“Faith, Science, & Suffering” with Philip Clayton
Show Notes:
Can science and faith exist together? If God created the world and then created people in God’s own image, why do we experience suffering? How do we reconcile the hard facts of science with the miraculous story of God’s own faithfulness and actions in the world? These are difficult but not impossible topics to explore, and today’s guest offers us a way into those hard conversations.
Dr. Philip Clayton is Professor Emeritus at Claremont School of Theology, as well as the former Ingraham Chair, where he directed the PhD program in comparative theologies and philosophies. He earned a joint PhD from Yale in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of religion. He is the author of more than two dozen books, including The Problem of God in Modern Thought and Religion and Science: The Basics.
Resources:
Learn more about Dr. Clayton on his website, philipclayton.net
Follow Dr. Clayton on Instagram or Facebook
Buy Dr. Clayton’s books online
Transcript:
Eddie Rester 00:00
Hi, I'm Eddie Rester.
Chris McAlilly 00:01
I'm Chris McAlilly. Welcome to The Weight. Today we're talking to Philip Clayton. Dr Clayton
spent the majority of his career as a professor and a writer at Claremont School of Theology.
He's written at the intersection of religion, science and theology. Today we have a wide ranging
conversation about matters really, of how God works and how God acts in a harsh and
sometimes brutal world.
Chris McAlilly 00:31
It was a great conversation, really, really, really unexpected. It was more than I thought it
would be. What were your takeaways, Eddie?
Eddie Rester 00:40
Well, I looked down at my watch, and I was like, Oh my gosh, we're at time. And it had, the
conversation went so fast. We cover everything from the intersection of science and religion
and the war that sometimes happens there, to how do you begin to understand faith in a world
that is real and gritty and at times broken. We talk about some scripture related to that, and
really just talk, I think, theology and life, and how theology really impacts how we see the
world, how we do ministry, how we help one another find hope. So this, really, for me, was just
an incredible conversation, hopeful conversation about hard things.
Chris McAlilly 01:27
Yeah, so his starting point in his own faith journey is in a kind of evangelical or charismatic
world, and then he comes to face kind of hard philosophical questions around how can God act
in a in a scientific world, and he doesn't end up in kind of atheistic position. He remains a theist.
He's deeply committed to his Christian faith. And then he talks about how he began to
understand ways of speaking of God's presence and action in a world where there are natural
laws that are regular and consistent.
Chris McAlilly 02:03
And where we land is a place, he'll talk about it, a powerful theology that is utterly realistic,
offers present hope, but also future, long-term hope. And so, yeah, I mean, I think if you've
wondered about kind of questions of suffering or evil, and you've wondered how the Christians
think about or speak about the presence of God in a world such as this, Dr Clayton maybe gives
you some language for that. And then beyond that, we talk about kind of how a deep theology
can help inform hopeful executive leadership in the world today. So great conversation. Yeah,
it's good.
Eddie Rester 02:45
I think you're going to enjoy it. If you feel like your faith is crashing on the rocks and it can't
hold up to the suffering, or if you know somebody in that world right now, this is a great
conversation for them. I think some great resources. So like it. Share it. Let us know what you
think.
Chris McAlilly 03:03
[INTRO] Leadership today demands more than technical expertise. It requires deep wisdom to
navigate the complexity of a turbulent world, courage to reimagine broken systems, and
unwarranted hope to inspire durable change.
Eddie Rester 03:20
As Christ-centered leaders in churches, nonprofits, the academy, and the marketplace, we all
carry the weight of cultivating communities that reflect God's kingdom in a fragmented world.
Chris McAlilly 03:31
But this weight wasn't meant to be carried alone. The Christian tradition offers us centuries of
wisdom if we have the humility to listen and learn from diverse voices.
Eddie Rester 03:41
That's why The Weight exists: to create space for the conversations that challenge our
assumptions, deepen our thinking, and renew our spiritual imagination.
Chris McAlilly 03:51
Faithful leadership in our time requires both conviction and curiosity, rootedness in tradition,
and responsiveness to a changing world.
Eddie Rester 03:59
So whether you're leading a congregation, raising a family, teaching students, running a
nonprofit, or bringing faith into your business, join us as we explore the depth and richness of
Christ-centered leadership today. Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO]
Chris McAlilly 04:17
We're here today with Dr Philip Clayton. Dr Clayton, thanks for being with us today.
Philip Clayton 04:17
It's great to be on the podcast with you guys.
