HUMAN QUEST FOR PERFECTION IN A BLIND NATURE:
SOME INSIGHTS FROM THE THOUGHT OF PAUL TILLICH

Eduardo R. Cruz
Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo
E-mail: erodcruz@pucsp.br

People are religious to the extend they
believe themselves to be not so much
imperfect as ill. Any man who is halfway decent
will think himself extremely imprefect, but a
religious man thinks himself wreched.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (45e)[1]

 

Introduction

That there is a drive for human perfection is an undeniable fact of everyday life. The Olympic games are there to confirm, especially for those activities that involve a score. Who does not recall Nadia Comaneci, the perfect ten in 1976? But this drive is especially visible today in areas where, until a few years ago, ideals of perfection were only a dream. Among them, we may cite plastic surgery, gene correction, artificial life, and the like. The turn to the year 2000 also brought some interesting reports in the media, concerning the future yielded by science and technology, where some present yearnings for perfection would be fulfilled. So what we see at the brink of the 21^st. century is an increase, not only of the drive for perfection, but also in the means to accomplish it.

Yet, some of the fears that we are repeating errors of the past, and that part of this renewed fascination for perfection may be related to business-oriented interests, are also present in contemporary authors. Increase in the desire for perfection may foster new utopias, and new "perfect systems," as we have seen in recent past, may enslave more than liberate human beings.

Important as these social concerns may be, they are almost harmless when compared to our existential situation as being the outcome of an evolutionary history. First, there is the danger recognized by scientists that "fooling around" with our genome or our acquired traits as an organism may be deleterious for individuals and the species as a whole. More importantly, however, at least from a philosophical and a theological perspective, is the clash between the intrinsically goal-oriented drive for perfection and the purposelessness of the evolutionary process. Apart from the scientific question whether (and how) we may speak about a telos in nature at all (for a good assessment of the question, see Ruse 2000), there is the one of the mismatch between natural processes and our dreams of perfection and their metaphysical, anthropological, and ethical overtones--a mismatch that many twentieth century authors have called our ‘estrangement’ from nature.

The purpose of this paper is to comment on a few philosophical and theological aspects of these questions, resorting to some ill-explored (in recent times) facets of the doctrine of original sin. Then I am going to suggest that Paul Tillich=s notion of the "ambiguity of perfection" is a good way to bridge the perception that processes of nature are blind, and the conviction that the quest for perfection is purposeful.

Taking Seriously the Purposelessness of Nature

In a previous paper of mine [2], I have argued against deducing univocally any purpose or benevolence in nature, supposedly ascertained by the sciences, from the Goodness of Creation. The message that we receive from nature, both in daily experience and in scientific knowledge, is ambiguous: we may turn our attention either to its bounty and aptitude for life, or to its ruthlessness. Traditional theology has had special difficulty with the latter aspect. It spoke of "natural disasters," occasional events that have a particular impact on nature, but almost ignored the bare fact of "life living on life." In doing so, it left aside the perception that has been enhanced by modern evolutionary studies, that nature is "cruel" in its ordinary processes. Both for ontogenetic and phylogenetic purposes, killing other living beings is the rule, not the exception. The quotation marks in the cruel have a purpose: from an evolutionary perspective, nature could not care less about the fate of individuals and species. Richard Dawkins likes to put his finger in this particular trait of evolution, and we should better pay attention to it.

As it is well known, traditional theology has followed the Augustinian synthesis on original sin. So, whatever cruelty is found in nature, it still was ascribed to Adam=s disobedience. Nature (indistinguishable from Creation) was good and purposeful, because God could not create anything less than perfect, and will be reestablished to its pristine state only in the Parousia. Incredible as this view has become in face of contemporary knowledge, it still takes sin and evil quite seriously, rejecting by the same token any law of progressivism [3].

