God of the Gaps
One of the areas I have really become fascinated with is literature which deals with changes in what Charles Taylor calls our "social imaginaries."
For those unfamiliar with Taylor's definition one can look for it in his book, helpfully titled Modern Social Imaginaries (p.23-30 in particular), or his more massive A Secular Age (which I just finished last month, it is spectacular). By "social imaginary" Taylor is attempting to target something more specific than "theory," though that is included. It includes:
This is obviously a very interesting and multi-faceted concept that can be developed in many directions (and Taylor does so in a little over 800 pages). For example Taylor agrees with John Milbank that many aspects of modern, or "secular," humanist ideas which masquerade as "discovery's" (of science, human reason, man come of age, etc...) are actually constructions which have forgotten their theological and philosophical origins. But the point I want to write about briefly here specifically is how Taylor draws this discussion to a head in several points to discuss how massive alterations in our social imaginary have caused the "science vs. faith," debates because they have (often implicitly, without many noticing) changed the very structure of the terms and concepts involved. (p.295 -- here Taylor explicitly cites with approval the various works of Stanley Hauerwas, Alasdair MacIntyre, John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, Fergus Kerr, David Burrell, and Louis Dupre)
Thus a major portion of Taylor's investigation (mainly in the second half of the book) regards how pre-theoretical conditions have often changed, which create an environment that deeply imbeds forms of the world that can produce unbelief. Thus after a large section of argument Taylor starts a chapter on the rise of unbelief in the 19th century:
It is these changes in which Taylor notes an inordinate amount of pressure in Victorian England (and this is echoed in the analyses of Pannenberg, The Historicity of Nature, and McGrath, The Twilight of Atheism) was placed upon theologians (mostly pressure coming from themselves) to produce proofs of "design." This was because the overwhelming social imaginary at the time was the philosophy of mechanism--things no longer really were thought (or felt, again at a pre-theoretical level) to accord with any Platonic-type view that things were ordered by the ideas, or that there was any type of meaning of that sort in the universe at all. But the immediate reaction to this was understandable but ultimately not very profound idea that this world was "created by a benevolent God, in part to succour his human creatures," and thus must evince evidence of this.
And again without the Platonic-type deep meaning in structures, allegorical, moral, and typological readings of the Bible themselves largely dropped out: "Having largely dropped the Platonic facet of the cosmos idea, many felt they had to adhere more rigidly to the Biblical facet in all its details. But this rigidity springs from the scientific context itself...Hence the idea of fastening on the bible primarily as a chronicle of events, and trying to extract the maximum exactitude from the accounts one finds there: a typical project of the post-Galilean age, and which ends up [e.g.] in the ludicrous precision of Archbishop Ussher's calculations [regarding the beginning of the world some 6000 years ago]." (p.330). Thus "the pure face-off between 'religion' and 'science,' is a chimaera, or rather an ideological construct." (332)
Thus in one sense there was no conversion from "Christianity," to "science," or "belief" to "atheism" pure and simple: there was only a transition between two constructions of either, the atheist and the scientist only seeming to contradict the theologian because the entire discussion has been put into an improper mode of discourse. As he puts it later:
Thus part of the problem, ironically enough, became the apologetics themselves. As Michael Buckley writes in his magisterial At the Origins of Modern Atheism: "In the absence of a rich and comprehensive Christology and Pneumatology of religious experience, Christianity entered into the defense of the Christian God without appeal to anything Christian." (At the Origins of Modern Atheism p.67). And the atheism that ensued was not a reaction to Christianity qua Christianity, but in most cases was a revolt against this particularly flacid form of design theory which tried to find a place for God. As Amos Funkenstein put it:
I will post more on this later, but for now I want to propose, with many others, that ID is a fundamentally modern phenomenon, and God's relation to the world has not always been conceptualized this way, nor need it today. Im currently in a course on Medieval theology, and I will leave you with a quote from Etienne Gilson:
For those unfamiliar with Taylor's definition one can look for it in his book, helpfully titled Modern Social Imaginaries (p.23-30 in particular), or his more massive A Secular Age (which I just finished last month, it is spectacular). By "social imaginary" Taylor is attempting to target something more specific than "theory," though that is included. It includes:
- How ordinary people "imagine" social surroundings, carried in contemporary images, stories, legends, etc...
