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| To Trip the Light Fantastic: A Review of Karl Peter's
A review of
Karl E. Peters, Dancing With the Sacred: Evolution, Ecology, and God Harrisburg PA: Trinity Press International, 2002.
In the over twenty years that I co-taught a college course in science and religion, it was a continual source of frustration for my colleague and I to have never found quite the right books for our students to read. The 'classics' by Barbour, Polkinghorne, Peacocke, and others were just enough beyond them that we could use them only in part or not at all. Even the hard-to-get little volume by John Houghton, The Search for God: Can Science Help? (Oxford, England: Lion Publishing, 1995) we found needed to be supplemented by class lectures.
Accessibility, therefore, was a continual problem we faced in finding appropriate textbooks. But there was also something else. It never occurred to us that there was also a personal, subjective, existential dimension to the new scientific 'story of evolution.' I know I personally have found science a powerful shaper of my own personal beliefs about life, but for some reason I never thought to bring it into the classroom. It was something of a revelation, then, when Ursula Goodenough's little book, The Sacred Depths of Nature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) came out, which celebrates a kind of poetic 'spirituality' of nature. Unfortunately, this volume appeared too late for us to use in our class. But it did point out to me something important. I now think this subjective, personal dimension should become part of any class in science and religion. I say this by way of introducing another book that I consider to be very much like Goodenough's. It is Karl Peters' new study, Dancing With the Sacred. It, too, along with being competent on the scientific side, is personally engaging on the emotional side. In fact, Peters' book is even more autobiographical and emotionally revealing than Goodenough's. (This is not to criticize the latter work, but only to point out a difference of degree.) Peters takes us through his own spiritual-intellectual pilgrimage and not only explains very clearly what the central scientific ideas are that connect with personal beliefs and values, but confesses what these have meant to him in his own personal life.
Raised in traditional Christianity and accepting it fully, he began in college and seminary to question in the light of modern science what he'd assumed all along. He finally found an intellectual (and spiritual) guide in the writings of Henry Nelson Weiman and Ralph Burhoe. But perhaps the most powerful part of the book comes in the last chapters where Peters talks about the problem of evil. Here the personal nature of his work in religion and science really comes to the fore. He describes here (Chapter 15) his own experience watching his wife Carol suffer for a year and a half with cancer and then die from it. Peters here is unusually generous in letting us in on this excruciating and deeply upsetting part of his life. For him this experience with death and dying gave personal meaning to what Holmes Rolston III has called 'the cruciform nature' of the world. There is not just beauty, justice, and order in the universe, but also a deeply disturbing directionlessness and an indifference to human suffering. Still, an idea that helped make Peters' life bearable at this time was his conviction of the naturalness of death, of its being an integral part of life.
From what I've said so far, it might seem that the only thing to commend this book is its personal side. But this is not true. It also presents all the basic scientific ideas necessary to understand the story of evolution in remarkably accessible form. It even offers some new insights, one of which is the following. Peters rightly says that in Christian theology our apologetic has been to contrast theism with naturalistic, impersonal views of the Ultimate Ground of Being. We have based our argument largely on the argument that personal metaphors and symbols are much richer than impersonal ones when it comes to describing such a Source. But, based on Peters' experience with death and dying, he says that he begs to differ. He has decided that he actually prefers the impersonal option because 'a personalized universe is not necessarily a home.' (p. 130) If we allow the Divine to be symbolized in human, personal metaphors and images, what's to prevent us from picturing the cosmos as a battleground between good and evil personages? But if one depersonalizes the world, then 'at least the devil is not out to get us.' (p. 130) Peters prefers to think of the cancer cells that got the upper hand in his wife's body, and the viruses and bacteria that often make us ill and kill us, as not intending to kill us, but simply following their own 'evolved biological programs.' (p. 130) I found Peters here giving Process theology a twist that for me was new in its theological argumentation as well as its manner of personal application. I could also mention that he does this for me also with his treatment of the problem of change and the way this too upsets us. He asks, 'How can we dance to the music of the spheres if the tune is constantly changing?' (p. 131)
To deal with this also very unsettling question, Peters points out that there are at least three advantages to being in a world that resembles jazz music in its combination of order and continual improvisation. First, in times of rapid change we pay more attention to things, and this can stimulate creativity. Second, change means that we're driven more to depend on the help and support of others, and this makes us happier. And finally, 'we can use the chance encounters of life as opportunities to participate in the jazz of creative existence.' (p. 134) Change always presents us with new opportunities for growth. Like Teilhard de Chardin, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and others, Peters finally decides that the modern story of evolution places new, 'adult' responsibilities upon us. Up to this point we have been 'earth children,' largely naive and innocent. But now we have grown up into 'earth adults' (p. 142) who need to take responsibility for its future. Peters throughout his book emphasizes our need for a deep ecological ethic--as does the Goodenough volume. Finally there's the title, Dancing With the Sacred. For Peters, 'the sacred' is the transcendent as we find it in nature. We will certainly feel lost in the universe at times, and cower before its awesome power. But once we find ourselves as part of nature, we should begin to feel more at home in it, and even begin to see existence as a kind of wonderful dance in which we grab our whirling partner and become swept up in its embrace. I wish I could have had this book available when I was teaching my class!
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Published 2002.10.26
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