What does Christian faith look like in the heady academic clutter of Oxford postgraduate life?

At GCU, we believe that Christian faith and practice speaks to all areas of life. As graduate students, we affirm this University’s motto: Dominus illuminatio mea. The Lord is my light, the lens through which I see the world.

For us this means critically engaging our disciplines – asking hard questions about meaning and practical, daily action: Why is there something rather than nothing? What is the purpose and value of human life? Where did we come from? How do we engage with one another in a pluralist cultural space? How should I spend my money, or invest my time? And because we are a confessional community, we seek to have these conversations shaped by the life and story of the person of Jesus of Nazareth who claimed to be the revelation of God in the world.

Our Monday night talks connect students with academics seeking an understanding of the deep interaction between Christianity and their discipline, and how that might shape conversation in the University. We aim to build a community of students and academics, welcoming to the wider University. And so we seek to sustain and engender friendship. To that end, we invite anyone to stay for conversation, and then join us for our other events – movies, pub walks, punting, dinners, and more – as we seek to explore Christian community and thought in this unique setting.

SIGNPOSTS(2010), Vol I, Issue II

Graduate christian union

4 signposts 5

SIGNPOSTS(2010), Vol I, Issue II

5 President’s Welcome

6 The Mitre: Hilary and Trinity 2010 Talks

8 Critical Response‘The Least of These’: The Difficulties of Development• Andrew Kerr

11 Veritas Forum - Student Response‘“We Don’t Do God”? Secularism and Faith in the Public Square’ (Christopher Hitchens and John Haldane)• Rob Heimburger and Elizabeth Kays

14 OpinionLamenting Eden: Fallenness and Man’s Place in Creation• Zack Baize

17 Book ReviewCreation Frustrated• Renada Arens

Editor: Joel HarrisonMagazine Design: Jared Honeycutt and Ilse Gey van PittiusCover Design: Michelle BaizeContributors: Andrew Kerr, Rob Heimburger, Elizabeth Kays, Zack Baize, Renada Arens, and Joel Harrison

Signposts is produced by the University of Oxford Graduate Christian Union. The GCU Committee and Editor welcome any comments or suggestions and, in the case of GCU members, contributions. All rights remain with the authors and designers. Do not re-publish without express consent. Contact joel.harrison@magd.ox.ac.uk

us live. This, then, forms something of the purpose behind Signposts and indeed, I believe, the endeavours of GCU generally. In the pages of this e-zine you will find Christian graduate students attempting to think through a Christian rhetoric. These pieces conceive of our disciplines and the Christian story as an inseparable union driven by a desire to humbly express words which seek after God. Andrew Kerr opens with our ‘Critical Response’ section, reflecting on models of development prevalent in poverty and economics discourse. His piece highlights both the difficulty of action – what is the best approach? – but also its necessity, given that we are made in the image of God. Rob Heimburger and Elizabeth Kays then provide us with two brief reflections on this past year’s Veritas Forum. Titled, ‘We Don’t Do God’, Veritas was this year engaged by Christopher Hitchens and Professor John Haldane on the issue of secularism and Christianity as public philosophy. Rob and Elizabeth’s pieces continue this conversation by highlighting two particular tensions raised during the Forum. Zack Baize and Renada Arens each write pieces that weave the personal and the academic, and continue our ongoing engagement with questions prominent in the sciences. Renada’s book review of Charles Foster’s The Selfless Gene (which formed the basis of our opening talk in Michaelmas 2009), is a reflection of faithful intellectual inquiry. She considers the wisdom of her received creationism in relation to arguments for theistic evolution, framed with reference to the narrative of the fall. Zack’s piece I like to think of as his own version of Letter to a Christian Nation. In it he channels C.S. Lewis’ love of nature and N.T. Wright’s eschatological writings as he expresses his own understanding of the deep interaction between ecology, our sense of the human, and theology. He questions whether an unduly anthropocentric theology plays some role in our ecological crisis. This leaves me to thank our contributors, Michelle Baize for her cover design, and Jared Honeycutt and Ilse Gey van Pittius for the design work. The magazine is born out of relationships, and I am privileged to have done a little bit of life with you all. Finally, I hope you find something in these pages, be it provocative, a cause for delight, or something to simply make you ponder. After all, we offer these words as an act of faith.