- It is different than a "theory," in that theory is mainly possessed at a theoretical or reflective level, and by only a few elites or a small minority. The Imaginary is shared by large groups at an often pre-theoretical level (i.e. "gut feeling" etc...)
- These social imaginaries provide a common "understanding," (if the purely intellectual connotations are put aside, and "understanding," includes emotional, physical, and psychological disposition) which provides and "atmosphere" or "context" for common practice (A Secular Age p.171-172)
This is obviously a very interesting and multi-faceted concept that can be developed in many directions (and Taylor does so in a little over 800 pages). For example Taylor agrees with John Milbank that many aspects of modern, or "secular," humanist ideas which masquerade as "discovery's" (of science, human reason, man come of age, etc...) are actually constructions which have forgotten their theological and philosophical origins. But the point I want to write about briefly here specifically is how Taylor draws this discussion to a head in several points to discuss how massive alterations in our social imaginary have caused the "science vs. faith," debates because they have (often implicitly, without many noticing) changed the very structure of the terms and concepts involved. (p.295 -- here Taylor explicitly cites with approval the various works of Stanley Hauerwas, Alasdair MacIntyre, John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, Fergus Kerr, David Burrell, and Louis Dupre)
Thus a major portion of Taylor's investigation (mainly in the second half of the book) regards how pre-theoretical conditions have often changed, which create an environment that deeply imbeds forms of the world that can produce unbelief. Thus after a large section of argument Taylor starts a chapter on the rise of unbelief in the 19th century:
But [this second wave of the rise in unbelief] is also qualitatively different....this depth is a reflection of something else, viz. that the unbelieving outlooks are more deeply anchored in the life-world and background sense of reality...than their eighteenth century predecessors. (p.322-323)This involved (and here Taylor follows both Dupré and Kóyre) a fundamental change in the cosmological imaginary. We transitioned from a "cosmos" (a hierarchically graded universe full of symbolic meaning and order) into an "infinite universe" which is now vast, infinite, seemingly shapeless to divine meaning. Here Taylor again "wants to emphasize that I am talking about our sense of things. Im not talking about what people believe," (325) because certainly many still believed (and still believe) in a God who intervenes in the universe, or a universe that contains meaning and form. Rather Taylor is attempting to chart a change over at the level of pre-theoretical awareness--i.e. how we inhabit the universe, our emotional attunement to it (to use the Heieggerian concept, which Taylor often employs). "Reality in all directions plunges its roots into the unknown, and as yet unmappable" (p.326) and one where "the extensions of time probably had the greatest impact," in altering our cosmic imaginaries, now bombarded by the "dark abyss of time."
It is these changes in which Taylor notes an inordinate amount of pressure in Victorian England (and this is echoed in the analyses of Pannenberg, The Historicity of Nature, and McGrath, The Twilight of Atheism) was placed upon theologians (mostly pressure coming from themselves) to produce proofs of "design." This was because the overwhelming social imaginary at the time was the philosophy of mechanism--things no longer really were thought (or felt, again at a pre-theoretical level) to accord with any Platonic-type view that things were ordered by the ideas, or that there was any type of meaning of that sort in the universe at all. But the immediate reaction to this was understandable but ultimately not very profound idea that this world was "created by a benevolent God, in part to succour his human creatures," and thus must evince evidence of this.
