>From: Moorad Alexanian <alexanian@uncwil.edu>
> I honestly do not know how you know when God "irruptively breaks the
> continuity of creaturely cause/effect relationships and coerces creatures
> (any member of the Creation, animate or inanimate) to do something beyond or
> contrary to their God-given capabilities."
If you see a tree shedding its leaves in the fall and growing a new crop of
leaves the following spring, I think it would be reasonable to say that such
things are possible because God is sustaining the being of the whole
creation, so that its atoms, molecules and cells are able to function
without interruption in a manner that follows from their God-given
character.
If, on the other hand, you were to see a tree rise out of the ground, shake
the dirt out of its root system and proceed to fly by flapping its branches,
I think it would be reasonable to consider the possibility that you are
seeing a supernatural intervention.
> He who sustains the creation is
> in full control and it is hard for humans to know how that translates into
> what we experience and know.
All I intended to say was that when we talk about divine action, we need to
distinguish between the differing actions of (1) sustaining something in
being and (2) performing a supernatural intervention.
The matter of "full control" that you now introduce raises a new question.
Howard Van Till
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Nov 15 2001 - 13:42:18 EST