Re: Let's start with the assumption that I am right!

This didn't go the 1st time. I'll try again with Glenn's material snipped.

Glenn -

3 points here:

1) You can't get anywhere without presuppositions. Starting in that way is hardly a peculiarity of Reformed Presuppositional Apologetics. You can't get Euclidean geometry without Euclid's postulates (or something equivalent) & you don't get special relativity without Einstein's 2 postulates (or something equivalent). Of course that doesn't mean that those presuppositions are immune from challenges. But the way in which the scientific theories based on certain assumptions are tested is by seeing how well & how broadly they explain phenomena.

2) The belief that God accomodated the inspiration of scripture to current cultural views of science, history &c need not (& I think should not) be left just as a brute fact or as a way to avoid embarassment. It should be understood as an expression of the divine kenosis, slef-limitation, that took place in the Incarnation. I don't know if you were reading the list when I mentioned my recent article "Couldn't God Get It Right?" It's at
http://www.elca.org/faithandscience/covalence/story/default.asp?Copyright=06-03-15&Author=murphy&Pages=1 . This is a very brief discussion but I hope gets my point across.

3) You (& others) ask, if God accomodated to current science, why not to current theology? To a certain extent we do have to recognize that the revelation of God & his will has been progressive, as I noted in an earlier post. (Abraham didn't know about the Trinity.) But there's a more fundamental point. God didn't need to reveal accurate physics, astronomy, biology, geology &c because we can figure out those things with our own brains and observational abilities. In fact, for God to communicate them directly would have short-circuited the whole process of human maturation. But we can't understand who God is & God's will for us just from our observations & use of our brains because of the fudamental problem of sin. That's the point that Paul makes in Romans 1:18-23.

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: glennmorton@entouch.net
  To: asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Friday, June 02, 2006 10:42 PM
  Subject: Let's start with the assumption that I am right!

  ............................
Received on Sat Jun 3 11:35:47 2006