Dancing with the Sacred: Evolution, Ecology, and God

Currents in Theology and Mission, April, 2005 by Antje Jackelen

Dancing with the Sacred: Evolution, Ecology, and God. By Karl E. Peters. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2002. x and 171 pages. Paper. $15.00.

Through eighteen short chapters this book takes the reader on a dance from the starting point, "Thinking about God in a New Way," via explorations of erring as divine (because creation takes place by making mistakes!), of our social-ecological selves and our possibilities of living in harmony with cruciform nature, to a celebration of the earth as a child of God and of humans as the evolved mind of the earth-child.

Peters, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Religion at Rollins College, Florida, as well as president of the Center for Advanced Study in Religion and Science and coeditor of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, is in a position of looking back on many years of experience at the interface of religion and science. The guiding question for his book is: How may scientific knowledge help me in my religious living?

The answer is a concept of God that rests on the Darwinian ideas of random variation and natural selection. Peters speaks of God as a creative process or creative event rather than the Creator--a process that includes the emergence of new possibilities in nature and the universe, in human history and culture as well as in personal living. His model exemplifies the turn from substance to relationality that is characteristic of much creative thinking nowadays. More poetically: God is like a dance (p. viii), or God is the music (p. 49). "By participating in the creative process we are dancing with the sacred" (p. viii).

It becomes very clear that a tribal God can no longer fulfil the role of a sacred center. Today, the sacred center needs to be the center of the entire universe as well as the center of our own lives. Peters's thoughts oscillate between a nonpersonal and a personal God. Although the support for a nonpersonal God is strong throughout the book, the personal image is not ruled out. On one hand, God is imagined as nonpersonal process. On the other hand, the divine may be described as "self-breathing; it has warmth or energy ...; it has desire" (p. 32)--a rather personal concept. God is encountered both in the creative potential of nature in the largest sense and in what Peters calls "our own sacred center."

The scientific, evolutionary picture that so powerfully states our kinship with the rest of the natural world, together with an understanding of our personal lives as dancing with the sacred, opens for Peters a hopeful way of dealing successfully with the crises we are facing, especially the ecological crisis. Thinking in terms of "webs of reality" allows for both an affirmation of the individual self and the transcendence of that self. Although the concept of an immortal, substantive soul cannot be maintained, there is still room for "big selves" and "a social-ecological-evolutionary kind of immortality as part of the fabric of an evolving universe" (p. 73).

Can we, in this theological ecology, continue to speak about living in accordance with the will of God? Yes, we can, according to Peters: by living within long-established requirements of nature and culture and by exploring the boundaries--even at risk!--we live in harmony with the sacred. The problem of evil is treated both in general under the aspect of cruciform nature and in particular as the walk "From Life to Love" (chap. 15). Especially in this chapter, but also in many other places, Peters becomes very personal. He invites readers to share his experiences of life and death and to be his partner in reflecting over them within a scientific and religious worldview.

The reader who looks for a distinct and clear-cut position to agree or disagree with may feel disappointed. There is a lot of both-and in this book. The position presented may look like a quest for spirituality shaped by a mixture of scientific secularism, Buddhist contentedness, and American Puritan self-control and self-leadership.

I appreciate the openness and plasticity of the dance metaphor. It is brilliant in its aesthetics but also yearning for interpretation. The metaphor itself does not guarantee us a dance of life for the ecological well-being of what we can experience as God's creation. It may as well be a dance of death. It may be a dance around the golden calf (Exodus 32) or the dance of self-glorification expressing utter contempt of weakness (F. Nietzsche in his dance-song to the Mistral in the appendix of The Gay Science). Embracing chaos in ourselves and around us does not automatically give rise to a dancing star.

This book touched me in several ways. I experienced its power not in its argument; the book is more a plea than an argument. Rather than being compelling, Peters invites us to probe the height, depth, and breadth of thinking about God in an age of science. He is offering some maps rather than giving directions. Even where I tend to disagree with the author, I still feel inspired and safe to ask myself: But what if? His personal honesty and his simplicity (without becoming simplistic) creates an open space where it feels good and right to breathe, think, and love.