365 - Chance and Order in Science and Theology

Chance and Order in Science and Theology

By S. Paul Schilling

"If randomness alone were in the saddle, the horse would gallop in all directions, or remain in the stall. If chaos is to be averted or overcome, there needs to be some unitary principle, some overall order, some ground of stability, within which new species emerge and development takes place. Utterly unrestrained chance could not account for the connectedness, the interrelationships, or the dependable order of the world we know. That world exhibits determinateness as well as uncertainty, law as well as randomness. A view that takes account of both features is both more rational and more in accord with the facts. "

"THE WHOLE history of science," writes Stephen W. Hawking, "has been the gradual realization that events "do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order."¹ When Hawking adds that this order "may or may not be divinely inspired," he recognizes a kinship between his assessment and that of most of the world's religions. Both scientists and religious thinkers are concerned about the respective roles of determinate causation and chance in cosmic and human events, and many changes in their views have occurred over the years. It should be instructive, therefore, and practically relevant to examine and relate to one another recent explorations of scientists and theologians on this question. This essay seeks also to relate these investigations to the perennial problem of evil in religious thought.

I

With regard to attitudes toward chance, the situation today is quite different from that which prevailed in both science and theology at the beginning of the twentieth century. Newtonian mechanics, still in the saddle, maintained that all future positions and velocities of particles are completely determined by the forces that act on them. When precise information is given regarding masses, forces, initial positions, and velocities, exact predictions of the future behavior of particles can

S. Paul Schilling is professor of systematic theology emeritus at Boston University School of Theology. He has written a number of books, including God in an Age of Atheism (1969) and God Incognito (1974).

¹Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam Books, 1988), p. 122.

 

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be calculated. Following Newton, the eighteenth-century mathematician Pierre-Simon de Laplace held that the present state of the universe, from its largest to its smallest entities, is at any time the effect of its antecedent state and the cause of the next succeeding state. Hence a sufficiently competent intelligence would be able to comprehend all motions in a single formula, and nothing would be uncertain. The universe is a vast machine that functions according to rigid causality. with future events entirely determined. On the human level, scientific determinism reached its fullest expression in behavioristic psychology, according to which all our actions, however free they may appear, are strictly necessitated.

Many theologians have likewise affirmed an ultimate determinism, though on quite different grounds. Citing biblical passages like Amos 3:6, Calvinists have upheld the doctrine of absolute divine sovereignty over both nature and human life, leaving no room for chance. Calvin himself declared that "not a drop of rain falls but at the express command of God."² Arminian theologians have been adamant in rejecting any form of determinism, but almost equally firm in excluding any notion of chance as an ultimate characteristic of the universe. The Preacher in Ecclesiastes 9:11 declares that "time and chance govern all," but this passage is an aberration from others in the same writing that typify the author's central position. Traditional interpretations of providence, with few exceptions, have assumed God's complete control of all events, allowing no loopholes for the intrusion of lesser wills or ultimately accidental occurrences.

II

Radical changes in both science and theology have altered the situation greatly. In biology, the important role of chance mutations on both the human and subhuman levels is undisputed. These are unforeseeable alterations in the genetic constitution of cells that are transmitted to offspring though unrelated to the needs of the organism when they occur. Mutation of a gene takes place when, apparently by accident, the DNA molecule that constitutes the gene is not exactly reproduced. Such occurrences make plain that evolution does not proceed deterministically. They are the secret of useful advances, including the emergence of the human species with its amazing potential for both individual and cultural achievement. However, they are also responsible for many injurious results. Genetically harmful genes as well as favorable ones are preserved in the genetic constitution of the organism. Because of this accumulation, every individual is born with a genetic heritage that is responsible on the human level for occasional geniuses but also for imbeciles. Gene mutations account for many diseases, including hemophilia, some birth deformities, congenital

²John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, I. xvi. S.

 

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idiocy, the premature aging of progeria, and many cases of premature death.

