This is part 3 and the conclusion of my blog which began with Evolution from Creation to New Creation (1), and then continued in Evolution from Creation to New Creation (2). These three blogs are all my own ruminations upon the book by Ted Peters and Martinez Hewlett EVOLUTION FROM CREATION TO NEW CREATION: CONFLICT, CONVERSATION AND CONVERGENCE.
Peters and Hewlett examine the various responses that believers have and can take to evolution from the viewpoint of biblical creationists, to intelligent design adherents, to theistic evolutionists. They pose Five Questions for which they feel Theistic Evolutionists must be willing to give account in order to have a believable, credible and defensible position of arguing that science and theology are compatible (pp 117-118). Their five questions summarized are these:
1) Can theology accept “that it has taken life 3.8 billion years to develop on a 4.5-billion-year-old planet”?
2) “Can theology accept that contingency, randomness, and chance characterize the process of speciation”…?
3) “Can theological anthropology incorporate the evidence that biological continuity between human life and all other forms of life exists … “?
4) How does God act in time?
5) Can theological affirmations of divine love and omnipotence by reconciled with the fact that animals suffer because of predators, disease and disaster, and the fact that 98 percent of all species have perished?
For believers to present a credible scientific understanding of creation they must be willing to address head on the violence in nature which so troubled Darwin: “to see violence, suffering, and death as merely natural and hence value-neutral—represents a failure of theological nerve. … From the theological point of view, we simply cannot let science alone define what is natural or, worse, redefine violence, suffering, and death as value neutral.” If God is all powerful and all good how can one explain the violence and suffering which is obvious in nature, and not just in sinful human beings? If God could intervene and change the world, why doesn’t He? Is violence natural and inherent in creation, or do we have free will which enables us to aspire to something greater than our biologically determined selves?
There is no doubt in the Orthodox tradition at least that many saints were greatly troubled by these questions, and they wept for a creation that had been so distorted by the sinfulness of humanity. The condition of the world at times seems so hellish that it is hard to imagine that God can see any good in it at all. And yet He does. Certainly Christianity sees the answer to these questions and the purpose of the world itself being found in the “bigger picture” which is beyond the limits of space and time. There is a logic to the universe which is not a human logic and so we cannot grasp the entire purpose nor see the entire picture. We are limited by space and time. And through the dense shroud which suffering imposes on our ability to see, we still perceive glimpses of beauty, order and design in the universe. We long for the entire picture to be revealed, but that requires us to move into dimensions which are not yet ours to perceive. Peters and Hewlett write:

Darwinius
“Each moment God imparts openness to the future that releases the present from bondage to past causes. God’s creative activity is never ceasing; each moment the entire physical universe is given its existence in such a way that it is open toward what comes next. This ceaseless future-giving by God explains why the laws of nature cannot grip nature in rigid determinism.”
Biology would say we live within the limits imposed upon us by genetic determinism. We are made in the image of our ancestors whose genes determine our current behavior. Christian theology would deny genetic pre-determinism and says, yes we bear the genetic traits passed down to us through the billions of year that life has been evolving on this planet. However we have been endowed by our Creation with His image and likeness which means we can aspire to something greater than our biological limitations. We have not only a past but also a future, all of which are part of God’s plan even if that is hidden from our understanding.
“Once we apprehend that God intends a future, our task is to discern as best we can the direction of divine purpose and employ that as an ethical guide. When we invoke the apocalyptic symbol of the New Jerusalem, where ‘crying and pain will be no more,’ then this will inspire and guide the decisions we make today that will affect our progeny tomorrow.”
Chaos theory and quantum mechanics have caused us to realize that there are relationships in the universe which we do not understand and apparently cannot ever know: not because we lack the instrumentation but because it cannot be known. The world is far more complicated and interrelated than is commonly imagined. There are patterns in nature and paradigms in logic which we have not yet discovered – both micro- and macro-. There also are interrelationships which because of the limits of space and time and of our own one-sidedness, the tiny place we occupy in the vast universe, we can never see. Thus the logic as to why things happen the way they do remain obscure to us in our limited knowledge and vision.
According to these modern theories even the flapping of a butterfly in the rain forest can affect the weather – there is so much that we cannot know or understand about the universe we occupy. If it is true that the tiniest of events (the micro) can alter the macro events of the world, it means that God does not have to do spectacular interventions in world history to affect its course. He too can gently nudge His creation by doing the smallest of things. All He has to do is be patient and let time take its course in working out His will. So the vastness of both space and time are not wasted, but rather are the very canvasses upon which God gently and with the greatest regard for the free will of His creatures influences the design which He is creating.