> Both TEs and ECs claim that God does not intervene directly in the origin
> of life. TEs tend to be more liberal theologically (eg, Polkinghorne) and
> give a certain autonomy to the creation. For example, they would say that
> the five fingers on our hand just happened to evolve. An EC has a God
> that is a lot closer to the classical formulations of His attributes. For
> example, God "loaded" creation to result in a five finger human being as
> He had planned. TEs tend to find process theology attractive, having a
> God who is in his own personal evolution. ECs have no trouble accepting
> God's intervention as directly seen in the NT miracles. Polkinghorne, on
> the other hand, dismisses NT miracles as "stories" with no historical
> value (and yes, I got this first hand sitting under him in 1991 in a
> course at Regent College--I don't think he'll be invited back there for a
> while ;-).
Hmmm. I agree with you that there are several theological positions
within TE/EC, but I haven't been using those two terms to differentiate.
I've been using them interchangeably. In fact, I've been sort of joining
Terry Gray's campaign to replace "TE" altogether with the term "EC." EC
is a better term for several reasons.
I suppose we could start differentiating the terms as you suggest, but
I'm not sure we could all agree on the definitions. I'm not sure it's
necessary to do so at this point in the discussion.
Hmmm.
Loren Haarsma