T&T Clark Handbook of Christian Theology and the Modern Sciences 9780567680426, 9780567680457, 9780567680433

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One Historical Explorations
Chapter One The Genesis Creation Accounts
Chapter Two Wisdom’s Wonder and the Science of Awe
Chapter Three Aristotle’s Sciences Inquiring Into Nature and the Divine
Chapter Four Augustine and Science
Chapter Five Basil and the Greek Fathers on Creation in the Hexaemeron
Chapter Six Maximus the Confessor and John Damascene’s Cosmology
Chapter Seven Hildegard of Bingen
Chapter Eight Thomas Aquinas
Chapter Nine John Calvin and Modern Science
Chapter Ten George Washington Williams, Frederick Douglass, and Maria Stewart
Chapter Eleven Neo-scholasticism and Anti-evolutionary Catholicism
Part Two Transitioning from the Twentieth to the Twenty-first Century
Chapter Twelve Twentieth- and Twenty-first-century Catholic Voices on Nature and Science
Chapter Thirteen Twentieth- and Twenty-first-century Orthodox Voices on Nature and Science
Chapter Fourteen Twentieth- and Twenty-first-century Protestant Voices on Nature and Science
Part Three Explorations in Christian Theology Today
Chapter Fifteen the Encounter of Theology with Physics
Chapter Sixteen the Human as World-maker
Chapter Seventeen Theology and the Biological Sciences
Chapter Eighteen Medical Innovation, Conventional Theology
Chapter Nineteen Theology and the Psychological Sciences
Chapter Twenty Theology and the Social Sciences
Chapter Twenty-One Black Noise and the Sorrow Songs
Chapter Twenty-Two Liturgy as Ethicizer
Chapter Twenty-Three a Case Study for Lived Religion-and-science
Chapter Twenty-Four Environmental Sciences and Christian Theology
Contributors
Index

Citation preview

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T&T CLARK HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY AND THE MODERN SCIENCES

Forthcoming titles in this series include: T&T Clark Handbook of Ecclesiology, edited by Kimlyn J. Bender and D. Stephen Long T&T Clark Handbook of Pneumatology, edited by Daniel Castelo and Kenneth M. Loyer T&T Clark Handbook of Christian Ethics, edited by Tobias Winright T&T Clark Handbook of Analytic Theology, edited by James M. Arcadi and James T. Turner Jr. T&T Clark Handbook of Colin Gunton, edited by Myk Habets, Andrew Picard, and Murray Rae T&T Clark Handbook of Theological Anthropology, edited by Mary Ann Hinsdale and Stephen Okey T&T Clark Handbook of Christology, edited by Darren O. Sumner and Chris Tilling T&T Clark Handbook of Christian Prayer, edited by Ashley Cocksworth and John C. McDowell

Titles already published include: T&T Clark Handbook of Thomas. F. Torrance, edited by Paul D. Molnar and Myk Habets T&T Clark Handbook of Christian Theology and Climate Change, edited by Ernst M. Conradie and Hilda P. Koster T&T Clark Handbook of Edward Schillebeeckx, edited by Stephan van Erp and Daniel Minch T&T Clark Handbook of Political Theology, edited by Rubén Rosario Rodríguez T&T Clark Companion to the Theology of Kierkegaard, edited by Aaron P. Edwards and David J. Gouwens T&T Clark Handbook of African American Theology, edited by Antonia Michelle Daymond, Frederick L. Ware, and Eric Lewis Williams T&T Clark Handbook of Asian American Biblical Hermeneutics, edited by Uriah Y. Kim and Seung Ai Yang T&T Clark Handbook to Early Christian Meals in the Greco-Roman World, edited by Soham Al-Suadi and Peter-Ben Smit

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T&T CLARK HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY AND THE MODERN SCIENCES

Edited by John P. Slattery

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T&T CLARK Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, T&T CLARK and the T&T Clark logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2020 Copyright © John P. Slattery and contributors, 2020 John P. Slattery has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editor of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. ix constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Terry Woodley Cover image © Diana Robinson Photography/Getty All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-0-5676-8042-6 ePDF: 978-0-5676-8043-3 eBook: 978-0-5676-8044-0 Series: T&T Clark Handbooks Typeset by Newgen KnowledgeWorks Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

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To Kristen, my love. & To Blaise, Finn, Lucy, and Kitti: I pray that you may know more fully this complex, beautiful world.

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CONTENTS

A cknowledgments   Introduction  John P. Slattery

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PART ONE  Historical Explorations 

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1 The Genesis Creation Accounts  J. Richard Middleton

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2 Wisdom’s Wonder and the Science of Awe  William P. Brown

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3 Aristotle’s Sciences: Inquiring into Nature and the Divine  Anne Siebels Peterson

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4 Augustine and Science  John C. Cavadini

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5 Basil and the Greek Fathers on Creation in the Hexaemeron  Andrew Louth

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6 Maximus the Confessor and John Damascene’s Cosmology  Doru Costache

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7 Hildegard of Bingen  Debra L. Stoudt

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8 Thomas Aquinas  Michael J. Dodds, O.P.

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9 John Calvin and Modern Science  Brian Edgar

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10 George Washington Williams, Frederick Douglass, and Maria Stewart: Race, Science, and Moral Resistance in African American Political Thought  Terrence L. Johnson 11 Neo-Scholasticism and Anti-Evolutionary Catholicism: A Brief History  John P. Slattery

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CONTENTS

PART TWO  Transitioning from the Twentieth to the Twenty-First Century 

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12 Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Catholic Voices on Nature and Science  159 Paul J. Schutz 13 Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Orthodox Voices on Nature and Science  177 Elizabeth Theokritoff and Christopher C. Knight 14 Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Protestant Voices on Nature and Science  191 Sarah Lane Ritchie PART THREE  Explorations in Christian Theology Today 

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15 The Encounter of Theology with Physics: An Eastern Christian Perspective  Stoyan Tanev

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16 The Human as World-Maker: An Anthropocene Dogma  Lisa H. Sideris

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17 Theology and the Biological Sciences  Celia Deane-Drummond

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18 Medical Innovation, Conventional Theology  Terri Laws

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19 Theology and the Psychological Sciences  Jessica Coblentz

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20 Theology and the Social Sciences: A Contemporary Overview  Timothy K. Snyder

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21 Black Noise and the Sorrow Songs: A Reflection on the Negro Spirituals and the Involuntary Modernization of Black Music  Rufus Burnett Jr.

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22 Liturgy as Ethicizer: Cultivating Ecological Consciousness through a Coptic Orthodox Liturgical Ethos  Stephen M. Meawad

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23 A Case Study for Lived Religion-and-Science: Theology of Urban Ecology  Lea F. Schweitz

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24 Environmental Sciences and Christian Theology  Paul J. Schutz

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N otes

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I ndex

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C ontributors

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am so very grateful to all of those who have supported me in the long process of gathering together the chapters for this volume. To my editor, Anna Turton, and the good people at T&T Clark; to my past and present colleagues at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, whose friendship and support is dear to me, Curtis Baxter, Rob O’Malley, Katy Hinman, Rachel Kline, Lilah Sloane-Barrett, McKenzie Prillaman, Jennifer Wiseman, Se Kim, Liz Crocker, Warren Dennis, and Christine DiPasquale; to my students at Notre Dame, whose ideas and comments helped me to further craft my vision that would become this book; and to the many authors of this book, who perilously jumped on board yet another edited volume in a world full of edited volumes. Not only that, dear authors, but you also encouraged my vision, responded to my phone calls and emails, met me at conferences, and delivered your papers! My favorite part of this bookcreation project has been building relationships with each of the authors, from sitting down at conferences to chatting over the phone, seeing how their ideas may intersect with my own. I have made new friendships and strengthened old ones several times over in the process, and for this I will be eternally grateful. Seeing the final version in print, with so many voices from so many places, is simply wonderful. Finally, I am thankful beyond words can express to partner and wife, Kristen. I wanted to give up on this project a few times in the early stages, and it was Kristen, time and time again, who encouraged me to push forward and not be dismayed by the sheer amount of effort it takes to convince dozens of people to pull together six thousand words on a topic of my choosing! Words cannot express how you have changed my life, Kristen, and I am forever blessed by having you with me. Unless noted otherwise, Scripture quotations are from New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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Introduction JOHN P. SLATTERY

The central goal of this volume is to bring new voices, perspectives, and conversations to the foreground of Christian theological engagement with science, and to highlight the wide-ranging but often unheralded engagements today. In order to accomplish this goal, I attempted several novel approaches to the volume. First, I sought out representatives from the three major branches of Christianity—Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant—to author the chapters in the volume. Second, I recruited theologians to reflect on areas of modern science not traditionally part of the “theology and science” dialogue, such as theological engagements with the history of race science (Chapter 10) as well as with the modern social sciences (Chapters 20 and 21). Third, I commissioned nearly a dozen chapters on historical figures who were often discussed in association with science but for whom a collection like this had never been published. I am delighted to present the following chapters as the imperfect yet successful fulfillment of this goal. Before presenting an overview of the chapters, I’d like to reflect for a moment on the title of the volume.

“CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY” It would be foolish to attempt to represent every branch of Christianity in the modern world, but one of my central goals for this text was to evenly represent the three major families of Christianity worldwide. According to a 2011 demographic study by the Pew Research Center, approximately 50 percent of the world’s 2.18 billion Christians identify as Catholic, 37 percent identify as some form of Protestant, and 12 percent identify as Orthodox.1 In order to make a broad—though certainly not comprehensive—study on the state of Christian theology and the modern sciences today, I felt it necessary to include significant representation from each of the three branches. Chapters on Maximus are followed by chapters on Hildegard and Calvin, and Johnson’s discussion of Black protestant theology in nineteenth-century America is followed by my investigation of neo-scholastic theology in nineteenth-century Europe. This tripartite orientation is most explicit in the three chapters that make up the transition portion of the text between the historical and modern chapters, as Chapters 12, 13, and 14 focus respectively on the recent histories of interactions with science in the Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions.

Pew Research Center, “Global Christianity—A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Christian Population,” https://www.pewforum.org/2011/12/19/global-christianity-exec/. Accessed February 6, 2020. 1

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“AND THE MODERN SCIENCES” What is modern science, and what are the modern sciences? I considered many titles for this book but continued to return to “modern sciences” for the broad vision of science that it signals. The chapters in this volume approach a wide range of sciences, historical and contemporary. It was important to use the modifier “modern” since science has taken many forms at different times in history, and I wanted to illustrate that even the historical figures would be discussed in relationship to things that we would consider science, or conceptions of science, today. This gets particularly difficult in the medieval and ancient worlds, when both the divisions of thought and the divisions of labor resisted the modern split between religious and scientific discourses. As Brown and Middleton attest in their chapters, the ancient Hebrew people knew no hard break between religious and scientific realms, nor would they have considered them separate questions. The ancient Greek world, it could be argued, began the break between the ideas, but Peterson’s chapter shows the complicated nature of such a delineation in Aristotle’s own understanding of science and causation. As the volume moves through history, one sees science represented as a wide variation of ideas: cosmology and creation for Genesis, Augustine, and the Greek Fathers; ecology for Maximus and Hildegard; philosophies of science for Aristotle, Aquinas, and Calvin; anthropology for Frederick Douglas and Maria Stewart; and evolution for the neo-scholastics. Even these distinctions melt away under close inspection—Aristotle’s philosophies are not modern, Hebrew cosmologies of creation must be understood in their context, Frederick Douglas attacks a racist anthropology that bears little resemblance to accepted modern anthropological studies, and so forth. A final note is needed concerning the inclusion of social sciences in the second half of the volume. Most literature that gets filed under “theology and science” would be better termed “theology and physics, biology, ecology, and psychology.” Theologians who encounter health care in their work are typically labelled ethicists, and those who deal with social science are not included in the discussion. The subfield has a problem of naming and, for the most part, knows it. Peter Harrison is now well known for promoting awareness of this problem, an argument which he detailed in The Territories of Science and Religion in 2015.2 His issues were more theological than scientific, as he rightly pointed out the Christian and Western assumptions in the phrasing and topics. But even Harrison’s cautions were not enough. The field of theologians encountering science has grown far beyond the imaginations of Ian Barbour and John Polkinghorne, but most such theologians do not find themselves in the same circles at conferences, as they are likely not discussing quantum mechanics or the evolution/creation controversy. Instead, by the hundreds, scholars are simply encountering science wherever they study, which is to say, everywhere. If we take the broadest possible view of science as the accepted scholarly study of natural things, then the modern sciences must include not only those taught in secondary education—physics, chemistry, biology—but also a plethora of fields and subfields.3 For example, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the well-respected

Peter Harrison, The Territories of Science and Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015). I mean “the accepted scholarly study of natural things” to be a practical, not philosophical, delineation of modern science. I recognize the philosophical limitations of such a phrase and would be happy to discuss them in person with interested parties! 2 3

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journal Science, lists the following fields as representative of the wide span of modern science: ●●

Agriculture, Food, and Renewable Resources

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Anthropology

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Astronomy

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Atmospheric and Hydrospheric Sciences

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Biological Sciences

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Chemistry

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Dentistry and Oral Health Sciences

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Education

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Engineering

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Geology and Geography

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History and Philosophy of Science

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Industrial Science and Technology

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Information, Computing, and Communication

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Linguistics and Language Science

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Mathematics

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Medical Sciences

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Neuroscience

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Pharmaceutical Sciences

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Physics

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Psychology

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Social, Economic, and Political Sciences

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Statistics.

Not all representatives from each of the above fields would agree with such a big tent approach, but I think it important to understand that each field includes scholars who undergo concerted, dedicated, and replicable efforts to understand the natural world. As such, the only limits science should have are limits I would impose upon any scholarly pursuit: research quality and ethics. There have always and will continue to be gatekeepers to try and discern fiction from facts—for example, universities, fellowships, journals, publishers, and peers—and these gatekeepers, at their best, serve to protect the integrity of good scientific research, based on the accepted standards of the fields being discussed.4 However, due to the failures of such gatekeepers to stop scientific research on various types of people well into the twentieth century, another type of gatekeeper was established in the 1970s: university-level, regional, national, and international ethical

Two caveats needed: First, gatekeepers often fall victim to the same biases that afflict many in the general population, including racism, misogyny, homophobia, and so forth. Second, science is not simply about what is replicable but about what is ethical to allow as part of the body of knowledge. Experiments done at Nazi concentration camps, or on prisoners against their wills, for example, should not be allowed in the body of scientific knowledge, as such an allowance would encourage others to disregard ethics for the sake of exploration. 4

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review boards. Such boards help keep science focused upon discovering new ideas, solving problems, and serving the interest of the general public. This said, this volume has not the space (nor I the time) to index theologians who are interacting with every possible branch of science today. Instead, I have attempted to find a mixture of new and seasoned voices to reflect upon both the status of current conversations in Christian theology today as well as to imagine new possibilities for interacting with science for the future. It is my hope that this collection of perspectives will inspire theologians and scientists to both recognize the excellent engagements already happening with modern science and pursue new methods of interaction between the many fields and subfields of Christian theology and modern science.

OVERVIEW Part One: Historical Explorations The first eleven chapters explore the question of science from a number of historical figures, movements, and writings associated with Christianity. So many more names could be included here, so I apologize in advance to anyone whose favorite theologian was left off the list. Two names are not on the list by choice, however: Galileo and Darwin. Both men have been the anchors for the vast majority of all work on the intersection of science and theology for the last few hundred years, and I can recommend many good books to those interested on the theological and scientific studies of the two scientists. Given this explicit avoidance of Galileo and Darwin, one might find it ironic that I included two chapters on the Hebrew Bible when so much ink has been similarly spilled on the creation story, specifically with reference to Darwin. While Galileo and Darwin may be vital to modern science, they are still niche figures in the history of Christian theology. The Hebrew Bible, on the other hand, is of central importance to Christian thought and, as such, I felt it necessary to include chapters that explore its continued significance in discussions of science. To the credit of Richard Middleton and Bill Brown, the two chapters on the Hebrew Bible are original, refreshing, and an invaluable resource for new pathways into the Sacred Scriptures. Hebrew Bible: Genesis  Middleton’s chapter analyzes the Genesis creation accounts in light of contemporary research on the place of humans in both the cosmos and the ecosystem of the Earth. His chapter corrects common misconceptions regarding the passages while clarifying “the cosmic and ecological vision of these paradigmatic creation accounts.” Along the way, Middleton illuminates the scientific choices made the authors of Genesis by addressing why the authors described the world created as such, what metaphors they used, why there were two accounts, and what place humans represented in the ancient cosmos. His chapter concludes with an extended study of humans in relationship with other animals throughout the Hebrew Bible and how this relationship can lead us to a prophetic understanding of humanity’s role on Earth today. “While the Earth does not currently experience the fullness of God’s presence (due to human sin), the Bible promises that even this small portion of the cosmic temple will ultimately be filled with the glory of God, as the waters cover the sea.” Hebrew Bible: Wisdom  William P. Brown’s chapter offers a complimentary vision of science and the Hebrew Bible in extending the ecological reading of scripture to Wisdom

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literature. Reading Psalm 104 and Job 38–41 in dialogue with biology, astrobiology, neurobiology, and psychology, Brown both “highlights the value of biodiversity” in the Psalms and “sheds new light on the longstanding crux of Job’s response to YHWH’s revelation of creation.” This analysis reveals a decentered Job, not only humbled as a human but also humbled as a creature: “Job not only discovers himself sharing common creature-hood with the wild; he also sees something of himself in each of these creatures, all sharing in the irrepressible exercise of life.” Brown concludes by asking how we should interpret Job’s experience of awe given modern scientific understandings of the human experience. “If experiences of awe have such consequences, both psychologically and socially, what are they for Job’s character within the larger scope of the narrative? It is a question that is scarcely raised in Joban scholarship, but science prompts such a line of inquiry.” Aristotle  Anne Siebels Peterson’s chapter shifts the conversation from ancient Israel to ancient Greece. Peterson’s discussion of the relationship between theology and science in Aristotle is helpful both in her disambiguation of terms as well as in her careful discussion of the universal nature of Aristotle’s “first science.” Such analyses are central to this volume, as Aristotle’s influence is vast and unwieldy in modern Christian theology, and many historians attribute the eventual rise of modern science to the reclamation of Aristotle by Islamic, Jewish, and Christian theologians in the Middle Ages. For example, writes Peterson, “the disciplines that we know today as natural science, metaphysics, and theology each count as a science in the Aristotelian sense of the term [ἐπιστήμη], as they are all branches of knowledge.” Peterson’s chapter both illuminates the importance of Aristotle while furthering understanding of Aristotle’s delineations of philosophy, science, and theology. Augustine  John Cavadini’s contribution on Augustine breathes life into the many philosophical discussions of creation and the philosophy of science in Augustine’s works. Augustine makes it clear that scripture is not concerned with scientific arguments. Augustine, he writes, is concerned that people will “never believe what Scripture has to say about matters like the resurrection of the dead and the hope of eternal life if they think Scripture teaches scientific error.” Cavadini contrasts Augustine’s views on wonder with Stephen Hawking, discusses Augustine’s evolution-like concept of rational seeds, and reflects on the importance of mystery. “From Augustine’s point of view,” writes Cavadini, “the point about confessing the mystery of Creation is not to have found the equivalent of, or replacement for, a scientific theory that provides what feels like a rational proof or justification for God’s role as Creator, for that would amount to defeating the doctrine of Creation.” Basil and the Greek Fathers  “It is striking,” Andrew Louth reflects in his chapter on Basil and the Greek Fathers, “how frequently Christians in the early centuries reflected on the Six Days of Creation—the Hexaemeron as it appears in Greek.” Louth argues that this tradition of reflection on creation has been somewhat lost to the modern reader and that the contemporary turn of theological conversations toward science would do well to remember the depth of conversations throughout the sacred tradition. In order to do this, however, we must consider how differently they viewed science. For the Greek Fathers, “a ‘scientific’ view of things then was not simply concerned with establishing the nature of the world (a world that includes ourselves), but also with how as human

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beings to live in this world.” After discussing a wide range of valuable reflections on the science of the day, Louth focuses on the contributions of Basil, identifying four pivotal lessons from Basil’s reflections on the Hexaemeron. These lessons are his fearlessness in encountering any aspect of the science of his day, his appreciation for a sense of wonder, his humility in the face of creation, and his “conviction of the connectedness of everything created, a connectedness rooted in the creative energies of God, in the one Word or Logos of God, in whom all the diverse meanings, or logoi, of creation find unity and harmony.” Maximus and John of Damascus  The Byzantine monks Maximus the Confessor and John Damascene, writes Doru Costache, built their intricate systems upon the many lifetimes of works of the Greek Fathers like Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory the Theologian, Evagrius, and Dionysius the Areopagite. Through their systems, Maximus and John developed what would become the Orthodox Christian tradition of natural contemplation in intersecting but distinct ways. “John preferred the sober format of structured discourse, whereas Maximus spiraled in staggering movements of mystical reflection.” Despite this, Costache writes, “both shared a common interest in making sense of God’s creation, the cosmos, at the crossing of theology and science, or what was known as natural philosophy, physike.” Costache reflects upon their compelling contributions, noting that “whereas Maximus preferred to develop his views of the infrastructural rationality and connectivity of all things, … John chose a more direct form of engagement at the crossing of science and theology.” Their overlapping yet contrasting contributions thus continue to offer unity, contemplation, and order to the world of the sciences. Hildegard of Bingen  Living several centuries after John and Maximus, Hildegard of Bingen occupies a unique place in theological scholarship. “The Benedictine saint’s oeuvre,” writes Debra Stoudt, “comprises a variety of genres: visions, musical compositions, medical-scientific texts, letters, biblical exegesis, and a morality play.” Stoudt provides a thoughtful overview of Hildegard’s life and scientific contributions in her chapter, noting that “Hildegard’s interest in and knowledge of cosmology, medicine, and science in general reveals itself not only in the Physica and the Cause but also in her visionary trilogy.” Of particular importance is the unity of nature and spirit that binds together Hildegard’s many methods of understanding the world. In the end, “Hildegard reconciles the world she observes and in which she lives with the spiritual one both revealed to her by the Living Light and yet to be attained, recognizing the significance of each and underscoring the necessity of unity between them in order for God’s divine plan to be achieved.” Thomas Aquinas  After Galileo and Darwin, there is perhaps no more famous figure in the Roman Catholic discussions of science and theology than Thomas Aquinas. In his chapter, Michael Dodds revisits Aquinas’s influence both in the thirteenth and the twentyfirst centuries. After reviewing Aquinas’s biography and “critical acceptance” of Aristotle, Dodds discusses the theologian’s views on a wide range of debated topics, including conflicts of scriptural usage, the nature of truth, ideas of causality, and the many different faces of science itself. “Aquinas contributed in many profound ways to the understanding of the relationship between theology and science,” Dodds writes. “Perhaps a retrieval of

Introduction

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his thought may foster a return to the relatively tranquil relationship between theology and science that characterized his time.” John Calvin  While Aquinas is frequently discussed in a positive relationship to science, the opposite can be said of John Calvin. The Reformer’s influence is vast in the modern world, but a strong love of science is not his most noted progeny. Brian Edgar’s chapter helpfully analyzes the range and viability of disparate views of Calvin today:  Is his theology to be understood as being in conflict with science (with theology seeking to control science), operating independently (because of a commitment to different methods, presuppositions or languages), in dialogue with science (with methodological parallels and some form of natural theology), integratively (in the form of a theology of nature or some other systematic synthesis) or in any one of numerous other models that have been proposed? Edgar carefully dissects five aspects of Calvin’s thought that could be interpreted negatively and, in the end, proffers an optimistic future. No matter one’s opinion on Calvin, however, “nothing should be allowed to override the intellectual contribution that Calvin made towards the development of that complex and diverse entity we recognize as modern science.” George Washington Williams, Frederick Douglass, and Maria Stewart  The final two chapters of the historical section of the volume dwell upon lesser-known aspects of the theology-science conversation in the nineteenth century. While Darwin scientifically dominated the century, battles raged both literally and figuratively for the soul of modern science. In this chapter, Terrence Johnson details the state of racial science in nineteenth-century America and profiles three theologians who attack the falsehoods of this now-discredited science. George Washington Williams employed scriptural analysis of the Hebrew Bible to discredit the sui generis claim of race scientists. Wary of relying on ancestry, Frederick Douglass employed ethnographic studies of the intelligence and capabilities of “the contemporary Negro” in order to showcase the equivalence of all humans. Maria Stewart argued with a mixture of history and ethnography, focusing on the importance of “racial uplift” and encouraging a type of mimesis in order “to demonstrate to naysayers the undeniable human worth of the sons and daughters of African.” For all three scholars, human worth, given by God, “is inalienable and not predetermined by race or birthplace.” Johnson’s discussion of their work illustrates both the challenges of objectivity in early modern science and the many roles that theology has played and can play in dialogue with scientific discourse. Neo-Scholasticism  The next chapter engages the nineteenth-century discussion of science on the other side of the Atlantic. While much has been written about the reception of Darwin, very little has been written about the evolutionary views of the dominant Catholic philosophical movement known as neo-scholasticism. This chapter argues that the official Catholic response to Darwin is best seen through a lens of the neo-scholastic movement, known for its influence on late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century theology. The most significant portion of this argument is the following realization: “the same Pope who laid the groundwork for the last 120 years of Catholic Social Teaching with Rerum Novarum also laid the groundwork for a half-century of rejection of human

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evolution and modern science.” Both arguments “come from the same philosophy: Leo’s firm holding of Thomistic notions of dignity in the face of modern economic systems pushed him to make human dignity the centerpiece of Rerum Novarum, while the same firm holding of Thomistic notions of science allowed a nearsighted neo-scholastic vision of scientific objectivity to bar the way for the acceptance of evolutionary science in Roman Catholicism.” The official acceptance of evolution in the late twentieth century highlights the need to understand better this implicit rejection in the nineteenth century.

Part Two: Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Developments in Christian Theology and Science The three chapters of this intermediary section of the volume bring the discussions from the past to the modern day. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries have seen massive developments in the discussions between theologians on matters of science. In order to best represent the three major strands of Christian theology, I requested three separate chapters for each of the three traditions of Christianity today. Paul Schutz authored the discussion of Catholic theology, Sarah Lane Ritchie that of Protestant theology, and Elizabeth Theokritoff and Christopher Knight jointly authored that of Orthodox. I have found these to be among the most illuminative in the present volume, as they each carefully outline the last two centuries of conversations in each of the respective traditions.

Part Three: Explorations in Christian Theology Today The final ten chapters in the volume are dedicated to the twenty-first-century world of modern science via theological explorations, systematic surveys, pressing critiques, and imaginative reflections. These chapters engage with a wide range of modern sciences, including the medical and social sciences, and it is my hope that they will help expand the vision of what we can mean when we say “theology and science” today. Physical Sciences  Stoyan Tanev and Lisa Sideris offer two quite different approaches to discussions of theology and physics. Tanev employs a specific methodological approach to compare the work of St. Gregory Palamas and Barlaam the Calabrian in the fourteenth century before using the same approach to compare Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr in the twentieth century. Such analyses lead to helpful analogical comparisons “of the ways of using logical proofs in both theology and quantum physics.” This comparative approach, which requires “a controversial issue or a conceptual challenge that could be used as a point of comparison of these two distinctive domains of human experience and knowledge,” allows present readers to analyze the theological contours of twentiethcentury debates on quantum physics through the lens of ancient theological debates. Sideris, on the other hand, examines the tension between what she calls planetary environmentalism and the harsh reality of life on Earth. “Allusions to planetary wisdom and awakening suggest, perversely, that our arrival at the current moment—a moment defined in daily news headlines by massive species extinction, soaring levels of CO2, ubiquitous plastic waste, and other mounting atrocities—in fact heralds a transition to a higher evolutionary stage, a new level of cosmic significance for our species.” These projects, writes Sideris, “routinely tout an ecological agenda or seek to reintegrate humans into nature … and yet they entail and often celebrate technological powers and quasi-theological assumptions about the human that at best set us apart from nature and at worst bolster extravagant claims of human exceptionalism.”

Introduction

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Biological, Medical, and Psychological Sciences  Celia Deane-Drummond, Terri Laws, and Jessica Coblentz each offer incisive analyses of the respective scientific fields of medical, biological, and psychological sciences. Deane-Drummond describes in detail the challenges and possibilities for theologians who continue to engage with biological sciences. Deane-Drummond surveys major topics and influential theologians before offering an agenda for the future of biological engagement. “It is clear,” she writes, “that even though theology has expanded its horizons considerably through its engagement with the biological sciences, there is still the need to delve into the rich resources of its tradition, and to seek wisdom wherever it may be found, but a wisdom that is ultimately grounded in knowledge and love of God and God’s creation.” Laws examines a subset of biological sciences in the twenty-first century, that of applied medical science and technology. By placing these scientific fields into dialogue with liberation Christian theology, Laws is able to expand the conversation into health care, inequity, and the assumptions made in the discussions of science, technology, and theology. “It is tempting to believe that faith communities must construct sophisticated theologies that match the complexity of modern medicine.” However, “rather than succumb to the fallacy of sophistication, Christian theology can both boost its relevance and help modern medicine sustain its best potential when theologies return to the basics of its moral authority. In the case of modern medicine and theology, this points to a Christian theology that both acknowledges the social inequities of health care and corrects such by focusing on the foundational message of the Gospels.” As theology engages science, sometimes the moral authority of simplicity is the best dialogue partner of increasing complexity. Coblentz examines the relationship of Christian theology and the psychological sciences “with hopes that a survey of some of recent scholarship that explicitly theorizes the relationship of psychology and theology, and of some scholarship that represents the interface of these disciplines in practice, will engender a richer portrait of what this interdisciplinary relationship is and what it can become.” Psychological sciences, in their goal of understanding the human person, share unique properties with theology, and while the dialogue may be difficult and sometimes acrimonious, “this difficult dialogue may prove worthwhile … in pursuit of greater understanding—of the human person, and of our respective disciplines, and even, of God.” Social Sciences  The two chapters regarding the social sciences are among those you won’t find in any other science/theology volume. Not only is the intersection with sociology not considered a standard conversation partner in the classic discourse, but so many theologians use sociology today that it has nearly become a subfield of its own (e.g., ethnographic studies in theology). Because of this extraordinary fact, I found it vital to include discussions of the social sciences in this volume. Timothy Snyder’s chapter offers a wide survey of the field of theological investigations of sociology. Snyder argues for the invaluable nature of social sciences today: “whereas many once looked to theology for explanations of what it means to be human and for a vision of our common life together, many now turn to the disciplined and empirically researched accounts of social scientific theory.” He explores both the development of sociology and cultural anthropology as well as the wide range of ways that theologians have and continue to engage “social theory, social scientific concepts, and recent efforts to develop distinctively theological approaches to ethnography.” Since sociology and theology will forever be intertwined in the search to understand and assist humanity,

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Snyder writes that theologians must “become more than casual readers and observers, and instead become enthusiastic students of the discipline’s ideas and observations.” Following Snyder’s survey, Rufus Burnett’s chapter offers an intriguing and powerful analysis of postcolonial sociological discourses in light of critical race theory in contemporary Christian theology. “With the sociological insights of John Cruz and Anibal Quijano,” writes Burnett, “this reflection will indicate how the Euro-American reception of black sound reifies what anti-colonial psychologist Frantz Fanon termed sociogeny.” Burnett’s analysis of this particular “nexus of science and theology” describes “how the study of black music can benefit from advances in both the scientific application of sociology and the constructive wave of decolonial theology … By identifying the theological foundations of ethnographic approaches to the spirituals via Jon Cruz, I have illumined one aspect of how the epistemic hegemony of Eurocentrism operates in the reception of black music.” Environmental Sciences  The final three chapters of the volume address the ever-growing field of ecological sciences. A subject of many books on its own, I felt it important to represent both novel explorations in the field, by Stephen Meawad and Lea Schweitz, and a survey of the past and future of the specific field of ecological theology, by Schutz. Meaward’s chapter represents an exploration of contemporary ecological theology in arguing how “the liturgical ethos of the Coptic Orthodox Church … is effective in creating self-sustaining, ecologically aware communities.” This ethos is effective “through its call to action,” “through the connections it offers between ecology and theology,” and “through the frequency of Coptic liturgical prayers.” By analyzing the communities of the Zabbālīn of the Mokattam Hills and the Anaphora Retreat Center in Upper Egypt, Meawad illustrates how “the ability of these people to establish communities whose ecological impact surpasses those of most modern green projects, eastern or western, speaks to the potential within Coptic Orthodox Christianity to impact contemporary environmental ethics and to establish a theological foundation for ecological awareness.” Lea Schweitz’s contribution explores a different type of integration between religion and science. “What if projects in religion-and-science,” she writes, “began from the embodied, practical questions that engage church people in their everyday lives?” She presents a case study in the “theology of urban nature” that plays on the “stories, places, and practices that emerge in the embodied, practical questions where religion and science interact.” The final chapter of this volume is a comprehensive survey of the exponentially growing field of ecotheology, which Paul Schutz describes as “the discipline that merges the horizons of theology, ecology, and the environmental sciences to rethink how humans live our relationships to God, earth, and other creatures, including other humans, with whom we coevolved and with whom we live.” Schutz analyses the foundational concerns for the field; surveys the scientific, sociological, and theological resources for current work; and examines the current state of ecofeminist and ecowomanist theology, since “they are uniquely well suited to address the social underpinnings of ecological issues.” Echoing arguments throughout the volume, Schutz argues that since all creatures on earth are truly imperiled, one must “imagine holistically … by accepting limits in order to foster the ever-greater flourishing of all creatures in cooperation with one another and with God.”

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Introduction

IMAGINING A WAY FORWARD As I reflect upon the volume en masse, I am reminded of the great fallacy of scientific and theological progressivism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The hope of progress was unbounded—a progress not simply technological but also social, spiritual, scientific, and personal. Humans evolving purposefully, inventions surpassing wildest imaginations, societies that reach the stars, systems of justice that eradicate all crime and poverty, all grounded—as some argued—in the perfection of religious aspiration, the Christian faith. Reality has shown itself far more complex. Instead of perfection, the drive for progress brought eugenics, nuclear weapons, and genocide along with technological progress. Computers have revolutionized science in ways previously unimagined. Global communication is nearly instantaneous, air travel is commonplace around the world, and yet billions continue to live in poverty, sometimes due to wealthy societies and corporations who need goods produced at cheap labor. In this world of paradoxes and inequity, science still holds the allure as it did for Aristotle, Basil, and Hildegard. Science, that basic human instinct to understand the world and its creatures, originates from the same instinct that seeks to explore the mystery of our existence itself. Science and theology can be described in a multitude of relationships—dialogue, coherence, harmony, integration, conflict—but in the end, they are human endeavors, as complex individually as they are entangled. And so, while this volume encourages further exploration of the widest reaches of scientific fields, it perhaps also encourages humility and simplicity in the face of technological and scientific heterogeneity. For while the science of today includes more volumes of data than Galileo could imagine, the Christian theology of today is grounded in the same person, and the same faith, that anchored the thoughts of Basil, Aquinas, Calvin, and Hildegard. The more theology changes, grows, and learns from the latest scientific advances, the more it is required to stay the same.

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PART ONE

Historical Explorations

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CHAPTER ONE

The Genesis Creation Accounts J. RICHARD MIDDLETON

The Bible opens with a majestic, wide-angle view of cosmic creation in Gen 1:1–2:3, and then zooms in telescopically to focus on the creation of humans in the context of their earthly environment (beginning in Gen 2:4). Despite the differences between these two creation accounts, their canonical placement as the introduction to Scripture suggests their paradigmatic function for thinking about the cosmos, including the role of humans vis-à-vis other creatures and their Creator. This essay will explore Genesis 1 and 2, along with related biblical texts, in order to clarify the cosmic and ecological vision of these paradigmatic creation accounts. The focus will be on the intrinsic (emic) conceptuality of these texts, how they envision the world, and the place of humans in it. But this will require some reflection on how the vision of these ancient texts might relate to modern conceptions of the world.

THE COSMIC VISION OF GENESIS 1 “Space,” says The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is.”1 Just how big is space? The distance from the Earth to the sun is 93 million miles. Neptune, the furthest planet from the sun in our solar system (now that Pluto is no longer formally a planet), is just under 3,000 million miles from the sun.2 The Milky Way galaxy (of which our solar system is a part) contains minimally 100 billion stars, and possibly up to 400 billion, depending on our assumptions about the average star density of the galaxy. But the Milky Way is just one galaxy in a universe that contains an estimated 20 billion trillion stars, and the farthest stars in any direction are 46 billion light years away, which makes the observable universe 92 billion light years across. So, “mind-bogglingly big” might even be an understatement. And not only is the universe big, it is also old. The Earth itself (along with our solar system) was formed some 4.6 billion years ago, whereas the universe originated in the big bang 13.8 billion years ago. If it seems contradictory that the most distant stars are 46 billion light years away while the universe

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (New York: Del Rey, 1979), from the start of ­chapter 8. More precisely, the distance is 2,798,700,000 miles.

1 2

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Waters above the earth

Dome (Firmament)

Pillars of the earth

SHEOL (The Underworld) Waters under the earth

FIGURE 1: The Biblical Cosmos.3

is only 13.8 billion years old, this can be resolved by realizing that the universe is expanding at an exponential rate. So the universe is really, really big and very, very old. At first glance, it looks like our modern scientific picture of a universe of immense size and age must be in tension with the biblical picture of the world, especially as found in Genesis 1. After all, this text claims that God created “the heavens and the earth” (i.e., the cosmos) in six days (then rested on the seventh); and by some calculations (using the genealogies in Genesis), this took place no more than six to ten thousand years ago. But going beyond the assumed contradiction in time scale, there are the widely differing understandings of the size and structure of the cosmos when we compare the Bible with modern science (Figure 1). The world picture that we find both in Genesis 1 and in many other biblical texts seems to assume a flat earth founded upon the waters, with the netherworld somewhere “down there,” either in or below the subterranean waters.4 At the extremities of the earth were the distant mountains that extended down into the underworld waters and up into the heavens or sky. These mountains were thought of as the “pillars” that supported the dome (or “firmament”) of the heavens, envisioned as a sort of roof over the earth, which held back the cosmic waters above.

From Barry L. Bandstra, Reading the Old Testament: Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 4th ed. (Boston, MA: Cengage Learning, 2009), 40. Used by permission of the author. 4 Note that Earth (capitalized) is the name of a planet in our solar system, whereas the earth (lower case) in the ancient world picture is simply equivalent to land (both are translations of Heb. ’ereṣ). 3

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So long as we don’t take this world picture as overly literal (it is more a phenomenological portrait of the world), this makes perfect sense as a nonscientific way of describing the human environment.

World Picture versus Worldview Here it is helpful to distinguish the world picture (German Weltbild) or cosmology or “cosmic geography” (a favorite term of scholars) that the Bible assumes from its normative worldview (German Weltanschauung), the distinctive and abiding theological vision revealed precisely through this ancient world picture. The biblical writers were not teaching this ancient world picture (this way of seeing the world was simply the common understanding of ancient Near Eastern cultures); rather, they were using this world picture to communicate a distinctive vision of the meaning of this world. Christians in earlier ages transferred the abiding values of this ancient theological vision from the original picture of a flat earth with heaven overhead to the medieval conception (learned from the Greeks) of the Earth as a sphere, with seven concentric crystalline spheres around it, in which were embedded the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, in that order.5 This theological vision was again transferred to the heliocentric universe of modern times, with the various planets orbiting the sun (and the moon orbiting the Earth). Today most Christians intuitively read the creation account in Genesis 1 in ways that assume the earth is a planet, something no biblical author ever thought.

The Literary Structure of Genesis 1 Without denying our modern conceptions of the world, this essay will attend to the intrinsic theological claims of Genesis 1 and 2 as ancient texts, beginning with the cosmic vision of Genesis 1, technically 1:1–2:3. This will clarify how the world picture of the text, which the Bible largely shares with the ancient Near East, conveys an important theological vision or normative worldview that is relevant to any cosmology. As is widely recognized, Genesis 1 uses a literary framework of six days of creation, organized into two parallel panels, after which God rests (Figure 2). Whereas the first panel of days 1–3 consists in God providing cosmic structure by separating or differentiating realms of existence, the second panel of days 4–6 consists in God filling these structured realms with mobile creatures appropriate to them. The days of the first panel thus provide the conceptual foundation for the days of the second panel. First, in the pre-creation preamble, the earth is pictured as covered with water and darkness. On Day 1, God separates the realms of light and dark, thus bringing into being the temporal alternation of day and night. This provides the foundation for the creation of the luminaries, the light-giving bodies, on Day 4, which more specifically govern times and seasons. On Day 2, God opens up an air space in the midst of the waters by means of a firmament or dome (named “sky” or “heaven”; Hebrew šamayim). This provides the foundation for God’s creation of flying and swimming creatures on Day 5, which inhabit the realms of sky and waters below. The shift from the ancient Near Eastern world picture to the medieval conception (via Greek cosmology), including the hybrid picture found in Second Temple Judaism and the Patristic era, is lucidly traced in J. Edward Wright, The Early History of Heaven (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 5

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CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY AND THE MODERN SCIENCES Preparation [1:1−2] [“formless and empty”]

Panel I [Forming Static Regions]

Panel II [Filling with Mobile Occupants]

Day 1 [1:3−5] [1] light/darkness [“day”/“night”]

Day 4 [1:14−19] [5] luminaries

Day 2 [1:6−8] [2] water/firmament/water [“sky”]

Day 5 [1:20−23] [6] fish and birds

Day 3 [1:9−13] [3] water/dry ground [“seas”/“land”]

Day 6 [1:24−31] [7] land animals

[4] vegetation

[8] humans

Day 7 [2:1−3] [“the heavens and the earth and all their host”]

FIGURE 2: The Literary Structure of Genesis 1.

On Day 3, God separates the waters below from dry land. This provides the foundation for God’s creation of various types of land animals, including humans, on Day 6. Finally, the creation of vegetation on Day 3 provides the foundation for God’s assignment of food for living creatures on Day 6. In the preface to the six days of creation, we find the statement (Gen 1:2) that the earth was initially “formless and empty” (Heb. tohû wābohû). At one level this phrase is onomatopoeic (like “hurly burly” or “helter skelter”), portraying a world that is not yet productive or habitable.6 But the phrase may also function as a double entendre, representing the initial state of the two panels before God structured and filled the world: “formless” (tohû) referring to the lack of differentiation between realms and “empty” (bohû) referring to the lack of creatures inhabiting these realms. The creation account thus appropriately concludes (Gen 2:1) by noting that “the heavens and the earth” (panel 1) were completed, along with “all their host” (panel 2) (Figure 2).7

The traditional term “chaos,” often used by biblical scholars to characterize tohû wābohû, imports connotations of resistance to God, which are not present in the text. The core idea is that the earth was not yet functional or conducive to life. 7 Note that Isa 45:18 states that God did not create the world a tohû, but formed it to be inhabited. 6

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This is clearly not a scientific account of the cosmos.8 Rather, Genesis 1 portrays an architectonic scheme of a wisely ordered and well-planned world, which provides an appropriate habitation or dwelling for a variety of creatures (both human and nonhuman). In other words, the cosmos is likened to a house.

The Cosmos as a Building In both the Bible and other cultures of the ancient Near East (Sumer, Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, etc.), the world was thought of as a building, a habitable space for humans and other creatures to live in.9 This is why God’s creation of the world and the building of a house are described in similar terms in the book of Proverbs.10 By wisdom a house is built,   and by understanding it is established; by knowledge the rooms are filled   with all precious and pleasant riches. (Prov 24:3–4) A few chapters earlier we find this description of how God created: The LORD by wisdom founded the earth;   by understanding he established the heavens; by his knowledge the deeps broke open,   and the clouds drop down the dew. (Prov 3:19–20) Not only do both texts speak of a well-designed building—using the overlapping terms “wisdom” (ḥokmâ), “understanding” (tĕbûnâ), and “knowledge” (da‘at)—but they replicate the two panels of Genesis 1. First, the structure is described; then the provisioning of the house is mentioned.11 Further, verbs like “founded” (yāsad) and “established” (kûn) are architectural terms. Even the New Testament retains language of “the foundation of the world” (Matt 13:35; Luke 11:50; John 17:24; Eph 1:4; Heb 9:26), although some modern transitions like the NIV treat this as a dead metaphor and render it as the “creation” or “beginning” of the world. But the metaphor was very much alive in the Old Testament. So, when God questions Job, his description of creation draws on architectural imagery.

Although it is sometimes claimed that this world picture (which the Bible largely shares with the ancient Near East) represents “ancient science,” this is not accurate. Francesca Rochberg’s detailed study of what we might call ancient science in Mesopotamia (the interpretive framework of cuneiform knowledge) makes it clear that this was not an ancient attempt to describe the same reality that concerns modern science (i.e., the realm of nature or physical reality). Not only did Assyrian and Babylonian science ignore much of the so-called natural world, it included a great deal of esoteric knowledge organized according to principles and schemata very different from those of modern science. See Francesca Rochberg, Before Nature: Cuneiform Knowledge and the History of Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016). My thanks to John Walton for pointing me to this study. 9 For a fuller account of the biblical understanding of the cosmos as a building, see J. Richard Middleton, The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2005), 77–81; also Raymond C. Van Leeuwen, “Cosmos, Temple, House: Building and Wisdom in Ancient Mesopotamia and Israel,” in From the Foundations to the Crenellations: Essays on Temple Building in the Ancient Near East and Hebrew Bible, ed. Mark J. Boda and Jamie Novotny (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 366; Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2010), 421. 10 From here on, all biblical references are NRSV unless otherwise noted. Scripture quotations marked NRSV are from New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. 11 Indeed, Van Leeuwen states, “In the Bible, house building and filling is the fundamental metaphoric domain for divine creation” (“Cosmos, Temple, House,” 404). 8

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Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?   Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know!   Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk,   or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together   and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy? (Job 38:4–7) Although this ancient picture of the world as a building may seem strange to modern people—aware as we are of the vast expanses of space—it conveys an important theological claim that is directly relevant to our contemporary scientific understanding of the universe.

The Significance of Sevens in Genesis 1 To fully appreciate this theological claim, it will be helpful to consider the significance of sevens, which permeate the Genesis 1 creation account. Besides the explicit seven-day literary structure (6+1), there are seven summary execution reports in the text that “it was so” (Gen 1:3, 7, 9, 11, 14, 15, 24) and seven evaluation reports that God saw that it was “good” (Gen 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31).12 When we probe beneath the surface we find multiples of seven for certain Hebrew words and also for the number of Hebrew words in some sections of text. Someone clearly went to a lot of trouble in composing this creation account. The following are occurrences of sevens in Gen 1:1–2:3 that have been noted:13 ●●

“God” = 35 (7 × 5)

●●

“Earth” = 21 (7 × 3)

●●

Number of words in Gen 1:1–2 (the pre-creation preamble) = 21 (7 × 3)

●●

Number of words in verse 1 = 7

●●

Number of words in verse 2 = 14 (7 × 2)

●●

Number of words in Gen 2:1–3 (the seventh day) = 35 (7 × 5)

●●

Total number of words in Gen 1:1–2:3 = 469 (7 × 67)

The significance of these sevens becomes clear when we realize that seven is a number widely associated with worship and temples in the ancient world and also in the Bible. There are references to ancient temple dedication ceremonies that took seven days, including Baal’s temple in the Ugaritic myth (after his defeat of the god Yam) and the

The first of the summary execution reports (1:3) is a variant, naming the item that came to be (“and there was light”; the Hebrew for “it was” and “there was” is identical). Likewise, the first of the evaluation reports (1:4) also names the light (“God saw that the light was good”), while the last such statement (1:31) is also a variant (“And God saw all that he had made and, behold, it was very good”). Further, since there are seven of each of these two reports spread over God’s eight creative acts, there is necessarily one omission of each report at some point in Genesis 1. Thus, “it was good” (the evaluation report) is missing from Day 2 and “it was so” (the summary execution report) is missing from Day 5. For a fuller account of variations in the literary pattern of Genesis 1, and their possible significance, see Middleton, The Liberating Image, 278–87. 13 On the sevens in Genesis 1, see Umberto Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis, Vol. 1: From Adam to Noah, trans. Israel Abraham (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1961), 12–15. 12

The Genesis Creation Accounts

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Lagash temple built by Gudea, a Sumerian king in the twenty-second century bce.14 In the biblical account, Solomon built the Jerusalem temple in seven years (1 Kgs 6:38), dedicated it in the seven-day feast of Tabernacles in the seventh month (1 Kgs 8:2), and followed it up with seven more days of celebration (1 Kgs 8:65).15 Solomon’s temple dedication speech is also structured as seven specific petitions to God (1 Kgs 8:31–53).16 Then there are the sevens in the Exodus account of the construction of the wilderness tabernacle, which preceded the Jerusalem temple. Not only are there seven speeches of God’s instructions to Moses (each beginning with “And YHWH said to Moses”), but there are also fourteen (7 × 2) summaries of Moses doing what God instructed (“just as YHWH commanded Moses”).17 The fourteen summaries have a similar function to the seven statements in Genesis 1 that “it was so”; both sets of statements affirm that construction was accomplished in accordance with God’s design.

The Cosmos as a Temple The connection of the number seven with temples and worship in the Bible suggests that we need to go beyond the picture of creation as a building to ask: What sort of building is God constructing in Genesis 1? The answer is that God is constructing a temple, a cosmic sanctuary for the Creator to inhabit along with creatures. Indeed, the patterned, liturgical feel of the text might be intended to evoke a seven-day dedication ceremony for the temple of creation.18 The Bible thus understands the world as God’s “house” or temple (Figure 3).19 In this picture, heaven corresponds to the Holy of Holies, where God’s presence is concentrated. Much of the Old Testament thus treats God’s presence in the Jerusalem temple as the earthly correlate of YHWH reigning from heaven.20 However, Isaiah 66 stands out in challenging those rebuilding the temple after the exile. Since creation (heaven and earth) is already God’s dwelling, God has no need for a humanly constructed “house.” Thus says YHWH: Heaven is my throne   and the earth is my footstool;

For Gudea’s temple, see Gudea Cylinder B.18.19 and Gudea Statue B.7.30; English translation in George A. Barton, The Royal Inscriptions of Sumer and Akkad (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1929), 253, 187. For Baal’s temple, see Tablet 4, column 6; English translation in Michael D. Coogan and Mark S. Smith, ed. and trans., Stories from Ancient Canaan, 2nd ed. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2012), 134–5. 15 The parallel account in 2 Chronicles mentions a seven-day dedication of the altar in the temple (2 Chron 7:9). 16 1 Kgs 8:31–32, 33–34, 35–37a; 37b–40, 41–43; 44–45, 46–53. 17 “And YHWH said to Moses”: Exod 25:1–30:10; 30:11–16; 30:17–21; 30:22–33; 30:34–37; 31:1–11; 32:12– 17. “Just as YHWH commanded Moses”: Exod 39:1, 5, 7, 21, 26, 29, 31; 40:19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 32. 18 The liturgical significance of seven is seen also in the story of Jericho, which is conquered by seven priests marching around the city for seven days, seven times on the seventh day, blowing shofars, in front of the ark of the covenant (Josh 6:3–15). John H. Walton is the most prominent scholar to suggest that the sevens of Genesis 1 portray a temple dedication ceremony. See Walton, “Creation in Genesis 1:1–2:3 and the Ancient Near East: Order out of Disorder after Chaoskampf,” Calvin Theological Journal 43 (2008): 48–63, here 61. Walton describes Genesis 1 as the “inauguration” of the functions of the cosmic temple in The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009), 88–92. 19 Although in the ancient Near East earthly temples were thought of as the houses of the gods and, as Van Leeuwen puts it, there was “an easy symbolic interaction of house as dwelling place … and as cosmic realm” (“Cosmos, Temple, House,” 402), it does not seem that this led to the explicit identification of the cosmos as a temple. 20 For further on cosmos as temple in the Bible, see Middleton, The Liberating Image, 81–8. 14

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FIGURE 3: The Cosmos as Temple.21

what is the house that you could build for me,   and what is my resting place? All these things my hand has made,   and so they all came into being, says YHWH. (Isa 66:1–2a; author’s translation) The correspondence between creation and the tabernacle (as macrocosmos and microcosmos) is evident beyond the occurrences of sevens in both accounts. It can be seen also in God’s appointment of Bezalel to oversee construction of the tabernacle. To this

From Alan P. Dicken, On a Faraway Day …: A New View of Genesis in Ancient Mesopotamia (Columbus, GA: Brentwood Christian Press, 2002), 122. Used by permission of the author. 21

The Genesis Creation Accounts

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end, he is filled with wisdom, understanding, and knowledge (Exod 31:1–5; 35:30–33), the same triad of terms by which God created the cosmos in Proverbs 3. Through these endowments Bezalel is “to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, in every kind of craft” (Exod 31:2–5). Bezalel’s work in “every kind of craft” (Exod 31:3, 5) reflects God’s completing “all his work” of creation (Gen 2:2, 3). Despite the differences in translation, the Hebrew wording is almost identical. Further, Bezalel is filled with “the Spirit of God,” which echoes the presence of the Spirit hovering over the initially formless and empty world (Gen 1:2). Just as the Spirit of God is present in Bezalel, directing construction of the sanctuary, so the Spirit at the start of Genesis 1 suggests the presence of God’s wisdom in guiding the construction of the cosmos. And since the Shekinah glory of YHWH filled the tabernacle and the temple after their completion (Exod 40:34–35; 1 Kgs 8:10–11), the mention of the Spirit of God in Gen 1:2 suggests that the Creator was getting ready to breathe the divine presence into the cosmos. Yet when world construction in Genesis 1 is complete there is no reference (as might be expected in Gen 2:1–3) to God inhabiting the cosmic sanctuary.

The Imago Dei as Mediation of Divine Presence Instead, God creates human beings to be his own image and likeness on earth, granted a delegated rule over the earth and its creatures (Gen 1:26–28). Crucial to understanding the phrase “image of God” (Hebrew ṣelem ’ĕlohîm) is the way images were viewed in the ancient world in which Israel lived. The image of a god was a statue placed in a temple, and people believed that the deity they worshipped somehow channeled his or her power and presence through the statue to the worshippers. The primary function of an image, therefore, is mediation.22 This means that humans are the authorized mediators of God’s presence in the cosmic temple. In the vision of Genesis 1, it is the human task to fill the earth not just with progeny but ultimately with God’s presence, a task accomplished by faithful representation of the divine King, who rules from heaven. In the following creation account God breathes the divine presence into a human being, formed from the dust of the ground, causing the human to become alive (Gen 2:7). While this text has often been identified in the history of interpretation as the correlate in Genesis 2 of the creation of humanity as imago Dei in Genesis 1, only recently have studies showed that the divine inbreathing in the garden (Gen 2:7) reflects dedication ceremonies for cult statues known from the ancient Near East. These ceremonies imagine the spirit of the deity entering the statue with the result that it becomes the living image of deity, which is then placed in that deity’s temple and is understood as mediating divine presence from heaven to earth.23 In different ways, then, Genesis 1 and 2 affirm that humanity is the authorized image of God in the cosmic temple, charged with the royal-priestly vocation of representing,

It is precisely because they were viewed as mediating divine presence that kings and priests were described as an image or likeness of a particular deity in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. On this, see Middleton, The Liberating Image, 108–22. 23 For a lucid study of the so-called “mouth washing” or “mouth opening” ritual in Mesopotamia and Egypt, see Catherine L. McDowell, The Image of God in the Garden of Eden: The Creation of Humankind in Genesis 2:5–3:24 in Light of the mīs pî pīt pî and wpt-r Rituals of Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt (Siphrut: Literature and Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures 15; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2015). 22

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and thus mediating, the divine presence from heaven to the earthly realm. The filling of the cosmic temple with God’s presence in Genesis 1 is thus not intended to be automatic but missional. It is furthered or hindered by how humans exercise power and agency on behalf of the King of the universe.24 Earth is thus not strictly speaking “secular” or “profane,” but is equivalent to the holy place in the cosmic sanctuary, such that ordinary earthly life is meant to be priestly service to the Creator. The earth, as God’s intended holy place, may be desecrated; but earthly life is never simply “secular.” The understanding of the cosmos as sacred space, along with the role of humans as imago Dei, makes sense not only of the six-day framework of creation in Genesis 1, but also of God’s rest on the seventh day.25 As ancient Near Eastern literature makes clear, “rest” refers to the deity taking up residence in his temple, sitting on his throne. So the point of God’s “rest” in Genesis 1 is that, having constructed the cosmos as his “house” or temple, and delegated rule to humanity, the divine King has now taken up residence in his throne room (heaven), reigning as Lord of the universe. So the 6+1 timeframe of the Genesis 1 creation account has nothing to do with scientific calculations of how the universe came into being. Indeed, if we read it as a scientific account we will miss the main point—that this world is God’s intended dwelling, a sacred cosmos meant to be sanctified with the divine presence.

The Expanding Universe as God’s Temple Now that we have moved beyond the world picture of ancient times and come to understand our sun as just one among many stars in an expanding universe of billions of galaxies that have developed over deep time, the question is whether we can see this universe with the eyes of faith as the cosmic temple that God wants to inhabit with humanity and other creatures. When the biblical writers spoke of God reigning from heaven (Ps 11:4; 14:2), this was intended as a symbol of divine transcendence, implying that God is far above and beyond us (after all, we don’t have access to heaven). Yet since “heaven and earth” is how the Bible describes creation, God dwelling in heaven is also a symbol of divine immanence; God has condescended to inhabit part of the created order.26 When Solomon pondered God’s further condescension to inhabit the Holy of Holies, he asked in amazement, “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!” (1 Kgs 8:27) We, who have a much clearer understanding of just how immense “the heavens” are, can appreciate Solomon’s words in a new way. Even a universe 92 billion light years across cannot contain God! Yet God has condescended not just to dwell in heaven or in the Holy For my own exposition of this sacramental understanding of the imago Dei, see J. Richard Middleton, “The Role of Human Beings in the Cosmic Temple: The Intersection of Worldviews in Psalms 8 and 104,” Canadian Theological Review 2, no. 1 (2013): 44–58; “Image of God,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Theology, vol. 2, ed. Samuel E. Ballentine et al. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 516–23; A New Heaven and a New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical Eschatology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2014), ­chapter 2 (esp. 37–50) and ­chapter 8 (esp. 163–76); and The Liberating Image, ­chapter 2 (esp. 74–90). 25 While Gen 2:2–3 uses the verb for God ceasing (šābat) from the work of creating, Exod 20:11 speaks of God resting (nȗaḥ) on the seventh day. 26 On this point, see Terence E. Fretheim, The Suffering of God (Overtures to Biblical Theology; Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1984), 37; also Fretheim, God and World in the Old Testament: A Relational Theology of Creation (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2005), 26. 24

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of Holies of the tabernacle and temple. It is the Christian confession that the Creator became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, the Word made flesh (John 1:14), and is even willing to indwell the church, described in the New Testament as the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 3:16–17; 6:19; 2 Cor 6:16; Eph 2:21).

THE ECOLOGICAL VISION OF GENESIS 1–2 Attending to the ancient cosmology or world picture of Genesis 1 allows us to discern the powerful theological vision or worldview of the text, which might be missed if we ignored this cosmology. This theological vision is able to provide us with a lens through which we may view a universe of billions of galaxies that have developed through deep time. More problematic, however, is the question of how to relate the picture of humanity in the early chapters of Genesis to what the sciences are telling us about human evolutionary origins and our kinship with other creatures. Not only does the descent of all people from an original couple (Genesis 2) contradict the large population group scientists think is needed to explain human evolution, but the idea of the radical uniqueness of humans vis-à-vis other creatures, which is often taken to be implied by the “image of God,” is in tension with the evolutionary kinship of humans with other living organisms.27 The remainder of this essay will explore the ecological vision of Genesis 2 (with some reference to Genesis 1) by addressing these prima facie contradictions head on. It turns out that the vision of being human in these chapters is remarkably resonant with what the modern sciences are telling us about the place of humans among other living creatures.

An Initial Human Pair or a Large Population Group? Evolutionary change occurs only gradually in a population over time. The best current estimate is that Homo sapiens emerged in their present form about three hundred thousand years ago, and, to date, all population genetics calculations result in an estimate of several thousand ancestors needed to account for present genetic diversity. Yet Genesis 2 recounts God’s creation of an initial human pair (Adam and Eve), not a large population group, with no reference to earlier human ancestors. How are we to understand the relationship between the claims of the ancient text and those of modern science? Although we often think of the first human pair in Genesis 2 as “Adam and Eve,” the text originally designates them as “the human” (ha’ādām) and “the woman” (ha’iššâ). “Adam” does not clearly become a proper name until the genealogy of Genesis 5 and “Eve” is the name given to the woman in 3:20.28 What are we to make of the fact that

A third issue, which we will not have space to address in this essay, is the idea that “death” is a consequence of human sin (according to the Eden story), which seems incompatible with the scientific assumption of mortality for all living organisms, including those that predate humans. But it is not at all clear that “death” in Genesis 2–3 is to be equated with mortality. For an argument that the Eden story assumes original human mortality, see J. Richard Middleton, “Humans Created Mortal, with the Possibility of Eternal Life,” Sapientia, May 17, 2018, https://henrycenter.tiu. edu/2018/05/humans-created-mortal-with-the-possibility-of-eternal-life/; and Middleton, “Reading Genesis 3 Attentive to Human Evolution: Beyond Concordism and Non-Overlapping Magisteria,” c­ hapter 4 in Evolution and the Fall, ed. William T. Cavanaugh and James K. A. Smith (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017), 67–97. 28 There are four places in Genesis 2–3 where ’ādām appears without the definite article, but none of these is indisputably a proper name (2:5, 20; 3:17, 21). Gen 4:25 is the first use of ’ādām without the definite article that could be taken as a proper name (“Adam knew his wife again”). Yet the first mention of the man knowing his wife in Gen 4:2 has ha’ādām. Even the genealogy of Genesis 5, which clearly uses ’ādām as a proper name (5:1, 3–5), contains two uses of ’ādām to refer to humanity (5:1–2). 27

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the name of the first man is “Human” (’ādām) and the name of the first woman (ḥawwâ) sounds like the Hebrew word for “Life”? And who would name their son Abel (hebel), meaning “Vapor” or “Futility,” the same word that recurs as a theme in Ecclesiastes? These names are clearly a function of the story. For example, Abel’s life is soon snuffed out. Given the symbolic meaning of the names “Adam” and “Eve,” we may understand the first couple in Genesis 2 as archetypal or representative of all humanity. That is, what is said of “the human” (ha’ādām) is meant to be true of all people; and the description of “the woman” (ha’iššâ) is meant to represent all women. So while the text also understands the human and the woman (Adam and Eve) to be the progenitors of the human race, which contradicts an evolutionary account, it does not do so to the exclusion of an archetypal interpretation.29 An archetypal interpretation of the first couple in Genesis 2 maps well onto the different account of human origins in Genesis 1.30 There God creates not individuals but population groups to fill various niches, including flying creatures in the sky, swimming things in the water, and then animals on the land, and also humans, designated by the collective noun ’ādām, on the land. When Christians read the account of human creation in Genesis 1 as an original couple, they do this by retrojecting the account from Genesis 2 back into ­chapter  1. But we need to respect the different portrayals of creation in each account. The differences between Genesis 1 and 2 go beyond the initial population size of the human race. Whereas Genesis 1 begins with the earth inundated with water (Gen 1:2) so that God has to separate the waters for dry land to appear (Gen 1:9), in Genesis 2 the earth is originally a dry wilderness so that plants are not able to grow (Gen 2:5) until a mist rises to water the ground (Gen 2:6). There is also a different order of creative events in each chapter. In Genesis 2, the order is: dry land, water, a human (’ādām, later specified as a man), then plants, animals, and a woman. In Genesis 1, the order of these same items is: water, dry land, plants, animals, humans (’ādām, consisting in male and female together). Neither account is teaching science, for then we would need to ask which account is scientifically true. Rather, both accounts teach an ultimately coherent and harmonious theological vision of being human.

The Imago Dei as Earthly Vocation or Calling This theological vision is centered on the creation of humanity as God’s image and likeness (imago Dei). But doesn’t this idea, with its implication of human uniqueness, contradict human kinship with other animals? An evolutionary account understands modern Homo sapiens as one species in a larger family of the genus Homo, and part of an even larger grouping of hominins (including the Australopithecines), to whom we are genetically related. These hominins are, in turn,

Indeed, sermons on the garden story tend to focus on the archetypal significance of the characters, helping us to understand our lives under the rubrics of the first couple. One of my students recently preached at the funeral of his father, who had started out as a bus driver and ended up managing a fleet of buses. The core of the sermon compared Adam’s vocation in tending the garden with his father’s vocation of working with buses—a wonderful archetypal reading. 30 The tensions between the creation accounts in Genesis 1 and 2, along with suggestions for conceptualizing their relationship, are explored in J. Richard Middleton, “What Is the Relationship between the Creation Accounts in Genesis 1 and 2?” BioLogos, January 3, 2018, https://biologos.org/blogs/guest/ what-is-the-relationship-between-the-creation-accounts-in-genesis-1-and-2. 29

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descended from prior hominids, from which both humans and great apes are descended, and ultimately all living things are part of a complex, branching “bush” of evolutionary development, going back to the hypothesized Living Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA). Although the precise lineage of Homo sapiens is a matter of speculation, analysis of the human genome decisively shows our kinship with, and in some cases descent from, other living creatures. Whereas many Christians through the ages have taken the imago Dei in Genesis 1 to mean that humans are unique among creatures, especially that we are radically distinct from animals, this is not the primary point of the image. Most contemporary Old Testament scholars understand the imago Dei not as certain capacities or features that distinguish humans from other animals but as a calling or vocation, which involves representing and manifesting God’s presence and rule on earth by the way we live, particularly by the way that we exercise power or agency in the world.31 This calling is unpacked in quite mundane or earthly ways in the Bible. It involves the task of agriculture, described in Genesis 2 as working and protecting the garden (Gen 2:15) and in Genesis 1 as subduing the earth (Gen 1:28), thus bringing it into productivity.32 Psalm 104 gives more specificity in describing the human ability to turn grapes, olives, and wheat into wine, oil, and bread, for our own enjoyment and sustenance (Ps 104:14–15). The human calling also includes animal domestication and possibly fishing (Ps 8:8 [MT 8:9]), described using the ancient metaphor of rule or dominion (Gen 1:26, 28; Ps 8:5–8 [MT 8:6–9]), since kings in the ancient Near East were often thought to be masters of animals. Even in Genesis 2 the human task comes to include animal husbandry, evident in the episode of the naming of animals. This naming results in a new category of living creature, called “livestock” or “cattle” (bĕhēmâ; Gen 2:20), not mentioned among the animals God brought to the human (Gen 2:19).33 And in Genesis 4 we find, in the second generation, not only Cain working the ground (horticulture) but also Abel keeping flocks (animal husbandry), in fulfillment of this new dimension of the human task in the world (Gen 4:3–4). The image of God is thus fundamentally an earthly, cultural vocation, which involves human interaction with the earth via agriculture and animal domestication, and comes to include city building, music, and metallurgy (Gen 4:17, 20–22), to name just a few examples of what humans develop in the early chapters of Genesis. Ultimately, this biblical trajectory suggests that humans image God when they live in conformity to God’s will in all their earthly life, as stewards of this world that God has entrusted to them. Humans,

Although the explicit statement that we are created in God’s image occurs only a few times in the Bible, these statements crystallize a pervasive underlying biblical theme concerning human agency in God’s world. The Bible’s coherent understanding of what it means to be human may be likened to an underground river flowing beneath the surface that is often hidden from view; but there are a few places where the river comes to the surface and the powerful flow of water becomes clear. The explicit references to the image of God are those places where the river bubbles most clearly to the surface. 32 Theodore Hiebert notes that the strenuous language in Genesis 1 of subduing and having dominion would have meant no more for preindustrial Israel than “the human domestication and use of animals and plants and the human struggle to make the soil serve its farmers.” Hiebert, “Re-Imaging Nature: Shifts in Biblical Interpretation,” Interpretation 50 (1996): 36–46; here 42. 33 Although the collective noun bĕhēmâ can mean simply “animals,” its usage in the early chapters of Genesis designates the sort of herd animals that humans typically domesticate, hence the translation “livestock” or “cattle.” 31

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we could say, are to be God’s prism in the world, refracting the concentrated light of the Creator into a rainbow of cultural activities that scintillate with God’s glory.34 Of course, humans would need to have certain capacities or faculties (including rationality, symbolic language, joint intentionality, etc.) in order to be able to fulfill the calling to image God.35 And the Bible does, in fact, distinguish humans from other animals in a fairly commonsense way. Not only are humans granted dominion over animal life and not vice versa, but animals simply cannot meet the deepest human needs for interpersonal fellowship (Gen 2:20).

Human Commonality with Other Animals in the Bible Nevertheless, the Bible presents a picture of significant continuity between humans and other animals, indeed, between humans and the earth itself. Thus in Genesis 2 the human (ha’ādām) is created from the ground or soil (ha’ădāmâ), which is an intentional pun in Hebrew, signifying the human’s status as a groundling or earth creature. An equivalent English pun would be the human made from the humus. But Genesis 2 goes on to tell us that animals are also created from the ground, thus testifying to a fundamental humananimal commonality or kinship. Further, both humans and other animals are described by the identical phrase nepeš ḥayyâ (Gen 2:7, 19), which means something like a “living organism.” Although the phrase nepeš ḥayyâ is used of both humans and other animals in Genesis 2, many translations (such as the NRSV and NIV) render it somewhat differently when it is used of humans in 2:7 (“living being”) and of animals in 2:19 (“living creature”), which seems to be an attempt to distinguish humans from animals.36 But this betrays a misunderstanding of the biblical assumption of a fundamental commonality between humans and other animals.37 Indeed, not only humans (Gen 2:7) but “all flesh,” a term that contextually includes all animals (Gen 6:17; 7:15, 22), possess the “breath of life” from their Creator. Congruent with Genesis, Psalm 104 notes that when God takes away the breath/spirit (rûaḥ) of living creatures they die, but the infusion of God’s own breath/spirit (rûaḥ) results in their creation or renewal (Ps 104:29–30). Possessing divine breath/spirit is not something distinctive to humanity in the Bible.38 Psalm 104, further, never mentions humans without pairing them with some form of animal life, whether cattle (104:14), lions (104:21 and 23), or Leviathan, the sea serpent (104:26). And this psalm tells us that God “formed” Leviathan (104:26), the very same Hebrew verb (yāṣar) used for God’s creation of the first human in Gen 2:7. Leviathan and humans are kin, which happens to I have been using this metaphor since the 1980s in my teaching; it first appears in print in J. Richard Middleton, “The Liberating Image? Interpreting the Imago Dei in Context,” Christian Scholar’s Review 24 (1994): 8–25, here 24–5. 35 “Joint intentionality” is a term famously used by anthropologist/psychologist Michael Tomasello to refer to the unique human ability of two or more individuals to have a shared perception of an action and its goal, as well as the role of each toward the shared goal. This ability does not seem to be extant among other primates. Note that “human” for Tomasello may go back to Homo heidelbergensis. 36 The phrase nepeš ḥayyāh is used for animals also in Gen 1:20, 24, and 30. The NRSV and NIV render it “living creature” in 1:20 and 24, but “beast of the earth” in 1:30. 37 Even Genesis 1 doesn’t give humans their own unique day of creation, but portrays humans and land animals as created on the same day (day 6), thus assuming a certain commonality between them. 38 Humans, however, are distinctive in that the narrative of Genesis portrays God as directly breathing into them (Gen 2:7). A further differentiation may be that whereas “breath of life” in Gen 2:7 translates nišmat ḥayyîm, in 6:17 and 7:15 it translates rûaḥ ḥayyîm (different words for “breath” are used). Yet Gen 7:22 contains the hybrid expression nišmat-rûaḥ ḥayyîm. 34

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be part of the point God makes to Job in his second speech from the whirlwind. God also tells Job about his similarity with a creature named Behemoth, which is a plural of majesty of the usual collective noun for animals or beasts (bĕhēmâ): “Look at Behemoth [= the mega-beast], which I made with you” (Job 40:15).39

Glimpses of the Image of God in Other Creatures Even the idea of being created in God’s image does not imply an absolute distinction between humans and other creatures. True, only humans are explicitly said to be created in God’s image and likeness (Gen 1:26–27). However, a careful reader of Genesis 1 would notice that various nonhuman creatures are rhetorically portrayed as similar to God (a case of showing rather than telling). Given that God engages in acts of separation on the first three days in Genesis 1 (separating light from dark; waters above from waters below; waters below from dry land), it is significant that the purpose of the firmament (rāqîa‘) on day 2 is to separate the waters above from the waters below (Gen 1:6). The firmament’s function thus images and continues God’s own creative activity. Also, one of the purposes of the sun and moon on Day 4 is to separate light from dark and day from night (Gen 1:14, 18), thus imaging and continuing God’s creative work of separating light from dark on Day 1. Likewise, given that God engages in acts of filling on Days 4 through 6 (filling the heavens with luminaries; the waters with fish; the air with birds; the land with animals), it is significant that God grants fertility to creatures that live in the air and water and calls them (just as he does humans) to multiply and fill the world (Gen 1:22, 28); thus, both humans and animals image God’s own creative activity. Finally, it isn’t only humans who are like God (the ultimate Ruler of the cosmos) in being given dominion. The sun and moon are also granted rule over day and night (Gen 1:16). True, the verb for rule here (māšal) is different from the verb used for human dominion in Gen 1:26 and 28 (rādâ), yet māšal is used for human rule in Ps 8:6 (MT 8:7). There seems to be a parallel: whereas the luminaries represent God’s dominion in the heavens, humans represent God’s dominion in the earthly realm. Might not these elements of the rhetorical portrayal of nonhuman creatures in Scripture—along with biblical texts that portray the commonality, indeed, the kinship, of humans with a variety of other animals—provide an opening for thinking about the deep connection (even continuity) of humans with animals and even with the rest of the created order? Such texts, which are certainly not meant to teach science, can prime us theologically—in terms of our worldview—to be open to what ecological and evolutionary science tells us about ourselves. Paying attention to the Bible might thus help us make theological sense of human kinship with other creatures.40 I have argued for the intended similarity between Job, on the one hand, and both Behemoth and Leviathan, on the other, in J. Richard Middleton, “Does God Come to Bury Job or to Praise Him? The Significance of YHWH’s Second Speech from the Whirlwind,” St. Mark’s Review no. 239 (March 2017): 1–27. 40 This still leaves open the question of exactly how we might relate the biblical picture of humanity to what we are coming to know from evolutionary science. Anatomically modern humans have been around for at least three hundred thousand years, but archeology suggests that there was an explosion of human cultural development much later, the so-called Great Leap Forward, somewhere around one hundred thousand years ago. Could that be correlated with the origin of the imago Dei? This is, of course, only speculation. But it makes sense to think of God providently superintending the evolutionary process until hominins recognizable as Homo sapiens emerged and stabilized as a species. Then, at some point in their development, God entered into a unique relationship with a representative population of these hominins, calling them to the ethical vocation of imago Dei, to live as his 39

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Human Distinctiveness in an Ecological Cosmos That such texts are found side by side with an emphasis on human distinctiveness, even uniqueness, testifies to the realism of Scripture about human agency in the world. Although the ancient writers could not have understood the full implications of their portrayal of genuine human power vis-à-vis our earthly environment, we today are brutally aware of the devastating impact that humanity is having on the biosphere. In particular, our participation (as the primary cause) in the sixth global extinction event bears unbidden witness to the Bible’s vision of the significant role of humanity vis-à-vis the earth—for good or ill. The biblical understanding of humans as fundamentally earth creatures, made not only from the earth (Gen 2:7) but also for the earth (Gen 2:5, 15), implies that humanity and the natural world are inextricably intertwined—what affects one invariably affects the other. This is why Genesis not only describes the normative human calling as working the ground (Gen 2:5, 15), but also portrays human sin as causing the ground to be cursed, such that its fruitfulness is affected (Gen 3:17). This ecological vision is articulated in great detail in Israel’s covenantal and prophetic literature, which describes the consequences of positive and negative human action. The Torah and the Prophets challenge Israel in terms of two ways of life, one leading to blessing and fruitfulness, the other leading to curse and destruction—a choice, fundamentally, between Life and Death (see Deut 30:15–20). In many of these texts, the consequences of human action affect the land, its vegetation, and animal life; and these consequences rebound on people, due to the inextricable bond between humans and the ground.41

The Renewal of All Things But the prophetic literature also envisions a day in which humanity, the earth, and its panoply of creatures are restored to harmony and flourishing. This vision continues into the New Testament, which speaks of the lifting of the curse from the earth (Rev 22:3) and the liberation of creation from its bondage to corruption (Rom 8:19–21), leading to a new heaven and new earth, in which righteousness dwells (Rev 21:1; 2 Pet 3:13).42 This cosmic vision of the redemption of “all things” (Eph 1:19; Col 1:20) is grounded fundamentally in the ecological vision of the early chapters of Genesis, where humans and their earthly environment are intrinsically intertwined—so that human salvation is unthinkable without the renewal of the world. This renewal is fundamentally linked to the sacramental understanding of the world as God’s temple. While the Earth does not currently experience the fullness of God’s presence (due to human sin), the Bible promises that even this small portion of the cosmic

image in the world. Might a scenario like this account for what seems to be a significant transformation of human behavior, as found in the archeological record? 41 For a fuller exploration of this ecological vision in the Torah and Prophets, see Middleton, A New Heaven and a New Earth, ­chapter 5: “Earthly Flourishing in Law, Wisdom, and Prophecy.” 42 Many translations of Rom 8:21 (NIV; NLT; ESV; NRSV) speak of creation’s bondage to “decay” (phthora), from which it will be liberated. The term “decay” suggests organic death or even entropy and is often understood as teaching that these ordinary processes were initiated by human sin in the garden. However, phthora does not refer in either the New Testament or the LXX to what we normally mean by decay. Indeed, the LXX of Gen 6:11–13 uses verbal forms of phthora to describe the corruption or destruction of the earth due to the violence that filled it. Thus Rom 8:21 it is better translated as bondage to “corruption” (KJV; NAB; NASB; NJB), which suggests something much more disruptive and dysfunctional than “decay.”

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temple will ultimately be filled with the glory of God, as the waters cover the sea (Num 14:21; Isa 11:9; Hab 2:14). When evil has been vanquished and the world becomes the kingdom of God (Rev 11:15), such that God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven (Matt 6:10), then God’s throne (pervasively pictured in the Old Testament as being in heaven) will shift decisively to the midst of earthly life (Rev 22:3), leading to the ultimate goal of a cosmos permeated with God’s presence. To use Pauline language, Christ will then “fill all things” (Eph 4:10) and God will be “all in all” (1 Cor 15:28).

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CHAPTER TWO

Wisdom’s Wonder and the Science of Awe WILLIAM P. BROWN

Dr. James Woodrow, professor of chemistry and uncle of Woodrow Wilson, was appointed the “Perkins Professor of Natural Science in Connection with Revelation” at Columbia Theological Seminary, South Carolina, in 1861.1 It was a position that was ahead of its time in North American theological education. After twenty-two years of teaching, Woodrow was asked to “set forth his views upon evolution in order that the church might have the benefit of his opinions.”2 In a public address, Woodrow argued that faith and science, when rightly understood, do not, indeed cannot, contradict each other and that even the Bible teaches something of evolution. Case in point: in Genesis God commanded the waters and the earth to create new forms of life and Adam was fashioned incrementally from the organic layer of the soil. Apparently, the Southern Presbyterian Church felt no “benefit” from Dr. Woodrow’s opinions. He was dismissed from the seminary in 1886.3 Thankfully, such manufactured crises are no longer the case, at least among mainline seminaries. Nevertheless, the perceived conflict between faith and science remains manifest in a way that continues to impoverish the practice of biblical interpretation. By acknowledging the authority of science in understanding the physical world, as one should, many biblical scholars mistakenly consider the ancient creation texts of the Hebrew Bible to have little to do with the physical world. One can see why: biblical texts are by no means scientific in any modern sense. However, they are not simply poetic, metaphorical musings or mythological depictions of the physical world. Nor are they concerned primarily with a “spiritual” realm beyond the physical world in which these ancient authors lived and moved and had their being. The Bible does not operate out of a Cartesian dualism that favors the spiritual over the material, mind over matter, soul over body. As agrarians, the ancient Israelites knew much about the physical world; indeed, such knowledge was necessary for their survival. Thanks to science, we know much more empirically than the ancients ever did. Nevertheless, the spectacular progress of modern science does not render the theological and ethical insights of the biblical creation accounts obsolete. wo years after Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published (1859). T Louis C. LaMotte, Colored Light: The Story of the Influence of Columbia Theological Seminary, 1828–1936 (Richmond, VA: Presbyterian Committee, 1937), 189. 3 For details, see James B. Miller, “Evincing the Harmony: Confronting the Challenge of Science for the Church,” SciTech: Journal of the Presbyterian Association on Science, Technology, and the Christian Faith 18, no. 4 (2009): 1, 7–10, 15. 1 2

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The Hebrew Bible, particularly the Writings, often appeals to the power of observation: “When I gaze at your heavens, the work of your fingers …” (Ps 8:3; cf. 19:1). “I turned my mind to know, search out, and seek wisdom and the sum of things” (Eccl 7:25). “It is the glory of God to conceal things, but it is the glory of kings to search things out” (Prov 25:2). “Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways, and get wise” (Prov 6:6). For the ancient sages (and at least one psalmist), the physical world was their classroom. Looking and searching, observing and studying—the sages were, among other things, practitioners of “inquisitive awe,”4 validating the human desire to explore the world, “to search things out,” to observe and study the world that God created in and through wisdom. For the sages, “the self-revelation of creation”5 was an integral part of divine revelation. To construe biblical faith as somehow anti-scientific is patently anti-biblical. If theology is “faith seeking understanding” (à la Anselm), and science is a form of understanding seeking further understanding, then theology has nothing to fear and everything to gain by engaging science. Indeed, to treat the ancient texts for their own insights into the physical world, to treat them as “proto-scientific” approaches to understanding the world, is to invite constructive dialogue with the sciences. The payoff for such honest and open dialogue, I submit, is generative theological reflection or, put more broadly, wisdom.

WISDOM AND SCIENCE While the first three chapters of Genesis have garnered the most attention in past discussions regarding biblical faith and science, the Psalms and the Wisdom literature provide fertile ground for extending the conversation. They too feature bona fide accounts of creation, including most notably Psalm 104, the great creation hymn of the Psalter, and Job 38–41, YHWH’s poetic rendering of the cosmos and its life.6 To explore their dialogical potential with science, I propose drawing from various scientific disciplines for discussion, specifically biology and astrobiology for Psalm 104 and neurobiology and psychology for Job 38–41. As for the former, the biological sciences highlight the value of biodiversity celebrated in the psalm. Regarding the latter, the cognitive sciences shed new light on the long-standing crux of Job’s response to YHWH’s revelation of creation. In both cases, science heightens the awe and wonder of these biblical creation accounts. As a point of departure, we begin with what I consider to be the cornerstone of wisdom’s perspective on creation: YHWH founded the earth by wisdom,     and established the heavens by understanding. By [YHWH’s] knowledge the deeps burst open,     and the clouds drop dew.7 (3:19–20)

See William P. Brown, Sacred Sense: Discovering the Wonder of God’s Word and World (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015), 1–14. 5 As Gerhard von Rad once described biblical wisdom in Wisdom in Israel, trans. James D. Martin (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1988 [1972]), 144–76. 6 For a full discussion of the various creation accounts of the Hebrew Bible in dialogue with science, see William P. Brown, The Seven Pillars of Creation: The Bible, Science, and the Ecology of Wonder (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 7 All translations are my own. 4

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Creation, it is claimed, reflects God’s wisdom because it is fashioned in God’s wisdom. Woven into the very fabric of creation, God’s wisdom can be observed and discerned. Such wisdom ensured that creation was not chaotic or unintelligible but ordered and stable, precisely what scientists see in nature’s “laws” and “theories,” from the law of gravity to the theory of evolution, all based on empirical examination.

Psalm 104 and Planetary Life While Psalm 104 is theological poetry from start to finish, it offers an unapologetically positive, and positively realistic, view of the natural world, including the wilderness, traditionally considered dangerous and chaotic. The psalmist celebrates the world of the wild and the God who made and sustains it all in wisdom. YHWH, how many are your works!     In wisdom you have made them all;       the earth is stock full of your creatures. (v. 24) As in Prov 3:19–20 noted above, YHWH’s wisdom is reflected in creation. In the eyes of the psalmist, the world is a veritable Terra sapiens—a “wise world” that is ordered, beautiful, and preeminently accommodating to a staggering variety of creatures. To illustrate just how manifold creation is, the psalmist lovingly describes various animals: onagers, birds, cattle, cedars, storks, mountain goats, coneys, lions, and, yes, Leviathan—all attesting to YHWH’s wise handiwork. As the species of life are varied and numerous, so also are their habitats and niches, from towering trees and flowing wadis to mountainous crags and the deep dark sea. The psalm acknowledges that each species has its rightful habitat: the trees are for the birds (vv. 12, 17), the mountains “belong to” the wild goats, the crags provide “refuge for” the coneys (or rock hyrax, specifically Procavia capensis, v. 18), the lions have their dens (v. 22), and people have their homes. In God’s cosmic mansion there are many dwelling places, each one appropriate or “fit” for each species. Evolutionary biology redefines this sense of fitness by reversing the relationship between a species and its environment: each species evolves to become “fit” for its place, although it is not entirely one way, as we shall see. In either case, humanity’s place in creation is regarded by the psalm as legitimate as that of any other species, but it is not singled out as central or dominant. The psalm offers, one could say, a Copernican view of human life,8 a view in which humanity is dethroned from its traditionally assumed position of dominance in the created order (cf. Gen 1:26–28; Ps 8:6–9 [5–8]), near the top of what medieval theologians called the scala naturae. Instead of assuming a dominant place in the “great chain of being,” humanity in Psalm 104 is given a nonanthropocentric entry in the encyclopedia of life. Creation is not simply habitat for humanity; it is habitat for diversity! As the psalmist celebrates YHWH’s wisdom made manifest in diversity, so the scientist explores the underlying dynamics of biological diversity, made possible through biological evolution, or in Darwin’s own words, “descent with modification,” whereby a species undergoes genetic and anatomical change over time. As a result, life on earth evolved gradually

The reference here is to the revolutionary discovery made by Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543), who debunked once and for all the view that Earth was the center of the solar system (but already anticipated by the Greek astronomer Aristarchus [310 bce–230 bce]). As a result, Earth found its place as one among many planets (“wanderers”), all orbiting the sun. 8

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from one common species known as the “last universal common ancestor” (LUCA), which lived more than 3.5 billion years ago. In the course of evolution, this species branched out into various new species, the mechanisms of which were natural selection and genetic mutation. As the evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobhzansky, a devout Russian Orthodox Christian, famously observed, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”9 Reading Psalm 104 through the lens of evolutionary biology compels the reader to appreciate the way in which the psalmist celebrates the breadth of life in all its diversity. Moreover, the psalm acknowledges the inextricable link between a given species and its habitat. Each species of life has its home and sustenance in creation. The earth is a residential neighborhood of creatures whose traits and ways of life are markedly different from each other. Yet they all manage to coexist. If there is a perfection or ideal presumed in the psalmist’s world, it would be the perfection of diversity, including both life and habitat. As life’s species are varied and numerous, so also are their habitats and niches. While about 1.8 million species have been officially catalogued, most experts believe that around 10 million species actually exist.10 Indeed, considering all the microbes and other tiny organisms awaiting discovery, some suggest 100 million or more.11 And one must not overlook the fossil record, sparse as it is, which reveals many more species having thrived on Earth in the past.12

FIT FOR A NICHE The psalmist marvels not only at the plethora of flora and fauna but also at the various habitats in which they flourish. The psalm assigns a home fit for every animal. Fitness for survival and reproductive success, biologists have observed, are not simply the result of adaptation driven by natural selection. Organisms not only respond to their respective environments; they also, in many cases, transform them. Israeli biologists Eytan Avital and Eva Jablonka have identified “social learning” as one way in which animals adapt to and alter their environments, becoming thereby agents of their own evolution.13 An animal’s environment is not just an external given to which a species simply adapts itself; it is also a matter of formation through the species’ own agency. An animal’s specific environment is its ecological niche, “the habitat as it is experienced and constructed by the animal itself.”14 Introduced into the discourse of biology by Charles Elton in 1926, an animal’s “niche” is its interactive place in the environment; it describes “the status of an animal in its community, to indicate what it is doing and not merely what it looks like.”15 A niche, in short, “includes address and occupation.”16

Theodosius Dobzhansky, “Nothing in Biology Makes Any Sense Except in the Light of Evolution,” American Biology Teacher 35 (1973): 125–9. 10 Stuart L. Pimm et al., “What Is Biodiversity?” in Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity, ed. Erich Chivian and Aaron Bernstein (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 14. 11 Catherine Baker, The Evolution Dialogues: Science, Christianity, and the Quest for Understanding, ed. James B. Miller (Washington, DC: AAAS, 2006), 132. 12 Stephen C. Stearns and Rolf F. Hoekstra, Evolution: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 214. 13 For numerous examples of social learning among birds and mammals that have formed their evolutionary paths, see Eytan Avital and Eva Jablonka, Animal Traditions: Behavioural Inheritance in Evolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 14 Avital and Jablonka, Animal Traditions, 310. 15 Quoted in Harold J. Morowitz, The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 132. 16 Ibid., 133 (italics added). 9

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Not only do species evolve but also their environments. In these cases, the organisms take the initiative by selecting a new environment or transforming a familiar one, with genetic and anatomic changes emerging as a result of their actions. Organisms, thus, are not passive agents as they achieve fitness within their respective environments. They can, in many cases, be niche constructors.17 Termites, for example, create a new environment by constructing mounds for shelter and climate control. Mounds, burrows, and dams are all examples of such niche construction. They are the ways animals “adjust the environment to themselves,”18 thereby “fundamentally affect[ing] the rate and the direction of genetic changes.”19 A more mundane example, perhaps, but equally illustrative is the one given by the psalmist: birds building nests (Ps 104:17). Nest-building is an interaction of both “innate and learnt” behaviors.20 The animals referenced in Psalm 104 are active agents in turning their environments into habitats, their places into niches, and all with God’s wisdom. But what about on a broader scale? What about the interconnection between life in all of its diversity and its physical environment as a whole? This question comes under the scientific scrutiny of astrobiology, a relatively new discipline that is intently multidisciplinary. According to the “NASA Astrobiology Strategy 2015” roadmap, three basic questions drive such research: (1) How does life begin and evolve? (2) Does life exist elsewhere in the universe? (3) What is the future of life on Earth and beyond?21 While the first question is standard for biology, it takes on a planetary twist in conjunction with the follow-up questions: What makes Earth habitable and inhabited by life? What are the requisite planetary conditions for life to begin and to evolve in all its complexity? Such questions remain open for further investigation. Nevertheless, some things are clear. If Earth were at all closer or farther from the sun, its life-sustaining water would have vaporized or remained frozen, thereby minimizing, if not eliminating, the prospect of advanced life from the start. Of all the planets in our solar system, only Earth has a distance that is “just right” (93 million miles from the sun) for water to remain liquid, thereby making its surface a sanctuary for life. It is precisely this living refuge that the psalmist marvels over, a world that is eminently inhabitable for many and varied forms of life. Little did the psalmist know how delicate and complex an operation it was for such a living world to emerge, astrophysically, geologically, and biologically. But such complexity is something that the psalmist would have greatly appreciated, I believe, even as the psalm takes a decidedly theological turn by attributing the flourishing, diverse character of creation to God’s generative joy. No matter. Through the lens of science, God’s sustaining joy in Psalm 104 rests on the delicate balances that support Earth’s complex ecosystems, which according to the psalm must be sustained in order for God’s joy to be sustained. The biological and ecological sciences, moreover, highlight humanity’s responsibility to sustain such balances. We now know more than ever that human flourishing at all levels, from

F. J. Odling-Smee, “Niche-Constructing Phenotypes,” in The Role of Behavior in Evolution, ed. J. C. Plotkin (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988), 73–132; and J. Odling-Smee, K. N. Laland, and M. W. Feldman, “Niche Construction,” American Naturalist 147 (1996): 641–8. 18 Avital and Jablonka, Animal Traditions, 311. 19 Ibid.,  29. 20 Ibid.,  308. 21 For the full document, see https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/uploads/filer_public/01/28/01283266-e401-4dcb-8e053918b21edb79/nasa_astrobiology_strategy_2015_151008.pdf. Accessed April 10, 2016. 17

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health to economy, depends on the planet’s biodiversity.22 For the psalmist, the value of biological diversity is validated by God, no less, and the value of human responsibility for preserving life’s diversity is pressed urgently by science. As Edward O. Wilson has said about ants, “We need them to survive, but they don’t need us at all.”23 That, of course, could be said of countless other species, botanical, zoological, bacterial. In Psalm 104, the theological value of biodiversity underlines the scientific value of sustaining biodiversity and vice versa.

JOB AND THE SCIENCE OF AWE YHWH’s answer to Job features a comparable catalogue of wild animals, from lions to Leviathan, many shared by Psalm 104. But it also adds a dramatically new layer of significance: a primordial sense of awe. While Psalm 104 celebrates the wisdom of biodiversity, acknowledging humanity’s place as one species among many others, the divine speeches in Job highlight the awe-filled alterity of creation, including the wild animals. More than in Psalm 104, these animals are described as quintessentially wild and alien. Indeed, as far as Job was concerned, they could have been creatures from another planet. In any case, the effect for Job is an experience of unmitigated awe, whose implications for interpreting the book of Job as a whole remain to be spelled out in biblical scholarship. In fact, Job’s final response to YHWH’s revelation of creation has baffled interpreters and led to misinterpretation. I submit, however, that some familiarity with neurobiology and psychology makes perfect sense of Job’s seemingly surprising response.

Job in Awe After YHWH reveals the wonders of creation, Job responds in two ways, specifically in 42:3 and 6. As for the first: Therefore, I declared what I did not understand,      things too wonderful (niplā’ōt) for me, which I did not know. Here Job admits that he has spoken out of ignorance, specifically of YHWH’s niplā’ōt, or “wonderful things.” In YHWH’s revelation of creation, Job is both bewildered and awestruck. But what has bewildered biblical interpreters are Job’s final words, which admittedly take a surprising turn. I heard you by the hearing of the ear,    but now my eye has seen you. Therefore, I withdraw24 [my case]    yet am comforted over dust and ashes. (42:6) For a full discussion, see Eric Chivian and Aaron Bernstein, eds., Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 23 Quoted in Chivian and Bernstein, “Preface,” in Sustaining Life, xi. 24 Or “retract.” The meaning of the verb (from the root m’s) is disputed. Space does not allow for a full discussion of its semantic possibilities. Briefly, I take the first line of v. 6 to be elliptical: the implied object of the verb is Job’s case against God, which signals Job’s intention to formally withdraw his case. Throughout the book of Job, the verb is typically deployed to convey rejection or refusal. This is particularly clear whenever the verb takes an object (5:17; 8:20; 9:21; 10:3; 19:18; 30:1; 31:13), but it also applies in cases where the verb stands alone, as in 34:33 and 36:5, whose objects can easily be inferred from the context, as is also the case in 42:6, which I take as Job’s retraction of his own case against God. 22

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On the face of it, Job’s final response seems counterintuitive, even absurd. Having withdrawn his lawsuit against YHWH, Job declares his sense of resolution in the language of “comfort.” Fundamentally, the verb nḥm denotes a change of heart/mind and can exhibit a wide range of meaning from regret to comfort. As in the case of the first verb in this verse (m’s), the range of ancient versions admits an uncertainty of meaning.25 But much like the first verb, the meaning that the second verb assumes elsewhere in the book contributes definitively to its meaning here. Indeed, the verb occurs six other times in Job and always with the sense of “comfort,” a prominent theme throughout the book.26 Hence, the default meaning of the verb in 42:6 is “comforted” or “find comfort,” a meaning that is not reflected in any standard English translation except the Common English Bible.27 In short, Job’s response to YHWH’s speeches reflects a seeming tension: awe bordering on fear, on the one hand, and comfort, on the other. How does one reconcile the two? Science can help. Much recent work has been done in probing the psychological and neurological dimensions of “awe.” One foundational psychological study locates the emotion of awe “in the upper reaches of pleasure and on the boundary of fear.”28 Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt identify two religious examples, one being close to that of Job’s encounter with YHWH. In the dramatic climax of the Bhagavad Gita, the hero Arjuna asks the god Krishna to see the cosmos. In gracious response, Krishna grants him a “cosmic eye” that allows him to see both Krishna, the Lord of the universe, and the universe. Arjuna is filled with wonder, and his verbal response indicates he is in a state of awe: “Things never seen before have I seen, and ecstatic is my joy; yet fear-and-trembling perturb my mind” (II.45). Or put more succinctly in a more recent translation: “Having seen what no mortal has seen, I am joyful, yet I quiver with dread.”29 Joy and fear, ecstasy and trembling: such are the polarities of awe. Keltner and Haidt ask the question: How can awe be “profoundly positive and terrifyingly negative” at the same time?30 The same could be asked of Job. To answer this question from a research-oriented perspective, Keltner and Haidt identify “two central themes of the awe family,” namely “vastness” and “accommodation.”31 The former designates anything “that is experienced being much larger than the self,” hence its affinity with overwhelming power. As the second central theme of awe, “accommodation” refers to the “process of adjusting mental structures that cannot assimilate a new experience.”32 This includes the experience of disorientation and confusion. Awe, thus, “involves the need for accommodation,” which may or may not be successful.33 They go on to say, “The success of one’s attempts at accommodation may partially explain why awe can be both terrifying (when one fails to understand) and enlightening (when one succeeds).”34

See Thomas Krüger, “Did Job Repent?,” in Das Buch Hiob und seine Interpretationen, ed. Thomas Krüger et al. (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 2007), 220–3. 26 Job 2:11; 7:13; 16:2; 21:34; 29:25; 42:11 (cf. the nominal form in 15:11). 27 The translation of “comfort” has been rigorously argued by Krüger, “Did Job Repent?,” 223–9. 28 Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt, “Approaching Awe, a Moral, Spiritual, and Aesthetic Emotion,” Cognition and Emotion 17, no. 2 (2003): 297. 29 Stephen Mitchell, trans., Bhagavad Gita: A New Translation (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2000), 141. 30 Keltner and Haidt, “Approaching Awe,” 303. 31 Ibid.,  304. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 25

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Job’s penultimate words in 42:2–3 testify to YHWH’s overwhelming power (v. 2), as well as Job’s difficulty in assimilating what YHWH has revealed to him. The central themes of awe (vastness and accommodation), moreover, provide a helpful, stereoscopic lens through which to reread YHWH’s revelation to Job. In the case of Job, the science of awe proves to be hermeneutically fruitful.

VASTNESS YHWH reveals creation to consist of domains and dimensions that extend far beyond Job’s own purview, from the “pathway to where light dwells” (38:19) to the “gates of deep darkness” (v. 17) and “recesses of the deep” (v. 16), as well as the “storehouses” of snow and hail (v. 22) and the “expanse of the earth” (v. 18). There also lies the “waste and desolate land,” where channels of rainwater irrigate the desert (vv. 25–27). Such domains testify, in Job’s earlier words, to the “outskirts of [YHWH’s] ways” (26:14), now brought front and center to his attention. YHWH has turned Job’s world not so much “inside out” as outside in. But regardless of direction, YHWH shows Job the vastness of creation. It is a world so vast that it both swallows him up and scales him down. While the cosmos according to YHWH provides Job no answer, no response to his protest of pain, it does by necessity draw Job outside of himself as he becomes lost in vast cosmic landscapes. Creation’s vastness points invariably to the One who exercises sovereign power over all creation, a God who “can do all things” and whose purposes “cannot be thwarted,” as Job’s own words testify (42:2). Earlier when YHWH invites Job to respond, all he can muster is, Look, I am so insignificant (qallōtî);     what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth.     I have spoken once, and I will not answer;       twice, I will not do it again. (40:4–5) Job’s self-professed silence and insignificance, complete with appropriate hand gesture, acknowledges YHWH’s unrivaled, superior might in comparison to himself and, for that matter, to anything else. Job’s silence, in turn, signals his state of awe. Immediately thereafter, YHWH challenges Job to do what only YHWH can do, namely act with divine power, a challenge that drips with sarcasm (40:9–14). Job is thereby put in his place; he is no equal to YHWH. Job’s perception of his low status vis-à-vis Almighty God corresponds to what Keltner and Haidt describe as “primordial awe,” that is, “the emotional reaction of a subordinate to a powerful leader.”35 Between Job and YHWH, the power differential could not be greater.

ACCOMMODATION Vastness and power cover much of the thematic substance of YHWH’s answer to Job. But what of Job’s response to such revelation? Job’s terse but telling response in 42:3 testifies to his difficulty in assimilating what YHWH has revealed to Job—what could be called

Ibid.,  306–7.

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a state of disorientation or bewilderment. The world that YHWH reveals to Job extends Job’s understanding and at the same time upturns it. Job discovers a cognitively dissonant cosmos, one that disrupts and overturns his own thinking about the world. How so? The animals are key. YHWH’s answer showcases various wild creatures, both near and far (38:39–39:30; 40:15–41:26). Each one is given its poetic due in YHWH’s cosmic collage of life. The first animal, the lion, as with nearly every creature, is introduced with a challenge cast as a question: “Can you hunt prey for the lion, or fill the appetite of the young lions?” (38:39). Such a question effectively turns Job’s world on its head. Contrary to what Job might have expected, YHWH does not challenge Job to kill the lion, as if to test his physical prowess in the face of predatory danger. Rather, YHWH challenges Job to imagine himself providing for the lion (38:39; cf. Ps 104:21). Also key for Job is the onager, or wild ass, a quintessentially free creature according to YHWH. Who has set the onager free?     Who has loosed the bonds of the wild ass, to which I have given the desert for its home,     the salt land for its dwelling place? It laughs at the city’s commotion;     it does not hear the driver’s shouts. It ranges the mountains as its pasture,     searching after all manner of greenery. (39:5–8) This onager effectively reverses Job’s cultural map: it scorns the “commotion” of the city while flourishing in the wilderness. Whereas Job views the wilderness as the domain of chaos and his own urban context as the locus of civilized order, the onager sees just the opposite. Through divine poetry, Job is invited to see the world as the onager sees it, in direct contradistinction to his own. Moreover, the onager proves itself to be far different from what Job had surmised about this creature. For Job, the onager was a convenient metaphor for struggling outcasts eking out their survival on the margins: “Like onagers in the desert they go out to their toil, scavenging for food” (24:4b). From Job’s perspective, the onager metaphorically maps the poor as pitiable scavengers subsisting in the wilderness. More harsh are Job’s words six chapters later: Among the bushes they bray     under the nettles they huddle. A senseless and nameless brood they are,     stricken from the land. (30:7–8) But from YHWH’s perspective, the onager is far from pathetic. The wilderness is its natural element; the salt lands are its “dwelling places” (39:6). In YHWH’s world, monstrous and marginal creatures are free to secure their livelihood, which they pursue fiercely and with poetically infused dignity. They are subjects unto themselves, even as they are abhorrent in Job’s sight. Finally, Job complains that he has become “a brother of jackals and a companion of ostriches” (30:29), paired animals that are emblematic of mourning and urban desolation.36 The statement is sarcastically ironic: Job has found “companionship,” as it were, in a community whose members signify only human tragedy, a companionship that Cf. Isa 13:22; 34:13; Jer 9:10; 10:22; 49:33; 51:37; Mic 1:8.

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he bitterly laments. Nevertheless, YHWH reveals to Job that he is in fact in good company with these animals of the wild, even the ostrich, who, although bereft of wisdom, stands fearlessly against the hunter, “the horse and its rider” (39:18). Ostriches and jackals are nothing to complain about, YHWH claims, yet all to wonder about. Perhaps most dissonant for Job (and to any reader) is YHWH’s validation of chaos in creation. The movement of YHWH’s revelatory answer proceeds from creation to chaos, rather than the reverse, as is typical of creation accounts, both ancient and modern.37 The monstrous figure of Leviathan marks the culmination of creation in Job. In YHWH’s world, this monster of the deep not only thrives but is also elevated to unrivaled royal status (41:26; cf. 40:11–12). It is Leviathan, not Job, much less humanity, who bears royal status. All in all, YHWH’s reconstruction of creation is not just an exercise in cognitive dissonance but an experience of cognitive implosion. Call it “mind-blowing awe.”

JOB DECENTERED The two central themes of “vastness” and “accommodation” (or the difficulty of assimilation) point to a dynamic that underlies Job’s experience of YHWH and creation: Job is decentered. Job discovers throughout this wild and vast creation that he is not centrally or hierarchically related to any of it. Indeed, one would expect in YHWH’s litany of creation some acknowledgment of human dominance over creation, as indicated in Genesis 1 or Psalm 8. But no. In fact, humanity as a species is nowhere referenced, as if it did not exist at all. The world according to YHWH forces Job to rethink who he is in relation to God and creation. He is forced to “accommodate” and, in turn, radically revise his worldview. While Keltner and Haidt offer no details about what is involved in such a process, neurologist Patrick McNamara does. He describes the phenomenon of decentering as a “temporarily decoupling of the Self from its control over executive cognitive functions,” on the one hand, and “a search for some more effective controlling agency over cognitive resources and mechanisms,” on the other.38 In being decentered, the self, in other words, loses control, or suffers a “reduction in agency,”39 and searches for another pathway that leads to integration and control. In so doing, the self enters into a liminal state that is resolved either positively or negatively. One result is that the self is “enriched, transformed, and transfigured.”40 It can also promote the self ’s “healing capacities.”41 On the negative side, “the decentering process can … lead to dangerous, disintegrative psychic states including fanaticism and psychotic and delusional states.”42 On the positive side, the process can involve “a flood of images and affects that resolves into a process of attempts at meaning and then finally insight and gratitude/joy.”43 Just ask Job.

Carol A. Newsom, “The Book of Job: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 4, ed. Leander E. Keck (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1996), 597. 38 Patrick McNamara, The Neuroscience of Religious Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2009), 5. 39 Ibid.,  143. 40 Ibid.,  5. 41 Ibid.,  6. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid., 143. McNamara goes on to describe how decentering is mediated chemically in the brain, including a reduction in serotonin, which inhibits executive control over matters of cognitive control or “prefrontal-temporal cortical function” (143), as well as a heightening of limbic activity (144). 37

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BACK TO JOB For better or worse, the book of Job is not a clinical report. Little is said in the poetry or prose about Job psychologically, much less neurologically. Nevertheless, some awareness of the psychological and neurological factors of experiencing awe is helpful in noting certain features of the biblical account that may otherwise be overlooked, and perhaps even account for the greatest puzzle in the text. We have already noted the most disputed verse in the entire book: “Therefore, I withdraw [my case] yet am comforted over dust and ashes” (42:6). Scholars have typically resisted this most obvious translation precisely because it seems so counterintuitive. How could Job find “comfort” in the face of YHWH’s ego-crushing, decentering revelation? According to our psychologists and neurologists, however, an experience of awe can be both “profoundly positive and terrifyingly negative,” resulting in a new configuration of the self. For Job, it was both, an experience that in the end turned out to be profoundly positive, that is, “comforting.” Where, then, does Job find such comfort in YHWH’s harsh answer? At one point, YHWH implores Job to direct his attention to Behemoth in 40:15: “Voila Behemoth, which I made with you!” Job, it seems, shares a connection “with” the monstrous Behemoth. While the force of the preposition remains open to interpretation, the question remains: why would YHWH mention Job at all in connection with the “first of God’s acts” (v. 19), unless it was something significantly worth noting, perhaps even “comforting”? Perhaps the preposition is simply temporal in nuance (“along with” or “at the same time of ”). Or perhaps it connotes a fraternal connection, such as the one Job complains about with the jackals and ostriches (30:29). In any case, Behemoth and Job are deemed fellow creatures, and so by extension all the creatures of the wild. For all the alien otherness of creation, Job finds his place in the company of those creatures. Regardless of the implications, this single preposition invites reflection on what Job shares with these creatures of the wild, beginning with Behemoth: alien identity, resistance to control, fierceness. In YHWH’s creation, Job not only discovers himself sharing common creaturehood with the wild; he also sees something of himself in each of these creatures, all sharing in the irrepressible exercise of life. In other words, in his bewilderment Job is “be-wilded” and, thus, comforted. Using the language of Keltner and Haidt, Job successfully “accommodated” YHWH’s revelation of creation, and, in the language of McNamara, was “decentered.” And what was “profoundly positive” for Job in the process was his newfound “comfort.”

JOB BACK HOME In the conclusion of their study, Keltner and Haidt speculate on the distinctly social consequences of awe: As the examples of Arjuna and St. Paul suggest, awe can transform people and reorient their lives, goals, and values. Given the stability of personality and values …, aweinducing events may be one of the fastest and most powerful methods of personal change and growth.44

Keltner and Haidt, “Approaching Awe,” 312.

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In more recent studies, such “change and growth” frequently leads to greater humility and compassion.45 If experiences of awe have such consequences, both psychologically and socially, what are they for Job’s character within the larger scope of the narrative? It is a question that is scarcely raised in Joban scholarship, but science prompts such a line of inquiry. Is Job any different after his encounter with YHWH and creation’s self-revelation? Hebrew narrative typically says little about the emotional and cognitive inner workings of its characters. Nevertheless, a clue can be found in the epilogue, in which we find a very different Job at play (42:7–17). The consequential power of awe directs the reader’s attention not so much to Job’s new life, restored as it is, but to Job’s new way of life, as indicated by one single yet very telling act. Job, the patriarch, commits an unconventional act by sharing his inheritance with his three daughters (42:15). In biblical antiquity, the family’s wealth was passed on to the sons, while the daughters had to marry outside the family as a matter of economic survival. But not in Job’s household. What Job cares about is the dignity and economic well-being of all his children, daughters and sons alike, much like YHWH’s care for all the creatures of the wild, a gratuitous care in the face of radical alterity. In his journey of awe, Job moves from his sense of insignificance vis-à-vis the vastness of creation and the overwhelming power of the creator to a state of comfort over his smallness in light of his newfound connection to creation and finally to a self-transformation that, in turn, transforms his entire household. Through this experience of primordial awe, Job is enabled to reconstruct his familial “niche,” as it were, in a whole new way.

Jake Abrahamson, “The Science of Awe: Can Psychologists Chart What Happens When Nature Blows Your Mind?” Sierra (October 2, 2014). Accessed from https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2014-6-november-december/ feature/science-awe. 45

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CHAPTER THREE

Aristotle’s Sciences Inquiring into Nature and the Divine ANNE SIEBELS PETERSON

ARISTOTLE’S THEORETICAL SCIENCES: AN UNSOLVED MYSTERY? The disciplines that we know today as natural science, metaphysics, and theology each count as a science in the Aristotelian sense of the term [ἐπιστήμη], as they are all branches of knowledge. They are also theoretical sciences, concerned purely with understanding rather than with action or production, in contrast to what Aristotle calls practical or productive sciences.1 However, in order to properly clarify the relationships between these disciplines for Aristotle, some terminological clarifications are in order. First, “metaphysics” is not Aristotle’s term at all but one imposed at a later date on the treatise in which Aristotle discusses a science that he initially refers to as wisdom [σοφία].2 As he goes on to clarify the content of this science, he tells us that it will pursue wisdom of the first kind, or wisdom in an unqualified sense of the term. It is the first science, and accordingly, the pursuit of this science will be first philosophy [φιλοσοφία πρώτη]. What we have come to call metaphysics is thus, in Aristotle’s own terminology, the first science or the discipline of first philosophy.3

Mathematics is another theoretical science for Aristotle, but it is not my main focus here. Aristotle’s concept of ἐπιστήμη is developed initially in the Posterior Analytics, but employed, along with the concept of wisdom or σοφία, in his discussions of the nature of the first science in the treatise that has come down to us as the Metaphysics. 2 Metaphysics I.1, 981b29. 3 Aristotle develops his generic conception of a science in the Prior Analytics and Posterior Analytics. Some have argued that Aristotle’s first science fails to meet the constraints of his generic conception of a science from the Analytics, instead representing a new kind of science; see Walter Leszl, Aristotle’s Conception of Ontology (Padua: Editrice Antenore, 1975); and Terence Irwin, Aristotle’s First Principles (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). That argument, however, has been compellingly challenged; see R. Bolton, “Aristotle’s Conception of Metaphysics as a Science,” in Unity, Identity, and Explanation in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, ed. T. Scaltsas, D. Charles, and M. L. Gill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 321–3, 353–4; and M. Frede, “The Unity of General and Special Metaphysics: Aristotle’s Conception of Metaphysics,” in Essays on Ancient Philosophy, ed. M. Frede (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 91–3. 1

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Second and accordingly, the pursuit of natural science for Aristotle is natural philosophy as opposed to first philosophy. He tells us that it differs from first philosophy because the sort of wisdom it pursues is not wisdom of the first, or unqualified, kind but rather wisdom in a qualified sense.4 For Aristotle, then, the disciplines that we call metaphysics and natural science are both sciences, and the pursuit of each of them counts as philosophy. Contrast arises not between philosophy and science as such but only between the terms “natural” and “first,” and thus between natural science (φυσικὴ) and the first science (πρώτη ἐπιστήμη), or between natural philosophy and first philosophy. And as we shall soon see, Aristotle is mysteriously open to the idea that even that contrast may fall away in the end. Third, Aristotle employs the label “theology” not in order to introduce a third separate discipline in addition to natural science and his first science, but rather simply as one possible characterization of his first science. He begins by offering a more general characterization of the first science as the science of the first causes [πρῶτα αἴτια] and principles [ἀρχὰι], emphasizing that these may turn out to be divine things and that if they do then the first science will be theology. Therefore, theology cannot turn out to be a science separate from Aristotle’s first science. If theology is a science at all, then it is the same science as the first science, or what we have come to call metaphysics. Although Aristotle in the end affirms the importance of what we know as natural science, metaphysics, and theology, for him these amount to two rather than three separate sciences. For Aristotle ultimately considers the study of divine things to be under the provenance of the same discipline originally introduced as the first science. To add madness to mystery, the early books of the Metaphysics do not merely characterize the first science as the science of the first things. They also characterize it as the science of being qua being, that is, as a perfectly general or universal science that studies everything there is just insofar as it is a being, rather than through some more specific lens applying only to a limited subset of the things there are. Naturally enough, after offering these two different characterizations of his first science, the science of the first things and the science of everything, Aristotle explicitly voices the looming objection: can a single science really answer to both characterizations, or must we choose? Is the first science a universal science of being qua being, or is it a science of just one subset of beings, namely, whatever class of beings turns out to be first?5 In response to his imagined objector, Aristotle not only denies that there is any conflict between these two characterizations of his first science but also goes so far as to claim that the first science will be universal because it is first.6 How could a single discipline be at once the science of all beings, a universal science, and the science of a specific subset of beings, the first causes and principles? Even more mysteriously, how could its status as the science of the first things explain its status as a universal science? This question has an embattled history in Aristotelian scholarship. I will argue that prominent ways of answering it do not pay sufficient heed to Aristotle’s own first step in answering it. Immediately after stating the objection, the first claim Aristotle makes in addressing it is the conditional claim that if everything were formed by nature (i.e., if there were no divine beings), then natural science would be the first science.7 How is this conditional claim about natural science relevant to the answer he etaphysics I.1, 1005b1–2. M Metaphysics VI.1, 1026a23–27. 6 Metaphysics VI.1, 1026a29–31. 7 Metaphysics VI.1, 1026a27–29. 4 5

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goes on to give, namely, that the first science’s status as universal is due to its status as first? I will show that if we begin where Aristotle begins in answering this question, with this mystifying claim that natural science could have been the first science, we uncover an overlooked explanation of how Aristotle’s first science could be universal because it is first: not, as many have assumed, because of some feature specific to the theological beings that Aristotle in the end takes to be the first beings, but rather because of more generic considerations about what studying the first things qua first amounts to. On this new way of accounting for the universality of Aristotle’s first science, or what we now call his metaphysics, a large part of the importance of that science turns out to lie not so much in the particular conclusions it comes to about natural or divine objects but moreso in the methodological stance it adopts to investigate the world, natural and divine alike. Indeed, I will argue, this stance is of paramount importance for what we think of as science and metaphysics today.

UNIVERSAL BECAUSE FIRST: THE PROBLEM AND ITS PREVIOUS RESOLUTIONS We have seen that Aristotle’s first science, what we now call his metaphysics, is a twoheaded beast whose status as the science of everything is somehow due to its status as the science of the first causes and principles. The mysterious dual nature of this science has incited centuries of debate, not only over how its status as universal could be, as Aristotle claims it is, due to its status as first, but even over whether a single science could fulfill both of these characterizations at all. The project of this section is to scrutinize the context of Aristotle’s dual characterization of the first science and his even more puzzling claim that the first science will be universal because it is first, motivating the problem that scholars have identified with these claims and mapping out some prominent contours of the literature on this issue, to pave the way for the contrasting explanation I will propose in the next section. Metaphysics I.1 characterizes the first science as a science that will study the first causes and principles, that is, as a discipline that studies a certain subset of all the beings there are, namely, whichever ones turn out to be first causes or principles. In I.2, the seemingly contrasting characterization of the first science as a universal science, one that will address “all things,” arises.8 In IV.1–2, Aristotle delves into the details of what it means to be the science of all things. It is to be the science that does not “cut off a part of being and investigate the attributes of this part,” but rather investigates “being as being.”9 Then in VI, as we have seen, he brings these two characterizations together and insists that they not only fail to conflict, but indeed, one follows from the other. Aristotle begins Metaphysics VI by first reminding us that the discipline underway is universal, or investigates being as being. Natural science, by contrast, “confines itself to one class of beings, i.e. to that sort of substance which has the principle of its movement and rest present in itself.”10 More intuitively, the point is that natural science only concerns movable things, and relatedly—since for Aristotle everything movable has matter—it etaphysics VI.1, 982a8. M Metaphysics VI.1, 1003a22, 25. All translations of Aristotle’s texts are from Jonathan Barnes, ed., The Complete Works of Aristotle:  The Revised Oxford Translation, 6th ed., 2 vols. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984). 10 Metaphysics VI.1, 1025b19–21. 8 9

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only concerns things that are “not separable from matter.”11 Thus, if there were anything separable from matter or immovable, studying it would be the job of a science “prior” to natural science: [If] there is something which is eternal and immovable and separable [from matter], clearly the knowledge of it belongs to a theoretical science—not, however, to natural science (for natural science deals with certain movable things) nor to mathematics, but to a science prior (προτέραν) to both. For natural science deals with things which are inseparable from matter but not immovable, and some parts of mathematics deal with things which are immovable, but probably not separable, but embodied in matter; while the first (πρώτη) science deals with things which are both separable and immovable … the highest genus [my emphasis].12 In this passage, Aristotle has been read as shifting from characterizing the first science as universal to characterizing it as departmental or specialized—that is, as dealing not with everything but rather with a certain subset of all the things there are, namely, things that are both separable and immovable. The question thus arises: which is it? Is the first science the universal science of being qua being, or is it the specialized science of the first beings (i.e., the highest genus, those beings that are prior to all other beings)? Aristotle does not overlook this looming point of confusion but explicitly broaches the dilemma at hand, and it is in doing so that he makes his mystifying claim that the first science will be universal because it is first: One might indeed raise the question whether first philosophy is universal, or deals with one genus, i.e. some one kind of being; for not even the mathematical sciences are all alike in this respect—geometry and astronomy deal with a certain particular kind of thing, while universal mathematics applies alike to all. We answer that if there is no substance other than those which are formed by nature, natural science will be the first science; but if there is an immovable substance, the science of this must be prior and must be first philosophy, and universal in this way, because it is first. And it will belong to this to consider being qua being—both what it is and the attributes which belong to it qua being.13 A significant amount of scholarship in the earlier twentieth century argued that Aristotle’s first science simply could not be at once the science of everything and the science of the first causes and principles, attributing these differing characterizations of the discipline to an interpolated text or to different stages of Aristotle’s career.14 Such ways of addressing the conflict at hand, however, have rightly gone out of fashion, for they cannot account for the fact that, as we can see in this key passage at the end of Metaphysics VI.1, Aristotle etaphysics VI.1, 1025b28–29. M Metaphysics VI.1, 1026a10–21. 13 Metaphysics VI.1, 1026a24–32. 14 See Paul Natorp, “Thema und Disposition der aristotelischen Metaphysik,” Philosophische Monatshefte 24 (1887): 37–65, 540–74; see also Werner Jaeger, Studien zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Metaphysik des Aristoteles (Berlin: Weidmann, 1912). Natorp argues that the passages that explain the first science in terms of theology are later interpolations into Aristotle’s text, while Jaeger argues that such passages represent an earlier stage in Aristotle’s career after which Aristotle shifted toward an understanding of first philosophy as the science of everything. For a detailed case against each of these views, see G. Patzig, “Theology and Ontology in Aristotle’s Metaphysics,” in Articles on Aristotle: Metaphysics, vol. 3, ed. Jonathan Barnes, Malcolm Schofield, and Richard Sorabji (London: Gerald Duckworth, 1979), 35–7. 11 12

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himself simply does not see a conflict between his two characterizations of the discipline. In one and the same breath, he not only asserts their compatibility but also adds that one characterization is the reason for the other.15 A compelling account of Aristotle’s remarks at the end of Metaphysics VI, then, must do more than motivate the mere compatibility of these two characterizations of the first science (a task that has seemed difficult enough in itself!). It must further explain why Aristotle thinks that the universality of the first science is due to its priority. How could its focus on the first or highest things explain its applicability to everything? How could it be that by investigating the first things qua first, we thereby investigate all the things there are? To put the question yet another way, why would the universality of the science under consideration follow directly from the fact that it studies the first things? The Latin commentators on Aristotle, in particular Thomas Aquinas, offer an explanation for why Aristotle here takes the science of the first things to be thus connected with the science of everything, but tend to stop short of identifying the science of the first things with the science of everything. Aquinas straightforwardly denies that God is the object of Aristotle’s science of being qua being (i.e., Aristotle’s universal science of everything), which Aquinas refers to as metaphysics; instead, Aquinas claims, the object of metaphysics as such is only being in general.16 The science of the first things qua first is merely a part of the science of being qua being, though of course a necessary and central part of that science, since divine substances alone are (at least in a nonproximate sense) causes of all beings. In Aquinas’s view, it is because of the causal primacy of the first beings that a full explanation of all beings requires an appeal to the first beings. However, the science of the first things is not one and the same science as the science of everything, just a central part of that science.17 Perhaps the most prominent account of the relationship between these two characterizations of first philosophy that does identify the science of everything with the science of the first things, as Aristotle’s own words seem to imply, is the account developed by G. Patzig. Patzig appeals to the fact that what turns out to be “first” for See M. Frede, “The Unity of General and Special Metaphysics: Aristotle’s Conception of Metaphysics,” in Unity, Identity, and Explanation in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, ed. T. Scaltsas, D. Charles, and M. L. Gill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 83–4. As Frede there puts the point, “Any interpretation has to start from the fact that it is clear from Aristotle’s own remarks that Aristotle himself does not see a conflict between the two notions. Though [VI.1] introduces in addition to physics and mathematics, a theoretical science of separate, unchanging substances as the object of our study, he, right from the beginning of the chapter, also talks as if he were still concerned with the universal discipline introduced in [IV] which studies being as such, and not just a particular kind of being (1025b9–10). And toward the end of Chapter 1, he faces the issue squarely by pointing out that there is a problem of whether first philosophy is universal or particular. But, obviously, for Aristotle this is not much of a problem. For, hardly having raised it, he settles it by the succinct remark: ‘it is universal in this way because it is first’ ” (1026a30–31). 16 Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle, trans. John P. Rowan (Chicago: H. Regnery, 1961), 2. 17 This line of thought has been defended more recently by Shane Duarte, who defends it by appeal to the nature of scientific understanding for Aristotle: 15

Since scientific understanding of an object requires an understanding of its causes, both proximate and remote, the science that studies these first things will be universal in the sense that an understanding of them will be involved in the understanding of any being—either because that being is one of the first beings or because it is causally dependent on them. (S. Duarte, “Aristotle’s Theology and Its Relation to the Science of Being qua Being,” Apeiron 40, no. 3 [2020]: 313) It has also been recently defended by J. Follon, “Le concept de philosophie première dans la ‘Metaphysique’ d’Aristote,” La Revue Philosophique de Louvain 90 (1992): 387–421.

