In The Christian Faith, Michael Horton unravels the real problem with resolving the tension between theism and and science via the “God of the gaps” apologetic approach. This approach, for those unfamiliar with the terminology, is used by people who wish to respect the claims of science but also wish to retain a place for God to do something on his own that compliments science. Thus when scientific claims can only be taken so far, the “God of the gaps” apologetic says “Ah – see, God’s activity is to be found in this stuff over here that science is unsure about.”
On the one hand, Horton notes that this approach must be in continual flux as scientific claims stake more and more of a claim on knowledge and (seemingly) leave less and less of a gap into which God can fit. But on the other hand, Horton has a much more weighty critique:
The “God of the gaps” apologetic is not simply a weak strategy; it is based on a theological misunderstanding, assuming that God’s agency and creaturely agency occupy the same register. Accordingly, to the extent that a certain state of affairs can be attributed to natural (human or nonhuman) causes, God is not involved. Again we meet the troubling univocity of being, which fails to recognize the Creator-creature distinction and the analogical character of creation in its relationship to God.
Although God is always and everywhere at work in creation, he is not one agent among others vying for freedom, power, and control in the same ontological space. Rather, God is mysteriously above, behind, and within the creation and the ordinary relations of cause and effect with which he has endowed it. God is more involved in the world – yet less direct, immediate, and therefore evident in his agency – that the “God of the gaps” apologists imagine. When the Word became incarnate, his neighbors – his own brothers – did not recognize his divinity. Although the Spirit is at work in every atom, his agency even in raising those who are spiritually dead to eternal life remains largely hidden (Jn 3:8; 1 Co 2:14).
The Christian Faith, pg. 338. (Bold emphasis mine.)
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Andrew