George Murphy wrote:
> I should back off a bit & provide briefly some context for my remarks. They are
> given withour supporting argumentation. I give a few references to my work for further
> details.
> Who God is can be known only through God's self-revelation which is centered on
> the cross of Christ. The understanding of divine action most consistent with the
> character of God so revealed is kenotic: God limits his action in the world to what can
> be accomplished through natural processes, so that the world can be understood in terms
> of those processes without reference to God. This has several consequences, among them:
> 1) Creation possesses "functional integrity" (Van Till).
> 2) Scientific theories (including natural selection) are not to be derived from
> theology. In particular, methodological naturalism is the appropriate way
> to do science.
> #1 is an expression of grace at the very beginning, for it means, among other things,
> that we can understand the world, know consequences of our actions, &c. #2 is simply
> the reverse side of the fact that we don't learn about God from science apart from
> revelation.
You are welcome to your theology, but some of this is very Lutheran, and as such it shouldn't be passed
off as Christianity per se. A position is not non-Christian just because it is not Lutheran. I should add
that you are using a very different notion of grace as well. Grace is what is given in redemption, not in
creation. To claim that grace is what is given in creation is to adopt a tenet of Pelagianism, and that
shouldn't be passed off as traditional Christianity.
> OTOH, science and theology can be mutually illuminating when scientific
> understanding of the world are placed in the context of revelation. E.g., a critical
> reading of scripture, the witness to revelation, itself does not speak directly about
> biological evolution. But the fact that the object of God's reconciling action in the
> cross is "all things" (Col.1:20), together with the principle "what has not been assumed
> has not been healed", is best understood if there is an organic relationship between
> humanity & other living things, a relationship which was assumed in the Incarnation.
But all these lines are so arbitrary. Given molecule-to-man macroevolution, then if it is sufficient for
Christ to reconcile all things to Himself by becoming a human, then He could have reconciled all things
things to Himself by becoming any material thing. (Why limit it to "organic" connection?? Why not
material connection? He has no organic connection to the molecules on Neptune. Are they lost forever?) If
not, then why does full reconciliation only work if He becomes man? The arbitrariness of "organic" is what
is so blatant. Why not choose any other relationship? For some reason, to heal the plant kingdom it is not
enough that Christ assumes the same matter that was previously shared by the entire biosphere, He must
have an organic relation to them. Why stop there? Why not a kingdom relation, or phylum relation, or
class, or order, etc.? If He had to become a human to reconcile humans, then why must He not become a bat
to save bats, and a cow to save cows? You pick the lines where it suits you. That's fine, but just up and
say that your prior belief in macroevolution drives the whole thing; don't claim to derive it from special
revelation.
> While natural selection is inconsistent with traditional pictures of God, it is
> not surprising if God is known as the one who creates life out of death and who
> participates in dying himself.
I hope we're clear that "not surprising" here does not mean "supports"; it just means "compatible", (for
reasons I explained in my previous post) unless you want to say something stronger.
> This argument is strengthened when one realizes that the
> major theoretical competitor of natural selection has always been some variety of
> "transmission of acquired characters" which means that in a sense species "earn" their
> survival and further development, a kind of "biological works righteousness." (& in
> fact the way "natural selection" has often been understood, including some comments in
> this exchange, has really been more like Lamarckianism.)
Call it what you will. The fact is that there cannot be transmission of unacquired [genetic]
characteristics. Whatever is transmitted must be already possessed at least at the genetic level.
> Bryan R. Cross wrote:
> >
> > George Murphy wrote: ..............................
> > > Your analysis would be correct if natural selection were a matter of individuals
> > > trying to "merit" survival by defeating enemies. In fact it's a matter of populations
> > > being "selected" (note quotes) by environments, including unforseeable environmental
> > > catastrophes. Gould has done a good job of emphasizing this.
> >
> > Whether it is individuals or populations, natural selection is not grace-based. Who survives? The
> > strong. Of course the environment selects, but it doesn't select willy nilly; it selects the strong.
> > Divine grace, however, historically selected the weak, the foolish, the undeserving, etc. This point
> > is so obvious that it needs no defending.
>
> As I pointed out above, the functional integrity of creation is itself an
> expression of grace. You again fall into the error of identifying natural selection
> with a crude triumph of "the strong". It isn't. Mammals didn't survive the Chixlub
> impact instead of the dinosuars because they were "stronger" - or for that matter
> "smarter", more moral &c than dinosaurs. They were just luckier. In general, natural
> selection doesn't select those who "deserve" to survive.
