 1956: 48).

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By way of conclusion, regarded in this light, the gap between theistic awe and wonder and the non-theistic spirituality of scientists is perhaps not as large as initially appraised. Both religious practices and scientific practices are cognitive technologies that help us to transcend the self, and to find out about the world around us.

Bibliography Calaprice, A. 2011. The Ultimate Quotable Einstein. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Caldwell-Harris, C.L., A.L.  Wilson, E.  LoTempio, and B.  Beit-Hallahmi. 2011. Exploring the Atheist Personality: Well-being, awe, and magical thinking in atheists, Buddhists, and Christians. Mental Health, Religion & Culture 14: 659–672. Carroll, N. 1993. On Being Moved by Nature: Between Religion and Natural History. In Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts, ed. S. Kemal and I. Gaskell, 224–266. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carson, R. 1956. Help Your Child to Wonder. Woman’s Home Companion, July, 24–48. Damasio, A.R. 1994. Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain. New York: Avon. Danvers, A.F., and M.N. Shiota. 2017. Going Off Script: Effects of Awe on Memory for Script-­ typical and-Irrelevant Narrative Detail. Emotion 17 (6): 938–952. Danvers, A.F., M.J. O’Neil, and M.N. Shiota. 2016. The Mind of the ‘Happy Warrior’: Eudaimonia, Awe, and the Search for Meaning in Life. In Handbook of Eudaimonic Well-Being, ed. J. Vittersø, 323–335. Dordrecht: Springer. Darbor, K.E., H.C. Lench, W.E. Davis, and J.A. Hicks. 2016. Experiencing Versus Contemplating: Language Use During Descriptions of Awe and Wonder. Cognition and Emotion 30 (6): 1188–1196. Darwin, C. 1871. The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. Vol. 1. London: John Murray. ———. 1872. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. London: John Murray. Dawkins, R. 1997. Is Science a Religion? The Humanist 57: 26–39. ———. 1998. Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder. Boston/ New York: Houghton Mifflin. ———. 2017. Science in the Soul. Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist. Kindle ed. New York: Random House. De Cruz, H., and J.  De Smedt. 2010. Science as Structured Imagination. Journal of Creative Behavior 44: 29–44. ———. 2015. A Natural History of Natural Theology: The Cognitive Science of Theology and Philosophy of Religion. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Feynman, R., R.B. Layton, and M. Sands. 1963 [2010. The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume I, Mainly Mechanics, Radiation, and Heat. New York: Basic Books. Frijda, N.H. 1986. The Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gottlieb, S., D. Keltner, and T. Lombrozo. 2018. Awe as a Scientific Emotion. Cognitive Science 42 (6): 2081–2094. Griskevicius, V., M.N. Shiota, and S.L. Neufeld. 2010. Influence of Different Positive Emotions on Persuasion Processing: A Functional Evolutionary Approach. Emotion 10 (2): 190–206. Heschel, A.J. 1951. Man is Not Alone. A Philosophy of Religion. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Heschel, A. J. 1955 [2009]. God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism. London: Souvenir. Heschel, A.J. 1965. Who is Man? Stanford: Stanford University Press. James, W. 1902. The Varieties of Religious Experience. A Study in Human Nature. New  York: Longmans, Green, and Co.

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Kant, I. 1790 [2000]. Critique of the Power of Judgment (ed. P. Guyer and trans. E. Matthews). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Keltner, D., and J. Haidt. 1999. Social Functions of Emotions at Four Levels of Analysis. Cognition & Emotion 13 (5): 505–521. ———. 2003. Approaching Awe, a Moral, Spiritual, and Aesthetic Emotion. Cognition and Emotion 17: 297–314. Kuhn, T.S. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Lamont, P. 2017. A Particular Kind of Wonder: The Experience of Magic Past and Present. Review of General Psychology 21 (1): 1–8. McGhee, M. 2011. Spirituality for the Godless. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 68: 227–244. Morton, A. 2010. Epistemic emotions. In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion, ed. P. Goldie, 385–399. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Otto, R. 1923. The Idea of the Holy. An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational (trans. J. W. Harvey). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Piff, P.K., P. Dietze, M. Feinberg, D.M. Stancato, and D. Keltner. 2015. Awe, the Small self, and Prosocial Behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 108 (6): 883–899. Russell, G.K. 2017. Children and Nature. In Context 37: 3–7. Schliesser, S. 2005. Wonder in the Face of Scientific Revolutions: Adam Smith on Newton’s ‘Proof’ of Copernicanism. British Journal for the History of Philosophy 13: 697–732. Shiota, M.N., D. Keltner, and A. Mossman. 2007. The Nature of Awe: Elicitors, Appraisals, and Effects on Self-Concept. Cognition and Emotion 21: 944–963. Smith, A. 1795. The History of Astronomy. In Essays on Philosophical Subjects, ed. D. Stewart, 3–130. Dublin: Wogan, Byrne, Moore et al. Steinhart, S. 2018. Religion after Naturalism. In Renewing Philosophy of Religion, ed. P. Draper and J. Schellenberg, 63–78. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stellar, J.E., A.M.  Gordon, P.K.  Piff, D.  Cordaro, C.L.  Anderson, Y.  Bai, L.A.  Maruskin, and D.  Keltner. 2017. Self-transcendent Emotions and their Social Functions: Compassion, Gratitude, and Awe Bind us to Others through Prosociality. Emotion Review 9 (3): 200–207. Tobia, K.P. 2015. Wonder and Value. Res Philosophica 92 (4): 959–984. Valdesolo, P., A.  Shtulman, and A.S.  Baron. 2017. Science is Awe-some: The Emotional Antecedents of Science Learning. Emotion Review 9 (3): 215–221. Wettstein, H. 2012. The Significance of Religious Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Helen De Cruz is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Philosophy at Oxford Brookes University in the United Kingdom. Her publications are in empirically-­informed philosophy of cognitive science, philosophy of religion, social epistemology, and metaphilosophy. Next to over 35 journal articles and 13 chapters in edited volumes, she is author of Religious Disagreement (CUP, 2019) and co-author of A natural history of natural theology (De Cruz and De Smedt, MIT Press, 2015). She is co-editor of Advances in Religion, Cognitive Science, and Experimental Philosophy (De Cruz and Nichols, Bloomsbury, 2016). She is also executive editor of the Journal of Analytic Theology.

Chapter 14

A Contingency Interpretation of Information Theory as a Bridge Between God’s Immanence and Transcendence Philippe Gagnon

Abstract  This paper investigates the degree to which information theory, and the derived uses that make it work as a metaphor of our age, can be helpful in thinking about God’s immanence and transcendence. We ask when it is possible to say that a consciousness has to be behind the information we encounter. If God is to be thought about as a communicator of information, we need to ask whether a communication system has to pre-exist to the divine and impose itself to God. If we want God to be Creator, and not someone who would work like a human being, ‘creating’ will mean sustaining in being as much the channel, the material system, as the message. Is information control? It seems that God’s actions are not going to be informational control of everything. To clarify the issue, we attempt to distinguish two kinds of ‘genialities’ in nature, as a way to evaluate the likelihood of God from nature. We investigate concepts and images of God, in terms of the history of ideas but also in terms of philosophical theology, metaphysics, and religious ontology.

Keywords  Archetype · Complexity · Complication · Divine action · Gnosticism · Information theory · Likelihood · Monopsychism · Participatory observer · Top down causation ‘...human understanding of God is directly linked to the collective self-understanding which human beings have of themselves in any given age of the world. When that self-­ understanding changes, then one can anticipate a corresponding change in the contemporary understanding of God’ (Bracken 1979: 25). ‘A theory of knowledge that resolutely starts from the case that sets the norm of all knowledge, i.e. the meeting between persons, saves itself a good many false problems’ (Urs von Balthasar 1958: 32).

P. Gagnon (*) Université Catholique de Lyon, Lyon, France © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Nature – and Beyond, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 5, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31182-7_14

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14.1  Introduction Why offer information theory as a candidate in exploring the contrasted terms of divine immanence and transcendence? An oft-heard answer is that this theory rules over our world, with its smart phones, databases, big data, and even ‘augmented man.’ In its early days, ESSSAT gave to the proceedings of its third conference the title The Science and Theology of Information (1990), but in subsequent conferences this topic has been less emphasised. Besides the viewpoint of the philosopher, what does the theologian have to say about this topic? The engineer who uses this ill-named theory and finds the capacity of a transmission channel will be satisfied. The philosopher who considers information theory will be interested in highlighting an older problem: what is the optimal adjustment that could exist between a blueprint and its implementation? Between thought and a world that we deem either resistant to it, or made up of it? The question thus posed seems to be too general, but as soon as we want to transfer it to the context of a discussion on materialism, reductionism and the suggestion that there could be inherent limits to these projects, it arises under a different form. Ontological reductionists will say: ‘give me only one example of a situation where known principles of genetics, of biochemistry, and of neurochemistry have been insufficient to explain thought and language? Why would we postulate a spirit, some sort of ‘ghost in the machine,’ to account for our behaviour and even our language?’ The materialist framework does not admit of a representation which is always and everywhere the same. It cannot even account for the very notion of a representation: ‘The counter-causal direction of intentionality not only shows that this cannot be accommodated in physical science (of which neuroscience is a part) but that appearance is not something that the material world, a nexus of causation, affords’ (Tallis 2010: 9). Were I to visualise the chemical processes enabling my thinking process, I would witness them in the third person. However, I can only experience thinking in the first person, by reaching out with my will to these processes, such that if I consider the processes analysed and categorised as material to be the only realities, I must suppose that what I perceive is an illusory effect. If I am only neuronal connections, there is nothing to observe! One can try to get out of this challenge by saying that we are not in reality matter and energy, as would be the cadaver of someone who has just died, not even a ‘living torch’ (Popper 1995: 43), but that we exist thanks to dynamical relations between those material elements that we know from other means to subsist in an independent situation outside the composite that the body is – atoms of copper, of zinc, etc., but also molecules. But admitting as such the presence of dynamical bondings and links poses the question of the independence of that very substratum. We designate our relations as existing by a concatenation detachable from a support, yet this only makes sense within a broader thesis of multiple-realisability, which primo interprets this as an implementation, and secundo threatens the materialist vision (see Putnam 1988), since information becomes the blueprint for a composition that it would keep

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as its own secret. What is more, that thesis has the same degree of reality as the under-determination of theories by facts. This helps in asking in a refreshed way the classical question: what do we need to be able to say in order to establish that matter has been ordered by form? Leibniz had already understood that the question of the fine versus the coarse nature of the grain and veins of matter is a precondition of talking about its integratedness to form (Leibniz 1996: 86). It is a fact that we have very incompletely appreciated what matter is. Information theory accounts can always, in virtue of their under-­determination, be recast as the normal unfurling of matter and energy, the elusive nature of information perhaps best captured by Keith Devlin’s suggestion to think of it as the ‘Cheshire cat’s grin’ (1997: 240–243). The information about which we are talking when we say that we could understand, and so hold in our mind and memory immaterially the ‘informational signature’ of a man or a tree, is not Shannon information. It could be if all was due to a random stroke of nature, but there is a measure, which we do not yet possess, that would bridge the relationship between complexity and complication. The chemist Denbigh argued that, in the absence of a satisfying measure of organisation, a measure of complexity that would still be quantitative would have to resemble what he suggested naming integrality, the product of the number of connections in a structure multiplied by the number of parts of a different type, thus suggesting a measure that aims at a generalisation of our understanding of information (Denbigh 1974: 103–106). For the model to work a simplification has to occur, such that we overvalue a central mechanism and ignore the others. The purpose is getting the message across, and seeing if it can be compressed faithfully. Information theory separates form and meaning. That of which it can show the conservation by invariance is form, but that form (forma) appearing in a Roman context with its juridical and theatrical uses (Breton 1987: 39), had little to do with the tradition of philosophers who meditated on μορφη, from Aristotle to Plotinus and beyond. Our duty is to re-articulate the two notions, since speaking about the informational weight of any reality irrespective of its context, scale, and integratedness in a system rapidly becomes meaningless. Since information integrates not only complexity but also complication – earlier identifications of information with complexity were short-sighted – we are required to start from a ‘monadic’ unit present in the mind and conserved only there. Some information theorists have estimated that we need to posit an ideal receiver, since there is no presuppositionless or contextless deciphering of information (Carnap and Bar-Hillel 1953; Kåhre 2002: 12–14, 48). The ideal receiver will have a similar function to the ideal gas in physics. When can we say that a consciousness has to be behind the information we meet? There is no information floating in the air, without a context. Are there ‘infons’ in the same way that there are gravitons (Devlin 1995: 37–40, 45–48, 97–98)? Keith Devlin states rightly that we can use information way before we know what it is. As Schmitz-Moormann (1990: 172) and von Weizsäcker (1980: 39) recognized, this is akin to the same thought two interlocutors would have in their minds. To declare the world ‘chance-like’ is a much easier affair with information as received in engineer’s parlance than it is with integrated knowledge. Let us illustrate

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it as follows. We have in Fig. 14.1 a spade symbol and need to identify where it is. We’ll need to answer left / right ⇒ select left, answer the same question again ⇒ select right, and then again ⇒ select left. This will require three specifications, 23, or 3 bits.

