>Jim
>
>On Fri, 26 May 1995 20:32:22 -0400 (EDT) you wrote:
>
>>Earlier today Stephen was responding to an earlier post by Glenn about bread
>>baking and God's creative involvement;
>>
>>This brought to mind a seemingly stupid, but quite interesting question.
>>
>>If I were to drop of rock from waist height, is God' active involvement
>>required for it to fall to the ground? Or do the physics require that it
>>fall without God's participation. The only possible involvement by God would
>>be to "intervene" to change its fall.
>>
>>I seems to me that the only possible Christian answer worth the name Christain
>>is that the rock could not have fallen unless God directly caused it to fall.
>>
>>Terry, would you agree with my answer?
I agree with the following proviso: that some of God's actions in creation
occur through what the Westminster Confession of Faith calls "secondary
causes", i.e. causes for which there is a level of explanation where it is
unnecessary to refer to God. God is no less involved in these "secondary
causes" but it is perfectly rational to explain the behavior of the rock in
terms of gravity. *This is often as far as science is interested in
going.*
(A little aside: This is where I get a bit uncomfortable with some of the
critics of "methodological naturalism". I do not consider myself a
methodological naturalist, however when methodological naturalists are
accused of setting up arbitrary rules about what science is and of not
being interested in the truth, I get a little nervous. One can still say
true things (after a fashion) about rocks and gravity without recognizing
God's role in sustaining them. Clearly, if the only explanation involves
primary causation, as some might assert in the origins discussions, then
methodological naturalism is not going to get you very far. I do think
that by and large science has been interested in answering questions of
secondary causation and is content (usually) to leave the questions of
primary causation to the philosophers and theologians.)
But the questions remain: Why is there gravity? Why are rocks subject to
gravity? Why are rocks massive? Why does gravity act on masses? How is
it that gravity applies in this particular circumstance? While some of
these questions can be addressed via secondary cause type answer, there is
always the primary causation question. Either God did it, i.e. he sustains
and governs the universe in such a way that gravity works (the theistic
position in my opinion) or these are intrinsic and inherent properties that
function as autonomous agents (the deistic or naturalistic position in my
opinion).
>>
Stephen wrote:
>Jim, it is *not* a "stupid...question" <g>. I do not believe that in
>the final analysis, that there are "laws of nature". I believe that
>what man calls "laws of nature" are a description of God's regular
>workings in and through nature. We call these things "laws", but
>where are they? We can't capture a law and put it on display. They
>seem to be mysteriously external to the cosmos. They are the way
>things work, but do we really know why?
>
>Jesus said that not even one sparrow could fall to the ground apart
>from the will of the Father (Mt 10:29). If not a sparrow, why a rock?
Amen. Although this seems to go against your earlier comment (I think is
was you Stephen, please correct me if I am wrong) that God cares more for
animate creation than inanimate creation.
>
>I think the whole naturalistic world-view of modern science based on
>the idea of an autonomous nature is fundamentally un-Biblical. Wright
>(himself a theistic evolutionist) correctly points out that the Bible
>did not even have a word for nature:
>
>"The word "nature" does not appear in the old Testament. The Hebrew
>writers did not have a word that would translate into what we commonly
>understand as nature (the material world as an independent reality);
>it was a concept foreign to their way of thinking." (Wright R.T.,
>"Biology Through the Eyes of Faith", 1991, Apollos, p15)
Great book! Everyone should read it if you haven't yet.
>
>For example, the Bible never says "it rained" but always "God sent
>rain" (eg. Gn 2:5; Jer 14:22; Joel 2:23). While it might be useful
>to abstract from reality and use a mechanistic model of reality to
>exploit the regularity of God's working, that does not mean it is the
>whole truth.
See Psalm 104 and 135 for many such examples.
>
>We can say a stone fell without (rightly) thinking that God made the
>stone to fall, because it is comparatively trivial and partially
>correct as far as it goes. However, if we take that useful
>mechanistic model, make a metaphysical principle out of it, and try to
>fit our theology, the Bible and God to it, then I believe we make a
>potentially serious error.
YES, YES, YES!!!! Stephen, we are in nearly complete agreement here.
Perhaps this is why you are so feisty in resisting my position; only a
slight nudge will put you in my camp ;-)
In my own thinking the only way you can be theistic evolutionist is to have
this utter moment by moment dependence on God by the creation. Thus,
creaturely (inanimate and animate) properties and behavior depend utterly
on God's sovereign sustanance and governance (although in a secondary sense
we may attribute them to real secondary causes--read Hodge carefully about
this; I think that he actually rejects your notion that that are NO laws of
nature, although he would say that the laws of nature are absolutely
dependent on God's sustaining power--fine line distinction in my opinion).
But, also creaturely contingencies depend utterely on God's sovereign
sustanance and governance, as in history and evolution. There is chance
and contingency from our human point of view, but there is no chance and
contingency from God's point of view. So whatever the outcome of what
appear to be chance and contingent events may be from our point of view, we
can be confident that they are an expression of God's design, plan, and
purpose. It seems that many of the 19th century Calvinists (Hodge, A.A.
Hodge, Warfield, Asa Gray, etc.) were able to come to terms with evolution
(not Darwinism in the case of C. Hodge) on these Calvinistic grounds. See
David Livingstone's _Darwin's Forgotten Defenders_ for a defense of this
thesis.
I will be the first to say that if you take away my doctrine of the
sovereignty of God and his providential sustanance and governance over even
the smallest aspect of creation, then I can't be an evolutionary
creationist (theistic evolutionist). If God is not in control in the way
that I am suggesting, then the process requires his special tweaking
(progressive creationism; sorry, I couldn't resist) in order for it to
accomplish his purpose and reflect his design. In the one case where I do
think that there was a special act of God, in the creation of man, I do so
on the basis of scripture and Biblical theology and not on the basis of any
scientific argument.
I am also very comfortable with your objection to the notion of "nature".
This is exactly the point I try to make when I say that the distinction
ought to be regular/irregular or ordinary/extraordinary rather than
natural/supernatural. It seems to me that you objected to this line of
thinking before. "Nature" is just as dependent on God as any supernatural
act. The term itself connotes a notion of autonomy; that something acts
according to its own "nature".
You wrote in your last paragraph:
>However, if we take that useful
>mechanistic model, make a metaphysical principle out of it, and try to
>fit our theology, the Bible and God to it, then I believe we make a
>potentially serious error.
I agree whole-heartedly. Yet I can't help but think that this comment is
aimed at me. I'd be very interested in having you explain to me how you
think that I make a metaphysical principle out of my science and then try
to fit our theology, the Bible and God to it.
I wish we could all agree that given this theological position, that in
principle, evolutionary creation is possible. The questions that remain
then are: Is there good evidence that it has occurred? and Is it
compatible with the teaching of scripture in some of its particulars?
Terry G.
_____________________________________________________________
Terry M. Gray, Ph.D. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Calvin College 3201 Burton SE Grand Rapids, MI 40546
Office: (616) 957-7187 FAX: (616) 957-6501
Email: grayt@calvin.edu http://www.calvin.edu/~grayt