Creation’s autonomy and the action of God

Abstract

Thomas Jay Oord has recently proposed that God’s relationship to the world and its human inhabitants is well described as one of uncontrolling love, and that God is constitutionally incapable of intervening unilaterally in human lives. Consequently, prayer for God so to act is misjudged and inappropriate. This article argues that this conclusion runs counter to the biblical record, which sees God’s relationship with the world as sustaining and upholding, but also allowing for specific willed actions. However, God has given the world functional autonomy, which would be abrogated by interventions too predictable or too attributable. It is proposed that intervention by God is real and not uncommon, but often of concealed and unprovable provenance. God’s self-limitation with regard to intervention is seen as consistent but chosen, in contrast to Oord’s proposal of an ‘essential’ kenosis.

Keywords

autonomy of creation human autonomy intervention kenosis

Introduction

In a previous contribution to Theology,¹ I defended the belief that God can and does intervene in the world of our experience. This belief is rejected by those Christians who see God’s interaction with the created world solely as its sustainer and holder-in-being. They contend that it is incompatible for God to have that role and also to initiate specific actions within the world.

My defence of divine intervention was twofold. First, I pointed out that human intervention in the physical world is an undeniable reality. We humans can will a change and take action to bring it about. How a conscious human will brings about otherwise unpredicted events is as yet unexplained by science, but to deny it is to deny the validity of all (supposedly voluntary) human activity and thought processes. I then pointed out that if we accept the reality of human intervention, it is perverse to deny the possibility of divine intervention.

Second, the reality of divine intervention, either unprompted or in response to human prayer, is integral to the message of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, as is an encouragement to pray expectantly for God to act.

In making these points I was endorsing John Polkinghorne:

Human and divine agency both clearly fall into the category of experience that is presently well beyond our capacity for full understanding. As persons, we should not deny our basic experiences of free choice and consequent moral responsibility. As Christians, we should not deny our intuition, and the testimony of our tradition, that God acts in the world.²

God Can’t

A few weeks after my ‘Everyday intervention’ article appeared, Thomas Jay Oord published God Can’t,³ a book that contains the bold claim⁴ that ‘the God who intervenes doesn’t exist’.

Oord’s book seeks to provide new answers to the age-old question of why a loving God allows suffering. He examines the various answers that have been offered over the years and finds them all unsatisfying. His own answer is that God cannot single-handedly prevent evil. This is a consequence of God’s nature, which Oord characterizes as uncontrolling love. Following earlier writers, he describes this self-limitation as a kenosis, recruiting a word Paul the Apostle used to describe the chosen self-limitation that Jesus undertook while taking human form (Philippians 2.7). However, Oord insists that this inability to intervene is not the consequence of a voluntary choice, but is intrinsic. God ‘doesn’t freely choose to be self-limited’.⁵ Oord denotes this ‘essential kenosis,⁶ a phrase that purists might consider an oxymoron.

Essential kenosis certainly resolves the thorny issue of how God can be free of blame for failing to intervene to rid the world of evil. God is constitutionally incapable of preventing evil, and therefore cannot be held responsible for its continuing presence in our world.

Chapter 3 of Oord’s book deals with disease and healing. He recounts his own history of ministering healing in the name of Christ. He slowly and reluctantly came to the conclusion that it was ineffective, and he now believes that this cannot be otherwise, because God does not directly intervene in our world. Although many Christians would not share his view, the problem of God not healing is a real one. If God sometimes answers our prayers for healing, why not always? Why do our prayers sometimes fail? In Oord’s words, ‘why aren’t more people healed? Is God stingy?’⁷

Oord follows his logic into the realm of intercession.

We often call for help in moments of crisis. We cry out for divine intervention. In desperation we seek a way out: ‘Help me, God!’ If we stop and think about it, however, requests for ‘intervention’ don’t make sense. If God is already present and acting for good all the time, we don’t need God to come into our situation. God is already there. God never intervenes, because God is always already present.⁸

Creation’s autonomy and God’s intervention

Oord’s God Can’t has a great deal to commend it. It points out the inadequacy of many attempts to resolve the problem of pain. And there is much that is both wise and gracious concerning the nature of God. But I am profoundly uncomfortable with where his theodicy leads him, specifically that God does not intervene and that therefore we are wrong to ask ‘him’ to. This seems to fly in the face of the entire Bible, which consistently and ubiquitously speaks of an active God whose love, mercy and justice cause him to intervene in nature and in human lives; and explicitly encourages believers to ask God fervently so to act. I respectfully submit that Oord’s proposal demands a price too high for classical Christian theology to pay.

Because I am taking issue with his conclusions, I need to quote Oord again, to make his position clear.

