Chaos Theory by Sjoerd L. Bonting (Novalis, 14.50 euro)
‘In the beginning, when God created the heaven and the earth …’. The opening chapters of Genesis are often portrayed nowadays as a battleground in some ongoing war between religion and science, seen at its most unedifying in the recent attempts in the US to block the teaching of evolutionary biology in schools and colleges. But for those of us who think the engagement should be less of a battle and more of a mutually enriching debate, Genesis is fertile territory indeed.
Can evolution, the Big Bang and the Christian doctrine of a Creator God exist happily side by side? Many scientist-theologians, from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin through Wolfhart Pannenberg to John Polkinghorne, have insisted that they can – and Sjoerd L. Bonting, a former professor of biochemistry turned Anglican clergyman, has developed his own take on Creation theology which he calls ‘chaos theology’.
In the beginning, according to Bonting, there was a ‘formless void’. Rather than God pulling the universe out of a hat in six days flat, we should think of God beginning a process of ordering the chaos – a process which continues right up to the present day.
Bonting’s suggestion has several appealing aspects. It offers a new way of thinking about evolution and cosmology. It’s happy to accept the mystery of Creation that Genesis celebrates with such panache. (Science, as Bonting points out, also accepts an initial mystery: Big Bang theories begin, not at the moment of the bang itself, but one ten million trillion trillion trillionths of a second afterwards.) Chaos theology also offers an intriguing take on a problem that has bedevilled theologians for centuries - namely, if God created everything, why did He create the bad stuff? Because, Bonting answers, God didn’t create it. It was always there, and it erupts every now and again in the form of disease, natural disaster and so forth.
Chaos Theology is a short book, and a lively one. Because it’s so short, however, scientific concepts are occasionally left wriggling around in a sort of critical quantum vacuum – chaos theory and entropy, to take just two examples, aren’t properly pinned down. At times Bonting ventures perilously close to the old heresies of Gnosticism and Manicheanism; and while his commentary on the Genesis texts is engaging and informed, it’s nothing like as impressive as the work of the Genesis expert Claus Westermann.
Nevertheless he has some intriguing new things to say on a perennially interesting topic, and a healthy respect for both religion and science. And for those of us who believe Creation theology is too valuable to be left to extremists and Creationists, that’s not a bad place to begin.
Arminta Wallace
