On Thu, 30 Sep 2004, gordon brown wrote:
> With the omniscient God there is no such thing as "dumb luck". No volcano
> erupted in the Garden because God knew what he was doing. To Him natural
> processes are predictable so that, for example, he could have the wind
> blow at the right time and with the right velocity to roll back the waters
> of the Red Sea so that the Israelites could cross on dry ground. We are
> confident that when we pray, if it is God's will, he can keep natural
> disasters away from us without changing the laws of physics even though
> such events happen at other times and places.
What should we make of the following:
In 1755 there was a great earthquake near Lisbon which killed nearly
70,000 people. The earthquake happened on Sunday on exactly the hour when
many were in church, which probably greatly increased the death toll.
In the decades that followed, that earthquake shook up a number of
theologians and how they thought about evil and God's omnipotence.
Theologian Austin Farrer was one theologian who was asked what God's will
could possibly have been in the Lisbon earthquake. He wrote: "The will of
God in the event is his will for the elements of the earth's crust or
under it: his will that they should go on being themselves and acting in
accordance with their natures." (Farrer, A (1966) "A Science of God?"
From Polkinghorne, J. (1989), "Science and Providence").
Received on Fri, 1 Oct 2004 08:04:50 -0400 (EDT)
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