Re: [asa] God as Cause

I understand that the OT view (I think I got this from Walton, OT prof at
Wheaton) was that God was the immediate cause of all phenomena. Now he is
the ultimate cause (Creator), acting through secondary causes whose
pattern he provides (Providence). Deists would make natural law
independent or self-acting currently, and seem to be echoed too often by
YECs. The Israelites had no notions to correspond to nature or natural
law, although they recognized regularities. Ancient polytheists would
have tended to emphasize the whims of the deities. Neither would have
understood deism.
Dave

On Thu, 4 Jan 2007 12:58:40 -0800 (PST) Bill Green
<wgreen82004@yahoo.com> writes:
How many of you believe that God cause all things?

It seems that the Bible has a lot to say about causes.

Isaiah 45:7
I form the light and create darkness,
I make peace and ??create calamity;
I, the Lord, do all these things.?’

Amos 4:13
For behold,
He who forms mountains,
And creates the ?wind,
?Who declares to man what ??his thought is,
And makes the morning darkness,
?Who treads the high places of the earth—
?The Lord God of hosts is His name.

Psalm 147:8—9
Who covers the heavens with clouds,
Who prepares rain for the earth,
Who makes grass to grow on the mountains.
?He gives to the beast its food,
And ?to the young ravens that cry.

Psalm 147: 15—18

He sends out His command to the earth;
His word runs very swiftly.
?He gives snow like wool;
He scatters the frost like ashes;
He casts out His hail like ?morsels;
Who can stand before His cold?
?He sends out His word and melts them;
He causes His wind to blow, and the waters flow.

These verses seem to teach that God causes all natural processes, from
plate tectonics (mountains) to wind and frost, growing grass and running
water.

I have read some articles about "complementarity" on your website, but I
am not clear as to whether many of you believe that God actually directly
controls natural processes.

The "complementarity" view, it seems, could include a view in which the
theological perspective is superfluous or only necessary for certain
purposes. It seems to me that in order to avoid this situation, and in
order to affirm the Scriptural definitions given above, we must ascribe
to God the direct causation of all of these processes, and the scientific
explanations as descriptions of his activity. Scientific or material
"causes" are not "causes," but only sequential events, all caused by God.
 How can we say, for example, that God causes the grass to grow when we
are in church, but then say that auxins and cytokinins cause it when we
are in the lab? If auxins and cytokinins are sufficient, then why invoke
God at all?

Thanks for your input.

Sincerely,

Bill Green

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Thu Jan 4 18:23:51 2007