Theologians have devised ingenious ways to account for the continuity of creation, "fall," and redemption. They have done so by uncovering and expanding on the Christological, Trinitarian, and eschatological layers of the Doctrine of Creation and Providence. This is surely the right move, and this new path is certainly yielding its fruits. Yet, it may be asked whether it has not been done at a price, namely, giving up the universal neoplatonic framework in which the Doctrine was originally formulated, and by the same token "covering up" the unfathomable depths and amount of suffering and "evil" in nature [4]. Indeed, after removing the guilt of Adam, and nonetheless exempting God from any responsibility for this state of affairs, it is hard to develop a credible "theology of cruelty," in accordance with data and explanations from evolutionary theory, and then match it with a "theology of perfection." After all, specifically Christian doctrines are good to account for the grace of God and His/Her benevolence toward nature and human beings alike, leaving natural evil in a certain cloud of mystery.

It seems to be the case, therefore, to retrieve from obscurity certain aspects of the old account that have been embarrassing to modern theology, and try to give an adequate interpretation to them. This is the case, for example, of the "state of original justice," its relationship to perfection, and how suffering and "cruelty" entered in the world. What follows below are but a few indications of the issues at stake [5].

Perfection as a Theme for Scientific and Theological Reflection

Contemporary science has a dubious stance regarding human perfectibility. On the one hand, scientists gladly provide popularizers and journalists with stuff that lead us think that science and technology are the only venue for perfection in the future. On the other, based on past experiences (as hinted at in the Introduction), they are the first to disavow any attempt to base perfectibilistic utopias on the findings of science. Grounded on the most recent of the latter, they can be very explicit in this respect--see, for example, Matt Ridley=s The Origins of Virtue (Ridley 1996), ch. 14. Yet, it is precisely in this kind of findings, through evolutionary psychology, neurosciences, and the like, that a nexus can be found from what has blindly come from the past to the future-oriented pursuit of perfection, so as to eventually produce a single scientific account of both seemingly contradictory histories. As an interpretation of these findings would take us well beyond the limits of this paper, we will turn our attention to the theological underpinnings of these counter-movements of blindness and purpose.

It is at least curious to notice that, considering the importance that words such as "perfect" and "perfection" have played in the history of theology, how little has been said on the subject in contemporary developments. It seems that Adolf von Harnack was right after all, when saying that Christian doctrines had been overburdened with Greek categories in Patristic times [6]. Wittgenstein’s epigraph at the beginning is a sort of anticipation (as much of contemporary theology is influenced by him) of this state of mind. After all, the Judaeo-Christian tradition does provide bridges between a "religious man" and a "man who is halfway decent"!

Anyhow, the scriptures have not many references to perfection (teleios [perfect] occurs about twenty times in the Septuagint, and twenty others in the NT), the most famous of them being Matt. 5:48: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." [7] But this does not mean that the notion is unimportant to a biblical outlook--see the Qumranic usage of t~mîn—"to be complete." In any case, meeting with the Greco-Roman civilization meant to the Fathers the adoption, not only of standards of perfection, but also of a long tradition of reflection on what "being perfect" means. This tradition will not be retraced here [8]. Suffice is to say that in the first centuries of Christianity people had to expand on assertions such as "God is perfect," "Jesus Christ is perfect," "human beings were created perfect," and the like. Needless to say, many of the controversies and heresies of those times circled around how these perfections were to be understood. Pelagianism was one of the most important heresies, having to do with the capacity of human beings to perfect themselves without a special grace from God.

To preserve God=s sovereignty, goodness, and perfection, Augustine had then to postulate (following many Fathers in this respect [9]) that Adam had been created in a state of Original Justice, having preternatural gifts that would be his special marks in his being image and likeness of God, vis-à-vis the merely natural gifts that the rest of the natural world had been endowed when created. These are infused knowledge, integrity, and immortality. However, it is certainly incredible, from our vantage point, to picture that in a remote past a first couple represented the Greek ideal: unambiguous, rational knowledge of whatever needed to be known; perfect, rational control over their sensuous nature; and absence of suffering and bodily decay that leads to human death [10]. Even more incredible, from a Christological perspective, is to imagine that, in a way, the wrong doing of Adam was stronger than the redemption accomplished by Christ: Adam=s sin immediately led to distortion, to imperfection, whereas Christ=s death left us on probation, as it were, so that we would have to wait until the Parousia to have the preternatural gifts back!

