Re: [asa] Pascal and Natural Theology (was "ID and YEC Arguments")

Thanks George. I'd love to see your earlier paper on Pascal. Ok, so Pascal
and Luther said we might be able to get an inkling from nature that there is
a God, but that we can't know anything about him in detail from nature alone
(or if we try for such detail, we'll probably corrupt it). That seems like
something I as an evangelical would agree with.

It still seems to me that using Pascal's "hidden God" quote against
arguments from design is somewhat misplaced. Shouldn't we distinguish broad
design arguments -- e.g., "the appearance of design in the anthropic
principle supports the notion that there is a God" -- from more narrow ones
-- e.g., "the Cambrian explosion correlates to the creation of separate
'kinds' of animals as [supposedly] recorded in Genesis 1"?

On 10/21/06, George Murphy <gmurphy@raex.com> wrote:
>
> David -
>
> Apparently you missed my post on this last night. (Maybe it got caught in
> your spam filter. That's happened to me with some list posts.) Here it is
> (in red):
>
> Pensee #602 is rather long. The part you cite is near the end, p.222 in
> the Penguin edition. Pascal clearly has Is.45:15 in mind here.
>
> Even stronger statements against the supposed natural knowledge of God
> comes earlier, #s 6 & 7 on p.32.
>
>
> It is a remarkable thing that no canonical writer ever used nature as a
> proof of God's existence. All set out to convince us of it. But David,
> Solomon, and all the rest never said: 'There is no void; therefore there
> is a God.' They must have been cleverer than the cleverest of their
> successors, every one of whom has used this argument. The fact is worth
> pondering on.
>
>
> If it is a sign of weakness to use nature as a proof of God,
> do not despise Scripture for it; if it is a sign of strength to have
> recognized these contradictions, give Scripture the credit for
> it.
>
> Paul's point in Roman 1 is that while there is evidence for God in the
> world, people always misinterpret it and construct idols. (& the
> Intelligent Designer can be added to the list of such idols.) While they
> may know that there is a God, there are unable to have any idea of who God
> is. Thus when Paul concludes his argument for the universal problem of sin
> in Ch.3, he doesn't say "OK, now let's do natural theology right." Instead
> he turns immediately to what God has done in Christ. (& note also that in
> 10:18 he interprets Ps.19:4 as referring to the apostolic proclamation of
> the gospel!)
>
> There is some similarity between Luther's arguments in the Heidelberg
> Disputation & what Pascal says above. (Luther also cites Is.45:15.)
> Luther thought, on the basis of Rom.1, that people could know that there
> is some God from nature. But when he says "That person does not deserve
> to be called a theologian who looks upon the invisible things of God as
> though they were clearly perceptible in those things which have actually
> happened," he is clearly rejecting the idea that a supposed natural
> knowledge of God should play any role in proper Christian theology. (This
> is especially clear from his Latin, which echoes the Vulgate of Rom.1:20.)
>
> I haven't been following this thread closely but in connection with ID I
> should point out that however Rom.1 is interpreted, it provides no support
> for ID claims. Whatever evidence Paul may have had in mind must have been
> something easily accessible to people in the 1st century Mediterranean
> world, & thus can't have anything to do with the bacterial flagellum, the
> blood clotting cascade, &c.
>
> Then to continue - another Pensee (#362, #126 in the 1961 Penguid ed)
> begins with someone posing a question to him:
>
> "'Why, do you not say yourself that the sky and the birds are proof of
> God?' No [Pascal replies]. 'And does your religion not say so? No, for
> though it is true in a sense, for some to whom God has given the light to
> see it, yet it is false in the case of the majority of men."
>
> The distinction I alluded to above with Luther is important with any
> discussion of a supposed natural knowledge - the distinction between simply
> believing that "there is a God" and actually knowing anything about who God
> is.
>
> Then there is a crucial distinction that needs to be made between what
> I've called an independent and a dependent natural theology - between one
> that claims to speak of God independently of revelation & one in which
> nature is thought to tell us about God when illumined by revelation. (By
> "revelation" I mean what some would call "special revelation." Whether
> there is anything that can properly be called "general revelation" is what's
> at issue. I think it's a misleading term.) Christians can legitimately