Chris McAlilly 04:20
Tell us a little bit about you, where you are, and kind of the scope of your work.
Philip Clayton 04:29
Well, I had a dramatic conversion to Christ in high school from an atheist family, and I just
assumed I would be pastoring a church. Went to a conservative evangelical college to prepare
for that, and then Fuller Seminary, and along the way, I had a really clear call to academics, in
particular to how as Christians in the world today, we deal with the scientific world around us.
And there were times when I struggled with my faith over that, but over a lot of years of
teaching at Claremont School of Theology and training pastors and listening to pastors and
church folk, and reading books about science and writing books, I came to a place where I think
we really can navigate this issue. But I'll just say I also think it's a hard one.
Eddie Rester 05:14
Yeah. One of my favorite folks who really has conversations about this is Francis Collins. He's
one of those folks who really has healthy conversations from the scientific side of the aisle. One
of the, I'm in a new office unpacking books, and I ran across Bart Ehrman's book. I'd bought it
years ago to read about suffering, because he comes from the actually suffering in science,
make it clear that there is no God. I mean, he comes down very clearly.
Eddie Rester 05:47
How do you begin to navigate that question of how, in this world, where science is so pervasive
healing, we've seeded that just to doctors, even the medical community, how do we begin to
pull the thread? How do we have that conversation? What's helpful?
Philip Clayton 06:06
Yeah, so if we could start with the realization that science and God can't ultimately be at
warfare, that the creator of the universe can't actually have created a universe that's only
understood through principles that make that God impossible. I mean, it sounds simplistic, but
that's kind of important. So if we can begin with that statement, which I think is a statement of
faith, but also a really reasonable thing to say, then we get to focus in on the details. So how
does God go about influencing the world, as scripture says God does, and as we experience in
our own lives, when science tells us a bunch of true things about the world?
Eddie Rester 06:54
I think about, I'm also thinking about Thomas Jefferson, because he, when he was reading
scripture, he edited out anything that seemed extraordinary, any healing story, anything that
really wasn't just a teaching of Jesus. He actually took scissors to a Bible, according to the
story. So I mean, what are some of those? How does that play out? Help me with that. How do
we help someone begin in that conversation?
Philip Clayton 07:28
Yeah, Eddie, I love your use of a really bold and disturbing example, because it already points
us toward positions in the middle, really just the opening few minutes of our discussion. So the
question is not, does God influence the world in any way, but how does God carry out that
influence? And as we head into the range of options, and I'm sure we'll explore them together, I
think that the first thing I want to say is we don't need to break communion with those who are
little bit to the left or a little bit to the right of us on the scale...
Philip Clayton 08:07
I come from a charismatic background, early in my faith, and I absolutely believe that miracles
are happening all around us. Natural law was being suspended all the time. I don't quite hold
that position today, but some of my brothers and sisters do. On the other hand, we're going to
meet some people who are pretty cautious about how they affirm divine action. Maybe they'll
just talk about a kind of influence or tug or push or lure, and I don't think we have to break
communion with those folks, either.
Chris McAlilly 08:40
Yeah, I think that it's helpful to just begin by saying God acts. We're not exactly sure how.
There are a range of ways of thinking about how God acts powerfully or personally. I think for
me, you know, one of the ways in which I've heard it stated is, you know, how do you get... Part
of it is grammatical, you know, how do you get to a place where you can say that God is the
actor, the subject of active verbs? You know, that becomes really one of the tensions that you
see, and you see it playing out in the scriptures, in the gospels, or in the Acts of the Apostles,
where you have testimonies of healing. You have stories of inner transformation. You have
prophetic words being spoken. You have spiritual gifts being offered.
Chris McAlilly 09:28
And you've mentioned, you know, maybe kind of lay out some of the options that are there. On
the one hand, you have someone who would really not think much about science. They would
want to stay with the Bible. They would want to stay with the kind of theological approach, you
know. What's positive about that view, or maybe what are some of the things that it's lacking?
Philip Clayton 09:57
The starting point when you read, say, the New Testament, but likewise for the Old Testament,
is that God directly steps in and changes the course of action of the world through direct
miraculous interventions. The woman was sick and was healed. The child was dead and was
healed. Lazarus was dead. So we have this, the really strong claims. And then there are those
who say, well, in today's world, all we can say is, kind of in a general way, God lures the world
towards God's self.
