God Unbound

 Brian McLaren's God Unbound: Theology in the Wild, which I read recently, is a fascinating mix of travelogue and theology, as McLaren reflects on the wonder of nature and the way in which that demonstrates the presence of God.

He describes an amazing trip to the Galápagos Islands with some stunning descriptions of the wonderful things he encounters. For example, "I come upon two kinds of sea stars I haven't seen before, one red like the sand with orange spikes on the side, one wheat-coloured with coffee-brown lines radiating from the centre. I pick up a beautiful shell that contains a hermit crab.”

Again: “In another area, several especially beautiful pyramids sea stars cling to a tower of rock. Their five slender legs vary from mottled olive to mustard yellow. Beneath them in patches of sand I see a half-dozen rounded chocolate chip sea stars also clustered together, their bodies the colour of café au lait, with a chocolate stripe running from the centre the blunt end of each broad, rounded foot, chocolate chips scattered generously between the stripes."

He goes on to reflect theologically on the experience, not least on the connection between theology and science and the perceived (by some) challenge to the theological perspective of Charles Darwin. McLaren comments: "Anyone who investigates Darwin's story fairly and honestly will agree: he was no iconoclastic rebel, brash, bold, and eager to challenge every convention. No, he worked patiently and painstakingly for twenty years to test his argument and face every objection, from the theory’s Inception by 1839, to his first intention to write on the subject in 1844, to his firm decision to begin what he considered a short book on the subject in 1854, to the final publication of On the Origin of the Species in 1859.”

He then draws a link with St Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco, which has a large mural of Christ leading a dance and "joining him are suns, moons, stars, four animals, and ninety larger-than-life-sized saints." 

The dancing saints include Darwin and McLaren adds: “Jesus himself, I would venture to say, would be proud to have Darwin pictured as one of his dancing companions. After all, their life's work was similar, as if they were moving to the same rhythm. They both challenged the long-established and nearly universally affirmed understandings of God. They both dared to utter, after a pious truism, the revolutionary word but. They both dared to say aloud the simple but revolutionary truth that what is has not always been, and what is will not always be. And they both were seen by some as monsters for doing so.”