I don't see how they can be disconnected. I suppose you'll need to provide me a few examples: 1. Something that you have made but you did not determine that it should be made. 2. Something you determined would be made, but then you did nothing to cause that result.
Yes, so often misunderstanding has semantic roots. I can think of all sorts of creativity that in my mind are not "determined". The improvisation of a jazz musician, for example. Today I met an artist painting a landscape on the picnic table in the park. I asked him if he knew when he began what the finished painting would look like? He said "No, I let the imagination flow, and it comes out different every time." He went on to say that beyond a general idea of the concept, determining the work ahead of doing it would not be natural. Interesting choice of word.
This is the sense in which I think of God not determining what would come of the evolutionary process.
Your criteria, however are different. I think you would agree that however improvised the work, the jazz musician and the free-form artist do decide to make something and do cause it to be made.
I don't think I ever said humanity is not an animal in physical character. Ecclesiastes 3:16-22 says we are no different than the beasts - that like them we are made of dust. But I doubt we would agree on what is unique about humans. To you it is that we have a unique role, which seems to point only to being unique in what we do in this life. Such an attitude wouldn't seem to make much, then, of the rhetorical distinction made in Ecclesiastes (the spirit of humanity rises and the spirit of all other animals returns to the earth). To me the distinction is important because I believe God determined humanity - He made us with a purpose - a purpose larger than simply ruling over this earth (like the Queen of England rules).
Partly true. If we are in agreement that from a physical, biological perspective we are animals, that removes a large potential stumbling block. If we focus on Genesis 1:26 the uniqueness asserted there is one of role. But that is clearly not the whole picture. In the next verse, we have humanity named as the image of God. That seems to go well beyond a mere role. There are certainly other aspects of human uniqueness as well. In Romans, the purpose of creation is depicted as labouring to bring to birth the children of God (humanity/redeemed humanity?) No other one creature, not even the angels, are assigned such importance.
Another purpose I would consider important is to know and love God as commanded in the Shema and the twin commandment to love one's neighbour as oneself. "For by this shall all know that you are my disciples, that you love one another."
So, I think we do have a basic agreement here as well.
Therefore, although we are an animal in physical character, in spirit we share in the divine. No other animal does that.
Actually, I am not sure about that last statement. I take a rather Teilhardian view of the material world. I don't think anything is "just material". I think even the smallest atom, or sub-atomic particle, has an inner spiritual nature of some sort, consistent with its material aspect.
Mostly, I am anti-dualist. Every created thing is a physico-psychical being whose existence is held in the Being of God. That doesn't mean I deny a uniqueness to humanity, but I don't like defining that uniqueness in a way that seems to denigrate non-human existence. How deeply, I wonder, is the insistence on human uniqueness rooted in human pride and consequent rejection of the rest of creation?
If anything, human uniqueness is displayed primarily in our capacity to reject God and fall into sin--hardly a quality to be proud of.
But given the gradual nature of the evolutionary process, given that if God did not specifically make Adam & Eve but that humanity evolved from UCA, it means there was only a tiny difference between Adam and his predecessor - between Adam and his siblings. So why did God choose to raise Adam up in this way and yet left all his relatives to return to the dust? And the questions continue to cascade from there. If life arose via evolution, through selection, through a process of predation & combative competition for mates & aggressive establishments of territory, then God called such things "good". If that was good, then why did God hold Adam and his descendents accountable for sinful actions that he had previously called good? And again, why did he hold Adam accountable but not his relatives who were virtually identical?
I think Papias has provided as good an answer to all of this as I can. However, I think you are also holding to a deficient understanding of evolution that gets in the way.
As Papias mentioned, we have somewhat different understandings of the first humans. Papias sees Adam and Eve as two particular individuals, the first of a biologically human/near-human population to be endowed with souls, making them human in a biblical as well as biological sense. I tend to see Adam and Eve as personifications of humanity as a whole.
One of the things happening here is that we are looking at what it is to be human in two different senses. Biologically, what it is to be human is to have a human genome which is expressed in morphological, physiological and behavioral traits typical of the species. Biblically, what is is to be human is to stand in a relation with God that permits awareness, bonding, love and also the breaking of that relationship through disobedience and sin.
It seems to me we often see these as conjoined (since in us they are), but perhaps we should not. Maybe the species designated H. sapiens was around for a million years or so before Adam (in either sense) came into being. Or maybe Adam (in either sense) existed before H. sapiens and so the relation with God that is unique to humanity also existed in close kin such as H. neanderthalensis or H. erectus.
If, during the evolution of our species, the biological and biblical "humanness" were not conjoined in the same organism, your question about Adam vis-a-vis his near biological kin answers itself. Adam is accountable and his near biological kin are not, because Adam's relationship to God exists only in him and not in his near biological kin. In Adam, there is a consciousness of a relationship with God, a consciousness of both love and duty, and of the capacity to choose against obedience which simply doesn't exist in those who are merely biologically similar, but stand outside that spiritual relationship with their Creator.
I also want to comment a wee bit on this phrase:
If life arose via evolution, through selection, through a process of predation & combative competition for mates & aggressive establishments of territory,
Mostly, I want to say that this is a very limited and distorted view of what Darwin meant by "the struggle for existence" and is even more askew when we take into account what we have learned since Darwin's time.