Philip Clayton 10:43
Actually, because this can get abstract, maybe a personal anecdote here would be helpful. I
was involved with some brilliant theologians and scientists and philosophers in a program done
by the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, a Christian organization thinking about
how theology and science work together, and the Vatican Observatory. And we got down to
exactly where in physics, would there be space for God to operate. There's a long story there,
but it turns out it's quantum indeterminacy in the collapse of the wave function, for your nerdy
scientific listeners.
Eddie Rester 11:25
Tha'ts right, yeah.
Philip Clayton 11:27
And then, well, could that influence evolution as a whole? And one volume that we published
said, yes, it could. And I would go back and forth on this sort of skeptical seesaw. One day at
said, yes, it could. And I would go back and forth on this sort of skeptical seesaw. One day at
Fuller Seminary, a woman came in who was doing her D.Min on Korean grandmothers, who had
been forced to be sex slaves, so-called comfort women, by the Japanese during the occupation.
And she had the chance, as a Korean woman, had the chance to speak to them through their
church where she was on staff in Seoul. And she said, "They opened up to me because they
were within a few years of dying." And they had never shared with any person in the world the
experiences they had in this Japanese occupation, being forced to be a sexual servant,
basically. And the degree of shame in Korean culture of having been forced to do that was so
terrible that they spent their lives suffering in silence, and her book showed the level of pain
that these women went through.
Philip Clayton 12:45
But she had a testimony. She said, "Every one of those women I spoke to said that they knew
during these last decades and decades, they had a constant sense of the presence of the Holy
Spirit and the comforting presence of God." So although they had an agony or a shame, they
could never share, God was ministering to them, healing them through those years. And at that
point, I realized I could not take a position that ruled that out.
Philip Clayton 13:19
It's just so obvious to me from scripture, from others' testimonies in my own life, that God does
bring that healing presence. How? I don't know. And so what I wanted to do is to come to this
discussion with the humility to say, we may not know the exact causal mechanisms, but I'm
going to say we have overwhelming evidence of a spiritual presence of God to us, to individuals
and groups, that is healing. That would be my starting point or center point for our discussion.
Chris McAlilly 13:50
Yeah, so just want to underline something. I know Eddie wants to jump in. You know, I think for
folks who want to negate or exclude the possibility of God's action, one of the places of
vulnerability in the Church's teaching is acute suffering, you know, an injustice of the most
intense form, and that the presence of such suffering would be a sign of the absence of God's
action or presence. And so, then the church has to grapple with that.
Chris McAlilly 14:30
One of the theological categories that gets talked about is the category of theodicy, this idea
that there are terrible things that happen, that a God who is both good and powerful would not
allow in the world, that such a God would create. The suffering of Jesus, Gethsemane, the cross
becomes a model of suffering not being a sign of God's absence, but rather a place where, you
know, God is most acutely present with suffering love. God fills up those moments with
presence. It's still, it's still a very difficult thing to sustain, as a living position, but the testimony
that you've offered is compelling and really helpful. I'm so grateful for it.
Philip Clayton 15:22
I want to see where Eddie wants to take it, but I do want to say that when you bring up this, the
notion of the problem of evil, why does God sometimes not respond, that that's a theological
issue, not a philosophy skeptic. We have to struggle with that one, and our answer about God
and divine action has to be adequate to the problem of evil, so I hope we can come back to
that.
Eddie Rester 15:44
Well, one of the things I was just thinking about, another example of a family when I was an
intern, called me in because the pastor I was working for couldn't be found. This was before cell
phones. Everything in me wanted to find him, because I knew that their dad was dying, and
they wanted me come pray with their dying father. And you know, one of the things afterwards,
I'm sure I prayed a fine prayer, but I think I prayed for him to be healed in a moment where the
doctor was very clear he was in the last moments of his life. But the daughters who were
laughing in the den and telling stories afterwards with me, the oldest daughter said,
"Eddie, this is the healing. It's not that my dad is going to get up out of that bed. He's not, Eddie. And
we don't want him to continue to suffer. This, though, is the healing that God has brought."
Eddie Rester 16:39
It's one of those moments that I was like, oh. Sometimes it's not how we want, but it's always
who we want, that God is always with us. I think one of the things that somebody helped me
with years ago, and I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on this, is that the question we
always want to ask in the face of suffering, is why? And the one question scripture never really
even attempts to answer for us, is the question of why. Even when you get to the book of Job,
and people talk about the patience of Job. Job was not a patient man, but Job, who presses God
in a very trial lawyerly kind of way, never gets the answers to his question. He gets a different
kind of answer. I'd love to hear some of your reflections on that, kind of this why question not
being answered as well.
