A rchive Date
[ 21-11-2005 ]
Category
[ Philosophy ]
sub-Categoy
[ Metaphysics ]
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[http://www.science-spirit.org/article_detail.php?article_id=78
New Wineskins for Old Wine: A Credible Theology for a Scientific World
If theology is to survive as a credible vehicle of truth, it must have the courage to embrace scientific knowledge and reconceive itself accordingly, says Peacocke in this call for a "mnimalist " approach.
by Arthur Peacocke
Christian theology is facing tremendous challenges as it confronts the universe that science has revealed.
The Western intellectual world has yet to be convinced that theology can be done with the kind of intellectual honesty and integrity which is the hallmark of scientific thought. This skepticism is felt not only by "the cultured despisers of religion" whom Schleiemacher described, but also by many wistful agnostics who respect Christian ethics and the person of Jesus, but do not believe that Christian affirmations have any reference to actual realities.
Even those intellectually-educated, thinking people still attached in some way to the Christian churches are increasingly hanging on by their fingertips, forced to bracket off whole sections of their religion as unintelligible or unbelievable in its classic form.
There is an increasingly alarming dissonance between the language of devotion, doctrine and liturgy and the way people really perceive themselves in the modern world n a world they now see in the light of the sciences, especially the "epic of evolution."
This deep alienation from religious belief among the key formulators of Western culture is becoming almost lethal to the Christian churches, which have nearly always based their beliefs on some sort of authority: "The Bible says," "The Church says" n even "Theologians say"! Educated people know that such authoritarian claims are circular and cannot be justified because they fail to meet the demand for validation by an external, universally accepted standard.
That standard can only be reason based on experience, or reasonableness for short. This standard of modern intellectual life must be met by theology in its relation to science, or else the theological enterprise is doomed to increasing irrelevance. These stark facts pose an array of crucial questions that can no longer be avoided. We can only touch briefly on a few of them here.
Entering the Fray
One critical precedes all others: Does theology dare to employ the criteria of reasonableness that characterize other forms of human inquiry, particularly the sciences?
A strong case can be made that the natural and human sciences have achieved their goal of depicting n provisionally and metaphorically n the realities of the natural world by inference to the best explanation (or IBE, for short). IBE employs criteria such as comprehensiveness n giving a unified explanation of a diverse range of facts not previously connected; general plausibility, giving the best fit with previously established knowledge; internal coherence and consistency, avoiding self-contradictions; and simplicity of explanation (this is sometimes debated in science, however: physicists admire it, biologists suspect it).
As John Wisdom put it: "The process of argument is not a chain of demonstrative reasoning. It is a presenting and representing of those features of a case which severally cooperate in favor of the conclusion." IBE is an informal reasoning process, common not only in science but also in moral and legal reasoning.
A theology based on these principles would be, as Hans Kung has put it, "truthful, free, critical and ecumenical" n a theology which deals with and interprets the realities of all that constitutes the world, especially human beings and their inner lives. Can theology, using IBE, enter the fray of contemporary intellectual exchange and survive in its own right?
Too often, the dialogue of theology and science has been distorted by an anachronistic conception of the two realms. The dialogue is seen as an attempt to build a bridge between two strong, solidly established disciplines. But this picture represents only the medieval enterprise of relating natural philosophy to theology. Since then, the medieval world of natural philosophy has been replaced by the worldview of the modern natural and human sciences, which have a shifting structure, and are constantly undergoing revision as new knowledge is gained and old theories updated or discarded. This is not a solid, rock-like foundation for a bridge, but a veritable lava flow, purging the landscape ahead and solidifying behind.
It is time for that other supposedly solid anchor of the bridge n theology n to undergo the same kind of epistemological revolution and cease to pretend that it is a solid, unshifting rock, stable for all time. It must be replaced by the open exploration that characterizes science, in which nothing is unrevisable. The "bridge" imagery for the science-and-theology enterprise must be replaced by the sense of a joint exploration into a common reality, some aspects of which will prove, in the end to be ultimate n and thus divine.
Running in Circles
Unfortunately, this is not how theology is actually practiced. Looking at the field today, we find a variety of theological procedures that do not meet the criteria of IBE.
Among these is a continuing reliance on an authoritative book: "The Bible says." Even those not given to biblical literalism still have a habit of treating the Bible as a kind of oracle, as if quotations from past authorities could settle questions in our times (like a doctor resorting to Galen!). Yet the library of books we call the Bible is itself constituted by a self-critical dialogic process of constantly revising, repudiating and extending the work and experience of earlier generations.
There is also a reliance on an authoritative community: "The Church says," "The Creeds say." Here the religious community talks only to itself, establishing a framework and grammar for its own internal discourse without ever exposing itself to any external judgement of reasonableness. So however much the faith is explicated and enriched within the community, it fails to equip itself with the means to convince outsiders to take its affirmations seriously.
