Real Creation Science!

I have started work on my paper/talk for the forthcoming Conference on the Academy and the Church.

Here is a sketchy outline. I thank Ben Myers for many helpful discussions and ideas on this topic.

Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Creation: implications for the dialogue between science and theology

The Doctrine of Creation is an article of faith

The existence of God is a contestable hypothesis

The existence of the world is a contestable hypothesis

The covenant is the meaning and purpose of the creation

Creation is the external basis of the covenant

Science cannot discover meaning and purpose

The creation is distinct from God

There are limits to what can be known about God from science

There are limits to what can be known about science from theology

Justification for the practical naturalism of science

The creation is real and objective

Science is possible

The creation is good

A mandate for the scientific investigation of the world

Scientific knowledge can be beautiful

The orderliness of the creation reflects the faithfulness of the creator

The covenant is the internal basis of the creation

The reliability of physical laws

The creature can understand the creation

Creator creates creature

Science works

The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences

Agape science

Following up on my previous post Scientific Theological Eros, it is interesting that in his discussion of the difference between "Eros" and "Agape" love as driving forces in theology, Barth gives the profound throw away line:

At this point the question may remain undecided whether it would not also be beneficial for the other sciences if the ruling motive of their procedure was Agape rather than Eros.

For theological work the dominant position of love is a vital and unalterable necessity. Indeed, theological work also displays that interest of the perceiving human subject and that sweeping movement in which it allows itself to be borne and hurried toward the object to be known. These elements of Eros will not be simply suppressed or eliminated in it. For theological work, however, Eros can only be the serving, not the ruling, motive. The erotic wish and desire to gain possession of the object can have in theological work only the significance of a first and inevitable beginning in the direction toward its object.

Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology, pages 201-202

As a practising scientist myself, I think Barth's insight is profound. To me, much science appears to be driven by the scientists rush to exalt himself, to control, to possess, and to tame. The object of "desire" is both nature and funding, status, .... Thus, it can be classified as "Eros" science.

In contrast, "Agape" science would be humbler and gentler. The focus is not on the scientist and not on control but on understanding and on server others (society, students, colleagues, ....). Ultimately, it is more effective because it is more objective, since the ego of the scientist does not blind him/her to the way things are rather than the way we want them to be.

Why work?

During World War II, Dorothy L. Sayers, gave a talk, Why work?, which is worth reading. Here are a few choice quotes

[We should view work] not as a necessary drudgery to be undergone for the purpose of making money, but as a way of life in which the nature of man should find its proper exercise and delight and so fulfill itself to the glory of God. That it should, in fact, be thought of as a creative activity undertaken for the love of the work itself; and that man, made in God’s image, should make things, as God makes them, for the sake of doing well a thing that is well worth doing.

.....

God is not served by technical incompetence; and incompetence and untruth always result when the secular vocation is treated as a thing alien to religion….

.....

Shall we be prepared to take the same attitude to the arts of peace as to the arts of war? I see no reason why we should not sacrifice our convenience and our individual standard of living just as readily for the building of great public works as for the building of ships and tanks – but when the stimulus of fear and anger is removed, shall we be prepared to do any such thing? Or shall we want to go back to that civilization of greed and waste which we dignify by the name of a “high standard of living”?

Avoiding extremes

I think a great challenge in life is to avoid extreme positions: to keep a balanced perspective on subtle and complex issues.

Yesterday, my son and I read and discussed the chapter, Two notes, in Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis, where he makes two qualifications or clarifications about the previous chapter on free will and being transformed into the likeness of Christ.

In the second note he discusses the balance between affirming individuality and corporality in the church.

I found the following passage interesting because of the general caution at the end.

Christianity thinks of human individuals not as mere members of a group or items in a list, but as organs in a body different from one another and each contributing what no other could. .... But a Christian must not be either a Totalitarian or an Individualist.

I feel a strong desire to tell you - and I expect you feel a strong desire to tell me-which of these two errors is the worse. That is the devil getting at us. He always sends errors into the world in pairs-pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse. You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors. We have no other concern than that with either of them.

Recommended reading

It is always interesting to see what books Christian leaders recommend reading. Here is Tim Keller's recommended list.

Quite a few of these I have not read and so should!

Scientific theological eros!

I thought I would never see those three words strung together!

Yesterday I was reading the famous 1 Corinthians 13 passage on love and I remembered that in Karl Barth's An Introduction to Evangelical Theology had an interesting last chapter on the role of love in theology.

