Related articles and links |  1 of 4

Every five minutes another book appears explaining why our traditional understanding of God is outmoded, no longer acceptable among thinking people, and otherwise fit for the scrapheap. Books cite all sorts of reasons for this, but among the most popular is the notion that a grasp of Darwinian evolution demands a complete rethinking of theology. Theology is not alone, of course. As "applied Darwinism" grows ever more ambitious, its scope includes everything from the formation of galaxies to the eating habits of teenagers. Darwinism Today, a series of short, clearly written books published by Yale University Press, covers subjects such as "an evolutionary view of women at work" and "a Darwinian view of parental love." There is little, it seems, that doesn't need to be rethought in Darwin's wake.

Still, the claims for Darwin's impact on theology tend to be particularly sweeping. "Any thoughts we may have about God after the life and work of Charles Darwin (1809-1882) can hardly remain the same as before," John Haught writes in the preface to his new book, God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution (Westview Press). Haught, a professor of theology at Georgetown University and director of the Georgetown Center for the Study of Science and Religion, is one of a number of recent writers who insist on this fundamental divide: Before and After Darwin. (See, for another example, Finding Darwin's God, by Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller.) As a representative expression of a very influential point of view in the current science-and-religion conversation, Haught's work merits our close attention.

Naturally we first want some basic orientation; we want to know what has changed (or should have changed) so radically in our "thoughts about God" and how those changes are connected with Darwinism. Well, take this example for starters:

According to process theology, evolution occurs because God is more interested in adventure than in preserving the status quo. "Adventure," in Whiteheadian terms, is the cosmic search for more and more intense versions of ordered novelty, an other word for which is "beauty." God's will, apparently, is for the maximization of cosmic beauty. And the epic of evolution is the world's response to God's own longing that it strive toward ever richer ways of realizing aesthetic intensity.

Here Haught gives an overview of some modern theology that has engaged with evolution, rather than strictly presenting his own views. But as the book develops, it becomes clear that he shares the perspective outlined in this passage. There is nothing new in the notion that there is a supernal beauty in the unfolding of cosmic history. This is a theme that can be found running throughout the centuries of "pre-Darwinian" theology, though traditionally God is not imagined as a cosmic Walter Pater, seeking "ever richer ways of realizing aesthetic intensity."

What is distinctive in Haught's perspective, relative to the Christian tradition, is the notion that this beauty is dependent on God's not knowing precisely how the great artwork that is the universe will come out. He hedges a bit about what God does know. At one point, countering Stephen Jay Gould and others, Haught suggests that something like human consciousness would inevitably emerge in the kind of universe God set in motion. So God knew that much. But having effaced himself to create a more or less autonomous happening, he could not know in what particular corner of what galaxy this would occur. In Haught's theology, heavily influenced by the thought of the Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, this originating God has put himself under "eternal restraint." This God is

next page... |  1 of 4

share this page

May 22 2000, Vol. 44, No. 6