The Weight
The Weight
"Faith, Science, & Suffering" with Philip Clayton
Show Notes:
Can science and faith exist together? If God created the world and then created people in God’s own image, why do we experience suffering? How do we reconcile the hard facts of science with the miraculous story of God’s own faithfulness and actions in the world? These are difficult but not impossible topics to explore, and today’s guest offers us a way into those hard conversations.
Dr. Philip Clayton is Professor Emeritus at Claremont School of Theology, as well as the former Ingraham Chair, where he directed the PhD program in comparative theologies and philosophies. He earned a joint PhD from Yale in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of religion. He is the author of more than two dozen books, including The Problem of God in Modern Thought and Religion and Science: The Basics.
Resources:
Learn more about Dr. Clayton on his website, philipclayton.net
Follow Dr. Clayton on Instagram or Facebook
Buy Dr. Clayton’s books online
Hi, I'm Eddie Rester.
Chris McAlilly:I'm Chris McAlilly. Welcome to The Weight. Today we're talking to Philip Clayton. Dr Clayton spent the majority of his career as a professor and a writer at Claremont School of Theology. He's written at the intersection of religion, science and theology. Today we have a wide ranging conversation about matters really, of how God works and how God acts in a harsh and sometimes brutal world. It was a great conversation, really, really, really unexpected. It was more than I thought it would be. What were your takeaways, Eddie?
Eddie Rester:Well, I looked down at my watch, and I was like, Oh my gosh, we're at time. And it had, the conversation went so fast. We cover everything from the intersection of science and religion and the war that sometimes happens there, to how do you begin to understand faith in a world that is real and gritty and at times broken. We talk about some scripture related to that, and really just talk, I think, theology and life, and how theology really impacts how we see the world, how we do ministry, how we help one another find hope. So this, really, for me, was just an incredible conversation, hopeful conversation about hard things.
Chris McAlilly:Yeah, so his starting point in his own faith journey is in a kind of evangelical or charismatic world, and then he comes to face kind of hard philosophical questions around how can God act in a in a scientific world, and he doesn't end up in kind of atheistic position. He remains a theist. He's deeply committed to his Christian faith. And then he talks about how he began to understand ways of speaking of God's presence and action in a world where there are natural laws that are regular and consistent. And where we land is a place, he'll talk about it, a powerful theology that is utterly realistic, offers present hope, but also future, long-term hope. And so, yeah, I mean, I think if you've wondered about kind of questions of suffering or evil, and you've wondered how the Christians think about or speak about the presence of God in a world such as this, Dr Clayton maybe gives you some language for that. And then beyond that, we talk about kind of how a deep theology can help inform hopeful executive leadership in the world today. So great conversation. Yeah, it's good.
Eddie Rester:I think you're going to enjoy it. If you feel like your faith is crashing on the rocks and it can't hold up to the suffering, or if you know somebody in that world right now, this is a great conversation for them. I think some great resources. So like it. Share it. Let us know what you think.
Chris McAlilly:[INTRO] Leadership today demands more than technical expertise. It requires deep wisdom to navigate the complexity of a turbulent world, courage to reimagine broken systems, and unwarranted hope to inspire durable change.
Eddie Rester:As Christ-centered leaders in churches, nonprofits, the academy, and the marketplace, we all carry the weight of cultivating communities that reflect God's kingdom in a fragmented world.
Chris McAlilly:But this weight wasn't meant to be carried alone. The Christian tradition offers us centuries of wisdom if we have the humility to listen and learn from diverse voices.
Eddie Rester:That's why The Weight exists: to create space for the conversations that challenge our assumptions, deepen our thinking, and renew our spiritual imagination.
Chris McAlilly:Faithful leadership in our time requires both conviction and curiosity, rootedness in tradition, and responsiveness to a changing world.
Eddie Rester:So whether you're leading a congregation, raising a family, teaching students, running a nonprofit, or bringing faith into your business, join us as we explore the depth and richness of Christ-centered leadership today. Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO]
Chris McAlilly:We're here today with Dr Philip Clayton. Dr Clayton, thanks for being with us today.
