Evolving with miracles
Ch. 1 Q. 3 of Hall's Theological Outlines gets into the relations of miracles to the natural order of things with Hall holding that miracles are necessary in order for evolution to take place:
The advance of the αίών requires innovations, steps, and the entrance of higher forces than those previously resident in the κόσμος. The evolutionary hypothesis requires this supposition; and, unless we become materialists, we must assume that the progress of cosmical development, however gradual, depends upon an involution of forces which are supernatural to the previously existing natures which undergo development.
Maybe someone (Janet?) can let me know if this is hopelessly out of date. . . . but I do like his his use of cosmos and aion, reminds me a little bit of the way the structuralists talked about synchrony (cosmos) and diachrony (aion). Again perhaps Janet can let me know if this is off or on, here or there, or neither. I am a little surprised that Hall considers these evolutionary advances to be miracles (supernatural events which inspire wonder) rather than events like the sacrament of the host, which is supernatural but invisible and thus not technically a miracle.
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This is the famous (notorious) "God of the Gaps" hypothesis raised by Christians after Darwin, and scientifically speaking, I think it is outdated. Daniel Dennett shows how random variation produces the miracle of the human eye, and all the other gaps are going down, one by one.
But isn't there a more fundamental question here? Isn't this debate between scientists (showing there is no higher "spiritual" intervention) and believers (clinging to the gaps) just another manifestation of the dualistic Cartesian mindset again? That "matter" is strictly "mechanical" and mind or spirit is something else altogether? Radically free and unconnected to physical reality? (Notice how by this itself Descartes in one fell swoop eliminates the distinction between merely human mind-stuff and divine mind-stuff. Descartes says the latter is infinite, but for all practical purposes this is when (17th c.) the human mind becomes capable of holding "fundamental truth" about the nature of physical reality (which I don't think any earlier Western thinkers believed, including Plato) -- at least not in a totalizing manner.
In other words, let's re-turn to a non-scientistic, non-naturalistic view of matter itself. If we do, we have the paradox of immanence to show God's grace underlying the cosmic and evolutionary principles that are inherent in the matter of the physical universe. We don't need miracles, and in fact isn't the resort to miracle to "prove" God's reality very much a caving in to modern empiricist attitudes?
Immanence is inherently paradoxical -- we don't even need to say immanence AND transcendence to have the historical Christian paradox, because what is immanent is of course in its very nature also transcendent (at least relatively). I think even the physicists have this without recognizing it in their desire to find and formalize "the principles" underlying a physical system, or at least to find "the mathematical description or formula." The formal element working in the material is both inseparable and ontologically higher, precisely as we find in Aristotle...who I read as a thorough-going incarnationalist and non-dualist.
I've been reading and reading the physicists and the anti-theistic stuff (Dawkins is terrible; Dennett is wonderful) and all the old "arguments" are going down -- even the Big Bang is only in one sense a "beginning" and requires no originator. BUT these old arguments for God's existence weren't offered to "prove" God "exists." They (Anselm through Aquinas)were offered primarily for wonder and edification by those who already knew God through the church and sacraments....
Notice that Augustine through Aquinas saw the mind or soul (same word) as the "life" of the body, and God as "the life of the life of my mind" (Augustine). The mind and body are so integral that separate existence of the soul (until the resurrection of the body)even becomes problematic -- a miracle, of sorts!
Anyway, I have half-written posts over at my weblog on this and also on Kevin Hart, whose great, great chapters on Marion, Balthasar, Milbank, Derrida, Levinas, and Blanchot are truly beautiful and informing -- in his _Postmodernims: A Beginner's Guide_ (2004). It's not for beginners only -- it is amazing, with chapters on the postmodern Bible, postmodern theolgy, and especially on the "gift of death" and "givenness conversation." It was truly grace for me to find this book right now, as I'm stepping into Balthasar.
(I need a few days, but I'll be posting on all this over at deepgraceoftheory.com soon.)
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