President’s Welcometranscendence in a secular world is always scandalous. -Graham Ward

How are we to speak and write, as Christians? Where do we begin? As I sit down to pen this, the welcome to the second issue of Signposts, these questions are on my mind (some would say, again!) My summer reading consisted in an odd mix of legal philosophy, applied ethics, pedagogy, and biographies, but each text seemed to be raising this crucial issue in my mind: what is a Christian rhetoric? There are multiple ways of addressing this issue. Some would say that the idea of a distinct ‘Christian rhetoric’ is problematic. The argument might be that we share reason in common with anyone else and so bring to bear on our inquiry the same tools of analysis as any inquirer. Being confessional, some would say, is consequently unnecessary – indeed, it might be a hindrance to a certain kind of apologetics. Others would contend that the failure to ‘talk God’ fails to scratch people where they itch, holds the Christian narrative prisoner to whatever ‘better’ discourse is available, and, ultimately, fails to articulate meaning in a universe that would otherwise be characterised by chaos. Clearly, I’m a fan of stark dichotomies! There is something to be said for both of these poles. Every statement or point of inquiry does not have to end with ‘and this reminds me of our Lord Jesus’. But there is nevertheless something deeply important in the presentation of words and argument. This summer I particularly enjoyed reading Stanley Hauerwas’ memoir, Hannah’s Child. In it he states:

I do not have an idea and then find a way to express it. The expression is the idea. … In this time of transition, Christians must regain confidence in the words that should determine our speech. … Faith is nothing more than the words we use to speak of God.

Hauerwas is discussing theology, and addressing God. He goes on to emphasise that our words are attempting to penetrate into something we find often defies our words – namely, God. However, for the Christian, our words and how we use them are critical, for they identify us within a story – that of the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Our words are, in this sense, an act of prayer, for in them we seek to shape ourselves into people who live as God would have Joel Harrison

GCU President, 2010-11

6 signposts 7

The GCU had the privilege of hosting the following speakers in Hilary and Trinity terms, 2010. A selection of the talks can be accessed online at www.oxfordgcu.org.uk/talks.html.

Meetings are held on Mondays at 7pm for 7:30pm in the upper room of the Mitre Pub, High Street, Oxford.

HILARY TERM

Week 1

Week 2 Rev Dr Patrick Richmond: ‘Swinburne vs Dawkins: Is God Simple or Complex?’

Week 3 Mary Louis: ‘Faith and Consumption: Reflections on Travels in Bangladesh’ and Jessica Whittle: ‘Glimpses of God in the Aftermath of the Indonesian Earthquake’

Week 4 Social night

Week 5 Dr Philip Endean S.J.: ‘Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poet and Jesuit’

Week 6 Dr Sabina Alkire: ‘The Role of Christians in Global Poverty Relief ’

Week 7 Dr Jonathan Chaplin: ‘The Legitimacy of Religious Public Reasoning’

Week 8 Prof Wilson Poon: ‘Science and the Hiddenness of God’

Week 9 Worship Night

The Mitre: Hilary and Trinity 2010 Talks

Rev Dr Michael Ward: ‘Planet Narnia: C.S. Lewis, Cosmology, and Christianity’

The Mitre: Hilary and Trinity 2010 Talks

TRINITY TERM

Week 1

Week 2 Dr Kelly James Clarke: ‘The Deadliest Sin for Christian Scholars’

Week 3 Games night

Special Event: Veritas Forum: Christopher Hitchens and Prof John Haldane: ‘“We Don’t Do God”? Secularism and Faith in the Public Square’, Sheldonian Theatre

Week 4 Rob Heimburger, Elizabeth Kays, and Jacob Waldenmaier: ‘“We Don’t Do God”? Student Panel on the Veritas Forum’

Week 5 Social night

Week 6 Prof Jeff Schloss: ‘Biological Accounts of Morality and their Implications for Christian Belief ’

Special Event: Oxford GCU - AGM

Week 7 Dr Adrienne Chaplin: ‘“On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art” – Some Possible Christian Responses’

Week 8 Dr Joanna Collicutt: ‘Growing up into Christ: Some Insights from Psychology’

Dr Hilary Marlow: ‘We’re Only Human: Biblical Perspectives on Humanity and the Natural World’

8 signposts 9

GCU has had several talks in the last two terms on topics that might broadly be defined as

development-related. Dr Sabina Alkire, director of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative in the department for International Development, spoke on ‘The Role of Christians in Global Poverty Relief ’. Mary Louis, a former student, reflected on her experiences in visiting Bangladeshi clothing factories. These talks encouraged me to organise a two session poverty discussion group. The first of these focused on describing poverty trends and how people working in development measure this, building on aspects of Sabina’s presentation. The second focused on the debate about aid, its effectiveness, and how it should be structured to provide the greatest possible benefit. In this article, my intention is to continue the conversation by briefly setting out the situation faced by the world’s poorest and two solutions that have been articulated by economists. I then reflect on some possible responses for readers of this article and the GCU community as a whole, taking into account the attitudes and responses I hear being articulated by GCU members.

I take as foundational that humans are made in God’s image and that this compels us to think seriously about how we can help ameliorate the plight of people suffering extreme material deprivation. Many other kinds of deprivation could be highlighted, as Sabina did in her talk. My focus, however, will be on material poverty, as measured by the amount an individual consumes per day, converted into US dollars by Purchasing Power Parity exchange rates. JK Galbraith described economics before the 20th century as having largely focused on ‘the prices of grim essentials’. However, as society advanced enough technologically and politically to enable production that could potentially provide for the basic needs of the world’s population, he argued that there was a shift towards analysis of how incomes are distributed across individuals. He then noted that this is ‘the most sensitive business with which economists deal’. This perhaps underlies some

of the world’s concern about such extreme poverty co-existing with such enormous wealth.

