Reclaiming Creation

Read this journal article today:

Hanby, Michael, Reclaiming Creation, Theology Today 62(2006): 476-83.

Michael Hanby is Assistant Professor of Theology at Baylor University.

From the concluding paragraphs of the article:

"The first function of the Christian doctrine of creation, then, is simply to protect the infinite qualitative difference between God and all that is not God, something that both Darwinian and creationist "explanations" fail to do. Creation thus understood is not an alternative theory or explanation of the world of the sort Darwinians or other scientists demand, but rather a denial in principle that any such "theory of everything" is finally possible, and a suspicion that any such comprehensive theory will necessarily exercise a reductive tyranny over the things it purports to "explain." To precisely this extent, the Christian doctrine of creation is more "agnostic," less ideological, and thus - dare we say? - more scientific than Darwinism. The Christian doctrine of creation refuses to posit a causal mechanism for the being of the world, but only a misunderstanding of the word "God" could register this refusal as a failure. For God is no "sky hook," a straw man of Darwinism's own invention that liken's God's creative act to a piece of stage-machinery that "intervenes" from "beyond," like Aphrodite restoring Paris to his bedchamber. Rather, God is that simple, immutable act of being and love so transcendently other to creation as to be at once external and internal to it, mysteriously indwelling it while calling it into the novelty of existence in the mystery of divine love." (P. 482)

Hanby encourages a fresh approach to the debate between faith and science with respect to the question of origins. Natural selection in particular, and science in general, at best, can only be an explanation of "what is." It can never comment on how things came to because there can be no naturalistic explanation of how something arises out of nothing. There are limits to "explanation," whether naturalistic or theological. There are things that neither science nor theology can deliver. The Christian doctrine of creation serves to highlight the incredible distinction between God and the "novelty of existence." We are here, not because God needs us to be. We are here because of God's unexplainable act of love in creation. For this reason Hanby thinks that Darwinism, creationism, and Intelligent Design, are missing the point when it comes to origins.