Thomas Jay Oord is a theologian, philosopher, and scholar of multi-disciplinary studies. He is a best-selling and award-winning author, having written or edited more than twenty-five books. A twelve-time Faculty Award-winning professor, Oord teaches at institutions around the globe, and is the director of the Center for Open and Relational Theology. To find out more about him or view more of his works, visit his website or the Center for Open and Relational Theology.
Science and Human Spirit from Postmodern Perspectives. Wuhan, China. Oct. 2005.
SUMMARY
In this piece Oord examines research on love in the social and natural sciences, and presents some of his own research in philosophy and religion related to it. He argues that God cannot be culpable for genuine evil, because God essentially and lovingly relates to all creatures by providing them with power for free choices.
From the beginning of recorded history, humans have sought how best to live in relation to others. In the oldest writings and artifacts, we find evidence of the human struggle to, as Alfred North Whitehead put, “live, live well, and to live better.” (FR) The major religions of the East, the West, and South develop in sophisticated ways this widespread quest to live well in relation to others.
For many of the world’s major religions, the word “love” best describes the multi-faceted ways humans attempt to live well. Wise men such as Confucius and Aristotle taught love for friends and family. Others spoke of love for one’s government, society, and country. Jesus taught love for enemies. Many sages spoke of a proper love for oneself. Most theistic traditions spoke of God as one who loved us and who was worthy of our love. Others suggested that nonhumans and all nature were proper recipients of love.
The rise of modern science brought new challenges and new opportunities to the human quest to live, live well, and live better. Science brought new ways to analyze and measure existence as we know it. It brought new tools and theories to help us make sense of life in the universe.
Some of what science brought was at odds with religious views about existence – including views about love. While religious people were able to accommodate easily some scientific theories, there is no doubt that other theories were in opposition to widely held religious views. Science seemed to suggest that we rethink how humans might best live and love in relation to others.
In the 20th century Western world, a scientist named Pitirim A. Sorokin argued passionately that love must be studied by all of the sciences – natural sciences, social sciences, religious sciences. Sorokin came to his convictions about the importance of love studies when jailed in Russia as a political prisoner in the early decades of the 20th century. After escaping a Russian prison, Sorokin immigrated to the United States of America and eventually accepted a professorship at Harvard University outside Boston. In 1949, he founded the Harvard Research Center in Creative Altruism with the financial help of Eli Lilly and the Lilly Endowment.
Sorokin’s major publishing contribution to love research was his book, The Ways and Power of Love: Types, Factors, and Techniques of Moral Transformation. In the volume’s preface, he defends the importance of scientific and religious study of love. He writes:
At the present juncture of human history an increase in our knowledge of the grace of love has become the paramount need of humanity, and an intensive research in this field should take precedence over almost all other studies and research. . . . Considering the immensity of this task, [my] contribution is very modest in comparison with the total sum of the necessary studies. Since, however, the better brains are busy with other problems, including the invention of means of extermination of human beings . . . [and] many a religious leader is absorbed in the intertribal crusades against various enemies – under these conditions somebody, somehow, (click on same slide) must devote himself to a study of the miracle of love.[1]
Throughout the book, Sorokin offers insights into the power of love, suggestions about how love research might be done, and predictions about what would occur should society neglect the study of love.
Unfortunately, Sorokin’s research on love faded by the end of the 1950s when he retired from teaching and his research center ran out of funding. Although his own contribution to the study of love was exemplary, he inspired no immediate followers to carry his research mantle.[2] Organized research on love from a perspective that integrated science, religion, and philosophy all but vanished.
In recent decades, interest in scientific investigation of love has reemerged. I call this emerging field of new scholarship the love-and-science symbiosis.[3] Exactly how scholars involved in this budding field believe that love and science should relate and/or be integrated varies greatly. What they share in common, however, is the belief that issues of love are of paramount importance. And they believe that the various scientific disciplines – whether natural, social, or religious – must be brought to bear upon how best to understand love. In this presentation, I would like to share some research on love in the social and natural sciences. I will close with some comments on my own research in philosophy and religion related to this research.
