Macroevolution, Contingency, and Divine Activity: Divine Involvement through Uncontrolling, Amorepotent Love in an Evolutionary World

What are the things that God values in the creative process? How does one define God's activity in such a world? How is God's involvement different from a contingent--what this author labels contingentist--instance? Why do we need a God-idea at all? Herein, Bradford McCall addresses how divine, amorepotent love works with and within a contingentist (i.e., radically contingent) evolutionary theory and worldview. Within the course of this project, he reaches a via media between the (somewhat) radical formalist position of Simon Conway Morris and the veritably radical contingent position of Stephen Jay Gould. But . . . how is the contingentist amorepotent and uncontrolling love of God understood as purposeful? McCall argues in detail that there in fact is some sort of purposiveness that is nevertheless working in a chastened Gouldian position, and he distinguishes between contingency and veritable divine involvement. He contends that God does not insist upon a particular outcome but merely allows propensities to work themselves out. God amorepotently loves the population of the natural world into greater forms of complexity, relationality, and beauty in varied and multifarious forms, along with the extension of diversity.

Bradford McCall holds a PhD in process philosophy studies from Claremont School of Theology. He is the author or editor of four previous books: The God of Chance and Purpose (Wipf & Stock, 2022); Evolution (Wipf & Stock, 2020); God and Gravity (edited; Wipf & Stock, 2018); and A Modern Relation of Theology and Science Assisted by Emergence and Kenosis (Wipf & Stock, 2018).

Philip Clayton is the Ingraham Professor of Theology at Claremont School of Theology, Claremont, CA.