A John Haught Reader Quotes

“God forgoes any annihilating “presence” to or compelling of the world in order, paradoxically, to be nearer to it. What is “withdrawn” is not at all God’s “loving kindness” or God’s intimate involvement with the world, but instead any coercive or obtrusive presence that might suppress the autonomy of the beloved. God is present in the mode of “hiddenness,” not abdication.”
― John F. Haught, A John Haught Reader: Essential Writings on Science and Faith

“The doctrine of grace claims that God loves the world and all of its various elements fully and unconditionally. By definition, however, love does not absorb, annihilate, or force itself upon the beloved.”
― John F. Haught, A John Haught Reader: Essential Writings on Science and Faith

“finite world could “adapt” to an infinite source of love only by a process of gradual expansion and ongoing self-transcendence,”
― John F. Haught, A John Haught Reader: Essential Writings on Science and Faith

“According to Rahner, the central content of Christian faith is that the infinite mystery of God pours itself generously, fully, and without reservation into the creation. Put in simpler terms, the infinite gives itself away to the finite.”
― John F. Haught, A John Haught Reader: Essential Writings on Science and Faith

“evolutionary science has provided theology with a great opportunity to enlarge upon the ancient religious intuition—expressed so movingly by Saint Paul—that the entirety of creation “groans” for ultimate fulfillment (Rom 8:22). After Darwin, we may speak more assuredly than ever about the inseparability of cosmic and human destiny.”
― John F. Haught, A John Haught Reader: Essential Writings on Science and Faith

“To say that suffering is a logical possibility in an evolving universe, however, is not to claim that it is morally tolerable. For this reason, faith and theology cry out for the completion of creation (creatio nova).”
― John F. Haught, A John Haught Reader: Essential Writings on Science and Faith

“we would have to conclude that an initial creation, one already finished and perfected from the beginning, could not be a creation truly distinct from its creator. Such a “world” would simply be an appendage of God, not a world unto itself; nor could God conceivably transcend such a world. It would be a world without internal self-coherence, a world without freedom or a future, and, above all, a world devoid of life. By definition, living beings must continually transcend, or go beyond, themselves.”
― John F. Haught, A John Haught Reader: Essential Writings on Science and Faith

“the fact of evolution now allows theology to realize more palpably than ever that creation is not just an “original” but also an ongoing and constantly new reality. In an evolving cosmos, creation is still happening, no less in the present than “in the beginning.”
― John F. Haught, A John Haught Reader: Essential Writings on Science and Faith

“In other words, rather than viewing evolution simply as a dangerous challenge that deserves an apologetic response, evolutionary theology discerns in evolution a most illuminating context for our thinking about God today.”
― John F. Haught, A John Haught Reader: Essential Writings on Science and Faith

“Evolutionary theology, unlike natural theology, does not search for definitive footprints of the divine in nature. It opposes “intelligent design,” not only because it is scientifically useless but also because such a notion is entirely too lifeless to capture the dynamic and disturbing way in which the God of biblical religion interacts with the world.”
― John F. Haught, A John Haught Reader: Essential Writings on Science and Faith

“Those who prefer simple stories with fairy-tale endings will not relish the new narrative of life’s troubled but creative journey here on Earth. If they are pious, they may plug up their ears when scientists speak and if they are skeptics, such as Dawkins and Dennett, they will flourish the facts of evolution before us as the definitive proof of religion’s intellectual emptiness. But we shall see that Darwin’s portrayal of the way the universe works actually invites us to think about God, once again, in a meaningful and truly inspiriting way.”
― John F. Haught, A John Haught Reader: Essential Writings on Science and Faith

“the evolution of the cosmos is more than just “compatible” with theism. Faith in a God of self-giving love, it would not be too much to say, actually anticipates an evolving universe. It would be very difficult for us to reconcile the religious teaching about God’s infinite love with any other kind of cosmos.”
― John F. Haught, A John Haught Reader: Essential Writings on Science and Faith

“If God were in total control of things, we might not expect the weird organisms of the Cambrian explosion, the later dinosaurs and reptiles, or the many other wild creatures that seem so alien to us. We would want our divine magician to build the world along the lines of our own narrowly human sense of clean perfection. But what a pallid and impoverished world that would be. It would lack all of the drama, diversity, adventure, and intense beauty that evolution has produced. It might have a listless harmony to it, but it would have none of the novelty, contrast, danger, upheavals, and grandeur that evolution has brought about over billions of years.”
― John F. Haught, A John Haught Reader: Essential Writings on Science and Faith

“a God of love influences the world in a persuasive rather than coercive way and this is why chance and evolution occur.”
― John F. Haught, A John Haught Reader: Essential Writings on Science and Faith

