INTEGRATING EVOLUTION: A CONTRIBUTION TO THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF CREATION

Abstract. Science has demonstrated that the universe creates itself through its own history. This history is the result of a probabilistic process, not a deterministic execution of a plan. Science has also documented that human beings are a result of this universal, probabilistic process of general evolution. At first sight, these results seem to contradict Christian teaching. According to the Bible, history is essentially the history of salvation. Human beings therefore are not an "accident of nature" but special creations to be saved. With deeper theological probing, it becomes clearer, however, that creation must create itself. The Christian God is the loving God who enters into a loving relationship with human beings if they desire to reciprocate. If creation could not create itself, human beings could not be free. Without freedom to ignore or reject God's love, the central act of the Christian God, the drama of salvation, would become a parody played by marionettes in the hands of a supernatural manipulator. Christians should welcome the fundamental insight brought forth by science that the universe, including human beings, created itself through its own history. This article will try to show that this scientific insistence is required and confirmed by the intrinsic character of the orthodox, Judeo-Christian concept of God. That nature has to create itself, including human beings, secures human freedom and with it, the responsibility for human actions. From this perspective one might better understand the Bible in the light of God's revelation through the book of nature.     

THE DOCTRINE OF CREATION AND MODERN SCIENCE

Abstract. In contrast to Christian theology that has ignored science, this essay suggests that a credible doctrine of God as creator must take into account scientific understandings of the world. The introduction of the principle of inertia into seventeenth-century science and philosophy helped change the traditional idea of God as creator (which included divine conservation and governance) into a deist concept of God. To recapture the idea that God continually creates, it is important to affirm the contingency of the world as a whole and of all events in the world. Reflecting on the interrelationship of contingency and natural law provides a framework for relating scientific theories of a universal field, the concept of emergent evolution, and the theological concept of eternal divine spirit active in all creation.     

THE DOCTRINE OF UNIVOCITY IS TRUE AND SALUTARY

After clearing up some misunderstandings of Scotus's doctrine of univocity, I argue that the doctrine of univocity is true. All predications about God must be reducible to univocity if they are to be intelligible at all. So even if the doctrine has unwelcome consequences, we ought to affirm it anyway; it is not the job of the theologian or philosopher to shrink from uncomfortable truths. I then argue that the doctrine of univocity in fact has no unwelcome consequences. Moreover, it has at least two salutary logical consequences of the highest importance. I conclude that the polemic against univocity, and against Scotus as its defender, is misplaced.     

THE DOCTRINE OF CREATION

Synopsis: We are often told that the doctrine of creation has not been refuted by modern science, but we cannot judge whether that is true unless we know exactly what the doctrine is, and that is seldom explained. I first offer an interpretation of the doctrine, then defend this as an interpretation, and finally argue that we should use not scientific but forensic methods to decide whether the doctrine, so interpreted, is true.     

RELIGION, PACIFISM, AND THE DOCTRINE OF RESTRAINT

The doctrine of restraint is the claim that citizens and legislators ought to restrain themselves from making political decisions solely on religious grounds. That doctrine is normally construed as a general constraint on religious arguments: an exclusively religious rationale as such is an inappropriate basis for a political decision, particularly a coercive political decision. However, the most common arguments for the doctrine of restraint fail to show that citizens and legislators ought to obey the doctrine of restraint, as we can see by reflecting on those arguments as they bear on the Agapic Pacifist's rationale for denying that even legitimate political authorities may use lethal military force.     

HISTORY AND THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Philip Hefner identifies three settings in which to assess the future of science and religion: the academy, the public sphere, and the faith community. This essay argues that the discourse of science and religion could improve its standing within the secular academy in America by shifting the focus from theology to history. In the public sphere, the science‐and‐religion discourse could play an important role of promoting tolerance and respect toward the religious Other. For a given faith community (for example, Judaism) the discourse of science and religion can ensure future intellectual depth by virtue of study and ongoing interpretation. The essay challenges the suggestion to adopt irony as a desirable posture for science‐and‐religion discourse.     

MALEBRANCHE'S DOCTRINE OF FREEDOM / CONSENT AND THE INCOMPLETENESS OF GOD'S VOLITIONS

‘God needs no instruments to act’, Malebranche writes in Search 6.2.3; ‘it suffices that He wills in order that a thing be, because it is a contradiction that He should will and that what He wills should not happen. Therefore, His power is His will’ (450). After nearly identical language in Treatise 1.12, Malebranche writes that ‘[God's] wills are necessarily efficacious... [H]is power differs not at all from [H]is will’ (116). God's causal power, here, clearly traces only to His volitions - not merely to the fact that He wills, but specifically to the content of His volitions (‘“what” He wills’). Yet despite the obviously key role the ordinary notion of volitional content plays for Malebranche, recent writers have paid surprisingly little attention either to it or its exegetical implications. I hope to rectify this situation here. The plan of this paper is this: first, to borrow current work in the philosophy of mind to sketch the notion of an incomplete volition, i.e. one whose content is ‘incomplete’ in a sense to be explained; second, to show that Malebranche clearly allows and uses something like this notion; third, to apply the notion to Malebranche's doctrine of human freedom. In so doing, I believe, we can understand this doctrine in a new way, and one which: (i) is clearly consistent with his texts, and (ii) unlike other interpretations makes coherent sense out of the conflicting streams in his heroic attempt to reconcile his occasionalism - the doctrine that no finite substances have genuine causal powers - with our freedom; fourth, Contrast my interpretation with those of two recent writers: Sleigh et al. (1998) and Schmaltz (1996); and Fifth, Summarize the major results.