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Aristotle is the unmoved mover, and while it does not depend on any other thing for its existence, all other things depend on it for their existence. “Such a science deals principally … with that … ‘first’ on which the other things depend. … This completes Aristotle’s proof of his claim in VI.1 that ‘first philosophy’ as theology is at the same time general ontology.”18 In other words, because Aristotle’s unmoved mover alone is ontologically independent, while all other beings are ontologically dependent on it, an understanding of the being of the unmoved mover is required for an understanding of the being of everything.19 Due to this asymmetrical relation of ontological dependence that holds between the unmoved mover and all other things, Patzig claims, to study the first things is also to study everything.20 Michael Frede’s way of understanding Aristotle’s resolution elaborates on Patzig’s basic insight.21 He appeals to the same asymmetrical dependency relation between the unmoved mover and all other things, but highlights the epistemic or explanatory dimension of this relation (rather than, as Patzig does, its existential or ontological dimension) as the reason why Aristotle’s first science is universal because it is first. We have seen Aristotle insisting that if there turn out to be objects that are neither tied inseparably to matter nor subject to motion, those objects will be prior to, or higher than, other objects. Now Aristotle’s unmoved mover as introduced in Metaphysics XII turns out to possess both of these marks of priority, which we have just seen Aristotle denying to natural things. As Frede interprets this point, natural things, due to their motion and dependence on matter, have a qualified rather than an unqualified way of being, while the unmoved mover alone among all the things there are has an unqualified way of being since the unmoved mover is both independent of matter and immovable. The upshot is that all other ways of being turn out to be intelligible only as qualified versions of the unqualified way of being engaged in by the unmoved mover, so that we can only fully understand or explain the (qualified) being of other things once we understand the (unqualified) being of that which is first, Aristotle’s unmoved mover. As Frede summarizes his argument, “t‌heology deals with beings of a certain kind, namely, separate substances. But in doing so, it also deals with a particular kind or way of being, a way of being peculiar to divine substances. … It turns out that this way of being is the one in terms of which all other ways of being have to be explained.”22 To explain why the first science indeed studies everything by studying what is first, Patzig and Frede both appeal to a special feature of that object that turns out to be peculiar to Aristotle’s first science, his unmoved mover. They appeal to a feature in virtue of which that object has priority

atzig, “Theology and Ontology,” 45. P In more detail, it is well-known that Aristotle in the Categories and again in Metaphysics IV maintains that accidents (such as quantities, qualities, and relations) cannot exist apart from substances (such as Socrates or Lassie). Although being is, for Aristotle, equivocal—there is no such thing as just plain being, but only more specific categories of being—one among those more specific categories is primary and includes those beings on which all other beings depend for their existence. In short, being, for Aristotle, has focal equivocity, or what Patzig calls paronymy (opposed to both synonymy and mere homonymy), with a focus on the category of substance—that category which alone among all the categories is fully independent. Patzig argues that just as accidents cannot exist apart from substances, so sensible substances (like Socrates and Lassie) cannot exist apart from divine substances (the unmoved mover). Thus, all beings depend on the unmoved mover (either directly, as in the case of non-divine substances, or indirectly, as in the case of accidents). 20 Of course, to study the first things is to study everything merely insofar as it is a being, so as not to infringe on the territory of other sciences that study those objects in more specific ways. 21 Frede, “Unity of Metaphysics,” 83. 22 Ibid.,  84. 18 19

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over all things, with Patzig focusing on the ontological priority of the unmoved mover and Frede focusing on the epistemic or explanatory priority of the unmoved mover.23 There is certainly much to be said for each of these explanations of how Aristotle’s first science could be, as Aristotle claims it to be, universal because it is first. Patzig’s view appeals to an ontological priority of the objects peculiar to the first science. Frede’s view appeals to the epistemic or explanatory priority of the objects peculiar to the first science: the way of being possessed by the divine is intelligible apart from any other way of being, but not the reverse. And the earlier view championed by Aquinas and other Latin commentators on Aristotle appeals to the causal priority of the objects peculiar to the first science. It is not my aim here to develop a critical case against any particular one of these explanations, much less against all three. I will instead argue for the positive claim that whatever the other strengths (or weaknesses) of these dominant explanations may be, they all overlook or at least fail to emphasize one key reason why Aristotle takes his first science to be “universal because it is first.” For a (if not the) central reason why Aristotle’s first science is “universal because it is first” arises from the methodology peculiar to the first science, rather than from ontological, epistemological, or causal facts about the objects that turn out to be peculiar to the first science, namely, divine objects.24 I will argue that the methodology peculiar to the science of the first things is also a universal methodology, a methodology that illuminates all the things there are. The upshot will be a conception of Aristotle’s first science on which it is of ongoing relevance for science more generally.

UNIVERSAL BECAUSE FIRST: THE METHODOLOGY OF ARISTOTLE’S FIRST SCIENCE Why should we think that the reason for the universality of Aristotle’s first science has to do mainly with its methodology rather than with some feature of the objects that turn out to be peculiar to it (e.g., some causal, ontological, or epistemic feature of the unmoved mover)? To uncover a key motivation for this new way of answering the question of how metaphysics can be universal because it is first, we need only begin where Aristotle himself begins immediately after stating the question of whether the first science is universal or instead deals with some subset of all beings, that is, with his mystifying conditional claim about natural science: “We answer that if there is no substance other than those which are formed by nature, natural science will be the first science.”25 Surprisingly, Patzig’s analysis of why the first science is universal because it is first references but never discusses this claim.26 And Frede’s analysis (which, as we have seen, builds on Patzig’s) does little more with it. Like Patzig, Frede never draws on this claim in articulating what he takes to be the explanation of why first philosophy is universal because it is first. He goes no further in his discussion of this claim than to offer the following interpretation of these mystifying lines: “w‌ere it not for the assumed fact Precursors to Patzig’s and Frede’s general way of viewing Aristotle’s resolution are articulated in W. D. Ross, Aristotle (London: Routledge, 1995), 163 (first published in 1923); and H. von Arnim, “Zu W. Jaegers Grundlegung der Entwicklungsgeschichte des Aristoteles,” Wien. Stud. XLVI (1928): 20. 24 Whether this overlooked reason is consistent with or in conflict with any of the dominant explanations in the scholarly literature is not a question I will pursue here; I will simply argue that it is overlooked by those explanations. 25 Metaphysics VI.1, 1026a27–29. 26 Patzig, “Theology and Ontology.” 23

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that there are substances prior to natural substances, metaphysics would be part of physics [i.e. natural philosophy] and hence physics [i.e. natural philosophy] would be first philosophy.”27 But what does Frede mean by the term “metaphysics,” which is not Aristotle’s term? And what is meant by the associated language of parthood, which does not arise in Aristotle’s text? Further, why would having metaphysics be a part of natural science make natural science first philosophy? Frede delves no further into these details, leaving the claim unilluminated. Only once we properly understand this underemphasized text at 1026a27–29 do we find that it harbors a (if not the) central key for understanding the peculiar nature of Aristotle’s first science, including a new way of answering our key question of how that science could be universal because first. As we have seen, this text follows immediately after Aristotle has articulated the question at hand: “whether first philosophy is universal, or deals with one genus, i.e. some one kind of being; for not even the mathematical sciences are all alike in this respect—geometry and astronomy deal with a certain particular kind of thing, while universal mathematics applies alike to all.”28 Moreover, this text is explicitly prefaced with the words “we answer that,” alerting us that Aristotle takes this claim to play a key role in motivating and explaining his own answer, that the first science is universal because first. The either-or framing of the question at hand is clearly motivated by the background intuition or assumption that a science that deals with the peculiarities of a certain subset of beings cannot also deal with every being. There is certainly much to be said for this intuition, as Aristotle himself surely agrees that it applies in the case of many sciences. To give just one example, the science pursued in Aristotle’s De Anima (a precursor to the science today known as psychology, but with a broader domain that includes the capacities associated with plant life as well as what we today think of as more properly psychic capacities) must investigate its objects just insofar as they are psychic. To the extent that it fails to achieve this focus, it will not be functioning as the science of psychology but rather as some more general science. But given that it is genuinely focusing just on psychic features, it will thereby overlook anything that lacks such features. Since many things do lack such features, psychology must have a restricted scope. It simply cannot be a universal science, cannot be a science of being qua being. Intuitively, the point seems to generalize: how could any science that focuses in on the features definitive of a particular subset of all beings thereby study all beings? The explanations we have seen thus far zero in on some special feature (ontological, epistemic, or causal) possessed by divine beings and argue that this feature explains how the science that studies them could also be universal. What Aristotle goes out of his way to tell us in his mystifying claim about natural science, however, is that we do not antecedently rede, “Unity of Metaphysics,” 86. F Metaphysics VI.1, 1026a24–26. To clarify the question at hand, Aristotle uses a subset of the theoretical sciences—the mathematical sciences—as an analogy for the theoretical sciences in general. When it comes to mathematics, there is “universal mathematics,” which concerns all mathematical objects, in addition to the more specific mathematical sciences that concern the specifics of delimited subsets of mathematical objects (such as geometry). Just so, Aristotle intends for the reader to draw the analogy that when it comes to the theoretical sciences more generally, it may likewise turn out that there is one theoretical science that concerns all beings, in addition to the more specific theoretical sciences—of which sort is the first science? Precisely what “universal mathematics” could be is of course a debated question, but not one relevant for my argument here. See section 8, “Universal Mathematics,” of H. Mendell, “Aristotle and Mathematics,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2017 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta. Available at . 27 28

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know what the objects of the first science will wind up to be; rather, we learn what they are by engaging in the first science. This suggests that explanations of the universality of the first science which appeal to some feature peculiar to divine beings as such put the cart before the horse. Perhaps, to find what is at root distinctive about Aristotle’s first science, we should not look to the features peculiar to divine beings as such. Where then should we look to find what is really distinctive about that science? The significance of Aristotle’s mystifying claim about natural science for answering this question, along with the question of how the first science could be universal because it is first, has been underestimated. What this claim highlights is just how drastically the nature of Aristotle’s first science differs from the nature of other theoretical sciences (namely, natural science and mathematics). To bring out the relevant difference, we must first clarify how natural science and mathematics are defined and differentiated from each other. It is well established that for Aristotle, natural science and mathematics do not differ from each other by studying numerically different sets of objects. Both alike study natural objects, but focus on different features of natural objects. Whereas natural science studies natural objects as such, that is, insofar as they are movable and inseparable from matter, mathematics studies quantitative features of those same objects. In so doing it ignores the motion and material from which those quantitative features are in fact inseparable, studying them only qua immovable and qua separate from matter. As Emily Katz puts the point: What distinguishes mathematical study from the investigations of the natural scientist is that the mathematician studies sensible objects not as sensible but rather as lengths, as planes, as figures, and so on. Aristotle explains that just as there are properties peculiar to animals in virtue of their being male or female, so there are properties that are true of things as lengths or as planes. Thus, we need not posit … a separate “length” or “plane” apart from sensible things (M 3, 1077b17–8a9). Mathematical objects are simply sensible objects treated as numbers and as geometrical objects.29 Natural science and mathematics can study numerically the same objects, but they study them in different ways, as they focus on different features of their objects. For example, the natural scientist would study a hedgehog by examining all the inner workings and movements of its different organs. The mathematician, by contrast, would ignore such things and study the hedgehog just insofar as it is (say) spherical. The two sciences are defined and differentiated from each other not extensionally (i.e., not by the simple fact of numerically what objects each one studies) but rather intensionally, by the more refined fact of what features of those objects each one focuses on. And for each of these sciences Aristotle specifies precisely what features are relevant. In terms of general structure, the definition of the science underway in the Metaphysics follows suit: as natural science studies things qua movable and (since motion requires matter) qua inseparable from matter, and mathematics studies things qua immovable and thus qua separable from matter, the first science studies things qua first and (because of this) qua being. The mere structural similarity of these claims, however, is deceiving; for what Aristotle tells us at 1026a27–29 is that unlike the terms “natural” and “mathematical,” “first” is not, just by definition, associated with any determinate feature or set of features. Depending on what the world turns out to be like (e.g., whether there Emily Katz, “Aristotle’s Critique of Platonist Mathematical Objects: Two Test Cases from Metaphysics M 2,” Apeiron 46, no. 1 (2012): 29. 29

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are any divine things), the first science as such may study things qua immovable and separable from matter (and thus be theology), or it may study things qua movable and inseparable from matter (and thus be natural science). This line has been glossed over in the scholarly literature, but if we take it seriously at the start, it emphasizes that the term “first” is a placeholder. It does not by definition pick out a set feature as that feature in virtue of which first philosophy as such investigates its objects.30 Not only is there no overlap between each of these pairs of features that could characterize the objects of the first science, but the features comprising one pair are direct opposites of those comprising the other pair. Yet either way the discipline at hand would count as the first science! While many have moved immediately to understanding “first” here in terms of the objects Aristotle in the end takes to be first, divine objects, my claim is that Aristotle’s use of “first,” rather than of some term definitionally tied to theology, is significant for understanding the nature of the science underway and in particular for understanding why that science is universal because first. And neither, relatedly, is the term “being” (in the alternate characterization of first philosophy as the science of being qua being) associated by definition with a single determinate feature. For as Aristotle repeats time and again, and as is well-established in the scholarly literature, “being” is “said in many ways.” It is an ambiguous term that could refer on a given occasion to any one of the more specific categories of being to which Aristotle is committed.31 Neither the characterization of the first science as the science of things qua first nor the characterization of it as the science of things qua beings picks out a single antecedently determined feature or features as that in virtue of which first philosophy as such investigates its objects. “Being” and “first” alike are, for Aristotle, terms whose specific referent is indeterminate; under neither descriptor, then, is the science underway in what we know as the Metaphysics confined just by definition to studying theological objects as such. Rather, it will study whatever objects turn out to be first, divine or natural. The existence of the first science does not stand or fall with the existence of any predetermined class of objects; it is ineliminable. The first science is the only science not defined in terms of some fully predetermined feature (or set of features) whereby it investigates its objects. The upshot, for my purposes, is that the first science differs from others most notably in its methodology. Since the first science is the only science not defined as such by whatever specific feature or set of features its ultimate objects happen to have in the end, but only by the more generic features “first” and “being,” it is therefore the only science that asks, rather than assumes, what its ultimate objects are and what more specific features they have. To be sure, it assumes that there are beings, and that some among those beings are first; but just by definition, it assumes nothing more determinate about their nature. Its endgame is figuring out what the “first” or “highest” objects might be in their fully determinate nature. The first science is not defined as such in the way that more specific theoretical sciences are defined, that is, in terms of a fully determinate feature (or set of features) Aristotle discusses various senses of priority in Metaphysics V.11. There he states that things that are prior “in the sense of nature and substance” are those “which can be without other things, while the others cannot be without them” (1019a3–4). My suggestion is that the “first” things are just the limiting cases of such priority, the things such that they can be without any other things while all other things cannot be without them. If divine substances do exist, they will satisfy this description; if they do not, then natural substances will satisfy this description. 31 For more details about this claim and its implications, see Franz Brentano, On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle (Berkeley: University of California Press), 3–5. 30

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whereby it investigates its objects. The first science may turn out to investigate things qua immovable and separable from matter, or qua precisely the opposite pair of features! What defines it as the first science is just that it seeks the first things—those things such that the starting points or principles proper to their investigation have no further starting points or principles beyond them. These, whatever they are in their fully determinate nature (divine or natural), will be the objects proper to the first science. Only once their nature is illuminated will the project of the first science be complete. We can now return to our key question of how Aristotle’s first science could be universal because first. I have argued that the first science is distinctive in its methodology; for it is the only science that can actively seek, rather than assume, what its objects (the first things) are in their fully determinate nature. In Metaphysics VI.11, Aristotle claims that things that are prior “in the sense of nature and substance” are those “which can be without other things, while the others cannot be without them.”32 How, accordingly, would one go about seeking the first things? This passage suggests an answer: by continually asking the question on what further objects the objects we already know depend for their existence. One would then ask the same question of the class of objects that answers that question, and so on, until one arrives at objects that do not harbor any dependency relations to some further class of objects. The final stage of the first science would be to investigate the nature of those objects, but only the final stage; and to get to this stage one must investigate all beings, asking what dependency relations each class of beings might have upon some further class of beings. Failure to investigate all beings will result in failure to know whether the objects one ultimately arrives at genuinely are first or not. As we put the dilemma above, how could any science that focuses in on the features definitive of a particular subset of all beings thereby study all beings? How could the first science be an exception to this otherwise compelling rule? This question indeed seems difficult to answer if we are defining the first science as the science that focuses on some feature peculiar to the class of objects it winds up investigating, such as the causal, ontological, or explanatory priority of divine objects. I have argued that the key reason why Aristotle’s first science is universal because first is that it seeks after the first things just insofar as they are first (whatever they may turn out to be), not because it studies divine objects insofar as they are divine. What is central to the first science qua first is not any feature or features peculiar to divine beings qua divine, but rather its methodology. This methodology is distinctive because it involves actively looking beyond the assumed starting points or principles that constrain other sciences in open-minded pursuit of the question of what (perhaps yet unstudied) beings other beings might depend upon and, relatedly, of what new modes of investigation those beings might require (such as the theological mode of investigation).33 We cannot engage in the search after the “first” or “highest” beings without studying all beings, since the first beings just are those beings on which all others depend.34 Whether they

etaphysics VI.11, 1019a3–4. M Whether there is anything beyond the reach of the starting points of the other sciences is an open question; but the first science is not defined by what the answer turns out to be. It is defined by the fact that it alone has a methodology adequate to pursuing this question. In the end, the results of first philosophy may be that natural science is competent to address all the things there are (and in this sense is first philosophy), or that natural science is not competent to address all the things there are (and in this sense is not first philosophy). 34 This characterization of Aristotle’s first science would lead us to expect that in Aristotle’s treatise that we now know as the Metaphysics, we should find references to claims developed in many of the more specific 32 33

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turn out to be divine or natural is a conclusion, not a presupposition, of Aristotle’s first science.35

THE ONGOING RELEVANCE OF ARISTOTLE’S FIRST SCIENCE I have argued that the universality of Aristotle’s first science arises in key part from its distinctive methodology. No other theoretical science is defined in a way that does not antecedently determine precisely which features it investigates. It is the only science whose existence is not, by definition, tied to any specific feature (or set of features) of its objects—only to the generic feature of being first. If no objects turn out to be natural then there is no natural science. If no objects turn out to be mathematical then there is no mathematics. But the first science does not stand or fall with whether any objects turn out to have or not have any certain feature or set of features. It will stand no matter what the world turns out to be like. It is the only ineliminable science. Since it alone does not stand or fall with the applicability or inapplicability of the starting points of any particular science, it is the only science that can question the limits of the assumed starting points that constrain each of the other sciences. Drawing on texts from Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, James Lennox notes that “one of the most difficult aspects of science is, Aristotle opines, determining whether we have proven something from principles appropriate to it.”36 Aristotle’s first science is, in my view, the only science in whose purview it is to ask whether and when a certain science may be overextending its principles into domains it is not competent to address, whether into the domain of a different already established science or of a science yet to be established. This is because the first science is the only science that investigates the dependency relations between objects of different sciences. For example, recall that Aristotle’s natural science considers objects qua movable and qua inseparable from matter. The upshot is that we cannot unreflectively expect the methods of natural science to answer questions about whether there is anything immovable or separate from matter, any more than we can expect the methods of biology to tell us whether there is anything that is not alive or the methods of astronomy to tell us whether there is anything nonastronomical. Natural science may be able to answer the bare question of whether something immovable exists (as Aristotle does in Physics

sciences—and this is precisely what we do find. To name just a few examples, the middle books of the Metaphysics draw on conclusions about hylomorphic compounds originally defended in Aristotle’s Physics (i.e., the treatise that pursues natural science), even drawing on specific claims about elements as studied in On Generation and Corruption (i.e., the treatise that pursues the science of lower-level elements, or what we today might call physics); and in later books such as IX and XII Aristotle draws on claims about activity, knowledge, and sensation from the De Anima (i.e., the treatise that pursues the science of life). Similarly, in other treatises Aristotle makes explicit the basic presumptions of, and associated limitations of, the other sciences. 35 My account of the nature of Aristotle’s first science, including the reason why it is universal because it is first, is like Patzig’s and Frede’s account in that it claims the science of the first things to be one and the same science as the universal science of being qua being. However, it is unlike Patzig’s and Frede’s account of the first science in that it does not appeal to the ontological priority of divine objects qua divine to explain how the first science is universal. For this reason, my account has the virtue of avoiding the compelling difficulties broached for Patzig’s and Frede’s way of resolving the conflict between Aristotle’s dual characterizations of his first science in Enrico Berti, “Multiplicity and Unity of Being in Aristotle,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 101 (2001): 199–204. 36 James G. Lennox, “De caelo 2.2 and its Debt to the De incessu animalium,” in New Perspectives on Aristotle’s De Caelo, ed. Alan C. Bowen and Christian Wildberg (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2009), 206.

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VIII), but it is only in the Metaphysics that the nature of the unmoved mover is fully illuminated in terms of pure actuality. Just as it would be inappropriate to conclude that there are no trees or fish simply because they do not show up in a telescope, so it would be inappropriate to conclude that there are no immovable and separate beings simply because they do not show up when we use the methods and tools of natural science. To investigate the important question whether any such beings exist, we need a science that investigates its objects not qua movable and inseparable from matter (as natural science in general does), but rather without any such antecedently established constraints. The upshot is that Aristotle’s first science is the only science that can investigate when there may be a need for new sciences, such as theology, the new science he establishes by the end of his Metaphysics. Aristotle was deeply concerned with critiquing those who extended the starting points or principles of one science to issues that those starting points simply could not adequately address. To give just one example, roughly one-fifth to one-quarter of his writings concern the science of life, what we have come to call biology.37 Aristotle was the founder of this science. As D’Arcy Thompson put the point, having “won a place for it in philosophy” is one of Aristotle’s most important achievements.38 Pre-Socratic materialists like Empedocles explained the living world in terms of nonliving materials like fire, earth, air, and water. Plato, by contrast, explained the entire material world, including living things, in terms of an unseen realm of immaterial forms. Both of these modes of explanation imply that living things are to be understood in terms of nonliving things (material elements or immaterial forms), or more generally that we simply do not need a science of living things as such, a science of living things insofar as they are alive or qua alive. Aristotle was the first to insist that living things do require their own science, their own mode of investigation, and that the broad umbrella of natural philosophy or natural science encompasses not just a science of nonliving materials like the Empedoclean elements (fire, earth, air, and water) but also a science of living things as such or qua alive.39 We might understand Aristotle’s first science as the limiting case of Aristotle’s deep commitment, evidenced in the case of his founding of biology, to the importance of discerning when the need for a new science arises—that is, to genuinely asking (rather than assuming, as so many of the predecessors he critiques in the early chapters of the Metaphysics did, and perhaps as we sometimes still do) what objects are prior to others, and ultimately, what objects are first. Much contemporary literature that claims to be engaging in Aristotelian metaphysics centers itself on the ongoing relevance of specific Aristotelian doctrines such as hylomorphism or essentialism. These are certainly interesting projects, but I contend that they are insufficient to make a certain way of engaging in metaphysics truly Aristotelian. What is distinctive about Aristotle’s own first science is not the specific features its peculiar objects turn out to have in the end; it is rather the peculiar methodology of this science. The need for a science that constantly steps back to ask whether other sciences Whether it amounts to one-fifth or one-quarter of his writings depends on whether one considers the De Anima to be part of his writings on the science of life, which is contested. 38 D. W. Thompson, “Aristotle’s Natural Science,” in The Legacy of Greece, ed. Richard Livingstone (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1921), 4. 39 For a helpful discussion of how Aristotle’s science of life opposes the purely materialist and the purely Platonic scientific methodologies, see James G. Lennox, “Material and Formal Natures in Aristotle’s De Partibus Animalium,” in Aristotle’s Philosophy of Biology: Studies in the Origins of Life Science, ed. James G. Lennox (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 37

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are overextending their principles either into a domain properly investigated by the principles of another science or into a domain properly investigated by a science that has yet to be established, and thus into the related question of what new sciences may be needed, is ineliminable. Whether specific Aristotelian commitments like hylomorphism and essentialism are still important today remains a debated question, but the relevance of Aristotle’s first science does not depend on a certain answer to that question. I have argued that if we answer the question how Aristotle’s first science could be universal because first by beginning where Aristotle begins, we will find that focusing on causal, ontological, or epistemic features of the objects of the first science—that is, divine objects—leaves out (or at the very least fails to emphasize) that the relevance of genuinely Aristotelian metaphysics is not tied up with the relevance of specific Aristotelian doctrines (such as that of the unmoved mover, or, for that matter, of hylomorphism and essentialism).40 For this claim makes the earth-shattering move of characterizing the first science as a science that asks, rather than assumes, what its objects are in their fully determinate nature; it pursues the first things, whatever their specific features may turn out to be. It is therefore quite distinctive in its methodology. And given Aristotle’s understanding of priority, this question cannot be pursued without studying all objects. The first science is the science that actively looks beyond the starting points of all the other sciences for the first things, and this cannot be done without knowledge of those sciences. In this way, Aristotle’s first science is indeed universal because it is first. And if this is so, then the relevance of that science is independent of the relevance of particular Aristotelian doctrines such as hylomorphism and essentialism. Indeed, it is of timeless relevance.

I.e., beginning with his claim in Metaphysics VI.1, 1026a27–29.

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CHAPTER FOUR

Augustine and Science JOHN C. CAVADINI

In his most mature commentary on Genesis, De Genesi ad litteram (“On the Literal Meaning of Genesis,” hereafter Gnlit), Augustine lays out some warnings for Christian theologians whose statements might conflict with the results of astronomical research by natural philosophers, whom today we would call scientists. Some of these passages became famous because they were cited by Galileo in defense of his orthodoxy. To begin with, it is important that Augustine is interested in providing a literal exegesis of the opening chapters of Genesis, and that he makes it clear that it is far from obvious, in most cases, what the literal meaning of this text could be. From the point of view of many of our contemporaries, the literal meaning is almost by definition the obvious meaning, the “plain” or surface meaning of the text. An example would be the unreflective assumption that the “literal” sense of Gen 1:1–2:3 is that God created by speaking words such as we are familiar with, and the work that God did by speaking was extended over a period of six days, again such as we are familiar with, and that God stopped working on the seventh day and rested. None of this is obvious to Augustine, who questions what it might mean for God to speak when there has been no language invented, when God, who has no mouth, hasn’t created any creature yet through whom He could speak, and when there isn’t any air yet through which sound could travel. Was there even time yet, when the earth was still “formless and void”? Time would be required if God’s creative speaking involved a sentence with words. What could “morning” and “evening” mean when the sun hadn’t been created yet? The text is telling us that the sense to be attributed to “morning” and “evening” is not the same as that marked out by the rising and the setting of the sun, so the “days” spoken of cannot be those marked out by the sun. All of these questions are raised not by a hostile party trying to “debunk” Scripture, but by the text itself. The text itself is telling us that if there is a “literal” sense to what the text claims, it can’t be the “obvious” sense that an unreflective approach to the text might assume. This is true even of the first verse of Scripture. What is the “beginning” in which God created heaven and earth? It can’t refer to time since, if there were already time in existence “in” which God is acting, then God’s actions are time-bound. The text is insisting that we look more deeply and more carefully for its literal sense. But why would one persist in the pursuit of a “literal” sense that doesn’t seem, to this unreflective posture, so literal after all? It is because Scripture says that God actually did something, and something happened as a result. The text can’t simply be relegated to a prophetic meaning, that is, a figuration of something yet to come (though it may also be that), nor reduced to a purely symbolic or allegorical meaning as though it were a coded

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way of speaking about affairs internal to human reason (though it may also have some purchase as such too). The “literal” sense is the sense which accepts the major claim that Scripture makes about God’s doing something and that everything which is not God came about as a result of His action. The text is resisting the mythological notion that God’s acts of creation involve some change in God or that the creation of time (an aspect of creation) is somehow within time, while yet wanting to claim that God nevertheless acts, such that “God, without any change in Himself, produces effects subject to change and measured by time” (Gnlit. 1.1.2).1 The literal sense of Genesis must involve a use of language to evoke a true “act” that nevertheless transcends time, space, and any kind of change in God. Since “God does not work under the limits of time by motions of body and soul, as do human beings and angels, but by the eternal, unchangeable, and fixed exemplars of His co-eternal Word and by a kind of brooding action [of love] of His equally coeternal Holy Spirit” (1.18.36), the precise literal sense, being about matters outside of any possible experience of ours, is “obscure and far beyond our vision.” We have to be careful not to circumscribe our thinking or imagination such that we are in effect “wishing the teaching of Holy Scripture to conform to our own, whereas we ought to wish ours to conform to that of Sacred Scripture” (1.18.36). Thus, we have to allow Scripture to proclaim the transcendent acts of God as distinct from myth, and yet not to reduce them to terms defined by time and space as if, in our way of putting it, creation were equivalent to a scientific hypothesis about the origin of the universe that is empirically verifiable or falsifiable. In fact, Augustine states some very specific cautions against theology working as though the doctrine of creation were falsifiable by empirical evidence. “Usually,” he comments, “even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars,” and so forth. Therefore, he goes on, “it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an unbeliever to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation.” The problem is not so much that the ignorant exegete is mocked and scorned, but rather “that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions,” and thus these writers are rejected as unlearned and the Scriptures with them. “Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions,” as when nonbelievers “find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well … [and] which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason” (1.19.39, see also 2.1.4 for a specific example). Augustine worries that they will then never believe what Scripture has to say about matters like the resurrection of the dead and the hope of eternal life (1.19.39) if they think Scripture teaches scientific error. Further, unlearned Christians can be scandalized when nonbelieving critics of Scripture, or at least critics of scientific errors that they, the critics, believe Scripture teaches, are heard “eloquently discoursing on the theories of astronomy or on any of the questions relating to the elements of the universe.” Augustine comments that “with a sigh, they esteem these teachers as superior to themselves, looking upon them as great men; and they return with disdain to the books which were written for the good of their souls” (1.20.40). The purpose of Scripture in all of its senses, including the literal, is not to produce a scientific

Translations of Gnlit. are taken from the translation of John Hammond Taylor, S.J. in Ancient Christian Writers, no. 41 (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), sometimes with adjustment. 1

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handbook, but rather to nourish the good of souls. We are not to mistake Scripture’s teaching for science, for then it will look inevitably primitive and unlearned, no better than myth. When scientists are able, “from reliable evidence, to prove some fact of physical science, we shall show that it is not contrary to our Scripture,” presumably by searching for the literal sense as part of the proclamation of God’s transcendent acting. On the other hand, “when they produce from any of their books a theory contrary to Scripture, and therefore contrary to the Catholic faith, either we shall have some ability to demonstrate that it is absolutely false, or at least we ourselves will hold it so without any shadow of a doubt” (1.21.41). If it is truly the faith that is offended by a “theory” (as opposed to a fact of physical science), since faith is placed not in scientific theories but in God’s transcendent acts, one will be able to refute it, at least in principle.2

SCIENCE IN THE CONFESSIONS According to Augustine’s account in Confessions, it was a deficiency in Manichaean theology that it made claims, as a matter of revelation demanding faith, about the nature and causes of eclipses and other astronomical events. In other words, Mani, claiming to be the presence of the Holy Spirit in person, taught as religious claims matters that were empirically falsifiable, which were contrary to scientific claims that were easily verifiable by observation. “It was providential,” Augustine comments, “that this man talked so much about scientific subjects, and got it wrong, because this gave people who had truly studied them the chance to convict him of error.” It was the discovery of scholarly, scientific discussions of astronomy that first caused Augustine to doubt his Manichaean loyalties. “The books of secular philosophy” provided reasons for Augustine to doubt what in Manichaeism he had simply been asked to “believe.” He noted in those secular books the “many true conclusions which they had drawn from creation itself,” and, he adds, “I saw that these could be verified by calculation, by observing the succession of the seasons and by the visible evidence of the stars” (Conf. 5.3.6).3 The discrepancies between science and Ernan McMullin has provided a thorough analysis of Augustine’s position on the relationship between the claims of science and the claims of Scripture, and the way in which Augustine’s position figured in the Galileo controversy, in “From Augustine to Galileo,” Modern Schoolman 76 (1999): 169–94. He shows how a conflict of judgment could arise given two of Augustine’s main principles, as McMcullin sees them, in Genlit. These are, what McMullin calls the “Principle of Priority of Demonstration,” that is, that “when there is a conflict between a proven truth about the physical world and a particular reading of Scripture, an alternative reading should be sought” (173), and the “Principle of the Priority of Scripture,” namely, that “Where there is an apparent conflict between a Scripture passage and an assertion about the natural world grounded on sense or reason, the normal meaning of the Scripture passage should prevail as long as the latter assertion falls short of proof ” (174). Galileo developed a strong form of the first principle. He developed other equally Augustinian insights, derived from Gnlit, that would indicate prudence and reservation of judgment even where a truth about the physical world was only probable and not yet proven. McMullin notes, 2

Where there is an apparent conflict between Scripture and the ordinary sources of human knowledge regarding some feature of the physical world, ought one lay demands of proof on the latter side or not? Must one wait for a Newton or a Foucault before seeking an alternative reading of the disputed Scripture passage? … There are grounds in Augustine, and even more clearly in Galileo, for both positive and negative responses to these questions. (190) This view actually leads to a more benign interpretation of the Galileo controversy, able to give benefit of the doubt to both sides (194). 3 Translations of Confessions are taken from Maria Boulding, O.S.B., in The Works of Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, Part I, vol. 1 (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1997), sometimes with adjustment. Latin text is that of M. Skutella, in Bibliothèque Augustinienne, Oevres de Saint Augustin, vol. 13 (Paris: Institut D’Études Augustiniennes, 1998).

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Manichaeism exposed the latter as a tissue of “myths” (fabulis, Conf. 5.3.3). As we have seen, Augustine in Gnlit. is at pains to distinguish biblical revelation on Creation from myth, and warns Christians not to make the same mistake (in effect) as the Manichees by interpreting Scripture as though it were myth, as though the doctrine of creation were about changes in God who is acting in time and space, as though God were in some way part of the world he is said to create. Humility is necessary so that, as we have seen, believers do not expect revelation to conform to the limits of human thought and imagination, but to be open to a proclamation that transcends these limits. In Confessions, Augustine also faults the scientists (natural philosophers) for the same lack of humility that we have just seen him warn believers against. Augustine comments that although their scientific conclusions about the world are true, “they have not been able to discover its Lord.” The reason is that they do not seek humbly: “Many true statements do they make about creation, but they do not find the Truth who is artificer of creation because they do not seek him with reverence” (pie, Conf. 5.3.5), but with “irreverent pride” (impiam superbiam). “Pride” in Augustine is of course the opposite of humility, but an English reader can wonder how the rather innocent and even positive sounding word “pride” can even be offensive, let alone destructive. But “superbia” is in Augustine something much more sinister than the English word communicates. Pride is not simply joy in one’s legitimate accomplishments, but rather a desire to live as though one were self-interpreting, the principle of one’s own meaning, and in that sense, self-sufficient.4 Since the only truly self-sufficient reality is God, pride is in effect the desire to displace God and to live as though one had no need to reference anything outside of oneself. This requires that there be nothing outside of oneself or one’s projects to attract one’s own or anyone else’s wonder, for if one is reduced to a wondering awe at something outside of oneself, one has momentarily at least left pride behind for humility. Wonder is the opposite of Pride. Pride will therefore seek some mechanism to safely displace the wonder in the world from wherever it might naturally lie, onto oneself or one’s own accomplishments or those of one’s social group. That mechanism, in Confessions and in other works of Augustine, is glory or what we today might more familiarly recognize as cultural prestige. We can see this dynamic at work in the opening chapters of Confessions 5, from which we have been quoting. Augustine comments, as the Book opens, that he offers his confessions as a “sacrifice,” meaning a sacrifice of praise, as he exhorts his whole being to exclaim, “Lord, who is like you?” (Ps 34:10; Conf. 5.1.1). He tells God that “Your whole creation never wearies of praising you,” and that this happens through the mouths of those who consider creation thoughtfully and reverently, in awe of its wondrous character, the work of God who has “made all these created things so wonderfully” (mirabiliter, Conf. 5.1.1). Wonder at the beauty of the world terminates properly in the Creator. But, as Augustine sees the matter, the scientists he has been mentioning have a vested interest in displacing that wonder onto themselves as an elite group. Commenting on the scientists’ ability to predict eclipses many years in advance based on their calculations, he notes they are able to “draw up rules (regulas) from their research.” It is on the basis of these This ancient, Augustinian analysis surfaces, perhaps through Guardini, in Pope Francis’s idea of “misguided” and “excessive anthropocentrism” in his encyclical Laudato Si’, where it ends up so “prizing technical thought over reality” that all values become relative, and paradoxically the dignity of the human being, along with the rest of creation, reduced to manmade, utilitarian values, is “compromised” (see LS 115, citing Guardini, and LS 116– 23). Also see John Cavadini, “Laudato Si’ and Environmental Works of Mercy,” in Church Life Journal (2016) at churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/laudato-si-and-environmental-works-of-mercy/#.XjX4-hnZNKJ.twitter. 4

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rules, or laws as we might call them, that they can make predictions that come true. In response, “people are filled with wonder” (mirantur), but they are wondering not so much at awesomeness of creation itself with its laws, nor at its Creator, but at the amazing achievement of the scientists, who, in turn, bask in the prestige (they “strut and make merry” [exultant atque extolluntur; Conf. 5.3.4]). As St. Paul had analyzed it, in their “claim to be wise” (Conf. 5.3.5, cf. Rom 1:22) or, as Augustine applied it to himself later in Confessions, in their coveting a “reputation for wisdom” (Conf. 7.20.26), they descend into the idolatry of self-worship.

AUGUSTINE CONTRA HAWKING Incidentally, we can find an interesting contemporary example of what Augustine is describing. According to Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow in their book The Grand Design, “philosophy is dead,”5 and, with its demise, wonder seems to have been a collateral casualty. Regarding the “miracle of fine-tuning” (164) that makes the cosmos conducive to human life, they observe that it has been taken to argue for some higher “grand design” (181) but that design is not the “answer of modern science.” The answer is, rather, the theory of multiple universes: Our cosmic habitat—now the entire observable universe—is only one of many, just as our solar system is one of many. … [I]‌n the same way that the environmental coincidences of our solar system were rendered unremarkable by the realization that billions of such systems exist, the fine-tunings in the laws of nature can be explained by the existence of multiple universes. (165) “Unremarkable,” I take it, is the opposite of “wonderful.” The “miracle” of fine-tuning is only an “apparent miracle” (title of c. 7), only an apparent wonder. Nor is there any need for reverence, for God is a hypothesis of first causation that is no longer needed (71). As Hawking and Mlodinow somewhat irreverently point out, Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going. (180) Paradoxically, once the universe has been disenchanted of divine causation, the only thing that is left to wonder at is the theory that explains everything else: “perhaps the true miracle,” the authors drily comment, “is that abstract considerations of logic lead to a unique theory that predicts and describes a vast universe full of the amazing variety that we see” (181). It is an irony that those “abstract considerations” are not disembodied, but belong to the scientist, though not as human being, since most human beings are not capable of such abstraction, but, strictly speaking, as a scientist. The true wonder is not the amazing variety we see, but the impressive abstract considerations of the scientists, which deflate the world of its wonder, and deflect the wonder onto the theory instead. One can feel, at the very end of The Grand Design, the claim to cultural prestige wellearned, and surely well-deserved, after the “great triumph” of making such sense out of so many hitherto unmitigated wonders (181).6 S tephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design (New York: Bantam Books, 2010), 5. See further John C. Cavadini, “The Anatomy of Wonder: An Augustinian Taxonomy,” Augustinian Studies 42 (2011): 153–72. 5 6

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Perhaps this is not exactly “strutting” and “making merry,” but Augustine could not have scripted this better. The logic displays the precise difference that Augustine has pointed out between the truth of scientific hypotheses that are objectively verifiable and unscientific overreach involved in reducing the Creator to the terms of our thinking about changeable beings within the universe, as though God were in effect a part of the world He is said to create, a spark on the same level of the “blue touch paper” He sets afire. This overreach is an ideology of power, of the prestige of an elite cultural institution, “science,” buttressing its own clout as a social group. It is a political act disguised as an epistemological, “scientific” claim, reflecting the underlying “tyrannical anthropocentrism”7 that Augustine calls pride.

AUGUSTINE ON CREATION It is interesting to observe that contrary to what many moderns assume, the six-day scheme of creation was not taken in Antiquity to refer to six literal days (in our sense of the word “literal”). This was not the traditional interpretation, debunked, as people think, in the last century or so. For Augustine, since the first three days cannot have been literal days as we know them now, the rest must follow suit (see Gnlit 4.26.43). In fact, “those first six days occurred in a form unfamiliar to us as intrinsic principles within things created” (4.18.33). In fact, Augustine argues that the “light” created on the first day is the angelic creatures, that is, created rational light and created wisdom, which was enlightened by the Word of God, and by which they are made “day.” There is only this one “day” that, in its knowledge of the creature as God creates each (on day one, themselves), is aware of the creature in light of God’s Wisdom or Word, and also in itself—a knowledge that is called “evening”—and then in its refusal to dwell in the creature in itself, but in referring that creature back to God in a sacrifice of praise, “morning” dawns. The angels remain “day” and never “night” because they do not fall into the solipsism of rejoicing in their own creation as though it were their own, as though they were self-sufficient, nor in any other creature as though it had meaning in their knowledge of it, rather than in God’s eternal knowledge of it. Creation is “light” in its praise of God, and surely this is one of the purposes of the biblical story, to proclaim creation unto the praise of the Creator. But the angelic knowledge is not sequential. All of creation is created simultaneously, though not in its current form. Rather, “through Wisdom all things were made, and the motion we now see in creatures, measured by the lapse of time, as each one fulfills its proper function, comes to creatures from causal reasons (rationes) implanted in them, which God scattered as seeds at the moment of creation when He spoke and they were made, He commanded and they were created (Ps 32:9, Gnlit 4.33.51).” This is creation strictly speaking, creation from nothing, but subsequently God’s Providence “works within the course of time” (5.11.27), corresponding to Gen 1:1–2:5 and Gen 2:6ff. (the two creation accounts). Augustine says we must therefore “make a threefold distinction in speaking of creation. First there are the unchangeable forms in the Word of God; secondly, God’s works from which He rested in the seventh day; finally, the things that He produces from those works even now” (5.12.28). God “unfolds the generations which He laid up in creation when first He founded it” (5.20.41). God’s Providence is recognized in the “inexpressible awe and wonder” that both the simple observer and even more the

This is Pope Francis’s expression, Laudato Si’, 68–9.

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learned are filled with in contemplating the order, the “rule of measures, every harmony of numbers, every order of weights” (see Wis 11:21, 5.22.43). This “wonder” is not so much the result of a train of reasoning, an “argument from design” so to speak, though the obvious “design” of even bodies is an element adding to the wonder, but rather the awareness of an order of causation that is not within the succession of times, not within change, but transcendent of it and to which the proper response is praise, rather than a denial of the wonder by reducing it to our rationality, itself one of the wonders for which praise is proper. Augustine gives the creation of human beings as an example of the sort of thing that was created, strictly speaking, in the simultaneous creation8 from nothing in the “six days,” and of the later unfolding of what was created. How were the human, male and female, created originally, on the “sixth day?” Augustine answers, “Invisibly, potentially, in their causes, as things that will be in the future are made, yet not made in actuality now” (6.6.10). This is hard to understand, Augustine says, because the original “causes” or “seeds” are not physical, though they are created (see 6.6.11). They are “hidden and invisible reasons latent in creation as causes” (6.10.17). Thus the doctrine of the “seminal reasons,” as it is sometimes called, is not a quasi-deist kind of materialism, that is, that God creates the material universe something like a clock that ticks and unwinds on the basis of a purely material prestate that inevitably produces the final state. That would reduce God to the equivalent of a physical cause, only the first one in a chain of physical causes.9 In a way, “simultaneous creation” is a misleading expression, because it implies that God’s unique act of creation was in time, meaning everything was created together in an instant, at the same time. Ernan McMullin offers an excellent account of what Augustine actually has in mind: “The act of creation is a single timeless act from the Creator’s perspective, in which past, present, and future (our categories, not the Creator’s) come to be together,” though this act results in the fact that (interpreting Sir 17:1, “He made all things together”) “in some sense ‘all things’ were already present in the first instant of the universe’s temporal appearance.” See his “Evolution as a Christian Theme,” at https://www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php/36443.pd, 5, 6. 9 Ernan McMullin offers a brilliant reflection on the relationship between Augustine’s theories and modern theories of evolution in “Evolution as a Christian Theme.” He discusses the “rationes seminales” as “potencies, causal possibilities … implanted in the matter of the first creation, potencies that in due time lead to the later ‘creation’ of each kind, … more exactly described as a fashioning from materials already at hand, unlike the coming to be from nothing prior” (7). Then, “to assert that the seedlike principle for a particular natural kind lay within the earth meant no more (and no less) than that the earth had conferred upon it what it would take for that natural kind to develop eventually within it in a natural way” (8). Though Augustine’s view gradually faded from memory (10) due to the ascendency of Aristotelian physics from the thirteenth century on, and to the Protestant appeal to sola Scriptura, which generally effected “a decisive turn towards literalism in biblical interpretation” (12), it nevertheless has returned to memory given its congeniality to contemporary scientific theories of origins, such that we can “have a plausible cogmogony which respects at once the findings of the natural sciences and the deepest insights of the Christian theology of creation.” The “space left by Augustine for alter generation to fill in his account of how the Creator enabled the living kinds to develop in a natural way from the potentialities contained within the newly-formed universe can now be tentatively filled” (15), even including the role that “chance” may play in theories of evolution: “In the light of the Augustinian doctrine of creation … a ‘chance’ event is as much the work of the Creator as are the laws of nature themselves. The Creator can achieve the Creator’s purposes just as easily by means of ‘chance’ events as by means of those laws” (17). As I try to suggest in what follows, I believe there is a role not only for “chance” but, back to Augustine strictly speaking, for “freedom” to play in the outworking of the “rationes seminales.” McMullin also sees potential in Augustine for an “emergent” account of spirit that is not, at the same time, reductionist. See Paul L. Allen, “Ernan McMullin on Human Nature and the Meaning of Reduction,” Zygon 48 (2013): 294–305, with an excellent review of the relevant literature. See also Christina Hoenig, Plato’s Timaeus and the Latin Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), especially, on Augustine’s account of creation and the rationes seminales, 242–51. I thank Alexander Pierce for pointing my attention to this monograph, and direct the reader to his as yet unpublished manuscript, “Augustine on the Rationes Seminales: Plato’s Timaeus, Gen. 1–2, and the Christian Imagination.” 8

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Instead, it must be recalled that “measure, number and weight” are not simply marks of order in the material world, though the material world does have measure, number, and order. The spirit has these features, for example, there is “the measure of an activity, which keeps it from going on without control …; there is the number of the affections of the soul and of the virtues, by which the soul is held away from the unformed state of folly and turned towards the form and beauty of wisdom; and there is the weight of the will and of love,” which can be rightly or wrongly directed (4.4.8). In fact, God Himself has measure, number, and weight. He is the “measure without measure, … the number without number …, the weight without weight” (4.3.8). We could also say that God is free, utterly Himself, not dependent, known as measure, number, and weight uniquely. Insofar as measure is that which “places a limit on everything, number gives everything form, and weight draws each thing to a state of repose and stability,” God is most truly and fundamentally all three, because “He limits everything, forms everything, and orders everything” (4.3.7). God is dependent and limited by nothing in any way; he is in no need of what he creates and creation does not add to his happiness, so to say that creation has measure, number, and weight is to say that it reflects God’s freedom, that God gives it itself as a gift, and that it is a true gift of self, that God’s “ratio” for creation is His will for it to be a self, to be free, each thing insofar as its nature permits, with the human being as “image” of the free self that God is. And the freedom of creation is given so that it can be given back to God in praise, not hoarding it as its own possession and disfiguring itself, becoming “night.” The “causal reasons” are the presence to each thing of God in His willing it to be a self and, by His Providence, to be drawn to its greatest freedom. Thus, the “rational seeds” are neither the basis of a deterministic materialist unfolding nor the basis for a Providence conceived as a micromanager, but as giving a self that has number, form, and weight to the extent that it can grow to be a self that is nothing else but itself, and that is free to give itself, either as a rational creature or in the gift of the rational creature’s praise (note from Conf. 5). To allow the awesome wonder of creation to seize oneself and to lead one to an awareness of the world as God’s sheer gift, free in itself, is to realize one’s own “ratio” as a human being. It turns out that from Augustine’s point of view, the point about confessing the mystery of Creation is not to have found the equivalent of, or replacement for, a scientific theory that provides what feels like a rational proof or justification for God’s role as Creator, for that would amount to defeating the doctrine of Creation as such. Rather, it is to provide the theological and intellectual context in which it makes sense to make a gift of oneself, completely and without reserve, in love, just when scientific facts about the littleness of humanity in the vast and seemingly trackless universe(s) might seem to imply that this is irrational or foolish. But “the foolishness of God is wiser than men” (1 Cor 1:25).

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Basil and the Greek Fathers on Creation in the Hexaemeron ANDREW LOUTH

When we think of problems of science and religion nowadays, there is a tendency (temptation) to think that these problems are ours, that they are new, and that, consequently, there is nothing to be learnt from earlier Christians, still less from the Fathers (no matter the importance they have for the discernment of the dogmatic tradition of the Church). Some of this is misconceived, I would argue, the result of our projecting back into the past the kind of naive fundamentalism that we associate with those who want to reject “modern science” as in contradiction with the “traditional belief of the Church.” We thus assume some kind of continuity between those who reject the findings of modern science and the thought of Christians who lived before the era marked by a modern scientific understanding of the world. This seems a hazardous assumption that cuts us off from those before us who sought to understand the nature of the world from within their own thought-world. There are certainly differences between an attempt to understand the nature of things in terms of modern thought and such attempts informed by what was for them, in the fourth or seventh century, contemporary thought. The differences are not, by any means, all one way: benightedness then, enlightenment now. Perhaps the most fundamental distinction lies in the way in which attempts to understand the nature of things in the early Christian centuries, whether by Christians themselves or their “pagan” contemporaries (“pagan” for want of a better word)—which both then and now could come under the umbrella of “philosophy”—turn out to be in some respects very different (even if then, as now, the kind of texts we draw on turn out to overlap to a considerable extent: Plato and Aristotle, for instance). Philosophy nowadays, at least in the Anglophone world, has been deeply affected by the spirit of modern science, and sees its role as analytical and critical, whereas philosophy was then regarded, as the English translation of one of Pierre Hadot’s books has it, as “a way of life.”1 It is not clear to me that we have gained much by narrowing down our sense of philosophy. Therefore, if we are to look at the relationship between science and religion in the Greek Fathers, Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, Eng. trans. Michael Chase (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995); the original French was called, Exercises spirituels et philosophie antique, 2nd ed. (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1987). 1

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we need to remember that a “scientific” view of things then was not simply concerned with establishing the nature of the world (a world that includes ourselves), but also with how as human beings to live in this world. With this in mind, let us look at the way in which the early Christian writers, mostly Greek, and in particular St. Basil the Great, reflected on the nature of things by consideration of the account in Genesis 1 (and 2) of creation, a consideration, we shall find, that did not in the least ignore what for them was a “scientific” understanding of the world.2

THE TRADITION OF REFLECTION ON THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION It is striking how frequently Christians in the early centuries reflected on the Six Days of Creation—the Hexaemeron as it appears in Greek.3 It was a tradition inherited from the Jews: Philo’s treatise On the Making of the World had a great influence on subsequent Christian exegesis. Eusebius, the fourth-century Church historian, refers to eight accounts of commentary on the creation narrative in Genesis, mostly now lost, mainly from the end of the second century of the Christian era. Origen, the great third-century theologian, perhaps the greatest of all Christian exegetes, wrote both a commentary and homilies on Genesis; of the commentary only fragments survive, and in his homilies he moves through Genesis pretty quickly, only in the first homily discussing the Six Days. The later Greek tradition is dominated by Basil’s Homilies on the Hexaemeron, which will be our main concern in this lecture; Gregory of Nyssa’s On the Making of Human kind is explicitly supplementary, but there are many discussions of the Genesis account of creation by other Greek thinkers, though Basil’s tends to cast a shadow over his successors. This reflection on the Genesis creation account is not at all confined to the Greek tradition. One of the longest and most comprehensive commentaries on Genesis, including the Hexaemeron, was composed by St. Ephrem, Basil’s contemporary, who wrote in Syriac, the form of Aramaic spoken in Syria, and there are several later Syriac theologians who discuss the Six Days. The fifth-century Armenian writer, Eznik of Kolb, has a good deal of discussion of the creation account in his treatise, On God. Exposition of Genesis was especially rich in the Latin tradition. The fourth-century Ambrose of Milan was not the first, and Augustine, on whom Ambrose made such an impression while he was still a rhetor, five times made an attempt at exposition of the Genesis creation account. Whereas Basil’s single account seems to have hampered later Greek reflection, Augustine’s five different accounts only stimulated further reflection; in an article surveying the tradition of Hexaemeral commentary, the late Père Yves Congar listed nearly forty Latin commentators between Augustine and the end of the Middle Ages

What follows is a light reworking of an article I published some years ago: “The Six Days of Creation According to the Greek Fathers,” in Reading Genesis after Darwin, ed. Stephen C. Barton and David Wilkinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 39–55. 3 There is relatively little secondary literature on the subject. Apart from the article by Congar, cited below, see In Principio: Interprétations des premiers versets de la Genèse, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Section des Sciences Religieuses, Centre d’Études des Religions du Livre, Laboratoire associé au C.N.R.S., 152 (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1973); J. Zahlten, Creatio mundi: Darstellungen des sechs Schöpfungstage und naturwissenschaftliches Welt im Mittelalter, Stuttgarter Beiträge zur Geschichte und Politik, 13 (1979); D. S. Wallace-Hadrill, The Greek Patristic View of Nature (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1968). 2

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(including the Venerable Bede and the twelfth-century Laurence of Durham), and that list is certainly not exhaustive.4

THEOPHILOS OF ANTIOCH The earliest Christian account of the Six Days of Creation is found in the defense of Christianity written by a second-century bishop of Antioch, Theophilos. The time and context give us some clues as to why reflection on Genesis seems to have been so urgent. Theophilos was one of the second-century “apologists,” that is, defenders of Christianity, primarily against the threat of persecution the Christians faced from the Roman authorities. Most of these defenses, or “apologies,” were addressed directly to the emperor; Theophilos’s Apology, unusually, was addressed to some presumably highranking Roman official called Autolycus. Theophilos begins by meeting the challenge, “Show me your God,” with the forthright response: “Show me your man, and I will show you my God,” and goes on to affirm that only the eyes of the soul can see God, and only the ears of the heart hear him, but these eyes and ears are clouded by sin, and so, as he puts it, “O man, your ungodliness brings darkness upon you and you cannot see God.” The sins Theophilos lists are mostly moral failings, but as his account develops it becomes plain that there are also intellectual failings that darken the eyes of the soul, ways of understanding the human situation, and the nature of the world that cut one off from God. Such ideas as that the universe is simply a matter of chance, and that human beings can therefore find no meaning in this life. Or—the apparent opposite—that what happens in the world is not at all a matter of chance, but ruled by an iron necessity, fate, εἱμαρμένη, which some Christians liked to think derived from the word for a chain, εἱρμός, suggesting that humans were inexorably bound to their fate. The second century, too, was the period of what scholars have for a couple of centuries called “gnosticism,” with its ideas that the universe was the product of a god either malevolent or incompetent, and thus flawed or actually evil, with salvation being seen as escape from the evil meshes of the world and the clutches of an ill-disposed god. Such ideas, too, would, for Theophilos, blind the soul and prevent it from seeing God. This is the context in which Theophilos’s account of the six days of creation in the second book of his Apology fits—and I expect the same is true of the lost second-century accounts of the Hexaemeron: it was reflection on Genesis that provided an accurate account of the nature of the universe, an account that disclosed, rather than obscured, or occluded altogether, the nature of God. But what God is revealed in Theophilos’s reading of the Genesis account of creation? The answer is less obvious than we might suppose, for what Theophilos found in Genesis was an account of creation by a God who created out of nothing. We are so accustomed to thinking that creation means creation out of nothing that we perhaps find this obvious, our only doubts being whether Genesis, derived from a genre of Near Eastern creation myths that presuppose no such thing, has such a radical notion of creation. That Theophilos reads Genesis like that seems unsurprising; one cannot expect him to have known about ancient myths of creation. But, in the second century, when Christians and Jews were a small countercultural minority, most people thought very differently. The idea of God as creator, fashioning the universe ex nihilo, was a new and revolutionary See Yves-M. J. Congar OP, “Le thème de Dieu-créateur et les explications de l’Hexaméron dans la tradition chrétienne,” in L’Homme devant Dieu. Mélanges offerts au père Henri de Lubac, 3 vols. (Paris: Aubier, 1964), vol. 1, 189–222 (“inventaire litéraire” on 215–22). 4

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idea, perhaps just as striking as the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and indeed an integral part of it, for if one did not grasp that the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ was the creator of the universe, who had indeed created the universe through his Son, Jesus Christ, then one could never grasp the universal significance of Christ’s death and resurrection. A little more than a century after Theophilos, St. Athanasios, the great bishop of Alexandria, twice at the beginning of his treatise On the Incarnation asserts that, if we are to discuss the doctrine of the Incarnation, “it is necessary first to speak about the creation of the universe and its creator, God, so that in this way it may be seen to be fitting that its renewal was effected by the Word who created it in the beginning.”5 And along with the idea of God as creator went the conviction that God created everything out of nothing, ex nihilo, a concept of which Theophilos is one of the earliest witnesses. It is this conviction—that God created the universe out of nothing—that these early Christians found expressed in the Genesis account of creation, and that was why it was so important to them. Such is the importance of this notion of creation that I think we need to dwell on it for a bit. Though Christians and Jews read in Genesis an account of creation out of nothing, they recognized that it was no more than implicit in that text, and knew that there is very little explicit support for the doctrine of creation ex nihilo in the Scriptures. This is clear in the evident embarrassment of the early Christian thinkers who searching for biblical texts to support creation ex nihilo find themselves reduced to only two Scriptural texts to support the idea. The first is 2 Macc 7:28, where the mother of the Maccabean martyrs, by tradition Solomonia, encourages her youngest son to accept martyrdom bravely, by asserting that “it was not out of what already existed (οὐκ ἐξ ὄντων) that God made” the “heaven and the earth,” so in dying her son is confiding his life to the One who gave him it, and who “will in his mercy give life and breath back to you again” in the resurrection (2 Macc 7:23). The second is a passage from the Shepherd of Hermas, Mandates 1, where we read: “first of all believe that God is one … who brought everything into being from what does not exist (ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος).” Such a slender Scriptural basis for such an important doctrine suggests that we are looking for the wrong thing: looking for a clearly defined concept, rather than an overwhelming conviction of the reality of God. It is striking that the first explicit assertion of creation out of nothing in the JudeoChristian tradition—in the passage from 2 Maccabees just quoted—occurs in the context of martyrdom and resurrection: the doctrine is presented as something entailed by belief and trust in a God to whom one can commit one’s life to the point of dying. Solomonia’s youngest son did not accept martyrdom because he believed in creation out of nothing, though he did, but because he believed in God, the source of life. Strictly speaking, the doctrine of creation out of nothing is not a cosmological doctrine, but a consequence—or really a part—of Jewish and Christian belief in God, so fundamental that in the Scriptures it is mostly taken for granted, or expressed almost parenthetically, as when the Apostle Paul confesses his faith in “one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist” (1 Cor 8:6). But in the second century, Christians found themselves in a religious milieu in which neither the notion of a transcendent, all-caring God could be taken for

Athanasios, De Incarnatione 1, in Athanasius, Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione, ed. and trans. Robert W. Thomson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 136f. (trans. slightly modified). 5

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granted nor the idea of creation as owing its existence solely to Him. It was this they found in Genesis, and for this reason they so readily reflected on the account there of creation. We might reflect, too, that we now find ourselves once again in such a world, where the idea of creation, with its message that existence is a gift, is barely recognized. So, Theophilos begins his exposition of Genesis thus: In the first place, in complete harmony they [that is, the prophets, the scriptural writers] taught us that he made everything out of nothing (ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων). For there was nothing coeval with God; he was his own place; he lacked nothing; he “existed before the ages” (Ps 54:20). He wished to make man so that he might be known by him; for him, then, he prepared the world. For he who is created has needs, but he who is uncreated lacks nothing.6 Along with the idea that God created the world out of nothing, Theophilos emphasizes that God made the world as a preparation for making human kind, and the purpose of creation is that God might be known by the human creation. The centrality of the human to the Christian notion of creation is something we shall encounter further on. These ideas are held together by Theophilos through his conviction that the universe was made by Wisdom: wisdom that is expressed in the order and beauty of the cosmos, and that inspires humans to seek the creator through the creation—wisdom under its aspect of teeming variety, ἡ πολυποίκιλος σοφία τοῦ Θεοῦ (Eph 3:10). For Theophilos, this point is made in two complementary ways: first, his constant sense of the wonder of the cosmos, and then second the way in which he sees significance in the ordering of the cosmos. So he exclaims at the beginning of his account: No one can adequately set forth the whole exegesis and plan of the six days’ creation, even if he were to have ten thousand mouths and ten thousand tongues. Not even if he were to live ten thousand years, continuing in this life, would he be competent to say anything adequately in regard to these matters, because of the “surpassing greatness” (Eph 1:19) and the “riches of the Wisdom of God” (Rom 11:33) to be found in this account of the six days just quoted.7 It is perhaps worth noting, parenthetically, that, despite the way in which Theophilos lards his account of creation with disparaging references to the Greek poets and philosophers, he can’t prevent himself alluding to Homer’s account of the massed Achaean army, which Homer says he could not recount, “had he even ten tongues, or ten mouths.”8 In the account of Genesis itself, he draws attention to the significance of numbers, to the way the world is described in the likeness of the sea, the way in which the two great luminaries symbolize God and humankind, and how the three days prior to the creation of the luminaries contain an allusion to the Christian τριάς, or trinity: Theophilos is also the first to refer to God in this way. He sees other analogies in the accounts of the creation of the fish and animals. Creation is, for Theophilos, a great code, which, if we interpret it properly, discloses the nature and ways of God; it contains, as he says repeatedly, a “great mystery.”

Theophilos, Ad Autolycum II.10, in Theophilus of Antioch, Ad Autolycum, ed. and trans. Robert M. Grant (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 38–41 (trans. somewhat modified). 7 Ibid., II.12 (Grant, 44f.). 8 Homer, Iliad II.489. 6

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BASIL ON THE HEXAEMERON However, the finest account of the Hexaemeron, the Six Days, in the Greek tradition—so great that it eclipsed most of the earlier accounts, and encouraged later Greek expositors simply to repeat what he had said—is that composed by St. Basil the Great toward the end of his life (he died on January 1, 379). There are nine homilies that end with a promise to account for the creation of humankind on the sixth day. His brother Gregory of Nyssa clearly thought that Basil had never got round to fulfilling that promise, as he provided an account of the creation of humankind to supplement his brother’s homilies, though there survive a couple of sermons—quite separate from the nine of the Hexaemeron in the manuscript tradition—often attributed to Basil. Basil’s account of the Hexaemeron consists of nine homilies, and from references in the homilies themselves, it would appear that the first four and the last four were delivered on two pairs of days—two homilies, morning and evening, each day—while the fifth homily was delivered separately on some day in between. All the sermons were delivered during Lent, and presumably at the beginning of Lent, as it seems to have been an ancient tradition to read the whole of Genesis during Lent. So on the first day, Basil discussed the events of “day one” (he specifically makes the point that Genesis says not “the first day,” ἡμέρα πρώτη, but “day one,” ἡμέρα μία), expounding the creation of heaven and earth in the morning and of light in the evening; on the next day, he discussed the events of the second day, the morning sermon concerning the creation of the firmament, and the evening sermon the gathering together of the waters. The fifth sermon discussed the third day of creation: the creation of the plants. Then there followed another two-day set: discussing the fourth day—the creation of the luminaries of heaven—one morning, and the events of the fifth day—the creation of the reptiles and fish—in the evening. The following day, Basil returned to the reptiles in the morning and went on to discuss the birds, also a work of the fifth day, and then in the evening, he turned to the events of the sixth day, the creation of the earthly animals, culminating in the creation of humankind, about which he makes some preliminary remarks, promising to treat the subject fully one day. As we have seen, it is unclear whether he ever got round to fulfilling that promise. I’ve spelt out the liturgical setting of the homilies, because it seems to me significant, as we shall see. Basil’s starting point and emphasis is much the same as that of Theophilos. The account is about creation, and creation by God. Basil brings this out by repeating the first words of Genesis and developing them in different ways—a rhetorical figure known as anaphora. “In the beginning God created”—Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἐποίησεν ὁ Θεός—“heaven and earth.” The wonder of the notion brings my discourse to a standstill! What shall I say first? How shall I begin my discourse? … [that is another rhetorical figure known as adynaton, but I won’t continue with a rhetorical analysis: just remember that we are reading one of the best rhetoricians of his day!]   “In the beginning God created heaven and earth.” Therefore those who think that all that exists is without government or direction, but borne about by chance, are revealed as infected by the deceit of atheism …   “In the beginning God created.” What an excellent order of words! He puts “beginning”—ἀρχή—first, lest anyone think that [the cosmos] is without beginning. Then he adds “he created,” to show that what has been made is only the tiniest part of the divine power …

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  “In the beginning God created”—the blessed nature, goodness without envy, beloved by everyone that partakes of reason, the much-longed-for beauty, the beginning of beings, the source of life, the intellectual light, the unapproachable wisdom: this it is that “in the beginning created heaven and earth.”9 All through his homilies, Basil conveys his sense of the majesty and glory of God, revealed in the wonder and beauty of the cosmos. When, at the beginning of his discussion of the fourth day of creation, he considers the two great luminaries created on that day, he exclaims, If sometimes on a clear night you look up at the inexpressible beauties of the stars, you get an idea of the maker of the universe, of who it is who has adorned the heavens with the variety of these flowers, and how in these visible bodies the serene necessity of their movements surpasses what is merely pleasant. And again if in the day you consider with sober thought the wonders of the day, and through what is seen make an analogy with what is unseen, you will be ready as a hearer, fit to join the august and blessed assembly.10 The blessed assembly—of the church in Caesarea, where Basil was preaching, and also, I believe, in the assembly of the saints. Commentators often remark on what they feel are the liturgical cadences of Basil’s language. There is another striking liturgical passage a few lines later, following further reflection on the wonder of creation: If we have learnt these things, we shall come to understand ourselves, to know God, to worship the creator, to serve the Master, to glorify the Father, to love what he gives for our nourishment, to reverence our benefactor, and we shall not cease to worship the one who provides for our present life and that which is to come, who through the wealth already procured for us can be trusted in what has been promised, and through experience of what is present assures us of what is longed for.11 Compare that with this: Master, the One who Is, Lord God, Father Almighty, who are to be worshipped, it is truly right and fitting, and becomes the majesty of your holiness to praise you, to hymn you, to bless you, to worship you, to thank you, to glorify you, who alone are true God; to offer you with a broken heart and a spirit of humility this our reasonable worship. For it is you who have granted us the knowledge of your truth. And who is able to tell of all your acts of power? To make all your praises heard or to recount all your wonders at every moment?12 That is a passage from the beginning of the eucharistic prayer, the Anaphora, ascribed, maybe correctly, to St. Basil himself.13 If we recognize the liturgical cadences in Basil’s Basil, Hom. in Hexaemeron I.2, in Basile de Césarée, Homélies sur l’Hexaéméron, Sources Chrétiennes 26bis, ed. with French trans. Stanislas Giet (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1968), 92–6. 10 Hexam. VI.1 (Giet, 326). 11 Hexam. (Giet, 328). 12 The Divine Liturgy of Our Father among the Saints Basil the Great, translated from the Greek original by Archimandrite Ephrem (Manchester: St Andrew’s Press, 2001), 27. 13 Or perhaps not. Since writing that I have met, and discovered the work of, the liturgical scholar, Gabriela Winkler. Her doubts seem convincing: see her Die Basilius-Anaphora. Edition der beiden armenischen Redaktionen und der relevanten Fragmente, Übersetzung und Zusammenschau aller Versionen im Licht der orientalischen Überlieferungen, Anaphorae Orientales 2, Anaphorae Armeniacae 2 (Rome: Edizioni Orientalia Christiana, 9

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glorying in creation, we see more deeply how in this hymn of glory, Basil is seeking to inculcate in his congregation a spirit of thanksgiving, eucharistia, as the fundamental disposition of the creature to his Creator, and indeed to all life. But what kind of an account of creation do we find in Basil’s hexaemeral homilies? This is a question Basil himself addresses explicitly several times. Twice he insists that the Genesis account must be interpreted literally, not allegorically. First, when he comes to discuss the waters separated by the firmament in verse 6, he objects to those who contrary to the mind of the church resort to allegory and see in the reference to “waters,” figurative language for “spiritual and incorporeal powers.”14 And again, at the beginning of the ninth homily, he returns to his attack on allegory, and remarks that “when I hear ‘green herb,’ I understand green herb, and so with plant, fish, wild animal and domestic animal: I take all these as they are said.”15 Allegorical interpretation of these terms he dismisses as the “fancy of dreams and old wives’ tales.”16 What he has in mind, very likely, is the way Origen is said to have interpreted Genesis in terms of an initial creation of spiritual beings, which turned away from God, leading to the Fall—into bodies in the material cosmos. Origen’s surviving homily on the Six Days—the first in the Genesis series—is not so explicit, but does interpret the waters as spiritual beings, and finds in the animal creation allegories of human behavior, as indeed Theophilos had.17 Basil’s point is that the account of the six days of creation is about the origin of the created order: it gives an account of the created cosmos. Allegorizing the account draws attention away from the repeated insistence that this cosmos was created by God in all its order and variety and that it was created good. To find here allegories of spiritual beings or of the way in which fallen human behavior can be regarded as bestial or reptilian—even if all this is true and edifying—draws attention away from the point of the creation narrative: to proclaim the Creator and the goodness of his creation. But it would be unwise to claim Basil as an advocate of something comparable to what we think of as the historical critical method. Basil is not averse to allegory; it is just that here, with the example of Origen to warn us, allegory may well miss the real point of the creation narrative. Nor even does it mean that Basil regards the Genesis account as telling us all we need to know about creation. This point can be illustrated in two ways. First of all, one motive that Origen and others had for allegorizing aspects of the Genesis story was in order to get it to tell a fuller story. What about the creation of the angelic beings, for instance? There is nothing explicit in the Genesis account, and yet they appear in the rest of the Scriptures, and no one, Jew or Christian, in Basil’s time thought that they were uncreated. Origen finds them referred to in the waters above the firmament, and supports this interpretation by referring to Ps 148:4, which calls on the “water above the firmament” to praise God. Ordinary water cannot praise God, Origen and others reasoned; this must be a figurative way of referring to the angelic hosts above the heavenly firmament. Basil will not admit this interpretation, but it does not mean that he did not believe in an angelic creation. He is quite clear that there was a creation of the angels, but the angelic world is “beyond time, eternal and everlasting”; the formation of 2005). It remains that the vulgate text of the anaphora has been influenced by St Basil’s language, but later, under the influence of the conviction that St Basil was indeed the author. 14 Hexam. 3.9 (Giet, 236). 15 Hexam. 9.1 (Giet, 480). 16 Hexam. 3.9 (Giet, 236). 17 Origen, Hom. in Genesim 1.2, 9–11, in Origenis Omnia Opera, ed. Lommatsch, Berlin, 1837, VII, 108, 116– 19); and cf. Theophilos, Ad Autolycum 16f. (Grant, 52–4).

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the angelic realm is not related in Genesis, it is ἀνιστόρητον, because it is unsuitable for those only just initiated in the faith; it belongs instead to the unwritten tradition of the church.18 Whatever Basil means by avoiding allegory, he is no advocate of some kind of biblical literalism. Second, how then does Basil expound the very spare account of the creation that we find in Genesis? What he does is appeal to what for him was contemporary science. He explains in the first homily that when it says that God created heaven and earth, by “earth” we are to understand all the four elements of the cosmos—earth, fire, air, and water—and he explains the order, harmony, balance, and beauty of the cosmos by showing how the opposites represented by the elements—earth being cold and dry, fire hot and dry, air hot and wet, and water cold and wet—are held in tension by God’s wisdom.19 An even more striking example of the way in which Basil and his brother Gregory read the Genesis account in terms of contemporary Greek science occurs in the very first chapter of Gregory’s On the Making of Human kind, which begins by quoting Gen 2:4—“This is the book of the coming into being of heaven and earth”—and then goes on to describe what we would call the Ptolemaic system of the cosmos, with the earth at the center surrounded by celestial spheres rotating at fearsome speeds.20 In the homily on the creation of the great heavenly luminaries, Basil discusses astronomical and calendrical matters, and takes the opportunity to make clear the church’s opposition to astrology.21 When he discusses the creation of plants, reptiles, fish, birds, and animals, he produces lots of information about their different kinds and habits drawn from some contemporary natural history, occasionally drawing moral lessons.22 The notes in the critical edition are full of references to classical parallels—the elder Pliny, for instance, not that Basil could have used Pliny’s Natural History, but because it is the most extensive to survive from antiquity, but also to Aristotle, and interestingly the great medical doctor, Galen, the works of both of whom Basil may well have known and used. When he comes to discuss human beings, his picture, as we shall see, draws heavily on Plato’s Timaeus. For Basil there was no opposition between Scripture and science; he used contemporary science to draw out the bare outline of the cosmos found in Genesis. He can do this because he is quite clear that the Scriptural account is not a scientific account. It is no criticism of Moses, he remarks, that he did not clarify whether the earth is a sphere, a cylinder, a disc, or like a great basket, hollowed out in the middle, or that he did not give the measurement of the circumference of the earth, for all these things, interesting though they might be, are irrelevant to Moses’s purpose: to proclaim God as creator, the cosmos as his good creation, and the place of the human in all this.23 Let us look now at three points on which Basil lays some stress. First, his understanding of the “beginning,” the ἀρχή, of creation; second, how he conceives the cosmos as a whole; and third, his insistence on the goodness of creation.

Hexam. 1.5 (Giet, 104). For Basil’s notion of unwritten tradition, see On the Holy Spirit 27.66, in Basile de Césarée, Sur le Saint-Esprit, Sources Chrétiennes 17bis, ed. with French trans. Benoît Pruche O.P. (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1968), 478–86. 19 Hexam. 1.7, 10 (Giet, 116–18, 126–30). 20 Gregory of Nyssa, De opificio hominis 1 (PG 44.128C–132C). 21 Hexam. 6.4–8 (Giet, 342–70). 22 Hexam. 7, 8, 9.1–5 (Giet, 390–510). 23 Hexam. 9.1 (Giet, 480–2). 18

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BASIL ON THE “BEGINNING,” ἀρχή Basil devotes a good deal of the first homily to discussing the beginning of creation, the moment of creation. The words “in the beginning” mean “in this temporal beginning” or “in the beginning of time”—which is why Genesis does not tell us about the creation of the angelic realm, which is outside time. But Basil faces a philosophical puzzle here, which others wrestled with—St. Augustine, John Philoponos, St. Thomas Aquinas. How does the eternal God, who is beyond time, create in time? Or, to quote a poet, where is “the point of intersection of the timeless / with time?” T. S. Eliot was concerned in Four Quartets with how time-bound beings discern this point. Basil is rather looking at it from the other side. He is clearly anxious to avoid the kind of anthropomorphism that would effectively make God a temporal being, intervening in the temporal sequence from alongside, as it were. To solve this, Basil draws on contemporary mathematical thought, the kind of speculation that goes back to Pythagoras, but which had experienced a revival among the Neoplatonists such as Plotinos. He suggests that “the beginning” refers to “something momentary and timeless belonging to creation”;24 it is worth noting that Basil’s phrase includes no noun—it is something that escapes ostensive definition—and he goes on to suggest that this beginning is “indivisible and without extension,” initiating what follows, but not part of it. “For, just as the beginning of a road is not yet a road, nor the beginning of a house a house, so the beginning of time is not yet time, not even the smallest part of it.”25 The analogy that lies behind his illustrations is the idea of a mathematical series, the same analogy the Neoplatonists used to illustrate procession from the One.26 This beginning, not itself part of the series, is, in this context, “the point of intersection of the timeless / with time.” Basil treats this question very briefly—he is preaching, not giving a lecture—but he points the way other Christian thinkers were to follow.

THE NATURE OF THE COSMOS When Basil thinks of the cosmos as a whole, he is struck especially by the way it all hangs together, by its harmony, its interconnectedness. In this he is picking up a theme from the Wisdom literature of the Greek Bible, where we read that “Wisdom is more mobile than any motion; because of her pureness she pervades and penetrates all things … She reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and she orders all things sweetly” (Wis 7:24, 8:1). The way Basil puts this perception, however, recalls the language of Plato’s Timaeus and the Stoics, for he speaks of the parts of the cosmos being “bound together by a certain unbreakable ordinance of love in one communion and harmony, so that the most distant parts are united by sympathy.”27

THE HARMONY AND GOODNESS OF THE COSMOS It is this harmony that manifests the goodness of creation. At the end of the account of each day (even the second day in the Septuagint), the Genesis account remarks that God exam. 1.6 (Giet, 110). H Hexam. 1.6 (Giet, 112). 26 See some discussion of similar ideas in Dominic O’Meara, “Mathematics and the Sciences,” in All from One: a Guide to Proclus, ed. Pieter d’Hoine and Marije Martijn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 167–82, at 177–80. 27 Hexam. 2.2 (Giet, 148), cf. Tim. 32BC. 24 25

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saw that it was good—ὅτι καλόν, good, not in the moral sense, but fine, beautiful. Basil often comments on this, and always remarks that this does not mean that it is pleasing to the eyes, or adorned with some human beauty, “for beauty is that which according to the principles of art realizes the end intended.”28 It is an austere, not a comforting beauty, that Basil sees in God’s creation. This austerity manifests itself in another way. Basil will not have it that the darkness and the abyss spoken of in Genesis is a substantial reality made by God, for that would make God the author of evil, and let humans off the hook, for they could lay the blame on God for the evil in their lives. For Basil, as with Plato, “the blame is with the one who chooses, God is blameless.”29 The darkness spoken of in Genesis is not substantial; it is a matter of shadows that cut off the light—similarly with the abyss. Basil begins his discussion of all this with a very direct address to his congregation. “Don’t search for evil outside, nor imagine that the origin of evil is some nature, but let each of us recognize that we are ourselves the source of the evil we find in ourselves.”30 And after saying that we can choose “whether to master our passions and give in to the appeals of pleasure, to contain our anger or to raise our hand against the one who irritates us, to tell the truth or to lie, to have an equable and moderate character or be overcome by pride and pretence,” he tells his congregation: “for of all these you are the master, do not seek their origin in another, but recognize that what is properly evil has its origins in misfortunes to which we have freely assented.”31 “The fault, dear Brutus, lies in ourselves.” It is not surprising that Basil actually names the Manichees in these homilies, though with reference to their belief that everything has a soul, for he saw in dualism, not least theirs, a fundamental slur against the creator, with the most insidious consequences for human moral endeavor.

THE PLACE OF THE HUMAN IN THE COSMOS Everyone knows that in Genesis we have two creation accounts: one in ­chapter  1, which tells the story of the six days of creation and another in ­chapter  2, which focuses on the human creation and tells the story of the creation of Adam and Eve, their being placed in Paradise, their disobedience and exclusion from Paradise, and then continues with a history of the human race. Nowadays, scholars tend to see two different accounts that have been laid side by side—though that still leaves the question as to why they were placed together: it was surely not oversight. The Fathers read the two accounts as a single literary whole, indeed the composition of Moses, to whom the Law had been revealed. Read like that, the creation of humankind seemed pivotal: the six days leading up to the creation of humankind, which ­chapter  2 then developed. In the homilies on the Six Days, Basil did not get to treat the creation of humankind properly; in the last homily, as we have already seen, he sketches out what he promises to treat in more detail later on. But the outline of his account is clear, and we shall close by briefly considering it. He first mentions humankind at the very beginning of his exposition of the sixth day, which begins with God’s saying, “Let the earth bring forth a living soul,” and goes on to contrast human beings, who stand upright, with the animals, which are bent down to the ground:

exam. 3.10 (Giet, 240). H Plato, Republic X. 617E. 30 Hexam. 2.5 (Giet, 160). 31 Ibid. 28 29

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The earthly animals are bowed down towards the ground, but the heavenly plant, the human being, is different, as much by the form of his bodily fashioning as by the dignity of his soul. What is the attitude of the four-footed animals? Their head is bent down to the earth, they look at their bellies, and they seek what pleases it in any way. Your head—Basil says, addresses his congregation—is lifted up to heaven. Your eyes look on high, as if you would be dishonouring yourself with the passions of the flesh, if you served the belly and what is beneath it, “being compared to the beasts without understanding and becoming like them” (Ps 48:13 LXX). But your care should be “to seek what is on high, where Christ is” (cf. Col 3:1), be in your mind above earthly things. As your body has been fashioned, so should you order your way of life: “let your citizenship be in the heavens!” (Phil 3:20) Your true fatherland is Jerusalem on high, your fellow-citizens and compatriots are “the first-born, whose names are written in the heavens.” (Heb 12:23)32 Despite all the allusions to the New Testament, the basis of Basil’s comparison here—the human as a heavenly plant, with its roots in the heavens—is Plato, at the end of the Timaeus.33 Indeed, Basil’s understanding of what it is to be human, like his understanding of the cosmos, is a blending of Genesis and the Timaeus, or even a reading of Genesis within a universe of discourse derived from the Timaeus. He combines, as do most of the Greek Fathers, the biblical idea of the human as created in the image of God, with the idea of the Timaeus that the human is a little cosmos, μικρὸς κόσμος, so that the structure of the cosmos is reflected in miniature in the human, while the human finds its own structure writ large in the cosmos. Basil does not accept the idea of Plato that the cosmos is a living being, nor the implication drawn by many interpreters of Plato’s Timaeus that this correspondence provides a justification for astrology, but the idea that the fate of the cosmos is implicated in the human, that the human is the bond of the cosmos, σύνδεσμος τοῦ κόσμου, is an idea that Basil shares with most of the Greek Fathers. The human fulfils this role, because he is in the image of God, and so fulfils a role in the cosmos analogous to that of God—not the creator itself, but the one through whom the cosmos is bound together in that communion and harmony, in that συμπάθεια, that we remarked on earlier. For this reason Basil lays stress on the significant role that humankind has been given in relation to the cosmos—to care for it, to be a veritable shepherd of being—and what this entails for humans themselves: fundamentally the requirement to “know themselves,” which, Basil says, is “in reality the most difficult thing of all.” This privileged—and demanding—role for humankind is signaled in the Genesis account by the fact that God is presenting as considering the creation of humans. Instead of simply saying “Let there be” light, a firmament, or saying “Let the waters bring forth creeping things and birds,” or “Let the earth bring forth a living soul,” God says “Let us make human kind in accordance with our image and our likeness” (Gen 1:26), and only then does the account go on to say that “God made human kind in accordance with his image” (Gen 1:27). The fact of God’s considering, the allusion to the persons of the Trinity that Basil detects in the use of the plural: all this invests the creation of the human with a solemnity that is not found in the making of the rest of creation. Furthermore, what God considers is to make in the human an image of Himself: that again draws attention to something special in the creation of humankind. exam. 9.2 (Giet, 486–8). H Plato, Tim. 90AB.

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To go on to consider that in any detail would be another paper—or several! And it would take us beyond the account of the Six Days, since what is meant by the human is unfolded in a more discursive way in the second chapter of Genesis. Let me conclude by indicating a few ways in which the Fathers’ consideration of the Six Days of creation— and especially in St. Basil’s account, although a pre-Darwinian account—might still have something from which we may learn. First, and most obviously, Basil is not afraid of what was for him contemporary science. It does not occur to him to oppose the Genesis account to that commonly accepted by the science of his day, though he is not afraid to argue against philosophical positions that then, as now, scientists thought were entailed by their discoveries and convictions. Curiously, one of the places where Basil draws the line is over the tendency of a complete scientific account to advance a deterministic view of the cosmos. For him, on the contrary, the cosmos is the result of God’s free creation, and within that creation there are beings created to be free, in the image of their creator. Second, and consequent on that fundamental intuition, is his constant awareness of the wonder of creation. Out of that sense of wonder there grows a sense of creation as gift, and life as gift, so that life in God’s creation is always informed by a sense of thanksgiving, εὐχαριστία. Third, we find in Basil’s exposition of the created order a sense of humility. Basil knows a lot, and rejoices in that knowledge, but he is still tentative, open to correction, aware that there are problems to which he has, as yet, no convincing answer. Finally, despite the limited nature of his knowledge, St. Basil has a conviction of the connectedness of everything created, a connectedness rooted in the creative energies of God, in the one Word or Logos of God, in whom all the diverse meanings, or logoi, of creation find unity and harmony (an idea that would be later developed by one of the greatest of the Greek Fathers, St. Maximos the Confessor). That sense of wholeness has been fragmented by the dramatic advances of the sciences. Yet there still remains a widespread nostalgia for wholeness and interconnectedness, a nostalgia that finds many unhealthy outlets in the modern world in cults and philosophies that repudiate the advance of science and seek a sense of wholeness in various esoteric practices and beliefs. We need some way of recapturing that sense of wholeness, and the Fathers and St. Basil, unafraid and unembarrassed in their acknowledgment of any true knowledge, and also unshakably confident in God’s creative word, may still perhaps help us to recover some sense of the wholeness of God’s manifold creation.

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CHAPTER SIX

Maximus the Confessor and John Damascene’s Cosmology DORU COSTACHE

The early Christian tradition of natural contemplation,1 which can be traced back to the Alexandrian theologians Clement and Origen,2 was given impetus through the works of Basil of Caesarea, Gregory the Theologian, and Gregory of Nyssa,3 alongside their monastic heir, Evagrius,4 and their distant disciple, the author known as Dionysius the Areopagite.5 Typically, toward articulating their worldview these authors combined scientific information and theological insight. Building on these foundations, two Byzantine monks and theologians, Maximus the Confessor and John Damascene, developed the earlier contributions in quite different ways. John preferred the sober format of structured discourse, whereas Maximus spiraled in staggering movements of mystical reflection. Yet both shared a common interest in making sense of God’s creation, the cosmos, at the crossing of theology and science, or what was known as natural This essay was written at Josephine Butler College during author’s Durham International Senior Research Fellowship with the Institute of Advanced Study, Durham University, United Kingdom (Epiphany Term, 2018). The preliminary research was effectuated during author’s honorary associateship with the Department of Studies in Religion, the School of Letters, Art and Media, the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, the University of Sydney, begun in May 2017. 2 Paul M. Blowers, “Beauty, Tragedy and New Creation: Theology and Contemplation in Cappadocian Cosmology,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 18, no. 1 (2016): 7–8, 13–16; Paul M. Blowers, “Entering ‘This Sublime and Blessed Amphitheatre’: Contemplation of Nature and Interpretation of the Bible in the Patristic Period,” in Nature and Scripture in the Abrahamic Religions: Up to 1700, 2 vols., ed. Jitse M. Van Der Meer and Scott Mandelbrote, Brill’s Series in Church History 36 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 1:147–76, esp. 148–50, 153–4, 162; Joshua Lollar, To See into the Life of Things: The Contemplation of Nature in Maximus the Confessor, Monothéismes et Philosophie (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 102–20; Andrew Louth, Maximus the Confessor, The Early Church Fathers (London: Routledge, 1996), 63–6. 3 Blowers, “Beauty,” 10–28; Blowers, “Entering,” 147–8, 157, 164, 167–8; Doru Costache, “Christian Worldview: Understandings from St Basil the Great,” in Cappadocian Legacy: A Critical Appraisal, ed. Doru Costache and Philip Kariatlis (Sydney: St Andrew’s Orthodox Press, 2013), 97–126, esp. 107–25; Doru Costache, “Seeking Out the Antecedents of the Maximian Theory of Everything: St Gregory the Theologian’s Oration 38,” in Cappadocian Legacy, 225–41, esp. 235–41; Lollar, To See, 120–37. 4 Blowers, “Beauty,” 22; Blowers, “Entering,” 154, 159–64; Lollar, To See, 137–54. 5 Doru Costache, “Being, Well-Being, Being for Ever: Creation’s Existential Trajectory in Patristic Tradition,” in Well-Being, Personal Wholeness and the Social Fabric, ed. Doru Costache, Darren Cronshaw, and James Harrison (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2017), 55–87, esp. 64–71; Lollar, To See, 154–9. 1

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philosophy, physike. Here I consider aspects of their interdisciplinary representations of reality. The ease and elegance with which they navigated between the available sciences and theology denotes, together with their equipment for the task, the openness of the Byzantine framework for cultural exchanges.

MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR The biography of Maximus (d. 662) is still a matter of dispute. Until relatively recently his Byzantine vita, written in the tenth century, was generally accepted.6 But this eulogistic writing is not entirely reliable, as the information for his early years is especially problematic. That said, by locating his birthplace and formative years in Constantinople, the Byzantine vita offers a plausible explanation for his highly speculative training, wide information, including philosophical and scientific, and refined literary style. Andrew Louth argued that these were impossible to acquire and cultivate elsewhere.7 These exquisite skills and ranging knowledge are immediately relevant here. Whether or not Maximus’s Byzantine biography is accurate—and Sebastian Brock, who edited the Syriac vita,8 expressed serious doubts in this regard—these skills and wide information remain unquestionable. In what follows I attempt to sketch his layered cosmology, after which I highlight the nature of the information he used. Maximus took for granted that God created the universe out of nothing.9 The fact of being created is what marked the difference between the universe and its creator, a difference that impeded their ontological merger.10 But for him this basic axiom of the Christian faith did not exhaust either the doctrine of creation or, as Paul Blowers had it, divine resourcefulness.11 At the origin of the universe were not simply God’s creative power and will but God’s goodness and wisdom. Divine goodness and wisdom account for the meaningful structure and the purposefulness of the cosmos.12 Symptomatically, at the center of his cosmological thinking Maximus placed the Logos of God—the supreme wisdom—as the originating, creative, and providential factor at work in the universe.13 It is due to the permeating activity of the Logos that the universe is a cosmos, an ordered reality, organized after a divine blueprint devised before the creation existed.14 The cosmic blueprint is overwhelmingly complex. It contains the constitutive norms of each being ever to exist in the universe, each species, and the cosmos as a whole, including Bronwen Neil and Pauline Allen, The Life of Maximus the Confessor: Recension 3, Early Christian Studies 6 (Sydney: St Pauls, 2003); Pauline Allen and Bronwen Neil, Maximus the Confessor and His Companions: Documents from Exile, Oxford Early Christian Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). 7 Louth, Maximus the Confessor, 6–7. 8 Sebastian Brock, Syriac Perspectives on Late Antiquity, Collected Studies Series (London: Variorum Reprints, 1984), 299–346. 9 Paul M. Blowers, “From Nonbeing to Eternal Well-Being: Creation ex nihilo in the Cosmology and Soteriology of Maximus the Confessor,” in Light on Creation: Ancient Commentators in Dialogue and Debate on the Origin of the World, ed. Geert Roskam and Joseph Verheyden (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 169–85, esp. 170–6. 10 Difficulty 41.2.6–8, 13–14 in Nicholas Constas, ed., Maximos the Confessor: On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua, 2 vols., Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). 11 Paul M. Blowers, Maximus the Confessor: Jesus Christ and the Transfiguration of the World, Christian Theology in Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 101–2. 12 Difficulty 41.2.9–10. 13 Difficulty 7.20.5–11. 14 Blowers, “Nonbeing,” 179–80; Torstein Theodor Tollefsen, The Christocentric Cosmology of St Maximus the Confessor, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 21–60. 6

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the interactions between the various beings and levels of existence. All created beings are themselves as well as related, or themselves insofar as related.15 This is because created beings are possessed of a schesis (quality, disposition, relation) that determines both their particularities and their manner of connecting with other beings.16 As particularity and connectivity, schesis embodies the profound layer of the divine principles of things, logoi. In turn, the logoi present in the infrastructure of the creation translate the antecedent divine blueprint into the concreteness of created beings. Thus, the divine principles are both thoughts within the one Logos and at the heart of creation’s multiplicity, to the extent that the one Logos is many logoi and the many logoi one Logos.17 As such they constitute an ubiquitous network of information patterns that feed into the matrix of the cosmos. They secure both the specificity and the connectedness of the beings. The schesis of things illustrates this double function. Deeper still, the logoi facilitate the fundamental and permanent interaction between God and the creation. Albeit ontologically separate, the created and the uncreated intersect through the logoi, the interface of their relation. They can perform this function given their presence in both God and the creation. For Maximus, there is no way of articulating a Christian cosmology without the network of divine principles, by which the cosmos is, metaphorically, the visible flesh of the Logos,18 thus a form of divine incarnation.19 But the divine principles perform more than these tasks. Alongside establishing the continuous link between the uncreated and the created, together with safeguarding the specificity and mutuality of beings, they enable the dynamic actualization of universe’s potential. For Maximus, the universe is not ready-made, created once and for all in the initial big bang of God’s omnipotent fiat. It is an evolving reality, a work in progress. Each being within it, each species within it, the particular and the general, and the cosmos in its entirety, all emerge in a state of potentiality whose actualization—or dynamic development—is predetermined by their divine principles.20 The essence of beings is potentiality on its way to concreteness.21 Dynamism, the fact of “being through becoming,” marks creation’s ontological difference from divine perfection.22 But by virtue of their principles all things are destined to reach perfection, specific eschatological goals, indeed their ultimate fulfillment. To that end, all things undergo successive stages of systolic and diastolic movement, of inflation and deflation or extension and contraction.23 These stages entail morphological changes that, although within the limits imposed by the divine principles, pertain to their natural movement or their dynamic of actualization. This process therefore combines logos and evolution, predetermining divine parameters and natural movement. What matters is that the order, maturation, and fulfillment of the cosmos and everything within it are not simply given; they are both promised and having to be earned; Mystagogy 1.4–30; 7.552–575, in Christian Boudignon, ed., Maximi confessoris Mystagogia: una cum Latina interpretatione Anastasii Bibliothecarii, Corpus Christianorum Series Graeca 69 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011). 16 Mystagogy 1.10,15,17; 7.25. 17 Difficulty 7.20.5. See also Blowers, “Nonbeing,” 176–9; Tollefsen, Christocentric Cosmology, 64–136. 18 To Thalassius 35.11–13, in Carl Laga and Carlos Steel, eds., Maximi confessoris quaestiones ad Thalassium, 2 vols, Corpus Christianorum Series Graeca 7 and 22 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1:1980; 2:1990). 19 Blowers, “Nonbeing,” 177–8. 20 Difficulty 7.16.1–18. See also Difficulty 7.24.1–6. 21 Chapters on Knowledge and Economy (hereafter, Chapters) 1.3.1–2 in Kerstin Hajdú and Andreas Wollbold, eds., Maximus Confessor: Capita theologica et oeconomica: Zwei Centurien über die Gotteserkenntnis, Fontes Christiani 66 (Freiburg: Herder, 2017). 22 Difficulty 7.9.10–11; 41.2.8. 23 Difficulty 10.89.1–5; 10.90.8–12. 15

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they are already there, but not quite yet. In this case, natural movement, fundamentally conditioned by the divine blueprint, points to further complexity and fulfillment. Cosmic perfection is not given in the beginning. Cosmic perfection is something to be attained at the end of the evolutionary movement, when all inflations and deflations end. The movement of the cosmos and of everything within it unfolds after various ternary patterns: “essence, potentiality, and actuality,” “origin, middle, and finality,” “creation, movement, and rest,” and “being, wellbeing, and being forever.”24 The last trilogy primarily applies to rational beings able to decide on the course of their life,25 but the first three patterns, immediately relevant here, apply to all things created. The first trilogy defines created essence as dynamic, as potentiality on its way to ontological concreteness, or actuality, through gradual actualizations. The second and the third trilogies take their cue from the first one, showing how this process occurs. They depict the universe and all things within it as beginning in the form of a divine project, or intention, which corresponds to a state of ontological potentiality. Divine intention and natural potentiality are therefore at the origin of all creation. Before the universe and all things within it emerge in the physical plane, they are not yet, but they are so in the mind of the creator. The divine act of creation, or generation, mentioned in the third pattern, brings God’s intention and the potential stuff of the cosmos into being and puts things in motion—potentiality going through stages of actualization in harmony with the divine intention. Actualization, creation’s middle term, corresponds to movement. Movement is definitely natural, inherent to created beings. Nevertheless, while movement is natural, it by no means is aimless. When the created things emerge into being, they begin to move toward their predetermined goal. Their finality is a state of “rest,” that is, full actuality, ontological completion, an unprecedented state in the earlier stages.26 From a different angle, because the movement of the universe and of everything within it unfolds in the parameters of the divine intention—the antecedent blueprint or the principles of things—the process of actualization transcends naturalism in its modern sense. God permeates the spacetime continuum as the origin, or cause, the middle, or milieu, and the finality, or fulfillment of all created beings. In Maximus’s words, “God is the creative origin, middle, and finality of any essence, potentiality, and actuality.”27 This being the case, creation’s motion from beginning to end is an ongoing event of divine participation: “the beings which persist in existence and movement participate in God.”28 There is no conflict between movement as natural and the divine or supernatural support. The universe and everything within it exist, move, and have being within the divine milieu.29 The two aspects, natural and supernatural, converge into what one may Chapters 1.4.8–9; 1.5.1. Chapters on Love 3.23.2–3 in Aldo Ceresa-Gastaldo, ed., Massimo Confessore: Capitoli sulla carità, Verba Seniorum 3 (Roma: Editrice Studium, 1963), 152. Difficulty 7.6.1–3; 7.9.1–11; 10.12.3–14. See also Blowers, “Nonbeing,” 182, 185; Costache, “Being,” 71–85. 25 See Costache, “Being,” 74–76. Elsewhere, this trilogy refers to the overall goodness of the creation. Blowers, “Nonbeing,” 171, 176. 26 Chapters 1.3.3–7. See also Blowers, Maximus the Confessor, 110. Maximus’s views informed Dumitru Stăniloae’s articulation of the Christian worldview against the backdrop of evolutionary cosmology. See Doru Costache, “A Theology of the World: Dumitru Stăniloae, the Traditional Worldview, and Contemporary Cosmology,” in Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Tensions, Ambiguities, Potential, ed. Vasilios N. Makrides and Gayle Woloschak, Science and Orthodox Christianity 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019), 205–22, esp. 213–16. 27 Chapters 1.4.8–9. In Mystagogy 1.7–8 he called God the “cause, origin, and finality” of everything. See Blowers, “Nonbeing,” 181–4. 28 Difficulty 7.16.18. 29 Acts 17:28. Quoted in Difficulty 7.22.2–3. 24

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call the principle of synergy or cooperation of the divine and the cosmic energies.30 Cooperation is inherent to the created reality because of its origin in the divine blueprint that, according to Maximus, corresponds to “the mystery of Christ.” The phrase “the mystery of Christ” refers to Christ’s inner structure, what theologians designate as “hypostatic union.” According to this Christological model, everything that happens within the one person of Christ is double, divinehuman, synergetic.31 And since “the mystery of Christ” is “the origin” and “the blessed finality for which all things were established,” “in view of which God produced the essences of beings,” then the same synergetic pattern permeates the entire spacetime continuum.32 Synergy works within the universe as a continuous interaction of the divine and the cosmic energies so that cosmic events are neither merely natural nor merely supernatural. Thus, Maximus’s complex understanding of nature does not align with either medieval supernaturalism or modern naturalism. His understanding transcends the reductive schemas of creationism, which draws on the supernaturalist position, and evolutionism, which draws on the naturalist viewpoint. But the complexity of created nature does not denote only its openness to God’s active presence. It also entails an anthropic dimension or the adjustment of the universe to human presence. Maximus referred to this aspect, metaphorically, by likening the human being to “grace” for the creation.33 I take this to mean that the human being is as necessary to the workings of the universe as the cosmic energy and God’s active presence are. This view is typical for the theanthropocosmic perspective,34 which holds together the divine, the human, and the cosmic realities. Turning to the anthropic dimension of created nature, to make sense of it one should consider what I usually call Maximus’s theory of everything.35 By this phrase I understand a comprehensive representation of reality that accounts for the whole as well as for the parts. His complex outline of reality—both coherent and multilayered, unified and diversified—may not correspond to the current understanding of the concept, but it successfully fits the bill of the contemporary quest for encompassing narratives, such as Big History. Here is a summary of his theory.36 Reality has two sides, one created and one uncreated. The uncreated side, that is, God, created the visible and the invisible universe that, we already know, ontologically speaking entirely differs from the uncreated so that no bridge exists between them. This first and most fundamental division of reality hosts the less radical polarity between the visible and the invisible, or in Platonic parlance, the intelligible and the sensible, the two levels of the created domain. In turn, the visible aspect of the universe subdivides into the physical sky and the earth. The earth itself is the locus of another polarity, between paradise and the inhabited world. The last division, whose location remains unspecified, refers to the gendered humankind, male and female.37 ostache, “Theology of the World,” 210–12, 220. C To Thalassius 60.5–26. 32 To Thalassius 60.32–38. See Blowers, Maximus the Confessor, 104–6; Doru Costache, “The Orthodox Doctrine of Creation in the Age of Science,” Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies 2, no. 1 (2019): 43–64, esp. 58–60. 33 Difficulty 41.3.1. 34 See my doctoral dissertation (in Romanian), “Logos and Creation: From the Anthropic Cosmological Principle to the Theanthropocosmic Perspective” (University of Bucharest, 2000); Costache, “Seeking Out,” 225–6. 35 Costache, “Seeking Out,” 226–9; “Theology of the World,” 217–20. 36 Doru Costache, “Mapping Reality within the Experience of Holiness,” in The Oxford Handbook of Maximus the Confessor, ed. Pauline Allen and Bronwen Neil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 378–96; Louth, Maximus the Confessor, 69–71; Tollefsen, Christocentric Cosmology, 82–3. 37 Difficulty 41.2.6–24. See Costache, “Mapping Reality,” 379–81. 30 31

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This comprehensive map of reality can be represented as a series of five concentric circles, the largest being the supreme division of reality between the created and the uncreated, while the narrowest is the anthropological one comprising maleness and femaleness. Each second element of the first three circles—the created, the physical universe, and the earth—is subdivided into the two components of a narrower circle. I already mentioned that Maximus did not indicate which of the two milieus of the fourth circle, including the paradise and the inhabited land, hosted gendered humankind. Perhaps this was a way of saying that human beings were called to freely choose their location or (and this is the possibility I favor) that they were supposed to bridge the two earthly realms. The latter possibility transpires through his repeated point about humankind’s aptitude for cosmic unification.38 Ontologically connected with all things created, the human being “naturally mediates” between the various layers of reality as a “natural bond of sorts” and a “kind of workshop within which all things are supremely held together.”39 This imagery evokes the ancient notion of humankind as a microcosm in which the universe is recapitulated.40 So equipped, and undertaking the path of personal purification, the human being ascends from one circle to the next one, successively bridging the polarized levels of reality.41 Given that the final synthesis between the created and the uncreated required a corresponding mediator, humankind achieved the five unifications in the person of Christ, God and man, created and uncreated.42 The saints continue to work toward the unification of reality through the ages.43 The idea of an ongoing unification of reality coheres with Maximus’s view that the universe is a work in progress and that it progresses in complexity until it reaches its predetermined end, that is, its eschatological fulfilment. The earlier studied trilogies do not work independently from this outline of gradual unification. And whereas his straightforward cosmological statements do not always clarify what fulfillment is about, the theory of everything makes plain that it means the unification of the created with the uncreated into what he rendered by way of an ecclesiological metaphor as “one breath,” sympnoia.44 Furthermore, the theory confirms that what facilitates this achievement are both natural and supernatural factors. Maximus’s was a nuanced approach. His map of reality draws on a wide range of sources, scriptural, theological, philosophical, and scientific. That said, as Hans Urs von Balthasar long ago noted, his synthesis cannot be reduced to its sources.45 Take for instance his theory of everything, this genuine summary of his entire teaching about nature. The broadest circle, that is, the ultimate division of reality, between the created and the uncreated, draws on theological convictions related to scriptural narratives. The second circle however refers to a narrower polarity, between the visible and the invisible, or sensible and intelligible, between objects accessible to the senses and objects accessible through contemplation. Whereas the visible and the invisible were the preferred terms

ifficulty 41.2.20–5.21. See Costache, “Mapping Reality,” 381–5. D Difficulty 41.2.20–22; 41.3.2. 40 See also Mystagogy 7.540–575. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the Confessor, trans. Brian E. Daley, SJ (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius, 2003), 173–6, 199–200; Costache, “Orthodox Doctrine of Creation,” 59; Louth, Maximus the Confessor, 61–2; Tollefsen, Christocentric Cosmology, 102–3. 41 Costache, “Mapping Reality,” 383. 42 Ibid., 385–92. 43 Ibid.,  392–4. 44 See To Thalassius 53.15; 63.518; 64.581. 45 Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy, 56–63. 38 39

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of the Christian vocabulary, present in the Nicene creed, the sensible and the intelligible were borrowed from the Platonic tradition. The alternation of these terms within Maximus’s discourse is another proof of how profoundly integrated were the views these words represented both for him and for his forebears. Specifically, he thoroughly reinterpreted the Platonic vocabulary against a Christian backdrop, as the elements of the second division pertain to the created universe, being inapplicable to the divine. In other words, following some of his traditional antecedents,46 Maximus considered the created versus uncreated polarity more profound than the one between sensible and intelligible. Next, the third circle refers to the visible universe in physical terms, which evoke Aristotelian cosmography: the astronomical sky and the earth. There is no room for confusion here. This sky is not the mystical heaven of the angelic beings. As such from the metaphysics of the second circle he moved toward things more familiar, albeit not undertaking to explore the physics of sky and earth in any details. The last two circles, located on earth, return to the Scriptures, from which Maximus borrowed the polarity between the paradise, of Genesis 2, and the inhabited land, of Genesis 3, as well as the gender division, of Genesis 1. These last two circles and their corresponding unifications are pivotal for understanding the spirit of Maximus’s theory of everything. The fifth polarity, regarding gendered humankind, is of primary interest because it discloses the mode of union for all five circles. In short, as the first synthesis preserves the distinctiveness of manhood and womanhood while bridging them through the broader category of humankind, the unifications do not abolish the differences.47 All things remain what they are and yet attain further complexity by engaging in synergetic interactions. Keeping this in mind, of particular interest is the second synthesis, between the paradise, a metaphor for the spiritual life, and the inhabited land, or civilization, science, and technology. This second step refers to the synthesis of spirituality and technology, of theology and science, being consistent with the overall perception of Maximus about Christian and secular culture. In conclusion, his theory of everything, corresponding to his general worldview, takes the shape of a program of cultural integration and cross-pollination, which Torstein Tollefsen likened to the hierarchical architecture of the Porphyrian tree, of Aristotelian inspiration,48 and which I consider a sample of Byzantine transdisciplinary thinking.49 It is due to this aptitude for integration that various ideas, concepts, and sources found a welcoming haven within his thinking. His Logos theory draws on Philo’s through the intermediary of several early Christian thinkers of whom prominent were the Alexandrine and the Cappadocian theologians. His understanding of the divine principles borrows from the Platonic and the Stoic traditions. His knowledge of the natural world is Aristotelian but filtered by such Christian forebears as Gregory of Nyssa and Nemesius of Emesa.50 His worldview therefore represents a comprehensive framework that does not dismiss any relevant information, regardless of its source. This framework says something

ostache, “Seeking Out,” 235. C Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy, 154–7. 48 Tollefsen, Christocentric Cosmology, 26, 33, 67, 79, 81–92. 49 Doru Costache, “The Transdisciplinary Carats of Patristic Byzantine Tradition,” Transdisciplinary Journal of Engineering & Science 4 (2013): 131–40, esp. 98–9. 50 Costache, “Seeking Out,” 229–35; Lollar, To See, 43–99; Marius Portaru, “Classical Philosophical Influences: Aristotle and Platonism,” in The Oxford Handbook of Maximus the Confessor, 127–48. 46 47

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fundamental about the generous Byzantine culture were such a synthesis was possible. On this note I must now turn to the contributions of John Damascene, Maximus’s admirer.

JOHN DAMASCENE John (d. 749) was born in the capital of the Umayyad caliphate, Damascus, to a Christian family of noble status, of either Syrian or Arab origin.51 Together with undergoing the available Arab curriculum, he acquired education in the paideutic tradition, his writings showing great refinement. He became a monk in a Palestinian monastery, either Saint Sabbas’s or Saint Chariton’s, where he wrote treatises, orations, and liturgical hymns. He left behind an important theological and spiritual legacy that far exceeds his renowned contributions to iconology.52 Relevant here is his erudite synthesis of the classical and the Christian traditions within the trilogy suggestively entitled The Fount of Knowledge.53 The first part of this tripartite work, Philosophical Chapters, explores the method of proper thinking within the classical tradition.54 This search was motivated by the author’s conviction that true theology is impossible without mastering the rules of logic and dialectic.55 Only one equipped with such intellectual tools could proceed toward making sense of things, as John himself did in the third volume of the trilogy, An Exact Exposition on the Orthodox Faith (hereafter, Exposition).56 In what modern editions present as its second part (­chapters 15–44 of the work), the latter displays his wealth of knowledge in matters natural. His information draws on the cosmology, astronomy, physics, geology, biology, and anthropology of his age, which he discussed within a scriptural setting. One could surmise that for John the acquisition of knowledge demanded scientific information as much as theological aptness, reason as much as faith.57 It is without a doubt that he appropriated this view from a range of fourth- and fifth-century authors who made heavy use of the available sciences in order to elucidate obscure points in the Genesis narrative of creation.58 Given the absence of contemporary sources (the earliest coming from the tenth century), John’s biography is not easy to reconstruct. Alexandre Kazhdan, A History of Byzantine Literature (650–850), Research Series 2 (Athens: The National Hellenic Research Foundation, 1999), 75–7; Andrew Louth, St John Damascene: Tradition and Originality in Byzantine Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 5–14; Andrew Louth, “St John Damascene: Preacher and Poet,” in Preacher and Audience: Studies in Early Christian and Byzantine Homiletics, ed. Mary B. Cunningham and Pauline Allen, A New History of the Sermon 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 247–66, esp. 247–9; Peter Schadler, John of Damascus and Islam: Christian Heresiology and the Intellectual Background to Earliest Christian-Muslim Relations, The History of Christian-Muslim Relations 34 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 98–101. 52 Kazhdan, A History, 77, 87–90; Louth, St John Damascene, 15–28; Louth, “St John Damascene,” 250–65. 53 Kazhdan, A History, 79–80; Louth, St John Damascene, 31–7. 54 Louth, St John Damascene, 38–42, 44–53. 55 Doru Costache, “Christian Gnosis: From Clement the Alexandrian to John Damascene,” in The Gnostic World, ed. Garry W. Trompf, Gunner B. Mikkelsen, and Jay Johnston, Routledge Worlds (London: Routledge, 2019), 259–70, esp. 267–9; Schadler, John of Damascus, 75–82; Dominic O’Meara, “Conceptions of Science in Byzantium,” in The Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium, ed. Anthony Kaldellis and Niketas Siniossoglou (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 169–82, esp. 172. 56 Louth, St John Damascene, 84–189. The edition I use is P. Bonifatius Kotter, ed., Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos, vol. 2, Patristische Texte und Studien 12 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1973). 57 Costache, “Christian Gnosis,” 268; David Bradshaw, “The Presence of Aristotle in Byzantine Theology,” in The Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium, 381–96, esp. 387–92; Louth, St John Damascene, 126, 130; Efthymios Nicolaidis, Science and Eastern Orthodoxy: From the Greek Fathers to the Age of Globalization, trans. Susan Emanuel (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), 46–8; Anne Tihon, “Astronomy,” in The Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium, 183–97, esp. 183, 185–6. 58 Louth, St John Damascene, 118–19, 126, 130. 51

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Because of this methodological choice, his representations of reality significantly diverge from Maximus’s contemplative manner, although his discourse is not entirely deprived of spiritual nuances. For instance, he depicted the paradise as a twofold reality, spiritual and material, a place situated in the east, higher than all other places. Its double structure mirrored that of the human being, also spiritual and material.59 The second part of Exposition considers the spacetime continuum, undertaking the cartography of the visible and invisible universe in the encyclopedic style of The Fount of Knowledge.60 This map is an invaluable source for any modern researcher of the Byzantine worldview, drawing the exact contours and the contents of the cosmos known at the time. Looking briefly at the relevant chapters, they refer to the following: first, the age and the creation (15–16/2:1–2); second, the invisible world (17–18/2:3–4); third, the visible cosmos (19–24/2:5–10); fourth, the paradise (25/2:11); fifth, elements of anthropology (26–42/2:12–28); sixth, providence, foreknowledge, and predetermination (43–44/2:29– 30).61 These items, pertaining to yet another theory of everything—in fact providing many more details than the Maximian one, which pays no attention to biological matters— illustrate a range of cultural horizons. The first one combines Hellenistic science and the Genesis narrative of creation. The second one develops the sketchy angelology of Scripture in the light of patristic tradition. The third one ingeniously maps the cosmos by showing, through a blending of scriptural imagery and scientific information, what phenomena pertain to the four fundamental elements. The fourth one discusses the Genesis narrative of paradise from the viewpoint of Platonic dual world. The fifth one considers the human being through the lens of the classical concept of the microcosm, to then describe the mechanisms of thinking, perception, and emotion, free will, virtue, and vice in scriptural and anatomical terms. The sixth one brings about John’s skillful integration of scriptural wisdom and logical acumen by way of engaging human free will and divine foresight. Underlaying his view of the nature was a modified Aristotelian ontology.62 In what follows I briefly look at the first and the third items, the latter only in regards to cosmology. Time and its divisions are not the only measure of reality. For one, the creator is above time, eternal, and in fact “preceding” all the ages.63 The word “age” (aion) is polysemic and God’s eternity is but one of its meanings. Other meanings refer to created realities, including the human lifespan and the whole of the creation’s existence. But the latter pertains to a broader and more elusive sense of the “age,” as a moving dimension64 that transcends time and, while similar to divine eternity, is eternal only after a fashion.65 This moving dimension is also called “age of ages,”66 encompassing the eight “days” or “ages” of the created continuum, namely, the present state of the cosmos, its previous stages, and its eschatological form.67 This elusive dimension, liminal to God’s eternity and the temporal dimension of creation, seems to correspond to what Maximus called the divine xposition 25.2–7,40–44 (2.11). See Louth, St John Damascene, 131–2. E On John’s encyclopedic project, see Schadler, John of Damascus, 52–6. 61 For an analysis of this part of Exposition, see Louth, St John Damascene, 117–44. 62 Bradshaw, “Presence of Aristotle,” 389; Nicolaidis, Science and Eastern Orthodoxy, 47. For the ancient cosmological ideas that influenced John, see Dmitry Biriukov, “The Cosmology of John Damascene and Its Antique Context,” Scrinium 12 (2016): 353–60, esp. 355–9. 63 Exposition 15.2,22 (2.1). 64 Exposition 15.11–12,21 (2.1). Louth, St John Damascene, 118, noticed the Platonic overtones of this representation. 65 Exposition 15.9–12 (2.1). 66 Exposition 15.29–31 (2.1). 67 Exposition 15.28–31 (2.1). See Costache, “Doctrine of Creation,” 52, 54, 56. 59 60

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project and its embodiments, the logoi. For some reason, John took exception to the concept of divine principles,68 although he stated that God creates by thinking about the universe.69 But he shared with Maximus the view that the Trinity70 created out of nothing the visible and invisible universe, which culminated in the making of humankind, in whose nature both aspects combined.71 What prompted God to create was goodness, the willingness for other beings to exist and to participate in divine perfection.72 Chapters 19–24 (2:5–10) represent an ingeniously connected whole, displaying John’s classification of everything that exists within the visible creation in relation to the four fundamental elements known to the ancients. But the algorithm of reality is more complex than that. The four elements as well as the entire cosmos connect on a more profound level, signified by the sky, ouranos, which contains all the created beings both visible and invisible.73 Putting aside the invisible aspect, the relation between the sky, or space, and the fundamental elements is staggering, suggesting different layers of the universe. John did not insist on this nuance though, perhaps on account of his quoting Ps 145:6 (LXX),74 a passage whose authority—he must have thought—spared him the effort to explain. What matters is that, out of nothing, God created the fundamental elements, “sky, earth, air, fire, and water,” from which are made “animals, plants, and seeds.”75 This physicalist worldview complements Maximus’s theory of the two stages of creation, where the transition from the divine principles to concrete beings was not satisfactorily explained. Perhaps they both realized how difficult it was to bridge the ideal and the material planes, an issue they endeavored to circumvent in different ways. We retain that, apart from the fundamental elements, brought about from nothing, everything else is created out of the primordial stuff. This means that there is no ontological discontinuity within the universe or within the sky that contains everything created. The astronomical information of John was limited at best, or, if not, he was definitely not interested in expanding on such matters. In discussing the nature of the sky, he listed several hypotheses, all different, without choosing between them and without refuting any explanations.76 True, he strongly believed that the nature of the sky remains unknown to us.77 He did the same in regards to the shape of the universe, where he presented two opinions, that it was either spherical or hemispherical.78 He did the same again when he discussed the alternating references to the sky in the singular and in the plural (two, three, seven, many) in the Scriptures and in cosmographical accounts.79 In so doing, John followed Basil’s neutral attitude in regards to the contradictory physical theories of his time.80 He further agreed with Basil on affirming that the sky—as all things that have a beginning of their existence—is naturally perishable and in need of divine providence.81 John’s treatment of the four fundamental elements took the form, I have already mentioned, of as many discourses on the various regions of the cosmos that, according to S ee on this Louth, St John Damascene, 117–18. Exposition 16.6–8 (2.2). 70 Exposition 15.24–27 (2.1); 16.6–8 (2.2). 71 Exposition 16.4–6 (2.2). See also Exposition 19.3 (2.5). 72 Exposition 16.2–4 (2.2). 73 Exposition 20.2 (2.6). For an analysis of “heaven” in this context, see Biriukov, “Cosmology,” 354. 74 Exposition 19.3–4 (2.5). 75 Exposition 19.4–7 (2.5). 76 Exposition 20.5–17 (2.6). Louth, St John Damascene, 126; Nicolaidis, Science and Eastern Orthodoxy, 47. 77 Exposition 20.81–82 (2.6). 78 Exposition 20.42–60 (2.6). 79 Exposition 20.61–73 (2.6). 80 See Costache, “Christian Worldview,” 103–5. John quoted Basil in this very context. Exposition 20.14–16 (2.6). 81 Exposition 20.74–80 (2.6). See Costache, “Christian Worldview,” 100. 68 69

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him, pertained to each of the elements. Consequently, ­chapters  21–24 (2:7–10) display the same structure: after introductions into the properties of the elements, that is, fire, air, water, and earth, the respective chapters explore the beings and the phenomena that most obviously represent those elements. Of immediate interest is ­chapter  21 (2:7), which deals with “light, fire, the luminaries, that is the sun and the moon, and the stars,”82 but the heading does not list the whole range of topics addressed therein. For John, the discourse on the cosmos included the working of the primordial light through the celestial bodies;83 the seven “planets,” so called not in the modern sense, but because they moved against the direction of the “fixed” stars;84 the solstices and the seasons;85 the zodiacal signs, their astrological impact, and comets;86 eclipses;87 the solar and the lunar years, and the phases of the moon.88 Corresponding to the last part of the chapter on sky, here, too, he returned to the point that, insofar as they are created, celestial objects are “composite” and therefore “corruptible,” impermanent, albeit we ignore their true nature.89 This leitmotif appears as an apologetic and pastoral strategy meant to deter people from worshiping the elements and the celestial objects. John approached the other elements in the same fashion, discussing, after references to the Genesis narrative of creation, in ­chapter  22 (2:8) the nature of air and of atmospheric phenomena such as the winds; in ­chapter  23 (2:9) the nature of water as a primordial element and in the forms it takes around us, from the ocean that circles the earth to seas, lakes, and rivers, the living milieu of innumerable aquatic species; in ­chapter  24 (2:10) the nature of the earth, understood as primordial element and as a place of human habitation, a place that humankind shares with animals, birds, and plants.90 It is obvious that John, as Maximus before him, showed a profound interest in nature, which he, emulating his predecessor, considered through the combined lens of the available sciences, the theology of creation, and scriptural material. And whereas Maximus preferred to develop his views of the infrastructural rationality and connectivity of all things, itself an interdisciplinary exercise, John chose a more direct form of engagement at the crossing of science and theology. Hence his numerous references to scientific facts and theories. Despite this difference, the following comment of Louth is applicable as much to Maximus as it does to John: John’s presentation of the visible creation is a remarkable fusion of biblical and classical learning. It is possible to assign the information given to one or another source, but, as John presents it, it forms a single whole … what we find in John is a rounded view of the created order in which astronomical/astrological, meteorological, geographical, and medical knowledge … belong together.91 The same assessment equally applies to the generous Byzantine framework, which, far from segregating the perspectives, welcomed this kind of integrated discourse.

xposition 21.1–2 (2.7). E Exposition 21.5–36 (2.7). 84 Exposition 21.37–39 (2.7). 85 Exposition 21.57–93 (2.7). 86 Exposition 21.94–147,192–200 (2.7). 87 Exposition 21.155–170 (2.7). 88 Exposition 21.171–186,201–207 (2.7). 89 Exposition 21.187–191 (2.7). 90 See Louth, St John Damascene, 126–30. 91 Louth, St John Damascene, 130. 82 83

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CHAPTER SEVEN

Hildegard of Bingen DEBRA L. STOUDT

Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) is a unique figure in the twelfth-century European intellectual landscape. As a visionary, composer, prophet, preacher, and expert in the healing arts, she garnered the attention and admiration of her contemporaries, religious and lay alike. Her manifold accomplishments are informed by historical and contemporary knowledge, traditions, and beliefs, but nonetheless reveal her innovative and inimitable spirit. The Benedictine saint’s oeuvre comprises a variety of genres: visions, musical compositions, medical-scientific texts, letters, biblical exegesis, and a morality play; the remarkable content of her works belies her claims as unlearned. Born into a noble family, Hildegard was received at a young age into the care of the anchoress Jutta of Sponheim, who, along with the monk Volmar, supervised her rudimentary education, which included singing the psalter, reading scriptures, and learning basic Latin. She entered the religious life around the age of fifteen, when she made her profession as a Benedictine nun. Little is known of her activities in the next two decades, but given her knowledge of plants and their medicinal uses, she may have been active in the infirmary that was part of the monastic community at Disibodenberg, perhaps as the individual who gathered ingredients and prepared remedies.1 Following Jutta’s death in 1136, Hildegard assumed leadership of the religious women who had gathered at Disibodenberg; in subsequent years she continued in the role of magistra, founding and leading independent female communities at nearby Rupertsberg and Eibingen. Around 1158 she embarked on the first of several preaching tours, undertakings that led her beyond the confines of the cloistered Benedictine communities near Bingen. Hildegard’s greatest notoriety derives from her visions, which began before she reached the age of five. They served as the impetus for her best-known works and her subsequent renown as a prophet: at the age of forty-two (1141) a voice from heaven directed her to write what she had experienced as the Living Light of the Godhead spoke to her. This experience and subsequent visions in 1157, 1163, and 1167 resulted in a trilogy produced in the final three decades of her life—the Scivias (Know the Ways [of the Lord]), Liber vitae meritorum (Book of the Rewards of Life [LVM]), and Liber divinorum operum (Book of Divine Works [LDO])—which presents her visions of the creation of the world, the role of humankind in it, and the contours of salvation history.

