The next chapter in Bishop Kallistos Ware’s classic, The Orthodox Way, is entitled, “God as Creator.” There is so much packed into this chapter, that it will take two posts to actually unpack it. For about three years, I wrote quite a lot about the creation/evolution debate in general, and specifically about Ken Ham and the young earth creationist group, Answers in Genesis. Now, the basic thesis, if you will, of Ken Ham and AiG is that Genesis, particularly Genesis 1-11, is the foundation to the Gospel, and that if you reject their historical interpretation of Genesis 1-11, then you are rejecting the very foundation of the Gospel. As Ham himself has said, “Once you give up a literal Adam and Eve—and thus reject a literal Fall—then you may as well throw the Bible away.”
Needless to say, if you’ve read my blog for any amount of time, or have read my book, The Heresy of Ham, you know that I do not agree with Ham’s assessment. Now, I first read Ware’s The Orthodox Way almost 20 years ago, long before I ever got involved in the creation/evolution debate. As I’ve re-read it recently, I think it is safe to say that this chapter, “God as Creator,” played a significant role in shaping how I understood the significance of the early chapters of Genesis. So let me say up front that in a way, Ken Ham is right: If you don’t properly understand the early chapters of Genesis, you probably won’t fully understand the Gospel and what salvation in Christ really means. Of course, Ken Ham and AiG most certainly do not properly understand those chapters. If you want to get a good handle on those chapters, you can’t do any better than read Kallistos Ware on the topic.
God as Lover
The first issue Ware discusses in the chapter, not surprisingly, is that of God as Creator. He points out the traditional Christian claim is that God created ex nihilo—out of nothing. But instead of engaging in some sort of quasi-scientific speculation, Ware points out this first and foremost emphasizes that God created the universe by an act of his free will—He chose to create. That leads to a second point, namely what was the motivation for His choice to create? The answer to that question is that being a Triune being who is a communion of persons who share in love with one another, God’s motivation in creation is His love. Therefore, when it comes to the topic of creation, instead of speaking of God as a Craftsman, Ware suggests we first and foremost speak of God as a Lover, for it was the Triune love within Himself that caused Him “to go out from Himself and to create things other than Himself.”
Once we realize that the world was created through the love and will of God, we should then also realize that the world, and everything in the world, is not self-sufficient. All of creation is dependent upon the love and will of God. God is the core our being, and without Him, we cease to exist. This should cause us to read the creation account in Genesis in a different light. Too often, God is presented in a very deistic way, as a cosmic clockmaker who created the world at one point in history, then wound it up with natural laws so that it could just keep ticking on its own. That is the picture of God that came out of the Enlightenment and is ironically the same picture many young earth creationists like Ken Ham seem to put forth.
Ware rejects this depiction of creation. God did not make the world back then and there, but rather God is continually making the world, here and now and always. As Ware puts it, “Creation is not an event in the past, but a relationship in the present.” Therefore, in sharp contrast to what modern young earth creationism does, Ware emphasizes that the purpose of the doctrine of creation “is not to ascribe a chronological starting-point to the world, but to affirm that at this present moment, as at all moments, the world depends for its existence upon God.”
Science and Faith
This then leads us to the topic of science and how it relates to faith. Most “new atheists” like Richard Dawkins often say, or at least strongly imply, that science and faith are at odds with each other, and that if there really was a God, you should be able to prove His existence scientifically somehow. YECists like Ken Ham counter that assertion by monkeying around with made up definitions of science and saying that there are two kinds of science: Observational science (based on things one can observe) and Historical science (which is supposedly revealed in the first few chapters of Genesis and that needs to be accepted by faith).
The problems with both new atheists and young earth creationists are too many to discuss in detail here. New atheists, though, by demanding scientific proof for God’s existence, effectively (and wrongly) reduce God to just a thing within the universe. The Christian will respond by saying that if God is just a thing within the universe, then that “thing” isn’t God, because God is most definitely not a thing within the universe, no more than an architect is a chair or a wall in a house he has designed. YECists, on the other hand, are also ironically driven by the same assumption as the new atheists, in that they feel they need to point to some kind of “science” in order to prove God. The result is that they come up with this fictional category of “historical science,” slap that label onto Genesis 1-11, and then triumphantly say, “Ha! You see? Science proves God!” Sadly, some Christians buy into this, but what Christians should say is simply, “Please stop. That is just ridiculous.”
