Imago Dei: Man/Woman Created in the Image of God. George Hobson

in the Universe, as Focused in Humanity; Human Self-transcendence and its Perversion

      God the Creator is also revealed to be purposeful. Obviously, purposefulness is implicit in the concept of creation, as its opposite is implicit in the concept of chance.47 As, starting with the rise of deism in the seventeenth century, the concept of autonomous nature gradually displaced that of God-dependent creation, and as the Creator God, disconnected from his handiwork, receded from the human mind and finally disappeared over the horizon of unbelief, teleology was extruded from science and replaced entirely by the schema of cause and effect. Most unreasonably, yet wearing the mask of reason, impersonal chance (plus time) was called in to assume the mantle of the personal Creator God; as surrogate divinity, chance became the causal agent of the universe. The absurdity of this, in the light of the wondrous complexity and order of this universe, is only now beginning to be recognized by honest thinkers.

      The biological and biochemical discoveries of the last century, combined with the astrophysical discovery of an evolving universe, should lead to a reconsideration of the place of teleology in the physical universe. Purpose is inherent in order and beauty. This affirmation which, empirically speaking, we may make initially on the basis of the phenomenon of life and, supremely, of human life, may be projected backward retrospectively and made with reference to the inorganic universe as a whole, in view of the fact that life has emerged out of this universe and cannot therefore be altogether in discontinuity with its principles. If purpose is to be found in living beings, we are entitled to infer that it is inherent in nonliving beings insofar as they are part of a larger, coherent context and are characterized respectively by their own forms of order.