The spiritual shortcomings of the God of the scientist turned theologian

The target of my criticism includes all general belief in God, all easy theism that is disconnected from the life of the church and the scriptures it celebrates. This god, like the god of the scientist/theologian, (I think the order is correct) conveniently soothes our worst fears that the universe is cold and unknowing and there is no one out there who eternally cares.

Being "out there" is a quality of this god who is cut off from the events of human history even in spite of the attempt to allow this god elbow room, via the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics, to break the natural law and produce miracles. This indeterminacy may be fine for sub-atomic particles but here at the level of human life, objects continue to fall if unsupported, dead bodies stay dead, much to our horror, and people who attempt to walk on water are in danger of drowning, or psychiatric assessment.

Here we discover part of the agenda. Finding elbow room for God to interfere with nature is an attempt to say that the miracles could have happened after all and intelligent people can, with a clear conscience, become bible-believing Christians. Much effort has been spent in apologetics to this end to counter the wholesale abandonment of faith by educated people who find that natural science, particularly Darwinian evolution, makes belief impossible. This is a mistake, since belief in miracles can be a barrier to faith because it substitutes the miraculous for an encounter with the living Christ through Word and Sacrament. Like natural theology it is a distraction from the main game. John's gospel is aware of this:

Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs which he did; but Jesus did not trust himself to them. (John 2:23,24).

It is obvious that the scientist/theologian/Templeton prize bandwagon will not lead to new theology but a shoring up of old-fashioned theism that borders on Deism and distracts us from the task at hand: being the church of God in this place. As Stanley Hauerwas says: "In a world without foundations, the only foundation is the church".