See Florence Eliza Glaze, “Medical Writer,” in Voice of the Living Light. Hildegard of Bingen and Her World, ed. Barbara Newman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 125–31; and Victoria Sweet, Rooted in the Earth, Rooted in the Sky: Hildegard of Bingen and Premodern Medicine (New York: Routledge, 2006), 60–3. 1

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The Physica and the Cause et cure [Cause] describe the material world and document natural remedies for a variety of diseases and conditions.2 Despite long-standing attribution of these writings to Hildegard, their emphasis on secular themes, uncharacteristic style, use of vernacular German, and problematic manuscript tradition has raised questions regarding authenticity; these remain unresolved.3 Nonetheless, the medical-scientific and the visionary works complement each other through their characterization of the relationship between the natural and divine worlds, between physical healing and spiritual wholeness.4 Whereas the cures in the Physica and the Cause attend to the healing of the body and the mind, the contents of the visionary trilogy address the well-being of the soul.

EDUCATION AND WRITINGS Lacking the formal education afforded male religious, Hildegard nonetheless was familiar with classical and contemporary theological teachings and scientific knowledge. No catalog of manuscripts at Disibodenberg is extant; however, the library holdings undoubtedly were similar to those documented in nearby religious communities. This has allowed scholars to posit potential resources at the magistra’s disposal for the Physica and the Cause, such as the Latin translations of works by Hippocrates and Galen, herbals, and treatises on anatomy, bloodletting, and diseases of women.5 Through clergy who visited Disibodenberg and whom Hildegard met during her preaching tours, she could have become acquainted with additional writings, including more recently copied manuscripts of translations by Constantine the African.6 Letter writing might have provided yet another venue for acquiring and sharing information. Despite substantial correspondence by and to Hildegard that still exists, there is meager content concerning medical-scientific issues. The letters occasionally reference the magistra’s own illnesses as well as her healing of the sick; the latter topic also appears in her Vita, begun during the last years of her life and completed after her death, which attributes healing miracles to her. The inclusion of German names for plants and diseases suggests that Hildegard also made use of vernacular sources, oral or written.7

Regarding the relationship between Hildegard’s visionary and medical-scientific writings, see Benedikt Konrad Vollmann, “Hildegard von Bingen: Theologische versus naturkundliche Schriften?” in Geistliche Aspekte mittelalterlicher Naturlehre: Symposion 30. November—2. Dezember 1990, ed. Benedikt Konrad Vollmann (Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert, 1993), 40–7, 128–31. Markus Enders describes Hildegard’s understanding of nature in the Physica and the Cause as well as the Scivias and the LDO in “Das Naturverständnis Hildegards von Bingen,” in “Im Angesicht Gottes suche der Mensch sich selbst”: Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179), ed. Rainer Berndt (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2001), 461–501. 3 Scholarly opinion has become more tempered since Charles Singer’s rejection of the Physica and the Cause as part of Hildegard’s oeuvre slightly more than a century ago: “The Scientific Views and Visions of Saint Hildegard (1098–1180),” in Studies in the History and Method of Science, ed. Charles Singer, Volume I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1917; New York: Arno Press, 1975), 14–15. Maura Zátonyi, Hildegard von Bingen, Zugänge zum Denken des Mittelalters 8 (Münster: Aschendorff, 2017), 60–4, summarizes current arguments concerning the authenticity of these works. 4 See Heinrich Schipperges, Hildegard of Bingen: Healing and the Nature of the Cosmos, trans. John A. Broadwin (Princeton, NJ: Marcus Wiener, 1997), 75–7. 5 Glaze, “Medical Writer,” 130–1; Sweet, Rooted in the Earth, 56–7. 6 Sweet, Rooted in the Earth, 57–8. 7 Ibid.,  58–60. 2

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The Physica and the Cause appear to have originated with the Liber subtilitatem diversarum naturarum creaturarum.8 In the opening paragraphs of the LVM a work with this title is mentioned as having been inspired by a vision;9 however, no vestiges of visionary style are apparent in the extant manuscripts of either medical-scientific writing. The Liber presumably was composed in the second half of the 1150s or slightly later, before completion of the LVM.10 By the first half of the thirteenth century, it had been divided into the Liber simplicis medicinae and the Liber compositae medicinae, both of which appear in the list of Hildegard’s writings recorded in 1233 in the Acta inquisitionis de virtutibus et miraculis sanctae Hildegardis, documentation assembled as part of a canonization effort. The titles Physica and Cause et cure were adopted later: the former derives from the first printed edition by Johannes Schott in Strasbourg in 1533, and the latter, Beate Hildegardis cause et cure, is contained in the thirteenth-century Copenhagen manuscript of the work.11 Compared to the manuscript tradition of the visionary works, that of the Physica and of the Cause is quite modest: the former appears in its entirety in five manuscripts and the latter in only one.12 Whether Hildegard can be deemed the author of the Physica and the Cause continues to be debated; current scholarly opinion characterizes the Cause as a compilation based on excerpts from the magistra’s other writings.13 The Physica consists of nine books, each of which catalogs a category in nature: the flora and fauna—plants, trees, fish, birds, animals, and reptiles—as well as the elements, stones, and metals.14 Hildegard introduces most objects in terms of the four qualities related to the elements and the humors: hot, cold, moist, or dry.15 She provides no

Michael Embach, Die Schriften Hildegards von Bingen. Studien zu ihrer Überlieferung und Rezeption im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2003), 290. The title of the Physica contained in both the Paris and Vatican manuscript, “Incipit liber beate Hildegardis subtilitatum diversarum naturarum creaturarum et sic de aliis quam multis bonis,” has led to speculation that the Physica was in fact the Liber; see Embach, Die Schriften Hildegards, 333, and the title selected for the critical edition of the Physica by Hildebrandt and Gloning. 9 Bruce W. Hozeski, trans., Hildegard of Bingen. The Book of the Rewards of Life (Liber Vitae Meritorum) (New York: Garland, 1994), 9: “This was the first year after that vision had shown me the simplicity of the various natural creatures with responses and warnings for greater and lesser people.” 10 Zátonyi, Hildegard von Bingen, 99, suggests 1151–8, before Hildegard began writing the LVM; the proposal of a date “before 1163” by Embach, Die Schriften Hildegards, 287, would allow for Hildegard to have been working on the Liber and the LVM at the same time. 11 Embach, Die Schriften Hildegards, 294–5. See also Reiner Hildebrandt, “Die überlieferungsgeschichtliche Komplexität der ‘Physica’ Hildegards von Bingen,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und Literatur 147 (2018): 141–61; and Laurence Moulinier, “Hildegarde ou Pseudo-Hildegarde? Réflexions sur l’authenticité du traité ‘Cause et cure,’ ” in “Im Angesicht Gottes suche der Mensch sich selbst,” 115–46. 12 Embach, Die Schriften Hildegards, 307–62, 374–85. 13 Moulinier, “Hildegarde ou Pseudo-Hildegarde,” 146; and Irmgard Müller, “Zur Verfasserfrage der medizinischnaturkundlichen Schriften Hildegards von Bingen,” in Tiefe des Gotteswissens—Schönheit der Sprachgestalt bei Hildegard von Bingen: Internationales Symposium in der Katholischen Akademie Rabanus Maurus, WiesbadenNaurod, vom 9. bis 12. September 1994, ed. Margot Schmidt (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1995), 8–9. 14 Priscilla Throop, trans., Hildegard von Bingen’s Physica: The Complete English Translation of Her Classic Work on Health and Healing (Rochester, VT: Healing Arts Press, 1998). Citations are from Throop’s English translation, when available. The critical edition of the Latin text is Hildegard von Bingen. Physica. Liber subtilitatum diversarum naturarum creaturarum. Textkritische Ausgabe, ed. Reiner Hildebrandt and Thomas Gloning, 3 vols. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2010, 2014). 15 Ortrun Riha, trans. and intro., Hildegard von Bingen. Heilsame Schöpfung—Die natürliche Wirkkraft der Dinge. Physica (Beuron: Beuroner Kunstverlag, 2012), 10, notes that such characterization was typical in herbals at the time. 8

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physical descriptions, focusing instead on the medicinal use of plants, stones, and metals, as well as bones, organs, or skin of creatures from the animal world. Given the significance of the medicinal garden in the monastic environment, it is not surprising that the inventory of plants is particularly extensive. Hildegard details how and when vegetation is to be gathered, the manner in which it is to be prepared as a curative, and the time of day the remedy should be applied or ingested. The effect of the cure may vary depending on the fitness of the afflicted person or the individual’s gender. For example, camphor is salubrious for both healthy and sick people, whereas goatsbeard poses danger to those who are not ill, and houseleek increases sexual desire in men and women but improves fertility only in males.16 The magistra occasionally references gynecological matters: she identifies goatsbeard and hazelwort as abortatives and recommends five different plants as remedies for menstrual issues. Therapies such as baths often are suggested as complements to the herbal cures. Trees are represented in a similar fashion to plants, but the quality of heat, cold, dryness, or moisture attributed to an individual species frequently signifies a specific human trait, such as fear, constancy, or happiness. Hildegard does not explain the trait’s significance or correlate it to the illness that the tree’s fruit, bark, leaves, or sap can cure. The brief discussion of the elements inserted between the books on plants and trees addresses only air, water, and earth, omitting any reference to fire. The observations about water allude not only to general aquatic bodies but also to rivers around Bingen, which the magistra identifies by name—the only geographically specific commentary in the Physica.17 The catalog of animals includes ordinary as well as exotic and legendary creatures such as the whale, elephant, and unicorn. Commentary on mammals provides insights into their habitats and mating practices, drawing attention to similarities with humans.18 Unlike the plants and trees, numerous species of fish, birds, animals, and reptiles in the Physica have no medicinal value, and most of the reptiles are poisonous. The relationship of more than two dozen stones and eight metals to the elements is a key identifying feature in these books. Stones may serve as cures in their natural state or mixed with water or wine; remedies with metals take only the latter form. Six books comprise the Cause, which begins with a comprehensive portrayal of the natural world.19 Book I explores the four qualities and characterizes the relationship of the elements, planets, and natural phenomena such as thunder and lightning with each other and within the context of the world order.20 In the first two books, the biblical stories of the fall of Lucifer, the creation, fall, and exile of Adam and Eve, and the ensuing flood

Throop, Hildegard von Bingen’s Physica, 25, 27. Debra L. Stoudt, “Elemental Well-Being: Water and Its Attributes in Selected Writings of Hildegard of Bingen and Georgius Agricola,” in Bodily and Spiritual Hygiene in Medieval and Early Modern Literature, ed. Albrecht Classen (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2017), 202–5. 18 Ortrun Riha discusses the orientation of nature, especially animals, toward humans in “Anthropologische Grundlinien hildegardischer Naturkunde,” in Unversehrt und unverletzt. Hildegards von Bingen Menschenbild und Kirchenverständnis heute, ed. Rainer Berndt and Maura Zátonyi (Münster: Aschendorff, 2015), 87–8. 19 Ortrun Riha, trans. and intro., Hildegard von Bingen. Ursprung und Behandlung der Krankheiten. Causae et curae (Beuron: Beuroner Kunstverlag, 2011), 8, notes that only a decorated initial introduces each new section traditionally identified as a book. 20 Priscilla Throop, trans., Hildegard of Bingen. Causes and Cures (Charlotte, VT: MedievalMS, 2006), 5. All citations are from Throop’s English translation. The critical edition of the Latin text is found in Laurence Moulinier, ed., Beate Hildegardis Cause et cure (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2003). 16 17

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are interwoven with descriptions of the physical world. The presence of the elements and the humors in the human body is a significant factor with regard to many conditions and illnesses; the overabundance or lack of any of these entities is perceived as the origin of sickness. The humors assume a variety of forms in the Cause and in Hildegard’s other works.21 Here they determine human character traits: “If the tepid surpasses the damp and the damp surpasses the dry and foamy, the person is crafty and flees peace, loving discord and contentions.”22 They also affect the temperaments of men and women, which are described in terms of physical attributes, personality, and rapport with the opposite sex. The second book introduces the themes of conception, fertility, and childbirth: the boiling blood of the man, which is semen, and the blood of the woman, both as foam, join; surrounded by the four humors that humans draw from the elements, the semen “is coagulated and firmed so that the shape of a human can be configured in it.”23 The soul, infused by God, nourishes and strengthens the organs of the fetus. Books III, IV, and V deal more exclusively with causes of and cures for physical ailments, from nosebleeds to tumors, as well as emotional conditions, such as melancholy.24 There is substantial duplication between Books III and IV of the Cause and passages in the Physica with regard to the illnesses and remedies referenced.25 The final book of the Cause briefly revisits the theme of conception and presents a lunary, which describes the character of a male and a female conceived each day after the new moon.26 The Cause also makes mention of medical procedures such as bloodletting through venesection, cupping, and scarification, along with the practice of uroscopy. Details include when and how bloodletting should take place, what the patient should eat before and after, and what impact the procedure has on men and women at different ages.27 The importance of a healthful diet and adequate sleep is noted, and moderation on both counts is stressed. Hildegard identifies only one source, Hilarion the Egyptian, in the Physica and none in the Cause. The absence of references to works and authors is unusual for medical-scientific works at this time but corresponds to the method employed in the rest of the magistra’s writings. Reiner Hildebrandt has demonstrated similar ordering of items in the Physica and in the Summarium Heinrici, an eleventh-century Latin schoolbook;28 this encyclopedic work in turn derives much of its content from the etymologies of Isidore of Seville. Numerous influences on the Physica and the Cause have been recognized, among them

On Hildegard’s understanding of the humors, see Sabine Flanagan, “Hildegard and the Humors: Medieval Theories of Illness and Personality,” in Madness, Melancholy, and the Limits of the Self, ed. Andrew Weiner and Leonard Kaplan (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), 14–23; and Sweet, Rooted in the Earth, 93–123. 22 Throop, Hildegard of Bingen: Causes and Cures, 47. 23 Ibid.,  51–2. 24 Sweet, Rooted in the Earth, 125–34, provides a useful description of these three books. 25 Moulinier, Beate Hildegardis Cause et Cure, XXXI–XL. Müller, “Zur Verfasserfrage,” 12–17, provides tables that identify textual parallels between the Cause and the Physica. 26 Charles Burnett, “Hildegard of Bingen and the Science of the Stars,” in Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of Her Thought and Art, ed. Charles Burnett and Peter Dronke (London: Warburg Institute, 1998), 118–21. 27 Throop, Hildegard of Bingen: Causes and Cures, 97–105. 28 Reiner Hildebrandt, “Summarium Heinrici: Das Lehrbuch der Hildegard von Bingen,” in Stand und Aufgaben der deutschen Dialektlexikographie, ed. Ernst Bremer and Reiner Hildebrandt (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1996), 89–110. 21

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the Physiologus, Aethicus Ister’s Cosmographia, the writings of John Scotus Eriugena, the Macer Floridus of Odo Magdunensis, and the Liber Nemroth (Book of Nimrod).29 Traces of works translated by Constantine the African and the Salernitan medical tradition also have been observed, despite their limited dissemination in the German-speaking areas at this time.30 Given the inclusive nature of its contents, the Physica may be reckoned among the encyclopedic works of the twelfth century;31 however, it lacks the usual breadth and hierarchical structure of such reference works and perhaps is more appropriately viewed as part of the tradition of herbals.32 The heterogeneous content and organization of the Cause suggest that it, too, draws upon various models. Despite abundant similarities to ideas found in encyclopedic, medical, and cosmographic writings available in the twelfth century, no source for either the Physica or the Cause has been identified. The details contained in each are unique to Hildegard and reflect the worldview that permeates her visionary works.

REMEDIES AND CURES The remedies contained in the Physica and the Cause are assumed to be efficacious, if the directions regarding their preparation and application are followed. However, in certain cases healing will occur only if God permits. Included among cures for physical maladies such as headaches and epilepsy are recipes to repel the devil, ward off evil, or withstand demonic invocations, magic formulations, and other enchantments—some combat conditions such as insanity or madness caused by magic or evil words. Hildegard perceives magic as the realm of the devil, and those who engage in such acts suffer the punishments of hell.33 What constitutes magic is seldom discussed, although the “perverse art” of prognostication is included. In the third vision of the Scivias the voice of the Living Light admonishes Hildegard against misuse of the created world: “For I do not want you to scrutinize stars or fire or birds or other creatures for signs of future events; and if you persist in scrutinizing them, your eyes are obnoxious to Me, and I will cast you out like the lost angel, who deserted the truth and threw himself into damnation.”34 The performance of special rituals and the recitation of particular words imbued with healing powers appear as remedies alongside natural recipes in the Physica and the Cause. In some instances, there is a sympathetic relationship between the cure and the illness. For example, instructions in the Physica state that the right ear of a lion should be laid on the ear of a deaf person to invoke “the sharpness of the animal’s strong hearing”; likewise, greenish earth placed under the head and feet of a person afflicted with numbness is called upon to share its “vital greenness.”35

Moulinier, Beate Hildegardis Cause et Cure, LXIII–CI; and Peter Dronke, “The Allegorical World-Picture of Hildegard of Bingen: Revaluations and New Problems,” in Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of Her Thought and Art, 10–11. 30 Moulinier, Beate Hildegardis Cause et Cure, LXXVI–XCVI. 31 Laurence Moulinier, “Une encyclopédiste sans precedent? Le cas de Hildegarde de Bingen,” in L’enciclopedismo medievale, ed. Michelangelo Picone (Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1994), 119–34. 32 Riha, Heilsame Schöpfung, 7–8. 33 Hozeski, The Book of the Rewards of Life, 247. 34 Columba Hart and Jane Bishop, trans., Hildegard of Bingen. Scivias (New York: Paulist Press, 1990), 100. 35 Throop, Hildegard von Bingen’s Physica, 208, 103. 29

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The Physica includes approximately thirty incantations; the Cause repeats a set of four contained in the description of mammals.36 Most numerous are those regarding stones, with nine verbal formulas in the twenty-six chapters of that book. An explanation for such frequency is found in the introduction, which describes how in the mountains in the East the fiery heat of the sun created precious stones, which rivers carried to other parts of the world; originating thus from the elements of fire and water, the stones “contain many powers.”37 However, those not formed in this manner also are able to bring about positive and negative results, if God allows it. Ritual actions often accompany the words recited, and there are frequent Christian allusions such as the sign of the cross, the name of God or Christ, and other biblical references.38 Several incantations Hildegard purportedly used to cure the sick are contained in the third book of her Vita, written perhaps to support the case for the magistra’s canonization.39 The words to be written to stop a hemorrhage suffered by a woman from Lausanne (­chapter  10) are those of a well-known blood charm, and biblical quotations are used in both the oral ritual employed to heal the knight on his deathbed (­chapter  15) and the words recalled as Hildegard restores the sight of the blind boy (­chapter  18).40 These familiar formulas and scriptural citations contrast in content and style with the incantations in the Physica and the Cause; it may be that the medieval editors of the Vita considered such conventional texts more appropriate for purported use by Hildegard herself.

ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE PHYSICAL AND THE SPIRITUAL The prefaces to the individual books of the Physica and numerous passages in Books I and II of the Cause provide a broader context for each work, offering both natural and theological explanations for the created world and thus uniting the physical with the spiritual. The initial passages of the first book serve to introduce the entire Physica, and the opening sentences present numerous ideas fundamental to Hildegard’s worldview: With earth was the human being created. All the elements served mankind and, sensing that man was alive, they busied themselves in aiding his life in every way. And man in turn occupied himself with them. The earth gave its vital energy, according to each person’s race, nature, habits, and environment. Through the beneficial herbs, the earth brings forth the range of mankind’s spiritual powers and distinguishes between them; through the harmful herbs, it manifests harmful and diabolic behaviors.41 The parallel creation of the world and of humankind, the reciprocal relationship between the elements and humans, and the viriditas or “greenness” (“vital energy”) that emanates from the Divine and is the life-giving force for humanity are themes that resonate Debra L. Stoudt, “The Medical, the Magical, and the Miraculous in the Healing Arts of Hildegard of Bingen,” in A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Beverly Mayne Kienzle, Debra L. Stoudt, and George Ferzoco (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 265‒8. 37 Throop, Hildegard von Bingen’s Physica, 138. 38 Ibid., 140, 144–5, 212. 39 Anna Silvas, trans. and intro., Jutta and Hildegard: The Biographical Sources (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), 181–201, here 187, 189, and 192, respectively. 40 Stoudt, “The Medical, the Magical, and the Miraculous,” 268–9. 41 Throop, Hildegard von Bingen’s Physica, 9. 36

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throughout Hildegard’s oeuvre. The potential for both the positive and negative impact of nature is acknowledged. Plants grown under certain conditions possess a specific nature or temperament, which is conveyed to the individuals who consume them. Herbs that grow from the air are “gentle on the digestion” and make those who eat them happy, whereas those that are windy (ventose) lie heavy in the stomach and causes sadness in individuals who partake of them.42 The three books devoted to living creatures reassert the bond between the natural world and humankind. Birds are characterized as colder than animals because “they are not conceived with as great a heat of desire”; many “subsist on the fiery air,” which is why they “strive toward heaven.”43 They are akin to the human soul since both are of the air and lifted above the earth. This characterization is revisited at the beginning of the book on animals, where winged creatures “represent the virtue a person reveals in his thinking,” whereas animals, bound to the earth, “represent the thoughts and meditations a person brings to completion in work.”44 The attitudes that different types of mammals demonstrate toward work accentuates their similarity to humans. In contrast, precious stones are God’s adornments of the angels and an attribute of Lucifer’s original splendor. Imbued with beauty and power, gems are associated only with good and reject evil uses since God “willed that they would be held in honor and blessing on earth and used for medicine.”45 Allusions to creation introduce the last books, those on reptiles and metals. The role of the serpent in the story of the Garden of Eden anticipates Hildegard’s portrayal of this creature as a poisonous killer, although she notes that its prelapsarian ancestors did not possess such a nature.46 In the final book, after the Spirit of the Lord moves across the waters and the Spirit’s breath makes them flow, the elements come together to form various metals: the fire of the water changes earth into gold; pure waters penetrate the earth, which becomes silver; and waters moved by the wind transform earth into steel and iron.47 The life-giving power of water is related to other acts of creation: “just as the spirit of the Lord first made the waters flood, so it also vivified the human being and gave plants, trees, and stones their vitality.”48 This analogy underscores the animate nature of every category of object discussed in the Physica. The opening passage of Book I of the Cause establishes the supremacy of the Divine in the cosmos since “before the creation of the world, God was, and is, without beginning.”49 The world was formed because it was God’s wish. When God spoke, light came into existence, and God placed “the sun, moon, and stars in the firmament, so the devil would see them and know how much beauty and splendor he had lost” after he fell from the sky.50 Whereas the theocentric perspective clarifies why the created world exists and functions as it does, a scientific lens informs explanations how natural phenomena occur. Stormy weather results from intense heat and fire in the upper air, dew is the sweat of air Ibid.,  9–10. Ibid., 286: “Volatilia frigidiora sunt animalibus que in terra versantur, quoniam tanto calore libidinis non generuntur … Quedam etiam ab igneo aere vivunt, et ideo velut ignis sursum tendunt.” This passage derives from Schott’s 1533 edition and is not included in Throop’s translation. 44 Throop, Hildegard von Bingen’s Physica, 205. 45 Ibid.,  138. 46 Ibid.,  229. 47 Ibid.,  237. 48 Ibid. 49 Throop, Hildegard of Bingen: Causes and Cures, 1. 50 Ibid.,  9. 42 43

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warmed by the stars, and an eclipse of the moon may result when elements and storms collide.51 The firmament must rotate, otherwise “the sun would be over the earth nearly all summer, without night, and under the earth nearly all winter, without day”; however, the sun slows the rotation so that the firmament is not torn apart.52 The Cause further defines the relationship between the cosmic and the human through comparisons. Thunder is likened to the loud voice of an angry person, gentle rain is equated with tears of joy, and the role of the winds in the firmament parallels that of the soul to the body, each serving as a binding force.53 Anthropomorphization permeates the most comprehensive description of the cosmos: The firmament is like a person’s head: the sun, moon, and stars are as the eyes; the air is as if the sense of hearing; the winds as if the sense of smell; the dew as if the sense of taste; the sides of the world as if arms and sense of touch. The other creatures in the world are as if the stomach. The earth is as if the heart since, in the same way the heart sustains the upper and lower parts of the body, the dry earth encompasses the waters flowing over it, and is an obstacle to the waters under it, lest they break out in a destructive way.54 The constituent components of the universe are analogous to parts of the human body, presented in traditional medieval fashion a capite ad calcem. The endowment of celestial bodies and the elements with human senses reinforces the bond between creation and created beings. Like her contemporaries, Hildegard identifies five planets, in addition to the sun and the moon, although she does not name them; these control the heavens. The position of the stars in the firmament continues the analogy above: “From where it is positioned, any star passes upwards through the whole firmament, just as a vein ascends from a person’s foot to his head. They give splendor and heat to the whole firmament, just as veins passing through a person’s liver give blood and heat to the liver.”55 God made the celestial bodies to serve humans, but humans must be mindful of the temperaments of these entities, acknowledging the proper season for planting crops and for procreating. Disobedient or immoderate behavior may cause “all the elements and seasons [to] exceed their ordained places”; the result can be imbalances in the natural world, such as storms and droughts, as well as illnesses.56 Book I of the Cause concludes with a catalog of the powers of the elements, reiterating the reciprocal relationship with humanity: “The elements absorb every single quality of a person. A human draws elements into himself, and he is with them and they are with him.”57 Through their various capacities, air, water, and earth support and nurture flora and fauna. Initial sections in Book II note the relationship of the elements to each other: their interdependence upon and inextricability from each other. The impact of each on humans is described as well: fire through the brain and marrow, air in breathing and reasoning, water by creating moisture and suffusing flesh with blood, and earth in the flesh and bones.58

I bid., 3, 7, 8. Ibid.,  8. 53 Ibid., 3, 4, 5. 54 Ibid.,  9. 55 Ibid.,  12. 56 Ibid.,  15. 57 Ibid.,  16. 58 Ibid.,  36–7. 51 52

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In the visionary works, Hildegard weaves together salvation history and the creation of the cosmos through the common thread of the elements. Book One, Vision Three of the Scivias describes the world in the shape of an egg, with zones of fire, ether, and watery air; each zone has its own whirlwinds. The elements surround a “sandy globe,” and when they contend with the winds, they are able to move it.59 The visions contained in the LVM present a catalog of vices to which humans succumb, along with corresponding virtues; however, each of the six parts begins with the image of a human figure—identified as God and Christ in part one60—standing upon the abyss and situated within the ether, air, earth, and water that comprise the cosmos. In the course of the work, the figure turns in different directions to survey the earth. The moisture and greenness (viriditas) of the earth causes his virtue to flourish and be beautiful;61 the water strengthens his virtue since it purifies all things.62 The LVM lacks details of the created world contained in the Scivias and the LDO, but the reappearance of the figure emphasizes the omnipresence of the Divine and underscores the relationship between the macrocosm and the microcosm. The synthesis of the natural and the spiritual culminates in Hildegard’s final work, the LDO. Like the Scivias, the LDO describes the formation of the world, when God “gave all creation to [humans] so that they might do their work with it, in the same way that God himself had made his work, that is, humankind.”63 Despite this privileged role, humans “can neither live nor even exist without creation.”64 The first vision portrays Divine Love, the “fiery life of the essence of divinity” that “with the airy winds … quicken[s]‌all things.”65 It is on the breast of this figure that Hildegard sees the universe in the subsequent vision.66 The cosmic egg of the Scivias appears here as a wheel or globe, and the magistra offers an explanation for the modified perception: whereas the egg’s layers are “a bit like the way the world is devised of the elements,” the wheel “is whole and better imitates the form of the world in its every part.”67 In Parts I and II of the LDO Hildegard details the structure of the cosmos, from the circle of fire, the oldest element, to those of air and water, and finally earth in their midst, “tempered by them all.”68 Especially prominent are the winds, whose qualities influence the humors in humans, resulting in illness or good health;69 as in the Physica and the Cause, the humors touch specific body parts and cause particular sicknesses. Vision 4 of Part I, which comprises one-third of the LDO, catalogs parts of the human body from the head to the loins, comparing them to the various elements with regard to their function as a part of the whole and expanding upon the anthropomorphization of the elements contained in Book I of the Cause. In Part II of the art and Bishop, Hildegard of Bingen. Scivias, 93–4. H Hozeski, The Book of the Rewards of Life, 19–20. As Christ, the figure is identified with the warrior (vir preliator) in Isa 42:13, which is quoted on p. 19. Concerning the vir preliator in the LVM and other works by Hildegard, see Beverly Mayne Kienzle, Hildegard of Bingen and Her Gospel Homilies: Speaking New Mysteries (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 282–5. 61 Hozeski, The Book of the Rewards of Life, 175. 62 Ibid.,  220. 63 Nathaniel M. Campbell, trans., St. Hildegard of Bingen. The Book of Divine Works (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2018), 35. 64 Ibid.,  54. 65 Ibid.,  34. 66 This vision is depicted in the illumination on 9v of the Lucca manuscript, which has been digitized and is available online: https://www.wdl.org/en/item/21658/. 67 Ibid.,  55. 68 Ibid.,  60. 69 See Hans Liebeschütz, Das allegorische Weltbild der heiligen Hildegard von Bingen (1930; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1964), 72–86. 59 60

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LDO Hildegard presents her vision of the earth divided into five parts, which correspond to the five senses.70 The extensive explication of the biblical account of creation that follows affirms the fullness and completeness of God’s acts. Like the final part of the Scivias, Part III of Hildegard’s last visionary work has an eschatological focus. Just as transformation of the elements in the last days is foretold in the earlier work,71 their restoration is described in the LDO: “in that day when the very elements with which humankind has sinned will be cleansed, humankind will also be revived from the dead, and through repentance most pleasing to God, restored to a radiance greater than when first created.”72 The end times witness renewal and redemption on both a physical and spiritual plane.

CONCLUSION Hildegard’s interest in and knowledge of cosmology, medicine, and science in general reveals itself not only in the Physica and the Cause but also in her visionary trilogy. Nature serves as a dominant theme throughout her oeuvre; it is essential to her theological and scientific understanding of the cosmos. As the magistra’s understanding of the physical realm expands and matures, many of her ideas about it develop and evolve, and as further visions are revealed to her, she appears to better comprehend the impact of the natural world on the spiritual life. The medical-scientific works not only provide practical guidance for healing purposes but also acknowledge the relationship between physical health and spiritual well-being. The Scivias, LVM, and especially the LDO reinforce the bond between the material domain and humans as God’s creations. In her writings Hildegard reconciles the world she observes and in which she lives with the spiritual one both revealed to her by the Living Light and yet to be attained, recognizing the significance of each and underscoring the necessity of unity between them in order for God’s divine plan to be achieved.

Campbell, The Book of Divine Works, 267–8. Hart and Bishop, Hildegard of Bingen. Scivias, 520. 72 Campbell, The Book of Divine Works, 474. 70 71

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CHAPTER EIGHT

Thomas Aquinas MICHAEL J. DODDS, O.P.

At his birth in 1224/5, St. Thomas Aquinas entered a world of political and intellectual ferment. His father, Count Landolf, Lord of Aquino, was a baron of Frederick II who had been installed as Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Innocent III but was soon at odds with the papacy over his political ambitions. The intellectual arena was turning from the ancient tradition of monastic education, with its emphasis on scriptural meditation and Platonic philosophy, to the heady new atmosphere of the universities that were gradually embracing the recently discovered philosophy of Aristotle.1 In his life and studies, Aquinas would bring the old tradition together with the new. The appearance of Aristotle was momentous not only for philosophy and theology but also for the eventual development of modern science. As A. C. Crombie notes, Granting the great and fundamental differences between medieval and 17th-century science, the equally striking underlying similarities, apart from other evidence, indicate that a more accurate view of 17th-century science is to regard it as the second phase of an intellectual movement in the West that began when the philosophers of the 13th century read and digested in Latin translation the great scientific authors of classical Greece and Islam.2 Although Aquinas was not a practitioner of science himself, his thought plays an essential part in that background story.3 As a child, Thomas began his education at the Benedictine Monastery of Monte Cassino.4 The changing political situation led his parents to move him to the University of Naples. There he met and joined the newly founded Order of Preachers in 1244.5 S ee Fergus Kerr, O.P., After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 3–4. A. C. Crombie, Medieval and Early Modern Science (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959), 2:110. Edward Grant concurs, “I asked myself … could a scientific revolution have occurred in the seventeenth century if the massive translations of Greco-Arabic science and natural philosophy into Latin had never taken place? The response seemed obvious: no, it could not” (Edward Grant, The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages: Their Religious, Institutional, and Intellectual Contexts [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011], xii–xiii). 3 “Thomas Aquinas was assuredly one of the most perceptive contributors to discussions of the nature of science in this [medieval] period” (Ernan McMullan, The Inference That Makes Science [Milwaukee, WI.: Marquette University Press, 1992], 32–3). “Although concerned mainly with the supernatural, Aquinas was convinced that one could only approach this realm through a knowledge of the world of nature” (William A. Wallace, O.P., Causality and Scientific Explanation [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972], 1:72). 4 For a thorough account of Aquinas’s life and thought, see James A. Weisheipl, O.P., Friar Thomas D’Aquino: His Life, Thought and Works (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1983); and Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., Saint Thomas Aquinas. 2 vols., trans. Robert Royal (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996–2003). 5 Torrell, Saint Thomas, 1:6–9. 1 2

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His parents (who had envisioned him as the eventual abbot of Monte Cassino) were not amused: “By any standard, Thomas’s action was dramatic and radical. His decision to throw in his lot with the Dominicans would have verged on the incomprehensible to any parents who, like his, were of aristocratic (if only of a relatively minor) standing, and were correspondingly ambitious for the future career of their child.”6 The family kidnapped him for a time, but eventually gave into his wish to become a “beggar monk.” The Order sent him to study at the University of Paris and then to Cologne, where he served as assistant to St. Albert the Great, who had embraced not only the philosophy of Aristotle but also the full range of scientific inquiry of his day. Hearing that Aquinas’s classmates had nicknamed him “the dumb ox” in virtue of his quiet ways, Albert famously prophesied, “We call him the dumb ox, but he will make resound in his doctrine such a bellowing that it will echo throughout the world.”7 Aquinas’s first teaching assignment was at the University of Paris (1256–9), a far from peaceful place as Humbert of Romans describes it: “No sooner was a friar caught sight of … than he was surrounded by the human swarms. … Arrows had been shot against the priory, which had henceforth to be guarded day and night by royal troops.”8 He then taught at Orvieto and Rome (1259–68), again at Paris (1269–72), and finally at Naples (1272–4). In Rome he devised a new approach to theology that eventually took shape in his Summa Theologiae, a textbook for “beginners” designed to avoid bringing “weariness and confusion to the minds of readers.”9 Like Albert the Great, Aquinas was eager to embrace the newly discovered philosophy of Aristotle. He wrote commentaries on many of Aristotle’s works and incorporated his thought in his own theology.10 Not exclusively Aristotelian, he also employed the teachings of Neoplatonic and Islamic philosophers, especially in developing his notion of the “act of existing” (esse). As the Dominicans continued certain monastic traditions in their liturgical life, so Aquinas made the tradition of scriptural meditation the foundation of his theology. As Fergus Kerr notes, “For Thomas, theological activity is a form of sharing in God’s being, a form of union with God, an anticipation of the beatific vision.”11 Graced with a mystical experience of Christ on December 6, 1273, Aquinas remarked, “Everything I have written seems to me as straw in comparison with what I have seen.”12 A few months later, on March 7, 1274, he died in the Cistercian abbey of Fossanova, while on his way to the Second Council of Lyons. He was canonized 1323 by Pope John XXII and declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Pius V in 1567.13 Denys Turner, Thomas Aquinas: A Portrait (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), 9. Torrell, Saint Thomas, 1:26. 8 Weisheipl, Friar, 93. 9 St.Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica [ST], Prologue, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger, 1946). 6 7

Relatively fresh from Paris, friar Thomas launched his course at Santa Sabina in Parisian fashion. But the strictures of an older syllabus and an older textbook soon led him to modify his presentation. In his second year in Rome Thomas Aquinas set to work on what would become not only his greatest legacy but perhaps the single greatest summary of medieval theology, the Summa theologiae. (Michèle M. Mulchahey, “First the Bow Is Bent in Study …” Dominican Education before 1350 [Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1998], 280) See Gilles Emery, O.P., and Matthew Levering, eds. Aristotle in Aquinas’s Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2015. 11 Kerr, After Aquinas, 158. 12 Torrell, Saint Thomas, 1:285, 289. 13 Ibid., 1:321, 325. 10

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Controversies over his thought did not end with his death, and one of them may have played a role, at least indirectly, in the development of modern science. On March 7, 1277, Stephen Tempier, the bishop of Paris, condemned 219 propositions, some of which involved teachings of Aquinas. A few days later, Robert Kilwardby, the Dominican archbishop of Canterbury, condemned a list of thirty propositions including some “of Thomist inspiration.”14 The condemnations sparked fierce controversies between theologians who were suspicious of Aristotle and the Latin Averroists who had accepted Aristotle’s teachings as true even when they contradicted Christian doctrine, by relying on the Aristotelian interpretations of the Islamic philosopher Averroes (a latinization of his Arabic name, Abū l-Walīd Muḥammad Ibn ʾAḥmad Ibn Rušd, 1126–98). Aquinas’s thought occupied a moderate position in the controversy, incorporating a critical acceptance of Aristotle, as “St. Thomas did not regard Aristotle as an absolute authority as Averroes had done, but simply as a guide to reason.”15 In 1325, the condemnations related to Aquinas’s teachings were annulled.16 The net effect of the condemnations was to discredit the Averroist interpretation of Aristotle and to allow for new interpretations of nature that made way for modern science: The teaching of Aristotle was to dominate the thought of the later Middle Ages, but with the condemnation of the Averroist view that Aristotle had said the last word on metaphysics and natural science, the bishops in 1277 left the way open for criticism which would, in turn, undermine his system. Not only had natural philosophers now through Aristotle a rational philosophy of nature, but because of the attitude of Christian theologians they were made free to form hypotheses regardless of Aristotle’s authority, to develop the empirical habit of mind working within a rational framework, and to extend scientific discovery.17

AQUINAS ON SCIENCE Definition of Science For Aquinas, science is “knowledge of a thing through its cause.”18 In this he follows the teaching of Aristotle: “We suppose ourselves to possess unqualified scientific knowledge of a thing … when we think that we know the cause on which the fact depends, as the cause of that fact and of no other, and, further, that the fact could not be other

Ibid., 1:300–4. Crombie, Medieval, 1:63. 16 Torrell, Saint Thomas, 1:324. 17 Crombie, Medieval, 1:64. 14 15

Theological restrictions embodied in the Condemnation of 1277 may have actually prompted consideration of plausible and implausible alternatives and possibilities far beyond what Aristotelian natural philosophers might otherwise have considered, if left to their own devices. While these speculations did not lead to the abandonment of the Aristotelian worldview, they generated some of the most daring and exciting scientific discussions of the Middle Ages. (Edward Grant, “Science and Theology in the Middle Ages,” in God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science, ed., David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers [Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986], 69). See also: Grant, Foundations, 81–3; Wallace, Causality, 1:103. St. Thomas Aquinas, On the Truth of the Catholic Faith (Summa contra gentiles) [SCG], Book I, chap. 94, no. 3, trans. Anton C. Pegis et al. (New York: Doubleday, 1955). 18

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than it is.”19 Aristotle also allows for knowledge that is merely probable (“opinion”), as well as knowledge that is still less certain and arises through persuasion (“faith”).20 Unlike our current tendency to equate “science” with empirical science, Aquinas sees it as a much broader notion embracing not only physics but also the philosophy of nature, mathematics, metaphysics, and even sacred theology.21

Divisions of Science Aquinas distinguishes the various sciences in terms of their degree of abstraction from matter and motion.22 The philosophy of nature (natural science) studies material things, whether animate or inanimate, that depend on matter for both their being and their intelligibility. Mathematics studies things, such as abstract mathematical ideas and relationships, that depend on matter for their being but not for their intelligibility. Natural theology or metaphysics studies things that depend on matter for neither their being nor their intelligibility, including angels and God. Each science establishes its subject matter through a kind of abstraction. Through the first degree of abstraction, natural science attains universal knowledge of particular, changeable material beings by abstracting universal concepts (e.g., “cat”) from particular things (actual existing cats). Through the second degree of abstraction, mathematics studies quantitative relationships by abstracting quantity from material beings. Metaphysics studies being as being, not by a process of abstraction (though it is sometimes called the “third degree of abstraction”) but through a judgment that being is not necessarily material. Aristotle comes to this judgment at the conclusion of his Physics.23 All changeable, material things (the subject of physics) necessarily depend upon an unchanging, immaterial being (God). Being may therefore be studied not only “as material and changeable” (Aristotle’s physics) but also simply “as being” (Aristotle’s metaphysics). Aquinas calls metaphysics “natural theology” or “divine science” since it studies God through rational inquiry as the ultimate cause of all things.24 It knows God “not as the subject of the science but as Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 71b 8–15, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941). “Aristotle defined ‘episteme’, the kind of knowledge that Latin Aristotelians called ‘scientia’, as ‘definite knowledge through explanations.’ There is no doubt that St. Thomas thought of this definition as correct, and that he used it out of respect for Aristotle’s authority” (C. F. J. Martin, Thomas Aquinas: God and Explanations [Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,1997], 1). 20 William A. Wallace, O.P., The Modeling of Nature: Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Nature in Synthesis (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 263. 21   19

In examining Thomas’s treatment of this question, we must remember that by science (scientia in Latin; episteme in Greek) Thomas has a very special sense of the word in mind, the sense set forth by Aristotle in the Posterior Analytics: knowledge of what is so in terms of the causes which make it so, and knowledge which is necessarily so. This conception of science is quite different from later conceptions which either limit science to mathematics and the empirical sciences or consider science to be only hypothetical reasoning or the construction of models and paradigms. (William E. Carroll, “Thomas Aquinas on Science, Sacra Doctrina, and Creation,” in Nature and Scripture in the Abrahamic Religions, ed. Jitse M. van der Meer and Scott Mandelbrote [Leiden: Brill, 2008], 1:225) St. Thomas Aquinas, The Division and Methods of the Sciences: Questions V and VI of His Commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius, trans. Armand Maurer (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1963). 23 Leo Elders, Faith and Science: An Introduction to St. Thomas’ Expositio in Boethii de Trinitate (Rome: Herder, 1974), 107. 24   22

Philosophers, then, study these divine beings only insofar as they are the principles of all things. Consequently, they are the objects of the science that investigates what is common to all beings, which

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the principle of the subject.” Beyond such philosophical knowledge, God may also be known through his own self-revelation. This is not natural theology but sacred theology, “the theology taught in Sacred Scripture.”25 But sacred theology is also a science. Its claim to this status is based on its foundation in divine revelation. As one science, such as music, may receive its principles from another, such as arithmetic, “so sacred doctrine is a science, because it proceeds from principles established by the light of a higher science, namely the science of God. … Just as the musician accepts on authority the principles taught him by the mathematician, so sacred science is established on principles revealed by God.”26 Aquinas is also aware of what he calls “intermediate” sciences that “apply mathematical principles to natural things; for instance, music, astronomy, and the like.” Such sciences “demonstrate their conclusions concerning natural things, but by means of mathematics.”27 The application of mathematics to the physical world, or the quantitative study of nature, is of course a key factor in modern science as developed by Galileo and Newton. Medieval scholars did not tend to exploit this possibility except in the science of astronomy. While they considered the mathematical approach useful, they deemed it superficial compared to the purely physical approach to the natural world exemplified in the philosophy of nature: For the natural scientist, mathematical form is not the most basic; more primary, for him, is the physical nature of the entity being studied, for it is the nature that dynamically takes on the form or shape by which one recognizes the species and readily distinguishes, for example, a man from a lower animal. … For Albert and Aquinas, therefore, the insight afforded by mathematics is not deeper or more “divine” as the Platonists would have it, but is more superficial than a physical insight. As a consequence a study of the mathematical features of a physical entity does not necessarily explain its nature, although it can accurately describe the quantitative characteristics of that nature, and it may help in discovering a physical explanation for them.28 The purely physical approach to nature was thought to yield greater certitude than the mathematical. Aquinas makes a distinction “between a hypothesis which must necessarily be true and one which merely fitted the facts. Physical (or metaphysical) hypotheses were of the first type, mathematical hypotheses of the second.”29 The distinction is found in a remark about Ptolemaic astronomy in Aquinas’s treatise on the Trinity:

has for its subject being as being. The philosophers call this divine science [scientia divina]. … This is the kind of theology pursued by the philosophers and that is also called metaphysics [metaphysica]. … Thus philosophical theology [theologia philosophica] investigates beings separate in the second sense as its subjects [i.e., beings, such as potency and act, that can exist without matter but are sometimes found in matter], and beings separate in the first sense as the principles of its subject [i.e., beings, such as God and angels, that can in no way exist in matter]. (Aquinas, Division and Methods, Q.5, 4, co.) Ibid. ST I, 1, 2, co. See Wilhelmus G. B. M. Valkenberg, Words of the Living God: Place and Function of Holy Scripture in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Leuven: Peeters, 2000). 27 Aquinas, Division and Methods, Q.5, a. 3, ad 6. 28 Wallace, Causality, 1:80. 29 Crombie, Medieval, 1:89. 25 26

Aquinas was not the only medieval to make this distinction between a physical explanation that realistically accounts for the facts and a mathematical explanation that merely “saves the appearances.” Yet his

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Reason may be employed in two ways to establish a point: firstly, for the purpose of furnishing sufficient proof of some principle, as in natural science, where sufficient proof can be brought to show that the movement of the heavens is always of uniform velocity. Reason is employed in another way, not as furnishing a sufficient proof of a principle, but as confirming an already established principle, by showing the congruity of its results, as in astronomy the theory of eccentrics and epicycles is considered as established, because thereby the sensible appearances of the heavenly movements can be explained; not, however, as if this proof were sufficient, forasmuch as some other theory might explain them.30 While the mathematical or geometrical account of Ptolemy fits the facts, Aquinas sees that another mathematical account might do so just as well or better. This openness to alternate explanations foreshadows in a rather remarkable way the hypothetical deductive method of modern science, where even a verified theory can always be replaced by a better one.31

The Notion of Causality Since Aquinas defines science as “the knowledge of a thing through its cause,” to comprehend his idea of science, we have to understand his notion of causality. While contemporary empirical science tends to equate causality with the agent or efficient cause (often represented as a kind of force), Aquinas and Aristotle see causality as a much broader concept that includes not only the efficient cause but also the material, formal, and final cause.32 In various ways, all four types of causes involve dependency, as “those things upon which others depend for their being or becoming are called causes.”33

endorsement of this way of looking at mathematical arguments in physical science, particularly since it was stated in the widely studied Summa theologiae, remained influential. (Wallace, Causality, 1:87–8) ST I, 32, 1, ad 2. “Yet it is not necessary that the various suppositions which they hit upon be true for although these suppositions save the appearances, we are nevertheless not obliged to say that these suppositions are true, because perhaps there is some other way men have not yet grasped by which the things which appear as to the stars are saved” (St. Thomas Aquinas, Exposition of Aristotle’s Treatise on the Heavens, Book II, lect. 17, no. 451, trans. Fabian R. Larcher and Pierre H. Conway, accessed October 1, 2018, https://dhspriory.org/thomas/ DeCoelo.htm#2–17). 31 See Michael J. Dodds, O.P., Unlocking Divine Action: Contemporary Science and Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 178–9; Michael J. Dodds, O.P., “Thomas Aquinas vis-à-vis Natural Theology, Theology of Nature, and Religious Naturalism,” Theology and Science 15, no. 3 (2017): 268–70. 32   30

“Cause” in modern philosophical English tends to mean what Aristotle called the “efficient cause” or “efficient mode of explanation,” an explanation in terms of how a thing came about. Aristotle famously also recognizes explanation in terms of matter—of what a thing is made of; in terms of form—of what makes what it’s made of into what it is; and in terms of end—of what it’s for. (Martin, Thomas Aquinas, 21–2) “Evidently we have to acquire knowledge of the original causes (for we say we know each thing only when we think we recognize its first cause), and causes are spoken of in four senses” (Aristotle, Metaphysics I, 2 (983a 24–8), in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941). See Aristotle, Physics, II, 3 (194b 23–33), in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941); St. Thomas Aquinas, The Principles of Nature, in Selected Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. Robert P. Goodwin (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), 7–28; St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, Book 2, lect. 5, trans. Richard J. Blackwell, Richard Spath, and W. Edmund Thirlkel (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963). 33 Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, Book I, lect. 1, no. 5.

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Matter and form are intrinsic causes of things on both the accidental and substantial levels. On the accidental level, a statue, for example, may be made of marble (the material cause) and have the shape of Lincoln (the accidental form). On the substantial level, a dog is a substance composed of matter and form. Here, however, the matter is not a particular type of thing (such as marble), but the sheer possibility of being a thing. This possibility of being is actualized not by an accidental form, such as a certain shape or structure, but by substantial form, the principle by which a substance is a particular kind of substance.34 It is the principle by which a dog is a dog, and therefore exhibits the structure and activities of a dog. So the dog barks and wags its tail in virtue of its substantial form. Matter and form are also intrinsic principles of change on the accidental and substantial levels. On the accidental level, a cube of bronze may be reshaped into a statue. The new shape is the formal cause, the accidental form. The bronze is the material cause, the substrate that endures through the change. In this case the material cause is a thing that, while remaining that kind of thing (bronze), is capable of receiving a new accidental form. On the substantial level, a thing may cease to be what it is altogether and become something else. When a dog dies, for instance, it ceases to be a dog (one organically unified substance) and becomes a carcass (which is really a collection of substances gradually decaying into still more basic substances). While bronze remains bronze, even if the statue is melted, the dog does not remain a dog when it becomes a carcass. Here the material principle is not a substance with the potentiality to be differently shaped, but the mere potentiality of being a substance, a potentiality actualized first by one substantial form and then by another. This potentiality is not itself a thing, but the mere possibility of being a thing. Aristotle calls it “primary matter (prōtē hulē).”35 Together, substantial form and primary matter comprise the “nature” of a material substance, the spontaneous source of its proper activities.36 Change also requires efficient and final causes. The efficient cause is the agent, and the final cause is the end or purpose in virtue of which the efficient cause acts. As Aquinas explains, “If an agent did not incline toward some definite effect, all results would be a matter of indifference for him. … So, it would be impossible for him to act. Therefore, every agent tends toward some determinate effect, and this is called his end.”37 For Aquinas and Aristotle, final causality is a universal feature of both animate and inanimate nature.38 The notion of dependency characterizes all four types of causes but in different ways. Each thing depends on its material and formal causes for its being since these are intrinsic to its nature. If they were removed, it would cease to exist. Each thing likewise depends on efficient and final causes for any change it undergoes.39

S T I, 110, 2, co. Aristotle, Physics 193a 29; 191a 7–12; Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, Book I, lect.13, no. 118. 36 Aristotle, Physics, 192b 21–193b 12; James A. Weisheipl, O.P., “The Concept of Nature,” in Nature and Motion in the Middle Ages, ed. William E. Carroll (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1985), 1–23. 37 SCG, Book II, chap. 2, no. 8. 38 On how the notion of universal final causality is compatible with modern empirical science, see Benedict M. Ashley, O.P., “Research into the Intrinsic Final Causes of Physical Things,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 26 (1952): 185–94. 39 St. Thomas Aquinas, On the Power of God, Q. 5, a. 1, co., trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1952). 34 35

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THE RELATION BETWEEN THEOLOGY AND SCIENCE Aquinas regarded theology as a science founded on divine revelation received in faith.40 It is distinct from but in no way opposed to philosophy and other sciences that proceed from human reason. While contemporary culture sometimes sees contradiction or even “warfare” between religion and empirical science or faith and reason, such thoughts would be utterly foreign to Aquinas.41

Unity of Truth For Aquinas, there can be no fundamental conflict between the truth that God reveals and the truth that reason discovers. “Although the truth of the Christian faith … surpasses the capacity of reason, nevertheless that truth that the human reason is naturally endowed to know cannot be opposed to the truth of the Christian faith.”42 As William Carroll explains, “For Thomas faith perfects reason, so sacra doctrina can perfect all other sciences. Such perfecting is not an elimination or destruction of these sciences; it is rather a recognition that human reason has limits to its scope.”43

Resolution of Apparent Conflicts Although genuine conflicts are ruled out in principle, apparent conflicts may arise and must be addressed. For such work the medieval theologians were better equipped than many contemporary theologians since they were usually trained philosophers familiar with the science of their day. As Edward Grant explains, With the arts masters [philosophers] forbidden to apply their knowledge to theology, we are left with the theologians as the class of scholars who applied science to theology and theology to science during the Middle Ages. Not only were they thoroughly trained in natural philosophy and theology, but some were also significant contributors to science and mathematics. … Because they were trained in both natural philosophy and theology, medieval theologians were able to interrelate science and theology with relative ease and confidence, whether this involved the application of science to S T I, 1, 1–2. See such seminal works as John William Draper, History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (New York: D. Appleton, 1874); Andrew Dickson White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, 2 vols. (New York: D. Appleton, 1896). Recent scholarship has discredited the “warfare” imagery and rhetoric. See Gary B. Ferngren, “Introduction,” in Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction, ed. Gary B. Ferngren (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), ix; John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 321; Joshua M. Moritz, “The War That Never Was: Exploding the Myth of the Historical Conflict between Christianity and Science,” Theology and Science 10 (2012): 113–23. 42 SCG I, c.7.1. 40 41

What is divinely taught to us by faith cannot be contrary to what we are endowed with by nature. One or the other would have to be false, and since we have both of them from God, he would be the cause of our error, which is impossible. Rather, since what is imperfect bears a resemblance to what is perfect, what we know by natural reason has some likeness to what is taught to us by faith. Now just as sacred doctrine is based on the light of faith, so philosophy is based on the natural light of reason. So it is impossible that the contents of philosophy should be contrary to the contents of faith. (St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius, Q.2, a.3, co., in Faith, Reason, and Theology: Questions I-IV of His Commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius, trans. Armand Maurer (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1987). Carroll, “Thomas Aquinas on Science,” 1:230.

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scriptural exegesis, the application of God’s absolute power to alternative possibilities in the natural world, or even the frequent invocation of scriptural texts in scientific treatises in support of scientific theories and ideas. The theologians had a remarkable degree of intellectual freedom and, for the most part, did not allow their theology to hinder or obstruct inquiry into the structure and operation of the physical world.44 Aquinas was well aware of the methods and boundaries of theology, philosophy, and natural science, allowing each its proper realm of research. As David Lindberg points out, Philosophy and theology both have their spheres of competence, [Aquinas] argues, and each can be trusted within its proper sphere: if we wish to know the details or causes of planetary motion, for example, we must look to the philosophers; on the other hand, if we wish to understand the divine attributes or the plan of salvation, we must be prepared to enter the precincts of theology. In Thomas there is a respect for the philosophical enterprise, and a determination to employ it whenever possible, that takes him beyond the Augustinian position and places him in the forefront of the liberal or progressive wing of theologians in the second half of the thirteenth century.45 Respecting the boundaries of theology and science, Aquinas cautions against substituting a divine cause for a natural cause: When we ask the reason why, in regard to a natural effect, we can give a reason based on a proximate cause; provided, of course, that we trace back all things to the divine will as a first cause. Thus, if the question is asked: “Why is wood heated in the presence of fire?” it is answered, “Because heating is the natural action of fire”; and this is so “because heat is the proper accident.” But this is the result of its proper form, and so on, until we come to the divine will. Hence, if a person answers someone who asks why wood is heated: “Because God willed it,” he is answering appropriately, provided he intends to take the question back to a first cause, but not appropriately, if he means to exclude all other causes.46 We might see this as Aquinas’s response to contemporary theologians and scientists who invoke “the god of the gaps” rather than seeking natural causes for natural phenomena.47

rant, “Science and Theology,” 69. G David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 232–33. 46 SCG III, 97, no. 17. 47   44 45

Those who argue for “irreducible complexity” and then move to claims about intelligent design, represent a contemporary version of what has been called the “god of the gaps.” This is the view that the natural order itself and the changes in it require an appeal to a divine agent operating within the world as a supplement to other agents and causes in the world. … The “god of the gaps” … becomes a cause within the world and is not the Creator. (William E. Carroll, Creation and Science: Has Science Eliminated God? [London: Catholic Truth Society, 2011], 54–5)   When we look for a cause of genetic information we are led to consider that reading and writing coded information appear to require an intelligent cause, or at least a cause that is analogous to intelligence. This has led design theorists to propose God as the author of the message written in the DNA. While I do not wish to exclude or belittle the role of God in the design and function of living organisms, I think that the account of the design theorists is dangerous, and ultimately incoherent, because it removes the role of secondary causes from the world, turning living organisms into puppets or, to use a more contemporary analogy, robots. In explaining the cause or principle responsible for inscribing and interpreting the

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Scriptural Conflicts Aquinas accepted the absolute authority of scripture as well as the truths established by human reason and offered some principles for resolving apparent conflicts. We can find these in his discussion of Gen 1:7, which speaks of “the waters above the heavens.” With St. Augustine, Aquinas maintains that “these words of Scripture have more authority than the most exalted human intellect. Hence, whatever these waters are, and whatever their mode of existence, we cannot for a moment doubt that they are there.”48 When it comes to deciding what the waters are, however, he consults the science of his day, rejecting interpretations that are scientifically (or philosophically) impossible. If an interpretation “can be shown to be false by solid reasons, it cannot be held to be the sense of Holy Scripture.”49 He criticizes those who present errors of reason as truths of faith. “Faith is made ridiculous to the unbeliever when a simple-minded believer asserts as an article of faith that which is demonstrably false.”50 Rejecting scientifically false interpretations, he offers some alternatives consistent with both scripture and the accepted science of his time.51 While rejecting his medieval science, we can still appreciate his principles.

Conflicts between Divine and Creaturely Causality The question of the relationship between divine and creaturely causality became a crisis in the wake of modern science. When science seemed to reduce causality itself to the univocal notion of the force that moved the atoms, God’s causality was also understood as a kind of force, which then seemed to violate or disrupt the established forces of nature. This led many scientists simply to deny the possibility of God’s action in the world and many theologians to limit divine action or reinterpret it in completely subjective, rather than ontologically objective terms. Many areas of contemporary science, however, including quantum mechanics, chaos theory, big bang cosmology, biology, and sciences that employ the notion of emergence, now seem to point to a broader notion of causality reminiscent of Aristotle and Aquinas.52 In view of these issues, it may be helpful to consult the wisdom of the medieval theologians. A key concept is Aquinas’s notion of secondary causality, which posits that a particular effect may be attributed wholly to God as the transcendent primary cause and wholly to the creature as the secondary cause. God’s causality does not diminish or interfere with the proper causality of creatures but is rather its source.53 A. C. Crombie explains the importance of this teaching for the relationship between theology and science:

message encoded in DNA, I think we would do better to look for a more proximate cause rather than turn immediately to God. (John Goyette, “Substantial Form and the Recovery of an Aristotelian Natural Science,” Thomist 66 [2002]: 527) S T I, 68, 2, ad 2. ST I, 68, 3, co. “Since Holy Scripture can be explained in a multiplicity of senses, one should adhere to a particular explanation, only in such measure as to be ready to abandon it, if it be proved with certainty to be false; lest Holy Scripture be exposed to ridicule by unbelievers and obstacles be placed to their believing” (ST I, 68, 1, co.). 50 Aquinas, On the Power of God, 4, 1, co. 51 See ST I, 68, 3, and 4. 52 For a detailed account of these issues, see Dodds, Unlocking. 53 Ibid., 205–10. 48 49

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Albertus and more definitely St. Thomas realized … that theology and natural science often spoke of the same thing from a different point of view, that something could be both the work of Divine Providence and the result of a natural cause. In this way they established a distinction between theology and philosophy which assigned to each its appropriate methods and guaranteed to each its own sphere of action. There could be no real contradiction between truth as revealed by religion and as revealed by reason.54

CONCLUSION Though not a “scientist” himself, Aquinas contributed in many profound ways to the understanding of the relationship between theology and science. His teaching remains quite relevant to current issues in the relationship between Christian theology and the modern sciences. Perhaps a retrieval of his thought may foster a return to the relatively tranquil relationship between theology and science that characterized his time: That medieval theologians combined extensive and intensive training in both natural philosophy and theology, and possessed exclusive right to interrelate the two, may provide a key to explain the absence of a science-theology conflict in the extensive medieval commentary literature on the Sentences and Scripture. For the host of issues they regularly confronted, the medieval theologian-natural philosophers knew how to subordinate the one discipline to the other and to avoid conflict and confrontation. Indeed, they were in an excellent position to harmonize the two disciplines while simultaneously pursuing all manner of hypothetical and contrary-to-fact conditions and possibilities. Compared to the situation in late antiquity, when Christianity was struggling for survival, and the difficult times that lay ahead, the later Middle Ages … was a relatively tranquil period in the long interrelationship between science and theology.55

Crombie, Medieval, 1:63. Grant, “Science and Theology,” 69–70.

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John Calvin and Modern Science BRIAN EDGAR

If one wished to select a particular year to act as a marker for the beginning of the intellectual revolution that led to what we now refer to as modern science, then one could do much worse than to select the year 1543.1 This was the year in which Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) finally published De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of Celestial Bodies), his astronomical masterpiece that offered a heliocentric alternative to the geocentric system of Ptolemy (AD 100–170).2 This was also the year in which the Flemish physician and professor of anatomy at the University of Padua Andreas Vesalius published De Humani Corporis Fabrica (On the Structure of the Human Body). This equally groundbreaking anatomical masterpiece provided a detailed analysis of bone, cartilage, muscle, circulation, heart, brain, and other bodily organs as an alternative to the anatomical system of Galen (AD 129–200/216), which was based on humoral theory and the dissection of animals. The work of both Ptolemy and Galen had been widely accepted for more than a millennium and dominated the fields of astronomy and anatomy, but now, just as Copernicus provided a new atlas of the heavens, Vesalius provided a new atlas of the human body. As modern astronomy and anatomy arose together, modern science gradually came into being. By an even happier coincidence, 1543 was also the year in which John Calvin published his own explicit call for an intellectual reformation, if not revolution, in theology. Since its publication, his tract The Necessity of Reforming the Church has been used for centuries to focus attention on the practical implications of the reformation doctrines of the gospel for the life of the church. In the development of his own theological reformation, Calvin frequently makes a point of making connections with the new developments in various sciences (scientia) and arts (artes) including astronomy and anatomy. Given that all three of these revolutionary documents were published in the same year, Calvin was not, at that time, familiar with the new theories of Copernicus or Vesalius. Nonetheless, he was clear that both astronomy and anatomy were important parts of the new pursuit for human knowledge about the created order. “There is a need of art and of more exacting toil,” he argued, “in order to investigate the motion of the stars, to determine their assigned stations, to measure their intervals, to An earlier version of this paper appeared in the July 2010 edition of the Journal of the Institute for the Study of Christianity in an Age of Science and Technology under the title “Calvin and the Natural Order.” 2 John Gribbin, Science, a History, 1543–2001 (London: Allen Lane, 2002), xvii. 1

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note their properties. … Likewise, in regard to the structure of the human body one must have the greatest keenness in order to weigh, with Galen’s skill, its articulation, symmetry, beauty and use.”3 In addition to this, he argued that theology is also necessary because “without Christ, sciences in every department are vain, and the man who knows not God is vain, though he should be conversant with every branch of learning.”4 Not only was Calvin unaware of the research of Vesalius in 1543, it is also unlikely that he ever knew directly of Vesalius’s work. He did, however, become familiar with some closely related research on circulation through his awareness of the writings of the Spanish polymath, physician, anatomist, astronomer, and unorthodox theologian Michael Servetus (1511–53). Servetus taught at the University of Paris and not only gained a certain reputation by correctly predicting an eclipse of Mars by the moon but also preceded Vesalius in research on certain aspects of the circulatory system. Servetus however failed to publish his research until ten years after Vesalius, and when he did it appeared in Christanismi Restitutio (1553), a book of both theology and anatomy that, on the one hand, described pulmonary circulation and, on the other hand, rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. Servetus sent a copy of the book to Calvin, but he later fell into the hands of the French Inquisition who objected to his views on the Trinity and the deity of Christ. He managed to escape to Geneva where he was arrested again, this time by the reformers! Unable to escape, he was tried for heresy and burned to death. His anatomical research was suppressed along with his theological views by both the Inquisition and the reformers.5 With regard to Copernicus, there is no certainty that Calvin knew directly of him, though it is possible because Calvin’s close colleague, Theodore Beza, as well as others known to Calvin, knew of Copernicus. Calvin does appear to have been aware of the general principle of the heliocentric theory. In a sermon on 1 Corinthians 10–11 he spoke against those who say that the sun does not move and that it is the earth that shifts and turns. For a long time this and his frequently quoted but spurious condemnation of Copernicus, “Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?” formed an important part of an overall argument held by Andrew Dickson White, John William Draper, and others that Calvin (and the Reformation and even Christianity as a whole) was opposed to science.6 However, the quotation attributed to Calvin is neither authentic nor an accurate reflection of Calvin’s approach as he was a consistent supporter of science in many forms. His problem with the heliocentric theory was one that he shared with a majority of astronomers of the time. He did not reject it because he believed it was contrary to the special revelation of scripture but, as he specifically says, because it was opposed to general revelation as expressed in common sense. He argued that those who say the sun is still while the earth moves are the kind of people who will say that something is warm John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 1, ed. J. T. McNeill (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1960), 1.5.2. 4 John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library), 1 Cor 1:20. 5 Lawrence Goldstone and Nancy Goldstone, Out of the Flames: The Remarkable Story of Michael Servetus and One of the Rarest books in the World (New York: Broadway, 2002), 325. 6 John William Draper, History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (New York: Appleton,1896); Andrew Dickson White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (New York: George Braziller, 1955). 3

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when it is cold, or that it is black when it is white. Calvin simply did not see enough in the theory to overcome the commonsense perception concerning the apparent movement of the sun. While he obviously had heard something of the heliocentric view, there is no clear evidence that Calvin knew anything about Copernicus himself. He certainly did not condemn him. For Calvin, science itself was unable to lead people to the true knowledge of God or to salvation, but that should not be taken to mean that he saw little value in science for he had a deep appreciation for the study of the natural world by both the godly and the ungodly. He argued that there is a natural gift given to humanity as a whole to enable them to explore the arts and the sciences. Consequently, he could say, “whenever we come across these matters in secular writers, let that admirable light of truth shining in them teach us that the mind of man, though fallen and perverted from its wholeness, is nonetheless clothed and ornamented with God’s excellent gifts.”7 Moreover, for Calvin, truth is not to be despised, wherever it appears, and those such as the philosophers, physicians, and mathematicians who describe nature are to be commended for being “sharp and penetrating” in their investigations, and “if the Lord has willed that we be helped in physics, dialectic, mathematics, and other like disciplines, by the work and ministry of the ungodly, let us use this assistance.”8 In all this there is strong agreement between Calvin, Copernicus, and Vesalius. There are not three revolutions in process, but one revolution in three parts, because the hermeneutical method of Calvin and the Reformers, their theology of God and nature, and their distinct turn toward the pursuit of truth through empirical methods provided a philosophical foundation not only for a reformation of the church but also of scientific method. Indeed, John Macmurray argued that “the one creative achievement of the Reformation was science and the scientific spirit.”9 Macmurray’s ambitious claim, however, leans too far in one direction, as does the earlier, contrary claim that Calvin and the Reformation were implacable foes of science, as exemplified in Andrew Dickson White’s assertion that Calvin had a strictly literalistic interpretation of scripture and that this lay behind his alleged condemnation of Copernicus.10 Both views underestimate the complexity of the situation. First, there are theoretical complications, including the fact that there is a need to be wary of anachronistic categorization because the scientia of the sixteenth century, which referred to knowledge gained in a particular way, through the use of human reason, is not to be simply equated with the modern science that eventually emerged. It is doubtful that the attempt to characterize the relationships between theology and faith, on the one hand, and between science and reason, on the other, in terms of a single mode (whether understood either in terms of complete harmony or total warfare) is able to do justice to the actual complexity of the cultural situation. There are also practical, historical considerations that complicate the matter. The approach of Calvin and the other reformers to human knowledge of the created order was certainly positive but it was no more consistent than the science of the day. Just as astrology and alchemy existed alongside astronomy and chemistry so too was the theological, and sometimes the scientific, world inconsistent with regard to whether Calvin, Institutes, 2.2.14. Ibid., 2.2.15, 16. 9 John Macmurray, Reason and Emotion (London: Faber and Faber, 1972), 172. 10 White, History of the Warfare of Science with Theology, 97, 132. 7 8

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prayer was an alternative or a complement to the work of the physician and whether the planets moved by physical forces or by the hand of God. Nor can one credit the reformers with the full development of modern science due to pre-reformation influences, the research undertaken by Catholic scholars, and the role of Islamic and other influences. Yet reformation theology was by no means unimportant in the development of modern science. More than a mere correlation, there exists an undeniable element of causation through the influence of at least five distinctive theological factors found in the work of Calvin, which have influenced attitudes toward science and the natural world, the empirical approach to research, and the assessment of scientific claims. They are, first, an epistemological development involving the formal structure of the knowledge of God and the world; second, an ontological understanding of the created order in terms of the glory of God; third, a theology of common grace in the natural world encouraging empirical research; fourth, a biblical and theological hermeneutic of accommodation that resolved many apparent conflicts both between theology and science and between faith and reason. Finally, there were shifts in the understanding of vocation, the importance of secular work, and the importance of scientific research that emerged from Calvin’s doctrines of the priesthood of all believers and the vocation of the laity. These provide an impetus toward the development of modern science that is as important as the groundbreaking work of Copernicus and Vesalius.

CREATION AND THE GLORY OF GOD Epistemology and the Knowledge of God and Self Calvin was born in 1509 in Noyon in Picardy. A Roman Catholic by birth he had, by the age of only twenty-four, managed to incur the wrath of the Church of Rome because of his developing and dissenting theological views. By the time he was twenty-seven, in 1536, he had completed the first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, which provided the intellectual foundation for his call for the necessity of the reformation of both church and society. He famously began his Institutes with the words that launched modern theology: “Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But, while joined by many bonds, which one precedes and brings forth the other is not easy to discern.”11 Here is a rejection of pure objectivism and a recognition that any true knowledge requires a knowledge of the self. The conception, so clearly expressed, that there is a mutual relationship between the knowledge of God and knowledge of ourselves marks a new turn in theology. God cannot be known in the abstract but only in that reciprocal relationship God has established with us. We only know God as we acquire a deeper knowledge of ourselves, and every expression of the truth is predicated upon, and reveals something about, ourselves as well as God. Calvin is not a modern philosopher of science like Michael Polanyi (1886–1964), yet there are methodological connections here with Polanyi’s contemporary expression of the way “personal knowledge” (personal commitment and tacit knowledge) influences the development of science. For Polanyi knowledge is not merely objective, it is grasped, and the act of believing becomes an addition to knowledge.12 For both Calvin and Polanyi, Calvin, Institutes, 1.1.1. Iain Paul, Knowledge of God: Calvin, Einstein, and Polanyi (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic, 1987), 1–2.

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the human person is intimately connected with knowledge of all external realities. For Calvin, humanity is part of the created world and God is known within it. Theology no longer begins with abstract questions but with an honest enquiry of the empirical nature of things. This means working with both the revealed Word and the created world of God. For Calvin, there are not two ways of knowing, a scientific one and a theological one, but only one way. For both Calvin and Polanyi there is personal participation in the shaping of knowledge. Scientists rightly assume that their intuitions, insights, and understandings based on previous experience are actually worthwhile and thus frequently base research on them. Similarly, theological knowledge is not purely objective but is based on participation with Jesus Christ. Polanyi said that “nothing that is said, written or printed, can ever mean anything in itself; for it is only a person who utters something—or listens to it or reads it—who can mean something by it.”13 Similarly, Calvin argues that scripture itself is nothing without the involvement of the one attending to it. God only bestows actual knowledge of himself through Scripture and then only by the witness of the Spirit to the one coming in faith “for God alone is a fit witness of himself in his Word.” The Spirit “must penetrate into our hearts to persuade us” and thus “those whom the Holy Spirit has inwardly taught truly rest upon Scripture and that Scripture indeed is selfauthenticated.”14 Calvin’s fundamental approach to scripture is founded upon a form of knowledge that involves personal participation. His epistemological insights established a formal structure for knowing that not only functioned in the theological and spiritual realm but which also worked to overcome the dualism that alienated secular, scientific knowledge from the realm of the spiritual and that which gives meaning to life.

Ontology and the Glory of God Calvin devotes ­chapter  5 of the first book of Institutes to demonstrating that the knowledge of God’s wisdom and nature “shines forth in the fashioning of the universe.” God’s glory is seen in the creation around us. This glory is the revelation of God, the beauty of God that is seen not only in Christ (the focal center of Calvin’s theology) but also in the natural world. Thus science, in its own way, recognizes the presence of God in the beauty or glory of the physical world. Richard Feynman, Nobel Laureate in physics, echoed this sentiment: “You can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity.”15 Furthermore, Werner Heisenberg said the theory of Quantum mechanics “was immediately found convincing by virtue of its completeness and abstract beauty”16 and it has been said that “beauty is so central a standard in physics that it take primacy even over experimentation.”17 Calvin’s understanding of the created order not only stressed the connection of the world to God as reflecting the glory of God, it also emphasized the way that the world is good, ordered, and comprehensible with consistent principles or laws governing matter and movement. Calvin provided a renewed theological sense of created order that encouraged the work of scientists. This theology of creation as the glory of God had more of an influence at a Ibid.,  131. Calvin, Institutes, 1.7.4, 5. 15 Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1965), 171. 16 Thomas Dubay, The Evidential Power of Beauty: Science and Theology Meet (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1999), 114. 17 Robert Augros and George Stanciu, The New Story of Science: Mind and the Universe (Lake Bluff, IL: Regnery Gateway, 1984), 39. 13 14

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general level and only occasionally in terms of specific debates such as his preference for a view of the world as finite, such as when he wrote that “however widely the circuit of the heavens extends, it still has some limit.”18 This contrasted his work with philosophies of the infinite, as had been speculated by some such as Nicholas of Cusa.19 Calvin’s work covers a wide range of areas of thought including the humanities, theology, and philosophy as well as the natural sciences. Both the mediaeval trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music) are scientific, but his interests extend even further. There are references in Calvin to the study of times, seasons, and chronology; numbers and mathematics; astronomy, famously described as “not only pleasant, but also very useful to be known”;20 geography; kinematics/physics and movement; chemistry; biology; psychology and the mind, as well as the soul/rational thinking (“one of the essential properties of our nature is reason”); agriculture; architecture; shoemaking; history; language; economics; anesthetics; the law; and ethics/moral philosophy.21 Calvin’s reflections on the natural world provided a foundation for understanding the world in which we live and a theological rationale for the scientific enterprise. He gave a renewed theological legitimation to the scientific investigation of nature, which was seen as a means of discerning the hand of God in creation as well as understanding the working of the world.

Theology and Peculiar Grace For Calvin, the divine action of God in the world was nothing other than grace, a feature of God’s character that was a prominent part of Calvin’s theology. This understanding of grace directly influenced reformed theology and, more indirectly, early modern scientific thought. It was divine grace that led God to create a world that exhibited glory, goodness, and order. The universality of this grace meant that there was within humanity both “an awareness of divinity”22 and the possibility of rational insight into the natural world and its processes. This is evident in Calvin’s references to divine grace regulating the actions of wind, fire, the sea, the process of procreation, and the fertility of plants.23 This grace is universal, a fact of creation, and the means of human, rational discernment. It is a gift that is “bestowed indiscriminately upon pious and impious” and which is “rightly counted among natural gifts.”24 Calvin would have approved of the axiom that “all truth is God’s truth” as he wrote that “if we regard the Spirit of God as the sole fountain of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor despise it wherever it shall appear.”25 The logical and empirical work of philosophers and scientists was also important, even if it involved the investigation of the “inferior” natural world. “Shall we say the philosophers were blind in their fine observation and artful description of nature? … Shall we say they are insane who developed medicine? … [T]‌hese men whom Scripture calls ‘natural men’ were, indeed, sharp and penetrating in their investigation of inferior Calvin, Institutes, 1.14.1. Book 2 of “De Docta Ignorantia” found in J. Hopkins, Nicholas of Cusa on Learned Ignorance: A Translation and an Appraisal of De Docta Ignorantia, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: Banning, 1985). 20 John Calvin, Commentaries on the First Book of Moses called Genesis, trans. J. King (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1996), Gen 1:6. 21 Calvin, Institutes, 2.2.17. 22 Ibid.,  1.3.1. 23 Ibid., 1.16.7. 24 Ibid., 2.2.14. 25 Ibid., 2.2.15. 18 19

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things.”26 Whether the unbeliever understands it or not, humanity’s ability to understand and thus control something of God’s work in the world is a result of the universal providential grace of God. This understanding comes through the light of reason, which is grounded in Christ and which comes through the Holy Spirit. For Calvin, not only is the glory of God the purpose of all science, but Christ is the foundation of all knowledge. But although Christ is the basis of this knowledge, knowledge of Christ does not come through this universal or, as it became known, common grace. Calvin did not use the term “common” but did describe it as “universal” and as the “peculiar grace of God.”27 It is peculiar in that it is a grace that does not lead to salvation and thus is to be clearly distinguished from that special, saving grace that leads to salvation. True knowledge of the world may help in daily living and it may even lead us to contemplation of God but humanity, inevitably, eventually turns away from this and “we profit no more by it than if we believed that all things were turned topsy-turvey by the heedless will of fortune.”28 Although a knowledge of God from the created order is clear and universal, it is at the same time a knowledge that is useless, completely devoid of meaning or significance and likely only to lead to arrogance and pride without the knowledge of Christ. A grace that does not lead to salvation is a paradox for Calvin that inevitably leads him to questions about the reality and the soteriological significance of this common grace revelation. Apart from the anthropological and soteriological debates, however, Calvin’s conception of common grace implies that there is a rationale for a scientific approach to the world through its stress on the goodness of creation, God’s all-encompassing providence, and the gracious preservation of the world, human life, and culture.

Hermeneutics and Accommodation The first intent of Calvin’s hermeneutic was to emphasize the plain meaning of the text in distinction to the more traditional allegorical interpretation of scripture that was still employed by the orthodox theology of the day. Despite this emphasis, Calvin, like Luther, allowed for nonliteral (more precisely, literarial) biblical interpretation where attention is paid to the intended meaning of the text. This not only provides an escape from allegory but also from literal and often scientifically inaccurate descriptions of the natural phenomena, which are recorded in the Bible. The subsequent importance of this allowance cannot be overestimated. Calvin did not think like those who see the Bible as a scientific textbook where descriptions of creation, the flood, the cosmos, and so forth are necessarily taken literally and scientifically. Indeed, he does not habitually read scientific conclusions into the text. But nor did Calvin think like a modern scientist, for he sometimes invokes miracles and divine actions as substitutes for physical events, a form of a god-of-the-gaps understanding of causation. The situation is complex. Calvin certainly believed that the earth was only a few thousand years old, that the whole of the globe was covered by water during the flood, and that the earth was at the center of the universe with the sun and other planets circling around it. These were all commonplace views in his day and he accepted these and other descriptions of natural phenomena at face value when they accorded with natural reason. However, he also held to a principle of accommodation that would come to the

Ibid., 2.2.15. Ibid., 2.2.14. 28 Ibid., 1.5.11. 26 27

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fore if a conflict arose between Scripture and science. The basic theological principle of accommodation is based on the theology of the incarnation, and states that in order to communicate with humanity, God accommodates himself to limited human capacity. Thus God is said to “condescend,” “descend,” “adapt,” “stoop,” or “lisp” in order to reach “the unlearned,” “the humble,” “the ignorant,” or “little children” who would otherwise not be reached because of their “limited,” “feeble,” or “small” capacity. Consequently, for example, when speaking about the stars or geography, Moses omitted “higher subtleties” and spoke in a “homely,” “popular,” or “rudimentary” style. Jeremiah never intended to philosophize as the astrologers. David did not “dispute philosophically” or “discourse scientifically” when praising God for the wonders of the cosmos. Finally, in particular, “the Holy Spirit had no intention to teach astronomy” in expounding Ps 136:7.29 For Calvin the Holy Spirit and the Scriptures generally teach spiritual truth and provide theological understanding. Astronomy and the other sciences function appropriately in their realms and are certainly worthwhile and are to be commended. Consequently those who rely on literalistic interpretations of, for example, creation and the flood can find no substantial support for their hermeneutical approach in John Calvin when his principle of accommodation is applied. He urged a flexible approach to questions about origins, cosmology, and science generally. The purpose of Genesis and Psalms was not to describe scientific facts but to express the beauty and the goodness of God. Calvin’s theology is fully supportive of an approach whereby science and faith operate in consonance with consistent methodologies, their own independent areas of interest, and a congruency in those matters where they overlap.

Vocation and the Calling to Science In promoting the idea that salvation came by grace through faith, Martin Luther repudiated the idea that good works (of mercy, charity, and so forth) or religious works (of fasting, worship, or religious obedience) could bring salvation. This inevitably meant, by association, that secular work (one’s ordinary, daily work) was of no soteriological value either. Although none of these works could themselves bring about justification, they were seen as an important effect of it. They were the fruit of salvation and the central reformation text “it is by grace you have been saved, through faith … not by works” is immediately followed by the statement that “we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works” (Eph 1:8–10). Consequently, Luther stressed, as a logical corollary to his repudiation of work as the basis of salvation, the importance of work (and not only specifically religious works but also ordinary, daily work) as the result of salvation. Thus, for Luther, having a vocation or a calling was not something restricted to clergy and the religious orders. Everyone’s daily work, of any kind, was their vocation. This was a radical change in thinking as previously (with notable exceptions such as Augustine, Aquinas, and Benedictine monasticism) secular work had been seen as spiritually second-rate compared to an ascetic, monastic life.30 Although it was Luther who began the process of sanctifying work, the notion of a Protestant work ethic is particularly associated with Calvin. He taught that men and women live to bring glory

I bid., 1.13.1, 1.17.13, 2.7.2, 2.11.13. Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica, trans. English Dominicans. (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1955), III, Q.41, Art 2. 29 30

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to God through their daily work as much as through their worship. Everyone is called to their work by God: “Each individual has his own kind of living assigned to him by the Lord … so that he may not heedlessly wander about throughout life.”31 All work was now considered to be spiritually valuable, seen as a form of worship not only because work glorifies God but also because it serves the common good and is thus a fulfilment of the Great Commandment of loving God and neighbor. Being a servant of God therefore meant working hard, being industrious and diligent, as well as demonstrating commitment and responsibility in one’s life. The visible evidence of this commitment to God was, naturally, assumed to be success in work. Luther argued that God gave everyone a vocation, implying that it was important to remain where one was and undertake one’s position without complaint. Calvin agreed that God gave everyone a vocation but felt that the implication of this was that it was important to move, if necessary, to ensure that one was in the right place. Luther’s approach affirmed the social value of all vocations, including that of being the lowliest serf, and stressed stability. According to Luther, one ought to simply accept one’s position in life as given by God and stay where one was. This suited a traditional agricultural context where it was largely inevitable and customary for people to undertake the same work as their family. On the other hand, Calvin’s approach affirmed the individual value of one’s vocation, whatever that may be, and stressed the importance of searching it out. This approach suited a more changeable urban context where people undertook businesses that needed to grow and adapt, and which therefore encouraged change and movement. Both Luther and Calvin thus drew culturally helpful but different pastoral implications from the same fundamental fact concerning the divine ordering of human vocation. Calvin in particular stressed the positive role that philosophers and scientists could have through their work, even if they were unbelievers, but more so if they understood the spiritual truth that underlies all scientific endeavor. The knowledge of all that is most excellent in human life is said to be communicated to us through the Spirit of God … but if the Lord has willed that we be helped in physics, dialectic, mathematics, and other disciplines, by the work and ministry of the ungodly, let us use this assistance. … We should at once add that all this capacity to understand, with the understanding that follows upon it, is an unstable and transitory thing in God’s sight, when the solid foundation of truth does not underlie it.32 There is no doubt that Calvin’s teaching about Christian calling and vocation was widely influential. In a manner parallel to its influence in the area of science, Calvin’s teaching continues to play an important role in theories about the protestant work ethic and the development of capitalism. The extent of such influence in either area is, of course, difficult to assess but it can be argued that it provided a rational justification and practical encouragement to science as a vocation. All together these elements of Calvin’s theology of the glory of the created order offer a foundation for a way of thinking positively about the work of science and the scientist. They provide an impetus toward the development of modern science, which is as important as the pioneering examples of scientists like Copernicus and Vesalius.

Calvin, Institutes, 3.10.6. Ibid., 2.2.16.

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SCIENCE AND THE NEED FOR GOD In addition to noting the way in which elements of Calvin’s theology influenced future thought, it is necessary to remember that Calvin was not deliberately writing his theology for a scientific age. He was a man of his time despite unknowingly helping establish the foundations for an age of science.33 Consequently, he had a far more limited idea of scientific research and methodology than what developed as the result of various important aspects of his thought. Aspects of his theology that are less congenial to modern science but which are nonetheless theologically important include his various convictions revolving around his understanding of the need that science had for theology. Those aspects of his thought that challenge aspects of modern science include the following.

Calvin Was of the Belief that Science Studied for Its Own Sake Simply Leads to Vanity He had great reservations about any scientific investigation that was undertaken solely for its own sake. Research into the natural world that was not orientated toward discerning the nature and character of God was to be resisted, for he feared that too much curiosity in science would take attention away from the Creator. Science for its own sake was nothing but vanity. We see in human nature some sort of desire to search out the truth … Human understanding then possesses some power of perception, since it is by nature captivated by a love of truth. … Yet this longing for truth … soon falls into vanity. Indeed, man’s mind because of its dullness, cannot hold to the right path, but wanders through various errors and stumbles repeatedly, as if it were groping in darkness, until it strays away and finally disappears. Thus it betrays the capabilities of seeking and finding truth. … For this reason, in investigating empty and worthless things, it torments itself in its absurd curiosity, while it carelessly pays little or no attention to matters that it should particularly understand. … Secular writers … are almost all found to have entangled themselves in it. For this reason, Solomon, through the whole of his Ecclesiastes, after recounting all those studies in which men seemed to themselves to be very wise, declares them to be vain and trifling.34 Calvin felt it appropriate to make use of the natural gifts that God has given, the gifts of philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and so forth, but the first purpose of all research is to know God.

Calvin Argued That for Science to Produce Anything Other Than Vain Knowledge the Scientist Must Be Regenerate In order to pursue science in a true way the scientist must, according to Calvin, not only be a person of reason, high intelligence, and completely committed to his work, but also a believer. “Without Christ, sciences in every department are vain, and the man who knows not God is vain, though he should be conversant with every branch of learning.”35 In modern thought it is generally reckoned, contra Calvin, that the religious faith of the Alister McGrath, A Life of Calvin: A Shaping in the Study of Western Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 293. Calvin, Institutes, 2.2.12. 35 Calvin, On Corinthians, 1 Cor 1:20. 33 34

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scientist ought to play no part in the investigation, the analysis, or the assessment of natural phenomena. The actual relationship, as most theoreticians understand, is often more complex. The extent of any debate or dialog between theology and science depends markedly upon both the field of science and the era under consideration. Today anatomy is not generally subject to any significant debate between theology and science, but in biology more generally evolutionary theory is contentious for some for religious reasons. Vesalius had to step carefully with regard to his discussion of the relationship between body and soul as well as exactly what anatomical investigation could or ought to reveal. While the Platonic strand of ancient tradition operated with a dualism of body and soul, which made purely physical investigations less problematic, Galenic medicine had adopted the more unitary Aristotelian view of the soul as the form of the body. Consequently it was believed the person had an animal soul that governed sense, feeling, and motion, as well as an intellectual soul that regulated the mental faculties.36 These were taken to be corporeal entities and so, in order to avoid trouble, Vesalius pointed out that in order to “avoid running afoul of some ‘idle talker’ here, or some critic of doctrine, I shall completely avoid this dispute concerning the types of soul and their location.” There were those, he said, who would leap to the conclusion that a physician who discusses the anatomy of the person must be one who is “in doubt about the faith or has some uncertainty about the immortality of Souls” without taking into consideration the fact that physicians must necessarily think about the various processes that govern bodily life, as well as, he conceded, seeking to discern “if we can grasp it with the mind chiefly what the substance and essence of the soul is.”37

Calvin Had Concerns about the Value of Any Science That Functions Independently of Theology Calvin argued that the sciences ought to be completely subject in their operation to theology. “The liberal arts and all the sciences must be looked upon as empty and worthless, until they have been entirely subject to the Word and the Spirit of God.”38 It is not that the one who does not know God knows a lot about science but nothing about God, but rather that the one who does not know God knows nothing. His or her understanding of the natural world is in question, in serious doubt, unreliable. “Although the Lord represents both himself and his everlasting Kingdom in the mirror of his works with very great clarity, such is our stupidity that we grow increasingly dull towards so manifest testimonies, and they flow away without profiting us.”39 This view of the scientific value of knowledge gained through the examination of what might be called the general revelation of God is consistent with his view of the theological value of the knowledge of God that is gained in the same way. That is, the knowledge is real, genuine, and useful in many ways but ultimately of no value without the specific knowledge of Christ. The value of the arts, astronomy, and biology is entirely discounted without Christ. They are, in fact, worse than useless as they are actually condemnatory. Just as Roy Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason: How the Enlightenment Transformed the Way We See Our Bodies and Souls (London: Penguin, 2004), 44–50. 37 Andreas Vesalius, The Fabric of the Human Body: An Annotated Translation of the 1543 and 1555 Editions of De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem, ed. D. H. Garrison and M. H. Hast (Basel: Karger, 2014) [Bk. VI, Ch. 15, p. 594 (1543 ed.)], 1202. 38 Calvin, On Corinthians, 1 Cor 4:19. 39 Calvin, Institutes, 1.5.11. 36

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there is ambivalence regarding the knowledge of God (it is clear but worse than useless), so there is a corresponding ambivalence with regard to the scientific knowledge of the world (it is valuable but unreliable). It has already been noted in the realm of cosmology that Copernicus’s theory was seen as having significant theological ramifications. While that debate has now passed away, today there are serious theological and scientific reflections on the nature of space and time. For example, whether big bang theory or singularity theory implies or concurs with the theological concepts of creation ex nihilo, the finitude of the universe, or theism generally. These debates necessarily involve various preliminary considerations such as whether science or reason can ever prove finitude, whether theological beliefs such as creation ex nihilo are able to be established by reason or whether they are purely matters of faith, whether all Christian cosmological statements are entirely metaphorical with no necessary connection with science at all, and whether the nature of any God invoked in such a dialog can be confidently related to the God of biblical revelation.

Calvin Demonstrated Ambiguity about the Way That God Acts in the World in Relation to Natural Processes While asserting that the scientific study of the natural world would enhance the understanding of God, Calvin would argue, on the one hand, that things move “according to the peculiar nature which each class of being has received by the law of creation,” thus implying an understanding of secondary causes. He would argue then on the other hand that “there is no motion, no agitation under the heavens, unless inspired by his angels.”40 Calvin did at times resort to theological explanations as a distinct alternative to physical ones, in the manner of a god-of-the-gaps argument. In the apparent absence of scientific explanations, he invoked divine providence to explain the stability of the earth at the center of the universe and, in the creation narrative, the holding back of the waters from flooding all land. There is an ambivalence here, which ought not to be taken as representing Calvin’s full considered view, any more than Isaac Newton’s subsequent use of divine intervention to explain the diurnal rotation of the world or the irregular movement of some of the outer planets adequately represents his full considered view.41 It is simply that it takes time for such principles to be fully integrated. Modern science’s methodological atheism that completely excludes divine agency from physical causation was not yet completely dominant. In fact, Calvin’s fuller understanding of divine action provided a useful balance between two views. On the one hand, he considered a somewhat unpredictable medieval world where divine, angelic action was the dominant explanation with little room for physical processes. On the other, he considered a mechanistic view of processes and the deistic view of God that was to develop in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which had little room for divine action in the world. Calvin believed that an independent science will inevitably lead to deism or atheism, and his view, that the natural world was to be explored solely to increase one’s adoration of God, meant that a neutral, disinterested scientific approach would inevitably weaken an understanding of God’s providential activity within the natural order. His views contrast with the scientific, John Calvin, Commentaries on the First Twenty Chapters of the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, trans. T. Meyers (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library), Ezek.1:21. 41 John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 144–51. 40

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methodological atheism of some Christian scientists today who believe that God cannot be introduced as an actor or an explanation for any scientific theory. Calvin defined this view as deism with a remote, inactive God. For the Reformers, God was involved and active in the world.42

Calvin’s Understanding of Peculiar Grace and Special Grace Created a Dualism That Has the Potential to Limit the Relationship between Theology and Science The primacy of grace in the Reformers involved a shift from the Neoplatonically influenced Augustinian tradition. This tradition had dominated the medieval period and considered the universe sacramentally as a representation of the eternal, heavenly pattern so that the world itself had no real significance other than as a “signifier” of the eternal. The primacy of grace shifted the approach to a covenantal one that can be understood in terms of God’s turning toward, acting in, and being gracious toward the world, giving to the world an integrity (though not an independence) of its own. As noted above Calvin expressed the relationship of God to the world in terms of peculiar grace, thus recognizing the way that God created a world that reflected his glory, goodness, and order, as well as providing a foundation for the Christian appreciation of science. Peculiar grace, however, is strictly distinguished from what became known, by contrast, as “special” grace that has the potential to lead to salvation (though a better contrast with peculiar grace, a grace that does not lead to salvation, would be “normal” grace or simply “grace”). Peculiar and special grace are united as being the grace of the one God, but they are differentiated in their mode of operation, and consequently Calvin’s theology is built upon a fundamental dualism. Calvin is clear that peculiar grace cannot lead in any way toward salvation, and despite all the value of all that can be learned about the world because of peculiar grace, its ultimate value is nothing unless special grace comes in and redeems it. This has a limiting effect on the relationship between theology and science.

CALVIN AND MODERN SCIENCE Where, in the end, does Calvin’s theology sit in terms of the overall relationship between science and theology? His views are frequently cited in order to support various positions today. Is his theology to be understood as being in conflict with science (with theology seeking to control science), operating independently (because of a commitment to different methods, presuppositions, or languages), in dialogue with science (with methodological parallels and some form of natural theology), integratively (in the form of a theology of nature or some other systematic synthesis), or in any one of numerous other models that have been proposed?43 It should be noted, first, that any attempt to locate Calvin within the confines of a particular model is historically problematic as his way of thinking was emerging in the midst of considerable intellectual. It would be anachronistic to expect his thought to reflect the methodology of a later era. Second, because, despite his reputation, he was not so much a systematician as he was a passionate preacher. He sought to persuade people of his understanding of the gospel and was well capable of stressing different points of view at the one time. The third, and a major point, is the overall complexity and richness of his thought. The range of his interest in specific scientific issues as well as in theoretical issues and theological . F. Torrance, Theological Science (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1969), 66–7. T This uses the classic typology found in Ian G. Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science (London: SCM, 1990), 3–30.

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considerations is extraordinarily wide and his thought is not easily summarized. Fourth, it is not surprising that as a result of the dualism of peculiar and special grace, his view is often seen as being less amenable to the dialogical or integrative models it deserves. More integrated understandings of the relationship between science and theology will emerge if a bridge is developed between peculiar and special grace. The issues relating to his view of grace have, of course, been widely discussed in soteriological context but it also has implications for understanding the nature and value of the created order. Finally, however, nothing should be allowed to override the intellectual contribution that Calvin made toward the development of that complex and diverse entity we recognize as modern science.

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George Washington Williams, Frederick Douglass, and Maria Stewart Race, Science, and Moral Resistance in African American Political Thought TERRENCE L. JOHNSON

A great deal has been written about science and its role in justifying, creating, and fueling white supremacy, antiblack racism, and beliefs in black inferiority during and after the defeat of slavery and colonialization.1 The term “scientific racism” is generally retrieved to describe the horrific period between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries when scientists relied on preexisting racist beliefs to circumscribe the epistemic boundaries of their explorations into human biology. During this period, the study of anatomy, especially the study of skull shapes and sizes (phrenology), along with ethnology (the study of human characteristics and the differences between the groups under examination), was deployed to assert broad and sweeping claims regarding the physiological, moral, and intellectual differences between Europeans and others—notably Africans, Asians, and indigenous groups in Latin America and the Caribbean. All of this coincided with increasingly public debates on the moral and political legitimacy of slavery and colonialism in Africa and the Caribbean. Very little has been written, however, on the ways African Americans during this same period appropriated exceptionalist claims that underscored pseudoscientific assertions to undermine political and cultural racism. From George Washington Williams to Frederick Douglass to Maria Stewart, leading nineteenth-century African American

See, e.g., John P. Jackson Jr., Science for Segregation: Race, Law, and the Case against Brown V. Board of Education (New York: NYU Press, 2005); Laurelyn Whitt, Science, Colonialism, and Indigenous People: The Cultural Politics of Law and Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Roy MacLeod, “Reading the Discourse of Colonial Science,” in Les Sciences Coloniales: Figures et Institutions, ed. Patrick Petitjean (Paris: Orstrom, 1996), 87–96. 1

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historians, abolitionists, and political writers wholeheartedly rejected scientific claims of innate racial intellectual and moral inferiority by pointing to black civilizations in ancient Africa and the Hebrew Bible as examples of black genius and evidence of the humanity of Africans and their descendants. Claims of black excellence and ingenuity often relied on appeals to exceptionalism and claims based on a distinct nature and culture of Africans and African Americans, a similar logic underscoring pseudoscientific claims of European superiority. Do both instances reflect bad philosophical principles and poor logic? This essay explores the compelling ways blacks inverted scientific racism by appealing to AfroChristianity as they developed political traditions focused on moral exceptionalism and a rights-based liberalism. Scientific racism played a critical role in establishing the moral and political vocabulary blacks retrieved to fight against scientific racism and political injustice. In fact, their responses informed the foundational principles of African American liberalism within black political thought: self-reliance, individual rights, and racial uplift. In their many efforts to dismantle racial pseudoscience and its claims of black inferiority and immorality, many nineteenth-century blacks cleverly and boldly turned to science as their resource and recourse. By countering scientific racism with narratives of black excellence and resilience—for instance, the Exodus motif and the Black presence in Egypt and Ethiopia— they established new resources to rally against both the legal and cultural claims of black inferiority. Some objected to their inverted use of scientific racism. But the ingenuity of their claims highlighted an understudied conceptual scheme of humanistic discourse within African American political thought. Indeed, figures like Williams and Douglass turned to science to reinvent blackness from a maligned social category to an immaterial one that illumined a moral and political good. The political implications of this move are staggering: Blackness becomes both an immaterial and material resource for imagining the humanistic strivings of a new race of people.

A MILIEU OF ANTIBLACKNESS During the nineteenth century, reason and observation were deployed to characterize Africans and “Negroes” as intellectually inferior and morally inadequate vis-à-vis Europeans. This racial hierarchy, in turn, was promoted through numerous public vehicles, including reference books, popular literature, and the press. The most public display of scientific racism occurred in London in 1810, when a British medical doctor brought South African Saartjie Baartman, known as the Hottentot Venus, to London for research and public performance. Standing virtually nude in public display alongside other persons with so-called “deformities,” Baartman was subjected to the worst kind of racist and misogynist profiling. For nearly five years until the time of her death in 1815, Europeans jabbed and gawked over Baartman’s tannish skin color and large buttocks. She illustrated, in the flesh, the grotesque of God’s creation. According to Katherine McKittrick, “Baartman is produced as unquestionably less than human vis-à-vis colonialscientific knowledges” that reinforced and extended the public’s understanding of the black body as inferior.2 Racial science as a discourse and cultural weapon manufactured Baartman into a public spectacle, an embodied extension of scientific racism’s imagination of the racial and gendered other. Katherine McKittrick, “Science Quarrels Sculpture: The Politics of Reading Sarah Baartman,” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal 43, no. 2 (2010): 114. 2

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The debasement of Baartman sets the stage for the emergence for an extended narrative of the black body as both inferior and grossly embellished in terms of physical and sexual prowess. The normative white gaze, as it were, inscribed upon the black body preexisting normative beliefs of black inferiority, establishing the framework for an ontology of blackness within competing and overlapping publics. As Patrick Miller notes in “The Anatomy of Scientific Racism: Racialist Responses to Black Athletic Achievement,” reference books, one of the primary means of knowledge distribution in the United States and England, invoked sweeping claims regarding the inferiority of those deemed as Negro. What is striking is the degree to which beliefs in their deformity played into embellishing the athletic and sexual prowess of blacks. On the one hand, the black body is constructed as the moral and intellectual antithesis of the pure and pristine white body; on the other hand, the black brute is endowed with unusual strengths in areas that justify their social and economic status as subhuman and second-class citizens. For instance, under the heading “Negro” within the Encyclopedia of Britannica of 1895, the writers noted that the differences in cranial sizes between whites and Negroes “was said to account for the intellectual limitations of blacks.”3 Drawing upon the ethnological, phrenological, and anthropological observations of human biology and culture (e.g., ethnology, phrenology, and anthropology), writers constructed the black body as physically superior but intellectually and morally deficient. The move establishes the scientific and cultural rationalization within public life for the ongoing political and economic subjugation of African Americans. It should come as no surprise, then, to see the emergence of racial science within popular media and entertainment, most notably within the minstrel tradition. Within blackface minstrelsy, white performers put on black paint and performed blackness through art and acting based on manufactured and grossly exaggerated assumptions of how blacks talk, dance, and behave. Blackface performers, for purposes of cultural consumption, embellished blackness through a farcical characterization of black culture and cultural norms. Eric Lott links this exaggeration of black culture to a deeper, more sadistic representation of the “Black” in American public life. He exposes in his work the “illicit” fascination among whites, especially white male actors, with black men and their bodies. “A strong fascination with black men and black culture, that is to say, underwrote this popular expropriation. Blackface performers were conspicuously intrigued with street singers and obscure characters from whom they allegedly took the material that was later fashioned for racist ends.”4 The fascination with black bodies is linked to Baartman’s captivity and sexual exploitation in public culture, both of which rely on a sustained commitment to antiblackness among the creators and consumers of black minstrelsy. As Lott demonstrates in his work, the “benign” context of minstrelsy underscored the general distaste for blacks and their culture. One cannot overstate the point: this preoccupation with the black body illustrates a far greater systemic problem of the unconscious forms of racial bigotry and hatred. In other words, black minstrelsy is able to be reproduced and sustained in the media and public life, in part, due to two necessary conditions: beliefs in scientific racism and the innate moral inadequacy of African Americans. Teasing out veiled racial presuppositions within any intellectual endeavor or social problem is critical, and especially so in exposing Western philosophy’s role in reproducing Patrick Miller, “The Anatomy of Scientific Racism: Racialist Responses to Black Athletic Achievement,” Journal of Sport History 25, no. 1 (1998): 127. 4 Eric Lott, “Love and Theft: The Racial Unconscious of Blackface Minstrelsy,” Representations 39 (1992): 25. 3

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scientific racism within the world of ideals. Throughout modernity, reason and observation have played a major role in constructing the moral and cultural narratives in and through which scientific inquiry emerged. Cornel West aptly describes the problem of modernity as one rooted in “methodological assumptions” based on white supremacy. According to West, the modern philosophical discourse “promotes and encourages the activities of observing, comparing, measuring, and ordering the physical characteristics of human beings.”5 West persuasively argues that bad racial science sits at the heart of modernity and its unrelenting castigation of Africa and Africans. “The creative fusion of scientific investigation, Cartesian epistemology, and classical ideals produced forms of rationality, scientificity, and objectivity which, though efficacious in quest for truth and knowledge, prohibited the intelligibility and legitimacy of the idea of black equality in beauty, culture, and intellectual capacity” (West, 48). Georg Hegel’s characterization of blacks in the early nineteenth century underscores the argument West develops. For instance, in Hegel’s description of Africa he described Negroes as a “race of children who remain immersed in their state of uninterested naivete.”6 He went on to disparage African life as one void of traditions, noting “they do not show an inherent striving for culture. In their native country the most shocking despotism prevails. There they do not attain to the feeling of human personality, their mentality is quite dormant, remaining sunk within itself and making no progress, and thus corresponding to the compact, difference less mass of the African continent.”7 Hegel, according to Darrel Moellendorf, argued that biological differences distinguished racial groups from one another and reflected their natural “psychological” and “spiritual” distinctions. Such differences, emerging from biology, helped to explain existing social and political disparities. When reflecting on Negroes, Hegel described them as possessing the maturity and intellect of children. “Negroes, uninterested and lacking in interest, in state of undisturbed naivety, are to be regarded as a nation of children. They are sold and allow themselves without any reflection as to the rights or wrongs of it.”8 Hegel’s response to African enslavement by Europeans stemmed from common misbelief, Moellendorf notes, in the passivity of Africans during the slave trade. During Hegel’s time period, most historians assumed Africans willingly embraced their enslavement due to their inferior intellect. To this end, the inferior nature of Africans and/or Negroes stems from their race. Moellendorf goes on to claim that Hegel envisioned Africans as devoid of a soul, the source from which humans retrieve and develop the tools to produce knowledge and culture. Without a soul, Africans are “weak.” “If the non-white peoples are seen by Hegel to be variously weak, unfit for freedom, and irrational because of their biology, Europeans or whites are seen as the very paradigm of freedom and rationality.”9 As I have demonstrated, scientific racism was a transatlantic endeavor. Its “theories of racial descent and evolution regularly made their way onto the transatlantic stage, both in scientific lectures and in various forms of mass entertainment, including popular theater, Cornel West, Prophecy Deliverance!: An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1982), 48. 6 Georg Hegel, “The Classification of Races,” in The Idea of Race, ed. Robert Bernasconi and Tommy Lee Lott (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2000), 40. 7 Ibid.,  41. 8 Darryl Moellendorf, “Racism and Rationality in Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit,” History of Political Thought 13, no. 2 (Summer 1992): 246. 9 Ibid.,  248. 5

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the circus, zoological exhibitions, minstrel shows and the freak show.”10 Scientific racism can be traced back to “race science,” which involved fields such as phrenology, craniology, ethnology, and physiology. “Indeed, American race scientists often doubled as scientific showmen, traveling with ethnological charts, human skulls, and other comparative specimen in tow.”11 Here, we see the first clear example of the significant and insidious ways cultural beliefs in black inferiority shaped the rise of the social and natural sciences in the United States. Linking culture to science “contributed to the popular dissemination of racial science through the representation of black and other nonwhite peoples as evolutionary degenerate and inferior beings.”12 The “American School” of racial science (or ethnologists) took an interesting turn in the mid-nineteenth century. It shifted away from the belief that all humankind descended from Adam (monogenesis) to a belief that humankind emerged from the creation of separate and distinct individual races (polygenesis).13 The move, fostered by scientists such as Samuel G. Morton and George R. Gliddon, carried political and cultural implications around popular discourses on race. It increased discussions of inferior races and “a belief in ineradicable racial weakness.”14 This coincided with the political rhetoric of Manifest Destiny that fueled “its own scientific prophets who provided an intellectual rationale for the realities of power” and of legalized segregation and political subjugation.15 One of the main proponents of polygenesis, Samuel G. Morton, collected skulls that were on display at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. His 1839 book, Crania Americana, is viewed as a definitive text of scientific racism.16 In this infamous study, Morton used skull sizes to differentiate races and establish a racial hierarchy based on “natural” intelligence, inferring that the larger a race’s skull, the greater its intelligence. Crania Americana seems to have solidified the shift in the American School of racial science. By invoking craniology, Morton “justified” inherent inferiority along racial lines based on the size and construction of the skull. “Comparing cranial size, capacity, and structure, he posited the existence of races that had always been distinct from physical, not environmental, causes.”17 This, according to Horsman, was considered standard and acceptable research of the American School until Charles Darwin’s research began appearing in the 1850s.

SCIENTIFIC RACISM AND THE CREATION OF THE “OTHER” The early architects of black religion and political thought were clearly aware of the multiple approaches developed in the modern West to reinforce white hegemony over black and brown bodies. The binary was primarily maintained in public life by appealing to the unquestionable objectivity of the social and natural sciences. To this end, the

Britt Rusert, “The Science of Freedom: Counterarchives of Racial Science on the Antebellum Stage,” African American Review 45, no. 3 (2012): 293. 11 Ibid.,  291. 12 Ibid. 13 Reginald Horsman, “Scientific Racism and the American Indian in the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” American Quarterly 27, no. 2 (1975): 152. 14 Ibid.,  153. 15 Ibid. 16 Rusert, “Science of Freedom,” 291. 17 Horsman, “Scientific Racism and the American Indian,” 156. 10

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justification of centuries of domination, which was based on cementing the white–black binary, could only be maintained in the political sphere if both the economic structure and moral discourse supported scientific beliefs in black inferiority. As Patrick Miller notes, “The origins and development of the discourse of difference has been examined specifically with regard to the Nazi eugenic theories that marked Jews and gypsies, as well as homosexuals, for extermination. It has also been assessed with consideration of hierarchies of privilege and subordination over time.”18 Racial hierarchies developed simultaneously with the rise of European expansionism and human scientific inquiry. Difference, then, emerged as a discursive category as Europeans pursued Africa and the Americas for natural resources. The notion of the “other,” according to Miller, dates back to Aristotle’s justification for slavery as well as, more recently, great works of literature produced by men like Shakespeare. The link between Greek antiquity and the literary representation of otherness within Shakespeare’s representation of Othello and Caliban “stood as the foundations of modern European racism. Such images speak compellingly to a lengthy history of racial boundary-making and the color-coding of culture.”19 In the general public sphere of the late nineteenth century, reference books invoked sweeping general claims regarding the inferior status of those deemed as Negro. Drawing upon anthropology and phrenology, writers turned to science and culture to justify beliefs in the innate inferiority of blacks to help explain their intellectual and moral depravity.

RELIGION AND BLACK ETHNICS Religion clearly drove the reliance on exceptionalism to justify black beauty, intelligence, and morality in and after antiquity. Blacks turned to religion, such as Christianity, Islam, and African indigenous practices, to fight scientific racism. While not directly exploring scientific racism, scholar Sylvester Johnson’s notion of “Black ethnics” describes the ingenuity employed by blacks to reinvent themselves and especially the racial category of the Negro during the heyday of racial exploitation following Reconstruction. Johnson connects the category to early twentieth-century groups like the Nation of Islam (NOI) and the Moorish Science Temple, but I think the category can be appropriately applied to earlier figures who were attempting to reinvent blackness with religious and scientific resources. Some among the black ethnics reclaimed science, such as the NOI, and instead of rejecting it in full scale, they retrieved science and the “scientific revolution” to advance their liberal political ambitions.20 Historian Patrick Rael argues that free blacks actually “crafted a tradition of public protest” to understand human difference based on racial science.21 Scholars such as Williams, Douglass, and Stewart provided, according to Rael, the theological and philosophical backdrop to understanding how many African Americans imagined a new “race” based on their humanistic understanding of science, religion, and blackness. Such individuals, according to Rusert, infused “phrenology, mesmerism, physiology, and others fields of popular science” into their public talks

atrick B. Miller, “Anatomy of Scientific Racism,” Journal of Sport History 25, no. 1 (1998): 121. P Ibid.,  125–6. 20 Rusert, “Science of Freedom,” 292. 21 In “A Common Nature, A United Destiny: African American Responses to Racial Science from the Revolution to the Civil War,” historian Patrick Rael explores African American criticisms of racial science. http://glc.yale.edu/ sites/default/files/files/events/race/Rael.pdf. Accessed February 2, 2020. 18 19

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to underscore the need for a new and robust political and moral construction of race, freedom, and liberation.22 The turn to ethnicity among blacks during the late nineteenth and throughout the twentieth century surfaced as six million blacks migrated north to secure employment, economic independence, and political rights. In “The Rise of Black Ethnics,” Johnson argues that ethnic identity was tied to rejecting the category of the Negro for something else, typically a social identity tied to racial uplift, moral betterment, and self-determination.23 This usually manifested as some form of religious expression or religious imagination emerging from some kind of theistic affirmation of blacks and of their subjectivity and embodiment—in other words, as some affirmation of their importance as human beings. “The concern with ethnic identity is especially evident in [black Judaism and the Universal Negro Improvement Association] to the degree adherents claimed a distinctive nationality, in the sense of possessing a heritage or culture. Such claims specified religious, linguistic, aesthetic, and geographic origins that were pre-American.”24 Pre-American origins, in this case, connotes pre-European enslavement, pre-Middle Passage, and prechattel slavery. The desire to reject scientific racism and its claims of abject inferiority had everything to do dismantling the moral problem of blackness from scholarly inquiry, public policy, and political culture. By linking economic and political circumstances to scientific racism, they illuminated the ongoing structural efforts to castigate blacks as an inferior people without subjectivity or a soul. These new religious movements developed a theology based on what I call humanistic strivings, a philosophy and practice designed to cultivate “theologies … of ethnic heritage that redeemed converts from social death, a condition marking them as people without peoplehood, relegated as nonmembers of the American nation.”25 They developed a theology, in other words, that could redeem them from and dismantle the moral problem of blackness in scholarly inquiry, public policy, and political culture. Ethnicity takes on a critical role in reimagining the moral problem of blackness within black political thought. “Ethnicity” initially emerged in the United States as a discursive strategy to maintain the differences between different whites, while still maintaining the (supposedly even greater) “racial” difference between “white” Europeans and inferior, inadequate “black” Africans (128). In short, ethnicity was a supposedly scientific invention used to perpetuate white supremacy by continuously distributing the benefits of whiteness to an increasing number of (newly minted) white Americans, all while maintaining the inferior, racial, black status of African Americans. Blacks, however, appropriated ethnicity. While ethnicity and science were used to demonstrate black inferiority and therefore used to justify segregation and discrimination, African Americans turned to them for at least two liberatory reasons: (1) to legitimate their humanity by constructing themselves into an “ethnic” people and (2) to highlight antiblack discourse in Western society. The latter move was designed to expose the social and cultural inadequacies of Western society, the theological contradictions of Western Christianity, and the moral bankruptcy of whites. The turn to black ethnicity is also stunning as it invokes science as a resource for constituting a new racial narrative. Their drive to peoplehood included a rugged effort

usert, “Science of Freedom,” 292. R Sylvester Johnson, “The Rise of Black Ethnics: The Ethnic Turn in African American Religions, 1916–1945,” Religion and American Culture 20, no. 2 (2010): 127. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. 22 23

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to humanize blacks as a people embodied with souls and subjectivity, just like any AngloSaxon, Irishman, or German. “In innumerable speeches, sermons, and addresses, black elites urged their people to live lives illustrative of the heights to which blacks as a group might ascend.”26 Within the new framework, racial hierarchy is reordered based on the failure of Western science and liberal politics to pursue just practices. Rael calls this move a “living-proof refutation of racial science’s conclusion.”27 In other words, the construction of a new “Black” was not based on black superiority but imagined as a way to repair a broken (Western) social and political construct.

