From: George Murphy (gmurphy@raex.com)
Date: Fri Aug 15 2003 - 09:16:27 EDT
Howard J. Van Till wrote:
>
> >From: Keith Miller <kbmill@ksu.edu>
>
> > It seems that you have put your finger on the real issue - at least for
> > you and
> > many other Christians. That issue is theodicy -- how to understand
> > God's character
> > in light of pain and suffering. I have often stated, that the
> > fundamental issues driving
> > much of the Creation/Evolution debate within the church are theological
> > ones. Until
> > those issues are dealt with forthrightly, arguing about scientific
> > questions is not
> > productive. We must uncover the root theological concerns and deal
> > with those first.
>
> Keith.
>
> Agreed, with a few further comments.
>
> 1. It would, however, still be of some value to demonstrate that the
> science-like arguments against the broad concept of evolutionary continuity
> via natural processes (in a God-equipped universe) are unsound and will not
> serve to give meaningful support to interventionist pictures of divine
> creative action.
>
> 2. How deep are people willing to dig to uncover the the "root theological
> concerns" that you suggest need to be addressed? Consider, for example,
> these two levels:
>
> (a) Continuing to re-examine, re-examine and re-examine the biblical text to
> find out what is THE correct and authoritative biblical teaching regarding
> the formational history of the Creation or the character of divine creative
> action.
>
> (b) Challenging the presupposition that there is such a thing as THE correct
> and authoritative biblical teaching regarding the formational history of the
> Creation or the character of divine creative action and accepting the
> difficult task of developing a perspective, not by appeal to an ancient
> canon declared to represent divine authority, but by a rational examination
> of a diversity of relevant considerations -- empirical, theological,
> philosophical, historical -- all recognized as the products of thoroughly
> human efforts to make sense of the grand human experience.
>
> I suggest that (a) has been adequately tried, and has failed. I am
> personally inclined to dig deeper and follow an approach more like (b).
Or
(c) Start from the claim that God has revealed himself in the life, death, and
resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth and from that standpoint interpret both scripture and
scientific understanding of the world. This is to be distinguished from the following
approaches.
i) Starting with philosophical assumptions about God's goodness, power, &c
which - especially in connection with evolution - produce most of the traditional
dilemmas of theodicy.
ii) Treating scripture as a collection of propositions without any internal
interpretive center.
iii) Approach (b) above - which, since it finally has no fixed point for an
understanding of God, makes it possible for the practitioner to create the sort of deity
(or non-deity) that he or she prefers.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Fri Aug 15 2003 - 09:18:23 EDT