Poverty measurement

Measuring poverty is not simple and measuring how it has changed over time is very complex. Professor of Political Economy and Development, Robert Wade, notes that it is important to recognise that even a discussion of how much has been gained is political, with vested interests on different sides arguing that the people of the world

are either richer or poorer as a result of the increased trade and globalisation of the last 30 years or so. Readers of the Financial Times and The Economist would probably believe this process of increased trade and development has been responsible for lifting several hundred million people out of poverty. The actual story seems to be slightly more

complex. It is generally agreed that the percentage of people living in extreme poverty (measured by a poverty line of US$1 per person per day in 1985) has fallen over the last 20 years. But because the world’s population has been growing so rapidly this does not necessarily mean that the absolute number living in poverty has fallen. In fact Angus Deaton has shown the household surveys which form the basis of poverty estimates can result in wildly differing estimates for poverty reduction depending on how the known problems are corrected. Household surveys measure consumption as a way of measuring poverty: if a person consumes a lot they’re rich and if they consume a little they’re poor. If you were asked what you consumed yesterday you would probably have a good idea, but if you were asked what you consumed over the last week or month you would probably forget a number of things. Deaton notes that shorter recall periods led to a 175 million person ‘reduction’ in the number of Indians estimated to be poor. It looked like people were consuming more when it was actually the result of them remembering things better over a shorter time period. Despite this and other objections, Martin Ravallion and Shaohua Chen at

‘The Least of These’: The Difficulties of Development

‘ … humans are made in God’s image … this compels us to think seriously about how we can help ameliorate the plight of people suffering extreme deprivation’

CRITICAL RESPONSE by ANDREW KERRthe World Bank insist four hundred million were lifted out of extreme poverty (US$1 a day) between 1981 and 2001 – although they note that almost all the poverty reduction took place in Asia and that poverty levels in Africa almost doubled over the same period.

Potential Solutions

If diagnosing the size of the issue and whether it is growing or shrinking is a problem, thinking about potential solutions is going to be even more fraught. If the number of people living in poverty is getting smaller then we should perhaps carry on doing things the way we have been doing them. But if it’s not then we need a (major?) rethink. Below I outline two solutions that have been articulated by economists and which are currently the most popular in the media and wider culture, as well as in the church. I have neglected more radical solutions or critiques not because I disagree with them but because I have not grappled with them enough to think I could do them justice. For example, Nishan de Mel, a former GCU president, has written a critique of current economic thinking in response to the financial crisis (published in Church and Society in Asia Today, 2009 volume 12(2)). I invite further contribution and discussion in the pages of this magazine.

Jeffrey Sachs (author of The End of Poverty); Bono; and many Christians from the UK and Europe

For academics and activists like Sachs and Bono, poor people are caught in a poverty trap and need help to escape from a poor environment, bad education, or the disadvantage of living in disease ridden or civil war prone areas. Western governments, individuals, and churches can provide cash to help the poor do this if we only increase our giving. A major rethink of our individual and societal giving is required but not of much else. This may sound appealing to Christians who focus on their own

and others’ individual sin and greed but are less concerned about reform of (international) society more broadly (how we structure financial markets, international trade, foreign policy – for example, the (non)use of armed conflict and possible forms of intervention – and so on).

Very much related to this first solution is the current emphasis on thinking about how we can use our power as consumers to influence policies in countries where the goods we consume are produced, to benefit the (poor) people who make these goods. This was touched on by Mary Louis in her presentation ‘Faith and Consumption: Reflections on Travels in Bangladesh’. She encouraged us to be curious consumers, explored how we can help those who produce what we consume, and pointed out the complexity of the textile manufacturing process. She also highlighted that efforts by outsiders to help can easily end up doing more harm than good.

This emphasis on consumption suggests a key question: who do we want to help? If we are helping those who make the clothes we wear then they are likely to be living in a stable country with decent employment and the possibility of future generations being less poor than the current one. On the other hand if we want to help those who live in countries not growing and plagued by conflict, corruption, and an unhealthy reliance on natural resources, described by Paul Collier in his book, The Bottom Billion, then they are unlikely to benefit from our actions as clothes consumers. These countries are too unstable or lack the

infrastructure to link into the global supply chains that produce the clothes we wear. I am sure at least some readers’ clothes are made in Bangladesh, Mauritius, or Turkey, but I am also sure no reader is wearing clothes made in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, or Sudan. This does not mean,

however, that nothing can be done for these poor countries by curious consumers. Angola has become the third largest

‘[The] emphasis on consumption suggests a key question: who do we want to help? ... I am sure at least some readers’ clothes are made in Bangladesh, Mauritius, or Turkey, but I am also sure no reader is wearing clothes made in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, or Sudan.’

10 signposts 11

supplier of oil to the US, and oil makes up more than 90% of the value of Angola’s exports. Campaigns by US consumers (GCU members?) to increase transparency in oil revenue spending in Angola could be extremely effective in helping more of the oil money to reach ordinary (and very poor) citizens.