Fig. 14.1

We could imagine someone guessing right, and telling us with only 1 bit where this spade is. That 1 bit would serve itself a free lunch. Suppose we were asked to identify with one, then two words – significant ones like ‘jeûnes’ and ‘opiniâtre’ – whose verse this is (Fig. 14.2):

Fig. 14.2

Guessing right would not help us much with this verse of Stéphane Mallarmé from ‘Cantique de saint Jean.’ If we do not admit that there is a qualitative difference between mere grid positioning and seeing the Gestalt of Mallarmé, we have to explain in a summative way how we can for instance say that the author of a work the key of which is hidden – a verse of Mallarmé, or St. John Perse, or Borgès – could in this second example be identified by bringing the probability to 1/4 or 1/3, while in the ordinary way, starting from the common knowledge of humankind, we would start with a considerably larger figure in the denominator of these fractions. Can the knowledge we possess be considered a neuronal configuration? It certainly can, but it is one that is individualised, or ‘tacit,’ meaning we cannot reconstruct it relying on a general conception of mind. Indeed, the performance, as it is analysed in information theory, has us fish meaningfulness from a common experience of seeing the ‘same form,’ which reminds one of the Stoics’ semainomenon (σημαινομενον, or λεκτον); it is not equipped to handle Quine’s problem of the indeterminacy of translation – in other words, to account for all the specifics that could lead one to say that it is not really the same form that was grasped. Materialism denies this personal knowledge. More accurately, it does not deny that whoever worked for years on Mallarmé or Borgès could be credited more chances of identifying this sequence, but by the desire to treat information as a universal currency, it tries to map the capturing of information with a univocal measure,1

 As in the model of Fred Dretske (1983: 96–97).

1

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which would allow bypassing Gettier’s problem, by assuming without warrant that a justified true belief would have completely lifted uncertainty (see Gagnon 2018: 481–484 for the technical reasons why this will not work). We could look at information theory to give us the ultimate compression of reality, but it is not sure that we would arrive at it that way, that we could re-code the world as it is with mere information. There is certainly a road from the patterning of recurrences, the contrasting of hypotheses, and the fading of all significant differences to the retrieval of their information, such as we have in P(h,e)  = P(h | e)∙ P(e) = P(e | h)∙P(h), which gives I(h,e) = I(e) + I(h | e) = I(h) + I(e | h) as the relation between Bayesian evaluation and information. Indeed, if we look for units of functional order, we come to see a difference between very large amounts of living beings hardly ever changing in size or shape but becoming huge in numbers (e.g., bacteria), being distinguished from living beings (metazoans) that are immensely less numerous but break symmetry, invent organised and hierarchically-controlled organs acting through servomechanisms as well as message systems, and, what is more, make use of the very basis of informational analysis, discreetness. That does not preclude them from using analogical – or plus or minus – systems such as endocrine glands. This type of form is not measurable in the way the signals in telephones are. It is a qualitative take on information (Salmon 2010: 760) (Fig. 14.3).

Fig. 14.3  (From Salmon 2010: 761)

Psychologist Susan Pockett has surveyed the literature and highlighted the fact that nearly all the definitions of information are process-like and make it exist outside the mind (Pockett 2014). She distinguishes between those theories, which make consciousness depend on certain functional properties of representational vehicles such as the computation in which they engage, and sets them against vehicle theories, for which consciousness is determined by intrinsic properties, independently of computational activity.

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14.2  Entering the Semantic Realm The problem when we theorise about the ‘evolution’ of information, as Karl Schmitz-Moormann (1990) or James Salmon have done (Salmon 2010), or when it is considered that information is received, processed, and retransmitted by absolutely everything, as in Michel Serres (2014: 148–9), is that the idea of information does not conserve the same meaning throughout. That in itself would not be over-­ dramatic if it were not for the fact that these lines of reasoning borrow their appeal from the halo that still surrounds the only rigorous definition of information, which is that of Shannon. As Donald Mackay saw, information does not always have an ‘effective’ effect (behavioristically speaking), even if it can modify that which remains a presence in a world of ‘existence1,’ the existence which we apprehend at the end-point of an intentionality-dependent object of pursuit, as one found in Meinong’s Gegenstandtheorie, that need not exist as a two- or three-dimensional physical object. It is to be contrasted to ‘existence2’ about which we could call on the more familiar characterisation of that which has indexical referentiality and can fill in for the value of a variable to be bound in a domain of individuals marked by constants (Margolis 2006: 88). Literature of the last couple of decades has focused on the flow of information, but these approaches regulate effective exchanges, traceable ones. For instance: we work and earn money, which is information (see Dowek and Abiteboul 2017: 60). We all know that money does not buy everything. Similarly here, we can’t always move to the superior level and make every exchange of information enter into an even more encompassing or general category, which would pre-contain them all, since the translation of any act of cognition, in the sense of being first passively and then actively modified gauged as a value in terms of informational weight, leaves what is essential outside. As Barwise and Seligman noted, information, if it is to be useful, must capture it all the way down to the token (1997: 16–7). We can thus inquire about the abduction that is presupposed in every act of reading (see Aliseda 2007), but the fact that in personally working on Mallarmé, I make his recognition more probable while going out of my field I would be at a disadvantage, has no place where to be inserted in a general theory. This has to do with our perception which does not scan a surface to recompose it according to a pre-given template, but which recognises Gestalten and what George Miller called ‘chunks’ (Miller 1956: 81–97) as one would recognise a face (example in Dunstan Martin 2005: 22–3; see also Putnam 1992: 19–34).

14.3  Evolutionary Issues From the evolution of information we get to the evolution of organisms. Such evolution is a process of keeping information, also with a reusing of recipes, if we think of gene transfers, swapped genomes, and architect genes. Information theory can

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shed light on the information processing in living systems: it can measure the information content of DNA with precision. But naturalistic evolutionary theory is an attempt to do more, that is, to explain the origin of this information as ultimately the result of unguided natural processes. Is the guidance by a ‘grammar’ of mechanically stabilised forms all that we need in order to account for living forms? We may need to distinguish between the form of a species, bearing a certain degree of plasticity to which we have paid more attention since Darwin, and the archetype to which this species is a response (see Dumoncel 2009: 7). One can think of J. Scotus Erigenus who called on a division of nature wherein God as ‘nature which creates and is not created’ interacts with that which ‘creates and is created,’ and we can add that it links hands with C. S. Peirce’s ternarism, in that the interpretant, the organism as a sustained memory of that which coded it into existence, the sign, i.e. the obstacles, encounters or occasions for the species to manifest its in-built tendencies in an harmonious effort,2 is governed by a signified or archetype. As A. E. Taylor had it, ‘if “God” simply meant the same thing as the forms, or as a supreme form, it would remain a mystery why there should be anything but the forms, why there should be any ‘becoming’ at all’ (1963: 442). As such, the species as transience would have to be situated in that dehiscence between participated creativity and the ‘Good beyond,’ being only established in existence in an allusive mode. There is a difference between directly introducing novelty in the world, and seeing to it that the world not be fixed, so that the introduction of novelty is not an impossibility. Would God’s only way of informing in such a process be to keep archetypes of rightful solutions available? Where does the cobra get its information on the deer’s nervous system when it paralyses its central nervous system (Elitzur 2006: 612; Wagner 2014: 182–186 on genotype networks)? Very often however, examples such as these that front-load much cleverness onto predators and adaptive systems, could look morally outrageous if directly transferred onto God (Myers 2000: 154–155). The Biblical God (who creates by ‘separating’) is such that he can preserve pathways of efficient integration, seeing to it that there is a multiplicity, but he does not put things together without their consent – at least, that is the crux of the biblical message, which will go as far as to predicate intentionality of non-human processes. There are elements with enough independence that information and messages can be sent. This gives the world the structure of a frozen record, which is also open to the exploration of unusual and rare patterns (Matsuno 1997). This is important, since both causal determinism and finalism, which Bergson considered an inverted mechanism (1911: 39–40), are in need of a transgression. If God therefore were to let information flow, this would be done according as entities are put in relation with an  ‘A given DNA sequence can change signifié depending on the state of the cell: when the interpretant changes, the signification of the gene does too – the relations have shifted, and in this way we have a new gene. There is no such thing as a gene in isolation, every gene being a constituent of a sequential set of genes or other cellular signs, so that apart from membership in this set, a piece of DNA has no meaning – it is not a sign’ (Emmeche and Hoffmeyer 1991: 35–36). 2

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environment that they use to further their structure, and this creation of information would either feed from noise, under the form of random perturbations, or it would be externally imposed, through God creating new genes, or new switches. To inquire about God’s action in the world, and to ask whether God could be said to govern the world by means of information control or input, may require a step back and a few remarks on the concepts and images of God, not only in terms of the history of ideas, but also in terms of philosophical theology, metaphysics, and religious ontology. There is a pattern to be seen, if we move from a God as great informer, which supersedes a God as winder-up, and a God as calculator in the fashion of Leibniz, sweeping his way across a trajectory that maximises goodness in a world with ‘incompossible’ states of affair. As Jeremy Campbell’s book on 400 years of images of God bears out, a general controller of information forces us in the direction of an intellectual Deity and, we could add, manoeuvring a concept that has both a mentalistic side and an integrated capacity in systems distributed with nodes, allows for this same Deity to ‘not get wet’ with a messy world, to look down from a haughty outlook (2006: 265).3 The construal of the whole of the scientific endeavour thus has a bearing on what we may call ‘information’; in the late-80’s debate on determinism in France (see Pomian 1990), those thinking in terms of information theory were gathered under the umbrella of chance, chaos, bifurcations, new paradigms, etc. If one however sees science as the deployment of the simplest algorithm for the simplest recurring energy configuration, information is pre-calculation, and pre-ordaining, or it is retrieval by us of the regularities which progressively eradicate their ‘chancey’ character. Intelligent Design supporters are right that the means used in nature to transmit genetic information are not so stringent that they would only produce redundancy, the production of which is what ‘self-organisation’ theories’ contribution amounts to, and are not so flimsy that they would not allow the conservation of templates, involving, e.g., weaker bonds than the hydrogen ones. This point as made by Stephen Meyer is cogent (Meyer 2010: 250–251). A God who would ‘use’ information to communicate with the world reminds one of those Neoplatonic intermediaries imagined to be entirely spiritual but which are then also capable of using matter. Spinoza’s reaction to these unconvincing entities was to collapse creation’s very idea in a permanent and ubiquitous self-sustaining causality: natura naturans.

3  ‘[T]he [cosmological] models are purely formal and static, and have no qualities, especially personal qualities, which touch the religious problems of everyday life. … they do not introduce any value other than those of orderliness, mathematical depth and elegance, particularly not goodness nor human freedom. It follows that they do not even address those paradoxes that have been found in traditional metaphysical theories of God.’ (Hesse 1995: 244–245).

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14.4  Evaluating God from Nature: Which Standard? Bayes’ use of inverse probability could only be done with an intrinsically symmetric background axiom, that is, there is a precondition to changing P(h | e) into P(e | h), i.e. in moving from the support an hypothesis receives from evidence, to the probability that that same evidence would get should we posit that hypothesis. For Bayes’ theorem to work, a precondition is to posit P(h | e) ⟺ P(e | h), namely the probability of a certain hypothesis on a certain evidence is such if and only if the probability of that evidence on that certain hypothesis is the same. In plainer terms, one will consider all hypotheses that can be adduced, but the point of the endeavour is to come to a situation where only one hypothesis could be valuated to the exclusion of all others. In other words, Bayes was into finding the recurrence of nature, the ‘constant conjunctions’ of David Hume, but with an opposite design: to show nature’s omnipresent regularity, and intelligibility (see Bertsch McGrayne 2011: 13–33). If we thus establish how rationality progressively and inductively gets the ‘whole picture,’ a generalised premiss could, and Laplace saw this well, ‘redescend’ as a deduction on the whole of nature, such a premiss having been first obtained inductively. Olivier Costa de Beauregard reflected on this (1963: 90) in the following sense: if Bayes can only work provided there is symmetry in joint probabilities, this means that efficient cause is not condemned to stroll along the direction of time, and be agnostic about that which commands the response of nature to our own intervening. The things that nature does, asymptotically always the same way, thus the ‘capturing’ of this by finding how a hypothesis is progressively strengthened, can shift efficient cause into a knowledge that does not only colligate information off of occurrences, but could also predict, or control, those occurrences by having reached the greatest degree of generality. Finality would be out of the realm of poets or metaphysicians, and land in the province of physicists and mathematicians. Could God survive an analysis in those terms? We could ask in front of nature: is it awe-inspiring, does it work like there is geniality behind it? Such questions can only be answered if we distinguish two kinds of orders, two kinds of ‘genialities’ in nature. On this point, as Robert Pennock had seen early on, the intelligent design camp has missed the mark in theorising how human designers would act, how they would assemble propellers, shafts, and the like. Thus, we need to ask: • Would an engineer, working with our methods of construction, have made this world the way we find it? • Does this world seem constituted as though a genius-like being could have made it? The discussion on the merits of God conceived as designer has centred around the first question. If we answer favourably to the second question, we will by the same token acknowledge that the articulation of this to our models of acting with geniality will in all likelihood not be done according to the canons of scientific or philosophical explanation. Without elaborating here, let us recall that this is the reason why Hume inserted the figure of Demea in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (a character dependent on his meditating on the writings of