Comparable to the identification of accidental mutations in genes has been the discovery by researchers in quantum mechanics of randomness at the subatomic level. According to Werner Heisenberg's principle of uncertainty, made public in 1927, changes of state within the atom take place in a wholly unpredictable manner. Indeterminacy is such that it is impossible to state the effect on each other of certain interrelated pairs of measurable quantities in the atom, like position and momentum. A quantum mechanical system cannot at the same time have both an exact velocity and an exact position. What this means is translated into lay language in John C. Polkinghorne's words regarding the electron: "If I know where it is I do not know what it is doing, and if I know what it is doing I do not know where it is."³

Such indeterminacy in the atom is now acknowledged by the great majority of physicists. Some attribute it to imperfection in the observer's measurements or other limitations in human knowledge, but many regard it as a characteristic of nature itself. Heisenberg himself, recognizing that observable events contain many possibilities, asserts that "the transition from the 'possible' to the 'actual' takes place during the act of observation."⁴ Thus, experimentation does not disturb a previously determined situation but actualizes one of various possibilities. Within a determinate range of possibilities, the particular occurrence is thus indeterminate and unpredictable.

Jacques Monod insists categorically that the evolution of all living things is brought about by natural selection operating through entirely random variations. These are "the only possible source of modifications in the genetic text." Hence chance alone is at the source of every innovation, of all creatures in the biosphere." The concept that "pure chance, absolutely free but blind," is the basis of evolution, is now "the sole conceivable hypothesis, the only one compatible with observed and tested fact." Moreover, there is no warrant whatever for supposing that "conceptions about this should, or ever could, be revised."⁵

Monod's uncompromising conclusions and the arguments by which he reaches them have called forth volumes of critical comment, which for the most part need not concern us here. Suffice it to say that there is widespread acceptance of his science but equally wide disagreement regarding his philosophical interpretations. From the standpoint of our present discussion, the net effect of his work has been to increase considerably the number of thinkers who take chance seriously in their total view of reality.

³John C. Polkinghorne, "Creation and the Structure of the Physical World," THEOLOGY TODAY, 44 (1987), p. 63.

⁴Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1958), p. 54.

⁵Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity (London: Collins, 1972), p. 1 10.

 

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III

Recognition of the pervasiveness and potency of random events, whether in the biosphere or elsewhere, is not equivalent to the conclusion that all occurrences are haphazard. In fact, many scientists who are now most emphatic in pointing to the absence of pattern in specific areas of their research are equally positive in reporting the presence of constancy and order. A fascinating indication of this combination is provided by James Gleick's Chaos, which chronicles the continuing explorations of leading investigators in a wide variety of fields. The very subtitle of the work--Making a New Science--suggests that even chaos may occur according to discoverable laws.

Gleick reports the findings of trail-blazing research by specialists in mathematics, physics, fluid dynamics, biology (including genetics and population growth and decline), medicine (including epidemiology and psychiatry), economics, and ecology. Everywhere he encounters so much turbulence in nature that he can speak of chaos as "an entity unto itself."⁶ Yet what he finds is "orderly disorder .... Truly random data remain spread out in an undefined mess. But chaos-deterministic and patterned-pulls the data into visible shapes. Of all the possible pathways of disorder, nature favors just a few."⁷ Roderick V. Jensen, theoretical physicist at Yale, speaks of quantum chaos as "the irregular, unpredictable behavior of deterministic, non-linear dynamic systems."⁸

To the nonscientific observer it seems strange to find chaotic activity referred to as deterministic, but the conjunction of the two adjectives illustrates well the paradoxical nature of this "new science." Gleick repeatedly characterizes the situations disclosed by the researches he reports as "stable chaos...... deterministic disorder," "regular irregularity," and "within the chaos, astonishing geometric regularity."⁹ J. Doyne Farmer, of the Dynamical Systems Collective at Santa Cruz, says that the group was drawn together by "the notion that you could have determinism but not really.... The system is deterministic, but you can't say what it's going to do next." Philosophically, Farmer sees the phenomenon of chaos as "an operational way to define free will, in a way that allows you to reconcile free will with determinism."¹⁰

Obviously, the deterministic postulate dies slowly; it is preserved in name even when redefined to stand for something quite different from its historic meaning. But clearly for increasing numbers of scientists, the traditional notion of a tightly-knit universe with no loose ends is no longer tenable. Even chance is seen to behave in orderly fashion; whether in microscopic particles or everyday complexity it operates

⁶James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science (New York: Penguin Books, 1987), p. 181.

⁷Ibid., pp. 266-267.

⁸Ibid., p. 306.

⁹Ibid., pp. 55,69,98,305.

¹⁰Ibid., pp. 250,251.

 

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according to stable, universal laws. Replying to Einstein's familiar question, Joseph Ford of the Georgia Institute of Technology declares, "God plays dice with the universe. But they're loaded dice. And the main objective of physics is to find out by what rules they were loaded, and how we can use them for our own ends."¹¹

Among religious thinkers today there is nothing comparable to Jacques Monod's confident assertion that "pure, blind chance" alone is the basis of evolution. However, belief in the determination of all events by the divine will has sharply declined. Increasing numbers of theologians now assign to randomness a positive role in creation and affirm a complementarity of chance and law.

