On Mon, 29 May 1995 11:55:27 -0400 you wrote:
>Stephen and Jim wrote (this goes in part to answer some of Tom Goodwin's
>questions as well):
>...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.*
>...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 believe this is true too! If we can care for some things more than
others, why can't God?
>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.
Agreed.
>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.
Yes.
>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 ;-)
I don't resist your position, Terry. I said at the very outset that I
could become a Theistic Evolutionist if that's where the evidence
pointed. At present I believe Darwinism has too many problems. I
believe a more supernaturalist model is needed to account for the
facts. Therefore I remain a Progressive Creationist.
Of course, it could be that "a slight nudge will put you in *my*
camp"! <g>
>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,
Well, then if he says that, then I disagree with Hodge. However, if
someone can demonstrate a purely autonomous law of nature, then I will
agree with him and you.
> 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.
Agreed.
>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.
Apart from "Gray" (any relation?) I suggest that the others only made
room in their theology in case evolution was proved. They were
training young ministers (as well as counselling older one) and they
had to provide them with tools to handle Darwinism, which was then
sweeping all before it.
>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.
Disagree. This is more a Greek philosophical theory of Unmoved Mover
than a Biblical one. God is perfectly free to "tweak" his creation, if
He felt that was the best way to develop it, and if He forsaw and
planned from the outset that He would "tweak" it.
>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 believe you are inconsistent here Terry. If God can "tweak" human
biological history, why not other species' biological history. There
is nothing special about man, except he is in the image of God. I
believe that God carried out similar "forming from the dust of the
ground" (Gen 2:7) for all the major groups.
>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".
No. There is still a *qualitative* distinction between natural and
supernatural in the Bible.
>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.
No it wasn't, honest! I try not to "aim" comments at individuals. You
don't know me, Terry. I am interested more in general principles, than
in individual's positions. Please believe this!
This is not to say that I have occasionally critiqued an individual's
position, but then I have clearly said it. I am fairly direct and call
a spade a spade.
>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?
I think the "scripture" part is what I most find wrong with TC. I said
it to Howard Van Till, that one could go through the whole Bible and
never find a hint of his EC world-view. He never got back to me.
God bless.
Stephen