A Christian Theology of Evolution and Participation

Abstract. Recent controversies surrounding the discernment of design in the natural world are an indication of a pervasive disquiet among believers. Can God as creator/sustainer of creation be reconcilable with the belief that God's work is indiscernible behind secondary evolutionary causes? Ch...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Zygon
Main Author: Creegan, Nicola Hoggard (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Wiley-Blackwell 2007
In: Zygon
Year: 2007, Volume: 42, Issue: 2, Pages: 499-518
Further subjects:B Nature
B Incarnation
B Christian de Duve
B Trinity
B Creation
B Stuart Kauffman
B Deus absconditus
B Kenosis
B evo devo
B Charles Darwin
B Simon Conway Morris
B non-Darwinian evolutionary models
B John F. Haught
B Intelligent design
B Richard Dawkins
B Telos (The Greek word)
B Denis Edwards
B Natural Selection
B Jürgen Moltmann
B Evolution
B God
B Stephen J. Gould
B Sensus Divinitatis
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Summary:Abstract. Recent controversies surrounding the discernment of design in the natural world are an indication of a pervasive disquiet among believers. Can God as creator/sustainer of creation be reconcilable with the belief that God's work is indiscernible behind secondary evolutionary causes? Christian piety requires that the order experienced in the natural world be evidence of God's love and existence. Theistic evolutionary models rarely examine this matter, assuming that God is indiscernible in the processes and order of the world because only secondary causes can be examined. This leaves antievolutionary perspectives to interpret and address the problem of seeing God in the world. I examine these issues in order to gain more credibility for the religious longing to discern God in nature while at the same time affirming the indubitable truth of an evolutionary history. I argue that God's trinitarian nature, hiddenness, and incarnation give us reason to believe that God's presence in the natural world will be discernible, but only within the natural processes, and thereby only in an obscured fashion. I also argue that newer understandings of evolutionary mechanisms are more consistent with theological appropriation than are strictly Darwinian ones.
ISSN:1467-9744
Contains:Enthalten in: Zygon
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2007.00499.x