Philip Clayton 17:41
So we have to nod our heads and agree that Scripture doesn't give us a clear and compelling
answer, why do the innocent suffer? Why does God allow this? And that it's the question that
every pastor, and really friends also know, every time you go to a hospital bed or the family of
a person who's just lost a member, especially the really tragic cases.
Philip Clayton 18:03
And I want to say one answer that's given, that's a hard answer, just so that we can have it on
the table and see where it takes us. And I always begin by saying it's absolutely clear that God
comforts. And there are long books, some of which I've written, that say how there's no conflict
with science that a comforting spirit could be present to the mind or consciousness of an
individual human being. Be happy to talk about that in detail.
Philip Clayton 18:37
But here's my answer. This, what I call the hard answer, comes from the problem of evil, of
innocent suffering, and my absolute belief that God cares, that that is not irrelevant to God,
that people would suffer. It could be, this is probably my own position in the end, that the only
way to create a universe where conscious beings would evolve who are free, able to make their
own moral choices, able to encounter God and make their decisions about God themselves, to
come to faith or not, would be one that had a lot of regularity. It had natural laws.
Philip Clayton 19:23
If God stepped in, whenever God wanted to, all the time, just set the laws aside, we couldn't
become moral agents. We couldn't make that ultimate decision of faith, for or against faith.
Imagine that every time that a robber came up to a poor woman on the street, held up a gun
and was ready to pull the trigger, or pulled the trigger, some little flowers would dance out and
settle gently down to the ground, because God would stop humans from ever causing harm to
another. I don't think we'd develop the sort of souls of understanding and the need for faith
that we have.
Philip Clayton 20:05
There's a veil, somehow, that God put up. And I wonder if it isn't the regularity of this natural
world. If so, then bad things happen to good people, as the famous book calls it, because that's
the nature of the universe that can prepare human beings who freely know God, freely worship
God, and freely model their lives after the Son of God.
Eddie Rester 20:34
What I'm hearing is that the regularity that science describes for us and science can speak to
us about--and I've always loved science from the time I was I was a little boy, still to this day, I
love reading books on science all that--but it's within that regularity that we begin to develop
the capacity to make the choices of faith and can also, would you also say we can begin to
experience and be trained in empathy within that regularity?
Eddie Rester 21:12
As I'm thinking now, I'm thinking, if God just intervened on our behalf all the time, then I'm not
sure, or on others' behalf as well, that we would ever be able to truly develop what in us is that
empathetic setting of, "my heart is beating as one," or "my heart hurts for what hurts the heart
of God." Is that also within that regularity that science talks about?
Philip Clayton 21:44
Exactly. And as a Christian, I can't help but recognize that the revelatory power of Jesus' life on
earth has a lot to do with the nature of the world as one filled with suffering and actually evil
actions. The strongest impetus for my Christology is a very early letter by Paul, 53 years after
Jesus was born, the letter Philippians chapter two, where we're called to have the mindset that
Jesus had, actually the Greek word says "practical wisdom." "Who, although he was in the form
of God, did not count equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself."
Philip Clayton 22:28
So that's the kenosis, the self emptying notion. That's, I think, at the heart of Christology,
taking on the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of man. And then listen: "and being
found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a
cross." There's something about the nature of the world that God enters into to reveal God's
self that brings that kind of suffering. And I know more about the character of God from that
individual and that passage, that truth, one who would say in the Garden of Gethsemane,
"Not my will, but Thine be done," I know more about the eternal nature of God than any other
source, I would say. But that means it's a world where evil happens, and evil and good people
suffer from it.
Chris McAlilly 23:19
So I want to think about in light of this kind of laying out a theological understanding of the
nature of God and God's action in the world, kind of filtered through and interpreted through
the person and the work of Christ, as laid out in Philippians chapter two. And you know, what I
want to think about is, like, how does that play out for an individual who is in a leadership role,
is working in a in a context of a church? How does it impact the way you kind of go about your
work, Eddie?
Eddie Rester 23:58
Ask that one more time. Help...
Chris McAlilly 24:01
Yeah, so we're talking about this theology of God's action in creation, and here's Jesus, who,
you know, has the mind of Christ. We're instructed by Paul to engage one another with the
mindset of Christ, who, even though he was in the likeness, had equality with God, had emptied
himself and became like us in every way, even on to suffering and death and then is exalted
again. How does that impact the way you think about your work as a pastor?