It looks at the habits of a very few species and generalizes them to all of the history of biological evolution. Take "combative competition for mates". What does that call up? Probably elk or rams butting heads, or bull elephant seals driving away rivals for their harem. But what about birds which "compete" for mates by singing? Is that combative? What of the peacock who shows off his plumage? And how do we describe the way flowers attract pollen-carrying bees?
Funny too, how predation conjures up images of violence without mention of how it also rewards cooperation. The lone predator is often at a disadvantage compared to the predator that hunts in packs. And the lone prey animal is an easier target than the species that has developed a social system which includes warning signals and mutual defence.
And somehow parasites, which probably cause more deaths than predators, never get mentioned. Sometimes I think people subtly forget that evolution occurs in ALL species, not just animals. And the struggle for existence applies to all facets of life and in different ways in different sorts of species.
Then, too, Darwin, naturally enough, was looking primarily at natural selection i.e. at evolutionary changes that occur when one set of variations provides a better opportunity to survive, mate and produce offspring than another set of variations does. Note that this will happen even in a totally "non-competitive" species. The primary quest of any living being is to find sufficient resources to stay alive--mostly in the form of food. And in most species, this does not involve fighting with someone else over who gets the food. Most of the time, it is simply a matter of finding enough food or not finding enough food.
It is often forgotten that Darwin thought of natural selection as only one factor among many. Today, that is even more the case, for science now normally includes genetic drift which can be more important that natural selection in a small population. We have strong examples of cooperation in social animals and a way to understand why cooperation can be a successful evolutionary "strategy".
So, don't succumb to a dismal portrayal of evolution as all predation, combat and aggression. It is far more nuanced and varied than that. There is a lot of interdependence, co-evolution and mutuality that is just as important a part of the history of evolution as the well-known competitive aspects.
I'm sure you'll give me an answer. But to be honest, to me it sounds like dissembling. It gives the appearance of starting from a conclusion that evolution is true and working backward to make the Bible fit, the process of which requires making key words and phrases nebulous, thereby stripping the Bible and consquently Christ's sacrifice of any real meaning (the discussion on the connection between "make" and "determine" being but one example).
First, let me say it is correct to start with the conclusion that evolution is true. (And I appreciate that you said conclusion, not "assumption".) Because it IS a CONCLUSION that evolution is true. Given the evidence, it is an inescapable conclusion that evolution is true. Just as inescapable as the conclusion that the earth orbits the sun, in a solar system that is a small part of a galaxy that is only one average galaxy among trillions scattered across the visible universe.
Nothing the biblical text says, and no mode of interpretation or hermeneutical principle can make evolution not true. (Including UCA). One might just as well try to use scripture to deny that the sky, on a cloudless sunny day, is blue.
But what does it mean to "fit" the bible to evolution?
Some people have tried to find texts in the bible that suggest (or could be made to suggest) evolution. They have tried to make the biblical text concord with modern science. One example of that is the Day-Age mode of interpreting the creative days of Genesis 1.
If it is important to see the bible as in agreement with modern science, this would appear to be the direction to go.
But I think it has a lot of problems. The question I would pose is, why is it important that a book whose most recent contents were penned close to 2,000 years ago and much of which was written up to 1500 years before that, why is it important that it present a face that agrees with modern science?
And that goes double or triple if it is claimed that not only must ancient scripture concord with modern science, but that it must do so on the basis of a literal interpretation of the text.
What is clear to me is that these conditions are human constructs, based on fallible, human assumptions, and therefore, they can also be removed by human decision with no disrespect to the text, the inspiration and authority of the text, and certainly no abandonment of the key teachings of the Christian faith.
So, as I see it, if a literal interpretation of a text, or an assumption that certain accounts are a record of historical events, cannot be so, given what we know on other grounds, well so much for that interpretation or that assumption. The interpretation or assumption was a human error and it is no disrespect to God or scripture to say so.
Further we know that God must always accommodate his communication with us to our capacity. The view that at least some of scripture is in a pictorial sort of language suited to human need at the time of revelation is an ancient one in Christian hermeneutical tradition. Indeed, it seems to be hinted at in several places that speak of what was once hidden but is now revealed, or knowledge we cannot yet bear.
The notion of accommodation in divine communication relieves us of finding "allegorical" meanings of what seem to be blatant contradictions of science fact. It is much simpler, IMO, to note that the writer is using cognitive concepts common to his/her time which our view no longer acknowledges. But if we set aside our modern knowledge and try for the writer's perspective, we can understand the divine wisdom being conveyed through the writer.
I don't think there is anything wrong or untrue in the bible itself. I think we run into difficulties when we attach certain assumptions about the text to it in such a way that if our assumptions prove false, we take it as a rejection of the bible and of its message. We should take it only as a rejection of a false assumption on our part.
I don't think the task of Christians should be to show that the bible either does or does not support the fact of evolution. Rather, knowing that evolution is a fact, the task of Christans should be to understand that fact from a Christian/biblical point of view.
Our failure (in both liberal and conservative churches) to do that has let the vacuum be filled with a wholly secularized interpretation of science and the common perception that faith and science are incompatible, especially on the topic of evolution. That consequence, in my view, is a tragedy.
P.S. I tried really hard to find a "nice" way to say all this. I realize this probably comes across as an attack. I don't mean it to sound that way, but I don't know how else to put it. Maybe you need to grade my little essay and give me some suggestions.
Oh, if only all the people I disagree with were so nice! It is a pleasure to converse with you! I only hope I am reciprocating in kind.