Incredible as it is, however, this doctrine deserves perhaps more than ostracism: there is implied in it the confidence on human reason to unveil essential traits of the human being in the midst of contradictory phenomena; it reminds us that we are the products of lawful, ordered structures; it is likely to provide us with some standards of perfection, to help us to understand why we engage ourselves so earnestly in the pursuit of perfection, and to challenge us to seek a better bridge between the apparent lack of concern for perfectibility in natural processes, and our own drive for perfection. So suffused as it is with Greek thought, the notion of "preternatural gifts" is perhaps more adequate to provide for this bridge, than the more parochial renderings of the doctrine of Creation in Christological, Trinitarian, and eschatological terms [11].

Paul Tillich on Perfection and Perfectibilism

As a good modern theologian, Paul Tillich has little to say on the "preternatural gifts" of Adam, and solely in a negative manner. The main passage is this:

It [state of dreaming innocence] is not perfection. Orthodox theologians have heaped perfection after perfection upon Adam before the Fall, making him equal with the picture of the Christ. This procedure is not only absurd; it makes the Fall completely unintelligible. Mere potentiality or dreaming innocence is not perfection. Only the conscious union of existence and essence is perfection, as God is perfect because he transcends essence and existence (Tillich 1957, 34).

In a positive manner, we may draw from this short passage three aspects of Tillich=s thought. First, that he retains the idea of perfection in his conceptual scheme: God is perfect and so is Jesus Christ, making human perfection a possibility and a vocation. Second, he provides us, here and in other parts of his works, with a coherent picture of human essence "from the past" (see the reference to the "ontological elements" below). Third, and more important, how he regards human beings in the stream of natural processes. Humans are placed in continuity with the rest of nature, in a specific dimension that emerges in evolutionary history:

Man is the creature in which the ontological elements are complete. They are incomplete in all creatures, which (for this very reason) are called ‘subhuman.’ Subhuman does not imply less perfection than in the case of the human. On the contrary, man as the essentially threatened creature cannot compare with the natural perfection of the subhuman creatures (Tillich 1951, 260).

By "natural perfection" is not meant that the natural world is flawless and nice. He has in mind the teleological perfection of Aristotle and Aquinas, that is, the actualization of potentialities, from natural entities to humans. In another passage Tillich is more specific about what he has in mind:

One distinguishes between lower and higher forms of life in the realm of the organic. Something must be said about this distinction from the theological point of view, because of the wide symbolic use to which all forms of organic life, especially the higher ones, are subject and because of the fact that man--against the protest of many naturalists--is often called the highest living being. First of all, one should not confuse the "highest" with the "most perfect." Perfection means actualization of one=s potentialities; therefore, a lower being can be more perfect than a higher one if it is actually what is potentially--at least in a high approximation. And the highest being--man--can become less perfect than any other, because he not only can fail to actualize his essential being but can deny and distort it (Tillich 1963a, 35-36).

Is there a place in this scheme for suffering, cruelty, and evil in nature? Yes, for as we have argued elsewhere (Cruz 1997), nature is not "innocent" (it is important to emphasize this point in an age of ecological romanticism), and participates in whatever evil inclinations humans display. How to reconcile the assertion made before, endorsed by most biologists, that nature is neither "cruel" nor "nice," with this more anthropomorphic view of Tillich? By recognizing that its perfection is ambivalent. In fact, one of the most original contributions of this author to contemporary thought is his extensive discussion of the "ambiguity of perfection," both at the natural and the social levels. As Tillich suggests,

Theology should not take the consequences of these insights [even the most sublime functions of the spirit are rooted in the vital trends of human nature] too lightly; they are indeed, most serious in their effect on the image of perfection. . . . He who admits the vital dynamics in man as a necessary element in all his self expressions (his passions or his eros) must know that he has accepted life in its divine-demonic ambiguity and that is the triumph of the Spiritual Presence to draw these depths of human nature into its sphere [12]. . . . There is no nicety in the images of perfection in the saints of the Catholic Church or in representatives of the new piety of the Reformation. He who tries to avoid the demonic side of the holy also misses its divine side and gains but a deceptive security between them. The image of perfection is the man who, in the battlefield between the divine and the demonic, prevails against the demonic, though fragmentarily and in anticipation. This is the experience in which the image of perfection under the impact of the Spiritual Presence transcends the humanistic ideal of perfection. It is not a negative attitude to human potentialities that produces the contrast but the awareness of the undecided struggle between the divine and the demonic in every man, which in humanism is replaced by the ideal of harmonious self-actualization (Tillich 1963a, 241).