God cannot heal single-handedly. Many people believe God heals by absolute fiat. ‘Shazam!’ and healing occurs unilaterally. But this belief creates huge problems. In fact, it’s the primary obstacle keeping us from understanding why we are not healed. If God could heal single-handedly, God should fix our problems acting alone. There’s a better way to think. Divine healing isn’t a solitary, controlling ‘Zap!’ It’s not supernatural control. Healing requires cooperation, because God always expresses uncontrolling love.⁹

I believe that the biblical perspective on the relationship of God with the created world is that God is both the One who constantly upholds and sustains the universe and also One who is specifically active within it, either unprompted or in response to petitionary prayer. In other words, God’s other (and major) role of sustaining the world in being in no way precludes specific actions within it. This negates the stance of Aubrey Moore, who in 1889 wrote: ‘a theory of occasional intervention implies as its correlative a theory of ordinary absence’.¹⁰ I believe we are wise to concur with the biblical writers, who seem to find no logical contradiction between holding-in-being and intervening.

The natural world operates by its own rules, ones that humans have observed, codified and creatively utilized, both in everyday life and in technology. The world is predictable; causes have effects. Put theologically, the world has a God-given autonomy. Interestingly, the need for an autonomous creation only arises because God further chose to make humans ‘in his own image’, with the ability to reflect on the world and its workings. Even a world populated by higher animals, but ones lacking human rationality, could still be an arena for frequent divine interventions. No one would be there to notice and puzzle over them.

A truly autonomous world is a prerequisite for truly autonomous humans truly able to mimic God’s creativity. Implicit is a transfer of power from God to his creation. But was this a total handover, leaving God unable to intervene? Perhaps not. Consider the Incarnation. Was this kenosis complete? Charles Wesley contends that Jesus ‘emptied himself of all but love’. Was Wesley right? Not quite. Jesus the man retained and often exhibited superhuman characteristics. Most of his human life displayed divine glory and fullness (John 1.14; Colossians 2.9), not emptiness. Humility, too, but not kenosis, which goes way beyond humility. He chose kenosis in Gethsemane when he relinquished control, accepting suffering at the will and hands of others. Keith Ward puts it succinctly:

This view of kenosis, not as divine loss but as divinely willed restraint, is a more accurate reflection of the passage in Philippians. For what that passage says is not that Jesus gave up some of his divine or human attributes, but that he did not insist on status and power. That is a matter, not primarily of what attributes one has, but of how one exercises them.¹¹

By analogy, creation’s autonomy could also be qualified and partial, with God retaining the option to intervene. However, if God’s interventions were evident and their provenance unquestionable, they would undermine the predictability of our world and also prejudice our God-given autonomy as human agents. And so God has to intervene more sparingly, more sporadically, mostly when our backs are turned or in remote locations where human scrutiny and analysis are less acute. God’s chosen self-restraint means that God cannot answer all our prayers as we should like. We can imagine the consequences if every prayer for healing was predictably answered by an immediate miracle.

The extent to which the gift of autonomy to the created world has limited God’s freedom to intervene must have steadily increased as scientific understanding became more sophisticated and as human life came to depend more and more on technology, with its reliance on the predictability of natural phenomena. But God is infinitely creative and every generation discovers God’s willingness and ability to respond to our fervent prayers.

Conclusions

The thesis I am presenting shares much with Oord’s. We both acknowledge and celebrate natural law and human agency as gifts from a loving God, gifts that demand of God a degree of self-limitation. But while Oord sees this self-limitation as expressing and deriving from an immutable feature of God’s nature, I suggest that it is chosen and voluntary. I also see it as partial, thus avoiding Oord’s conclusions that God cannot intervene without our aid and that therefore intercession for God to act is inappropriate. I believe that these conclusions are mistaken.

Is it helpful to recruit the term kenosis for God’s self-limitation in creating an autonomous material world and an autonomous human species? Distinguished apologists such as Polkinghorne and Oord believe it is. Kenosis in Scripture refers to a chosen act of God the Son, who, in obedience to the Father, for a specific purpose and for a limited period of time, humbled himself, becoming a human being and indeed a servant. As pointed out above, the man Jesus retained and exhibited aspects of his divine nature. I submit that, if it is used to describe God’s chosen and partial self-limitation implicit in creation, kenosis can truly be a helpful metaphor.

Footnotes

Notes

Author biography

John B. Lloyd is an Emeritus Lay Minister (Reader) in the Church of England’s Diocese of Lichfield, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Sunderland. Before retirement he was Head of the School of Pharmacy at Sunderland University, and prior to that Professor of Biochemistry at Keele University and then Professor of Paediatrics and Pharmacology at Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, USA. He now researches and writes on issues of science and faith and on personality taxonomies.