Originally Written March 18, 2009
N.B. My thoughts on Teilhard have changed since I first wrote this, but I still wanted to post it.
Today, I had a very interesting conversation with a friend and colleague about the three-fold Creationism-Intelligent Design-Evolutionism debate. We discussed the two sides at some length, and at one point he asked me, “So, if you believe God was involved in creation but don’t call yourself a Creationist, what do you believe?” It took me a few minutes to really process the question and formulate a response, but I eventually reached a conclusion that is perhaps a “both-and” reply to the question of God’s role as creator and the validity of scientific discovery, both of which I think are wholly valid.
To say that God “created the heavens and the earth” per the Book of Genesis limits God to so great a degree that God hardly seems Supreme at all. To say that God “spoke the word” of Creation and “made it so” is to entrap the mind of God in a box so small it could easily hold the scientific understanding present 6,000 years ago. If God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, God transcends even the deepest or most brilliant mind, and so to put God "in a box" or acknowledge that there even is a box (even Scripture) is to deny God's transcendence - for God and the working of the Holy Spirit, there is no box, no specific framework. Once, in regard to the issue of creation, my cousin Todd said to me, “I want to be baffled by God.” I want to be—and am—baffled, too. God should be baffling. To interpret the story of creation literally is to limit the unlimited, to confine that which cannot be confined.
In response to this point, my friend pointed out, “Some theologians might argue that if you are going to say that the stories of Creation present in Genesis are false, you should just discount the entire Bible.” Admittedly, no theologians that I have studied have argued such a thing, but if someone were to argue this stance, I’d respond that to disregard the entire Bible because you disregard the stories of creation is just like saying, “Because the Greek myths aren’t true, there’s no validity to anything Aristotle wrote, either.” For, to argue that the Book of Genesis is fact flies in the face of centuries of research on the Bible, much of which has been dedicated to analyzing the Bible as a literary work and a spiritual work, one born of God and of human cultures. In teaching Scripture, I’m always surprised by how many people are unaware that there are two stories of creation that stand side-by-side in the book of Genesis, although numerous commentaries mention this literary fact. Because Genesis was created from four literary and cultural traditions of the ancient world, the “final” version of Genesis contains some duplication.
The first story of creation is the “seven day” creation story, in which God speaks the word and creation springs into being. God says, “Trees!” and there are trees, “Boids,” and there are birds, and “Fishies!” and there are fish. One commentary (in a Bible) states, “According to the highly artificial literary structure of Genesis 1:1-2:4a, God's creative activity is divided into six days to teach the sacredness of the sabbath rest on the seventh day in the Israelite religion (Genesis 2:2-3).” Note the words “highly artificial” here. This story is clearly not meant to be interpreted literally; rather, it is an etiological myth explaining how we got here and instituting the Sabbath as a day of rest. Notably, Adam and Eve are nowhere to be found in this story.
The second story of creation, which research states is much older than the first, focuses on the creation of humanity and features Adam and Eve as its primary characters. In this story, God somewhat humorously attempts to make a “suitable partner” for Adam and fails repeatedly before putting Adam to sleep and creating Eve from his rib.
So often are these two stories conflated that it’s no wonder so few people know that Genesis presents two distinct stories from two different time periods and born of two different cultural traditions. This alone discounts the use of Genesis’ creation stories as fact.
At this point, my Creationist friends who are reading this are probably ready to string me up and call me an atheist. But as I said earlier, I firmly believe in God’s involvement in creation, but my faith in God and God’s love tells me that the truth is bigger than anything a several-thousand-years-old, culturally rooted, divinely-inspired (see below for an explanation of that) etiological myth can present.
What about Intelligent Design, then? Can we argue that certain aspects of creation (or perhaps all of creation) were made by some intelligent force (a.k.a. God)? To do so is to argue something only slightly different from a purely Creationist view. Numerous scientific watchdog groups have termed the Intelligent Design theory “pseudoscience,” an excuse for teaching Creationism. According to Wikipedia, The U.S. National Academy of Sciences has stated that "creationism, intelligent design, and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life or of species are not science because they are not testable by the methods of science.”