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Malebranche). Stephen Unwin (2004: 4) reminds us that no one will be spared having to judge in this matter. We would not benefit from simply recording answers be it from Anselm or Descartes on one side, or from Russell or Schopenhauer on the other side, as if they could answer in a better way than any of us when it comes to asking: ‘Is there, yes or no, a God?’ The error lies in asking mortals such as we are to arbitrate with a definite and unrevisable ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Unwin advocates using Bayesian reasoning, and thus invites us to a ‘personal knowledge’ on the matter. We know that some, like Richard Swinburne, would conclude that there is a God (even that Christ is resurrected!), while others like Wesley Salmon conclude there to be a greater posterior probability that there be no God. It is important to see that we are not asking the same question whether we consider P(h | e): ‘Is God highly probable given that there is evil in the world?’ (the calculation weighing what supports theism and filtering this by assessing a value to counter-hypotheses), or instead P(e | h): ‘given such and such evil in the world (not the sum total or conjunction of all evil), is this state of affairs probable given God’s existence?’ The answers can be very different. The second relation is not a probability like the first, but the likelihood, an idea introduced by R. A. Fisher, which is a relation of proportionality in relation to a probability. Approaches like that of Swinburne make P(h | e) into a posterior probability raising the probability of the God hypothesis, as any evidence would for any other hypothesis. Elliott Sober, himself agnostic, insists that it is the likelihood, i.e. the support an hypothesis gives to evidence that matters, which for instance justifies us in keeping the evolutionist hypothesis in the light of theism, but without suggesting that we should at any time abandon or reject the theistic hypothesis or claim to have falsified theism, which sheds better light on some things than does evolution (Sober 2008: 112–113; 2015: 246–8). If we ask about the probability P(h | e), where a good God is the hypothesis, and the dying of an innocent child, from say heart malformation, the evidence adduced against it, one still has to weigh in the strikingly huge number of births without defects. It certainly makes one hesitate to affirm a God controlling every detail of the world’s goings-on, but it does not make God a being affected by improbability any less than driving in a country can be deemed ‘safe’ without denying that occasional accidents take place. Now Ivan Karamazov famously objected that if the death of innocents is needed for the truth to come about, we might as well reject a truth like this (Brothers Karamazov, 5.4.21). For us, using the likelihood relation to think through the problem, we would find that P(e | h) asks whether the God hypothesis, independently established, could withstand this test: would God allow an innocent to die of heart malformation? The evidence for which we assess the likelihood would have to be evidence for, while the evidence for alternate incompatible hypotheses would be dealt with in the denominator according to P ( h|e ) =

P ( e|h ) ⋅ P ( h )

(

) ( )

P ( e|h ) ⋅ P ( h ) + P e|hC ⋅ P hC

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Since this kind of confirmational logic only runs numbers in the end, our remarks about God being dealt a favorable hand in virtue of the sheer outnumbering of viable and healthy organisms against the number of birth defects and the like would still stand. It is more likely that God wants his glory to be manifested in healthy organisms and with their numbers high as they are. The only interesting feature to be had out of this exercise would require that we make a qualitative judgment indeed. For instance, we could imagine how one would react if asked whether the Jewish shoah of WWII, as a positive fact that happened, could be made likely in view of the God hypothesis: P(S | G), with S for ‘shoah’ and G for ‘God hypothesis.’ Many will think: a loving God, faithful to his people, would not let that happen. Yet, if the problem be read dispassionately, and with the narrative logic of the Hebrew prophets, many biblical texts could be adduced that would threaten with just this sort of destruction the people that does not honour God anymore. One could still say of many of those who died that they were innocent, but the problem of the suffering of innocents has more to do with our contemporary mindset reacting to classical theodicies than it has with God’s protection versus the delivery of his people in the hands of their oppressors as we have in the Bible. Or else, seen in a different light, any positive fact that could be said to refute the God hypothesis, could do just the opposite. For instance, without the order of value (in other words without the addition of God to this evaluative framework), i.e. the axiological realm which condemns forever and without appeal behaviour such as that of the Nazi regime, and which identifies God and absolute Value, the ultimate value of human existence as a good could be doubted. In the face of the horrors of this world, one could think, far from being denied, God is posited (see Chatfield in Bartholomew 1988: 163–164; Bridge 1985: chap. 7). Logician Wesley Salmon, from the very onset of his career, reflected on the probability that this universe, although it contains human-designed objects, might not in itself be designed, since what dominates in it is not akin to watches or artefacts bearing the mark of human technology. He reasoned from the assumption that, among the objects around us that we can qualify as ‘natural,’ even if some of them are ‘conceived’ (such as sky-scrapers or watches), very many others do not stem from the intelligent activity of beings like us, such as atoms and molecules, or planets. Since the later category seems to contain immensely more tokens, one would have to raise the posterior probability that they would have come into existence without any preconception (Salmon 2005: 154–158). The French philosopher of science Raymond Ruyer would have countered this by saying that things hang by force, and that mind is force; indeed, atoms react with instantaneity (1957: 283), justifying Bohm’s take that the universe exists as a whole with ubiquitous enfolded order: ‘Ultimately the entire universe has to be understood as a single undivided whole, in which analysis into separately and independently existent parts has no fundamental status’ (2005: 221).

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14.5  A Fruitful Theological Endeavour? Stéphane Lupasco once observed that the analysis of our main question has been conducted in two directions: either the complete eradication of finality, as postulated for instance by the Monod-Jacob-Lwoff group through a reuse of the tools of information theory applied to the cybernetics of the cell, or a quasi-religious opening into forms being transcendent, immaterial, and thus in a sense ‘pattern,’ but communicated by an immaterial being (Lupasco 1970: 93–4). To claim that a measure of negative logarithm of the probability mass function for the value could be seen to be a signature of God or an immaterial designer is difficult, in that it makes this designer inevitably an ‘intra-muros’ being of this world, poking and typing in it, or on it, and doing so as one of us would.4 Now, in the living world what constituted complex forms communicate is ultra-precise instructions for building-up proteins, and they are not a mere reflection of Shannon’s measure. There are multiple such measures possible. Those can tell us what a channel can transmit and support, but we intuitively understand the danger of God putting fingers into the mechanism of enzymes interaction: why would he not ‘protect’ us better from so many malfunctions? If God was meddling with enzymes or nucleic acids, would it not be easy to restore situations where, for example, all we need for the occurrence of sickle-cell anemia is the substitution (respectively the anti-­ substitution), in the formation of haemoglobin, of an adenine molecule for a thymine in the sixth codon? (see Dobzhansky 1996: 462; see also Avise 2010: 90–92). There are three ways to imagine God, information and the world: (1) A pre-­ specification of every encounter, or pre-established harmony as in Leibniz’s metaphysics, where information does not happen thanks to interplay, freedom, or indeterminacy which are precisely repressed from the beginning of time. One needs to add that Leibniz reused for the divine concursus the very idea of exceptional, or miraculous causality, since at every instant, no matter the perturbation, God has preordained one that would be harmonious (Wolfson 1961: 204); (2) An unavoidable use of a messenger, translating between one set of assumptions and compressible signs to convey it to another, also implying the presence of a mandatory rate of exchange between information signatures, which are in reality patterned energies, all of which poses that problem in the same way that energy conversions do, there being a toll to pay such that we don’t have perpetual motion/information contraptions; (3) A presence in the midst of the ‘flesh of the world’ of matter freed from Cartesian de-spiritualisation, where the medium in its multiplicity would not toss away and destroy the message, but would turn systematic obstruction into inter-­ translatability through the work of the Spirit. Souls inform prime matter (πρωτη υλη) to constitute a living body: they don’t just inform ‘matter,’ otherwise their unity would not be as intimate as possible but merely accidental. With this correction in mind, one could reconsider the model of  This is reflected in my review of W.  Dembski’s ‘metaphysics of information’ in his Being as Communion of 2014 (Gagnon 2015: 23). 4

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God acting as soul, but then precisely there is no place for such a God ‘inputting’ or ‘imparting’ information, since the archetype of a God in charge from the top down needs purifying. A Trinitarian God will create by organising space (original meaning of παντοκρατωρ), look at the lογος as repository of all order and beauty, and work hand in hand with the Spirit in ‘fluttering’ or ‘brooding over’ (‫רחף‬ – see Gesenius 1990: 766) any matter that comes to the dignity of being a ‘thing.’ God’s highest achivement would be to account for the presence of existence2 from existence1, an object to sustain in being as attractor. One has to consider how God often will act on souls, rather than taking their place. Saint Thomas Aquinas, while commenting on Hebrews, recalls how a message either can come from outside, laterally introduced into our head, or it can adopt the regime of the New Law, and stem from within sentient and thinking beings: The manner in which it was given is twofold: in one way by externals, by proposing words suited to their understanding. This man can do; and that is the way the Old Testament was given. In another way by acting inwardly, and this is peculiar to God: ‘the inspiration of the Almighty gives understanding’ (Jb. 32:8). This is the way the New Testament was given, because it consists in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, Who instructs inwardly (2012, 8-2, §404).

In attempting to think together about immanence and transcendence, to find a communicating pathway between the two, as we initially stated information theory seems pre-adapted, because we find in it what are in fact points of specification for the construction of a decisional scale that remains imaginary, but which precisely contains ipso facto the position and arrangement of units of matter, and which would be indicative for the mind that would use it to guide itself. But there is a knot where things don’t run as planned, since a specification of nature ‘from the top down’ all the way to the subatomic level is not a possibility. Information and causation are involved in the failure of physical theories to account for complex states of the world without pre-writing their initial conditions, and as Walker and Davies explain: the manner in which biological systems implement state-dependent dynamics is by utilising information encoded locally in the current state of the system, that is, by attributing causal efficacy to information. It is widely recognised that coarse-graining (which would define the relevant ‘informational’ degrees of freedom) plays a foundational role in how biological systems are structured, by defining the biologically relevant macrovariables [...] However, it is not clear how those macrostates arise, if they are objective or subjective, or whether they are in fact a fundamental aspect of biological organisation – intrinsic to the dynamics (i.e. such that macrostates are causal) rather than merely a useful phenomenological descriptor (2017: 33–34).

In summary, when we want God to communicate information, we encounter this problem: is God going to type in something, as though using a keyboard? Will there be a system that imposes itself on God? What would a creation in context mean? This is what we must think of if we want God to be creator of the whole system, and not someone who would work like a human user; creating will mean sustaining in being the channel and the material system, as much as being the author of a message. An author not only of notes, as we’d have were we playing the bars of a score,

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but of the instrument too; this is why models of God’s action tying it to the mind/ brain interaction are problematic, as well as those imposing form on chaos, as we read in Arthur Peacocke (borrowing from a quote of Popper that is emotionally charged but epistemologically meaningless, see Peacocke 1993: 161–162, 173). The account of information in relation to God stemming from many apologists of the Christian religion, or intelligent design supporters, is not consistent with its eventual measurement. If it cannot be measured, does information become a metaphor? On one end, one could say that there is nothing that isn’t metaphorical, yet if, with Barwise and Seligman, we make it the logic of distributed systems, it will have to be construed as circuit completion. The dilemma between God using general laws or being the author of a uniquely special providence, which baffled C. S. Lewis in his posthumous work on prayer (Lewis 1992: 53), rests on a false alternative; it neglects that it is never an obstacle for God to make the Kingdom happen locally, and that, furthermore, to do it God does not need to pull away some strait jacket of laws of nature that would enclose the universe (these laws are called laws of nature only due to a lazy use of language: they should be referred to as laws of science). Yet, to emphasise the informational nature of a world that makes sense to us, one must not do like William Dembski and make of reality’s stepwise channels something entirely made of thought. Many informational ontologies are denseless, and bodiless: think of Polkinghorne and ‘patterns that carry the soul’ (2002: 104–106), of C. S. Lewis’ letter on the resurrection where the ‘the soul reassuming the corpse’ is declared ‘absurd’ (1992: letter xxii), or of Dembski’s ‘patterns all the way down’ (2014: chap. 11): in all these cases one is an hair’s breadth away from a monopsychic cosmology. To use information theory directly on the world, descending from orders emitted by God, or to aim in his direction starting from messages emitted by our communication, is in both cases to invent a world of patterns, but in the sense of mathematics, an empty, ghostly world;5 and I would even say, encouraged by the Placuit Deo letter from the Catholic Church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (2018: §3, 8), a gnostic world, such that this reconstruction suffers from the same defects as other time-bound meta-images of God.

14.6  Conclusion We have to assert a position that would recognise the formidable novelty of the information-turn, since it realises an unthought-of physical dissemination of cues and orders, in other words it can broadcast over space decisional lattices that are on the side of mind. Our only access to this will be one of retrieval. Information retrieval comes with certain conditions. In so doing, it also shatters forever the ‘view 5  Here we echo the creed of the xith council of Toledo, where it is stated that we will not rise in some æthereal body: ‘Nec in aërea vel qualibet alia carne (ut quidam delirant) surrecturos nos credimus, sed in ista, qua vivimus, consistimur et movemur’ (Denzinger-Schönmetzer 1976: §540).

