Denis Edwards and Keith Ward on miracles

Miracles present what is probably the toughest challenge for Denis Edwards’ noninterventionist account of divine action. After all, isn’t a miracle by definition an act of God “intervening” in, or overriding, or bypassing the normal chain of events?

Edwards considers one traditional view on what a miracle is, namely that of Thomas Aquinas. As we’ve seen, Edwards follows Aquinas in distinguishing between God as the primary cause–that is, the cause of created beings’ very existence–and creatures as secondary causes, “the patterns of relationship we find in the natural world, everything studied by the sciences, and everything that could ever be studied by the sciences” (How God Acts, p. 81).

A miracle, for St. Thomas, is an event where there is no secondary cause, but which is brought about by God directly. A miracle, in Thomas’s words, “surpasses the capabilities of nature.” Despite following Thomas’s general metaphysical line, this is a point where Edwards differs: “miracles can be seen as wonderful manifestations of the Spirit that occur through secondary causes” (p. 84).

To flesh this out, Edwards takes a bit of a detour through the philosophy of science. Miracles are often said to be “violations” of the “laws of nature.” But we can distinguish several meanings of “laws of nature.” It can refer to our theories or intellectual descriptions of the patterns and relationships of nature, but it can also refer to those underlying patterns and relationships themselves. Our theories, at best, imperfectly model the reality they seek to describe, and there are multiple levels of reality–mental, personal, ethical, aesthetic–that are, as yet, not comprehensible under some general law-like description.

The upshot is that so-called miracles may be beyond the laws of nature in the sense that they are not explicable by our currently formulated theories, but may still be intelligible in light of the natural order taken as a whole (if we fully understood it). “This opens up the possibility that miracles may occur though a whole range of secondary causes that our current science cannot yet model or cannot yet model well” (p. 87).

But if that’s the case, then what makes an event a miracle? Following Karl Rahner, Edwards proposes that a miracles are “signs and manifestations of God’s saving action” (p. 87). To be a miracle, it’s necessary, not that an event be directly brought about by God, but that it be experienced by us as a revelation of God’s grace. For example, in principle, science might come to some understanding of how “prayer, human solidarity, love, or faith can contribute to biological healing,” (p. 89), but that would not detract from the religious significance of such an event.

It might be useful to compare Edwards’ view with that of another contemporary theologian–Keith Ward, whose book Divine Action is devoted to many of the same problems as Edwards’. Ward would agree with Edwards that miracles are events in which God’s purposes are disclosed to human beings, but he goes further: a miracle can be understood as a sequence of events “which takes physical objects beyond their normal physical realizations, and displays their relation to their spiritual origin and goal” (Divine Action, p. 176).

Ward argues that contemporary science offers a picture of a universe that is much “looser” and more open than the one offered by, say, deterministic Newtonian physics. The universe, Ward argues, is thus open to being influenced by God: “the whole ‘seamless robe’ picture of nature as a closed causal system is much less compelling than it once may have seemed” (pp. 177-78). In Ward’s view, the universe “is always orientated toward God” as the “purposive causal basis as of the universe itself” (p. 179). Consequently, direct divine action can’t be ruled out.

This is obviously a complex issue, but there are some considerations that incline me toward Ward’s side of the debate. Edwards is concerned to safeguard the completeness of scientific explanations of phenomena, which, he thinks, requires a closed causal system on the level of creatures. But as Ward points out, miracles and other special divine acts are not the kind of measurable and repeatable events that would fall under general scientific laws or explanations. So, you could theoretically have a “complete” physics without it necessarily excluding divine acts that make a difference to how things go in the world. It therefore seems rash to rule out divine intervention for the sake of preserving a closed causal nexus.

Secondly, Ward agrees with Edwards that God respects the autonomy of the created order, but that this is not an “unrestricted” autonomy. God will act to bring the divine purposes to fulfillment. “A miracle will be an extraordinary event, improbable in terms of the physical system considered in itself, but fairly probably in the wider context of a spiritual purpose for the whole system” (p. 180). The causal processes of nature are not, in themselves, the final word because the universe as a whole is, by its nature, rooted in and open to its creator (and redeemer).