Human Sciences
At the turn of the twenty-first century, a new approach to psychology research began to appear. This approach, called “positive psychology,” sees itself as returning to psychology’s 19th and early 20th century research agenda. Positive psychologists argue that following World War II, psychologists in the West concentrated mainly upon studying and treating pathology and mental illness. Psychologists regarded their clients as passive victims, with the conflicts of childhood or later life largely controlling and oppressing these victims.[4]
Positive psychology’s chief proponent, Martin E. P. Seligman, says that this new approach in psychology intends to study and promote positive subjective experiences. “The aim of positive psychology,” says Seligman, “is to catalyze a change in psychology from a preoccupation only with repairing the worst things in life to also building the best qualities in life.”[5] Treating clients is not only about fixing what is wrong, but also about building what is right. “In the quest for what is best,” says Seligman, “positive psychology does not rely on wishful thinking, self-deception, or hand waving; instead, it tries to adapt what is best in the scientific method to the unique problems that human behavior presents in all of its complexity.”[6]
Positive psychologists investigate a wide variety of positive human traits. “We have discovered,” says Seligman, “that there are human strengths that act as buffers against mental illness: courage, future-mindedness, optimism, interpersonal skill, faith, work ethic, hope, honesty, perseverance, the capacity for flow and insight, to name several.” The most compelling research relates to traits or actions such as forgiveness,[7] hope,[8] positive emotions,[9] gratitude,[10] and optimism.[11]
Some research in positive psychology draws upon or assumes the value of another branch of psychology exerting influence in love research today: attachment theory. Social scientists often regard attachment theory as a theoretical explanation for why some individuals are capable of establishing positive, prosocial relationships that promote well-being. Given that love involves relationships, investigating attachments between individuals is a natural agenda for social scientists to pursue.
John Bowlby is widely regarded as the originator of attachment theory, and his close work with Mary Ainsworth provided empirical data that refined the theory’s basic concepts.[12] In the mid-twentieth century, Bowlby came to believe that the relationship an infant enjoyed with its mother (or significant care-giver) greatly influenced the development of that infant throughout life. The nature of the relationship an infant enjoys with its caregiver establishes a prototype that shapes later relationships.[13] Today, developmental psychologists employ Bowlby’s basic theory in their research on infant, child, adolescent, and adult relationships.
Bowlby said that humans have an attachment behavior system that has evolved as part of the human biological substrate. This system is activated when humans (especially infants) perceive a threat. In response to the attachment behavior system, humans seek close proximity and protection as a way to find relief and a sense of safety. The system also naturally elicits in humans a positive mental representation of protecting partners in relationship. When the attachment behavior system functions well, the individual feels relaxed, confident, and is more likely to care for self and others. Evolution has endowed infants with particular learning and loving abilities that seek expression in the infant-caregiver relationship.
Psychologist Mario Mikulincer and Phillip R. Shaver provide recent research that supports the hypothesis that those with a proper sense of attachment and security are more likely to act compassionately. After conducting a number of studies, the psychologists find that those who avoid attachments are consistently less compassionate and less altruistic than their more secure counterparts. “Our findings indicate,” say Mikulincer and Shaver, “that the attachment behavior system affects the caregiving system, making it likely that heightening security will yield benefits in the realm of compassionate altruistic behavior.” Anxious people, however, are prone to wallow in personal distress in response to a needy person’s plight without that distress leading to their engaging in helping behavior.
The psychologists believe that their studies should affect the way that children are raised. “Child-rearing practices and behavior in close relationships that engender attachment insecurity are likely to undermine or distort the insecure person’s subsequent compassion and altruism,” they say. “If we wish to help children and adults develop their natural potential for compassion and altruism, one way to do so would be to help them achieve attachment security.”
Altruism is a word that social scientists often use when speaking about love for others. Auguste Comte apparently coined the word in the 19th century, and its barest meaning is its reference to “the other.” Some today use altruism to speak of other-regard. But the word has been assigned additional meanings by scientific, theological, and philosophical disciplines. We will return to some of these meanings later.
Some have defined altruism in such a way as to make acting altruistic virtually impossible. They define altruism as one acting to benefit another person with absolutely NO benefit to oneself. We might call this “absolute altruism.” Such a definition presupposes that existence is comprised of isolated selves and that persons are not essentially related to others. And this definition eliminates as altruistic any action that might provide a sense of self-satisfaction or bring reward in the afterlife. Because so many acknowledge that helping others brings a sense of self-satisfaction or reciprocal benefit and so many religious people believe that God rewards helpfulness in some way, absolute altruism seems unattainable.