Eddie Rester 24:36
I think for me, is that it opens the door to, as Philip was saying, that things will happen, the
unexpected, the brokenness, and that at times we are pulled into the darkness and the
brokenness of the world, but we don't have to lose hope in that. I think that for me, that's one
of the things I always take from that passage.
Eddie Rester 25:04
"Have the same mind that is in Christ," which is when you are poured out, and most of the time
when we are poured out, it's not because we chose to be poured out. We don't want that
experience in life. But I think what that passage says to me is we can be poured out or broken
open and poured out, and we can still have the hope that if there is resurrection, if there is
truth, if there's beauty, then that can occur even after or as we are being poured out.
Eddie Rester 25:43
You know earlier, Philip, you were talking about people who have written, in a way to help us
see where God is in the world, where science is not against. And one of the people I think about
is N.T. Wright.
Philip Clayton 25:59
I'm reading his hope book right now. Really recommend.
Eddie Rester 26:02
Are you? I need to get that one. You know, I've again, unpacking books. I've been unpacking his
books. And actually had a friend recently in England that one day was walking by a house and
said, "That guy looks like N.T. Wright." And his wife said, "Be quiet." Turns out it was N.T.
Wright. Just randomly ran into N.T. Wright on the streets of England.
Eddie Rester 26:24
But he says, "Beauty is one of the things that God has given to us so that we can know that
God is present." And I want to get back to your conversation around presence as well. We keep,
I keep thinking we need to get back to this. But you know, I think one of the things that we can
see and experience, even in those moments when we've been broken and poured out, is
beauty, the beauty around us, the beauty in our friendships, the beauty and expressions of
caring that come to us. And I think sometimes as people think scientifically or very rationally,
and which we need to do, sometimes we skip, and I'm guilty of this, we skip out on naming
beauty as an expression of the good work of God in our lives.
Philip Clayton 27:22
What I hear echoing in my ears are the responses, as I'm having pastoral functions or just
friendship functions, the responses of folks who've gone through terrible suffering themselves
or family members or friends. And when I would say, you know, God is deepening our souls,
God is still present to us. And they say, "But why not the miracle? Why not just do it? Scripture
has miracles. Why didn't I see that here in the case of my child who suffered and died?" And I
think we have to say that's a hard teaching.
Philip Clayton 28:02
Scripture is filled with lots of hard teachings, and that's one of the hardest for me. We have to
answer that we are never left alone, and the comfort of the Holy Spirit is never absent.
"And yea, I am with you always, even to the end of the earth." That promise resounds across
scripture, including to Job in his monologues.
Philip Clayton 28:30
So if we can say that, for some reason, God has created a universe with regularity where the
evil choices of individuals or just the function of natural law causes awful, awful things to
happen, but God always is there to comfort and to draw us deeper into the Divine Self, into the
Divine Presence.
Eddie Rester 28:54
And I think, you know, as Paul talks about suffering and how God uses--not causes, but uses
suffering--I think about a time my parents were divorcing in college. It was absolute hell. And a
pastor friend of mine, he said, "Eddie, one day God is going to use this." And I was so frustrated
with that. He had been so supportive. And I don't want to negate what he at all.
Eddie Rester 29:26
But he said,
"One day, Eddie," as a part of the conversation, let me say that. He said,
"One day, God's going to use this." And here's what I know, is that years later, my compassion for folks
working through divorce, it's immense. My desire for people, when they get married, to have
good, hard conversations before they get married is there because I believe God's using that
moment of suffering, and again, I do not want anybody to hear God causes that. I walked into a
situation one time as a staff member where a staff member had died. In all of theology I walked
into was God had taken this person. God had done this. And deprogramming that was was a
hard thing, but God can use the pain and the suffering when we've been poured out, I think.
Chris, what do you think? How does that play out for you?
Chris McAlilly 30:28
I am thinking about the ways in which you know sometimes the problem of evil or acute
suffering in an individual can be totalizing. It can be the only thing that someone can see or
sense or feel. It can be the thing that takes away the past or the possibility of the future. And,
you know, I've been thinking about what's lost when you lose a conception of God as present,
what's lost when you lose the capacity to speak about God, God's action in the midst of a world
like that, and it's, it's very bleak, and it's hopeless and it's despairing.
