Resolving God of the Gaps
I’ve been thinking about how God, as spirit, acts in the world. One often overlooked or underemphasized notion derives from God’s omnipresence. And thinking carefully about omnipresence helps resolve facets of the God of the gaps problem.
Most Christians will say God is present to all creation. The usual word to express this notion is “omnipresence.” Divine omnipresence need not and should not be equated with pantheism, however. Christians rightly distinguish between the Creator and creation. God can be present to all others without literally being all that exists.
God being present to all others includes being present to the most and least complex creatures. God is present to the subatomic particles and great whales. In God, all creation lives and moves and has its being. God is directly and immediately present to all.
God is not only present, but I propose that God exerts causal influence upon all and in various ways. To use contemporary terms, God exerts direct, top-down, lateral, and bottom-up causal influence. This multi-level causation comes in many forms, because it is multi-faceted.
In short, God’s providential activity is more than being the glue by which all things adhere. God also influences all things directly.
God of the Gaps
Affirming God’s omnipresence and omni-influence helps overcome key problems in science and theology discussions. One problem, known as the God of the gaps, has an epistemic and ontological form.
The epistemic form of the God of the gaps problem says that, except in a few cases, we can explain particular events entirely through naturalistic scientific statements. We only need refer to God for events not completely explained by science.
The ontological form of the gaps argument says that, except in a few cases, creaturely forces alone cause events to occur. Divine causation is occasionally necessary. God is an occasional add-on.
To say that God is present to all and exerts causal influence upon all, however, overcomes both forms of the God of the gaps argument. Because God is a causal influence upon all creatures, explanations purporting to be sufficient but that do not include divine causation are necessarily erroneous.
Christians should claim that, in principle, all fully adequate explanations of events will include reference to divine causation. The God who is always present to and always exerting influence upon creatures plays a role in any fully adequate explanation of a particular event.
To put it more traditional language, we all need God all the time. We should not think a fully adequate explanation can be given for any occurrence that does not include mention of God’s activity.
A Controlling God?
Unfortunately, some people think saying, “God is present to and always influences creation,” means, “God controls everything all the time.” But just as our parents influenced us without controlling us completely, so God can be always present and always influential without also being all controlling.
And, as I’ll say in later essays, this notion of a noncontrolling God seems entailed in the notion that God always acts lovingly.
For our present purposes, however, it seems wise to emphasize the classic Christian idea that God is omnipresent.
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Comments
Thanks. This is very interesting. By all means, keep going. At some point are you planning on addressing the Problem of Evil? That seems to be the primary reason people suggest limits on God’s power.
Tom,
Yes! This makes sense. Of course, God-of-the-gaps ‘explanations’ will never do, for several obvious (eventually embarassing) reasons. Could your idea of omnipresence (present to, among, with, alongside) be extended to the idea of miracle, from God’s viewpoint? While understanding the audacity of trying to see anything from God’s point of view, I’ve been thinking that maybe our ignorance of the nature of the material world is sufficiently great that God’s miraculous acts, from God’s vantage point, result from using matter (the working of matter), naturally. They appear as supernatural miracles to us because of our limited understanding of matter. (Examples of more scientifically advanced societies appearing god-like to less scientifically advanced ones would easily illustrate this point.)
If this is a reasonable line of thought, and if it fits well enough with your idea of omnipresence, one could avoid the “roughness” of the God-of-the-gaps model as well as the mental squirming we all do when we postulate a miracle here but no miracle there. Just thinking.
Bev
In my reading I came across the idea of Panentheism.(Denis Edwards, Breath of Life) Taking from Genesis, God breathed life (ruach) into man and he became a living soul. If the Spirit of God is the source of all life then all living things possess the Spirit. I like this because is makes us look at all living things as possessing the diving. In Judaism respect was given to even the killing of animals for sacrifice or food.
I am still struggling with the concept of God in inanimate objects. Cannot laws of physics be enough to deal with such items as atoms and rocks? The quest goes on.