Bill Easterly

The main problem, according to someone like Bill Easterly, is that the West believes it can solve ‘The Rest’s’ problems with big plans and top down approaches from Aid agencies and NGOs, even though, Easterly contends, it is a market system with a price signal mechanism that has brought wealth to the West. Christians and others who want to ‘help’ are deemed to be motivated by ‘The White Man’s Burden’, a modern version of the colonial project. Aid agencies are not driven by the profit motive or receiving feedback from a price system and this, so the argument goes, renders them ineffective. Easterly cites the US$2.3 trillion given in aid over the last five decades and the millions who die every year of preventable diseases as evidence that the current aid system is not working. Giving to help the poor in countries afflicted by dictatorship, civil war, and oppression will consequently do little in the long term unless there is a dramatic change in the politics and economics of these countries and in the way aid is dispersed. But Easterly is also critical of neo-imperialist Western efforts to impose change on other countries. These arguments provide a refreshing challenge to the current system of dispersing aid and the agencies responsible for this, urging those of us who give (either directly or as tax payers, since the Department for International Development is only one of two to receive a guarantee of no budget cuts by the new Coalition Government in the UK) to press for more accountability in how our money is spent. Easterly, however, also sings the praises of free markets with little attention to their own problems.

Conclusion

I think many GCU members struggle with their belief in every human being made in God’s image and their resultant concern for the suffering of the poorest, whilst living in relative freedom and having relative wealth in Oxford. I have offered some analysis of two solutions popular in the media today. But I also hear people discussing the limitations of the current economic system, how it corrodes

solidarity and reduces the time people are willing to give in the service of others. The very ‘facelessness’ of the problem, and our own preoccupation with work and consumerist pursuits, seems to engender a potential lethargy of commitment. As an economist trained in the current paradigm of my discipline, I myself am struggling to work out how my discipline and the training I have received fits or conflicts with my concern for the poor. I am aware that even the idea of ‘helping’ can be patronising to those who are being helped and that often those who suggest helping are part of the same elite who ‘helped’ create the financial crisis. I am also aware that a fundamentalist belief in the workings of the market system can be a form of idolatry. These are perhaps the beginnings of other solutions more critical of the current system and, although I do not have any solid answers, I would encourage us as a community to continue to think, talk, and educate ourselves about these issues. Finally, I would urge our community to consider the massive pressure for financial security we all face and how this impacts upon our career choices and the way we spend and think about the resources we have been given. We live, in Oxford, lives of comparative abundance, making Christ’s words all the more powerful: ‘When someone has been given much, much will be required in return; and when someone has been entrusted with much, even more will be required.’ ▪

Andrew is a DPhil Candidate in Economics at St Antony’s College, Oxford. His research explores how labour markets operate in Sub Saharan Africa, focusing on education, informality, and the role of public sector employment and trade unions in development.

visit us: www.oxfordgcu.org.uk

Veritas Forum: Student Response

‘“We Don’t Do God”? Secularism and Faith in the Public Square’ (Christopher Hitchens

and John Haldane)

Is secularism or some faith-based worldview a superior public philosophy? Which, if either, provides a more robust foundation for respect of human rights and liberties, and other widespread public

values and ideals? Would it be fairer or more neutral to have a secular public square – one free of appeals to religiously informed

principles and arguments? Is this even possible?

Journalist and author Christopher Hitchens and philosopher John Haldane discussed these and related issues in the third Veritas Forum at Oxford University, on 12 May 2010 to a packed-out

Sheldonian Theatre. Sherif Gergis (after a titanic co-ordinating effort) moderated. The discussion was filmed and is available here. In this comment, Rob Heimburger and Elizabeth Kays each choose

one aspect of the discussion for a brief reflection and further thought.

12 signposts 13

Rob Heimburger

Christopher Hitchens and John Haldane got us laughing and shouting, pondering and questioning. But in the course of a debate on ‘Secularism and Faith in the Public Square,’ they did not get us thinking about what ‘secularism’ means in the first place. They left us thinking that we are either on the side of ‘secularism’ or on the side of ‘faith,’ and that our task is to demonstrate how our side makes a better contribution to something called the ‘public square.’ Haldane missed an opportunity to upset this picture with a more careful examination of the secular.

Haldane pressed the point that we take human life to be inviolable, and he asked Hitchens what grounds this sense. Hitchens responded that he needs no grounding for what is a simple biological fact: human beings are evolved primates who observe the Golden Rule. Haldane claimed that this natural history is not enough, that we need some notion of life as a gift if we are going to protect life. While Haldane may have been right, his argument failed to consider what it is to be secular. Haldane said that a concern for life finds no good secular grounding, and he hinted at faith-based assumptions that provide better grounding. In so doing, he persisted in simply opposing secularism and faith without examining what it is to be secular.