Social scientist C. Daniel Batson’s landmark book, The Altruism Question: Toward a Social-Psychological Answer, brings together a number of quantitative studies. Highlighted in the book is his own research attempting to answer this question: Could it be that we are capable of having another person’s welfare as an ultimate goal and that not all of our efforts are directed toward looking out for ourselves?[14]
Batson defines altruism as “a motivational state with the ultimate goal of increasing another’s welfare.”[15] This definition makes altruism’s measuring stick the actor’s primary motives to increase the welfare of another. If the actor’s ultimate goal is to increase another’s welfare, the actor is altruistic – even if the actor also benefits in some way. Altruism so understood does not require, but may include, self-sacrifice. Moving the discussion from measuring consequences to assessing primary motives allows Batson to reject absolute altruism and investigate what I call “primary motive altruism.”
Batson addresses what we all know from our experience. That is, not every person who seeks to relieve another’s need is acting with primary motives that are altruistic. It could be, for instance, that the helper’s primary motive is to gain social and/or self rewards. Or the helper’s primary motive may be to avoid penalties. Or a helper’s primary motive may be to reduce his or her own feelings of personal distress.
The hypothesis Batson seeks to test in his research is his claim that feeling empathy for the person in need evokes motivation to help in which these benefits to self are not the primary goal of helping. To test this hypothesis, Batson created various situations in which he could manipulate the factors that indicate whether one’s primary motives are egoistic or altruistic. He and others have done approximately such twenty-five studies. In these studies, Batson and other researchers have discovered no clear support for any of the egoistic explanations that one’s primary motive for helping others is some benefit to the self. The studies support, instead, the hypothesis that those who strongly empathize with someone in need will sometimes act with the well-being of that other as their primary motive. These quantitative studies provide valuable data to social scientific love research.
A central feature of Batson’s important research is his manipulation of laboratory environments to gauge the motives of experiment participants in controlled situations. Others suggest, however, that research on human love should focus on the kind of person that acts lovingly, not on particular actions analyzed in controlled experiments. In particular, say some, social scientists would do well to study those whose behavior emerges from a loving personality or character. Loving persons are the most fitting examples for scientific research. And this research is best done by examining expressions of love in day-to-day life outside the laboratory.
Sociologist Samuel Oliner and his wife Pearl have collected real-world data and proposed hypotheses related to what they call “the altruistic personality.” Their research is focused upon interviews of those who rescued Jews in Nazi Europe during World War II. This research is highly suggestive of what kind of person acts lovingly and what might influence humans to develop loving personalities.
The Oliners and their assistants interviewed almost 700 persons who lived in several countries in Nazi-occupied Europe. Those interviewed included 406 individuals who had rescued Jews, 126 individuals who chosen not to rescue Jews, and 150 Jewish survivors. Most rescuers helped individuals of a different culture, ethnicity, and religious persuasion. Nonrescuers were included in the study to address how the attributes rescuers and nonrescuers differ.
The Oliners provide numerous first-hand accounts of those who risked their lives rescuing Jews in their book, The Altruistic Personality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe. The following account given by a Dutch rescuer serves as an example of these testimonials:
The Germans came and took a look at our house. They told us we had to take in a German couple who were living on the coast. We were worried because they would find out we were keeping Jewish people. They took the living room, bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen upstairs. Slowly they found out the truth.
One day we had soup on the kitchen stove. The German woman came downstairs and lifted the lid to see what was in the pot. Willy – the Jewish guy – saw that. He said, “It’s not ladylike to lift the lid from the pot.” I told him, “Be careful what you say; don’t make trouble!”
I had the feeling something would happen. I told my husband, “Let’s go away, let’s find a place,” but he said, “You’re crazy!” But I had a feeling. My husband should have listened to me.
This woman, the German lady, went to the police. She told them we had a Jew in hiding. She said, “I would like to have the Jew taken away from there, but don’t do anything to the people.” She was referring to us. She thought the police were safe. But the guy she spoke to worked for the NSB, the Nazis. She didn’t know that.
It was four o’clock on a clear Sunday afternoon. My husband had just come home from taking our little girl on a sled ride. He was home just ten minutes when the Gestapo came – with a dog. The dog ran upstairs, and there was shooting. My little girl was crying because her Daddy was screaming. I took my little girl and ran out the door. The dog smelled out the hiding place. My husband wouldn’t say anything, so they set the dog on him. It bit off his hand. They shot my husband and one of the Jews.[16]
This Dutch rescuer and her husband knew the great risk associated with helping Jews. And yet they chose to take this risk – at their own peril.
