Creation and Humanity

A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World #3

by Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen

The third installment in a wide and deep constructive theology for our time


This third volume of Veli-Matti Karkkainen’s ambitious five volume
theology project develops a Christian theology of creation
and humanity (theological anthropology) in dialogue with
the Christian tradition, with contemporary theology in all its
global and contextual diversity, and with other major living
faiths -- Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism.


In constructing his theology of creation and humanity, Karkkainen uniquely engages the natural sciences, including physical,
cosmological, and neuroscientific theories. He devotes
particular attention to the topics of divine action in a world
subjected to scientific study, environmental pollution, human
flourishing, and the theological implications of evolutionary
theory -- with regard to both cosmos and humanity.

Genres: Theology

576 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 1, 2015

About the author

Veli-Matti Käkkäinen is professor of systematic theology at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. He has published numerous articles in international journals of theology.

Reviews

[Reinhardt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful. Comprehensive. Insightful.

He tackles two of the more contentious areas of theology as practiced in the public square. He is not afraid to engage with Quantum Mechanics, Cosmology, Biology, Neurology, and other sciences, including social sciences. His goal is to practice the theology of the real, what is actually true. A theology outside the church walls. A theology that can stand and engage with and respond to modern science.

He doesn’t limit his engagement to science. He engages with so-called contextual theologies as well as the other 4 main faith traditions, drawing insights and contrasts. His breadth of learning is impressive. In this seemingly insurmountable task of public theology, he maintains the priority of the Biblical revelation and the best of Christian tradition. He restores theology to its rightful place as the queen of the sciences.

He begins by outlining the relationship between science and theology and how they interact. There are the options giving one or the other priority or seeing them as mutually exclusive domains or the final option, which he chooses is mutually interacting knowledge.

He looks at science in Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. The theology-science interaction in Islam is Quran-science, always with the Quran first. This speaks to the dearth of Muslim fundamental science, although they developed technologies. Hinduism and Buddhism are also skeptical of modern Western science, in part due to its Christian foundation, but also due to its later development into hostility to the spiritual.

He looks at the types of naturalism: the anti-theistic type, which is hostile to religion, which has become the default; the naturalism that accommodates religion as a human enterprise; then theistic naturalism and agnostic naturalism. While agreeing with the theistic naturalism, he questions if that is the best terminology.

All religions, whether they explicitly believe in an ex nihilo creation and a creator God, all take the understanding that the spirit precedes the physical.

He spends a short chapter exploring the concept of nature. Nature is not, as assumed in modernity, an autonomous force, nor is it as assumed in postmodernity, really nothing. The Christian view of nature is that it is creation endowed by the gifts of God. It is an ordered cosmos rather than disorganized chaos. Nature is not separate from grace as nature is already to some extent infused with grace.

A Trinitarian Theology of Creation. It is not only God the Father as Creator, although he is, it is mediated through the Son with the Power of the Spirit. Creation is a free act of God. An act born of love. God created so he could be ‘not God’, so he could be a man. God creates from his Goodness. He creates something outside himself, but something he is intimately connected to. There is not a disconnect between God and the universe. God inhabits the universe. Creation is both nature and infused with God.

The Spirit, who biblically is not primarily the immaterial in the material-immaterial dichotomy, rather He is the power, the source. The Spirit is the source of life. In this, the metaphors of science such as field theories can improve our understanding. The Spirit pervades all and enlivens all. Christ through the agency of the Spirit sustains all creation. Christ is not only the Redeemer, but also the Cosmic Christ. The Christ who is the end of creation, the goal. The Spirit is the agent who will ultimately unite the Cosmos with Christ. The Spirit is the cosmic Spirit who fills not only humanity, but all of creation, giving creation life, energy, and value. God is transcended and separate from creation, but in and is embodied in creation.

A brief chapter on Eastern views on creation follows. Buddhism has no concept of a creator, only an infinite, ever-recurring cosmos. Hinduism, while positing a creator, doesn’t distinguish between creator and creation. And there is no explicit creation ex nihilo, the creator is both cause and effect!