When Hitchens led the discussion away from philosophy and toward history, he indicated where we might gain insight about what it is to be secular. Hitchens argued that the American Revolution was the point when the English tradition finally gave up the tie of the state to one established church, producing what he called ‘the most tolerant regime known to humanity.’ Haldane likewise offered support for a plural, tolerant society, but he did not tell us whether he agreed with Hitchens that bishops should not sit in the House of Lords and that the Queen should not approve the appointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Since Haldane is a Roman Catholic, his thoughts on the issue would surely have proved interesting. But beyond piquing our interest, his thoughts on history and government might have led the way out of the dispute between Team Secularism and Team Faith. We might have heard some reflection on the secular of the sort that we find in the writings of Oliver O’Donovan. O’Donovan connects the ‘secular’ with its Latin root saeculum, meaning ‘age,’ so that the secular is what belongs to this passing

age in the face of the eternal age, the coming age of the rule of God. The sort of government that both Hitchens and Haldane endorsed, a tolerant and life-affirming government, emerged in the West because secular rulers were confronted by the eternal rule of God, O’Donovan argues. As the church during Christendom bore witness to God’s rule, human rulers were humbled, and states emerged which were limited in coercive power and responsible to law. O’Donovan claims that governments learned to be secular, to be of this passing age, because they were made aware of Christ as ruler. Thus he can say in The Desire of Nations that ‘the most truly Christian state understands itself most thoroughly as “secular.”’

As it was, Haldane’s gentle words contributed to the same tired debate as Hitchens’ incendiary remarks, the debate between ‘secularism’ and ‘faith.’ Had Haldane reflected on the notion of the secular, we might have discovered a secularity proper to governments humbled before the reign of Christ.

Rob is reading for the DPhil in Theology at Blackfriars, Oxford, inquiring into a Christian response to immigrants.

Elizabeth Kays

In this brief response, I want to examine a crucial assumption I felt both speakers accepted in the debate. In his opening remarks, Hitchens praised the framers of the American Constitution for their commitment to the separation of church and state. He then concluded that religious beliefs must be excluded from political discourse in order to preserve true religious freedom. I believe that this conclusion oversimplifies the interaction between church and state and overlooks religion’s potential value as a moral force in society.

Although the founding fathers’ precise vision for the role of religion in America is debatable, numerous quotes and letters illustrate that many considered it a crucial support for civic values among citizens as well as statesmen. Even in today’s increasingly multicultural society, I submit that this perspective deserves further consideration.

In George Washington’s 1796 farewell address, he outlined a list of imperatives for the survival of the fledgling nation, including the following: ‘Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports ... The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them’. This suggests that, at least in part, the founding fathers viewed personal religion as underpinning public duty. Although not all followers of any particular religion will exhibit a healthy sense of civic duty – and many non-religious citizens will – the American founders believed that religion can provide a much-needed mechanism for cooperation in society.

To me, the need for such a mechanism seems relatively self-evident. Countries are not always composed of (or governed by) reasonable people who would happily coexist given the opportunity. Whole economic systems like capitalism recognise and exploit our innate self-interest, and so a viable system of government should include a mechanism to counteract this trait. A free society can only survive as long as its citizens do not vote themselves special privileges and officials do not misappropriate taxpayer funds. Without a universal expectation of commitment to and sacrifice for the larger community, problems like the UK MP expenses scandal of 2009 will be only too common.

Most religions offer a basis for such an expectation. Christianity, for example, instructs followers to ‘consider

others as better than yourselves’ (Philippians 2:3). Although many non-religious people adhere to such values, the continued existence of these traits is threatened – or at least impoverished – when they are separated from their religious foundations in public discourse.

In our modern, pluralistic society, ongoing discussion amongst citizens is necessary to determine what values should govern our policies and public actions. But to conclude with a quote from John Adams in his 1798 address to the US military: ‘We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion ... Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other’. ▪

Elizabeth, St Catherine’s, Oxford, has just completed her degree in Chemistry and is studying for her PhD in Freiburg, Germany.

Photos: John Cairns©. Available at: http://www.johncairnsphotography.co.uk/

14 signposts 15

Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken.

- Genesis 3:23

The recent BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, in establishing itself as one the worst man-made environmental disasters

in US and possibly world history, has once again brought the environment into the foreground of public concern. Photos and news updates have circled the globe, highlighting the devastation as birds, fish, and other wildlife are affected. Additionally, local economies, such as tourism in the Gulf, have seen sharp declines. The repercussions of the spill have seeped from the Mississippi River delta to Washington DC and BP’s London headquarters and finally into global financial markets, reminding us of the degree to which our society has subsumed and become increasingly reliant on natural inputs. We were supplied with continually updated satellite imagery of the oil sheen’s trajectory, juxtaposed with clumsy explanations as to why the wellhead continued leaking.

Responses to the oil spill and its management have varied greatly from an outright rage to a sort of quiet remorse. These

divergent ways of responding to various aspects of the disaster have manifested themselves in protests, boycotts, letter writing campaigns, and so on. Many religious communities, as in most disasters, have been invaluable in organising relief and clean-up efforts in affected areas. However, I would like to interrogate the degree to which this event, as well as previous environmental disasters, has prompted we the people, particularly Western Christians, to reexamine our role in creation and the underlying assumptions of how we are to interact with the rest of the natural world.

