A Modern Relation of Theology and Science Assisted by Emergence and Kenosis

Bradford McCall

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781532642128, 9781532642135
• eBook ISBN: 9781532642142
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

How should we attempt to understand the relationship between theology and science in the twenty-first century? In this book, I will attempt to answer this question by examining several previous attempts to classify this relationship. I also develop my personal view of the relation, thereafter discussing some Catholic contributions to this project, and then revisit some of my previously published material, highlighting the role of panentheism therein, and noting an emergent implication from the literature: the resultant possibilities for God--an implication that creates space for a broadly relational perspective of the process of emergence. These movements allow me to argue that kenosis and emergence can add to the discussion of understanding the theology and science relationship. Herein, I advocate a monistic process-based view of the overlapping relationship between theology and science.

Part One

Delineation of Theology & Science Models

1

A Delineation of Models Regarding the Relationship Between Theology and Science1

In this chapter of the book, I delineate several aspects of previous models of the relationship between religion/theology and science. John Hedley Brooke and Geoffrey Cantor, for example, argue that neither religion nor science is reducible to some sort of timeless essence; rather, both must be understood in their historical particularities—they are inextricable from the times in which they arise.2 Within the academy of higher education today, there are four general ways of responding to the main question of this chapter. On the one hand, we have those who think they there are no real limits to the competence of science, what it can do, and what it can explain. Richard Dawkins, for example, writes that since we have modern biology, we have “no longer . . . to resort to superstition when faced with the deep problems: Is there a meaning to life? What are we for? What is man?”3 According to Dawkins, science can address and answer all of these questions. Mikael Stenmark calls people like Dawkins “scientific expansionists.”4 What they have in common is that they think science can and should be expanded in such a way that the only kind of knowledge that we can have is of a scientific variety.

On the other hand, there are people that contend science should be heavily informed by or shaped by religion. These thinkers aver that the boundaries of religion—not those of science—can and should be expanded in such a way that religion dictates science. Stenmark calls these individuals “religious expansionists.”5 For instance, in this camp one will find such thinkers as Alvin Plantinga, who, while noting that it is naive to expect contemporary science to be religiously or theologically neutral, advises us that it would be wise that, “a Christian academic and scientific community ought to pursue science in its own way, starting from and taking for granted what they know as Christians.”6 I contend that we must take religious expansionists as serious as we take scientific expansionists.

There is yet another group of views on the theology and science relationship, one that contends science cannot be ideologically neutral. Steven Rose, Richard Lewontin, and Leon J. Kamin, for example, are representatives of this view; they write that they “share a commitment to the prospect of the creation of a more socially just—a socialist—society. And we recognize that a critical science is an integral part of the struggle to create that society.”7 Stenmark calls these thinkers “ideological expansionists.”8

In contradistinction to the three above mentioned models, there is a fourth group of thinkers that defend the idea that science and theology or ideology ought to be restricted to their own separate areas of inquiry; Stenmark calls these people “scientific and religious restrictionists.”9 An example of this type of thinking can be found in the writings of Stephen Jay Gould, who argues that science and religion should exhibit a respectful noninterference, and are in fact autonomous, non-overlapping “magesteria.”10 The magisterium of science regards the empirical realm, whereas religion regards questions of ultimate meaning and moral value.11

It should be noted that both science and religion have social dimensions, and as such, they are social practices, meaning that they are “Socially established cooperative human activities through which their practitioners . . . try to achieve certain goals by means of particular strategies.”12 I agree with Stenmark here. I contend that science and theology have social practices that overlap. It is often claimed that science is the paradigm of dispassionate inquiry, where positions of truth are critically examined, and nothing is believed on the basis of authority; instead, the scientific community disinterestedly applies the scientific method. I question this claim, and contend instead, with Thomas Kuhn,13 that all scientific truths are socially constrained. Moreover, since the practice of science is a learned activity, it, like religion, employs the usage of authority. Philip Kitcher agrees, writing, “individual scientists identify certain people within the community as authoritative in issues that are not agreed on throughout the community.”14

Personal Model of the Science and Theology Relationship: Overlap

Early in my postgraduate education, I encountered Process philosophy, and my life has been forever changed as a result. This section of the book will briefly recount the results of this encounter with Process philosophy, its continuing relevance for me, and how my advocation of a monistic Process-based view of the overlapping relationship between science and theology looks like fleshed out in practice. In my studies over the last fifteen years, I have interacted heavily with Process philosophy, and have invariably inculcated much of what I have been exposed to since my entrance into a postgraduate degree program. In these postgraduate studies, I have consistently sought to integrate my new learning with my undergraduate degree in biology. So then, in the chapters that follow, one may find an explication of how I have come to view the science and theology relationship as one that should be characterized by a monistic understanding of the two domains that is based on a Process worldview (i.e., ideologically based), and is discernable by an overlapping of the two fields of inquiry.

While I here use the term “integrate,” this should not be taken to mean that I indiscriminately agree with Ian Barbour’s characterization of what he calls the “Integration” position of the theology and science relationship.15 Due to this highly read book, most of the discussion post 1990 has classified the science and religion relationship as being one of conflict, independence, dialogue, or integration. Because I view the notion of there being a “conflict” between science and religion as a specious concept, based more so on John William Draper’s polemic against the Catholic Church, as expressed in his History of the Conflict between Religion and Science, as well as my contention that the putative relation known as “dialogue” is nebulous (regardless of which view one might hold, they should be committed to “dialogue” with opposing views), I would—if I had to use Barbour’s delineations—be an integrationist. But overall I agree with Brooke and Cantor16 and van Huyssteen17 who argue th...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part One: Delineation of Theology & Science Models
• Part Two: Kenosis & Emergence
• Part Three: Teleology & Theology
• Part Four: Pneumatology, Philosophy, & Science
• Bibliography