The next chapter is a monumental work on the relation and interaction of modern science and theology. He begins with the various quantum cosmologies and how they relate to ex nihilo creation. The depth here is astonishing. Never in a work of theology does one expect to read about the Harley-Hawkins model of cosmology. He investigates various cosmological interpretations and their implications for theology. He then examines time itself, beginning with Augustine’s insight that God created time itself. He looks at models of time, flow time, and tenseless block time. He comes to the conclusion that block time, although a common model in modern physics, is not compatible with Christian theology. He then looks at space, space (time), as he carefully puts it. Space can be thought of as a container or as a relation between items, and here he comes down on the relation model, for which he provides philosophical grounding. He finally takes a look at evolution and how it is received by the religions. Eastern religions, in essence, have no problems with it as they don’t have a theory of beginnings. Judaism is largely reconciled to it, but Islam is very antagonistic to it. There is hardly an Islamic scholar in the Islamic world who supports it. The contentious nature of the evolution debate in North American Christianity goes without saying. He closes with a look at the nature of evolution and the punctuated equilibrium theory. A stunningly informed chapter. As a lay reader of books on quantum mechanics and modern cosmology, I can say this chapter provided new information as well as brilliant insights. Mind blown! Including the insight that life is ‘Informed matter’ - matter with added information (DNA) that is required for life.

A chapter on Divine action in creation. Begins with the NIODA model: Non-interventionist Objective Divine Action. A model of how God intervenes in the universe. An examination of the types of causality provides insight into how God could or does intervene in his creation, also relating ideas in Quantum Theory and Chaos as opportunities of indeterminacy in nature. He also discusses natural laws and their character as either ontological statements or descriptions. He traces the idea of the supernatural, first really introduced by Aquinas, but in a much different sense than how it’s used today. Supernatural was beyond and encompassed all of nature, not as a separate domain. He concludes with a discussion of miracles, which in at least some sense, is a mandatory aspect of Christian theology. But he is careful to define miracles not as actions that contradict the laws of nature but as interventions we don’t understand.

He then tackles the problem of evil and suffering. He develops two theodicies. The “Augustinian” evil as the absence of good, a pure negative, and the “Irenaean” where evil plays a developmental role. He proceeds to describe Good Harm Analysis and breaks it into three components: 1) Property-consequence GHA; certain properties come with harms, e.g. freedom, 2) Developmental GHA; evil is sometimes necessary for growth, 3) Constitutive GHA - evil is a necessary part of reality. He summarizes as CNT (consequentialist natural theodicy) that evil is an unintended byproduct of the ends of creation - somewhat similar to the best possible world theory. He develops the idea of entropy as not the same as evil, but bearing a strong relation.

Kärkkäinen turns to pollution (broadly understood). What are its theological implications? He briefly looks at other religious perspectives and is somewhat skeptical of the common belief that Eastern religions are more eco-friendly. Looking at Buddhists’ view of nature as trapped in an endless cycle of annihilation without any intrinsic value does not support an eco-friendly theology. Although Buddhism does not distinguish between man and nature, it also sees ultimate enlightenment as something individual. Hinduism, particularly with the semi-dualistic strains that see creation as somewhat separate from the deity, offers a slightly more theological basis for ecology, but nevertheless, the non-teleological nature of creation diminishes its value. He turns to the postmodern foundations that underlie most eco-philosophy and identifies it as a primary weakness. Postmodernism denies any ultimate reality, nature itself is socially constructed. This offers no real basis for value. This weakness explains the ubiquitous turn to divinization of nature as the only postmodern solution to a theology of nature.

He concludes the discussion with a review of Christian theology of ecology. Although Christianity is widely blamed for the ecological crisis, Christianity per se does not support such a degradation of creation. He admits, of course, that the technological means to harm creation largely rose in the Christian West, but that is not saying theology is the ground. No doubt certain theological concepts have been misused to plunder creation: man’s dominion, humanity as created in God’s image, and others. A full view of creation as filled with the Triune God opposes any instrumental use of creation.

PART II - Humanity

He begins with a biological account of the development of humanity and how humans, alone among animals, have been able to transcend themselves. They are not biologically determined. With the introduction of language, symbolic thinking, and syntax, humans can transcend biology. Although a pure naturalist would attempt to ground epistemology in biology, he shows how this fails. Syntax, symbols, and semantics can in no reasonable way be considered material. With the self-transcendence also comes the incurably religious nature of humans at all times in all places. Again, naturalist explanations would suggest it is only a helpful evolutionary adaptation, with the assumption that all religious beliefs are false. The Cognitive Science of Religion model, also primarily naturalistic, but that religion is the byproduct of other thought patterns applied to the religious domain. It is difficult to explain the ubiquity of religion if it has no factual basis. One can see in children and openness to a transcendent structure even if they have never been taught it. He argues, of course, that there is a transcendent reality that humans are able to intuit to a degree.

Next, he addresses the image of God in humanity. He explores the seeking of the self internally as exemplified in modernity and the destruction of the identity of the self in postmodernism. The image has been seated structurally, especially in the patristic period, but post-Reformation, a relational element has become more prominent. The image of God is something about our relation to God. The image must be seen in a Trinitarian sense. Christ becomes the true image to which we are called.

