(Snip)
> 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?
>
> 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)
>
> 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.
I think that there is a certain amount of philosophical confusion in the
view you are propounding. Does God always cause the rock to fall,
according to the same mathematical principle(s) every time? The answer, so
far as I know, seems to be yes. Thus there is a *law* operating in what we
have come to call nature. Whether you call it a natural law or a law of
God's activity in the created order makes no discernible difference i.e.,
no difference that can be determined empirically-scientifically. Thus, it
is possible to think and talk about nature and its laws as if nature and
its laws are independent entities.
It is true that the notion of nature as a self-functioning independent
entity is unbiblical in the sense that the biblical writers (at least the
OT ones) had not thought of that notion because that way of thinking was
foreign to them. Does this show that the notion of nature as an
independent entity is false? Only if you hold that only those metaphysical
notions introduced by the Biblical writers are OK. But why should anyone
hold that? No good reason, so far as I can tell.
"Nature" is a Greek notion, and one that is necessary, I think, in order
that there can be any natural science, with the technology connected with
that science. As a historical fact, no natural science was developed -- I
would say that it could not be developed -- until the Greek notion of
nature was introduced.
If you want to suggest that we should reintroduce the notion of a
nature-God union ito our thinking, I would agree. But I think the study of
nature and its laws should still be independent of our theology because
otherwise we are likely to subordinate our scientific investigations to
our theological interests, to the detriment of science, as has happened in
the past. Although it may be tempting to want to subordinate science to
theology -- especially because the opposite has been done by the
prevailing materialistic/naturalistic ethos, to the detriment of both
religion and ethics -- I think is's a bad idea. The old "two truths" view
has a lot going for it, even though most people seem now to despise it.
(Snip)
> 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.
>
> Stephen
Lloyd Eby
leby@nova.umuc.edu