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from nowhere’ of a scientific subject or observer that would observe without acting or disturbing, as though behind a glass. The analytical imagination, seeking mindless components of a machine-universe, is disavowed, and as Wheeler observed, one has to assess the power of the loop that this contains: One view holds that as we keep on investigating matter, we will work down from crystals to molecules, from molecules to atoms, from atoms to particles, from particles to quarks – and mine forever greater depths. A very different concept might be called the ‘Leibniz logic loop.’ According to this view the analysis of the physical world, pursued to sufficient depth, will lead back in some now-hidden way to man himself, to conscious mind, tied unexpectedly through the very act of observation and participation to partnership in the foundation of the universe (1974: 689).

One of the lessons we have learned from the quantum world is that the answer we get depends on the type of question we are asking, or the type of apparatus we interrogate nature with. It is fitting that there be a reminder in this last quote of the fact that this observational road that leads back to man, and is self-implicational, also is hidden. This is true for the Word of God. The structure of our inductive experience can only carry with it a ‘worldliness’ that God will call into judgment; whether we use information, or any other category, to apprehend his action on our world and in our world, it will be true that ‘God has shown up human wisdom as folly’ (1 Cor 1:20). As such, when we are reminded that ‘He is present in our request and its fulfilment alike, [that h]e is both question and answer’ (Wiesel 2010: 104), we need to remember that the human soul is of such depth that no one will plumb deep down into it and touch its bottom, no more than that of the physical universe (as Heraclitus had it: ‘You will not find the boundaries of soul by travelling in any direction’: see Thatcher 2004: §71, 151). If we interpret our problem with reference to a foundational action of Christ, we will see that there is no faculty of connotation in human beings that could be deemed theirs and could be protected from the intrusion of the Spirit. God’s action, if it is real, will make extremes converge such that it will not be possible to think of reaching out to it by deploying the virtues of a form of natural necessity. However, we can confidently say that information theory has been valuable in helping establish that a world of complete free-flow is not and cannot be a world. Can God control the world by natural laws? Aren’t generalities a human way of acting and creating by-­ products? As Thomas Aquinas maintained against the thesis of the plurality of worlds, we do not only need information for there to be world, we need a oneness of perspective, a concretely universal reality: we need matter, in other words an embodiment that secures actuality from potentiality (see Gelernter 2001: 31).

Bibliography Aliseda, A. 2007. Abductive Reasoning: Challenges Ahead. Theoria 22 (3): 261–270. Avise, J. 2010. Inside the Human Genome: A Case for Non-Intelligent Design. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Bartholomew, D. 1988. Probability, Statistics, and Theology. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A 151 (1): 137–178.

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Barwise, J., and J.  Seligman. 1997. Information Flow: The Logic of Distributed Systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bergson, H. 1911. Creative Evolution (trans. A. Mitchell). New York: Henry Holt and Company. Bertsch McGrayne, S. 2011. The Theory that Would not Die. New Haven/London: Yale University Press. Bohm, D. 2005. Wholeness and Implicate Order. London: Routledge. Bracken, J. 1979. What are They Saying About the Trinity? New York: Paulist Press. Breton, P. 1987. Une histoire de l’informatique. Paris: La Découverte. Bridge, A. 1985. One Man’s Advent. London: HarperCollins. Campbell, J. 2006. The Many Faces of God: Science’s 400-Year Quest for Images of the Divine. New York/London: W. W. Norton. Carnap, R., and Y. Bar-Hillel. 1953. Semantic Information. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 4 (14): 147–157. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. 2018. Letter on Certain Aspects of Christian Salvation Placuit Deo. Osservatore Romano, No. 11 (2538), March 16, 8–10. Costa de Beauregard, O. 1963. Le Second Principe de la Science du Temps. Entropie, information, irréversibilité. Paris: Seuil. Dembski, W. 2014. Being as Communion: A Metaphysics of Information. Farnham: Ashgate. Denbigh, G. 1974. An Inventive Universe. New York: G. Braziller. Denzinger, H., and A. Schönmetzer. 1976. Enchiridion Symbolorum Definitionum et Declarationum de Rebus Fidei et Morum. 36th ed. Barcelona/Freiburg: Herder. Devlin, K. 1995. Logic and Information. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1997. Goodbye Descartes: The End of Logic and the Search for a New Cosmology of the Mind. New York: Wiley. Dobzhansky, T. 1996. On the Nature of the Evolutionary Process: The Correspondence Between Theodosius Dobzhansky and John C. Greene. Biology & Philosophy 11 (4): 445–491. Dowek, G., and S. Abiteboul. 2017. Le temps des algorithmes. Paris: Le Pommier. Dretske, F. 1983. Knowledge and the Flow of Information. Cambridge: MIT Press. Dumoncel, J.-C. 2009. La transformation de la métaphysique par A. N. Whitehead. In René Daval et al., Le procès de l’univers et des savoirs, 5–22. Paris: Seraphis/L’Art du comprendre. Dunstan Martin, G. 2005. Does it Matter: The Unsustainable World of the Materialists. Floris: Edinburgh. Elitzur, A. 2006. When Form Outlasts Its Medium: A Definition of Life Integrating Platonism and Thermodynamics. In Life as we Know It: Cellular Origin, Life in Extreme Habitats, and Astrobiology, ed. J. Seckbach, 607–620. Dordrecht: Springer. Emmeche, C., and J. Hoffmeyer. 1991. From language to nature. Semiotica 84 (1–2): 1–42. Gagnon, P. 2015. Review of Being as Communion: A Metaphysics of Information by William A. Dembski. ESSSAT News and Reviews 25 (1): 17–24. ———. 2018. La réalité du champ axiologique: Cybernétique et pensée de l’information chez Raymond Ruyer. Louvain-la-Neuve: Chromatika. Gelernter, D. 2001. Computers and the Pursuit of Happiness. Commentary 111 (1): 31–35. Gesenius, H.F.W. 1990. Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Baker Pub. Group. Hesse, M.B. 1995. The Sources of Models for God: Metaphysics or Metaphor? In Physics and Our View of the World, ed. J. Hilgevoord, 239–254. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kåhre, J. 2002. The Mathematical Theory of Information. Boston/Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic. Leibniz, G. W. F. 1996. New Essays on Human Understanding (trans. P. Remnant and J. Bennett). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lewis, C.S. 1992. Letters to Malcolm, chiefly on Prayer. San Diego: Hartcourt, Brace & Co. Lupasco, S. 1970. La tragédie de l’énergie. Tournai: Casterman. Margolis, J. 2006. Introduction to Philosophical Problems. London/New York: Continuum. Matsuno, K. 1997. Information: Resurrection of the Cartesian Physics. World Futures 49: 235–249. Meyer, S. 2010. Signature in the Cell. San Francisco: HarperOne. Miller, G. 1956. The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on our Capacity for Processing Information. Psychological Review 63 (2): 81–97.

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Myers, D. 2000. New Design Arguments, Old Millian Objections. Religious Studies 36 (2): 141–162. Peacocke, A. 1993. Theology for a Scientific Age. Being and Becoming, Natural and Divine. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Pockett, S. 2014. Problems with theories that equate consciousness with information or information processing. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience 8: 1–3. Polkinghorne, J.  2002. The God of Hope and the End of the World. New Haven/London: Yale University Press. Pomian, K. 1990. ‘Présentation’ in La querelle du déterminisme. Paris: Gallimard. Popper, K. 1995. A World of Propensities. Bristol: Toemmes. Putnam, H. 1988. Representation and Reality. Cambridge: MIT Press. ———. 1992. Renewing Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Ruyer, R. 1957. Homonculus et Méganthrope. Revue de métaphysique et de morale 62 (3): 266–285. Salmon, J. 2010. Evolution of Information. Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 66 (4): 759–768. Salmon, W. 2005. Hume’s Arguments on Cosmology and Design. In Reality and Rationality, ed. P. Dowe and M.H. Salmon, 152–177. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Schmitz-Moormann, K. 1990. The Evolution of Information. In The Science and Theology of Information, ed. C. Wasserman, R. Kirby, and B. Rordorff, 172–184. Geneva: Labor and Fides. Serres, M. 2014. Pantopie: De Hermès à Petite Poucette. Paris: Le Pommier. Sober, E. 2008. Evidence and Evolution: The Logic Behind the Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2015. Ockham’s Razors: A User’s Manual. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tallis, R. 2010. What Neuroscience Cannot Tell Us about Ourselves. The New Atlantis 29: 3–25. Taylor, A.E. 1963. Plato: The Man and His Work. London: Methuen. Thatcher, O.A. 2004. The Library of Original Sources, II, The Greek World. Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific. Thomas Aquinas. 2012. Commentary on the Letter of Saint Paul to the Hebrews (trans. F. Larcher). Lander: Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine. Unwin, S. 2004. The Probability of God. New York: Three Rivers Press. Urs von Balthasar, H. 1958. Science, Religion, and Christianity (trans. H. Graef). London: Burns & Oates. Wagner, A. 2014. Arrival of the Fittest: How Nature Innovates. New York: Current. Walker, S.I., and P.C.W.  Davies. 2017. The ‘Hard Problem’ of Life. In From Matter to Life: Information and Causality, ed. S.I. Walker, P.C.W. Davies, and G.F.R. Ellis, 19–37. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weizsäcker, C. F. von. 1980. The Unity of Nature (trans. F. J. Zucker). New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Wheeler, J.A. 1974. The Universe as Home for Man. American Scientist 62 (6): 683–691. Wiesel, E. 2010. All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs. New York: Knopf Doubleday. Wolfson, H.A. 1961. Religious Philosophy: A Group of Essays. Cambridge: Belknap Press. Philippe Gagnon has taught philosophy, biology and mathematics, in his native Canada and then in the United States. He holds a doctorate in philosophy (Université Laval, 2005) and in theology (Dominican University College, Ottawa, 2000). He is currently maître de conférences at the Université Catholique de Lyon, in the École supérieure de biologie, biochimie et biotechnologies, and researcher at the Chaire science et religion of the same university. He has published La théologie de la nature et la science à l’ère de l’information (Paris/Montreal, 2002), Teilhard de Chardin. Les terres inconnues de la vie spirituelle (Montreal, 2002), L’expérience de Dieu avec Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (Montreal, 2001), Christianisme et théorie de l’information. Science et théologie dans l’œuvre de Claude Tresmontant (Paris, 1998), and La réalité du champ axiologique. Cybernétique et pensée de l’information chez Raymond Ruyer (Éditions Chromatika, Louvain-la-­ Neuve, Belgium, 2018).

Chapter 15

The Transcendent Within: How Our Own Biology Leads to Spirituality Sara Lumbreras

Abstract  In our own biology, in our very own body, we have been given the seeds of spirituality. I argue that life events and other experiences that activate particular biological mechanisms in our bodies have a spiritual meaning in themselves. Their spiritual dimension should not be understood as an epiphenomenon: it is fundamental and inescapably intertwined with its biological extent. The scope of self-­ transcendent experiences considered ranges from flow to mystical experiences. The biological mechanisms that seem to be involved focus on oxytocin cascades, which are an integral part of the regulation of social behaviour across mammal species. Oxytocin has been linked to feelings of love and connectedness as well as to faith. Interestingly, the moment where its concentration is at its highest is during childbirth. This article explores the different varieties of transcendent experience in relation to their biological support processes and the life events they accompany. It stresses the dangers of reducing biology to commodified processes that disregard the importance of their spiritual component. Showing respect to our physical experiences means acknowledging our own transcendence. If we fail doing so, we risk losing one of the most precious gifts we have received: the transcendent within. Keywords  Childbirth · Commodification · Death · Flow · Life events · Mystical experience · Oxytocin · Peak experience · Self-transcendent experience · Sickness

S. Lumbreras (*) Universidad Pontificia Comillas, Madrid, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Nature – and Beyond, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 5, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31182-7_15

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15.1  The Transcendent Within The double nature of God, transcendent and immanent, is reflected in the dimensions of human beings. We are intertwined entities with several dimensions: biological, intellectual and spiritual. It has long been recognized that there are ways to elevate the intellect towards the divine. It is equally true that there are other, more physical paths to transcendence – avenues laid in the most immanent way possible: within our very own biological nature. I would argue that these offer a deeply genuine path to transcendence that links our intuitions, emotions and decisions. These avenues to transcendence imply not only that there is a physiological correlate of transcendent experiences, but also that transcendent experiences are at the core of what it means to be human, encompassing our mind and emotions as well as our very own biology at the moments that are most significant in our lives. Science has focused on some of the physiological correlates of spiritual experience. One particularly well-known example would be the existence of specific areas of the brain which stimulation is linked to spirituality and faith (Van Cappellen et al. 2016: 1579–1587). Less research has been done on the nature of the life events that frequently trigger spiritual experiences. I would like to propose that the seeds of transcendence are present in our biology, and that the most important events in a person’s biography correlate with physiological states that are associated with transcendent experiences. The importance of salient life events – and their biological dimension – is currently downplayed in our society. This has important consequences for wellbeing in a holistic manner: physiological, psychological and spiritual. We need to stress their importance to protect our nature, both immanent and transcendent.