RESPONSES TO AMERICAN SCIENCE African Americans responded to three dominant themes present within the scientific community in the nineteenth century: human origins (the veracity of monogenism or polygenism); the body (as a way to understand cultural and religious differences between Europeans and Africans); and the environment (the role of social contexts in shaping human difference). Their responses stem from an understanding of white Christianity’s role in informing racial science. Terence Keel’s insightful work on race, science, and religion underscores the point I am developing. Racial scientists “drew from Christian patterns of reasoning about the abrupt solemnity of creation, human difference, and the universal applicability of a Christian worldview. Collectively, these concepts enable the belief that human races descend from a common ancestor (monogenism) and that modern science must tell a story about the origin of all people.”28 The fascination with origins was all too often designed to reinforce European superiority and African inferiority. One of the best debates on human origins can be traced to Samuel Stanhope Smith, the Presbyterian minister and president of what is now Princeton University. Smith believed all races were part of the same “species” but that “differences in color, anatomy, intelligence, temperament, and morality could be attributed to differing physical and social environments, especially climate and the contrasting habits of life produced by ‘savagery’ and ‘civilization.’ ”29 In opposition to Smith, Charles Caldwell maintained a belief in genetic differences between the races. He did not believe, however, that the inferior status of Africans justified their enslavement.30 By the 1850s, a new school of thought emerged in the United States, known as the American School of Ethnology, which aimed to cement the beliefs in innate racial differences between Europeans and non-Europeans. Indeed, the primary axiom of this discourse was based on a belief that humankind had been “separately created as distinct and unequal species.”31 Samuel Morton’s previously mentioned Crania Americana was the driving force behind this discourse. His research was also deployed to debunk black and abolitionist claims that Negro slaves descended from the Egyptians, as he claimed that Negro slaves were a distinct group from “civilized” Africans like Egyptians.32 As a ael, “A Common Nature, A United Destiny,” 190. R Ibid. 28 Terence Keel, Divine Variations: How Christian Thought Became Racial Science (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018), 5. 29 George M. Fredrickson, The Black Image in the White Mind:  The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817–1914 (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 72. 30 Ibid.,  73. 31 Ibid.,  74. 32 Ibid.,  75. 26 27

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Quaker, Morton’s views were accepted or seen as legitimate since he did not gain any obvious economic or political advantages by arguing to maintain slavery.33 Black responses in the United States to scientific racism seemed to be cautious at best. Most responses focused on how African American were model citizens and thus capable of embodying the characteristics of a refined human being. Racial uplift, for instance, was a reliable tool retrieved to undermine intellectual or moral claims of inferiority. As they climbed the economic and education ladder, blacks debunked racial myths through varying forms of assimilation. But not everyone agreed with this approach. Some turned to Egypt, Ethiopia, or Christian scripture to prove the innate superiority of blacks and of blackness. For instance, George Washington Williams suggested that Egyptians were Negroes. In the History of the Negro Race in America, Williams turns to the Hebrew Bible to demonstrate the important history of “dark-skinned peoples” within biblical times in places like Ethiopia. “In the ancient world, he argued, such designations as ‘Ethiopian’ and ‘Cushite’ had been applied to all those Africans with dark skins and ‘wooly hair’ who had come to be known in modern times as ‘Negroes.’ These were the people who had been responsible for ancient Egyptian greatness.”34 He went on to suggest that black Egyptians, who had assumed major leadership roles as kings and princesses, were involved in the human enslavement of whites and blacks in ancient African civilization, thus arguing that blacks, not whites, were at the apex of the racial hierarchy.35 The two-volume text published in 1883 was considered at the time the most important historical work on Africa produced by a black scholar. Turning to primary and secondary sources, Williams attempted to reconstruct the narrative of Africans, African slaves, and their descendants by exposing ancient civilizations built by blacks.36 By locating black history within celebrated Egypt and Ethiopia, Williams documents the trajectory of Africans and the African Diaspora by illuminating the epistemic roots of African civilization and African American culture. Williams work of proving Africans possessed a history and civilization prior to colonialism and enslavement was a necessary step in establishing two important points. First, it debunks claims of race as biological, as sui generis, or as an external indication of a group’s fate. Second, it reflects a critical approach to reading historical archives by way of imagining and reinserting within the text groups or individuals who had been ignored or overlooked within the text at hand. To the first point, blacks within antiquity and biblical narratives served as sufficient proof for rejecting beliefs in the inherent inferiority or inadequacy of Africans. As Bruce notes, “Ancient Egypt and Ethiopia provided black historians with a powerful argument against the main tendencies of Darwinist racial thought. Its innatist elements were contradicted by the high achievements of ancient black civilizations.”37 This point likely seems redundant to the contemporary reader, but during Williams’s life black inferiority was a fact that had been established on scientific and historical grounds. Indeed, “Black history showed that the career of humanity had not been characterized by inevitable and unbroken progress,” but that even Rome can fall and colonial India can become the largest democracy in the world.38 Ibid.,  76. Dickson D. Bruce Jr., “Ancient Africa and the Early Black American Historians, 1883–1915,” American Quarterly 36, no. 5 (Winter 1984): 686. 35 Ibid.,  687. 36 Such as papyrus scrolls, murals, canopic jars, the Torah, journals of merchants and opposing civilizations. 37 Ibid.,  698. 38 Ibid. 33 34

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As to the second point, this turn to discover the “black” roots of Africa introduced a hermeneutical turn within the social sciences and humanities, a move away from presuming the author’s intent was knowable and established within the text to a suspicion of the text at hand. The move toward forcing archeology and competing sources to validate, for instance, biblical accounts of Egypt or Ethiopia was a remarkable one in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Appropriating biblical narratives for political and religious purposes demonstrated two important developments within black religion. First, it demonstrated that blacks had dismantled the thin wall separating religion from political life by highlighting God’s hand in promoting justice and freedom for all both in biblical times and within the post-Reconstruction era. Second, this appropriation demonstrated that blacks had introduced a radical approach to reading the Bible, exercising a hermeneutical shift that placed the poor and disinherited within the center of biblical narratives. Williams was part of a broader collective of African American intellectuals in the early twentieth century who were turning to the social sciences and humanities to fight against scientific racism. “In fact, as many African American thinkers saw it, through Egypt black Africa had in fact given birth to modern civilization. They inverted accepted historical understandings, placing Africans not at the bottom of the scale of civilization as eternal children, but at its top, as first parents.”39 For historians like Williams, the scholarship focused on humanizing African history as well as highlighting the significance of black civilization on the continent in general and Egypt and Ethiopia in particular. Early black historians drew rather eclectically on the modern scholarship available to them, making reference not only to those who believed the ancient Egyptians to have been black, but also to those who did not. Williams even … employed archeological evidence that argued that any blacks present in ancient Egypt and Ethiopia had been subservient to a leadership dominated by “Pharaonic,” Caucasian Egyptians.40 Laurie R. Maffly-Kipp argues that historians like Williams had a far greater effect on society than previously acknowledged. These historians are more important, then, not simply for what they reflect about the history of African Americans. They are even more significant for what they reveal about the wide-ranging public discourse among post-Reconstruction black leaders regarding representations of the race—representations that served both to counter white racial images and to reimagine the African American community itself on different terms.41 Alongside the efforts of nineteenth-century black social scientists stood writers and political activists such as Frederick Douglass. He aligned himself with black leaders who believed racial difference may have been sanctioned to reflect human diversity but not racial hierarchy. He argued that “differences among the peoples of the earth, in culture and physical makeup, could be explained by reference to differing conditions of climate and geography rather than to innate differences between the races.”42 Douglass’s public address, “The Claims of the Negro Ethnologically Considered,” addressed directly the scientific

ael, “A Common Nature, A United Destiny,” 191. R Bruce, “Ancient Africa and the Early Black American Historians,” 690. 41 Laurie R. Maffly-Kipp, “Mapping the World, Mapping the Race: The Negro Race History, 1874–1915,” American Society of Church History 64, no. 4 (December 1995): 611. 42 Rael, “A Common Nature, A United Destiny,” 184. 39 40

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claims of black inferiority within American ethnology. As we have seen, this particular school of thought established racial difference as a distinct marker and indication of human history. Blacks were not human in the eyes of most scientists, slaveholders, and the general public. Douglass wanted to refute this claim by arguing for a just society that “respects the manhood of the Negro. This is an elementary claim, simple enough, but not without question.”43 He built his arguments by developing two important points: first, he carved out a framework for determining the constitution of what it means to be human; second, he refuted the monogenism and argued for an understanding of human origins based on polygenism. His argument moved away from any substantiated claims of origins and ancient civilization to counter the claims of scientific racism; instead, Douglass focused on the lived experience of blacks in the United States and especially their ability to survive and produce knowledge, tradition, and culture within a foreign land as sufficient evidence for proving their humanity. Unlike many of the social scientists, Douglass argued for the innate “manhood” of Negroes based on their demonstrated capacity to think, feel, reason, and reflect. “His good and his bad, his innocence and his guilt, his joys and his sorrows, proclaim his manhood in speech that all mankind practically and readily understands.”44 Douglass’s appeals to the humanistic endeavors of the contemporary Negro rather than retrieving ancient African civilizations created the framework in which W. E. B. Du Bois later imagined interiority and soul as possible necessary categories for understanding both the consciousness and epistemic contributions of blacks to the modern West. Indeed, humans through reason and experience adapt to the social and historical conditions of their milieu. According to Douglass, the human characteristic of adaptability is what distinguishes humans from animals. “Tried by this test, too, the Negro is a man.”45 Frederick Douglass’s engagement with ethnology was remarkable. He seemed to oppose textual or historical resources as the primary path to justify black peoples’ humanity. “What if the Negro may not be able to prove his relationship to Nubians, Abyssinians and Egyptians?”46 The abolitionist wanted to avoid debates regarding originalism or historical determinism. Rather, despite his support of polygenism, he emphasized a universalist appeal to a common nature within humankind, one destined to grapple with humanistic strivings motivated by fear, love, greed, generosity, altruism, and so forth. All humans, according to Douglass, are endowed with a desire to fulfill and expand humanistic aims based on generally accepted norms of what it means to be human. Human rights stand upon a common basis; and by all the reason that they are supported, maintained and defended, for one variety of the human family, they are supported, maintained and defended, for all the human family; because all mankind have the same wants, arising out of a common nature. A diverse origin does not disprove a common nature, nor does it disprove a united destiny.47 The move distinguished his argument from those advanced by other polygenistic ethnologists, who argued that different origins meant blacks had to have a different, deficient nature. However, “the ethnologists offered scientific sanction for a Biblical

Frederick Douglass and Philip S. Foner. “The Claims of the Negro Ethnologically Considered,” Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass 2 (1854): 289–90. 44 Ibid.,  291. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid.,  307. 47 Ibid. 43

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theory of slavery at a time when the tension between science and religion was on the rise. Scientific ‘discoveries’ often contradicted Biblical ‘truth,’ creating a double bind for so-called Christian slaveholders and their apologists.”48 Douglass implicitly responded to those divided by religion and science by pointing to a new conceptual scheme aimed at construing Africans as in possession of a “nature” that is endowed within all human beings regardless of homeland or origin. Bernard Boxill summarizes Douglass’s political anthropology well: his “claim that all men are equal implies that a human being’s ancestry does not detract from his humanity or from his claim to equality.”49 Similarly, Maria Stewart located rights and liberty as inalienable possessions endowed within the interiority of all human beings. Neither the social context nor the exhibited talents of a group or individual should deny a person access to the public or public goods. Unlike Douglass, however, Stewart believed the sins of Africans led to their enslavement by Europeans. As she characterized it, “Our gross sins and abominations … provoked the Almighty to frown thus heavily upon us, and give our glory unto others. Sin and prodigality have caused the downfall of nations, kings and emperors.”50 African slaves “sprung from one of the most learned nations of the whole earth; from the seat, if not the parent of science; yes, poor, despised Africa was once the resort of sages and legislators of other nations, was esteemed the school for learning, and the most illustrious men in Greece flocked thither for instruction.”51 Stewart built her argument from the premise of Africa as the cradle of civilization, where “learned and enlightened nation[s]‌” like Ethiopia emerged. The move toward history provided invaluable resources to Stewart and others in their effort to debunk racial science. While whites invented a history that ignored black antiquity, blacks reconstructed historical narratives of Africa by discovering artifacts to legitimate Africa’s place as the birthplace of ancient civilizations. “Once the identity of between ancient Egyptians and modern-day blacks was established, the whole of Egyptian civilization could be invoked on behalf of blacks’ potential for elevation.”52 But the sins of the fathers placed a “thick mist of moral gloom” of the people.53 As such, the knowledge of their magnificent past, according to Stewart, will not solve modern-day barriers facing blacks. It is only when they turn to God, she writes, and pursue the political struggle to achieve “the rights of man” that blacks may discover liberation.54 Here, Stewart inverted the standard antebellum move in history: instead of turning to “sacred” and “secular” historical writings to maintain white supremacy, she retrieved history to underscore positive attributes of blacks and black African civilizations. Stewart’s position on ancient Egyptian civilization emerged from and was shaped by racial uplift, a moral-political philosophy aimed at humanizing blacks through acquiring and imitating Victorian society’s models of education, as well as political and social etiquette. As Stewart notes, “We ought to follow the example of the whites in this respect. Nothing would raise our respectability, add to our peace and happiness, and reflect so Mason Stokes, “Someone’s in the Garden with Eve: Race, Religion and the American Fall,” American Quarterly 50, no. 4 (December 1998): 719. 49 Bernard Boxill, “A Man’s a Man for All That,” Monist 93, no. 2 (April 1, 2010): 191. 50 Maria W. Stewart and Marilyn Richardson, Maria W. Stewart, America’s First Black Woman Political Writer: Essays and Speeches (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 65. 51 Ibid.,  65. 52 Rael, “A Common Nature, A United Destiny,” 191. 53 Stewart and Richardson, Maria W. Stewart, America’s First Black Woman Political Writer, 65. 54 Ibid.,  68. 48

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much honor upon us, as to be ourselves the promoters of temperance, and the supporters, as far as we are able, of useful scientific knowledge.”55 This form of mimesis attempts to demonstrate to naysayers the undeniable human worth of the sons and daughters of Africa. The point Stewart developed underscores the crux of her political efforts to defeat scientific racism: human worth is inalienable and not predetermined by race or birthplace.

CONCLUSION The liberalism advocated by Douglass and Stewart relied on two important points: biblical narratives and racial exceptionalism. The Bible provided during their lifetime universally agreed-upon narratives of triumph and resistance that many blacks appropriated to reimagine themselves within antiquity. Unlike the authors of racial science, Douglass and Stewart embraced a hermeneutics of suspicion when employing history as a resource for both understanding and reimagining science and race. Political mobilizations to justify that blacks are human and deserving of all rights and responsibilities granted to other human beings lead to unintended consequences, most notably racial exceptionalism. Stewart embraced racial exceptionalist rhetoric to characterize black antiquity and foreshadow the social and political reality that awaits the descendants of African slaves. Both Stewart and Douglass emphasized the degree to which antiblackness emerges in and through multiple and overlapping religious, moral, and scientific discourses. The emphasis on Negro exceptionalism by Williams is a necessary backdrop to the political writings of Douglass and Stewart. But they all point to an emerging tradition among African American intellectuals who weaved together the social sciences and religion to undermine scientific racism and its changing but continual presence in popular media and culture. Such writers consistently turned to biblical texts and ancient civilizations in Africa to establish the role of “essential” African Americans in producing ancient civilizations. These historical figures were not bystanders in the development of antiquity but the producers of it. What Maffly-Kipp and others call a humanizing of history led to a major contribution to Anglo-American political philosophy: thick accounts of justice that weave together religion’s critical role in establishing equality and equal opportunity without establishing a new religion or religious fundamentalism within politics. Unlike other scientists, Williams, Stewart, and Douglass turned to religious tropes and moral exceptionalism as resources for deepening a rights-based liberalism and expanding political opportunities in a white supremacist context. Their comprehensive approach underscores the important role of African American religion and moral traditions in challenging false distinctions between morality and science, between beliefs and data. The inversion of exceptionalism compelled a generation of thinkers to recover, and sometimes invent, a buried past. In doing so, they exposed the limits of objectivity and the degree to which cultural beliefs can be bracketed within scientific inquiry.

Ibid.,  68.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

Neo-Scholasticism and Anti-Evolutionary Catholicism A Brief History JOHN P. SLATTERY

At this point I want to put the following beyond dispute: I CONSIDER IT CATHOLIC DOCTRINE TO AFFIRM THAT GOD IMMEDIATELY AND DIRECTLY FORMED ADAM FROM THE SOIL OF THE EARTH.1 —Enrico Buonpensiere, Consultor to the Congregation for the Index of Prohibited Books, 1897 Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve. —Pope Francis, October 27, 20142 It is always fascinating to see the history of Catholicism through disparate quotes over time. One can see doctrinal development as plain as day, even without knowing all the steps from one to the next. Many words have been written on this particular doctrine of creation via evolution, but I hope to cover new ground in this essay by clearly outlining for the first time how the neo-scholastic movement directly led to the anti-evolutionary stance taken by the Vatican in the late nineteenth century.3 From the reinstitution of the Jesuits in 1814, to the rise of neo-scholasticism, to the Pecci brothers, to Leo XIII, Aerterni Patris, Zigliara, and Buonpensiere, the neo-scholastic movement not only fought against modernism, Kantian philosophies of science, capitalism, and democracy, but it also delivered to the Catholic world a clear condemnation of evolutionary theories in the late nineteenth century. As the argument is as philosophical as it is political, often more philosophical than theological, and certainly more philosophical than scientific, it is not one often drawn or “MI SEMBRA ESSERE DOTTRINA CATTOLICA LO AFFERMARE CHE DIO ABBIA IMMEDIATAMENTE E DIRETTAMENTE FORMATO ADAMO DAL LIMO DELLA TERRA.” Index, Protocolli, 1897–9, fol. 80, p. 45, Archives of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (ACDF). Own translation; emphasis original. 2 For an official transcript of this address, see Pope Francis XVI, “Address of His Holiness Pope Francis on the Occasion of the Inauguration of the Bust in Honour of Pope Benedict XVI,” October 27, 2014. http://www.vatican.va/content/ francesco/en/speeches/2014/october/documents/papa-francesco_20141027_plenaria-accademia-scienze.html. 3 Much of this material has been included in my recent book, which tells a related but different story. See Faith and Science at Notre Dame: John Zahm, Evolution, and the Catholic Church (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2019). 1

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understood in contemporary scholarship.4 And although the specific argument I present today is only one piece of a wider argument that constructs a philosophical and theological framework for how the Catholic Church officially understood theology, philosophy, and science in the nineteenth century,5 I believe this subset of the wide discussion stands alone in its importance for understanding how the same philosophy that gave rise to modern Catholic social teaching (as neo-scholastic philosophy played a heavy hand in the authorship of Rerum Novarum) also created a powerful and uniquely Catholic version of anti-evolutionary arguments.

A VERY BRIEF HISTORY OF NEO-SCHOLASTICISM The history of neo-scholasticism is one small part of a nine-hundred-year history of interpretations of Thomas Aquinas. It has been told many times, in many different ways, in countless books, articles, and lectures. Instead of attempting a novel history of neoscholasticism, this section will view the movement as a historical way to understand the anti-evolutionary censures and arguments made during the papacy of Leo XIII. In this light, the vision of neo-scholasticism here begins and ends with the person of Gioacchino Pecci, the future Pope Leo XIII, who was born in 1810. In 1818, at eight years old, Gioacchino Pecci left home with his older brother Guiseppe to study to become a priest. In 1824 he and his brother were transferred to the Roman College, recently entrusted to the Jesuits, to be closer to his family. When Pope Pius VII reinstated the Jesuit order, one of the first new novices was a scholar named Serafino Sordi, whose admiration and love of Aquinas would become contagious, influencing his fellow Jesuit novice Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio. Several years later, in 1824, Taparelli was appointed rector of the Roman College in the same year that Pecci and his brother began studying there. Taparelli introduced the Pecci brothers to the Angelic Doctor and set them on a course to change the face of Catholicism. A year before Taparelli was transferred, the future Pope Leo XIII would choose to become a diocesan priest, while his older brother would continue the scholarly route and become a Jesuit. The neo-scholastic movement did not catch on quickly or easily. Taparelli was transferred to Naples where he labored for twenty years to build a devotion to Aquinas, and only after such labor—and many students—did his work begin to show dividends. A devoted neo-scholastic and former student of Taparelli named Gaetano Sanseverino published an explicitly Thomist journal, La Scienza e la Fede, in 1840, and founded the Academy of Thomistic Philosophy in 1846. In the same year, a young but highly skilled Jesuit named Joseph Kleutgen would publish his first book, Über die alten und die neuen Schulen, condemning the Enlightenment and lifting up Aquinas as a model for modern philosophy. Kleutgen was educated under the Jesuit Giovanni Perrone at the Roman College, an appreciator of Aquinas in his own right. For example, those who discuss neo-scholastics rarely discuss science (see, James A. Weisheipl, “The Revival of Thomism: An Historical Survey,” 1962 Lecture, Mount Saint Bernard Seminary, Dubuque, IA. http://opcentral.org/resources/2014/02/17/the-revival-of-thomism/), those who discuss philosophy and theology rarely discuss evolution, such as Gerald McCool, Nineteenth-Century Scholasticism: The Search for a Unitary Method (New York: Fordham University Press, 1989), and those who discuss history of evolutionary theory rarely discuss the philosophical implications involved, such as R. Scott Appleby, “Exposing Darwin’s ‘Hidden Agenda’: Roman Catholic Responses to Evolution, 1875–1925,” in Disseminating Darwinism, ed. Ronald Numbers and John Stenhouse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 173–207; and Mariano Artigas, Thomas F. Glick, and Rafael A. Martínez, Negotiating Darwin: The Vatican Confronts Evolution, 1877–1902 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006). 5 See Slattery, Faith and Science at Notre Dame. 4

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The election of Pope Pius IX, combined with the revolution of 1848, however, would shift the tides decisively toward neo-scholasticism. First, in 1850, Pius appointed Pecci as archbishop of Perugia. Pecci asked his brother to join him, and together they transformed the small diocesan seminary of Perugia into a thriving seminary of neo-scholasticism. Second, in the same year, Taparelli and two burgeoning Jesuit scholars named Carlo Curci and Matteo Liberatore founded the influential Civiltà Cattolica at Pius IX’s request. This journal quickly became not only a strong voice for the movement but also an explicit philosophical and theological voice for Pope Pius IX, with the assumed backing of the Holy Father himself. Third, on July 11, 1850, Kleutgen was appointed consultor to the Congregation of the Index by Pius and played a key role in condemning the works of Anton Günther, Jakob Froschammer, Johann Hirscher, and many others.6 Kleutgen would rise in estimation throughout the next two decades, writing dozens of reports for the congregation as well as publishing two major volumes detailing a novel systematic approach to theology and philosophy, Die Theologie der Vorzeit and Die Philosophie der Vorzeit, both anti-Enlightenment and both pro-Aquinas. After these events in the 1850s, things began to coalesce for the neo-scholastic movement. Kleutgen was enlisted as a drafter of Dei Filius during the First Vatican Council, which Pecci also attended. Directly before his death, Pius appointed Pecci as camerlengo of the church, an administrative post that made him a resident of the Holy City.7 The voice of Civiltà Cattolica was rarely stronger than when Pecci was elected pope, and Kleutgen’s philosophical views were close at hand to the new pontiff. But these few scholars and priests were not alone in reviving a love of Aquinas. In the 1850s and 1860s, the movement grew in various ways. Neo-scholastics could be found in teaching posts not only in Italy but in France and Germany as well.8 Furthermore, while Jesuits clearly began the movement, priests and theologians of many stripes and shades took up this particular method of interpreting the works of Aquinas in a philosophical battle against the Enlightenment.9 Due to the movement’s growing popularity, a predictable side effect also occurs around this time: it becomes difficult to separate the specific form of philosophical argument under neo-scholasticism from the general appreciation for studies of Aquinas.10

Wolf confirms the date of July 11, 1850, in Index, Diari 19 (1807–65), fol. 98, ACDF. Hubert Wolf, Römische Inquisition und Indexkongregation. Grundlagenforschung: 1814–1917 (Munich: Schöningh, 2005), 3:807. 7 The camerlengo of the church historically has managed the Pope’s property and finances. 8 John Inglis points to similar movements toward recovering medieval philosophy in France and Germany in the nineteenth century, not all of which could be labeled neo-scholasticism, but all of which had similar goals of defeating the Enlightenment and raising up Aquinas as the exemplary counterexample for Catholicism. Similarly, Thomas O’Meara writes that from the 1840s on, “more and more bishops and seminary professors were convinced of the value of a Thomist restoration, and in Mainz, Münster, Rome, and Louvain centers were committed to uncovering and expounding Thomas Aquinas.” Thomas O’Meara, Aquinas, Theologian (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 153–80. Cf. John Inglis, Spheres of Philosophical Inquiry and the Historiography of Medieval Philosophy (Boston, MA: Brill, 1998), 57–61. 9 Pope Leo XIII himself would be one example, of course. Another would be Gaetano Sanseverino (1811–65), a Dominican priest who published a five-volume philosophical treatise in the 1850s outlining a new philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. James A. Weisheipl points to Sanseverino as one of the five most influential members of the nineteenth-century movement. Weisheipl, “The Revival of Thomism. 10 This remains a significant difference between Inglis’s and McCool’s interpretation of the same era. McCool— and many others, for that matter—see the explosion of beneficial Catholic studies known as the ressourcement in the early twentieth century as relying heavily on the popularity of neo-scholasticism, whereas Inglis sees the same work as a continuation of an already-growing trend of turning back to medieval and other ancient sources to recover a philosophical tradition decried by modern philosophy. 6

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FOUR CENTRAL TENETS OF NEO-SCHOLASTICISM It is helpful to remember that ever since his canonization in the early fourteenth century, and especially since the blossoming of Thomistic interpretations in the sixteenth century, Aquinas had always been a revered figure in Catholicism, and Thomism had nearly always been a part of the Catholic educational experience.11 One must be careful to differentiate between the general sense of appreciation for Aquinas’s delineation between faith and reason and the specific arguments made about the application of such delineation by the neo-scholastics, however. What marked Taparelli, Sordi, Pecci, Liberatore, Kleutgen, and others as significantly different was not that they appreciated Aquinas when others did not. For example, Vatican I’s Dei Filius was approved readily by hundreds of council fathers, and it unquestionably affirms the largely Thomistic notion that Christian faith and human reason are separate but interdependent faculties of the human mind, and that they cannot contradict one another.12 The differences between a general appreciation for Aquinas and the movement of neoscholasticism could be summarized by the following four precepts, although delineations of this sort are necessarily debatable.13 First, the leaders of the neo-scholastic movement insisted on a singular philosophical structure for all Catholic scholarship that was both objective and universal, for doctrine could not exist in a world where the roots of philosophy were being forever debated.14 Second, the Scholastic interpretation of the philosophy of Aquinas was to be revered as the model of this universal structure, over against any philosophical systems based on Descartes, Kant, Locke, or anyone else in the modern world, as well as over against the theological interpretations of any other theologian, such as Augustine, Bonaventure, or Scotus. Third, neo-scholastics argued that by relying on Aquinas and other medieval philosophers, contemporary Catholic philosophy could be constructed as a single objective whole. Fourth and finally, neo-scholastics resisted anything resembling a historical approach to philosophical or theological development, for if doctrine could be changed over time, it would be impossible to test its veracity.15 One could add to these four precepts certain views of epistemological realism, adherence to an Aristotelian vision of the sciences, and many other positions, but these four limit the field substantially. Based on the timeline and arguments above, it should be clear that the neo-scholastic movement was heavily influential in the life and ideas of Pope Leo XIII. However, the degree to which these four precepts of neo-scholasticism can be concluded from his writings, such as Aeterni Patris, is another question.

Excepting certain times, of course. The reinstatement of the Jesuits and the rise of neo-scholasticism in first half of the nineteenth century brought Thomism back into the picture of education generally as well as specifically. See O’Meara, Aquinas, Theologian, 169. 12 See, e.g., Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles 1.1–9. 13 This study does not consider neo-scholasticism and neo-Thomism after Leo XIII. The perceived character of neo-scholasticism changed much with the policies and theologies of Pius X, both in his harsh critiques of modernism and in his support of so-called manualist theology. One could argue that it also changed much in the pontificate of Leo XIII, but Leo’s own scholarly approach to theology and philosophy, as well as his engagement with modern culture, separates him from the contentious political moves of both Pius IX and Pius X. As the character of the curia often reflects the character of the Pope, Leo’s neo-scholasticism was enforced in a manner far more consistent with a desire to show the world the beauties of Aquinas’s scholarship than to decry, yet again, the evils of modernity. 14 McCool, Nineteenth-Century Scholasticism, 232–3. 15 Ibid.,  186–7. 11

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AETERNI PATRIS When Pope Pius IX died in 1878, eight years after Rome was taken from the Pope’s control by the Italian Revolution, and eight years after Pius had to disband the First Vatican Council well before he intended, the College of Cardinals looked for someone to lead the Catholic Church into this new world of democracy, capitalism, and revolution. Now-cardinal Gioacchino Pecci was known for his pastoral mindset, his intelligence, and his commitment to embracing the modern world through a strong neo-scholastic image of Catholic theology. Within a year after his election, Pecci—now Pope Leo XIII— published Aeterni Patris, once again with the assistance of Joseph Kleutgen, cementing a vision of Thomas Aquinas as the standard theological expression throughout the Catholic world. Aeterni Patris was published on August 4, 1879, and can be divided into five general sections: the importance of philosophy (para. 1–9); the history of philosophy through Aquinas (para. 10–16); the greatness of Aquinas (para. 17–18); the reception of Aquinas by the church (para. 19–23); and the importance of Aquinas today (para. 24–33). The first two sections praise the necessity of philosophy and the proud tradition of philosophy and theology that ends with the thirteenth-century Scholastic theologians. The third section narrows the praises of the Scholastics to the person of Aquinas. Leo spares no superlatives in his description of Thomas Aquinas, and the encyclical begins to read more as an Apologia rather than a philosophical argument: With his spirit at once humble and swift, his memory ready and tenacious, his life spotless throughout, a lover of truth for its own sake, richly endowed with human and divine science, like the sun he heated the world with the warmth of his virtues and filled it with the splendor of his teaching.16 Not words you expect from a Pope in the twenty-first century, but the late nineteenth century was all about glory, progress, and perfection, so we’ll cut him some slack for the hyperbole. The fourth section analyzes to the reception of Aquinas for further proof of his importance in the church by cataloging his impact in the last six hundred years, and the fifth section encompasses Leo’s attempt to apply Thomas’s philosophy to the present day. He describes four reasons why Aquinas must be sought for a true dogmatic foundation, which sound a lot like neo-scholasticism: philosophical subjectivity, rationalism, civil unrest, and advancement of all scholarship. For our purposes, Leo’s final argument stands as most important, and rather ironic. It is well to note that our philosophy can only by the grossest injustice be accused of being opposed to the advance and development of natural science. For … the Scholastics … well understood that nothing was of greater use to the philosopher than diligently to search into the mysteries of nature and to be earnest and constant in the study of physical things. … Moreover, in this very age many illustrious professors of the physical sciences openly testify that between certain and accepted conclusions of modern physics and scholastic philosophic principles there is no conflict worthy of the name.17

I bid., para. 17. Ibid., para. 30.

16 17

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While this paragraph can seem quite positive at first glance, it is deceptively so. First, the final sentence explicitly speaks of physics instead of the highly controversial realm of evolutionary biology in 1879. Second, the phrase “certain and accepted conclusions” fails to analyze the possibility of such conclusions appearing as contrary to “philosophical principles.” Because of this failure, it would have been clear that such acceptance only comes through those who accept the scholastic philosophical principles a priori, for who else can properly struggle for and believe a scientific theory if not those firmly based in scholastic philosophical thought? It seems a missed opportunity that could have given much clarity to the evolution debates in the next few decades. It is important to note here that the four precepts of neo-scholastic philosophy listed above would have been found in Aeterni Patris by any who was watching for them. Because neo-scholastic theologians would have seen the encyclical as a sweeping support of their general philosophical method, the condemnations of scientific arguments like evolution after 1879 were seen as a direct result of applying Aeterni Patris to the modern world. Thus, remarkably, the same Pope who laid the groundwork for the last 120 years of Catholic Social Teaching with Rerum Novarum also laid the groundwork for a halfcentury of rejection of human evolution and modern science. Indeed, both arguments come from the same philosophy: Leo’s firm holding of Thomistic notions of dignity in the face of modern economic systems pushed him to make human dignity the centerpiece of Rerum Novarum, while the same firm holding of Thomistic notions of science allowed a nearsighted neo-scholastic vision of scientific objectivity to bar the way for the acceptance of evolutionary science in Roman Catholicism. But Aeterni Patris did not condemn evolution, nor should it be interpreted as such. Instead, the task of applying the document to the evolutionary debate fell to members of the various congregations of the Vatican Curia, particularly the Congregation of the Index of Prohibited Books, who handled the cases of several evolution-friendly books in the 1880s and 1890s. This story now turns to two of the theological consultors to the Congregation of the Index, and two of the leaders of the late nineteenth-century neoscholastic movement, Enrico Buonpensiere and Tommaso Zigliara.

TWO LIVES DEVOTED TO THOMISM: BUONPENSIERE AND ZIGLIARA Tommaso Maria Zigliara was born in Bonifacio, Italy, in 1833. After studies under Jesuits in Corsica, he joined the Dominican order at eighteen and was ordained a priest in 1856 by then-archbishop Pecci of Perugia, the future Pope Leo XIII. Zigliara rose through the ranks of the Dominican order, teaching philosophy first in Corsica, then in Rome, where he first encountered one of his brightest students, Enrico Buonpensiere. Buonpensiere was born in Terlizzi, Italy, on 1853.18 He completed university studies in Naples and became a Dominican friar in Viterbo, just north of Rome, at the age of seventeen, in the midst of the First Vatican Council and the collapse of the Vatican’s political holdings. From Viterbo he traveled south to Rome where he completed philosophical and theological studies under the tutelage of Zigliara, then a devoted friend of the future Pope Leo XIII and ardent neo-scholastic theologian. Gero Grassi and Maria Teresa de Scisciolo, “frate Enrico Buonpensiere,” in Per Ricordare: 347 Donne e Uomini di avantieri, di ieri e di oggi della nostra Terlizzi 1300–2013 (Terlizzi: Cooperativa Culturale RTS, 2013), 90–1, http://www.gerograssi.it/cms2/images//libro%20gero%20per%20ricordare.pdf. 18

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In 1873 Zigliara was appointed rector of the Dominican College of St. Thomas, which just that year had been banished from their historical home at the Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva by the Minervan government. With Buonpensiere in tow as a studentturned-faculty member, Zigliara remained rector of this transitory college until Leo’s election to the papacy in 1879, whereupon Leo appointed him cardinal and copresident, with Leo’s brother, of the newly formed Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, which still thrives today.19 Zigliara, in turn, appointed Buonpensiere professor of philosophy, mathematics, morality, and physics at the same college. Cardinal Zigliara wrote, taught, and preached tirelessly during the 1880s and early 1890s until his untimely death in 1893, as Buonpensiere, undoubtedly, continued to learn from him. At the time of Zigliara’s death, the cardinal was president of the Pontifical Academy, a member of seven Roman congregations, including the Congregation of the Index, and the cardinal prefect of the Congregation of Studies.20 As a sign of his influence, The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1912 accorded the highest praises to the late cardinal: “by his teaching and through his writings, [Zigliara] was one of the chief instruments, under Leo XIII, of reviving and propagating Thomistic philosophy throughout the entire Church.”21 After Zigliara’s death, Buonpensiere followed in his teacher’s footsteps, becoming one of the youngest consultors to both the Congregation of the Index (June 20, 1894) and the Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith (December 28, 1895). Buonpensiere was soon named a theologian of the apostolic datary and appointed a consultor of the Congregation of Studies.22 On April 9, 1897, Buonpensiere was promoted to professor and regent of the College of St. Thomas, now known as de Urbe instead of de Minerva due to its new location in Rome. As regent Buonpensiere was the central orchestrator behind its promotion to a pontifical college in 1906.23 From then on it became known as the Pontifical College (later university) of St. Thomas Aquinas or, as it is known today, the Angelicum.

See “Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas,” http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_academies/santommaso/index.htm. For an extended history of the academy, see Abelardo Lobato, “The Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas: History and Mission,” Anuario Filosófico 39, no. 2 (2006): 309–27, 317–18, 229–30, 329–49, https://web.archive.org/web/20140108144628/http://dspace.unav.es/dspace/bitstream/10171/16163/1/1.%20 LOBATO.pdf. 20 The Sacred Congregation of Studies organized and approved curriculum and charters of Catholic universities and seminaries around the world. It is now known as the Congregation for Catholic Education. See “Congregation for Catholic Education (for Educational Institutions),” http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccatheduc/ index.htm. 21 Charles Callan, “Tommaso Maria Zigliara,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 15 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1912), http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15759a.htm. Additionally, historian Benedict Ashley, author of The Dominicans, argues that Zigliara “helped prepare the great encyclicals Aeterni Patris and Rerum Novarum.” The Dominicans (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1990), 197. 22 The apostolic datary was largely an honorific position that was one of the five “curial offices” before being abolished by Pope Paul VI in 1967. The main task of dataries in the late nineteenth century was to respond on behalf of the Pope to letters from around the world, especially those regarding indulgences and graces. Wolf, Römische Inquisition und Indexkongregation, 3:224–5. Cf. Hubert Jedin, The Church in the Modern Age (London: Burns and Oates, 1999), 16, 169. 23 Tomus Alter, ed., De Religiosis Institutis & Personis: Supplementa et Monumenta (Rome: Brugis, 1907), Supplementa, 166–7, https://archive.org/details/dereligiosisins01vermgoog. The Pope officially named St. Thomas a pontifical college on May 26, 1906, as the above book details, but the official papal pronouncement was not issued until two years later, on November 8, 1908. Cf. Pope Pius X, “Domum Delectis (November 8, 1908),” Acta Apostolicae Sedis 11, no. 2 (1909): 137–8, http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-x/la/letters/documents/ hf_p-x_let_19081108_domum-delectis.html. 19

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Buonpensiere remained a professor at this bastion of neo-scholastic thought until 1910, when he was named professor at the Lateran Seminary in Rome, a position he held until 1925. At that point Buonpensiere retired from teaching due to failing eyesight, and in January of 1929 he passed away.24 Toward the end of his life he completed the second of two major works on Thomas Aquinas. The first, completed in 1902, was a 976-page treatment of questions 1–23 of the Summa Theologiae; the second, published posthumously in 1930, covered questions 27–43.25 Buonpensiere may not have gained the fame of his teacher, Zigliara, or his student, Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, but he was well known in neo-scholastic circles in the first few decades of the twentieth century.26 Shortly before his death, he was lauded by a leading Dominican journal as “one of the greatest theologians in the Order.”27 Furthermore, in his La Synthèse Thomiste, Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, perhaps the most well-known neo-scholastic theologian, who taught at Buonpensiere’s Angelicum from 1909 until 1960, writes, “Among those who contributed to the resurgence of Thomistic study, before and after Leo XIII, we must mention eight names: Sanseverino, Kleutgen, S. J.: Cornoldi, S. J.: Cardinal Zigliara, O. P.: Buonpensiere, O. P.: L. Billot, S. J.: G. Mattiussi, S. J.: and Cardinal Mercier.”28 Buonpensiere is mentioned in the same sentence as not only his teacher, Zigliara, but also the originators of neo-scholasticism, Kleutgen and Sanseverino.

ZIGLIARA AGAINST EVOLUTION Having established the pedigrees both of influence at the Vatican and of neo-scholastic philosophy of these two Dominican priests, we now turn to their approaches to evolution. As early as 1876, one can see Zigliara construct a neo-scholastic argument against evolutionary development. He argued that the general doctrine of evolutionary transformism (i.e., the idea that one species can transform into another species) is simply a new form of ancient Greek materialism.29 He applied this critique as much to the French naturalist Jean-Baptist Lamarck’s evolutionary hypotheses as to Darwin’s natural selection. Zigliara wrote that while Darwin “amplified and explained” Lamarck’s theories, to the point where he posited the evolutionary development of humanity, both human evolution and general evolution have been “principally and fundamentally” disproved by Aristotle.30 Importantly, this refutation was not based on the status of the scientific demonstrations of evolutionary scientists but on metaphysical arguments. For example,

rassi and Scisciolo, “frate Enrico Buonpensiere,” 91. G Enrico Buonpensiere, Commentaria in I. P. Summae theologicae S. Thomae Aquinatis, O.P., a q. I. ad q. XXIII (De Deo uno) (Romae: F. Pustet, 1902); Buonpensiere, Commentaria in I. P. Summae Theologicae S. Thomae Aquinatis, O.P.: a Q. XXVII ad Q. XLIII (De Deo trino) (Vergarae: El Santίsimo Rosario, 1930). 26 Cf. Angelus Walz, “The ‘Angelicum’ Celebrates Its Fiftieth Anniversary,” Dominicana 44, no. 3 (Fall 1959): 273, http://www.dominicanajournal.org/wp-content/files/old-journal-archive/vol44/no3/dominicanav44n3romanjubil eeangelicumcelebrates.pdf. 27 “Cloister Chronicle,” Dominicana 12, no. 1 (1927): 88, http://www.dominicanajournal.org/wp-content/files/ old-journal-archive/vol12/no1/dominicanav12n1cloisterchronicle.pdf. 28 Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought (St. Louis, MO: Herder, 1950), ­chapter  3, https://www.ewtn.com/library/theology/reality.htm. My emphasis. 29 Artigas, Glick, and Martínez, Negotiating Darwin, 40. 30 Thoma Maria Zigliara, Summa philosophica in usum scholarum, 3 vols., 12th ed. (Paris: Briguet, 1900), 2:149. 24 25

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Let us hear Saint Thomas describe and refute a similar opinion to the recent evolutionary theories: “And so others have replied that the very same soul which at first was merely vegetative is afterwards, through the action of the power that exists in the semen, brought to the point of becoming sentient, and, finally, is brought to the point that the very same soul becomes intellective … But this position cannot stand. First of all, no substantial form admits of more and less; instead, the addition of greater perfection makes for a different species, in the way that the addition of a unit makes for a different species among numbers. But it is impossible for numerically one and the same form to belong to diverse species.”31 Zigliara argues that, based on the Aristotelian metaphysical ideas of substance, species, and singularity, the very concept of transformation between species over time is untenable. It is not, however, an argument whose scope is limited to human evolution or to Darwinian natural selection. Zigliara’s metaphysical critique applies to anything and everything opposed to the doctrine of special creation (the immediate creation of every individual species). As consultor for the Congregation of the Index, Zigliara reiterated this anti-evolutionary position when reviewing pro-evolutionary books in the late nineteenth century. For example, against Raffaello Caverni’s 1877 New Studies of Philosophy: Lectures to a Young Student, Zigliara connects his argument against evolution with the antimodernism of the Syllabus of Errors, noting that “Darwinian evolution … is nothing more than the material part of total evolutionism, which is the same as Hegelian pantheism.”32 A particularly telling moment occurs when Zigliara responds to one of Caverni’s arguments about Church authority. Caverni argues that the church is not infallible when it comes to the conclusions of natural science, such as theories about the origins and development of animal life.33 Zigliara responds that such an argument is not only fallacious but also dangerous. Doctrines of creation itself, the immortality of the soul, and the very existence of the soul would naturally come into question. “Who, exactly, would set the boundary between the objects of science and those of faith?” Furthermore, Zigliara argues, granting such freedom to the natural sciences would mean that “the first Vatican Council … erred when it asserted that there are certain revealed truths that are also accessible to natural reason.”34

BUONPENSIERE AGAINST EVOLUTION Following the death of Zigliara in 1893, Buonpensiere took over chief consulting duties for the Congregation of the Index when it came to matters of science. The Dominican priest wrote three reports for the Congregation of the Index related to evolutionary theory in the 1890s: two on Dalmace Leroy, one in 1895 and one in 1897; and one on John Zahm in April 1898. While each report is unique in some of critiques, they all show clear influence of Zigliara’s neo-scholastic arguments against evolution.

I bid., 2:150. Original emphasis. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologicae I, Q. 118, A. 2, ad 2. Index, Protocolli, 1878–81, fol. 71, ACDF; Artigas, Glick, and Martínez, Negotiating Darwin, 43–4; Slattery, Faith and Science at Notre Dame, 88–99. 33 Artigas, Glick, and Martínez, Negotiating Darwin, 42. 34 Index, Protocolli, 1878–81, fol. 71, ACDF; ibid., 42–3. 31 32

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Buonpensiere against Dalmace Leroy, O.P. In his short (four pages) 1895 report on Dalmace Leroy’s book, The Evolution of Organic Species, Buonpensiere expands upon Zigliara’s metaphysical argument from Aquinas, adding an “empirical” argument against evolution as well. He writes, Evolution, as all Catholic philosophers teach, has been resolutely condemned by ontological and empirical science. In ontology, it has been infallibly demonstrated that the essence of any object is an immutable type, that is, incapable of any evolution, whether higher or lower. In empirical science there is an unchangeable law of hybridization, which maintains the distinctness of living species such that a pairing of two living beings belonging to different species will either produce no fruit or will produce fruit that are completely infertile.35 As such, “evolutionism, opposed completely by the philosophical sciences, cannot even be called a hypothesis: it is a simple desiderata [derived argument] of materialism, more or less Platonic.”36 He finishes with a decisive flourish: Consequently, the impudence of those who attempt to harmonize evolutionism with Revealed Doctrine is reckless and anti-Christian … [And if] evolutionism is contrary to Science and Faith, the impudence of Father Leroy has been truly reckless, both for defending such absurdities, and for pretending he believes it not opposed to Revelation … For me, it would be better that this work be placed on the Index, in accordance with the rigor of justice.37 After this report was given to Leroy, the French priest entered into an extensive dialogue with the Congregation of the Index, asking not to be placed on the Index and offering possible emendations and changes to the text. The prefect of the congregation eventually turned to Buonpensiere again for a more complete discussion of Leroy’s text and ideas. Buonpensiere rose to the occasion, producing a fifty-six-page report that evaluated ten chapters of Leroy’s new work.38 Of the many specific refutations in this 1897 report, two arguments help us understand Buonpensiere’s approach to the entire discussion. First, “even granting that the Church may not have expressed its opinion on evolutionism with complete dogmatic precision,” he writes, “it is nevertheless true that the Church has persistently shown its repugnance to this doctrine.”39 Since none of Darwin’s books were ever on the Index of Prohibited Books, one can only presume that what Buonpensiere has in mind are discussions of evolutionary theory by other neoscholastic scholars (such as Zigliara), the general antimodernist stance of Pius IX, and the neo-scholastic interpretations of Dei Filius and Aeterni Patris.40 Second, Buonpensiere pushes back against a claim made by Leroy, that church Fathers should not be judged as “competent judges” because their understanding of science was

Index, Protocolli, 1895–6, fol. 118, p. 3, ACDF, original emphasis; Artigas, Glick, and Martínez, Negotiating Darwin, 92, updated translation. 36 Index, Protocolli, 1895–6, fol. 118, p. 4, ACDF; Artigas, Glick, and Martínez, Negotiating Darwin, 93, updated translation. 37 Index, Protocolli, 1895–6, fol. 118, p. 8, ACDF; Artigas, Glick, and Martínez, Negotiating Darwin, 95–6. 38 Index, Protocolli, 1897–9, fol. 55, ACDF; Artigas, Glick, and Martínez, Negotiating Darwin, 108–12. 39 Index, Protocolli, 1897–9, fol. 55, p. 5, ACDF; Artigas, Glick, and Martínez, Negotiating Darwin, 108. 40 For a complete discussion of these texts, see Slattery, Faith and Science at Notre Dame, 99–133. 35

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different than that of the nineteenth century. While Augustine, Aquinas, and others had no knowledge of evolutionary theories today, Buonpensiere countered, their opinions should still be considered dogmatic and definitive until contrary scientific theories of the modern day have been “clearly demonstrated.”41 But this apparent concession seems to be a red herring. Buonpensiere’s vision of the place of natural science, as we saw from his 1895 report, does not extend to it the competence to negate dogmatic arguments, no matter how clear the demonstration. Once again, this is precisely what one would expect of someone trained in neo-scholasticism.

Buonpensiere against John Zahm, C.S.C. In his report on Evolution and Dogma, written by Holy Cross priest and evolutionist John Zahm, Buonpensiere repeats many of the same objections he employed in the case against Leroy, most notably objections to the alleged misuse of historical theological figures such as Augustine and Aquinas. He adds that a Christian is free neither to “accept moderate evolutionism” nor to interpret Genesis with such fluidity as to consider the story of creation less than scientific truth.42 One major difference between Buonpensiere’s report on Zahm and his report on Leroy, however, is that at the end of his report on Zahm, Buonpensiere appears to grow quite agitated. He seems compelled to repeat himself time and time again on evolution. On page 45, he goes beyond his role as a consultor when he writes, At this point I want to put the following beyond dispute: I consider it Catholic Doctrine to affirm that God immediately and directly formed Adam from the soil of the earth.43 The next six pages are not a refutation of Zahm directly but rather a neo-scholastic argument to prove the truth of the above claim. Beginning with Genesis, Buonpensiere cites a list of theologians extensive enough to rival any of Zahm’s lists: Plato, Philo, Basil, Chrysostum, Cyril of Alexandria, Ambrose, Augustine, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Duns Scotus, Suarez, Peter Lombard, and Alexander of Hales! “The unanimous agreement of the Church Fathers and Scholastic Theologians in matters of Faith and Customs bears certain witness to Catholic Dogma … [and] thus the truth of the conclusion above is sustained.”44 Buonpensiere concludes his report by simultaneously dismissing Zahm and pleading his own case: “It is necessary, once and for all, to let Catholic naturalists know publicly that it is not permitted to teach that Adam’s body may not have originated immediately from the soil of the earth but from the body of an anthropomorphic brute.”45 Buonpensiere argued that the Congregation of the Index should issue a formal statement stating exactly this, as it would clear up the misconceptions of modern science that led to authors like Zahm writing such blatantly pro-evolution books.

rtigas, Glick, and Martínez, Negotiating Darwin, 108. Cf. Index, Protocolli, 1897–9, fol. 55, p. 23, ACDF. A Artigas, Glick, and Martínez, Negotiating Darwin, 148. Cf. Index, Protocolli, 1897–9, fol. 80, pp. 25–35, ACDF. 43 “Mi sembra essere dottrina cattolica lo affermare che Dio abbia immediatamente e direttamente formato Adamo dal limo della terra.” Index, Protocolli, 1897–9, fol. 80, p. 45, ACDF. Emphasis original. 44 Index, Protocolli, 1897–9, fol. 80, p. 51, ACDF. 45 Index, Protocolli, 1897–9, fol. 80, p. 53, ACDF. 41 42

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CONCLUSION Due to Buonpensiere’s strong language, one might wonder why neither Pope Leo XIII nor the Congregation of the Holy Office (precursor to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) issued any official statements on the theory of evolution. Indeed, after Buonpensiere’s report, several members of the Congregation of the Index proposed that the Congregation of the Holy Office consider precisely this question, but there is no record of either congregation or the Pope publishing a definitive doctrinal statement against human evolution.46 Because of both this lack of official promulgation in the 1890s and an official opening of dialogue on evolution with Humani Generis in 1950, history has tended to look kindly on this period of Vatican anti-evolutionary philosophies.47 However, given the close connection between neo-scholasticism, Pope Leo XIII, and antievolutionary arguments illustrated here (as well as the censure of Teilhard de Chardin in the early twentieth century), it is perhaps more helpful to see this period as one of quiet censure. Just loud enough to pull books from publication when necessary and just quiet enough to avoid raising up more moderate voices against the Papacy in a time of turmoil and revolution. It is an injustice to silenced scientists like Caverni, Leroy, Zahm, Teilhard, and others to consider the Vatican’s neo-scholastic stance on evolution in the late nineteenth century anything other than one of censure.

rtigas, Glick, and Martínez, Negotiating Darwin, 151; Index, Diari, vol. 22, fol. 39r, ACDF. A This is particularly true with Negotiating Darwin, which has then influenced much of the field.

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CHAPTER TWELVE

Twentieth- and Twenty-FirstCentury Catholic Voices on Nature and Science PAUL J. SCHUTZ

The insights issuing from the natural and social sciences generate a dynamic and rapidly changing context for theological reflection. Near-instantaneous communication makes advances in quantum theory, cosmology, biology, anthropology, and other disciplines readily available for public consumption, rapidly transforming the sociocultural milieu in which Christians think and live the so-called “truths of faith.” Likewise, our planet faces an unprecedented ecological crisis. A warming planet, changes in global climate, and the rapid extinction of ancient species weigh on the hearts and minds of those who follow Jesus. And where we once contemplated what it means to be human, we now ponder the meaning of transhumanity, as our very sense of self is reshaped by advances in biotechnology. For Catholic theologians, this situation elicits a pressing need to reimagine the mysteries of faith. Fortunately, there is a basis on which such reimagining can occur. Pope John Paul II’s 1988 letter to former Vatican Observatory director George Coyne, S.J., paved a way for dialogue between theology and modern science that is exemplified in the fifteen-year “Divine Action Project,” a collaboration between the Vatican Observatory and the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences.1 Citing a history of “needless conflicts” between church and academy, the Pope calls for “dialogue and common searching” between theology and science, concluding, “Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish.” It is also noteworthy that John Paul’s letter describes humans as “products, knowers and stewards of creation,”2 paving a way toward Pope Francis’s engagement with ecology in his 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si’. In a different vein, Coyne and his successors—most notably Guy Consolmagno, S.J.—have

For a summary of the Divine Action Project, see Wesley Wildman, “The Divine Action Project, 1988–2003,” Theology and Science 2, no. 1 (2004): 31–75. The project produced the well-known book series, Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action. 2 John Paul II, “Letter of His Holiness John Paul II to Reverend George V. Coyne, S.J., Director of the Vatican Observatory,” June 1, 1988, http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/letters/1988/documents/hf_jp-ii_ let_19880601_ padre-coyne.html. 1

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operated as public intellectuals, making television appearances and publishing books for the general public on science and faith.3 Yet these developments were anticipated earlier in the twentieth century, in the work of theologians and scientists who took seminal steps toward theology-science dialogue. One must only consider Karl Rahner, S.J.’s “Christology within an Evolutionary View of the World,” or Bernard Lonergan, S.J.’s Insight to see the seeds of dialogue planted decades ago.4 Even before these giants joined the conversation, two other Catholic thinkers, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., and Msgr. Georges Lemaître, were reflecting on emerging scientific claims from the standpoint of faith in ways that established two distinctive trajectories of theology-science dialogue, which have shaped Catholic theological reflection in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. After offering a brief summary and critique of the contributions of Teilhard and Lemaître, this chapter profiles seven Catholic voices on nature and science, noting how these thinkers—John Haught, Joseph Bracken, Ilia Delio, William Stoeger, Denis Edwards, Elizabeth Johnson, and Celia Deane-Drummond—follow in various ways and to varying degrees the trajectories established by Teilhard and Lemaître. I conclude the chapter with two critical reflections on the future of the conversation.

TWO SEMINAL THINKERS: PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN, S.J., AND GEORGES LEMAÎTRE Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. French Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) interprets evolutionary history as an epic of “complexification,” wherein unconscious matter evolves toward life and consciousness in a multiphase movement from cosmogenesis to biogenesis, anthropogenesis, and noogenesis, or the emergence of a “thinking layer” of self-consciousness.5 In this way, Teilhard conceives the human person as “the axis and the arrow of evolution.”6 Yet we would be remiss to read his work solely as metascientific or metaphysical. Rather, as David Grumett states, “Teilhard’s theology provides the hermeneutic for the whole of his thought.”7 As such, Teilhard manifests what Ursula King names “a fervent pan-Christic mysticism” grounded in the unity of matter and spirit—or the “outside” and “interiority” of all things.8 Thus, to grasp Teilhard’s synthesis of science and faith, one must read the account of evolution in The Human Phenomenon in light of the spiritual vision of The Divine Milieu and Mass on the World, with special focus on the unity of “all things” in Colossians 1 and the final consummation of all things in 1 Corinthians 15, which shape Teilhard’s evolutionary vision.

Notably, Consolmagno received the American Astronomical Society’s 2014 Carl Sagan Medal for his efforts in this regard. “Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno Wins Carl Sagan Medal from the American Astronomical Society,” July 14, 2014, https://jesuits.org/news-detail?TN=NEWS-20140714111304. 4 Karl Rahner, “Christology within an Evolutionary View of the World,” in Theological Investigations 5 (Baltimore, MD: Helicon Press, 1966), 157–92; Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992). 5 See Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Human Phenomenon, trans. Sarah Appleton-Weber (Portland: Sussex Academic, 1999), 122–4. 6 Ibid.,  7. 7 David Grumett, Teilhard de Chardin: Theology, Humanity, and Cosmos (Leuven: Peeters, 2005), 5. 8 Ursula King, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1999), 18. 3

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In this way, Teilhard counters the “fundamental, impossible, and antiscientific dualism” of many approaches to nature and humanity with a unified vision of evolution, which is oriented toward the convergence of all things in God, the “Omega Point.”9 His vision likewise counters claims that the universe is purposeless, destined toward entropic dissolution, with a deep hope in the future consummation of creation, “without which it would justifiably feel truncated, a failure—cheated.”10 This vision culminates in the “hominization” of the cosmos through human ingenuity, whereby humans “seize the tiller of the world by putting our hands on the driving force of evolution itself ” in harmony with the “Grand Option” for a universe transformed by the will of God-Omega.11 This option, in turn, culminates in “Christogenesis,” the emergence of the cosmic Christ. Teilhard’s vision can thus be summarized simply in his prayer from Mass on the World: “Lord, make us one.”12 I conclude this profile of Teilhard’s vision by noting two lines of critique. First, while he emphasizes the unity of spirit and matter and the unity of humans and otherkind in evolutionary history, Teilhard’s call for humanity to “seize the tiller” of evolution operates with a precarious logic similar to that which drives the technocratic paradigm critiqued in Laudato Si’, especially if one observes that plants, animals, and coevolution never appear in his account of convergence.13 Second, the recent debate initiated by John Slattery raises new concerns about Teilhard’s endorsement of race-based eugenics.14 The critical responses by John Haught and others appear to equate Slattery’s attribution of racism to Teilhard as an accusation that Teilhard consciously held racist views—or at the very least held that certain races are essentially superior to others. In my view, these questions are immaterial. For, even if The Human Phenomenon names racism a “subtle distortion” of the positive impulse toward See Teilhard, Phenomenon, c­ hapter 2. Ibid.,  162. 11 Ibid., 177; Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “The Grand Option,” in The Future of Man, trans. Norman Denny (New York: Harper & Row, 1964). 12 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Mass on the World, in Hymn of the Universe, trans. Simon Bartholomew (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 20. 13 Celia Deane-Drummond shares this concern. See Celia Deane-Drummond, The Wisdom of the Liminal: Evolution and Other Animals in Human Becoming (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014), 7ff. Before the promulgation of Laudato Si’, other thinkers expressed similar concerns about the anthropocentric orientation of Teilhard’s vision. See, e.g., Thomas M. King, “Teilhard and the Environment,” Ecotheology 10, no. 1 (2005): 88–98; Thomas Berry, “Teilhard in the Ecological Age” (Chambersburg, PA: Anima, 1982). Other thinkers offer a more positive appraisal of Teilhard’s ecological potential. See Mary Evelyn Tucker, “The Ecological Spirituality of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,” Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 7, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 1–19. 14 Slattery initiates the debate in John P. Slattery, “Dangerous Tendencies of Cosmic Theology: The Untold Legacy of Teilhard de Chardin,” Philosophy and Theology 29, no. 1 (2017): 69–82; and John P. Slattery, “Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s Legacy of Eugenics and Racism Can’t Be Ignored,” Rewire News, May 21, 2018, https://rewire.news/ religion-dispatches/2018/05/21/pierre-teilhard-de-chardins-legacy-eugenics-racism-cant-ignored/. Responses to Slattery’s claims include Joshua Canzona, “Teilhard’s Legacy Can’t Be Reduced to Racism: A Response to John Slattery,” Rewire News, August 22, 2018, https://rewire.news/religion-dispatches/2018/08/22/teilhardslegacy-cant-be-reduced-to-racism-a-response-to-john-slattery/; and John F. Haught, “Trashing Teilhard: How Not to Read a Great Religious Thinker,” Commonweal, February 12, 2019, https://www.commonwealmagazine. org/trashing-teilhard; Slattery responds to Haught in “Teilhard and Eugenics: A Response to John Haught,” Commonweal, March 12, 2019, https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/teilhard-eugenics. In addition, Noel Keith Richard observes the significant absence of scholarly attention to Teilhard’s claims about race and eugenics. Noel Keith Richards, From Piltdown Man to Point Omega: The Evolutionary Theory of Teilhard de Chardin (New York: Peter Lang, 2000), 159. Richards writes, “One would have expected a great deal of comment on such a controversial subject … instead there is almost complete silence.” Notably, David Grumett does not mention Teilhard’s statements on eugenics in sections of bioethics and politics. 9

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complexity and convergence—and regardless of Teilhard’s historical situation—his claim that Western European rationality manifests the fullness of anthropogenesis implicitly perpetuates racism and white supremacy.15 He writes, During historical times the principal axis of anthropogenesis has passed through the West. In this glowing zone of growth and universal recasting, everything that makes the human being today has been found … For even what had long been known elsewhere has taken on its definitive human value only by becoming incorporated into the system of European ideas and occupations. It is not simple naivete to celebrate Columbus’s discovery of America as a great event.16 On this side of colonialism, imperialism, and chattel slavery, one cannot speak in this way of European history without acknowledging the violence done to peoples oppressed and eradicated in the name of “progress.” In this sense, at the very least, Teilhard can rightly be called racist. If nothing else, this debate reminds theologians to avoid letting preservationist impulses occlude honest, critical discourse about the benefits and limitations of theological claims.

Msgr. Georges Lemaître In contrast to Teilhard, the Belgian priest and originator of the big bang theory, Georges Lemaître (1894–1966) argues for the separation of science and faith on the basis of differences in method and focus. While Lemaître did not write on theology and science per se, his comments on science and faith pave the way for many Catholic approaches to theology-science dialogue, especially those influenced by his student, the priest and philosopher Ernan McMullin (1924–2011).17 Lemaître’s proposal of a “primeval atom” or “fireworks universe” in the early 1930s rapidly attained acceptance within the scientific community, with Einstein describing his model as “the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened.”18 But despite the widespread use of the word “creation” by Einstein and others, Lemaître explicitly eschewed creation language to avoid confusing or conflating his theory with biblical creation. He writes, “I do not say a creation … The question if it was really a beginning or rather a creation: something starting from nothing, is a philosophical question which cannot be settled by physical or astronomical considerations.”19 This linguistic concern illustrates Lemaître’s notion of how science and faith relate. In 1934, on a public speaking tour in the United States, Lemaître received the Mendel Medal for outstanding service to science at Villanova University. When asked how Christian researchers should relate religious convictions to scientific insights, Lemaître stated the Teilhard, Phenomenon, 171. Ibid., 146. Emphasis mine. 17 For a summary treatment of McMullin’s thought, see Paul Allen, Ernan McMullin and Critical Realism in the Science-Theology Dialogue (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006). McMullin was a student in Lemaître’s graduate seminars at the time Lemaître criticized Pius XII’s declaration on a synthesis of science and faith. 18 Duncan Aikman, “Lemaître Follows Two Paths to Truth,” New York Times, February 19, 1933, 3. Dominique Lambert observes that Lemaître’s “primeval atom” may have influenced Teilhard, who speaks of a “kind of primitive ‘atom.’ ” Dominique Lambert, The Atom of the Universe: The Life and Work of Georges Lemaître, trans. Luc Ampleman (Krakow: Copernicus Center Press, 2015), 384–5. Cf. Helge Kragh, Cosmology and Controversy: The Historical Development of Two Theories of the Universe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 22ff. 19 Lambert, Atom, 335. 15 16

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researchers should “master and apply with wisdom the particular techniques proper to the problem,” recognizing that just as Christians hold that God made all things, they must also hold that divine action never substitutes for secondary, or creaturely, causes. He concludes, “God’s omnipresent action is everywhere essentially hidden” and not subject to empirical investigation.20 On this basis, Lemaître argues that science and faith constitute “two paths” to truth.21 Despite Lemaître’s claims, debates about the theological significance of his model brewed, culminating in Fred Hoyle’s claim that Lemaître’s proposal of a temporal “beginning” of the cosmos implied “causes unknown to science,” leaving room for a divine creator—a point that conflicted with Hoyle’s steady-state model of the universe and his ardent atheism. Perhaps humorously, it was Hoyle who in 1949 dubbed Lemaître’s model the “Big Bang.”22 But for Lemaître there was no conflict: “The conflict has always been between those who fail to understand the true scope of either science or religion.”23 Lemaître’s “two paths” approach informed every aspect of his work as a scientist and as an inaugural member—and later president—of the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences. Indeed, as Helge Kragh explains, when Pope Pius XII employed Lemaître’s theory to justify divine creation in precisely the way Hoyle and Lemaître opposed, Lemaître intervened with the Pope, who never again presented the relationship of science and faith as he had in 1951.24 Lemaître’s tenure as president of the academy saw “a distinct broadening of the scope of the pontifical academy, both in ecumenical and geographical terms.” Lemaître likewise inaugurated Vatican Observatory “study weeks,” the foundation for projects such as the Divine Action Project.25 Despite his important contributions to the field, some may find Lemaître’s “two paths” approach too limiting to be useful. For, in contrast to Teilhard’s spiritual synthesis, Lemaître’s emphasis on the methodological and epistemological limits of science and theology confines the scope of their interaction and negates the possibility of synthesis. Thus, Ian Barbour’s critiques of “Independence” approaches to theology-science interaction surely apply to Lemaître, as his discussion of “two paths” may neglect the fact that science and theology are bound to interact, given that they inhabit one world.26 Still, Lemaître’s approach has significantly influenced the presuppositions for dialogue with the sciences in Catholic theology, especially as it focuses reflection on the limits of Godtalk undertaken in a scientific world.

CATHOLIC TAKES ON THEOLOGY, SCIENCE, AND NATURE: SEVEN CONTEMPORARY VOICES The theologians who follow in the footsteps of these foundational figures can be divided along two trajectories, which originate in Teilhard and Lemaître. In the Teilhardian alérie de Rath, Georges Lemaître, le Pere du big bang (Belgium: Editions Labor, 1994), 80. Emphasis mine. V Lambert, Atom, 212. 22 Rodney D. Holder, “Georges Lemaître and Fred Hoyle: Contrasting Characters in Science and Religion,” in Georges Lemaître: Life, Science, and Legacy, ed. Rodney D. Holder and Simon Mitton (Heidelberg: Springer, 2012), 43ff. 23 Aikman, “Lemaître,” 3. 24 Kragh, Cosmology, 258–89. 25 Lambert, Atom, 335. 26 See Ian Barbour, When Science Meets Religion: Enemies, Strangers, or Partners? (San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins, 200), 17–22. 20 21

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trajectory—which to varying degrees synthesizes science and faith into an overarching narrative of cosmic fulfillment by drawing on Teilhard and process thought—are John Haught, Joseph Bracken, and Ilia Delio. In the trajectory established by Lemaître—which emphasizes disciplinary limits and seeks dialogue between theology and science—are William Stoeger, Denis Edwards, Elizabeth Johnson, and Celia Deane-Drummond. Of course, these trajectories are not exhaustive or definitive, but they provide a helpful tool for mapping theology-science interaction in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Catholic thought. Each profile concludes by attending to the practical and ecological dimensions of the approach, and while I will not critique individual theologians, one may imagine the ways in which the preceding critiques of Teilhard and Lemaître apply to, or are addressed by, the thinkers considered here.

THE TEILHARDIAN TRAJECTORY: JOHN HAUGHT, JOSEPH BRACKEN, AND ILIA DELIO John F. Haught Since his earliest work, theologian John F. Haught (1942–) has worked to reimagine the mystery of God in light of scientific narratives of evolution and emergence. Drawing primarily on Teilhard and Alfred North Whitehead—with support from Karl Rahner, Paul Tillich, and non-Christian traditions—Haught envisions religion as an “adventure,” by which humans discern the presence of an “infinite and inexhaustible future” in the beauty and struggle of cosmic history.27 Like Teilhard—whom Haught names “arguably … the most important Christian thinker of the past century … to those who believe that religion must come to grips with evolution”28—Haught rejects the “cosmic pessimism” of entropic accounts of the end of the universe in favor of the “promise” and future “perfection” of nature, finding resources for articulating this vision in the evolutionary orientation of process thought.29 Haught’s theological vision is rooted in the Whiteheadian claim that sense experience is limited, and therefore “inadequate to mediate the full complexity—and beauty—of the world in which we are organically situated.”30 Thus, at the level of epistemology, Haught emphasizes the interaction of multiple “levels” of explanation; building on Teilhard’s notion of the “interiority” of things, he argues that science points toward levels of inquiry beyond empirical analysis, driving us to ask “what is really going on?” in the cosmos.31 Haught’s epistemological commitments ground his models for the interaction of science and faith. His first models—Conflict and Contrast—emphasize, respectively, the negative outcomes and limitations of “mixing and confusing” the roles of religion and science, and of failing to engage crucial questions that emerge when science and religion interact. His third model—Contact—proposes that science and religion engage in productive dialogue, John F. Haught, What Is God? How to Think about the Divine (New York: Paulist Press, 1986), 31. Haught’s 2017 book, The New Cosmic Story: Inside Our Awakening Universe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017), aims to offer an account of “Big History” that attends to religious perspectives, which are typically left out of Big History narratives. I will not address this contribution here, because its insights go beyond the realm of Catholic theology, but it is noteworthy as an illustration of his commitment to a synthetic, cosmic perspective. 28 John F. Haught, Responses to 101 Questions on God and Evolution (New York: Paulist, 2001), 133. 29 John F. Haught, The Promise of Nature: Ecology and Cosmic Purpose (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1993), 35. 30 Haught, What Is God?, 85. 31 John F. Haught, Christianity and Science: Toward a Theology of Nature (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2007), 59ff. In this text, Haught articulates his claims as a systematic theology. 27

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seeking possible interdisciplinary consonance. The fourth model—Confirmation— seeks ways in which “religion positively supports the scientific adventure of discovery,” emphasizing unique areas of correspondence between religious and scientific accounts of the cosmos, and even offering “a special kind of blessing” to the scientific endeavor.32 Haught’s Confirmation model is exemplified in his own theological account of God as “absolute future,” which he draws from Rahner and reinterprets in conversation with Teilhard and process theology.33 On Haught’s account, the fact of an evolving universe—what he names Darwin’s “gift” to theology—replaces any notion of a “static, eternal and necessary universe … with an exciting unfinished world-in-process.”34 On a higher level of explanation, this vision finds confirmation in the Teilhardian and process vision of God as the great “up ahead,” who lures the open process of evolution to fulfillment—a model of divine action Haught conceives in conversation with the Taoist principle of “non-interfering effectiveness.”35 Thus, although God is present in and with the cosmos, embracing its suffering and holding its past in “memory,” God’s action is kenotic; out of love for creaturely autonomy, God accepts creation’s limits while always holding out to the universe “new ways of becoming itself.”36 Echoing Teilhard, he concludes, “What gives consistency to the world—and happiness to the human heart—is the general thrust of all things toward what is yet to come.”37 This future orientation likewise provides the basis for moral decision-making and meaningmaking in an evolving world. Finally, Haught’s work manifests a distinctive concern for making Christianity credible in a scientific world. Responses to 101 Questions on God and Evolution offers clear answers to questions of faith, and his timely response to the New Atheists in Deeper Than Darwin speaks to the spirit of a moment influenced by a new scientism and the rise of militant atheism.38 Further, he consistently attends to ecological concerns, arguing that “something analogous to what we humans call ‘purpose,’ is … an essential prerequisite of sustained global and intergenerational commitment to the earth’s well-being.”39 This sensibility, which rests on the inbreaking future that is God, fosters a deep appreciation of the beauty of the cosmos and envisions care for creation simply as “the extension to all beings of the inclusive life-style of Jesus.”40

Joseph A. Bracken, S.J. Whereas Haught synthesizes Whitehead with Teilhard to ground his approach, Jesuit theologian Joseph A. Bracken (1930–) tends toward the former pole, offering a theology For the full discussion of these models, see John F. Haught, Science and Religion: From Conflict to Conversation (New York: Paulist, 1995), 4. Though Ian Barbour’s models—Conflict, Independence, Dialogue, and Integration— remain normative in the field, it is my opinion that Haught’s Confirmation model offers a unique perspective not found in Barbour’s approach. 33 See Haught, Christianity and Science, 7 n. 12. 34 Haught, Science and Religion, 117. For Haught’s treatment of Darwin’s “gift,” see God after Darwin: A Theology of Evolution, 2nd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2008). 35 John F. Haught, “Information and Cosmic Purpose,” in Science and Religion: In Search of Cosmic Purpose, ed. John F. Haught (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2000), 115. See God after Darwin for Haught’s full treatment of Taoism. 36 Haught, 101 Questions, 136. 37 Haught, Christianity and Science, 7. 38 See John F. Haught, Deeper Than Darwin: The Prospect for Religion in the Age of Evolution (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2003). 39 Haught, Promise, 7. 40 Ibid., 140. On aesthetics, see Haught, 101 Questions, 142. 32

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based in Whitehead’s philosophy. On the basis that contemporary science diminishes the power of Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics to describe the fundamental features of reality, Bracken proffers Whiteheadian metaphysics as a more adequate and compelling basis for interpreting Christianity’s “truth-claims or adequacy to experience.”41 Whitehead’s primary claim is that process thought “enjoys a mode of being and activity which is not simply reducible to the being and activity for those same parts or members.”42 For Bracken, then, whereas Thomistic metaphysics emphasizes substance, being, and act, process metaphysics emphasizes fields of activity and mutual relation in a way that better corresponds with scientific accounts of evolution, which are premised on the interactions of creatures within ecological contexts. Bracken thus envisions reality as constituted by Whiteheadian “societies,” or “structured fields of activity,” with the worldprocess conceived as “a dynamic totality greater than the sum of its individual ‘parts’ or members taken singly.”43 Here, he observes a “natural affinity” between Teilhard’s notion of complexification and Whiteheadian metaphysics, with Whitehead providing resources for addressing shortcomings in Teilhard’s metascientific account of evolution.44 Theologically, this worldview originates and finds confirmation in the life of the Trinity; the “communitarian life of God” is the ultimate society from which all created societies flow and in which they interact in relationships of interpenetration and mutual influence.45 Conceived as such, Bracken possesses a radically panentheistic vision, with God being “altered” in relation to the world, and the world conceived “literally” as existing in the Trinitarian field.46 He writes, If the three divine persons of the Christian Trinity co-constitute by their interrelated activity an all-inclusive field within which the activities of all finite entities are located, and if the decisions of the divine persons from moment to moment impact upon their creatures and the self-constituting decisions of creatures are felt by the divine persons, then, one may legitimately say that God and creatures occupy a common world, a joint field of activity that all of them assist in shaping and forming.47 The unity of the Trinity thus emerges from the relational activity of the divine persons, such that each contributes uniquely to the divine life—the “field of activity”—they share. For Bracken, this is the principle of Trinitarian unity, which corresponds with the notion of “fields” in contemporary physics and the radically relational models of reality found in quantum theory. Finally, Bracken envisions Jesus as the bridge between the creaturely and divine, such that the hypostatic union of Jesus’s divinity and humanity functions a sacrament of the interaction of divine and creaturely fields of activity. This, in turn, grounds “a new socially

Joseph Bracken, The Triune Symbol: Persons, Process, and Community (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985), 2. 42 Ibid.,  5. 43 Ibid. 44 See Ibid., 174–5. For Bracken’s treatment of Teilhard and Whitehead, see Society and Spirit: A Trinitarian Cosmology (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1991), 161ff. 45 Joseph Bracken, Society and Spirit: A Trinitarian Cosmology (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1991), 159. Cf. Joseph Bracken, Subjectivity, Objectivity, and Intersubjectivity: A New Paradigm for Religion and Science (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Foundation Press, 2009), 190–1. 46 See Joseph Bracken, The World in the Trinity: Open-Ended Systems in Science and Religion (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2014), esp. c­ hapter 3. Cf. Bracken, Triune Symbol, 7–18. 47 Bracken, Society and Spirit, 140. 41

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oriented worldview” based in relationship, which impels Christian theology toward a more holistic vision of the cosmos, rooted in the life of the triune Creator.48

Ilia Delio, O.S.F. While Bracken appeals primarily to process thought, Franciscan theologian Ilia Delio (1955–) offers a robust theological development of Teilhard, whom she names “a voice [crying] out in the desert that a new (and exciting) story had arisen.”49 In addition to Teilhard, Delio cites Franciscan theologians—especially Bonaventure—who impart to her project a distinct focus on divine love. Like Bracken, Delio expresses concerns that Medieval theology is inadequate to an evolutionary world. She likewise observes “a strong anti-incarnational bias in our culture,” which is rooted in the dominance of technology and manifest in the advent of transhumanism.50 With these concerns in view, she invokes Ewert Cousins’s notion of the second axial period of human consciousness—characterized by global consciousness, relatedness, and the possibility of love—to argue that theology must abandon the “static” Christ of Medieval cosmology, with its focus on redemption from sin, in favor of a “cosmic Christ” who dwells at the “heart of creation” and draws creatures toward wholeness as co-participants in evolutionary history and co-creatures of the Creator God.51 As a basis for her Christology, Delio reflects on the “overarching purpose or direction” of evolution, which—following Teilhard—she sees as oriented toward consciousness, complexity, self-transcendence, and unity.52 Then, drawing on Bonaventure and Duns Scotus, Delio names divine love the integrating principle and driving force of evolution. In this way, Christ reveals “the design of the universe because Christ is first in God’s intention to love.”53 Thus, just as Trinitarian love grounds the existence of the universe, the incarnation expresses the “primal, fecund mystery of self-communicative love that makes possible all of God’s works ad extra.”54 At the same time, she writes, Christ is “emergent,” caught up in the Christogenesis whereby the universe moves ever more fully toward the love in which and for which it was created. As such, the resurrection enacts the emergence of Christ “from within the created order,” charging those who follow Jesus with the responsibility to act as co-creators who seek “the deepening of life” in union with God.55 Thus, Delio—drawing on process thought—concludes that “God is a continuous becoming in love because of the absolute dynamism of divine love”; God changes precisely because God is faithfully responsive in love.56 In sum, evolution tends toward love in what she terms “amorization”—the fulfillment of the hominization proposed by Teilhard.57 Bracken, World, 2. Ilia Delio, The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution, and the Power of Love (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013), xv–xvi. 50 Ilio Delio, “Eco-Christology: Living in Creation as the Body of Christ,” Human Development 33, no. 1 (Spring 2012): 8. For Delio’s treatment of technology and transhumanism, see Making All Things New, 101ff. Ecology is present in Delio’s work, albeit as a relatively minor theme. The clearest articulation of her ecological vision comes in “Eco-Christology.” 51 See Ilia Delio, Christ in Evolution (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2008), 52ff. 52 Ibid.,  3. 53 Ibid.,  6. 54 Ibid.,  58. 55 Ilia Delio, The Emergent Christ: Exploring the Meaning of Catholic in an Evolutionary Universe (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2011), 88–9. 56 Ibid.,  4. 57 Delio, Christ, 142. 48 49

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Much like Haught, Delio maintains a practical orientation toward cultivating a spirituality for the evolutionary age. Expounding this point, she writes that in the twenty-first theology, we must “[shift] the context of theology from the rigor of academic discipline to the context of life and holiness.”58 On this basis, Delio concludes that to be katholikos—Catholic— is to participate in making “wholes,” “learning how to live in harmony” with all things, taking cues from the love of God revealed in Christ.59 In sum, then, Catholics must apply their vocation as whole-makers to the needs of the present day, remaining oriented toward a vision of cosmic community rooted in empathy and compassion. She concludes, “The emergence of Christ depends on our capacity to love, to become whole-makers.”60

LEMAÎTRE’S LEGACY: WILLIAM STOEGER, DENIS EDWARDS, ELIZABETH JOHNSON, AND CELIA DEANE-DRUMMOND William R. Stoeger, S.J. Although best known for his interpretation of the Aristotelian-Thomistic model of divine action by primary-secondary causality, Jesuit astronomer William Stoeger (1943–2014) applies science to a wide range of theological topics, including method and the doctrine of creation. At the level of method, Stoeger accepts Lemaître’s emphasis on disciplinary difference, which in his view negates the possibility of synthesizing science and faith, as in Teilhard, and of proposing models that locate divine action within physical reality.61 At the same time, he sees the “two paths” of science and theology as intersecting, arguing that their interaction clarifies disciplinary limits, reveals each discipline’s “foci and experiential grounds,”62 and provides a mechanism for modifying, purifying, and enriching faith claims so that Christian theology can evolve in step with the best scientific knowledge that is available in a given context. He writes, “Appropriation of tradition must always involve renewed personal and communal discernment in light of the new situations, contexts, understandings and experiences individuals and communities encounter, including those triggered by new scientific knowledge, and those emanating from new political, economic and social circumstances.”63 Further, interaction with the natural sciences reveals the need for well-defined criteria of validation in theology, which Stoeger conceives on the basis of their long-term fruitfulness and life-giving potential. He writes, “ ‘By their fruits shall you know them,’ is a perennially important principle.”64 In this way, theology empowers Christianity “to Ibid.,  24. Ilia Delio, Making All Things New: Catholicity, Cosmology, Consciousness (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2015), 191. 60 Delio, Emergent Christ, 156. 61 Such models include locating divine action in quantum indeterminacy or in chaos theory. These proposals are uncommon in Catholic theology but dominated the Divine Action Project. See William Stoeger, “What Contemporary Cosmology and Theology Have to Say to One Another,” CTNS Bulletin 9, no. 2 (March 1989): 1–15. 62 See William Stoeger, “Contemporary Cosmology and Its Implications for the Contemporary Science-Religion Dialogue,” in Physics, Philosophy, Theology: A Quest for Common Understanding, ed. Robert J. Russell, William R. Stoeger, and George V. Coyne (Vatican Observatory: Center for Theology and Natural Sciences, 1988), 233ff. 63 William Stoeger, “Reflections on the Interaction of My Knowledge of Cosmology and my Christian belief,” CTNS Bulletin 21, no. 2 (March 1, 2001): 14. 64 William Stoeger, “Our Experience of Knowing in Science and in Spirituality,” in The Laws of Nature, the Range of Human Knowledge, and Divine Action (Tarnow: Biblos, 1996), 13–14. I am working from Stoeger’s original manuscript. 58 59

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discern what belief or way of acting or living is in harmony with who we are and what reality is,”65 finding “something new, something fuller, something more lifegiving” in the encounter with the living God.66 Applying scientific insights to the question of divine action, Stoeger assumes a “weakly critical-realist stance” toward reality, which emphasizes the sciences’ ability to describe natural processes while also acknowledging their methodological and epistemological limits. On this basis, he distinguishes between “our ‘laws of nature,’ ” which provide limited descriptions—not prescriptions—of physical phenomena, and “the laws of nature as they actually function,” or natural processes as they are in se.67 He conceives of God’s action happening in and through the laws of nature, not as we observe them but as they actually function, such that God is “closer and more intimately present to creation than creation is to itself.”68 Stoeger’s model of divine action is a function of theology of creation, which reinterprets creatio ex nihilo and creatio continua in light of contemporary science. Like Lemaître, Stoeger holds that the big bang and cosmic evolutionary process possess an inviolable integrity of their own; they do not need “anything else” to operate. However, the big bang cannot answer a more fundamental philosophical question: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Therefore, Stoeger interprets creatio ex nihilo not as the “moment of creation” but as a description of the ontological dependence of all things on God.69 His interpretation of creatio ex nihilo has as its complement a robust notion of creatio continua, which envisions God as “permanently and totally” bound up with creation, sustaining it and seeking its flourishing and fulfillment.70 Here, primary-secondary causality enters the frame, describing how God’s creative action takes place. In keeping with his account of the laws of nature and theology of creation, Stoeger posits that creation as a whole is the “causal nexus” of divine action, as God—the primary cause and possibility of existence, acts by indwelling secondary causes—or the laws of nature—with life-giving love. As such, Stoeger aims to embrace the “formational and functional integrity” of the cosmos and “rules out a tinkering God who is constantly intervening in nature to effect what He/She intends,” while offering a deeply panentheistic view of God’s presence and action.71 On a practical level, Stoeger’s theology orbits around scientific accounts of “constitutive relationships,” which hold that all things are constituted by evolving relationships at every William Stoeger, “Is There Common Ground in Practice and Experience of Science and Religion?” Panel Presentation, Science and the Spiritual Quest Conference (Berkeley: Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, June 7–10, 1998), 3. 66 Stoeger, “Our Experience,” 11. 67 For a full treatment of this distinction, see William Stoeger, “Science, the Laws of Nature, and Divine Action,” in Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Cosmology and Biological Evolution, ed. Hilary D. Regan and Mark William Worthing (Adelaide: Australian Theological Forum, 2002). 68 William Stoeger, “Conceiving Divine Action in a Dynamic Universe,” in Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action: Twenty Years of Challenge and Progress (South Bend, IN: Notre Dame, 2008), 232. 69 William Stoeger, “Describing God’s Action in the World in Light of Scientific Knowledge of Reality,” in Chaos and Complexity, ed. Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy, and Arthur Peacocke (Vatican: Vatican Observatory, 1995), 246. 70 William Stoeger, “God and Time: The Action and Life of the Triune God in the World,” Theology Today 55, no. 3 (October 1998): 373. I would argue that this article contains Stoeger’s most comprehensive theological argument. 71 William Stoeger, “Cosmology and a Theology of Creation,” in Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Cosmology and Biological Evolution, ed. Hilary D. Regan and Mark Worthing (Adelaide: Australian Theological Forum, 2002), 10. I am working from Stoeger’s original text. 65

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level. “Everything we see, including ourselves, is made up of other things linked to one another in very special ways, according to the laws of nature.”72 Imagining the cosmos in this way, he concludes, imparts to theology a robust ecological dimension that offers resources for de-anthropocentrizing Christian thought and emphasizes that the Gospel message is, at its core, a message of life and flourishing for all creation.73

Msgr. Denis Edwards As Stoeger follows Lemaître, Australian theologian Denis Edwards (1943–2019) follows Stoeger on theology-science dialogue and primary-secondary causality. Yet his engagement with scripture and theology—with Rahner, Richard of St. Victor, and Athanasius in particular—and his pervasive pastoral and ecological orientation impart a distinctive flavor to his work. To wit, Edwards’s writings frequently begin with an account of life on our “garden planet.”74 But he imagines this planet embroiled in an encompassing socioecological crisis that touches every aspect of society, from politics to economics and gender.75 At the same time, he writes, we live within an age “exciting and full of promise” for fostering solidarity with creation,76 and his work aims to drive theology “beyond anthropocentrism to an ethics of intrinsic value.”77 Edwards grounds his theology in three insights from Rahner: that creatures co-constitute a community of life before the creator, that humanity is the cosmos become conscious of itself, and that evolutionary change is empowered by God from “within creatures” by the Spirit,78 whom he names “the immanent divine power of evolutionary emergence.”79 Building on this foundation, Edwards posits “a God of mutual relations, who is communion in love.”80 Imagining God in this way, he writes, conceives divine power as a kenotic “power-in-love … a relational power,” which renders God vulnerable to creaturely suffering and—in contrast to conceptions of God as a ruling monarch— reimagines God as “actively waiting upon finite creaturely processes, living with the constraints of [natural] processes, accompanying each creature in love, rejoicing in every emergence, suffering with every suffering creature, and promising to bring all to healing and fullness of life.”81 God’s vulnerability empowers creaturely autonomy and is fully revealed in the life of Jesus. Edwards then offers “an evolutionary Wisdom Christology,” which sees Jesus is both an evolutionary emergent and the eternal, creative wisdom of God.82 As an evolutionary emergent, “Jesus is part of this process, a product of the Big Bang, the formation of the Milky Way, the unfolding of our Solar System, the molding of the crust of the Ibid.,  2. Stoeger’s fullest statements on ecology come in an unpublished 2005 address given at a Catholic Earthcare Conference in Adelaide, Australia, entitled “Our Intimate Links with the Universe and Nature: The View from Cosmology and Astrobiology.” 74 Denis Edwards, Jesus and the Cosmos (New York: Paulist, 1991), 1. 75 See Denis Edwards, Jesus the Wisdom of God: An Ecological Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995), esp. Introduction and ­chapter 7. 76 Edwards, Cosmos, 19. 77 Edwards, Wisdom, 10. 78 Edwards, Cosmos, 22. 79 Denis Edwards, Ecology at the Heart of Faith (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2006), 37. 80 Denis Edwards, The God of Evolution: A Trinitarian Theology (New York: Paulist, 1999), 15. 81 Denis Edwards, How God Acts: Creation, Redemption, and Special Divine Action (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010), xiii. 82 Edwards, Evolution, 101. 72 73

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Earth, the development of life on the planet, and the emergence of consciousness.”83 As wisdom, Jesus unites God and creation and reveals God’s concern for a healing and liberating shalom that “embraces the body, health, sanity, relationships, community, and wholeness.”84 On this basis, Edwards develops Stoeger’s model of divine action in the laws of nature, in harmony with Lemaître’s “two paths” approach. While the cause of God’s greatest act—the resurrection of Jesus—remains a mystery at the level of physics, theologically it reveals “the inner meaning of creation,” namely the transformation and divinization of all things by the power of God working through nature.85 Edwards’s Christology culminates in a soteriology that interprets Athanasius’s theology of the Word and Wisdom in light of evolutionary biology, envisioning all creatures as participants in “the wide sense of transformation in Christ” and “communion in life of the Trinitarian God,” which extends to the ta panta of Col 1.86 The connection between evolution and divine Wisdom likewise leads Edwards to seek a more inclusive view of the imago Dei, as evolutionary history links image-bearing humans with predecessor species and, indeed, “all flesh” (Gen 9:15).87 At a practical level, he concludes, this vision fosters “ecological consciousness … empathy for and solidarity with all the life forms on our planet,”88 which—as Delio also states—reveals that “the human task of completing creation derives its meaning from the redemptive and divinizing will of God, revealed by Christ Jesus.”89 Jesus, then, unites the cosmos to God and reveals the way in which humans are called to a “cosmic praxis” for the common good of the whole universe, including terrestrial creatures and intelligent life yet to be encountered.90

Elizabeth A. Johnson, C.S.J. Like Stoeger and Edwards, theologian Elizabeth Johnson (1941–) assumes a dialogical model of science-theology interaction that is grounded in disciplinary difference and that aims to see theology enriched through engagement with scientific insights. So significant is this concern that Johnson argues that the “intellectual” and “moral integrity” of theology depend on its ability to engage scientific and ecological concerns. Making this point clear, she writes that “neglect of ‘the cosmos’ ” in theology “enfeebles theology in its basic task of interpreting the whole of reality in the light of faith,” and “blocks what should be theology’s powerful contribution to the religious praxis of justice and mercy for the threatened earth, so necessary at this moment of our planet’s unprecedented ecological crisis.”91 This necessitates “that we just think through a new theology of creation, but

Edwards, Cosmos, 66. Edwards, How God Acts, 19. 85 Ibid.,  93. 86 Denis Edwards, “The Redemption of Animals in an Incarnational Theology,” in Creaturely Theology: On God, Humans and Other Animals, ed. Celia Deane-Drummond and David Clough (London: SCM Press, 2009), 81. 87 See Denis Edwards, “Humans, Chimps, and Bonobos: Toward and Inclusive View of the Human as Bearing the Image of God,” in Turning to the Heavens and the Earth: Theological Reflections on a Cosmological Conversion, ed. Julia Brumbaugh and Natalia Imperatori-Lee (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2016), 7–25. 88 Edwards, Evolution, 128. 89 Edwards, Cosmos, 97. 90 Ibid., 115; Edwards, Wisdom, 69. 91 Elizabeth Johnson, “Turn to the Heavens and the Earth: Retrieval of the Cosmos in Theology,” Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America 51 (1996): 1. 83 84

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that cosmology be a framework within which all theological topics be rethought and a substantive partner in theological interpretation.”92 Johnson’s writings on divine action and theology of creation—or ecological theology— operationalize these methodological concerns. Like Edwards and Stoeger, Johnson assumes the Aristotelian-Thomistic view of divine action by primary-secondary causality, with a distinctive focus on the compatibility of divine providence with the operation of chance in quantum theory, chaos theory, and evolution. Yet, she uniquely grounds her model of divine action in a “vigorous pneumatology,” wherein the Spirit “embraces the material root of existence and its endless new potential, empowering the cosmic process” by drawing it into a participatory concursus with “the livingness of the One who is sheer, exuberant aliveness.”93 As such, Johnson’s account of divine action—like Stoeger’s—is grounded in the idea that if the cosmos possesses an integrity of its own, which rules out a “tinkering” ruler-God who directs nature toward an end, “then faith can affirm that God works not only through the deep regularities of the laws of nature but also through chance occurrence which has its own, genuinely random integrity.”94 On this basis, Johnson extends Niels Gregersen’s notion of Deep Incarnation to posit “Deep Resurrection” as a sacrament of cosmic salvation. Deep Incarnation imagines Jesus—the “earthling whose blood held iron made in exploding stars and whose genetic code made him kin to the whole community of life that descended from common ancestors in the ancient seas”—as taking on sarx, or “all flesh,” to bring the suffering of all creatures before the living God.95 But the story does not end there. For if the Incarnation embraces the suffering of all flesh, Johnson concludes, the resurrection proclaims salvation to the whole creation. She writes, “Looking back and ahead from the cross, theology can posit divine presence to all suffering and dying creatures that accompanies them knowingly in their pain.”96 In practice, Johnson’s account of divine solidarity with suffering creation demands that humans respect and restore creation, and guard it against destruction. Humanity is, then, charged by the Spirit to foster the flourishing that flows from the livingness of God. Moreover, Johnson’s account of Christ’s cosmic significance challenges Christians to imagine “creeping things” (Gen 1:24) and humans as kin and copartners in a wondrous “community of creation” that mirrors the dynamism of Trinitarian life.97 Conceiving human-earth relations in this way empowers humans to dismantle the androcentric biases that undergird anthropocentric views, toward the flourishing of all creation. In Johnson’s words, “The vision motivating such theology is that of a flourishing humanity on a thriving earth, both together a sacrament of the glory of God.”98

Celia Deane-Drummond Like other thinkers in the trajectory set by Lemaître, Celia Deane-Drummond (1956–) brings theological claims into dialogue with science with a unique focus on evolution, Ibid.,  14. Elizabeth Johnson, Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 17; Elizabeth Johnson, Women, Earth, and Creator Spirit (New York: Paulist Press, 1993), 58; Elizabeth Johnson, “Does God Play Dice? Divine Providence and Chance,” Theological Studies 57 (1996): 11. 94 Johnson, “Does God,” 15. 95 Elizabeth Johnson, Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 142. 96 Johnson, Ask, 209. 97 Johnson, Women, Earth, 31. 98 Johnson, “Turn,” 12. 92 93

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ethology, and anthropology. Deane-Drummond likewise eschews comprehensive syntheses of science and faith, writing that theologians must preserve an “appropriate distance between them inasmuch as both have their own proper areas of discourse that do not always connect.”99 Further, more than any other thinker engaged in theology-science dialogue, Deane-Drummond attends to the ethical and moral implications of theology for scientific research. For example, while—like Delio—she attends to the ways in which technology and transhumanism condition contemporary society, her reach extends further, to the ethics of GMO farming, eugenics, insurance claims, biotechnology, and biological warfare, while also expressing concerns about the ways that socioeconomic and political forces act upon the scientific enterprise in the Anthropocene.100 Thus, she argues for “a reassessment of scientific knowing … [and] a reclamation of a more integrated approach to our understanding that includes goodness and knowledge in wisdom.”101 Indeed, wisdom provides the integrating center of Deane-Drummond’s model of science-theology dialogue, and she sees both disciplines oriented toward wisdom in distinctive ways. She writes, “Wisdom is the dynamic interwovenness of God, the whole cosmos and humanity … the means through which we discover how far our purposes are matched with those of God.”102 For theology, pursuing Wisdom elicits a deeper understanding of the mystery of God’s presence in creation; Wisdom likewise provides a resource that empowers science to formulate ethics “in tune with global concerns” and “recover its original intention to work for the common good.”103 Despite methodological and practical resonances with Stoeger, Edwards, and Johnson, Deane-Drummond draws on theological sources quite different from the thinkers considered above. For example, while acknowledging their influence, she explicitly parts ways with Rahner and Teilhard on various bases—most notably the anthropocentric orientation she observes in their thought104—and grounds her writings in the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar, Aquinas, and Orthodox theologian Sergei Bulgakov. Although she expresses concerns about Balthasar’s own anthropocentrism, his discussions of gender, his embrace of magisterial theology, and his lack of engagement with biological and evolutionary science, she finds the basis for her “cosmic Christology” and theology of creation in Balthasar’s category of “theodrama.”105 For Deane-Drummond, theodrama offers an alternative to the “narrative approaches” of Teilhard and Thomas Berry that is better suited to scientific accounts of punctuated equilibrium, constraint, and contingency.106 Moreover, she argues, theodrama offers an aesthetics capable of connecting the beauty of Christ’s life to creation and so extends the significance of his suffering and death to the cruciform reality of evolutionary suffering in a drama “motivated by the love of God for the world.”107 Theodrama provides a crucial

Celia Deane-Drummond, Christ and Evolution: Wonder and Wisdom (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2009), xviii. 100 For Deane-Drummond’s treatment of the sciences, see especially the introduction to Creation through Wisdom: Theology and the New Biology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000). See Deane-Drummond, The Wisdom of the Liminal, for her discussion of the Anthropocene, a unique aspect of her approach. 101 Deane-Drummond, Creation, 2. 102 Ibid., 29. 103 Deane-Drummond, Creation, 15. Cf. ibid., 67ff. 104 See Deane-Drummond, Liminal, 5ff. 105 Deane-Drummond, Christ, 36. 106 See ibid., xv. 107 Ibid., 126. 99

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reminder that humans always stand within the drama of the God-world relationship, alongside creatures of infinite variety. Building on this foundation, Deane-Drummond further employs theodrama to construct a theological anthropology that is grounded in an “embedded understanding of the human rooted through millennia of evolutionary living in a common creaturely world” and oriented toward a “communitarian understanding of human being and becoming.”108 Here, she brings evolutionary biology and anthropology to bear on theological conceptions of the human person—especially those found in Aquinas, which often correspond in surprising ways with contemporary science—to argue that human “being” emerges as humans “[navigate] boundary relationships with each other … including relationships with other species.”109 Thus, scientific studies of animal cooperation, communication, virtue, niche construction, and so on, demonstrate how “liminal” interactions between species deepen our understanding of what it means to be human in relation to and in harmony with other creatures. In all this, Deane-Drummond’s theodramatic approach imagines evolutionary history as a “performance” with humans “caught up in a shared drama with other species and orientated toward God’s purposes for history.”110 At the level of praxis, Deane-Drummond’s theology elicits a more “inclusive” model of relations between humans and otherkind, which gives greater “moral attention to other species, especially those animal kinds that can be regarded as our kin.”111 When applied to conservation and ecological preservation, such a vision fosters the Wisdom to navigate the challenges of the Anthropocene, understanding more deeply our impacts on the vast drama of life in which we are embedded, in hopes that all things “will be transformed for the greater glory of God.”112

CONCLUSION Since the days of Teilhard and Lemaître, Catholic theologians have embraced the gifts and challenges presented by contemporary scientific perspectives on the cosmos. Grateful for the contributions of these theologians, I conclude with two brief reflections on the future of field. First, given the pressing socioecological concerns of the Anthropocene and the global impact of climate change, ecology must not be treated as a separate or secondary science, as has often been the case in theology-science dialogue.113 Discussing God’s relation to and action in the world without attending to the practical significance of that relationship seems like a grave error, especially in light of earth’s threatened state. After all, ecology is itself a science. For this reason, I believe the widespread distinction between “theology and science” and “ecological theology”—the latter often being relegated to a lower position in the conversation—must be rethought, and theologians must give explicit attention to earth and its creatures, especially insofar as their well-being intersects with other sociohistorical and political concerns. James Cone makes this point clearly: “The logic that led to slavery and segregation in the Americas, colonization and Deane-Drummond, Liminal, 2–3. Ibid., 4. 110 Ibid., 11. 111 Celia Deane-Drummond, “Are Animals Moral? Taking Soundings Through Vice, Virtue, Conscience, and Imago Dei,” in Creaturely Theology: On God, Humans, and Other Animals, ed. Celia Deane-Drummond and David Clough (London: SCM Press, 2009), 210. 112 Deane-Drummond, Liminal, 317. 113 Notably, the Divine Action Project contains little to no mention of ecological concerns. 108 109

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Apartheid in Africa, and the rule of white supremacy throughout the world is the same one that leads to the exploitation of animals and the ravaging of nature.”114 This survey has already shown how Catholic theologians integrate ecological considerations into their discussions of theology and science; I propose that present and future theologians fully embrace this fact and its importance at this time in the history of our planet. Second, while hope is central to the Christian faith, as Teilhard argues, and theology can never embrace accounts of cosmic dissolution that empty evolutionary history of meaning, I have two concerns about theological approaches that embrace Teilhard’s “Omega” vision. First, more precise models of the universe will reveal new information about the physical end of the cosmos. Although the Teilhardian account of Omega goes far beyond physical ends, I fear that teleological narratives may ultimately prove counterproductive to the credibility of Christian thought. Second, and more importantly, I am concerned about the power dynamics at play in discussions of an Omega-future. Whose future is it, and what is the significance of that future for the creatures who are absent from Teilhard’s vision? Can humans avoid harming societies and ecosystems as they steer evolution forward? Delio’s appeals to Raimon Panikkar and her efforts to de-westernize Christianity are helpful in this regard, but given Teilhard’s comments on race and eugenics, I wonder whether Christianity can ever employ teleological narratives without implicitly invoking the legacy of violence that has been wrought in the name of Christ. For these reasons, I find the approaches in Lemaître’s trajectory more promising, both in their more direct engagement with science and in their avoidance of metascientific narratives of progress. No matter where they stand in the field, I find hope in the future, as the next generation of Catholic thinkers takes up the change issued by John Paul II and carries the flame of these great thinkers into the twenty-first century, reimagining the mysteries of reality and the great Mystery of God in a world made ever new by scientific investigation.

James H. Cone, “Whose Earth Is It, Anyway?” in Earth Habitat: Eco-Injustice and the Church’s Response, ed. Dieter Hessel and Larry Rasmussen (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001), 23. 114

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Twentieth- and Twenty-FirstCentury Orthodox Voices on Nature and Science ELIZABETH THEOKRITOFF AND CHRISTOPHER C. KNIGHT

Theology in the Eastern Orthodox Church is seen less as a constructive exercise than as an expression of the living tradition of the Church. “Tradition” includes not only the Scriptures but also the writings of the church Fathers (usually reckoned as up to the fourteenth century), as well as liturgical texts and practices. Expressing this tradition in contemporary terms and bringing it to bear on questions that the Fathers could not have dreamed of requires, of course, wisdom and discernment, and it is often a matter of debate what constitutes valid extrapolation from patristic teaching. Important aspects of patristic thinking, such as the unfolding of Trinitarian perspectives in the fourth century, are part of the heritage of both Eastern and Western Christians. As a result, the Orthodox Tradition is understood to include much of the Western Christian thinking of the period prior to 1054, when the schism between East and West occurred. However, even before this date, different perspectives had arisen in the thinking of the two sides. Important aspects of earlier Western theology, such as the Augustinian understandings of original sin and of the relationship between grace and nature, had little impact in the Christian East, where different perspectives were dominant. Since the schism, Orthodox theology has been influenced by theological developments in the West only for relatively brief periods, and these influences have had little lasting impact. Detailed knowledge of Western theological thinking has been uncommon among Orthodox scholars, and this remains true even now, not least among those involved in the debate about the relationship between theology and science. Historically, the relationship between Orthodoxy and science was a complex one even in the late antique and medieval periods. The early Alexandrian and Antiochene methods of interpreting scripture led to different understandings of science both in the late antique period and later, while in the late medieval and early modern periods, hesychasm sometimes constituted a further complicating factor. Since the rise of modern science, this complexity has, if anything, been exacerbated.1 The only general survey of this historical background is given in Efthymios Nicolaidis, Science and Eastern Orthodoxy: From the Greek Fathers to the Age of Globalization (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011). However, although Nicolaidis does indicate something of the way in which the Russian church has often opposed “scientific culture, whether Byzantine or otherwise” (140), he frankly recognizes that his book 1

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RUSSIAN RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY The beginnings of an approach to modern science rooted in the Orthodox tradition can be traced back to the Russian religious philosophy of the nineteenth century. This is paradoxical in that the originator of this movement, Vladimir Soloviev (1853–1900), was largely inspired by Western philosophical and mystical ideas. But his more theologically inclined successors Pavel Florensky and Sergei Bulgakov, both of whom became priests, began the work of rediscovering in the Eastern Christian tradition the roots of his ideas of the unity of all things in God and the destiny of matter to be transformed. Much of their thinking is still widely considered idiosyncratic, especially their signature doctrine of the divine wisdom in creation (sophiology). Yet, consciously or otherwise, many contemporary Orthodox writers on science and ecology are indebted to this school of thought because of its quest for a theology of material creation and its recognition that such a theology needs to draw on, and draw in, the scientific understanding of the world. Florensky, one of the world’s last Renaissance men, was a man of extraordinary brilliance in mathematics, physics, and electrical engineering, an inventor as well as a speculative theologian. It was through a fascination with the natural world that he came to theology, but from a young age he had a seamlessly integrated approach to the world in which the desire to observe and measure and dissect went hand in hand with a longing “to get to know that world which is by definition unknowable, not by breaking its mysteries, but by observing it on the quiet.”2 At the dawn of the twentieth century, Florensky was facing some of the arguments still rehearsed today about religion as supposedly inimical to scientific investigation; and he was a strong proponent of the idea that science is actually made possible by monotheism and especially Christianity, which affirms the “law-like unity of creation” and its “genuine reality.” He asserts strikingly that the dogma of the Holy Trinity “serves as the rule for the development of science,” inasmuch as the diversity and independent being of the world imply its creation by a God who is love.3 Florensky makes a convincing case that an integral vision of the ground-reasonholiness of creation, and hence by extension of the way to approach these aspects, is firmly grounded in the tradition of the church Fathers and spiritual writers. This is a vision shared by many Orthodox ecological writers, but Florensky’s writings have not hitherto been a major influence on those engaged in the theology-science dialogue. His work was cut short by the Russian revolution and was largely inaccessible for much of the twentieth century. This helps explain why despite that promising start, a century later there is still no consensus among Eastern Orthodox Christians about how to formulate a contemporary theological response to the sciences of our time. Intellectual ferment in this area, characteristic of Western Christianity for several generations, has been rare in Orthodox circles until relatively recently. Coupled with sociological factors that vary from region to region,4 this rarity means that a wide spectrum of views exists. largely neglects the Slavic strand of Orthodox thinking, and a comparable study of this Slavic history is much needed. 2 Avril Pyman, Pavel Florensky: A Quiet Genius (New York: Continuum, 2010), 8. 3 Fr. Pavel Florensky, The Pillar and Ground of the Truth, trans. B. Jakim (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 202–3. 4 Many Orthodox Christians lived until very recently in situations in which they were inevitably influenced by the need to react against the Marxist-Leninist version of atheism, with its supposed support from the sciences. This has meant that, even after the downfall of that ideology in their countries, many of them have tended, almost instinctively, to see science and atheism as having an intrinsic connection. In addition, at least some influential Orthodox in the West have developed a similar attitude for reasons that are susceptible to comparable

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CONFLICT OR CONSONANCE? These views can be mapped roughly in terms of Ian Barbour’s now classic categories of conflict, independence, dialogue, and integration.5 However, the Orthodox versions of these views sometimes differ considerably from any of their Western Christian equivalents. For example, while a number of essentially conflict-orientated and anti-scientific attitudes are to be found, these only rarely arise from the kind of biblical literalism that is at the heart of their equivalent in Western theological circles. Even though the Western historical-critical approach to scripture has had relatively little impact in the Orthodox world, scriptural interpretation in that world is strongly influenced by the way in which theologians of the patristic period—especially those in the Alexandrian tradition— often read the Old Testament scriptures using an allegorical rather than a literal mode of interpretation. This means, for example, that the creation accounts in Genesis are not usually seen by Orthodox Christians in the way they are by those Protestant fundamentalists who insist that they provide literal, “scientific” truths about the way in which the cosmos came into being.6 The motivations for taking a critical attitude to scientific theory are not uniform in the Orthodox world. The attitude of Philip Sherrard,7 for example, seems to be based largely on his failure to perceive any validity in the distinctions commonly made between technology and pure science and between science and scientism. For Seraphim Rose,8 by contrast, it is a kind of fundamentalism in relation to selected strands of the patristic literature that is at the heart of his concerns.9 In practice, these two sets of objections often coalesce in critical reactions to science. Because of the kind of theological anthropology that is characteristic of Orthodoxy, it is often the evolutionary emergence of humanity that is the chief focus in the disquiet that some Orthodox express in relation to science. Already in the 1930s, Bulgakov made a serious and largely ignored attempt to interpret the doctrine of creation in a way that takes evolution seriously, while asserting robustly that science cannot tell the whole story. Recognizing that interpretation of the Fall story is the greatest stumbling block, he consigns it to “meta-history.” He sees the evolutionary process “not as caprices of chance but as … the actualisation of the prototypes of the world.” The “struggle for existence” in nature is to be seen as a sign of the limited character of the world, its “relative imperfection,” as the “world soul” gropes to fulfill the plan of its being. Perhaps most interestingly, he distinguishes the biological evolution of “the animal species Homo sapiens” from the divine image and inbreathing bestowed by God on the individual of that species “capable and worthy of becoming the vessel for the human spirit.”10

sociological analysis. Especially if reacting against the recent “liberalization” of many of the mainstream Western forms of Christianity, they too may tend to associate science with the ideologies of those they perceive to be the enemies or diluters of faith. 5 Ian G. Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science: The Gifford Lectures 1989–1991, Volume 1 (London: SCM, 1990), 1–30. 6 An exception to this statement is to be found among a small number of Orthodox influenced by Protestant fundamentalism, but this is a significant factor mainly in North America. 7 E.g., Philip Sherrard, Human Image: World Image—The Death and Resurrection of Sacred Cosmology (Ipswich: Golgonooza, 1992). 8 Seraphim Rose, Genesis, Creation, and Early Man (Platina: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2000). 9 This attitude that has been questioned from within the Orthodox community in George Theokritoff and Elizabeth Theokritoff, “Genesis and Creation: Towards a Debate,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 26 (2002): 365–90. 10 Sergius Bulgakov, Bride of the Lamb (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 164–80.

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As can be seen, Bulgakov was not afraid of using untraditional language and seemed less concerned than most Orthodox writers about preserving the expressions used by the church Fathers. More recently, some leading Orthodox patristic scholars have again explored ways of making theological sense of human evolution (though without engaging with the details of evolutionary theory). Andrew Louth, for example, has commented that Maximus (or Maximos) the Confessor—one of the most influential patristic authors in modern Orthodox thinking—assumes, with all his contemporaries, that natures are fixed. Nevertheless, he goes on, Maximus’s thought is still dynamic enough to be implicitly open “to the idea of evolution … as a way of expressing God’s providence” and that his cosmic vision can “be re-thought in terms of modern science.”11 Panayiotis Nellas, in a similar vein, has commented that, for patristic writers, “the essence of man is not found in the matter from which he was created but in the archetype [the incarnate Logos] on the basis of which he was formed and towards which he tends.” It is precisely for this reason, he goes on, that for the Orthodox understanding of creation, “the theory of evolution does not create a problem … because the archetype is that which organizes, seals and gives shape to matter, and which simultaneously attracts it towards itself.”12 Such perspectives are echoed also in a more recent generation of Orthodox patristic scholars, such as Doru Costache;13 and the traditional understanding of the fall of man and its cosmic effects have been questioned by theologians such as Christos Yannaras and Paul Ladouceur.14 Such approaches are not yet widely influential, however, and the conflict position is still not uncommon.

INDEPENDENCE, DIALOGUE, AND INTEGRATION However, the conflict view is probably less common in the Orthodox community than is a tendency to assume or argue for independence.15 This latter approach leads to an implicit (and sometimes explicit) denial of the validity of the mainstream exploration of the relationship between science and theology that has taken place among Western Christians over the last half century. Of the exponents of this kind of position, Christos Yannaras, in some of his work on postmodern metaphysics, perhaps represents the most sophisticated position from a philosophical perspective. It is, however, Alexei Nesteruk who presents the most interesting argument from the perspective of one who (as a cosmologist) knows the sciences from the inside. While affirming science as a legitimate expression of the human spirit, he tends to bypass questions about truth in science and theology, and about the consonance or dissonance between them, by interpreting both in terms of the philosophical approach known as phenomenology. Major themes in Andrew Louth, “The Cosmic Vision of Saint Maximus the Confessor,” in In Whom We Live and Move and Have our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God’s Presence in a Scientific World, ed. Philip Clayton and Arthur Peacocke (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 189. 12 Panayiotis Nellas, Deification in Christ: Orthodox Perspectives on the Nature of the Human Person, trans. Norman Russell (Crestwood, IL: St.Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997), 33. 13 See, e.g., Doru Costache, “The Orthodox Doctrine of Creation in the Age of Science,” Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies 2 (2019): 43–64. 14 Christos Yannaras, The Enigma of Evil (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2012); Paul Ladouceur, “Evolution and Genesis 2–3: The Decline and Fall of Adam and Eve,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 57, no. 1 (2013): 135–76. 15 E.g., the comments in John Breck, “Orthodox Bioethics in the Encounter Between Science and Religion,” in Science and the Eastern Orthodox Church, ed. Daniel Buxhoeveden and Gayle Woloschak (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 119–30. 11

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Orthodox theological thought can, he claims, be incorporated in this approach,16 and his views have been influential. A more positive assessment of the possibility of fruitful interaction between science and Orthodox theology can be found in the thinking of a number of scholars whose approaches often straddle the division between dialogue and integration as set out by Barbour. Gayle Woloschak, for example, a professor of radiation oncology who also engages in theological teaching on the topic of science and theology, has both defended evolution in a theological context and done much to try to ensure that Orthodox ethical teaching is properly informed by scientific insights.17 In a comparable way, Archbishop Lazar Puhalo, while not attempting any systematic analysis of the interaction of science and theology, has written a number of insightful short theological studies that take up scientific perspectives.18 Within this category, the nearest approach to dialogue—as Barbour understands that term—is perhaps Stoyan Tanev’s exploration of the concept of energy in physics and in Orthodox theology.19 However, in a number of ways his approach partially reflects the integrationist spirit of Pavel Florensky, whose work he discusses only briefly, his main focus being on the relevant work of Georges Florovsky and Serge Bulgakov. While starting with what may seem to be a “boundary question,” as Barbour understands that term, Tanev moves beyond that question to provide an interesting basis for further research. Perhaps the most obviously integrationist approach is that encouraged by Basarab Nicolescu, who has focused on essentially philosophical issues, taking bold and controversial strides to formulate a “transdisciplinary” approach that affects not only the science-theology dialogue but also every area of human thought.20 In doing this, he attempts to delineate a framework in which the usual concept of interdisciplinarity is set aside in favor of a notion of the interaction of disciplines in which the unity of knowledge—often implicitly present in Orthodox thought—is explicitly explored.21 Whether his particular version of this approach fully recognizes the distinctiveness and the experiential basis of theology has, however, sometimes been questioned. Christopher Knight is perhaps the Orthodox author who has most closely engaged with the Western science-theology dialogue, arguing that the legitimate questions enunciated

Alexei Nesteruk, The Universe as Communion: Towards a Neo-Patristic Synthesis of Theology and Science (London: T&T Clark, 2008). 17 See, e.g., Gayle E. Woloschak, Faith, Science, Mystery (Alhambra, CA: Sebastian, 2018). 18 See, e.g., Archbishop Lazar Puhalo, The Creation and Fall (Dewdney, B.C.: Synaxis Press, 1986); The Evidence of Things Not Seen (Dewdney, B.C.: Synaxis Press, 2007); On the Neurobiology of Sin (Dewdney, B.C.: Synaxis Press, 2010). 19 Stoyan Tanev, Energy in Orthodox Theology and Physics: From Controversy to Encounter (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2017). 20 Basarab Nicolescu, Manifesto of Transdisciplinarity (New York: State University of New York Press, 1992). The term transdisciplinarity seems to have been first proposed by the psychologist Jean Piaget in 1970. He defined it in terms of an approach that is not limited (as interdisciplinarity usually is) to recognizing the interactions or reciprocities between specialized fields of research. Rather, it locates these links inside a total system without stable boundaries between the disciplines. See Léo Apostel, Guy Berger, Asa Briggs, and Guy Michaud, eds., Interdisciplinarity: Problems of Teaching and Research in Universities (Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 1972), 144. Nicolescu’s prescriptions for and understanding of transdisciplinary work represent pioneering work that may be modified in future, and by no means all of the Orthodox approaches that may be seen as transdisciplinary are based on his particular understanding. 21 The unity of knowledge associated with transdisciplinarity is, it should be noted, based on an understanding very different to that involved in the reductionistic use of this concept associated with the imperialistic claims about scientific method set out in Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (New York: Knopf, 1998). 16

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by participants in that dialogue can be answered more satisfactorily when explored in terms of the Orthodox Tradition than they have been when examined in a purely Western context.22 He and some of these other Orthodox authors have focused in their work on aspects of the Orthodox theology of creation23 that are often little known among Western scholars. One such is the way in which the relationship between grace and nature is seen by Orthodox Christians. As Vladimir Lossky has noted, the Orthodox Tradition “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.”24 A related issue here is the Orthodox understanding of the Fall, which is not the Augustinian one that has so strongly affected many strands of Western theology. Here, especially in its attitude toward natural theology, Orthodoxy has a strong sense that a distinction must be made between the discursive rational faculty (dianoia in Greek) and the intuitive faculty (nous).25 This latter faculty, although seen as partially eclipsed in fallen humanity, is seen as being—when cleansed by divine grace through ascetic effort—the basis of all true theology.