These and other practices make it difficult for theology to come to terms with the world whose realities are discovered by the sciences. If theology is to meet the intellectual demands of our times, it will have to take account not only the communal inheritance of claimed, classic revelatory experiences (in texts, liturgies, art, etc.), but also the scientifically discovered realities of the world n and the perceptions and traditions of other world religions as well.
Interrogating the Implications
All of this suggests a radically revisable theology which will not sit at all comfortably with the traditional theology now promulgated by church bodies and in most pulpits. But I believe such a transformation has become imperative. There are indeed some tough critical issues that theology must consider in the light of science, a series of positions and questions that religious thinkers can no longer avoid. These include:
This is one world. A monistic naturalism is overwhelmingly indicated by the sciences. This need not be reductive about the many levels in the world, and in human beings; but the only dualism now defensible appears to be the distinction between the Being of God and everything else. Talk of the "spirit" or of the "soul" of human beings as distinct entities appears to be precluded.
This one world is an interconnected web of processes at many levels, which are increasingly intelligible to the sciences. These processes are more subtle and rational than we could ever have conceived. And their creativity is in-built; even for theists, it is becoming increasingly incoherent to have a view of God as intervening in these processes to fulfil divine purposes.
Human nature is constrained by our biologically-conditioned and biologically-created genes. What is the relation of this to doctrines of "original sin"? After all, God created us with these biologically-derived genes.
Human beings seem to be "rising beasts" instead of "fallen angels." There is no evidence for a past paradisal existence of homo sapiens; so how should this shape our understanding of the work of Christ as "redemption"? Should we now regard the "work of Christ" less as the restoration of a past perfection and more as the transformation into a new, as-yet unrealized state? How did n and does n Jesus make any difference?
The relation of God and the world must be reinterpreted. If God is all the time creating in and through the processes of the world n if they are themselves Godis action n then the understanding of Godis immanence in the world has to be held in a much stronger sense than ever before. Does this call for a "sacramental panentheism," representing both the closeness of God to creation and Godis basic "otherness"? Certainly, we need more dynamic metaphors for this relation.
The relation of God to time must be reinterpreted. How should we relate classical notions of eternity and Godis supposed "timelessness" to modern relativistic physics? Some say God perceives past, present and future with an eternal immediacy, while many of us believe the future does not have any kind of actual existence which an omniscient God could logically know n God will be present at all future events, but what these will be is not determined in advance.
Also, cosmology predicts with very great certainty the demise of this planet and all life on it, including ours. What then is the value of talk about "a new heaven and a new earth"? The only bases for this seems to be the imaginings of one late first-century writer, and the belief that the material body of Jesus was somehow tranformed to leave an empty tomb. The latter is at least debatable, even among informed Christians, and the former can scarcely be evidence. So what is left? The belief that God is merciful Love and has, through the resurrection of Jesus, taken at least one human being who was fully open to Godis presence into the divine life. Isnit the rest of Christian eschatology little more than empty speculation?
Opening the Gates
Much Christian apologetics based on science is still entangled in worn-out metaphors and images, and it is not convincing the general, educated public. What we all must now do in this interaction of theology and science is to develop n by argument and imagination a believable notion of God and of the role of Jesus Christ, one which coherently embraces what we now know from science about the cosmos, this planet, and about our own species and others. Theology has to develop concepts, images, notions and metaphors that represent God"s purposes and implanted meanings for the world as we actually find it be through the sciences.
We require an open, revisable, exploratory, radical n dare I say it ? liberal (but not woolly!) theology. Then there might evolve a more general recognition of Godis dynamic action in the processes of the world n God as Transcendent, Incarnate, and Immanent, in Whom all exists.
This approach may well be unfashionable among Christians who seem everywhere to be retreating into their fortresses of classical Protestant evangelicalism, traditional Catholicism, and so-called "biblical theology." Nevertheless, transition to such a theology is, in my view, unavoidable if Christians in the West are not to degenerate into an esoteric society internally communing with itself, and thereby failing to be the bearer of its "good news" (the evangel) to the universal (catholicos) world.
Hence, a paradox: to be truly "evangelical" and "catholic," the church of the next millennium will need a theology that will necessarily have to be genuinely liberal and even radical n particularly in its relation to a worldview everywhere shaped by the science. For Christian theology to have any viability, it may well have to be stripped down to newly-conceived essentials, minimalist in its affirmations. Only then will it attain that degree of verisimilitude with respect to ultimate realities which science has to natural ones n and command respect as a vehicle of public truth.
Arthur Peacocke is director of the Ian Ramsey Centre for the interdisciplinary study of religion in relation to science, a member of the Faculty of Theology, Oxford University, and former dean of Clare College, Cambridge
© 2002 Science & Spirit Magazine. All rights reserved]
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