Cross & ID (was Re: Fwd: Judge Jones sided with the Discovery Institute and ruled against the Dove...)

David -

1st, what Paul says is that people ought to be able to know God from creation but they don't. The problem that he begins to point out here (in an argument that runs through 3:18) is that everyone is a sinner, & it's that that keeps people from knowing the true God. The point of the argument is negative - "so they are without excuse." & when he's finished showing this universal character of sin, he doesn't say "OK, now let's do natural theology right." Instead he turns immediately to God's revelation in Christ.

2d, there is an important difference between believing that there is a God & knowing who God is. We know the latter from God's self-revelation in the history of Israel which culminates in Christ, & specifically in the cross-resurrection event. If we do know God in Christ then we can look at nature & see that God's activity from the standpoint of faith. But any attempt to know God apart from Christ - any independent natural theology - results in just another variety of the idolatry that Paul talks about in Rom.1. The Intelligent Designer can be just as much an idol as the images Paul refers to.

3d, grant for the sake of argument that we can know God from natural phenomena apart from faith. Those phenomena must be ones that Paul & his readers in the 1st century Mediterranean world knew about. Needless to say, they knew nothing about the blood clotting cascade or information theory.

4th, the idea of an idependent natural theology was indeed known well before the Enlightenment. But as used by Christian apologetes it was always understood that it was at best a preliminary to a genuine Christian theology & salvific knowledge of God. But in the 17th century there began a slide toward the idea that the supposed natural knowledge of God is all we need - the kind of thing that comes to full flower in Lessing et al. & there is always the danger of that happening. I.e., an independent natural theology is dangerous & needs to be handled with care. Even if this danger is avoided, presuppositions that come from the putative natural knowledge of God create problems for understanding the central Christian claims of the Incarnation & Trinity.

Understanding God's action in the world in terms of a theology of the cross is discussed in "Chiasmic Cosmology and Creations Functional Integrity" at http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2001/PSCF3-01Murphy.html . My article "Intelligent Design as a Theological Problem" can be found at http://puffin.creighton.edu/NRCSE/IDTHG.html .

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: David Opderbeck
  To: George Murphy
  Cc: jack syme ; D. F. Siemens, Jr. ; pimvanmeurs@yahoo.com ; asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Monday, January 02, 2006 10:13 AM
  Subject: Re: Fwd: Judge Jones sided with the Discovery Institute and ruled against the Dove...

  George -- what do you make of Romans 1:20: "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." The principle that men are without excuse because God's nature is revealed to everyone through creation has been central to Christian theology and apologetics since the first century. It isn't an invention of the Enlightenment.

  On 1/2/06, George Murphy <gmurphy@raex.com> wrote:
    There is some truth in your initial statement but the citation of I Cor.1:18-31 doesn't support it. The idea that science should be able to give evidence for God independent of faith is a notion of natural religion, not Christianity. OTOH the message of the cross, that God & God's saving work are revealed under the form of their opposite suggests that God's action in the world should be hidden.
Received on Mon Jan 2 11:00:00 2006