Walter Hicks wrote:
> george murphy wrote:
>
> > Walter Hicks wrote:
> > .................................
> >
> > > The only argument that I think could be valid is that God has a
>use for the rest
> > > of the 15 billion years of space-time that does not include
>mankind. My suspicion
> > > is that such may well be the case, but I certainly cannot
>support it from the
> > > Bible.
> >
> > ............................
> > A spheroidal earth, the Copernican model, Maxwell's
>equations, DNA as the
> > basis for genetics, & the idea that representative democracy is a
>better form of
> > civil government than monarchy - to name just a few of many - are
>also ideas that
> > can't be supported from the Bible. We don't get our
>understanding of the way the
> > physical world works from the Bible. & while our understanding
>of God & God's
> > relationship with the world is to be based upon scripture, it's
>not to be achieved by
> > limiting our thinking entirely to the Bible: If that were the
>case we wouldn't even
> > understand the Bible because we wouldn't know its language, geography &c.
>
> That is an excellent point, George. So I ask you pointedly: Do you
>believe that God had
> much, much more than Mankind in mind when He created this extensive
>15 universe-years of
> space time? Evidently C.S. Lewis did but I know that many
>Christians feel that the
> universe was created only for mankind and get that implication form
>the Bible -- not
> science. That can make a big difference in what is (to them)
>"credible" theology and
> what is not.
>
> Comments?
We have to be very careful in talking about God's purposes
for creation lest we
impose our ideas of what is fitting, reasonable &c as constraints
upon God. The idea of
creatio ex nihilo means, among other things that the creation of the
universe was not
necessitated by anything external to God. Thus we should restrict
our statements about this
to what can learned from scripture & (with some tenativeness) what
can reasonably be derived
therefrom.
I think that one of the most significant biblical statements
in this connection is
Ephesians 1:10
(to which I have referred previously), that God's "plan for the
fullness of time" is "to
gather up all things in [Christ], things in heaven and things on
earth." This indicates
that the divine-human Jesus Christ, God Incarnate, is God's purpose
for creation. Humanity
is a central part of this purpose because it is the species in which
the Word has become
Incarnate: the flesh of God is human flesh. But God's purpose is
certainly not restricted
to humanity. The Ephesaisn text says explicitly that it is for "all
things in heaven and on
earth."
That's a theological claim with good scriptural support. A
bit more speculatively
we can bring in our scientific understanding of the world. With an
evolutionary view of the
world humanity is organically related to other species past and
present, and even has a
common history with the stars and the big bang. These relationships
and this history is
also assumed by the Word in the Incarnation. Thus an evolutionary
view suggests a way of
understanding how the Incarnation affects not just homo sapiens but
the whole universe -
something that it much harder to understand if humanity was created
separately from other
species. (This is essentially the argument set out in my old article
"A Theological
Argument for Evolution" in the March 1986 Journal of the ASA.)
& if the evolution of an intelligent species as preparation
for Incarnation is part
of God's plan then it would seem that a universe at least several
billion years old would be
required in order for stars to form & make carbon, 2d generation
stars with planets to form,
& life to evolve.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
"The Science-Theology Interface"
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