From: Howard J. Van Till (hvantill@chartermi.net)
Date: Fri Aug 15 2003 - 08:29:15 EDT
>From: Keith Miller <kbmill@ksu.edu>
> It seems that you have put your finger on the real issue - at least for
> you and
> many other Christians. That issue is theodicy -- how to understand
> God's character
> in light of pain and suffering. I have often stated, that the
> fundamental issues driving
> much of the Creation/Evolution debate within the church are theological
> ones. Until
> those issues are dealt with forthrightly, arguing about scientific
> questions is not
> productive. We must uncover the root theological concerns and deal
> with those first.
Keith.
Agreed, with a few further comments.
1. It would, however, still be of some value to demonstrate that the
science-like arguments against the broad concept of evolutionary continuity
via natural processes (in a God-equipped universe) are unsound and will not
serve to give meaningful support to interventionist pictures of divine
creative action.
2. How deep are people willing to dig to uncover the the "root theological
concerns" that you suggest need to be addressed? Consider, for example,
these two levels:
(a) Continuing to re-examine, re-examine and re-examine the biblical text to
find out what is THE correct and authoritative biblical teaching regarding
the formational history of the Creation or the character of divine creative
action.
(b) Challenging the presupposition that there is such a thing as THE correct
and authoritative biblical teaching regarding the formational history of the
Creation or the character of divine creative action and accepting the
difficult task of developing a perspective, not by appeal to an ancient
canon declared to represent divine authority, but by a rational examination
of a diversity of relevant considerations -- empirical, theological,
philosophical, historical -- all recognized as the products of thoroughly
human efforts to make sense of the grand human experience.
I suggest that (a) has been adequately tried, and has failed. I am
personally inclined to dig deeper and follow an approach more like (b).
Howard Van Till
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Fri Aug 15 2003 - 08:31:34 EDT