15.2  A Catalogue of Transcendent Experiences There are a multitude of experiences, ranging from everyday to life-changing, that have been catalogued as transcendent in the literature. Yaden, in his recent work ‘The Varieties of Self-Transcendent Experience’ (Yaden et  al. 2017), provides a comprehensive review of the types of transcendent experience that have been described. In these experiences, what is transcended is the concept of self rather than our material reality. The most intense varieties also transcend material reality, although the milder ones do not. I have chosen to consider the full spectrum of experiences as it helps to present a wider context where a continuum of experiences range from routine to sublime, from everyday to life-changing. Flow describes the mental state where a person is fully immersed in a challenging activity. It is characterized by focus, the feeling of high-energy levels and enjoyment (Csikszentmihalyi 1997). When in flow, the sense of space and time gets temporarily lost. In addition, the self is said to fade during the activity (and with that, the perception of oneself as a social actor), only to re-emerge afterwards. This

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feeling can be stimulated by engaging in tasks that are perceived as both interesting and challenging, with clear goals and feedback. Research on flow began in the 1960s as part of the study of creative processes. Researchers were intrigued by one fact: when working for instance on painting, the artist continues working despite hunger or fatigue – yet loses interest in the creation as soon as it is finished. The subject is not moved by the result of the activity, but rather by the activity itself (it is autotelic). The concept of flow is extremely interesting for positive psychology, as ‘a good life is one that is characterized by complete absorption in what one does’ (Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi 2014: 239–263). Mindfulness is the psychological process of bringing one’s attention to, and keeping one’s attention in, the present moment. This means that, rather than describing the subject’s state at a very particular moment, mindfulness refers to a way of approaching life. Mindful attention is characterized by being open to what happens in the moment, which contrasts with flow, where attention is closely focused on the task at hand. This attention is non-judgmental. The mindful subject does not judge her or himself either. Mindfulness has its conceptual origins in many contemplative cultural and philosophical traditions. Buddhism contains extensive instructions on mindfulness training, although the practice of mindfulness does not require accepting any philosophical or religious framework. In recent times, mindfulness has been given increasing attention since it has been shown to have positive effects on mental health. These positive effects are commonly understood to be derived from the decreased perception of self; depression and anxiety are commonly linked to self-­ centered rumination and worry (Eberth and Sedlmeier 2012: 174–189). Self-transcendent emotions have been linked to a stronger sense of spirituality (Saroglou et  al. 2008: 165–173). They are defined as mental states where self-­ interest becomes less important. They include compassion (understood as sharing the suffering of others), moral elevation (which is the response to witnessing acts of moral value), gratitude and awe. These emotions have been shown to have a key social function as they stimulate pro-social behaviour: they lead human beings to forget their momentary needs and focus on the needs of others (Stellar et al. 2017: 200–207). Awe, a self-transcending emotion, can be particularly intense. It has been shown to alter the perception of space and time (Saroglou et al. 2008: 165–173). Peak Experiences are more intense experiences that have the ability of transforming the individual. They were named by Maslow, who first described them in highly-functioning individuals (or, in his words, ‘the best specimens from mankind’ (Maslow 1962: 9–18)). He defines peak experiences as moments of ‘pure, positive happiness when all doubts, all fears, all inhibitions, all weaknesses, were left behind. Self-consciousness was lost. All separateness and distance from the world disappeared as they felt one with the world, fused with it, really belonging in it and to it, instead of being outside looking in’ (Maslow 1962: 9–18). Maslow understood that all peak experiences were at bottom the same, and were defined by this connectedness (and, to some degree, by being intensely positive), although they were elicited in different ways for different people. Interestingly, in his interviews he found a wide array of possible triggers for peak experiences: from music to the practice of

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sports, from learning a new mathematical proof to the satisfaction of finishing an exhausting task. Peak experiences have been shown to have a clear sense of purpose and to be linked to wellbeing and to empathic behaviour. Besides Maslow’s hypothesized association of peak experiences with self-­ actualization, peak experiences have been empirically shown to positively correlate with well-being. It has been found that although individuals who report having peak experiences are also likely to report having experiences involving intense happiness, they are even more prone to report having cognitive experiences of a ­transcendent and mystical nature (Mathes 1982: 92–108). This points to the transcendent qualities of peak experiences being more important than the positive ones. In addition, it has been shown that the individuals who report having peak experiences are more likely to report living in terms of B-values (in Maslow’s terminology), which include unity, perfection, goodness, truth and beauty. In addition, empathic behaviour seems to be increased by peak experiences too (Olson et  al. 1998: 13–24). Mystical Experiences can be defined as a particularly intense variety of peak experience where all things are experienced to be part of a Whole, which is usually identified with God. A long list of research has tried to pin down the specificity of mystical experiences for several decades now, from studying their prevalence (Thomas and Cooper 1978: 433–437) to their brain activation patterns (Persinger 1983: 1255–1262; Beauregard and Paquette 2006: 186–190). While earlier studies focused on temporal-lobe function (or, rather, mal-function), latter research has shown brain activity to be much more complex and associated with healthy structures rather than problems. It seems that several elements are shared by these different types of transcendent experiences. First, the self seems to fade in importance. With it, self-interest seems to disappear as well, at least to a certain extent. Bodily and social boundaries get blurred too: it is unclear where the self ends and others start. This was referred to as the annhilinational component by Yaden (Yaden et al. 2017: 143). The second common element to Self-Transcendent Experiences (STEs) is the relational component, by which the connection to other people or the environment intensifies greatly.

15.3  Biological Switches of Transcendent Experience Much research has tried to analyse whether it is possible to trigger these kinds of experience. Maybe the most well-known example has been the application of transcranial stimulation (George et al. 1999: 300–311), a line of research that seems to have fallen out of interest, as have research efforts focused on entheogens (psychoactive substances that can induce spiritual experience aimed at development). N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) was named as ‘the spirit molecule’ by Rick Strassman almost 20 years ago (Strassman 2000). This compound occurs naturally in many plants and animals, and historically it has been used by several cultures for religious ritual processes. It is a component of the ‘Ayahuasca brew’ of many Amazonian

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tribes (the second active component of the Ayahuasca brew is a monoamine oxidase inhibitor, MAOI, which ensures DMT is not immediately broken down in the body). Its consumption can induce the intuition of a higher being or higher beings with whom the individual interacts, as well as highly complex and vivid hallucinations. The annhilinational component of STEs appears as well, albeit in a negative form in some cases, leading to an anxious loss of the sense of self. Other substances that contain DMT or DMT-like compounds include mushrooms and the skin of some species of amphibians, which are also used as recreational drugs. Psilocybin is a drug chemically related to DMT. It has been shown to produce effects that are similar to a spontaneous mystical experience, with subjects reporting intense spiritual significance and positive changes in their behaviour. These changes were sustained in time and could be verified by external community observers (Griffiths et al. 2006: 268–283). In this study, two-thirds of volunteers rated their experience as the most meaningful of their lives or among the five most meaningful. Some researchers have tried to find links between transcranial stimulation of the temporal lobes and the internal production of DMT (Hill and Persinger 2003: 1049–1050), although this relationship is far from established. These interventions can be understood as material gates or switches to spiritual experience. Their existence, far from supporting the interpretation of transcendence as anomalous brain function, should be understood as a particularly good illustration of how closely intertwined the different dimensions of human being are: biology and spirituality are closely linked. Most early research on these biological switches focused on powerful entheogens that, although were a part of sacred rituals in some cultures, do not belong to everyday experiences. There is a second kind of portal to spirituality that, contrary to the previous ones, are a part of life for most people in all societies and historical contexts. I would like to argue that human life is seeded for spirituality at the most profound level: in our natural biology – with no need for outside intervention such as the administration of entheogen drugs  – and the rhythms of life as we experience it.

15.4  Portals to Transcendence Although most research on the link between biochemistry and spirituality has focused on psychoactive drugs, there is a second, more recent line of research that studies the effects of naturally-occurring neuropeptides on STEs. The most interesting examples are oxytocin and arginine vasopressin, which appear to be related to pro-social behaviour across mammals. Interestingly, some researchers have argued for a link between these neuropeptides and the brain regions linked to STEs, which could be a locus for their proliferation during the experiences (Grigorenko 2011: 33–60). Oxytocin seems to be particularly interesting in this context, so it is worthwhile analysing its role in mammal behaviour in more depth. Oxytocin is a hormone and

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neuropeptide that is produced in the hypothalamus and released by the pituitary. Its role is fundamental in social bonding, sexuality and childbirth. It is typically involved in the development of prosocial behaviours, such as trust and attachment, and has been labelled the ‘love hormone’. Oxytocin has behavioural effects that are parallel in humans and other mammals. For instance, if oxytocin antagonists are administered to female rats after giving birth, they do not exhibit maternal behaviour. Sheep take care of foreign lambs when administered oxytocin artificially (Kendrick et al. 1987: 56–61). In addition, typically maternal behaviour, licking and grooming, in rats elicits permanent changes in the behaviour of the baby rats as they grow old. Rats that were raised by mothers that spent longer licking and grooming them  – and were also relatively docile towards humans – exhibited a more docile behaviour than the ones whose mothers did not, and were, in turn, more aggressive. This phenomenon is independent from any genetic disposition in the rats: if the babies were exchanged, it was the babies brought up by the docile rats (born from aggressive mothers) that were docile, and vice versa (Pedersen and Boccia 2002: 259–267). These effects have, to some extent, also been observed and theorized in humans, where they serve as support for Attachment Theory. Attachment Theory, founded by John Bowlby after studying the developmental psychology of children from various backgrounds, states that a strong emotional and physical attachment to at least one primary caregiver is critical to personal development. The oxytocin released in the first stages of life would reinforce the oxytocin cascades, and with that social behaviour and the ability to trust or love for life. Oxytocin release is also linked to increased vagal tone. The vagus nerve is activated during self-transcendent positive emotions, and individuals with an increased vagal tone have been shown to have a higher propensity for STEs of all varieties (Vago and David 2012: 296). Another route to generating STEs is the realization of practices such as prayer or meditation, which have been proven to enhance the ability of the individual to get to these states. Several studies have confirmed this relationship, with prayer and meditation increasing the likelihood of all varieties of STEs, from flow and mindfulness to mystical experiences (Eberth and Sedlmeier 2012: 174–189). Again, oxytocin seems to be involved in the effects of meditation and prayer. A recent study has shown that when oxytocin is administered nasally, meditation and prayer are perceived as more intense. In addition, individuals with different genes related to oxytocin receptors appear to have substantially diverging religious experiences (Van Cappellen et al. 2016: 1579–1587).

15.5  A Life Is Seeded for Spirituality Oxytocin is active during all our lives as mammals, particularly so when experiencing love and affection. What is more, as mentioned above, the concentration of this chemical increases during significant life events.

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The situation where oxytocin is at its highest concentration in humans is childbirth. Many mothers report deeply spiritual experiences during pregnancy, delivery and breastfeeding (Moloney 2006: 41–46). Pregnancy may be a state where it is especially easy to feel providence – God intervening in the world even inside ourselves, and even if we cannot see it – infusing new life and supporting it. This miracle can be uniquely relevant to pregnant women, who can also feel the peace of surrendering to trust in this providence. The miracle happens within the mother, but without her active participation and requires only surrendering to the miracle – and taking care of herself, so that it can operate without impediments. This is felt intensely at a physical as well as at an emotional level: God acts through her. This resonates with some conceptions of mysticism where the root of the connection with God happens in two phases: kenosis or emptying of the self (which responds to the annihilinational component of STEs) and theosis (letting oneself be filled with God, which would respond to the relational component of STEs). There is an unequivocal understanding that STEs are received and not sought for. A particularly interesting account of the mystical experience in these terms can be found in the work of Melloni (Melloni and Ribas 2001). Later, I would argue that the extreme physical pain of delivery also acts as an avenue towards transcendence. Pain has traditionally been understood as an experience that can support spiritual growth (Coward 1990: 162–169). I understand this happens because pain can have a strong annihilational component in itself: when in pain, the self gets suppressed in order to minimize suffering, which can even result in dissociation. During delivery, the accounts of feeling entranced are widespread among mothers who do not receive any anaesthetics (Smulders et al. 2002). In addition, there is a relational component to some types of pain, which makes us feel closer to other human beings who have endured similar experiences. The case of childbirth is particularly easy to understand: when in labour, a woman can feel that her pain is the same, in a deep sense, as the pain of her own mother, of her grandmother and of every other women on earth, as part of one and the same thing. The relational component of pain should appear also in other situations – for instance, the pain of someone being tortured for his or her faith is the same as the pain of every other person under similar circumstances. Pain brings the realization of our own vulnerability (the annihilational component) and makes it similar to the pain of others, generating also feelings of compassion for other suffering creatures (the relational component). In cases of extreme pain such as childbirth there is also an element of surpassing our own boundaries. At many moments pain seems intolerable, as if it could be ended only by death. Survival seems a miracle, made possible only by the support of something larger than oneself. This adds to the feelings of vulnerability in a very intense manner. In addition, some types of pain could also have a meaning beyond themselves. We could call them transcendent pain. This pain has a reason, it is justified as a sacrifice. This can be, again, interpreted as the annihilational component of STEs in the sense that the self is sacrificed for a higher purpose. The case of childbirth is particularly easy to understand: pain is a necessary sacrifice for the child coming into this world, but any painful sacrifice could have the same interpretation.

