Fabien Revol

What if human nature were not something fixed through time? Would it
make it of less worth, and would it take away that special dignity that Christians claim God gave to the human creature? There is here a key problem to build a bridge of dialogue between Christian ethics on ecological issues and libertarian ecologists on that same topic. For the latter, because nature is all flux and change, there is no such thing as a human nature. For Christian theology, however, it is a key concept founded on both philosophical and theological reasons. A theology of continuous
creation can give a hand here to help Christians to assimilate an ecological view of the human being all the while still defending its dignity. Our universe is quite old but not eternal: it has a beginning and very likely an end. Through its history, which implies change, contingent events and evolution, the stability of the fundamental structures of the universe are fairly well-established; otherwise it would be a chaos where biological life could have never arisen. Even so, evolution is a very slow phenomenon, and that slowness increases with the complexity of the genetics of the being. Through the metaphysical idea that substantial forms are not immutable, they can be upgraded through informational inputs or modifications in the context of evolutionary thinking, and through the idea that those changes are very slow because stability is the very condition for the possibility of change among the living, the question of nature as the essence of a being, can be reintroduced in the debate according to the scale of time change in question. Then, time is a parameter that is called to acquire more consistency and value, whereas immutability is a concept that abstracts time and its role in the definition of dignity. Continuous creation brings then the idea that human nature is both the outcome of time and submitted to it, as well as giving it its full meaning in the midst of a divine creative project.

The Encyclical letter Laudato Si', published by Pope Francis on 24 May 2015, has deeply impacted the life of Christians, and especially those who are connected to the Catholic Church. All over the world, new interdisciplinary centres have been created for the study and the teaching of integral ecology. Research in the field of 'ecotheology', or the theology of ecology, has been stimulated, complemented by an ongoing renewal of the social teaching of the Catholic Church, most notably through Pope Francis's initiative in Amazonia. This shows how integral ecology is a vision of both Christian life and an efficient pontifical policy deploying many resources to address the numerous challenges our contemporary world faces. The enthusiasm with which people have become involved in this vision all over the globe, and the seriousness with which numerous Christian institutions both readily accepted and were deeply inspired by the subject of integral ecology, bear witness to a forthcoming paradigm shift. From theology to economic life through Catholic educational systems, universities, and NGOs, integral ecology and Laudato Si' are now among the fundamentals required for the building of the new world. This paper, through the experience of its author mainly situated in the context of France but connected to several international initiatives, attempts to depict the impact and the germ of renewal for both the Church and the inhabitation of our common home.

Continuous creation refers to a theological concept at the frontier
between philosophy and theology. It takes into account the
dynamism of the creative act in time, seeking to give meaning to
natural novelty that the modern sciences can help to describe.
The concept of continuous creation renews the theology of
creation in order better to dialogue with culture and meet the
challenges of our times, but also in order to give the believer
tools for seeking inspiration for living according to the integral
ecology and thus being good stewards of our common home.
This article therefore explores the theological possibility of
thinking continuous creation in a cosmological perspective
leading to anthropology within the contingency of natural
phenomena.

The renewal of the concept of continuous creation follows two steps: (1) an establishment of the concept of novelty in an exercise of philosophy of nature, as a means of interpreting the scientific discourse concerning the evolution of life; (2) starting out from philosophical and theological critiques and from the concept of novelty, this work proposes a reformulation of the concept of continuous creation in its dynamic perspective. If the universe of possibilities of creation proceeds from the Divine Word by the will of the Father, as the first timeless ex nihilo creative moment, the Holy Spirit allows, in a second creative moment, the universe of possibilities to proceed continuously through a creative partnership in which all creatures are involved. Created novelty is the expression of a procession of one possibility among others, which has been selected by creatures during the evolutionary process, due to the interdependence of constitutive interactions and the propensities in which creatures are situated.

The concept of continuous creation is now widely used in the context of reflections on the dialogue between science and religion. The first part of this research work seeks to understand its meaning through a twofold elaboration: (1) the historical setting of the three philosophical trends in which this concept was developed: scholastic (conservation), Cartesian (conservation through repetition of the creative act at each instant), and dynamic (interpreting the emergence of radical and contingent novelty in nature as a sign of the continuity of creation); (2) a philosophical and theological critique of the concept of continuous creation regarding the question of the relationship between change and creation, in the light of its highly polymorphous contemporary use, and, in opposition, its absence within the Catholic Magisterium. This work opens the field a further step toward reflection on a renewed concept of continuous creation.

'Science and Religion: A future source of assistance for Ecological Commitment?' in Neil Spurway and Louise Hickman (eds), Forty Years of Science and Religion: Looking Back, Looking Forward (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016), p. 147-157.

Fabien Revol, 'The link between the concepts of law of nature and continuous creation' in Neil Spurway (ed.), Laws of Nature, Laws of God? Proceedings of the Science and Religion Forum Conference, 2014 (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015), ch. 8, p. 161-170.

Today’s context of the debates concerning evolution allows theologians to work more
peacefully in order to enter in dialogue with the scientific discourses. Theology can identify at
least seven gifts that stem from the encounter with Charles Darwin's scientific heritage:
1. A new framework to think about nature.
2. The exit of a static universe, that allows to envisage nature dynamically and
historically.
3. The possibility of thinking the design of nature at another level, i.e. by not looking for
it in the details of natural structures but in the general tendencies of a universe which
gets continuously organised.
4. The eviction of non-Christian images of God by the failure of the design argument.
5. God's humility to think of theodicy: the sign of the cross as the answer to the question
of ontological evil.
6. Towards a new concept of finality, meaning an immanent desire for form.
7. The reintroduction of the theme of immanence in theology in order to think the
continuous and active presence of God.
These gifts are the signs of the passage of natural theology to theology of nature, i.e.
interpreting the theological meaning of history of nature rather than discovering and deducing
the existence of God and his attributes.

Classical biology seeks to analyze living systems, their structures, functions and history. What is studied is not directly life but the living through which life is self expressed. And this in terms of functionalities of the living, which is a perfectly legitimate reduction in a scientific framework, as long as it is a conscious process and it does not limit the view on the living, and moreover on life, to functionalities.
Synthetic biology, combined with nano-biotechnology, uses the discoveries of classical biology for the development of synthetic pieces of living and tries to reproduce the essential functions of life. Its goal is also to produce forms of living that nature itself has not yet produced. This vision of life is questionable not only in philosophy (classical distinction between functionality and experiences), at the epistemological level, but also in science itself, where the influence of experience on the functionalities of life begins to be investigated. For instance, in the epigenetic phenomena, the gene expression is influenced by the environment and by the behavior of the individuals carrying these genes. But also in brain plasticity, the development of synapses is affected by the practice of brain functions or by the re-education of these functions.
2
These new findings suggest that life is a unity, at least at the physical and psychical, and even spiritual levels for the human being. The respect for the living and for life must take into account this unity that can become a criterion for evaluating and discerning a "humanizing" use of nano-biotechnologies for medical applications, for example.