Philip Clayton:It's great to be on the podcast with you guys.
Chris McAlilly:Tell us a little bit about you, where you are, and kind of the scope of your work.
Philip Clayton:Well, I had a dramatic conversion to Christ in high school from an atheist family, and I just assumed I would be pastoring a church. Went to a conservative evangelical college to prepare for that, and then Fuller Seminary, and along the way, I had a really clear call to academics, in particular to how as Christians in the world today, we deal with the scientific world around us. And there were times when I struggled with my faith over that, but over a lot of years of teaching at Claremont School of Theology and training pastors and listening to pastors and church folk, and reading books about science and writing books, I came to a place where I think we really can navigate this issue. But I'll just say I also think it's a hard one.
Eddie Rester:Yeah. One of my favorite folks who really has conversations about this is Francis Collins. He's one of those folks who really has healthy conversations from the scientific side of the aisle. One of the, I'm in a new office unpacking books, and I ran across Bart Ehrman's book. I'd bought it years ago to read about suffering, because he comes from the actually suffering in science, make it clear that there is no God. I mean, he comes down very clearly. How do you begin to navigate that question of how, in this world, where science is so pervasive healing, we've seeded that just to doctors, even the medical community, how do we begin to pull the thread? How do we have that conversation? What's helpful?
Philip Clayton:Yeah, so if we could start with the realization that science and God can't ultimately be at warfare, that the creator of the universe can't actually have created a universe that's only understood through principles that make that God impossible. I mean, it sounds simplistic, but that's kind of important. So if we can begin with that statement, which I think is a statement of faith, but also a really reasonable thing to say, then we get to focus in on the details. So how does God go about influencing the world, as scripture says God does, and as we experience in our own lives, when science tells us a bunch of true things about the world?
Eddie Rester:I think about, I'm also thinking about Thomas Jefferson, because he, when he was reading scripture, he edited out anything that seemed extraordinary, any healing story, anything that really wasn't just a teaching of Jesus. He actually took scissors to a Bible, according to the story. So I mean, what are some of those? How does that play out? Help me with that. How do we help someone begin in that conversation?
Philip Clayton:Yeah, Eddie, I love your use of a really bold and disturbing example, because it already points us toward positions in the middle, really just the opening few minutes of our discussion. So the question is not, does God influence the world in any way, but how does God carry out that influence? And as we head into the range of options, and I'm sure we'll explore them together, I think that the first thing I want to say is we don't need to break communion with those who are little bit to the left or a little bit to the right of us on the scale... I come from a charismatic background, early in my faith, and I absolutely believe that miracles are happening all around us. Natural law was being suspended all the time. I don't quite hold that position today, but some of my brothers and sisters do. On the other hand, we're going to meet some people who are pretty cautious about how they affirm divine action. Maybe they'll just talk about a kind of influence or tug or push or lure, and I don't think we have to break communion with those folks, either.
Chris McAlilly:Yeah, I think that it's helpful to just begin by saying God acts. We're not exactly sure how. There are a range of ways of thinking about how God acts powerfully or personally. I think for me, you know, one of the ways in which I've heard it stated is, you know, how do you get... Part of it is grammatical, you know, how do you get to a place where you can say that God is the actor, the subject of active verbs? You know, that becomes really one of the tensions that you see, and you see it playing out in the scriptures, in the gospels, or in the Acts of the Apostles, where you have testimonies of healing. You have stories of inner transformation. You have prophetic words being spoken. You have spiritual gifts being offered. And you've mentioned, you know, maybe kind of lay out some of the options that are there. On the one hand, you have someone who would really not think much about science. They would want to stay with the Bible. They would want to stay with the kind of theological approach, you know. What's positive about that view, or maybe what are some of the things that it's lacking?
