Howard, please accept my apologies for my temporarily sloppy thinking
and writing. When Allan pointed this out, I immediately thought "oops"!
I'll try to do better in the future.
>Has our concept
>of divine creative action been unduly affected by the 'special effects'
>industry? Perhaps so.
An interesting idea for "sociologists of religion" to check out.
>Has orthodox Christian theology ever suggested that God
>is able and/or willing to act in the world only within gaps in either the
>formational economy or the operational economy of the Creation?
There are three possibilities, not two: you describe "only in gaps
(only miraculous)" and "only natural (as in your RFEC theory), but there
is also "natural and miraculous (as in Biblical history)"
>if
>the presence of such gaps is not required to "make room" for divine action,
>then the absence of such gaps is no loss whatsoever. End of story.
It would certainly be a loss in Biblical human history, if there
were no gaps in the natural flow of events.
>The optimally-gifted Creation, complete with a gapless formational
>economy, does not in any way hinder God from acting as God wills to act.
This is an important principle. (temporarily forgetting it was the
cause of my "oops" error above, when I said CANNOT instead of NEED NOT)
Craig Rusbult