the complexity of life than we had ever dreamed. Being of the dust of the
earth is just the smallest beginning for our understanding.
- When thinking of what is necessary to arrive at life as we know it, a purely
biological viewpoint can be surprisingly helpful. Biochemist Nick Lane, an
active researcher and award-winning science writer, explores the origin of
life and cellular complexity from an energetic viewpoint in a tour de force
of real science and reasonable speculation (Nick Lane, The Vital Question:
Energy, Evolution and the Origins of Complex Life [New York and London:
W.W. Norton & Company Ltd., 2015]. ) While this is a work of science
with no reference to spiritual divine action, careful reading will uncover
ideas that are not incompatible with a belief that divine action is necessarily
present to the entire process. For example, this quote from Lane: “I want
to show you that this relationship between energy and life goes right back
to the beginning—that the fundamental properties of life necessarily
emerged from the disequilibrium of a restless planet.” (from Chap. 2,
What is Life?) And in speaking of the universal importance of proton gra-
dients to cellular life, Lane asks, “Does this refl ect the quirks of history, or
are these methods so much better than anything else that they eventually
came to dominate? Or more intriguingly—could this be the only way?”
(from Chap. 3, What is Living?).
- Athenagoras writes in a A Plea for Christians that (Satan is) “the spirit
which is about matter who was created by God, just as the other angels
were...and entrusted with the control of matter and the forms of matter,”
as quoted in Gregory A. Boyd, God at War: The Bible & Spiritual Confl ict ,
(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 306.
- Jon D. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, 2nd ed. (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988).
- C.S. Lewis, “Peace Proposals for Brother Every and Mr. Bethell,” in
Christian Refl ections , ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids, MI and
Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans, 1967), 33. (Thanks to G. A. Boyd
for pointing out this Lewis quote).
- Boyd, God at War , 87.
- E. Janet Warren, Cleansing the Cosmos: A Biblical Model for Conceptualizing
and Counteracting Evil (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2012).
- Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil.
- Warren, Cleansing the Cosmos.
- Boyd, God at War.
- Yong, Spirit of Creation.
- Yong, Renewal of Christian Theology.
- Horace Bushnell, Nature and the Supernatural: As Together Constituting
the One System of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1862,
digital reprint 2011).
- Walter Wink, “The World Systems Model,” ed. Gareth Higgins,in
Understanding Spiritual Warfare: Four Views , ed. James K. Beilby and
Paul Rhodes (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2012).
LET THERE BE LIFE!: TOWARD A HERMENEUTIC OF BIOLOGICAL... 313
