On Thu, 18 Jan 1996 13:07:00 -0500 you wrote:
SJ>Progressive Creation - God provided laws and mechanisms of the
cosmos
>and life, and started them off, and was continuously involved
>immanently in sustaining, controlling and guiding them through natural
>processes, and in addition intervened transcendently at strategic
>points to introduce new information and direction.
BH>The idea of God intervening has bothered me in the past, for the
reason
>that it can be taken to imply that nature didn't proceed as planned by God,
>so God had to intervene to patch things up. I don't believe this is what
>Stephen is claiming. What he _is_ claiming I believe is that God _plans_
>to intervene because He derives _pleasure_ from intervening (IOW words the
>Calvinist formula, to wit: it pleased God to ...) If God chose to
>intervene at particular times because He wanted to be a "hands on" God,
>then I have no problem with that.
Thanks Bill. Scripture clearly teaches (or at least strongly implies)
that God planned to intervene. For example, Jesus was "the Lamb that
was slain from
the creation of the world" (Rev 13:8)
BH>I would still argue however, that He generally influences nature in
a very
>elegant, artistic way that does not introduce unseemly jerks and glitches
>into the behavior of nature. This may be because He loves order, because
>He does not want to thrust Himself on unbelievers, because He wants men to
>see a consistent nature that will yield regular principles when studied, or
>some combination of the forgoing.
Absolutely. I do not envisage God intervention in biological history
as involving "unseemly jerks and glitches". I see His interventions
as planned, subtle design modifications by the addition of new
information and/or the modification of old information.
TE presumably envisages God's working in creation as a continuous
inclined plane:
/
/
/
whereas PC would see it as a series of (perhaps very small) steps:
_|
_|
|
TE assumes that nature has the power to make its own vertical steps.
PC would argue that no matter how small the vertical increment is,
unaided nature cannot make it. Only a Creator can lift nature up to
the next plateau.
Here is Ramm's classic statement of PC again:
"In progressive creationism there may be much horizontal radiation.
The amount is to be determined by the geological record and biological
experimentation. But there is no vertical radiation. Vertical
radiation is only by fiat creation. A root-species may give rise to
several species by horizontal radiation, through the process of the
unraveling of gene potentialities or recombination. Horizontal
radiation could account for much which now passes as evidence for the
theory of evolution. The gaps in the geological record are gaps
because vertical progress takes place only by creation." (Ramm B.
"The Christian View of Science and Scripture", Paternoster: London,
1955, p191)
As Gruber observed:
"Natura non facit saltum - nature makes no jumps - was a guiding motto
for generations of evolutionists and proto-evolutionists. But Darwin
encountered it in a sharp and interesting form, posed as an
alternative of terrible import: nature makes no jumps, but God
does...." (Gruber H., "Darwin on Man", 1981, pp125-26, in Denton M.,
"Evolution: A Theory in Crisis", 1985, p58)
God bless.
Stephen
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