In their book, The Altruistic Personality, the Oliners present hundreds of stories of altruistic rescuers. The risks these people took for the well-being of others were often astounding. These accounts lead naturally to the question, Why did some people in Nazi Europe choose to risk their lives in their effort to help Jews? Or to put the question more generally, Why do some people sometimes act altruistically and others do not?
According to the Oliners, those who consistently act altruistically have an altruistic personality. When the Oliners say that people have altruistic personalities, however, they do not mean that these people always act altruistically. Rather, they mean that some people are more likely than others to make altruistic decisions.[17]
The Oliners speculate that people who see themselves as closely related to others are more likely to act for the good of others at some cost to themselves. “What distinguished rescuers,” say the Oliners, “was not their lack of concern with self, external approval, or achievement, but rather their capacity for extensive relationships – their stronger sense of attachment to others and their feeling of responsibility for the welfare of others, including those outside their immediate familial or communal circles.”[18] Most altruistic rescuers, say the Oliners, developed this sense of deep relatedness to others during childhood.
A person’s identification with religion was, according to the Oliner’s research, not strongly related to whether or not that person chose to rescue Jews. However, the way in which one interpreted their religious teaching and commitment did influence their tendency to help. Those who believed that religion instructed them to care for all humans were more likely to rescue Jewish victims.
The Oliners conclude that those who rescued Jews were ordinary people. “What distinguished them [from nonrescuers and bystanders] were their connections with others in relationships of commitment and care. It is out of such relationships that they became aware of what was occurring around them and mustered their human and material resources to relieve the pain…. They remind us that courage … is available to all through the virtues of connectedness, commitment, and the quality of relationships developed in ordinary human interactions.”[19]
Biological Sciences
We turn from the human social sciences to the natural science of sociobiology. In sociobiology, much research and many theories are offered that influence how we might think about love as the way in which we might live, live well, and live better. The discussion of love in sociobiology is typically framed in terms of altruism and egoism, rather than care, compassion, or virtue.
When sociobiologists talk about altruism and egoism, they typically have in mind something very different than what human science researchers have in mind. Earlier we noted that social scientist Daniel Batson defines altruism as a motivational state with the primary goal of increasing another’s welfare. For sociobiologists, however, motives have very little if anything to do with altruism. Sociobiologists define altruism as an organism’s reproductive success, especially in terms of passing along that organism’s genetic heritage.
Although written thirty years ago, Richard Dawkin’s little book, The Selfish Gene, continues to exert influence and receive extensive criticism in the contemporary sociobiology debate on altruism. Dawkins argues that humans are machines created by their genes, and humans are the survival machines that carry these genes. The selfish gene acts in self-interested ways to ensure its continued influence in future bodies.
The survival of genes into future generations depends on the efficiency of the passive bodies in which they live and helped to build. “The genes are master programmers,” says Dawkins, “and they are programming for their lives. They are judged according to the success of their programs in copying with all the hazards that life throws at their survival machines, and the judge is the ruthless judge of the court of survival.” (ch. 4)
Dawkins admits that genes might act in ways that seem unselfish in some circumstances. He accepts, for instance, the kin selection hypothesis that sometimes organism’s will act for the good of another whose genetic structure is similar. The more genetically similar the other may be, the more likely the gene will act self-sacrificially to benefit that related other. For instance, the altruism of parents for their young is explained by the fact that parents and their children share so much in common genetically. A mother, says Dawkins, is “a machine programmed to do everything in its power to propagate copies of the genes which ride inside it.” (ch. 8)
As I mentioned earlier, many criticize Dawkins‘s theories in The Selfish Gene. Perhaps the most common criticism is that Dawkins should not use the word “selfish” in relation to genes. The word implies that genes have motives. While Dawkins admits that genes do not have motives, he uses language throughout the book that suggests such. Others have argued that Dawkins places too much emphasis upon the power of the genes. His gene-centered approach allows little or no room for other selective forces and influences in evolution.
The theory in evolutionary biology receiving the most attention in recent years was set forth by Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson in a 1998 book they titled, Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior. Sober, a philosopher, and Wilson, a biologist, revived multi-level selection theory. Among other things, the theory claims that genes are not the only selective force in evolution. Specifically, the authors suggest that group-selection provides an explanation for why some act self-sacrificially for those to whom they are not closely related genetically.
