Michael Welker, ed. The Work of the Spirit, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006).
Dr. Welker is a graduate of the University of Tübingen where he studied with Jürgen Moltmann and earned a doctorate in theology in 1973. Later, he received a Ph.D. from Heidelberg in 1978. In an interesting contribution to the present compilation edited by Dr. Welker, Amos Yong discusses the contributions (if any) of pneumatology to the broad notion of Divine action.[1] In so doing, Yong invokes the Spirit of God as acting upon Primordial Chaos. From this assertion of Yong, the following discussion will leap forth into an engagement with Polkinghorne’s essay (also in this volume), as well as with my own posits regarding the function of the Spirit in creation. Polkinghorne states that the Spirit is the carrier of Divine wisdom, to which this author adds that Divine wisdom is essentially compatible with the notion of information (i.e. that which is specified).[2] Moreover, Polkinghorne proposes a secret and hidden presence of the Spirit within natural and historical processes. This hiddenness of the Spirit comports well with the Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky’s statements to the effect that the Spirit remains unmanifested, concealing himself even in his appearing.[3] So then, the Breath of Life enables and empowers emergence of creation and creatures. It is therefore posited that this Spirit of emergence endows creation with the ability to unfold by “natural” processes according to their inherent potentialities.
The Spirit ennobles creatures to possess emergent capabilities.[4] The term ruach, according to Dunn, connotes the meanings of wind, breath, and power, usually with attending connotations of strength or violence.[5] Creation begins not with the Word, but rather with the Spirit, as the Spirit’s presence precedes and is presupposed by the speaking of the Word.[6] Creation from a Pneumatological standpoint, as Dabney affirms, begins with the Spirit, and thus interprets the world as not defined by necessity, but by possibility instead, for the Spirit is the Possibility of God.[7] This Divine Possibility swept over the primordial chaotic abyss. By the kenosis of the Spirit into creation, the complex activity of ordering within the chaotic primordial waters was onset. And it should be noted that the Spirit is not only the source of this order, but also its sustenance. Because of the Spirit hovering over the waters, “the chaos becomes promise.”[8]
According to Kathryn Tanner, the Spirit has historically been seen to either work immediately (proximately, i.e.), or gradually.[9] So then, the Spirit could be seen as just as much at work in the ordinary events of history as in its unusual happenings. Just as God usually works within, rather than overriding, the normal course of human affairs, so too does God work within the natural processes of nature, for “the same Spirit doth not breathe contrary notions.”[10] The gradual model of the working of the Spirit requires methods of inquiry typical of modern science, and holds great promise for the Science and Religion dialog.[11] The Spirit works modestly, in a continuous fashion in and through natural processes.[12] The notion of emergence is compatible with the impersonal kenotic working of the Spirit in empowering creation from within. Indeed, by the Spirit’s kenosis into creation, creation itself is then enabled, using Clayton’s language, to participate in the processes of production and reproduction.
Primordial Chaos:
Primordial chaos, in and of itself, is utterly incapable to produce (because it is by definition random processes) the formation of an ordered, structured, and functional collocation of atoms. Moreover, primordial chaos, due to its intrinsic unpredictabilities allows the Possibility of God much leeway in action. Indeed, primordial chaos lacks the favorable environ that is a requisite for enduring and functional patterns of matter to emerge. In fact, in primordial chaos, matter did not exist as such, but indeterminate and unconditioned disorder instead. So then, primordial chaos here refers to the great confusion of matter out of which the Spirit of God, by kenosis, generated order, structure, and ultimately all of life. This creating the Spirit did by infusing the primordial chaos with pure and directed information, which resulted in evolutionary process that was imbibed with fertility. According to Yong, the Spirit causes the emergence of order and presides over it from within through the processes of division, distinction, differentiation, and particularization.[13] This primordial chaos was essential to God and to God’s subsequent creation because it was the source of innumerable potentialities and novelties, without which the immense variety of nature would not be possible.[14] In this sense, then, the Spirit of God acted as a liaison between the primordial chaos, which was the source of variation and novelty, and the resultant ordered and structured creation of the Genesis account.
Moreover, this primordial chaos did not contain its own information (only non-directed energy) as per se, but had to be infused with such by the Spirit. Thus, one may accurately note that the Spirit is the Agent of Causation by the interjection both concretion and specification through information.[15] So then, the movement from chaos to cosmos was directed and determined by the Spirit of God. Primordial chaos without an input of active information by the Spirit of God would remain forever indeterminate and unstructured.[16] Moreover, this primordial chaos serves as the source of the innumerable rudiments of creation, upon which the Spirit of God acted and ordered into reality.
