God and Evolution: Fundamental Questions of Christian Evolutionism

9. The God of an Evolving Nature

chapter 9 The God of an Evolving Nature Between Biblical and Scientific Perspectives As our ideas about the structure and laws of nature develop, our ideas about the presence and role of God in the processes of nature also undergo significant change. Before the emergence of modern science, nature—in Greek mythology and in the homilies of leading theologians —was understood to be a domain of Divine presence. The description of that presence combined poetic reverie with commonsense philosophy, contemplative wonder about the world, and an experience of awe in which God also reveals His hidden presence. In places where Christian thought was an important influence, that view was shaped by biblical passages in which God was hidden both in a still small voice (1 Kings 19:12) and in Abraham’s wanderings in the darkness of the empty steppe. The Psalms spoke of this, showing a God “clothed with honor and majesty” (Psalm 104:1) as the God of badgers and wild goats (Psalm 104:18) who renews the face of the ground (Psalm 104:30), penetrating with His presence both the whole world of nature and the deepest layers—the “heart and mind” (Psalm 26:2) of human existence. A particular aesthetic sensitivity to the beauty of a nature which reveals the presence of God is shown in the Old Testament by the author of the Book of Sirach. He writes, among other things, 147 Look upon the rainbow, and praise him who made it, exceedingly beautiful in its brightness. It encircles the heaven with its glorious arc; the hands of the Most High have stretched it out....... He pours the hoarfrost upon the earth like salt, and when it freezes, it becomes pointed thorns. The cold north wind blows, and ice freezes over the water; it rests upon every pool of water, and the water puts it on like a breastplate. (Sirach 43:11–12, 19–20) Here, a great sensitivity to the beauty of nature is combined with an awareness of the presence of God, who reveals his power in the physical processes determining our daily existence. The Gospel view shows even more forcefully the connection with nature as a domain of the experience of God. There, a glance at the lilies of the field and the birds of the air takes on a theological dimension . Herds of sheep and nets filled with fish, the vine, the tares, and the shriveled fig tree speak of God. All of nature has a theological dimension, directing the attention of man in the direction of the unseen reality of the spirit. The inconspicuous mustard seed and the scorpions of the desert, the water of the Jordan and ears of corn plucked on the Sabbath become the natural background for retelling truths about the Kingdom of God. That style has many later practitioners , who, with the help of natural metaphors, have tried to explain the truth about the reality of the unseen world of grace. In the twelfth-century treatises of the School of Chartres, God is still presented as revealing His cosmic presence both in extraordinary miracles expressing Divine Providence and in the miracle of the harmonious development of nature.1 Both the slow growth of the vine and the change of water into wine at the wedding feast of Cana, in which the process of change was imperceptible even to the immediate witnesses of the miracle, expressed God’s presence in our daily life. 148 The God of an Evolving Nature 1. Cf. Z. Liana, Koncepcja Logosu i natury w Szkole w Chartres (Cracow: Ośrodek Badań Interdyscyplinarnych, 1966). Not only spring flowers, but also the flowering staff of Aaron (Numbers 17:23), points to a Divine power which permeates the horizon of human endeavors and activities. God acts both in known laws and in extraordinary signs. In the thirteenth century, when St. Thomas Aquinas discussed the possibility that angels had been entrusted with the responsibility for the motion of the planets and, in the pages of De substantiis separatis seu de angelorum natura ad Fratrem Reginaldum , ascribed to them functions which Aristotle left to the separated intelligences (intelligentiae separatae), he tried to use information about the motion of the planets to gain a more accurate knowledge of the nature of angels.2 During the period of the rise of modern science, Leonard Lessius challenged the opinion of St. Thomas. His objection, however...