WHY THE QUESTION MATTERS

This is a fundamental question for theology, especially if we are to understand why some think that the very idea excludes God. Sometimes chance is spelt with a capital C as though to accord it a quasi-metaphysical status. I have already noted, in chapter 1, the hazards of thus personifying chance because to do so almost inevitably sets it up in opposition to God. It is then but a short step to speaking of chance as causing things, and once that happens we are on a very slippery slope indeed. The fact that we have so many words for chance with an overlapping meaning in our vocabulary shows the subtlety of the concept. Random, likelihood, probability, contingency and uncertainty are all terms which arise and sometimes they are used in conjunction as when people speak of ‘random chance’ as though to emphasise the sheer uncertainty of it all! In the following section I seek to elucidate the meaning of chance by looking at it in the context of some other terms with which it is commonly linked.