Philip Clayton:The starting point when you read, say, the New Testament, but likewise for the Old Testament, is that God directly steps in and changes the course of action of the world through direct miraculous interventions. The woman was sick and was healed. The child was dead and was healed. Lazarus was dead. So we have this, the really strong claims. And then there are those who say, well, in today's world, all we can say is, kind of in a general way, God lures the world towards God's self. Actually, because this can get abstract, maybe a personal anecdote here would be helpful. I was involved with some brilliant theologians and scientists and philosophers in a program done by the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, a Christian organization thinking about how theology and science work together, and the Vatican Observatory. And we got down to exactly where in physics, would there be space for God to operate. There's a long story there, but it turns out it's quantum indeterminacy in the collapse of the wave function, for your nerdy scientific listeners.
Eddie Rester:Tha'ts right, yeah.
Philip Clayton:And then, well, could that influence evolution as a whole? And one volume that we published said, yes, it could. And I would go back and forth on this sort of skeptical seesaw. One day at Fuller Seminary, a woman came in who was doing her D.Min on Korean grandmothers, who had been forced to be sex slaves, so-called comfort women, by the Japanese during the occupation. And she had the chance, as a Korean woman, had the chance to speak to them through their church where she was on staff in Seoul. And she said, "They opened up to me because they were within a few years of dying." And they had never shared with any person in the world the experiences they had in this Japanese occupation, being forced to be a sexual servant, basically. And the degree of shame in Korean culture of having been forced to do that was so terrible that they spent their lives suffering in silence, and her book showed the level of pain that these women went through. But she had a testimony. She said, "Every one of those women I spoke to said that they knew during these last decades and decades, they had a constant sense of the presence of the Holy Spirit and the comforting presence of God." So although they had an agony or a shame, they could never share, God was ministering to them, healing them through those years. And at that point, I realized I could not take a position that ruled that out. It's just so obvious to me from scripture, from others' testimonies in my own life, that God does bring that healing presence. How? I don't know. And so what I wanted to do is to come to this discussion with the humility to say, we may not know the exact causal mechanisms, but I'm going to say we have overwhelming evidence of a spiritual presence of God to us, to individuals and groups, that is healing. That would be my starting point or center point for our discussion.
Chris McAlilly:Yeah, so just want to underline something. I know Eddie wants to jump in. You know, I think for folks who want to negate or exclude the possibility of God's action, one of the places of vulnerability in the Church's teaching is acute suffering, you know, an injustice of the most intense form, and that the presence of such suffering would be a sign of the absence of God's action or presence. And so, then the church has to grapple with that. One of the theological categories that gets talked about is the category of theodicy, this idea that there are terrible things that happen, that a God who is both good and powerful would not allow in the world, that such a God would create. The suffering of Jesus, Gethsemane, the cross becomes a model of suffering not being a sign of God's absence, but rather a place where, you know, God is most acutely present with suffering love. God fills up those moments with presence. It's still, it's still a very difficult thing to sustain, as a living position, but the testimony that you've offered is compelling and really helpful. I'm so grateful for it.
Philip Clayton:I want to see where Eddie wants to take it, but I do want to say that when you bring up this, the notion of the problem of evil, why does God sometimes not respond, that that's a theological issue, not a philosophy skeptic. We have to struggle with that one, and our answer about God and divine action has to be adequate to the problem of evil, so I hope we can come back to that.
Eddie Rester:Well, one of the things I was just thinking about, another example of a family when I was an intern, called me in because the pastor I was working for couldn't be found. This was before cell phones. Everything in me wanted to find him, because I knew that their dad was dying, and they wanted me come pray with their dying father. And you know, one of the things afterwards, I'm sure I prayed a fine prayer, but I think I prayed for him to be healed in a moment where the doctor was very clear he was in the last moments of his life. But the daughters who were laughing in the den and telling stories afterwards with me, the oldest daughter said, "Eddie, this is the healing. It's not that my dad is going to get up out of that bed. He's not, Eddie. And we don't want him to continue to suffer. This, though, is the healing that God It's one of those moments that I was like, oh. Sometimes it's not has brought." how we want, but it's always who we want, that God is always with us. I think one of the things that somebody helped me with years ago, and I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on this, is that the question we always want to ask in the face of suffering, is why? And the one question scripture never really even attempts to answer for us, is the question of why. Even when you get to the book of Job, and people talk about the patience of Job. Job was not a patient man, but Job, who presses God in a very trial lawyerly kind of way, never gets the answers to his question. He gets a different kind of answer. I'd love to hear some of your reflections on that, kind of this why question not being answered as well.