ORTHODOX PANENTHEISM Much of the Orthodox approach to science relates to an essentially panentheistic understanding of the relationship between God and the creation. Orthodox theology has, in two complementary ways, avoided the Western tendency either to separate God and the world or else to fall into pantheism by making no proper distinction between them.26 One of these ways is to be found in embryonic form in the writings of Clement of Alexandria and of Basil the Great, but it was developed most systematically in the much later work of Gregory Palamas. This work makes a distinction between God’s transcendent essence (ousia) and his immanent energies or operations (energeiai). As Kallistos Ware has put it, “In his essence God is 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.”27 The second panentheistic approach to be found in Orthodoxy was developed much earlier than the time of Palamas, in the thinking of Maximus the Confessor. Maximus stresses the way in which the divine Logos (spoken of in the prologue of the fourth gospel)

Christopher C. Knight, The God of Nature: Incarnation and Contemporary Science (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007). 23 A brief account of this theology of creation is given in Elizabeth Theokritoff, “Creator and Creation,” in The Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Christian Theology, ed. Mary B. Cunningham and Elizabeth Theokritoff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 63–77. 24 Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1957), 101. 25 Christopher C. Knight, “Natural Theology and the Eastern Orthodox Tradition,” in The Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology, ed. Russell Re Manning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 213–26. 26 The Orthodox panentheistic vision is very different to the view of mainstream Western Christian philosophical theism, which has tended to assume a strict separation between God and the world. In the late medieval period, the predominant Western “substance” metaphysics effectively forbade any kind of panentheism, while later attempts to move away from the resulting notion of separation tended to lead—as in the work of Spinoza—to a kind of pantheism in which the world and God were simply identified with one another. See the comments in Philip Clayton, “Panentheism in Metaphysical and Scientific Perspective” in In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being, ed. Clayton and Peacocke, 75–84. 27 Kallistos Ware, Bishop of Diokleia, “God Immanent yet Transcendent: The Divine Energies according to Saint Gregory Palamas,” in In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being, ed. Clayton and Peacocke, 160. 22

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is in some sense present in what he calls of the logoi of created things. As Ware has put it, these logoi are described by St. Maximus “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 ‘predetermination’ or ‘preconception’ concerning that thing—they are not created but uncreated.” Maximus’s thought here, Ware explains, is based on the notion that “Christ, the Creator Logos has implanted in every created thing a characteristic logos, a ‘thought’ or ‘word’ which is God’s intention for that thing, its inner essence, that which makes it distinctively itself and at the same time draws it towards the divine realm.”28

DIVINE ACTION The view expressed in this last phrase of the inbuilt tendency of the cosmos to develop toward its eschatological state is seen in Christopher Knight’s work as significant for understanding God’s action as Creator.29 What he calls Maximus’s teleologicalchristological understanding of the cosmos is, he argues, clarified by the way in which scientific insights related to the anthropic cosmological principle and the notion of convergent evolution may be interpreted in terms of the teleological aspect of the logoi. Knight also sees Orthodoxy as having a second major contribution to make to understanding divine action. This is in terms of the understanding of miracles that is to be found in some Orthodox writers. Here the focus is on the eschatological state of the cosmos, which is seen as proleptically manifested in miraculous events. Because they manifest the eschatological state, there is a sense, he argues, in which these events are not “supernatural,” in the Western sense of that term, but are part of the “natural” functioning of the cosmos as it is when it fully reflects the purposes of God. Indeed, he has suggested that the Orthodox approach may, because of this, be seen as a form of theistic naturalism in which naturalism as usually understood is replaced by an “enhanced” naturalism in which all events may, in causal terms, be attributed to the logoi of created things. Only in a low-level form, he suggests, are these logoi manifested as the laws of nature that are susceptible to scientific investigation. This approach has been seen by Sarah Lane Ritchie as a component of a “theological turn” that has taken place in twenty-first-century discussions of divine action within the science-theology dialogue. In this development, which has Thomist and Pentecostalist components as well as an Orthodox one, there is a reaction against the metaphysical assumptions inherent in the “causal joint” approach that was previously predominant in discussions of that action.30 It is worthy of notice that Orthodox literature tends to make less use of the distinction between natural and supernatural than it does of the distinction between the uncreated and the created, this latter category including entities such as angels, which in Western thinking are thought of as supernatural. This reflects the Orthodox stress on what Elizabeth Theokritoff has called “solidarity in createdness,” which takes up the way in which Orthodox theology stresses Ibid. Vladimir Lossky, e.g., in his book The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (1957), notes that for the Eastern tradition, the world, “created in order that it might be deified, is dynamic, tending always towards its final end, predestined in the ‘thought-wills’ ” (101). 30 Sarah Lane Ritchie, “Dancing Around the Causal Joint: Challenging The Theological Turn in Divine Action Theories,” Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 52 (2017): 361–79. This paper is to be expanded in Divine Action and the Human Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). 28 29

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that it is “for the sake of the whole creation that man the microcosm receives the divine inbreathing, so that nothing in creation should be deprived of a share in communion with God.” This sense of solidarity in createdness has, Theokritoff goes on to note, “remained a leitmotif in Eastern Christian theology.”31

PSYCHOLOGY Because of the long-standing interest among Orthodox in spiritual direction, an interest in modern psychology, especially in its psychoanalytic form, has been characteristic of one important strand of thinking. This has, however, been controversial, since there have been a number of conflicting answers to the question of whether psychoanalytical concepts can be mapped onto the more traditional ones developed in the Christian ascetic tradition. The Eastern Christian “science of the soul” is represented in a vigorous living tradition of spiritual guidance and increasingly well known from the Philokalia,32 an anthology of spiritual writings that has extremely high status throughout the Orthodox world. Perhaps the most nuanced view of the relationship between the insights of Orthodox theology and modern psychological models is to be found in the work of Nikolaos Loudovikos.33

THEOLOGY AND ECOLOGY Beginnings In studies of the relationship between theology and the sciences, it has perhaps only been in the field of ecological theology that Orthodoxy has developed a high profile among Western Christians. On the popular level, this has been largely due to the impact of ecological statements and initiatives by the so-called Green Patriarch, Bartholomew of Constantinople. However, apart from some awareness of the writings of John Zizioulas and the adoption of the notion of humans as “priests of creation” by some Western Christians, the theological basis of Orthodox perspectives in this area has not been widely appreciated. Theological ecology has the potential to be a prime example of science and theology intersecting, and we shall note some writings where this does happen. In many Orthodox writers and homilists, however, we see nothing of the sort. Science is confined to the role of messenger, conveying the almost unremitting bad news about the state of the earth and explaining the effects of human behavior on the environment. Earlier Christian “ecological” thinking places the stress on human responsibility; and among Orthodox writers of the 1970s and 1980s, the primary question concerns the legitimacy and limits of human “dominion” over the earth, specifically as manifested in modern technology. Here, Orthodox theologians look to the paradigms of the Eucharistic offering, for which

heokritoff, “Creator and Creation,” 65. T The Philokalia is an anthology of writings from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries by masters of the Orthodox spiritual tradition, compiled in the eighteenth century. The most complete English translation is: G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware, eds. and trans., The Philokalia, The Complete Text compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth (London: Faber and Faber, 1979 (vol. 1); 1981 (vol. 2); 1984 (vol. 3); 1994 (vol. 4); vol. 5 forthcoming). 33 Much of Loudovikos’s writing on this topic is in Greek, but some of his early thoughts are available in English in: Nikolaos Loudovikos, “Existential Psychology: Modern Psychology and the Destiny of Theology,” in Orthodox Theology and the Sciences: Glorifying God in His Marvelous Works, ed. George D. Dragas, Pavel Pavlov, and Stoyan Tanev (Columbia, MO: Newrome, 2016), 108–19. 31 32

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the natural world is shaped into bread and wine, and of the making of icons to affirm human use and transformation of “nature” but also to qualify the spirit in which it is to be undertaken.34 There is typically a strong affirmation in principle of scientific research as a human enterprise: as Paul Evdokimov writes in 1965, “a scientist bent over the disintegration of atoms may reflect on the eucharistic integration of nature into the risen body of Christ. The ‘Jesus prayer’ will naturally come to purify his vision, so that he may perceive the ‘flame of things’ in the very matter of the world.”35 Nevertheless, what has been much slower in coming is a recognition that the interaction between faith and science is two-way: that the very way we speak theologically about creation and man’s role in it needs to be informed, and can be enriched, by a scientific understanding of the world. While a theological focus on the material world has had a place in Orthodox thinking since the nineteenth century, as we have seen, the encounter with contemporary environmental issues came initially through the World Council of Churches (WCC). It is no coincidence that the most prominent Orthodox voice on these issues in the 1970s and 1980s was a long-standing Central Committee member and sometime president of the WCC, Metropolitan Paulos (Varghese) Mar Gregorios of the Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church. Mar Gregorios was an adventurous and idiosyncratic thinker who was happy mixing political philosophy with theology, but many of his insights remain unparalleled. Like others of his time—the great Romanian theologian Fr. Dumitru Staniloae being a prime example—Mar Gregorios evinces what seems today a rather naive optimism about technological “mastery” of the world. But with a clarity and consistency rarely found in later writers, he demonstrates the full implications of replacing the modern juxtaposition of “man and nature” with the traditional Christian language of “creation” in contradistinction to God.36 Man’s unique role is a role within, not vis-à-vis, creation. Mar Gregorios is one of the first to use the image of “priest” for man’s role in creation, precisely because the priest is an integral part of that which he represents.37 He is far more sensitive to the communal implications of the eucharistic metaphor than most of those who repeat the “priest of creation” formula today. For him, human affairs including “sciencetechnology, political economy and value choices” are part of creation’s self-offering to the Creator. Indeed, in the spirit of the eucharistic prayer “Thine own of Thine own we offer …,” “all human activity, indeed all the dynamism and vitality in the created order” is to be understood as God’s own creativity. Mar Gregorios is quite explicit: “Art and science, philosophy and faith are all from the operation of the [Holy] Spirit.”38 Mar Gregorios has thoughts on science in society, which have unfortunately not been followed up by later Orthodox writers. He is dismissive in equal measure of “lazy romanticism” about a pre-technological era and of an exaggerated awe of science and technology that sees our present stage of development as final and unquestioningly accepts science as the only way of knowing.39 Writing at a time when Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics was the latest sensation, Mar Gregorios is well placed to point out that Christianity too is an Eastern religion, with potential for integrating science into a broader vision of human understanding and aspirations and overcoming “pernicious

S ee, e.g., Archimandrite Kallistos Ware, “The Value of the Material Creation,” Sobornost 6, no. 3 (1971): 154–65. Paul Evdokimov, “Nature,” Scottish Journal of Theology 18 (March 1965): 22. 36 Metropolitan Paulos Mar Gregorios, The Human Presence (Madras: The Christian Literature Society, 1980), 85. 37 Ibid. 38 Metropolitan Paulos Mar Gregorios, Science for Sane Societies (New York: Paragon House, 1987), 230–1, 97. 39 Ibid.,  74–5. 34 35

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dichotomies.” Importantly for ecological thinking, these include the false duality between vertical and horizontal, the assumption of “one realm (nature) where man is master and another (grace-supernatural) as coming from God.”40

“Reason as Contemplation”: Convergent Approaches A pattern that we see emerging already with Mar Gregorios is an understanding of the place of Christian tradition quite distinct from that assumed by Protestant “eco-theology,” which often internalizes the idea that Christianity is to blame for the ecological crisis. A classic modern statement of the “cosmic theology” that grounds the Orthodox approach to environmental questions is to be found in a trio of sermons given in 1989 by the late Patriarch of Antioch, Ignatius IV.41 As well as drawing on church Fathers such as Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor, and his compatriots Isaac and Ephrem the Syrians, Ignatius shows the influence of Florensky, Bulgakov, and Evdokimov, in addition to the French theologian Olivier Clément. Clément’s theological cosmology uses poetic rather than scientific language, but the commonality of matter among all physical creatures is central to his very concrete vision of how the sanctification of all creation works.42 Ignatius speaks in a similar vein of the destiny of nature to “become eucharist.” But precisely because of the gulf between theological and scientific ways of speaking, he keeps returning to the point that the world that is “an ocean of symbols” of its Creator is the very same world that the sciences describe on a different level, that the experience of the world as theophany leads us to make common cause with those who marvel at the intelligibility of the universe. For Patriarch Ignatius, environmental destruction is above all symptomatic of a divorce between “modern rationality,” which deals in “quantifiable abstractions of things,” and a spiritual knowledge of the world that perceives the great divine “Reason” (Logos, Word) suffusing all things. Quoting Ilya Prigogine who speaks of scientific knowledge as “poetic listening to nature,” he declares that “[r]‌eason as instrument has disenchanted the world, … reason as contemplation has now to teach us to admire and respect it” (Lecture 3). This approach amounts to a firm rejection of Stephen Jay Gould’s “NOMa” principle avant la lettre. It thus opens the way to more recent explorations of science and theology as different but congruent levels of “reading” material creation.43

Relationship in Creation and the Witness of the Sciences The best-known and most systematic ecological theologian of contemporary Orthodoxy is undoubtedly John Zizioulas, Metropolitan of Pergamon. Zizioulas is the chief exponent of the image of man as “priest of creation.” His whole ecological vision is framed in eucharistic terms, which for him means that it is all about relationship. In lifting creation up to God, whether in the Eucharist per se or in thankful (i.e., eucharistic) use of the world, man brings it into communion with its Creator.44 Zizioulas has carefully articulated a position Ibid.,  104–6. Ignatius IV, Patriarch of Antioch, “Three Sermons: A Theology of Creation; A Spirituality of the Creation; The Responsibility of Christians,” http://www.orth-transfiguration.org/. Accessed December 10, 2019. 42 E.g. Olivier Clément, “Le sens de la terre (Notes de cosmologies orthodoxe),” Contacts 59–60, nos. 3–4 (1967): 252–323; On Human Being: A Spiritual Anthropology (London: New City, 2000). 43 E.g. Elizabeth Theokritoff, “How to Read the Creation,” in A Journey along the Christian Way. Festschrift for the Right Rev. Kallistos Ware, ed. Elena Ene D-Vasilecu (Beau Bassin: Scholars Press, 2018), 12–25. 44 Metropolitan John of Pergamon, “Man the Priest of Creation,” in Living Orthodoxy in the Modern World, ed. A. Walker and C. Carras (London: SPCK, 1996), 178–88. 40 41

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that accepts the goodness of creation as a whole while insisting that it needs man: human “priesthood of creation” has to do with the ultimate survival (eternal life) of creation, given that everything is created out of nothing and therefore cannot enjoy a “natural” immortality. Corruptibility is “natural” to the world, but God’s purpose is that it should transcend its nature. This illustrates the dynamic quality of Orthodox cosmology: creation is for salvation, the world is moving toward an end point of union with God. A precise and systematic thinker, Zizioulas is seriously committed to setting out Orthodox theological cosmology “in a way that will not involve logical contradictions or stumble over fundamental scientific facts”;45 theologians cannot simply repeat traditional formulae of Christian cosmology and anthropology without reference to what we know about the world today. This is not primarily an apologetic exercise but a matter of “articulat[ing] Christian theology in a way that will be faithful to the logical consequences of its own assumptions.”46 It is not always recognized what a key part an evolutionary understanding of the world plays in Zizioulas’s liturgical vision of creation. Once man is “thrown back to his organic place in nature,”47 it becomes imperative to seek human distinctiveness in something other than rationality, in which other animals share to varying degrees. For Zizioulas, human distinctiveness lies in the capacity for relationship, which is not a natural attribute but a calling from God. This capacity enables man to see creation as a “catholicity of interrelated entities.”48 Relationship for Zizioulas is key to a theological understanding of the movement of the world toward transfiguration into Christ. He draws on science to find parallels to this in the physical workings of the world, whether it is the “breakdown in communion” involved in the programmed death of a cell49 or the physicists’ picture of the world as “relational and dynamic”;50 and importantly, he argues that this is not merely an analogy but an ontological connection, grounded in creation through the Logos. Insofar as man is seen as central to the destiny of all creation, this can only mean man in solidarity with “the entire creation in relation to which [our ontological identities] are established.” The fact that man is also an animal is a sine qua non for the exercise of a “cosmic priesthood”: we cannot be thought of apart from the “endless [evolutionary] chain of ‘others,’ personal and ‘natural,’ ” from which our own being has emerged.51 Zizioulas’s ecological theology is not without its Orthodox critics. A number of writers consider that his insistence that the divide between God and the world is bridged only through the person—the person of Christ, the human person defined by its ability to relate—has the result that “creation appears devoid of divine presence”; “there is not a clear sense of how creation as God’s creation is already relating and participating in God’s life.”52 This undervaluing of the nonhuman should not be seen as a necessary consequence of seeing man as “priest of creation,” although it may correlate with a lack of attention to etropolitan John of Pergamon, “Preserving God’s Creation” (Part 2), Sourozh 40 (May 1990): 39. M Ibid.; original emphasis. 47 Metropolitan John of Pergamon, “Preserving God’s Creation” (Part 1), Sourozh 39 (March 1990): 8. 48 Metropolitan John of Pergamon, “Preserving God’s Creation” (Part 3), Sourozh 41 (August 1990): 37. 49 John D. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness. Further Studies in Personhood and the Church (London: T&T Clark, 2006), 59. 50 John D. Zizioulas, “Relational Ontology: Insights from Patristic Thought,” in The Trinity and an Entangled World: Relativity in Physics and Theology, ed. John Polkinghorne (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 152. 51 Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 92. 52 Aristotle Papanikolaou, “Creation as communion in contemporary Orthodox theology,” in Towards an Ecology of Transfiguration: Orthodox Christian Perspectives on Environment, Nature and Creation, ed. John Chryssavgis and Bruce V. Foltz (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013), 119. 45 46

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the broader implications of the liturgical metaphor.53 Seeing the created order in liturgical terms actually affords considerable potential for integrating the scientific understanding of the world and exploring its interactions as aspects of concelebration, an approach exemplified in George Theokritoff ’s concise paper “The Cosmology of the Eucharist.”54 Some of Zizioulas’s themes, especially his eucharistic emphasis, are found also in John Chryssavgis but in a very different key. For Chryssavgis, a theological understanding of relationship is matched with a deep feeling for the beauty and the brokenness of creation, for the natural world as a realm of God’s presence. The sacred, sacramental quality of the world, the awareness that matter matters, are recurring themes in his writings and the impetus behind his extensive work to promote environmental awareness in the Orthodox Church. An important source for him is the spiritual tradition of the desert, gleaned both from study of ascetic texts and experience of contemporary monastic life. The desert dweller comes to know nature—both his or her own body and the surrounding natural world—with an unparalleled immediacy, in a way that is neither scientific nor aesthetic. This is anything but a “mystical” vision of creation unrelated to physical realities. With an intensity largely unknown in modern civilization, the desert dweller is made aware of being on the same footing as other creatures, “co-operating and identifying with the earth, in the firm conviction that both humanity and the earth belong to heaven.”55 Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) and John Chryssavgis are responsible for some of the most powerful, profound, and inspiring Orthodox writing about nature, albeit in rather general terms. Both are strongly characterized by a sense of the sacredness of all creation. In Metropolitan Kallistos especially, this is informed by poetry and literature rather than science. But we also note his profound humility before the givenness of the natural world, the unique self of each particular creature. It is this place, or tree, or animal, or person that is holy. It is perhaps noteworthy that in his comprehensive essay “Through the Creation to the Creator”56 Metropolitan Kallistos explores the way in which “the world is a sacrament of divine presence, a means of communication with God” before exploring the role of the human.57 In contrast to the anxiety about “paganism” characteristic of Zizioulas and some other Greek writers, he is happy to acknowledge in the natural world a life and energy that he connects with the divine Energies, in which “God is the core of everything.”58 This well illustrates an Orthodox understanding of human kinship with other creatures that is not a “levelling down” but a “levelling up.” It opens the way for arguing that the remarkable sophistication of natural processes by no means detracts from the dignity of the human creature who bears the divine image, since it redounds to the glory of the Creator who is also man’s Prototype.59 See further Elizabeth Theokritoff, “Creation and Priesthood in Modern Orthodox Thinking,” Ecotheology 10, no. 3 (December 2005): 344–63; “Priest of Creation or Cosmic Liturgy?” in Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth: Studies in Honour of Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia, ed. Andreas Andreopoulos and Graham Speake (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2016), 189–211. 54 G. Theokritoff, “The Cosmology of the Eucharist,” in Ecology of Transfiguration, ed. Chryssavgis and Foltz, 131–5; see also E. Theokritoff, “Liturgy, Cosmic Worship and Christian Cosmology,” Ecology of Transfiguration, ed. Chryssavgis and Foltz, 295–306. 55 John Chryssavgis, “Sacredness of creation in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers,” Studia Patristica XXV (1991): 349; see also Chryssavgis, Beyond the Shattered Image (Minneapolis, MN: Light and Life, 1999). 56 Ware, “Through the Creation to the Creator,” in Ecology of Transfiguration, ed. Chryssavgis and Foltz, 86–105. 57 Ibid.,  90. 58 Ibid.,  91. 59 See further Elizabeth Theokritoff, “Cosmic Priesthood and the Human Animal: Speaking of Man and the Natural World in a Scientific Age,” in Thinking Modernity: Towards a Reconfiguration of the Relationship between 53

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Further Developments Increasingly, there are Orthodox writers who see a need to get beyond generalizations couched in traditional theological language and look more systematically at the ecological implications of Orthodox tradition. Some take the long view, looking at the whole relationship between God and creation, and here the favorite starting point is the theology of St. Maximus. The doctrine of logoi of creation, discussed above, is seen as key to a profound respect for the earth, which is sharply distinguished from pantheism. It also presents “reason” (i.e., logos) not as a divisive factor but a point of connection between human and other creatures. Radu Bordeianu,60 for example, uses this theology to challenge the phobia in environmental writing about “anthropocentrism,” since Maximus makes it particularly explicit how man serves as the focus for a union of all things in God. Bordeianu explains how according to Maximus, the spiritual condition of the human being can affect the entire cosmos because the world is man “writ large”; but he makes no attempt to link this with the scientific picture of the connections linking humans to other creatures. Other writers do, however, point in this direction.61 These include a detailed earlier study of Maximus’s thought in light of the ecological crisis, published in Greek by Konstantinos Zakhos. His title, Lost Familiarity, picks up a theme familiar from Andrew Louth and others—man’s sense of alienation from the rest of creation. Bringing Maximus into conversation with contemporary thinking on science and the environment is a major part of this work, but in a manner slightly reminiscent of Philip Sherrard, Zakhos shows a certain inclination to treat science (notably evolution) as philosophy rather than engaging with its discoveries. Clearly, there is much more to do by way of exploring how Maximus can inform a theological understanding of creation as we know it today, but that work has at least begun. On more specific questions of how humans perceive and treat the world, there are some who are frustrated with the gap between conventional theological portrayals of nonhuman creation and the picture that emerges from the contemporary sciences.62 In relation to the particular environmental threats faced by various creatures, a particularly trenchant critic is Christina Gschwandtner, who has herself studied the place of nonhuman creation in Orthodox liturgical texts but argues that the connection between liturgical theology and practice and ecological action remains to be demonstrated.63 Some of her challenges seem to presuppose an environmentalist agenda for practical action and to underestimate the power of what Zizioulas calls an “ethos.” Her criticisms point to the significant difference between a theological vision of creation and an environmental

Orthodox Theology and Modern Culture, ed. Assaad E. Kattan and Fadi A. Georgi (Tripoli/Muenster: St. John of Damascus Institute of Theology, University of Balamand/ Westphalian Wilhelm’s University Center for Religious Studies, 2010), 105–31. 60 Radu Bordeianu, “Maximus and Ecology: The Relevance of Maximus the Confessor’s Theology of Creation for the Present Ecological Crisis,” Downside Review 127 (2009): 103–26. 61 E.g., Louth, “The Cosmic Vision,” 184–96; Elizabeth Theokritoff, “The Vision of St. Maximus the Confessor: That Creation May All be One,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Ecology, ed. John Hart (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2017), 220–36. 62 E.g., Theokritoff, “Cosmic Priesthood,” 105–31; Christina M. Gschwandtner, “Creativity as Call to Care for Creation? John Zizioulas and Jean-Louis Chretien,” in Being-in-Creation: Human Responsibility in an Endangered World, ed. Brian Treanor, Bruce Ellis Benson, and Norman Wirzba (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015), 100–12. 63 See especially Christina M. Gschwandtner, “Grounding Ecological Action in Orthodox Theology and Liturgical Praxis? A Call for Further Thinking,” Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies 1, no. 1 (2018): 61–77.

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ethic, but they also highlight the need for clarity of thinking and intellectual honesty in discussing the intersection of theology and ecology.

CONCLUSION Even in areas such as environment where one might expect theology and science to intersect, Orthodox thinking does not fit easily into the Western categories of “dialogue.” Contemporary East and West start from rather different assumptions about how the natural world relates to theology. If many distinguished Orthodox theologians ignore science almost entirely in their writing and teaching, this usually has less to do with any ideological position of “independence” than with an educational background anchored firmly in the humanities and classics. Nevertheless, there is work being done by a number of theologians, often scholars rather than hierarchs, that shows the rich possibilities for creatively “thinking anew” the cosmic vision of the church Fathers in a way that is informed by the findings of contemporary science.64

E.g., the prescient study of St. Basil’s Hexaemeron by Nikos Matsoukas, in which he explores what a “new hexaemeron” might look like: Epistimi, philosophia kai theologia sten Exaemero tou M. Vasileiou, 2nd ed. (Thessaloniki: Pournara, 1990). Also the valuable collection of Orthodox ecological thinking, some of it otherwise little known, in John Chryssavgis and Bruce V. Foltz, eds., Towards an Ecology of Transfiguration. 64

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Twentieth- and Twenty-FirstCentury Protestant Voices on Nature and Science SARAH LANE RITCHIE

To tell a grand, sweeping narrative of the relationship between science and Protestant theology in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries would be not only to betray the complexity and plurality inherent in their historical relationship(s) but also to ignore the astounding fertility, creativity, and particularity that are the hallmarks of the current dialogue. No longer is it appropriate to talk about “science” and “religion” or even “science” and “theology” as monolithic entities that each represent a single methodology, goal, or subject of research. Rather, scholars working within the inherently interdisciplinary field of science and theology find themselves in conversations and research programs that flourish precisely because of their specificity: the most interesting theological work might occur, say, at the intersection of ecotheology and climate science, or theological aesthetics and cognitive science. At a time of increasing demand for postgraduate courses and even degrees in science and religion, and when interdisciplinary engagement is encouraged even within the most specialized of scientific disciplines, those interested in constructive theological engagement with the sciences suffer from an embarrassment of riches. Of course, such a rosy picture is far from the whole truth about the relationship between science and theology, both as it exists now and as it has evolved over the past century or so. While academic theologians might often exhibit an openness to scientific knowledge or even pursue science-engaged theological work themselves, the tone and content of the discussion can be markedly different beyond the walls of academic institutions. Mythic or not, the conflict narrative still has a hold on the public imagination, and the continued, stridently vocal existence of both Young Earth Creationists and militant New Atheists offer religious and scientific caricatures, respectively, that fail to communicate the more interesting and fruitful spaces that are ripe for exploration. How, then, do we find ourselves at a moment in time marked by the unprecedented resources and appetite for holistic interdisciplinary inquiry evident within theology and the sciences, but also marked by widespread religious fears about the worldview-shattering dangers of scientific inquiry? While no survey chapter could ever hope to be comprehensive, there is indeed a compelling, and sometimes tragic, story to be told. As we look back over the past century of Protestant theological thinking on science and nature, we begin to see the

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broad contours and hues that characterize the historical landscape from the turn of the twentieth century to the present. This historical landscape does not sanction the telling of a grand, univocal narrative, but it does permit us to see the thematic conversations that have shaped the relationship between Protestant theology and science. And if one looks quite closely, it is even possible to make out the barely defined edges of new possibilities, the sorts of theological engagements with rigorous empirical inquiry that now open themselves to intrepid minds.

SETTING THE STAGE At the turn of the twentieth century, much of Western theology was characterized by liberal Protestantism, the nineteenth-century movement championed by the German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher and more fully developed (at least partially) as a response to the naturalizing thrust of modern science, namely, evolutionary theory. As scientific disciplines became formalized and developed the rigorous empirical methodologies that have made the scientific enterprise so explanatorily successful, many theologians had recognized the need to adopt a sort of flexibility in relating traditional Christian doctrine to the intellectual demands of the modern world. This was especially true in the case of evolutionary theory: Darwin’s theory of natural selection had drastic implications for literal readings of the Genesis creation narratives, posing serious challenges to the account of a six-day creation of the universe and traditional accounts of original sin, for example. The response of liberal Protestantism was to adjust the theological program in such a way that Christianity was essentially shielded from scientific critique. The epistemological basis of Christian faith was not to be found in scientific proofs or external authorities, and the purpose of Scripture is not to generate accurate knowledge about the natural world. Rather, Christianity must always be oriented to the human experience; Schleiermacher spoke of the primacy of “feeling” and absolute dependence on God, while neo-Kantian theologian Albrecht Ritschl’s emphasis on ethics, culture, and Christian community refused the reduction of Christianity to factual (or unfactual) truth claims. In short, liberal Protestantism had defined its scope in such a way that it was essentially immune to scientific critique, aided in large part by the work of historical critical methods being employed within biblical studies. Not only were there theological reasons to do Christian theology with little concern for empirical science, but higher criticism of the Bible also justified the move away from literalist interpretations of the biblical texts. Scientific knowledge could be embraced without fear, for it had no bearing on the substance of the faith.

LIBERAL THEOLOGY AND THE ORIGINS OF FUNDAMENTALISM In the early twentieth century, classical German liberal Protestantism gave way to a second generation of liberal theologians, and this generation of scholars quickly began taking over elite theological institutions, particularly within the United States. Liberal theology in the early twentieth century was committed to a theology that embraced human experience and reason, rather than constraining itself to traditional doctrines that ran afoul of the current scientific or social consensus. Theological liberalism, broadly speaking, seeks to avoid both the extreme of insisting upon uncompromising affirmations

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of traditional beliefs and the extreme of the all-too-common retreat into deism or atheism. Scripture can be subjectively authoritative within the realm of spirituality and Christian community, even while it is not determinative of historical or scientific facts about the world. This time period was also marked by a certain theological optimism about human potential (as evidenced by its focus on the social gospel movement). While there were different schools within early liberal theology, in general its adherents embraced (or at least accommodated) scientific knowledge, privileged human reason, and emphasized social relevance and ethical living. In one of its more influential forms, and exemplified by the “Chicago school,” liberal theology even developed into a naturalistic empiricism based on scientific methodology.1 Unbridled optimism notwithstanding, liberal theology was not without opposition. To the extent that Protestant theology in the early twentieth century was dominated by enthusiastic proclamations of human progress and the triumph of reason over traditional authority, conservative Christians mounted an equally spirited defense of traditional Christian doctrines. Though coming from different historical and theological streams, these conservative Christians (mostly Americans) came to be known as “fundamentalists,” referring to their shared commitment to what they considered to be the fundamentals of the Christian faith. Published from 1910 to 1915, The Fundamentals was a set of essays codifying five such doctrinal commitments, four of which were seemingly at odds with the findings of modern science: biblical inerrancy, the bodily resurrection of Christ, the virgin birth, and a literal understanding of the miracle accounts recorded in the Gospels. Not all conservative theologians considered themselves to be fundamentalists; those in the “Princeton theology” tradition, for example, saw themselves as merely preserving orthodox Reformed commitments that were basic to the Christian faith. Nonetheless, the fundamentalist movement in the early twentieth century was marked by a univocal commitment to biblical inerrancy: the Bible is completely accurate in every way, including in its scientific and historical details. There is a slight irony to this inerrantist position, as it attempts to meet the challenges of modern science on scientific terms, claiming not only that the Bible is true in all its teachings (the traditional Protestant position) but also that it is factually, scientifically accurate in every specific.2 In some ways, then, fundamentalism represented a defensive hardening of traditional Christian beliefs, perhaps as overcompensation in the face of the liberal theology so dominant in theological education for decades prior. Theological tensions remained heightened within the Protestant world in the first few decades of the twentieth century, perhaps most notably evident in the fundamentalistmodernist controversy, a Presbyterian conflict in which Princeton Theological Seminary was the epicenter. This controversy reached a crescendo in 1925 at the now-infamous Scopes trial, where evolutionary theory was pitted against the biblical inerrancy to which fundamentalists were wedded. At issue was the teaching of evolution in public schools, the prohibition of which had become a focal point for fundamentalist activism. As celebrity politician William Jennings Bryan squared off against famed defense attorney Clarence Darrow, the theological tensions of the last several decades came into contact with media influences, public perceptions of science, and political interests. While Bryan and the Gary J. Dorrien, The Making of American Liberal Theology: Idealism, Realism, and Modernity, 1900–1950 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 7. 2 Margaret Bendroth, “Christian Fundamentalism in America,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion. https:// oxfordre.com/religion/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.001.0001/acrefore-9780199340378-e-419. 1

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fundamentalists won the case against teaching evolution in public schools, they are generally considered to have suffered a resounding defeat in the court of public opinion. In some ways, the Scopes trial was tragic for both liberal and fundamentalist theology, as it served to entrench the public perception that science and theology are inherently at war with one another. The irony here is that, historically speaking, the presumptively inherent conflict between science and theology is somewhat mythical, as has been persuasively demonstrated by historians such as John Hedley Brooke and Peter Harrison. It is thus both inaccurate and tragic that twentieth-century tensions, often driven by media narratives, are so often viewed as historically representative or conceptually inherent to the science-theology conversation itself. However, it is also true that the fundamentalist/ liberal divide has had a far more profound effect on the science-theology dialogue than is often acknowledged in contemporary theological scholarship. While the field of science and religion is indeed robust and encouraging of interdisciplinary dialogue, historical and contemporary social tensions should not be ignored. The fundamentalist conflict only began to wane after the 1920s, at least within the elite academic institutions in which it had been born, as many of its leaders left their institutions to found more conservative institutions. Fundamentalism’s influence has continued within Protestant Christianity, however, appearing with varying strength and different emphases throughout the last hundred years. Most significantly for our purposes is the continued suspicion toward, and sometimes the outright rejection of, evolutionary theory within American evangelicalism. Here it is important to note that fundamentalism is not an equivalent to evangelicalism. Indeed, many evangelical organizations and scholars have actively affirmed and promoted various versions of theistic evolution, the idea that God is actively creating in and through the evolutionary process. Nor is it the case that the same theological tensions reached the same sort of breaking points throughout the Western world: historian Peter Bowler, for example, argues that earlytwentieth-century Britain witnessed a concerted effort to reconcile science and theology, in stark contrast to the heated fervor marking the American context.3 But it is true that the theological insistence on inerrantism, that hallmark of fundamentalism, has colored the fraught evangelical relationship with science and particularly with evolutionary theory. In other words, fundamentalism fostered a very particular theological attitude toward the natural sciences. If the liberal posture toward scientific knowledge was one of acceptance and accommodation leading to the reinterpretation of traditional doctrines, the fundamentalist posture was one of dogmatic insistence that science conform to traditional interpretations of Scripture.

NEIN! NATURAL THEOLOGY AND THEOLOGY AS SCIENCE Presumptive victory over fundamentalism notwithstanding, liberal Protestant theology in the mid-twentieth century was not without its detractors. While leading theologians like Paul Tillich were eager to adopt “a method of correlation” wherein Christian theology must always and only be done in constant engagement with culture (of which scientific knowledge was an increasingly significant part), others found the optimistic and existentialist accommodation of liberal theology to culture to be a tragic capitulation. Arguably the most significant theologian of the twentieth century, German Protestant Peter Bowler, Reconciling Science and Religion: The Debate in Early-Twentieth-Century Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 3. 3

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Karl Barth epitomized the theological backlash against liberal theology, insisting that God’s self-revelation in the person of Jesus Christ, through the Bible, was the source of all knowledge of God. Often referred to as neo-Orthodoxy, Barth’s theology emphasized the radical otherness of God, the fundamental discontinuity or “dialectic” between God and humanity. Rather than accommodating doctrines to cultural norms, theology must maintain its identity as a response to the Word of God rather than to society, science, or human knowledge in any form. One key aspect of Barth’s thought is his unwavering and strident rejection of natural theology. While many theologians throughout history had sought to obtain knowledge of God through observation of the natural world, Barth condemned such a pursuit as “quite impossible within the Church, and indeed, in such a way that it cannot even be discussed in principle.”4 Precisely because knowledge of God comes only through the selfrevelation of God in Christ, the project of natural theology could never be anything other than an erroneous human effort to discover God where God was not to be found. The natural sciences, for Barth, can never tell us anything about God, and to suggest otherwise is to undermine God’s self-revelation. Hence, when fellow theologian and friend Emil Brunner wrote a qualified endorsement of natural theology in 1934, Barth responded with a Nein! so vehement that it ended their friendship.5 Neo-Orthodoxy may have rejected liberal theology’s acquiescence to cultural forces (including pressure to adapt theology to scientific knowledge), but Barth also rejected the fundamentalist condemnation of scientific theories that seemed to contradict literalist readings of the Bible. Empirical science may not be able to convey knowledge of God, but neither could it refute theology. Why? For Barth, science is incapable of undermining theology precisely because natural science and theology are two distinct enterprises altogether, devoted to the systematic study of completely different subjects. As Alister McGrath explains Barth’s position, “science is about the human investigation of the world; theology is about responding to God’s self-revelation.”6 In other words, the radical otherness of God renders the tools and methods of scientific inquiry utterly irrelevant for theology. It is crucial to emphasize that Barth was not rejecting science—far from it. Indeed, Barth was utterly untroubled by evolutionary theory and scientific inquiry more broadly. Because he saw science and theology as fundamentally independent and nonoverlapping realms of inquiry, he was happy to allow science to carry on doing what science does: providing explanations for natural phenomena. The Bible, for Barth, is not a biology textbook and should not be relied upon as such. Rather, the Bible is God’s self-revelation, and it would be something of a category error to treat it as a source of scientific knowledge. In fact, Barth went so far as to think of theology itself as a sort of science, if by science we mean a rigorous academic discipline with its own subject and methodology that should be addressed on its own terms: Theology is one among those human undertakings traditionally described as “sciences.” Not only the natural sciences are “sciences.” Humanistic sciences also seek to apprehend a specific object and its environment in the manner directed by the

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics Volume II: The Doctrine of God, Part I, ed. Geoffrey William Bromiley and Thomas F. Torrance, trans. T. H. L. Parker, W. B. Johnston, Harold Knight, and J. L. M. Haire (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957), 85. 5 Emil Brunner and Karl Barth, Natural Theology (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2002). 6 Alister McGrath, Science and Religion: An Introduction (Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 1998), 40. 4

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phenomenon itself; they seek to understand it on its own terms and to speak of it along with all the implications of its existence.7 Here again we see the basis for Barth’s simultaneous affirmation of the natural sciences as legitimate knowledge-seeking endeavors, on the one hand, and his rejection of them as theologically relevant, on the other. Theological knowledge is not the sort of thing that can be meaningfully addressed with the language and methods of the natural sciences. For Barth, both theology and the natural sciences suffer when the methods of one science are misapplied to the other. This does not mean that God cannot use the natural world as a witness to God’s self-revelation; as Barth famously quipped, “God may speak to us through Russian communism, through a flute concerto, through a blossoming shrub or through a dead dog.”8 Rather, it is that there is nothing intrinsic about nature or even human reason that is revelatory. Many readers will sense that there is something a little too neat about Barth’s distanced acceptance of scientific knowledge that, in principle, can never impact theological claims. Is it really the case that no scientific theory could challenge traditional Christian theology? Or in a more theologically positive sense, is it really the case that the nature and revelation of God is so far removed from the created world that literally nothing of God can be known from the systematic study of creation? Not only does natural theology have a firm historical footing throughout Christian history, but surely theological claims must also have some connection to empirical reality. Otherwise, how can theology avoid being dismissed as just so much linguistic construction unmoored from reality, particularly when certain articulations of its traditional doctrines seem at odds with scientific descriptions of the natural world? Indeed, while Barth’s influence on Protestant theology has been profound, not all who followed him have been happy to leave his Nein! unmitigated. Some of Barth’s most prominent interlocutors interpreted him in a manner far friendlier to theological engagement with the natural sciences, taking his core theological insights and developing them in directions far more conducive to engagement with empirical inquiry. Chief among these was Thomas F. Torrance, the Scottish theologian who not only was vital to Barth’s continued massive theological influence but was also a pioneer of the science-theology dialogue. Torrance agreed with Barth’s rejection of traditional natural theology, insofar as natural theology was taken to mean an independent way of obtaining knowledge of God. Torrance insisted that “for theological knowledge at all levels God is its one controlling and ultimate object.”9 Nor is there a “logical bridge between God and the world” whereby empirical observation might allow humans to infer necessary truths about God.10 Torrance follows Barth in affirming the scientific character of theology, such that theological science and natural science are both systematic modes of inquiry that must be committed to the knowledge and methods appropriate to their respective objects of study. So, “the exclusion of ‘natural theology’ by scientific theology as a sort of ‘foreign body’ … results from its determination to act in strict conformity with the nature of its proper

Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology: An Introduction, trans. G. Foley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1963), 16. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics Volume I: The Doctrine of the Word of God, Part 1, trans. Geoffery W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1975), 60. 9 Thomas F. Torrance, Reality & Evangelical Theology: The Realism of Christian Revelation (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2003), 22. 10 Thomas F. Torrance, Divine and Contingent Order (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1987), 34. 7 8

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object.”11 Torrance is in full agreement with Barth’s Christocentric priority: humans are utterly dependent on God’s self-revelation for all theological knowledge. Here, though, is where Torrance’s “theological science” differs from—or, perhaps, develops more fully12—Barth’s own theological project. Yes, Torrance insists, traditional natural theology must be abandoned, but what about the possibility of a reformulated natural theology, brought within the purview of systematic theology more broadly?13 If we are to take seriously God’s self-revelation and the doctrines of creation and incarnation, Barthian scholar Travis McMacken explains, “if God’s being has truly entered into the created world of space and time, as is affirmed by the hypostatic union, then our knowledge of God is bound up with our knowledge of the created world.”14 Brought within the positive theological frame, the very concept of what it means to be “natural” is transformed. Torrance’s insight is that within the proper frame of revealed theology, the natural sciences can indeed contribute to real theological knowledge. So long as natural theology is not pursued as an autonomous source of theological knowledge, there is nothing inherently wrong with theological engagement with empirical science. Torrance insists that it is precisely because of God’s self-revelation that we should expect areas of overlap between the theological and natural sciences: As I see it, theologians and scientists live and work side by side within the same orderly world of space and time where God has placed us and within which He makes Himself known … the questions raised in theological and natural science cannot but overlap especially where they bear upon the contingent nature of the space–time world, but while neither is indebted to the other in respect of the material content of its knowledge, there is, I believe, and always has been, much more traffic between seminal theological and scientific ideas than is often realised.15 Key to understanding Torrance’s optimism regarding science-theology interaction is his particular epistemological framework. Science, Torrance claims, is “no more and no less than the rigorous extension of our basic rationality.”16 The methods and content of each science will differ in appropriate and necessary ways, but “theological science and the other sciences make use of the same basic tool, the human reason operating with the given, so that the theologian and the scientist are at work not only in the same room, so to speak, but often at the same bench.”17 The created universe is intelligible to human beings, and while the various sciences will have different objects and methods, they are all dependent on the contingent intelligibility and rationality underlying all forms of human inquiry and knowledge. There is thus an epistemological link between theological and natural science. Crucially, though, Torrance always refuses the possibility of theological knowledge apart from revealed theology: the natural sciences only become theologically valuable when they are seen through the lens of divine self-revelation. As Torrance puts it:

homas F. Torrance, Theological Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 103. T There is significant debate about the extent to which Torrance gets Barth “right” and the extent to which he more fully develops principles and commitments that are latent or inherent within Barth’s own work. 13 I here follow Travis McMacken’s description of Torrance’s “reformulated” natural theology. See Travis McMacken, “The Impossibility of Natural Knowledge of God in T.F. Torrance’s Reformulated Natural Theology,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 12, no. 3 (2010): 319–40. 14 Ibid.,  332. 15 Torrance, Theological Science, xx. 16 Ibid.,  107. 17 Ibid.,  xii. 11 12

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So it is with natural theology: brought within the embrace of positive theology and developed as a complex of rational structures arising in our actual knowledge of God it becomes “natural” in a new way, natural to its proper object, God in selfrevealing interaction with us in space and time. Natural theology then constitutes the “epistemological geometry,” as it were, within the fabric of “revealed theology.”18 Torrance, then, takes Barth’s emphasis on divine self-revelation and develops the neoOrthodox frame to not only justify, but also actually call for, theological engagement with the natural sciences, going so far as to suggest that the natural sciences become more truly “natural” when viewed theologically. Torrance’s development of Barthian thought had a massive influence on twentiethcentury Protestant theology and was particularly groundbreaking in its rationale and justification of theological engagement with the natural sciences. Not all theologians, however, were happy to constrain the role of the natural sciences within the governing framework of revealed theology, as Barthian commitments required. Torrance went farther than Barth in encouraging dialogue between theology and the natural sciences, but the privileged Barthian role of divine self-revelation in Christ and the Bible did not allow for any substantial influence of scientific thought on traditional formulations of doctrine. One theologian who critiqued Barth’s insistence on the complete independence of theological claims from scientific critique was German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg. While Pannenberg agreed with Barth and Torrance that theology is itself a science, Pannenberg differed from Barth in his willingness to question even divine self-revelation. Pannenberg worked out his “science of God” in a very different manner from Barth and Torrance, affirming that “as the theme of theology, God by definition includes the empirical reality by which the idea of God must be tested, and thus defines the object of theology.”19 Here we see Pannenberg affirming the natural sciences as theologically significant when viewed through a theological lens (as Torrance also affirmed) but also going so far as to allow empirical inquiry itself to play a nontrivial role in the theological task. This more robust engagement was in large part a result of Pannenberg’s belief that theology is a fundamentally public enterprise: theology could not rest on the insider knowledge of revelation if that revelation was not itself susceptible to public inquiry and testing. As Philip Clayton explains, Pannenberg “realised that theology would have to hold itself to the standards of critical inquiry, even falsifiability, if it wished to present itself as a rational discipline in the university.”20 Importantly, though, Pannenberg did not urge mere theological capitulation to scientific inquiry, as this was the error made by liberal theologians in previous decades. Rather, Pannenberg argued that scientific explanation alone could offer only a partial and insufficient knowledge of reality. Science may be able to identify and describe the ordered processes of the natural world, but this intelligible order is itself contingent, dependent upon God and only fully explicable when known theologically. The most comprehensive understanding of reality would only be possible if the science of theology was brought into conversation with the other sciences.

homas F. Torrance, Reality and Scientific Theology (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1985), 39. T Wolfhart Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science, trans. F. McDonagh (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1976), 300. 20 Philip Clayton, “Science, Meaning, and Metaphysics: A Tribute to Wolfhart Pannenberg,” Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 28, no. 4 (2003): 238. 18 19

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While this elevation of theology might appear imperialistic at times, Pannenberg’s affirmation of a unified reality served to actually invite critical theological engagement with the sciences. If theology is secure in its public status and explanatory role, then it could be free to adapt to specific scientific challenges. As Clayton describes, “Here was a rigorous proposal for a theology that would be ready to accept whatever revisions were necessary for it to take its place among the academic disciplines ‘in an age of science’— even if doing so meant that, henceforth, doubt and revisability and hypothetical reasoning would become the modus operandi for theologians.”21 Pannenberg’s work is complex, nuanced, and evolving, but one recurring theme is his conviction that all human pursuit of truth is, fundamentally, a pursuit of God. And if it is true that “because God is truth … all human inquiry has God as its ultimate subject matter,” then theology fundamentally cannot be threatened by empirical inquiry.22 In Pannenberg, then, we see a compelling example of what a comprehensive scientific theology might look like: a truly dialogical and responsive relationship in which theology and science are seen as interconnected pursuits of ultimate reality.

SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS Thus far, we have surveyed some of the general contours of twentieth-century theological thought on the natural sciences, but of course these theological movements did not develop in a vacuum. The twentieth century witnessed massive upheavals in the philosophy of science and the natural sciences themselves, and these profoundly destabilizing changes allowed not only progress in the science-theology dialogue but also the establishment of a new field altogether: science and religion. While early twentieth-century theologians found themselves grappling with the theological issues surrounding Darwinism, human origins, the age of the earth, and biblical hermeneutics, subsequent Christian scholars found themselves confronting the reign of logical positivism. Logical positivism was an extremely influential philosophical movement from the 1920s through the 1950s and was broadly committed to the claim that “beliefs must be justified on the basis of experience.”23 The core of logical positivism was its insistence that all knowledge claims be based on empirical observation, whether those claims are obviously scientific in nature or not. This demand for empirical observation solidified into the verification principle, which is basically the affirmation that the only meaningful statements are those that are verifiable. Because of its sweeping epistemological claims, logical positivism’s implications for theology were significant: under logical positivism, not even theological claims were excused from the demand for empirical verification. Unsurprisingly, then, leading logical positivist Rudolph Carnap went so far as to conclude that “traditional theology is a remnant of earlier times, entirely out of line with the scientific way of thinking in the present century.”24 Note that this dismissal of theology is tied to a very particular understanding of the philosophy and limits of science: for the logical positivist, there are no areas of knowledge in which empirical

Ibid. Stanley Grenz, “‘Scientific’ Theology/’Theological’ Science: Pannenberg and the Dialogue Between Theology and Science,” Zygon 34, no. 1 (1999): 162. 23 McGrath, Science & Religion, 71; original emphasis. 24 Rudolph Carnap, “Intellectual Autobiography,” in The Philosophy of Rudolph Carnap, ed. P. A. Schilpp (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1963), 8. 21 22

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inquiry is not the final arbiter of truth claims. As Carnap confirms, “when we say that scientific knowledge is unlimited, we mean that there is no question whose answer is in principle unattainable by science.”25 While logical positivism was clearly a challenge for Christian theologians, its downfall came from within the philosophy of science itself. Karl Popper, for example, argued that verificationism was both too rigid and too loose: too rigid because it seemed to “exclude the most important and interesting of all scientific statements, that is to say, the scientific theories, the universal laws of nature” (because the laws of nature themselves, as abstract concepts, cannot be verified) and too loose because it allowed for the “verification” of pseudoscientific theories (such as when any dream is made to fit a particular theme within Freudian psychoanalysis).26 Instead of focusing on verifying knowledge claims, Popper himself focused on falsifying those claims and ensuring that one is able to state the precise ways in which a theory or system could be proven false. Falsificationism also posed a challenge to theological claims, as one could claim that metaphysical claims are not constructed in such a way that they are, in principle, falsifiable by experience or empirical methods.27 But Popper’s approach was also strongly critiqued by philosophers of science as misrepresenting the way science actually works. McGrath explains that “the absolute demand for something which incontestably falsifies a theory … is actually unrealistic in the natural sciences.”28 Even the most widely accepted scientific theories have to incorporate and accommodate seemingly anomalous data. And perhaps more importantly, both verificationism and falsificationism ignore the reality that all experimentation is inherently theory-laden: the goal of purely objective scientific inquiry is always illusory. The real death blow for logical positivism, however, came through a sustained critique of the idea that scientific knowledge evolves gradually over time in response to particular theories’ verification or falsification. This sustained critique was most effectively articulated and represented by Thomas Kuhn, whose 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions upended traditional notions of scientific progress. Kuhn argued that scientific progress is not a linear or inevitable process marked by gradual evolution and the refinement of theories but instead that science is marked by paradigm shifts. Within a given scientific paradigm—an internally consistent portrait of reality defined by a specific set of practices, questions, and norms—particular questions are viewed through the specificities of that paradigm, and “normal science” is possible. But, Kuhn argued, scientific paradigms themselves undergo revolutions when they are no longer able to account for a growing body of anomalous data. When such a scientific revolution occurs (say, in the Copernican revolution or the advent of quantum mechanics), the old and new paradigms are said to be incommensurable, as there is no continuity between the two paradigms, for the paradigms themselves frame reality in fundamentally different ways. As Kuhn explains, “Paradigm changes do cause scientists to see the world of their research-engagement differently. In so far as their only recourse to that world is through what they see and do, we may want to say that after a revolution, scientists are responding to a different world.”29 Rudolph Carnap, The Logical Structure of the World, trans. R. George (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 290. 26 Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), 281. 27 See, e.g., Antony Flew and Basil Mitchell, “Theology and Falsification,” in Exploring Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology, ed. Steven M. Cahn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 28–9. 28 McGrath, Science & Religion, 79. 29 Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 111. 25

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It is impossible to overstate the importance of this change in how science is understood not only for philosophy of science but for the science-theology dialogue as well. Kuhn’s work undermined the common assumption that scientific inquiry offers straightforwardly objective truth about reality, instead demonstrating that scientific paradigms themselves only work within their own well-defined parameters, operating with specific, internally consistent practices, assumptions, and norms. The scientific enterprise is about much more than empirical observation and involves subjectivity, social constructs, institutional norms, and metaphysical presuppositions. In terms of theological engagement with the sciences, this philosophical move away from the restrictive and exclusive world of logical positivism allowed for what Clayton has called “the rediscovery of the questions.”30 Scholars began to realize that, once again, theology had a place at the explanatory table, and true interdisciplinary research became a real possibility.

THE BIRTH OF A FIELD By the 1960s, the science and theology conversation had evolved, such that the systematic study of science and religion had become a real possibility. While science-engaged theologians would continue tradition-specific theological engagement with scientific ideas, others were moving toward the formalization of a science and religion field that did not assume theological or religious commitments on the part of its practitioners. While many in the science and religion field continued to be theologians engaging with interdisciplinary questions from within a specific theological tradition, research topics within science and religion appeal to people of all faiths and none. This formalization was made possible by developments across various disciplines. Theologians were moving beyond the Barthian reticence to engage with natural science and had become more willing to explore the theological implications of secular scholarship; the philosophy of science had moved beyond positivism and was demonstrating awareness that historical, cultural, and philosophical realities are relevant to the natural sciences; and groundbreaking scientific discoveries were calling for rigorous interdisciplinary engagement on complex new research questions. As leading science and religion scholar Robert John Russell writes, these “independent factors provided a unique intellectual context for the creation of ‘science and religion.’ ”31 Perhaps the most significant figure in this early period of systematization was Ian Barbour, a physicist and religious scholar widely recognized as something of a founder of the science and religion field.32 Barbour is perhaps most well known for his fourfold See Philip Clayton, “The Fruits of Pluralism: A Vision for the Next Seven Years in Religion/Science,” Zygon 49, no. 2 (2014): 430–42. 31 Robert John Russell, ed., Fifty Years in Science and Religion (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004), xv. 32 At this point, readers will have noticed a shift in terminology: why have we moved from discussing science and theology to analyzing the methods of science and religion? The relation between the science-theology dialogue and the field of science and religion is notoriously muddied and often controversial. After all, most (though not all) science and religion scholars are driven by theological questions and even commitments, and many consider themselves as much at home within confessional communities as within academic communities. Given that subjectivity is inevitable in any field, and that science and religion clearly addresses theological questions, what is to be gained by labelling the field “science and religion”? This is a complex conversation that will not be explored fully here, but it is worth noting that the early framing of the field as “science and religion” was one that prioritized not traditional theological commitments but a recognition of shared methodologies and standards for the evaluation of theories—whether scientific or religious. While there may well be good arguments for insisting on doing “science and theology” rather than “science and religion,” it is worth remembering that a great deal 30

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typology, a widely used (and widely criticized!) framework for identifying the various ways of relating science and religion: conflict, independence, dialogue, and integration. Those adhering to the conflict model see science and religion as existing in fundamental competition and opposition to each other: their respective truth claims necessarily conflict, and success in one domain inevitably undermines the other (note that both atheistic and religious individuals may hold this view). Those affirming an independence approach see science and religion as completely different endeavors working with different tools, toward different ends. This view has been most prominently communicated by Stephen Jay Gould, whose “non-overlapping magisteria” (NOMA) model allows him to affirm that “science tries to document the factual character of the natural world, and to develop theories that coordinate and explain these facts. Religion, on the other hand, operates in the equally important, but utterly different, realm of human purposes, meanings, and values—subjects that the factual domain of science might illuminate, but can never resolve.”33 It should be noted that, as previously mentioned, Karl Barth affirmed something like an independence model, insofar as he affirmed scientific inquiry “over there,” as it were, but rejected any substantial theological engagement with the natural sciences. The integration approach, conversely, explores the possibility of an ultimate synthesis between science and religion, resulting in a comprehensive and systematic metaphysics to which both science and religion contribute. The process theology of Alfred North Whitehead offers one prominent and promising framework for developing an integrationist model. The dialogue approach, however, has become something of a default position for those working within contemporary science and religion. Those affirming dialogue recognize the distinctions between the disciplines but equally highlight their shared presuppositions, methods, and even concepts; as Barbour explains, “the basic structure of religion is similar to that of science in some respects, though it differs at several crucial points.”34 These similarities in presuppositions, methods, concepts, and “boundary questions” allow for authentic mutuality between science and religion, forming a sort of structural “bridge” between the disciplines. Barbour articulated his vision of this bridge in his groundbreaking 1966 book Issues in Science and Religion. At the heart of Barbour’s proposal is “critical realism,” a term he coined to describe a theory of truth that affirms the correspondence of theories—scientific or otherwise—to actual reality (contra instrumentalism), while also recognizing the limited, partial, and provisional nature of these theories and truth claims (contra naïve realism). For the critical realist, truth claims do indeed refer to reality and must be evaluated on the basis of agreement between theories and available data. At the same time, however, the critical realist recognizes that all theories are contextual and provisional, and data itself is theory-laden. Moreover, even scientific theories are reliant on metaphors and models which “selectively represent particular aspects of the world for specific purposes … [T]‌hey are to be taken seriously but not literally.”35 In practice, even scientific theories often have to be evaluated indirectly and in conjunction with other systems of theories. of fruitful engagement has been made possible because of the contributions of the earliest science and religion scholars. 33 Stephen Jay Gould, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life (New York: Ballantine Books, 2002), 4. 34 Ian G. Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science: The Gifford Lectures 1989–1991, Volume 1 (London: SCM, 1990), 36. 35 Ian Barbour, Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1997), 115.

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The critical realist thus recognizes the need to evaluate theories and truth claims according to a sophisticated and nuanced set of criteria: these include not only agreement with the available data but also comprehensiveness in scope and fertility, or explanatory power: as Russell writes, “thus intelligibility and explanatory power, and not just observableness or predictive success, is a guide to the real.”36 Critical realism, then, became a conceptual framework for developing a systematic and rigorous relationship between science and religion: “Clearly, religious beliefs are not amenable to strict empirical testing, but they can be approached with some of the same spirit of inquiry found in science. The scientific criteria of coherence, comprehensiveness, and fruitfulness have their parallels in religious thought.”37 This critical realist foundation for science and religion was indicative of the “rediscovery of the questions” motivating interdisciplinary thinkers in the mid-twentieth century and proved a massively important step in the broader conversation between theologians, scientists, and philosophers. Not all interested parties have found critical realism to be an ideal methodology for theology-science research. Though critical realists might agree with John Polkinghorne that both science and theology enjoy “increasing verisimilitude” between theory and reality, critics argue that it is disingenuous and misleading to equate the explanatory success of the sciences with that of theology. Theological inquiry cannot claim the same sort of empirical success as can the natural sciences, even if both theology and science are rigorous academic endeavors.38 Ernan McMullin, for example, highlights several disanalogies between the method and object of the two disciplines,39 while Willem Drees concludes that “given the differences in success, we cannot defend theological realism in the same way that scientific realism is defended. Hence, we cannot co-opt the prestige of science for theology in this way.”40 Other leading scholars have opted for a different methodology based on the philosophical work of Imre Lakatos, which prioritizes the “fruitfulness” of “research programs.” As Philip Hefner explains, “while a research programme cannot be verified or falsified, it can be judged as to whether it is progressive or degenerating, i.e. whether it possesses or lacks the capacity to stimulate new insights.”41 Nancey Murphy has been particularly key in applying Lakatos’s research programs to theological inquiry, allowing her to develop a method for evaluating the relative empirical success of any given theological research program.42 Though developed differently from Murphy, Philip Clayton has also worked with a Lakatosian methodology, prioritizing the role of explanation in evaluating both scientific and theological progress: “theology cannot avoid an appeal to broader canons of rational argumentation and explanatory adequacy.”43 The explanatory power (or lack thereof!) of a particular theological research

Robert John Russell, “Creating the ‘Bridge’ Between Science and Theology,” in Fifty Years in Science and Religion, 46. 37 Ian Barbour, When Science Meets Religion: Enemies, Strangers, or Partners? (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2000), 25. 38 John Polkinghorne, Scientists as Theologians (London: SPCK, 1996), 17. 39 See Ernan McMullin, “Realism in Theology and Science: A Response to Peacocke,” Religion and Intellectual Life 2, no. 4 (1985): 39–47. 40 Willem Drees, Religion, Science, and Naturalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 145. 41 Philip Hefner, “Religion-and-Science,” in The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science, ed. Philip Clayton and Zachary Simpson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 573. 42 Nancey Murphy, Theology in the Age of Scientific Reasoning (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 58–61. 43 Philip Clayton, Explanation from Physics to Theology: An Essay in Rationality and Religion (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 13. 36

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program is central to its assessment, and this must always be done in conversation with the sciences.

SEEKING TRACTION While the early years of science and religion were marked by a preoccupation with methodological concerns, attention soon shifted to specific research topics lying at the intersection of theological inquiry and empirical science. Philip Clayton has articulated the goal of seeking “maximum traction” between science and theology, and this well describes the motivation and goal for many scholars in the field.44 For example, the question of divine action has received significant time, energy, and resources: does God act in the world by intervening in the laws of nature, or do scientifically identifiable loci of indeterminism suggest plausible ways for God to act in a noninterventionist manner in and through natural processes themselves? A similar question involves evolution: are there ways to affirm God’s creative action in and through the messy, ruthless, and yet remarkably fruitful processes of Darwinian natural selection? Did God fine-tune the universe’s various laws and constants in order to ensure the development of human life? How might we think of human uniqueness or the imago Dei given the obvious continuity between Homo sapiens and other animals? Is there an immaterial soul or does contemporary neuroscience suggest a more holistic, physical depiction of human beings? Theologians examining these questions, among others, generally adopt a posture of humility in the face of contemporary science, seeking to adapt traditional theological doctrines to the best of contemporary science. At the same time, though, theologians are acutely aware of the many metaphysical and philosophical presuppositions that underlie the scientific enterprise itself and the limits of scientific inquiry. Contemporary sciencetheology dialogue, at its best, promises to be a true dialogue: a constant conversation about empirical findings and their relationship to broader theological and philosophical questions. For example, take the question of divine action. In the latter half of the twentieth century, much of the debate surrounding God’s involvement in the natural world involved questions of mechanism: if God intentionally acts within the physical structure of the created world, how exactly does that happen without God appearing inconsistent or like a divine lawbreaker? To answer this question, scholars suggested “causal joints” such as chaos theory or quantum mechanics wherein divine intentions might meet causal physical processes. Eventually, however, the conversation shifted from questions of mechanism to a recognition of the enormous theological issues with divine action as traditionally conceived, namely, the problem of suffering. If God can and does act, ever, is God not culpable for not preventing even a little gratuitous suffering? Many theologians began to approach the question of divine action not as a scientific problem to be solved but as an enormous challenge to Christian conceptions of an all-loving, all-powerful God. As Christopher Southgate puts it, “the theology of providence can only ever be explored alongside the problem of suffering and evil.”45 The question of divine action, among many others, is thus not one to be answered merely with reference to empirically identifiable loci of physical indeterminacy; rather, these sort of questions require theological thinking that is deeply engaged with subjective experiences and multiple disciplines. Clayton, Adventures in the Spirit, 54–5. Christopher C. Southgate, God, Humanity, and the Cosmos (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2010), 279.

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At the end of the twentieth century, the science-theology dialogue was one that recognized the nonreductive nature of reality, the importance of theological engagement with the natural sciences, and, increasingly, a sort of fearlessness in its traction-seeking endeavors. This fearlessness is seen most clearly, perhaps, in the empirical study of religion itself. The twentieth century was marked by a growing awareness that religious belief, religious experience, and religious behavior are not only amenable to empirical modes of inquiry and explanation but are also ultimately natural when viewed within the explanatory framework of evolutionary science. The cognitive science of religion, sociology of religion, evolutionary psychology, the neurobiology of religion, anthropology, and ritual studies are just a few of the fields that now offer models for predicting and explaining religion itself within scientific frameworks. For many, this can be threatening: Is science explaining away religious belief, and even God? Many Christians, theologians or otherwise, understandably resist scientific explanations for religious beliefs, theological commitments, and transformative spiritual experiences. They fear that explanations of the physical, psychological, evolutionary, and historical processes involved in the subjective experience of religious must necessarily exclude the possibility that such experiences represent a true relationship between creation and its creator. They adopt what can be called an “incompatibilist” view on empirical inquiry into religion: either a scientific explanation for religious experience and belief is true, or human religion really and truly has to do with an encounter between human beings and God.

THE NATURALISTIC TURN Not all theologians, however, fear scientific explanations for religious beliefs and experiences. By the end of the twentieth century, many, though certainly not all, within the science and theology dialogue had begun moving past grudging acceptance of the empirical study of religion itself and toward an actual embracing of such explanations. The naturalizing thrust of the sciences might challenge the idea that religious belief, spirituality, and transformative religious experiences are fundamentally supernatural, mysterious, or immune to empirical inquiry, but this challenge has also prompted theologians to grapple creatively and constructively with traditional Christian doctrines, using the explanatory power of the sciences as a catalyst for envisioning new models of the God-nature relationship or, at least, for developing new perspectives on traditional models. These thinkers often eschew the quasi-deistic version of classical Western theism that prioritizes God’s transcendence and otherness at the expense of divine immanence. For them, naturalistic explanations need not undermine theological affirmations of divine involvement with nature, because nature itself can never exist outside the presence of God in the first: God is somehow intimately involved with the entire natural world. For example, this naturalistic turn is perhaps seen most prominently in the various forms of panentheism that regained popularity in the late twentieth century. Panentheists affirm that the entire natural world exists, somehow, within God, even as God is more than the physical world. For the panentheist, Christians can wholeheartedly embrace naturalistic explanations precisely because being involved with God is part of what it means to be most fully natural. Other theistic affirmations of the naturalistic turn draw on pneumatology, emphasizing that the Holy Spirit’s presence and activity is partly constitutive of what it means to be natural. Still others find constructive models and

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perspectives in ecotheology, feminist theology, emergence theory, and process thought. Such perspectives prioritize integration, interdependence, organismic thinking, and embodiment. In short, recent decades have seen theologians seeking not to defend against naturalistic explanations or to forcibly insert God into a scientific framework. Rather, many within science and theology have been creatively and sensitively working with empirical inquiry to develop more supple theologies of nature. It must be noted that this turn toward ground-up, nuanced, nonreductionist theological engagements with the sciences has been marked by ever-increasing specificity. It is certainly true that early years of twentiethcentury science and religion saw a preoccupation with method and a quest for a unified “core” for the science and religion field. Today, “science and religion” and “science and theology” are umbrella terms that cover projects, people, methods, subdisciplines, and theological traditions so disparate as to seem, at times, incompatible. And yet it is perhaps precisely because of that specificity, plurality, and diversity that the science and theology conversation today is indeed marked by fruitfulness, in a manner unimaginable in earlier times of single-issue conflict. Some may lament that contemporary theological engagement with the sciences can look like a capitulation, a loss of all that is sacred. Yet others will see in such work the opportunity to bring traditional Christian doctrine into creative and constructive engagement with the whole breadth of human knowledge and experience. These individuals are critically engaged but unafraid, inhabiting once again the Reformed mantra, semper reformanda: the Church is reformed, and ever reforming.

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Encounter of Theology with Physics An Eastern Christian Perspective STOYAN TANEV

Exploring the encounter of theology and physics has always been a challenge. In previous works I suggested a combination of two comparative methods as a basis for the articulation of a constructive approach to such exploration—the Analogical Comparative Theological Approach (ACTA).1 The usual application of the comparative theological approach in a science and religion context should focus on a scientific issue as a third position providing a reference for the encounter of two different religious traditions. Example of such third position could be, for example, the dominant cosmological understanding of the creation of the universe. In this sense, the usual way of applying the comparative theological approach needs to be adjusted in a way that fits the context of the encounter between theology and physics. The first adjustment is that, in this case, physics needs to take the place of one of the traditions, that is, the encounter will be between the theological perspective of a specific religious tradition and the scientific understanding of a particular physical theory. The second adjustment is that the (third) position, which provides the comparative background for the encounter, needs to be specific and highly relevant for both theology and physics. If we take again as an example the creation of the universe, the encounter will be between the articulation of the doctrine of creation in the religious tradition and the emergence of one of the dominant scientific (cosmological) understandings of the beginning of the universe. In this sense, the role of the third position is taken by the concept of creation itself, which is now considered from the viewpoint of the two different perspectives—the theological and the scientific one. In this chapter I will take an ACTA perspective on the encounter between Orthodox theology and quantum physics by exploring the relevance of the energy concept and The articulation of ACTA was inspired by my theological research and teaching experience. The foundations of this approach were set in my Energy in Orthodox Theology and Physics. From Controversy to Encounter (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2017) and then complemented by the comparative theological perspective in Stoyan Tanev, “Adopting an Analogical Comparative Theological Approach to the Encounter of Orthodox Theology with Physics,” Theoforum 48 (2018/2019): 153–73, doi: 00.0000/TF.48.1.0000000; Stoyan Tanev, “Using the Concept of Energy to Encounter Orthodox Theology with Physics: An Analogical Comparative Theological Approach (ACTA),” in Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science Tensions, Ambiguities, Potential, ed. V. N. Makrides, G. E. Woloschak (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols), 127–46. 1

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the distinction between essence (unknowable) and energy (knowable) in two important debates: (1) between St. Gregory Palamas and Barlaam the Calabrian in the fourteenth century,2 and (2) between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr in the twentieth century. The first debate focuses on some of the key aspects of Orthodox theology, the second one on the ongoing challenges in the interpretation of quantum mechanics. As we shall see, both debates are deeply rooted in controversies about the nature of knowledge, the challenges of knowing, and the ways these challenges affect the application of logical arguments. The assumption is that we can learn a lot about theology and quantum physics if we focus on exploring the potential parallels between them from an ACTA perspective.

THE DEBATE BETWEEN ST. GREGORY PALAMAS AND BARLAAM THE CALABRIAN St. Gregory Palamas confronted Barlaam of Calabria (c. 1290–1348) with respect to several issues, two of which were his understanding of the nature of Divine knowledge and the ways of using logical propositions about God.3 Barlaam was a highly learned Greek monk born in Southern Italy who had moved to Constantinople to focus on studying Aristotle on the basis of the original Greek texts (he was already a master of the Aristotelian Categories and Physics, having studied them in Latin translation).4 He was characterized as “brilliant but sharp-tongued” and “thoroughly versed in the classics, an astronomer, a mathematician, as well as a philosopher.” However, “this formidable learning was coupled with an arrogant, sarcastic manner, so caustic at times that he put off even friends and allies.”5 During the years 1333–4, Barlaam was assigned by the Emperor to lead the negotiations with the representatives of Pope John XXII and wrote twenty-one treatises against the Latins in which he opposed the primacy of the Pope and the Filioque—the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and from the Son (Filioque). Around 1336, Gregory Palamas received copies of Barlaam’s treatises against the Latins, condemning their insertion of the Filioque into the Nicene Creed. Although this was the position of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Palamas engaged into a critique of Barlaam’s way of supporting it. Soon after that, the focus of the debate shifted from the Filioque to the nature and presuppositions of theological proofs, the relationship between secular philosophy and theology, and the possibility of direct communion with the uncreated

Georgi Kapriev, “Gregory Palamas,” in Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy: Philosophy between 500 and 1500, ed. Henrik Lagerlund (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011), 520–30. 3 My main sources about the details of the debate are: John Romanides. “Notes on the Palamite Controversy and Related Topics Part I,” The Greek Orthodox Theological Review 6 (1960–61): 193–202; Stavros Yangazoglou, “Philosophy and Theology: The Demonstrative Method in the Theology of Saint Gregory Palamas,” The Greek Orthodox Theological Review 41, no. 1 (1996): 1–18; Иван Христов, “Битие и съществуване в дискусията за метода между св. Григорий Палама и Варлаам,” in Хуманизъм, култура, религия, ed. Иван Стефанов (София: Лик, 1996), 37–48; Robert Sinkewicz, “The Doctrine of Knowledge of God in the Early Writings of Barlaam the Calabrian,” Medieval Studies 44 (1982): 181–242; Георги Каприев, Византийска философия, второ издание (София: Изток-Запад, 2011) (earlier edition in German: Georgi Kapriev, Philosophie in Byzanz (Wuerzburg: Koenigshausen und Neumann, 2005), 344); Иван Христов, Византийското богословие през XIV век. Дискурсът за божествените енергии (София: Изток-Запад, 2016); Norman Russell, Gregory Palamas and the Making of Palamism in the Modern Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Kindle Edition, 2019). 4 Romanides, “Notes on the Palamite Controversy and Related Topics, Part I,” 192. 5 Colin Wells, Sailing From Byzantium: How a Lost Empire Shaped the World (New York: Random House, 2006), 47. 2

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life of God.6 Barlaam’s approach to the discussions with the Latins aimed at proving that their syllogisms are neither apodictic nor dialectic and, therefore, fallacious. In order to show the impropriety of their syllogisms about the Filioque, Barlaam examined their fit to the requirements formulated by Aristotle in his Posterior Analytics.7 He summarized Aristotle’s basic principles on the subject and demonstrated how the Latin arguments did not meet their requirements. For example, he claimed that in an apodictic syllogism the premises should reveal the essence of the object and be the cause of the conclusion, but in a theological syllogism the premises cannot express the essence of God who is unknowable.8 There is historical evidence of St. Gregory’s mastership of Aristotelian logic.9 His argumentation against Barlaam focuses on a different articulation of the ontological foundations of Aristotelian logic.10 It is not the Divine essence that is the subject of syllogistic proofs but those aspects of the Divine being that are open to participation—the acts of being, the Divine life, wisdom, and providence.11 In other words, the ground for participation is that part of the essence that is open to participation by all created things. Due to its existential orientation, St. Gregory calls this part of the Divine essence— nature.12 This essence/nature is the source of the Divine energies, making possible the knowledge and experience of God and opening the possibility for an authentically theological approach to syllogistics. The distinction between the uncreated, incommunicable Divine essence and the uncreated but communicable Divine energies, according to the Orthodox tradition, allows for the active and charismatic relationship between the uncreated and transcendent God and the created world. Regarding knowledge of God’s essence (what God is), the uncreated God is totally unknown to created beings, even to the saints who receive the gift of God’s uncreated grace. No contact with, or knowledge of, the Divine essence is possible and thus no logical demonstration can possibly be produced for it. The fact that God exists, however, as both One and Three (that God is, and who God is), and that “around” God are the various properties of the Divine nature and hypostases, can be investigated and demonstrated. Needless to say, an obvious prerequisite for all this is the fact that God personally revealed these things to humanity as part of His salvific economy, renewing His charismatic relationship with humanity through the Church. The experience of life in Christ teaches that there exists the possibility of direct communion and relationship with God through God’s uncreated energies. Thus, when there is contact between God and knowledge, there is demonstration.13

angazoglou, “Philosophy and Theology,” 4. Y The discussion here follows the logic of Христов, “Битие и съществуване,” 41; Христов, Византийското богословие през XIV век, I.4. 8 Sinkewicz, “The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God,” 190. 9 See Russell, Gregory Palamas and the Making of Palamism in the Modern Age. Russell refers to Philotheos (Patriarch of Constantinople), Dēmētrios G. Tsamēs, Philotheou Kōnstantinoupoleōs tou Kokkinou Hagiologika erga (Volume 4 of Thessalonikeis Vyzantinoi Syngrapheis; Thessaloniki: Kentron Byzantinon Ereunon, 1985). 10 See Христов, “Битие и съществуване,” 36–48; Христов, Византийското богословие през XIV век, I.4; Христов, “Естествения разум и свръхестественото озарение,” in Хуманизъм, култура, религия, ed, Стефанов, 125–34. Comments on the validity of this assumption can be also found in: Gunnarsson, Mystical Realism in the Early Theology of Gregory Palamas, 24; 95. 11 Христов, “Битие и съществуване,” 47; Христов, Византийското богословие през XIV век, I.4. 12 Ibid. 13 Yangazoglou, “Philosophy and Theology,” 7. 6 7

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St. Gregory Palamas critiqued the Calabrian for his insistence on the reality of Divine illumination in pagan philosophers.14 For Barlaam, philosophy is a source of knowledge about God, and “the pagan philosophers were illuminated by God just like the Church Fathers, because the truth to be found in both philosophy and theology is one.” According to Palamas, however, “pagan philosophy can in no way lead us to an understanding of the nature of the human person created in the image and likeness of God; such an understanding is the fruit of revelation alone.”15 Palamas was not against philosophy in general. For him there was no doubt that “philosophy can become a divine gift if it is connected to the faith and love of God. … Reborn through divine grace, philosophy is transformed into something ‘new’ and ‘divine-like,’ it becomes a discourse of edification, it knows and accepts the gifts of the Holy Spirit. It becomes the wisdom from above of those who ‘philosophize in Christ.’ ”16 Barlaam rejected the possibility of using apodictic proofs in theology and believed instead in the suitability of the dialectical method “because it begins with, and has as its premises in, the universal laws and the data of created reality, which are subsequently applied to God. In this way, Barlaam sought the eternal and uncreated within the temporal and the created.”17 He clearly ignored the biblical and patristic distinction between the created and the uncreated aspects of Divine revelation, as well as the revelatory presence and activity of God in the history of the Church. For him, no vision or direct experience of God is possible without created intermediaries. Any gift of God, even the light of Tabor, inasmuch as it was perceived by the physical senses, constitutes a “created spirit” or a “created symbolic representation.” On the basis of such created representations, the soul rises through philosophy toward the immaterial archetypes which constitute perfection and the fullness of theognosia. Barlaam … denied methodologically the empirical basis for theognosia because he rejected the uncreated presence and participation of God, especially, in the liturgical and ascetic life of the Church.18 However according to Gregory Palamas, Theognosia is an event, a direct charismatic experience given to those who are pure of heart and mind, who are illuminated in body and soul by the uncreated light of divine grace. The prophets, the apostles and the saints of the Church ascended and ascend to this height of vision and communion with God. Together with this charismatic theology, which is basically a theophany of God, rationalistic theology has its place. The latter begins from and elaborates upon the insights of the former.19 We can see how the discussion of the legitimacy of using apodictic syllogisms in theology turned into a discussion of the nature—created or uncreated—of the theophanies in the Old and the New Testaments, as well as of the physical or sensible nature of the Divine light seen by the apostles during the Transfiguration of the Lord on Mount Tabor.20 S inkewicz, “The Doctrine of Knowledge of God,” 181–242, 241. Russell, Gregory Palamas and the Making of Palamism in the Modern Age, 138. 16 Yangazoglou, “Philosophy and Theology,” 16. 17 Ibid.,  16–17. 18 Ibid.,  17. 19 Ibid. 20 Stoyan Tanev, “Created and Uncreated Light in Augustine and Gregory Palamas: The Problem of Legitimacy in Attempts for Theological Reconciliation,” Analogia—The Pemptousia Journal for Theological Studies 4, no. 3, Special issue on St. Gregory Palamas, Part 2 (2018): 81–114. 14 15

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Fr. John Romanides was one of the first to point out the Latin, or rather Augustinian, theological point of departure of the Calabrian monk. Following the Augustinian tradition of the West, Barlaam took it for granted and passionately argued that the glory of God revealed in this life to the patriarchs, prophets, and apostles was a created glory and that in each separate case of revelation this glory came into existence and passed out of existence, being of only a short duration. Having been theologically formed by such works as Augustine’s De Trinitate, the Calabrian knew quite well that it was not the uncreated Divinity itself that was revealed in the Old and New Testaments but temporarily existing creatures that symbolized divinity and thereby elevated the minds of those who were the objects of revelation to various levels of the comprehension of ultimate truth.21 For Barlaam, if the light shining at Mount Tabor was visible to the apostles, it had to be created, definable, and physically perceptible, that is, it could not have been uncreated. For Palamas, this light was uncreated, eternal, and undefinable, transcending both the intellect and the natural laws of physical sensation. For him, this is the Divine glory, which is not an objectively given reality that can be perceived by anyone present, because its visual experience requires the transformative effect of the Divine grace and energies. A reference to the first homily of St. Gregory Palamas on the Transfiguration of Christ will help in clarifying this point: The light of the Lord’s transfiguration does not come into being or cease to be, nor is it circumscribed or perceptible to the senses, even though for a short time on the narrow mountain top it was seen by human eyes. Rather, at that moment the initiated disciples of the Lord “passed,” as we have been taught, “from flesh to spirit” by the transformation of their senses, which the Spirit wrought in them, and so they saw that ineffable light, when and as much as the Holy Spirit’s power granted them to do so. Those who are not aware of this light and who now blaspheme against it think that the chosen apostles saw the Light of the Lord’s Transfiguration with their created faculty of sight, and in this way they endeavour to bring down to the level of a created object not just that light—God’s power and kingdom—but even the power of the Holy Spirit, by which divine things are revealed to the worthy.22 In this passage, St. Gregory referred to St. Maximus the Confessor in order to emphasize that it was actually Christ’s disciples who were transfigured by the Spirit and made able to see his Divine glory.23 In addition, he relates the experience of the apostles to the experience of Moses: Everything about the blessed divine nature is truly beautiful and desirable, and is visible only to those whose minds have been purified. Anyone who gazes at its brilliant rays and its graces, partakes of it to some extent, as though his own face were touched omanides, “Notes on the Palamite Controversy and Related Topics, Part I,” 194. R St. Gregory Palamas, “Homily Thirty Four on the Holy Transfiguration of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ,” in The Homilies, trans. Christopher Veniamin (Dalton, PA: Mount Tabor, 2009), 266–74, 269. 23 Andrew Louth, Maximus the Confessor (London: Routledge, 1996), 106, Difficulty 10, 1125D–1128A:  21 22

They beheld Him transfigured, unapproachable because of the light of his face, were amazed at the brightness of his clothes and in the honor shown Him by Moses and Elijah who were with Him on either side, they recognized his great awesomeness. And they passed over from flesh to spirit, before they had put aside this fleshly life, by the change in their powers of sense that the Spirit worked in them, lifting the veils of the passions from the intellectual activity that was in them.

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by dazzling light. That is why Moses’ countenance was glorified when he spoke with God (Exod 34:29). Do you observe that Moses too was transfigured when he went up the mountain and beheld the Lord’s glory? But although he underwent transfiguration, he did not bring it about, in accordance with him who said, “the humble light of truth brings me to the point where I see and experience God’s radiance.”24 Another passage from the Triads provides some additional insights on the distinction between the physical and the sensible: [T]‌he disciples would not even have seen the symbol, had they not first received eyes they did not possess before. As John of Damascus puts it, “From being blind men, they began to see,” and to contemplate this uncreated light. The light, then, became accessible to their eyes, but to eyes which saw in a way superior to that of natural sight, and had acquired the spiritual power of the spiritual light. This mysterious light, inaccessible, immaterial, uncreated, deifying, eternal, this radiance of the Divine Nature, this glory of the divinity, this beauty of the heavenly kingdom, is at once accessible to sense perception and yet transcends it?25 The message of these passages is clear—a necessary condition of theophanic experience is that the visionary is in the right state of soul under the influence of grace.26 The Divine light is not accessible to the human capacities in the way they naturally operate. It is physically invisible and inaccessible to them. There is more to it, however. Every human being can prepare by good works, purification of the heart, and prayer, but the vision of the Divine light is ultimately given by the transformation of the natural human capacities through the enabling power of the Holy Spirit, the Eternal Spirit of the Father and of the Son, who proceeds from the Father and rests on the Son. In this sense, the spiritual empowerment is Christological, Pneumatological and Trinitarian. It is the Trinitarian Divine activity that transforms or transfigures the sight of Moses and of the apostles, originating from the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit, so that they could start seeing this same Light according to the degree of their receptivity and according to the Divine will for them. It is, however, Christ himself who appears in the theophanies, since it is Him who sends the Spirit from the Father; He is the one in whom all things were created and hold together.

THE DEBATE BETWEEN ALBERT EINSTEIN AND NIELS BOHR Quantum physics began challenging the epistemology of classical physics in the beginning of the 1920s and resulted in a famous debate between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr. The key issues in the debate are still reverberating, and it was just in the last quarter of the twentieth century that modern physics experiments demonstrated that the fundamental issues in the famous Einstein–Bohr debate have been resolved in Bohr’s favor. The outcome of this debate was the discovery of a profound new relationship between parts and whole of physical entities which is completely nonclassical. This new relationship

St. Gregory Palamas, “Homily Thirty Four,” 271. In this passage, St. Gregory refers to St. Gregory the Theologian’s Oration on the Holy Theophany, that is to say, On the Birth of Our Saviour XXXVIII. 25 Gregory Palamas, The Triads, trans. Nicholas Gendle (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1982), triad III.i.22 26 Cory Hayes, “Deus In Se Et Deus Pro Nobis: The Transfiguration in the Theology of Gregory Palamas and Its Importance for Catholic Theology” (PhD dissertation, Duquesne University, 2015), 94. 24

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suggests that the classical conception of the ability of a physical theory to disclose the whole as a sum of its parts, or to describe reality in itself, is no longer acceptable. Modern physics experiments have made it perfectly clear that these assumptions of classical physics are no longer valid.27 It took more than two decades after the discovery of quantum physics before it became possible to formulate a theory that was somewhat similar in functioning to Newtonian mechanics. Quantum mechanics was introduced in 1925 and 1926 by Heisenberg and Schrödinger in two different but mathematically equivalent versions. Heisenberg’s version was presented in virtually nonclassical terms and led to the formulation of the so-called uncertainty principle.28 When applied to a particle, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle means that having more precision in measuring the particle’s position leads to less precision in measuring its velocity, and vice versa. In addition, there is a minimum value for the product of the uncertainties of these two measurements. The radicalness of this principle comes from the fact that it makes a quantum physicist blind and wordless by hiding or blurring the physical attributes of the particle. We cannot point to a specific position of a quantum object, or speak of its specific trajectory, or see it moving from point A to point B. We can just predict the probability for it being in a specific space region as well as its potential velocity and energy ranges. The particle-like understanding of light emerged after Planck’s discovery of the quanta, primarily due to Einstein’s explanation of the photoelectric effect. It was around 1920 when light acquired an explicitly dual, that is, wave-particle, character, which is unexplainable by classical physics. Almost at the same time, the pervasive nature of this duality at the quantum level became apparent as well. Both light and particles, under different complementary circumstances, can manifest their presence in a wave-like or particle-like manner. It is quite significant that the point at which mathematical theory meets the realm of the un-visualizable is exactly the point at which classical logic breaks down as well. This breakdown required a new logical framework that was originally developed by Niels Bohr in an effort to explain wave-particle dualism in quantum physics.29 The mutual exclusivity of wave and particle behaviors of single quantum entities was the basis for him to introduce the principle of complementarity—a single quantum entity can either behave as a particle or as wave, but never simultaneously as both. Bohr emphasized that there is a new situation.30 What was this new situation? Before the emergence of quantum physics, all physical objects were known to behave in experiments in one out of two ways—as a particle or as a wave. As a result, some of the physical objects existing in nature manifested the properties of a particle and others the properties of a wave. There was no way for a classical object to alternate its wave or particle properties in different experimental setups. After the emergence of quantum physics, scientific experiments clearly showed that one and the same physical object can manifest the properties of either particles or

Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos, The Non-Local Universe: The New Physics and Matters of the Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 28 Werner Heisenberg, “Über quantentheoretische Umdeutung kinematischer und mechanischer Beziehungen,” Zeitschrift für Physik 33, no. 1 (1925): 879–93. An English translation can be found in B. L. van der Waerden, ed. and trans., Sources of Quantum Mechanics (New York: Dover, 1968), 261–76. 29 Niels Bohr, “The Quantum Postulate and the Recent Development of Atomic Theory,” Nature 121 (1928): 580–90. See also Steen Brock, “Old Wine Enriched in New Bottles: Kantian Flavors in Bohr’s Viewpoint of Complementarity,” in Constituting Objectivity, Transcendental Perspectives on Modern Physics, ed. Michel Bitbol, Pierre Kerszberg, and Jean Petitot (Berlin: Springer Science + Business Media B.V., 2009), 301–16, 314. 30 Ibid., 115–16. 27

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waves depending on the specific experimental configuration. In other words, it became possible for physical objects to drastically alter their manifested properties depending on the intention of the observer resulting in a specific experimental design. One could not speak anymore of objectively existing properties of quantum objects independently of observer’s experimental intervention. The quantum object exists objectively, but its properties emerge within the context of the experimental setup and observer’s intention behind it. This contradicts classical logic, which assumes that physical entities have welldefined unchanging properties and all logical statements are based on the constancy of these properties over time. The debate between Bohr and Einstein began at the fifth Solvay Congress in 1927 and continued intermittently until Einstein’s death in 1955. The argument took the form of discussion of thought experiments in which Einstein would try to attack the validity of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle by demonstrating that it was theoretically possible to measure, or at least determine, simultaneously the precise values of two complementary constructs in quantum physics—position and velocity. Bohr would then respond with a careful analysis of the conditions and the results of the thought experiments and demonstrate that there were fundamental ambiguities Einstein had failed to resolve.31 Einstein eventually accepted the idea that the uncertainty or indeterminacy principle is a fact of nature. He, however, never really engaged in the discussion of the principle of complementarity.32 The essential point of subsequent disagreement in the debate became whether quantum theory was a complete theory. Einstein’s position can be expressed by one of his most famous quotes today: “Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the ‘Old one.’ I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice.”33 According to him, if our current understanding about the nature of quantum objects is probabilistic, it only shows that we are missing something and there should be some “hidden variables” that escape our knowledge but will be certainly discovered as our theories keep improving over time. In other words, our ignorance of the variation of these hidden variables makes the behavior of quantum reality appear as probabilistic, unpredictable and unknowable in classical terms. At the same time, however, future knowledge of these hidden variables would supposedly make the description of quantum systems completely deterministic. In other words, although quantum indeterminacy may be a property of a quantum system in practice, it does not need to be so in principle. In this sense, the physical attributes of quantum systems can be viewed as objective or real even in the absence of measurement and we could assume, as Einstein did, a one-to-one correspondence between every element of the physical theory and the properties of physical reality. Bohr agreed that the existing theories may and will improve with time but believed that this improvement will not remove the principles of uncertainty and complementarity because they are inherent characteristics of the nature of quantum objects. He looked at quantum objects in terms of their energetic manifestations in the effects of their interaction with measurement An insightful discussion of the nature of the debate between Einstein and Bohr can be found in Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos, The Non-Local Universe: The New Physics and Matters of the Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 162. 32 N. P. Landsman, “When Champions Meet: Rethinking the Bohr–Einstein debate,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 37 (2006): 212–42, 217. 33 Letter to Max Born (December 4, 1926), in Max Born and Albert Einstein, The Born-Einstein Letters, trans. Irene Born (New York: Walker and Company, 1971). 31

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instruments rather than in terms of the properties they manifest in isolation and independently of an observer. In Bohr’s ultimate view, all available quantum phenomena are defined strictly in terms of the manifestations of particular aspects of the inner nature of quantum objects in recorded effects, such as the click of a photodetector, rather than in terms of properties that are preassigned to the these objects independently of their involvement in an experiment. The assignment of such properties in advance, when they are on their own and outside of the context of a specific experimental configuration, is unacceptable in view of the impossibility of any sharp separation between the behavior of atomic objects and their interaction with the measurement instruments that serve to define the conditions under which the observable phenomena appear. In this sense, quantum discreteness, discontinuity, individuality, and indivisibility are transferred to the level of the phenomena and their effects. This transfer requires a terminological adjustment since our concepts apply now to physically complex and non-localized entities, each involving the whole experimental arrangement rather than to single physical entities that are localized in space. In Bohr’s view, there is no God-like perspective from which we can know physical reality in itself. Bohr’s way of expression, especially in the early stage of the development of quantum mechanics, did not help much in providing clarity to his positions. According to Heisenberg, however, Bohr did not have a problem with language but was in the process of creating a new one. In this process he “tried to keep the words and the pictures without keeping the meaning of the words and of the pictures, having been from his youth interested in the limitation of our way of expression, the limitation of words, the problem of talking about things when one knows that the words do not really get hold of the things.”34 I have greatly appreciated a recent interpretation of the debate suggested by N. Landsman.35 According to Landsman, in the early stages of the debate, Bohr was the undisputed winner. However, after decades of derision by the Copenhagen camp, Einstein’s star as a critic of quantum mechanics has been on the rise since about the early 1980s. … Bohr’s reputation as an interpreter of quantum mechanics seems to be travelling in the opposite direction. During his lifetime, Bohr was revered like a demi-god by many of his contemporaries, certainly because of his brilliant pioneering work on quantum theory, probably also in view of the position of inspirer and even father-figure he held with respect to Pauli (who seems to have been Bohr’s greatest admirer) and especially Heisenberg.36 While most of the presentations of the Einstein–Bohr debate closely follow Bohr’s perspective,37 Landsman agrees with Beller (1999)38 that “Bohr’s account was written from a winner’s perspective, concentrating on parts of the debate where he indeed emerged victorious, if not ‘triumphant’.”39 Bohr’s triumphant attitude could be understood by looking at his reaction to the EPR (Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen) paper40 published in 1935 to suggest a thought experiment intended to demonstrate an inherent paradox in the early formulation of quantum theory. Ibid. Landsman, “When Champions Meet,” 212–42. 36 Ibid.,  214. 37 Niels Bohr, “Discussion with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in Atomic Physics,” in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, ed. P. A. Schilpp (La Salle: Open Court, 1949), 201–41. 38 M. Beller, Quantum Dialogue (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). 39 Landsman, “When Champions Meet,” 215. 40 A. Einstein, B. Podolsky, and N. Rosen, “Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality be Considered Complete?” Physical Review 47 (1935): 777–80. 34 35

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The paradox involves two particles that are entangled with each other according to quantum mechanics. Under the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, each particle is individually in an uncertain state until it is measured, at which point the state of that particle becomes certain. At that exact same moment, the other particle’s state also becomes certain. The reason that this is classified as a paradox is that it seemingly involves communication between the two particles at speeds greater than the speed of light, which is a conflict with Einstein’s theory of relativity.41 As Landsman pointed out, “EPR was really a confused and confusing mixture of Einstein’s earlier attack on the uncertainty relations with his later ‘incompleteness’ arguments against quantum mechanics,” but, at the same time, “the immediate response to EPR by the Bohr camp reveals their breathtaking arrogance towards Einstein’s critique of quantum theory.”42 Bohr and his supporters did not see in this paper any new relevant arguments against their position and kept bluntly applying their previous logic in refuting it. According to Landsman, they did that “with an obscurity surpassing that of EPR,” but, more importantly, “this attitude must count among the most severe errors of judgement in the history of physics.”43 This is because EPR has become arguably the most famous paper ever written about quantum mechanics. For although Einstein’s original intention might have been to press what he felt to be a reductio ad absurdum argument against quantum theory, the paper is now generally read as stating a spectacular prediction of quantum theory, viz. the existence of what these days are quite rightly called EPR-correlations. The theoretical analysis of these correlations … revitalized the foundations of quantum theory, and their experimental verification … was done in one of the most stunning series of experiments in twentieth-century physics.44 In other words, Einstein suggested the configuration of a quantum entanglement experiment in order to demonstrate that such entanglement was impossible, that is, Einstein demonstrated his greatness by … being wrong. As a result, one could claim together with Landsman that, “[a]‌mazingly, the one outcome of the Bohr–Einstein debate that is of lasting value for physics therefore concerns a phenomenon whose existence Einstein actually denied …, and whose significance Bohr utterly failed to recognize!”45 Independently of their disagreements, “Bohr and Einstein were both quite worried about the problem of objectification in physics, especially in quantum mechanics. … Bohr claimed objectification of a quantum system through the specification of an experimental context; Einstein claimed objectification of any physical system to arise from its (spatial) Andrew Zimmerman Jones, “EPR Paradox in Physics. How the EPR Paradox Describes Quantum Entanglement,” ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/epr-paradox-in-physics-2699186. Accessed May 12, 2019. 42 Landsman, “When Champions Meet,” 217. 43 Ibid. 44 See Stuart Freedman and John Clauser, “Experimental Test of Local Hidden-Variable Theories,” Physical Review Letters 28 (1972): 938–41; Alain Aspect, Philippe Grangier, and Gérard Roger, “Experimental Realization of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen-Bohm Gedankenexperiment: A New Violation of Bell’s Inequalities,” Physical Review Letters 49 (1982): 91–94; Alain Aspect, Jean Dalibard, and Gérard Roger, “Experimental Test of Bell’s Inequalities Using Time-Varying Analyzers,” Physical Review Letters 49 (1982): 1804–7; W. Tittel, J. Brendel, H. Zbinden, and N. Gisin, “Violations of Bell Inequalities More Than 10km Apart,” Physical Review Letters 81 (1998): 3565–6. For a broader list of similar experiments, the reader could visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Bell_test_experiments. 45 Landsman, “When Champions Meet,” 217–18. 41

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separation from the observer.”46 Landsman shows mathematically that the positions of the two giants overlap significantly—“a point both failed to recognize, probably not merely for the ideological reason stated above, but undoubtedly also because of the desire of both to defeat the opponent.”47 Landsman’s article is particularly relevant for our discussion. The author is a wellknown theoretical physicist48 who, interestingly, employed a theological argument to enlighten the essence of the disagreement between Einstein and Bohr: More importantly, the agreement between Einstein and Bohr on the solution to the problem of objectification in quantum theory paves the way for an identification of their exact disagreement on the issue of the (in)completeness of the theory. Namely, the technical parts of their debate on the (in)completeness of quantum mechanics just served as a pale reflection of a much deeper philosophical disagreement between Bohr and Einstein about the knowability of Nature. For Bohr’s doctrine of classical concepts implies that no direct access to the quantum world is possible, leaving its essence unknowable. This implication was keenly felt by Einstein, who in response was led to characterize his opponent as a “Talmudic philosopher.”49 Landsman shows how astute the characterization of Bohr as a Talmudic philosopher was through a theological analogy comparing Bohr and Einstein with Maimonides and Spinoza, respectively, on the unknowability of God. Bohr insisted that the formalism of quantum theory provided a complete description of physics and accepted as a given the incompleteness of the knowledge the theory provides. This for Einstein was equivalent to a mere acceptance of ignorance. He was most probably following Spinoza (his interest in Spinoza is well known), who spoke about the “complacency of ignorance” in reference to the scholastic philosophers who defended the unknowability of God.50 In a letter to Schrodinger from June 19, 1935, Einstein portrays Bohr as follows: “The Talmudic philosopher doesn’t give a hoot for ‘reality’, which he regards as a hobgoblin of the naïve.”51 According to Landsman, the “Talmudic philosopher” label reveals the real and insurmountable disagreement between Einstein and Bohr that is manifested in the opposition between Einstein’s claim that “God doesn’t play dice with the world” and Bohr’s reply to him that he “should stop telling God what to do.”52 As Landsman indicates, some of the commentators on the Bohr–Einstein debate “tend to put Einstein in the Talmudic tradition, leaving Bohr at the side of Eastern mysticism (referring to Bohr’s choice of the yin-yang symbol as the emblem of his coat of arms following his Knighthood in 1947).” Others emphasize that Bohr was not religious and did not believe in the existence of a “God’s-Eye View” on quantum reality.53 Ibid.,  216. Ibid.,  218. 48 https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=nl&user=PTyjucMAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate. 49 Landsman, “When Champions Meet,” 218. Landsman refers to A. Einstein, Letter to Erwin Schrödinger (June 19, 1935), in A. Fine, The Shaky Game: Einstein Realism and the Quantum Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 35. 50 A. Donagan, “Spinoza’s Theology,” in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, ed. D. Garrett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 343–82, 347. 51 D. Howard, “Einstein on Locality and Separability,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 16 (1985): 171–201, 178 (Howard’s translation). 52 Landsman refers to R. Kroehling, Albert Einstein: How I See the World (PBS Home Video, 1991). 53 David Farvholdt, “Niels Bohr and Realism,” in Niels Bohr and Contemporary Philosophy, ed. Jan Faye and Henry Folse (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994), 77–96, 88. 46 47

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The theological analogy suggested by Landsman is between the knowability of Nature in physics, as limited by Bohr’s doctrine of classical concepts, and the knowability of God in theology, highly restricted as the Old Testament claims it to be. Indeed, Bohr’s idea that the quantum world can be studied exclusively through its influence on the ambient classical world has a striking parallel in the ‘Talmudic’ notion that God can only be known through his actions.54 To illustrate this analogy, Landsman quotes from Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed: God’s reply to the two requests (by Moses) was to promise that he would let him know all His attributes, telling him at the same time that they were His actions. Thereby He told him that His essence could not be apprehended in itself, but also pointed out to him a starting point from which he could set out to apprehend as much of Him as man can apprehend.55 A nicely surprising outcome of Landsman’s theological analogy approach is its alignment with Orthodox theology with respect to the relevance of the distinction between the unknowable Divine essence and the knowability of God’s energies or activities. Examining the relationship between the Talmudic and the Eastern Christian understanding of the distinction between Divine essence and energies is beyond the scope of the present study. We can only mention that a link between the two traditions could be found in Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 bce–40 ce)—a Hellenized Jew who spanned two cultures, the Greek and the Hebrew. For him, the Divine essence is strictly unknowable and God is known through his powers, which he identifies with the Divine glory.56 “Philonic metaphysics, rooted in the antinomy between divine transcendence and immanence, begins with the distinction between God’s incommunicable divine essence and his participable divine operation, or energy.”57 Leaving aside the similarity between the Eastern Christian and Jewish understandings of the unknowability of God, we can point out that Landsman’s analogy indicates the potential of the essence-energy distinction as an exploratory lens in the interpretation of the debate between Einstein and Bohr. I have already discussed this potential in previous works58 and cannot but truly appreciate Landsman’s supportive argument.

CONCLUSION The discussion above could be considered as a comparative exploration of the emergence of the distinction between essence and energy or between knowable and unknowable as issues in the unfolding of the debates between St. Gregory Palamas and Barlaam the Calabrian (fourteenth century), and between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr (twentieth

andsman, “When Champions Meet,” 236. L M. Maimonides (1995). The Guide of the Perplexed, ed. J. Guttmann, Book I, Chapter LIV (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1995). 56 David Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West – Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 59–64; John Dillon, The Middle Platonists, 2nd ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), 155–70. See also Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 bce–40 ce), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://www. iep.utm.edu/philo/. 57 Tikhon Alexander Pino, “An Essence–Energy Distinction in Philo as the Basis for the Language of Deification,” The Journal of Theological Studies, NS, 68, Part 2 (October 2017): 551–71. 58 See note 1. 54 55

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century). The emerging issues lead to the discussion of the ways of using logical proofs in both theology and quantum physics. The comparative analysis follows the logic of the ACTA approach, which requires a “third position,” a controversial issue or a conceptual challenge that could be used as a point of comparison of these two distinctive domains of human experience and knowledge. Our third position—the relevance of the energy concept and the distinction between essence and energy—cannot be decoupled from the debate format of the analysis. In this sense, we can claim that the adoption of the ACTA approach was enhanced by the analogical format of the comparison between the two debates. However, the contemporary relevance of the debates enhances the operation of the third position as part of the ACTA approach.

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Human as World-Maker An Anthropocene Dogma LISA H. SIDERIS

One day in 1966, the environmentalist and tech-visionary Stewart Brand took a dose of LSD and gazed at the San Francisco skyline. He could feel the curve of the Earth. He imagined drifting further and further into space, to take in the full arc of its curvature. Soon after, Brand began actively petitioning NASA to release photos of the Earth taken from space. To promote his cause, he famously created buttons that demanded, “Why haven’t we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet?” The question struck a chord with the public, and his buttons sold widely for 25 cents each. In 1967, NASA released the photo, and Brand placed it on the cover of his Whole Earth Catalog, a countercultural do-it-yourself manual for tech enthusiasts seeking to get back to nature. This image, as well as the iconic photo of “Earthrise” taken during lunar orbit, evoked feelings of unity and solidarity for many.1 It inspired a sense of global oneness. Astronauts who witnessed this view of the Earth firsthand reported a kind of cognitive shift in awareness, an awefilled appreciation our planet’s interconnectedness and fragility. The “Overview Effect,” as this religious-like shift in perspective is now called, is celebrated by scientific and spiritual seekers alike as a dramatic leap forward in human consciousness.2 Armed with this new perspective, humans (or some humans) began to intuit their dual, if somewhat conflicting, obligations: namely, to care for Earth and— ultimately—to escape its embrace, in a techno-spiritual quest to locate other worlds and perpetuate our species into the future. In short, this moment marked a peculiar confluence of spiritual, technological, and environmental aspirations. At the same time, the whole Earth vision contains within it a paradox that, I argue, is reproduced in many high-profile technologically driven environmental initiatives in which technology often functions both as a vehicle for journeying “back” to nature in some sense and as a means of throwing off or transgressing natural limits altogether. These projects routinely tout an ecological agenda or seek to reintegrate humans into nature. And yet they entail and often celebrate technological powers and quasi-theological assumptions about the human that at best set us apart from nature and at worst bolster extravagant claims of human exceptionalism.

Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). 2 Frank White, The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution (Boston, MA: Houghton and Mifflin, 1987). 1

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In what follows, I call attention to a particular portrait of the human as a worldmaking or world-shaping creature that often accompanies these conflicting impulses to preserve and transcend nature and earthly conditions. My contention is that these projects share a common investment in humans’ arrival at a planetary stage of species consciousness. Many of these projects also have an investment in developmental or stage theories of cosmic evolution, an idea that is implicitly religious or has specific theological antecedents. That is, these interpretations of our species typically embed the human in a deep-time perspective in which the recent development of our world-making powers is seen as almost an inevitable outcome of impersonal but teleological evolutionary forces. Human thought and technology, on this account, constitute an emerging sphere of the mind—a thinking layer that evolves beyond the biosphere and comes to remake it in our species’ own image. The commonly invoked term for this concept is the noosphere.3 The emergence of this thinking sphere of the planet is seen by many of the thinkers I discuss here to signify humans as drivers of future planetary and cosmic evolution. This perspective on the human as a world-making creature imbued with a cosmic destiny and purpose is one I mean to critique.4 The particular modes of planetary thinking I examine here have an enthusiastic following among some prominent and publicfacing scientists, tech-visionaries, and Anthropocene scholars, and the influence of these perspectives on the broader culture cannot be ignored. I begin by discussing some of the paradoxes of “whole Earth” environmentalism and then turn to projects that embody these tensions between intimacy and alignment with nature (or “the planet”), on the one hand, and transcendence of planetary and natural limits, on the other.

THE PARADOXES OF WHOLE EARTH ENVIRONMENTALISM Much has been written on the significance of the whole Earth image and its uses and misuses. For many, as I have suggested, the image symbolizes Earth’s fragility, unity, and finitude.5 Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, who followed in Carl Sagan’s footsteps as host of the popular Cosmos television series, frequently remarks in public lectures and interviews that humans went to the moon but discovered the Earth.6 Tyson means to suggest something very specific, namely, that NASA and the Apollo missions deserve credit for the rise of the environmental movement, far more than watershed events and texts often cited as the impetus for environmentalism, such as Rachel Carson’s classic Silent Spring. Related to this, Tyson invokes the trope that Earth exhibits no borders or boundaries from space: seen from a great distance, all is one. Without this image of Earth from space, we could never have envisioned initiatives such as Doctors Without Borders or Earth Day.7 Yet at the same time that the whole Earth image supposedly inspired Paul R. Samson and David Pitt, eds., The Biosphere and Noosphere Reader: Global Environment, Society and Change (New York: Routledge, 1999). 4 However, my contention is not that all potential cosmic or planetary perspectives necessarily fall prey to problematic or self-aggrandizing visions of our planetary future or human exceptionalism, as there may be other ways of defining what it means to think or act in planetary terms that would resist or denounce Earth-fleeing transcendence. 5 Yaakov Garb, “The Use and Misuse of the Whole Earth Image,” Whole Earth Review 45 (March 1985): 18–25. 6 The original inspiration for this observation came from Apollo astronaut Bill Anders. 7 Tyson made this claim, for example, in an Earth Day lecture I attended at the University of Wisconsin. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, “Science as a Way of Knowing,” keynote address, Ninth Annual Nelson Institute Earth Day Conference, University of Wisconsin, April 20, 2015. 3

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stewardship and care for our home, it also quickened a desire to leave Earth behind, to colonize other planets and solidify our status as a truly cosmic species. A banner of interconnectedness and solidarity, the Whole Earth image is also a “banner of alienation and escape from the Earth.”8 On this account, the image and its attendant technology are “apt symbols” of the victory of the transcendent and disembodied, over a more embodied attunement to the material Earth.9 The whole Earth perspective marks our technological ascendance as a species and our capacity to take up a certain kind of omnipresence. A variety of ambiguous and competing interpretations of the whole Earth image often emerge in discussions among astronauts and space scientists. Examples of this can be seen in the short documentary film Overview, which focuses on new forms of consciousness experienced by astronauts who first saw Earth from this perspective. Among other impressions engendered by the “overview” perspective, the experience underscores an awareness of Earth as truly a planet. To be a planet is to be an object in space, in the same way that, seen in space, the sun is finally grasped as a star—no longer simply our familiar sun but a bright body against a black background. These mixed feelings of being intimately bonded with the Earth, but also in a sense disembodied and flying free in an infinite horizon, foreshadow the conflicting agendas that the whole Earth image underwrites. For example, with the understanding of Earth as a planet comes the realization that we— even we living on Earth—are always already in space. Space—the universe—is where we live (though we had to leave the planet to fully apprehend this reality). If we live in the universe and the Earth is a planet—a category that includes many other bodies in the universe—then it follows that we might visit or even live on other planets as well. Earth might come to be seen as a home base, or our “host” planet—a phrase often invoked by astrobiologists. Getting a “better view” of Earth from space brings with it a newfound “psychic aloofness.”10 To understand Earth as hosting us suggests that other planets might serve that function as well, and this thought—this framing of Earth as a planet, and planets as hosts— fundamentally changes our relationship to Earth. It prompts us to consider whether humanity can bond with and care for this planet while making explicit overtures toward other potential worlds. In becoming a planetary species we are no longer mere earthlings but potential worldlings. Earth seems less our natural home and something more akin to an exoplanet, a world as seen from the outside, objectively. It becomes an abstract entity, something an engineer can manipulate, break or fix at will, akin to a spaceship.11 For some proponents of space exploration, as we will see, humanity’s expansion into the wider universe and our development of technologies that allow us to view Earth from this objective stance are seen as synonymous with our maturity as a species, while Earth represents our childhood home, our juvenile state. Moving into space suggests our “technological omnipresence,” and yet, in “being everywhere we are nowhere.”12 The habitation of other words, the exchange of this one for another, begins to seem a natural, perhaps even a progressive stage of development. Thus, there is something inherently and uniquely objectifying about the view of Earth from space that, for all its wonder and awe, also facilitates a utilitarian gaze. This so-called

arb, “Use and Misuse,” 18. G Ibid.,  19. 10 Ibid. 11 Astrobiologist David Grinspoon’s book title—Earth in Human Hands—suggests such an image of Earth as manipulable by humans. 12 Garb, “Use and Misuse,” 20. 8 9

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planetary perspective not only subsumes Earth under a general category of things in the universe, but it also places Earth among objects theorized by astrobiologists as undergoing predictable stages of techno-evolutionary development. In other words, it suggests that Earth can be placed into a universal developmental framework for all planets, an “entirely new ‘big story.’ ”13 With these ambivalent or conflicting ideas of our relationship to Earth in mind, I turn to a few projects that embody these tensions and speak to an increasingly popular conception of what it means to be human. The first of these is Biosphere 2.

THE EARTHBOUND TRANSCENDENCE OF BIOSPHERE 2 Humans have always looked to space as a transcendent realm, a place to work out our most challenging questions about what it means to be human.14 Many who have aspired to space travel have been equally preoccupied with a variety of liberatory and transcendent goals for humanity as a whole. These have included the infinite extension of the human life span, the overcoming of death or physical resurrection of the dead, the colonization of other worlds, time travel or the reversal of time, and the realization of universal brotherhood.15 This association holds especially true for a group of thinkers often referred to as the Russian Cosmists who emerged in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and whose ambitions included, collectively, a quest for space flight, pursuit of human longevity or immortality, and the resurrection or reanimation of all matter. The cosmists sought to turn transcendent projects into tasks to be realized in this world—to “turn metaphysics into engineering projects.”16 One of the most famous of these thinkers is geochemist Vladimir Vernadsky (1863–1945), who along with the Jesuit priest and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and French mathematician Éduoard Le Roy, coined and popularized the “noosphere” concept.17 The Cosmists proposed that humans are still in the early stages of evolution. We are still children, or perhaps adolescents, a problematic and precarious stage of development. The process of gaining maturity involved humans’ emerging as a force on the planet and in the cosmos at large. Our evolutionary maturity would be signaled, on this account, by our ability to alter our environment (construed broadly to extend beyond Earth) through human thought and technology. So what has Biosphere 2 to do with Russian cosmism and the noosphere? Originally built in 1987, Biosphere 2 is an enclosed mini-planet in the Arizona desert in which a cult-like group of “terranauts”—earthbound astronauts, of sorts—lived without aid from the outside world for two years. The facility also contained carefully selected plant and animal species and a range of biomes, including a marine environment, coral reef, desert, rainforest, and others. From its inception, Biosphere 2 pursued somewhat clashing imperatives both to respect and harmonize with earthly limits—to get back to nature in some sense—but also to test, transcend, or redefine natural limits. Adam Frank, Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth (New York: Norton, 2018), 10. Linda Billings, “Overview: Ideology, Advocacy, and Spaceflight—Evolution of a Cultural Narrative,” in Societal Impact of Spaceflight, ed. Steven J. Dick and Roger D. Launius (Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2007), 483–500, http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS115997. 15 George M. Young, The Russian Cosmists: The Esoteric Futurism of Nickolai Federov and His Followers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). 16 Richard Smoley, “Spaceship Earth: The Visionary Ideas of the Russian Cosmists,” New Dawn, September–October 2013. https://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/spaceship-earth-the-visionary-ideas-of-the-russian-cosmists. 17 Samson and Pitt, The Biosphere and Noosphere Reader. 13 14

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Biosphere 2 was fueled by an intoxicating quest for cosmic meaning.18 As Rebecca Reider notes in Dreaming the Biosphere, a fascinating and thorough treatment of this bizarre experiment, the environmental rationales for the project were often proclaimed, but they were never very clear, even to the project’s creators. There was a vague sense that Biosphere 2 could teach us to live harmoniously with nature, to live humbly and lightly here on Biosphere 1. Earnest terranauts (or biospherians, in Reider’s terminology) pored over Eugene Odum’s Fundamentals of Ecology and James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis. Inventor and designer Buckminster Fuller, who popularized the term “spaceship Earth” as well as systems thinking (an approach to living in accordance with natural patterns that Fuller called “synergetics”), significantly influenced the creators of Biosphere 2. And yet, while the pursuit of Edenic harmony and integration with nature was a frequent refrain of the project’s pioneers, their rhetoric was also tinged with hubris over the sheer audacity of their endeavor and the dizzying prospect of creating and eventually colonizing new worlds. Journalists, who have had a love-hate relationship with Biosphere 2 since its inception, often repeated its role in saving the Earth without asking how, exactly, that noble goal aligned with the overall thrust of the mission. Biospherians struggled to articulate just how the project would help the planet, insisting vaguely that it was a grand and important adventure for the human species, and that it gave them hope.19 In fact, a chief motivation behind the project was the development of closed biospheres to be used in space colonization. Ecological imperatives of planet-saving mingled freely with explicit yearnings to escape the confines of Earth. The odd blend of myths and metaphors point to the competing objectives of Biosphere 2. Was Biosphere 2 primarily a refuge for endangered species? A spiritual exercise? A laboratory for new eco-technologies and biospheric science? Was it a trial run for a space station? Biblical myths and metaphors mixed with triumphal rhetoric of Manifest Destiny and the Final Frontier, as Reider’s work demonstrates.20 Biosphere 2 was sometimes defended as a Garden of Eden, sometimes as a high-tech incarnation of Noah’s Ark, or an enactment of the epic of Gilgamesh—suggesting a safe haven for life on an already doomed planet.21 In one sense, Biosphere 2 was focused on mundane details: soil composition, energy flows, the life-sustaining work done by microscopic organisms. But it was equally about human “power and meaning in the universe.”22 That is, it was driven by a desire to apprehend and literally act out humanity’s role and destiny, not only on Earth but also within the vast cosmos.23 “The Biosphere-builders were trying to work out humanity’s correct role in nature,” Reider argues. Above all they wanted to know if humans could “initiate and guide the evolution of an entire biosphere.”24 They believed a planetary

Rebecca Reider, Dreaming the Biosphere: The Theater of All Possibilities (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009). 19 Reider, Dreaming. 20 For a similar and fascinating account of religiously inflected motifs of Manifest Destiny and Final Frontier rhetoric in America’s space program, see Catherine Newell, Destined for the Stars: Faith, the Future, and America’s Final Frontier (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019). 21 Reider, Dreaming, 117. 22 Ibid.,  119. 23 Reider regularly deploys the metaphor of theater and performance in her account of Biosphere 2. Many of the biospherians had experience as stage actors and extensive knowledge of mythic genres. They understood the project as performance on the largest possible scale—the theater of all possibilities noted in Reider’s subtitle. 24 Reider, Dreaming, 117. 18

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vision of unity could provide an antidote to the emptiness of the modern, post-religious age. Biosphere 2 offered the prospect of “new creation mythology for confusing times.”25 Biospherians understood themselves to be inaugurating a new stage in evolution. A main pioneer of the project, John Allen, drew from Vladimir Vernadsky’s conception of the noosphere as the template for a human-directed biosphere. As the “patron saint of Biosphere 2,” Vernadsky’s spirit enlivened its mission and his solemn, bearded face adorned the walls of its interior.26 For the creators of Biosphere 2, Vernadsky’s cosmic vision enshrined the power of humans to direct planetary processes. If the ambitious project of human-assisted evolution succeeded, they would emerge as a new breed of humans as “heroes who are champions of life and explorers of space.”27 Reider correctly perceives parallels between the project’s spiritual mission and the belief of Teilhard and others that through active participation in evolutionary processes, humans could evolve a new spiritual and planetary stage. The basic plot of Biosphere 2, she writes, had strong parallels elsewhere in society—indications that the Biosphere-builders’ fervent philosophizing was their own offbeat version of a widespread search for meaning. Various mystical gurus, such as the French Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin … had gained large international followings in the early twentieth century using similar philosophies. Each of those gurus preached his own theological system based on a spiritual definition of “evolution,” promoting a faith that through conscious spiritual effort humans could literally evolve.28 In short, Biosphere 2 obeyed the evolutionary imperative that “humanity must pick up the work of creation where God had left off.”29 While it remained physically earthbound, Biosphere 2 was animated metaphysically by a cosmic vision made possible by the perspective of Earth from space. To this day, the University of Arizona’s official website for Biosphere 2 describes its original mission as being a “facility that could be used by humans to live on other planets and to demonstrate the inter-connectedness of humans and the environment.”30 Here again we find the familiar mixture of aspirations both to leave Earth and to draw closer to it, even care for it. Presumably, “environment” here is meant to signal Earth’s environment—the natural environment as we normally conceive of it—but it could mean any environment anywhere in the universe, on any host planet. The cosmic orientation of Biosphere 2 brought into sharper relief its competing rationales. There was uncertainty about whether Biosphere 2 inaugurated a return to an earthly paradise informed by cutting-edge ecology or something akin to an escape pod from a dying planet.31 If Biosphere 2 betokened humanity’s potential to create and direct new worlds, this seemed to cast humans in a godlike role. If the goal was to harmonize with the Earth, subordinating humans and their egos to nature’s own principles or the workings of microscopic organisms, this suggested a rather different and more humble ethic. But if the driving question was whether humans are capable of guiding planetary unfolding, Biosphere 2 threw cold water on such ambitions. Numerous vertebrate species went extinct; others, such as insect species who were decidedly not part of the project Ibid.,  104. Ibid.,  119. 27 John Allen and Mark Nelson quoted in ibid., 121–2. 28 Reider, Dreaming, 122. 29 Ibid.. 30 Biosphere 2, University of Arizona, https://biosphere2.org/research-outcomes. 31 Reider, Dreaming, 91. 25 26

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design, spread uncontrollably. The human inhabitants also behaved in unexpected ways, despite their shared cosmic vision, as their community degenerated into warring factions and petty antagonisms. The lessons of Biosphere 2 are both moral and biological, as Reider’s narrative suggests. First: humble creatures, more so than humans, were revealed to be the important drivers of evolution. Microbes, not the more charismatic species, emerged as the critical players in biospheric processes. Second: the ability of humans to perform mundane tasks like growing food proved far more critical to their survival than their capacity for intellectual abstraction or complicated engineering. Third: despite extensive preparation, the biospherians turned out to have very poor understanding of the life-forms with whom they shared their miniature world. From all this, we might surmise that humans are not well positioned to assume the evolutionary driver’s seat. Most importantly, I would argue, Biosphere 2 could never decide if its mission and ideology was learning to live within terms set by nature or striving to escape those limits by creating a new world on human terms. This tension between accepting and escaping limits is central to the paradoxes of techno-environmentalism and the cosmic imaginary.

