RDehaan237@aol.com wrote:
> George,
>
> Thanks for the questions. Sorry for the long delay in responding to them.
>
> <<Bob -
>
> When you say "Divine action kicks in when a given stage has run its
> course"
>
> it sounds as if God is not doing anything while a stage is running its course.
>
> I.e.,
>
> If not - if God is also active with natural processes during each
> stage -
>
> then what is the difference between that action & what takes place to move
> from one
>
> stage to another? Why could not natural processes - with divine cooperation
> - be
>
> capable of achieving these transitions? Teilhard de Chardin
> pointed
>
> to the analogy between such transitions (e.g., the development of
> consciousness) &
>
> phase changes in a material when it's heated. No miracle happen, but
> something
>
> qualitatively new emerges.
>
> (To suggest that is not, of course, to claim that we now understand
> all the
>
> physical processes that make the emergence of life, consciousness, &c
> possible.) >>
>
> I posit that God is active all the time, "sustain[ing] all things by his
> powerful word" (NRSV< Heb. 1:3). I take this to mean, roughly,
> providence--upholding, governing, cooperating, in your term.
Preservation & cooperation are 2 aspects of providence, & I think it's a
distinction worth making. The 1st is a static & the 2d a dynamic concept.
Traditionally cooperation has been subsumed under preservation. I think our
modern dynamic understanding of the world suggests that we ought to reverse this &
see God's cooperation with creatures as the way God preserves creation.
> This is going
> on all the time. In transitions God did a new thing, a creative thing, added
> new formational capacities, to borrow Howard's term. Creation moved to a
> new, more complex stage of development, and God's action goes into the
> providential mode again.
>
> To illustrate. A person is driving down the highway on cruise control.
> Ahead of him is a slower moving truck. The person decides it's time to pass
> the truck so he "kicks" the car into overdrive, passes the truck, and then
> continues on his way in cruise control again. Providence, creative action,
> providence returning.
Metaphors & models shouldn't be pushed too far, but the example you give
seems to illustrate something different. The cruise control machinery is already
there & is activated in a particular situation. The driver doesn't stop the car
to build a cruise control device & install it.
The formational capacities of hydrogen, carbon, &c atoms are there from
the time they're formed in the big bang or stars by natural processes. But those
capacities don't manifest themselves until they're in appropriate environments:
Chemical bonding won't begin till temperatures drop & enough atoms can get
together. & God is active all along with individual atoms & when they begin to
combine. In one sense God does something new when the first molecules are formed,
but God is operating in accord with the same basic laws of QM & E&M that obtained
before then.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
"The Science-Theology Interface"
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