Arthur R. Peacocke, dealing with the issues on Monod's own terms, questions the assumption that at the outset the chance that life would appear was infinitesimally small. Impressed by the models and experiments employed by Manfred Eigen of Gottingen, Peacocke holds with Eigen that the evolution of life was inevitable, in principle, in spite of its indeterminate course, and "sufficiently probable within a realistic span of time."¹² Initially, there was a vast range of potential universes; chance mechanisms allowed these possible forms of matter to be explored and thus should be seen as involved in the original design of the universe. Randomness at the molecular level need not be seen as evidence of irrationality. Even as humans use random events for their own purposes, God may likewise use chance occurrences to fulfill divine ends, hence to realize the potentiality in creation." ¹³

A germinal work by Keith Ward, Rational Theology and the Creativity of God, asks how to account coherently for a God who according to the axiom of intelligibility is a necessary, timeless, immutable originator of all things, but according to the doctrine of creation is a temporal, contingent, changing creative agent. Ward replies that the seeming duality of creation and necessity is not fundamental. Rather, one being can be coherently regarded as the ground both of rationality and of freedom and contingency.¹⁴ God is not "two beings, a nature and an agent, but one, an agent with awareness, purpose, and creative power, possessed of an immutable nature."¹⁵

For Ward, randomness as well as law is "built into the structure of things." The probability-status of quantum theory and the mutations disclosed in biology show that chance plays a far greater role in the world than has usually been acknowledged. But this does not demand surrender of belief in order: "Randomness within statistically probable parameters is just what is required to allow one both to maintain the

¹¹ Ibid. p. 314.

¹² Manfred Eigen and Ruthil Winkler, Laws of the Game (Allen Lane, Penguin Books, 1982), p. 519.

¹³ Arthur R. Peacocke, Creation and the World of Science (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 94, 97-103.

¹⁴ Keith Ward, Rational Theology and the Creativity of God (New York Pilgrim Press, 1982), p. 165.

¹⁵ Ibid., p. 169.

 

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rationality of nature and the existence of radical creativity within it."¹⁶ Nor does such recognition of chance require the abandonment of theistic belief. God can be seen as establishing the basic natural laws and the direction of the universe but also as providing "that a plurality of partly self-changing substances can develop toward a free community of creative spirits."¹⁷

The supposition that both order and chance are ultimate enables Ward better to understand natural evil. Contingent creativity eliminates absolute control no less effectively than it excludes determinism. Where changes occur to some extent at random, failures, imbalances, and destructive conflicts are inevitable. Amid a plurality of contingent forces, harmony is impossible. Hence, many forms of natural evil may plausibly be regarded as necessarily involved in a universe marked by a mixture of plurality, randomness, lawfulness, and indeterminate striving. Evil can be justified if it is a necessary implication of some good that is otherwise unobtainable, especially if the good overwhelmingly exceeds the evil. "God is not able to prevent those evils as long as he wills to achieve that good."¹⁸

Probably the most thorough examination of chance in relation to theistic faith is the work of David J. Bartholomew, professor of statistical and mathematical science at the London School of Economics. In God of Chance, he draws on his voluminous knowledge of the nature of statistical probability and his considerable acquaintance with theological and philosophical discussions of providence and related doctrines to support the conclusion that chance is not only real but intended by God."¹⁹ In this assessment, he finds the most convincing rebuttal to Monod's argument. God actually designed the universe in such a fashion that chance had a role to play. God's goal for human life could not be obtained without human freedom; but if there is to be scope for the operation of real freedom, creation must provide for genuine uncertainty. The presence of chance in the universe, therefore, instead of leaving no room for God, is rather an important means whereby divine purposes are attained. In contrast, Monod's thesis makes the universe not only extremely improbable, but virtually impossible."²⁰

Bartholomew sees the universe as "a giant stochastic process." The adjective is derived from the Greek stochazesthai (to aim or guess), and refers to an activity whose end can only be conjectural because it involves random variability. Chance obtains "whenever a situation exists in which there is more than one possible outcome for an event, and where one cannot predict, with certainty, which outcome will occur." Bartholomew sometimes uses the term probabilistic as a synonym for

¹⁶ Ibid., pp. 192,193.