Tillich goes beyond, therefore, the tradition of teleological perfection, which in modern times has taken the shape of progressivistic theories [13]. He places the drive for perfection (most clearly seen in the human realm, enhanced by our quest for freedom) within the framework of a philosophy of religion, which is itself less parochial than specific Christian doctrines. It is true that at this point he is dealing with Spiritual Presence, which is little more than a rationalization of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, leading us to the realm of redemption, which is beyond the scope of our concerns here. Most important is that this philosophy of religion (as exposed, for example, in Tillich [1925] 1969) may function as one of the bridges between a "theology of cruelty" and a "theology of perfection." This philosophy has drawn from Augustine an important insight: as finite and fallen creatures, we are bound to deception: what we take for perfection may as well be demonic distortion (the dialectical tension should be kept: perfect it still is, but in a destructive and enslaving manner). On the other hand, what we regard as imperfect may reveal itself to be perfect [14]. However excellent and thorough scientific findings may be, this fundamental ambiguity will not be removed from our consciousness.

Conclusion

Toward the end of his life Paul Tillich faced a very select audience, on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of Time magazine (May 6, 1963). The title of his address was "The Ambiguity of Perfection," from which we quote one of its most significant excerpts:

It is my conviction that the character of the human condition, like the character of all life, is "ambiguity": the inseparable mixture of good and evil, of true and false, of creative and destructive forces--both individual and social (Tillich 1963b, 69) [15].

There was certainly a note of irony in his choice, for before him was the best of what the American perfection could offer in terms of human resources. He also meant perfection--which he did not deny that was achievable (even though "fragmentarily and in anticipation")--in the Platonic trinitarian scheme: the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. "Life," on the other hand, is not restricted to the organic realm, but includes all that is subject to the evolutionary process (starting from the "Big-Bang") and involves creativity and destructivity, order and chaos, life and death (see Cruz 1995 for a more thorough explanation).

Ambiguity (or ambivalence) does not deny that perfection is there--it simply asserts that it is also "not there." Tragedies of old Greece help us to understand one of the crucial aspects of this ambiguity: the noblest and most god-like the being or the action, the more it is liable to a fall [16]. There is no intrinsic conflict therefore (even though I agree it is hard to conceptualize it) between a nature that does not care for our ideals of truth, goodness, and beauty--yet displaying many impressive examples of perfection--and our quest for perfection, beyond and even against any immediate need for survival. The notion of the "preternatural gifts" accounts for what, within nature and without any immediate appeal to a Christological mediation, makes the difference between humans and the rest of creation. In a fallen state, they are not immediately accessible to us, so we have to strive and long for them. Purposelessness--in nature and in human existence--is not at odds with this drive for perfection: if it is a reflection of the state of estrangement from God=s purpose, it is also an opportunity to exercise freedom, both on our behalf and on behalf of nature, as well as to hope for the coming of God=s Redeemer.

 

References

Anderson, Gary A. 2000. "Necessarium Adae Peccatum: The Problem of Original Sin." In Sin, Death, and the Devil, 22-44. See Braaten and Jenson 2000.

Braaten, Carl E., and Robert W. Jenson, eds. 2000. Sin, Death, and the Devil. Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans.

Cruz, Eduardo R. 1995. "On the Relevance of Paul Tillich’s Concept of Ontological Life and Its Ambiguity." In Paul Tillich=s Theological Legacy: Spirit and Community, Frederic J. Parrella, ed., 118-124. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter.

. 1996. A Theological Study Informed by the Thought of Paul Tillich and the Latin American Experience: The Ambivalence of Science. Lewiston, NY: Mellen University Press.

. 1997. "Is Nature Innocent? Reflections on Niebuhr and Tillich." In The Concept of Nature in Science and Theology (part I), Niels H. Gregersen, Michael W.S. Parsons, and Christoph Wassermann, eds., 215-224. Geneva: Labor et Fides.