Group selection theory says that altruists thrive as a group when in competition with groups composed of selfish individuals. “To be sufficient,” argue Sober and Wilson, “the differential fitness of groups (the force favoring the altruist) must be strong enough to counter the differential fitness of individuals within groups (the force favoring the selfish types” (1998, p. 26). Group-selection theory goes a long way in accounting for how altruism might emerge and succeed, and Wilson has recently employed the theory to account for altruism emergent in religious groups (2002). But the authors readily admit that group-selection theory also suggests that “niceness” can predominate within a group while “nastiness” prevails between groups (Sober and Wilson 1998, p. 9). From the group-selection perspective, altruism toward the outsider remains unexplained.
Research on nonhumans in recent years suggests that many creatures act cooperatively in their quest to live, live well, and live better. Primatologists such as Jane Goodall, Christopher Boehm, and Frans DeWaal have shown that nonhuman primates act in sophisticated ways to live better in community with others.
DeWaal’s research shows that primates act in ways that help themselves, their families, and their extended community experience greater well-being. For instance, chimpanzees cooperate by grooming each other, thereby eliminating insects that could harm. And chimpanzees console and soothe one another after fights and conflict. DeWaal notes, however, that “altruism is bound by what one can afford. The circle of morality reaches out farther and farther only if the health and survival of the innermost circles is secure.” (Good Natured, 213).
Lee Alan Dugatkin has compiled massive evidence in his book, Cooperation among Animals: An Evolutionary Perspective, that nonhumans work together to attain greater well-being. Dugatkin chronicles this fitness advantage of intra-group cooperative relatedness by offering chapters that convey scientific research on cooperation among fish, birds, nonprimate mammals, nonhuman primate mammals, and insects (1997, chs. 3-7).
In conclusion, much important research related to altruism, cooperation, and even love is emerging in the biological sciences. Part of my own work has been to point out some of the philosophical and theological presuppositions that underlie the theories being debated in this realm.
Cosmology
Before I briefly indicate the direction my own research in relation to what I’ve discussed already, I want to mention one important book for sciences related to cosmology. The book is coauthored by the theologian and philosopher Nancey Murphy and the mathematician and physicist George F. R. Ellis and titled, On the Moral Nature of the Universe: Theology, Cosmology, and Ethics. In it, Murphy and Ellis draw together research and hypotheses from a variety of disciplines to make a complex but convincing set of arguments about cosmology and love.
For some time, philosophers have occasionally made claims about the cosmological status of love. Teilhard de Chardin, the French anthropologist and philosopher, talked about love as an energy pulsing at the heart of the universe. C. S. Peirce argued similarly. Such claims about love and cosmology are not typically made by physicists today.
Murphy and Ellis begin their cosmological argument for love by noting that for some time, many physicists have professed the universe “fine-tuned” to enable the evolution of complex creatures like us. The laws of physics present at the Big Bang, together with the development of favorable environments during the evolution of the universe and planet, make possible the emergence and maintenance of complex life. Extremely small changes in any of the multiple cosmological conditions would apparently have eliminated the possibility of life altogether. These premises supply the basis of what is typically called the Anthropic Principle.
Of course, the question many ask when hearing that the cosmos is finely tuned is, “How did it get this way?” Unfortunately, one cannot design a scientific test to discover the ultimate causes in the creation of the universe. The scientific method is not capable of confirming theories about ultimate origins.
Many who believe that God exists have suggested that only divine action explains cosmological fine-tuning. Of course, the Anthropic Principle does not prove that God exists. But one might argue that a grand theory that includes a God-hypothesis might incorporate fine-tuning in its attempt to offer a more adequate explanation of existence. This is, in fact, the kind of argument Murphy and Ellis make.
The novelty of the authors’ argument is their proposal that the finely tuned cosmos tells us something about how God acts. If we suppose that God set up the laws of the universe in the beginning, these laws and God’s noninterference of them might tell us something about deity. After all, God apparently works in concert with nature, suggest the authors, never overriding or violating the very process that God created.