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The relational component is also present, as the sacrifice is made for others. This is also linked to love as a positive, transcendent emotion. Once again, motherhood provides one of the most intense experiences of love. The hormone cocktail rushing through a new mother’s veins supports the feeling of immense and life-changing love. This chemical mix, where large concentrations of oxytocin play a prominent role, seems to be deeply affected by the exposure to pain. The brain secretes endorphins to cope with the pain of contractions, which mixed with oxytocin generates a state of euphoric love once the baby is delivered. C-sections have been shown to have higher rates of postpartum depression and issues with attachment (the mother not feeling that kind of immediate, immense love for her baby) (DiMatteo et al. 1996: 303). Some researchers think this may be due to the lack of exposure to these hormones (Olza-Fernández et  al. 2014: 459–472). In addition to pain, exposure to important life events such as sickness, death and birth seems also to predispose people to transcendent experiences, as acknowledged by Maslow and many others including Pahnke (Pahnke 1969: 1–21). This exposure is not limited to self-experience, and is also important in relatives and caregivers, who have been found to find an increased sense of meaning after taking care of a deceased family member (Enyert and Burman 1999: 455–462). We can find very clearly both the annihilational and the relational components in sickness, birth and death. Sickness and death remind us of our vulnerability, whilst the miracle of a new birth makes all our human achievements pale in comparison – the latter effect is related to awe as a positive transcendent emotion. In addition, these events are the foundation of what it means to be human and they are the same for all of us, regardless of any circumstances: the rhythms of life and death are inescapable. Motherhood presents us with another compelling example of an avenue for transcendence which is deep-seated in our biology. Breastfeeding was traditionally linked to the state of bliss in oriental religions: a peaceful, perfect happiness. It is again oxytocin, mediating the milk ejection reflex, which often elicits feelings of immense, calm love. Another interesting instance appears in the practice of sports, where endorphins and adrenaline can generate a range of STEs from flow to peak experiences (Yaden et al. 2017: 143). This could be even more intense when engaging in fighting in war. There is an element of pain and supressing the ego in extreme physical activity, and the relational component can be easily traced to belonging to a group in the experience of fighting. In examples such as the previous ones, our own biology serves as a portal for transcendence, as an avenue to spirituality in the most intense manner possible. Our material self leads us ineluctably to go beyond ourselves. Our own physical and chemical foundations and the life events that characterize any human experience are a powerful avenue to spirituality: the transcendent within.

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15.6  R  eductionist Interpretations of Human Nature Are an Impediment to Our Own Biological Experience The transcendent within is at the core of what it means to be human. Acknowledging it means paying respect to our biological foundations and experiencing meaningful events as consciously as possible. However, the advance of science has brought, in some cases, the commoditization of experience and the medicalization of life events, leading to a diminished involvement of the individual in his or her own spiritual existence, to a forced silence of the transcendent within. Science can explain the material dimension that underlies these mechanisms and, in some cases, control what was previously in the hands of nature. However, by doing so, it is at risk of reducing their spiritual component to a mere epiphenomenon when it is rather the essence of the experience. When only the objective, quantifiable phenomena are considered, human experience becomes a commodified process. Particularly good examples of this would be the medicalization of pregnancy and childbirth, where the experience is hindered by the strong medical routines where the intervention of the mother is minimal (Smulders et al. 2002). Fifty years ago Maslow expressed concerns about the difficulties he experienced when trying to accompany his wife when she gave birth (Maslow 1962: 9–18). He explained that being present during those moments was one of the most meaningful moments of his life, yet he was only allowed to be there as a physician and after long discussions with the doctors at their hospital. Nowadays, the presence of the father is quite common, but the medicalization of childbirth is so intense that some experts consider it a form of obstetric violence (Sadler et al. 2016: 47–55). It is particularly painful to note how not only the spiritual, but also the emotional component of pregnancy and childbirth is ignored in the model supporting surrogate pregnancy. According to the arguments presented by Sadler et al. (2016: 47–55), pregnancy is regularly reduced to a commodified process that has a human baby as its product. In the same way, contact with death in Western societies has been greatly diminished in the past decades – people used to die at home, but now everything happens most often in a sterile hospital environment. The care of the terminally ill or the elderly has been professionalized, and many people never have an experience of care in their homes. We should educate ourselves in the appreciation of the avenues to the transcendent that lie within our own biology, in our daily activities and, in a more special way, during moments of special significance such as childbirth, sickness or death. We should avoid the temptation of reducing biology to commodified processes. Showing respect to our physical experiences means acknowledging our own transcendence. If we fail to do so, we risk losing the part of our identity that links the immanent with the transcendent, one of the most precious gifts we have received: the transcendent within.

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Bibliography Beauregard, M., and V. Paquette. 2006. Neural Correlates of a Mystical Experience in Carmelite nuns. Neuroscience Letters 405 (3): 186–190. Coward, D.D. 1990. The Lived Experience of Self-Transcendence in Women with Advanced Breast Cancer. Nursing Science Quarterly 3 (4): 162–169. Csikszentmihalyi, M. 1997. Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life. New York: Basic Books. DiMatteo, M.R., S.C.  Morton, H.S.  Lepper, T.M.  Damush, M.F.  Carney, M.  Pearson, and K.L. Kahn. 1996. Cesarean Childbirth and Psychosocial Outcomes: A Meta-Analysis. Health Psychology 15 (4): 303–308. Eberth, J., and P.  Sedlmeier. 2012. The Effects of Mindfulness Meditation: A Meta-Analysis. Mindfulness 3 (3): 174–189. Enyert, G., and M.E.  Burman. 1999. A Qualitative Study of Self-Transcendence in Caregivers of Terminally Ill Patients. American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Medicine® 16 (2): 455–462. George, M.S., S.H.  Lisanby, and H.A.  Sackeim. 1999. Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation: Applications in Neuropsychiatry. Archives of General Psychiatry 56 (4): 300–311. Griffiths, R.R., W.A.  Richards, U.  McCann, and R.  Jesse. 2006. Psilocybin can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences having Substantial and Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance. Psychopharmacology 187 (3): 268–283. Grigorenko, E.L. 2011. Closeness of All Kinds: The Role of Oxytocin and Vasopressin in the Physiology of Spiritual and Religious Behavior. In Thriving and Spirituality among Youth: Research Perspectives and Future Possibilities, ed. Amy Eva Alberts Warren, Richard M. Lerner, and Erin Phelps, 33–60. Hoboken: Wiley. Hill, D.R., and M.A.  Persinger. 2003. Application of Transcerebral, weak (1 microT) Complex Magnetic Fields and Mystical Experiences: Are they Generated by Field-Induced Dimethyltryptamine Release from the Pineal Organ? Perceptual and Motor Skills 97 (3 suppl): 1049–1050. Kendrick, K.M., E.B.  Keverne, and B.A.  Baldwin. 1987. Intracerebroventricular Oxytocin Stimulates Maternal Behaviour in the Sheep. Neuroendocrinology 46 (1): 56–61. Maslow, A.H. 1962. Lessons from the Peak-Experiences. Journal of Humanistic Psychology 2 (1): 9–18. Mathes, E.W. 1982. Peak Experience Tendencies: Scale Development and Theory Testing. Journal of Humanistic Psychology 22 (3): 92–108. Melloni, J., and J. Melloni Ribas. 2001. La mistagogía de los ejercicios. Vol. 24 Editorial SAL TERRAE. Caamargo (Spain). Moloney, S. 2006. The Spirituality of Childbirth. Birth Issues 15: 41–46. Nakamura, J., and M. Csikszentmihalyi. 2014. The Concept of Flow. In Flow and the Foundations of Positive Psychology, ed. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 239–263. Berlin: Springer. Olson, M.S., P.S. Hinds, K. Euell, A. Quargnenti, M. Milligan, P. Foppiano, and B. Powell. 1998. Peak and Nadir Experiences and their Consequences Described by Pediatric Oncology Nurses. Journal of Pediatric Oncology Nursing 15 (1): 13–24. Olza-Fernández, I., M.A.M.  Gabriel, A.  Gil-Sanchez, L.M.  Garcia-Segura, and M.A.  Arevalo. 2014. Neuroendocrinology of Childbirth and Mother–Child Attachment: The Basis of an Etiopathogenic Model of Perinatal Neurobiological Disorders. Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology 35 (4): 459–472. Pahnke, W.N. 1969. The Psychedelic Mystical Experience in the Human Encounter with Death. Harvard Theological Review 62 (1): 1–21. Pedersen, C.A., and M.L. Boccia. 2002. Oxytocin Links Mothering Received, Mothering Bestowed and Adult Stress Responses. Stress 5 (4): 259–267. Persinger, M.A. 1983. Religious and Mystical Experiences as Artifacts of Temporal Lobe Function: A General Hypothesis. Perceptual and Motor Skills 57 (3 suppl): 1255–1262.

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Sadler, M., M.J.D.S. Santos, D. Ruiz-Berdún, G. Leiva Rojas, E. Skoko, P. Gillen, and J.A. Clausen. 2016. Moving Beyond Disrespect and Abuse: Addressing the Structural Dimensions of Obstetric Violence. Reproductive Health Matters 24 (47): 47–55. Saroglou, V., C.  Buxant, and J.  Tilquin. 2008. Positive Emotions as Leading to Religion and Spirituality. The Journal of Positive Psychology 3 (3): 165–173. Smulders, B., M.  Croon, and R.C.  Feenstra. 2002. Parto seguro: Una guía completa. Girona: Médici. Stellar, J.E., A.M.  Gordon, P.K.  Piff, D.  Cordaro, C.L.  Anderson, Y.  Bai, L.A.  Maruskin, and D.  Keltner. 2017. Self-Transcendent Emotions and their Social Functions: Compassion, Gratitude, and Awe Bind us to others through Prosociality. Emotion Review 9 (3): 200–207. Strassman, R. 2000. DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor’s Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences. New York: Simon and Schuster. Thomas, L.E., and P.E. Cooper. 1978. Measurement and Incidence of Mystical Experiences: An Exploratory Study. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 17 (4): 433–437. Vago, D. R. and S. A. M. David. 2012. Self-Awareness, Self-Regulation, and Self-Transcendence (S-ART): A Framework for Understanding the Neurobiological Mechanisms of Mindfulness. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 6 (Article 296), 1–30. Van Cappellen, P., B.M.  Way, S.F.  Isgett, and B.L.  Fredrickson. 2016. Effects of Oxytocin Administration on Spirituality and Emotional Responses to Meditation. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 11 (10): 1579–1587. Yaden, D.B., J. Haidt, R.W. Hood Jr., D.R. Vago, and A.B. Newberg. 2017. The Varieties of Self-­ Transcendent Experience. Review of General Psychology 21 (2): 143–160. Sara Lumbreras holds a PhD and a MSc Eng from Universidad Pontificia Comillas, Madrid. She is an associate professor at the Institute for Research in Technology and teaches at the Industrial Management Department at the ICAI School of Engineering and the Financial department at the ICADE School of Business and Law. Her research focuses on the development and application of decision support techniques for complex problems, particularly in problems related to sustainability. She is also a member of the board of the Chair of Science, Technology and Religion at Comillas, where she studies the evolving links between technology and society and the implications of technology on our understanding of human nature and uniqueness.

Chapter 16

Beyond the Everyday Self Fraser Watts

Abstract  This paper begins from empirical research relevant to the sense that there is something ‘beyond’ the everyday self, the work of David Hay in which he asked people whether they had experienced ‘a presence or power, whether you call it God or not, which is different from your everyday self?’ About a third of the population reported that they had. I suggest that such experiences arise from a synthesis of an experiential component that is hard-wired, global, and relatively independent of faith and culture, and an interpretative factor that is specific to faith, culture and context. The idea of ‘something more’ is the other side of a restricted naturalism, but there is no need to adopt the dualism implicit in the distinction between the everyday and the beyond. An alternative is an emancipated view of nature in which the transcendent is not distinct from the natural but connected with it. When something beyond is postulated in contemporary culture, it is often not framed in theistic terms but represents a vague sense of something beyond that is neither naturalistic nor theistic. Keywords  Beyond · Dualism · Experience · Filtering · Naturalism · Psychosis · Religion · Something more · Supernatural · Two-factor

16.1  Introduction The sense that there is something ‘more than’ the everyday world, something ‘beyond’, is a widespread and well-documented. In this paper I will take the scientific evidence for that sense as my starting point. I will then make several sets of comments about it, theoretical, philosophical and theological. F. Watts (*) University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Nature – and Beyond, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 5, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31182-7_16

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My theoretical point is concerned with the factors that give rise to this sense of something more. I will argue for a two-factor theory that involves the intersection of (i) an experiential factor rooted in the human constitution and (ii) an interpretative factor that is more dependent on culture and tradition. Next I will make some philosophical comments, drawing attention to the vagueness of that idea that there is something ‘more’ or ‘beyond’. I will argue for a broad and emancipated monism, rather than either a narrow naturalism or a dualistic supernaturalism. I will also propose a monistic interpretation of ‘God’, rather than either a naturalistic or supernaturalistic one. One of the classic empirical studies of the sense of something more is that of David Hay in the UK (Hay 1982). His opening question was to ask people whether they had experienced ‘a presence or power, whether you call it God or not, which is different from your everyday self’. 36% of people answered Yes to that question. A similar survey question comes from Andrew Greeley (1974), using the question, ‘Have you ever had the feeling of being close to a powerful spiritual force that seemed to lift you out of yourself?’ The percentages answering Yes were very similar to those answering Yes to Hay’s question, and similar in the US (35%) and UK (36%) respectively (Hay and Morisey 1978). Hay found that people tended to be distressed when they had such experiences, and at peace afterwards. In that sense, such experiences of a presence or power beyond yourself can have quite powerful mood-changing properties. It is interesting that most people were alone when they had such experiences, rather than participating in collective religious practices. The majority of people who had such experiences (74%) thought that the spiritual side of life was very important, though it is not possible from existing data to disentangle what is cause and what is effect in that association. Religious belief was less closely related, and an interesting aspect of Hay’s research is that 24% of atheists and agnostics had such experiences.