¹⁷ Ibid., p. 195; see also pp. 154, 156, 159.

¹⁸ Ibid., p. 197.

¹⁹ David J. Bartholomew, God of Chance (London: SCM Press, 1984), pp. 158-159.

²⁰ Ibid., pp. 30,36.

 

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stochastic.²¹ He observes a fundamental indeterminacy in nature, in subatomic matter, in the blind alleys and genetic malfunctioning of the evolutionary process, and at all other levels. Hence chance is to be seen as C4an essential ingredient of the cosmos.²²

However, the existence of chance is not a sufficient basis for inferring the absence of purpose. Human purposes can be advanced by card games, the tossing of coins, games that blend chance and skill, and sampling methods employed by sociologists. I had an opportunity to experience this first hand through participation some years ago in a project that sought to ascertain the beliefs of members of the United Methodist Church on social and religious questions. Every sixtieth church was selected electronically from an alphabetical list. To those who agreed to cooperate, some others were added to insure a sample that would represent the different sizes of churches and communities approximately in the proportions in which the sizes occurred. Questionnaires numbering 5,020 were finally returned from 267 charges, about 41.8 percent of the schedules mailed. The research team was satisfied that by this method of stratified random sampling the data secured adequately represented, at a minimum, the 150,340 members surveyed while at most they might be termed the best possible picture of the entire church."²³ Our use of a process including wide scope for chance served to advance our purpose. It also insured fairness and protected the research from the intrusion of subjective bias.

According to Bartholomew, the reality of chance is no more antithetical to the rule of God than our use of randomness to achieve some of our ends. A world of chance and accident is not only logically compatible with belief in God; there are positive reasons for supposing that an element of pure chance (where no causal explanation can be conceived of in our present state of knowledge) acts constructively to create a richer environment than would otherwise be possible. Such a world is particularly well equipped to produce beings fit for fellowship with God. In fact, at one point Bartholomew asserts that chance and accident are not merely compatible with theistic belief; they are "required by it."²⁴ He concludes that our world displays a complementarity of chance and necessity, of randomness and law.

The clue to the functioning of this interplay is the distinction between the macro-universe and the micro-activities within it. God determines the end and the lawfulness of the former but allows indeterminism in the latter. On the large scale, "order and predictability remain the characteristic features of the world of everyday experience," while unpredictability and flexibility mark the microlevel. All that happens is ultimately God's responsibility, but this does

²¹Ibid., pp. 10, 66-67,157.

²²Ibid., p. 94.

²³See S. Paul Schilling, Methodism and Society in Theological Perspective (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1960), pp. 275-308.

²⁴Bartholomew, God of Chance, pp. 13, 97, 138.

 

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not require that every individual happening has meaning in terms of God's intention. Divine purpose is "expressed in the aggregate effects of large numbers of genuinely random events."²⁵ God acts by persuasion, not coercion, at the highest level of creation, in order to affect the outcome.

What bearing does all this have on human efforts to understand evil? Bartholomew is quick to point out that the occurrence of events not intended by God "goes a long way toward reconciling undeserved suffering with the love of God."²⁶ He finds it reasonable to suppose that suffering with the love of God.

a world with all the properties needed to carry out God's purposes could not avoid the occurrence of accidents, some of which would inevitably produce ill for human beings. In an unpredictable flux, events will occur that are not intentional or direct acts of God or in accord with the divine will for human life. Human exercise of freedom accounts for much evil, but not for natural disasters where no human choice is involved. "There seems to be a residuum of mischances which are part of the very nature of things." In the task of creation, God takes real risks, and some of these introduce risk and suffering into the lives of God's creatures.²⁷

Is there then any assurance that the ill effects of chance can be controlled so that God's purposes can be achieved? Bartholomew's answer is found in the doctrine of providence, which centers in his insistence that randomness is limited by its occurrence in a determinate order, and that divine action on the macro-level finds ways of turning the aggregates of micro-events to good ends. In this connection, the question of divine power inevitably arises. Here Bartholomew is unclear. He seems to vacillate between affirming something like a traditional view of omnipotence-self-limitation-and an unwilled condition inherent in God's eternal nature. At one point, he declares that both creation and redemption call into play "all the resources of an unlimited God." But he also assigns to God "as much knowledge and power as possible, given that he decided to create this kind of world."²⁸ And in defending the notion that God has freely chosen that things be as they are, Bartholomew makes the puzzling statement that God "may have decided that he should not be able to do something because it is not in his nature to want to do it.,²⁹ Can God then decide to be something that God is not, or by will change the direction of God's abiding eternal nature?