SPACE ECOLOGY A new set of projects dubbed Star Ark picks up where the early vision of Biosphere 2 left off. Star Ark, and its flagship prototype named “Project Persephone,” represents a bold new step toward what its architects call “Space Ecology.” Persephone and similar projects are envisioned, much like Biosphere 2, not as mere vehicles or facilities but as worlds in and of themselves: self-sustaining, multigenerational, evolving spaceships and “fully artificial form[s]‌of Nature” in which generations of “starfarers can potentially persist indefinitely.”32 According to its chief visionary and “sustainability innovator” Rachel Armstrong, Star Ark and space ecology invite reflection “on the future of humanity in an ecological era of space exploration.”33 Intriguingly, Armstrong labels this new era of space exploration the “Ecocene,” a term that parallels the Anthropocene but without its negative connotations of unprecedented detrimental impacts and extinction.34 Armstrong describes space ecology in terms reminiscent of the Cosmists’ desire to animate matter, defining it as an emerging discipline devoted to “ecopoiesis,” or “the science of how inert environments become lively.”35 Star Ark enthusiasts adopt their tagline from the film Interstellar: “Mankind was born on Earth. It was never meant to die here.”36 Allusions to the ecocene and space ecology call to mind the idea of a good Anthropocene, according to which humans’ ubiquitous imprint on the planet takes benign and beneficial forms.37 The good Anthropocene is understood not as a disruption or breakdown of the Earth system but as an exciting opportunity for humans to guide and shape the planetary future through wise use of technology, turning our collective power over Earth toward good. This way of framing the Anthropocene accords with a conviction that the planetary or cosmic shift in perspective brings with it a promotion of the human, an elevation of the

achel Armstrong, ed., Star Ark: A Living, Self-Sustaining Spaceship (Cham: Spring Praxis Books, 2017), 13. R Ibid. 34 Ibid.,  17. 35 Ibid.,  20. 36 Ibid.,  13. 37 See, e.g., John Asafu-Adjaye, Linus Blomqvist, Stewart Brand et al., “An Ecomodernist Manifesto,” Breakthrough Institute, April 2015, www.ecomodernism.org. 32 33

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species to an entity that self-consciously creates and runs worlds.38 Vernadsky had grasped this idea early on when he spoke of the noosphere or mindsphere concept alongside a notion of humans as an emergent “geological” force. This portrait of humans as a geological agent is now central to the Anthropocene concept (and indeed, some scholars see Vernadsky’s ideas as presaging the Anthropocene concept39). The good Anthropocene, the ecocene, and the noosphere all embrace purposeful world-making and the redemptive power of technology. This vision has clear affinities with those of techno-environmental pioneers such as Buckminster Fuller. Interestingly, however, a century before Fuller articulated his vision, Russian Cosmist Nikolai Federov (1829–1903), an Orthodox Christian philosopher, suggested that humans would evolve to become “captain and crew of a spaceship earth.”40 He believed that Earth is not humans’ natural home but that we belong to an ecosystem that is essentially the whole cosmos (think: space ecology). All things in the cosmos, he held have incipient consciousness, but humans alone attain consciousness in its highest degree as the culmination of evolutionary processes. This distinction confers to humans the spiritual task of regulating “nature” both on Earth and in the universe at large. Similarly, in the secular theology of the planetary perspective, humans as the creature marked by exceptional forms of consciousness, complexity, or self-awareness, and humans as world-makers often go hand in hand. Thus, it is no surprise that Star Ark’s visionaries are also influenced by Russian Cosmists—not only Vernadsky and Federov but also Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935). Considered the Russian father of rocketry, he dreamed of a space colony inhabiting an artificial world called “Noah’s Ark,”41 and like today’s advocates of the planetary turn in human evolution, he understood space travel “as breaching the final frontier of humanity’s quest for cosmic consciousness.”42 We see similar themes and narratives regarding humans’ (and the planet’s) “awakening” to a new phase of planet-shaping possibilities in discourse surrounding astrobiology, as promoted by some of the most prominent spokesmen for an astrobiological perspective.

THE ANTHROPOCENE IN COSMIC PERSPECTIVE Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe. While grounded in empirical science, astrobiology also displays mythic and prophetic elements, and in some cases, it even assumes a religiously inflected, progressive view of the unfolding of the cosmos.43 Astrobiology is of interest not only for its spiritual dimensions, whether implicit or overt, but also because of the way in which it is entangled with a cluster of concepts and claims we have already encountered in this overview of world-making initiatives.

Reider notes that the biospherians embraced a motto of “create and run” to describe their ventures, where the phrase signals a dual meaning of creating and running new projects or worlds, but also creating projects and then moving quickly and restlessly on to the next exciting enterprise. 39 Bertrand Guillaume, “Vernadsky’s Philosophical Legacy: A Perspective from the Anthropocene,” Anthropocene Review 1, no. 2 (2014): 137–46. 40 Federov, quoted in Young, The Russian Cosmists, 90. 41 Armstrong, Star Ark, 14. 42 Steve Fuller, Roberto Chiotti, Krists Ernstsons, “Connecting with the Divine and the Sacred, and Becoming Cosmically Conscious,” in Star Ark, ed. Armstrong, 285. 43 Ted Peters, “Astrotheology and the ETI Myth,” Journal of Theology and Science 7 (2009): 3–29. 38

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I want to call particular attention to the way in which placing Earth in a planetary context—one planet among many—may suggest that all planets exhibit a similar evolutionary trajectory. For example, some astrobiologists are interested in knowing whether planets, or at least those with intelligent life, undergo recognizable stages of development. For example, would an earthlike planet elsewhere have an atmosphere that was oxygenated by photosynthetic life, as ours was (in the so-called Great Oxygenation Event)? Would they have something akin to Earth’s Cambrian explosion of complex life? Some astrobiologists think that, with the presence of the right sort of sun (or star), these developments are likely or even inevitable. As regards intelligent life in particular, some astrobiologists propose that intelligent life on any planet anywhere will at some point reach a critical stage, a phase of technological “adolescence” wherein the planet’s inhabitants either learn to live with their technology—to navigate its dangers without destroying themselves through nuclear war, resource depletion, and climate change—or they simply die out. Some sort of filtering process might determine, universally, whether or not a civilization makes it through this bottleneck of reckoning with its own technological powers. These ideas are illustrated in recent pronouncements by astrobiologist Adam Frank regarding the insights to be gained by looking at the Anthropocene and the climate crisis from an astrobiological perspective. Frank believes that a “mythicscale” big story, one made available by science and enhanced by taking an astrobiological perspective on the Anthropocene, will help guide our civilization through our present and perilous phase as “cosmic teenagers.”44 Armed with a big new myth, “we can learn what path through adolescence we must take … we can reach our maturity.”45 An article Frank has coauthored with another scientist and an urban planner is a case in point. It builds upon the work of a Soviet astronomer named Nikolai Kardeshev who in the mid-1960s proposed a three-stage evolutionary scheme for planets with life.46 From this, the authors develop their own fivefold classification, which they offer as a helpful way of thinking about sustainability issues on a larger canvas, namely, the planetary scale. Frank, in his book-length treatment of the Anthropocene titled Light of Stars, refers to this perspective as “thinking like a planet.”47 The fivefold classification scheme recognizes the need to put “civilizations back into the context of the biosphere, rather than above it.”48 Yet, in reintegrating humans (or “civilizations,” wherever they exist) back into nature, Frank’s approach takes the view from nowhere, or from everywhere—a view of Earth seen by the light of the stars, in his phrase. Consequently, he and his coauthors propose that our Anthropocene moment might in fact “be a generic consequence of any planet evolving a successful technological species.”49 The suggestion here is that any highly intelligent species in the universe will inevitably force their “host” planet out of whack as they capture and manipulate resources to fuel their civilization. The authors propose that our planet is presently transitioning from stage IV to stage V, a movement that entails significant evolutionary innovation. Specifically, transitioning toward stage V involves the evolution of the “noosphere.”50 Seen in planetary context, they conclude, Frank, Light of the Stars, 6–9. Ibid.,  225. 46 Adam Frank, Axel Kleidon, and Marina Alberti, “Earth as a Hybrid Planet: The Anthropocene in an Evolutionary Astrobiological Context,” Anthropocene 19, no. 13 (2017): 13–21. 47 Frank, Light of the Stars, 206. 48 Ibid.,  222. 49 Frank et al., “Hybrid Planet,” 13. 50 Ibid.,  20. 44 45

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the Anthropocene appears as a “predictable planetary transition.”51 This message of generic predictability, of universal, abstract anthropocenes, is just one of the dubious consequences of reading the environmental crisis by starlight. Elsewhere, Frank has characterized astrobiology’s key insights by arguing that humans are simply another thing the Earth has done in its long history. We’re an “expression of the planet,” as [sci-fi author] Kim Stanley Robinson puts it. It’s also quite possible that we are not the first civilization in cosmic history to go through something like this. From that perspective, climate change and the sustainability crises may best be seen as our “final exam” … Better yet, it’s our coming of age as a true planetary species.52 Note how this perspective on the Anthropocene makes our current environmental crisis— which is, after all, the result of particular choices that particular humans have made— appear a natural and universal development, even an auspicious turning point. Regarding climate change, Frank asks rhetorically, “What else would we expect to happen?” Climate change, he believes, is what any successful planet would do.53 He cites Vernadsky’s insight that the noosphere—“a shell of thought surrounding the planet”—constitutes a form of planetary “waking up.”54 In previous stages of our planet’s unfolding, evolution occurred blindly, without agency. But now Earth has awakened to an “evolutionary direction, a goal” that derives from the agency-dominated biosphere itself (i.e., noosphere), which is, in turn, a central feature of the Anthropocene. Our technology must now become a “web of awareness” that will enable the flourishing of Earth and its civilization.55 On this account, the arrival of the Anthropocene and a planet-enshrouding shell of thought brings about the “completion of Gaia,” a final stage in a planet’s development. The idea of humans as beings that complete nature via technology functions as a theological anthropology of sorts, one that resonates both with Russian Orthodox thought and the evolutionary philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin, among other antecedents.56 This language of maturity and of humans as a world-shaping species is echoed in astrobiologist David Grinspoon’s work. Grinspoon argues that our species currently exists in a stage he calls the “proto-Anthropocene.” Our goal as a species is to progress to a mature Anthropocene. Until very recently, human transformation of the planet, he argues, has occurred in an unconscious fashion. But knowingly changing the planet is a whole new (and exciting) thing.57 Self-conscious global change is a completely new phenomenon. It puts us humans into a category all our own and is, I believe, the best criterion for the real start of the era. The Anthropocene begins when we start to realise that it has begun. This Ibid.,  13. Adam Frank, “Climate Change and the Astrobiology of the Anthropocene,” 13.7 Cosmos and Culture, October 1, 2016 (emphasis mine), https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/10/01/495437158/ climate-change-and-the-astrobiology-of-the-anthropocene. 53 Frank, Light of the Stars 225. 54 Ibid.,  221. 55 Ibid. 56 There are suggestions here of anthropocosmism—of humans as the being who completes the universe—as well as intimations (detheologized in Frank’s account) of processes of theosis or deification, whereby humans are created by God in order that they will become like unto Him—technological demigods (ibid., 211). Where the astrobiological account noticeably differs is in its insistence that any planet with intelligent life will follow this path. Humans, in other words, are exceptional on Earth, but perhaps not so in the universe. Regardless, the gulf between human or humanlike life and all other life is duly widened. 57 David Grinspoon, Earth in Human Hands: Shaping the Planet’s Future (New York: Grand Central, 2016), 225. 51 52

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definition also provides a new angle on the long-vexing question of what differentiates our species from other life. Perhaps more than anything else, it is self-aware worldchanging that marks us as something new on the planet. What are we? We are the species that can change the world and come to see what we’re doing.58 The mature Anthropocene, Grinspoon believes, is just now beginning. Where humans previously blundered around blindly, making severe but unconscious impacts on the planet, now we are deliberately making global changes in the fullness of a new awakening. Note the coincidence of this moment of maturity with our understanding of ourselves as space-bound creatures, for Grinspoon believes that we will live sustainably on Earth when we become a full-fledged cosmic species. On this account, humans face an ultimate choice: spaceflight or extinction. In one sense, of course, this is obviously true because eventually our sun will burn out and whatever our species is at that point (if anything) it would have to leave Earth to survive. But Grinspoon is also saying that the same technology that will take us into space will allow for a more sustainable Earth. “The kind of society that will thrive sustainably on earth,” he writes, “is one that embraces space technology for wise stewardship” of Earth. Planetary exploration he believes, will bring “Earth wisdom.”59 By his own account, Grinspoon’s thinking about humans entering a mature, deliberate phase of earth-shaping derives inspiration from Russian Cosmists and Teilhard de Chardin. “The visionary rocket designer Tsiolkovsky, the evolutionary priest de Chardin, and the biospheric geochemist Vernadsky,” he writes, “they all saw what was coming.”60

NICHE CONSTRUCTION RUN AMOK One final example of this vision of humans as world-makers brings us back to Earth. There is another discourse emerging among scientists that locates humanity’s essence in our ability to remake our worlds: niche construction. According to niche construction theory, humans as creatures do not simply adapt to the environmental circumstances in which they find themselves but actively modify their surroundings to suit their own needs. Those modified environments, in turn, select for creatures with the capacity to make those modifications, creatures like us—in an iterative fashion. Niche construction theory is often promoted in tandem with a call for a new evolutionary paradigm called the extended evolutionary synthesis (EES). EES takes a less gene-centered view of evolution and accords greater weight to the varieties of ways in which inheritance occurs, not only via the gene but also through forces outside the gene (epigenetics). With its broader understanding of heredity, the EES sees organisms as playing an active role in shaping their environments. Organisms inherit not only genes but also behaviors and environments. This understanding of the role of organisms in shaping their environments can be interpreted as evidence of continuity among all life forms, human and nonhuman alike. Like the other initiatives I have canvassed here, niche construction frames the human in ways that seem to put the human more fully into nature, making our niche constructing

David Grinspoon, “Welcome to Terra Sapiens,” Aeon Newsletter (no date), https://aeon.co/essays/ enter-the-sapiezoic-a-new-aeon-of-self-aware-global-change. 59 Grinspoon, Earth in Human Hands, 235. 60 Ibid.,  236. 58

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powers continuous with those of nest-building birds or dam-building beavers. But in the hands of some proponents of the theory, niche construction points to our absolute discontinuity with all life. We are niche constructors in a class by ourselves—organisms that can engineer an entire planet.61 These claims for human exceptionalism locate human uniqueness in our creative capacity and powers of innovation. As anthropologist Agustín Fuentes explains in the opening arguments of The Creative Spark, humans are “singularly distinguished and shaped by creativity.”62 Niche construction offers “new story of human evolution, of our past and current nature,” and as “the epic tale of all epic tales,”63 a grand narrative to inspire and guide us into the future. The path of human evolution capitalized on this creative spark, cultivating it to new levels and “constructing an entirely new way of making a living on this planet that would eventually beat everything else, ever.”64 While it is true that earthworms or beavers engage in significant alterations of their environments, the argument goes, humans recreate their worlds in self-conscious ways that affirm our exceptional status. Accounts of human niche construction highlight our “successful” history of adaptation, where success is lauded irrespective of the long-term, negative impacts on the broader spectrum of life, and in ways that prophesy a continuing pattern of success into the future. Similar to Frank’s account, there is a kind of narrowing of “success” here to survival at all costs, as if the goal of human existence is, as Fuentes puts it, to “beat everything else.” Climate change and the Anthropocene are treated as collateral damage, unintended consequences of a species doing what it does best. In a similar vein, biologist and leading proponent of EES, Kevin Laland, stresses the adaptiveness of human niche construction, despite the growing warning signs that our world-making may be a form of world-destroying. “Human minds and human environments,” he writes in Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony, “have been engaged in a long-standing intimate exchange of information, leaving each beautifully fashioned in the other’s image.”65 Our species’ evolutionary innovations and accomplishments are lauded as “unprecedented” and “unrivalled.” Similarities between humans and animals are “superficial,” Laland believes, and the “intellectual credentials of other animals have been inflated.”66 The idea of Earth in human hands is one that could not have been thought without the image of our planet in space and its attendant mythos. In these calls for a new story, a large-scale myth of our species’ world-making powers, certain patterns repeat themselves. I worry about what it means for this particular narrative of the self-aware, world-creating human to be holding sway at precisely this moment, when it seems that restraint and humility—reining-in rather than naturalizing our power—seems warranted. An interesting feature of the storyline is its assumption that humans, of their own accord, can acquire the needed wisdom; that once we become self-aware and mature, we can turn our world-making powers toward good, ushering in a new noospheric In rhetoric of the world-making human, sometimes scale defines our distinctiveness (changing a whole planet), sometimes self-awareness marks us off as unique, and sometimes both scale and consciousness are invoked. 62 Agustín Fuentes, The Creative Spark: How Imagination Made Humans Exceptional (New York: Penguin Random House, 2017), 2. 63 Ibid.,  3–4. 64 Ibid.,  23. 65 Kevin Laland, Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018) 233; emphasis mine. 66 Ibid.,  15. 61

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awakening, an ecocene era, or a good Anthropocene. How are we to acquire this wisdom? The narrative assumes rather than explains humanity’s pivot toward the wise and the good. Humans alone reconstruct their worlds knowingly, proponents of this worldview suggest, and this knowingness is itself taken as evidence that we can direct our powers toward constructive rather than destructive world-making. This new epoch announces its arrival in terms of a newfound “mass awareness of our role in changing the planet,” as Grinspoon puts it. “This is what will allow us to transition from blundering through inadvertent global changes to thoughtfully and deliberately controlling our effects on the planet. It starts with the end of our innocence.”67 But how? The mythic language of burgeoning consciousness, lost innocence, and our erstwhile obliviousness to escalating planetary assaults, allows for a peculiar escape from accountability, even as it celebrates Earth’s completion—the finishing of evolution’s “unfinished” symphony—at the hands of one supremely creative species. These narratives both frame and limit our ability to envision other possible futures and forms of agency. Allusions to planetary wisdom and awakening suggest, perversely, that our arrival at the current moment—a moment defined in daily news headlines by mass species extinction, soaring levels of CO2, ubiquitous plastic waste, and other mounting atrocities—in fact heralds a transition to a higher evolutionary stage, a new level of cosmic significance for our species. Yet for all its theological resonances, the narrative is stripped of vital reference points and reminders that religions can provide, such as the recognition that humans, of their own accord, are not capable of total wisdom and omniscience. That we are constitutionally flawed and finite beings. These sweeping perspectives on the human seem all too powerless to critique our current destructive patterns. Of course, these storytellers might respond that their whole point is that we are free to choose, that the future is open, that our self-conscious knowledge of what we are doing as a “planet” allows us to plot a different course for the future. And yet our arrival at this stage of reflexive modernity and maturity is somehow built into the narrative from its inception. Faith in our own endless adaptability and creativity obviates the need for genuine reckoning and change. Instead, we are told, deliverance lies in doing what we have always done, but wisely.

Grinspoon, “Welcome to Terra Sapiens.”

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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Theology and the Biological Sciences CELIA DEANE-DRUMMOND

Few might have predicted that one of the most popular areas of public debate in the third millennium would be both the promise and dangers of applied biological sciences.1 Half a century ago, there was a quiet revolution in the concept of biological life, following the discovery of the genetic code by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953. From the 1970s, there has been a growing awareness that the spread of human population and industrialization has contributed to environmental damage, threatening the survival of human and other species. Theologians concerned with pastoral and practical matters could no longer afford to ignore the relationship between theology and the biological sciences. Yet the way life and nature should be understood from a theological perspective has had a checkered history. Contemporary inquirers could well ask: what has theology to do with biology? Envisioning the hand of God as in some sense operative in the natural world has a very long history. In the early patristic period, the entire natural world was viewed as symbolic of the heavenly realm, pointing to theological truths. The Middle Ages introduced the concept that Nature was a book to be read alongside the book of holy scripture. This opened the way for closer observation of the natural world, reinforced by the rediscovery of Aristotelian philosophy in writers such as Thomas Aquinas. However, it was only once experimental science became fashionable in the seventeenth century that a new kind of natural theology emerged, one that viewed the experimenter as discovering the design of God in creation. The botanist John Ray’s The Wisdom of God Manifest in the Works of Creation, published in 1695, was popular for over a century and went through ten editions by 1835. Unlike other authors who had interpreted their observations in the light of religious concepts, Ray was determined to establish natural history on an empirical basis. Yet the motivation for natural history was not just scientific curiosity; it became a religious duty to search for the empirical truth in the natural world so it could be used to serve humankind and ultimately give glory to God. The seventeenth century also witnessed a collapse in the concept of the supernatural, so that in the most extreme case the resurrection was just another natural process. Instead of viewing nature as a threat, Francis Bacon, among others, believed that the natural world needed to be brought under the control of scientific reasoning. A number of questions surfaced that continue to This essay was originally printed in David F. Ford and Rachel Muers, eds., Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology Since 1918 (Oxford: Wiley, 2005). Revised and reprinted with permission by the author. 1

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engage those committed to a theistic understanding of the natural world. In what sense is God visible in the natural world? How does one explain the suffering apparent in natural processes? How does empirical science come to terms with the miraculous? What is the role of humanity in the natural world? Yet a far more challenging scientific development was to await the Christian religious community with the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1865), which outlined his theory of evolution. This, in brief, states that variety exists in a population and that those individuals who are best suited to the environment will live longer and hence have more offspring. This ensures that the characteristics of these individuals are passed down to the next generation through a process known as natural selection. Gradually, over long periods, new species emerge. His theory posed a significant challenge to existing natural theologies. For now, it seemed that new species were no longer fixed in a preconceived plan but rather could emerge without necessarily involving the workings of a divine author. In addition, humanity no longer had a special place; rather, it was just one species within a densely branched tree and within that from a subbranch of successful hominins. Of course, then, as now, theologians became adept at redesigning their theological explanations to take account of Darwin’s theory. Theological justification could take a number of possible routes. One might be to reject Darwinism outright as being a scientific theory that is in opposition to Christian belief in a divine Creator. The rise of Creationist ideas, alongside a purported “scientific” explanation from the scriptural accounts, represents one form of popular accommodation that is rejected by theologians and scientists alike.2 Alternatively, some form of theistic evolution is accepted, combining evolutionary ideas with belief in a Creator. In this scenario, there are two alternatives. Either, according to the deist alternative, God simply started the process of evolution and then left nature to itself, or God is intricately involved in the process from the beginning, suffering in and with the processes of the natural world. The idea of secondary causation is somewhere between these two alternatives, though it is usually combined with a more general sense of God’s presence in the natural world. Deism tries to avoid the problem of associating God directly with the suffering and natural evil in the world. God’s involvement in evolutionary change, or variations on it, are rather more influential in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, which are the focus of this chapter. The scientific community largely accepts Darwin’s theory of evolution, although with some qualifications. The rediscovery of Gregor Mendel’s plant breeding experiments highlighted the significance of discrete mutagenic changes. In the 1930s and 1940s, most biologists came to accept Neo-Darwinism, combining the insights of Darwin with genetic theories about mutation. Darwin had no clear concept of how inherited variations were passed down between generations, or how such variations arose. Experimental research showed that the environment could influence the mutation rates. The balance of genes in a population would change if some individuals with a given mutant gene were able to survive better compared with other individuals in the same population. This is the genetic corollary to natural selection. There are other ways that gene pools may change, such as through more random processes (genetic drift). The evolutionary biologists Niles Eldredge and Stephen Gould have found punctuated equilibria, where rapid phases of This movement is particularly influential in the United States and, while important to analyze as a social movement, will not be the topic under scrutiny in this chapter. Often biologists are nervous to speak to theologians as they assume that they are creationists and so hostile to evolutionary theories. The majority of theologians argue that the most conservative forms of creationism are exegetically and scientifically unwarranted. 2

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evolutionary change are interspersed with much slower phases. Their results supplement evolution through natural selection.3 New combinations of genes may lead to variations, and difference in physical appearance (phenotype) may appear even with the same genetic makeup (genotype). In addition, changes in gene regulation are likely to affect the overall structure or morphology of an organism, and hence diversity. The relative importance of environmental and ecological factors in the overall process of evolutionary change is also subject to further debate, with newer evolutionary theories in the twentyfirst century now putting more stress on niche construction and a dynamic interchange between an organism and its environment. Older classical evolutionary theories tended to see particular traits in an organism being selected for in a given environment, rather than perceiving that environment as part of a dynamic system. It is also somewhat misleading to speak of mutations as “chance” events, since microscopic events that seem random are a result of physical and chemical changes, and lead to law-like properties at the macroscopic level. The full explanation as to the way genetic inheritance worked at the molecular level awaited the discovery of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) by James Watson and Francis Crick.4

SURVEY It would be premature to think too harshly of those pioneers of the twentieth century who, on discovering the structure of DNA, claimed that they had found the “secret of life.” The mushrooming of numerous branches of molecular biology and medical genetics, culminating in the multimillion-dollar Human Genome Project with its aim to give a full chemical sequence of the human genome, speaks of the future potential of this technology. Similar arguments have been used in order to support human cloning.5 Supporters normally highlight the medical advantages of the technologies and the possible alleviation of human suffering and pain. Yet the seeming dazzling scientific importance of such new technologies can obscure a number of social, political, theological, and ethical issues that are ongoing subjects of debate. At this juncture, theology can no longer remain detached from ethical and pastoral concerns. If God is the author of creation, are there limits to the genetic manipulation of nature? What is the role of humanity in the process of evolution? Are we becoming “fabricated” through our own inventions, or are we cocreators with God working for a better future? Who, for example, is to gain most from the technology? Does the desire for genetic change disguise a more sinister trend toward eugenics? A key issue in human genetics concerns the extent to which humanity is determined by its genetic structure, reminiscent of the longstanding nature–nurture debate. A popular view is that we are simply genetically programmed, that the discovery of our genetic composition is all that is really required in order to define “self.” A number of theologians challenge this so-called gene myth, and they believe that such misconception leads to unwarranted fears about the dangers of genetic manipulation. Ted Peters, for example, is a strong advocate of human freedom; while we may be genetically constrained in our Gould also suggests that the probability of complex life emerging is very low. Simon Conway Morris has challenged Gould’s conclusions, arguing from the same fossil record that the probability of complex life emerging is high; see C. Southgate, ed., God, Humanity and the Cosmos (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999), 150–1. 4 For an introduction to genetic science, see Southgate, God, Humanity and the Cosmos, 143–50. 5 Christian theologians largely reject reproductive cloning, though opinions on “therapeutic” cloning to treat diseases are divided. Traditional Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theologians reject all forms of cloning as showing insufficient respect for human dignity. 3

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choices, this does not amount to genetic “programming.” Hence, he argues that the use and application of genetics is more likely to be a gift of God to humanity, as long as it is used responsibly.6 The application of genetics to the nonhuman sphere raises a number of important issues, such as animal welfare, potential environmental damage, and more general questions such as how far and to what extent is humanity warranted in reordering the natural world. Another question arises as to the relative value of humanity compared with nonhumans. While in secular analysis the consequences are normally the measure that judges an action right or not, from a theological perspective, other values come into play, including, from the Genesis account, the idea that all creation is good and belongs to God. The interpretation of the command to humanity to “have dominion” over the earth may lead to an emphasis on control, as in Francis Bacon, or, alternatively, on a greater sense of human care and responsible stewardship. The philosophical tension between a stress on the value of either humans (anthropocentrism) or all biological species (biocentrism) is reflected in debates about how far it is right to use animals in experimental science, the relative weight given to protecting endangered species, and so on. Those who wish to extend human rights to animals are advocates of the animal rights movement. Peter Singer believes that animals deserve protection because they are sentient. Theologians have taken issue with Singer in that he seems to imply that humans lacking sentience are dispensable and have no moral worth. Tom Regan campaigns for animal rights and argues that animals are individual “subjects” of a life. The theologian Andrew Linzey justifies his theo-rights approach by suggesting that since God created animals vulnerable to human domestication, they deserve equivalent protection to children.7 Should we use biological characteristics in order to define worth, or is human personhood beyond comparison with nonhumans? Authors like Singer are nervous about any justification for giving a higher priority to humans, dubbing this “speciesism.” Stephen Clark uses genetic science to support his case that humans are not significantly different from animals, though he is hesitant about the too facile endorsement of Darwin’s theory. Such research presents a challenge to Christian anthropology: what does it mean to be human in a biological world where human genetic structure amounts to 98 percent of that of primates? Of course, at this juncture it is important to note that genetics alone is not responsible for human behavior and that small genetic changes can lead to large changes in effects. As evolutionary science continues to grow and develop, theologians working at the interface with biology have devoted considerable attention to meeting its particular challenges. The paleontologist and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) was one of the pioneers originally working in this field. He believed that it was possible to create a synthesis between evolutionary ideas and Christian theology, culminating in a grand vision for the Christification of the universe. Those theologians of the process theology school, such as Ian Barbour and John Haught, have had considerable influence, especially in the United States, adapting a process vision of reality drawn from the work of the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. Other theologians are less convinced that scientific theories about nature can be incorporated into Christian theological frameworks without leading to their distortion. Thomas F. Torrance argued for a Barthian approach to How to set such limits is more difficult. See Celia Deane-Drummond, Creation through Wisdom: Theology and the New Biology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000). 7 His attempt to argue for the presence of the Holy Spirit in animals from biblical sources is unconvincing. For a discussion, see Celia Deane-Drummond, The Ethics of Nature (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004). 6

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theology, while still following the methodology of scientific empiricism. In other words, he develops a scientific theology. Alister McGrath also claims to aim at a scientific and theological synthesis; however, it soon becomes clear that the vagaries of science are too precarious in their provisionality to give him any real confidence, so instead he opts for attachment to scientific empiricism as essential to theological insight.8 How far such a methodology is universal in science is somewhat open to question; for example, the falsification hypothesis common in physical science is not used in ecological science at all. Many theologians have responded to the particular challenge posed by the work of Richard Dawkins and his agenda not just to promote evolutionary ideas as the explanation for life but also to dismiss religious experience in the name of scientific “realism.” He is well known for his book The Selfish Gene. While he claimed that he was using the phrase in order to stress the particular tendency for genes to conserve themselves through each generation, the moral overtones were obvious. Mary Midgley was quick to point out the rhetoric in what Dawkins was attempting, by elevating “a humble piece of goo within cells to a malign and all-powerful agent.”9 She argues that attitudes will affect the form in which symbolism and imagination take shape. She suggests that Dawkins has a hidden religious agenda in his description of genes as the “primary policy makers” and characterizing altruism as still basically selfish behavior. Other sociobiologists, such as E. O. Wilson, have joined Dawkins’s campaign to formulate a myth around genetics, though he is less nervous about using religious language in order to describe the achievements of evolutionary science. Midgley strongly objects to the egoism and fatalism in much of the language used by sociobioloigsts, believing that such language ultimately stems from “an unrealistic acceptance of competitiveness as central to human nature.”10 Although Dawkins’s attempt to describe cultural evolution through meme theory has largely been superseded in evolutionary biology, biologists remain confident that evolutionary tools help to clarify cultural change. The precise relationship between biological and cultural evolution remains a topic for considerable debate among anthropologists and biologists. Keith Ward has added to the debate by characterizing three areas of challenge posed by evolutionary theory. The first is that there is no ultimate purpose in the universe, the second is that life evolves simply through competitive ruthlessness, and the third is that mind happens as an “adjunct” to gene survival.11 Like many contemporary biologists, he believes that natural selection on its own cannot guarantee the emergence of complex conscious life forms. He also shares with Stephen Clark the doubt as to why intelligent life emerged, as there is nothing to suggest that such a capacity would inevitably have greater survival rates compared with those with no rationality.12 Of course, other “higher” human characteristics that serve to structure cultures are not simply explicable through reproductive advantage.13 One difficulty with Ward’s argument is that if we accept that the natural probability of mind emerging is very low, and hence invoke divine purpose, then we are left with a God of the gaps, who fills in where science has failed to provide an explanation. Both Dawkins’s confidence and Ward’s rejoinder may account for the S ee, e.g., A. McGrath, A Scientific Theology, Vol. 1: Nature (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001), 45–9. M. Midgley, Evolution as a Religion (New York: Methuen, 1985), 123. 10 Ibid.,  140. 11 See K. Ward, God, Chance and Necessity (Oxford: Oneworld, 1996), 64. 12 For discussion in Stephen Clark, see his Biology and Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 13 Ward does not address the possibility that cultural constructs or memes are passed down through nongenetic means. 8 9

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spectrum of possible debates, though it is important to face Dawkins on his own terms, namely through accepting the possibility that humanity did emerge through natural processes. In addition, there are other voices within evolutionary biology who argue that, given the conditions on earth, the evolution of something like humans is virtually inevitable. Simon Conway Morris is a good example of a biologist who is less hostile to religion compared with Richard Dawkins but who still argues that convergence in evolution implies that human-like species are less the result of “chance” and more the result of an inevitable process.14 At the same time he suggests that the particular conditions that arise in our solar system that give rise to life are rare; we live in a lonely universe where we are unlikely to encounter other hominoid-like species. Conway Morris speculates that if humans are “castaways” in the universe, then we might think of this as a biological gloss on the fall. Those with faith will inevitably see divine purpose in cosmological and evolutionary events. The ultimate fate of the earth through science alone portrays a somewhat chilling eschatology and one that Christian theologians would wish to reject. However, this does not mean that our limited understanding of evolutionary science needs to import God in order to arrive at a satisfactory position. Theologians who are interested in the natural world include those who are concerned with environmental issues in general and ecology in particular. Many come to the debate as much concerned about the practical, political, ethical, and social issues as the scientific ones. Instead of the Darwinian images of competitiveness, biological processes such as symbiosis, cooperation, and integration of processes in ecological systems become inspirational models for human behavior. Feminists have been particularly influential through ecofeminism, including prominent feminist writers such as Rosemary Radford Ruether and Sallie McFague in the United States and Anne Primavesi, Ruth Page, and Mary Grey in the United Kingdom.15 Page is concerned about the extent of suffering in evolution and so prefers God’s immanence to be expressed as with creation rather than in creation. Most ecofeminists believe that there is a link between oppression of the earth and oppression of women, though the possible advantage of identifying women with the earth is hotly debated. Carolyn Merchant has linked the Baconian urge to control nature with oppression of women, arguing instead for a relational approach to the natural world. As a corollary to the link between science and sexism, feminist authors have urged a new kind of science, one that focuses more on care rather than control.16 Ruether has included images of Gaia in her reconstruction of theology and nature (Gaia is the divine within nature that complements the God of law and covenant). Primavesi has taken up James Lovelock’s model of the earth functioning as a single organism (Gaia) in order to argue for a reformulated theology along Gaian lines. While theologians who use the Gaia hypothesis stress aspects of cooperation that are implicit in this theory, closer attention to the details shows that in its most radical form, it envisages resituating the place of humanity so that it is no longer the apex of creation but a somewhat unwanted parasite on the planet. The tension implicit in Gaia reflects a more general issue characteristic of all aspects of ecotheology, namely the choice between individualism/anthropocentrism and holism/biocentrism. Liberation theologians such as Leonado Boff and Sean McDonagh Simon Conway Morris, “The Paradoxes of Evolution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe?” in God and Design: The Teleological Argument and Modern Science, ed. N. A. Manson (London: Routledge, 2003), 328–46. 15 For details of debates in ecofeminism, see Celia Deane-Drummond, “Creation,” in The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Theology, ed. S. Parsons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 190–206. 16 Hilary Rose is a leading author in this respect. For discussion, see Celia Deane- Drummond, Biology and Theology Today (London: SCM Press, 2001), 184–207. 14

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have also been highly instrumental in raising the profile of the link between oppression of the poor and environmental issues. The discussion so far might imply that ecotheologians are all radical in their approach to theology. This is far from the case. Concern for environmental issues is universal across the theological spectrum, from evangelical writers such as Stephen Bouma Prediger and Michael Northcott through to Orthodox theologians such as John Zizioulas. Reformed theologian Jürgen Moltmann has incorporated ecological thinking into his theology, stressing community relationships in the Trinity and ecology. In addition, Moltmann draws on ecological ideas to develop his Christology and eschatology. Christ becomes one who suffers with the earth, incorporating the natural world into the redemptive purpose. The main purpose of Moltmann’s writings is to engender a theology that speaks to the pressing sense of environmental concern. He is less concerned to engage in detail with ecology as science. More recent work on scientific ecology has shown that the idea of ecology in terms of stable, interconnected systems is no longer accepted. Ecologists now are more likely to focus on flux, dynamic interchange, and the involvement of humans in ecological change. Theologians tempted to draw on models of ecology in terms of stable interrelationships need to be aware that this is an idealized philosophy rather than ecological science.

KEY REPRESENTATIVES Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a brilliant scientist whose paleontological research challenged Darwin’s assumption that cranial capacity in evolution emerged prior to toolmaking. He argued instead that evolution and toolmaking evolved together. Like the sociobiologists of a later generation, he believed that evolution was responsible not only for physical characteristics but also for all sociocultural history. Yet it was the way he combined his scientific ideas with his theological vision that caused the most controversy.17 He did not adhere to the materialism characteristic of Darwin’s original thesis; instead, he suggested that matter was ever increasing in spiritualization. The Human Phenomenon (1940), possibly his most influential work, urged a unity of matter and spirit, thought and action, personalism and collectivism, plurality and unity. His earlier work, The Divine Milieu (1920), was more focused on his particular brand of Christian mysticism informed by an evolutionary account of creation. His commitment to ontological monism is very clear: God’s immanent nature is interpreted in terms of the cosmic Christ. His law of complexity/consciousness attempted to explain the emergence of consciousness. Teilhard stressed the significance of human evolution, so that humans could not only influence but also direct evolution; wars were simply growing pains of adolescent humanity that would ultimately grow up through the achievements of science and technology. Organic evolution functioned like a giant organism developing toward the goal of unity in matter and spirit. He understood each phase of evolution to represent distinct jumps over a critical threshold: first, the formation of elementary corpuscles of the cosmos; second, the formation of a biosphere; third, the formation of human species. At death, an immortal center of consciousness in human beings united to form a planetary layer

He developed Henri Bergson’s ideas who, in Creative Evolution (1907), argued that all spirit in nature emerges as an élan vital. 17

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of superconsciousness around the earth, eventually to be united with God as Omega, the end of evolution. Teilhard’s grand synthesis was bold, optimistic, daring, and mystical rather than systematic. It is not difficult to criticize his work from a scientific point of view, even though he was a well-respected paleontologist and elected to the French Academy of Sciences in 1947. The place and significance he gave to humans is not evident in Darwin’s theory, which posited a branching evolutionary path. There is no evidence for Teilhard’s critical evolutionary thresholds or for the concrete importance of mental activity in evolution.18 Some scientists, nonetheless, warmed to his ideas, believing that the primacy he gave to science more than compensated for his lack of attention to detail. From a theological perspective, it is also easy to find problems with his thesis: his vision is optimistic and anthropocentric in a way that finds rather fewer supporters in contemporary contexts. In addition, his picture of resurrection amounts to imaginative speculation that is beyond the bounds of credibility. However, his vision is also prophetic in many of its elements. For example, his organic picture of the earth has been taken up and developed in Gaian theory, popular among many ecotheologians. His focus on process and final goodness is also characteristic of process theology and its current engagement with science. His attention to the importance of consciousness made less sense in evolutionary terms, yet has become an area of increasing debate. The unity of mind and brain, the relationship to the soul and the way in which consciousness emerges from our primate ancestors is still unresolved. In addition, importantly, Teilhard argued that just as theology needed science, so too science needed theology if it is to have a “heart” as well as a “head.”

Arthur Peacocke Arthur Peacocke devoted the early part of his career to working on the chemical structure of DNA. As a biochemist turned theologian, he has helped to raise the public profile of issues in biology and theology, especially his reworking of theological ideas in light of current biological and evolutionary ideas. The influence of more liberal Anglican writers such as G. W. Lampe and David Jenkins is tangible in his discussion. Like Torrance, he envisages the scientific method as being critical in its engagement with theology. However, he is more radical in his approach, in that he is prepared to take any article of faith as provisional, unless proved otherwise by scientific “evidence.” He argues, in particular, that the experience of working as a scientist helps humanity understand God’s interaction with the world. Understanding does not come through faith in the traditional way, but the other way round. Unlike Teilhard, who believed in rudimentary forms of consciousness in the world, Peacocke prefers the idea of emergence, that at increasing levels of complexity we find new properties emerging that are not predictable according to the lower levels of organization. Moreover, he suggests that, excluding behavior, the most successful species are not necessarily the most complex. However, he is wary of saying that humankind is just another animal; rather, there are unique characteristics of human species, just as in any other species. In other words, he argues for a holistic approach to life on earth, one that does not simply isolate the genes but explores wider parameters of behavior, sociology, psychology, and religion.

Whether intelligent life is inevitable from an evolutionary perspective, or highly improbable, is a matter of ongoing debate. 18

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Peacocke’s Christology is liberal in its conception of Christ as a perfect human being, though he is also attracted to more abstract ideas such as the divine Logos incarnate in the world. God, for Peacocke, works through the interplay of chance and necessity in allowing the earth to evolve. However, he distances himself from those authors who wish to locate God’s action in evolution at the microscopic level; rather, the action of God is through “top-down” or “whole–part” interaction, so that the influence is indirect, through a chain of levels acting in a “downward” way. Like process theologians, he argues for panentheism, though he retains the idea of a sacramental universe. He rejects classical ideas such as the fall of humanity, preferring reinterpretation in terms of failure to achieve potential given by God. Drawing on Moltmann, he is attracted to the idea of a suffering, pathetic, self-emptying God, one who shares in the suffering of all creatures, as well as humans. Humanity is cocreator, coworker and co-explorer with God in creation. Few scientists object to the way in which Peacocke has formulated his theology, though his sharp rebuttal of sociobiology may come as a surprise. His theological position is more controversial, in particular his claim that God can be envisaged through scientific exploration. Nicholas Lash, for example, believes that presuming that science is a mediator of the truth of theology through scientific observation is false, as it is based on the shift toward the spectator model of human engagement with reality that came to dominate the Western imagination along with the rise of modern experimental science.19 His critique would also make him part company with more conservative theologians such as Torrance or McGrath, who incorporate scientific empiricism into theological discourse. Lash, in particular, believes that diversity of approaches to God, with their fragmentary insights, is more characteristic of God compared with any grand order independent of self. However, while scientific theories may have the appearance of such independent reality, in practice, science is more fluid and fuzzy at the edges than Lash attests, especially in its most creative and open aspects. Peacocke is drawn more to the latter, creative science, which has more in common with music or art than Lash implies. However, whether one is still committed to the way of achieving theological knowledge through scientific discourse is a matter of debate. The natural world is an ambiguous place in which to find God. It seems more likely, then, that only with the eye of faith can wonder in the natural world appear to be truly reflective of the glory of God.

John Zizioulas John Zizioulas is an Eastern Orthodox theologian of some distinction who has devoted considerable energy to translating Orthodox ideas into a language that can be readily understood in the West. He is also characteristic of a larger movement within the Orthodox community that believes in the importance of caring for the earth as God’s gift to humanity. The Orthodox perspective is one that both sees “nature” as inclusive of human beings and perceives a radical distinction between God as “other” than creation. How can God and the world be linked without losing the radical distinction between the two? Zizioulas argues that the link between God and the world is possible through humanity. However, he rejects the emphasis on rationality as a basis for human superiority, as evolutionary research presents other animals having this capacity, and it can also be the basis for a rationalization of the world for selfish exploitation. He argues, instead, that freedom is the most important dimension of human beings. Freedom may N. Lash, The Beginning and End of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 79–80.

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be used in ways that are distorting, as is clear from the story of the fall. But “[b]‌y taking the world into his hands and creatively integrating and referring it to God, man liberates creation from its limitations and lets it truly be.”20 Christ acts as the model for the perfect relationship between humanity and the world, so that as the bread and wine is offered in the Eucharist, so the source of all creation as a gift from God becomes clear. It is through the liturgical act that God and creation are once again drawn into right relationship. Nature as sacred no longer is under the threat of death but through the free choice of human beings enters life. This sacramental life, faithful to the teaching of the church, engenders an ethos, a way of life that counters the selfishness that Zizioulas believes is at the heart of the ecological crisis. Zizioulas’s writing is traditional in its biblical interpretation without ignoring the discoveries of modern evolutionary biology and science. He is prepared to listen to the insights of evolutionary ideas, without making these paradigmatic in his theology. He is also correct to believe that the problem facing humanity in practical issues such as the ecological crisis cannot be solved by theological endorsement of scientific empiricism. Rather, he calls for a specifically liturgical vision, one whose language and narrative is distinct from that of scientific reasoning with its modern tendency toward fragmentation and specialization. His stress on the importance of freedom would have resonance with other authors working at the interface between biology and theology, especially in areas such as genetics. The concept of humanity as priest of creation is more problematic, in that in environmental ethics there has been a shift away from anthropocentrism toward a greater sense of kinship with all creation. However, he is correct to place ecological concern at the door of a re-envisaged anthropology, for it is only inasmuch as humanity learns to change its behavior and attitudes that any hope of lasting ecological sustainability will come to fruition.

THEOLOGY AND THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES: A TENTATIVE AGENDA One of the ongoing difficulties for any theologian working at the interface with the biological sciences is keeping abreast of scientific discoveries and trends. Theological concentration on history, rather than nature, is understandable in the wake of the plethora of knowledge and information in the sciences, including the biological sciences. It is also apparent that most of the key contributors to the field have had some training in natural science. Yet if biological science is to be taken as a serious issue for debate in theology as such, rather than just by an elite who happen to have combined both careers, then there is a need for more theologians to take biological issues seriously. Such a possibility may only come about if theology becomes a shared task, where mutual encounter and engagement can take place. In order to begin such a task, theologians need more confidence in what they have to offer to debates about the place of science and technology. It is easy for theologians to be either timid when confronted by science’s enormous practical success or dismiss that science as bent on a philosophically naive empirical imperialism. Instead, respectful listening, a paying attention that needs to be at the heart of all theological enterprise, should serve to shape the way different theologians and their respective

J. D. Zizioulas, “Preserving God’s Creation: Three Lectures on Theology and Ecology,” King’s Theological Review 13, no. 1 (1990): 5. 20

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traditions approach biological discoveries. However, this need not lead to endorsement or appropriation of ideas emerging from scientific analysis. Rather, it is through careful reflection and discernment that the insights of science can be drawn upon in a creative process of exchange and interpretation. It is no longer possible to ignore the biological horizon of understanding, but the way biblical and theological interpretation intersect requires an ongoing effort. One way of achieving this task is through more corporate ways of working, so that exchange is facilitated between those with expertise in different fields. The humanities in general have been relatively slow to initiate such practices, while in the biological sciences, teamwork is taken for granted as being essential in order to achieve its goals. The particular way in which such an exchange comes to fruition will depend on the particular interests of those aiming to engage in the dialogue. The first tentative goal can be summarized as a readiness for respectful attention between those of different disciplines in theology and the biological sciences. In addition to this listening process, some readiness to contribute to practical issues that are of concern to citizens in general becomes part of a theologian’s brief when working at this interface. Engaging in theological ethics is inherent in topics such as genetics, environmental issues, and the advances associated with new developments in medicine. There is always the temptation for those working at this interface to leave practical issues behind and just formulate theories of God and evolution that are remote from any pressing social concerns. Such theorization has a little more impact than the theologies that it seeks to replace. In other words, it is a misplaced concreteness to claim that because scientific realism is operative in dealing with the world, a theology that takes account of such realism is practical in nature. A second goal can be summarized as a readiness to accept responsibility for working out the implications of such an exchange in practical decision making and ethics. Third, the various areas of systematic theology that encounter biological science are not simply restricted to a theology of creation, though of course this is significant. Rather, the full range of possibilities inherent in working through the implications of the biological sciences on theology in its broadest sense needs to be taken into account. Jürgen Moltmann, for example, includes his understanding of ecology in his discussions of a range of topics, such as creation, God, Christology, soteriology, eschatology, and anthropology. This is not to suggest that biological science is paradigmatic in shaping theological development. However, it is important to take into account the insights gained through biology and be able to give a reasonable response to such a challenge. The resurrection of Jesus, for example, would be impossible from a secular biologist’s perspective, which would claim death is irreversible. This dilemma has taxed even the most able of theologians.21 Yet this does not mean that faith in the resurrection is now no longer possible or that Christ did not rise from the dead. The physical form in which he was raised is obscure from the gospel accounts; he could both eat and pass through doors. It seems that we are dealing with a reality that is not normally predicated by science. This leads to a third goal: a readiness to accept the challenge of the biological sciences in all areas of theology without necessarily simply accepting biological empiricism as the final arbiter of such theology. Fourth, there is a danger that once the biological sciences become companions to theology, the insights of theology for science and the practice of science are attenuated.

Wolfhart Pannenberg’s theology shows this tension clearly.

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Theologians who have been inducted into the sciences through long training or association need to be aware of the gift that theology can bring to the sciences, as well as the other way round. This is true in decision making, about which aspects of biological science need to be developed, as well as the application of biological science in biotechnology. Hence, discerning priorities for scientific research becomes the task of all citizens, including theologians. While theologians cannot change the content of science, and it would be wrong for them to try and do so, they can influence funding policy. Consultation documents on cloning, use of genetic change to produce drugs, and the status of the embryo have all led to considerable debate on public policy in these areas. This leads to a fourth goal: a readiness to be engaged in policy making in the biological sciences, where such opportunities are available. There are also wider social issues to consider in the wake of possible applications of the biological sciences in genetics and environmental science. While the former reflects the confident edge of biology, the latter is more aware of human limitations in our dealings with the planet as a whole. In both areas, particular questions (such as that of social justice) are of interest to theologians. This goes further than simply arguing for ethical engagement as in the second goal outlined above. Rather, it suggests that particular areas call not just for theorization about the philosophical difficulty in application but also an engagement with those who are on the receiving end of injustices as an indirect result of the applications of biotechnology. This is not to suggest that all biotechnology is oppressive; rather, the task of the theologian is to recognize where this is the case and work to alleviate the situation within his or her means to do so. A fifth goal might be: a readiness to recognize those situations where applications of biology have led to social injustices and work for its amelioration. Other possible scenarios might be named, so the list is far from exhaustive. However, it shows the scope of the work to be done that is still very much an ongoing and expanding field of inquiry. By way of conclusion, it is clear that even though theology has expanded its horizons considerably through its engagement with the biological sciences, there is still the need to delve into the rich resources of its tradition and to seek wisdom wherever it may be found, but a wisdom that is ultimately grounded in knowledge and love of God and God’s creation.

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Medical Innovation, Conventional Theology TERRI LAWS

The term “medicine” connected to theology challenges the notion that medicine is a material matter. But should it? Making meaning for humanity offers the best way to develop and support innovation in medicine that honors the divinity in humans. Influenced from the somatic poles of suffering and pleasure, theologians such as M. Shawn Copeland and Anthony B. Pinn have argued that the human body ought to be the center of theological discourse. Copeland arrived at her conclusion, in part, through her own experience of illness, a form of suffering.1 Pinn highlights embodied pleasure as too often overlooked fodder for theological reflection.2 Neither theologian argues exclusively from these poles, but their texts, published in the same year, demonstrate that there was a dearth of scholarship that engaged theology not as an abstract but in the vast range of bodily experiences. The poles of suffering and pleasure, and the experiences between, offer a palette of prospective meanings of the effect of emerging medical technologies on the human experience. A recent discussion among undergraduate students in a Dearborn, Michigan, classroom provides an illustration of the conventional, nonexpert discourse on technology and its social implications for humanity. It also illustrates what is often missing in the fascination with emerging technologies, medical and otherwise: the meaning of the decision to engage medical technology, the experience of innovation, and how to design innovative medical technology to produce an outcome in the best interest of all humanity made in the image of God. This is the intersection of medicine, theology, and ethics. In the next section, I explain why I employ innovation in order to explicate the meaning of the social and cultural aspects of medicine. As it turns out, foundational Christian theological teachings anchor considerations about whether innovation is to be welcomed or feared. But first, an illustration.

AN ILLUSTRATION, ALBEIT VIA A SIDE ROAD Not long ago, in the moments before a class on the history and culture of Detroit was scheduled to begin, I witnessed undergraduate students from a variety of academic . Shawn Copeland, Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010), 131. M Anthony B. Pinn, Embodiment and the New Shape of Black Theological Thought (New York: New York University Press, 2010), xvii; 71. 1 2

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majors engage each other in a conversation about artificial intelligence and its prospective impact on humanity. The discussion revealed a somatic and emotional void in need of a solution to reconnect their notions of innovation with a surprisingly distant regard for humankind. During the prior few weeks in the course, students had learned about mid-twentieth-century urban deindustrialization and the loss of auto industry jobs to automation, disinvestment, and plant relocations. In the students’ conversation, a few self-identified science and engineering majors somewhat cavalierly remarked that compared to the effects of the previous disinvestment, even more people will be left behind in the advance of twenty-first-century emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence. Other students, especially those whose intellectual pursuits lay in the humanities and social sciences, posed questions to their science-oriented peers in an attempt to understand how the emerging technologies operate, believing that their ability to access knowledge might provide the key to mastering emerging technologies rather than to befall a future of being mastered by these emerging technologies. Their questions conveyed two prominent reactions: a feeling of the concern over deficiencies of their technological knowledge and fear that these emerging technologies that they do not understand might overtake humans. The students’ conversation is representative of the contemporary discourse mismatch between experts and non-experts. In this example, the burgeoning science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) professionals were speaking in a positivist scientific narrative while the future non-STEM professionals focused on how they and their fellow citizens would be affected. It is at once poignant and instructive. The STEM students who initiated the conversation centered on content: knowledge acquisition, the role of innovation, and emerging technology. The conversation also had a structure built on feelings about the welcome and/or hesitance of innovation based on how it affects humans, which was made even more relevant given its location. Dearborn, Michigan, shares a border with Detroit. Despite a more recent understanding of the region as a failed municipality and an urban wasteland, it is a key site of twentieth-century technological, social, and economic innovations that contributed to drastic changes in the United States. Those seismic changes did not just happen; they were felt within the bodily experiences of the humans who lived in the region as well as the hundreds of thousands of persons from around the globe who moved to the area between the 1910s through the 1950s and beyond. Detroit grew to become the fourth-largest city in the nation. Dearborn was the birthplace and home of car maker Henry Ford, whose innovations in the assembly line coupled with his unprecedented five-dollar-a-day wage helped to spur the growth of the automobile industry and the rise of an American middle class. Before his technological innovation, Ford’s cars were craft-built vehicles.3 After the assembly line, the company’s workforce exploded to churn out the Model T, but incessant tinkering to get the workers’ tasks to smaller and smaller efficient increments turned his workforce into dissatisfied men with high turnover.4 Ford’s unheard-of plan to increase wages to $5.00 per day was intended to give his workers an incentive to stay with the company and the opportunity to purchase the Model T that they now mass-produced. His sociological department agents inspected workers’ Douglas Brinkley, Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress, 1903–2003 (New York: Viking, 2003), 154. 4 Scott Martelle, Detroit: A Biography (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2012), 71. 3

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homes to ensure that their private lives matched the expectations needed to retain the new, unusually high wage.5 These innovations and their aftermath spawned the sociocultural term “Fordism,” a term that became a sharp critique of the dehumanizing effects of earlytwentieth-century industrialization.6 During their childhoods, southeastern Michigan students learn the positivist lore of Ford’s innovations. As young adults in the Detroit history and culture course, they learn to critique the same. The Henry Ford residential estate is out the back door of their university campus, and the world headquarters of the company that Ford built can be seen from the upper floors of the front street-facing buildings. The concept and energy of innovation is built into the DNA, so to speak, of the region. The Dearborn-Detroit area is also one of the most religiously diverse in the United States. In addition to Christian, Jewish, and Hindu communities, the area has one of the largest Arab American—Muslim and Christian—populations in the country. Despite their religious diversity, the students’ discussion focused on the excitement-versus-hesitance of new technologies and their implications for human life. Missing from their conversation was consideration that along with the possibilities that technological improvements may bring is the need for an evaluative ethical discourse questioning whether technology should be developed just because it is possible, and the grounding framework in which such ethical values can be formed. Religious diversity is central to the identity of these students’ college experience. Despite exposure in the course to the history of the rise of the region followed by a sixty-year period of its economic decline, students needed to be steered to ethical framing of emerging technologies and religion even though religion often grounds their ethical framing. Outside of a course focused on ethics, students are rarely encouraged to think outside intellectual silos, yet they voluntarily interject their religious beliefs in courses where they can anticipate expressing ethical considerations.7 In such settings, students risk offering comments and questions that suggest the examination of different sociological and cultural experiences of technology and technological innovation. Theology—as a category of divine-human relationship within a faith tradition—and theological reflection—as the application of theology to cultural matters including human-to-human social group engagement—offers needed perspective to questions of medical innovation for a more holistic discourse.

MEDICINE AND THEOLOGY: A SOCIAL AND CULTURAL APPROACH Indicative of the breadth of subjects related to theology in this volume, selecting a single topic within medicine and theology is a challenging task. To meet the task is to identify an analytical lens that achieves a variety of goals that will be identifiable to a broad audience rather than solely an expert one. Such an approach sufficiently looks forward in this age of technological advancement but not too far to be impractical, and it must be morally self-reflective while carrying the risk that is borne in faith. In the illustration above, the students in the conversation grew up in a region where innovation as local lore has run the full cycle from development to devastation to reinvention. Knowledge, Ibid.,  75. Ibid.,  71–3. 7 I see this in the medical ethics course that I teach; there students, especially religious minorities, identify their religiously based ethical approaches without prompting, especially on hotly contested topics such as abortion rights. 5 6

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as an analytical category, straddles the content and the human experience of the students’ conversation. Access to knowledge as well as implications for humans in this technological cycle are part of the social and cultural fabric of the region. There is a similar cycle in medical innovation. To develop a theology around it, we need to understand the social and cultural parameters of medical innovation. Patients want medicine to provide the practicality of healing; from theology they want the right mix of affective comfort and critical intellectualism for the somatic challenge. They want the combination to meet the struggle of the medical moment. When a patient is on her sick bed, it is important that whoever may be making decisions possess or have exposure to enough knowledge of the human body to understand the medical information being conveyed, to make decisions that meet their health need, and to trust that the health care team can skillfully execute the decision. The team, for their part, must accept the responsibilities of this trust and lend their knowledge to the task at hand. Trust and knowledge overlap as the social exchange of the agents in these health care professional-patient relationships. There are even times when in the immediacy of the need for medical attention or medical planning, the trust aspect of the relationship lies more in professional training than in trust of the person as professional. As such, the examination of knowledge is an essential common approach to framing topics in the intersection of theology and science.8 Ian Barbour, in one of the classic texts in the field of science-religion discussions, explores questions investigated by religion and science as two spheres of knowledge, as well as the relationship between the two.9 I have written about this elsewhere. In the religion-science knowledge discourse, religious knowledge can refer to cosmological or the ordering system of the universe, including sets of explanations about the existence of and relationship between humans and the divine Creator or creative force of the universe. Scientific knowledge also explores questions that address issues such as the composition, origin, and the material order of the universe. Although some thinkers have argued that the realms of religious and scientific knowledge engage in a conflictual relationship, others have noted that these realms may operate in a complementary fashion.10 Beyond Barbour’s identification of the content, differences between science and religion define how these differing types of knowledge are produced and function in society. For example, the classic comparative category of knowledge is how they are generated: reason versus revelation.11 Scientific knowledge is developed through systematic processes that are able to be replicated by other scientists, thus increasing the confidence one can have in scientifically produced knowledge.12 Through such a process, scientifically generated knowledge can be able to be trusted because its processes allow it to be reproduced.13 Society can have the confidence of a math problem that 2+2 calculates to 4 every time.

his essay is limited to medical innovation as knowledge and as fodder for theological reflection. T Ian G. Barbour, Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues, A Revised and Expanded Edition of Religion in an Age of Science (San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997), 77–82. See also Terri Laws, “ ‘At the Cross-Roads’: African American Spirituality, Clinical Trials, and Patient-Subject Decision-Making” (PhD dissertation, Rice University, 2015), 84. 10 Laws, “ ‘At the Cross-Roads’,” 83–4. 11 Barbour, Religion and Science, 7. Barbour’s precise thought is that truths are consistent through both natural and as revealed by God. 12 Ibid.,  78. 13 Ibid. 8 9

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Even if science cannot produce the same answer every time, it has an intellectual pathway to be able to do so. In a very broad sense, once established, the results of the scientific process can achieve a sense of certainty. Revealed knowledge is the other pole of Barbour’s argument. Here knowledge is garnered through subjective experience with the Divine. It brings no certainty, except, perhaps, to the faith-filled or the hopeful to whom the knowledge has been revealed. To them there is a sense of reassurance. As viewed from outside the experience, revealed knowledge offers no capacity or methodology for replication. The certainty of the religious believer is skeptical fodder for those who are outside the experience, especially if they see science having a conflictual relationship with religion.14 In daily life, revealed knowledge requires heightened trust in the individual to whom the knowledge was revealed, and human beings are fallible. Without such heightened trust, there is uncertainty in the reliability of the revealed knowledge. It is in the differences of their functionality, how these two spheres of knowledge operate, where the focus moves to search for the meaning of each sphere as a social and cultural process (rather than as a description of knowledge as a noun). Within the medical encounter, theologians can provide meaning-making interpretations of the healing (or lack thereof) that health professionals seek to provide. Just as Barbour noted that truths can be derived through both forms of (the noun) knowledge, in practicality, the knowledge process also coexists in the patient experience. In medicine, pursuit of scientific knowledge provides the opportunity to contribute modes of healing for human bodies that hopefully leads to an optimal quality of life. In the context of Western culture, particularly in the United States, one cultural narrative provides insight and understanding: the continuous striving for more and better. As demonstrated in the scene in that Dearborn, Michigan, classroom earlier, this cultural narrative is alive and well in the current generation. As a matter of medicine, it is the search for innovations that will enhance or extend human life. Building from questions in the cultural conflict narrative within Barbour’s writing, sociologist John H. Evans reconsiders the classic conflict in knowledge for a contemporary audience.15 Using an example in natural science, Evans examines climate change articles published in the Huffington Post as a representative voice of liberal secularism. He reaches the conclusion that it is not knowledge itself but the presumed conflict in the moral grounding between scientists and religious laypersons. This is where I too will end up theologically, but in order to get there, I identify first why I focus on medical innovation as the focus for theological construction.

THREE CATEGORIES OF MEDICAL INNOVATION AS SOCIAL AND CULTURAL PROCESS For purposes of this discussion, the field of medicine includes medical research as a social good that can contribute to improved treatments and optimal health outright or in toto within a specified set of geographical borders. In this view, in the US context, all Americans have a stake and an investment in medicine and its innovations. Income taxes from US workers and corporations help to create the revenues that federal agencies devise into research grants. Public funds help to support the in-hospital clinical training of medical Ibid.,  78–9. John H. Evans, Morals Not Knowledge: Recasting the Contemporary U.S. Conflict between Religion and Science (Oakland: University of California Press, 2018). 14 15

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school graduates.16 These examples identify medicine and its component parts, including medical research, as a social good based on the material value they can potentially bring to patients. But the nonmaterial values, the cultural values and narratives and their implications for American social collectives, need further attention, and understanding the cultural values embedded within the discourse of American medical innovation hints at related theologies. As such, I will now examine three cases that show the importance of focusing on medical innovations, each of which provide a picture of the influence on society and culture with which theology must wrangle. The first case that illuminates the focus on medical innovation examines what Americans have been willing to support in medical innovation and the processes used in the name of the American public to determine that support. Many citizens may be familiar with the fact that the National Institutes of Health administers grants for medical research across twenty-seven institutes organized by physical and mental health areas such as body systems and age groups as well as in minority health and health disparity. It is likely less well known that the Department of Defense (DoD) is the other major federal funder that administers grants for medical research. DoD funds research that “supports basic, translational, and clinical research projects; research training; and research infrastructure.”17 The vision for its program goals is “to transform healthcare for Service Members and the American public through innovative and impactful research. The [Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs] CDMRP works to accomplish this vision by responsibly managing collaborative research that discovers, develops, and delivers healthcare solutions for Service Members, Veterans, and the American public.”18 Each year, Congress identifies emphasis areas that they fund through the DoD.19 In fiscal year 2019, these directives amounted to as much as $1.054 billion that were not requested by the DoD.20 A YouTube video posted in the “About Us” section of the CDMRP makes the point that consumers are those who have the disease or injury for which a House of Representatives or Senator has requested funding, are family members or surviving family members of a patient, are advocates for the disease process or injury, or, if it is a health issue for military personnel, are active duty members of the Armed Forces with the permission to serve from his/her commanding officer.21 In making this point, the aim is to demonstrate that these mandated research programs have connections to “grassroots,”22 in this case, persons directly affected by the medical issue.23 Medicare funds help to pay teaching hospitals where medical school graduates gain treatment experience for a minimum of four years. See Association of American Medical Colleges, “Medicare Direct Graduate Medical Education (DGME) Payments,” https://www.aamc.org/advocacy/gme/71152/gme_gme0001.html. Accessed January 6, 2019. 17 United States Department of Defense, Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs, “Transforming Healthcare through Innovative and Impactful Research: Introductory Overview Video (Text),” Fort Detrick, MD, https://cdmrp.army.mil/about/cdmrpoverview_text. 18 Ibid. 19 United States Army Medical Research Materiel Command, Department of Public Affairs, “About Us: Funding Process,” https://cdmrp.army.mil/about/fundingprocess. 20 Department of Defense, United States Army Medical Research Materiel Command, Department of Public Affairs, “Press Release: Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs,” Fort Detrick, MD, October 31, 2018, https://cdmrp.army.mil/pubs/press/2019/funding_press_release19. 21 United States Department of Defense, Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs, “Consumer Involvement: Eligibility Checklist,” https://cdmrp.army.mil/cwg/apply. 22 United States Department of Defense, Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs, “Transforming Healthcare through Innovative and Impactful Research: Introductory Overview Video (Text).” 23 Peer reviewers are overwhelmingly academics rather than advocates. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Health and Medicine Division; Board on the Health of Select Populations; 16

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The focus on this type of medical innovation case is its interest in and valuing of its practical implication on behalf of the American military and/or its citizens. The cultural value exists in the connection to the research funding process to democratic input as represented by a few non-experts. A second case demonstrates the intersection of medical innovation with sociocultural values and representative American moral reasoning. One of the most famous cases of values, moral reasoning, and medical innovation in the past century was the 1960s’ expansion of kidney dialysis in Seattle, Washington. Dialysis was (and is) a mechanism that functions as a form of external artificial kidney, used as a means of sustaining the life of patients whose kidneys insufficiently eliminate waste from the blood system through urine.24 A report in Life, one of the most popular magazines of the time, brought unwelcomed attention to the process by which patients were provided access to this then new, lifesaving medical technology. Shana Alexander’s lengthy essay, “They Decide Who Lives, Who Dies,” described the inner workings of the Admissions and Policies Committee at the Seattle Artificial Kidney Center at the Swedish Hospital.25 The committee was later anonymously nicknamed the “God Committee.” It is highly debatable whether a committee consisting of a minister, an attorney, a labor leader, a banker, two physicians, and a housewife, appointed by the local medical society, accurately fits Alexander’s description of the collective as a “microcosm of society-at-large.”26 There is no doubt, however, that this anonymous seven had a difficult task in choosing among the applicants for access to the experimental treatment. Original applicants had only a one-in-fifty chance of being selected to gain access to the machine.27 For one of the selected recipients featured in the story, without dialysis, he would die within one to two weeks; applicants who were not selected in the Seattle facility were among the estimated 100,000 end-stage renal disease patients who died each year.28 The Life article drew from a number of committee conversations to provide a glimpse of the various concerns of each member as well as their collective work in ultimately affecting who would live and who would die. They initially had no evaluative criteria other than the medical recommendations of the physicians who eliminated patients on physical or psychological grounds, but it was the evaluative criteria the committee later developed that brought criticism. The committee members identified these additional factors to determine suitable participants: “age and sex of patient; marital status and number of dependents; income; net worth; emotional stability, with particular regard to the patient’s capacity to accept the treatment; educational background; nature of occupation, past performance and future potential; and names of people who could serve as references.”29 Furthermore, in addition to the overnight stay two times per week required to administer the treatment, patients needed to demonstrate financial viability, a

Committee on the Evaluation of Research Management by DoD Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP), “Number and Types of Peer Reviewers Across All CDMRP Programs,” in Evaluation of the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs Review Process (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2016), December 19, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK424516/table/tab_3-2/. Accessed December 30, 2018. 24 Christopher R. Blagg, “The Early History of Dialysis for Chronic Renal Failure in the United States: A View from Seattle,” American Journal of Kidney Diseases 49, no. 3 (March 2007): 482–96. 25 Shana Alexander, “They Decide Who Lives, Who Dies,” Life 53 (November 9, 1962): 102–25. 26 Ibid.,  106. 27 Ibid.,  104. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid.

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cost of approximately $15,000 per year—the equivalent of more than $125,000 in 2018 dollars.30 Beyond the selection task, committee members expressed process concerns such as the preference to free a physician to serve the medical needs of the selected patients rather than to be encumbered by choosing the treatment beneficiaries. In such a framing, the committee preferred they that give the civic service of “playing God” rather than ask a physician to do so alone. One committee member wanted to select only the healthiest of the sick patients to achieve the best results overall, thus making a best long-term argument for the viability of the experimental treatment. Another committee member, the labor leader, did not see this early dialysis as experimental. He thought they had enough data to show that it worked and thus preferred to work to expand access to more patients. Yet at the level of assessing individual candidates, he believed that personal character was important in selection and that religious involvement served as an indication of the character that he sought.31 (It should be noted that the percentage of Americans who were regularly religiously involved peaked in the 1950s and that the God Committee article was published in 1962.32) This type of case shows that even with the best of medical goals intended, social factors and cultural values, including a patient’s access to a social support network and perceived social worth, influenced who decision makers recommended to gain access to promising life-sustaining medical innovations. Lastly, a third case demonstrates how the very processes used in the scientific pursuit of innovation can reproduce exclusion through implicit bias as cultural narratives. This type of interaction differs from the second case in that the latter exclusions are based on implicit factors that create structural or systemic barriers where none are perceived. The former exclusions are based on a desire to protect the scientific development. Exclusions seek to produce the best results for the innovation enterprise. The God Committee’s labor leader’s argument for the best of the sick patients is one example. Their automatic exclusion of persons greater than 45 years old is another.33 The goal was to protect the overall experiment by presuming that patients older than 45, medically, would not survive as well.34 Older patients would not be included until there was greater medical and social acceptance of the treatment overall. The third case provides a different illustration by focusing on Carolyn Rouse’s study of the experience of sickle cell disease patients aging out of pediatrics.35 Rouse’s study deals with social dimensions of chronic disease processes that begin in childhood and continue into adulthood. The years before legal adulthood can be especially problematic. Culturally, we are often more tolerant of pediatric patients who are deemed to need paternalistic protections,36 less so with teens who are entering the age of asserting their agency. In Uncertain Suffering, these aging-out patients are being socialized in the Ibid. Ibid.,  123. 32 See any number of sociological studies, e.g., Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon and Shuster, 2000). 33 Alexander, “They Decide Who Lives, Who Dies,” 106. 34 Ibid. 35 Carolyn Moxley Rouse, Uncertain Suffering: Racial Health Disparities and Sickle Cell Disease (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009). 36 It should be noted that there is a substantive body of literature that adults perceive Black children to be older than they are and less deserving of protection than their White counterparts. See, e.g., Rebecca Epstein, Jamilia J. Blake, and Thalia González, Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood (Washington, DC: Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality, 2017). 30 31

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language and behaviors that medical culture and providers expect of their agency where they would be deemed as adults, even though they are still teens. The use of agency in health care facilities and medical culture is a unique social process for study. Medicine is a highly stratified institution with distinct power structures. Among unspoken behavioral norms in medical culture is to show a certain deference as a means of demonstrating a transparency that will get one the help needed. Patients respond by choosing to subjugate a share of their personal power as a means of allowing the care team access to their bodies in need of healing. Here enculturation and socialization in acceptable forms of agency are the focus of gaining access to innovations that may be developed for what can be a painful and debilitating condition. Aging-out patients must choose to exhibit a demeanor that shows that they are a “good” patient, one willing to follow doctors’ orders. The examples of the God Committee and Uncertain Suffering center on limited access to medical innovation given that the decision-making powers lie outside themselves, beyond their own agency. These limits support moral justification for policies and politics of exclusion. Rather than focus on growth, this politics presumes an inherent scarcity. In fairness, sometimes there is no quick or easy way to resolve scarcity. Then the only way to proceed is to determine a way to fairly distribute the innovative treatment or to devise a process to limit inclusion: these are ethical issues. In this essay, we are concerned with the theology that undergirds the ethics. Does a political stance of perceived inherent scarcity reveal a related theological position as to who will gain access to medical innovation? (Recall the devolution to social worth by the God Committee and the expectation of demeanor in Uncertain Suffering.) A final cultural example from the late 2000s presents a cautionary tale out of which a foundational theology of medical innovation can be constructed to support an inclusive ethic of distribution.

POLITICAL THEOLOGY AND MEDICAL INNOVATION: THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT As medical innovation, passage and implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in the early twenty-first century rivals the industrialization and creation of the middle class a century ago. In the twentieth century, via the Ford illustration above, we saw that the idea of innovation was not just the technology itself, that is, not just the execution of the assembly line taken from the meatpacking industry butchering process. On the contrary, as Everett Rogers argues, the innovation was the surrounding social and cultural processes. This includes both the implementation of the five-dollar-a-day wage and the opportunities presented to migrant workers from around the world, including Black and White Southerners only three generations removed from the Civil War and barely one generation removed from the violent terrorism during the nadir of American race relations.37 Back in the twenty-first century, it is helpful to understand that most of the

Everett M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, 5th ed. (New York: Free Press, 2003), 12–13. Rogers discusses this expansive view of technology as consisting of 37

hardware … the tool that embodies the technology as a material or physical object, and … [as] software … consisting of the coded commands, instructions, manuals, and other information aspects of this tool that allow us to use it for certain tasks … We often think of technology mainly in terms of hardware. Indeed, sometimes the hardware side of a technology is dominant. But in other cases, a technology may be almost entirely composed of information; examples are a political philosophy such as Marxism, a religious idea such as Christianity, a news event, and a policy such as a municipal no-smoking ordinance. The diffusion of such

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component parts of the ACA were not novel. Rather, the innovation was found in the way that these known parts were knitted together to expand financed health care to several million more Americans. During this era, evangelical voters overwhelmingly cast their ballots in presidential elections for the Republican nominee. Since 2012, this has meant voting for the candidate whose political party has favored repeal of the ACA passed by the Democrat-led Congress and signed into law in 2010. Such a pattern begs a question: Is there a coherent, theologically defensible relationship between the stated social aims of the ACA and the voting record of the opposing evangelicals? Before answering this question, we must understand the reasons for the opposition, as they will be instructive for understanding findings in a study that examines how religious attitudes might affect public policy. Reasons for opposition to the ACA varied among the voting public, but opposition remained four years after its passage. As promoted by then president, Barack Obama, a central aim of the act was to expand insurance coverage to the estimated fifty million Americans who were uninsured or underinsured at the time. It maintained the structure of market-based health insurance. Individuals and families needing coverage could purchase a guarantee-issue plan that would obtain them insurance without worry that they did not qualify due to an existing illness. In implementing states, other citizens might be eligible to apply for Medicaid, the qualifying income for which was expanded beyond the usual criteria described as “low income.” It should be noted that although most of the opposition lie among voters who preferred Republican proposals, some voters opposed the proposal believing that did not reach far enough. Many of those voters wanted to see a more liberal plan that could completely eliminate the uninsured population, such as one similar to Medicare, the publicly funded health insurance for citizens over the age of 65.38 Relatedly, another line of opposition to the ACA was the cost it would add to the federal debt. Despite these arguments, a 2016 study by McCarthy, Davis, Garand, and Olson observed that there is little research regarding how religious attitudes relate to policies that represent the redistribution of societal resources, including higher taxes on the rich, repeal of the ACA, and an increase in the minimum wage.39 They analyzed the 2013 Economic Values Survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute to look for links between these policies and religious attitudes. They concluded that identification with the religio-political label the “religious right,” as well as with a reading of the Bible that “church should work to preserve traditional beliefs as opposed to adapting to shifting cultural value orientations,” correlate with being less likely to support redistributive policies that would include the policy position to repeal the ACA.40 Belief in an understanding that the Bible describes a Jesus whose teaching would lead to taking actions on behalf of the poor is more likely to be theologically consistent with support for redistributive policies.41 As noted above, Rogers’s broad definition of innovation allows for understanding the ACA as a form of medical innovation. By extension, at the height of software innovations has … a methodological problem … their adoption cannot be so easily traced or observed. Such idea-only innovations have a relatively lower degree of observability and thus a slower rate of adoption. Pew Research Center, “ACA at Age 4: More Disapproval than Approval: But Most Opponents Want Politicians to Make Law Work,” http://www.people-press.org/2014/03/20/aca-at-age-4-more-disapproval-than-approval/. Accessed December 26, 2018. 39 Angela Farizo McCarthy, Nicholas T. Davis, James C. Garand and Laura R. Olson, “Religion and Attitudes toward Redistributive Policies among Americans,” Political Research Quarterly 69, no. 1 (March 2016): 121–33. 40 Ibid.,  130. 41 Ibid. 38

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the repeal the ACA debate, voters more likely to be identified with evangelicalism would also be more likely to be against offering that innovation to the neediest Americans. We are left only to wonder what type of exclusion from medical innovation is more deadly: exclusions based on theological grounding that leaves out large portions of the population, based on a view that the work of the church is limited to Jesus as personal Savior and divorced from questions of redistribution; or exclusions based on social worth criteria such as in the example of the God Committee. Either way, it bears recalling that the material resources of American society are largely developed out of the redistribution of pooled tax dollars that helps to develop various types of medical innovations. As such, neither view is palatable, and a need for a theology of inclusion becomes clear. Such a theology of medical innovation would rely less on a systematic theological program and be largely a constructive return to the view of Jesus’s teaching that reminds us of our interconnectedness.

A THEOLOGY OF INCLUSION Science and technology studies cover some of the same concerns we have here about sociological stratification and power differentials; that work develops through arguments for access to innovation by resting on democratic ideals of full citizenship. Theology has its own corollary to this helpful framework. Every major religion on the globe contains the ideal of the sacred worth of human life and its own formulation of the golden rule, and Christian theology offers much more than the sociological and political frames of citizenship. Although political systems and the frame of citizenship work through the lens of limits, theology can garner the frame of sacred worth as a means to evaluate access to innovation. It is tempting to believe that faith communities must construct sophisticated theologies that match the complexity of modern medicine. Medical discoveries from the simple (e.g., the protective benefits of handwashing) to the spectacular (e.g., the basic science needed to develop gene therapy and gene editing), applied as innovative treatments, have moved painful diseases and conditions that threaten to steal life from tens of thousands annually into the category of chronic, manageable illnesses. Even in cases where the condition still has a degenerative prognosis or the death trajectory, modern medicine has the ability to manage the progression of these diseases, including the dying process, so as to provide patients comfort such as pain management with a sufficient level of lucidity that patients gain additional time with family and friends and the capacity to pursue desired goals. In the United States, there is a pattern of uneven access to experimental and innovative treatments in health systems like ours, held together with capitalistic principles and practices. The byword remains competition rather than universal, as in universal coverage and universal access. Those with education (as power) and financial resources gain access.42 In the dialysis example above, public exposure of the committee’s decision making made it seem that they were “playing God” with the lives of the many. Contemporary medical innovations prompt similar consideration about what we think about the people in need as well as about how to fairly allocate these scare resources. However, in part because of public response to these social worth discussions of the past, we can understand that a conversation girded by an inherent-worth theology does more to move forward equitable This is true, e.g., in access to clinical trials. Patients who are well educated and have insurance are more likely to be able to participate in care and research networks. 42

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access.43 As long as our health care system is built on a foundation of belief in market forces, the best way to support modern medical miracles as a social good is to buffet its “survival of the fittest” secularism by heightening an Imago Dei theology with a “love thy neighbor as thyself ” ethic. Rather than succumb to the fallacy of sophistication, Christian theology can both boost its relevance and help modern medicine sustain its best potential when theologies return to the basics of its moral authority. In the case of modern medicine and theology, this points to a Christian theology that both acknowledges the social inequities of health care and corrects such by focusing on the foundational message of the Gospels—that Jesus came for all. In Risks of Faith, theologian James H. Cone famously wrote about how he developed his now broadly accepted Black Theology. Cone notes that like many African Americans of the 1960s, he admired Martin Luther King Jr., as King called for reconciliation between the races. Cone also appreciated the passion in Malcolm X’s sharp racial critique of White blindness to its own White supremacy and to antiblack racism. He combined these two modes of affect and critical thinking to construct a Christian theology that retained Jesus’s message of reconciliation without leaving behind a clear call for the justice that lay inside a critique of racism. Similarly, we cannot presume that theology that says that it is Christian automatically includes a message of love that is compassionate enough to eradicate inequity. It is no longer sufficient to say that all citizens of the United States are inherently worthy to our Creator God yet look away at the inequity on which our health care system is built and that enables those with resources to seek innovations that offer a fuller life, or at least one with treatment choices, and that those without them solely have the option to pray.

Carol Levine, “The Seattle ‘God Committee’: A Cautionary Tale,” Health Affairs, November 30, 2009, https:// www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20091130.002998/full/. Accessed April 30, 2019. 43 James H. Cone, Risks of Faith: The Emergence of a Black Theology of Liberation, 1968–1998 (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1999), xx–xxi. 43

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Theology and the Psychological Sciences JESSICA COBLENTZ

In an op-ed for the New York Times in February 2019, American psychologist David DeSteno presented his take on “what science can learn from religion.”1 Contra Western secularist Richard Dawkins, DeSteno argues “that religious ideas about human behavior and how to influence it, through never worthy of blind embrace, are sometimes vindicated by scientific examination.” He reports on psychological research confirming that Buddhist meditation “reduce[s]‌suffering and enhance[s] ethical behavior” and points to “an emerging body of research [that] shows that ritualistic actions, even when stripped from a religious context, produce effects on the mind ranging from increased self-control to greater feelings of affiliation and empathy.” All this is good, he says, and while it does not vindicate “religion as a whole,” it does suggest that religions might possess valuable resources for enhancing human life, ones that should be of interest to psychologists. DeSteno’s piece offers the public a relevant snapshot of the relationship between religion and the psychological sciences today. He is right to note the real resistance to religion that still endures in the name of science inside and beyond psychology, but his interest in the therapeutic utility of some religious beliefs and practices is also representative of an attitudinal shift in discipline in recent decades. Harold Koenig observes a dramatic shift in how psychologists and psychiatrists view the role of religion and spirituality in illness and health, including mental health, between 1970 and 2000.2 Illustrating this, psychiatrist Patricia Casey counts more than seven hundred quantitative studies on religion/spirituality and mental health in peer-reviewed journals during this thirty-year span. She cites well over six thousand of such articles in the eight-year span from 2000 to 2008. “The majority of these pointed to a positive association between religion/spirituality and mental health benefits,” she notes.3 Supporting Casey’s claim about the growing interest in religion among psychologists and psychiatrists since the turn of the millennium are the development of new best practice guidelines by various professional psychological organizations as well as the establishment and sustainability of David DeSteno, “What Science Can Learn from Religion,” New York Times, February 1, 2019, https://www. nytimes.com/2019/02/01/opinion/sunday/science-religion.html. 2 Harold G. Koenig, “Concerns about Measuring ‘Spirituality’ in Research,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 165, no. 5 (2008): 349. 3 Patricia R. Casey, “‘I’m Spiritual but not Religious’: Implications for Research and Practice,” in Theology, Spirituality and Mental Health: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Christopher Cook (London: SMC Press, 2013), 20. 1

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numerous peer-reviewed journals on the topic.4 Research on the psychological effects of religion, including its benefits, has blossomed. One might assume that increased engagement with Christian theology would accompany psychology’s openness to religion. As a whole, this has not often been the case in part because of scholars like DeSteno, who argue that religious beliefs and practices can be excised from their traditions to be deployed effectively in secular clinical settings. This mentality assumes that psychological perspectives on, and appropriations of, religion are theoretically and practically sufficient. Fraser Watts also attributes this to the secularity of psychology, “in that it has one of the lowest percentages of believing Christians of all academic disciplines.”5 Theologians, defensive of their unique contributions, would likely contest the disregard of psychologists. Yet theologians themselves have scarcely thematized the actual and potential interfaces of psychology and theology. In a time of increased openness to religion, this seems a missed opportunity—one this chapter seeks to address. This chapter takes up the relationship of contemporary Christian theology and the psychological sciences with hopes that a survey of some of recent scholarship that explicitly theorizes the relationship of psychology and theology, and of some scholarship that represents the interface of these disciplines in practice, will engender a richer portrait of what this interdisciplinary relationship is and what it can become. I preface this interdisciplinary consideration with a brief look at psychology among the other sciences. This clarifies the constitutive characteristics of the psychological sciences, contextualizes the subject matter of this chapter among others in the volume, and introduces some of the complexities that emerge when situating psychology in relation to theology. I then survey some recent theoretical scholarship on the disciplinary differences and compatibilities of psychology and theology, introducing various relationships between the psychological sciences and Christian theology. Next, I focus in on dialogical engagements between psychology and theology, noting how psychology can contribute to contemporary theological discourse and how theology can contribute to the psychological sciences as these disciplines continue to pursue their shared aim of understanding of the human person.

PSYCHOLOGY AMONG THE SCIENCES More than a century ago, psychologist William James characterized his disciple as the “science of mental life.”6 To what extent psychology is a science and how it compares to others has remained an ongoing topic of discussion among scholars in the time since James’s description. In their introduction to psychology, for example, Gillian Butler and Freda McManus affirm that psychology shares the same goals as many other sciences: “to describe, understand, and predict the processes that it studies.”7 While technological advancements have afforded new mechanisms for collecting and analyzing relevant empirical data, such as neuroscientific measurements of the workings of the brain, psychology’s object of study—the “mental life” of the human person—necessitates engagement with other data sources that many scientists deem suspect. “A difficulty

Ibid.,  21. Fraser Watts, Theology and Psychology (London: Ashgate, 2002), 3. 6 William James, The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1, Dover Edition (Mineloa, NY: Dover, 1890), 1. 7 Gillian Butler and Freda McManus, A Very Short Introduction to Psychology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 4. 4 5

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inherent in the study of psychology is that facts should be objective and verifiable, but the workings of the mind are not observable in the way that those of an engine are,” explain Butler and McManus. “Only a part of what we want to know in psychology—how we perceive, learn, remember, think, solve problems, feel, develop, differ from each other, and interrelate—can be measured directly.”8 Furthermore, “[s]‌tudying the physiology, biology, or chemistry of an organism provides the kind of exclusive focus that is not available to psychologists precisely because they are interested in mental processes, which cannot be separated from all the other aspects of the organism.”9 That is, realities such as human perception, learning, or feeling are always multiply determined by several factors, some of which are empirically measurable while other equally influential factors cannot be.10 Consider, for instance, prevailing psychological understandings of depression, which acknowledge that the condition likely results from some potentially quantifiable biological factors (think: “chemicals in the brain”) as well as other more elusive and contingent factors of personal history and cultural background, such as individual and collective trauma. The range and complexity of psychology’s data and their inseparability from the multifaceted realities of human experience leave the field with “no single governing paradigm or theoretical principle upon which it is based.”11 Indeed, Fraser Watts describes psychology as “really a family of disciplines, each with its own subject matter, questions, and methodologies.”12 While we might see the plurality and capaciousness of the psychological sciences as a necessity of and strength for addressing their complex subject matter, others argue that psychology is not a true science on this basis. Robert Kugelmann notes that often these scientific boundary debates are framed in terms of the “natural” and the “human” sciences, wherein scholars view “the natural sciences and the human sciences in terms of the former explaining nature and the latter interpreting human realities.”13 Among skeptics of psychology’s scientific validity, the discipline is cast as a human science that is discredited for its incorporation of subjective, non-empirical data. Alternatively, others—protective of psychology’s scientific legitimacy—position the discipline as “a natural science to the exclusion of a human science approach.” Still others seek “to enlarge the meaning of ‘science’ to include the human sciences.”14 Watts takes a middle ground, declaring, “Psychology is, in part, a human science seeking reasons and interpretations, but it is also a natural science seeking causal explanations.”15 Though, as is clear, disagreement persists among psychologists concerning the boundaries of psychological knowledge and methods, on the one hand, and the broader boundaries of science, on the other, scholars of psychology overwhelmingly concur that psychology is a science. Among psychologists and theologians who have attended directly to the relationship of psychology and theology in recent years, these boundary debates are often noted.

Ibid. Ibid.,  11. 10 Ibid.,  4. 11 Ibid.,  11. 12 Fraser Watts, Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality: Concepts and Applications (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 7. 13 Robert Kugelmann, Psychology and Catholicism: Contested Boundaries (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 6; emphasis mine. 14 Ibid.,  6. 15 Watts, Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality, 5. 8 9

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The reason is obvious, in that delineating the contours and constitutive commitments of psychology is requisite for considering the field’s relationship to others. Such definitional clarifications are necessary for distinguishing, say, “Augustine’s psychology”—meaning, the early bishop’s theory of the psyche or soul—from the theoretical claims of modern and contemporary psychological scientists, who, at the very least, predicate their theories on very different epistemological assumptions than the early Christian bishop of Hippo.16 Aiding this differentiation between theories of the mind, in general, and modern psychological perspectives, in particular, is the general consensus among contemporary psychologists that modern psychology began in the late nineteenth century when, in the wake of the Western Enlightenment, scholars began to apply the principles of modern science to their study of human experience. Psychology, shaped as it is by Enlightenment presuppositions, like other sciences, is notably and understandably different from those understandings of the person that arose prior to that long eighteenth century. That said, this historical demarcation does not clarify psychology’s boundaries entirely. It does not resolve whether we include psychoanalysis within our understanding of the psychology, for example. Freud understood psychoanalysis to be a science, while others contend that because its first principles are unfalsifiable and therefore cannot be submitted to the test of the scientific method, psychoanalysis is beyond the bounds of science.17 And so the debates continue.18

MODELS OF PSYCHOLOGY AND THEOLOGY Because psychologists widely defend the discipline’s identity as a science (albeit with disagreement about what this category denotes), it is no surprise that scholars interested in the relationship of psychology and Christianity have identified various models for relating the disciplines akin to those we see in broader examinations of science and religion. For example, psychologist Kevin Gillespie builds on John Haught’s fourfold schema of relationships between religion and science to identify parallels in the historical relationship of Catholicism and modern psychology.19 In doing so, Gillespie shows that, as with the other sciences, psychology has related to religion in terms of conflict, contrast, contact, and confirmation. Gillespie also adds to Haught’s schema a fifth relationship— ”conflation”—which Haught mentions but does not demarcate in his original study, and which Gillespie witnesses in some interfaces between Catholicism and psychology. Recognizing that Augustine and other historical figures did not theorize with modern scientific presumptions does not preclude the possibility of reading their works today with a modern psychological hermeneutic. One example of this is Sandra Lee Dixon, John Doody, and Kim Paffenroth, eds., Augustine and Psychology (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012). Similarly, Fraser Watts has championed modern psychological readings of Jesus, as seen in Fraser Watts, ed., Jesus and Psychology (Philadelphia, PA: Templeton Foundation Press, 2007). 17 For more on this, see Martin Hoffmann, “Psychoanalysis as Science,” in Handbook of the Philosophy of Medicine, ed. Thomas Schramme and Steven Edwards (Berlin: Springer, 2017), 1–22; Michael Lacewing, “Could Psychoanalysis Be A Science?,” in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry, ed. K. W. M. Fulford, Martin Davies, Richard G. T. Gipps, George Graham, John Z. Sadler, Giovanni Stanghellini, and Tom Thornton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 1103–27; Jon Mills, ed., Psychoanalysis at the Limit: Epistemology, Mind, and the Question of Science (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004). 18 For more on these intradisciplinary debates, see Man Cheung Chung and Michael E. Hyland, History and Philosophy of Psychology (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012): 34–60; and Sacha Bem and Huib Looren de Jung, Theoretical Issues in Psychology: An Introduction, 3rd ed. (London: Sage, 2013). 19 Kevin Gillespie, “Patterns of Conversations between Catholicism and Psychology in the United States,” Catholic Social Science Review 12 (2007): 173–83. Early in this essay, Gillespie surveys some other literature that proposes patterns in the relationship of psychology and religion across time. See pp. 174–6. 16

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In another example, psychologist Robert Kugelmann proposes his own four modes of engagement between these arenas: psychology divorced from philosophy and theology; psychology bound to philosophy; Christian psychology; and psychology instead of religion.20 It is notable for the purposes of this essay that in models of psychology and religion such as these, the discipline of theology, if mentioned at all, is subsumed within the larger category of religion. Even Kugelmann’s survey, which explicitly names theology, nevertheless treats it only occasionally across the four models. This makes sense insofar as theology has its epistemological grounding within the confessional sources of the Christian community and because many—probably most—theologians identify as members of the religious communities about which they theologize. One might therefore assume that psychology relates to a “religion” the same way it relates to that religion’s academic theological discourse. Mikael Stenmark’s critical analysis of various typological configurations of religion and science cautions against assuming the interchangeability of “religion” and “theology,” however.21 These terms have distinct denotations and, in some cases, hardly overlap: religion is an activity that does not require specialized cognitive training, whereas theology, like science, is a discipline that “requires special training and a much higher degree of cognitive competence than is required for taking part in religion in general.”22 While, as I noted, theologians are often also religious participants, theologians need not always belong to the religious community with whom and about which they theologize. “If theology is not an activity going on within the religious community, but merely has religious communities as its research subject, this further shows that it could be quite misleading on occasion to use theology as a substitute for religion when comparing religions and science,” explains Stenmark. “If we compare theology in this sense with science we might even end up comparing two academic disciplines, which is something quite different from comparing science with religion, a non-academic practice.”23 Stenmark’s call to differentiate between religion and theology invites a reconsideration of existing configurations of psychology and Christianity. Furthermore, knowing that contemporary psychology often relates to religious practices and beliefs differently than it does the confessional assertions of Christian theology, as the chapter’s opening example of DeSteno showcases, we need to consider further the extent to which even more compatibilist engagements between psychology and religion, such as what we find in psychology of religion, have included—or could include—the insights of Christian theological discourse. Some scholars have proposed models of psychology and Christian theology, in particular, and in their methodological reflections, as in the wider work of contemporary theology, we see a diverse range of relations between the disciplines. Some theologians, for instance, exercise an antagonism toward psychology that rivals positivist psychology’s invalidation of religion and its theological truth claims. For example, in the late 1960s, practical theologian Jay Adams founded the biblical counseling movement, originally termed “nouthetic counseling,” out of his conviction that Christians ought to reject modern psychology and instead rely on Bible, which he deemed a sufficient guide for

Kugelmann, Psychology and Catholicism, 8–18. Mikael Stenmark, How to Relate Science and Religion: A Multidisciplinary Model (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 25–6. 22 Ibid.,  25. 23 Ibid.,  26. 20 21

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the needs of the faithful.24 Accordingly, pastors, not professional psychologists and counselors, are seen as the expert caregivers of the Christian community, and conditions traditionally understood in a psychological frame are cast as spiritual problems that result from a sufferer’s personal sin. It follows that healing is a matter of genuine repentance and faithful reliance on God.25 Though the biblical counseling movement has evolved overtime and, in some cases, demonstrated greater openness toward the insights of psychology than its founder did, the movement maintains a theologically grounded suspicion of the psychological sciences overall.26 On the other extreme, there is a sizable and still growing body of literature seeking to “integrate” psychology and theology, a venture predicated on a belief in the unity of the Truth that both disciplines seek and espouse. From the perspective of such integrationists, agreement between the disciplines is inevitable and attainable, as it is simply a matter of overcoming differing interpretations to arrive at the underlying objective facts of the human person that presumably exist all along. To the extent that the psychological sciences are true and Christianity is true, then we should be able to discern how they align with one another. Like the nouthetic counseling movement, the integration approach to psychology and Christian theology has its roots in the 1960s, when, according to Steven Sandage and Jeannine Brown, academics sympathetic to psychology began to “appropriate— or integrate—in rather selective fashion certain psychological theories, practices, and counseling strategies. Their method of integration involves filtering psychological ideas and practices through a religious lens, checking for consistency with the Bible and already established Christianity theology.”27 What results from this blending is, ideally, a distinctly Christian psychology that is at once congruent with the fundamental tenets and practices of the contemporary psychological sciences and with orthodox theology. The structure of the book, Human Person in Theology & Psychology: A Biblical Anthropology, concretely illustrates the approach of integrationists, for each part of the monograph, which is organized according to anthropological subcategories such as “The Origin and Destiny of the Human Person,” contains a chapter on “theological perspective,” one on “psychological perspective,” and then finally a chapter that “integrates” these two otherwise disparate takes on the human person.28 More often than not, theologians occupy a middle ground between the two extremes of opposition and integration by simply ignoring the insights of modern psychology altogether, despite the disciplines’ overlapping interest in the human condition. The disregard I refer to here does not reflect a principled antagonism toward the psychological sciences, like that of the nouthetic movement. Rather, it may be that many theologians feel ill-equipped to engage the insights of this foreign discipline. It could be, too, that these theologians simply prefer for whatever reason the insights of philosophy, cultural Jay Adams’s 1970 monograph, Competent to Counsel: Introduction to Nouthetic Counseling (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1970), is recognized as the foundational text of the movement. 25 See, e.g., Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2011). 26 For more on the history and development of the movement, see Eric Johnson, ed., Psychology and Christianity: Five Views, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2010), 31–3; Heath Lambert, The Biblical Counseling Movement after Adams (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012); David Pawlison, The Biblical Counseling Movement: History and Context (Greensboro, SC: New Growth Press, 2010). 27 Steven J. Sandage and Jeannine K. Brown, Relational Integration of Psychology and Christian Theology (New York: Routledge, 2018), 23. 28 James R. Beck and Bruce A. Demarest, The Human Person in Theology and Psychology: A Biblical Anthropology for the Twenty-first Century (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2005). 24

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and literary criticism, or other human sciences as their sources for understanding the human person in lieu of psychology. There are some scholars, however, who advocate for the independence of psychology and theology on principle. Called “perspectivalism” or the “levels-of-explanation” approach to psychology and religion, this position affirms the value of both disciplines as valid ways of understanding reality while also asserting that their boundaries should not be blurred. Eric Johnson explains that, according to proponents of this view, theology and psychology “use different methods of investigation, have different objects of study, and answer different questions. Confusing them would distort both.”29 For example, writes Johnson, integrating these distinct disciplines could result in the “blending together [of] concepts that are, in fact, very different and do not really cohere (e.g., sin and brain dysfunction).”30 Instead, levels-of-explanation advocates exhort theologians to leave psychology to interpret the world from their own disciplinary standpoint, and vice versa. Still others take the disciplines’ shared interest in the realities of the human person as a ground for mutually beneficial, cross-disciplinary engagement between disciplines. Rather than integrating them, which emphasizes agreement between the disciplines so much so that their differences are often elided or downplayed, or by appreciating them only as separate understandings of reality that do and should not interface, this fourth approach to psychology and theology acknowledges the differing sources, epistemologies, and methods of each discipline and promotes mutually beneficial exchange between them. For those who strive to respect the disciplinary distinctions of theology and psychology while also exploring possibilities for advantageous interplay between them, this model appeals. And, perhaps because of the growing interest in mutual dialogue between religion and science more broadly, there have been in recent years a number of substantive methodological reflections on the interface of psychology and theology that reflect the interest in dialogue associated with this fourth approach. In the next section, I highlight a few.

PSYCHOLOGY AND THEOLOGY IN DIALOGUE: PSYCHOLOGY’S CONTRIBUTIONS Many of the aforementioned configurations of psychology and theology arise out of concern for the hegemony of modern science over and against Christianity and its theological truth claims. Consequently, even those models of psychology and theology that affirm the validity of psychology are often quite defensive of Christian theology’s validity. Integrationists, for example, often defer to their particular theological interpretation of Christian sources when a point of seeming conflict or contradiction arises in the process of integration. Those with a levels-of-explanation perspective affirm psychology but reject any encroachment it imposes on the territory of Christian theology. For theologians who approach psychology with a dialogical mindset, however, theology takes a far less defensive stance toward psychology, for dialogue between the disciplines is predicated on the assumption that each has something to learn from the other. Accordingly, these reflections on the relationship of theology and psychology regularly appreciate ways that psychology helpfully contributes to Christian theological reflection. Here, I highlight two.

Johnson, Psychology and Christianity, 33. Ibid.

29 30

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First, dialogical thinkers frequently recognize psychology’s valuable insights about the realities of human experience, which can aid theology in developing accurate and contextually pertinent theological reflection. It is unsurprising that theologians contributing to the small but growing field of theology and mental health often utilize psychological profiles of conditions such as depression as a foundational source for their reflection. In one recent example, theologian Stephen Pietsch brings contemporary psychological understandings and treatments of depression into conversation with Martin Luther’s pastoral letters.31 Pietsch recognizes continuities between contemporary depression and the struggles of the sixteenth-century addressees of these letters, and he identifies similarities between secular psychological treatments such as cognitive behavioral therapy and Luther’s pastoral directives. These correlations provide a fresh, psychological perspective on Luther’s writings, and they also lay the groundwork for understanding Luther’s theological and pastoral contributions to present psychological realities. Others, such as Marcia Webb, Kathryn Greene-McCreight, and Christopher Cook, similarly ground their theological reflection on mental health challenges in psychological understandings of these conditions.32 Concerned with the multifaceted effects of social oppression, womanist theologians have long drawn on psychological insights to name and interpret dimensions of African American women’s experiences, especially concerning self-image and embodiment. Chanequa Walker-Barnes’s To Heavy the Woke: Black Women and the Burden of Strength is a recent instantiation of this womanist theological tradition.33 Walker-Barnes brings together psychological research and her firsthand experiences as a licensed psychologist to illustrate how the stereotype of the StrongBlackWoman “locks Black women in a prison of suffering, silence, and self-sacrifice even as it pretends to guard them from attack.”34 This psychological research is the springboard for her constructive engagements with womanist, trinitarian, and pastoral theological resources. Phillis Sheppard, who draws on psychoanalytic frameworks, is another important contributor to this ongoing work in womanist theology. Apropos of how psychology might contribute to theology, she argues in Self, Culture, and Other in Womanist Practical Theology that the insights of psychoanalysis are vital for understanding the inner lives of the black woman to which womanist practical theologies are committed.35 Stephanie Crumpton’s work is yet another recent example of womanist theological engagements with psychology, too.36 Psychological understandings of the human person also ground the fast-growing field of trauma and theology. For this work, theologians often access the insights of psychology through the broader, interdisciplinary discourse of trauma theory, which marries psychology, sociology, philosophy, and literary criticism. We see this in the work of Shelly Stephen Pietsch, Of Good Comfort: Martin Luther’s Letters to the Depressed and Their Significance for Pastoral Care Today (Adelaide: ATF Theology, 2016). 32 See, for instance, Marcia Webb, Toward a Theology of Psychological Disorder (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2017); Kathryn Greene-McCreight, Darkness Is My Only Companion: A Christian Response to Mental Illness (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2006); Christopher C. H. Cook, Hearing Voices, Demonic and Divine: Scientific and Theological Perspectives (London: Routledge, 2019). 33 Chanequa Walker-Barnes, Too Heavy a Yoke: Black Women and the Burden of Strength (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2014). 34 Ibid.,  11. 35 Phillis Isabella Sheppard, Self, Culture, and Other in Womanist Practical Theology (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). 36 Stephanie M. Crumpton, A Womanist Pastoral Theology against Intimate and Cultural Violence (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). 31

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Rambo, Serene Jones, Flora Keshgegian, and many others.37 Psychological perspectives on trauma have not only informed theological reflection on the human person, especially human suffering and freedom, but also notably reconsiderations of doctrinal loci such as soteriological and eschatology. The enrichment offered by psychology to theology does not always come without conflict, debate, and correction, as Peter Hampson and Eolene Boyd-MacMillan showcase in their critical look at the groundbreaking work of theologian George Lindbeck. Central to Lindbeck’s argument about the nature of doctrine, explain Hampson and BoydMacMillan, is his foundational view of the person as “a product of a cultural-linguistic system,” who “effectively is using religious language (in a quasi-Wittgensteinian way) within certain forms of life.”38 From the perspective of psychology, however, they argue that Lindbeck “over-asserts the primacy of language, or more accurately cultural signs, but, arguably, underplays the importance of embodiment, mimesis, development, history and symbolic as well as the subtleties of cognition and its links with affect.”39 Rather than rejecting Lindbeck’s theology on these grounds, the authors suggest that insights from various psychological subfields could qualify and enhance Lindbeck’s account of the person. With this example, we see how theology’s reliance on psychology and other theoretical perspectives on the human person serves as an opening for input—affirmative or corrective—from psychology. This leads to the second contribution of psychology to theology that scholars frequently note. In the post-Enlightenment West, where the sciences, including psychology, are often prized as the ultimate, if not singular, authority on the workings of our world, many recognize the potential of psychology to validate theology where the disciplines’ perspectives on the human person align. In his retrospective on theological uses of psychology, John McDargh observes how both Catholic and Protestant schools of theology (broadly construed) have sought validation for their theologies in the work of psychology, albeit for distinct anthropological claims.40 He argues that Catholics have tended to seek psychological evidence for the transcendent dimension of human experience, while Protestants have turned to psychology to affirm their characterization of the person’s distinction from God. Psychology of religion, especially its findings about the contributions of religious belief and practice to human flourishing, provides a growing trove of evidence for validating many Christian theological truth claims. And, notes psychologist Heather Looy, “many Christians delight in finding scientific evidence to support the value and efficacy of the

See Shelly Rambo, Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2010); Shelly Rambo, Resurrecting Wounds: Living in the Afterlife of Trauma (Waco, TX: Baylor, 2017); Stephanie N. Are and Shelly Rambo, Post-Traumatic Public Theology (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Serene Jones, Trauma and Grace: Theology in a Ruptured World, Second Edition (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2019); Flora Keshgegian, Redeeming Memories: A Theology of Healing and Transformation (Nashville, TN: Abringdon, 2000); Jennifer Erin Beste, God and Victim: Traumatic Intrusions on Grace and Freedom (New York: Oxford, 2007); Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger, Bearing the Unbearable: Trauma, Gospel, and Pastoral Care (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015); Deanna A. Thompson, Glimpsing Resurrection: Cancer, Trauma, and Ministry (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2018). 38 Peter John Hampson and Eolene M. Boyd-MacMillan, “Turning the Telescope Round: Reciprocity in PsychologyTheology Dialogue,” Archive for the Psychology of Religion 30 (2008): 100. 39 Ibid. 40 John MacDargh, “Theological Uses of Psychology: Retrospective and Prospective,” Horizons 12, no. 2 (1985): 247–64. 37

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faith for human well-being.”41 She cautions, however, that many Christians—including theologians, presumably—often embrace the validation of the psychological sciences “without necessarily questioning the validity of the source of these conclusions.”42 Looy’s point here is neither to dissuade interaction between theology and psychology, nor to invalidate psychology (she is, after all, a psychologist). On the contrary, she declares that on the presumption that “all truth is God’s truth,” it may be that knowledge obtained through psychological science is no less or no more truthful than knowledge obtained through other means, such as a faith tradition. Thus there is some warrant for Christians to use psychological science to learn more about ourselves and specifically to study the effects of Christianity on human experience and behavior.43 Reflecting her dialogical orientation toward psychology and theology, Looy raises alarm about some Christians’ disregard for the significant differences—even conflicts—between the disciplines because she views such clear-eyed assessment to be requisite for authentic and rigorous mutual engagement. “The tensions inherent in a field that uses assumptions about human nature and about knowledge that do not always harmonize with those of Christianity are real, and the implications have not been fully worked out.”44

PSYCHOLOGY AND THEOLOGY IN DIALOGUE: THEOLOGY’S CONTRIBUTIONS Because the modern West holds the sciences in such high esteem, it is often more controversial to affirm the contributions of theology to psychological than to assert the converse. Consequently, scholars with a dialogical approach to theology and psychology often take strides to point out the shortcomings of the psychological sciences relative to theology. These limitations, they suggest, highlight the important contributions of theology for understanding the human person. The presumptive authority of the psychological sciences in broader society is reinforced by a central characteristic of psychology—a characteristic that, according to Looy, may in fact be a limitation. The discipline’s embrace of the Enlightenment’s “positivistic beliefs in the lawful, mechanical nature of creation, and the power of human rationality to discover and utilize those laws,” informs an objectivist or “etic” approach to studying the person that prizes the ability of the disconnected researcher to unearth “objective truths” about humanity. Looy warns that this leads to an idolization of scientific reasoning above all other forms of knowing, be they the subjective and self-reflexive insights of the people who psychologists study or the insights of other nonscientific disciplines, such as theology.45 Looy, with a number of other scholars including Fraser Watts and Marcia Webb, suggests that while this objectivism bolsters the authority of scientific knowledge within psychology and in many broader circles of the modern West, this narrow and singular approach to the study of the person may in fact be a hindrance to understanding humanity

Heather Looy, “Psychology at the Theological Frontiers,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 65, no. 3 (2013): 152. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid.,  148. 41

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and an area from which psychology can learn something from theology and its differing approach.46 Psychology’s presumption of objectivity can blind its scholars from biases that facilitate inaccurate or even unethical stances on the human person. (One might recall that, not long ago, same-sex attraction was officially classified as a disorder among American psychologists, a position no longer held and widely renounced by the guild.) Meanwhile, theology, with its confessional allegiances, often takes an “insider” or “emic” approach to understanding its subjects that incorporates the subjective claims of the Christian tradition and community. This disciplinary distinction stood out to Webb, a psychologist, when she came into contact with Christian theologies of disability. “Theologians of disability discussed the dilemma of scholars advocating, and thus speaking for, persons with disabilities,” she recounts. “My training in clinical psychology has emphasized different assumptions … An individual’s account of disability—particularly a disability of a psychological nature—is not necessarily assumed to offer accurate insights into the disability itself. Instead, attempts to remain as ‘objective’ as possible in the study of human functioning is often stressed in academic psychology.”47 As Webb attests, the possibility that individuals might possess valuable insight into their experience that outsiderpsychologists may not otherwise have access to remains, for many in psychology, an uncommon prospect. Having said this, scholars who observe these methodological trends often acknowledge exceptions within each respective discipline, for some theologies have disregarded the input of first-person perspectives in interpretations of human life while some psychologies have intentionally incorporated them, despite prevailing trends in the field.48 Another distinction that Looy notes between psychology and theology concerns psychology’s reliance on the process of reduction. Psychology, like all modern sciences, describes the world through a process of “reduction,” wherein the complexities of the world are “reduced” to those causal relationships that are essential for understanding certain aspects of reality.49 When wielded uncritically, she argues, this amounts to another shortcoming that theology may have resources to correct. A “bad reduction” occurs when a particular description of human life is seen to contain “all that is essential to understanding the whole in its richness and complexity.”50 In contemporary North American psychology, bad reductions often take the form of “biologism,” wherein human processes are reduced to biological processes alone, often at the exclusion of possible social contributors to the human phenomenon in question. Here, we might think of occasions when depression is attributed singularly to a brain chemical, or to a genetic trait, or to a constellation of gut bacteria at the dismissal of any other individual or social factors that might also contribute to a person’s condition. Like Looy, Watts criticizes the anthropology that underwrites this “reductionist impulse” in psychology. It presumes that “human beings are nothing but survival machines for their genes, that we are nothing but a ‘bundle of neurones’ [sic] … and that the Webb, Toward a Theology of Psychological Disorder, xx–xxvi; Watts, Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality, 10–11. Webb, Toward a Theology of Psychological Disorder, xx–xxi. 48 The existence of these exceptions is a point of emphasis for Hampson and Boyd-MacMillan. See “Turning the Telescope Round,” 94. In the psychology-theology dialogue literature, exceptions in theology tend to be under-addressed, however. For more on this, see, Jessica Coblentz, “What Can Theology Offer Psychology? Considerations in the Context of Depression,” Journal of Moral Theology 9, no. 1 (January 2020): 2–19. 49 For more on scientific reduction and its place in the psychological sciences, see Bem and de Jong, Theoretical Issues in Psychology, 57–68. 50 Looy, “Psychology at the Theological Frontiers,” 150. 46 47

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human mind is nothing but a computer program.”51 These critics of reductionism affirm that genes and neurons are certainly a part of human existence, but they critique those in psychology who reduce humankind to these or other biological realities alone. Such biologism presumes, often without explicit justification, that matter is fundamentally all that we are. Hampson and Boyd-MacMillan caution that this taken-for-granted naturalism restricts the capacity of psychology to account for those dimensions of human experience that exceed its empirical bounds; this limitation is especially apparent when juxtaposed with theologies that that attend to such elusive realities. For instance, the authors point to James Loder’s suggestion “that the person is situated not only in relation to the world, themselves and other persons, but also to the nothingness of the voice (the threat of death or non-existence, the absence of being) and the holy.”52 With Loder, Hampson and Boyd-MacMillan contend that “the latter two dimension of personhood … are frequently ignored by the human sciences and repressed by secular culture at large.”53 Echoing and adding to this concern, Looy notes that “[w]‌hile [biological reductions] do honor our embodied creatureliness, they deny or make problematic intention, free will, moral responsibility, and subjective experience. They also isolate human problems to the individual, by and large ignoring the contributions of community, and our collective responsibility for one another. Solutions to psychological problems are limited to those that alter our biological function.”54 Theological anthropology confronts psychology with its underlying naturalism, which often otherwise goes unquestioned. Furthermore, theology’s attentiveness to ontological realities beyond the bounds of most academic psychology—be they subjective insights, social factors, or supernatural realities—invites psychology to expand its perception of human life. We see this play out in some recent theologies of mental health. While I mentioned earlier that a number of texts in the field forefront psychological analyses of conditions like depression and schizophrenia, others acknowledge the insights of psychology but ultimately move beyond them due to the inability of psychology to represent adequately the social and spiritual dimensions of these conditions. John Swinton, for example, presents clinical understandings of schizophrenia and acknowledges the growing body of evidence that frames the condition as a “neurobiological defect.”55 However, he calls this understanding of schizophrenia “incomplete” insofar as it disregards “the social context within which they experience their difficulties, and the destructive web of attitudes, false assumptions, and negative interpretations that people bring to their situation.”56 Similarly, Priscilla Sun Kyung Oh acknowledges the resonances between the diagnostic profile of schizoaffective disorder and the experiences of a friend who sufferers a mental health challenge, yet she argues that “in the suffering of depression there is a need for a careful pathological assessment of psychiatric diagnosis whilst remembering the importance of existential issues in people’s lives”—existential issues that, by implication, exceed the purview of most psychological investigation.57 These projects push fellow Watts, Theology and Psychology, 4. Hampson and Boyd-MacMillan, “Turning the Telescope Round,” 102. 53 Ibid. 54 Looy, “Psychology at the Theological Frontiers,” 150. 55 John Swinton, Resurrecting the Person: Friendship and the Care of People with Mental Health Problems (Nashville, TN: Abington, 2000), 77. 56 Ibid.,  82. 57 Priscilla Sun Kyung Oh, Hospitable Witnessing: Using Autoethnography to Reflect Theologically on a Journey of Friendship and Mental Health Problems (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2018), 89. 51 52

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theologians—and potentially, psychologists—beyond the etiological explanations of mental health that prevail in the psychological sciences. Looy’s third distinction between theology and psychology follows from her critiques of reductionism. Looy observes that “when psychologists speak of human nature, they often mean a context-independent set of characteristics that are speciesspecific and universal.”58 Such claims dismiss the significance of the particularities and diversities of personhood that results from our historical situatedness. In contrast, she notes, “[t]‌ he Christian faith reminds us that we are fundamentally relational beings, part of a creation that includes nonhuman beings and inorganic elements, unable to develop and function without a social community.”59 Watts makes a similar distinction, observing that in theology “there has been growing emphasis on the social dimensions of the Gospel, whereas psychology, in contrast has seemed narrowly individualistic.”60 Hampson and Boyd-MacMillan provide us with one example of problems that arise due to psychology’s individualistic tendencies. They explain that psychological examinations of Christian transformation often focus on the role of “ego strengthening,” wherein “ego strength facilitates inter-personal relationships and manages personal fears of absorption or abandonment.”61 The authors note that this framing of spiritual transformation focuses on interhuman relationships to the neglect of the human-divine relationship (no doubt because most psychologists preclude God from their operative scientific worldviews). Yet, “the centre of Christian transformation is a Being who is understood as fully human as well as fully divine.”62 Insofar as psychology’s ontological and methodological underpinnings limit the discipline to the human realm alone, psychology remains “unnecessarily partial” and unable to apprehend how “in Christian transformation, the divine Other sets the relationship on analogous yet completely different ground” than a human other.63 In turn, Christian theology can awaken psychology to the distinctive nuances of religious transformations and offer a practiced vocabulary for conveying experiences like this that represent the intersection and interrelation of the natural and supernatural in human life.64 This last point from Hampson and Boyd-MacMillan complements Looy’s concerns about psychology’s deficient attention to human relationality. While Looy focuses on inattention to human relationality, Hampson and Boyd-MacMillan add their concern for the general disinterest of psychology when it comes to human relationship to the divine as well. Bringing together her concerns about the shortcomings of psychology and her observations about what Christian theology might offer as these disciplines join in dialogue about the human person, Looy hits home the advantages of Christian theological anthropology for confronting some of the pressing issues of our world today. Faced with evolving medical and technological advancements that enhance and extend human abilities—many of which psychology utilizes for therapeutic purposes—she argues that Christians

ooy, “Psychology at the Theological Frontiers,” 150. L Ibid.,  151. 60 Watts, Theology and Psychology, 5. 61 Hampson and Boyd-MacMillan, “Turning the Telescope Round,” 103. 62 Ibid.,  105. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid.,  108. 58 59

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especially should be asking whether these technologies and drugs are implemented as part of a culture focused on human beings as psycho-physical unities, embodied spirits and inspirited bodies, members of the body of Christ, integrally connected with the rest of creation. Are they means of developing character or fulfilling our calling? Or are they short-cuts that exemplify human hubris, that emerge from a paradoxical desire to transcend our biological limits and take control of our own destiny, no matter what the cost to our planet or ourselves?65 Looy’s questions imply that the theological anthropology that underpins the Christian worldview may be preferable to the normative view of the person that motivates the psychological sciences and its embrace of these ability-expanding technologies and treatments. Similarly, Looy laments how the “transhumanist ideal” of modern psychology strives to position humankind apart from and above the rest of the created world, characterized as it is by the limitations of finitude. This is a function of psychology’s underlying individualism and disregard for human context and relationality, she contends, and she worries that it furthers the denigration of the earth that has led to the perils of pollution, climate change and other environmental catastrophes. On this point, Looy finds Christianity’s anthropology preferable, as it emphasizes humanity’s situatedness in relation to the rest of the earth. This in turn orients Christians toward collective responses that properly correspond to community problems, from environmental crises to poverty and corporate greed.66 This communal orientation, grounded in a relational anthropology such as the one espoused by Christianity, would not only benefit people of faith but also all people striving to address these pressing issues in our world.