16.2  Two-Factor Theory I now want to advocate a two-factor theory of this kind of sense that there is something more than the everyday. It seems to be quite common for human experience to arise from a combination of biological/constitutional factors and contextual/cultural factors. The best known theory of this kind is Stanley Schachter’s two-factor theory of emotion (Schachter and Singer 1962). His research showed that there were biological determinants (such as adrenalin) of the level of emotionality people experienced, but that contextual factors (such as what film people were watching) determined which emotion people experienced. Wayne Proudfoot has discussed the development of a parallel two-factor theory of religious experience (Proudfoot 1987). The survey data summarised above is suggestive of such a two-factor theory of religion. The US has been much more religious than the UK (though the differences are starting to become eroded). Religious belief and public participation are much higher in the US. This makes it striking that the percentages of people experiencing

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a ‘powerful spiritual force’ that lifted them out of themselves were very similar in the US and UK. That suggests that the propensity to have such an experience was not dependent on culture, and was more an inherent part of the human constitution (i.e. ‘hard-wired’). This connects with the current distinction between religion and spirituality. It seems that these may become dissociated. Then the sense of something more becomes more closely linked with spirituality than with religion. There are various other pointers towards some such two-factor theory. One comes from Ralph Hood’s Mysticism Scale (Hood et  al. 2009, chapter 9). Hood et  al. found, using factor analysis of questionnaire data, that two distinct sets of terms were used. One set was rather general (whether about a sense of unity, or about nature etc.); the other set of terms was more interpretative and dependent on specific religious beliefs. The correlation between the two sets of terms was lower than the correlation within terms from the same set. This seems to point empirically to a dissociation between experiential/spiritual aspects of religious experience on the one hand, and interpretative/religious aspects on the other. These two aspects of the sense of something more seem to reflect a general dissociation that can open up in human cognition, rather than being anything unique or specific to religion or spirituality (Watts 2013, 2014, 2017). Iain McGilchrist has recently reviewed evidence relating to the distinction between left-brain and right-­ brain cognition (McGilchrist 2009). In his terms, the general sense of there being something more seems to be more characteristic of right-brain cognition, whereas the religious interpretation of that experience seems to depend on left-brain cognition. A similar distinction can be made between the two central subsystems of Philip Barnard’s Interacting Cognitive Subsystems (Clarke 2013; Watts 2013, 2014; Wynn 2005). The more intuitive (and phylogenetically older) Implicational Subsystem seems to underpin the general sense of something more, whereas the more analytical and articulate Propositional Subsystem seems to be involved in religious interpretation.

16.3  Beyond What? I will turn now from theories of cognition that bear on where and how the sense of something more arises, to the difficult question of what is actually meant by something ‘more’ or ‘beyond’. What is meant by a presence or power ‘different from your everyday self’ or a powerful spiritual force that seemed to ‘lift you out of yourself’? Part of the problem here is that these formulations focus on what the presence, power or force is not, but they do not say what it is. The concept of something different or beyond the everyday is secondary to the concept of the everyday self. The concept of something different from or beyond the everyday self depends on the view that there are strict limits to what counts as the everyday self. I have noted recently (Watts 2018a) that there are similar issues about the definition of ‘transpersonal’ psychology, which is usually defined in terms of what it goes beyond.

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The same issue arises, of course, about the idea of something beyond nature. Again, that is defined in terms of what the beyond is not. It is assumed that there are strict boundaries to nature, making it possible to tell when something goes beyond nature. A parallel issue often arises about the concept of miracle, if that is defined in terms of what goes beyond the laws of nature. You need a strict limit to what is allowable under the laws of nature before that approach to defining miracle makes any sense. The same issue arises yet again about whether there is something more than ‘matter’ (such as ‘mind’); you need a strict concept of matter before you can talk of something separate from matter. It has been a feature of modernity that it has tended to set strict boundaries to the everyday self, to nature, to matter, and to the laws of nature. I think that is a mistake. However, if you make that move, you then have two alternatives. Either you maintain that there is not, and cannot possibly be, anything ‘beyond’ matter, nature, the everyday self etc.; Or you enter into a dualism that postulates two kinds of substance, one within nature or the everyday, and one beyond it. As Mary Midgely has pointed out, both materialism and naturalism seem to have arisen historically from dualism (Midgely 1994). First, a distinction was made, like that beyond body and soul; then soul was eliminated entirely, and we were left with a truncated concept of body (or matter, or nature, or the everyday) which, as Midgely puts it, is left to run round like a headless chicken. There is an alternative to all this, which is to avoid the dualistic fissure in the first place, and to embrace an emancipated monism. This rejects the sharp divide between the everyday and the beyond, and instead recognizes that the ‘everyday’ has the potential to extend beyond its usual parameters without becoming something completely different. Clearly this has implications for how God is conceptualised. In the post-war years there has been a movement in theology against supernaturalism and towards an emancipated monism. The preference is increasingly neither for naturalism nor dualism, but for an enhanced monism which locates God in One World, but not in the limited and truncated world of naturalism. That is an approach to God that is entirely consistent with the approach to ‘beyond’ the everyday that I am taking here. What I am proposing here is different from ‘religious naturalism’, such as proposed by Wesley Wildman (2014). That accepts the distinction between the natural and the supernatural and locates God within the former, having discounted the supernatural as an empty category. I am no more enthusiastic about such religious naturalism than religious supernaturalism. I prefer to locate God within an undivided monism, rather than within either a supernatural world or a truncated natural world. The legacy of philosophical dualism goes deep, and it is not easy to move on from it, though my sense is that academia is finding it harder to move on from dualism than popular culture. In the long term, the prospects are better for monism than for either naturalism or supernaturalism. Outside conventional religious circles a holistic spirituality has been developing that overcomes the split between religion and psychology and integrates the two. It is a monistic spirituality that is about both the self and the transcendent (G. Watts, in press). At least in the West, this is where

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the main future of spirituality seems to lie. The new holistic spirituality cannot be located either in supernaturalism or in a truncated view of the natural world.

16.4  Filtering in Consciousness I will now return to cognitive theory and develop some suggestions about how the experience of the beyond might work cognitively. I suggest that when people experience something ‘beyond’ the everyday self they are not necessarily experiencing something from another world. My alternative proposal is that we normally focus on a limited part range of the wide range of experience that is potentially available to us. We normally filter out a large part of our potential experience. However, under some circumstances, we suspend the normal filters and experience more of what is potentially available to us. There is nothing controversial about the idea of filtering. There is a broad consensus that most of our information processing is done out of consciousness. We only become conscious of a small proportion of what we are processing. We routinely scan material in non-conscious ways, but become conscious of it if it meets certain criteria. The common example of this is the cocktail party phenomenon in which there is a conversation going on near us, but we filter it out and have no conscious awareness of what is being said. However, if someone says our name, we immediately become conscious of it, showing that we are monitoring the conversation at a non-conscious level. There are circumstances in which normal filtering breaks down. It is a plausible theory of what goes wrong when people have anomalous or psychotic experiences that normal filtering has broken down (Frith 1979). Religious content is common in the hallucinations and delusions that are found in major mental disorder (Cook 2015). There is an interesting similarity between psychotic and spiritual experience (Clarke 2008, 2010), and it is plausible to suggest that there is a somewhat similar suspension of normal filtering processes in both spiritual and psychotic experience. However, there are also differences (Watts 2018b). The breakdown of filtering in people with recurrent psychotic experiences seems to be involuntary and distressing, whereas the somewhat similar experiences of mystics seems to be deliberately sought and to be uplifting. Clarke and her colleagues make a convincing case for the essential similarity of what is experienced in mystical and psychotic states. However, following on from the monism I have espoused here, I would argue that these are not experiences of a completely different domain of experience. Rather, I suggest that they are experiences of a broader set of the potential range of experiences that would impinge on us if there were no filtering. I am thus espousing an emancipated or expanded monism, rather than a dualistic switch to experience of a different world. I would also argue, arising from two-factor theory, that though there is an essential similarity between psychotic and mystical experiences, there are also important differences, especially in how they impact on people. Mystics have an interpretative system that enables them to make sense of anomalous experience in a coherent way.

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People in psychotic states are experiencing similar things but in an involuntary way, and without the interpretative framework to make sense of them. That is very different, and means that the experiences are likely to be much more distressing. It is also often claimed that there are similarities between the religious experiences and the experiences that occur in epileptic seizures, and a parallel point applies. There are indeed marked phenomenological similarities; however, religious experiences are calming and uplifting, whereas epileptic experiences are distressing.

16.5  Conclusion I have argued that the widespread sense of something ‘more’ or ‘beyond’ the everyday arises from an intersection of hard-wired and cultural factors, which influence different aspects of it. Hard-wired factors can operate in a way that results in a less restrictive filtering of the range of potential experience that enters consciousness. A somewhat similar expanded consciousness can be found in both healthy religious experience and in disordered states of consciousness. However, I argue that, in the former case, having an interpretative framework that enables these experiences to be understood and assimilated results in their being experienced as uplifting rather than distressing. My preference is for understanding this something ‘more’ within an expanded monism rather than a supernaturalistic dualism.

Bibliography Clarke, I. 2008. Madness, Mystery and the Survival of God. Winchester: ‘O’ Books. ———., ed. 2010. Psychosis and Spirituality: Consolidating the New Paradigm. 2nd ed. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Clarke, C. 2013. Knowing, Doing, and Being: New Foundations for Consciousness Studies. Exeter: Imprint Academic. Cook, C.C.K. 2015. Religious Psychopathology: The Prevalence of Religious Content of Delusions and Hallucinations in Mental Disorder. International Journal of Social Psychiatry 61 (4): 404–425. Frith, C.D. 1979. Consciousness, Information Processing and Schizophrenia. British Journal of Psychiatry 134 (2): 225–235. Greeley, A.M. 1974. Ecstasy: A Way of Knowing. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Hay, D. 1982. Exploring Inner Space: Scientists and Religious Experience. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Hay, D., and A. Morisey. 1978. Reports of Ecstatic, Paranormal, or Religious Experience in Great Britain and the United States: A Comparison of Trends. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 17 (3): 255–268. Hood. R.  W. Jr., P.  C. Hill, and B.  Spilka. 2009. The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach. 4th ed. New York: Guilford Press. McGilchrist, I. 2009. The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Makings of the Western World. New Haven: Yale University Press. Midgley, M. 1994. Science as Salvation: A Modern Myth and its Meaning. London: Routledge.

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Proudfoot, W. 1987. Religious Experience. Berkeley: University of California Press. Schachter, S., and J. Singer. 1962. Cognitive, Social, and Physiological Determinants of Emotional State. Psychological Review 69 (5): 379–399. Watts, F. 2013. Dual system theories of religious cognition. In Head and Heart: Perspectives from Religion and Psychology, ed. F. Watts and G. Dumbreck, 125–154. West Conshohoken: Templeton Press. ———. 2014. Religion and the Emergence of Differentiated Cognition. In Evolution, Religion and Cognitive Science: Critical and Constructive Essays, ed. F. Watts and L. Turner, 109–131. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2017. Psychology, Religion and Spirituality: Concepts and Applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2018a. Psychology, Religion and the Transpersonal. Transpersonal Psychology Review 20 (1): 15–22. ———. 2018b. Theology and science of mental health and wellbeing. Zygon 53 (2): 336–355. Watts, G. in press. Cultural Disenchantment and the Rise of Holistic Spirituality. In R. Re Manning (ed.), Mutual Enrichment Between Psychology and Theology. London: Routledge. Wildman, W. 2014. Religious Naturalism: What it Can be and What it Need not be. Philosophy, Theology and the Sciences 1 (1): 36–58. Wynn, M. 2005. Emotional Experience and Religious Understanding: Integrating Perception, Conception and Feeling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fraser Watts, formerly Reader in Theology and Science in the University of Cambridge, is now Visiting Professor of Psychology of Religion at the University of Lincoln, UK, and Executive Secretary of the International Society for Science and Religion.