God acts in this way because the ultimate purpose of the universe is to make possible free moral responses to the creator. At the outset of creation, God decided to make a universe that includes freedom, and God voluntarily withholds divine power out of respect for that divinely bestowed liberty. The pair of authors sum up their argument by saying, “The fine-tuning of the cosmos can be taken up into a theology that sees God’s noncoercive respect for the freedom and integrity of creatures go all the way back to the initial design of an anthropic (intelligence- and freedom-producing) universe.”[20]
God’s cosmological acts – especially God’s refusal to override creaturely freedom – also tell us something important about the divine nature, say Murphy and Ellis. They tell us that God is love. God voluntarily became self-limited and continually renounces self-interest for the sake of the other, even when this self-renunciation causes God pain.
The evolution of life reveals that God’s loving creation of free beings can only be achieved through a slow, indirect, and painful route. The whole process of creation reflects, say the authors, the “noncoercive, persuasive, painstaking love all the way from the beginning to the end, from the least of God’s creatures to the most splendid.”[21]
My Own Work
I conclude this presentation with some brief words about my own work investigating issues related to love, science, and religion. Part of my work involves keeping scientists, scholars of religion, and philosophers aware of theories and hypotheses related to love. Many scholars of religion have no idea that scientists are busy researching issues related to love. Many scientists are unaware of religious and philosophical traditions that inform the questions and research agendas of science.
I serve as theologian for the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love. Stephen G. Post, professor of bioethics at the School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, is the institute’s president. The John Templeton Foundation provides the majority of the institute’s multi-million dollar funding. It, along with the Fetzer Institute and various smaller programs, has funded more than 40 major scientific research projects, sponsored conferences of varying sorts, and funded course competition programs to encourage teaching of love from religious and scientific perspectives. I have taken a lead in organizing and speaking at many of these conferences.
The second aspect of my own work entails my effort to offer a definition of love suitable for research in science, religion, and philosophy. Last May, I attended a meeting in Washington, D.C. as the theological consultant for about many major scientific research projects on love. The projects were interesting, but it quickly became apparent that researchers assumed diverse and sometimes contradictory notions of love. One leader stood and praised this variety, arguing that we don’t have to agree on a love definition. We can each have a different understanding.
While I do not think that any particular definition can be fully adequate to understanding love, I strongly disagree with this leader. I think that we need a definition of love. If scholars and researchers fail to define love clearly, the present surge in the scientific studies of love will fail to produce the positive results that they otherwise might. When we are not clear about what love is, it becomes difficult to judge the value or contribution of any particular investigation.
My recent work involves offering and defending a definition of love adequate for those doing research in the love-and-science symbiosis. My hope is this definition will be helpful to those outside the academy as well. My own definition of love is this: To love is to act intentionally, in sympathetic response to others (including God), to promote overall well-being.[22]
Analysis of this definition leads to a third aspect of my own work: considering how the fundamental aspects of love are influenced by scientific, religious, and philosophical theories. For instance, some religious scholars have suggested that love is primarily if not exclusively a matter of intention. For them, conditions and environment play little or no role in love. For some theologians, creatures are incapable of expressing love at all. Only God expresses love and any loving actions we see in creatures is really God acting unilaterally through these creatures. For some scientists, by contrast, love is primarily if not exclusively a matter of conditions and environment. For them, love can be explained entirely by neural substrates, genes, or societal conditioning. And yet for others, love has nothing inherently to do with well-being and everything to do with mere desire or sexuality. Part of my work is helping the many participants in the love, religion, and science conversation reconsider what seem to me to be inadequate understandings of the elements of love.
Finally, much of my own work has a decidedly religious tone. As someone who believes that the most plausible explanation for existence requires the existence of God, part of my work is in offering hypotheses related to God’s role in inspiring creatures to live, live well, and to live better.
My hypothesis is that God always loves; God is love, as the writer of 1 John in the Christian scriptures puts it. God desires increases in overall well-being.