Philip Clayton:So we have to nod our heads and agree that Scripture doesn't give us a clear and compelling answer, why do the innocent suffer? Why does God allow this? And that it's the question that every pastor, and really friends also know, every time you go to a hospital bed or the family of a person who's just lost a member, especially the really tragic cases. And I want to say one answer that's given, that's a hard answer, just so that we can have it on the table and see where it takes us. And I always begin by saying it's absolutely clear that God comforts. And there are long books, some of which I've written, that say how there's no conflict with science that a comforting spirit could be present to the mind or consciousness of an individual human being. Be happy to talk about that in detail. But here's my answer. This, what I call the hard answer, comes from the problem of evil, of innocent suffering, and my absolute belief that God cares, that that is not irrelevant to God, that people would suffer. It could be, this is probably my own position in the end, that the only way to create a universe where conscious beings would evolve who are free, able to make their own moral choices, able to encounter God and make their decisions about God themselves, to come to faith or not, would be one that had a lot of regularity. It had natural laws. If God stepped in, whenever God wanted to, all the time, just set the laws aside, we couldn't become moral agents. We couldn't make that ultimate decision of faith, for or against faith. Imagine that every time that a robber came up to a poor woman on the street, held up a gun and was ready to pull the trigger, or pulled the trigger, some little flowers would dance out and settle gently down to the ground, because God would stop humans from ever causing harm to another. I don't think we'd develop the sort of souls of understanding and the need for faith that we have. There's a veil, somehow, that God put up. And I wonder if it isn't the regularity of this natural world. If so, then bad things happen to good people, as the famous book calls it, because that's the nature of the universe that can prepare human beings who freely know God, freely worship God, and freely model their lives after the Son of God.
Eddie Rester:What I'm hearing is that the regularity that science describes for us and science can speak to us about--and I've always loved science from the time I was I was a little boy, still to this day, I love reading books on science all that--but it's within that regularity that we begin to develop the capacity to make the choices of faith and can also, would you also say we can begin to experience and be trained in empathy within that regularity? As I'm thinking now, I'm thinking, if God just intervened on our behalf all the time, then I'm not sure, or on others' behalf as well, that we would ever be able to truly develop what in us is that empathetic setting of, "my heart is beating as one," or "my heart hurts for what hurts the heart of God." Is that also within that regularity that science talks about?
Philip Clayton:Exactly. And as a Christian, I can't help but recognize that the revelatory power of Jesus' life on earth has a lot to do with the nature of the world as one filled with suffering and actually evil actions. The strongest impetus for my Christology is a very early letter by Paul, 53 years after Jesus was born, the letter Philippians chapter two, where we're called to have the mindset that Jesus had, actually the Greek word says "practical wisdom." "Who, although he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself." So that's the kenosis, the self emptying notion. That's, I think, at the heart of Christology, taking on the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of man. And then
listen:"and being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross." There's something about the nature of the world that God enters into to reveal God's self that brings that kind of suffering. And I know more about the character of God from that individual and that passage, that truth, one who would say in the Garden of Gethsemane, "Not my will, but Thine be done," I know more about the eternal nature of God than any other source, I would say. But that means it's a world where evil happens, and evil and good people suffer from it.
Chris McAlilly:So I want to think about in light of this kind of laying out a theological understanding of the nature of God and God's action in the world, kind of filtered through and interpreted through the person and the work of Christ, as laid out in Philippians chapter two. And you know, what I want to think about is, like, how does that play out for an individual who is in a leadership role, is working in a in a context of a church? How does it impact the way you kind of go about your work, Eddie?
Eddie Rester:Ask that one more time. Help...
Chris McAlilly:Yeah, so we're talking about this theology of God's action in creation, and here's Jesus, who, you know, has the mind of Christ. We're instructed by Paul to engage one another with the mindset of Christ, who, even though he was in the likeness, had equality with God, had emptied himself and became like us in every way, even on to suffering and death and then is exalted again. How does that impact the way you think about your work as a pastor?