For millennia Christian theologians and laity have been reflecting on the environment and ecology in diverse and sometimes

contentious ways. Christian ecologies situated in specific interpretations of the canon, from Genesis to Revelation, have influenced the ways in which Christians perceive their role as stewards of creation. There are two aspects

to this issue of Christian stewardship that have typically been considered as separate, but I believe are intimately connected. The first is, how are humans situated within the creation narrative? The second is, what does the first question imply with regard to our role as administrators of this creation? The main answer can be synthesised as this. By defining ourselves to some degree as ontologically separate from the rest of creation

Lamenting Eden: Fallenness and Man’s Place in Creation

OPINION by ZACK BAIZE

‘ … this theology of human dominion has been undergirded by a commonly held position that we are categorically different from the rest of creation ...’

(a specifically narrow hermeneutic of the creation narrative), humans problematically assume, in many ways, an oppositional posture towards the rest of the creation.

By framing questions of human needs, progress, and aesthetics through false dichotomies of ‘man vs. wild’ we construct an adversarial system where I believe God desires unity. It’s as if we have written a play, casting ourselves as the lone protagonists of creation, meant to overcome the adversities confronted as a result of the expulsion from Eden. In attempting to recreate the conditions of Eden on this side of the wall, through the production of nature we have repackaged the redemptive mission of Christ into a quest to have all of our desires met through consumption of the environment around us. This scenario puts man at the centre, with God as a sort of facilitator in the pursuit of total dominion. In essence, it is anthropocentric. I believe this necessitates a reframing of what might be thought of as the nature/society division by repositioning God as a central point of reference instead of ‘us’, or theocentrism, and a consideration of how this might look different from what is often found in the Church.

Historical theologies of nature have tended to frame the relationship between man and nature in distinctly anthropocentric terms. The Genesis account of God’s call to subdue and have dominion over the Earth has provided a basic tenet of theology from Augustine’s hierarchy of nature, to current developments in mainline Protestantism. Particularly modern theology, in its general acceptance of Cartesian philosophies of nature, has largely relegated the ‘outside’ (the natural) to reductionist matter, amorally commodified for our consumption. In focusing on religious experience and the transformation of the inward self as the primary goal of Christianity, we have disassociated ourselves from the land and our own carnal, physical reality to such an extent that, as Archbishop Rowan Williams said a few years ago, ‘we have become minds on sticks’. Again, this theology of human dominion has been undergirded by a commonly held position that we are categorically different from the rest of creation. This perspective on ecology has formed the heart of many modern debates between Christian communities and what I’ll refer to as secular attempts at human ecology. In many ways, the quintessential debate over categorical creationism is intimately connected to this theology of separation and has relied to a large extent on a prevailing acceptance by the Western Christian community of this anthropocentric faith; one that is defined by

and relies on man’s categorically distinct place in the creation story. If this was at all questionable, the answer arrived in 1859.

Darwin’s On the Origin of Species has been theologically debated from various perspectives. From its initial publication and the famous Oxford debates of 1862 to the 2007 opening of the Creation Museum in my own home state of Kentucky, Christian communities (in this case, Western Protestantism) have struggled to reconcile entrenched theologies of creation with the increasingly apparent actuality that we may be more intimately

related to the rest of the world than these theologies purport. This contention has featured prominently in secular opposition to literalist accounts of young earth creationism and the development of the science and religion ‘conflict thesis’.

The 1966 lecture by Lynn White Jr. entitled ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis’ has served as primary source of an argument that Christian teachings concerning creation have largely influenced this anthropocentric approach to ecology in the Church, and in Western society as a whole.

This argument has more merit than most of us would like to admit. To an extent, we have incorporated the false modern division between nature and society into our thought and practice. This separation from all things ‘carnal’ has marginalised the application of Christ’s teachings to the world around us, particularly the non-human. Many in the Church have come to view the Christian life as primarily a war on the inside, a transmutation of the soul. The problem with this is that while we are preoccupied with the business of spiritual renewal, the creation lies in wait. I do not mean to belittle the inwardness through which many, including myself, experience the love of God. On the contrary, it is absolutely vital for a Christian approach to ecology in that it can prompt us to participate more fully in God’s redemptive purposes. However, the thrust of the message of Christ is one of outwardness, of doing in the here and now the work of the Kingdom of Heaven. How do we engage in an outward expression of our Christianity in our relationship to the natural world – in human ecology?

It may sound bold, but I believe that the central impediment to a holistically Christian ecology in much of the Church (again, particularly in my experience of Protestant America), is the rejection of human biological evolution. While evolution is simply a theory, albeit an exhaustively evidenced and consensus-

‘ … the central impediment to a holistically Christian ecology in much of the Church ... is rejection of human biological evolution ...’