Personal experiences and the research from science noted above indicate that love requires relations. Love involves intentional responses to others. Consequently, I suppose that God is related to all things and has always been related to some world or another. In the speculation that God has always been related to some world or another, I agree with the teachings of Alfred North Whitehead and others in process theology. And in speculating that there has always been some world, I conform to the views of physicists such as Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University and Neil Turok of Cambridge University. Steinhardt and Turok contend that space and time have always existed in some form. Using developments in superstring theory, they say that the Big Bang of our universe is a bridge to a pre-existing universe. Creation undergoes an eternal succession of universes, with possibly trillions of years of evolution in each. Gravity and the transition from Big Crunch to Big Bang characterize an everlasting succession of universes.[23]
Among other things, the claim that the God of everlasting love has always been related to other nondivine beings allows me to overcome what I believe is a deficiency in the Murphy/Ellis proposal I addressed earlier. The advantage of believing that God has always been related to some universe permits me to discard the idea that God has ever coerced others. The creation of this universe did not entail divine coercion. In my hypothesis, noncoercion is an essential feature of how God lovingly relates to creation. Self-giving and creating love is part of God’s very nature, and God necessarily grants freedom to creatures. God relates lovingly to all creatures by inevitably granting freedom to everyone capable of so acting. As God provides freedom to each agent, each responds to the varied choices each faces. This means that it makes no sense to suggest that God could fail to provide freedom to creatures. In other words, God’s essential love relations with the cosmos entails that God cannot fail to offer, withdraw, or override the power for freedom that creatures require in their moment-by-moment life decisions.[24] This theological modification gets God off the problem of evil hook. God cannot be held culpable for failing to prevent genuine evils. God cannot be culpable, because God essentially and lovingly relates to all creatures by providing them with power for free choices. God could no more choose to cease providing freedom to others than to choose to cease existing. The genuine evil of the world results from debilitating choices free creatures make. Most importantly, the God not capable of coercion cannot be held culpable for failing to prevent genuine evil. It makes no sense to claim, “God is love,” if a God capable of coercion has the power to prevent genuine evils and yet fails to do so. But the God hypothesis that I am suggesting entails God’s incessant bestowal of freedom to others and thereby exonerates God from the charge of not deterring evil.
For more from the author Thomas Jay Oord, see his website https://thomasjayoord.com or the Center for Open and Relational Theology https://c4ort.com
Sorokin, The Ways and Power of Love, xii. ↑
Barry Johnson, in his authoritative biography, Pitirim A. Sorokin: An Intellectual Biography, tells of an anonymous note found in the records kept by Eli Lilly. The note, apparently written by Lilly, reads: “One of constantly interesting things about Sorokin is that he is an intellectual genius, who has arrived at truth about love and altruism via this route and has wound up his life a bitter old man with no young disciples. His interpreters are all old men, and as he once told me, ‘Sorokin will be rediscovered a 100 years hence—‘” (Lawrence, Ks.: University of Kansas Press, 1995), 268. ↑
Thomas Jay Oord, Science of Love: The Wisdom of Well-Being (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation, 2004). ↑
Martin E. P. Seligman, “Positive Psychology, Positive Prevention, and Positive Therapy,” Handbook of Positive Psychology, C. R. Snyder and Shane J. Lopez, eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 4. ↑
Seligman, “Positive Psychology, Positive Prevention, and Positive Therapy,” 3. ↑
Seligman, “Positive Psychology, Positive Prevention, and Positive Therapy,” 4. ↑
See especially the work of Robert D. Enright, Julie Exline, Michael E. McCullough, Stephen J. Sandage, Everett L. Worthington. ↑
See especially the work of Jennifer S. Cheavens, Shane J. Lopez, Diane McDermott, and C. Richard Snyder. ↑
See especially the work of Barbara Fredrickson. ↑
See especially the work of Robert A. Emmons. ↑
See especially the work of Charles S. Carver, Christopher Peterson, Michael F. Scheier, and Martin E. P. Seligman. ↑
Along with their books, see their classic essay: Ainsworth, M. D. S., & Bowlby, J. “An ethological approach to child development,” American Psychologist, 46 (1991) 333-341. ↑
See, John Bowlby, Attachment and Loss: Vol. 1. Attachment. (New York: Basic Books, 1969). ↑
Ibid., vii. ↑
Ibid., 6. ↑
Ibid., 74-75. ↑
Ibid., 12. ↑
Ibid., 249. ↑
Ibid., 260. ↑
Nancey Murphy and George F. R. Ellis, On the Moral Nature of the Universe: Theology, Cosmology, and Ethics (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 249. ↑
Ibid., 247. ↑
Paul J. Steinhardt and Neil Turok, “A Cyclic Model of the Universe,” Science. 296 (May 24, 2002), 1436-1439. ↑
Process theologians champion this point. See for instance, David Ray Griffin, God, Power, and Evil: A Process Theodicy. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976). ↑