Eddie Rester:I think for me, is that it opens the door to, as Philip was saying, that things will happen, the unexpected, the brokenness, and that at times we are pulled into the darkness and the brokenness of the world, but we don't have to lose hope in that. I think that for me, that's one of the things I always take from that passage."Have the same mind that is in Christ," which is when you are poured out, and most of the time when we are poured out, it's not because we chose to be poured out. We don't want that experience in life. But I think what that passage says to me is we can be poured out or broken open and poured out, and we can still have the hope that if there is resurrection, if there is truth, if there's beauty, then that can occur even after or as we are being poured out. You know earlier, Philip, you were talking about people who have written, in a way to help us see where God is in the world, where science is not against. And one of the people I think about is N.T. Wright.
Philip Clayton:I'm reading his hope book right now. Really recommend.
Eddie Rester:Are you? I need to get that one. You know, I've again, unpacking books. I've been unpacking his books. And actually had a friend recently in England that one day was walking by a house and said,"That guy looks like N.T. Wright." And his wife said, "Be quiet." Turns out it was N.T. Wright. Just randomly ran into N.T. Wright on the streets of England. But he says, "Beauty is one of the things that God has given to us so that we can know that God is present." And I want to get back to your conversation around presence as well. We keep, I keep thinking we need to get back to this. But you know, I think one of the things that we can see and experience, even in those moments when we've been broken and poured out, is beauty, the beauty around us, the beauty in our friendships, the beauty and expressions of caring that come to us. And I think sometimes as people think scientifically or very rationally, and which we need to do, sometimes we skip, and I'm guilty of this, we skip out on naming beauty as an expression of the good work of God in our lives.
Philip Clayton:What I hear echoing in my ears are the responses, as I'm having pastoral functions or just friendship functions, the responses of folks who've gone through terrible suffering themselves or family members or friends. And when I would say, you know, God is deepening our souls, God is still present to us. And they say, "But why not the miracle? Why not just do it? Scripture has miracles. Why didn't I see that here in the case of my child who suffered and died?" And I think we have to say that's a hard teaching. Scripture is filled with lots of hard teachings, and that's one of the hardest for me. We have to answer that we are never left alone, and the comfort of the Holy Spirit is never absent."And yea, I am with you always, even to the end of the earth." That promise resounds across scripture, including to Job in his monologues. So if we can say that, for some reason, God has created a universe with regularity where the evil choices of individuals or just the function of natural law causes awful, awful things to happen, but God always is there to comfort and to draw us deeper into the Divine Self, into the Divine Presence.
Eddie Rester:And I think, you know, as Paul talks about suffering and how God uses--not causes, but uses suffering--I think about a time my parents were divorcing in college. It was absolute hell. And a pastor friend of mine, he said, "Eddie, one day God is going to use this." And I was so frustrated with that. He had been so supportive. And I don't want to negate what he at all. But he said, "One day, Eddie," as a part of the conversation, let me say that. He said, "One day, God's going to use this." And here's what I know, is that years later, my compassion for folks working through divorce, it's immense. My desire for people, when they get married, to have good, hard conversations before they get married is there because I believe God's using that moment of suffering, and again, I do not want anybody to hear God causes that. I walked into a situation one time as a staff member where a staff member had died. In all of theology I walked into was God had taken this person. God had done this. And deprogramming that was was a hard thing, but God can use the pain and the suffering when we've been poured out, I think. Chris, what do you think? How does that play out for you?
