Re: Natural Theology, Unguided Processes and Apologetics

John P. McKiness (jmckines@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu)
Sat, 13 Sep 1997 12:41:40 -0500

Good Day,

I have been following this thread for the past couple of days with much
interest. I admit that my position on God's activity in His cosmos and
miracles are along the lines of Terry's. However, I'm wondering at this
point how you all deal with the statement in Genesis that on the seventh day
God rested and in both Old and New Testament we find statements of our
entering (or not entering) into His rest, implying that He is still in His
Seventh Day of rest.

It seems to me that this rest should be taken as a completion or ending of
some activity and it appears to be that of creation in Genesis for God and
of our earthly struggle when applied to us. I know that some have divided
up God's activity into the categories of Creative, Sustaining, and
Redemptive (at this point I don't remember the original source for this
concept) and I believe that some authors in the past (if I remember right
F. Schaeffer in _Genesis in Space and Time_ was one) believed that on the
Seventh Day God stopped His Creative activity but His Sustaining activity
continued and Redemptive began at the moment of Adam's sin.

To me the human concept of organic evolution is a human approximation to the
Sustaining activity of God in the biosphere and the fossil record is a
record of that activity.

Any some thoughts on this?

John