John,
Panentheism sees God as, in some sense, in or part of creation. This makes God, at least in part, dependent on creation for his full expression. This is very different from God being among, alongside, present to all of creation. In this second view, which I think is closer to Dr. Oord’s view, creation is utterly dependent on God, but God is not dependent on creation. However, because God is love, in an essential sense, creation does flow from the nature of God, not only from the will of God. In addition, the creation that flows from the essential love of God is like a fire hose that has no stop valve – it just flows. Creation is the beneficiary of this flow of love, all of the time. Creation of the universe, as we experience it, is a work in progress. It will proceed and will experience the very ends which God has in mind. The path taken to the ultimate goal, however, is not predictable, nor does it need to be. God is big enough to do it this way! In many ways, this continuous creative flow is like the Holy Spirit, who is described in the NT as wind and fire. There is no way we can understand, package, predict or ultimately thwart this third person of the Trinity. We can only permit him to work in us to bring us closer to Christ and to the likeness of Christ. So it is with creation that flows from the love of God, through the operation of the Holy Spirit. Enjoy the show!
I’m sure Dr Oord will let us know if I have misrepresented his quite workable idea of essential kenosis.
Bev
Here is the defination I am working from:
“Panentheism” is a constructed word composed of the English equivalents of the Greek terms “pan”, meaning all, “en”, meaning in, and “theism”, meaning God. Panentheism understands God and the world to be inter-related with the world being in God and God being in the world. It offers an increasingly popular alternative to traditional theism and pantheism. Panentheism seeks to avoid both isolating God from the world as traditional theism often does and identifying God with the world as pantheism does. Traditional theistic systems emphasize the difference between God and the world while panentheism stresses God’s active presence in the world. Pantheism emphasizes God’s presence in the world but panentheism maintains the identity and significance of the non-divine. Anticipations of panentheistic understandings of God have occurred in both philosophical and theological writings throughout history (Hartshorne and Reese 1953; Cooper, 2006). However, a rich diversity of panentheistic understandings has developed in the past two centuries primarily in Christian traditions responding to scientific thought (Clayton and Peacocke 2004).
It sounds to me like you are defining pantheism not pan-en-theism. I accept that I could be wrong in my understanding of the concept.
John,
Maybe they work for Air Canada!
From what I have read of panentheism, I think you have it right. As for misunderstanding it, the way proponents of panentheism formulate it, how could we ever be sure that we don’t misunderstand? As for non-panentheistic panentheism, well the angels on the pin-head I’m currently viewing are on strike
As I see it, God the creator is apart from his work. However, his love flows continuously and is continuously creative. As for where the Creator is, with respect to the products of his love, well, he is everywhere. With reference to the time-frame we inhabit, creation and its sustenance, never end: God’s love never ends. However, it’s essential to think of creation as both material and spiritual.
Our secular studies of the living parts if creation reveal great dynamism, amazing development in complexity and continuous adaptation. Chemists, physicists and cosmologists also report dynamism, various kinds of ever-changing order and chaos from the smallest to the largest systems. This is a big clue that we humans have come to the show rather late. We also have been here only a short time. As individuals, the time for viewing and interacting is indeed short.
As for the spiritual side of creation, the Creator wants to form himself in us. In the same way that the Creator, in the person of the Holy Spirit, is continuously present to the material and the non-human living world, he is also present to all humans beings. As far as we know, only humans are equipped to sense and respond (negatively or positively) to his presence. We Christians believe that The Holy Spirit wants to work in us to make us like Christ. This is every bit as much a creative act as the creation of the world. The Holy Spirit is in a person who has recognized the human need for Christ. In a real sense, the Spirit is part of that person, as he carries out the necessary creative work. In the same sense, the Holy Spirit is part of creation as he carries out that necessary creative work of the Trinity. Yet, we would not say that the Holy Spirit in any way needs to be part of us to be fully what he is. It’s the other way around. We need the Holy Spirit to be part of us, so that we can fully be who and what we should be. Likewise, the entire universe needs the presence of the creative Holy Spirit to be all it can be. And, somewhat mysteriously, “creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God….”
This took longer to explain than I wanted it to, and I always get suspicious when people can’t explain themselves more precisely. The bottom line, I think, is to not separate the work of the Spirit in creation from the work the Spirit wants to do in us. From this point of view, we may have less difficulty in understanding what we mean by the seemingly simple word ‘in’.
Thanks for the opportunity to correspond. It’s good to talk about these things.