Defending the Faith: Global Histories of Apologetics and Politics in the Twentieth Century

Abstract

physical earth and its physical inhabitants, posing in this manner the age-old, seemingly intractable issue of spirit-body dualism. The fifth problem is how a resurrected, non-physical (at least in the earthly sense of ‘physical’) Jesus can be the Real Presence in the two material elements of the Eucharist. And the sixth seeming disparity with ecological understanding is the idea that humans, and humans alone, have the prospect of eternal or everlasting life in a supernatural, non-material heaven after their deaths. Why, out of all of the millions of evolved species on Earth, should the human species alone have this hope? This idea would seem to put them radically out of relation to the evolutionary story, undoing their claimed continuity with other evolved organisms. I do not so much claim that these six problems are unsolvable. McDuffie could perhaps convince us in a subsequent work that they can all be successfully resolved. But for the sake of the consistency and convincingness of his attempt to reconcile tradition with present ways of thinking—so essential to his alignment of Christian and ecological concerns—I think that such critical problems should have been recognized as such and addressed at least briefly in this book. Otherwise, he is open to the charge of wanting to have his cake and eat it too. His focus throughout is admittedly on the functions of the Christian tradition and what it can share with secular science in this regard, and not very much on their different metaphysical commitments. And it is extremely important for him to emphasize the sacredness of Earth and its evolutionary, ecological processes in this functional manner, seeing its currently recognizable inherent and inviolable sacredness as resulting ultimately from its creation and continual loving maintenance by God. But function and metaphysics are intimately connected in the Christian tradition, as this example makes clear, and some fundamental changes in understanding how Christianity’s traditional non-materialist metaphysics can be adapted to modern ways of thinking would seem to be required. Mere hints, suggestions, or vague appeals to mystery (34–35, 39, 49) will not suffice to make a thoroughgoing reconciliation of the Epic of Evolution with many distinctive traditional Christian beliefs go through. McDuffie’s central thesis is weakened, in my judgment, in the absence of at least brief recognition and attention to this pervasive and otherwise troublesome issue. Differences in basic worldviews should be frankly acknowledged and dealt with, not minimized or ignored.