16 signposts 17

based theory, I do not believe that it is the particularities of biological minutiae that underlie the militancy of anti-evolution sentiment in parts of the Church. I believe that many Christians reject the theory of biological evolution because they interpret it as making the world a little less about ‘us’. While secular evolution advocates have built careers on delegitimising what they see as the whole of Christianity in light of scientific discovery, what they have really been doing is delegitimising a theology of creation that was flawed in the first place; a theology that many of us hold to tightly. We should have beat them to it. The world is not primarily about us, it’s about God and a redemptive plan for the whole of His creation. Two common phrases spoken from pulpits around the world go something like this, ‘God loves all people equally’ and ‘God loves each of us as individuals so much that he would have sent Christ even if we were the only person on Earth’. Our individual importance is reconciled with an understanding that God loves all of us equally. Why do we perceive our individual importance as a human species to be completely undermined by an intimately biological connection with the rest of the world? It is a small god whose disposition towards us is contingent on categorical, or special, creationism.

I am not a biologist, but I do know enough about biology to know that the theory of evolution, like all scientific theories, is not based on facts but on a series of deductions and conjectures. Therefore, the existence of inconsistencies or problematic elements to a cohesive theory of evolved life doesn’t make the theory wrong, it makes it simply incomplete. Complicating our own lack of understanding, however, is the relative lack of Christian scholarship in the field of evolutionary biology. An exemplary exception to this is Francis Collins and the BioLogos Foundation, which promotes a Christian perspective on theistic evolution. For the most part, the public consumption of evolutionary and ecological science has been framed and directed

by an unapologetically atheist, in some cases antitheist, ideology. The theory of human evolution and orthodox Biblical theology contradict each other not in any fundamental sense, but in the ways in which divergent epistemic communities have interpreted and sought to apply one to the other.

In some ways a theology of evolution, or theistic evolution, can weave a much more comprehensive narrative of God’s redemptive purpose and facilitate a truly Christian ecology. It can be seen to imply and order an elegant mechanism through which God is continually renewing his creation. It places mankind at the pinnacle of a continuum of biological kinship, as opposed to the oppositional, adversarial stance that has come to characterise the way in which we often perceive our relationship with the natural world. It implies a connection of mutually derived benefits. The Incarnation, as God became flesh and participated in His own creation, can be seen as a vindication not just of the human, but of the entire biological world. The Incarnation of Jesus Christ stands as a perfect example of how we should exercise our dominion over the natural world. We must become part of it, participating in the redemption of all things that Christ initiated at Golgotha, red in tooth and claw, with the hope of Christ’s return and the perfection of our (always God-infused) efforts. This does not degrade the importance of humanity in God’s redemptive purpose. Rather, it elevates the importance of everything else. In respect to the current ecological crises of the twenty-first century, an ontology of intimacy, a theology that recognises the commonalities and shared hopes of redemption of all creation is vital.

Of the two responses I spoke of earlier, in regards to the BP oil spill, I currently find myself more remorseful than outraged. Remorseful that the reasons for the spill and its continued mismanagement are embedded in our wider culture, as in much of the Western Church. The disregard for the environment’s welfare in maximising its productive outputs for human consumption is a natural consequence of the value we perceive it to have. The problem is that when we objectify nature, we are really objectifying ourselves, more akin to suicide than to murder. This connection must be made to address man’s place in creation and participation in the renewal of all things, the hope of the Christian gospel, the return to Eden. ▪

Zack, Green-Templeton College, Oxford, has just completed his MSc in Nature, Science, and Environmental Policy. His dissertation was entitled, ‘Valuing Values: Applying Value Theory to Payments for Ecosystem Services’.

Renada Arens, MA Publishing (Oxford Brookes), examines the arguments made in Charles Foster’s The Selfless Gene: Living with God and Darwin (2009). The book formed the basis for GCU’s first talk (from Foster) of the academic year, 2009-2010.

B eneath the title The Selfless Gene, a golden blob gradually evolves into the Christian cross. The subtitle, Living

with God and Darwin, further provoked my interest. Could there be a natural reconciliation between the two?

As a perhaps typical American homeschooler, I grew up learning about the six days of creation. My first encounter with Darwinism was from the depiction of equine evolution in the Dorling Kindersley Ultimate Horse Book, which my parents discredited as being against the Bible. In high school, I learned of Christians who claimed the days of creation were actually six ages in which evolution could have occurred. However, teachers at an apologetics camp I attended countered with various arguments, for example, that the Hebrew word for ‘day’ in Genesis is the same word used elsewhere for a solar day. These experiences reinforced my idea that the only Biblical protological understanding was that of a 10,000 year old earth created in six 24 hour days. During university, I began to wonder what differing beliefs about the earth’s age have to do with living as Jesus commanded. When I picked up The Selfless Gene, there were two questions in my mind: was what I learned wrong? And how does one’s understanding of earth’s origins affect Christian life?