Chris McAlilly:I am thinking about the ways in which you know sometimes the problem of evil or acute suffering in an individual can be totalizing. It can be the only thing that someone can see or sense or feel. It can be the thing that takes away the past or the possibility of the future. And, you know, I've been thinking about what's lost when you lose a conception of God as present, what's lost when you lose the capacity to speak about God, God's action in the midst of a world like that, and it's, it's very bleak, and it's hopeless and it's despairing. And then I think about who are the voices or the authors that maybe kind of give us an esthetic picture of what that looks and feels like. I think about a novelist like Cormac McCarthy, who is writing, I mean, his novels are absolutely brutal, "Blood Meridian" being one of them. Or, you know, a novel like "The Road," this post-apocalyptic picture of America, it's just completely despoiled and ruined, and there's nothing that even looks like civilization. And then, particularly in the book "The Road,", you have a father and a child, kind of navigating this absolutely horrific landscape, and you just get this beautiful picture of the presence of the father with the son, and the abiding nature of that. And the way in which that leads to the ability to get up and do one more day and then another day and a day after that. And there is, there's some, really, there's a deep beauty in that story. And I do, I do feel in reading it that it does... You know, I hear an echo of the kind of kenotic, this kenosis, and God the Father giving, the giving of the Son, the son's leaving the comfort, the deep, loving communion of God, God's Self--God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And coming into a world that is that is seemingly absent with God and filling it with the presence of the Divine. And that I don't know, it kind of gives you hope that that the bleakest and the most difficult moments, the hardest problems of evil, the most acute suffering, that God can offer something within that that can keep somebody moving along. And so for me as a pastor. So if that, if all those things are true, or those things are something that you could kind of suspend your disbelief for a moment, that it does help you engage hard moments within ministry, hard moments in your family, hard moments in life. So yeah, for me, it's like this. It's very, very practical, as you said, practical wisdom. That's not just abstract ideas about God for the sake of having these complex conversations. It really comes down to, can I get up in the morning and go to that hospital room and not deny the reality of what's going on there, but offer my full self? And without the theology, I can't do it, frankly. And with the theology, I struggled to do it. I mean, that's just me being real, man, it's hard. It's hard stuff, but the church, if the church is, if the hope of the gospel is to be real, it has to be real in the most difficult circumstances. I think that's where all that's cashed out for for me.
Philip Clayton:I wonder if you, if you guys, have experienced, as people grow, or as you grow in the spiritual growth that this ability to be in the world as it is and to affirm a God who is present, comforting and drawing us toward God's self, if that's there. I just think my early years as a Christian where everything was a miracle. I was going to participate as a counselor in a Billy Graham crusade. And I was driving to get parked in time, and I was running late, and I prayed, you know, "God let me find a parking spot."And then God gave the parking spot. I believed there was a miracle that got me a spot, and everyone else had to drive miles to park. And then it was going to rain, and I had a beautiful leather bound Bible. Well, "God, have it not rain so my Bible will be all right," and it didn't rain. And so God had done another miracle. I compare that now to being beside hospital beds and in living rooms. And as you guys also know from ministry, I just wonder whether it's a sign of spiritual maturity that we deal with a present and active and loving God in a pretty harsh world.
Eddie Rester:One of the things that I believe Scripture teaches, particularly when we're talking about Isaiah and Jeremiah, the prophets who spoke to people in exile, nd maybe particularly Jeremiah ,is you have to begin where you are and not where you wish you were. You know, a lot of people like
Jeremiah, 29:11, "oh, I know the plans for you, plans for your welfare and your goodness," and it's a beautiful verse, but it's spoken to people who are about to spend 50 years in exile. I mean, it's not a wedding day verse. It is a "here's the story that you got to cling to in a world where nothing is as you think it should be." And one of the things you know, I did a lot of, I did my doctoral work back, really, in the early 2000s when all the conversation was around post modernism. And one of the pieces of post modernity is the loss of meta narratives. We see that in countries. We see that, I think that we see that here, that there's no, in the United States, there's no overarching meta narrative for our country. That's other institutions as well. But that's impacted the church in that there's not this... People don't even know how to share the story in a way that can help people with where they are. And I think what you're talking about is, how do we bring this story of presence and comfort and life, even in the midst of death, really down into the nitty gritty. But there is this story that we hold to, even sometimes when we're afraid that science or life or reality is pushing, trying to push it away.
Eddie Rester:you'd follow through... Anything...