Chris McAlilly 31:08
And then I think about who are the voices or the authors that maybe kind of give us an esthetic
picture of what that looks and feels like. I think about a novelist like Cormac McCarthy, who is
writing, I mean, his novels are absolutely brutal, "Blood Meridian" being one of them. Or, you
know, a novel like "The Road," this post-apocalyptic picture of America, it's just completely
despoiled and ruined, and there's nothing that even looks like civilization. And then, particularly
in the book "The Road," you have a father and a child, kind of navigating this absolutely
horrific landscape, and you just get this beautiful picture of the presence of the father with the
son, and the abiding nature of that. And the way in which that leads to the ability to get up and
do one more day and then another day and a day after that. And there is, there's some, really,
there's a deep beauty in that story.
Chris McAlilly 32:22
And I do, I do feel in reading it that it does... You know, I hear an echo of the kind of kenotic,
this kenosis, and God the Father giving, the giving of the Son, the son's leaving the comfort, the
deep, loving communion of God, God's Self--God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And coming into a
world that is that is seemingly absent with God and filling it with the presence of the Divine.
And that I don't know, it kind of gives you hope that that the bleakest and the most difficult
moments, the hardest problems of evil, the most acute suffering, that God can offer something
within that that can keep somebody moving along.
Chris McAlilly 33:10
And so for me as a pastor. So if that, if all those things are true, or those things are something
that you could kind of suspend your disbelief for a moment, that it does help you engage hard
moments within ministry, hard moments in your family, hard moments in life. So yeah, for me,
it's like this. It's very, very practical, as you said, practical wisdom. That's not just abstract
ideas about God for the sake of having these complex conversations. It really comes down to,
can I get up in the morning and go to that hospital room and not deny the reality of what's
going on there, but offer my full self? And without the theology, I can't do it, frankly. And with
the theology, I struggled to do it.
Chris McAlilly 34:03
I mean, that's just me being real, man, it's hard. It's hard stuff, but the church, if the church is,
if the hope of the gospel is to be real, it has to be real in the most difficult circumstances. I
think that's where all that's cashed out for for me.
Philip Clayton 34:23
I wonder if you, if you guys, have experienced, as people grow, or as you grow in the spiritual
growth that this ability to be in the world as it is and to affirm a God who is present, comforting
and drawing us toward God's self, if that's there. I just think my early years as a Christian
where everything was a miracle.
Philip Clayton 34:47
I was going to participate as a counselor in a Billy Graham crusade. And I was driving to get
parked in time, and I was running late, and I prayed, you know,
"God let me find a parking spot."And then God gave the parking spot. I believed there
was a miracle that got me a spot, and everyone else had to drive miles to park. And then it was going
to rain, and I had a beautiful leather bound Bible. Well, "God, have it not rain so my Bible will be all right,"
and it didn't rain. And so God had done another miracle.
Philip Clayton 35:16
I compare that now to being beside hospital beds and in living rooms. And as you guys also
know from ministry, I just wonder whether it's a sign of spiritual maturity that we deal with a
present and active and loving God in a pretty harsh world.
Eddie Rester 35:37
One of the things that I believe Scripture teaches, particularly when we're talking about Isaiah
and Jeremiah, the prophets who spoke to people in exile, nd maybe particularly Jeremiah ,is you
have to begin where you are and not where you wish you were. You know, a lot of people like
Jeremiah, 29:11, "oh, I know the plans for you, plans for your welfare and your goodness," and
it's a beautiful verse, but it's spoken to people who are about to spend 50 years in exile. I
mean, it's not a wedding day verse. It is a "here's the story that you got to cling to in a world
where nothing is as you think it should be."
Eddie Rester 36:24
And one of the things you know, I did a lot of, I did my doctoral work back, really, in the early
2000s when all the conversation was around post modernism. And one of the pieces of post
modernity is the loss of meta narratives. We see that in countries. We see that, I think that we
see that here, that there's no, in the United States, there's no overarching meta narrative for
our country. That's other institutions as well. But that's impacted the church in that there's not
this... People don't even know how to share the story in a way that can help people with where
they are.
Eddie Rester 37:08
And I think what you're talking about is, how do we bring this story of presence and comfort
and life, even in the midst of death, really down into the nitty gritty. But there is this story that
we hold to, even sometimes when we're afraid that science or life or reality is pushing, trying to
push it away. Anything...
Philip Clayton 37:40
That's powerful.
Eddie Rester 37:40
Anything in there that you'd follow through...
Philip Clayton 37:42
One hund percetn. I really resonate with what you just said, Eddie. It strikes me that if there
were to be a religion that could really speak to today's world, it would have three qualities, and
I think you just described all those qualities in the Christian witness. The first would be, it's
utterly realistic. It's not pie in the sky. It has got its hand in the dirt. You know, you see wrinkled
and worried faces. You see the reality of this world as it is, no illusions. Nope. It's not a
Pollyannaish religion. And that's absolutely clear that a God who would come to be sacrificed
for us fits in that category.