The image of God is not only rationality, although that is a part, the relational is key. That involves the sociality, emotions, and embodiment of humans. The body is valuable and good as emphasized in incarnation and resurrections. God as creator is not closer to our spirit than our body; he is equally close to both. We are embodied as male or female, both with equal dignity. This complementarity underscores the relational aspects of the image.

Moving to a discussion of human nature, is it dualist or monist? Materialists, of course, say that all reality is material; any mental states are reduced to brain states. Idealists, on the other hand, take the immaterial as prior and the material as only a growth out of the spirit. Basic common sense understanding of human nature in all times and places is that people assume they have a soul as well as a body.

Turning to modern neuroscience, he examines the link between brain states and mental states. In a form of non-reductive physicalism, he describes mental states and contextual brain states, context being environment and social. He takes these neuroscience results seriously. Irrefutably, there seems to be a biological basis for religion. Brain states affect spiritual states. He traces the development of the theology of human nature from the Old Testament (primarily monistic) through the New (incontrovertible dualistic elements) and historically particular Augustine and Aquinas. Augustine being more dualistic, whereas Aquinas, being an Aristotelian, more akin to the form/substance idea of souls and body. He also examines Descartes’ extreme dualism that cannot be reconciled with biblical data. He ultimately comes down on a multidimensional monism. We are essentially one thing, but that thing has physical and spiritual aspects rather than parts.

He then tackles free will, beginning by addressing neuroscientists’ determinism. Although in the physical sciences, determinism has been somewhat undermined by Quantum Theory and Chaos Theory, in neuroscience, the turn has been increasingly deterministic. Although no one can live in this way, the dominant view is that everything is ultimately materially determined. He turns to free will in the light of God’s foreknowledge. His solution here is the contextual freedom of humans and God’s ability to providentially act while maintaining the freedom he has given to humans.

He engages the other big 5 religions in the discussion of human nature. Semitic faiths share a broad commonality. Jewish belief, originally materialist development, particularly with Maimonides into a form of dualism based on Aristotle similar to Christian teaching. Islam similarly is influenced largely by Aristotle’s hylomorphic dualism. Hinduism, in its various strains, tends to idealism, where the only real is the spiritual. Bodies are temporary tools. It also ultimately denies the real existence of the self. Buddhism reaches a similar conclusion without the spiritual substructure. It denies any permanent self.

He addresses original sin under the heading of the misery of humanity. He traces the origin of the doctrine from the OT through the articulation with Augustine. Augustine introduced the ‘physical’ inheritance of sin. This was further developed in the Reformation. The contrast is to the Orthodox view that doesn’t trace it to physical heritability. He addresses original sin face-on to the problem of death in relation to modern science. He doesn’t spend a lot of time articulating his own position, other than to state the universality of sin as the violation of God, but also sin has human implications. He addresses the nomenclature, suggesting that original sin is a freighted term that may not capture the doctrine effectively. He compares ideas of sin in Jewish and Islamic faiths, who avoid any idea of original sin, particularly in Islam. The Buddhist view of sin is difficult as there is no self on which to place sin. Hinduism faces a related paradox in that everyone is divine, hence cannot be sinful, but as he has Niebuhr say, sin is the most easily empirically verified doctrine.

He wraps up this volume with a discussion on human flourishing. Personhood is not a matter of degrees. What it means to be a person is not dependent on capabilities or disabilities. Human dignity is paramount. He discusses violence vs hospitality and looks quickly at the major religious traditions, all of which have been complicit in violence (but see his discussion of religious violence). The OT picture of creation does not involve violence in contrast to the majority of Near Eastern myths and many East Asian ones. Work is also part of human flourishing, but the economy should be one of grace and not pure self-interest.

NOTE ON PRINT QUALITY. It looks like some of the volumes are now print-on-demand. The print quality as well as the paper quality are noticeably lower in the PoD versions compared to the press run version. Also, the quality of cover printing is much worse in the PoD. The covers are very misaligned, which is highlighted by the fact that it is a 5-volume set that should match. Covers are out of alignment by at least ¼ inch and not only that, the PoD volumes are not cut to the same size; they are up to ¼ larger. Very disappointing for a 5-volume series that they couldn’t take the extra minute to make sure the cover graphics align and the book sizes were consistent.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not one of the best in the series, Kärkkäinen seemed to take on too much - science and evolution, modern psychology and personhood, modern theologians, and the four major world religions.

I am not convinced by his idea that original sin is an idea from Paul and Augustine. Even though it is
not explicit in the creation narrative, humanity seems to be stained by the initial rebellion of Adam and Eve, and that stain progresses through the rest of the OT. Humanity cannot escape its influence to create more and more misery, violence and death.

Always the reflection on how the other world faiths see these topics are the most interesting parts.