Quasi-mea culpa on Marcus Borg

A while back I lamented that moderate-to-progressive Christians were in danger of creating their own theological ghetto by creating an “approved” reading list of people like Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan. I wrote that “Borg and Crossan, for example, though they both have some good insights, seem to want to replace 2,000 years of Christian reflection on the person of Christ with a historical reconstruction of their own devising.”

Recently, though, our Sunday school class has been using a series of videos that feature various theological talking heads, Borg among them, and I found myself more impressed with him than I remembered being when I first encountered his work. So on a lark, I picked up his Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time from the library. I have to say, while I by no means agreed with everything in it, it offers a much more robust version of Christian faith than I expected. He has a particularly good chapter on Christology that draws on the “Wisdom” Christologies that have been developed by Elizabeth Johnson, among others, which I found pretty congenial (if not entirely satisfactory). Moreover, Borg writes in a warm, pastoral, and intelligible style; when so much theology is written in the impenetrable jargon of the academic guild, it’s no wonder he appeals to a lot of lay Christians.

I stand by my point that moderate, progressive, and mainline Christians could do a much better job engaging the tradition, but I think Borg deserves more credit than I gave him for working outside of a narrow, historical paradigm.

UPDATE: This review of another of Borg’s books from Walter Bruggemann seems to strike about the right balance:

Borg offers a clear contrast between the older model of faith and the new paradigm he advocates–a paradigm marked by the terms “metaphorical” and “sacramental.” He assures the reader that many of the claims in the old model of faith are caricatures that do not need to be honored. Borg’s contrast between old and new paradigm is instructive and helpful. With generosity of spirit, he acknowledges that over time women and men of faith have been helped by both models, though at points the argument takes a somewhat Manicheistic tone whereby all the good claims are grouped in the new and all the bad claims are grouped in the old. Borg does not entertain the possibility that many people of faith “mix and match” across his paradigms in quite workable ways. He consistently draws a sharp and clean contrast.

[...]

In such a reading the Bible is either a human document or the divine word. God is either a demanding giver of requirements or a generous giver of transformative energy. Jesus must be seen either as a metaphor and sacrament of God or we are stuck with irrelevant formulae cast in impenetrable rhetoric. Such a simple sorting out of either/or (which Borg does with generosity toward claims that he rejects) seems to this reader not only unnecessary but misleading.

Johnny Cash nixed “Imagine”?

From a review of the new Johnny Cash album American VI: Ain’t No Grave:

The success in large part on this sixth collection, as with the entire series, comes down to song selection, which [producer Rick] Rubin has overseen with excellent taste. Talk about a dream job: Thinking up cool songs for Johnny Cash to cover. And Cash was an incredible trooper over the ten-year period that Rubin recorded him, taking on everything from country to metal to pop standards with equal alacrity. Cash only rarely refused a tune, recording over a hundred different songs for the first in the series, American Recordings, alone. (Exception: Cash wouldn’t sing “Imagine” because he couldn’t get behind John Lennon’s wouldn’t-it-be-awesome-if-no-one-believed-in-God sentiment.)

The idea of Johnny Cash refusing to sing that overplayed treacle is very appealing to me. Anyway, the album is indeed great.

Friday Metal: Baroness, “A Horse Called Golgotha”

Baroness’s Blue Record was at or near the top of pretty much every heavy metal critics’ “best of” list last year. And this is one of the album’s best songs:

Edwards on providence

If God acts in a non-interventionist way as Denis Edwards suggests–acting through “secondary causes” and allowing natural processes and created beings their own proper autonomy–then what about events that theology has traditionally viewed as special divine actions that bypass the normal order of things? Let’s look at two cases: God’s providential ordering of all things (as traditional faith would have it) and unique, miraculous events. In this post I’ll talk about providence and save miracles for a later post.