Chapter 17

Friluftsliv: Aesthetic and Psychological Experience of Wilderness Adventure Mark Graves, Helga Synnevåg Løvoll, and Knut-Willy Sæther

Abstract  How does one experience nature? We examine arduous experiences of extreme outdoor wilderness to gain both knowledge of experience in that particular context and a relational understanding of nature. In the context studied, friluftsliv captures core Nordic values related to contemplative, aesthetic, and meaning-­ making dimensions of active immersion in unmanipulated nature. We examined 26 college students in small, loosely facilitated outdoor adventure leadership and skill-­ building courses before, during, and after a five-day, wilderness, cross-country ski trip with overnight camping in self-built snow caves. Drawing upon aesthetics within philosophical theology and eudaimonic well-being within positive psychology, we develop an empirically driven theoretical framework for examining aesthetic and spiritual experience in nature with relevance for future theological and psychological investigations. Our study included: self-report questionnaires from positive psychology and psychology of spirituality; a novel questionnaire under development for assessing aesthetic experience in nature; and qualitative and computational text analysis of brief experience reports written during the wilderness adventure. With factor analysis of the aesthetics questionnaire, we found two aesthetic factors: one apparently relating to traditional appreciation of beauty and a second factor relating to aspects of awe, immersive communion with nature, and the sublime.

M. Graves (*) Center for Theology, Science & Human Flourishing, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA e-mail: [email protected] H. S. Løvoll Department of Physical Education, Volda University College, Volda, Norway e-mail: [email protected] K.-W. Sæther Department of Religious Studies, Volda University College, Volda, Norway e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Nature – and Beyond, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 5, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31182-7_17

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Keywords  Aesthetics · Beauty · Friluftsliv · Nature · Psychology · Spirituality · Sublime · Transcendence · Wonder

17.1  Introduction How does one experience nature? We approach this comprehensive question by examining arduous experiences of extreme outdoor wilderness. Our task is to gain knowledge of experience in that particular context with a particular focus on aesthetic, psychological, and spiritual dimensions. We draw upon aesthetics within philosophical theology, eudaimonic well-being within positive psychology, and a novel empirically driven theoretical framework for examining aesthetic and spiritual experience in nature. This project approaches aesthetic experiences in a broad sense including beauty, wonder and the sublime (Sobosan 1999; Sæther 2016, 2017) and will contribute data to the study of aesthetics  – thus refining the theological reflection of aesthetic experiences of nature with empirical evidence. To ground our theological investigations within empirical research, we examined 26 college students in small, loosely facilitated outdoor adventure leadership and skill-building courses before, during, and after a five-day, wilderness, cross-country ski trip with overnight camping in self-built snow caves. In the context studied, friluftsliv captures core Nordic values related to contemplative, aesthetic, and meaning-­ making dimensions of active immersion in unmanipulated nature (Henderson and Vikander 2007). Thus, our empirical investigation focuses on the aesthetic, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of friluftsliv during arduous winter adventure, and our theological investigation examines those dimensions within the broader context of human experience of beauty, wonder, and the sublime in nature.

17.1.1  Friluftsliv What is central to the friluftsliv experience? In Norwegian culture, friluftsliv is a core value as well as a national identity marker. However, the core content of this term seems to be only vaguely defined, including skilled performance in adventurous activities as well as contemplative practices, sitting around the bonfire, and being aware of the silence. In his poem ‘On the heights,’ the Norwegian writer Henrik Ibsen (1871: 122) introduced the term ‘friluftsliv’ to the Norwegian language. The word attempts to describe a complex state of consciousness, being alone in the mountains. This complex state includes aspects of distance from everyday life, freedom, reflections of death, transcendence, and future visualization. By these aspects, friluftsliv has a much deeper interpretation than a description of simply being outdoors (Backman 2010; Henderson and Vikander 2007). Friluftsliv thus includes normative aspects of possible deeper experiences in nature. In the

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international field of outdoor recreation, this particular way of experiencing nature is ­identified through terms like ‘slow experience,’ as a different quality than ‘fast (or postmodern) adventure’ (Gelter 2010; Varley and Semple 2015). Momentary experiences in nature can have a direct influence on vitality, human growth, quality of life and human motivation along with other positive outcomes. Through studies of well-being in general and eudaimonic well-being in particular, a new focus emerges within positive psychology that includes emotions, meaning, spirituality, aesthetics, religiousness and philosophy as relevant phenomena to understand human well-being (Vittersø 2016; Waterman 2013). Although the psychological approach to understanding these phenomena typically includes social scientific methods in order to investigate the impact for well-being, the phenomena mentioned here are also usually studied within the humanities. Friluftsliv has a contemplative component, which we examine as a type of spirituality. Spirituality, as a field of study, draws upon philosophy, religious studies, theology, and disciplines in the social sciences (Holder 2005), and we examine wilderness experience using psychology of religion and spirituality, cognitive science, philosophy of religion, and philosophical approaches to theology. The Christian monastic tradition has roots in wilderness experience, and we draw upon those resources to provide a broader context for friluftsliv spirituality. As a working definition, we define spirituality as the experience of striving to integrate one’s life with the ultimate value one perceives, where ultimate value is mediated through a tradition and its associated communities (Schneiders 2005; Emmons 1999; Royce 1913/2001). In particular, we focus on the relationship between spirituality and aesthetic dimensions as fruitful for scholarly investigation. How does aesthetic experience in nature point toward deeper aspects of human spirituality? Aesthetic experience captures a unifying wholeness between what classical theory presumed was objective, real-world beauty and what modern theories reduced to the subjective ‘eye of the beholder.’ Bridging the philosophically inclusive and challenging study of aesthetics with broadly meaningful and elusive study of spirituality likely includes the conceptual freedom to characterize friluftsliv well, but we must make theoretical commitments to focus sufficiently on the aspects relevant for modeling friluftsliv empirically. Our primary focus is on the construct of experience, and especially experience in nature, with the intention of capturing contemplative outdoor wilderness aspects of friluftsliv within an aesthetic context and without requiring its restriction to arduous adventure. Our utilization of friluftsliv for theological and scientific investigation uses methods from psychology to address three research questions: • Are there measurable aesthetic aspects of human experience during extreme outdoor wilderness adventures? If so, do they have direct spiritual implications or not? • What characterizes the aesthetical and psychological dimensions of wilderness experience, especially peak emotional experiences? • Do the wilderness adventures contribute to a person’s well-being, personal growth, and satisfaction with life?

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These empirical questions contribute to addressing our theological question: • Does empirical investigation of human experience in nature contribute to a theological understanding of human spirituality within minimally disturbed nature? These questions extend integrative scientific and theological investigation into a more cohesive understanding of how humanity experiences nature.

17.1.2  The Present Study What are the psychological constructs of experience needed to model friluftsliv? To investigate the experience through the lens of friluftsliv requires three interrelated research activities. First, one must identify the psychological theories, methods, operationalized constructs, and measures that might capture and explain significant psychological dimensions of friluftsliv, especially as they relate to its understudied spiritual aspects and taking into account a purported aesthetic influence. Second, one must collect data about the experience, including traits measuring features of personality (McAdams 1997), spirituality (Seidlitz et  al. 2002), personal growth (Personal Growth Composite: Curiosity, Absorption, Complexity and Competence), satisfaction with life (Pavot and Diener 1993), and states measuring basic emotions (Oatley 1992; Vittersø et al. 2005). Third, one must analyze and interpret the raw data within appropriate psychological theories to prepare the results for further analysis and modeling. These findings contribute to positive psychology and psychology of religion and spirituality; initiate investigations on psychology of friluftsliv; and enable integrative empirical and theoretical modeling of wilderness experience. We use empirical methods from psychology and theoretical methodologies from philosophy, religious studies, and the interdisciplinary study of theology and science to identify and measure aesthetic and psychological dimensions of friluftsliv. Within psychology, the area of positive psychology contributes theories and instruments on personal growth and eudaimonic well-being, the psychology of religion and spirituality contributes instruments for assessing religious and spiritual perspectives and commitments, personality psychology contributes trait and identity assessments, and sports psychology contributes constructs related to performance and purpose. Empirical methods include self-report questionnaires, experience reports, and written narratives. As we are unaware of a suitable instrument to examine aesthetic experience in nature, we have begun developing a questionnaire by collecting and adapting related questions as well as generating novel questions from aesthetic theory. Analysis of the quantitative collected data includes correlations, factor analysis, analysis of variance, and regression analysis; and analysis of qualitative data includes manual coding and computational text analysis of narratives from the experience sampling.

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17.2  Method We examined 26 college students of outdoor education in small, loosely facilitated outdoor adventure leadership and skill-building courses before, during, and after a five-day, wilderness, cross-country ski trip with overnight camping in self-built snow caves. As part of the pilot study, we asked the students to complete several self-report questionnaires before and after the trip as well as experience reports daily during the adventure. Pre- and post-adventure questions were drawn from existing self-report questionnaires in positive psychology and the psychology of spirituality, and additional questions were collected to examine aesthetic aspects of the adventure. Questionnaires included existing Norwegian-language versions of Satisfaction with life scale (SWLS; Pavot and Diener 1993); Personal Growth Composite: Curiosity (Amabile et al. 1994), Absorption (Kashdan et al. 2004), Complexity (three questions) and Competence (three questions) based on California Psychological Inventory (CPI) from the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP, HPI Science ability HIC); Tellegen Absorption Scale (TAS; Tellegen and Atkinson 1974); and a 5-item questionnaire based on the wilderness purism construct (Vistad and Vorkinn 2012). The authors translated into Norwegian the Duke University Religion Index (DUREL; Koenig et al. 1997) – which measures organizational, non-organizational, and intrinsic religiousness – and the Spiritual Transcendence Index (STI; Seidlitz et al. 2002), which measures perceived experience of the sacred with respect to God and personal spirituality. To examine spiritual aspects of experience in nature, the STI questions for God were adapted for Nature and one question from The Daily Spiritual Experience Scale (DSES; Underwood 2011) was also included. As we are unaware of a suitable questionnaire with which to examine aesthetic experience in nature, we collected, adapted, and generated 22 questions as potential questions for a new questionnaire. The questions came from the four-item Desire for Aesthetics Scale (DFAS; Lundy et al. 2010), 11 questions on aesthetic personality from the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP; Goldberg et al. 2006), and seven novel aesthetic theory-generated questions: I find gorgeous scenery pleasing, I am fascinated by details and small things in nature, I appreciate variety in nature, I often feel everything is connected and related in nature, I often feel at home in nature, I feel beauty in nature evokes wonder, I feel nature evokes awe. We then used factor analysis to begin formulating an empirical measure of aesthetics of nature. During the adventure, and inspired by the Day Reconstruction Method (Kahneman et al. 2004), students were asked in the evening each day to report an emotionally strong experience in nature from the day outdoors (peak outdoor experience). First, we asked students to identify this episode by narratives. Second, we asked students to report their experience on emotional intensity, based on the Basic Emotion State Test (BEST; Vittersø et al. 2005).

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17.3  Results Based upon preliminary analysis of our pilot study data, we found correlations between personal growth scale and both Tellegen Absorption Scale (pretest r = .50, p = .01; posttest r = .54, p = .007) and preferences for ideal outdoor adventure experiences (spatial solitude r = .51, p = .009; skillful access r = .54, p = .006). Further examination of personal growth subscales found correlations between spatial solitude and curiosity (r = .61, p = .001) and between skillful access and absorption (r = .59, p = .002). We also found correlation between perceived experience of the sacred in spirituality and satisfaction with life (STI spirituality subscale-SWLS r = .53). With factor analysis, we found two aesthetic factors: one apparently relating to traditional appreciation of beauty and another factor relating in some way to aspects of awe, immersive communion with nature, and the sublime. The question items and their factor loadings are given in Table 17.1. (Factor analysis was performed using a minres algorithm and promax rotation with the number of factors determined using scree plots.) The first factor appears to capture an appreciation of beauty and its positive affect. The second factor captures awe and immersion in nature. (The higher loadings indicate that the corresponding question items contribute more to the factor; or, if a negative loading, that a low score on that question contributes to the factor.) To explore the experiences of participants during the adventure, we undertook qualitative and computational text analysis of brief experience reports written Table 17.1  Two factors for aesthetic experience in nature questions with factor loadings Factor 1 0.81 0.756 0.663 0.631 0.479

Factor 2

−0.695 −0.883 0.852 0.757 0.756 0.685 0.667 0.665 0.53 0.427

Question (English translation) Feel it is important to live in a world of beauty. Experience deep emotions when I see beautiful things. See beauty in things that others might not notice. I find gorgeous scenery pleasing. I often feel everything is connected and related in nature. Do not like poetry. (R) Seldom notice the emotional aspects of paintings and pictures. (R) I feel nature evokes awe. Get deeply immersed in music. I feel beauty in nature evokes wonder. I am fascinated by details and small things in nature. Am in awe of simple things in life that others might take for granted. I often feel at home in nature. I appreciate variety in nature. I often find myself staring in awe at beautiful things.

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d­ uring the wilderness adventure. The experience reports came from 26 total participants over 5 days, for 130 possible cases, of which 93 cases were completed. The experience reports included analysis of emotions and narratives. Experiences characterized as ‘strong experiences of nature’ felt more eudaimonic than hedonic (Minterest = 5.67, SD = 0.70, Mpleasure = 4.89, SD = 0.73, t = 5.0, p