Thank you for your two thoughtful and long posts. I am going to abbreviate
greatly in this response, but I hope the context will still be clear. Your
quote on the difference between a Weltbilt and a Weltanschauung is useful
to remind us of the difference of the two, but I disagree when you say
>To conclude, I disagree with your assessment of what is being done in this
>issue. People are not making two descriptions of the same reality. They are
>ALL busy making two separate descriptions of two separate realities.
I can't speak for how common my experience is, but introspection tells me
that for myself there really is _one_ Weltanschauung. I consider the
regularity of natural laws to reflect a continuing intentional act of God,
by which He holds in being a universe capable of unfolding fruitfully and
offering an arena in which real choices are possible and therefore also
real love. I do not consider that matter has an inherent power of its own
continuing in the absence of the sustaining love of God, so that whether we
see the "ordinary" course of events or a miracle we are equally seeing the
presence and intention of God. I cannot see in this Weltanschauung two
separate realities; I see only one. As to why and how I came to hold such a
Weltanschauung, that is a separate and much longer story; I only want to
point out that it is possible.
I also agree with you that it is important for our claims to be
disprovable, but I think I will wait and see what others have to say about
this before writing more.
I would like to end on a less contentious note. May I share with you all
some thoughts I wrote to a Christian friend who was looking a bit sceptical
about physical resurrection?
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You appeared a bit reticent Saturday when I was speaking about the
resurrection of matter as well as of spirit. Consider, though: Nothing can
exist unless God loves it, and God has loved the atoms for fifteen billion
long years before ever He loved us. He has watched their slow dance and
listened with joy to their highest sopranino and deepest profundo. What He
has ever loved, He will always love. Since the atoms have never sinned, His
love for them continues in its original simplicity, unshaded by sorrow or
mercy.
You have, I know, been moved to deep love by the glories of sunsets, the
majesty of mountains, the simplicity of flowers. You also know that your
love is an image, as all loves are, of His love, an image much as a child's
drawing of the sun is an image of the sun. How incomparably much must He
love these glories and beauties, then!
Even if He did not love these things from the first, they would all have
become precious by the indwelling of the Son. How precious bread is, that
He shared with us! How precious wine is, that He made for us! How precious
wood is, that bore Him in his agony! How precious the flesh that suffered
and was made new! Love could not let love be lost.
Nor is this unscriptural:
By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and all their host by the
breath of his mouth. Ps. 33:6
You spare all things, for they are yours, O Lord, you who love the living.
For your immortal spirit is in all things. Wis. 11:26-12:1
For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; ........ Isa.
65:17
...through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether
on earth or in heaven..... the gospel that you heard, which has been
proclaimed to every creature under heaven. Col.1:20, 23
But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new
earth, where righteousness is at home. 2Pet.13
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first
earth had passed away, ....... Rev. 21:1
What might such a new earth be, when matter itself is raised, free at last
from the stain of entropy and randomness, what Polkinghorn called a
creation "ex vetero"? I certainly do not know. But I also do not know how I
walk or how I breath; fortunately they do not depend upon my knowledge.
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Wishing you all much joy this Easter-
Alice