Hi Tom,

I agree that ID is not good science and not good theology. But I don’t agree with your statement that “God never coerces.” The idea that God only acts with “persuasive love” is flimsy and I can’t see why it contradicts the idea that God is love. When God created the world out of nothing, he did it with love and “force.” It was not persuasion merely. In the final judgment, God will judge, not with persuasive love, but with decisive action. I just can’t see, either in the Old no New Testament, where God lacks “coercive power.” Ed Madden once told me that he felt the real weakness of process philosophy is that its God could not even jam the system if God wanted to; and hence Madden didn’t think the God of process philosophy was worth refuting, which he says is why he and Peter Hare excluded process philosophy in their first edition of Evil and the Concept of God. A God so weak as process philosophy is hardly worth taking note of, he complained in personal conversation with me. He said that he included process philosophy only because the process folks insisted that they do so.
Larry Wood

Hi Tom,

Here’s an interesting comment by Peter Hodgson about God’s power in Zygon in an article, “GOD’S ACTION IN THE WORLD: THE RELEVANCE OF QUANTUM MECHANICS”—“It is an impoverished conception of God to suppose that he is bound by his own laws. God is the supreme lord of nature, who can make and unmake its laws and bring it into being,modify it, or extinguish it at will. It is unnecessary to think of God trying
to change the course of events by keeping within the limits of quantum indeterminacy.” [Zygon, vol. 35, no. 3 (September 2000).]

Larry,

Thanks for your good posts!  I’ll start my response with the second.

I agree that we shouldn’t say God is bound by those laws God voluntarily decides to decree or instantiate.  This, in my opinion, is one of the deficits of what I call “voluntary kenosis” theology.  This God is self-limited by voluntarily setting laws or giving freedom to creation. 

However, I think God IS bound by the eternal aspects of God’s own nature. E.g., God cannot decide to be 359 instead of Triune. But I’m guessing you’d agree with me on that.  Am I right?

With regard to your first post, I think we need to be careful to distinguish the metaphysical meanings of persuasion and coercion.  These meanings are not primarily about the use of force. A persuasive action is forceful, and a coercive action is forceful.

The metaphysical difference pertains to whether God can unilaterally determine—completely control—others. Persuasive force cannot entirely control others. I say God can’t control others entirely, because God’s nature is love and love never entirely controls.

You’re right to bring up the issue of creation out of nothing as an instance in which God would have to entirely control.  I deny that doctrine, however, because of its biblical, historical, logical, ethical, scientific and theological implications. (After writing that sentence, it occurs to me that I should write a blog on my objections to creatio ex nihilo!) I really wish theologians would be more biblical on this issue and deny that God creates from absolutely nothing.

Whatever process theologians say about God’s power or lack thereof (and process thinkers vary among themselves on this issue), I am committed to speaking of God as the almighty God of love who is not culpable for failing to prevent genuine evil. 

In my opinion, we should use language about God’s power that denies God has the capacity to coerce (in the metaphysical sense). But it also means using language indicating God is the mightiest being, Creator, and exerts might upon all others. I like to use the biblical word “almighty” to describe God’s power, although I realize the word itself could be interpreted in various ways.

I hope this helps explain my positions!

Thanks again for your comments…

Tom

I have thoroughly enjoyed these 3 posts and feel like my mind has been wonderfully stretched! Please help me understand better your statement “God’s creating irreducibly complex organisms is not an act of love.” You call it “coercive”.
It seems to me that creating the irreducibly complex components necessary for life as we know it, is supremely an act of love.Here we see the Creator bringing into relationship to Himself matter that would otherwise be inert, “less than” it could be, or even stymied in its development. Since I view the authority God wields in the universe as being like the authority of a parent, can it not also be thought that avery loving thing to do is to help a child who is stuck get unstuck? If life cannot develop apart from certain foundational components, it certainly seems to me that it is a supreme act of love for God to enable life to come into existence or progress in its development by providing those key elements, that is, the irreducibly complex organisms. So I don’t see how this act of creation is opposed to love.

Thanks for the great response, Bob, and for the compliment!

I agree that creating irreducibly complex components necessary for life could be a supreme act of love. I think when God seeks to create such complex organisms, it is an act of love.

My objection, however, is to thinking that creating irreducibly complex components necessary for life is creation by coercion. I think Christians should argue that God creates through cooperation/call/persuasion/inspiration, etc. 

I don’t have anything against the idea that God creates irreducibly complex organisms.  In fact, I affirm that.  I am only opposed to ID, insofar as it states or implies that God does such creating coercively, without any contribution from creatures.

When ID proponents say “evolution can’t account for this, so God had to design it,” this statement seems to suggest either A) evolution on its own can give a full explanation of some organisms but not this organism (which I think most ID folk would want to deny) or B) some organisms came about ONLY through God’s designing action (which I think ID, unfortunately, affirms). 