John Polkinghorne has also advocated a kind of top-down divine causality through God inputting pure and active information at the level of chaotic systems. Chaotic systems, perhaps wrongfully labeled, interlace both order and disorder. If the system is too far on the orderly side, the possibility for novelty is greatly reduced, as the system itself is too rigid for anything except a rearrangement of what already exists. Conversely, if the system strays too far on the side of disorder, a random world of proverbial anarchy results.[17] The potential for novelty and relative stability lies between the two poles of order and disorder within chaotic systems. In dialog with Polkinghorne, I posit that the endowment of potentiality and regularity was instituted by, and relies upon, the kenosis of the Spirit into creation. The Spirit, in this kenotic model, would be seen as working within the seemingly openness within nature, in conjunction with the unfolding of potentiality, and hence is not what some could call a “Spirit of the gaps” (akin to the God-of-the-gaps). Moreover, the Spirit enables emergence by endowing creation and creatures with the ability to unfold by apparent natural processes according to their own inherent potentialities and possibilities. Polkinghorne attributes this inputting of pure and active information at the level of chaotic systems to the Spirit that operates from within the causal nexus of nature.[18]
Polkinghorne similarly asserts that this pure information is finely-tuned and extremely sensitive to initial conditions, while also being open to the future at the same time.[19] As a scientist theologian, Polkinghorne has long wrestled with the topic of God’s action in the world, because models for conceiving divine action heretofore have been unsatisfactory.[20] Classical Interventionism should be dismissed as illogical because God’s action in the world would be inconsistently intermittent if actualized as pure intervention; God acting only as the Creator of the world is deistic, and thereby delimits divine action in perpetuity; Thomistic understandings of God as the primary Cause and creatures as secondary causes results in unnecessary bifurcations; and process theology is unable to sustain the eschatological guarantees of God as revealed in Scripture.[21] Polkinghorne’s conception of God’s input of information does not violate the law of conservation of energy, and also avoids the criticism of the god-of-the-gaps.[22]
[1] Amos Yong, “Ruach, the Primordial Chaos, and the Breath of Life: Emergence Theory and the Creation Narratives in Pneumatological Perspective,” in Michael Welker, ed. The Work of the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 183-204.
[2] John Polkinghorne, “The Hidden Spirit and the Cosmos,” in Michael Welker, ed. The Work of the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 183-204.
[3] Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1957), 169.
[4] Cf. Michael Welker, ed. The Work of the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), xii.
[5] James D.G. Dunn, “Towards the Spirit of Christ,” in Michael Welker, ed. The Work of the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 5.
[6] D. Lyle Dabney, “The Nature of the Spirit,” in Michael Welker, ed. The Work of the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 73.
[7] D. Lyle Dabney, “The Nature of the Spirit,” in Michael Welker, ed. The Work of the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 78.
[8] G.T. Montague, The Holy Spirit: growth of a Biblical Tradition (New York: Paulist, 1976), 67.
[9] Kathryn Tanner, “Workings of the Spirit: Simplicity or Complexity?,” in Michael Welker, ed. The Work of the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 87.
[10] Richard Sibbes, Works, A.B. Grosart, ed., 7 vols. (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1862), 5:427.
[11] Kathryn Tanner, “Workings of the Spirit: Simplicity or Complexity?,” in Michael Welker, ed. The Work of the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 105.
[12] Michael Welker, “Spirit in Philosophical, Theological, and Interdisciplinary Perspectives,” in Michael Welker, ed. The Work of the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 227.
[13] Amos Yong, “Ruach, the Primordial Chaos, and the Breath of Life: Emergence Theory and the Creation Narratives in Pneumatological Perspective,” in Michael Welker, ed. The Work of the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 194-95, 202.
[14] James E. Huchingson, “Chaos, Communications Theory, and God’s Abundance,” Zygon 37 (2002):398.
[15] John Polkinghorne, “The Hidden Spirit and the Cosmos,” in Michael Welker, ed. The Work of the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 169.
[16] cf. James E. Huchingson, “Chaos, Communications Theory, and God’s Abundance,” Zygon 37 (2002):395-414
[17] John Polkinghorne, “The Hidden Spirit and the Cosmos,” in Michael Welker, ed. The Work of the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 174.
[18] John Polkinghorne, “The Hidden Spirit and the Cosmos,” in Michael Welker, ed. The Work of the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 180.
[19] John Polkinghorne, Belief in God in an Age of Science (New Haven: Yale University, 1998), 66-67.
[20] see Christopher Southgate, God, Humanity, and the Cosmos: A Textbook in Science and Religion (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1999).
[21] Amos Yong, “From Quantum Mechanics to the Eucharistic Meal: John Polkinghorne’s ‘Bottom-up’ Vision of Science and Theology”, ????????????).
[22] John Polkinghorne, Belief in God in an Age of Science (New Haven: Yale University, 1998), 52-53.