Re: [asa] God as Cause

The questions below bring out, I think, 2 aspects of an adequate doctrine of providence that are often neglected. The 1st is analogous to the question, "How can we say that Lee Harvey Oswald killed John Kennedy when an autopsy tells us that he was killed by a bullet?" Making the necessary distinction is precisely why we need to speak about primary & secondary causation, even without any commitment to Aristotelian metaphysics.

Then "Why invoke God at all?" We don't - or shouldn't - invoke God as a solution to scientific problems. Theology is "faith in search of understanding." We begin in faith that the God revealed in Jesus Christ is the creator of the universe - i.e., the ultimate source of all things. A doctrine of providence is then an attempt to make sense of our knowledge of the world, including that contributed by science, in the context of that faith.

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

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Bill Green
  To: asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2007 3:58 PM
  Subject: [asa] God as Cause
  ....................

   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?

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Received on Fri Jan 5 09:45:12 2007