I reject both A and B. I argue that C) God’s creating of complex organisms is always in love, and love never acts coercively. Creatures contribute to God’s creative activity.

I think God’s love is never coercive for two reasons.  The first speaks to the definition of love. I think love in itself is always expressed in relationship. Entire control of the other in relationship is never loving.

The second reason speaks to what it would mean if God had the capacity to coerce. If God could coerce, a loving God should use coercion to prevent genuine evil. Because genuine evils occur, we shouldn’t say God possesses the capacity to coerce.  If we do, we are undermining a robust notion of divine love.

Hope that clarifies my position…

Tom

Please write your article on creation ex nihilo!  I am intrigued.

Tom my friend, your ‘process upbringing’ is showing badly… The initial creative act is ‘alone’, that is, God creates alone, for there is no creation to created with, and no slight of hand with Trinity here, the Godhead acts alone…  You write,

“Acting all alone when creating would not be loving for at least two reasons.  First, love requires relationship. Relationship requires cooperation and collaborating, at least to some degree.

Acting all alone as a sufficient cause amounts to forcing one’s way on others. This is coercion. Almost everybody believes that love and coercion – when coercion is defined as total control – are incompatible.”

Unless, you are joining your mentors in arguing that God came upon the ‘chaos’ and ‘encouraged’ it to be, rather than ‘called’ it into being, this first act of creation was alone.  There was ‘no thing’ to cooperate with God.

But further, you cheat in your definition (and I have got to stop pointing this out in your work).  “Love cannot coercive…”  Once you set the rules, how are we to argue, less we challenge the rules you have made.  All one need do is suggest, “indeed love can and does coercive”.  Love would never leave the creation to its own chaos…  Rules are easily written and the winner of the game writes the rules as Wittgenstein argued so long ago.

What I think you have done is show why ID is valid approach.  And me thinks you didn’t intend that…  :o)

A fiat act of creation does not need to preclude love.  Adding complexity, color, symmetry, functionality, distinctive, etc. might just as well be seen as a loving act by a Good God.

Don’t traditional understandings of the Trinity give an explanation as to why we can say God acts “alone” initially (creation ex nihilo)?  This does not necessarily prove ID, and I too am skeptical of most of the claims of ID, but I don’t get how Process thought posits “something” here before God.  Can something pre-date God?  If not, then how did “something” get here? 

God’s love CAN be (and has been) seen as an outgrowth of the mutuality of the Trinity.  God desires THIS kind of community so much that God chooses to reproduce it.  If that is the case, then God as Trinity can act “alone” and not violate your definition of love.  Right???

Charles

Tom:

I too have enjoyed these articles, but take issue with some of your presuppositions.

1. With whom did God collaborate when the first non-God creation was being made?

2. On what basis do you draw the conclusion that coercion cannot be done in perfect love?

Have a great day, Tom!

Tony

Thanks for these posts.  I can see that I’ll need to provide a post stating reasons why I oppose creation out of nothing and why I affirm creating out of something through love.

Tom

Regarding your claim that “love requires relationship” and ” Relationship requires cooperation and collaborating” how might we imagine the relationship among/within the Triune God as it relates to creation?  Since “God IS love” might we conceive of this cooperation and collaboration relating from/within/through God’s trinitarian nature?

This is a very interesting post that is thought provoking. However, I would disagree with your analysis of the creation account given in Genesis 1 that there is a “divine-creaturely cooperation”. In the first versus God, the trinity, creates unilaterally with no cooperation from creation since as of yet creation was not in existence. Also the language not appear to give the land/creatures any part in the creation. I would lean more towards an analogy with God as master painter creating his master piece with all of creation as his canvas and paint. This is the kind of creation account I see in Genesis. What where the other references where creation contributes to creating? Thank you for your blog.

Dr. Oord,

I guess my question after reading this is, with evolution, why does Christ come to earth?

It seems to me that if evolution in true, then sin is not really a choice. It is “evolutionary lag” in a way. If evolution is true, then the only reason I am here is because my ancestors were able to kill all those who opposed them. Evolution required my ancestors to put themselves above all others, because that is the only way that natural selection would have allowed humans to survive. So, if my ancestors had to do unloving things to survive, It would seem that instinct and genetics would force me to sin. It is sort of a ,” like father, like son” type of thing.

If sin is then not a choice, then why did Christ make it seem like it was?

I have tried to get as many different positions on this question as possible, but most professors seem to not see that one must change the traditional reason for Christ’s coming to earth if he or she accepts an evolutional worldview.

I am not sure what I believe as far as the whole creation theories go. I do not think that in the long run or the “big picture” it really matters whether people believe that God created out of nothing- or whether he simply put into action and then took a step back and let the rest take place. When it comes to a salvation issue, it is not important. What I do appreciate about your theory Dr. Oord, is that God must have created out of love and that the idea of Him creating alone would in all essence by definition of what we understand love to be-impossible since love requires a relationship and a relationship cannot exist with only one person