Cockroaches aren't God:
Callahan, Sidney
OF SEVERAL MINDS Sidney Callahan COCKROACHES AREN'T GOD PUTTING THE 'EN' IN PANTHEISM I object to calling the universe 'God's body'; isn't this simply pantheism?'I was in the midst of...
...Wicked Swinburne could not refrain from penning a parody in reply...
...Please don't expect me to believe that infectious lethal viruses are value neutral, equal to human life, or a good part of God's plan for creation...
...The nurturing placenta, also, encloses and nourishes the fetus by drawing upon the mother's resources, although it is not the mother, nor after birth is it any longer part of the child...
...The argument goes on...
...Now we too are enabled to work- with, through, and in God-toward the final transformation of creation...
...Within the universe we know, death, diseases, and chance events wreak havoc...
...Nature doesn't distinguish a cancer or other diseases because after all, these occurrences are neutral and just part of the ongoing ecological cycle...
...it's also flawed...
...Whatever you may have read in Deborah Tannen's books about gendered speech (or "genderlect"), it's not true that women won't disagree with one other or engage in intellectual dispute...
...Snail darters and spotted owls can't do much about saving the whales, or vice versa...
...Can this dark side of creation be seen as God's body...
...There's nothing like a bit of struggle with the hard questions of faith to make you understand past heresies that constantly reemerge...
...Doubt is faith in the main: but faith, on the whole, is doubt: We cannot believe by proof: but could we believe without...
...Medicine may have eradicated smallpox and polio but the natural environment is at the ready to produce new and more lethal assaults...
...I, in turn, object by bringing up viruses, plagues, genetic disease, brain tumors, breast cancer, tornadoes, cockroaches, lice, etc...
...for under is over and under: If thunder could be without lightning, lightning could be without thunder...
...And I cannot resist giving it here, as a final warning against the higher pantheism-and a reminder of how not to theorize...
...Panentheism, I have now learned, after looking it up at least ten times, is "the doctrine that God includes the world as part, though not the whole, of God's being...
...But the struggle against disorder, evil, and inertia will continue...
...In a nineteenth-century go-round over creation, Tennyson wrote "The Higher Pantheism," and had the poem read at the Metaphysical Society...
...Paul concludes that we must be content to hope because "our salvation is not in sight...
...Content matters...
...Surely only homo sapiens has the capacity to worry about future generations or to make necessary interventions...
...By "higher" he meant panentheism, not ordinary pantheism...
...What's that...
...Hope for the transfiguration of creation is sustained by faith in the Incarnation and redemption...
...No, no," I am told...
...Saint Paul writes to the Romans that the whole creation is enslaved to decadence, and from the beginning "has been groaning in one great act of giving birth" (8:23...
...In our ongoing conflict my ecofeminist friends keep asserting God's immanence in Creation, capital C, using images of Creation as God's body...
...And this list leaves out the failings of the human creature...
...Maybe there are other images from childbirth that might help us in understanding creation...
...In all future ecological debates I will cite the evidence presented in Richard Preston's The Hot Zone (Random House, 1994) and Laurie Garrett's The Coming Plagues (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1994...
...For me an adequate story of creation has to include its nonidentification with the divine as well as affirm its flaws and basic goodness...
...Well, enough of this line of speculation...
...Many lines of tortured dialectic follow, minus Tennyson's usual felicity of style...
...Even after this distinction is explained to me, I am not convinced...
...Tennyson's focus is on the key question, "For is He not all but that which has power to feel 'I am I...
...What, and wherefore, and whence...
...One, who is not, we see: but one, whom we see not, is: Surely this is not that: but that is assuredly this...
...but I do believe that creation, which is somehow wounded, should not be identified with God...
...Gaia, or earth's ecological system, simply renews itself continually...
...Perhaps creation can be seen as a child in the womb which is distinct from its mother yet intimately dependent upon maternal nurture...
...God is for us, forever...
...This is not pantheism but panentheism...
...These two books scientifically explain why and how new diseases will emerge and threaten human life...
...all talk is not building relationships...
...yes, it's a beautiful, wondrous world that "is charged with the grandeur of God...
...Feminists for sure understand that an erroneous belief such as "women are innately inferior" can ruin lives and corrupt cultures...
...Everyone instantly recognizes this poem's most famous lines: "Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet-Closer is He than breathing and nearer than hands and feet...
...This is partly because I am human, but even more because I believe the Scriptures that proclaim humankind to be made in the image of God...
...I agree...
...Think of how the AIDS virus first knocks out the immune system and then proceeds to attack the brain and cause dementia...
...I'll grant that most women are nicer than most men when they disagree with you, but women can still go at it with vigor and rigor...
...My point is not to deny that God made the world and that it is good, or to disavow that the Holy Spirit continues to create and sustain creation...
...isn't this simply pantheism?'I was in the midst of another debate with a circle of women friends over ecofeminism, or the new fusion of feminism and ecology...
...The hot zone is a place in Africa where deadly diseases make the leap from animals to humans...
...Besides, if we as humans don't believe in our specialness, how are we going to take up responsibility or plan to cooperate with the rest of our fellow creatures to preserve the world...
...I'm drawn to Paul's image of creation groaning in one great act of giving birth...
...All right, I reply, I admit I'm a "species-ist" and put humankind first and foremost...
...And so forth...
...This egalitarian approach to natural processes seems like a form of mystification to me, if not fatalism...
...Aha, say my opponents, you're only disturbed because you put human welfare first, taking an arrogant anthropocentric point of view...
...When ecological enthusiasts, especially those called "deep ecologists," assert that all of life and natural processes are equal, they're basically disparaging the importance of human life...
...And AIDS may not be the last plague we will have to fight against...
...What...
Vol. 122 • January 1995 • No. 1