The Orthodox understanding of creation, science, and God doesn’t go down that road. It says scientific inquiry observes the patterns and processes of cause and effect that happen within the created order, and therefore is able to tell us a lot about the workings of the natural order. That’s its job. The Christian faith, though, which as we discussed in earlier posts is essentially a personal relationship with God, gives us the spiritual vision to discern the creative energies of God at work within those natural processes. Therefore, faith doesn’t contradict science, as it looks beyond it. If that is confusing, just think of a person. Science can tell you all about the physical make-up of a particular person, but it cannot tell you anything about who that person actually is. To get to know that person, you have to interact with and form a relationship with him/her. Science can prove the existence of a natural body, but it cannot prove the existence of the person, who is both within the body, but also is still more than just a body.
In a similar way, we grow in our relationship with God who is beyond nature through the natural order that He created and that which science can help us more fully understand. On this point, Ware makes sure to emphasize that relating to God through the natural world is not pantheism, but rather panentheism—the conviction that God is both in all things (i.e. His immanence) and is yet at the same time beyond all things (i.e. His transcendence).
The Problem of Evil
Another issue Ware touches upon is the problem of evil. If, as Genesis 1 repeated says, God declared that everything He had made was “good,” then how can we account for the existence of evil. Much of what Ware says here is very similar, once again, to what C.S. Lewis talks about in Mere Christianity.Ware first points out that while Christianity affirms that God Himself is the “supreme good,” it rejects the idea that there is a “supreme evil” that is somehow coeternal with God. Secondly, he notes that since all created things intrinsically good (as God has declared), that means sin or evil is not a “thing”—it does have its own being. As Evagrius of Pontus said, “Evil in the strict sense is not a substance, but the absence of good, just as darkness is nothing else than the absence of light.” Maximus the Confessor even said, “Not even the demons are evil by nature, but they become such through the misuse of their natural powers.”
In this sense, we need to realize that evil is essentially a parasite and a perversion of what is naturally good. And since this is the case, since evil is ultimately a perversion of good, that means that it is, “in the final analysis an illusion and unreality.” When we really think about it, we realize just how true this is. Think of any time you’ve done something you know is wrong or have engaged in some kind of sin—how do you feel afterwards? Do you feel more yourself and more fully human, or do you feel more hollow and empty inside?
Man as Body, Soul, and Spirit
The final thing from chapter 3 that I want to touch upon in this post is the way in which Ware describes just what man and his place in God’s creation is. When it comes to understanding what human beings are, we need to realize there are three parts to a person. First, there is the body, which is taken from “the dust of the ground” (Genesis 2:7). This is the material part of us that we share with the rest of the natural world. We are biological creatures, and although Ware doesn’t touch upon this, I think we need to realize that we should therefore not be shocked at the suggestions that human beings, on a biological level, share an evolutionary past with the rest of the natural order.
Second, there is the soul. Ware describes this as the “life-force that vivifies and animates the body.” Although animals, and possibly plants, possess a soul of some sort, human beings are unique in that our soul is endowed with consciousness—i.e. a rational soul. Animals may know things, but human beings know that we know things. Finally, there is the spirit, that which is completely unique to human beings. This is the “breath” of God that connects human beings to God. It is with our spirit and our spiritual intellect that we are able to commune with the Spirit of God.
As Ware states, if we are to truly understand what human beings are, we need to recognize that human beings are created with three different “parts.” Man possesses a material body and thus shares in the materiality of the natural world. He also possesses a rational soul with which he is able to engage in scientific and philosophical inquiry. And at the same time, he also possesses a spirit and spiritual intellect, which is the highest aspect of himself, and with which he is able to understand eternal truth about God and discern the true essence of created things.
In light of that, Ware observes that in modern Western society, both the culture and educational system is based almost solely on training the mind (i.e. rational soul) and heightening aesthetic emotions, while completely disregarding the truest and highest aspect of human beings: their spirit and their spiritual intellect. As Ware puts it, “The result of this inward alienation can be seen all too plainly in [man’s] restlessness, his lack of identity and his loss of hope.”
Indeed, any honest look at human beings in our modern world will cause one to see just how true that assessment is. The extreme sense of loneliness and depression among so many people, the addiction to a variety of drugs and narcotics, and the explosion of claims of countless varieties gender identities—they are all symptoms of a kind of spiritual amnesia. People are constantly searching for a secure identity that makes them more fully human. Yet if society, and sadly even churches, fail to cultivate or even acknowledge the existence of the truest and highest aspect of human beings, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that at some point (and I think we are witnessing it right now in America) people start trying to link their identity to every fleeting emotion, attraction, or feeling that they think they are feeling at any given moment.
It is something we all need to think about as we try to make sense of our world today. In my next post, I will discuss more about “God as Creator.”
“Creation is not an event in the past, but a relationship in the present.” I can understand and agree with this now, but it isn’t what I was taught as a kid. Growing up in a dogmatic flavor of Protestantism I got a big dose of Deism, Platonism and Gnosticism without ever having heard of either.
Pax.
Lee.