Re: Dembski theodicy

George, this is losing me a bit -- if God intended the atonement before the
foundation of the world, didn't he forsee sin? And if His purpose before
the foundation of the world was to unite all things to Himself in Christ,
and the world we inhabit was created towards that purpose, then wouldn't His
creation of the kind of world we inhabit be in part a result of the fact
that He foresaw sin? Is the problem simply a reductionism -- God's purpose
in creating the world as it is was primarily in response to His
foreknowledge of sin -- or is it a broader problem with God's foreknowledge
of sin factoring at all into why He created as He did? I think I'd have a
problem with the latter. Teleology has always seemed to me to be an
important component of theodicy -- knowing everything (including that we
would sin), God created the world as it is because the best possible outcome
will ultimately result.

On 5/10/06, George Murphy <gmurphy@raex.com> wrote:
>
> David -
>
> I hadn't seen your question below to me when I sent my earlier post. Yes,
> I think God intended the cross "before the foundation of the world" as part
> of his intention to "unite all things to himself." That is because the
> creation of a world with full "functional integrity" which would give rise
> to rational creatures with free will would inevitably result in sin and its
> consequences. Thus God is prepared to share in paying the price of
> suffering & death which is involved in creating that kind of universe -
> that's the theodicy. (My paper which will deal with this in more detail
> will, I think, be in the next issue of PSCF.) That is quite different from
> saying that God created the kind of world we inhabit because he foresaw sin
> - see my earlier post. I think Dembski has things backwards.
>
> Shalom
> George
> http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/ <http://web.raex.com/%7Egmurphy/>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com>
> *To:* jcannon@washjeff.edu
> *Cc:* asa@calvin.edu ; Denis O. Lamoureux <dlamoure@ualberta.ca>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, May 10, 2006 9:35 AM
> *Subject:* Re: Dembski theodicy
>
> evangelical Christianity is a
> sociological category describing a group of people who hold (in
> varying degrees) an incoherent set of abstractions, severed from the
> abstractions' roots.
>
> Lovely. Nothing like opening the morning email to be lumped mindlessly
> into a "sociological category" by a physicist. Is it really necessary to
> call people names simply out of reaction to the fact that Bill Dembski is
> involved?
>
> I read Dembski's paper a couple weeks ago and personally I found it quite
> interesting. It seems to me that Dembski at heart is making a pretty
> traditional move in appealing to God's foreknowledge to address the problem
> of evil. Doesn't any theodicy ultimately have to appeal to God's
> foreknowledge?
>
> If you hold to a TE position, you either have to deny that human pain and
> suffering are a type of natural evil, or you have to say that God made us
> (through evolution) to experience pain and suffering at least in part
> because He knew that we would sin and further knew that our pain and
> suffering would help lead us to the cross. I can't see how the first option
> (denying that human pain and suffering are a type of natural evil) is in any
> way attractive or related to Christian theology or to the Biblical
> eschatological hope of redemption.
>
> The second option is more consistent, IMHO, with Christian theology, and
> further dovetails nicely with the concept that Christ participated in our
> pain and suffering by becoming flesh and dying on the cross. This also
> reflects the depth of the atonement, by which Christ not only took our place
> in receiving God's judgment, but also provided an example of virtuous
> suffering, and secured ultimate victory over sin and death. George Murhpy
> -- I confess I haven't gotten through your Cosmos in Light of the Cross book
> yet, but isn't your approach to TE and theodicy something along these lines?
> .......................
>
Received on Wed May 10 11:56:27 2006