So, where do we go from here? We’ve pitched the Genesis-is-fact argument out the window and briefly mentioned Intelligent Design. With what does that leave us? Simple evolutionism? The Big Bang Theory? Creation as an accident? Or is there a “both-and” viewpoint in which God is involved in and responsible for everything that science has revealed to be true?
Consider this: God is love. (1 Jn. 4:16)
No, really think about it: God is love. (Thanks, Robert, for emphasizing that.)
What is the intrinsic effect and nature of love? To create. Love creates unity, peace, joy, relationship. In an entirely transcendent and baffling way, love creates.
Visual artists create because of a transcendent love for interpreting the world in some medium. Composers compose because of a transcendent love of music and desire to create. Authors seek to capture human experience and emotion out of something transcendent. Two people join their lives and bear children out of the expression of their love. We’re not talking about saccharine, Valentine’s Day love here. We’re talking about something transcendent, something baffling, something that drives humanity to desires beyond words—we’re talking about love that is not of God but that is God most truly present.
Therefore, if God is love and the nature of this transcendent God-love is to create, then God’s very existence makes creation inevitable. God did not need to desire creation or plan it; the universe is simply born of this transcendent love that I believe is the true fabric of human existence, what Dan Simmons called the “Void Which Binds,” that which solely remains when all of creation is stripped away. Although many theologians would say that the trinity could have simply existed in perfect love, perhaps God could not have chosen not to create. For, to say that God "chose" to create or "acted" in creating is to deny the inherent creative nature of love.
When I envision what this "moment of creation" looked like, I do not think of God "doing" anything or "saying" anything. Rather, my mind goes back to what was one of the most important lessons I learned while studying conducting with Seb Bonaiuto. Seb taught me that stance and posture are more important than nearly anything else. "If a conductor holds his arms near his body, he looks guarded. If a conductor holds his arms out to the side, he looks defenseless or uncertain. But if a conductor raises his arms before him, as if to embrace the ensemble, he expresses love. He says, 'I welcome your music. I love your music. Let's share this love.'" And this is how I picture God, too. God did not "say" or "do" but opened his "arms" and "smiled" in a conductor's embrace, and creation simply "was."
If "Love creates" = "God creates," creation is an inevitability.
Within this argument, there is no need to argue whether the Big Bang was true or false, accidental or planned. It was simply inevitable. Some might attribute this to chance, to the unpredictable primordial chaos that was; but before anything was, love was. And love is. The true nature of God-love transcends all things, all theories, all books, even the books that reveal God to us.
And so it is with Christ, the redeemer (person of the trinity). God’s perfect love cannot remain perfect, because love in its essential form is love given away. And if love is freely given, with no "strings" attached, free will and therefore sin are both also inevitable. Just as a painter’s perfect vision is never realized on canvas or a composer’s perfect symphony is never perfectly written or performed, creation, although the inevitable result of God’s love, cannot remain perfect, but God’s will for creation remains: that creation returns to the perfect love that created it. So, the Christ, not Jesus the Incarnation, but Christ the plan of salvation, God’s plan for total unity, total love, total peace is another inevitable byproduct of God’s existence. For, in order for creation to achieve again the fullest communion with God—to dwell once more in perfect love—creation must be redeemed, and so the Christ is necessary.
St. Paul saw this clearly when he wrote 1 Corinthians 15:25-28:
“For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death, for “he subjected everything under his feet.” But when it says that everything has been subjected, it is clear that it excludes the one who subjected everything to him. When everything is subjected to him, then the Son himself will (also) be subjected to the one who subjected everything to him, so that God may be all in all.”
This is one of my favorite passages of scripture, for I believe it encapsulates Teilhard de Chardin's “Omega Point,” the point at which the universe’s complexity and consciousness evolves to the point at which it returns to the point from which it originated, to the love from which it was created. Once death is destroyed by the Christ, the Christ (again, not Jesus the Man but the spiritual-sacramental entity) will be subjected “to the one who subjected it…”—God—so that God may be all in all, so that in fact nothing exists except God-love, that which creates and redeems out of inevitability, that we may be joined in true harmony and true unity with the Creator.
Christ taught that to follow him fully is to relinquish one's self for the good of all. Perhaps, then, the fullness of human existence is the non-existence of the self, existing as Christ did, in perfect union and surrender to God.
Sorry that was so long, but I had to write it down. Those are my thoughts. What're yours?
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