Remarkably similar to the position reached by Bartholomew, though with very different sources, is the thought of Charles Hartshorne, which is representative of contemporary process theology. Mounting a vigorous attack against traditional notions of omnipotence, Hartshorne holds that the divine Mind incarnated itself in a

²⁵Ibid., pp. 5-6,135,157.

²⁶Ibid., p. 145.

²⁷Ibid., pp. 94,109,119,152.

²⁸Ibid., pp. 148,154.

²⁹Ibid., p. 146.

 

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cosmos "governed by divinely decided laws which leave the details of happenings to decisions made by countless kinds of nondivine creatures.³⁰ The reality of such free, creative decision-making implies the occurrence of 'chance' events-those not decided by any agent, and not fully determined by the past." Some events are the result not of the intent of any single agent, but the chance combination of two or more intentions. Randomness is inseparable from freedom.³¹

Chance is therefore real, but it is limited by the structure of law in a dependable physical order. This order, moreover, is not intelligible without an Orderer. It is God who makes it possible that innumerable decisions add up to a coherent and basically good world. "That there are laws of nature is providential."³² God, within whose life according to Hartshorne's panentheism all events occur, gives to the world sufficient orderliness to facilitate the harmonious adaptation of free creatures to one another and thus their participation in the creation of value. This extension to creatures of opportunities to contribute to the advance of values involves risk for both God and finite beings. But God, exercising the persuasive power of love, so influences the whole process that the opportunities for good expressions of freedom outweigh and justify the risk of unfortunate, more or less evil expressions.

Once true randomness is allowed within overall order, the theological problem of evil in "its most unmanageable form" loses much of its difficulty. The "nastiest form" of the problem is how to account for evil in a world absolutely determined by a divine Ruler. Once this absolute determination is replaced by a recognition of freedom and chance, the occurrence of events with evil effects is no longer an enigma."³³

IV

Looking back over these various interpretations, we need to reach some judgment regarding their truth and their contribution to our understanding of evil. My own response may be stated in nine comments.

(1) Both scientific investigation and our daily experience offer irrefutable evidence of the reality of chance in our world. Indeterminacy is operative in the suborganic realm, and, in plant and animal life, random mutations produce new forms and species, with variations that have both valuable and destructive effects. No supervising intelligence determines which of the swarming multitudes of sperm cells will fertilize a receptive ovum. Disastrous fires from which some escape while others lose their lives; plane crashes which some potential passengers avoid through last-minute changes in plans, while others become victims for the same reasons; seemingly unimportant incidents

³⁰ Charles Hartshorne, Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes (Albany: State University of New York, 1984), pp. 16,92.

³¹ Ibid., pp. 16, 69.

³² Ibid., pp. 69, 71; see also p. 18.

³³ Ibid., pp. 70, 89.

 

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that make the difference between war and peace and life or death for multitudes of people-who can fail to be aware of such events?

In my own youth, a sudden, unexpected change in my appointment to a summer pastorate resulted in my meeting the young woman who later became my wife, whom I should never have heard of had the original arrangement been consummated. (Here I am tempted to attribute the change to providence, but then I'd have to settle for a determinism that would invalidate a number of seemingly free human choices.) In April 1987, a seventeen-year-old high school senior, employed for the one week of his spring break in the construction of an eighteen-story apartment building in Bridgeport, Connecticut, was one of twenty-eight persons killed in the collapse of the half-finished structure. Any sound attempt to understand good and evil must weigh with care the role of accidentality.

(2) On the other hand, there is no warrant for the claim of Monod and others that only chance is responsible for the universe and its manifold operations. If randomness alone were in the saddle, the horse would gallop in all directions or no direction, or remain in the stall. If chaos is to be averted or overcome, there needs to be some unitary principle, some overall order, some ground of stability, within which new species emerge and development takes place. Utterly unrestrained chance could not account for the connectedness, the interrelationships, or the dependable order of the world we know. That world exhibits determinateness as well as uncertainty, law as well as randomness. A view that takes account of both features is both more rational and more in accord with the facts. It is hardly surprising that the wide-ranging researches recorded by Gleick concur in finding law even in chaos, which can therefore be studied as science.