. 2000a. "The Goodness of Creation in Face of Our Knowledge of Nature: Paul Tillich=s Realistic Stance Toward the ‘Vital Trends of Nature’." Paper presented at the VIII European Conference on Science and Theology, Lyon, France, 14-19 April.. 2000b. "Tragedy vs. Hope?" In this volume.

Hartshorne, Charles. 1962. The Logic of Perfection. LaSalle, IL: Open Court Pub. Group.

Hauerwas, Stanley. 2000. "Sinsick." In Sin, Death, and the Devil, 07-21. See Braaten and Jenson 2000.

Hefner, Philip J. 1993. The Human Factor: Evolution, Culture, and Religion. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 2000. "Nature Good and Evil: A Theological Sketch." In this volume.

Passmore, John. 1972. The Perfectibility of Man. London: Gerald Duckworth, 1972.

Rahner, Karl. 1961. Theological Investigations, Vol.I: God, Christ, Mary and Grace. Baltimore: Helicon Press.

Ridley, Matt. 1996. The Origins of Virtue. New York: Penguin.

Rogers, Katherin A. 2000. Perfect Being Theology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Rolston III, Holmes. 1987. Science and Religion: A Critical Survey. New York: Random House

. 1994. ADoes Nature Need to be Redeemed@? Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, vol. 29, no.2 (June), 206-229. 2000. "Naturalizing and Systematizing Evil." In this volume.

Ruse, Michael. 2000. "Teleology: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow?" Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences vol.31, no.1, pp. 213-32.

Shattuck, Roger. 1996. Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Tillich, Paul. 1951. Systematic Theology, Vol. I. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

. 1957. Systematic Theology, Vol.II. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

. 1963a. Systematic Theology, Vol. III. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

. 1963b. "The Ambiguity of Perfection." Time, 17 May 1963, 69.

. [1925] 1969. What is Religion? Edited with an Introduction by James L. Adams. New York: Harper&Row.

 

Notes

1. I am borrowing this epigraph from Stanley Hauerwas= excellent essay "Sinsick" (Hauerwas 2000, 7). This aphorism by Witggenstein is enough enigmatic as to allow for more than one interpretation, and I think Hauerwas= interpretation is the opposite of mine: religious thinking, as can be drawn from what follows, does account for both imperfection and wretchedness.

2. Eduardo R. Cruz, 'The Goodness of Creation in Face of Our Knowledge of Nature: Paul Tillich=s Realistic Stance Toward the 'Vital Trends of Nature.'" Paper presented at the VIII European Conference on Science and Theology, Lyon, France, !4-19 April 2000. To be published as "Being Fair to Nature, or How to Show that its Cruelty is up to the Goodness of Creation," in Zygon, forthcoming.

3. We are aware that the neoplatonic background of this synthesis has dangerously brought Christian thought close to dualism. As Hefner has aptly described, "If perfection were to be attained, it would require separation from the world; the soul would have to be liberated from the prison-house of the body." (Hefner 2000, 2) In any case, we will try to stay away from this controversy.

4. The following assertion is typical: "the doctrine of the original sin is not prior to, but follows from and is utterly dependent on, Jesus= resurrection from the dead and thus cannot be understood at all except in the light of that event." It is taken from James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong: Original Sin Through Easter Eyes (New York: Crossroad Herder Book, 1998), 3, and cited in Hauerwas (2000), 17. I agree wholeheartedly with this approach, as it is made clear in Cruz (2000), but it seems to me that to maintain at the same time that "Such a view makes the effects of sin no less serious" (Hauerwas 2000, 20) may lead us to wishful-thinking. In order to take seriously into account the data of contemporary science, we have simultaneously to view nature "from the past," as in traditional doctrines of Creation and Fall.

5. The reader is referred to some of the old, but still seminal, work of Karl Rahner on a modern interpretation of the state of original justic--see, e.g., Rahner 1961.

6. Charles Hartshorne, the renowned Process philosopher, does have an extensive discussion on >perfection= in his Hartshorne (1962). Yet, alas, he also thinks that Greek classical views have impaired the Semitic tradition in this respect.

7. The embarrassment is so great that some versions of the Bible would rather have other renderings, sometimes awkward, to this passage. The New English Bible, for example, has: "There must be no limits to your goodness, as your heavenly Father=s goodness knows no bounds."

