Macroevolution, Contingency, and Divine Activity: Divine Involvement through Uncontrolling, Amorepotent Love in an Evolutionary World
Ebook
What are the things that God values in the creative process? How does one define God's activity in such a world? How is God's involvement different from a contingent--what this author labels contingentist--instance? Why do we need a God-idea at all? Herein, Bradford McCall addresses how divine, amorepotent love works with and within a contingentist (i.e., radically contingent) evolutionary theory and worldview. Within the course of this project, he reaches a via media between the (somewhat) radical formalist position of Simon Conway Morris and the veritably radical contingent position of Stephen Jay Gould. But . . . how is the contingentist amorepotent and uncontrolling love of God understood as purposeful? McCall argues in detail that there in fact is some sort of purposiveness that is nevertheless working in a chastened Gouldian position, and he distinguishes between contingency and veritable divine involvement. He contends that God does not insist upon a particular outcome but merely allows propensities to work themselves out. God amorepotently loves the population of the natural world into greater forms of complexity, relationality, and beauty in varied and multifarious forms, along with the extension of diversity.
“In this creative and erudite work, Bradford McCall tackles big questions about God’s actions. And in conversation with key voices and ideas, he proposes an appealing vision. I’m especially attracted to the ways McCall privileges divine love and understands divine activity in light of it. This is an important book!”
—Thomas Jay Oord, professor of open and relationship theology, Northwind Theological Seminary
“Macroevolution, Contingency, and Divine Activity, by Bradford McCall, is one of the most interesting books I have read in a long time. Dealing with important issues about God’s involvement in the world, McCall shows an impressive ability to draw on biology, philosophy, history, and theology as partners in the quest for understanding. This is an important book for both seasoned scholars and beginning students. Highly recommended.”
—Michael Ruse, retired professor of philosophy, Florida State University
“Few contest the notion that God is God precisely in being able to redeem the pain and suffering of human history and its innumerable underdetermined actions. This work provides a preliminary account of how an undergraduate degree in biology is being redeemed, through the tragic and fluke circumstances involving traumatic brain injury, for contemporary theology in a scientifically understood world. More precisely, Bradford McCall also invites consideration of how divine redemption of the contingencies over the long arc of evolutionary history is occurring, especially as the latter is narrated in the geological, paleontological, and biological sciences.”
—Amos Yong, professor of theology and mission, Fuller Seminary
- Title: Macroevolution, Contingency, and Divine Activity: Divine Involvement through Uncontrolling, Amorepotent Love in an Evolutionary World
- Authors: Bradford McCall, Philip Clayton
- Publisher: Pickwick Publications
- Print Publication Date: 2023
- Logos Release Date: 2023
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781725278530, 9781725278516, 1725278510, 9781725278523, 1725278529, 1725278537
- Resource ID: LLS:9781725278530
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2023-12-12T21:46:25Z
Bradford McCall holds a PhD in process philosophy studies from Claremont School of Theology. He is the author or editor of four previous books: The God of Chance and Purpose (Wipf & Stock, 2022); Evolution (Wipf & Stock, 2020); God and Gravity (edited; Wipf & Stock, 2018); and A Modern Relation of Theology and Science Assisted by Emergence and Kenosis (Wipf & Stock, 2018).