Here are a few extracts, emphasizing the difference between eros and agape love.

Eros so highly praised in Plato's teaching.... Love as Eros, is, in general terms, the primordially powerful desire, urge, impulse, and endeavor by which a created being seeks his own self-assertion, satisfaction, realization, and fulfillment in his relation to something else. He strives to draw near to this other person or thing, to win it for himself, to take it to himself, and to make it his own as clearly and definitively as possible. And in a special sense, love, as scientific Eros, is the same desire in its intellectual form. It is the soaring movement by which human knowledge lets itself be borne toward its objects and hurries toward them in order to unite them with itself and itself with them, to bring them into its possession and power, and to enjoy them in this way.

.....Scientific, theological Eros has perpetually oscillated concerning the object which it should present to man for the sake of his self-assertion and self-fulfillment. That is to say, theological Eros can be directed either predominantly (and perhaps even exclusively) toward God or predominantly (and, once again, perhaps even exclusively) toward man.

When scientific Eros evolves in the field of theology, it characteristically and continually confuses and exchanges the object of theology with other objects. So far as Eros is the motive of theological work, God will not be loved and known for God's sake, nor man for man's sake. This situation can only be explained by the nature of Eros: every attempt to love and know God and man is made in the quite conscious and deepest interests of the theologian himself, in the self-love of the one who produces this theology.

It is undoubtedly no mere accident that the substantive "Eros" and its corresponding verb do not appear at all in ... the New Testament. The word for "love" in the New Testament is Agape. And from every context in which it appears the conclusion is obvious that it signifies a movement which runs almost exactly in the opposite direction from that of Eros. Love in the sense of Agape is admittedly also the total seeking of another, and this is the one thing that it has in common with love as Eros.

In Agape, however, the one who loves never understands the origin of his search as a demand inherent within himself, but always as an entirely new freedom for the other one, a freedom which was simply bestowed on him and consequently was originally alien to him. On his own, he never should or would have loved this other one at all. But he may do this, and since he may do it, he does do it. Because he is free for this other, he loves him. In this way he loves concentratedly, not haphazardly, ramblingly, or distractedly. And because he is free for him, he does not seek him as though he needed him for himself as a means to his self-assertion and self-fulfillment. The one who loves, seeks the other only for his own sake. He does not want to win and possess him for himself in order to enjoy him and his own power over him. He never trespasses on the freedom of the other, but by respecting the other's freedom, he simply remains quite free for him. He loves him gratis. That is to say, he desires nothing from him, and he does not wish to be rewarded by him. All he desires is to exist for him, to offer himself to him, and finally to give himself to him. He desires to be permitted to love him simply in the way that this ability has been granted to himself.

If love, in the sense of Agape, is no doubt also a seeking, it is nevertheless not an interested, but a sovereign seeking of the other one. ...This seeking is sovereign precisely because it is directed and oriented not to the sovereignty of the one who loves but to the sovereignty of the beloved one. To speak once more with Paul, love in the sense of Agape is patient and kind, not jealous or boastful, not arrogant or rude, not insisting on its own way. It rejoices in the truth, bears, believes, hopes, and endures all things. Agape is related to Eros, as Mozart to Beethoven. How could they possibly be confused? Agape is an altogether positive striving toward the other, quite distinct from all self-righteousness and intellectual superiority, as well as from all strife.

Marks of a true scholar

Partly because my daughter just started an Arts degree at university I started reading Five Minds for the Future, by Howard Gardner. [The book was recommended to me by a friend, Keith Birchley]. Gardner is a Professor of Education and Psychology at Harvard. He is best known for developing and promoting the concept of Multiple Intelligences.

However, independent of giving me ideas to discuss with my daughter, I have found the book very stimulating, both personally and professionally.
Gardner defines five specific cognitive abilities that he claims will be sought and cultivated by leaders. Roughly here is my paraphrase of each of the minds, as applied to research.

• The Disciplinary Mind: You need to master a specific discipline or research area. This takes about ten years.
• The Synthesizing Mind: You need to learn to integrate ideas from different disciplines into a coherent whole and to communicate that integration to others.
• The Creating Mind: You need to develop the capacity to uncover and clarify new problems, questions and phenomena.
• The Respectful Mind: You need to be aware of and appreciate different approaches and values within your discipline and between disciplines.
• The Ethical Mind: You need to fulfill your responsibilities as a worker within your institution, your discipline, and as a citizen.