Philip Clayton 38:24
But then there would be hope. There would be a chance for community in the presence, in the
present, hope in the present. The constant experience of the beating, compassionate heart of
God and God's presence and guidance. And there would be a long-term hope, that the world as
we see it around us today is not the final answer. And somehow, it's not given to man to know
the hour, but somehow there will be that state, as it says in the end of Revelation,"and there
will be no more tears and all shall be in Christ, and all shall be brought together, and all shall
know." And then, "now we see in a glass darkly, but then we shall see face to face. Now we
know in part, but then we shall know fully, even as we are fully known," as it says in first
Corinthians 13. That, if that religion existed, that would be a powerful religion. And I think it
does exist.
Eddie Rester 39:29
I think it does exist. And I think that, just as a brief excursus, I'm going to give it back to Chris. I
can, I can see... But I think we have layered so many things on top of what is this beautiful truth
that we hold, that can be a gift, as you said, for the world right now. I mean, it's a hard, gritty,
broken apart world without a story to tie people, to tie hope to people. And I just feel like,
yeah.It makes me hopeful to have conversations like this.
Chris McAlilly 40:11
Yeah. So I think part of the benefit of deep, philosophical, theological work is to continually
mine the resources of the tradition, its scriptures and its theological traditions, so that in the
midst of the world, such as it is, which is always changing, but presents itself as having some of
the same challenges over and over and over again, we have to be able to speak the gospel
words of faith and testimony in a way that is utterly realistic. It can offer a present hope and a
future, long term hope.
Chris McAlilly 40:54
And that, that kind of that framework is kind of always the case, whether it's a pastoral care
situation, whether you're preaching, whether you're offering an annual review or report. You
know, you're constantly having to tell the truth about the reality of your organization, the
reality of the world around you. Find a way to orient people towards a hope in the future and
also say that that's accessible now.
Chris McAlilly 41:24
I do wonder at times for those... So we've talked a little bit about those on the charismatic end,
those that would attribute, maybe, divine action, or the suspension of natural law, to guide
offering a parking place at, you know, Kroger. And that those examples kind of come off as
caricatures and maybe a little bit silly. I wonder on the other side, sometimes I wonder if
someone would only leave room in their worldview for a very muted action on the part of God,
and really just presence, but not much action. What are the benefits of that worldview? What
are some of the things that are lost in that?
Philip Clayton 42:14
I'm really glad you mentioned that issue, Chris, and it actually is something that I went through
personally in the very recent months. I worked for a number of years on a book with a co-
author and it's just appeared. It's called "Science and the Sacred." This co-author, Claudia, is an
atheist, a humanist, and we found that we had a lot in common. So we began writing this book
together, and we were in that place where the text is ready and you begin to do revisions. It
was going to be published by Cascade Press, which it is now.
Philip Clayton 42:53
And Claudia called me up and said,
"Phil, I just heard that I have brain cancer, and they give me
less than a year to live. " And she spent most of that year, until she was incapacitated, so about
nine months, helping to revise the book. She's a journalist, a beautiful author, and the touch
that she brought to the text was exquisite.
Philip Clayton 43:15
But it was also an exercise in facing exactly what you just described, Chris, that she didn't have
a view where God would do miracles. And this amazing thing happened, that our two positions:
I'm clearly a Christian theist, she was clearly a humanist and not a theist. We got them as close
as they could come without denying the difference between us.
Philip Clayton 43:43
And I acknowledge that a lot of the easy answers that I and other Christians give, whether
pastors or lay people, are sometimes too, how can I say, too facile. And she realized that she
had a longing for a narrative of the universe and of our lives, during life and beyond life,
beyond death, that is more robust than the standard atheist, oh, it's all dark, and things are
going to... They're all going to hell in a hand basket, and there's nothing we can do. It was
amazing personal journey and a journey of a believer and a non believer in this book, and I
could see that struggle.
Chris McAlilly 44:25
I appreciate you mentioning that. I'm coming into this conversation from having lunch with a
friend of mine who is Roman Catholic and who worships with us regularly because his wife grew
up in a Methodist Wesleyan context. And he really wrestles with this, kind of like, coming up to
the edge of what he believes to be true. And then, you know, really struggling across the divide
in the the body of Christ. That's extended even more so between someone who's a theist and
an atheist.