“In their relative freedom from divine coercion, some of the world’s evolutionary experiments may work and others may not. But divine love does not interfere. It risks allowing the cosmos to exist in relative liberty. In the evolution of life, the world’s inherent quality of being uncompelled manifests itself in the form of the random variations or genetic mutations that comprise the raw material of evolution. Thus a certain amount of chance is not at all opposed to the idea of God.”
― John F. Haught, A John Haught Reader: Essential Writings on Science and Faith

“We need to do more than just show that evolution does not contradict theism. Evolution, in our judgment, may very well be the most appropriate framework we have ever had through which to express the true meaning of our religious convictions. Evolutionary science helps deepen our understanding not only of the cosmos but also of God.”
― John F. Haught, A John Haught Reader: Essential Writings on Science and Faith

“Nature itself provides evidence neither for nor against God’s existence. Something so momentous as the reality of God can hardly be decided by a superficial scientific deciphering of the natural world. Hence we are in no way troubled by evolutionary theory.”
― John F. Haught, A John Haught Reader: Essential Writings on Science and Faith

“Creationists simply assume that the Bible is scientifically accurate, while evolutionists think of it as scientifically inaccurate. Both sides, however, treat it as though its intention were to give us scientific understanding. One side (creationism) views it as good science; the other (evolutionary skepticism) sees it as bad. But both implicitly conflate science with the Bible, an alliance that inevitably leads to conflict.”
― John F. Haught, A John Haught Reader: Essential Writings on Science and Faith

“Scientists can be theists, in other words, because their discipline thrives on the conviction that the world does finally make sense.”
― John F. Haught, A John Haught Reader: Essential Writings on Science and Faith

“Religion exists because our trust in reality is subject to constant erosion by the pain, tragedy, hostility, absurdity, and death with which the world confronts us.”
― John F. Haught, A John Haught Reader: Essential Writings on Science and Faith

“science has nothing to lose—and everything to gain—by rooting itself in religion’s fundamental premise that reality is intelligible or that the universe is grounded in an ultimately trustworthy reality, one to which the followers of Moses, Jesus and Muhammad give the name “God.”
― John F. Haught, A John Haught Reader: Essential Writings on Science and Faith

“Science and religion make meaningful contact with each other, especially when they decide to play by the rules of what we are calling critical realism. Accordingly, good science hopes more or less to approximate the way things are, but it is always willing to be critical of its contemporary ways of representing the world. And in the case of religion, the same critical realism allows that though our religious symbols and ideas need constant correction, they may nonetheless reflect—in an always limited way—a Transcendent Reality which is truly “there” and which always necessarily transcends our subjective narrowness.”
― John F. Haught, A John Haught Reader: Essential Writings on Science and Faith

“The authentic religious attitude, then, is a steadfast conviction that the future is open and that an incalculable fulfillment awaits the entire cosmos.”
― John F. Haught, A John Haught Reader: Essential Writings on Science and Faith

“By itself, science cannot justify the spontaneous trust you have placed in your own mind, even as you seek to arrive at scientific truth. To justify your implicit trust in the possibility of arriving at truth, you will need to look for a wider and deeper understanding of the universe, a more expansive worldview than naturalism has to offer. My proposal is that your own mind’s spontaneous and persistent trust in the possibility of reaching truth is itself a hint that the physical universe, at least as naturalism conceives it, is only a small fragment of all that is, all there ever was, and all there ever will be.”
― John F. Haught, A John Haught Reader: Essential Writings on Science and Faith

“Nuance without harmony is chaos and harmony without nuance is monotony.”
― John F. Haught, A John Haught Reader: Essential Writings on Science and Faith

“Another way to think about God, therefore, is as the horizon of ultimate beauty toward which you are irresistibly drawn.”
― John F. Haught, A John Haught Reader: Essential Writings on Science and Faith

“And if the fullness of God’s being is essentially future, then realistic religion consists in the hopeful and imaginative quest for this future.”
― John F. Haught, A John Haught Reader: Essential Writings on Science and Faith

“Hoping is not an escape from reality, nor is it as easy as its critics insist.29 Hoping is an attitude capable of living tolerantly with the absence of God.”
― John F. Haught, A John Haught Reader: Essential Writings on Science and Faith

“Hoping is an openness to the breaking in of what is radically new and unanticipated. Wishing, on the other hand, is the illusory extension into the future of what we want at the present moment.28 Wishing is not an openness to the future but rather is oriented entirely from the present. In order to hope, on the other hand, we need to relativize our wishing and open ourselves to the prospect of being surprised by the radically new.”
― John F. Haught, A John Haught Reader: Essential Writings on Science and Faith

“Science is fixed on the present or past; it is incapable of dealing with the future since there is no way it can bring the dimension of the yet-to-come under any sort of verificational control. Only imagination suffused with hope can bring the future within view.”
― John F. Haught, A John Haught Reader: Essential Writings on Science and Faith