Traditionally, “providence” refers to God’s guiding of nature and history toward divinely chosen ends. Some theologians have gone so far as to say that God directly wills every event that occurs. But if, as Edwards maintains, God allows created being a level of autonomy and doesn’t act in an interventionist way to change the course of nature or history, then what becomes of providence?

Edwards takes as an example of providence the development of life on Earth, including the emergence of human beings:

In the approach I am advocating, this can be seen as a special act of God in the sense that God chooses, eternally, that the universe would bring forth biological life on our Earth by means of emergence and increasing complexity. What makes this act special is that (1) this action of God has a specific effect in creaturely history, the emergence of life in the universe, and (2) this specific effect is intended by God. (pp. 64-5)

He goes on to say that this “act of God takes effect in and through all the regularities and constraints of nature, including chance events occurring within the structure provided by the laws of nature” and there are “no gaps in the causal explanation at the empirical level that theology should fill” (p. 65). God’s one act of choosing this world entails (or is identical with?) the act of choosing a world that would bring about the emergence of life.

But does this mean that every event that happens must be viewed as a direct expression of God’s will? No, because while God wills to give his creatures good things, he also respects the processes by which they come into being, which can in turn have unpleasant side-effects:

[T]he God who provides for me through secondary causes may also respect the proper autonomy of the created order. This means that while God can be seen as acting in secondary causes for my well-being, God may not be free to intervene in the functioning of secondary causes in a way that overturns the laws of nature in order to preserve me from suffering. (pp. 69-70)

This may seem to be an arbitrary distinction, but we have to remember that, for Edwards, God’s nature is revealed in the self-giving love of Jesus. That’s why it makes sense to affirm that God sends us good things, regardless of merit, but also that God chooses to create through secondary causes and to respect their “freedom.”

The Sea World incident

You may have heard the sad news of the Sea World trainer who was killed by the killer whale she was working with. Authorities were aptly referring to it as a “tragic accident,” but could these sorts of things be avoided by not keeping such creatures in captivity in the first place?

Jim Henley provides two contrasting takes, one form the website of animal trainer Karen Pryor, the other from animal ethologist and animal-rights activist Marc Bekoff. The former makes the case that we never would have learned how intelligent and social whales are if we hadn’t taken them into captivity, and thus we probably wouldn’t have felt the need to extend such protections to them as we have.

Be that as it may, I agree with Bekoff that we should “take all measures to make these sorts of encounters become things of the past by keeping whales and people apart.” Even if there was justification for capturing whales at some point in the past (a utilitarian justification that’s open to serious question), it’s hard to see what the point of doing so is now, particularly when they’re being used for entertainment. Contrary to the assertion of the KPCT post, I don’t see any reason to think that captives make particularly good “ambassadors.” For one thing, it may give us the impression that wild predators can be turned into cute and harmless pets.

The whole thing gives an eerie resonance to Neko Case’s “People Got a Lotta Nerve”:

Not very millenial

I scored a measly 24 on this Pew Research “How Millenial Are You?” quiz (via Clint Schnekloth). Can’t say I’m too upset by that.

Needed: better political symbolism

I’m all for an alternative to the “Tea Party” phenomenon that believes in “promot[ing] civility and inclusiveness in political discourse, engag[ing] the government not as an enemy but as the collective will of the people, [and] push[ing] leaders to enact the progressive change for which 52.9 percent of the country voted in 2008.” But “Coffee Party”? Really? At least “tea party” actually refer to an important, resonant event in our political history, even if Glenn Beck doesn’t seem to realize that Tom Paine believed in progressive taxation and the welfare state.

Why I don’t watch cable news

Well, not the only reason. But this article on the frequency with which “independent analysts” on cable news double as lobbyists or PR flacks is pretty damning.