Chris McAlilly 45:01
But what these two conversations kind of remind me is that we all have these deep longings.
We come to the real world with a particular set of frameworks and ideas and images and
stories that come from our family of origin, our training, our experiences, and then they're
tested and in moments of real trial. And I think one of the benefits that you're kind of reminding
me of is that having conversation partners with someone who doesn't think the way that you
think about an issue can can be clarifying to what it is that you believe. It can be life giving
because you're interacting with someone who maybe sees the world differently than you.
Chris McAlilly 45:47
And you know, the subtitle of your book,
"Science and the Sacred:Beyond the Gods in Our Image." So much of what I think we
need is to be kind of disabused of the ways in which our
understandings of God are just kind of extrapolations of our own self understanding. And we
need diverse conversation partners, and we need to live at the edge of our own worldview in
conversation with others to really kind of get maybe a little bit closer to the truth, maybe be
reminded of hope that we haven't accessed before. So I appreciate you bringing that up.
Eddie Rester 46:26
One of the, I'm thinking about a book from years ago that is so helpful for me around some of
the topics we've discussed today, a book called "Journeying" by Craig Barnes, and it's an old
book. Again, I've been unpacking books recently. I wonder, Philip, if you have books or other
resources, if somebody wants to continue thinking in these lines, really beginning to dig in a
little bit deepe. Maybe they've felt that they've been at one end or the other of this
conversation, something that might be helpful for them, that's been helpful for you.
Philip Clayton 47:06
I do think that this classic book by a clergy person, "Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People,"
is still it's still a classic work to work through. He's a Jewish rabbi, and just describes
this question of suffering in in a powerful way. The range of positions on divine action is huge.
There's a large literature that's a little bit more technical and I think, not quite as approachable.
I'll just say a lot of is associated with the lead researcher, Christian physicist named Robert J
Russell. And so googling his name would would bring you in some of these treatments.
Philip Clayton 47:54
And let me pause there and say that what has just occurred to me, as I was listening to you
guys, is that passage in Hebrews five. I just looked it up. It's 13 and 14."Anyone who lives on
milk, being still an infant isn't not fully acquainted with..." etc, etc, "but solid food is for the
mature who, by constant use, have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil." That's so
interesting that I think, "when, as a child, I..." What was, what is the scripture?
Chris McAlilly 48:26
"Thought like a child," yeah, exactly. "When I became an adult, I put childish ways behind."
Philip Clayton 48:32
Yeah, and I think there's a testimony of mature Christians, mature Christian communities,
mature churches that don't offer a panacea. So many times, pastors know that what is it that
the congregation wants. And this whole Gospel of wealth happens to play really well. A lot of
people come and they bring wealth to the church. The only trouble it's not the gospel of Jesus
Christ, in my view. So it's that willingness to see a world that's sometimes harsh and full of
suffering, and I admit often to long for the days when I could believe childish things. Two
miracles on my way to a Billy Graham crusade. You know? That's how it goes. But I think we
have a deeper testimony to offer, now. Those who have gone through the school of suffering,
those are my spiritual leaders. Those are my spiritual director.
Eddie Rester 49:32
And people, when we talk about people needing the story, they need that story. Because when
the waves that they've been riding to the Billy Graham crusade, two miracles on the way to the
crusade, when that crashes on the rocks and all anybody hears is, you should have had more
faith, or they just ignore the problem of intense suffering in the world. That's when people say,
"Well, maybe this isn't for me." This isn't the story, this isn't the hope, this isn't the way. And
they walk away from from the faith, not because they don't want to believe, but because we're
only offering them something that is impossible to believe in light of the reality of the world.
Chris McAlilly 50:20
So don't do that and keep... Grateful to Philip. Thank you so much for being with us. What a
conversation. So fun.
Eddie Rester 50:32
Well, "fun" is not the word.
Chris McAlilly 50:34
Fun is having a really deep theological conversation, Eddie, about heavy matters. That's fun. I
don't know what you count fun.
Eddie Rester 50:42
There you go. This has been great. Let me say that it has been great. Philip, thank you so much.
Philip Clayton 50:47
Thanks you guys for having me on the show, and thank you for this ministry. I think it's really a
powerful one.
Eddie Rester 50:51
[OUTRO] Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast, the best way to help us is to like,
subscribe, or leave a review.
Chris McAlilly 51:00
If you would like to support this work financially, or if you have an idea for a future guest, you
can go to theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]