8. The reader is referred to the excellent treatise on the history of the subject by John Passmore, The Perfectibility of Man (Passmore 1972). For the philosophical tradition, see Rogers (2000).

9. Philip Hefner seems to have a somewhat different reading of this tradition, stressing the importance of the Eastern Fathers and linking original sin with finitude and imperfection. See Hefner (1993), 123-38.

10. Yet, the writers of the new Catechism of the Catholic Church decided to stay on the conservative side at this point. The relevant paragraphs deserve to be quoted in their entirety, as they give us a nice summary of the doctrine of the "state of original justice:"
374. "The first man was not only created good, but was also established in friendship with his Creator and in harmony with himself and with the creation around him, in a state that would be surpassed only by the glory of the new creation in Christ."
375. "The Church, interpreting the symbolism of biblical language in an authentic way, in the light of the New Testament and Tradition, teaches that our first parents, Adam and Eve, were constituted in an original 'state of holiness and justice'. [DS 1511.] This grace of original holiness was 'to share in divine life'.
376. "By the radiance of this grace in all dimensions of man's life were confirmed. As long as he remained in the divine intimacy, man would not have to suffer or die. The inner harmony of the human person, the harmony between man and woman, and finally the harmony between the first couple and all creation, comprised the state called original justice'."
377. "The 'mastery' over the world that God offered man from the beginning was realized above all within man himself: mastery of self. The first man was unimpaired and ordered in his whole being because he was free from the triple concupiscence that subjugates him to the pleasures of the senses, covetousness for earthly goods, and self-assertion, contrary to the dictates of reason."
378. "The sign of man's familiarity with God is that God places him in the garden. There he lives 'to till it and keep it'. Work is not yet a burden, but rather the collaboration of man and woman with God in perfecting the visible creation."
379. "This entire harmony of original justice, foreseen for man in God's plan, will be lost by the sin of our first parents." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, official English version) As the text refers to 'creation,' not to 'nature,' it is still vested in symbolic language, in need of interpretation. Note the reference to perfectibility, in # 378.

11. Reiterating note # 3, I am not denying that the doctrine of original sin must be understood against the background of these other doctrines. As a Christian, I fully agree with a commentator of Karl Barth, who says that "The fathomless depth of sin can only be glimpsed under the tutelage of the redeemer" (Anderson 2000, 39). Yet, if we come for a dialogue with other religions and the sciences only with these doctrines in hands, we will not only be misunderstood, but also leave behind other aspects of Judaeo-Christian philosophical and theological resources that could work better in the way of a dialogue, if appropriately interpreted.

12. Holmes Rolston, III has made important contributions to a better understanding of the ambivalence of nature. At one point, he has this insightful assertion, apparently independent from the one by Tillich that we are analyzing: "The Spirit of God is the genius that makes alive, that redeems life from its evils." (Rolston 1987, 145)

13. Perhaps the major difference between the humanistic outlook (if we are allowed to this degree of generalization) and the Augustinian one is the role of human will. A "bound will" is also bound to deception concerning our capabilities and accomplishments. Rolston here offers a kenotic alternative: "The Creator is present, perfecting his creation through suffering. >For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through suffering=[Hb. 2,10]." (Ibid., 327). We are not arguing for an either/or view of perfection, but rather sorting out the basic differences between them. For a criticism of the "humanistic outlook," see also Shattuck (1996).

14. This immediately reminds us of 1 Corinthians. Rolston, again, has developed this point in an insightful and poignant manner when, in what he calls 'cruciform naturalism,' he interprets the presence of suffering and the simultaneity of good and evil in kenotic terms. In the language of perfection, he does assert the following: "It is imperfection that drives the world toward perfection, the disvalue that is necessary in the search for more value" (Rolston (2000), 25. See also Rolston (1987), 286-293 and Rolston (1994). However, as it can be plainly seen in our argument, we cannot go along his kenotic outlook: it seems to us that God's (and human's) positive attributes are threatened in this view.

15. A fuller account of what ambivalence (vis-à-vis ambiguity and other concepts) means for science and religion can be found in Cruz (1996).

16. For a more detailed treatment of tragedy in nature, see my "Tragedy vs. Hope?" in this volume.