Far from being the only correct Biblical understanding, Foster argues that the brand of creationism I learned is a

relatively recent development that misrepresents historic Christian belief. (Calvin, for instance, observed in a commentary on Genesis that ‘nothing is here treated of but the visible form of the world. He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere’ [p. 125].) Likewise, Foster claims that the reductionist teachings of Richard Dawkins misrepresent Darwinism and create a needless rift between science and faith. Both the young earth creationists and the ‘new atheists’ offer grossly oversimplified views of reality that fail to account for the complexity of the world. Foster surveys the evidence for the earth’s age, discussing how the speed of light travelling from distant galaxies indicates

the universe is at least 10 billion years old and the similar conclusions reached by radiometric dating. He makes a case that the fossil record shows species increasing in complexity over time. Perhaps most startling, he points to ‘inefficient design’ in the animal kingdom, refuting the claim that God engineered every creature with exact precision.

Foster clearly accepts that the ‘selfish genes’ of natural selection played a large role in shaping species on the macro-level. His central argument, however, is that ‘if the only force

pushing the biological world onwards is Darwinian natural selection, then natural selection is pushing it constantly in a direction that favors community, co-operation, and altruism’ (p. 222). Examining instances of sociability in the fossil record and the present animal kingdom, he refutes the claim that altruism is disguised selfishness by asking how natural selection could have allowed altruism to begin in the first place. Foster presents another explanation: a ‘selfless’, and dare we say, redemptive, force at work in the natural world.

BOOK REVIEW by RENADA ARENS

Creation Frustrated

18 signposts 19

Turning his attention to Genesis, Foster demonstrates an arguably higher view of Scripture than that of the young earth creationists. He writes, ‘the literalists presume that simple human language, shorn of all context, poetry and mythological allusion, can tell the story of the creation of the universe. The compilers [of Genesis] were not so arrogant. They … made it perfectly clear (by the unmistakable contradictions and in many other ways) that this was not what they were doing’ (pp. 121-122). He points to the alleged discrepancies in the Genesis 1 – 2 creation accounts as evidence that the writers were not trying to explain the technicalities of creation; human language can never fully explain an event that both predates and surpasses it. The Bible is clear as to who the Creator is; it does not tell us precisely how creation was accomplished. Creationism’s focus on these things detracts from what the Bible is really concerned with: ‘who we are, why we are here, where we have come from, where we are going, and how to live’ (p. 125).

Even granting that young earth creationism takes issue with scientific findings needlessly, my second question – how accepting Darwin impacts Christian life – remained. How does believing that the first humans likely looked nothing like Michelangelo’s Adam affect the reality of sin and redemption? How does an ape descendent on a 4.5 billion year old planet live in light of eternity?

Since the fossil record indicates animal death and suffering long before there were humans to sin, Foster suggests that something had gone wrong before Eve took the fruit. Pre-fallen humanity was instructed to subdue the earth, implying there was something to subdue. Foster then makes perhaps his most memorable point:

Even having looked hard at the natural world, and discounted the fall of man as a suspect [for the existence of death and pain], we can continue to accept the basic traditional Christian view of nature—that it is essentially a good thing twisted. The criminal—the twister—will have the following characteristics. He will be immensely ancient: he will have been around to inject selfishness into the primordial soup. As soon as it is palaeontologically possible to see his footprints, we will see them. He will oppose the rule of God, be the antithesis of God’s character, and be the inciter of the rebellion we see in Genesis 1 and 2 … . [I]t was his work that needed to be subdued by man. He may not have

been the snake in the garden, but he was its inspiration and perverter. He gave Noah his illegitimate taste for flesh … he fumes if a wolf lies down peaceably beside a lamb (p. 182).

After surveying the scientific evidence, Foster comes back to the central theme: we live in the midst of a revolt against the Creator. The age of the earth becomes merely a larger backdrop against which the rebellion has played out. The selfishness seen in both the death of an antelope and the ravings of a gunman are evidence not just of natural selection, but of sabotage in which humanity chose to join rather than to quell. Yet the fossil record itself seems to augur the words of Paul:

The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.Romans 8:19-23

Even after reading The Selfless Gene, I haven’t begun to understand the implications of the evidence for evolution, or how that evidence is coloured with atheist bias, just as young earth creationist claims are often grounded in reactionary pride rather than thoughtful consideration of either Scripture or nature. Even C. S. Lewis, that great chronicler of the Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve, writes in The Problem of Pain of an ‘animal form which was to become the vehicle of humanity.’ Along with Foster, I am willing to accept that it is indeed possible to reconcile the Darwinian and Pauline views of man. Perhaps they may be pointing towards the same thing: a creation awaiting deliverance from its womb of death. The struggle may have begun in the primordial soup, but it ends in the cross.

Note: As I was writing this review, I found a gnat squished between two pages, its flattened wings pointing to a discussion how the argument from kenosis does not demonstrate why suffering is necessary. Point taken. ▪

Developing a Christian Mind

February 19-20, March 18-19, 2011

Website available soon at www.oxfordchristianmind.orgtalk to your friendly GCU committee

Upcoming events...

I aim to misbehave - Malcolm Reynolds, Serenity (2005)

20 For more information or to contact us please visit www.oxfordgcu.org.uk