CONCLUSION That the relationships between Christian theology and the psychological sciences are complex and wide-ranging should be clear at the close of this chapter. What should also be apparent is the deep investment of both disciplines in understanding the intricacies of the human person. While some theologians advocate for the superiority of theology for advancing this shared interest, and there are likewise psychologists who see themselves as uniquely privileged for this task, those who perceive the utility of mutually beneficial dialogue across the disciplines also give us much to consider. For those of us who are willing to join them in the dialogue between psychology and theology, we will require not only study, thinking, and communication but also courage. For Heather Looy warns, “mutually transforming dialogue can be perceive as a threat to the identity of both psychology and Christianity.”67 Yet, in pursuit of greater understanding—of the human person, and of our respective disciplines, and even, of God—this difficult dialogue may prove worthwhile.

ooy, “Psychology at the Theological Frontiers,” 153. L Ibid. 67 Heather Looy, “Response to Glenn Weaver’s ‘Of the Place of Christian Faith and Scripture in Doing Psychology’,” in Science and the Soul: Christian Faith and Psychological Research, ed. Scott W. VanderStoep (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2003), 70. 65 66

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CHAPTER TWENTY

Theology and the Social Sciences A Contemporary Overview TIMOTHY K. SNYDER

The late sociologist Robert Bellah, while giving a response to a lecture by Jürgen Habermas in Kyoto, noted that the modern project has articulated reason and revelation as two entirely different ways of knowing.1 Reason and science offer one way of knowing, one particularly suited for the public square, while revelation and faith offer another way of knowing, one best left to the private sphere. Bellah wanted to problematize this distinction. He suggests that moments of revelation and faith are inevitably present in all kinds of modern scholarly work, and that much of what we might consider to be religious thought and practice are not void of reason. Perhaps revelation and reason are not so far from each other after all. These comments from Bellah appear in The Robert Bellah Reader as a way of introducing a final section on “Sociology and Theology.” Some will find it odd that one of the most influential American sociologists of the twentieth century would have such a section in a volume memorializing his scholarly contributions. Indeed, for many, theology and the social sciences will seem impossible interdisciplinary partners. In this overview of “Theology and the Social Sciences,” I hope to demonstrate to the skeptics that this need not be the case, that these two fields of inquiry have a long history of running up against each other, and more recently theologians have engaged in promising new interdisciplinary efforts. Social sciences require both ideas (social theory) and observations (social research). These ideas and observations work together in the social sciences so that the ideas are always informing observations, and the observations are, in turn, informing the ideas. While theologians may not have the kind of systematic approach to research and theorizing that are found in the social sciences, they too make observations, and they too bring their ideas to these observations. Theology has long borrowed from social theory and methodologies from the social sciences, though the interdisciplinary exchange has been notably one-sided. Social scientists have not regularly engaged theologians, borrowing from their ideas and methods. In what follows, I first discuss the historical development

Robert N. Bellah and Stephen M. Tipton, “Sociology and Theology,” in The Robert Bellah Reader (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), Location 8946, Kindle Edition. 1

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of two disciplines within the social sciences as a way of illustrating that many social scientific ideas have long been of concern to theologians, even as very different views have emerged concerning the relationship between theology and social theory. I then describe three turns within theology—turns to culture, practice, and ethnography—to show how theologians have come to embrace social scientific methods on their way to developing new ways of doing theology altogether.

THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES While the central concerns of the social sciences have long captured our imaginations, its historical development as modern scholarly disciplines has its foundations in The Enlightenment. Classic works of Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527), Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), and Adam Smith (1723–1790) illustrated the complex relationships between politics, economics, and social life. Scholars across the social scientific fields continue to point to their observations and ideas. While full historical accounts of political science, economics, geography, linguistics, education, and so on are beyond the scope of this overview, a brief discussion of the historical development of sociology and cultural anthropology will illustrate their shared history and entangled interests. It will also establish a common ground the social sciences share with theology while highlighting the lasting tensions that plague any interdisciplinary attempt between the two.

Sociology The field of sociology traces its history, in part, to 1839 when Auguste Comte (1798–1857) gave the discipline its name. Comte, a self-taught French philosopher and historian, was a student of Henri-Claude Saint-Simon, and many of the core ideas Comte posited as the “first sociologist” reflected those of his teacher.2 At the core of Comte’s thought was a utopian vision where “science would guide ‘industrialized society’ toward universal prosperity and freedom, and that superstitious beliefs would be left behind.”3 Even though some of Comte’s earliest followers came from theology, there was little room for theological commitments in Comte’s sociology. As one historian of the discipline suggests: Comte believed that human kind had progressed from theological entrapment in myth and fetish worship to a metaphysical stage of skilled speculation achieving maturity in his own positivist era, which would use evidence and reasoned argument to establish truth.4 Despite Comte’s place in the history of the discipline, it was his contemporary Karl Marx (1818–1883) whose ideas became incorporated into classical social theory along with Émile Durkheim (1853–1917) and Max Weber (1864–1920). By 1910, Durkheim had published The Division of Labor and taken his chair at the Sorbonne, while Weber had published The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904–5). These classical

Alan Sica, “A Selective History of Sociology,” in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Sociology (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley, 2012), 33. 3 Ibid.,  34. 4 Ibid.,  36. 2

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thinkers were firsthand observers to the massive cultural, political, and economic changes that marked modern, industrialized Western European and American societies. The breakthrough for this early tradition of theory was the idea of the social, what Durkheim called “social facts.” For Marx, the economic was the primary social force and labor was the primary expression of our social selves. His theory of historical materialism served as a direct counter to Hegelian idealism. The working class was not oppressed by wrong ideas about the world, they were oppressed by their concrete social conditions as they were on the ground. His critique in Capital (1867) can be viewed from these foundational commitments. While Marx was primarily a social revolutionary, Durkheim was an academic who sought to establish sociology as a scientific discipline of societal relevance. In The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), he laid out his vision for an empirical scientific discipline centered on the discovery of social facts. His theoretical account of the shift from preto modern society proposed a social evolution where societies passed through several stages of development. For Durkheim, there was no fixed human nature. Society produces those things that we typically ascribe to human nature. In fact, Durkheim compares society to a god—a powerful, moral force worthy of our reverence. In his sociology of religion, Durkheim argues that religion is a social fact, it is quite real in that believers act as if it is. As religion suggests, we are shaped by forces beyond our control and beyond our comprehension, but those are social and not divine forces at work. Central to his Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912) and other key works, is this relationship between the individual and society. For Max Weber, the key characteristic of modern society was a process of rationalization. This process can loosely be thought of as a kind of systematic ordering found in social structures and practices such as rules, education, planning, and standardization. Whereas in premodern societies this social ordering was organic, in modernity, it was carefully orchestrated by social institutions. In his seminal work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber traced the origins of capitalism’s rationalization that he theorized could be found in the religious ideas of Protestantism. First Luther and the Reformation developed the idea of a “calling” where daily work as vocation became dignified and became a duty. In its Calvinist form, vocation was further elevated while leisure was discouraged. Wealth, a product of dutiful labor, became commendable, and it might even be seen as a sign of one’s predestined salvation. These religious ideas fueled a devout, hardworking, and efficient work ethic, which, as it turned out, is exactly what modern, industrialized capitalism demanded. Each of these classic thinkers were adamant critics of modernity, yet they were also apologists whose social theory sought to advance society’s transformation into a “Republican ethos” of democracy, science, and secularization. In the twentieth century, a contemporary tradition of social theory emerged building on the American and European traditions of the discipline. The Chicago School (University of Chicago) is known for its interpretative approach to sociological analysis and is often associated with “microsociology,” a level of analysis concerned with individual interactions. An early example of this approach can be found in the symbolic interactionism of Hebert Blumer (1900–1987). Resisting mechanistic approaches to sociology that prioritize social rules and norms, Blumer’s symbolic interactionism emphasized the role of subjective intentions and meanings present in social action. For Blumer, society is constituted by a complex interaction of behaviors, objects, and their meanings. Another Chicago School extension can be found in the later work of Erving Goffman whose Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) depicts the social interactions of everyday life through the metaphor

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of a theatre. “All the world is not, of course, a stage,” writes Goffman, “but the crucial ways in which it isn’t are not easy to specify.”5 Goffman’s so-called dramaturgical analysis emphasized the importance of time, place, and audience in the performance of social action. In contrast to the microlevel of analyses, Talcott Parsons offered macrosociological analysis, a “general theory” of society as a social system made up of four levels—culture, society, personality, and behavior—each with their own function in maintaining the system as a unified whole. In addition to his theoretical work, Parsons introduced much of the American audience to the sociology of Max Weber. Parsons spent his career at Harvard University where he established the famed interdisciplinary Department of Social Relations with scholars from across the social sciences. The Department of Social Relations trained some of the most influential American social scientists including Clifford Geertz, Harold Garfinkle, Stanley Milgrim, Robert Bellah, and contemporaries such as Dan McAdams, Barbara Rognoff, and Renato Rosaldo. Extensions from European schools of thought have also had significant impact on contemporary social theory. Beginning in the 1970s, Anthony Giddens, a British sociologist, reexamined the works of classical social theory and proposed new directions for the discipline. Giddens especially sought to move beyond the debates between microsociology and macrosociology. His theory of structuration placed social structures always in relationship to agency; neither receiving priority in his thought. Giddens is one of the most prolific and influential contemporary social theorists. Also concerned with the question of agency is the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002), who will receive additional treatment in the section “The Turn to Practice.” While Bourdieu has had significant impact on theologians turning to social theory, he is perhaps best known in sociology for his field theory. Bourdieu also views social structures and agency in tension with one another, but Bourdieu develops the notion of a field—for example, markets, education, religion, or law— to describe the context in which social actors interact. Fields, in Bourdieu’s thought, bridge between social structure and agency, providing the “rules of the game” one must play by within that field. Like Giddens, Bourdieu’s prolific and wide-ranging influence on sociology and social theory reached far beyond the confines of the discipline. In Britain and France, respectively, these two social theorists are viewed as influential public intellectuals.

Cultural Anthropology Prior to the 1920s, it was popular to speak of “culture” as something which you either had or did not have. In this sense, culture referred to the particular education, status, and social norms of the upper class. After the 1920s, within the discipline of anthropology, “culture” took on a more universal notion that varies by social group and yet names shared human experiences by way of an exploration of differences among those groups. Key to this development in the concept of culture was Franz Boas, a German-trained geographer who broke from the dominant cultural evolution of his day, and in the process established the American tradition of cultural anthropology. Boaz was instrumental in establishing the role of ethnography within anthropology, and from his own fieldwork he conceptualized “culture” as a relative concept in which each culture had its own distinct history and development. In Boaz’s view, some cultures are “advanced” while others Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York: Anchor Books, 1959), 72.

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are “primitive.” Rather, cultures themselves ought to be studied on their own terms, which is best done by immersing oneself in it, taking detailed field notes, interviewing key informants, and participating in the culture by learning its language, customs, and practices. From his post at Columbia University, Boaz trained some of the most influential American anthropologists, including Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead. While the American tradition of anthropology was establishing itself in academic centers such as Columbia University and University of Chicago, distinctively British and French schools were also emerging. In Britain, this tradition was known as social anthropology and drew heavily on ethnographic practice, but its theoretical departure from cultural evolution was a bit more measured. Rather than embracing the comparative approach of Boaz’s cultural relativism, anthropologists such as A.R. Radcliffe-Brown (1881–1955) conceptualized culture as a living organism in which each “organ” played an important role in the function of “the body.” This idea, termed “functionalism,” explores phenomena in their contribution to a culture’s coherent whole. The French approach took slightly longer to develop. Claude Levi-Strauss (1908– 2009), the most influential of the early French anthropologists, studied at the Sorbonne before taking up a temporary academic appointment in Brazil as he conducted ethnographic fieldwork among the native tribes of the Brazilian Amazon. During the Second World War, Levi-Strauss briefly returned to France before taking up a position in exile at the New School of Social Research in New York. There he befriended Franz Boaz and began developing his structuralist approach to culture.6 Levi-Strauss’s structuralism focused on the underlying patterns of human thought that produce culture and yet also work within it. He posited that culture operated much like language, with its hidden, or underlying, rules that dictate behavior. Both functionalism and structuralism shared the view that anthropological analysis proceeded by taking up some cultural element and showing how it related to culture as a whole, which was always more than the sum of its parts. Perhaps no single social theorist did more to develop the idea of culture than Clifford Geertz (1926–2006). Trained in anthropology at Harvard, he conducted fieldwork first in Java and later throughout southeast Asian and northern Africa. Before his advanced studies, Geertz was a student of philosophy and his philosophic interests permeated his social theory, especially in his efforts to blend insights from ethnography, philosophy of language, and the German school of phenomenology. Having studied with Parsons, Geertz was also influenced by Weber’s ideas. Geertz sought to clarify the task of anthropology by insisting that it was not an experimental but an interpretative science.7 Specifically, Geertz conceptualized culture as a “system of symbols,” concerned primarily with the meaning of human action. In his seminal volume of essays, The Interpretation of Culture, Geertz writes that “man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun.”8 To understand how these influences and concepts came together for Geertz, consider his famous essay on Balinese cock fights.9 There he borrows from Canadian philosopher Robert Gyle and his notion of “thick description” to describe in detailed form the multiple meanings of human action, in this case the illegal betting on cock fights in Bali. Thick

In 1942 Levi-Strauss and Boaz were dining together in the faculty club at Columbia University when Boaz had a heart attack. He died in Levi-Strauss’s arms, an event that had a lasting impact on the French anthropologist. 7 Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 5. 8 Ibid. 9 Geertz, “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,” in The Interpretation of Cultures, 412–53. 6

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description is a way of writing social theory in order to detangle the “web of meanings” for the purpose of rendering what is hidden visible. By the 1960s, ethnography was a rite of passage for anthropologists and this oftenmeant extended immersion into a non-Western cultural context: a village in Java, a nomadic tribe in Algeria, or a remote community of Alaskan Natives. Ethnography was the core practice of cultural anthropology and the primary genre of its production of knowledge. Beginning in the 1970s and continuing in the 1980s, however, ethnographic fieldwork underwent a serious self-examination. In the early 1970s, after returning from extensive fieldwork in Morocco, Paul Rabinow, a student of Geertz’s at Chicago, penned a series of reflections on the very practice of ethnography as an inherently fraught exercise in understanding the other. “Anthropology,” he wrote, is an interpretative science. Its object of study, humanity encountered as Other, is on the same epistemological level as it is. Both the anthropologist and his informants live in culturally mediated world, caught up in “webs of significance” they themselves have spun. This is the ground of anthropology; there is no privileged position, no absolute perspective, and no valid way to eliminate consciousness from our activities or those of others. This central fact can be avoided by pretending it does not exist. Both sides can be frozen. We can pretend that we are neutral scientists collecting unambiguous data and that the people we are studying are living amid various unconscious systems of determining forces which they have no clue and to which only we have the key. But it is only pretense.10 At the time, these were uncommonly critical words. In 1986, historian of anthropology James Clifford, together with anthropologist George Marcus, edited Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. The cover of the book shows one of the authors in the field huddled over his notebook, no doubt drafting some thick description of yesterday’s participant-observation. Yet two unnamed others in the background are observing the anthropologist, an allusion to the critique of the book itself, that is, that the authority of the anthropologist was in doubt, that Western writers were increasingly unable to portray non-Western people without question, and that all cultural representation is contestable. If interpretative social science is contestable, some will say this seriously undermines its scientific status. For theologians, however, the interpretative traditions of social science provide a bridge to its ideas and methods. Theology has always been much more comfortable with hermeneutics than laboratory experiments. We now turn to the reception of social theory within theological studies to understand how the discipline has responded to the historical development of the social sciences.

THEOLOGY AND SOCIAL THEORY Considering the historical development of the social sciences, it ought not to be surprising that theologians have often explored social theory. Indeed, during its early development, the social sciences, like theology, drew on European and American schools of philosophy. Early social theorists such as Karl Marx, Adam Smith, and Max Weber had significant intellectual appeal both academically and popularly. In fact, during the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, social theories began making broad-based claims concerning

Paul Rabinow, Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977/2007), 151–2.

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what it meant to be human and how our lives together ought to be organized. That is, social theory began to claim a stage traditionally occupied by theology. I offer two examples of how theologians have engaged social theory as a way of outlining the broad spectrum of ways the discipline as a whole has responded to the emergence of the social sciences.

Bonhoeffer’s The Communion of Saints Experienced readers of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1916–1945) know that his first dissertation, The Communion of Saints: A Dogmatic Study into the Sociology of the Church (1930), is not the most readable of the Lutheran theologian’s writings. Perhaps because of this, it is often overlooked within Bonhoeffer’s corpus. In The Communion of Saints Bonhoeffer asks, how can one understand the church sociologically and theologically at the same time? Early on Bonhoeffer engages in a dialogue with the German school of social philosophy, which he takes to be the general theoretical foundation of sociology. In that dialogue Bonhoeffer suggests that the Christian life is fundamentally a social life. His key concepts of personhood, community, and their relationship before God, become the foundation of a distinctively theological contribution to the dialogue. Bonhoeffer critiques the loss of individuality—his concept of personhood goes out of the way to maintain individuality— in modern, idealistic notions of community. Yet, he also wants to insist on the encounter of the other which takes place in community. The church, for Bonhoeffer, becomes a sociologically unique community where Christians encounter themselves by way of the other, as broken and redeemed. This encounter is both theological and sociological. It is true, as others have suggested, that Bonhoeffer is prone to overstate the uniqueness of the church.11 To be fair, Bonhoeffer saw his dissertation as a normative reflection and he criticized the German state church’s basic conservatism, which, in his view, prevented it from living up to his fullest sociological potential. If the church cannot criticize the state, Bonhoeffer reasons, it sacrifices its own unique contribution to society. He discovered later, in an African American congregation in Harlem, that the church he idealistically wrote about in Communio Sanctorum was an actual, concrete place. To fully understand the significance of Bonhoeffer’s approach to social theory, it is important to trace a distinction in his reading of sociology in the early twentieth century. In the early decades of sociology there was considerable argument about what exactly constituted the field. Bonhoeffer did his best to make sense of that lack of consensus through distinction between social philosophy and sociology. Bonhoeffer viewed social philosophy, on the one hand, as a subject primarily concerned with existential questions concerning what it means to be social human being. On the other hand, sociology was concerned with the actual structures of empirical social phenomena, especially institutions. Sociologist Peter Berger (1929–2017) has pointed out that Bonhoeffer was engaging the social philosophy (theory) that was prevalent in Berlin at the time he was writing. It was a relatively short-lived moment, and the work of Weber, Troeltsch, and Durkheim— who Bonhoeffer classified as sociology and not social philosophy—end up having a more lasting impact on the field.12 Rather than evaluating the school of thought Bonhoeffer chose, here I want to highlight the fact that Bonhoeffer did indeed choose social theory

James M. Gustafson, “The Communion of Saints: A Dogmatic Inquiry into the Sociology of the Church, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” Theology Today 21, no. 4 (1965): 528. 12 Peter Berger, “Sociology and Ecclesiology,” in The Place of Bonhoeffer, ed. Martin Marty (London: SCM, 1963), 53–79. 11

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as a meaningful conversation partner. Indeed, as Michael Mawson has recently pointed out, Bonhoeffer sought to borrow the ideas of social theory and put them to use for his own explicitly theological agenda.13 Bonhoeffer was no so much interested in the interdisciplinary possibilities between theology and sociology as he was interested in how theologians understood the church in its theological and sociological realities. Bonhoeffer viewed some social realities as empirical and theological.

Milbank’s Theology and Social Theory A much more critical perspective on the possibility of adopting the ideas of social theory for theological reflection is offered in John Milbank’s Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (1990). Milbank starts from an altogether different starting point than Bonhoeffer. Social theory is problematic for Milbank because its origin lies in a distinctively modern effort to establish social order and peace by secular reason, which Milbank sees as itself an invention of social theory. Beginning with August Comte’s positivist social theory, through Machiavelli, Hobbes, Marx, Weber, Peter Berger, and Robert Bellah, Milbank offers an extensive discussion of social theory. According to Milbank’s analysis, where social theory has gone astray is in its pursuit of the German tradition of social theory following thinkers such as Marx and Weber; a better path would have been to follow a lesser known French tradition. In a memorable, though brutally simplistic distinction, Milbank suggests the German tradition of social theory “naturalizes the supernatural,” while the French tradition “supernaturalizes the natural.”14 Building on his reading of this French tradition, Milbank’s basic argument against the use of social theory in theology turns out to be rather simple: it is unnecessary. It is unnecessary because social theory is already theology, and theology is already social theory. Social theory may claim to be neutral, argues Milbank, but it is thoroughly valueladen when its functional analysis (e.g., Parsons) compartmentalizes religion as a distinct domain among others. With religion marginalized, regulated to its own separate domain, social theory can take the stage and provide society with its own meta-narrative of social ordering and peace. But this is precisely the problem for Milbank. Theology is already plays this role, and in fact, only theology can play such a role. As he suggests in his own words, theology has frequently sought to borrow from elsewhere a fundamental account of society or history, and then to see what theological insights will cohere with it. But it has been shown that no such fundamental account, in the sense of something neutral, rational and universal, is really available. It is theology itself that will have to provide its own account of the final causes at work in human history, on the basis of its own particular and historically specific faith.15 Milbank writes these words at the end of his book where his own value-laden Augustinian agenda comes into full view. That is, he wants theology to be social theory for the church as an alternative society. In the end, only theological ideas can provide the kind of social ordering and peace that social theory has promised, and yet failed to deliver.

Michael Mawson, “Theology and Social Theory—Reevaluating Bonhoeffer’s Approach,” Theology Today 71, no. 1 (2014): 69–80. 14 John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 1993), 207. 15 Ibid.,  380. 13

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By now it should be clear that while Bonhoeffer offers the possibility of theological engagement with the ideas of social theory, Milbank sees no point to such engagement. These two theologians provide the two polar ends of a much more complicated continuum. It is certainly possible to engage social theory, its concepts and its concerns without attempting the kind of theological sociology that Bonhoeffer offers. And it is certainly possible to borrow key insights from the social sciences without giving in to the “propaganda” of social theory’s metanarrative as Milbank seems to suggest. In fact, theologians have been doing this for quite some time. Social theory offers one of the most promising conversation partners for contemporary theological reflection exactly because the two disciplines share a good many concerns about what it means to be human, the meaning of history, and how we might live together with our neighbors. For theologians, perhaps the most significant concepts developed by the social sciences are culture and practice. It is to these key concepts that we now turn.

THE TURN TO CULTURE AND PRACTICE The Turn to Culture One of the key aspects of modern theology has been its central concern with historical particularity. There is no view from nowhere, there are only views from somewhere. The nature of that historical particularity has often been described as “cultural.” Throughout the twentieth century, culture has increasingly become a key concept for theologians. For example, H. Richard Niebuhr’s classic Christ and Culture (1951) or Paul Tillich’s Theology of Culture (1959) are early examples of the concept of culture at the very center of modern theology. Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, liberation theologies began calling for new approaches to contemporary theology. At the very center of these new approaches were critical social and cultural analysis. At the close of the twentieth century, Yale theologian Kathryn Tanner reflected on this turn in theology. In Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology, she writes, The most basic contribution that an anthropological understanding of culture […] makes to theology is to suggest that theology be viewed as a part of culture, as a form of cultural activity. Most contemporary theologians would admit as much. Theology is something that human beings produce. Like all human activities, it is historically and socially conditioned; it cannot be understood in isolation from the rest of human sociocultural practices. In short, to say that theology is part of culture is just to say in contemporary idiom that it is a human activity.16 For many, the turn to culture came with an essentially epistemological shift. Theology could no longer proceed with its foundationalist, universalizing meta-narratives. Instead, theology needs what Milbank would call “judicious narratives,” descriptions of Christianity’s way of life, of its Christian culture.17 Yet, as Tanner argues, [i]‌t is far from clear, for example, that one can use “way of life” in its full anthropological sense to talk about Christian churches apart from the wider cultural contexts in which they are set. Nor is it evident that Christian communal practices are self-contained

Kathryn Tanner, Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1997), 63. John Milbank, “Enclaves, or Where is the Church,” in New Blackfriars 73 (June 1992): 343.

16 17

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in the way their identification with the church might suggest: Christians’ primary sociocultural relations are not easily confined to their relations with other Christians.18 Tanner goes on to suggest that contemporary theology’s “new agenda” is to proceed with two distinct but related genres of theology: theology of the everyday and academic theology. While academic theology plays by very different rules than everyday theology, they both attend to “the meaning dimension of Christian practices, the theological aspects of all socially significant Christian action.”19 This brings us to our second key concept: practice.

The Turn to Practice As theologians have turned to culture, they have also turned to the idea of social or cultural practices. While practice theories have been taken up by a wide range of theological disciplines, the field of practical theology has developed the most sustained attention to them. Ted Smith has suggested that the concept of practice has become an influential way of attending to culture. As he points out, when theologians evoke the notion of practice, they often have quite different concepts in mind.20 These concepts have distinct histories, developments, and purposes. Smith points to three theories of practice that have had the most significant influence on practical theology: the hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer, the virtue ethics of Alasdair McIntyre, and the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu. Gadamer’s concept of “fore-understanding” can be used to draw together culture and epistemology. Drawing on Gadamer’s work with Aristotle’s notion phronesis (practice wisdom), practical theologians such as Don Browning have suggested that practical understanding does not come as a second task, somehow apart from supposedly theoretical understanding.21 Rather, the two are simultaneously implicated. For Browning, by way of Gadamer, human understanding is always practical. Gadamer’s way of thinking of practice is quite different than that of Alasdair McIntyre. For McIntyre, there are no longer any coherent moral authority or traditions. In an effort to rebuild from the ruble of modernity, he draws on Aristotle’s notion of virtues. Rather than grounding his concept of virtues in human nature, as Aristotle does, McIntyre grounds them in a concept of practices defined as [a]‌ny coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially constitutive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended.22 In McIntyre’s thinking, practices are institutions, or domains of society such as medicine, agriculture, or law. From the practice of medicine, one gets health, from the practice of agriculture on gets food, and from the practice of law one gets justice. A prominent

Tanner, Theories of Culture, 67. Ibid.,  70. 20 Ted A. Smith, “Theories of Practice,” in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Practical Theology (Malden, MA: John Wiley, 2012), 246. 21 Ibid.,  246. 22 Alasdair McIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd ed. (London: Duckworth, 1984), 187. 18 19

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“school” of practical theology, pioneered by Dorothy Bass and Craig Dykstra, draw on a revised form of McIntyre’s theory to suggest that from the practice of Christianity— through a constellation of ritual, ecclesial, and cultural practices offered by the Christian tradition—one gets vibrant, lived faith. Gadamer and McIntyre’s way of considering practice are both quite different than that of Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu is less concerned with epistemology or ethics, and, instead, focused on how social structures shape human agency. Up against a French tradition of social thought that tended to see the issue in terms of either objective or subjective options, Bourdieu sought a third way. The subjectivists emphasized the role of human freedom (Sartre). The objectivists emphasized the role of social, political, and economic forces (Levi-Strauss). Bourdieu’s alternative rests on bridging concepts to mediate between culture and practice: habitus as it develops within particular fields as discussed above. One’s habitus is, for Bourdieu, certainly structured in the way the objectivists typically think, yet Bourdieu also makes room for the intentions and desires of the individual. The habitus is one’s embodied know-how, a “system of durable transposable dispositions.”23 A habitus certainly does limit action, but it also provides repertoires for new actions. Theologians such as Elaine Graham and Mary McClintock Fulkerson have drawn on Bourdieu and his theory of practice to develop their respective feminist and socio-theological approaches to theology. While these theories are distinct, what they share is a way of connecting culture to practice. They provide ways of attending to culture in the practice of everyday life. Building on Tanner’s proposal that new connections are needed between academic theology and theology in everyday life, the turns to culture and practice represent an important, sustained effort by a range of theologians to deliver on just that. In more recent years, theologians have not only sought to engage the ideas of the social sciences, but also their methodologies. The result has been the development of new patterns of theological research birthed out of interdisciplinary engagement with the social sciences.

THE TURN TO ETHNOGRAPHY Theologians have been involved in empirical research, including qualitative methodologies originally developed by the social sciences, for decades. In a sense, the turn to ethnography24 has its origins in the second half of the twentieth century as theologians sought to address contemporary social contexts. The basic practices of ethnography— participant observations and interviewing—are not particularly complicated. They are rather basic human activities that in their non-systematic or academically rigorous forms amount to being there and listening. In their scholarly forms, these methods are hardly the sole domain of sociology or anthropology; as it turns out, it is hard for any discipline to claim a monopoly over the methods they develop. Over the past few decades, there has been an interest among social ethicists and practical theologians in studying the Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 72. 24 Sometimes also “qualitative methodologies” or “fieldwork.” Here I use “ethnography” to connect the method back to its origins in cultural anthropology with recognition that today ethnography is used in a wide range of social sciences. I am using ethnography as a catch-all term for all three terms. There are legitimate questions whether or not all qualitative methods are ethnography per se, but here I retain the term to foreground Tanner’s insight that theology is a cultural practice. The history of ethnography foregrounds, then, important issues of reflexivity, representation, and normativity that “qualitative research methods” does not seem to immediate imply. 23

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cultures and practices of contemporary people of faith and their religious communities. Ada María Isasi-Díaz (1943–2012), one the earliest theologians to systematically employ ethnographical methods, sought in the late 1980s to create space for the voices of Latina women to enact empowerment and solidarity through her process of group interviews. Originally part of her dissertation at Union Theological Seminary, it was later published as Hispanic Women: Prophetic Voice in the Church. While others embraced ethnographic methods before her, Isasi-Díaz was perhaps the first to argue that her methods were in and of themselves theological work.25 By the 2000s, a group of emerging scholars began making similar arguments concerning the theological value of embracing ethnographic methods. In the early 2000s, pastoral theologian Mary Clark Moschella regularly taught courses in ethnography to students preparing for ministry at Wesley Theological Seminary. Her sustained reflection on this experience, Ethnography as a Pastoral Practice (2008), became one of the earliest calls for theologians and religious leaders to embrace ethnography.26 It would be difficult to overstate the significance of Mary McClintock Fulkerson’s Places of Redemption (2007), which has become for theologians the exemplar par excellence. Not only is it required reading, but nearly every theoretical argument for theological ethnography and every research project attempting it, draws on Fulkerson’s seminal work. Already a tenured professor at Duke Divinity School when she sought to take up ethnography, Fulkerson offers a stunning socialtheological analysis of an interracial congregation that included participants with disabilities. The result is an exploration of the practices that enable otherness to have a “place to appear.” Around this time, conversations regarding the theological use of ethnography were ongoing in the Society of Christian Ethics. These conversations explicitly connected the embrace of ethnography with broader debates concerning the relationship between theology and the social sciences. Many of those involved came together to publish what would become another groundbreaking volume, Ethnography as Christian Theology and Ethics (2011), edited by Christian Scharen and Aana Marie Vigen. There, Scharen specifically answers critiques offered by Milbank two decades earlier.27 Ethnography, argues Scharen, offers precisely the kind of “judicious narratives” of Christian life, Milbank argued for, even while they may also problematize Milbank’s clear distinction between the church and the social world. Over the last decade, a new generation of theologians has emerged. These scholars have often pursued interdisciplinary approaches to theology and received methodological training in ethnography during their graduate studies.28 These scholars are challenging Isasi-Diaz makes this argument in unpublished notes around the time of her dissertation. Special thanks to the Archives at Burke Theological Library at Union Theological Seminary (Columbia University Libraries) and especially to Betty Bolden and Ruth Tonkiss Cameron for their assistance with the Ada María Isasi-Díaz Collection. For more, see “Papers, MDiv Thesis and PhD Dissertation” in Series 3, Box 4, of that collection. Research at Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University was provided by a 2013 Coolidge Fellowship: a collaboration of CrossCurrents/The Association of Religion and Intellectual Life, and Auburn Theological Seminary. 26 Mary Clark Moschella, Ethnography as Pastoral Practice: An Introduction (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2008). Now at Yale Divinity School, Moschella, along with Susan Willhauck, has edited a new volume on the intersection of theology, ethnography and pedagogy. See Moschella and Willhauck, Qualitative Research in Theological Education: Pedagogy in Practice (London: SCM Press, 2018). 27 More recently, Scharen has further developed his response to Milbank and those within radical orthodoxy who share his concern. For his alternative vision of the potential of theology in conversation with social theory, see Fieldwork in Theology: Exploring the Social Context of God’s Work in the World (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2015). 28 Training in ethnography itself has a storied past. Many social scientists received their training through trial by fire, sometimes accompanied by mentorship and other times not. Theology has now taken up a similar pattern. Some doctoral programs in theology now allow students to pursue coursework in qualitative methodologies alongside 25

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the boundaries of academic theology, pushing it into closer proximity and relationship with everyday people of faith and their religious communities, while challenging what counts as theology and who gets to do it. For example, Canadian theologian Natalie Wigg-Stevensen has challenged assumptions about theology as a form of knowledge production by bringing academic theology directly into congregational life.29 In another challenge to theology’s standard epistemological frameworks, Jaisy Joseph has argued that crossing cultural and disciplinary boundaries displaced her as a researcher, and in doing so offered her a “pluralistic epistemology” that reflects the very kind of diasporic space that she sought to better understand in her study of Eastern Catholic churches in the United States.30 Her work attends to the changing religious landscape in ways that are both empirical and theological. Similarly, Christopher James challenges dominant narratives that proclaim the demise of American Christianity by attending to the stories of new Christian communities in one of the most unreligious regions of the United States.31 And in the ethnography’s reflexive tradition of questioning the power relationships present between researchers and those researched, Lorraine Cuddeback-Gedeon has raised critical questions about the possibilities and limits of solidarity and accountability when theologians take up ethnography among marginalized people, in her case among those with intellectual and developmental disabilities.32 As these few examples suggest, the turn to ethnography offers important contributions to Kathryn Tanner’s call for new connections to be built between academic theology and theology in the everyday. At very minimum, they offer exemplary efforts to bring the insights of social scientific methodologies into theological focus. In conclusion, theologians have long engaged the social sciences, and as long as theology continues to be concerned with questions about what it means to be human, and how might we live together as neighbors on this planet we share, they will continue to engage the social sciences. My own hope is only that some theologians will become more than casual readers and observers, and instead become enthusiastic students of the discipline’s ideas and observations.

theological studies (usually as a research “language”). Two Lilly Endowment grants had an unprecedented impact on these developments. One provided funding for innovative doctoral programs in the area of practical theology and ministry. Boston University School of Theology, Vanderbilt Divinity School, Duke Divinity School, and Emory University’s Graduate Division of Religion received grants from Lilly and became centers for interdisciplinary doctoral study and qualitative research. A second provided funding for The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia. The Project also unleashed a generation of students to take up interdisciplinary study including fieldwork. 29 Natalie Wigg-Stevensen, Ethnographic Theology: An Inquiry into the Production of Theological Knowledge (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). 30 Jaisy Joseph, “The Decentered Vision of Diaspora Space: Theological Ethnography, Migration, and the Pilgrim Church,” Practical Matters Journal, 11 (Spring 2018), http://practicalmattersjournal.org/2018/06/09/decenteredvision-of-diaspora-space/. Accessed May 25, 2019. 31 Christopher B. James, Church Planting in Post-Christian Soil: Theology and Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). 32 Lorraine Cuddeback-Gedeon, “ ‘Nothing about Us without Us:’ Ethnography, Conscientization, and the Epistemic Challenges of Intellectual Disability,” Practical Matters Journal, 11 (Spring 2018), http://practicalmattersjournal. org/2018/08/03/nothing-about-us-without-us-ethnography-conscientization-and-the-epistemic-challenges-ofintellectual-disability/. Accessed May 25, 2019.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Black Noise and the Sorrow Songs A Reflection on the Negro Spirituals and the Involuntary Modernization of Black Music RUFUS BURNETT JR.

The following reflection is an engagement with black American music/sound and how it is implicated in the involuntary modernization of black Americans and their culture. The focus on music and sound aims to illumine how the sonic reception of black Americans was received by the modern Euro-American world first as noise and then as music.1 My analysis of the dynamics of this reception history will unearth the replete impacts on the theological imagination of black and Euro-Americans as well as reveal how the legacy of enslavement and colonialism extends Eurocentric perspectives via domination. Special attention will be given to how Eurocentrism dominates the interpretation of human and epistemic differences. Two historical points of cultural contact between the aesthetics of Euro-Americans and the music/sonic production of black Americans illumine these dynamics: the reception of the negro spirituals during the abolitionist movement and the advent of the blues in black American culture. With the sociological insights of John Cruz and Anibal Quijano, this reflection will indicate how the Euro-American reception of black sound reifies what anti-colonial psychologist Frantz Fanon termed “sociogeny.”2 Sociogeny was used by Fanon to name the collective sociological effects of colonization and racialization on

Nina Sun Eidsheim, The Race of Sound: Listening, Timbre, and Vocality in African American Music (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018). Eidsheim highlights how black music is distinct in voice and timber. By analyzing the sound with respect to critical race theory and postcolonial studies, she analyzes how sound contributes to the ideology of race and how it is read into the sound of black music. While my work will not treat her analysis in detail, the reader should note that black music is identifiable as black because of how it sounds in relation to the sonic aesthetics of those racialized as black and not necessarily because of the skin color of its composers and performers. I mention her here in passing to affirm this works knowledge of how sound is operative in how music is constructed, performed, and received. 2 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 2008), xv. 1

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African descended peoples living in the French Antilles and Algeria in the 1940s and 1950s. In his now classic text Black Skin White Masks, he wrote, “Alongside phylogeny and ontogeny there is also sociogeny.” Sociogeny was Fanon’s way of naming the collective or social psychological phenomena by which humans create culture and are able to recognize cultural differences. From a psychoanalysis point of view, Fanon was being critical of Sigmund Freud’s move from the species specific (phylogenic) analysis of human psychological behavior to a case-by-case study of individual humans and their psychological behavior (ontogeny). Sociogeny was a third area of concern that Fanon thought was particularly helpful in analyzing the phenomena of racial differences which operated at the level of society. As the title of his book suggests, he wanted to analyze the “inferiority complex” that was widespread amongst those racialized as black and made subject to antiblack racism. In more recent scholarship, Sylvia Wynter has connected Fanon’s insights with neuroscientific, psychological, and philosophical research on the consciousness of self. Updating Fanon’s sociogeny, Wynter has developed what she has termed the “sociogenic principle.”3 The sociogenic principle is Wynter’s way of naming the laws that govern the phenomena of human culture. She is particularly concerned with accounting for the cultural phenomena that proceed from Europe that lead to the racialization of cultural differences between Europeans and non-Europeans. The racialization of Europeans as white and non-Europeans as people of color leads, according to Wynter, to a social reality that has proven to be readable in ways that mimic biological phenomena such as the human genome. Similar to how the genomic principle associates organic chemical reactions with biological expectations for human life, the sociogenic principle associates the psychosocial phenomena with expectations for different types of human lives.4 The racialized world, according to Wynter, is predictable in ways that mimic the predictability of the human genome. While I will treat Wynter in detail below, it is important to note, that Wynter’s work also identifies theological sources that are integral to the proliferation of the sociogeny of white supremacy and Eurocentrism. She is particularly critical of how the binary of Spirit and Flesh is extrapolated from the writings of the apostle Paul and used to explain human differences in the emergence of the modern/colonial world. In short, Wynter notes that flesh, a spiritual and internal representation of human depravity or lack, was used by European colonialists to define non-Europeans with darker skin. Further, this provided a basis for defining European culture as superior to other cultures. Those nonEuropeans who did not embrace Judeo-Christian notions of the human were seen as outside of the category of the human and thus innately spiritually depraved. In this way, non-European people of color are seen as the representations of flesh (human lack) and ironically become the incarnation of human sinfulness. In the emergence of the modern world and the advent of rationalism, a secular notion of human lack emerges in the objective sciences. In the transition from revelation to reason the human “lack” of nonEuropeans is affirmed anthropologically and biologically. Wynter’s sociogenic principle is analytically helpful in recognizing the phenomena of white supremacy and Eurocentrism

Sylvia Wynter, “Towards the Sociogenic Principle: Fanon, The Puzzle of Conscious Experience, of ‘Identity’ and What It’s Like to Be ‘Black’,” in National Identities and Socio-Political Changes in Latin America, ed. Mercedes F. Duran-Cogan and Antonio Gomez-Moriana (Florence: Taylor & Francis, 2001), 30–1. 4 Ibid.,  53. 3

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as a social and cultural phenomenon that demands its own science. The implications of the racialization of human lack via science and theology are far-reaching but the task of this reflection is to chart the sociogenic principle of Eurocentrism and white supremacy in the reception of black music/sound. The reduction of the human into racialized subjectivities is inclusive of their sonic/ musical production. As a result, the music of racialized subjects is ossified and reduced in the ear of the Euro-American observer (the racializer) who hears through the sieve of the modern/colonial imaginary and its “reason-based” aesthetic hegemony. Such a recognition troubles the validity of the euphemism “music is a universal language.” In light of Wynter’s insights on the sociogenic, music is a fractured language that belies the intention of the producers and observers. Moreover, as we will see, outside observers contribute to the production of black music in ways unintended by black American producers. In other words, the “black” in black music/sound is the product of sociogeny and thus requires its own science, the sociology of music, to be adequately observed. From the perspective rendered here, music is seen as a particular aesthetic configuration of sound. Sonic productions are not necessarily musical. Instead, following the research of sonic studies scholar Brandon Labelle and the decolonial aesthesis project, it can be argued that the transition from black sound to black music already implies aesthetic ideologies of the sonic that both belie and affirm the epistemic perspectives of those who experienced the underside of modernity. The assessment that some sounds are musical and others are noise is an assessment of aesthetic proportions. In the same way that race produces social expectations in the human consciousness, the sounds of the racialized produce expectations and stereotypical assumptions about people and the sounds they produce. Christian theological discourse that masquerades as universal, singular, and prototypical are also a part of the colonial matrix of power that produce these sonic proportions of racialized difference. As such, this chapter endeavors to contribute to an emerging decolonial perspective on aesthetics by adding a critical theological reflection on how sound participates, resists, and provides alternatives to the sociogenic effects of colonial domination and its replete epistemology of Eurocentrism. The sociology of music will be integral if not essential to this endeavor. Jon Cruz’s sociological study of the negro spirituals illumines what I have termed here as the racialized difference of sound in his analysis of the reception history of the Negro Spiritual, particularly during the American Abolitionist movement of the nineteenth century.5 Cruz argues that modern practice of cultural interpretation in sociology is the heir to the proto-ethnographic work of the theologically inspired abolitionists who became aware of the music of the spirituals through Fredrick Douglass. For Cruz, the abolitionist interpretations of the spirituals are theological in nature and form the bedrock of the subsequent American Folklore projects beginning in the 1880s. Cruz contends that black culture and expressivity was used by abolitionist to stoke the flames of their moral and ethical mission to end enslavement. By theologically interpreting certain aspects of black culture, particularly the negro spirituals, abolitionists endeavored to humanize the enslaved via theological anthropology. While their efforts were aimed at dislodging enslaved black Americans from the quagmire of negative racial stereotype, they offered yet another delimiting category by which to mediate black subjectivity, sympathy. As will be seen more clearly below, Cruz argues that the abolitionists used the Jon Cruz, Culture on the Margins: The Black Spiritual and the Rise of American Cultural Interpretation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999). 5

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cultural production of the negro spiritual to fill in, and dam up, their ideas about the natural disposition of humans toward the Divine. As theologically oriented subjects, the enslaved were made worthy of sympathy and thus deemed redeemable through abolition. The spiritual singing negro and the sounds of black American expressive culture were appropriated to produce an outsider discourse on the identity of the freedom-deserving negro. Cruz notes that the consumers of the print media and speeches of abolitionists were disconnected from the lives of black Americans. As a result, the abolitionist discourse on the “benevolence of the negro” is best seen as an insular Euro-American discourse on black culture.6 Peruvian sociologist Anibal Quijano helps to clarify how the insular discourse of Euro-American reason produced the modern world and its colonial underside.7 He describes the expansion of European discourses as the globalization of European forms of knowledge, economics, and the inferiorization of the non-European via the ideology of race.8 While my focus will mainly be on the black American experiences with processes of coloniality, there are numerous groups who have endured what Quijano describes as the coloniality of power or the legacy of colonialism. With Cruz, Wynter, and Quijano working as a sociological basis, I will look to link the theo-anthropological claims of the abolitionists to the racialization and Eurocentrism that characterizes the coloniality of power. Second, I will offer a decolonial theological option that uses insights from the study of black religion as a basis for delinking and rethinking the sonic contribution of the spirituals. The overall aim of the theological contribution is to provide a way toward a constructive theological project that looks to provide an option for delinking the theology of black Americans from the coloniality of power and what Frantz Fanon articulated as the sociogeny of colonial domination.9 Let us first turn our attention to the overarching landscape of the modern/colonial world and the colonial wound from which the spirituals are moaned.

THE COLONIALITY OF POWER AND THE SOCIOGENIC PRINCIPLE Understanding the sociological situation from which black music emerges is helpful to theological reflection because it lays bare the epistemological preconditions that are operative in the modern/colonial world. Black music surfaces amid the contacts and exchanges between African and European cosmologies and epistemologies that come into contact during European expansion and colonialism.10 Quijano’s major contribution to sociological inquiry is his ability to recognize the idea of race as a sociological concept that allows for the stratification of society along lines of intellectual capacity and fitness to particular types of labor. While he is not the first to make such assessments, his approach to racialization is unique in that he sees it as an integral part of a matrix of power, rather than the sole problematic for modernity.

I bid., 22, 27–34. Anibal Quijano, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America,” Nepantla: Views from South 1, no. 3 (September 2000): 533–80. 8 Ibid.,  533–5. 9 Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 13. 10 Charles H. Long, Significations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Interpretation of Religion (Aurora, CO: Davies Group, 1999). 6 7

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For Quijano, the problem of modernity is more than just white supremacy. Under the enforcement of Eurocentric notions of race, humans of African, Amerindian, and Native American descent—the darker races—were deemed less capable of fulfilling the vision for humanity within the modern civilization project and were thus rendered the reincarnation of Aristotle’s natural slave. Quijano terms the matrix of power that reinforces Eurocentric racialization, via economic and epistemic domination, the coloniality of power.11 The coloniality of power signifies the global changes in how space and time are articulated as a result of European expansion into the Americas and Africa. The age of European “exploration” to the present is marked by methods of domination that reify the European perspective. Quijano’s use of the term “Eurocentrism” denotes the way in which colonialism and settler colonialism organized non-European spaces, places, and peoples. The expansion of Europe through violent domination produced the power necessary to degrade and subordinate Quechua, Yoruba, Taino, Mayan, Dahomey, Inca, and other indigenous groups. To this point Quijano writes that the conquered and dominated peoples were situated in a natural position of inferiority and, as a result, their phenotypic traits as well as their cultural features were considered inferior. In this way, race became the fundamental criterion for the distribution of the world population into ranks, places, and roles in the new society’s structure of power.12 When read from the sociological perspective offered by Quijano and other decolonialists, modernity/coloniality is not surpassed in the postcolonial moment. Rather, the colonial matrix of power and Eurocentrism persists in the transition to so-called independent nation-states. Quijano contends that the postcolonial promise of a radically democratic nationstate and the post-modern promise of the end of the Eurocentric metanarratives are both false promises that can only be imagined and enacted via increased confluence with the coloniality of power.13 A full examination of the dynamics of coloniality is beyond the scope of this reflection but it is important to note the fundamental distinction between the decolonial perspective, which is based on the analytic of coloniality, and the postmodern or postcolonial perspectives that attempt to name and assess new historical moments beyond, or after, modernity and colonialism.14 Unlike postmodernists and postcolonialists, decolonialists are more radically suspicious about the end of modernity and colonial domination.15 The suspicion in Quijano and others is one that recognizes the entrenchment of the nation-state within the racial, economic, and epistemic vision of Eurocentrism. uijano. “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America,” 533. Q Ibid.,  535. 13 Ibid.,  564–5. 14 Mabel Moraña, Enrique D. Dussel, and Carlos A. Jáuregui, Coloniality at Large: Latin America and the Postcolonial Debate (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 11–17. Here the editors set out the contours of the postcolonial debate. The debate concerns the legacy of colonialism and whether or not postcolonial nationstates are representative of new arrangements of power, politics, philosophy, and so forth that create a margin to European centers of power. Those following the insight of the coloniality of power and the colonial difference are highlighting how postcolonial discourses are largely produced within the center of Eurocentric discourse. Thinkers that depart from indigenous frameworks of Amerindian, African, Muslim, and Native American discourses are speaking about discourses beyond the periphery of the European center. As such, decolonial understandings of the center/periphery question are distinguished by a critique of the postcolonial nation-state which operates as a new center for colonial domination. 15 For a detailed explanation of the difference between postcolonial, postmodern, and decolonial, see RamónGrosfoguel, “The Epistemic Decolonial Turn,” Cultural Studies 21, nos 2–3 (March 1, 2007): 211–23. 11 12

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Decolonialists, alternatively, are looking to recognize and realize radical processes of delinking from the tripartite grip of racialization, neoliberal global market capitalism, and the epistemic hegemony of Eurocentrism. Delinking signifies the task of disentangling nonEuropean perspectives from any overdependence on Eurocentrism. When the decolonial perspective is applied to the music of black Americans, one can see how black music, in some instances, provides moments and starting points for delinking from Eurocentrism. Ironically, the decolonial perspective is also helpful in charting the unfortunate instances in which black music has devolved into yet another way of reifying Eurocentrism. While I will treat this in more detail below, it is important to further clarify the ideas of Eurocentrism that are co-emergent with the idea of race: evolutionism and dualism. In short, as can be seen in the work of Wynter and Quijano, colonial domination objectifies the differences amongst Europeans and non-Europeans. Wynter’s insights illumine the coloniality of being or the processes that lead to a violent ontologizing of human differences into what she describes as a “doctrine of man.”16 The doctrine of man proceeds as a way of producing a discourse and a politic that enforces a sociogenic principle upon the “lesser” races. Under the doctrine of man, human differences are ontologized and coded into a hierarchy of being based on racial difference. In this hierarchy of being, the Africans, racialized as black, are the fullest representation of inhumanity and the Europeans, racialized as white, are the highest representation of humanity and the “most advanced of the species.”17 In between are the indigenous peoples of the Americas and the Caribbean and the mestizo/a (mixed race identities which emerge from the so-called mixing of the races). Quijano’s notion of the coloniality of power is augmented by Wynter to analyze the doctrine of man and how it “overdetermines” the options for human being. It is important to note that neither Quijano nor Wynter find racial hierarchies to be exclusive to European ideology. Rather, their analysis is aimed at indicating how the Eurocentric notion of racial hierarchy is the first to undergo globalization.18 Globalization forcibly exported the otherwise provincial conceptions of time, space, and intersubjectivity that ground European epistemology.19 Aiding the European expansion are the processes of civilization and Christianization. These secondary processes help to ensure the primary interest of extracting wealth. It is this pursuit of capital that required the domination of labor and the production of the intersubjective differences along the lines of skin color.20 Key to colonial domination was the reification of Europe as the fullest representation of civilization and rationality and the non-European as the fullest representation of the primitive and irrationality. The modern/colonial European assumes a type of superiority complex that is based in their conflation of dualism and evolutionism. Quijano explains this: The confrontation between the historical experience and the Eurocentric perspective on knowledge makes it possible to underline some of the more important elements of Eurocentrism: (a) a peculiar articulation between dualism (capital-precapital, Europe–non-Europe, primitive-civilized, traditional-modern, etc.) and a linear, onedirectional evolutionism from some state of nature to modern European society; Sylvia Wynter, “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation–An Argument,” CR: The New Centennial Review 3, no. 3 (2003): 257–337. 17 Quijano, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America,” 542. 18 Ibid.,  543. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid.,  534. 16

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(b) the naturalization of the cultural differences between human groups by means of their codification with the idea of race; and (c) the distorted-temporal relocation of all those differences by relocating non-Europeans in the past. All these intellectual operations are clearly interdependent, and they could not have been cultivated and developed without the coloniality of power.21 As can be seen in Quijano’s words, Eurocentrism connotes the distortion of peoples, times, and spaces such that they validate the false superiority of Europe.22 As Europe dominates the cultures of the Americas and Africa, the peoples of these spaces are falsely represented as diametrically incapable of shaping the project of civilization. Despite their many contributions to the project of modernity, via their own insights in science, technology, medicine, agriculture, and so forth, they are still represented as primitive humans stuck in a state of nature and are therefore in desperate need of civilization. Quijano’s assessment rightfully points out the negative dehumanizing manifestations of the dualist and evolutionist notions that shape Eurocentrism and the modern ideology of race. However, there are also positive manifestations of these dualist and evolutionist notions that embrace the subjective difference of the non-European benevolently. Sociologist John Cruz has identified such a moment in his analysis of how the abolitionists of North America engaged the cultural production of the negro spiritual through theological ideas of Transcendentalism and Unitarianism.23 A closer look at his work will reveal how theological ideas are implicit in the production and reification of Eurocentrism albeit through benevolent assessments of the cultural production of the so called primitive races. If the practice of theology is to lend itself to the activity of delinking from the project of modernity, then it must become ever more vigilant concerning its complicity in racialization, the domination of labor, and the espousal of Eurocentrism. The sociology of music represented in the work of Jon Cruz is helpful because it recognizes the guise of positive reception and how it reifies Eurocentrism while claiming the natural predisposition of the primitive peoples towards the transcendent. This collusion of theological idealism with primitivism is an inverse example of Quijano’s articulation of the collusion of dualism and evolutionism. With Cruz, Wynter, and Quijano in mind, the following section sets out a sonic reading of the epistemic hegemony of Eurocentrism. The aim is to reveal how Christian theological ideas conspicuously exacerbate the coloniality of power by imposing theological ideas onto the sonic productions of black Americans.

THE NEGRO SPIRITUALS, DISENGAGED ENGAGEMENT, AND ABOLITIONIST ETHNOSYMPATHY In his text entitled Culture on the Margins: The Black Spiritual and the Rise of American Cultural Interpretation, Cruz recognizes a Euro-American reception of black music and how it evolved from hearing black music as nothing more than noise to a “disengaged engagement” with it as the essence of black life.24 In particular, the abolitionist vision grounded by Transcendentalist and Universalist theologies affirmed that humans were Ibid.,  552–3. Ibid.,  552. 23 Cruz, Culture on the Margins, 124–63. 24 Ibid., 22. By “disengaged engagement” Cruz denotes the ways in which the interest in black culture and aesthetics become separated from the political, social, and economic contexts in which they take place. 21 22

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naturally predisposed toward the transcendent.25 As such, many Transcendentalists and Universalists understood the project of modernity, particularly the institution of enslavement, as a defilement of the order of human life and an impediment to humanities true orientation toward the transcendent. When they learned of the negro spirituals sung by the primitives of Africa, they saw it as a sign of the natural orientation of the enslaved towards the transcendent. Cruz bases his assessment on the historical records of the abolitionist movement of the mid-nineteenth century. His analysis reveals how the abolitionist engagement with the experiences of black Americans provided a foundational basis for the fields of sociology and ethnography. Cruz understands the abolitionist’s reception of the negro spirituals as largely a Euro-American Christian enterprise that provided a firm defense for ending the institution of chattel slavery. Similar to Albert Rabateou’s understanding of the early religion of enslaved black Americans, black music in Cruz’s understanding works largely as an invisible institution.26 Prior to the work of abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison, the inner workings of black life were largely absent from white public spaces. The invisibility of black music is resultant from the inability of outsiders to traverse the veil of meaning that remained hidden in the world enforced by racialization. Cruz contends that the music of black Americans, particularly those living within the crucible of enslavement, were seen primarily as noise until abolitionists were prompted to listen more intently.27 After this closer listen, a new discourse emerges on the meaning and form of the negro spirituals. The beginnings of this new sociological discourse was prompted by the Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass published in 1845. When reflecting on the meaning of the songs of enslaved black Americans, Douglass wrote, I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle; so that I neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a tale of woe which was altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish … Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains … If anyone wishes to be impressed with the soul-killing effects of slavery, let him go to Colonel Lloyd’s plantation, and on allowance day place himself in the deep pine woods, and there let him, in silence, analyze the sounds that shall pass through the chambers of his soul—and if he is not thus impressed, it will only be because “there is no flesh in his obdurate heart.” I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.28 According to Cruz, this moment in American history prompted Euro-American abolitionists to reconsider the noise of Black Americans as songs of sorrow. Cruz’s theory

Ibid.,  160. Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 27 Cruz, Culture on the Margins, 47–50. 28 As quoted in ibid., 99. 25 26

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is insightful in that he recognizes how the sound of black music is understood within the Euro-American imagination. To this point he writes, The combination of unfathomable noise and fathomable emotions signals a peculiar disposition toward black music and a capacity to hear what we might call emotional noise. This double-dimensional hearing that coupled a sense of meaninglessness with a sense of meaning marks, I believe, the beginning of an important cultural and interpretive renegotiation in the hearing process that eventually yielded a more subjectivistic orientation toward black music, one that became increasingly attune to the meanings of black subjects.29 It is this sociological construct, the “subjectivist orientation,” that functions as a positive expression of what was aforementioned as Sylvia Wynter’s sociogenic principle and Aníbal Quijano’s notion of Eurocentrism and the conflation of evolutionism and dualism. Douglass’s memoir urges the abolitionists and other Americans of good faith to consider the singing of slaves as sign of their subjectivity. The sorrow songs of black Americans are now heard as the work of conscious subjects who are aware and critically asserting themselves amidst the institution of chattel slavery. As the noise-making objects (slaves) became noise-making subjects (spiritual singing negroes), the emotional and epistemic world of the enslaved became visible. The abolitionist engagement with the sorrow songs and the spirituals of the enslaved have, in Cruz’s estimation, produced several ways of viewing the enslaved negro that augmented mainline Eurocentric notions that saw black life as fundamentally depraved. The abolitionist views of the enslaved augments the negative stereotype of the “primitive African” who is fit for enslavement and intellectually incapable of participating in modern civilization as a thinking subject. However, this augmentation is positive in that it infuses the absolute depravity of black chattel with a more human essence. This new more subjective essence is used to call out the moral and ethical depravity of white enslavers and their inhumane treatment of black subjects. The abolitionist uses Douglass’s recollection of the spiritual singing negro as a way to ground their moral and ethical claims about the injustice of slavery. In the space of the moral and ethical interest of abolitionists, the slave emerges as a human endowed with subjectivity. The negro’s birth into subjectivity is yet another trap within the sociogeny of the modern/colonial world. The representation of the negro in the imagination of the Euro-American from noise making object to spiritual singing subject is one that trades one intersubjective marker for another. Neither state, noise-making negro chattel or spiritual singing negro, breaks the epistemic framing of black life as dualistically distinct from Euro-American life or evolutionarily prior to the modern Euro-American subject. What is shifting is the sociological principles, the sociogeny, which situates humans in the US colonial difference of the modern world. With Wynter’s assessment of the sociogenic principle and Quijano’s theory of the coloniality of power we can see that the shift from noise-making chattel to spiritual singing negro is not a discursive sign of a progressive moral victory. Instead, it is a shift in the sociological and economic entanglements of intersubjectivity necessary for the production of subjects within the systems of the modern nation-state.30 While the abolitionists were affirming a moral and ethical basis for coexisting with black Americans, the shift in the method of dominating the resources and products of those racialized as Ibid.,  46. Quijano, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America,” 557.

29 30

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black was already underway. As Quijano argues, the shift from slave labor to wage labor is a development or an expansion of domination rather than a retrogression.31 Any moral victory achieved by abolition is ensconced within the new arrangement of domination that extracts meaning and wealth from the paid labor (replacing the original extraction technique of enslaved labor) of black Americans. This is why humanistic cultural victories, which herald the music and art of black Americans as markers of the sanctity of black life, rarely lead to restorative socioeconomic and political outcomes at the level of the modern nation-state. Instead, these victories can only be read as progress from within the economic and political arrangements of the modern nation-state.32 The positive reception of the spiritual singing negro in the abolitionist movement is one that advances the subjectivity necessary for the domination of the resources and products of black life. Wynter and Quijano, when taken together, uncover the sociogeny and coloniality of modernity and how these dynamics govern the relationship between the African and the European long after the system of chattel enslavement. The achievement of subjectivity for black Americans is not an arrival in a freer mode of existence; instead, it is arrival in new sociological arrangements (the nation-state and neoliberal global world capitalism) that resituates the European and the non-European. Pushing Wynter and Quijano closer to the theological, Cruz contends that the abolitionist concerns for affirming the subjectivity of the enslaved was largely a component of the “religious enterprise.”33 In particular, Cruz points out how Unitarians and Transcendentalists received the singing slave as the incarnation of a theological idea based in naturalism. For Cruz, the theological conception of the spiritual singing negro serves as the basis for the discipline of sociology and its interpretation of cultural differences. The singing slave, as suggested in the Douglass quote above, was presented primarily via the slave narrative and not through sustained encounters with the world of the slave. Cruz is careful to note that Unitarians and Transcendentalists were looking to establish a representative example of the human’s natural orientation toward the sacred. As such, the spiritual singing negro, a human closer to the “natural state” of humanity, provided an ideal image to base their theological claims about the meaning of the human person.34 Unitarians followed the insights of theological and philosophical minds such as Ralph Waldo Emerson who articulated three basic principles as key to the Unitarian faith: 1. Words are the signs of natural facts. 2. Particular natural facts are signs of particular spiritual facts. 3. Nature is a symbol of spirit. With these principles Emerson understood faith as an ascent toward the Spirit as it is presented in nature. The natural world has within in it the revelation of God. The Unitarian fascination with nature developed out of a disenchantment with the modern turn toward the industrial market economy, which placed economic progress above nature and its life-giving systems.

Ibid.,  566–7. For instance, protest for a living wage, rather than minimum wage, only makes sense within a capitalistic system based on wage labor. The fight for equality under this system is not the creation of an alternative. It is only a revision of the wage labor system to more fairly distribute capital gains. 33 Cruz, Culture on the Margins, 126. 34 Ibid. 31 32

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The mistake of the market amongst Unitarians like Emerson was that it placed the pursuit of material above the engagement with nature. Emerson and the epistemic perspective of Unitarianism greatly influenced the early Euro-American reception of the spirituals. Cruz mentions two examples, Thomas Wentworth Higginson and William Frances Allen. Higginson and Allen are significant for Cruz because they produce the earliest examples of ethnographic field work and research associated with black music. Higginson’s work was compiled during the Civil War when he served as a colonel of a black regiment. His text, Army Life in a Black Regimen, is a collection of his journal reflections on the black men under his command. In the chapter of the text entitled “Negro Spirituals,” he recorded the lyrics of songs sung at camp by black Union soldiers. Higginson’s book is one of the first written records of black American songs. As Cruz notes, Higginson was steeped in the Unitarian and Transcendentalist visions of Christianity that were proponents of a new way of thinking about transcendence. Unlike the Calvinist perspective in which nature was something to be overcome through an ascent from depravity toward communion with a higher reality above nature, radical Transcendentalist and Unitarians espoused an embrace of nature as the route to transcendence. In this new epistemic perspective, the ultimate truth of divinity was to be found in, rather than above, nature. It is this “natural fact” that motivated Higginson’s romantic reception of the so-called primitive negroes and their songs. Engagement with the negro then is an engagement with a more primitive and therefore more natural iteration of humanity. Such an engagement was thought to bring the wayward modern Euro-American Christian back to their natural predisposition. Cruz argues that the preservation of the spiritual was motivated by this transcendentalist notion of who the negro was and how much closer they were to nature than the modern Euro-American Christian. As such, the cultural production of the spirituals, in the mind of Higginson, was an incarnate portal to the Spirit of God in nature. While more will be said about this later, it is important to note here the benevolent primitivism that Higginson applies to the negro. Higginson still sees the negro as substantively more primitive than the civilized Euro-American. Romanticizing this anthropological difference still holds in place the problematic of Eurocentrism and its conflation of dualism and evolution in which the non-European is constructed and racialized outside of modern civilization. Higginson’s work highlights this fact through waxing romantically on the primitivity of the “dusky negroes” who moved in “rhythmic barbaric dance.”35 Similar to Higginson, William Frances Allen was motivated by a need to preserve the “natural” humanity of the negro by chronicling their music. However, Allen proceeded in a more objectively scientific process of preservation and recovery. Cruz distinguishes Allen’s work by noting how Allen’s espousal of naturalism moves towards a more objective mediation of the naturalness of the spiritual singing negro. In Allen, Cruz sees the cementing of modern cultural interpretation which shapes the foundations of sociological investigation, especially with regard to racialized differences. Unlike Higginson’s primarily lyrical collection of black American songs, Allen also provided musical annotation. In Slave Songs, Allen compiles the sonic artifacts of negro culture. Slave Songs, extended the possibilities for reception beyond black circles in that now nonblack readers could also sing and provide musical accompaniment to black sound. The book contained 136 black American songs and was the largest compilation of its time. As Cruz notes, Slave

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment (Boston, MA: Houghton, Mifflin, 1900), 270.

35

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Songs was unprecedented and became the new standard and even the basis of new fields of research such as folklore and eventually musicology.36 Allen’s work lacked the romantic prose of Higginson. It proceeded as if he was anticipating a social scientific approach to black music. As Cruz argues, Allen’s prose in Slave Songs mirrors the attention to detail and nuance of Charles Darwin, ironically a scientific contributor to naturalism.37 While the historical details of Higginson and Allen are more expansive than what can be treated here, their significance is that they serve as the first printed media that allowed outsiders to determine and produce “authentic” black life. This authenticity cannot be detached from the philosophical and theological assumptions of naturalism and how it prompted the need for sympathetic readings of black life. Cruz labels these sympathetic readings ethnosympathy. Ethnosympathy is used by Cruz to signify the shift in the abolitionist perspective from ethos to pathos. Cruz connects how the epistemological assumptions of naturalism determine the authenticity of the negro spirituals. For instance, Allen and others distinguish negro spirituals from the secular songs of black life that are “more barbaric” and African in origin.38 As such, black culture is signified in the spiritual singing negro and not in the “shouts” which signified the pure barbarity of African paganism. In line with our earlier reference to the coloniality of power and the sociogenic principal, Higgins and Allen expand Eurocentism by theologically relegating black American music to the realm of the primitive. As Cruz notes, they construct and impose an ethnosympathetic view that proceeds from Unitarian and Transcendentalist notions of humanity longing to recover a more “primitive” orientation to God’s revelation through natural world. Unfortunately, as Cruz notes, the recovery of the spiritual provides the physical evidence of a forgone naturalist conclusion about the authentic sonic expression of black life. Allen and Higginson are less concerned with mediating the embedded meaning of the spirituals within black American life and more concerned with affirming a theological basis for abolition and the redeemability of the spiritual singing negro. In light of their theological agenda, Cruz argues that Higginson and Allen were participating in a “disengaged engagement” with the black lives from which the spirituals are produced.39 In what follows, I will argue that there is a theological analogue, an analytic from within the frame of God-talk that adds additional edge to Cruz’s critique. Further, there is a theological option that prevents the slippage into disengaged engagement, antiblack sociogeny, and coloniality. Such a move is necessary in order not to slip into an inverse disengaged engagement that leans too heavily on racial belonging as a solution to disengaged engagement. It would be all too easy to be satisfied with the critique that Higginson and Allen were trapped within the enclave of Eurocentrism and therefore ethnographically predisposed to disengagement. Conversely, it would be equally as easy to say, “If they were black they might understand the spirituals better.” We must also consider that even for those who see themselves as ethnographically “black,” there is still the opportunity for slippage into disengaged engagement. This point is illumined by Jawanza Clark in his recent work entitled Indigenous Black Theology: Toward an AfricanCentered Theology of the African-American Religious Experience (hereafter as Indigenous Black Theology). It is to this work that I know turn. Cruz, Culture on the Margins, 152. Ibid.,  135–6. 38 Ibid.,  154–5. 39 Ibid.,  128. 36 37

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INDIGENOUS BLACK THEOLOGY: AN ALTERNATIVE TO DISENGAGED ENGAGEMENT In his text Indigenous Black Theology, Clark provides a constructive theological approach that situates black theology within the epistemic and symbolic worlds of West African peoples.40 His work provides theological insights that offer alternatives to the problem of disengaged engagement in the interpretation of black music. Clark’s work provides a look at a foundational theological problem lurking behind Cruz’s critique of Higginson and Allen and how they contribute to the sociological imagination of black Americans as primitive (albeit benevolently). His way toward an “indigenous black theology” is clarified by what he denotes as an anti-African sentiment in black American churches and their replete theologies.41 According to Clark, anti-African sentiment finds its root in the doctrine of original sin. For Clark, original sin, in its traditional Protestant form, conflates sinners with the unconverted. This is especially the case in the theology of John Calvin and its legacy in the evangelical theology of Johnathan Edwards. In regard to Calvin, Clark writes, Calvin’s anthropology emphasizes the depraved condition of humanity post-fall. Adam’s act of sin is not his individual act alone, but, in fact, deforms the nature of all human beings ever born after Adam. Calvin constructs a universal anthropology that evokes guilt and shame and seeks to instill a certain sense of personal worthlessness and fear of God in an effort to promote humility.42 For Clark, Calvin’s interpretation of Adam’s sin is damaging to Africans and the African diaspora in so far as the whole of their faiths and cultures are by default depraved and sinful. The anti-African sentiment finds its roots in the doctrine of original sin in so far as Africa is by necessity devoid of anything holy, sanctified, or theologically edifying. As Clark makes clear, it is important to remember the historical context of Calvin’s theology. Calvin is writing at a time when human reason and the scientific method were promoting the sanctity of human capability without respect to revelation and the activity of the Holy Spirit. Calvin’s aggrandizement of the problem of sin is meant to warn the masses about the hubris of human reason. Just as European philosophers and emerging scientist of the sixteenth century saw Christianity as the prototypical enemy against reason, Calvin and his followers saw philosophy and science as the prototypical enemy against faith. From the perspective of enslaved black Americans and Africans, neither discourse— philosophy, science, or theology—was critically engaged with determining the value of faith and reason from within African worlds. What’s worse is that black American theology traffics in a similar lack of engagement with Africa, or as Clark puts it, an anti-African sentiment. Clark tracks the anti-African sentiment in the phenomenon of black-American conversion to mainline Protestantism, which required a turning away from African epistemologies that clarify the human person and divinity. Clark charts the anti-African sentiment not only in academic black theologies but also in the theological imagination of black American Protestants from enslavement to the present. While a full treatment

Jawanza Eric Clark, Indigenous Black Theology: Toward an African-Centered Theology of the African American Religious Experience, 1st ed. (Black Religion, Womanist Thought, Social Justice; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 41 Ibid.,  21–53. 42 Ibid.,  39. 40

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of his charting of the anti-African sentiment cannot be taken up here, suffice it to say that Clark is critical of any positivistic objectivism concerning original sin as the ultimate explanation of the human condition. For Clark, black Americans and Africans need not assent to the original sin of Adam. Further, black Americans and Africans do not have to claim Adam as their ancestor. Rather, black Americans and Africans can claim their own ancestors as the basis from which to understand their humanity in relationship to God. Following this claim, Clark contends that black Americans need to take responsibility for building their own theological anthropology, a theological anthropology of the ancestor. Clark’s constructive indigenous black theology takes up this task by critically examining the anthropology of the Akan peoples of West Africa. Through the Akan anthropology of the self, Clark finds a ground on which to provide a theological alternative to racialized being and how it is reinforced through the exclusivist doctrines of sin and salvation. Being careful to consider the oppressive elements of Akan anthropology, especially with regard to the treatment of Akan women and ethnocentrism, Clark illumines a framework for establishing and rethinking humanity amongst the racialized.43 Clark employs his critical analysis of the signs and symbols of the Akan anthropology to construct a theology of the ancestor that speaks to the American reality of epistemic hegemony and the resulting anti-African sentiment. From the Akan notion of the human encounter with the divine, Clark’s constructive theology denotes the salvific quality of the ancestor and how they operate to effect positive change in the everyday lives of their descendants. Through the medium of the ancestor, Clark, engages the wisdom of the Akan in a way that recovers African epistemology. As such, he resists the black American denial of the epistemic and theological value of African anthropology and the participatory role that ancestors can play in how salvation is understood. To this point Clark writes, The ancestors, as a doctrine of the human being, oppose a positivistic objectivist epistemology and also repudiate original sin and total depravity, precisely because these beings represent fulfillment and reveal the truth that the individual is born a divinely created being in process, not an exchangeable or uniform carbon copy of other human beings, and is a specific creation of not just God but of a living community. Every individual is born into this world with a unique, specific, and divinely ordained purpose; thus, the ancestors oppose any attempt to mitigate or obfuscate this originality of purpose by reducing every individual soul to the corrupt, contaminated soul of Adam.44

DECOLONIAL THEOLOGY AND THE FUTURE OF THE INTERPRETATION OF BLACK MUSIC Clark’s work gives at least one example (he is not alone) of how critical theological reflections on modernity can proceed deconstructively and constructively toward a decolonial and theological option.45 Clark’s analysis of the anti-African sentiment in black American Protestantism and Cruz’s analytic of disengaged engagement of Higgins and Allen has highlighted how theological ideas about the subjectivity of black Americans inform the interpretation of black music in particular and black American cultural Ibid.,  89–90. Clark, Indigenous Black Theology, 109; emphases mine. 45 For more examples of decolonial theologies, see: Joseph Drexler-Dreis, Decolonial Love: Salvation in Colonial Modernity (New York: Fordham University Press, 2018); Michel Andraos, Lee Cormie, Néstor Medina, and 43 44

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production in general. Cruz’s sociology has been particularly helpful since he illumines the sonic dynamics of the sociogenic principles that govern relationships and hermeneutics in the modern world. Cruz’s work illumines how “disengaged engagements” with the expressivity of the spirituals lead to the ethnosympathetic interpretation of black music by Unitarians and Transcendentalists. With the above reflection on Clark, I submit that there can also be an intra-racial form of “disengaged engagement.” When perceived through Clark’s theological insight, “disengaged engagement” with the Spirituals (and its problematic sociogenic results) is grounded by the legacy of original sin and its exclusivist reception in Calvinism, American Evangelicalism, and black theology. Simple identification or parallels drawn between biblical narratives and black experience do not by necessity equate to the decolonial activity of doing theology from a nonEurocentric frame. If the epistemologies of the racialized are distinct from the coloniality of modernity, it is because they are situated within signs and symbols that are beyond the pale of modernity. Charles Long’s challenge to the discourse of black theology asserted this epistemic challenge almost forty years ago and long before the decolonial turn was clarified. Clark’s theology meets this challenge by doing theology from within Akan notions of anthropology. The prospect of decolonial or “indigenous” black theology points to helpful shifts in constructive theology that look to prevent the hermeneutical and existential problems resultant from the racialization of the African and their relegation to a sinful, irrational, and primitive nature. As Clark’s work examples, black theology and black churches within the Protestant tradition are still embattled by the prism of race or as one critic Victor Anderson has argued, “the blackness that whiteness created.”46 The results of this entrapment is the internalization of civilized “Man.”47 As the symbol of white supremacy, “Man” is not simply the white body but the enfleshment of the absolute and universal power of European rationality. Eurocentrism is a pernicious ideology by which European elites make a god out of their own rationality. European rationality creates the races and thus the hierarchy of being ex nihilo. As Clark’s work suggests, black Americans must not repeat this hubris by making a God out of American Protestant doctrine with respect to their own experience. Bringing the coloniality of Western theology to an end requires sources that give us new ways of envisioning the human person. None of these new ways should dominate the world. As Walter Mignolo argues, we do not need to repair the Eurocentric universal. Instead, there needs to be an option that allows for a substantive engagement with the world’s universals. Mignolo, following insights from Enrique Dussel Becca Whitla, “Decolonial Theological Encounters: An Introduction,” Toronto Journal of Theology 33, no. 2 (Fall 2017): 259–60; Gerald Boodoo, Religion, Human Dignity and Liberation, ed. Oikos Editora (Sao Leopoldo, 2016); Rufus Burnett Jr., Decolonizing Revelation: A Spatial Reading of the Blues (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2018). 46 Clark, Indigenous Black Theology, 14. Jawanza Clark’s work is indebted to Victor Anderson’s groundbreaking insight on connecting Euro-American notions of racial being to black American attempts to redefine blackness through a method of racial apologetics with regard to black being. Anderson termed the ends of this methodological approach to black life, ontological blackness. Ontological blackness, for Anderson, remained a categorical ontology that remained in dialectical tension with the Euro-American hierarchy of race. Black theology by Anderson’s estimation was trapped in this dialectical tension with ontological whiteness and unable to claim freedom from white being, despite its many protests and constructive efforts. My argument is that Jawanza’s work meets Anderson’s challenge by providing a unique trans-modern option grounded in an alternative (Akan) anthropological framework. For Anderson’s articulation of “the blackness that whiteness created” and his analysis of ontological blackness, see Victor Anderson, Beyond Ontological Blackness: An Essay on African American Religious and Cultural Criticism (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 61, 161. 47 Wynter, “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom,” 263–83.

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articulates this option as a pluriversal option.48 Clark mirrors this insight in that his “Indigenous Black Theology” is aimed at assisting black churches and communities and is not aimed at offering universal theological prescriptions for all of humanity. Decolonial projects in sound and aesthetics could find benefit in considering Clark’s decolonial updates to the discourse of black theology. The promise in decolonial aesthetics is that it challenges the process by which aesthetics became “Eurocentered by European philosophy.”49 In this process, aesthetics became a part of the colonial matrix of power and was used to repress the non-European ways of expressing and determining beauty. Decolonial theorist Walter Mignolo and cultural critic Rolando Vazquez have recently compiled a dossier of decolonial aesthetics from across the planet. In their comments on the dossier, Vasquez and Mignolo describe a global movement of “decolonial aestheSis”: Decolonial aestheSis is a movement that is naming and articulating practices that challenge and subvert the hegemony of modern/colonial aestheSis. Decolonial aestheSis starts from the consciousness that the modern/colonial project has implied not only control of the economy, the political, and knowledge, but also control over the senses and perception. Modern aestheTics have played a key role in configuring a canon, a normativity that enabled the disdain and the rejection of other forms of aesthetic practices, or, more precisely, other forms of aestheSis, of sensing and perceiving. Decolonial aestheSis is an option that delivers a radical critique to modern, postmodern, and altermodern aestheTics and, simultaneously, contributes to making visible decolonial subjectivities at the confluence of popular practices of re-existence, artistic installations, theatrical and musical performances, literature and poetry, sculpture and other visual arts.50 While it is not his specific intention, Clark’s work illumines the aesthetic dynamics of mainline Protestant theologies and their collusion with the modern/colonial project. What is “anti-African sentiment” if it is not a result of the violent, and self-deprecating, denaturing of how black Americans sense and perceive the world? Clark’s indictment of the anti-African sentiment in black theology and black churches is also an indictment of the black music that promotes the anti-African sentiment through aesthetic domination. Black cultural production, in many cases, perpetuates and internalizes Eurocentrism as a way of gaining access to the fruits of modern subjectivity and the capital of the nation-state. Sustained communication with the decolonizing movements of the planet, can help to prevent this dangerous mistake of self-denial. Constructive theological projects that look to rethink theology, in line with decolonial movements, are needed, not simply to rethink the sounds of our ancestors, but also to assist projects in politics ecology, and economics. Many of these projects have concluded that all theological discourse is power discourse and that theology can only maintain the sociogenic principles of the coloniality of power and being. However, as Clark’s Indigenous Black Theology suggests, engagement with indigenous anthropologies and cosmologies can provide a basis from which theology can be reconceived as decolonial praxis. Such a praxis requires a divestment from European Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 175–6. Also see Ramón Grosfoguel, “Towards a Decolonial Transmodern Pluriversalism,” Tabula Rasa (December 1, 2008): 199–216. 49 Walter D. Mignolo and Rolondo Vasquez, “Decolonial AestheSis: Colonial Wounds/Decolonial Healings – Social Text,” Social Text Online, https://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_article/decolonial-aesthesis-colonialwoundsdecolonial-healings/. Accessed July 21, 2019. 50 Ibid. 48

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perspectives on Judeo-Christian religion, economics, politics, aesthetics, and knowledge. Decolonial theology then is integral to the process of delinking sense and perception from the activity of Eurocentrism which produces the world in the image of Europe.

CONCLUSION The analysis offered here has shown how the study of black music can benefit from advances in both the scientific application of sociology and the constructive wave of decolonial theology. My effort to speak to the nexus of science and theology has looked to show how theology functions at the foundations of scientific ideations of black music, particularly the spirituals. By identifying the theological foundations of ethnographic approaches to the spirituals via Jon Cruz, I have illumined one aspect of how the epistemic hegemony of Eurocentrism operates in the reception of black music. From this analysis, which benefited from the decolonial sociological theories of Sylvia Wynter and Anibal Quijano, I provided a basis for harnessing sociological insights for the purpose of reinvigorating the process of liberation in black theology. I have looked to the constructive decolonial theology of Jawanza Clark to offer an updated, and more decolonial leaning, theological discourse that can speak to the challenge of decolonial studies and the movement of decoloniality. It is my hope that this approach to black music illumined how the nexus of sociology and theology can be harnessed in the service of human liberation. In the current moment when theology is losing its viability as a vehicle of meaning, it would seem that such a project is worthwhile.

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Liturgy as Ethicizer Cultivating Ecological Consciousness through a Coptic Orthodox Liturgical Ethos STEPHEN M. MEAWAD

Eastern Orthodox Christianity’s recent expression of its ecological concern has been vast and strong, evidenced not only by its designation of September 1 as a day of prayer for the “protection of the environment” but also through the scholarly contributions of more than a dozen theologians and religious figures, including Patriarch Bartholomew, Elizabeth Theokritoff, and John Chryssavgis.1 Much of this witness extends to Oriental Orthodoxy, including similarities in the doctrine of creation, proper relation to nonhuman animals, spiritual degradation as a precursor to ecological degradation, and extending love of neighbor to include all of creation.2 However, few have offered a full analysis of ways that other families of Orthodoxy conceive of the relationship between ecology and theology. In this light, this chapter will examine the liturgical ethos of the Coptic Orthodox Church and describe how this ethos is effective in creating self-sustaining, ecologically aware communities. I will show that the Coptic liturgical ethos is effective (1) through its call to action, (2) through the connections it offers between ecology and theology, and (3) through the frequency of Coptic liturgical prayers. It is an ethos that is accessible to all who desire to embody a religious way of life that is ecologically minded. A more comprehensive version of this project would develop what might be called a politeia, a behavior or ethos of a given community, of the Coptic Orthodox Church. This politeia would include monasticism and asceticism, fasting, agriculture and co-stewardship, and self-sustenance. Each of these elements deserve their own analysis within Coptic Christianity and will be at play in the backdrop of this chapter, yet beginning with the Coptic liturgy is fitting because of the centrality of this practice for Coptic Christians. After See Bartholomew and John Chryssavgis. On Earth as in Heaven: Ecological Vision and Initiatives of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, 1st ed. (Orthodox Christianity and Contemporary Thought; New York: Fordham University Press, 2012); and Elizabeth Theokritoff. Living in God’s Creation: Orthodox Perspectives on Ecology (Foundations Series; Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2009). 2 The churches that rejected the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD, which now include the Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian, Malankara Syriac, Syrian, and Eritrean churches, constitute the present-day “Oriental” Orthodox churches. 1

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analyzing the Coptic liturgical ethos, I will examine two instantiations of communities that do well to faithfully embody this ethos: the communities of the Zabbālīn (“Garbagers”) and the Anaphora Retreat Center.

A LITURGICAL ETHOS Liturgical Time and Mindfulness In his extensive first-hand study on the Coptic Church, John H. Watson writes, “If the outsider knows nothing of Coptic Culture, Theology, Mission, and History but knows the Liturgy then the outsider knows everything that is important.”3 The liturgy is at the heart of Coptic life. All believers are formed by participation in liturgy, while simultaneously forming the liturgy: “[T]‌he [Coptic] liturgy is the work of the entire congregation.”4 Lay participation in the liturgy allows worshippers to make sense of life outside of liturgy as well, not just within the confines of its walls. It is through active engagement within the liturgy that the rest of life begins to make sense. Liturgy is to seep into all realms of one’s life, collapsing the divide between the sacred and the mundane. Daily occupational labor and the toil of asceticism, prevalent in the Coptic Church, become two sides of the same coin within a liturgical worldview. Labor, similar to the function of asceticism, becomes “an uninterrupted praise of the Triune God.”5 Understanding daily work in this way reinforces the singularity and unity of life the liturgy is to bring about, a life in which work, praise, and even leisure serve the same purpose of unity with God, albeit in different forms. One hallmark of this life is liturgical mindfulness, an awareness of oneself and one’s surroundings in the presence of God. Mindfulness is being ever-present to God and open to transformational encounter. This same mindfulness is communicated in front of every Coptic altar that points its believers to learn from nature. In front of each iconostasis (icon screen) found in Coptic churches hangs a hallowed ostrich egg as a reminder of mindfulness in worship. The ostrich keeps her eyes fixed on her eggs even from a distance and never forgoes her attention. So too are believers to keep watch in prayer, to keep watch on the sacrifice on the altar, and to keep watch for the return of their Lord and Savior. This mindfulness was exemplified well in the life of a recent Coptic monk named Abba Yusṭus al-Anṭūnī, also known as the silent monk. He hardly ever spoke a word save for three purposes. The first was in reading Scripture aloud, especially liturgically, since weekly and even daily liturgies are regular practices for Coptic monks. The second was in expressing his constant gratitude to God, “thanks be to God.” The third reason was seemingly peculiar: he would repeatedly ask, “What time is it now?” It was not a watch reading with which Abba Yusṭus was concerned. Instead, his awareness was one of kairos, pointing to a moment of time of utmost importance. Kairos alludes to the “first words attributed to Jesus in the synoptic tradition,” according to Watson, when Christ says, “The time (kairos) is fulfilled” (Mark 1:15).6 This “time” for Abba Yusṭus was always now. There was never a moment not to be mindful, watchful, and proactive. To this persistent

J ohn H. Watson, Among the Copts (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2000), 34. Ibid.,  37. 5 Ibid.,  17. 6 Ibid.,  30. 3 4

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question, Watson comments that it “troubles our self-satisfied certainty that we are not threatened and that everything continues to remain the same.”7 The reality is that we are threatened and that we must remain alert. Among other threats, we are threatened by evil, by selfishness, and by our neglect of God, neighbor, and creation. We are threatened by a temptation to ignore these very threats, choosing instead to turn a blind eye, as though blindness might somehow create a reality altogether devoid of threats. Pope Francis puts it clearly: “As often occurs in periods of deep crisis which require bold decisions, we are tempted to think that what is happening is not entirely clear.”8 A life submerged in the liturgical ethos ought to lead us to the realization of which Abba Yusṭus was so keenly aware: the time to act is now.

Ecology in Coptic Liturgical Prayers Ecologically, the Coptic liturgical ethos is more than a call to action. In two ways the prayers of the liturgy serve to build a keen ecological awareness in those who faithfully participate. First, within the liturgical rites are prayers that are explicitly ecological in nature and that manifest the theological significance of nonhuman creation. Second, the frequency of these liturgical daily, weekly, and yearly prayer cycles contributes to the cultivation of a pragmatic, ecological consciousness of believers. Regarding the former, the content of several different prayers used in the Coptic Church elaborate explicitly on theological understandings of the function and responsibility of nonhuman creation in relation to humanity. Ecological references exist throughout the various forms of liturgical prayers and rites of the Coptic Church, and volumes could be written on these prayers, but for the sake of space I will focus here on a type of prayer called the Midnight Praise.9 The Midnight Praise is a nighttime liturgical service in the Coptic daily cycle composed of Biblical and extra-Biblical chants traditionally performed by two alternating choirs and particularly observed in monasteries. It should be (and is, at least in all Coptic monasteries) chanted every night, as the name infers, around midnight.10 In practice it can be prayed anytime after sundown and before sunrise. It is through these texts that monasteries preserve the majority of Coptic theology, and thus one can learn much about explicit Coptic ecology through them. For example, the Wednesday Psali, prayed once a week on Tuesday night, offers an interesting ecological exegesis of Scripture when it says, “They teach us in the Holy Books, the breaths of God, to be merciful to the creation, which He has created.”11 The breaths of God, the inspired text of the Divine Scripture, command care for creation. While there is not a shortage of potential Biblical references, it is not clear precisely which texts the Ibid.,  31. Francis, On Care for Our Common Home: The Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ (New York: Paulist Press, 2015), 47. 9 For explanations on the spirituality of the Coptic Midnight Praise and its interpretation, see H. G. Anba Mettaous, The Spirituality of the Praise According to the Rite of the Coptic Orthodox Church (Sydney: Coptic Orthodox Diocese of Sydney and Affiliated Regions), 2005. 10 More commonly, this praise is timed to end at the break of dawn when the Divine Liturgy itself begins. For this reason, the Midnight Praise often begins a few hours after midnight. For a description of the Midnight Praise (tasbiḥat niṣf al-layl), see O. H. E. Khs-Burmester, The Egyptian or Coptic Church: A Detailed Description of Her Liturgical Services and the Rites and Ceremonies Served in the Administration of Her Sacraments (Cairo: Publications de la Société d’Archéologie copte, 1967), 109–11; and Robert F. Taft, The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West: The Origins of the Divine Office and Its Meaning for Today, 2nd rev. ed. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1993), 255–9. 11 Minā al-Baramūsī, Kitāb al-Ibṣalmūdiyah al-Muqaddasah al-Sanawiyah (Alexandria: Al-Kamāl ‘Abd al-Masīḥ Tādrus, 1908), 188–9; my translation. 7 8

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author of this Psali has in mind. Nonetheless, the methodical articulation is convincing on two counts: humans are to be merciful to nonhuman creation because this is a direct command from God and because all creation belongs to the same Creator. The Psali could have specified “animals” instead of “creation,” but in using the latter it encompasses all of creation, human and nonhuman. To be molded by the same Creator implies a sort of familial relation between humans and nonhuman creation. Further, humans are to express mercy, often synonymous with an active display of love and compassion instead a passive posture of indifference, to nonhuman creation. Beyond the Wednesday Psali, the book of Midnight Praise repeatedly reaffirms the communal activity of all creation praising, rejoicing, and glorifying in unison. The Sunday Psali reads, “All creation glorifies Your Name. My Lord Jesus Christ, help me.”12 Similarly, the ninth part of the Monday Theotokia (Praise of the Virgin), when contemplating the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, exclaims, “You came into the world through Your love for humanity. All creation rejoiced at Your coming.”13 And in reference to the Virgin Mary, the Saturday Theotokia reads, “All creation rejoices with you, crying out, saying, ‘Hail to you, full of grace,’ and, ‘The Lord is with you.’ ”14 These prayers demonstrate a collaboration between humans and nonhuman creation in the highest and most intimate form of communication with God, prayer. Humans did not celebrate the Annunciation, Incarnation, or any other event in the economy of salvation without the rest of creation. The Coptic Midnight Praise follows a structure in which a number of hymns and praises surround four main canticles usually referred to as hos (ϩⲱⲥ), the Coptic word for “praise.” The third of these four canticles contains the hymn of the three saintly youth in the extension to the book of Daniel, apocryphal for some, deuterocanonical for others, and canonical for Copts, among others. This hymn calls on all possible forms of creation to join in praise of God.15 In the same vein, the first part of the fourth canticle is a recitation of Psalm 148, which expresses a similar command to the rest of creation to join humanity in this Divine rite.16 To this, Matthew Massoud’s commentary on the canticle states that “[b]‌ecause of their [Adam and Eve’s] sin, and because we are the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, we ask the creation to join us in prayer, that God may restore us to the original state in which He created us, and place us once again into the New Garden of Eden, the Paradise of Joy.”17 Massoud goes on to explain that the rest of creation, who have not been endowed with the fullness of the cognitive, emotional, and maybe ontological realities of humans, sometimes does a better job than humans of praising God. Humans disobeyed God and continue to do so, but in fulfilling its duties on earth, the rest of creation glorifies its Creator. Nonhuman creation not only joins humans in praise of God and His economy of salvation but also is a tutor amid humanity’s silence. Its example is instructive and edifying as humans navigate their earthly journey and restoration to Paradise. Receiving instruction in praise from the rest of creation is further expressed in what is called the Psali Batos for the three saintly youth, Shadrach, Meshach, and

I bid., 103; my translation. Ibid., 167–8; my translation. 14 Ibid., 249–50; my translation from the Coptic text. 15 Ibid.,  58–64. 16 Ibid.,  89–90. 17 Matthew Massoud, The Spirituality of the Holy Psalmody. (Ontario, CN: St. Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Church, 2005), 49–50. 12 13

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Abednego: “Therefore, when we see them, let us say along with all these beings. Bless the Lord, all you birds. Praise Him and exceedingly exalt Him.”18 We are to observe creation and its ability to praise, we are to join creation in its proper praise, and we are to encourage creation in praise. We are to “look at the birds of the air,” to “consider the lilies of the field” and “how they grow” (Matt 6:26, 28). The task given to nonhuman creation is no small thing. Nonhuman creation has remained faithful to its purpose on God’s earth and has glorified God in its obedience. When humans begin treating the rest of creation with due respect as co-worshipers and not as commodities of exploitation to suit lavish lifestyles, they too can more fully realize their purpose in God’s will and in proper worship of, and intimacy with, Him.

Frequency of Coptic Liturgical Prayers In the previous section, I focused on prayers that precede the Eucharistic liturgy not because of a lack of ecological prayer in the liturgy itself but in order to demonstrate some of the most unique prayers of the Coptic Church. The Midnight Praise, as mentioned, is part of the daily canon of prayers in the Coptic Church. Similarly, the Book of the Hours, or the Agpeya (Coptic) or Horologion (Greek), contains a multitude of Psalms and other passages and prayers from Scripture. The Book of the Hours is prayed at least seven times a day in monasteries but is also used daily by many lay Coptic faithful.19 The repetition of these prayers works to transform those who recite them, and one of these avenues of transformation is ecological consciousness. The primary goals of these practices of prayer are not now, nor have they been, ecological; they carry significant potential to create increased ecological awareness in the petitioner. Like the Midnight Praise, they contribute to a breakdown of the walls that separate the sacred and the mundane, and to a habituation and repetition that becomes part and parcel of the psyche. But this process of cultivating ecological consciousness is not only accomplished through daily ecological prayers. Weekly and yearly cycles aid in accomplishing this same goal. For example, etched into the ears of all Copts are the words of the weekly Divine Liturgy of St. Basil, the most commonly used liturgy throughout the year. One place in particular in this liturgy, the fifth in a series of six litanies, sparks ecological interest. There are four potential forms of this single litany, each of which is specific to the agricultural season in Egypt at the time. Between June 19 (Paone 12, Coptic calendar) and October 19/20 (Paope 9), the church prays for the inundation of the Nile or “the rising of the waters.”20 Between October 20/21 (Paope 10) and January 18/19 (Tobe 10), the church prays the litany for the seeds, herbs, and plants.21 Between January 19/20 (Tobe 11) and June 18 (Paone 11), the church prays the litany for the winds, fruits, and trees.22 In the fourth option, all of these requests are combined, which proves more common in lands outside of Egypt in which the agricultural seasons differ from those of Egypt. This al-Baramūsī, Kitāb al-Ibṣalmūdiyah, 68; my translation. See O. H. E. Khs-Burmester, The Horologion of the Egyptian Church: Coptic and Arabic Text from a Mediaeval Manuscript (Studia Orientalia Christiana,d Aegyptiaca; Cairo: Edizioni del Centro Francescano di Studi Orientali Cristiani, 1973). 20 ʿAbd al-Masīḥ Ṣalīb, Ⲡⲓϫⲱⲙ ⲛⲧⲉ ⲡⲓⲉⲩⲭⲟⲗⲟⲅⲓⲟⲛ ⲉⲑⲟⲩⲁⲃ ⲉⲧⲉ ⲫⲁⲓ ⲡⲉ ⲡⲓϫⲱⲙ ⲛⲧⲉ ϯϣⲟⲙϯ ⲛⲁⲛⲁⲫⲟⲣⲁ ⲛⲧⲉ ⲡⲓⲁⲅⲓⲟⲥ ⲃⲁⲥⲓⲗⲓⲟⲥ ⲛⲉⲙ ⲡⲓⲁⲅⲓⲟⲥ ⲅⲣⲏⲅⲟⲣⲓⲟⲥ ⲛⲉⲙ ⲡⲓⲁⲅⲓⲟⲥ ⲕⲩⲣⲓⲗⲗⲟⲥ ⲛⲉⲙ ϩⲁⲛⲕⲉⲉⲩⲭⲏ ⲉⲩⲟⲩⲁⲃ (The book of the Holy Euchologion, which is the book of the three Anaphoras of Saint Basil and Saint Gregory and Saint Cyril, and other holy prayers) (Cairo: ʿAyn Shams, 1902), 349. 21 Ibid.,  350. 22 Ibid. 18 19

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combined litany is a recent composition approved for use outside Egypt by the Holy Synod (the hierarchical governing body of the Church). Most notable in all of these prayers is the concluding qualification of reliance on God for their fulfillment. In this prayer, there is an explicit interweaving between the agricultural and liturgical aspects of the Coptic ethos suggested in this project. It is God who brings the seasons to fruition; it is God who controls the waters, winds, crop yield, and fertility of the land; and it is God who brings all of “them to perfection in peace without harm” as a sign of “compassion on His creation which His hands have made.”23 This is further reflected in the second part of the prayer, which continues after a unique interjection by the congregation of a thrice-repeated “Lord have mercy.”24 This continuation is an interweaving between agricultural reliance on God for physical sustenance and reliance on God for spiritual sustenance. It is hard to distinguish between the two and it is not clear whether they are meant to be distinguished. Portions of this prayer read as follows: “Prepare it for sowing and harvesting. Manage our lives as deemed fit.” “For the eyes of everyone wait upon You, for You give them their food in due season.” “O You who give food to all flesh. Fill our hearts with joy and gladness.”25 The juxtaposition of material and spiritual requests suggests a collapsing between, or at least an intimacy of, the two. It is a “sufficiency in everything always” that grants us the grace to “abound in every good deed.”26 It is God who grants both material and spiritual goods, and each is the cause of the other with God as their ultimate Cause. Copts’ agricultural experiences are thus not disconnected from their liturgical ones, a fact that is evident in a number of other liturgical prayers, reminding the church that agriculture serves as a root of faith. If there are blessings to the land, it is never considered a reflection of the people but of God who hears the prayers of and cares for His people. As co-stewards with God, both through liturgical life and a sort of agricultural asceticism, believers can find agriculture as an opportunity to strengthen faith and for synergistic participation with God in ensuring the health of the land. Finally, the Lenten liturgical season serves as a component of the yearly Coptic liturgical cycle that effectively cultivates ecological consciousness. Before celebrating the liturgy on a Lenten weekday, and while in complete abstinence from food until late hours of the afternoon and early evening, the faithful complete many prostrations while incanting “Lord have mercy.” Similar to the liturgical prayers, a number of requests are made for all components of agricultural life. One petition even requests “the salvation of men and animals.”27 The theology of the Coptic Church does not profess the salvation of animals in the same way as the salvation of humans, and the petition here refers to “salvation” in the sense of safety and preservation, with no utility implied.28 The Church does not ask for the salvation of animals for an abundance of meat on feast days, for example, or for Ibid. 114, 116; translation from The Divine Liturgy: The Anaphoras of Saints Basil, Gregory, and Cyril, 2nd ed. (Los Angeles, CA: Coptic Orthodox Diocese of the Southern United States, 2007), 205–6. 24 This is one of the few times in the divine liturgies that the phrase “Lord have mercy” is repeated three consecutive times in response to a litany. See ʿAbd al-Masīḥ Ṣalīb, Ⲡⲓϫⲱⲙ ⲛⲧⲉ ⲡⲓⲉⲩⲭⲟⲗⲟⲅⲓⲟⲛ, 350. 25 ʿAbd al-Masīḥ Ṣalīb, Ⲡⲓϫⲱⲙ ⲛⲧⲉ ⲡⲓⲉⲩⲭⲟⲗⲟⲅⲓⲟⲛ, 116–18; The Divine Liturgy, 207. 26 ‘Abd al-Masīḥ Ṣalīb, Ⲡⲓϫⲱⲙ ⲛⲧⲉ ⲡⲓⲉⲩⲭⲟⲗⲟⲅⲓⲟⲛ, 118. 27 Ibid.,  524. 28 Massoud, Spirituality of the Holy Psalmody, 49–50. The liturgy of St. Basil uses this same word, and the most frequently cited publication reads “salvation.” See The Divine Liturgy, 202–3. The prayer here is in Coptic, and the word used for salvation is ⲥⲱⲧⲏⲣⲓⲁⲥ, which is normally translated as “salvation” (etymological relation to “soteriology”), but has often been translated as “safety” in this particular liturgical instance. See The Coptic Liturgy of St. Basil, Including Raising of Incense, 4th ed. (Sydney: Coptic Orthodox Sunday School, NSW, 1998), 23

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the successful fertility and subsequent slaughter of herds. The salvation of animals needs no qualification because it is a good in and of itself as part of God’s creation. Similar sentiments are conveyed in the evening litanies of Holy Week, or the Week of Suffering as it is referred to by Copts in Arabic. Here the priest asks the Lord to “protect Your people from the flood of the sea of this passing world. Lift away from them every hateful thing and likewise also from all the animals. Provide sustenance also to all the birds, for you give nourishment to the cattle and sustenance to the young ravens.”29 Dozens of other examples that show the symbiosis of humans and nonhuman creation can be cited, such as the request to “give joy to the face of the earth, and sustain us, the human race”30 and “to grant prosperity to His [God’s] people and the animals.”31 Often believers will demonstrate their faith in God and care for His creation by making very specific environmental requests such as, in one instance, for the blessing of beehives.32 All these examples, while significant in their own right, point to a greater effect. The frequent attendance and participation of the overwhelming majority of Copts at liturgical prayers contribute to the cultivation of an ecological awareness that can often become embedded both consciously and subconsciously. If daily prayer becomes an insincere or legalistic habit, the weekly rites disrupt the comfort that leads to complacency. Further, when weekly celebrations risk monotony, the yearly liturgical rites unsettle any deleterious familiarity. In this way the liturgical ethos of Copts is a fundamental contributor to the ecological character of what would be a Coptic politeia. The aim of this liturgical ethos is the formation of communities that are not only ecologically minded but also proactive, able to impact their immediate environment and those of surrounding communities, locally and globally. There are two communities in particular that in embodying this liturgical ethos have proven their efficacy in bringing about real and significant ecological change.

COMMUNAL INSTANTIATIONS OF THE COPTIC LITURGICAL ETHOS The Zabbālīn and Garbage Dreams One such community is located on the Mokkatam Hills of Cairo, Africa’s largest and fastest-growing city with an expanding population of eighteen million.33 Those who belong 91–92. See also Fr. Shenouda Anba Bishoy, ed., The Liturgies of the Coptic Orthodox Church, 4th ed. (Hinsdale, IL: St. Mark and St. Bishoy Coptic Orthodox Church, 1987), 63–4. Lastly, one of the most frequently used sources, especially before the Southern Diocese publication was released, is The Coptic Liturgy of St. Basil (Victaville, CA: St. John the Beloved Publishing House, 1992). All of these sources translate the word as “safety.” 29 The word I have translated here as “nourishment” can also be translated as “livelihood.” This word carries a connotation as a type of divine livelihood, that is, an earned wage whose source is God. Certainly the overarching point is that God provides what animals need, but the implications of using this word is an elevated respect for the animals to which they refer. See Fīlūthāūs al-Maqārī, Barnābā al-Baramūsī, and Mīkhā’īl Ǧirǧis, Kitab̄ dallal̄ wa tartib̄ gǔ mʿat alal̄am̄ wa ʿid̄ al-fisḥ ̣ al-magǐ d̄ hạsab taqlid̄ wa tartib̄ al-kanis̄a al-qibtịyya al-urtu̱d̄u̱ksiyya (The book of the guide and order of the week of suffering and the glorious feast of pascha according to the tradition and order of the Coptic Orthodox Church) (Cairo: Maṭba‘at al-šams, 1920), 100. 30 Ibid., 101; my translation. 31 This is found in the daytime litanies of Holy Week. The word that I have translated as “prosperity” here for stylistic reasons would be rendered “success” in a more literal translation. The awkwardness of granting “success” to animals, however, bolsters my emphasis on the respect given to nonhuman creation, similar to the note above. See ibid., 107. 32 Ibid.,  102. 33 Historically and according to Coptic tradition, this mountain is so important to Copts that the Advent fast was extended from forty to forty-three days because of a miracle that occurred at the end of the tenth century

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to this entirely Christian community are known as the Zabbālīn, or “garbage people,” because more than 95 percent of this approximately sixty-thousand-person community are responsible for Cairo’s garbage collection and recycling.34 These garbagers work every day to bring Cairo’s garbage on trucks and on carts drawn by donkeys, carrying over four thousand tons of garbage daily to their hometown.35 They have achieved the “highest ratio of recycled material in Africa and the Middle East” and have been cited as “the world’s most effective recycling program.”36 Eighty percent of all the garbage collected is used as recyclable material, and the other 20 percent is used as fodder for animals. This is while “western cities would boast of a 30% recycling rate.”37 These efforts have gained international recognition largely through the efforts of producer, director, and cinematographer Mai Iskander and her documentary Garbage Dreams, which brought these realities to the attention of the international community. At the heart of the documentary is the potential imposition of the globalization and modernization of this community’s trade, despite having advanced far beyond most modern “green” projects. This threat would render a recycling rate of 20 percent, leaving the rest to rot in landfills.38 While the documentary does a good job of bringing these ecological threats to the limelight, Iskander is unable to do so without highlighting aspects of the Coptic politeia generally and of the Coptic liturgical ethos specifically. The work of the garbage people is intimately tied to their faith, believing that God sees their sincerity, hard work, physical toil, prayer-filled lives, ecological mindedness, and liturgical life. God is the one in whose hands they are protected and for which they are cared. They do not see their jobs as a curse but a blessing, an opportunity to give back to God and His creation. They are described by many as a community that is fulfilled and peaceful, despite their seemingly unfortunate circumstances.39 They see no divide between their ecological concerns and their religious lives. The Zabbālīn embody the prayers mentioned above in which the intimacy between dedicated care for creation and devotion to God are unavoidable. In their spiritual discipline and ecological endeavors, the Zabbālīn, in their torn clothes and miasma of garbage, offer the world an aromatic breath of opportunity and a rich tapestry of integrated life that challenges all communities today.

that saved the lives of the Copts living there. Watson, Among the Copts, 31. See also Jeannette Catsoulis, “The Struggles of Cairo’s ‘Garbage People,’ but No Whining,” New York Times, January 6, 2010, C7. 34 In the absence of municipal facilities, the more accurate translation of Zabbālīn than “garbage collectors” is “garbagers” or “garbage people.” The latter is cited by Catsoulis. Additionally, “garbage collectors” conveys a more commercialized, westernized system, whereas the reality remains that the Zabbālīn are at odds with such systems. Mai Iskander’s documentary presents these infiltrating westernized systems that recycle at a rate of approximately thirty-percent as a threat to the superior system of the Zabbālīn. Verena von Pfetten, “Raised in the Trash Trade: Lessons in Recycling from Cairo’s Slums,” Huffington Post, March 6, 2009, https://www. huffingtonpost.in/entry/raised-in-the-trash-trade_n_163563. 35 Mai Iskander, Garbage Dreams, http://garbagedreams.com. 36 Watson, Among the Copts, 32. Catsoulis, “The Struggles of Cairo’s ‘Garbage People,’ but No Whining.” 37 Public Broadcasting Service, “PBS, Independent Lens: Garbage Dreams,” http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/ garbage-dreams/recycling.html. 38 Iskander, Garbage Dreams. 39 See Watson, Among the Copts, 32, where he attests to this peace and fulfillment in the community. This same theme runs throughout Mai Iskander’s Garbage Dreams documentary. Anecdotally, Fr. Moises Bogdady, with whom the author has ministered for nearly two decades at a Coptic Orthodox church in New Jersey, served in the city of the Zabbālīn for more than a decade and repeatedly makes remarkable claims of the deep peace and joy of this inspirational community.

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The Anaphora Retreat Center Another good example of an embodiment of the Coptic liturgical ethos is the Anaphora Retreat Center that covers one hundred and twenty acres in Upper Egypt. The retreat center’s website makes clear the intertwining of the center’s liturgical ethos and ecological consciousness: Anaphora was inspired by the spirituality of the monastic life … Anaphora is a place where people from all over the world come to find inner peace, tranquility, and relaxation. All other areas are illuminated by candles and solar lighting. Anaphora is funded by donations and is an organic farm that aims at self–sufficiency. Visitors can choose to stay in communal housing or individual cells. You can choose to enjoy various activities available including farming, prayer, daily mass, social gatherings around the fire, candle making or choose to experience the quiet solitude of this desert retreat.40 Due to the limited published information on this retreat center, I set up an interview with the visionary behind the creation of Anaphora, Bishop Thomas of the Coptic Orthodox Diocese of el-Qusiya and Meir in Upper Egypt. He successfully cultivated a haven that fosters diversity, ecological awareness, and Christianity never before seen in such a capacity. Each day begins early with the Midnight Praise, discussed in some detail above, followed by the Divine Liturgy. In the church at the Anaphora Center, liturgical services, including the serene and meditative evening prayers from the Book of Hours (Agpeya), run only on candlelight, without any electricity. The bishop describes the beginning of each day as a focus on life itself, on the inner person. Anaphora, as its name implies, is aimed at the “lifting up” of the person. At this facility, liturgical prayer lies at the center of humanity’s very care for nature. Cultivating true Christian love in the liturgy has a direct effect on the ecological well-being of any given land. “The more tenderness that human beings have toward nature,” noted Bishop Thomas, “the more productivity and friendship, and [the more of an] expression of goodness nature will have for us.” Thomas goes on to assert that plants and animals feel, and we as humans must respect these feelings. Our love impacts animals, plants, and all of nature. It is our duty not only to pray for creation, as we do in liturgy, but also to be proactive in light of these prayers. After breakfast, they gather for a diverse community meeting to discuss international news, especially ecologically focused items. The center offers field programs to teach farming techniques in concert with eco-theology. Bishop Thomas explains that since humans should “live in partnership with nature,” they must cultivate a relationship of love and respect with nature. People “need to nurture the desert,” he says, citing an emphasis on recycling, composting, and permaculture. “This is a responsibility; this is not a luxury. It is the responsibility of every Christian as the image of God.” The bishop goes on to explain that there exists a potentiality in humans that is expressed theologically as human “likeness to,” in comparison to “image of,” God. Humans are all given the image of God, but the realization of “likeness to God” depends on our actions in concert with God’s grace. In other words, the fulfillment of our transformation as Christians depends on our relationship with all of creation. “We are to be friends with nature, not to consume nature, not to use nature … At Anaphora we are teaching people the importance of ecotheology. It is our responsibility toward nature.” Similar to the ecological consciousness Bishop Thomas, “Anaphora Retreat: About Us,” Anaphora Retreat Center, https://bishopthomas.wordpress. com/about-us/. 40

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developed in the community of the Zabbālīn, Bishop Thomas states that at this center, there is absolutely no garbage. “Garbage,” he asserts, “means that something is not in the right place.” Before the creation of such retreat centers, the only source of such an environment of solitude, prayer, liturgy, agriculture, and self-sustenance would be monasteries. Anaphora could be considered a refined version of these monastic prototypes with a focus on serving laity explicitly. The ecological consciousness developed as part of the Coptic liturgical ethos, as Bishop Thomas emphasized repeatedly, continues to drive interest in this ecological haven, an interest evidenced by the estimated sixty thousand people who retreat to the center annually. The Coptic liturgical ethos is thus shown effective in creating communities whose religious concerns are not only tied to their ecological concerns but in fact serve as the ecological fountainhead of these concerns.

CONCLUSION: A COPTIC POLITEIA? In this chapter I have attempted to briefly demonstrate ways in which living a life immersed in the Coptic Orthodox liturgy, which I have termed a Coptic liturgical ethos, can create individuals and communities that are ecologically conscious. This ethos is only one component, though potentially the most important component, of what I would call a broader Coptic politeia. A fuller study of the Coptic politeia, which I have avoided replacing with “way of life” to prevent its misinterpretation as a mere set of actions or prescriptions, would present the intertwining of an integrated and God-oriented ethic characteristic of Orthodox Christianity. I have four brief suggestions in addition to the Coptic liturgical ethos for further research on this Coptic Orthodox politeia. The first component of this politeia is the centrality of a monastic and ascetic framework that seamlessly mends action and contemplation, the physical and the spiritual. The second component is a focus on self-sustenance. The efficient work ethic that undergirds this component is grounded in Scripture, especially ideals of poverty and economical labor, both of which prove beneficial ecologically in a community. The third component is an agricultural climate that harmonizes faith and agriculture, whose marriage points to a co-stewardship between land and humans. The fourth component is fasting, which brings about detachment and self-realization. This in turn enables one to act in accordance with the ecological actions to which one may either be naive or for which one may be unable to change her or his ways. The last component, and the only component presented substantially though not exhaustively in this chapter, is a liturgical ethos. The Coptic Orthodox liturgy, as I have presented it, consists not only in the celebration of the Eucharist but also in the daily prayers of the Agpeya, the Midnight Praise, and in other prayers such as those of Holy Week. At least three different elements of Coptic liturgy work to cultivate ecological awareness. The first is a reminder by the church that time is precious and mindfulness is crucial. The time to respond to the challenges that most urgently confront our world is now. The second is that this reminder begins with participation in the liturgy that makes humans aware of their nature as co-worshippers with the rest of creation. The ecotheology presented in the liturgy convicts participants of their essential place in the safety and salvation of the world. The third and final element is that the repeated daily, weekly, and yearly cycling of these prayers engrains in its adherents an ecological awareness that becomes part and parcel of Christian life.

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The significance of the Coptic liturgical ethos, and by inference, of a Coptic politeia, is manifested in the communities of the Zabbālīn of the Mokattam Hills and by the community of the Anaphora Retreat Center in Upper Egypt. The ability of these people to establish communities whose ecological impact surpasses those of most modern green projects, Eastern or Western, speaks to the potential within Coptic Orthodox Christianity to impact contemporary environmental ethics and to establish a theological foundation for ecological awareness. At the core of the ecological success of these communities is a primary focus on relation and unity with God, within community, shaped by Scripture and liturgy, and done in love of others and thereby in emulation of God. In this way, Coptic Orthodoxy offers the world examples by which to transform the ecological face of any land by first transforming the people therein.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

A Case Study for Lived Religion-and-Science Theology of Urban Ecology LEA F. SCHWEITZ

What if projects in religion-and-science began from the embodied, practical questions that engage church people in their everyday lives?1 What if more projects in religion-andscience were pursued specifically with the aim of strengthening and building up Christian churches?2 These opening questions begin this chapter with the aim of provocation. However, it is provocation with a purpose. In order to ensure we begin with both the provocation and the purpose intended, three claims must be attended to at the start. First, these opening questions are not intended to ignore the Christian “bias” from which much of the work in religion-and-science has issued.3 Many of the systemic frameworks and operating assumptions of the field of religion-and-science about what religion is and how it works has its origin story in white, English-speaking, mainline Protestantism. Important work is being done to bring religion-and-science to its fullest and best interfaith, global, and multiracial expression.4 The opening questions in this chapter stand next to and support moves in religion-and-science to continue in these critical directions. Second, the opening questions are not intended to disparage the excellent work in the deep, conceptual foundations from which the field of religion-and-science has been built: evolution, divine agency, methodological models of interaction,5 the ontology of Religion-and-science, with hyphens, follows Philip Hefner’s designation, and it parallels some of the developments he recommends for embodied science in religion-and-science. Philip Hefner, “Embodied Science: Recentering Religion-and-Science,” Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 45, no. 1 (2010): 251–63. 2 There are others asking these questions, as well. In print, there are examples like Leonard Hummel and Gayle Woloschak, Chance, Necessity, Love: An Evolutionary Theology of Cancer (Eugene: OR: Wipf and Stock, 2017), and Greg Coostona, Mere Science and Christian Faith: Bridging the Divide with Emering Adults (Westmont, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2018). In addition, there are online groups like Biologos (www.biologos.org) and Science for the Church (www.scienceforthechurch.org). 3 Peter Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Science (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 4 As one example, the collection of essays included in the Routledge Companion to Religion and Science include contributions that move in some of these directions: James W. Haag, Gregory R. Peterson, Michael L. Spezio, The Routledge Companion to Religion and Science (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011). 5 Robert Russell, Time in Eternity: Pannenberg, Physics, and Eschatology in Creative Mutual Insteraction (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012). 1

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theological anthropology,6 and cognitive sciences of religious belief and behavior.7 Each has made key contributions; the field of religion-and-science was built on the bedrock of this academic micro-niche. The opening questions of this chapter stand gratefully on the shoulders of those founding scholars and the research that make it possible to do religion-and-science. Third, the questions asked here are not new. “People in the pews” ask them every time they wonder how to form faithful disciples from people who are struggling with anxiety or who received a diagnosis of cancer or infertility. Lived religion-and-science questions emerge at the intersection of technology and worship. Seriously, have you ever been in a church discussion about the use of projectors? They are persistent for families who need evidence-based help to navigate best spiritual practices for aging parents and raising teenagers. They are transformative for communities seeking ways to make systemic changes in poverty and food scarcity and mass incarceration for the sake of the Gospel. The purpose of this chapter’s opening questions is to provoke religion-and-science to take more seriously these everyday, lived questions in the lives of Christian churches in order to carve out another micro-niche in the field: lived religion-and-science.8 With these concerns named, the opening questions resurface: “What if projects in religion-and-science began from the embodied, practical questions that engage church people in their everyday lives? What if projects in religion-and-science were pursued specifically with the aim of strengthening and building up Christian churches?” Lived religion-and-science does not begin from abstract “anywheres” with questions raised by anonymous “anyones.” Lived religion-and-science issues from the stories and questions of specific someones in particular places. As such, the priority is on those stories and places. Lived religion-and-science takes a narrative, place-based approach. Furthermore, lived religion-and-science for the church, as asked in the opening questions, additionally trains its sights on practices. Lived religion-and-science is practice-focused with a guiding norm to develop pragmatic, transformative actions for the wellness and wholeness of individuals, churches, and their communities. In the remainder of this chapter, I will argue through one sample case study for the relevance and coherence of a lived religion-andscience micro-niche as a way to do religion-and-science. The case study will be a snapshot of the narrative, place-based, practice-focused approach of a lived religion-and-science. My case study comes out of questions raised by urban seminary students for the sake of their own spiritual formation and the faith formation of their future congregations. While teaching at a Lutheran seminary in Chicago, my predominantly white, Christian students struggled to connect with the God they confessed each week through the urban nature in their neighborhoods. Where is God in concrete, complex urban ecologies? Theologically rich insights were available from experiences with their human neighbors or far off National Parks, but God the Creator seemed to have forsaken the city-wild. Religion-and-science has drawn on the “two books” framework to support scientifically engaged Christian theology. The claim is that humans may know God through both the “Book of Nature” and the “Book of Scripture.” However, my students and many church folks in urban congregations have not been able to hear God through the “Book Philip Hefner, The Human Factor: Evolution, Culture, and Religion (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000) David Leech and Aku Visala, “The Cognitive Science of Religion: Implications for Theism?,” Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 46, no. 1 (2011): 47–64, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9744.2010.01157.x. 8 Willis Jenkins, “Doing Theological Ethics with Incompetent Christians: Social Problems and Religious Creativity,” in Lived Theology: New Perspectives on Method, Style, and Pedagogy, ed. Charles Marsh, Peter Slade, and Sarah Azaransky (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 54–66. 6 7

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of Nature” in the city. The aim here is not to solve the problem of city folks’ theological and spiritual alienation from nature. Rather, this problem will be the model for the lived religion-and-science for which this chapter advocates. It is Christianity and science for the church. In order to do that, I want to introduce Quercus.

