The Evolving Face of God as Creator: Early Ninteenth-Century Traditionalist and Accommodationist Theological Responses in British Religious Thought to Paleonatural Evil in the Fossil Record
Authors:   ,   Andrews University, Ury Thane 
Published: May 2023

The Topic From the early Reformation through the early 1800s, Gen 1-11 was consensually understood as providing a perspicacious, historical account of how God brought the world into being. Tenets of belief included six literal 24-hour days of creation and a catastrophic global Flood, and most often the conviction that Gen 1:31 implies that no evil of any type existed prior to the Fall. New geological interpretations in the early nineteenth century, however, pointed toward an earth history that seemed anything but very good, instead suggesting a harsh concatenation of deep-time prelapsarian pain, struggle, destruction of the weak, predation, diseases, plagues, catastrophic mass extinctions, and death in the subrational creation. Thus, a new theodical dimension arose which the Church had not had to address prior to this time; i.e., paleonatural evil, as posited by a deep-time interpretation of the fossiliferous portions of the geologic column. If those entities which are commonly labeled as natural evil are deciphered to have existed long before the arrival of humanity (and thus sharing no causal nexus with original sin), then believers would have to justify why they see the Creator as good in light of concomitants in His handiwork which seem prima facie so counter-intuitive to how an omnibenevolent and omnipotent Creator might reasonably be expected to create. The Purpose Thus, in the early nineteenth century, questions arose as to the compatibility of paleonatural evil with Gen 1-11 and an omnipotent, omnibenevolent Creator. To what extent would embracing an "evolver-God" impact the primary attributes of God such as omnibenevolence? Would traditional understandings of omnibenevolence need to be recalibrated to comport with a deep-time interpretation of the fossil record? Who were the first believers to recognize this as a potential theodicy issue, and how did they respond? The purpose of this study is to assess the theodicies of some the first thinkers to recognize and respond to the problem of paleonatural evil. The Sources Give this context this dissertation seeks to discover, codify, analyze, and assess the theodical formulations of two groups of early nineteenth-century British groups; i.e., the traditionalists and accommodationists. Do they see natural evil as intrusive or non-intrusive to the original created order? If the Fall happened in space and time, to what extent did it impact the created order? Contrasting accounts of divine creative method, between the traditionalists and accommodationists, provide conceptual perspectives by which to trace the evolving face of God (i.e., to detect a changing understanding of His beneficence from the period of the Reformation to the early nineteenth century). Further, an attempt is made to (1) adjudicate whether the theodicy of the traditionalists or accommodationists is more compatible with the early Protestant understandings of God’s beneficence as revealed through His method of creation; and (2) to surmise how the early nineteenth-century dialectic between these groups can inform the same debate in the third millennium, which, in the wake of two additional centuries of geological discoveries, will continue to amplify the dialogue on paleonatural evil. Conclusion Traditionalists and accommodationists, past and present, broach the problem of paleonatural evil quite differently. The present study highlights ten areas of contrast between these two groups of theists, perhaps the most important being how each deals with the question of what omnibenevolence and a very good created order mean if nature has been read in tooth and claw for deep time. When pondering the God of the Lagerstatten, is one likely to see a paternal, caring, loving Creator?-the same omnibenvoient Creator revered by the early Reformers? Considering the staggering levels of paleonatural evil yet to be revealed, it must be asked what concessions, if any, would be exacted of divine benevolence in order to preserve an all-loving God? Once the time-honored perspicuity of the Genesis account is allowed to be recalibrated by an extra-biblical philosophical yardstick, is Evangelicalism setting a precedent for incremental accommodations to subsequent edicts of scientism? If Evangelicals accept one inch of such a source as ultimate authority, what coherent rationale can be given for not going further?