Incarnation and Neo-Darwinism: Evolution, Ontology and Divine Activity
Ebook
In this ground-breaking theological appreciation of neo-Darwinism, David O. Brown argues that evolution is not the way that God creates, but is a consequence of creatures’ imitating and participating in God.
Theologians often claim that evolution is the way that God creates; however, this is not how biologists understand evolution. David O. Brown argues that a sober appreciation of neo-Darwinism understands evolution as a theory of preservation, not creation. Evolution is not a temporary process that will end in the completion of creation (or deification), but is a permanent feature of how creation is. In other words, evolution is a scientific theory of ontology, not a scientific theory of creation, and the point of connection between evolution and theology is ontology, not creation.
This leads to two important implications: First, evolution cannot be the way that God creates and, further, shows that God cannot influence the universe. This leads to the idea that Christ is the sole agent of all divine activity; God creates through Christ. Second, there is a connection between the theological ontology of participation and imitation on one side and neo-Darwinism on the other. Evolution is simply imitation and participation at a biological level. Thus, causing participation is the divine act achieved through Christ, of which evolution becomes a necessary side effect. Evolution is not the way that God creates, but is a consequence of creatures' imitating and participating in God.
Dr David O. Brown (who is not to be confused with Professor David Brown of St Andrews) has been reflecting on Christology for some 15 years. In this carefully-argued, clearly-written and wide-ranging book he provides the fruits of these intellectual labours. He begins by recognising, quite rightly, that most theologians neglect the challenge that evolution poses for their subject, by assuming that it is both a teleological (working towards a specific goal) and a temporary phenomenon, rather than an undirected, permanent feature of the physical universe. Focusing on the mechanism of evolution, in particular natural selection – which was Darwin’s key insight, rather than the fact of evolution (the mutability of species), he offers a systematic theology based on this ‘neo-Darwinian paradigm that rejects direct divine involvement’ (p. 16). Brown develops this universal Darwinism in concert with his uncompromising theological claims for Christian anthropology (in which all creatures are equal and humanity’s Fall is rejected, as is its need of any special grace), divine activity (God is utterly transcendent and does not directly interact with the world), Christology and incarnation (stressing Christ as the sole and unique agent of divine action in the world and understanding incarnation as the eternal act of creation), and participation in the life of God, viewed as the key to understanding both the imitation of Christ and the inevitability of the universe’s spontaneous creation through evolution, once ‘Christ has become incarnate and, in his person, set up the relationship of dependence through the eternal emptying of divinity that created the ontological space that was the historical body of Christ’ (p. 170; cf. 161). The final chapters of the book will perhaps seem to many the most radical, removing the crucifixion from its role in salvation and redemption and treating it, rather, as ‘an extension of … the creating power of the incarnation’ (p. 177), while interpreting the resurrection, not as ‘a bodily transformation but … [as] a subjective transformation of the perception and meaning of “this life” before death’ – that is, as ‘coming to see the world differently’ (p. 211). Here, as throughout the book, Brown cites an extensive range of classical and contemporary authors in support of his position. Brown’s approach is at variance with that of most writers on science and religion who seek to make sense of Christian theology after Darwin. This is largely because he will countenance no additional relationship between God and creation that does not fall under the neo-Darwinian paradigm: no providential steering of mutations or whole-part causation of the creator towards her creation, and certainly no miraculous intervention into the physical nexus so as to elevate the human species above other creatures. Any notion of an immaterial soul is also ‘denied by the neo-Darwinian synthesis’ (p. 207; cf. 58–9). I am not so convinced, however, that the processes of natural selection are necessarily the only ways in which God can act; and I would argue that it is not the job of philosophers (or theologians) to prescribe what God cannot do – or be. I am also concerned that (a) the abstract metaphysical concept of God that Brown espouses, which leads to the claim ‘that God does not really act at all’ because God is eternal and impassible (p. 78, cf. 90), is one that is too remote and mysterious; and (b) he claims that other language that we apply to God may not be used analogically, but must be wholly equivocal – so that ‘God cannot be described by anything and cannot influence anything’ (p. 87). The result, for this reader 128 BOOK REVIEWS anyway, is a rather unattractive view of God that sacrifices too much on the altar of intellectual coherence. So, although this is an intelligent and scholarly piece of work, I find myself less convinced by and sympathetic to its conclusions than I am by its more welcome point of departure. It is, nevertheless, an original and important contribution to the science/theology debate that is well worth the effort of studying
- Title: Incarnation and Neo-Darwinism: Evolution, Ontology and Divine Activity
- Author: David Brown
- Publisher: Sacristy Press
- Print Publication Date: 2019
- Logos Release Date: 2023
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781789590616, 9781789590609, 1789590604, 9781789590623, 1789590620, 1789590612
- Resource ID: LLS:9781789590616
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2023-07-20T09:49:34Z