New & Enlarged Handbook of Christian Theology - Donald W. Musser

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to translate the religious meanings of creation into the terms of modern cosmology. All present Christians, however, by no means see it this way. To many the scriptures have been verbally inspired, and hence every proposition is literally as well as religiously or symbolically valid. The “science” of Genesis is as true and as important for them as are the “religious” meanings of Genesis; in fact, for them these two cannot be separated. Thus arises the familiar “warfare” between religion and science over “creation science” or “God’s science” and what they term “evolutionary science.”

      One of the most unexpected novelties of the present epoch has been the appearance of “creation science,” an alternative “biblical” cosmology of origins sharply contrasted with that of contemporary evolutionary science. On the one hand, creation science is deliberately modeled on aspects of the Genesis cosmology taken literally (e.g., separate creation of “kinds,” especially human beings, a miraculous worldwide Noachic flood, and “sudden creation from nothing” of the entire universe about 10,000 years ago). On the other hand, creation science also claims to represent a genuinely “scientific” model of origins, based, as its adherents put it, on “scientific data” and “inferences from those data.”

      Although fundamentalism has not accommodated itself to the conclusions either of modern scientific or of modern historical inquiry, nevertheless, in promoting creation science it has sought to co-opt scientific procedure and authority as enthusiastically as it earlier used and in part transformed on its own terms the technological, commercial, capitalistic, and nationalistic culture of modernity. In fact, creation science as a body of theory was authored by Ph.D.s in natural science who are also fundamentalists. In the creationist-evolution controversy, fundamentalism has taken the literal form of the creation story and insisted on its unchanging authority and “scientific” validity. This strange fusion of fundamentalist content with an ersatz science into creation science has received important political and social help from the alliance of right wing evangelicalism with conservative Republicanism, the latter probably unconcerned with biblical literalism, but happy to cement their liaison with significant segments of the middle and lower middle classes. As a result, a number of states have proposed laws mandating the teaching of creation science, along with evolution, whenever the question of origins is raised in science classes. To date, the federal courts have struck down these laws as violating the Constitution.

      Creation and Nature. In the nineteenth century, when science and religion seemed in temporary conflict, theological reflection concentrated on nature’s processes and devised a number of evolutionary theisms. Later, from 1914 through roughly 1960, when European society was in turmoil, theology concentrated its attention on the question of the meaning of history and tended to ignore the role and the relevance of nature. A number of theologies in fact were almost loathe to articulate systematically even the religious meanings outlined above (e.g., Gustav Aulen, The Christian Faith; Rudolf Bultmann, History and Eschatology; and Oscar Cullmann, Christ and Time). In the past two decades, however, the integrity and preservation of nature have posed an absolutely crucial problem for modern civilization. Almost every front—the air and the atmosphere, the seas and lakes, the forests, the waters under the earth, the species on the earth, even the temperature—has shown itself to be endangered by industrial civilization, already perhaps mortally wounded. As has always been known but hardly felt, history is utterly dependent upon nature; yet, as we now realize for the first time, history has the ability not only to exploit nature but also to destroy it—and with that, to destroy itself. A deep sense of the self-destructive possibilities of human creativity and freedom is genuinely “biblical,” as it is also Greek. Neither the Christian nor the Greek traditions, however, contemplated the immanent destruction of nature and life through the enlarged powers of high civilization, and yet that is just what is upon us today.

      As a consequence, increasingly since the late-1960s theologies of nature have appeared. They represent efforts to articulate anew the meaning for Christian faith of the symbol of creation and, even more, to give that reinterpreted symbol a centrality in systematic theology unknown before. Earlier in the century the relation of theological reflection to philosophy and to the methods of history was predominant in theologies of revelation, Incarnation, and history; now the relations of theology to science, technology, and ecology are very much to the fore. This renewed interest in nature has rekindled Christian theologies of creation; and they have emphasized the goodness and value of nature, of the purposes of God for the natural order and not just for us, and even of the redemption of nature as well as the redemption of men and women. Thus many theologies (including my own) have emphasized that nature was made in God’s image as a material order of inherent value, not just for us, but for itself and for God, and hence is in its being and its value also a sign or symbol of God. Such a reappreciation of nature, as opposed to its traditional role as backdrop to history or stage for the human drama, sees nature as itself an object of the divine purpose. The divine care has transformed the theological and religious meaning of creation far from its traditional anthropological bias.

      As the above indicates, one of the most important aspects of the ecological crisis is the attitude of men and women toward nature. Is nature there only for us, as the stage for our actions, as raw material for our consumption, as a vacation place? A “pragmatic” view of nature esteems the world only insofar as it is of use to us, as it resolves our problems and dilemmas, and as it adds to our well-being. Correspondingly, a scientific view of nature tends to reduce the richness, variety, and integrity of nature—its mystery—to what empirical science can uncover about our physical environment. Thus in modern culture the reality of nature as an objectified and determined system of “vacuous” entities (to use A. N. Whitehead’s phrase) corresponded to our assessment of nature as of value solely to us and so as subject entirely to our use. For this reason, as Herbert Marcuse has said, modern empirical science—if taken as an exhaustive description of the reality of nature—provides the ideological justification for the industrial exploitation of nature; it clears the way for the unimpeded greed of commercial culture. Clearly what is needed is to reawaken human beings to other ways of “knowing” nature’s reality than as the system of determined objects of scientific inquiry and as the usable raw material of industrial process.

      The effort to reach beyond both scientific positivism and anthropocentric pragmatism is a multifaceted enterprise. Many scientists have initiated and organized this important work, and artists, writers, and responsible moralists have led the way with regard both to the reality and to the value of nature. There is little question, however, that among these healing forces religion is potentially of vast importance. Historically, it has been through religious institutions of nature and religious symbolism, ritual, and myths that the richness, independence, power, terror, and sublimity of nature have been “known” (these are cognitive relations to nature) and expressed—and that a creative, cooperative relation has been encouraged. These relations need to be reawakened. In the biblical tradition, the symbolism of creation is potentially the locus for a new set of cognitive, emotional, and moral relations to nature. Even the tradition of natural theology—the effort to find in natural experience “signs” of the divine presence—inescapably revives a deeper and richer “knowledge” of nature’s reality. In seeking to establish the reality of God through our experiences of nature as God’s creation, natural theology may effect as much of a change in our attitude toward nature as it does in our confidence in the divine presence. Suddenly and quite unexpectedly, therefore, the symbol of creation, now in relation to our knowledge of and care for nature, has again moved into prominence. Now human well-being and the meaning of history are inextricably intertwined with the independence and integrity of nature. No longer is creation solely of anthropomorphic importance as merely a storehouse and a playground for human beings. Possibly with the ecology crisis there will be a new Copernican revolution with regard to the value of nature.

       LANGDON GILKEY

      Bibliography

      Langdon Gilkey, Maker of Heaven and Earth.

      Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation.

      Howard J. Van Till, et al., Portraits of Creation: Biblical and Scientific Perspectives on the World’s Formation.

      Cross-Reference:

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