And again without the Platonic-type deep meaning in structures, allegorical, moral, and typological readings of the Bible themselves largely dropped out: "Having largely dropped the Platonic facet of the cosmos idea, many felt they had to adhere more rigidly to the Biblical facet in all its details. But this rigidity springs from the scientific context itself...Hence the idea of fastening on the bible primarily as a chronicle of events, and trying to extract the maximum exactitude from the accounts one finds there: a typical project of the post-Galilean age, and which ends up [e.g.] in the ludicrous precision of Archbishop Ussher's calculations [regarding the beginning of the world some 6000 years ago]." (p.330). Thus "the pure face-off between 'religion' and 'science,' is a chimaera, or rather an ideological construct." (332)
Thus in one sense there was no conversion from "Christianity," to "science," or "belief" to "atheism" pure and simple: there was only a transition between two constructions of either, the atheist and the scientist only seeming to contradict the theologian because the entire discussion has been put into an improper mode of discourse. As he puts it later:
"We can say in general terms that, where there was a conversion from faith to science which was undertaken...the kind of faith involved played an important role...Thus to the extent to which Christian faith was totally identified with certain dogmas or cosmic theories...[would] the new depth reality appear as a decisive refutation [of Christianity]...we can really [here] speak of a conversion brought about by certain scientific conclusions. But then the greater question remains: why did they need to identify their faith with these particular doctrines?...This fits, of course, with my general position here, that conversions from religion under the influence of science turn not on the alleged scientific proofs of materialism or the impossibility of God (which turn out on examination to not go through anyway) but rather, on other factors which in this case consist in attachments to inessential doctrines which can be refuted." (p.365)This is absolutely ripe with profound insights, but here I want to focus in on the concept of the God-of-the-gaps. Because what happened is that our social and cosmic imaginaries changed in such a way that "evidence," for God became narrowed into identifying non-explainable functions of the (now-mechanistic) world (not just any unexplainable functions, of course, but those considered to have a high-level of meaning in their inexplicability). This facilitates the creation of a "pure nature," (which de Lubac so forcefully bemoaned): "The mechanical outlook which splits nature from supernature voids all...mystery. This split generates the modern concept of miracle; a kind of punctual hole blown in the regular order of things from outside, that is, from the transcendent. Whatever is higher must thus come about through the holes pierced in the regular, natural order, within whose normal operations there is no mystery." (p.547)
Thus part of the problem, ironically enough, became the apologetics themselves. As Michael Buckley writes in his magisterial At the Origins of Modern Atheism: "In the absence of a rich and comprehensive Christology and Pneumatology of religious experience, Christianity entered into the defense of the Christian God without appeal to anything Christian." (At the Origins of Modern Atheism p.67). And the atheism that ensued was not a reaction to Christianity qua Christianity, but in most cases was a revolt against this particularly flacid form of design theory which tried to find a place for God. As Amos Funkenstein put it:
The medieval sense of God's symbolic presence in his creation and the sense of a universe replete with transcendent meaning and limits had to recede, if not to give way totally to the postulates of univocation and homogeneity in the seventeenth century. God's relation to the world had to be given a concrete physical meaning...It is clear why a God describable in such unequivocal terms, or even given physical features and functions, eventually became all the easier to discard...Once God regained transparency or even a body, he was all the easier to identify and kill." (Theology and the Scientific Imagination p.116)Because of course a God that did a specific something in the universe could maintain that function only until it was discovered God was getting credit for something else's work. And no one likes a plagiarist. This is where I think ID (intelligent design) theory often leaves us today. Considering that it has now been ruled as not a science, and not able to be taught in schools (and from the records I have read, at the hearing Michale Behe was made to look like an idiot) this sort of analysis can only be seen as a red herring.
I will post more on this later, but for now I want to propose, with many others, that ID is a fundamentally modern phenomenon, and God's relation to the world has not always been conceptualized this way, nor need it today. Im currently in a course on Medieval theology, and I will leave you with a quote from Etienne Gilson:
But even supposing that we are not mistaken about these wonders—and mistakes of this kind will happen at times—they never introduce us to anything better than a kind of chief engineer of the universe whose power, as astonishing to us as our own is to a savage, remains, nevertheless, within the human order…It is useless, therefore, to press this question, and we must pass to [a] second. Just as the [Thomistic] proof [of God] from movement does not consider God as the Central Generating Station for the energies of nature, so neither does the proof from finality consider Him as the Chief Engineer of the whole vast enterprise. The precise question is this: if there is order, what is the cause of the being of this order? The celebrated example of the watch-maker misses the point, unless we leave the plane of making for the plane of creating. Just as when we observe an artificial arrangement, we infer the existence of an artificer as the sole conceivable sufficient reason of the arrangement, so also when we observe over and over, an order between things, we infer the existence of a supreme orderer. But what we have to consider in this orderer is not so much the ingenuity displayed in this work, the precise nature too often, perhaps always, escapes us, but the causality whereby He confers being on order…He is first with respect to the being of the universe, prior to that being, and consequently also outside it. That, to speak precisely, is why we ought to say that Christian philosophy essentially excludes all merely physical proofs of the existence of God, and admits only physico-metaphysical proofs, that is to say proofs suspended from Being as being.
--Etienne Gilson, The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009) pp.78-80.
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