Philip Clayton:One hund percetn. I really resonate with what you just said, Eddie. It strikes me that if there were to be a religion that could really speak to today's world, it would have three qualities, and I think you just described all those qualities in the Christian witness. The first would be, it's utterly realistic. It's not pie in the sky. It has got its hand in the dirt. You know, you see wrinkled and worried faces. You see the reality of this world as it is, no illusions. Nope. It's not a Pollyannaish religion. And that's absolutely clear that a God who would come to be sacrificed for us fits in But then there would be hope. There would be a chance for that category. community in the presence, in the present, hope in the present. The constant experience of the beating, compassionate heart of God and God's presence and guidance. And there would be a long-term hope, that the world as we see it around us today is not the final answer. And somehow, it's not given to man to know the hour, but somehow there will be that state, as it says in the end of Revelation,"and there will be no more tears and all shall be in Christ, and all shall be brought together, and all shall know." And then,"now we see in a glass darkly, but then we shall see face to face. Now we know in part, but then we shall know fully, even as we are fully known," as it says in first Corinthians 13. That, if that religion existed, that would be a powerful religion. And I think it does exist.
Eddie Rester:I think it does exist. And I think that, just as a brief excursus, I'm going to give it back to Chris. I can, I can see... But I think we have layered so many things on top of what is this beautiful truth that we hold, that can be a gift, as you said, for the world right now. I mean, it's a hard, gritty, broken apart world without a story to tie people, to tie hope to people. And I just feel like, yeah.It makes me hopeful to have conversations like this.
Chris McAlilly:Yeah. So I think part of the benefit of deep, philosophical, theological work is to continually mine the resources of the tradition, its scriptures and its theological traditions, so that in the midst of the world, such as it is, which is always changing, but presents itself as having some of the same challenges over and over and over again, we have to be able to speak the gospel words of faith and testimony in a way that is utterly realistic. It can offer a present hope and a future, long term hope. And that, that kind of that framework is kind of always the case, whether it's a pastoral care situation, whether you're preaching, whether you're offering an annual review or report. You know, you're constantly having to tell the truth about the reality of your organization, the reality of the world around you. Find a way to orient people towards a hope in the future and also say that that's accessible now. I do wonder at times for those... So we've talked a little bit about those on the charismatic end, those that would attribute, maybe, divine action, or the suspension of natural law, to guide offering a parking place at, you know, Kroger. And that those examples kind of come off as caricatures and maybe a little bit silly. I wonder on the other side, sometimes I wonder if someone would only leave room in their worldview for a very muted action on the part of God, and really just presence, but not much action. What are the benefits of that worldview? What are some of the things that are lost in that?
Philip Clayton:I'm really glad you mentioned that issue, Chris, and it actually is something that I went through personally in the very recent months. I worked for a number of years on a book with a co-author and it's just appeared. It's called"Science and the Sacred." This co-author, Claudia, is an atheist, a humanist, and we found that we had a lot in common. So we began writing this book together, and we were in that place where the text is ready and you begin to do revisions. It was going to be published by Cascade Press, which it is now. And Claudia called me up and said, "Phil, I just heard that I have brain cancer, and they give me less than a year to live." And she spent most of that year, until she was incapacitated, so about nine months, helping to revise the book. She's a journalist, a beautiful author, and the touch that she brought to the text was exquisite. But it was also an exercise in facing exactly what you just described, Chris, that she didn't have a view where God would do miracles. And this amazing thing happened, that our
two positions:I'm clearly a Christian theist, she was clearly a humanist and not a theist. We got them as close as they could come without denying the difference between us. And I acknowledge that a lot of the easy answers that I and other Christians give, whether pastors or lay people, are sometimes too, how can I say, too facile. And she realized that she had a longing for a narrative of the universe and of our lives, during life and beyond life, beyond death, that is more robust than the standard atheist, oh, it's all dark, and things are going to... They're all going to hell in a hand basket, and there's nothing we can do. It was amazing personal journey and a journey of a believer and a non believer in this book, and I could see that struggle.