There's science for you, appealing to luck. Science cannot appeal to direct intervention by God; but
appeals to Lady Luck are just fine. But with respect to your claim about natural selection, I believe you
are sorely mistaken. I agree that since non-humans are not moral agents, there is no sense in which they
"deserve" to be selected. And there is no doubt that random genetic drift occurs, pleiotropy, heterozygous
dominance, meiotic drive and other factors work against the maximization of optimality. But in general,
the fitter survive, and the gene frequency of fitter traits increases over time. If you deny this, you are
denying a fundamental tenet of macroevolution by natural selection. It is not due to luck that mammals
survived the dinosaurs. That is utter nonsense. That is like claiming it was a miracle, or that there is
simply no scientific explanation for it. Was it just by luck that thick-coated animals out-survived
thin-coated animals in the artic? Was it just by luck that camouflaged animals out-survived their
uncamouflaged relatives? If you were to be consistent with your methodological naturalism, you would give
up this appeal to luck, and begin looking for features about mammals that made them more suited to survive
those conditions than were the dinosaurs. For a discussion of fitness and natural selection, see, for
example, Elliott Sober's The Nature of Selection: Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus (University
of Chicago Press, reprint ed. 1993).
> > > Theologically, the significant thing about the evolutionary process is that life
> > > develops out of conditions of privation, competition, & death - which of course is not
> > > the way the conventional beneficent God of philosophical theism is supposed to work, &
> > > why the process creates theodicy dilemmas for such theism. It is, however, coherent
> > > with the character of the biblical God who creates life out of death (Exodus, exile &
> > > return, justification of the ungodly), all centered on new creation out of God's own
> > > participation in death. OTOH this is not a matter of God or believers simply being the
> > > "fittest" who "survive" because God Incarnate gets killed along with the "losers" in the
> > > process & is risen.
> >
> > With that last statement you show that there is no essential relation between mutation/natural
> > selection and God's modus operandi viz-a-viz salvation history. With evolution the weak die and the
> > strong survive; in redemptive history, the weak suffer and then the strong are brought down and the
> > weak eventually triumph with divine aid. I never claimed that natural selection is not coherent with
> > the character of the biblical God (nor did I claim that it is coherent). My point was that God's
> > character as described in the Bible does not *support* His forming life by natural selection. That
> > is because the character of God as described in the Bible is just as consistent with many other ways
> > of creating, including de novo creation. (That is plain just from the fact that *something* had to
> > be created de novo; therefore His character cannot be incompatible with de novo creation per se.)
> > Therefore, the claim that the Bible presents a picture of God's character that *supports* evolution
> > by natural selection is ludicrous. "Compatible with" means "supportive of" only if no other creation
> > options are "compatible with" the character of God as presented in Scripture. Since many other
> > creation-methods are compatible with the character of God as presented in Scripture, therefore the
> > character of God as presented in Scripture does not *support* evolution by natural selection.
>
> I note that you ignore the main thrust of the argument.
I briefly discussed its content previously, but I'll address it directly. I'm not sure who your phantom
opponent is here, this worshiper of the "conventional beneficent God of philosophical theism"; I'm not
even sure what you mean by this phrase, since you don't spell it out. Therefore, I cannot say anything
about whether such a view of God creates theodicy dilemmas or not.
> You're using "support" as if it meant logical implication. Of course it
> doesn't.
I'm not using "support" as if it meant logical implication. I'm using it in the abductive sense. If a
piece of evidence does not increase the likelihood of a hypothesis over competing hypotheses, then it does
not support that hypothesis.
> The fact that planetary motion obeys Kepler's laws to a good approximation is
> supportive of Newton's, Einstein's, & a number of other gravitational theories. I have
> never said that a denial of natural selection, or for that matter of biological
> evolution, is heretical. I will say that with we know today (at least if we've awakened
> from our dogmatic slumbers) about both scripture and natural science makes it very
> doubtful that one can construct a coherent Christian theology which takes the real world
> seriously if it doesn't include some form of macroevolution in which natural selection
> plays a significant role.
That just begs the question. I think that with what we *know* today (not just what we have assumed) about
Scripture and natural science, it is quite possible to have a coherent Christian theology that takes the
real world seriously and does not include some form of macroevolution. You have not shown that any
contemporary Christian theology that does not include some form of macroevolution is "incoherent", unless
"incoherent" just means that it does not include some form of macroevolution.
> > > First, someone who has previously affirmed belief in divine immutability is not
> > > in a good position to criticize anyone else for a priori theology.
> >
> > That claim is not necessarily true, for it would be true only if the person in question arrived at
> > his belief in divine immutability by way of a priori theology. Since you did not ask me how I
> > arrived at my belief in divine immutability, you are not in a position to make this judgment.
>
> You are free to describe how you arrived at that belief if you wish. In any
> case it's inconsistent with the belief that God experienced suffering & death on the
> cross, & therefore with the revealed character of God. Thus it is something brought to,
> rather than gotten from, revelation. (Yes, I know the 2 verses, & no, they don't trump
> the cross.)
I'm not going to debate exegesis with you. But I will say that I find the passages describing God as
unchanging much more explicit about the nature of God with respect to immutability than I find any passage
describing the actions of the Logos. If God creating is not incompatible with divine immutability, then
neither is any other act of any person of the God-head. Explaining this would take me into a discussion of
God's relation to time, a discussion I don't want to get into in this context.