> look at nature in the light of God's revelation in Christ & discern some
> things about that God's presence & activity in the world. But those to
> whom God has *not* given this light consistently misinterpret the evidence
> of nature & construct idols.
>
> Paul does not say that nature teaches us that we are separated from God &
> I don't think Pascal quite says that. We can know from nature that we are
> wretched but that that wretchedness is a consequence of separation from God
> is another matter.
>
> & with all this I think it's important to keep in mind what kind of text
> we're dealing with in the Pensees. It's not a finished work but a
> collection of notes & reflections (i.e., pensees!) for an apologetic which
> Pascal was never able to complete. So we ought to be careful not to read to
> much into hints in individual comments.
>
> I gave a paper "Pascal and Chiasmic Cosmology" at the 2002 annual meeting
> of the ASA & would be glad to send a copy to anyone who's interested.
> (Caveat: I just realized that I'll have to dig it out of my old computer.
> But I'll try.) My paper "Reading God's Two Books" in the March 2006 PSCF is
> also germane to this topic.
>
> Shalom
> George
> http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com>
> *To:* asa@calvin.edu
> *Sent:* Saturday, October 21, 2006 12:51 PM
> *Subject:* [asa] Pascal and Natural Theology (was "ID and YEC Arguments")
>
>
> Finally I found the Pascal reference concerning the "hidden" God that we
> were talking about in the other thread. It's #449 in my revised Penguin
> edition and #556 in Sellier's system. It's part of a fascinating series
> about what Pascal considered two essential truths of Christianity: "that
> there is a God, of whom men are capable, and that there is a corruption in
> nature which makes them unworthy." (#449).
>
> The point of #449 concerning the "hiddenness" of God seems to be that, if
> nature constituted a complete revelation about God, men would know that
> there is a God but would not know that they are corrupt and lost. Pascal
> says that "[a]ll those who seek God apart from Christ, and who go no further
> than nature, either find no light to satisfy them or come to devise a means
> of knowing and serving God without a mediator, thus falling into either
> atheism or deism, two things almost equally abhorrent to Christianity."
> Thus, he gives the famous line we've been discussing: "What can be seen on
> earth indicates neither the total absence, nor the manifest presence of a
> divinity, but the presence of a hidden God."
>
> In context, then, it seems to me that Pascal is *not* saying there is
> nothing that can be known about God from nature. In fact, it seems to me
> that he's suggesting we can know from nature that there is a God and that we
> are separated from him by our own wretchedness -- exactly what it seems to
> me Paul says in Romans 1 -- but that we cannot *stop* there because
> Christ, the cure for that wretchedness, is not revealed in nature -- exactly
> what Paul says in Romans 10 about the need for faith in the Gospel that
> comes through hearing the word of God. Pascal seems to make this explicit
> in #449 in the two paragraphs that follow the "hidden God" line:
>
>
> Shall the only being who knows nature know it only in order to be
> wretched? Shall the only one to know it be the only one to be unhappy?
>
> He must not see nothing at all, nor must he see enough to think that he
> possesses God, but he must see enough to know that he has lost him. For, to
> know that one has lost something one must see and not see: such precisely
> is the state of nature.
>
>
> Pascal offers a similar thought earlier in #446: "If there were no
> obscurity man would not feel his corruption: if there were no light man
> could not hope for a cure. Thus it is not only right but useful for us that
> God should be partly concealed and partly revealed, since it is equally
> dangerous for man to know God without knowing his own wretchedness as to
> know his wretchedness without knowing God."
>
> Certainly this Pascal reference, coming from a brilliant scientist and
> philosopher-theologian, supports an argument that God cannot be fully known
> through nature. However, I can't see how Pascal could be read to say that
> nature can't say anyting at all about whether there is a God. It seems to
> me he's saying exactly the opposite: nature tells us there is a God and
> that we are wretchedly separated from Him. He is refuting the Enlightenment
> rationalists who claimed nature is all the revelation we have about God, not
> the much more modest claim that nature reveals a creator-God.
>
> Thoughts from any Pascal afficianados out there?
>
>

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Received on Sun Oct 22 16:15:29 2006