Denis Edwards’ theology of divine action

In his new book How God Acts, Australian Catholic theologian Denis Edwards offers an account of divine action that is conscious of the picture of the world offered by modern science, but takes its lead both from the Christian revelation of God in Christ, the insights of Karl Rahner, and a modified Thomist metaphysics. The result is what Edwards calls a “noninterventionist” view of God’s action in the world that, he maintains, can make allowances for God’s special or particular actions, such as providence, miracles, and the resurrection of Jesus.

Science, Edwards says, reveals to us a universe that is multi-leveled and evolving, contains processes with their own integrity, and at least appears to move in a direction toward greater complexity. While this process results in the development of a marvelous diversity of life, sophisticated consciousness, and intelligent personhood, it also has costs in terms of the suffering and extinction of countless billions of living creatures. While the world may give hints of a divine intelligence, it is ambiguous enough to cause us to question whether a benevolent God is running the show.

However, if we attend to the God revealed in the ministry, teachings, passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we may be led to a different picture of divine action–one that is actually more harmonious with the scientific world-view. The God of Jesus, Edwards observes, is a God of vulnerable love, a God who “waits upon creation.” Jesus’ parables picture the reign of God coming in small, often unnoticed ways. His eschatology, on one interpretation, is a “participatory” one where God’s work requires the cooperation of creatures. The picture Jesus paints is of a providential God who cares deeply for his creatures, but not a manipulative puppet-master.

This understanding is reinforced when seen in light of the entire “Christ event.” In the resurrection of Jesus, God acts to “bring healing and hope to the world in a new creation” (pp. 25-6). But this comes only after the crucifixion. We needn’t see God as directly willing the death of Jesus, Edwards contends. Instead, we should understand that God in Jesus was wooing his creation back into a relationship of love. He was so willing to wait for humanity’s free response that he allows us to have our way, even to the extent of killing Jesus. However, God’s love refuses to give death and hatred the last word:

Reflection on the Christ-event suggests a theology of divine action in which God actively waits upon creation, upon the unfolding of natural processes and upon the freedom of human responses, yet acts powerfully, faithfully, and lovingly to fulfill the divine promises. (pp. 29-30)

To fill out this insight, Edwards draws upon Karl Rahner’s theology of creation and St. Thomas’s theology of divine action. Rahner sees the act of creation as a single act of divine “self-bestowal”: God seeks to give himself to something other than himself. This single act, Edwards proposes, has particular effects at various points throughout the created order. Thus every event can be seen as a manifestation of this single act of divine creativity without supposing that there are causal or explanatory “gaps” within the empirical world.

Following St. Thomas, Edwards distinguishes between God as the “primary” cause of everything that is and created beings as genuine “secondary” causes with their own proper autonomy. There is no causal competition between God and creatures; God’s causality can only be spoken of analogically and operates at a different level than that of creatures. This is the metaphysical counterpart to the more ethical picture derived from the Christ-event: God allows creatures their own proper autonomy, enabling them to flourish. He is the cause or root of their freedom, not the limit of it.

The way is then opened for Edwards to develop a genuinely “noninterventionist” account of divine action. If God is the power that enables creatures and created processes to exist and to exercise their own proper causality, then we can see God at work in the world without positing occasional divine “interventions” that break or override the “laws” of nature. God creates and exercises providential guidance of the world in and through created processes. “Divine action…works in and through the laws of nature rather than by violating, superseding, or bypassing them” (p. 55).

This has implications the problem of evil, among other things. If God creates through natural processes and respects the relative autonomy of created reality, then it may be that God cannot (in some sense) prevent the evil that mortal flesh is prey to. Suffering, pain, predation, disease, and death may be necessary (again, in some sense) attendants to the process by which God brings about new life. If the picture of the evolution of the universe offered by science is even remotely accurate, we are compelled to think of God as being very patient in waiting on natural processes to bring sentient and personal life into being. But unlike, say, the God of process theology, who seems to be one being among others within a shared ontological framework, Edwards’ God is genuinely transcendent and the unqualified source of all that is. God respects the relative autonomy of creation, but will take action to bring the divine purposes to completion.

(More to come in a later post…)