(3) The "big bang" in which astrophysicists now believe our universe was born ten to twenty billion years ago was hardly the sheer chaos that is often pictured. As is supposed, all matter was concentrated in one small spot that exploded, sending a huge, formless cloud hurtling outward in all directions. The cloud then collected into clumps that evolved into stars-great gatherings of billions of stars we call galaxies. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is a spiral collection of over a hundred billion stars. A star near its center requires about two hundred million years to make one revolution; one at the outskirts, two hundred billion years. Yet this galaxy and all the others exhibit uniformities and regularities that make them amenable to scientific observation, analysis, and the formulation of laws that describe their operation and relationships and make possible some dependable predictions.

(4) What we know as the unimaginably long process of cosmic development supports similar observations. Despite indeterminism, energy is conserved predictably. Amid all the chances, there are

 

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constants that apply universally and can be stated in formulas like Einstein's E = mc². The composition of the light we experience on earth is the same as that surrounding the farthest stars. Thus, our telescopes can "see" stars so remote that their light, traveling at 185,000 miles per second, is only now reaching the earth, despite the fact that they are now burnt out and no longer exist. Images radioed to the earth from the Soviet robot Venera 14 disclose on Venus a rocky terrain that resembles certain lava flows on earth, including some that cover parts of the ocean floor. The fact that radio signals and photographs can be transmitted from outer space exhibits the functioning of undeniable uniformities in the whole of physical nature.

(5) There is evidence that purposive effort played a part in the emergence of fully human beings in the evolutionary process. For example, speech among hominids apparently preceded the mature development of the brain as we know it. Some anthropologists like Geertz argue that such early speech contributed to the growth of the brain. Thus, cultural as well as natural or physical factors provided interacting stimuli which aided the development from hominid to genuinely human. Without the effort of hominids to communicate, homo sapiens could not have emerged. More than random mutation was involved.

(6) Bartholomew's judgment that the universe displays determinate order at the macro-level but indeterminism at the micro-level seems to be illustrated on a small scale in the human body. Within the body are various organic systems: respiratory, digestive, neural, cardio-vascular, reproductive, and others. They are subordinated to the organism as a whole, but within the fixed interconnectedness of the whole they manifest relative independence.

(7) If, in an unfinished world where evolution is still going on, events both good and ill can occur within a unitary context, it seems likely that ultimate reality itself is innovative, always open to and seeking to actualize new possibilities. Frances Young has found in the ancient Greek Fathers a fascinating comparison of God to a lyre-player, who often improvises in the search for new tunes.³⁴ A coherent interpretation of the data we have would support a conception of God who always acts in accord with the unchanging laws of the divine nature but is free to explore, extemporize, take risks, and respond to the consequences of human initiative.

(8) An important question arises regarding the ultimate status of chance. Is it purposed by God as the best means of attaining the goal of a free society of persons fulfilling the divine will, or is it inherent in the ultimate structure of the divine life? Both Ward and Bartholomew opt

³⁴Frances Young, Can These Dry Bones Live? (London: SCM Press, 1982), p, 90.

 

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for the former alternative, but not with complete consistency. Ward, for example, says that God is "not able" to prevent the evils involved in randomness "as long as he wills to achieve" otherwise unobtainable goals.³⁵Bartholomew declares enigmatically that "God chooses not to be able to do some things."³⁶ But ability in our ordinary understanding is not subject to choice. One either is or is not able. Both of these writers appear at times on the verge of recognizing chance as part of the ultimate, uncreated nature of reality, but they draw back from this conclusion. In that ultimate structure, the chance possibilities seem to be both finite and infinite. For instance, order seems to set a finite limit on the number of chemical elements, though there are untold billions of stars. Such diversity offers further indication that the universe as a whole is characterized by a wide variety of chance events, along with others that are purposive, all within an orderly structure.

(9) Acknowledgment of the role of chance within order offers a partial answer to the problem of reconciling belief in divine goodness with the realities of evil and suffering. Inquiring minds may still ask whether God's control is sufficient to fulfill God's purpose in creation. Space does not permit adequate examination of this question here. However, two responses may be briefly suggested. First, mature Christian faith trusts God as the Creator-Redeemer disclosed in Jesus Christ whose promised kingdom is on the way. Such faith is supportive of long-range hope. Secondly, belief in God as the eternal Spirit who strives with matchless power and love at great cost over vast expanses of time to realize divine ends illuminates the whole of our temporal existence, rendering it intelligible. Creation is unfinished, with undreamed of possibilities ahead, but with the strengthening presence of God available en route.

³⁵Keith Ward, Rational Theology and the Creativity of God, p. 146.

³⁶Bartholomew, God of Chance, p. 197.