>But the idea I wanted to at least suggest was that God obviously (I
>think it's obvious) could have created things in nature with an inherent
>ability to continue to exhibit lawed behavior without any further action
>on His part...
>
>The question, of course, is then: what exactly does upholding come to?
>
>I'm not sure how to answer that question, but I am relatively suspicious
>of the view that God is directly active in every 'natural' event, etc.
>I suspect that that leads ultimately to the view that there simply are
>no such things as genuine natural laws, that all actions (and events)
>are God's actions, and so on. I'm not sure exactly what it is about
>such consequences that I don't like, but I'm not sure it gives the
>creation due credit for being _what it is_ and for being in some rubust
>sense _real_. It is dependent - absolutely. It is a creation - no
>question. But it does have a character and status of its own, and I
>think that that should be given due recognition, even while admitting
>that it is in some way upheld.
Del has described the dilemma I see quite ably. I generally argue that God
is active in every event in nature. But to say that He actively _causes_
every event in nature introduces some problems: 1) I perform an experiment
and observe the results. I have just made God do something. Actually, by
typing at this keyboard, I am making God do something... (of course there
is a simple way out of this: God made me decide to do the experiment...) 2)
Paraphrasing what Del said earlier, it calls into question just what we
mean by "natural law" and raises the question of whether we aren't just
using strange definitions to avoid a problem.
I suspect there are some theological problems that just aren't helped by
closer examination...
But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try -- only that we ought to be patient
and cautious.
It seems to me that the "nature as a machine" analogy works -- to some
extent -- here: Nature is a finely tuned, responsive machine that God has
built for His good pleasure. He has established ways of controlling it to
carry out His desires. The machine is in a sense autonomous, because it
operates according to rules. But God is able at any time to intervene in a
number of ways: 1) He can initiate some function of the machine that has
not been operating previously or shut down some function that has been
operating; 2) He can make minor adjustments in parameters; 3) He can make
major functional changes in the way the machine operates; 4) He can stop or
restart the machine.
Many of these actions would not be detectible by an individual living
within the machine. For example, we use processes that are part of nature
to tell time. So He could (in principle) shut down nature and restart it
and we would never know. If He started a new process in the machine and we
weren't "looking in the right direction" when He did, we might have no way
of determining whether the result of the process is something new, or
something which has always been around but never been discovered.
I like what the Westminster Confession says:
Chapter III, paragraph 1:
God from all eternity did by the most and holy counsel of his own will,
freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby
neither is God the author of sin; nor is violence offered to the will of
the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken
away, but rather established.
Bill Hamilton | Chassis & Vehicle Systems
GM R&D Center | Warren, MI 48090-9055
810 986 1474 (voice) | 810 986 3003 (FAX)
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