A CASE STUDY: LEARNING TO READ THE “BOOK OF URBAN NATURE” Quercus is an aptly named oak tree. Her name, “Quercus,” is the Latin genus name for the oak trees. She lives in the Hyde Park neighborhood on the south side of the city of Chicago. From where she stands, she can see a statue of Carolus Linnaeus, the eighteenthcentury Swedish botanist credited with the system of naming that allows me to christen her “Quercus.” Quercus towers above the soccer field, carpet grass lawns on the University of Chicago campus. She drops acorns on the cars that park in her shadow. Her leaves probably whisper in the wind, but when I look up to the sky through her canopy, I usually hear sirens and helicopters from the nearby hospital. In the beginning, these unremarkable features didn’t capture my attention. It is easy to miss this oak tree for the concrete jungle. Over the years, she has become a companion species to me. She is more like kin than potential kindling. Even her name is like my grandmothers’ names: Ruby, Maxine, Doris. Quercus is the kind of name that echoes from another generation, hinting at her age without giving it away. My toddler practiced his first wobbly tree-climbing steps on Quercus. My older boy learned to inchworm up her lower branches to do impressions of squirrels – or Spiderman. And, Quercus has one hammock-shaped bough where I sometimes sit in an arboreal hug of her gnarly outstretched branches. The vibrancy of this tree resists what theologian Sallie McFague calls the arrogant gaze.9 Quercus resists attempts to mute her being into an object of the built environment. She frustrated my photographer. After several photo shoots, it was clear that there was no angle from which to capture her. The experience of her is greater; the phenomenology exceeds the photography. Getting to know Quercus’s city-worn leaves and saturated urban soundscape opened up a window to problem of lived religion-and-science. Quercus is now rooted in our family tree; she is a satellite in my orbit of concern, not simply an object of my nature-loving gaze. So, when storms tear through the Chicagoland area, I call my mother, and I check on Quercus in the hope of finding all her branches intact and her bark unscathed by lightning strikes. Knowing this tree has changed me; she didn’t just catch my gaze. Now, she holds a piece of my heart. Her roots ground me in the reminder that my life is held by something bigger than myself. Here is an example of how to read the “Book of Nature” devotionally. Knowing Quercus’s story and how her story connects to mine and to God is one chapter in the art of reading the “Book of Urban Nature.” In the devotional aspect, personal experience is drawn into a deep engagement with urban nature. It models poet Mary Oliver’s instructions for living a life: “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”10 It is where one’s personal experience in nature takes the foreground while connecting to something bigger than Sallie McFague, Super, Natural Christians: How We Should Love Nature (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1997), 33–6. 10 Mary Oliver, “Sometimes,” in Red Bird (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2008), 35–8. 9

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oneself. Sometimes this takes the form of gentle noticing; sometimes it is astonishment and wonder; and sometimes it is more tragedy and lament.11 The devotional reading is only the beginning; without additional social, ecological, and theological readings, the “Book of Nature” is not robust enough to tackle the problem of faith formation with which this case study began. The social reading itself has two forms: the historical (or structural) and the communal. The social readings place Quercus in the historical and systemic or structural streams that make it possible for us to know her now. It asks questions like: What is the history of the people in this place? What historical forces conspired to make this land what it is? What systemic forces (of power, race, and economy, for example) sustain the current shape of this place? What came before? And, what is it “in-between”? Quercus is in all likelihood the oldest tree in the city of Chicago. She is at least 265 years old—and counting. That puts her germination date at around 1752: before the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783); before the death of Carl Linnaeus (1778); before Chicago’s founder Jean Baptist Point du Sable was homesteading, farming, and trading at the mouth of the nearby Chicago River (1780); before Chicago’s official incorporation (1837); before the end of the US Civil War (1865); before the urban planning for the great “South Park” (which includes the Midway Plaissance, the green space where she lives) (1871); before the founding of the University of Chicago (1890) or the World’s Columbian Exposition (1893). Quercus holds Chicago her heartwood. She knew Chicago before it was the windy city or the white city, and as an insider, she knows these names do not refer just to the weather or the World’s Fair architecture or the (in)famous amusement parks.12 She survived the merger of the separate but financially insolvent independent city park administrations into the Chicago Park District, which is the organization that cares for her today (1934).13 She stayed in a neighborhood—and city—where systemic racist practices like redlining carved up the city. Quercus stayed while whites moved to the suburbs and black and brown people were denied lending and housing opportunities during the so-called urban renewal led by the University of Chicago during the 1950s and challenged by Martin Luther King Jr.’s Chicago Campaign for Fair Housing (1966). Quercus knows the before and the after of the air quality since the Little Village Environmental Justice organization helped shut down two of the nation’s largest and dirtiest coal plants, located just ten miles away (2012).14 The history of the city runs through her roots. The social reading has another axis. We accounted for her historical “befores,” but what about her social “betweens?” Her name puts her between an ambiguous Linnean legacy: on the one side stands all of modern taxonomy with Linneaus as the founder; he is a grand master of the system that organizes the natural world, including humans. On the other side of the Linnean legacy is the system that extended to humans and a

This range of responses aims to take seriously some of the critiques made by Lisa Sideris against unrealistic, unscientific, and romanticized versions of wonder that science sometimes inspires. See her Consecrating Science: Wonder, Knowledge, and the Natural World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017). 12 See, e.g., Evan Andrews, “Why is Chicago called the ‘Windy City’?,” last modified September 1, 2018, https:// www.history.com/news/why-is-chicago-called-the-windy-city; and the national best seller, Eric Larson, Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America (New York: Vintage, 2004). 13 Chicago Park District, “Midway Plaisance Park,” https://www.chicagoparkdistrict.com/parks-facilities/midwayplaisance-park. Accessed February 17, 2020. 14 Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, “Coal Plant Shutdown,” http://www.lvejo.org/our accomplishments/coal-plant-shutdown/. Accessed February 17, 2020. 11

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classification of our species into American, European, Asian, African, and Monstrous.15 The Linnean legacy buds into a name like Quercus and a racist classification of the human species based on confused combination of place of origin, skin color, and social/cultural/ emotional features. Before and between are ambiguous places to be; social readings of the “Book of Urban Nature” begin to knit devotional readings into a larger story told by historians and social scientists. The social reading includes other “betweens” as well—not just historical ones but communal ones. One example of this was hinted at in my devotional reading. In the communal reading, the shared experiences of this tree with my kids take the foreground. Quercus stands between me and my family, between us and the history of practices that let us buy a condo a few blocks away. Quercus was between me and a group of students I took on an urban nature walking tour of the neighborhood. Alongside the devotional, there is the expansive social reading that places Quercus in the longer histories of family, community, neighborhood, city, nation, and planet. Next, there is the ecological reading. It asks questions like: What is the ecology of this place? What evolutionary forces conspired to make this land and its flora and fauna what they are? What are the environmental challenges of this ecological community? What would it look like and what would it take for this ecological community to thrive? In Chicago, humans are tributaries of Lake Michigan. Our drinking water comes from there—and our, ahem, “waste,” flows into the Chicago River with every heavy rain or massive snowmelt. After a heavy rain, stormwater and sewage overwhelm sanitation systems and dump both into the Chicago River and sometimes Lake Michigan. In Chicago, humans are anthropological tributaries of the Lake. We are human extensions of the watershed. Quercus is an arboreal tributary of the Lake and part of the Mississippi watershed. Urban trees, like Quercus, are both arboreal tributaries of the watershed and arboreal aquaducts.16 The water of the region runs through trees like Quercus and is carried upward by them. They take water from the soil with their roots, carry it leaf-ward through the sponge-like sapwood, to refresh each and every leaf, unless the water hitches a ride out with fresh oxygen produced in photosynthesis. As such, urban trees are the natural air conditioners and air filters of the city.17 Tree life in the city is not a walk in the park.18 There are power lines and traffic lights— in Quercus’s case, the Chicago Park District trims her branches to keep them out of the way of medical helicopters landing nearby. And there is pollution. There is not enough sun, and there are too many bugs and diseases (and not enough biodiversity to slow either down). The soil is compromised by compaction and the winter runoff from salted streets and sidewalks. There also are the humans who have the sense that city trees are like park benches, just a piece of furniture to move around. Under conditions like these, most urban trees last around five years; Quercus is a survivor. The ecological reading takes in these ecological features of the “Book of Urban Nature.” In Quercus’s case, an ecological reading may also expand to take into account the ecological features of the urban forest and the underground connections Quercus has Justin E. H. Smith, Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference: Race in Early Modern Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 136–8. 16 Beatrix Beisner, Christian Messier, and Luc-Alain Giraldeau, “Arboreal Aquaducts,” in Nature All Around Us: A Guide to Urban Ecology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 10–15. 17 Ibid.,  120–3. 18 Peter Wohlleben, Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate, Discoveries from a Secret World (Berkeley, CA: Greystone Books, 2015), 174–9. 15

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with her tree neighbors or the evolutionary history that makes Oak trees worthy of an energy-star label for water efficiency. Finally, there is the theological reading, which asks: “Where is God in all of this?” From a Lutheran theological perspective (which is the one from which I write), one answer is that God is in, with, and under all of this. Luther had an uncanny ability for seeing God in everyday things—bread, water, wine, work of all kinds (or vocations). Quercus, then, also can be read as participating in a Lutheran sacramental view of nature, which, as Luther wrote, finds God “in, with, and under all things.”19 The sacramental view of nature rings through the Psalmist’s claims that the heavens tell of the glory of God and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork (Ps 19: 1, 4). Cynthia Moe-Lobeda cites Luther’s sermons proclaiming the same. Luther writes, “ ‘… the power of God … must be essentially present in all places even in the tiniest leaf.’ God ‘is in and through all creatures, in all their parts and places, so that the world is full of God and God [He, sic] fills all ….’ ”20 “ ‘Christ … fills all things … Christ is around us and in us in all places … he is present in all creatures, and I might find him in stone, in fire, in water…’ ”21 Quercus, too, joins the tiniest leaves, stones, fire, and water as places where we find God dwelling in, with, and under creation. However, it isn’t just Quercus. God’s indwelling dwells in less immediately wondrous or beautiful or awe-inspiring places. If God dwells throughout creation, then the sacramental view applies to Superfund worthy sites like the abandoned Acme Coke Plant and its crumbling brick oven monuments to Chicago’s steel industry as well as the restored wet prairies and vernal ponds of the marsh located just down the road. The sacramental view of nature applies to Lake Michigan and to the Chicago River—which was reverse engineered to flow backwards and which Chicagoans still dye green for St. Patrick’s Day. As such, the sacramental view of nature does not allow for an easy romanticism of nature. Creation, even and especially, as a place of God’s indwelling, remains a mask. As humans are simultaneously saint and sinner, God is paradoxically hidden and revealed. These are some of the theological aspects that sustain a Lutheran theological reading of the “Book of Urban Nature,” and it is part of what makes this particular reading a Lutheran one. Together, these four readings, the devotional, social, ecological, and theological, give back access and connection to nature in the city and beyond. They are a way to address the problem that emerged from my urban seminary students seeking to know God, the Creator in the city and to grow spiritually in connection with the nature in their neighborhoods. The solution draws on devotional practices, theological traditions, and current, credible scientific understandings of the ecologies and histories that shape these urban places. Other problems that emerge while engaging a lived religion-and-science approach will likely require other readings and other ways to yoke religion-and-science

David M. Rhoads, “A Theology of Creation: Foundations for an Eco-Reformation,” in Eco-Reformation: Grace and Hope for a Planet in Peril, eds. Lisa E. Dahill and James B. Martin-Schramm (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2016), 9. 20 Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, “A Haunting Contradiction, Hope, and Moral-Spiritual Power,” in Eco Reformation: Grace and Hope for a Planet in Peril, ed. Lisa E. Dahill and James B. Martin-Schramm (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2016), 47, citing Luther in “That These Words of Christ, ‘This is My Body,’ etc., Still Stand Firm against the Fanatics,” in Word and Sacrament III, ed. Robert H. Fisher (Luther’s Works 37:3–150; Philadelphia, PA: Muhlenberg, 1961), 57, 59. 21 Ibid., 47, citing Luther in “The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ—Against the Fanatics,” in Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, ed. Timothy F. Lull (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1989), 314–40. 19

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for the sake of the problem at hand. Consistent across the problems is the priority on lived problems and the place-based framework.

PLACE-BASED In the lived religion-and-science case study for this chapter, the place-based framework takes into account the particularities of place. In this case, it is urban nature. What do I mean by urban nature? It is not the only parks that show up in Lonely Planet travel guides.22 It is Hegewisch Marsh Park, a restored marsh next to a retired landfill,23 and Burnham Nature Sanctuary, a trail/flyway path built between the eight lanes of traffic on Lake Shore Drive and the fully operational Metra railroad tracks, and Jackson Bark, an amazing makeshift dog park built by one dedicated Chicagoan on abandoned tennis courts. Equally important, urban nature is not disconnected or set apart. It is not intended to set up an urban parallel to the American exceptionalism embedded in the vision of the United States as a shining City on a Hill. These are not cities on a hill from which rural America might be disparaged. The urban nature framework for this project attempts to recognize the distinctiveness of nature in the city and its connection and dependence beyond the city. To make this point, consider one of Aesop’s fables that includes a tale of two mice: the town mouse and the country mouse. Each mouse visits the home of the other. The town mouse is taken aback at the simple ways of the country mouse, but he enjoys the quiet of the night for sound sleeping. The country mouse delights in the extravagance of the city. The sights and sounds and smells and tastes that are unavailable in the country. However, they come at a cost. There are dangers like cars and alley cats, and there is noise—and fear. Like all Aesop’s fables, this one is meant to teach a lesson. It gets cashed out in various ways. One version concludes: “Poverty with security is better than plenty in the midst of fear and uncertainty.”24 Another puts it this way: “Better beans and bacon in peace than cake and ale in fear.”25 There is much more to say about the urban chauvinism of the town mouse and the pastoral romanticism of the country mouse, and the lack of a systemic understanding of how poverty works and traumatizes. However, it is one place in children’s literature where the differences between urban and rural life are taken seriously. The growing niche in the genre of parenting books about connecting children and nature often overlook these differences. One of my favorite examples is a snappy little how-to book: I Love Dirt! 52 Examples to Help You and Your Kids Discover the Wonders of Nature.26 The author claims that these examples can be done anywhere—city, suburbs, or the country. Consider the “dirt painting” example. The activity seems harmless enough—take dirt, add water, paint on sidewalks. As a parent, I love every single thing about this activity. The mess, the creativity, the literal getting your hands dirty, the harmlessness of an art product li Lemer et al., Lonely Planet: Chicago (Franklin, TN: Lonely Planet, 2020). A Chicago Park District, “Hegewisch Marsh Park,” https://www.chicagoparkdistrict.com/parks-facilities/ hegewisch-marsh-park. Accessed February 17, 2020. 24 Library of Congress, “The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse,” http://read.gov/aesop/004.html. Accessed February 17, 2020. 25 Joseph Jacobs, The Fables of Aesop (London: Macmillan, 1894), 15–17, https://books.google.com/books?id=5 llsEPwcG2wC&pg=PR5#v=onepage&q&f=false. Accessed February 17, 2020. 26 Jennifer Ward, I Love Dirt! 52 Examples to Help You and Your Kids Discover the Wonders of Nature (Boulder, CO: Roost Books, 2008). 22 23

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that is totally public. Spiritually and theologically, I am always in favor of practices that bring us closer to our mud-human creatureliness. However, I Love Dirt! takes place in an imagined, generic landscape. When I imagine how to actually pull this off, the first problem is the dirt. In most of the places I’ve lived in the city, this would mean digging up dirt in a common yard of an apartment building. It is not impossible, but we are definitely not going to make any friends. Digging deeper, it means thinking twice about what the lead and pesticide load of the dirt we dig. In East Chicago, Indiana, less than fifteen miles from my home-dirt, the lawns of the West Calumet public housing complex included signs that read: “Do not play in the dirt or around the mulch.” Until very recently, this was home to more than one thousand people. East Chicago is a superfund site with soil samples registering lead levels at 91,000 parts per million. The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) acceptable limit for residential areas? Four hundred parts per million.27 Dirt painting here will alienate lawn-loving neighbors—and it will make kids very, very sick. At the current rate of remediation, this land will remain a superfund site for far, far too long. It simply is not the case that dirt painting can be done anywhere—city, country, or suburb. Place-based frameworks need to account for the specificity of a place and the porousness of the connections that knit one place into relationship with others. When we talk about urban nature, the nested lives of town mouse and country mouse are held together without denying the differences between the landscapes or elevating one or the other through a fabricated urban chauvinism or an overactive pastoral romanticism. City folks seem quick to forget that much of their living is built on the backs of the rural communities that support them—whether it is in the food chains that feed the city, industrial pipelines that produces its energy and products, or the land that is filled with urban waste. On the People’s Climate march, a group of Catholics carried signs: “Who’s under your carbon footprint?” Something similar must be asked of the cities: “Who’s under your urban footprint?” Furthermore, it only takes a couple generations for city folks and country folks to cross paths. Melanie Harris’s Ecowomanism connects womanist theory, method, and praxis to her family’s ecojourney as part of the Great Migration of black folks from the rural south to the cities in the north.28 In Chicago in recent decades, the so-called Urban Renewal saw white folks leave the city for the suburbs; current census data shows a so-called Black Exodus as African Americans leave the city for the South and the suburbs. The journeys of humans and families and generations should mean that our collective memory knits urban and rural communities together in a web. My focus is on urban nature, which itself is not one thing, and yet it is deeply connected to the landscapes, migration corridors, and waterways beyond the city. This is the benefit of a place-based framework. It allows the particularities of place and its deep connections beyond the particularities to be made visible. Problems in lived religion-and-science are not “place-neutral.” Where a question comes from matters. Our case study about urban nature shows this dynamic acutely, but it is a feature of all lived religion-and-science.

Abby Goodnough, “Their Soil Toxic, 1,100 Indiana Residents Scramble to Find New Homes,” New York Times, August 30, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/31/us/lead-contamination-public-housing-east-chicagoindiana.html. Accessed February 17, 2020. 28 Melanie Harris, Ecowomanism: African American Women and Earth-Honoring Faiths (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2017), 7–8. 27

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INTO THE WEEDS: PRACTICES Recall the opening questions: What if projects in religion-and-science began from the embodied, practical questions that engage church people in their everyday lives? What if more projects in religion-and-science were pursued specifically with the aim of strengthening and building up Christian churches? Thus far, we have seen two implications from exploring these questions: (1) Stories take center stage as a way to ask and to address the questions that arise from everyday experiences, and (2) The geography or landscapes of the questioning matter. Lived religion-and-science is narrative and place-based. The final aspect of lived religion-and-science is its practice focus. We return one last time to sketch the practices that emerged to support my seminary students’ deeper engagement with urban nature. After learning to read the “Book of Urban Nature” in its devotional, social, ecological, and theological modes, what’s next? What does one do after learning how to read the “Book of Nature”? The spiritual practices that emerged in the case study for this chapter are: loving gaze, giving testimony, going public, building collectives, and intellectual activism. Each practice grows out of an insight from a contemporary author. The snapshots below give a brief description of the practice and the formative insight. We’ll take each in turn. Loving Gaze: One instance of this practice is shown in the introduction of Quercus; this oak tree is seen as a subject rather than simply an object. In Sallie McFague’s Super, Natural Christians, the practice requires a conversion from knowing nature as an instrument, or object for human consumption to knowing nature as a subject with its own agency and autonomy and history. The conversion changes human relationship with nature from a subject-object model to a subject-subjects model.29 The practice itself, then, demands paying attention to nature and relating to it differently. The loving gaze asks me to see Quercus as closer to myself than to a park bench. Giving Testimony: Recent work in environmental ethics and environmental education have seen the power of story to connect humans and nature. However, not just any story will do; testimony connects the lived, embodied experience of the witness to the landscape of the story. Megan Bolen’s Feeling Power: Emotions and Education makes explicit the ways telling stories from the heart participate in systems of social control or may be sites of resistance.30 In her hands, the practice of giving testimony constitutes a key site for social and political struggle. Wonder, fear, joy, silence—each of these carry “feeling power.” Giving testimony reads spaces through this analysis of power and tells the stories of these spaces with that lens in mind. Going Public: The practice, “going public,” is an intervention in itself because it may seem as though the practices of loving gaze and giving testimony give an easy pass to the structural, systemic conditions that make these practices what they are. Going public demands that the structural evils of racism and economic injustice be made visible and made public. Colluding in their invisibility mistakingly participates in the false dualism of the personal and the public, the private and the political. With Cynthia Moe-Lobeda’s Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecological-Economic Vocation, the impact of these structural realities have to be read out of the stories of urban nature.31 Moe-Lobeda calls this practice, “critical vision”; I am calling it “going public.”

McFague, Super, Natural Christians, 36–8. Megan Bolen, Feeling Power: Emotions and Education (Abingdon: Routledge, 1999). 31 Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecological-Economic Vocation (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2013), 87. 29 30

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Building Collectives: The inspiration for this practice is Jessica Gordon-Nembhard’s Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice.32 It is an exercise to expand our economic and ecclesial imaginations to build alternate economies of local, nonhierarchical cooperatives. Like the practice of “going public,” this practice is also an intervention. In this case, however, the intervention is to see urban nature as a site for community organizing and community building rather than the achievement of an individual explorer. Intellectual Activism: Intellectual activism is trained on dismantling the conceptual architecture that supports the persistence of our disconnection from urban nature. In the case study of this chapter, this includes nature individualism and nature fundamentalism. In the former, the focus of nature experiences shift from the lone backpacker in the wilderness to the relational, cooperative collectives that experience urban nature together—community gardeners, nature mentors, urban farmers. And it is the recognition that even the solo hiker is embedded in a deeply connected and nested web of relations that make the hike possible. In nature fundamentalism, the aim is to decenter a view of nature that is too tightly linked to the absence of humans and wilderness. This is not to deny the preciousness of “wilderness” spaces, like the National Parks system, but it is to revalue the nature that grows in, with, and under human activity (and, frankly, to understand human activity itself as part of nature). The third focus falls under intellectual activism as described by Patricia Hill Collins.33 For her, this practice falls into two truthtelling modes: speaking truth to power and speaking truth to the people. This project’s narrative-based method operates primarily in the second mode. By speaking truth to the people, we hope to reimagine what nature is and where nature is so that city dwellers can engage more deeply with the nature in their urban neighborhoods. In a snapshot, these are five practices that emerged in support and in response to learning to read the “Book of Urban Nature.” Continuing to show lived religion-andscience by example, these five practices will be further described through narrative, placebased, practice-focused stories. As an example of the first three practices, let me tell you about Burham Nature Sanctuary, an edgeland hiding between Lake Shore Drive and the South Shore rail line. The “Burnham” in Burnham Nature Sanctuary remembers Daniel Burnham, Chicago’s grand architect of the vision of Chicago as “Urbs in Horto,” “City in a Garden.” Burnham set the vision that held open the lakefront as a space for the people. The Burnham plan created the great lakefront paths that ribbon the coast of the Lake Michigan from north to south, through the very heart of downtown. The “Nature” in Burnham Nature Sanctuary might be a stretch for purists. This is habitat enhancement is not restoration. The land of the sanctuary used to be water; this land is lakefill. Restoration in this place requires rewilding by re-laking. This nature is about twenty-seven acres in three passive links of a longer, wider wildlife corridor. One link is about twenty acres of woodlands, one link is three acres of savanna, and one link is two acres of prairie. What about the “Sanctuary”? Migrating birds stop over in this habitat enhancement as a place of sanctuary on their route along the Lake Michigan flyway. Native prairie plants grow here. But, sanctuary? Freight trains are not good neighbors for an avian

Jessica Gordon-Nembhard, Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2014). 33 Patricia Hill Collins, On Intellectual Activism (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2012). 32

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community, and the buckthorn constantly threatens the prairie with its own version of arboreal gentrification. For me, there has been nothing sanctuary about this place. The sheer volume of the space is like an attack on one’s ears. The constant din of traffic, punctuated by the occasional train, leaves one exhausted even from passive listening. This isn’t the distant passing of cars and the far-off train rumble and whistle of a white noise app. It’s visceral— the sound is tactile. The trains and the traffic are felt in the body. In the language of my son’s elementary school health curriculum, it is a nature experience version of “bad touch.” It is closer to assault and violation than the “good touch” of a welcome hug or a lover’s kiss. This place is not a sanctuary for my ears—or my body. I have not yet hiked these paths alone. It is an isolated corridor of green space. The volume of the place is such that even a fellow hiker would not be able to hear a scream or a call for help. A friend said that she used to walk her dog with her kids here but they got scared off by a coyote. When we walked, it was a murder of crows. My first thought was that maybe the Burnham Nature Sanctuary just isn’t supposed to be a sanctuary for people. After all, the lakefront path is on the other side of “The Drive.” Chicago’s tourism department highlights that path, the one set aside from the traffic and the trains with paved surfaces for feet, paws, and wheels. People go there. And yet, urban nature has taught me much about the gender-mandering of city spaces. So, I can’t help but be suspicious that this space has been gender-mandered, too. It’s not a sanctuary for people—and especially not for women and femmes. In this short excerpt, the practices of loving gaze, giving testimony, and going public are shown. The autonomy or subjecthood of the Nature Sanctuary is recognized; the landscape is a subject, not just an object of my arrogant gaze—even to the extent of wondering whether people belong there at all. We hear a slice of the testimony of this place, its history, its connection to the flyways and some of the feeling power of being there. All of which is connected to the structural “gender-mandering” of spaces and a making visible the question: “Sanctuary, for whom?” In this next excerpt, the practices of building collectives and intellectual activism are shown. Destiny Watford, Marilyn Baptiste, Helen Slottje, or Kimberly Wasserman are four recent winners of the Goldman Environmental Prize for North America. They are women doing the unthinkable. Watford halted the production of an enormous incinerator next to public schools in south Baltimore. Baptiste defeated one of the largest gold and copper mines in British Columbia, preventing it from destroying a lake that is a spiritual anchor in her community. Slottje provided legal services to small towns across New York to pass local bans on fracking. Wasserman shut down two of the United States’ oldest and dirtiest coal plants, both located on Chicago’s southwest side.34 This way of telling the truth distorts the stories in two important ways: the acts described here were not the work of the solitary activist, nor did they happen overnight. These leaders worked with their communities for years to build coalitions that would transform the lives of those communities from the inside out. Kimberly Wasserman made these points exquisitely clear in her keynote interview at the 2017 Wild Things Conference in Chicago. In front of nearly 1,500 people (with hundreds on the wait list), we heard about the trials and transformations of her

The Goldman Environmental Prize, “Recipient List,” https://www.goldmanprize.org/recipient-list/. Accessed February 17, 2020. 34

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community. We heard about the years of community members and activists knocking on doors and listening to the stories of neighbors. We heard about an alderman who privileged a couple thousand dollars in campaign donations over the forty-one people who died prematurely each year because of the coal plants. We heard about the Clean Power Ordinance that helped shut down the plants, and we heard about “Jardincito,” a community-designed urban nature play space. We also heard about new challenges in the neighborhood, including expansions in manufacturing that will bring more than five hundred diesel trucks near an elementary school, exacerbating the air pollution already present. It was the kind of inspired, charismatic talk that makes folks want to get involved. Even before this well-meaning group of conference goers could make a donation (which, of course, the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization would gratefully receive), sign up to volunteer, or take a tour, Wasserman asked us, What are you doing in your community? We got ours. How can you get to work in yours? In my neighborhood, we have a fledging community garden. We have been trying to get something growing—with both greater and lesser successes. I have tended to fall on the side of lesser success. The first year, there was the squash plant that colonized the entire garden; the second, there was the complete carrot crop loss. Carrots were the only things I planted. Wasserman’s question made things painfully clear: I’ve been trying to grow the wrong thing. Initially, the raised beds were installed as a way to cultivate relationships with our neighbors. The tomatoes were supposed to be secondary. The garden itself is in the Woodlawn neighborhood on Chicago’s south side. It is in between a vacant elementary school that was closed in 2013 as part of one of the largest mass school shutdowns in US history, residential homes and condo buildings, and a triplewide sidewalk known as “concrete park.” The neighbors surrounding the garden are an eclectic bunch: long-time residents, short-term renters, some who are affiliated with the nearby University of Chicago, many who are not, families in all shapes and combinations, and relatively diverse in terms of race and class. Some neighbors (like me) were enchanted by the towering row of eight-feet-tall sunflowers that flanked “concrete park”—some were not. To me, it seemed they couldn’t see the flowers for the bees. If relationships with neighbors take precedence, perhaps the sunflowers go on an extended crop rotation because in the end, we are trying to grow a meeting place. Our community garden is not a Second World War victory garden; it is a resistance garden. Resistance to the idea that difference demands polarization. Resistance to the repeated narrative that Chicago is only a war zone. Resistance to the narrative that nature is primarily for white men who can afford it. Resistance to the idea that nature is tucked away in remote wilderness rather than readily available in the concrete jungle—even when it is planted next to a “concrete park.” In the Lutheran tradition of which I am a part, it is part of the resistance to the claim that nature is a primarily a commodity. With the Lutheran World Federation, our garden proclaims: Creation is not for sale. In this short excerpt, we see examples of practices of building collectives and intellectual activism. In particular, it puts pressure on the ideas that nature is a commodity, absent human activity, and the purview of individual eco-saviors. It is a vision of the world as it might be, by expanding our economic and theological imaginations to build ecocollectives who can speak truth with, for, from, and to the people. To be clear, the five practices showcased here (loving gaze, giving testimony, going public, building collectives, intellectual activism) are not practices to recommend for lived religion-and-science in general—because there is no such thing. These five practices are

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endemic to the problems, stories, and places from which they have emerged. The practices come out of the urban nature project that began with my seminary student questions. The larger task of lived religion-and-science is to hear stories, read places, and build practices out of the problems folks face in their everyday lives in order to transform lives and lands for wellness and thriving.

LIVED RELIGION-AND-SCIENCE: A CONCLUDING REJOINDER I close with a brief rejoinder about the disciplinary location of lived religion-and-science. This is religion-and-science but not in its traditional frame. It is a blend of portraiture (social science and art),35 ecology, lived theology (with its priority to experience), feminist pedagogy (feelings are power), womanist epistemology (bodies know),36 mujerista ethics (lo cotidiano (daily life) matters),37 and amateur natural histories (experts are not the only truth-tellers).38 Lived religion-and-science pushes religion-and-science to keep today’s wicked problems (like climate racism, urbanization, and cancer) at the heart of the research, teaching, and outreach in religion-and-science. Wicked problems reach broadly into the particular lives of nearly everyone, and the marker of success is not a final formulation of the forever-true answer. Wicked problems can hope for working solutions; the best ones (that is the ones that usually work) are built and tested in community. Churches can be one such community. Lived religion-and-science problems are the kinds of problems that call all hands on deck; it is narrative-centered, place-based, and practice focus. The work of lived religionand-science is to convene hands and ensure that there is genuine belonging for those who have answered the call in order to build a better world together.

Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot and Jessica Hoffman Davis, The Art and Science of Portraiture (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1997). 36 Emilie Townes, Breaking the Fine Rain of Death: African American Health Issues and a Womanist Ethic of Care (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1998). 37 Ada María Isasi-Díaz, Mujerista Theology: A Theology for the Twenty-First Century (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996). 38 For an extended argument for this claim, see Sarah E. Fredericks and Lea F. Schweitz, “Scholars, Amateurs, and Artists as Partners for the Future of Religion and Science,” Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 50, no. 2 (2015): 418–38. 35

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CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Environmental Sciences and Christian Theology PAUL J. SCHUTZ

Ecology is an interdisciplinary science that studies the interactions of biotic and abiotic forces in concrete contexts. Given this focus, ecology is concerned above all with relationships, precisely as they subsist in particular “heres” and “nows.” Ecology’s study of these “heres” and “nows”—or, of ecosystems—analyzes the composition and function of physical and chemical forces and processes in relation to the creatures that inhabit a distinct context. The word “ecology” has roots in the Greek word oikos, meaning household. Given this etymology, we might imagine ecology as the study of how households operate, taking stock of their residents and the physical makeup of the house—rocks, streams, bees, trees, and human beings. As naturalist Aldo Leopold famously explained, ecology “enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land.”1 Seen in this way, all reality is ecological, forming one great household on which every creature and community depends. In keeping with its relational orientation, ecology analyzes the reciprocal effects—both positive and negative—of interactions between creatures in and with shared habitats, including how creatures are nourished by cooperative symbiosis and are subject to predation, habitat loss, and so on. Yet here, it is important to stress the particularity of these interactions; while scientific terms provide conceptual markers that describe ecological interactions, ecosystemic organization is self-produced, arising from the specific creatures, processes, and interactions that dwell in a particular locale. Building on these foundations, ecology also explores how human communities are enmeshed in and dependent upon networks of communities that include millions of other-than-human creatures, who fill human stomachs and provide the materials to build soaring skyscrapers and humble homes. Such sustenance depends on the maintenance of ecosystemic balance and resilience. As William Rees, codeveloper of ecological footprint analysis, writes, “These relationships must be maintained if the components are to continue being able to produce themselves and the system is to retain its functional integrity.”2 Yet today, anthropogenic climate change is fundamentally disrupting ecosystem makeup and function. As a result, contemporary Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 203–4. 2 William E. Rees, “Thinking ‘Resilience,’” in The Post-Carbon Reader, ed. Richard Heinberg and Daniel Lerch (Heraldsburg, CA: Post-Carbon Institute, 2010), 29. 1

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ecologists must consider not only how processes like the water cycle function but must also assess whether water quality in a particular place is able to sustain the life of trout, deer, and humans who drink from running streams. As Russell Butkus and Steven Kolmes explain, these changing realities point us toward the field of environmental science, a subdiscipline of ecology that aims to “study, comprehend, and hopefully help design plans to counteract various aspects of ecosystemic deterioration” that result from human action and inaction.3 Environmental science draws on insights from various disciplines, including biology, climatology, economics, political science, and sociology to assess the full range of human impacts that operate in the Anthropocene, or Age of Humans. This chapter surveys the field of ecotheology, the discipline that merges the horizons of theology, ecology, and the environmental sciences to rethink how humans live our relationships to God, earth, and other creatures, including other humans, with whom we coevolved and with whom we live. The analysis proceeds in four parts. First, I lay out some preliminary concerns and foundational insights, which ground the socioecological and theological analysis undertaken in the latter part of the chapter. Second, I explore three resources for contemporary ecotheology, which offer scientific insights into the ecological crisis, illustrate the links between social and ecological issues, and present crucial connections between ecology and evolution. Third, I offer an overview of ecofeminist and ecowomanist theology, arguing that they are uniquely well suited to address the social underpinnings of ecological issues. I conclude by noting how these approaches might foster new ways for humans to live out their relationships with each other and with other creatures, toward the enrichment and flourishing of all creation.

THE LAY OF ‘THE LAND’: PRELIMINARY CONCERNS AND FOUNDATIONAL INSIGHTS Before assessing the theological implications of our contemporary socioecological situation, I want to raise a preliminary concern about the language used in these disciplines. Despite the great need to address human ecological impacts, there is good reason to challenge the use of “environment” language on the grounds that it is inherently, if implicitly, anthropocentric. For, when humans speak of “the environment,” we mean “our environment,” interpreting ecological networks and processes vis-à-vis their relevance to our human societies. James Nash affirms this concern, noting that “Environmental … seems to have anthropocentric connotations, suggesting moral concern only for the human environment, rather than for the context of all life.”4 Put another way, when we speak of “the environment,” we rarely mean the environments of roses, chipmunks, or beluga whales. Thus, “environment” language risks reinscribing hierarchical, dualistic renderings of human-earth relations—humans versus animals (i.e., humans are not animals), humans versus nature (i.e., humans are not natural)—on which the exploitation of nature depends. In an ecological sense, “environment” language produces a false portrait of reality, as humans are just as much part of the “environments” of other creatures as they are of ours. Using “ecosystem” language rather than “environment” language is, then, not only more accurate but also centers attention on how humans live Russell A. Butkus and Steven A. Kolmes, Environmental Science and Theology in Dialogue (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2011), 5. This text offers a solid introduction to ecotheology. 4 James Nash, Loving Nature: Ecological Integrity and Christian Responsibility (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1991), 21; emphasis original. 3

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their creatureliness in their ecological contexts. “Ecosystem” language highlights how human persons and communities affect, both positively and negatively, the ecological realities of other creatures. Applied to ecotheology, this emphasis on ecosystems grounds what I term an “ecocentric” view of reality. At first glance, the word “ecocentric” may seem to focus attention on other-than-human creatures, as “eco” is primarily associated with otherthan-human nature in public discourse. But following from the definition of ecosystems offered above, a properly ecocentric vision centers on the biotic and abiotic relationships that attain between creatures—not on one creature or another. Within an ecocentric vision, then, there is no “us” or “them”; there is always “us” and “them,” with each co-constituted in relationship to other creatures, natural processes, and God. Thus, from the standpoint of theology, an ecocentric view is also inherently theocentric, as it envisions the God–world relationship as the primary and indispensable relationship on which all others depend. Agrarian ecotheologian Norman Wirzba illustrates the point: We are always already and viscerally (through lungs and stomachs) implicated in and in-formed by others—bacteria, worms, butterflies, chickens, cows, gardeners—all of which together depend on the wild power of God as their source … Creaturely life is always life received from God and inspired and nurtured by others. To “be” is to be dependent and vulnerable.5 Finally, given the intersection of natural processes and human societies, it is crucial to observe that ecological realities are inextricably enmeshed within sociopolitical structures. The “land” is never untouched by human interests; it is an object of economic and political debate. To some, ecosystems simply provide resources to be consumed or traded; they serve economic growth. To others, caring for “the land” means caring for a living creature or network of living creatures with intrinsic value—a matter of justice. Together, these factors render ecosystems much more than objects of scientific study because all ecological realities are social realities, and vice-versa, as Rees explains: When humans maximize the harvest of a particular species … we inadvertently alter that species’ relationships to multiple other species (e.g., predators and prey) in the ecosystem, setting off a cascade of feedback responses that can fundamentally erode the system’s integrity. Some species may be lost, others may be favored, and, ultimately, the system may cease to function in ways that are necessary to sustain either the target species or their human predators … efficiency-oriented maximum production strategies simplify both exploited ecosystems and the social systems they support.6 On this basis, Rees concludes that reality is “socioecological,” and in light of the intersection of human societies and natural processes, all ecosystems are in fact “socioecosystems.” Rees’s analysis provides fertile ground for theological reflection on the natural world. For, if ecotheologian Denis Edwards is correct to claim that in light of God’s relation to the world, “theology is necessarily ecological,”7 then Rees’s account of the socioecological structure of reality demands that theologians engage the link between ecological and social concerns made by Pope Francis in Laudato Si’. Tacitly invoking the title of ecoliberationist Norman Wirzba, “The Art of Creaturely Life: A Question of Human Propriety,” in Being-in-Creation, ed. Brian Treanor, Bruce Benson, and Norman Wirzba (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015), 56–7. 6 Rees, “ ‘Resilience,’ ”  29–30. 7 Denis Edwards, Jesus the Wisdom of God: An Ecological Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995), 2. 5

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theologian Leonardo Boff ’s Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor, Francis writes, “we have to realize that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.”8 In this way, ecotheology is ultimately about justice, understood as the cultivation and maintenance of life-giving relationships with each creature and with creation as a whole, seen in the light of faith as the great, total life-system that in God calls “very good” (Gen 1:31). Or, as groundbreaking ecofeminist theologian Sallie McFague puts it, “Christian faith is concerned with a just and sustainable existence for all of God’s creation.”9

SCIENTIFIC FOUNDATIONS: ECOLOGY, CLIMATE CHANGE, AND EVOLUTION Ecotheology depends on robust engagement with the natural sciences, which provide accounts of “what’s out there” based on research by professionals equipped with the skills and methods proper to the analysis of the composition and function of socioecosystems. Two key areas of scientific research—on ecology and evolution—provide foundational resources for theological reflection on the state of our planet in light of Christian claims about God and God’s desire for the just, sustainable flourishing of life on earth. This section reviews the work of two key research bodies performing socioecological research and explores connections between evolutionary biology and ecology to propose ways in which each area of research might inform contemporary theological reflection.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and United Nations Environment Programme The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC: www.ipcc.ch) and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP: https://www.unenvironment.org/) constitute the arms of the United Nations concerned with climate science and the socioecological impacts of climate change. UNEP functions primarily to report on global climate issues and organizes the Climate Action Summit, an international day of activism and education about ecological concerns. The IPCC applies climate research to questions such as food production and migration, offering risk assessments and studies of potential avenues for adaptation in light of realities such as global poverty and food and water scarcity. The IPCC’s work is divided among three working groups, which study climate science, the vulnerability of natural and socioeconomic systems to climate change, and strategies for mitigating the effects of climate change, respectively. Published in August 2019, the IPCC’s most recent report, Climate Change and Land, details widespread changes to the global food system due to rising global temperatures. Noting that “[h]‌uman use directly affects more than 70% (likely 69–76% of the global, ice-free land surface,”10 the IPCC predicts that human impacts on the global climate will result in changes to growing seasons, widespread food scarcity, increased food prices, and

Pope Francis, Laudato Si’ (May 24, 2015), 49 (emphasis original), http://w2.vatican.va/. Cf. Leonardo Boff, Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997). 9 Sallie McFague, A New Climate for Theology: God, the World, and Global Warming (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010), 3. 10 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Summary of Headline Statements,” in Climate Change and Land (August 2019), A1 (emphasis original), https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/chapter/summary-for-policymakers/. 8

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new and worsening health and nutrition crises. It further predicts that the most significant consequences will be felt by the earth’s poor, whose well-being is already imperiled by food insecurity and access to clean water. The IPCC report sheds vivid light on the socioecological nature of reality, noting the dynamic interrelationship between human action and inaction and the operation of ecological processes, and vice-versa. Despite these threats to global socioecosystems, the report also sounds notes of hope, observing that “many land-related responses that contribute to climate change adaptation and mitigation can also combat desertification and land degradation and enhance food security.”11 As such, the IPCC proposes that holistic strategies to adapt to and mitigate the negative effects of climate change will also reverse the degradation of land and enhance food security for those who struggle to eat. Moreover, the report notes, if climate change mitigation is undertaken in a noncompetitive manner—on the basis of international cooperation and under an ecocentric view—“[m]‌ost of the response options assessed [by IPCC researchers] contribute positively to sustainable development and other societal goals.”12 As a tool for ecotheology, the IPCC puts meat on the bones of Pope Francis’s link between the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor, with a robust, ecocentric orientation toward justice and the holistic flourishing of creation.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Arctic Report Card Since 2006, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has issued an annual Arctic Report Card (ARC: https://arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card). Like the IPCC and UNEP, the NOAA analyzes the network of socioecological realities that constitute the context in which contemporary theologians do their work, with a particular focus on the Arctic region. The ARC offers resources for understanding how the effects of planetary warming “echo” beyond the Arctic, affecting life around the globe. For example, NOAA’s analysis highlights how changes in Arctic ecosystems destroy homelands of coastal peoples—especially indigenous communities—forcing their migration and exacerbating the socioeconomic hardships they already face.13 Along with rapidly increasing toxic algal blooms and microplastic contamination, changes in the Arctic threaten marine life and disrupt global biodiversity, with consequences that resound throughout the world. The report concludes, “New and rapidly emerging threats are taking form and highlighting the level of uncertainty in the breadth of environmental change that is to come.”14 At first glance, detailed scientific analyses may not appear to be adequate loci of theological reflection. Certainly, theology needs to adapt the information issuing from the sciences by using its own methods and in view of its proper questions, foci, and experiential grounds, as Jesuit astrophysicist William Stoeger makes clear.15 Still, if ecological and climatological systems constitute God’s good creation, then scientific accounts of socioecological change offer rich resources for reflecting on the meaning and significance of creation vis-à-vis realities such as ecological degradation and global Ibid.,  B1. Ibid.,  B2–B3. 13 “Pan-Arctic observations suggest a long-term decline in coastal landfast sea ice since measurements began in the 1970s, affecting this important platform for hunting, traveling, and coastal protection for local communities,” https://arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card. 14 Ibid. 15 See William Stoeger, “Contemporary Cosmology and Its Implications for the Contemporary Science-Religion Dialogue,” in Physics, Philosophy, Theology: A Quest for Common Understanding, ed. Robert J. Russell, William R. Stoeger, and George V. Coyne (Vatican Observatory: Center for Theology and Natural Sciences, 1988). 11 12

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poverty. Moreover, seeing earth’s present peril as a threat to the God-given integrity and intrinsic value of creation imparts moral significance to natural cycles such as weather, water, and carbon. For even though these cycles are composed of abiotic forces and are not sentient in themselves, the constitutive function these cycles have upon creaturely life renders them polyvalent, both ecological and social, as Christiana Zenner’s writings on water demonstrate and as Laudato Si’ affirms. As Zenner explains, “Water is rarely ‘uniform’: it is experienced culturally and geographically, mediated by particular places and histories, political economies, institutional arrangements, and social frameworks. In other words, water is a socio-natural substance, a material reality mediated by multiple cultural and social constructions.”16 Conceived as such, even the most fundamental, nonliving substance can—and perhaps must—become an object of moral concern. An ecocentric, socioecological view evaluates such “socio-natural” substances not as living or nonliving, or sentient or non-sentient, but as actors in a relational network that makes life and flourishing possible.

Ecology and Evolution: New Horizons for Adaptation The IPCC and NOAA offer valuable accounts of the socioecological challenges facing our imperiled earth. The intimate relationship between evolution and ecology offers a second fruitful foundation for theological reflection on humanity’s place in the cosmos and the meaning and significance of creation on a planet in peril. In an essay on the moral challenges of the Anthropocene, paleoanthropologist Rick Potts notes a fascinating link between evolution and ecology. He writes, “The overarching narrative of human evolution … has changed from how the human lineage came to have dominion over its ancestral environment, to a story of evolving adaptability and persistent change in the challenges to survival.”17 Potts’s assessment of humanity’s leap to dominance illustrates the ecological dimensions and consequences of evolution. From Darwin’s finches to dolphins, bonobos, and humans, creatures evolve through dynamic adaptation to the concrete, particular contexts they share. As Potts indicates, the same holds for early humans, whose ability to create tools and shelters from the particular ecological resources available in given “heres” and “nows” shaped the survival of genus Homo. Yet, Potts observes, the situation changed with the emergence of Homo sapiens, as our predecessors’ adaptation to the land was increasingly replaced by a quest for new ways to adapt the land to us—using wheels, plows, tractors, factories, and supercomputers to reshape earth in the interest of human interests and aims; anthropocentric domination is, in this sense, born of evolution. Seen in this way, climate change is both an outcome of evolution and an impetus toward further evolutionary adaptation, imparting moral significance to socioecological interactions. The degradation of ecosystems and destruction of traditional lands in the name of human progress—more properly understood as the interests of white males in the northern hemisphere—raises the question of how we live our socioecological relations in light of our ongoing socioevolutionary development. Humans are, after all, members of kingdom Animalia, creatures that share a threefold relationship with the rest of creation

hristiana Zenner, “Hydrology, Theology, and Laudato Si’,” Theological Studies 77, no. 2 (June 2016): 431. C Rick Potts, “The Moral Dilemma We Face in the Age of Humans,” The Age of Humans: Living in the Anthropocene, October 7, 2014, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/. 16 17

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by virtue of our shared evolutionary history, our co-participation in socioecosystems, and our fundamental dependence on our Creator God.18 The connection between evolution and ecology lies at the heart of several theologians’ work: including Celia Deane-Drummond, Denis Edwards, Elizabeth Johnson, and William Stoeger.19 In Deane-Drummond’s case, The Wisdom of the Liminal engages evolutionary biology in its quest for a “communitarian understanding of human becoming and being” in liminal interactions between species, weaving a distinctive theological anthropology from evolution.20 With a distinctive Christological focus, Edwards interprets the incarnation as a revelation that Christ—in taking on flesh—takes on the flesh of the whole cosmos, both as it evolved and as it subsists in ecosystems. He writes, “Flesh is understood as involving the whole 3.8 billion-year evolutionary history of life on our planet, with all its predation, death and extinctions, as well as its diversity, co-operation, interdependence and abundance. Flesh involves all the interconnected ecological relationships that make up life on our planet.”21 Building on this foundation, Johnson broadens Edwards’s incarnational theology to include the resurrection of all things in Christ and by the power of the Spirit: The risen Christ embodies the ultimate hope of all creation. The coming final transformation of history will be the salvation of everything, including the groaning community of life, brought into communion with the loving power of the God of life … Indwelling the world and empowering its creative ways, the ineffable living God also freely joins the world and drink the cup of suffering, even unto death. Looking back and ahead from the cross, theology can posit divine presence to all suffering and dying creatures that accompanies the knowingly in their pain.22 On this basis, Johnson proposes a “community of creation” paradigm rooted in an extensive study of the “entangled bank” that so captured Darwin’s imagination. Johnson’s paradigm sees the world as an “inestimable treasure,” the gift of the Creator God, wherein all creatures are co-participants in the divine life throughout evolutionary history and in their ecological relations.23 Like Edwards and Johnson, Stoeger links evolutionary history and ecological relations. After assessing hidden links between species that are encoded in our DNA and that unite all creatures over evolutionary history, he exclaims, “All living things are united in common chemical and biological structures and processes and in a common underlying code. We are in deep solidarity with all living things on this earth!”24

Eric Daryl Meyer’s work on human animality is particularly important here. See Eric Daryl Meyer, Inner Animalities: Theology and the End of the Human (New York: Fordham University Press, 2018). 19 For a summary of these figures’ work, see Chapter 12 in this volume. See also Celia Deane-Drummond, EcoTheology (Winona, MN: Anselm Academic, 2008), and A Primer in Ecotheology: Theology for a Fragile Earth (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2017). 20 Celia Deane-Drummond, The Wisdom of the Liminal: Evolution and Other Animals in Human Becoming (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014), 3. 21 Denis Edwards, “The Redemption of Animals in an Incarnational Theology,” in Creaturely Theology: On God, Humans and Other Animals, ed. Celia Deane-Drummond and David Clough (London: SCM Press, 2009), 92. 22 Elizabeth A. Johnson, Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 209–10. 23 Ibid.,  285. 24 William Stoeger, “Discerning God’s Creative Action in Cosmic and Biological Evolution,” Mysterion: Rivista di Spiritualitá e Mistica 1, no. 1 (2008): 71. 18

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Together, these treatments of evolution and ecology call humanity to reflect critically on how our identity has emerged through interactions with creatures of all stripes and enable us to better discern carefully how to live our God-given creatureliness alongside our fellow creatures. Yet ecotheology cannot ignore the reality of death and predation in the interactions that drive evolution, especially in light of the exploitative system of overproduction and the pressure for economic growth that, Deane-Drummond observes, “fosters, rather than curbs, the tendency for spiralling habits of over-consumption.”25 Still, as Nash shows, the evolutionary necessity of predation and consumption does not warrant the exploitative, destructive patterns of overproduction Deane-Drummond describes. Rather, Nash writes, our God-given vocation finds clearest expression when we seek “ecological integrity … the ‘holistic health’ of the ecosphere and biosphere, in which biophysical support systems maximally sustain the lives of species and individuals, and, reciprocally, in which the interactions of interdependent life forms with one another in their ecosystems preserve the life-sustaining qualities of the support systems.”26 For if God is the God of life, then humanity’s capacity for conscious and conscientious decision making must be expressed in ways that promote increased life and flourishing, not for a single species or social group but in terms of the great socioecosystem of the earth, which all creatures share. Nash is clear that this does not equal “biotic egalitarianism.”27 Rather, it fosters a stance of careful, critical discernment before the wondrous livingness of creation, inviting Christians to self-sacrifice for a greater socioecological good—what Nash names “the well-being of others in communal relationships.”28 On this basis, Nash concludes that while the attitudes that ground overproduction and overconsumption have roots in the evolutionary necessity of predation, human uniqueness—far from being an excuse for exploitative attitudes—rests in the fact that we are the only species that can choose how we predate. “We alone are the creative predators,” he writes.29 Against those he calls “profligate predators,” who exploit resources under the guise of predation’s necessity, Nash asks, “Is it possible to act as altruistic predators— as beings who seek to minimize the ecological harm that we inevitably cause and who consume caringly and frugally to retain and restore the integrity of the ecosphere?”30 In light of the socioecological and evolutionary science presented here, Nash’s interpretation of predation poses a hard challenge to political, economic, ecclesial, and social decision makers who shape and determine patterns of humans consumption. At the heart of Nash’s interpretation of evolution is, then, a call to be socioecological Good Samaritans, who—like the parable’s titular figure—express care beyond the bounds of their own tribe, giving themselves freely to others of all species in the name of fostering the fullness of life. Patterned on an ecocentric recognition of humanity’s situation within—and never alongside or above—networks of relations that include a baffling diversity of creatures, Nash’s notion of altruistic predation counters the exploitative logic of anthropocentrism with a call to love, simply and fully, that all creatures may rejoice in the fullest way in a “splendid universal communion” with each other and with their Creator.31

Deane-Drummond, Eco-Theology, 17. Nash, Loving Nature, 18. 27 Ibid.,  149. 28 Ibid.,  150. 29 Ibid., 149; emphasis original. 30 Ibid., 147; emphasis original. 31 Francis, Laudato Si’, 220. 25 26

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THEOLOGICAL HORIZONS: ECOFEMINISM, ECOWOMANISM, AND THE PRIMACY OF RELATIONSHIP Nash’s call to love creation counters the domineering logic of anthropocentrism with a radical humility, which “sits with the lowliest human as an equal (James 2:1–9), and even with unequals in an ecological context.”32 But given the socioecological analysis offered here, there is need for intersectional thinking that lifts up often-unmentioned links between the exploitation of earth and exploitation of subsets of the human family. Moreover, the relational character of an ecocentric paradigm demands reflection on all types of relationships, precisely as they participate in a single logic that enslaves and exploits to the benefit of those in power, often maintaining injustice in the name of economic growth. The relational emphasis and critique of patriarchy and white supremacy in ecofeminist and ecowomanist thought seems well equipped to ground such intersectional thinking.

Ecofeminist Foundations: Patriarchy, Epistemology, and the Exploitation of Creation For nearly forty years, ecofeminist theologians, from pivotal figures such as Rosemary Radford Ruether and Sallie McFague to scholars such as Elizabeth Johnson, Aruna Gnanadason, and Ivone Gebara, have observed connections between the oppression of women, patriarchy’s domination of women’s bodies, and the exploitation of the natural world. On Ruether’s account, ecofeminism takes cues from deep ecology to examine “symbolic, psychological, and ethical patterns of destructive relations of humans with nature and how to replace this with a life-affirming culture.”33 Building on this definition in a more theological key, Johnson offers what could be a thesis statement for ecofeminist theology. She writes, the exploitation of the earth, which has reached crisis proportions in our day, is intimately linked to the marginalization of women, and that both of these predicaments are intrinsically related to the forgetting of the Creator Spirit who pervades the world in the dance of life. Within a sexist system the true identity of both women and the earth are skewed. Both are commonly excluded from the sphere of the sacred; both are routinely taken for granted and ignored, used and discarded, even battered and “raped,” while nevertheless they do not cease to give birth and sustain life.34 In this way, ecofeminist theology links together patriarchy and the imperial and colonial domination of lands and peoples as facets of one matrix of oppression. Ecofeminist thought thus calls ecotheology, as the field that seeks justice for the earth and the poor, to denounce and dismantle the plural but interrelated oppressions that flow from what philosopher Karen Warren describes as a single, patriarchal “logic of domination” that

Nash, Loving Nature, 156. Rosemary Radford Ruether, “Ecofeminism: Symbolic and Social Connections of the Oppression of Women and the Domination of Nature,” in Ecofeminism and the Sacred, ed. Carol J. Adams (New York: Continuum, 1993), 13. 34 Elizabeth A. Johnson, Women, Earth, and Creator Spirit: 1993 Madaleva Lecture in Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1993), 2–3. 32 33

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finds concrete expression in unjust economic systems, racism, sexism, heteronormativity, and so on.35 This logic has at its root the pervasive and insidious operation of hierarchical dualisms. Hierarchical dualism bifurcates reality into oppositional pairs—spirit and matter, soul and body, male and female, humans and earth—valuing one over the other according to specific patterns of domination. As Ruether shows, in practice, this logic identifies “women with nature and males with culture” to enshrine the power of the male. In so doing, she writes, “patriarchal law, possession of women, slaves, animals, and land are all symbolically and socially linked together. All are species of property and instruments of labor, owned and controlled by male heads of family as a ruling class.”36 As such, ecofeminism sharpens the focus of socioecological analysis by uniting multiple oppressions under the rubric of a single logic that suppresses the right of creatures to flourish in their own right in a manner that, as Chung Hyun Kyung writes, “destroys the right relationship among all beings”—disrupting the order of mutuality and justice that ecotheology seeks.37 Further illustrating the injustice at work in the patriarchal paradigm, ecofeminist scholars note—in concert with key observations from socioecological analysis—that women, and, in particular, poor women of color, experience the greatest oppression even as they do the bulk of the world’s labor, including the bearing and raising of children. In Indian ecofeminist Vandana Shiva’s terms, women’s work is “the production of survival.”38 Yet unlike their male children and the men who father them, women often go uncompensated for their work; whether de facto or de jure, women experience themselves as exploited by a system that demands their labor but offers no recompense, rendering them servants of the patriarchy. Like IPCC and NOAA researchers, ecofeminist theologians are concerned with relationships. Yet ecofeminist analysis adds a crucial critical edge to the discussion, stepping beyond the fact of relationships to analyze the character and quality of relationships under the rubric of what promotes the greatest flourishing of all creatures, over and against patriarchal claims to dominance. In this sense, ecofeminist theology necessarily operates from the bottom up. It asks how socioecological realities are experienced and leveraged—either to further the patriarchal, masculinist rape of nature and of women’s bodies or whether, in keeping with the wisdom of women’s experience, they overcome dualistic models to discover radically new ways of relating, which is, as Ruether states, the transformation for which Christ calls.39

From Ecofeminism to Ecowomanism: Toward a Broader Socioecological Frame The late twentieth century marked a revolution in feminist theology, as scholars began to recognize that while the oppression of women is a universal phenomenon, this experience is in no way univocal. Rather, factors such as race and class intersect with, shape, and See Karen J. Warren, Ecological Feminism: A Philosophical Perspective on What It Is and Why It Matters (New York: Routledge, 1994). 36 Ruether, “Ecofeminism,” 16. 37 Chung Hyun Kyung, “Ecology, Feminism and African and Asian Spirituality,” in Ecotheology: Voices from South and North, ed. David G. Hallman (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1994), 176. 38 Vandana Shiva, Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Survival in India (Delhi: Kali for Women, 1988), 210, cited in Aruna Gnanadason, “Women, Economy and Ecology,” in Ecotheology: Voices from South and North, ed. David G. Hallman (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1994), 180. 39 See Rosemary Radford Ruether, “Eco-feminism and Theology,” in Ecotheology: Voices from South and North, ed. David G. Hallman (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1994), 199–206. 35

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transform ecofeminist analysis, demanding allied disciplines such as ecowomanist theology, a form of ecotheology rooted in the experiences of black women. In a foundational essay, womanist theologian Delores Williams lays the groundwork for the development of the field. Reinterpreting the connection between women’s bodies and the earth through the lens of black women’s experience, she observes that [b]‌ecause, in the nineteenth century, slave owner consciousness imaged black people as belonging to a lower order of nature than white people, black people were to be controlled and tamed like the rest of the natural environment … Put simply, the assault on the natural environment today is but an extension of the assault upon black women’s bodies in the nineteenth century.40 For ecowomanists, the land and black women’s bodies are objectified and tamed in the interest of furthering a patriarchal, white supremacist construction of reality that, as Shamara Shantu Riley states, “tends to only value the parts of reality that can be exploited in the interest of profit, power and control.”41 The connection Williams draws between the land and black women’s bodies grounds her extension of sin of “defilement”—a central idea of ecowomanist thought—to the natural world. As she explains it, “the sin of defilement manifests itself in human attacks upon creation so as to ravish, violate, and destroy creation: to exploit and control the production and reproduction capacities of nature, to destroy the unity in nature’s placements, to obliterate the spirit of the created.”42 To illustrate this link, she draws a harrowing connection between strip mining—a practice that takes all the land has to give until it is rendered barren—and the historical use of “breeder women,” whose bodies were used to maximize profits by breeding slaves, destroying black women’s bodies and often eliminating their ability to conceive children of their own. In this way, ecowomanist theology sharpens first-wave ecofeminism’s lens to focus even more clearly on the “cry of the poor” that resounds from places of structural oppression, not only on the basis of sex but even more insidiously on the basis of what Williams names an “antipathy toward blackness,” a hierarchical dualism of black and white persons, wherein lighter skin imparts power and privilege to those who possess it.43 The connection Williams draws between white supremacy and ecological exploitation finds concrete expression in several startling realities. For example, there is a direct correlation between the presence of communities of color, no matter their economic status, and the locations of toxic waste dumps and landfills.44 Likewise, particular socioecological spaces often correspond with the explicit oppression of people of color. One need only look to the cases of the Dakota Access Pipeline or the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, to find evidence of such racism today.

Delores S. Williams, “Sin, Nature, and Black Women’s Bodies,” in Ecofeminism and the Sacred, ed. Carol J. Adams (New York: Continuum, 1993), 24–5. 41 Shamara Shantu Riley, “Ecology Is a Sistah’s Issue Too,” in Ecofeminism and the Sacred, ed. Carol J. Adams (New York: Continuum, 1993), 195. 42 Williams, “Sin,” 25. 43 Ibid.,  28. 44 See, e.g., James H. Cone, “Whose Earth Is It, Anyway?” in Earth Habitat: Eco-Injustice and the Church’s Response, ed. Dieter Hessel and Larry Rasmussen (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001), 23–32; and Matthew B. Immergut and Laurel D. Kearns, “When Nature Is Rats and Roaches: Religious Eco-Justice in Activism in Newark, NJ,” Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture 6, no. 2 (2012): 176–95. 40

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Melanie Harris builds upon these connections, noting a crucial link between the colonial domination of lands and peoples according to an instrumentalist logic that, by imagining people of color and other-than-human creatures as less than white, steals their agency and places it in service of the colonizer’s ideal, a white supremacist status quo. In response to the colonial and patriarchal logic of white supremacy, she writes, “Ecowomanism offers a critical deconstructive analytical approach to systems of colonial ecology … [it] critiques environmental approaches that ignore the history of environmental justice work, which is historically led by communities of color, and refuses to acknowledge the impact of white supremacy on the development of the current environmental movement.”45 In response, Harris writes, ecowomanism interrogates the “parallel oppressions” outlined by Williams, lifting up the “agency-producing side aspect of ecomemory of ecowomanism itself, which can be seen in part by the move to reclaim the African American heritage of environmental history that can be healing and provides maps for self-recovery in African American communities today.”46 For white supremacy depends on its ability to silence black voices, void their contributions, and render them cogs in a wheel of systematic exclusion and exploitation, from which all white people benefit, whether they want to or not. Therefore, by drawing on black women’s experience to challenge to structures of oppression, ecowomanism subverts the logic of white supremacy to “interrupt the patterns of structural oppression” and dismantle complicity in such oppression in all sectors of society.47 In this way, ecowomanist theology both accepts and challenges ecofeminist thought, offering a holistic framework for hearing both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor found in contemporary ecological degradation and social oppression while also noting the absence of people of color from mainstream ecological discourse. Ecowomanism’s encompassing frame is, then, socioecological by nature. It draws together the horizons of the social and ecological into a single quest for an integral justice, a network of right relationships that allow the planet and all its peoples to thrive by dismantling interlaced structural oppressions, wherever they reside.

Seeking an Alternative Paradigm: Life, Love, and Mutual Interdependence Ecofeminist and ecowomanist analysis offer outstanding resources for observing the links between the manifold injustices that plague our imperiled planet. Yet the logic of domination at work in white supremacist, colonial ecology will not go quietly. An ecocentric, socioecologically oriented ecotheology demands a new paradigm for conceiving of God, God’s relationship to the world, and creaturely relationships that is fundamentally oriented toward the holistic health of earth and all its creatures. In my reading, African and ecowomanist theologies offer a relational cosmology that can undergird such a paradigm. For, as theologian Harvey Sindima observes, African cosmology is fundamentally “life-centered … since it stresses the bondedness, the interconnectedness, of all living beings.”48 Yet this interconnectedness, while consonant Melanie Harris, Ecowomanism: African American Women and Earth-Honoring Faiths (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2017), 17. Cf. Carol J. Adams, “Introduction,” in Ecofeminism and the Sacred, ed. Carol J. Adams (New York: Continuum, 1993), 17. 46 Ibid.,  43. 47 Ibid.,  44. 48 Harvey Sindima, “Community of Life: Ecological Theology in African Perspective,” in Liberating Life: Contemporary Approaches to Ecological Theology,” ed. Charles Birth, William Eakin, and Jay B. McDaniel (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990), 137. 45

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with scientific accounts of reality, is not neutral in African perspective, not simply a fact with which one must wrestle. Rather, the interconnectedness of all things is oriented toward an ethical end, which Sindima names “superabundance.” He continues, “It continuously transcends itself as it aims at greater and greater fullness of life.”49 Thus, African cosmology carries with it an impetus toward justice premised on the very ecocentric vision outlined above, which Harris terms an “ethical mandate for earth justice.”50 Along with its consonance with ecocentric accounts of ecology and evolution, African cosmology harmonizes well with Ivone Gebara’s call for a transformed epistemology. Writing from Latin America, Gebara’s critique of patriarchy focuses uniquely on the presuppositions that are at work in accounts of knowing. Challenging the dualistic, Cartesian epistemology that “has led to the imprisonment of creativity … [and] exiled reason from itself and alienated it from the totality of our being on which it depends and from which it nourishes itself,”51 Gebara proposes an epistemology grounded in “a sacred interdependence that is vibrant and visceral” and which emphasizes the embodied nature of knowing.52 As an ecocentric view would have it, knowing is mediated by bodies-inrelationship and conditioned by the unique socioecological contexts in which it occurs.53 With this point as her guide, Gebara writes that ecofeminist epistemology offers “an invitation to a deeper perception that includes our greater self, and thus an openness to recognize other resources that are available to us in life and that are not exclusively limited to what falls within the anthropocentric horizon.”54 Here, in direct correspondence with scientific perspectives on ecology and evolution, human persons are made of relationships, inextricably enmeshed in socioecological networks that constitute their being and wellbring, or lack thereof. As foundations for socioecological justice, these shifts at the level of cosmology and epistemology directly challenge anthropocentric claims to human, male, and white superiority, demanding a holistic movement toward self-gift and mutual enrichment for a greater social and ecological good. This vision of creation celebrates biodiversity and resists the instrumentalizing and domineering logic that makes God and nature in the image of particular types of humans, reimagining God as the utterly transcendent and yet radically immanent font of life and source of flourishing. As Ruether explains, such a God “is neither male nor anthropomorphic. God is the font from which the variety of plants and animals well up in each new generation, the matrix that sustains their life-giving interdependency with one another.”55 Surely, unmasking injustice and reimaging Christian theology through an ecocentric lens will not be easy. Indeed, as McFague observes, by accepting this alternative paradigm, “we are being called to do something unprecedented: to think wholistically, to think about ‘everything that is,’ because everything on this planet in interrelated and interdependent

Ibid.,  145. Harris, Ecowomanism, 15. 51 Ivone Gebara, Longing for Running Water: Ecofeminism and Liberation (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1999), 63. 52 Ibid.,  54. 53 This theme is central to my own work, as well. See Paul J. Schutz, “Cultivating a “Cosmic Perspective” in Theology: Reading William R. Stoeger with Laudato Si’, Lonergan, Rahner, and Ignatius,” Theological Studies 80, no. 4 (December 2019), 798–821. 54 Gebara, Longing, 52. 55 Ruether, “Ecofeminism,” 21. 49 50

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and hence the fate of each is tied to the fate of the whole.”56 Yet this is the vision toward which ecotheology must strive if it is to honor the life-giving relationships of justice and mutual flourishing to which all creation is called, in communion with its Creator God.

CONCLUSION: HORIZONS OF JUSTICE, LIFE, AND LOVE An ecotheology adequate to the challenges of our socioecological present must engage new insights from the natural sciences and attend to the multifaceted interaction of social and ecological concerns. This chapter has proposed that an ecocentric perspective centered on the networks of interacting relations in social and ecological contexts is well suited to support and nourish ecotheology in achieving this end. Indeed, an ecocentric perspective harmonizes well with scientific accounts of the ecological constitution of reality and thus provides fertile ground for interrogating the ways that concerns such as race, gender, and class intersect with ecological realities, as ecofeminist and ecowomanist thought show. In the end, an ecocentric vision and socioecological awareness aim to impart to theology new resources for reconstructing church and society, fostering what McFague terms a sense of “belonging, of being at home” in the world.57 As Harris writes, this vision demands practices of care, as well as consideration of actions such as ecological reparations that heal the wounds that have resulted from the historical exploitation and enslavement of lands and peoples. For God’s good earth is truly imperiled, and the “very goodness” of creation to which Genesis attests can only be imagined holistically, by accepting limits in order to foster the ever-greater flourishing of all creatures in cooperation with one another and with God. As great oaks seek the sun’s rays and water’s nourishment, so too must humans seek to serve creation as co-partners in the work of justice and life-making with the creatures and processes who make our beautiful earth oikos: home.

Sallie McFague, “An Earthly Theological Agenda,” in Ecofeminism and the Sacred, ed. Carol J. Adams (New York: Continuum, 1993), 86, citing Sallie McFague, Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1987), 69–77. 57 McFague, “Theological Agenda,” 96. 56

347

CONTRIBUTORS

William P. Brown is the William Marcellus McPheeters Professor of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. His teaching and writing explore the intersecting issues of creation theology, ecology, and justice from biblical perspectives. He is the author of A Handbook to Old Testament Exegesis, Wisdom’s Wonder, The Seven Pillars of Creation, and Seeing the Psalms, as well as editor of Engaging Biblical Authority. Bill was recently a member of the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton (www.ctinquiry.org), where he worked collaboratively with scientists, philosophers, and ethicists exploring the “societal implications of astrobiology.” Rufus Burnett Jr. is Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at Fordham University in Bronx, New York. His research focuses on the sonic, spatial, and embodied realities of the Christian imagination. Burnett’s constructive theological approach to systematics looks to expose the theological insight of people groups that respond to domination through the creative use of cultural production. His latest text, Decolonizing Revelation: A Spatial Reading of the Blues, engages the cultural production of the blues as an option for delinking the Christian imagination of revelation, from oppressive foreclosures within nationalism, American Christianities, race, class, sexuality, and ethnocentrism. John C. Cavadini is Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. He also serves as the McGrath-Cavadini Director of the McGrath Institute for Church Life. His scholarship and teaching is focused on the theology of the church fathers, Origen and Augustine in particular. Appointed by Benedict XVI, he served one term on the International Theological Commission. He was also the 2018 recipient of the Monika Helwig Award for Outstanding Contributions to Catholic Intellectual Life from the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities. Most recently he authored the 2019 Visioning Augustine. Jessica Coblentz is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Saint Mary’s College (Notre Dame, Indiana). Her research as a Catholic systematic theologian explores mental health in theological perspective, feminist theologies, theological education, and the relationship of theology and the psychological sciences. Her publications can be found in Theological Studies, Horizons, Journal of Moral Theology, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Journal of Catholic Higher Education, and various edited volumes. She is currently writing a book on depression for publication with Liturgical Press Academic. Doru Costache is Senior Lecturer in Patristic Studies at St Cyril’s Coptic Orthodox Theological College at the Sydney College of Divinity, Australia. He is a member of the International Association for Patristic Studies and a participant in Science and Orthodoxy around the World, a Templeton-funded project run by National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens, Greece (2016–19). He is also an Honorary Associate of Department of Studies in Religion, the University of Sydney (2017–20). He was a Durham International Senior Research Fellow of Institute of Advanced Study, Durham University,

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Contributors

United Kingdom (Epiphany Term, 2018). He is a coauthor of Dreams, Virtue and Divine Knowledge in Early Christian Egypt (2019). Celia Deane-Drummond is Director of the Laudato Si’ Research Institute and Senior Research Fellow in Theology at Campion Hall, University of Oxford. She is also honorary Visiting Professor in Theology and Science at the University of Durham, United Kingdom, and Adjunct Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. Her recent publications include The Wisdom of the Liminal: Human Nature, Evolution and Other Animals (2014), Ecology in Jürgen Moltmann’s Theology, 2nd edition (2016), Religion in the Anthropocene, edited with Sigurd Bergmann and Markus Vogt (2017), Theology and Ecology across the Disciplines: On Care for Our Common Home, edited with Rebecca Artinian Kaiser (2018), and Theological Ethics through a Multispecies Lens: Evolution of Wisdom Volume 1 (2020). Michael J. Dodds, O.P., is Professor of Philosophy and Theology at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. He received his doctorate in theology from the University of Friboug, Switzerland. He has served as Academic Dean of the Dominican School, and as Master of Students and Regent of Studies for the Western Dominican Province. His publications include The Unchanging God of Love: Thomas Aquinas and Contemporary Theology on Divine Immutability (2008) and Unlocking Divine Action: Contemporary Science and Thomas Aquinas (2012). Brian Edgar is Professor of Theological Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary. Brian is married to Barbara and resides in Melbourne, Australia. He is a research fellow at the Australasian Centre for Wesleyan Research, a fellow of the Institute for the Study of Christianity in an Age of Science and Technology (Australia), and a former ethics advisor on gene technology to the Australian Federal government. He is the author of The Message of the Trinity (2004), God Is Friendship (2011), Laughter and the Grace of God (2019), and winner of Christianity Today Book of the Year section award for The God Who Plays (2017). Terrence L. Johnson is Associate Professor of Religion and Politics in the Department of Government at Georgetown University. His research interests include African American political thought, ethics, American religions, and the role of religion in public life. He is the author of Tragic Soul-Life: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Moral Crisis Facing American Democracy (2012) and serves as coeditor of the Religious Cultures of African and African Diaspora People book series, which is published by Duke University Press. Johnson’s recently completed second book manuscript, We Testify with Our Lives: Black Power and the Ethical Turn in Radical Politics, explores the decline of Afro-Christianity in the post-civil rights era and the increasing efforts among African American leftists to imagine ethics and human rights activism as necessary extensions of, and possibly challenges to, political liberalism and liberal public philosophies rooted in individualism, neutrality, and exceptionalism. Christopher C. Knight is a priest of the Orthodox Church and was, until his retirement, the executive secretary of the International Society for Science and Religion. He is now a senior research associate of the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies in Cambridge, England. He is the author of over sixty papers and also of two books in the Fortress Press’s Theology and the Sciences series: Wrestling with the Divine (2001) and The God

Contributors

349

of Nature (2007). His third book, Christianity and Science: An Eastern Orthodox View of the Science-Theology Dialogue, is to be published by the St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press. Terri Laws is Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. She teaches courses in womanist and black feminist religious thought, African American religious experience, and medical ethics. Her publications have appeared in the Journal of Religion and Health, Pastoral Psychology, and Religion & Politics. Laws received the doctor of philosophy (religion) from Rice University and a master of divinity from the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Andrew Louth is Professor Emeritus of Patristic and Byzantine Studies, University of Durham, and was Visiting Professor of Eastern Orthodox Theology in the Faculty of Theology attached to the Amsterdam Centre of Eastern Orthodox Theology (ACEOT), Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, 2010–14. His research has largely been in patristics with monographs on Denys the Areopagite (1989), Maximus the Confessor (1996), and John Damascene (2002). His most recent books are Introducing Eastern Orthodox Theology (2013) and Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Present (2015). He is the archpriest of the Diocese of Sourozh (Moscow Patriarchate) and an elected fellow of the British Academy in 2010. Stephen M. Meawad is Adjunct Professor of Catholic Studies at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, and of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Saint Joseph in Hartford, Connecticut. He completed his PhD in theology at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with a dissertation entitled “Spiritual Struggle and Gregory of Nyssa’s Theory of Perpetual Ascent: An Orthodox Christian Virtue Ethic.” His research aims to render ancient Christian wisdom relevant to modern religious praxis by crafting a space for the intersection of golden-age patristics, modern ethics, and philosophical theology. He currently resides in Connecticut with his wife and daughter. J. Richard Middleton is Professor of Biblical Worldview and Exegesis at Northeastern Seminary (Rochester, New York). He is president of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies (2019–20) and holds a BTh from Jamaica Theological Seminary and an MA in philosophy from the University of Guelph (Canada). Middleton is the author of A New Heaven and a New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical Eschatology (2014) and The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1 (2005), and has published articles on creation theology in the Old Testament, the problem of suffering, and the dynamics of human and divine power in biblical narratives. His books have been published in Korean, French, Indonesian, Spanish, and Portuguese. Anne Siebels Peterson is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Utah. She researches Aristotle’s metaphysics and natural philosophy, specifically the way in which Aristotle’s hylomorphic understanding of living things is supported and influenced by his views on the nature of being and unity in his Metaphysics. Peterson also explores how Aristotle’s methods in philosophy of science and philosophy of biology complicate concepts like those of body, soul, change, and life, perhaps in ways that are still relevant for us as we continue to explore similar concepts in contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of science, especially philosophy of biology. Sarah Lane Ritchie is Lecturer in Theology and Science at the University of Edinburgh. She is the author of Divine Action and the Human Mind (2019). Her research interests focus on the intersection of theology and the various brain sciences, with particular emphasis

350

Contributors

on questions surrounding belief formation, religious experience, and the implications of religious phenomenology for theological metaphysics. Paul J. Schutz is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Santa Clara University. His research aims to reinvigorate the Christian theology of creation through engagement with contemporary science. His dissertation on the writings of astronomer William Stoeger, SJ, proposes an “ecopolitical” theology oriented toward the flourishing of each creature, according to its own kind. Recent publications include “As Dewdrops on Indra’s Web” in All the Ends of the Earth: Challenge and Celebration of Global Catholicism (2020), “Cultivating a ‘Cosmic Perspective’ in Theology: Reading William R. Stoeger with Laudato Si’” in Theological Studies (2019), and “From Creatureliness to a Creation Imagination” in The Other Journal (2017). Lea F. Schweitz is a writer, nature play consultant, and award-winning educator. After receiving her PhD from the University of Chicago, she spent more than a decade as the director of the Zygon Center for Religion and Science and as a tenured professor at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. The through line of her vocational path has been the consistent call to teach folks to love the wild, both in the movement of the Holy Spirit and the seasons of Midwest living. Currently, she is finishing a book on spiritual practices to connect city folks to the nature in their neighborhoods and the Creator God present in it all. For more, see her blog: www.wildsparrows.com. Lisa H. Sideris is Professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University, with research interests in science, religion, and the environment. Her first book, Environmental Ethics, Ecological Theology, and Natural Selection (2003) focuses on conflict and compatibility between Darwinian nature and ecological theology. She writes extensively on the life and work of Rachel Carson, and coedited a collection of interdisciplinary essays titled Rachel Carson: Legacy and Challenge (2008). Sideris’s recent work has turned to the moral significance of wonder. Her book Consecrating Science: Wonder, Knowledge, and the Natural World (2017) critically examines expressions of wonder emerging from sciencebased spiritual narratives of the cosmos. John P. Slattery is Senior Program Associate for the Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion Program with the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, DC. He manages the Science for Seminaries Project, helping seminaries across the United States and Canada engage with modern science. He has an interdisciplinary PhD in systematic theology and the history and philosophy of science from the University of Notre Dame. Besides this volume, he recently published Faith and Science at Notre Dame: John Zahm, Evolution, and the Catholic Church (2019). He has also published in academic and popular journals on the historical connections between eugenics, religion, and science in the early twentieth century, especially in the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. Timothy K. Snyder is Visiting Assistant Professor of Practical Theology at Wesley Theological Seminary and senior researcher at the Douglas G. Lewis Center for Church Leadership in Washington, DC, where he leads the Religious Workforce Project, a national study of the professional and volunteer leadership of US congregations funded by the Lilly Endowment. Trained in theology and the social sciences, Snyder’s past research has included congregational studies, lived theology, and digital religion. He has previously

Contributors

351

taught at Wartburg Theological Seminary and Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary of Lenoir Rhyne University. Debra L. Stoudt is Professor of German and Associate Dean in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. She has published on the lives and works of medieval German male and female mystics, medieval women healers and the power of healing, and the relationship between magic and medicine in the Middle Ages. She is coeditor with Beverly Mayne Kienzle and George Ferzoco of A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen (2014), which includes her essay “The Medical, the Magical, and the Miraculous in the Healing Arts of Hildegard of Bingen.” Stoyan Tanev is Associate Professor of Technology Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management associated with the Technology Innovation Management (TIM) Program in the Sprott School of Business, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. He is also Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Theology at St Paul University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and in the Faculty of Theology at Sofia University “St Kliment Ohridski,” Sofia, Bulgaria. Dr. Tanev has a multidisciplinary background including a PhD in physics (1995, University Pierre and Marie Curie, Paris, France, coawarded by Sofia University, Bulgaria) and PhD in theology (2012, Sofia University, Bulgaria). Dr. Tanev is a member of the Orthodox Theological Society in America and recently published the book Energy in Orthodox Theology and Physics—From Controversy to Encounter (2017). Elizabeth Theokritoff earned her doctorate in liturgical theology at Oxford under the supervision of Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia and is a research associate and lecturer at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies in Cambridge. She has a particular interest in theology and ecology and serves on the Religion and Science group in the recently established International Orthodox Theological Association. She is coeditor of The Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Christian Theology and author of Ecosystem and Human Dominion (in Greek) (2003) and Living in God’s Creation: Orthodox Perspectives on Ecology (2009), as well as numerous articles and chapters.

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353

INDEX

actualization 83–4 Adam and Eve 77 Calvin’s interpretation of Adam’s sin 301 Adams, Jay 265, 266 n.24 adynaton 72 aesthetic hegemony 291 Aeterni Patris (Pope Leo XIII) 145, 148–50, 154 Affordable Care Act (ACA) 257–9 Africans 302 enslavement by Europeans 134 indigenous practices 136 inferiority 138 paganism 300 sins of 142 African Americans 131, 133 body 138 environment 138 human origins 138 liberalism 132 segregation and discrimination 137 Akan anthropology of self 302 Allen, John 228 Allen, Pauline 82 n.6 Alter, Tomus 151 n.23 Ambrose of Milan 68 American Abolitionist movement 291 American evangelicalism 303 American moral reasoning 255 Analogical Comparative Theological Approach (ACTA) 209–10, 221 Anaphora 72–3, 315 Retreat Center 10, 315–16 ancient Israelites 33 animal rights 240 Anthropocene 229, 231, 233, 334 anthropocentrism 64, 189, 240 anthropology 2, 9, 88, 280 anti-African sentiment 301–2, 304 antiblackness 132–5 anti-evolutionary stance 145 Aquinas, Thomas 2, 6–7, 49, 49 n.16, 76, 124, 147 n.9, 152, 237

apparent conflicts, resolution of 112–13 controversies over his thought 107 death 106 divine and creaturely causality, conflict between 113–15 early life 105–7 “intermediate” sciences 109 notion of causality 110–11 notion of secondary causality 114 science, definition of 107–8 science, divisions of 108–10 scriptural conflicts 114 Summa Theologiae 112 teaching assignment 106 “the dumb ox” 106 theological activity 106 theology as science 112–15 unity of truth 112 University of Paris 106 Aristotle 5, 11, 67, 107, 108 n.18, 210 cosmography 87 first philosophy 45–6 first science 46–7, 51–8 logic 211 metaphysical ideas 153 in modern Christian theology 5 natural science 56–7 notion of virtues 284 ontology 89 philosophies of science 2, 5, 105 phronesis 284 posterior analytics 45 n.3, 56, 211 primary matter 111 prior analytics 45 n.3 science and causation 2 slavery, justification for 136 theology and science in 5 Aristotle’s theoretical sciences 45–7 Metaphysics 47–51 methodology of 51–6 relevance of 56–8 Arjuna 39, 43 Armstrong, Rachel 229

354

Army Life in a Black Regimen (Higginson) 299 artificial intelligence 250 astrobiology 34, 230 astronomy 60, 88, 109, 117 astrophysics 37 Athanasios, St. 70 Augustine and science 2, 5, 59–61, 76, 124 Confessions 61–3 contra Hawking 63–4 De Trinitate 213 doctrine of Creation 5 On Genesis 62 psychology 264 pride 62 Rationes Seminales 65 n.9 six-day scheme of creation 64–6 superbia 62 tradition 212 Autolycus 69 Averroes 107 Avital, Eytan 36, 36 n.13, 37 n.18 awe, science of 34, 43 Job and science of 38–40 mind-blowing awe 42 primordial awe 40 Baartman, Saartjie 132 debasement of 133 sexual exploitation in public culture 132–3 Bacon, Francis 237, 240 Baker, Catherine 36 n.11 Bandstra, Barry L. 16 n.3 Barbour, Ian 2, 179, 203 n.37, 240, 252, 252 n.9 Barlaam the Calabrian 8, 210–14 pagan philosophy 212 philosophy 212 Barth, Karl 195, 195 n.4–195 n.5, 202 theology 195–6 Christocentric priority 197 Bartholomew, Patriarch 307 Bartholomew of Constantinople 184 Basil, St. 5–6, 11, 68, 81 astronomical and calendrical matters 75 on the beginning 76 on Hexaemeron 68, 72–6 Bass, Dorothy 285 “the beginning” 76 bĕhēmâ 27, 27 n.33 Behemoth 43 being qua being 46, 49 Bellah, Robert 275, 278

Index

Bendroth, Margaret 193 n.2 Benedict, Ruth 278 Benedictine 124 Berger, Peter 281 bewilderment 41 Beza, Theodore 118 Bezalel 22–3 Bhagavad Gita 39 Bible biblical faith and science 34 biblical understanding of humans 30 Cartesian dualism 33 inerrancy 193 myths and metaphors 227 theory of slavery 141–2 worldview 17 Biblical Cosmos 15–16, 16 as building 19–20 human distinctiveness in ecology 30 as temple 21–3, 22 big bang cosmology 114 Big History 85 biocentrism 240 biodiversity 5 biological sciences 2, 5, 34, 37, 88, 114 Arthur Peacocke 244–5 John Zizioulas 245–6 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin 243–4 survey 239–43 theology and 237–9, 246–8 Biosphere 1 & 2 226–9 cosmic orientation of 228 biospherians 227–8 black American music/sound 289–92 abolitionist ethnosympathy 295–300 coloniality of power 292–5 decolonial theology 302–5 disengaged engagement 295–300 Euro-American reception 295 indigenous black theology 301–2 interpretation 302–5 Negro spirituals 295–300 Protestantism 302 sociogenic principle 292–5 see also African Americans Black Skin White Masks (Fanon) 290 black theologies 132 athletic and sexual prowess 133 biological differences with 134 body 133 Georg Hegel’s characterization of 134 inferiority 131–2, 139

355

Index

Judaism 137 ontology 133 performers 133 Blowers, Paul M. 81 n.2, 82, 82 n.9, 83 n.19 Blumer, Hebert 277 Boas, Franz 278 Boff, Leonado 242, 336 Bohr, Niels 8, 214–20 Bohr–Einstein debate 214–20 Bolton, R. 45 n.3 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 281–2 Book of Urban Nature 328 Bordeianu, Radu 189 Born, Max 216 n.33 Boulding, Maria 61 n.2 Bourdieu, Pierre 278, 284–5 Bowler, Peter 194 Boxill, Bernard 142 Boyd-MacMillan, Eolene 269, 272–3 Bracken, Joseph A. 160, 165–7 Bradshaw, David 220 n.56 Brand, Stewart 223 Brentano, Franz 54 n.31 Brock, Sebastian 82 Brooke, John Hedley 194 Brown, Jeannine K. 266 Brown, William P. 2, 4–5, 33, 34 n.4, 347 Brunner, Emil 195 n.5 Bryan, William Jennings 193–4 Buddhist meditation 261 Bulgakov, Sergei 178–81 Buonpensiere, Enrico 150–2 against evolution 153–5 Holy Office 155–6 against John Zahm, C.S.C. 155 Burnett, Rufus, Jr. 10, 97 n.36, 289, 303, 347 Butkus, Russell 334, 334 n.3 Butler, Gillian 262–3 Byzantine framework 91 for cultural exchanges 82, 87–8 Byzantine vita 82 Caldwell, Charles 138 Callan, Charles 151 n.21 Calvin, John 2, 7, 117–20, 301 ambiguity about the way that God acts 128–9 dualism 129 early life 120–1 God, creation and glory of 120–5 God, ontology and glory of 121–2 God and self 120–1

grace, theology and peculiar 122–3 hermeneutics and accommodation 123–4 Holy Spirit and Scriptures 124 interpretation of Adam’s sin 301 modern science 129–30 and modern science 129–30 peculiar grace and special grace 129 science, vocation and calling to 124–5 science and need for God 126–9 theology 124 to vanity 126 Capital (Marx) 277 Capra, Fritjof 185 Carnap, Rudolph 199–200, 200 n.25 Carroll, William 112 Carson, Rachel 224 Cartesian epistemology 134 Casey, Patricia 261 Catholic theology 145, 149 and modern psychology 264 social teaching 7–8 see also Christian theology causality, notion of 110–11 Cause et cure [Cause] 94–5, 98–9 Book I 100–1 Cavadini, John C. 5, 59, 62 n.4, 347 Caverni, Raffaello 153 celestial bodies 91 chaos theory 18 n.6, 114 chemistry 2, 8 Christanismi Restitutio 118 Christian anthropology 240 see also specific entries Christian bishop of Hippo 264 Christianization 294 Christian theology 1, 11, 17, 112, 136, 192 Christian notion of creation 71 of disability 271 explorations in 8–10 fundamentals of 193 judicious narratives 283 McIntyre’s theory 285 and psychological sciences 9 religious milieu 70 and science 8 Christification of the Universe 240 Chryssavgis, John 307 church in Caesarea 73 civilization 294–5 Civiltà Cattolica 147 Clark, Jawanza 300–5 Clark, Stephen 240–1

356

classic Christ and Culture (Niebuhr) 283 Clayton, Philip 198, 198 n.20, 201 n.30, 203, 203 n.42, 204 Clément, Olivier 81, 186 theological cosmology 186 Clifford, James 280 climate change 336–7 Coblentz, Jessica 9, 261 colonialism 131, 289, 292 power 292–5 Western theology 303 Colossians 1 160 Communio Sanctorum 281 companionship 41–2 Comte, Auguste 276 sociology 276 Cone, James H. 260 conflicts divine and creaturely causality 114–15 resolution 112–13 scriptural 114 Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) 254 Consolmagno, Guy 159–60 Constantine the African 94, 98 Constantinople 82 Cook, Christopher 268 Copeland, M. Shawn 249 Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics 218 Copernicus, Nicolaus 117 Copernican revolution 200 Coptic Orthodox Church/Christianity 10, 307–8 Anaphora Retreat Center 315–16 ecology in coptic liturgical prayers 309–11 frequency of coptic liturgical prayers 311–13 liturgical time and mindfulness 308–9 Midnight Praise 310 Zabbālīn and Garbage dreams 313–14 cosmic energy 85 habitat 63 imaginary 229 perfection 84 unification 86 Cosmos 15–16, 16, 39 actualization 84 as building 19–20 elements of 75 harmony and goodness 76–7 human distinctiveness in ecology 30

Index

Maximus’s teleological-christological understanding of 183 movement 84 nature of 76 place of human in 77–9 reality, comprehensive map of 85–6 as temple 21–3, 22 theanthropocosmic perspective 85 trilogy 84 Cosmos television series 224 Costache, Doru 6, 81, 81 n.5, 85 n.30, 88 n.55, 180 Count Landolf, Lord of Aquino 105 Coyne, George 159 Crania Americana 135, 138 Creator Logos 183 Crick, Francis 237, 239 critical race theory 10 critical realism 203 Crombie, A. C. 105, 105 n.2, 107 n.15, 114 cross-pollination 87 Crumpton, Stephanie 268 Cruz, John 10, 289, 291–2, 295, 300–1, 303, 305 Cruz’s sociology 303 Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor (Boff) 334 n.4 Cuddeback-Gedeon, Lorraine 287 cultural anthropology 9, 278–80 cultural beliefs in black inferiority 135 cultural integration 87 cultural-linguistic system 269 cultural prestige 62 cultural racism 131 culture, and social sciences 283–4 Dahomey 293 Darwin, Charles 4, 238, 300 Darwinism 199 Darwin’s natural selection 152 theory of evolution 238, 240, 243 theory of natural selection 192 Davis, Nicholas T. 258 n.39 Dawkins, Richard 241–2, 261 campaign to formulate myth around genetics 241 Deane-Drummond, Celia E. 9, 160, 172–4, 237, 339 n.20 decolonial theology 10, 302–5 decolonialists 294 aestheSis 304 decoupling of the Self 42 degree of abstraction 108

357

Index

De Humani Corporis Fabrica (Vesalius) 117 Dei Filius 154 De Incarnatione 1 70 n.5 Delio, Ilia 160, 167–8 deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), structure of 239 Department of Defense (DoD) 254 depression 263, 272 De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (Copernicus) 117 DeSteno, David 261–2, 261 n.1 dialogical thinkers 268 dialogue and integration 181 dialysis 255 Dicken, Alan P. 22 n.21 Dickson, Andrew 118 Dionysius 6, 81 disengaged engagement 295–300 divine 56 breath/spirit 28 and creaturely causality, conflict between 114–15 divine-human relationship 251 essence 211 essence, Talmudic and the Eastern Christian understanding 220 glory 213, 220 immanence 24 incarnation 83 knowledge 210 poetry 41 revelation 34, 112 self-revelation 198 substances 50 Divine Action Project 159 Division of Labor, The (Durkheim) 276 Dobzhansky, Theodosius 36, 36 n.9 Doctors Without Borders 224 Dodds, Michael J. 6–7, 105 Dorrien, Gary J. 193 n.1 Douglas, Frederick 2, 7, 140 on racist anthropology 2 Douglass, Frederick 131, 136, 297–8 dramaturgical analysis 278 Draper, John William 112 n.41, 118 n.6 Dreaming the Biosphere (Reider) 227 Drees, Willem 203 n.40 Duarte, Shane 49 n.17 Du Bois, W. E. B. 140 Durkheim, Émile 276 Dykstra, Craig 285 dynamic actualization of universe’s potential 83

dynamism 83 Earth Day 224 Eastern Orthodox Church 177, 184, 210 Ecocene 229 ecofeminism 341–2 ecology 2, 10, 243 climate change, and evolution 336–40 in coptic liturgical prayers 309–11 ecological degradation 307 and evolution 338–40 ecopoiesis 229 ecotheology 206 ecowomanism 342–4 Edgar, Brian 7, 117 Edwards, Denis 160, 170–1, 339 n.21, 348 Edwards, Johnathan 301 Egyptian civilization 142 Einstein, Albert 8, 214–20 photoelectric effect 215 Einstein–Bohr debate 214–20 Eldredge, Niles 238 Elementary Forms of Religious Life (Durkheim) 277 elements and humans 99 Eliot, T. S. 76 Elton, Charles 36 Embach, Michael 95 n.8 emergence theory 206 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 298 emotional stability 255 empedocles 57 empty (bohû) 18 energy flows 227 environmental ethics 189–90 environmental sciences 10, 333–4 alternative paradigm 344–6 climate change and UNEP 336–7 ecofeminism 341–2 ecology, climate change, and evolution 336–40 ecology and evolution 338–40 ecowomanism 342–4 NOAA 337–8 preliminary concerns and foundational insights 334–6 environmental threats 189 Ephrem, St. 68 essentialism 58 Eternal Spirit of the Father and of the Son 214 ethnicity 137 ethnography 280

358

and social sciences 285–7 ethos 189 eurocentric racialization 293 Eurocentrism 291, 294–5 Eusebius 68 Evagrius 6, 81 Evans, John H. 253 Evdokimov, Paul 185–6 evening (knowledge) 64 evolution 154 biology 35 change, process of 239 science 240 theories 154, 192 Evolution of Organic Species, The (Leroy) 154 An Exact Exposition on the Orthodox Faith 88 Exposition of Genesis 68 extended evolutionary synthesis (EES) 233 Eznik of Kolb 68 faith biblical interpretation 33 and science 33, 348–9 seeking understanding 34 tradition 251 false interpretations 114 falsificationism 200, 241 Fanon, Frantz 10, 289 Federov, Nikolai 230 feminist theology 206, 341–2 Fergus Kerr, O.P. 105 n.1, 106 Filioque 210 Florensky, Pavel 178–81 Follon, J. 49 n.17 Ford, Henry 250–1 Fordism 250–1 fore-understanding 284 formless (tohû) 18 Fount of Knowledge, The 88–9 Four Quartets (Eliot) 76 Frances Allen, William 299 Francis, Pope 336 Frank, Adam 226 n.13, 231 Frede, Michael 45 n.3, 49 n.15, 50–2 Freud, Sigmond 264 psychoanalysis 200 Froschammer, Jakob 147 Fuller, Buckminster 227, 230 functionalism 279 fundamentalists 193 Fundamentals of Ecology (Odum) 227

Index

Gadamer, Hans-Georg 284 Gaia hypothesis (Lovelock) 227, 232, 242 Galen 75, 94, 117–18 Galileo Galilei 4, 6, 61 n.2 Garand, James C. 258, 258 n.39 Garb, Yaakov 224 n.3 Garfinkle, Harold 278 Geertz, Clifford 278–9, 279 n.9 gene myth 239 regulation 239 Genesis commentary on 59–60 creation for 2 “literal” sense, pursuit of 59–60 narrative of creation 91 nonbelieving critics 60 Genesis 1–2, cosmic vision 15–16, 16, 68 architectonic scheme 19 ecological vision 25 expanding universe as God’s temple 24–5 human commonality with other animals 28–9 human distinctiveness in ecological cosmos 30 image of God in other creatures 29 Imago Dei as mediation of divine presence 23–4 Imago Dei as earthly vocation 26–8 initial human pair 25–6 literary structure of 17–19, 18 renewal of all things 30–1 significance of sevens in 20–1 six-day scheme of creation 17–19, 18, 59, 64–6 world picture versus worldview 17 genetic code 237 geology 37, 88 Giddens, Anthony 278 Gillespie, Kevin 264 Glaze, Florence Eliza 93 n.1 Gliddon, George R. 135 global communication 11 globalization 292, 294 gnosticism 69 God adornments of angels 100 creation of world 15–19 evolutionary process 194 freedom 66 glory 121 image of God in other creatures 29

Index

limited human capacity 124 Logos of 79 Providence 64–5 self-revelation in person of Jesus Christ 195–7 transcendence and otherness 205 wisdom and nature 121 God Committee 255 God-nature relationship 205 Goffman, Erving 277–8 Gould, Stephen Jay 202, 238 Grant, Edward 112 Greene-McCreight, Kathryn 268 greenness (“vital energy”) 99 Green Patriarch 184 Gregorios, Mar 185 Gregory of Nyssa 6, 68, 72, 75, 81 Gregory Palamas, St. 8, 210–14, 214 n.24–5 Grenz, Stanley 199 n.22 Grey, Mary 242 Grinspoon, David 232 Günther, Anton 147 Gyle, Robert 279 Habermas, Jürgen 275 habitus 285 Hadot, Pierre 67, 67 n.1 Haidt, Jonathan 39, 39 n.28, 43 Hampson, Peter 269, 272–3 Harrison, Peter 2, 194, 319 n.3 Haught, John F. 160–1, 164–5, 240, 264 Hawking, Stephen 5, 63–4, 63 n.5 Hayes, Cory 214n.26 health care 2, 9 professional-patient relationships 252 heaven and earth 72 Hebrew Bible 132 Genesis 4 power of observation 34 Wisdom 4–5 see also Bible Hebrew cosmologies of creation 2 Hefner, Philip 203, 319 n.1, 320 n.6 Hegel, Georg 134 idealism 277 hegemony of Eurocentrism 294 Heisenberg, Werner 215, 215 n.28 Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle 215 hermeneutics and accommodation 123–4 Hexaemeral commentary 68 Hexaemeron 5–6, 17–19, 18, 59, 64–6 Basil on 72–6

359

Theophilos of Antioch 69–71 tradition of reflection on 68–9 Hiebert, Theodore 27 n.32 Higginson, Thomas Wentworth 299 Hildegard of Bingen 2, 6, 11, 93–4 early life 93–4 education and writings 94–8 Liber divinorum operum (Book of Divine Works [LDO]) 93 Liber vitae meritorum (Book of the Rewards of Life [LVM ]) 93 magistra, role of 93 medical-scientific writings 93 n.2 physical and spiritual, relationship between 99–103 plants and their medicinal uses 93 remedies and cures 98–9 Scivias 93 Hirscher, Johann 147 Hispanic Women: Prophetic Voice in the Church (Isasi-Díaz) 286 Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The (Adams) 15 Hobbes, Thomas 276 Hoekstra, Rolf F. 36 n.12 Hoenig, Christina 65 n.9 holism/biocentrism 242 Holy Scripture 60, 113 n.45, 124 Holy Spirit 25, 60–1, 121, 124, 210, 214 Holy Synod 312 Holy Trinity 178 Homer 71 hominoid-like species 241 Homo sapiens 25 Hoyle, Fred 163 Hozeski, Bruce W. 95 n.9, 95 n.11–12 human as world-maker 223–4 anthropocene in cosmic perspective 230–3 Biosphere 2, earthbound transcendence 226–9 niche construction 233–5 space ecology 229–30 whole earth environmentalism 224–6 human consciousness 223, 291 human-divine relationship 273 human exceptionalism 8, 223, 234 human freedom 239 Human Genome Project 239 Humani Generis 156 humanistic sciences 195 humanity 9, 245 littleness of 66

360

human niche construction 233–5 human pair (Adam and Eve) 25–6 Human Person in Theology & Psychology: A Biblical Anthropology 266 humility 44, 62 humors in human body 9 hylomorphism 58 hypostatic union 85 Imago Dei theology 23–4, 260 immorality 132 Inca 293 independent nation-states 293 indigenous black theology 301–4 individualism/anthropocentrism 242 interactionism 277 Irwin, Terence 45 n.3 Isasi-Díaz, Ada María 286, 286 n.25 Iskander, Mai 314 Islam 136 Issues in Science and Religion (Barbour) 202 Jablonka, Eva 36, 36 n.13, 37 n.18 Jackson Jr., John P. 131 n.1 James, Christopher 287 James, William 262 Jenkins, David 244 Jenkins, Willis 320 n.8 Jerusalem 78 Jesus Christ 25, 70 death and resurrection, significance of 70 Job 38–41 34 back to 43 decentered 42 new way of life 44 response to YHWH’s speeches 39 John Damascene 6, 81, 87–91 astronomical information of 90 Fount of Knowledge, The 88 monk in Palestinian monastery 88 Johnson, Elizabeth A. 160, 171–2, 339 n.22 Johnson, Eric 267 Johnson, Sylvester 136–7 Johnson, Terrence 7, 131, 348 Jones, Serene 268–9 Jutta of Sponheim 93 Kafatos, Menas 215 n.27 Kapriev, Georgi 210 n.2 Kardeshev, Nikolai 231 Kazhdan, Alexandre 88 n.51–3 Keel, Terence 138

Index

Keltner, Dacher 39, 39 n.28, 43 Keshgegian, Flora 268–9 Kilwardby, Robert 107 King Jr., Martin Luther 260 Kleutgen, Joseph 148, 152 Knight, Christopher 8, 177, 348–9 knowledge (da’at) 19 Koenig, Harold 261 Kolmes, Steven 334 Krishna 39 Krüger, Thomas 39 n.25 Kugelmann, Robert 265 survey 265 Kuhn, Thomas 200 Labelle, Brandon 291 Laland, Kevin 234 Lamarck, Jean-Baptist 152 LaMotte, Louis C. 33 n.2 Lampe, G. W. 244 Landsman, N. P. 216 n.32, 217, 220, 220 n.54 Laws, Terri 9, 249, 349 Lemaître, Georges 162–3 legacy on theologians 168–74 Lennox, James 56 Leopold, Aldo 333 n.1 Leroy, Dalmace 154 Leszl, Walter 45 n.3 Leviathan 28–9, 42 Levi-Strauss, Claude 279 structuralism 279 liberation theologies 243, 283 and fundamentalism 192–4 Liberatore, Matteo 147–8 Liber compositae medicinae 95 Liber divinorum operum (Book of Divine Works [LDO]) 93 Liber simplicis medicinae 95 Liber subtilitatem diversarum naturarum creaturarum 95 Liber vitae meritorum (Book of the Rewards of Life [LVM]) 93 life-giving force for humanity 99 Light of Stars 231 Lindberg, David C. 112 n.41, 113 n.45 Linzey, Andrew 240 literary criticism 268 liturgical ethos of Coptic Orthodox Church 10, 307–8 Anaphora Retreat Center 315–16 ecology in coptic liturgical prayers 309–11 frequency of coptic liturgical prayers 311–13

361

Index

liturgical time and mindfulness 308–9 Zabbālīn and Garbage dreams 313–14 liturgical prayers 311–13 liturgical time and mindfulness 308–9 livestock 27 logoi of creation 83, 89, 189 Logos of God 6, 79, 82 Lollar, Joshua 81 n.2 Looy, Heather 269–74 Lossky, Vladimir 182 Lost Familiarity (Zakhos) 189 Louth, Andrew 5–6, 82, 82 n.7, 180, 189, 349 Loverlock, James 227, 232, 242 Luther, Martin 124–5, 268 2 Maccabees 70 Machiavelli, Niccolo 276 Macmurray, John 119 macrosociology 278 Maffly-Kipp, Laurie R. 140, 143 magistra 96 Maimonides, M. 220 n.55 Manichaean theology 61–2 Manichees 77 Marcus, George 280 Marx, Karl 276–7, 280 materialism 65 mathematics 45 n.1, 53 application to physical world 109–10 Mawson, Michael 282 Maximus the Confessor 2, 6, 79, 81–8, 189 biography 82 Byzantine biography 82 teleological-christological understanding of the cosmos 183 theory of everything 85, 87, 90 Mayan 293 McAdams, Dan 278 McCarthy, Angela Farizo 258, 258 n.39 McDargh, John 269 McDonagh, Sean 242 McFague, Sallie 242, 321 n.9, 327 McGrath, Alister 195, 200, 200 n.28, 241 McIntyre, Alasdair 284, 284 n.22 McMacken, Travis 197 McManus, Freda 262–3 McMullin, Ernan 61 n.2, 65 n.8, 162, 203 McNamara, Patrick 42 Mead, Margaret 278 Meawad, Stephen 10, 307, 349 mediation 23 medical genetics 239

medical innovation 249 Affordable Care Act 257–9 categories of 253–7 illustration 249–51 medicine and theology 251–3 social and cultural process 253–7 theology of inclusion 257–9 medicare funds 253–4, 254 n.16 medicine 6, 9 Merchant, Carolyn 242 mesmerism 136 metaphysics 47–54, 56–7, 108 Metropolitan of Pergamon 186 Meyer, Eric Daryl 339 microbes 229 microcosm of society-at-large 255 microscopic organisms 227 microsociology 277–8 Middleton, J. Richard 2, 4, 15, 19 n.9, 359 Midgley, Mary 241 Mignolo, Walter 303–4 Milbank, John 282–3 Milgrim, Stanley 278 Milky Way galaxy 15 Miller, James B. 33 n.3 Miller, Patrick 133, 136, 136 n.18 mind-blowing awe 42 miracle accounts recorded in Gospels 193 misogynist profiling 132 Mitchell, Stephen 39 n.29 Mlodinow, Leonard 63–4, 63 n.5 Moellendorf, Darrel 134 molecular biology 239 Moltmann, Jürgen 243 Moorish Science Temple 136 moral betterment 137 Morowitz, Harold J. 36 n.15 Morris, Simon Conway 241 Morton, Samuel G. 135 Moschella, Mary Clark 286, 286 n.26 Moses 77, 124 countenance 213–14 Moulinier 95 n.13 Murphy, Nancey 203, 203 n.42 Mystagogy 83 n.15–16 “the mystery of Christ” 85 Nadeau, Robert 215 n.27 Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass (Douglass) 296 Nash, James 334 n.4, 340 National Institutes of Health 254

362

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) 337–8 Nation of Islam (NOI) 136 Natorp, Paul 48 n.14 natural contemplation 81 naturalization of cultural differences 295 natural philosophy 46 natural science 46, 51, 53, 56–7 natural theology 108 theology as science 194–9 natural world 19 n.8 nature 237 nature and science 177 beginnings 184–6 conflict or consonance 178–80 convergent approaches 186 developments 189–90 divine action 183–4 independence, dialogue, and integration 180–2 orthodox panentheism 182–3 psychology 184 relationship in creation 186–8 Russian religious philosophy 178 theology and ecology 184–90 Nazi eugenic theories 136 Necessity of Reforming the Church, The (Cavin) 117 Negroes 132–3 exceptionalism 143 Georg Hegel’s characterization of 134 slaves 138–9 spirituals 295–300 Neil, Bronwen 82 n.6 Nellas, Panayiotis 180 neoliberal global market capitalism 294 neo-Orthodoxy 195 neo-scholasticism 2, 7–8, 152 four central tenets of 148 history 146–7 movement 145–6 nest-building 37 Nesteruk, Alexei 180 neurobiology 34 Newsom, Carol A. 42 n.37 New Studies of Philosophy: Lectures to a Young Student 153 New Testament 19, 25, 212 Newtonian mechanics 215 nḥm 39 Nicene Creed 210 niche construction theory 233–5

Index

Nicholas of Cusa 122 Niebuhr, H. Richard 283 NOAA see National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) “Noah’s Ark” 230 “non-overlapping magisteria” (NOMA) model 202 non-Western culture 280 “noosphere” concept 226 normative white gaze 133 Northcott, Michael 243 notion of causality 110–11 Odling-Smee, F. J. 37 n.17 Odum, Eugene 227 Oh, Priscilla Sun Kyung 272 Old Testament 31, 212 Oliver, Mary 321, 321 n.10 Olson, Laura R. 258, 258 n.39 “one breath,” sympnoia 86 On the Incarnation 70 On the Making of Human kind (Gregory) 68, 75 On the Making of the World (Philo) 68 ontological potentiality 84 Oriental Orthodoxy 307 Origen 68, 81 Origin of Species (Darwin) 238 Orthodox Christian theology 179 panentheism 182–3 Reformed commitments 193 theology and quantum physics 209 theology of creation 182 tradition 1, 6, 182 see also Christian theology ouranos 89 out of nothing , ex nihilo 70 Overview Effect 223 Page, Ruth 242 Pannenberg, Wolfhart 198, 198 n.20 Parsons, Talcott 278 Patriarch of Antioch 186 patristic thinking 177 Patzig, G. 49 Paul, St. 63, 70 Peacocke, Arthur 244–5 Pecci, Gioacchino 146, 148 Persephone Project 229 perspectivalism 267 Peters, Ted 239 Peterson, Anne Siebels 2, 5, 45, 349

363

Index

Philokalia 184 Philonic metaphysics 220 Philo of Alexandria 220 Philoponos, John 76 philosophy of science 201–4 phrenology 136 phronesis 284 Physica 94–6, 98–9 physics 2, 8, 88 Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, debate 214–20 eastern Christian perspective 209–10 St. Gregory Palamas and Barlaam the Calabrian, debate 210–14 physike 6, 82 physiology 136 Pietsch, Stephen 268 Pimm, Stuart L. 36 n.10 Pinn, Anthony B. 249, 249 n.2 Pino, Tikhon Alexander 220 n.57 Pitt, David 224 n.3 Planck’s discovery of quanta 215 planetary environmentalism 8 planetary perspective 225–6 planetary scale 231 planetary vision of unity 227–8 planets 91 evolutionary scheme with life 231 plastic waste 8 Plato 57, 67, 77 parlance 85 philosophy 105 tradition 87 Pliny’s Natural History 75 Plotinos 76 Polanyi, Michael 120–1 Polkinghorne, John 2, 132, 203, 203 n.38 polygenesis 135 Pope, primacy of 210 Pope John Paul II 159 Pope John XXII 210 Pope Leo XIII 145–6, 150 Pope Pius IX 147 Pope Pius XII 163 Popper, Karl 200, 200 n.26 positivism 199 posterior analytics 45 n.3, 108 n.19, 211 post-Reconstruction era 140 Potts, Rick 338, 338 n.17 Prediger, Stephen Bouma 243 Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Goffman) 277

pre-socratic materialists 57 Primavesi, Anne 242 primordial awe 40 Procavia capensis 35 process thought 206 progressivism 10 Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, The (Weber) 276–7 protestant theology 1, 8, 191–2, 301, 319 appeal to sola Scriptura 65 n.9 evolutionary theory 192 liberal theology and fundamentalism 192–4 naturalistic turn 205–6 natural theology as science 194–9 philosophy of science 201–4 Protestant fundamentalists 179 scientific revolutions 199–201 traction between science and theology 204–5 work ethics 124–5 see also Christian theology proto-Anthropocene 232 “proto-scientific” approaches 34 Providence 66 Psali Batos 310 Psalm 104 34–5 and planetary life 35–6 view of human life 35 pseudoscientific theories 200 psychological sciences, Christian theology and 9, 261–2 in dialogue, psychology’s contributions 267–70 in dialogue, theology’s contributions 270–4 models of 264–7 presumptive authority 270 psychology among sciences 262–4 psychology 34, 183, 268 and Christianity 265 of religion 269 Ptolemaic astronomy 75, 109, 117 Pyman, Avril 178 Pythagoras 76 quadrivium 122 quantum mechanics 114, 121, 215 Copenhagen interpretation of 218 ‘incompleteness’ 218 quantum phenomena 217 quantum physics 8, 214, 216 Quechua 293 Quercus (case study) 321–5

364

Quijano, Anibal 10, 289, 292–5, 292 n.7, 298, 305 Rabinow, Paul 280 racialization on African descended peoples 289–90 differences 137 hierarchies 132, 136 pseudoscience 132 racial science 7, 132 racial uplift 132, 137 racial weakness 135 tripartite grip of 294 Rad, Gerhard von 34 n.5 Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. 279 Rael, Patrick 136 Rahner, Karl 160 Rambo, Shelly 268–9 rationalization, process of 277 rational seeds 66 Rationes Seminales 65 n.9 Ray, John 237 reality 85 comprehensive map of 86 reason as contemplation 186 reduction in agency 42 reductionism 273 reductionism, critics 272 Rees, William E. 333 n.2, 335 Reformation 277 Regan, Tom 240 Reider, Rebecca 227 religion 202 and black ethnics 136–8 religious aspiration 11 religious diversity 251 religious imagination 137 religion-and-science 319–21 lived 331 place-based framework 325–6 practices 327–31 urban ecology 321–5 republican ethos 277 Rerum Novarum 7–8, 150 Richardson, Marilyn 142 Riha, Ortrun 95 n.15, 96 n.18 Risks of Faith (Cone) 260 Ritchie, Sarah Lane 8, 183 n.30, 191, 349 Ritschl, Albrecht 192 Rochberg, Francesca 19 n.8 Rogers, Everett M. 257 n.37 Rognoff, Barbara 278

Index

Romanides, John 210 n.4 Rosaldo, Renato 278 Ross, W. D. 51 n.23 Roy, Éduoard Le 226 Ruether, Rosemary Radford 242 Rusert, Britt 135 n.10, 135 n.16, 136, 136 n.20, 137 n.22 Russell, Robert John 201, 201 n.31, 203 n.36, 319 n.5 sacra doctrina 112 sacrifice of praise 62, 64 Sagan, Carl 224 salvation 69, 124 Samson, Paul R. 224 n.3 sanctuary 328–9 Sandage, Steven 266 Sanseverino, Gaetano 146, 147 n.9, 152 scala naturae 35 Scharen, Christian 286 schesis 83 schizophrenia 272 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 192 Schrödinger, Erwin 215 Schutz, Paul J. 8, 10, 159, 333 Schweitz, Lea F. 10, 319, 350 science 114 of being qua being 46, 49, 54 calling to 124–5 definition 107–8 divisions 108–10 and faith 160 functions independently of theology 127–8 need for God 126–9 notion of causality 110–11 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) professionals 250 science and Protestant theology 1, 8, 191–2 appeal to sola Scriptura 65 n.9 evolutionary theory 192 liberal theology and fundamentalism 192–4 naturalistic turn 205–6 natural theology as science 194–9 philosophy of science 201–4 Protestant fundamentalists 179 scientific revolutions 199–201 traction between science and theology 204–5 work ethics 124–5 science of God 198 science-religion discussions 252 scientific racism 131–3 and creation of the “other” 135–6

365

Index

moral and cultural narratives 134 race science 134–5 scientific revolutions 136, 199–201 Scivias (Know the Ways [of the Lord]) 93, 103 scriptural conflicts 114 scriptural meditation 105 secular books 61 self conscious global change 232–3 decoupling of the 42 determination 137 healing capacities 42 identified science 250 interpreting 62 professed silence 40 reliance 132 revelation of creation 34 transformation 44 semper reformanda 206 Servetus, Michael 118 Sevens in Genesis 1, significance of 20–1 Shekinah glory of YHWH 23 Shepherd of Hermas, Mandates 1 70 Sheppard, Phillis 268 Sherrard, Philip 179 n.7, 189 Sideris, Lisa H. 8, 223, 350 Silent Spring (Carson) 224 simultaneous creation 65, 65 n.8 Singer, Peter 240 sins Calvin’s interpretation of Adam’s sin 301 and prodigality 142 Theophilos of Antioch 69 six-day scheme of creation see Hexaemeron Slattery, John P. 1–2, 145, 161, 350 slavery 131, 138–9 Aristotle’s justification for 136 Biblical theory of 141–2 Slave Songs 299–300 Smith, Adam 276, 280 Smith, Samuel Stanhope 138 Smith, Ted 284, 284 n.20 Smoley, Richard 226 n.16 Snyder, Timothy K. 9–10, 275, 350 social community 273 social facts 277 social learning 36 social research 275 social sciences, theology and 2, 9–10, 275–6 Communion of Saints, The 281–2 cultural anthropology 278–80 historical development 276–80

social theory 280–3 sociology 276–8 Theology and Social Theory 282–3 turn to culture 283–4 turn to ethnography 285–7 turn to practice 284–5 social scientific theory 9 social system 278 social theory 275, 278, 280–3 sociogeny 10, 289–90 sociogenic principle 290, 292–5 sociological stratification 259 sociology 9–10, 268, 276–8 soil composition 227 Solomon 24 Soloviev, Vladimir 178 Sordi, Serafino 146, 148 Southgate, Christopher 204 space ecology 229–30 spaceship Earth 227 spirit, power of 339 spiritual and incorporeal powers 74 spiritual empowerment 214 spiritualization 243 Star Ark 229 state of disorientation 41 Stearns, Stephen C. 36 n.12 Stenmark, Mikael 265 Stewart, Maria 2, 7, 131, 136, 142 Stoeger, William 160, 168–70, 337, 339 n.24 Stokes, Mason 142 storehouses 40 Stoudt, Debra L. 6, 93, 96 n.17, 99, 99 n.36, 351 StrongBlackWoman 268 superbia 62 Swinton, John 272 Syriac vita 82 Taino 293 Tanev, Stoyan 8, 181, 209, 212 n.20 Tanner, Kathryn 283–4, 284 n.18, 287 Tao of Physics, The 185 Taparelli, Luigi 146, 148 techno-environmentalism 229 Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre 156–62, 240, 243–4 theologians influenced by 164–8 Tempier, Stephen 107 termites 37 terranauts 226 Terra sapiens 35

366

Theognosia 212 Theokritoff, Elizabeth 8, 177, 182 n.23, 183–4, 188, 307, 351 theologians of disability 271 theological anthropology 320 theological liberalism 192–3 theology and biological sciences 237–9, 246–8 Arthur Peacocke 244–5 John Zizioulas 245–6 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin 243–4 survey 239–43 theophanies 212 Theophilos of Antioch 69–71 apologies 69 fate 69 gnosticism 69 human creation 71 sins 69 theoretical sciences 45, 53 theories of cosmic evolution 224 Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology (Tanner) 283 theo-rights approach 240 theory of multiple universes 63 Thompson, D’Arcy 57 Throop, Priscilla 95 n.14, 96 n.16, 96 n.18 Tillich, Paul 194, 283 Tollefsen, Torstein 87 Torah 30 Torrance, Thomas F. 129–30, 196, 197 n.11, 198 n.18, 240 science-theology interaction 197 “theological science” 197 Torrell, Jean-Pierre 105 n.5, 106 n.7, 106 n.12, 107 n.16 transfiguration of Christ 213 Triads 214 Trinity 78, 214, 243 trivium 122 truths of faith 159 Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin 230 Turner, Denys 106 n.6 Tyson, Neil DeGrasse 224 uncertain suffering center 257 understanding (tĕbûnâ) 19 UNEP see United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Unitarian faith, principles 298 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) 336–7 unity of truth 112

Index

universal because first 51–6 Universal Negro Improvement Association 137 urban deindustrialization 250 vain knowledge 126–7 vanity 126 Van Leeuwen, Raymond C. 19 n.9 vastness 39 Vatican Observatory 163 Vernadsky, Vladimir 226, 228, 230 Vesalius, Andreas 117–18 Vigen, Aana Marie 286 virgin birth 193 vocation 124–5 von Balthasar, Hans Urs 86 Walker-Barnes, Chanequa 268 Wallace, William A. 108 n.20 Ward, Keith 241 Watson, James 237, 239 Watts, Fraser 262, 270–1 wealth 277 Webb, Marcia 268, 270–1 Weber, Max 276–8, 280 Wednesday Psali 309–10 Wells, Colin 210 n.5 West, Cornel 134 Western theism 205 White, Andrew Dickson 119 white Christianity 138 Whitehead, Alfred North 202, 240 white supremacy 131 methodological assumptions 134 Whitla, Becca 303 n.45 Wigg-Stevensen, Natalie 286, 287 n.29 Williams, George Washington 7, 131, 136, 139, 143 Wilson, Edward O. 38, 241 wisdom and science 33–5 accommodation 40–2 awe, Job and science of 38–40 ecological niche 36–8 Job back home 43–4 Job decentered 42 perspective on creation 34–5 Psalm 104 and planetary life 35–6 vastness 40 wisdom (hokmâ) 19 Wisdom of God Manifest in the Works of Creation, The (Ray) 237 Woloschak, Gayle 181 women empowerment 286

367

Index

Woodrow, James 33 World Council of Churches (WCC) 185 Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (Marcus) 280 Wynter, Sylvia 290, 294, 297, 305 YHWH ego-crushing 43 gates of deep darkness 40 recesses of /deep 40 revelation of creation 5, 21, 38 Yoruba 293 Young, George M. 226 n.15

Zabbālīn of the Mokattam Hill 10, 308, 313–14, 317 Zahm, John 153, 155 Zakhos, Konstantinos 189 Zátonyi, Maura 95 n.10 Zenner, Christiana 338, 338 n.16 Zigliara, Tommaso Maria 150–2 against evolution 152–3 metaphysical critique 153 Zizioulas, John 186–7, 189, 243, 245–6 zodiacal signs 91

368

369

370

371

372

373

374