Creator God, Evolving World

Book excerpt: Cynthia Crysdale and Neil Ormerod here present a robust theology of God in light of supposed tensions between Christian belief and evolutionary science. Those who pit faith in an almighty and unchanging God over against a world in which chance is operative have it wrong on several accounts, they insist. Creator God, Evolving World clarifies a number of confused assumptions in an effort to redeem chance as an intelligible force interacting with stable patterns in nature. A proper conception of probabilities and regularities in the world's unfolding reveals neither random chaos nor a predetermined blueprint but a view of the universe as the fruit of both chance and necessity. By clarifying terms often used imprecisely in both scientific and theological discourse, the authors make the case that the role of chance in evolution neither mitigates God's radical otherness from creation nor challenges the efficacy of God's providence in the world.