Re: [asa] Creation and Incarnation

I was away for awhile & have been hesitant to jump into the middle of this thread but it seems to me that it's going in some odd directions. So -

To begin with, while I realize that threads can get away from the description given in their subject line, it's unfortunate that "Creation and Incarnation" in being discussed primarily as a matter of philosophy rather than as theology. Perhaps I've missed the references but I don't see anything being said about Jesus Christ. & unless Christ - the one born of Mary & crucified under Pontius Pilate - provides the fundamental criterion, there's little point in talking about either creation or incarnation.

Then there's the question of what may constitute a legitimate "methodological naturalism," & one of the points being debated is whether or not human activities can count as "natural." E.g., when a person is healed of a disease because a physician has given her a drug developed by a pharaceutical company, can that healing be said to have taken place by means of "natural processes"?

I'm going to waive here (unless someone objects) the Aristotelian distinction between "natural" and "violent" motions. The reason for arguing that that healing was not entirely "natural" - & thus a phenomenon that can be understood by MN - seems to be a belief that human minds (of the patient, doctor, ^ scientist who developed the drug) are themselves not entirely "natural" - i.e., not themselves describable by a science consistent with MN. To this I reply -

1 Mind-body dualism is, IMO, a respectable view but it is not, even among Christians, the only view. (Cf. proponents of nonreductive physicalism.) & it seems strange to make our definition of what constitutes legitimate science depend on a debated anthropological position.

2) The thought processes, decision making patterns &c of people in different situations can be studied phenomenologically by psychologists without any presuppositions about the relationships between the mind and the physical world.

3) Most importantly - the theological issue ought to be dealt with in terms of "creation" rather than "nature." And whatever your anthropology is, you'd better have the human mind like the body on the "creature" side of the basic re-creator divide. Whatever our minds are, they are not part of God. The theological claim which will ultimately be translated into MN is then that creation can be understood from within creation, without reference to the creator (etsi deus non daretur). How this gets translated into a definition of science that is meaningful for non-Christians may be a difficult matter, but this is where we should start.

4) Finally, it should be noted that the question of the naturalness of human agency doesn't come up in situations in which MN is most strongly challenged - cosmology & biological evolution.

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Tue Aug 22 14:19:27 2006