> > > Second, I never said or will say that miracles can occur only in salvation
> > > history. The whole separation of a separate realm of phenomena in the world as
> > > "history", & of a separate realm of history as "salvation history" seems questionable to
> > > me. What I pointed out is that the nature miracles in the NT function, _inter alia_, as
> > > signs to point out the presence of the creator who operates all the time in the world
> > > through natural processes, & that a miraculous creation of life in general would not
> > > play that role. That doesn't prove that it couldn't have happened
> >
> > > Third, I didn't simply say that the NT miracles "point to Christ" but that they
> >
> > > "point to Jesus as the presence of the God who works all the time through natural
> > > processes in nature." The difference is non-trivial.
> >
> > But you started your sentence with "Many of the miracles of salvation history, & especially those of
> > the NT", implying that at least some of these were OT miracles. If any OT miracles point to Jesus,
> > then why not all OT miracles? You asked the question, "What would be the corresponding sign value
> > of, e.g., miraculous intervention to create life . . . ?" By asking this question you seem to admit
> > that miracles in redemptive history have sign value, while miracles outside of redemptive history
> > would not. But just above you rejected the notion of a separate realm of "salvation history", so it
> > seems that you have no principle reason to deny sign value to any miracle. The sign value of the
> > miraculous intervention to create life (should it have occurred that) would be the same as that of
> > any comparable OT miracle, or NT miracle for that matter.
>
> You continue to miss the point. The NT takes for granted that the God of Israel
> gives food to all people (e.g., Ps.145:15-16): It is a matter of faith, not of
> observation. The gospel writers see the feeding of the 5000 as a sign which "point[s]
> to Jesus as the presence of the God who works all the time through natural processes in
> nature." What would the comparable sign value of a miraculous creation of life in the
> beinning be? That the God who creates life in the beginning is the God who creates?
> Miracles aren't needed to establish tautologies.
You are right; I am not sure I understand your point. First, you admit that not all miracles occur in
salvation history. Then you question the distinction between salvation history and another realm of
history. Then you say that nature miracles in the NT point to the creator who operates all the time in the
world by natural processes. (Later you say that the NT miracles point not to Christ but to Jesus.) Then
you claim that a miraculous creation event would not point out the creator in this way. I have no idea
what you mean by "The NT takes for granted . . . not of observation." Then you repeat your claim about NT
miracles. Then you ask what the sign value of a miraculous creation of life in the beginning would be.
Apparently, your point is, I take it, that a miraculous creation in the beginning would have no sign
value. But first, as I said before, not all direct divine actions need have sign value. Surely you believe
that the creation event was a direct divine act, but you don't require of it that it had sign value.
Therefore, there is no reason to require of any direct divine event after the first moment of creation
that it have a sign value. Second, if it did have sign value, it needn't be a tautology. It could just as
easily be, "to point out the presence of the God who operates all the time in the world by natural
processes." The Genesis passage clearly express the intimacy with which God fashioned humans, for example.
> > > Finally, there is no reason at all on the basis of special revelation to think
> > > that the origin of life took place in a way which cannot be understood in terms of
> > > natural processes. As I have pointed out repeatedly, Genesis 1 points in just the
> > > opposite direction.
> > This is an argument from silence, for one can just as easily say that there is no reason at all on
> > the basis of special revelation to think that the origin of life took place in a way which cannot be
> > understood in terms of supernatural processes. With respect to Genesis 1, the Bible does not say
> > "this event occurred within the bounds of natural laws" or "this event exceeded the limits of
> > natural laws". As long as the Biblical evidence can be used to support equally either of two
> > contrary opinions, it supports neither. Whether one interprets the events of Genesis 1 as miracles
> > or not will depend upon what one believes about what can and cannot occur by natural processes.
> > Since in this regard the interpretation depends upon what scientific evidence the exegete brings to
> > the text, the text itself does not answer the question. We should not attempt to substantiate a
> > claim with an appeal to special revelation when special revelation provides no support for that
> > claim, or is equally compatible with the claim and its contrary.
>
> It doesn't take a very strong version of methodological naturalism to say that
> one ought to look for natural explanations for phenomena for which there is no
> indication from revelation that they were beyond the capabilities of nature.
Agreed. The source is previous scientific knowledge or methodological naturalism, not Scripture; that was
my point.
> Of course Genesis 1 doesn't say "this event occurred within the bounds of
> natural laws." It says "let the earth bring forth" & "let the waters bring forth", & it
> doesn't require modern science to see the implications. Ephrem of Edessa, Gregory of
> Nyssa, Augustine, & others of the fathers saw them.
Mechanism, mechanism, mechanism. That is the issue. Most Christians do not deny that humans were formed by
the dust of the earth; the debate involves the mechanism: by what means did fashion humans from dust? (By
macroevolution or directly? With direct divine action or without it? etc. and every position in between.)
Only those who endorse de novo creation are at odds (in my view) with these passages. All the other
positions (viz-a-viz *mechanism*) are quite consistent with these passages, for the passages say
absolutely nothing about whether the mechanism was within the bounds of natural laws. To read into that
passage "completely by natural causes and natural processes" is to read into that passage something that
is not there, even if it is true.
- Bryan
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jul 18 2000 - 02:49:41 EDT