To Make a Rainbow

Turning to thoughts of God’s activity in nature, in Chapter 4 we take emergence as the broadest expression of God’s work (and play!) in the cosmos. Biological evolution and the rise of consciousness are striking instances. The worldly ambience of the Book of Esther, where God, notoriously, remains offstage, affords precious insights as to the interplay of divine and human agency. Across the warp of history we weave the weft. Freedom is the watchword of God’s covenant. We did not create ourselves, but we do, in some measure, chart our own course. Understanding how God might work through nature, not against it, is critical to adult religiosity. We cannot confine divine action to the neverland of sacred history or let superstition displace personal piety and responsibility. The capricious gods are vanished. We cannot restore them to the domain from which natural science and its ancient, often unacknowledged ally, natural theology, have banished them.