Chris McAlilly:I appreciate you mentioning that. I'm coming into this conversation from having lunch with a friend of mine who is Roman Catholic and who worships with us regularly because his wife grew up in a Methodist Wesleyan context. And he really wrestles with this, kind of like, coming up to the edge of what he believes to be true. And then, you know, really struggling across the divide in the the body of Christ. That's extended even more so between someone who's a theist and an atheist. But what these two conversations kind of remind me is that we all have these deep longings. We come to the real world with a particular set of frameworks and ideas and images and stories that come from our family of origin, our training, our experiences, and then they're tested and in moments of real trial. And I think one of the benefits that you're kind of reminding me of is that having conversation partners with someone who doesn't think the way that you think about an issue can can be clarifying to what it is that you believe. It can be life giving because you're interacting with someone who maybe sees the world differently than you. And you know, the subtitle of your book, "Science and the
Sacred:Beyond the Gods in Our Image." So much of what I think we need is to be kind of disabused of the ways in which our understandings of God are just kind of extrapolations of our own self understanding. And we need diverse conversation partners, and we need to live at the edge of our own worldview in conversation with others to really kind of get maybe a little bit closer to the truth, maybe be reminded of hope that we haven't accessed before. So I appreciate you bringing that up.
Eddie Rester:One of the, I'm thinking about a book from years ago that is so helpful for me around some of the topics we've discussed today, a book called"Journeying" by Craig Barnes, and it's an old book. Again, I've been unpacking books recently. I wonder, Philip, if you have books or other resources, if somebody wants to continue thinking in these lines, really beginning to dig in a little bit deepe. Maybe they've felt that they've been at one end or the other of this conversation, something that might be helpful for them, that's been helpful for you.
Philip Clayton:I do think that this classic book by a clergy person, "Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People," is still it's still a classic work to work through. He's a Jewish rabbi, and just describes this question of suffering in in a powerful way. The range of positions on divine action is huge. There's a large literature that's a little bit more technical and I think, not quite as approachable. I'll just say a lot of is associated with the lead researcher, Christian physicist named Robert J Russell. And so googling his name would would bring you in some of these treatments. And let me pause there and say that what has just occurred to me, as I was listening to you guys, is that passage in Hebrews five. I just looked it up. It's 13 and 14. "Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant isn't not fully acquainted with..." etc, etc, "but solid food is for the mature who, by constant use, have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil." That's so interesting that I think, "when, as a child, I..." What was, what is the scripture?
Chris McAlilly:"Thought like a child," yeah, exactly. "When I became an adult, I put childish ways behind."
Philip Clayton:Yeah, and I think there's a testimony of mature Christians, mature Christian communities, mature churches that don't offer a panacea. So many times, pastors know that what is it that the congregation wants. And this whole Gospel of wealth happens to play really well. A lot of people come and they bring wealth to the church. The only trouble it's not the gospel of Jesus Christ, in my view. So it's that willingness to see a world that's sometimes harsh and full of suffering, and I admit often to long for the days when I could believe childish things. Two miracles on my way to a Billy Graham crusade. You know? That's how it goes. But I think we have a deeper testimony to offer, now. Those who have gone through the school of suffering, those are my spiritual leaders. Those are my spiritual director.
Eddie Rester:And people, when we talk about people needing the story, they need that story. Because when the waves that they've been riding to the Billy Graham crusade, two miracles on the way to the crusade, when that crashes on the rocks and all anybody hears is, you should have had more faith, or they just ignore the problem of intense suffering in the world. That's when people say, "Well, maybe this isn't for me." This isn't the story, this isn't the hope, this isn't the way. And they walk away from from the faith, not because they don't want to believe, but because we're only offering them something that is impossible to believe in light of the reality of the world.
Chris McAlilly:So don't do that and keep... Grateful to Philip. Thank you so much for being with us. What a conversation. So fun.
Eddie Rester:Well, "fun" is not the word.
Chris McAlilly:Fun is having a really deep theological conversation, Eddie, about heavy matters. That's fun. I don't know what you count fun.
Eddie Rester:There you go. This has been great. Let me say that it has been great. Philip, thank you so much.
Philip Clayton:Thanks you guys for having me on the show, and thank you for this ministry. I think it's really a powerful
Eddie Rester:[OUTRO] Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed the one. podcast, the best way to help us is to like, subscribe, or leave a review.
Chris McAlilly:If you would like to support this work financially, or if you have an idea for a future guest, you can go to theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]