Re: [asa] Van Till

I can't say whether or not Howard considers himself a Christian today. I
will comment though - & this is a statement about what he has written & said
in the public domain - that christology played a fairly small role in his
discussions even well before he shifted significantly from traditional
Christian views (e.g., in _The Fourth Day_ of 1986). (Again, I am speaking
of his writings, not his personal piety.) I commented a number of times to
him that his discussions of such ideas as "the functional integrity of
creation" and "robust formational economy" were good as far as they went but
were lacking in what seems to me the essential christological grounding.
Without that they are just "theism," & whether "classical" theism or not
makes relatively little difference.

Since I seem to be the only person on this list willing to say a good word
for process theology, I will just repeat that there are a lot of things
worse than that. For all its problems, a process theology which has a
strong christological emphasis is preferable to a classical theism which is
only philosophy.

Finally, a movement which has as one of its primary spokespersons a minister
of the Unification Church has to have a good deal of chutzpah to hold up the
unorthodox views of one of its critics as a dire warning.

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ted Davis" <TDavis@messiah.edu>
To: "ASA" <asa@calvin.edu>; <igd.strachan@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 4:37 PM
Subject: Re: [asa] Van Till

> Howard is a good friend, and I do not feel that I can say too much on his
> behalf.
>
> This much however I think he would not resent. For several years and for
> a
> variety of reasons--but NOT in his own view related directly to
> science--Howard moved from classical theism into process theism. We had
> some coversations while he was in this process, if I may jokingly put it
> that way.
>
> I do not know whether or not he would say that he is still a Christian. I
> certainly will not try to speak for him in that regard. I have not seen
> him
> for a few years, but he is still my good friend, and we talk whenever we
> are
> in close proximity. In some important ways (related to his thinking) he
> is
> not the same person he was when I first go to know him more than 20 years
> ago, at which time his ideas and example were very important in my own
> vocational and intellectual development--for which I thank him even now.
> In
> other important ways (related to his character) he is still the same
> person--for which I am also grateful.
>
> Related to ID, let me stress again the fact--as far as one can discern
> it--that evolution per se and other scientific ideas were not prime movers
> in Howard changing his understanding of God. Theodicy and personal
> experience, I sense, had much bigger roles than any scientific ideas. It
> would be wrong for IDs to claim, as I know has sometimes happened, that
> accepting evolution necessarily leads one to become a process theologian.
> There are examples of that, but Howard isn't one of them. Furthermore,
> that
> type of "evolution" from classical to process theism via evolution is
> pattern more typical of people from earlier generations. Since the 1950s,
> there has arisen a fairly large group of highly accomplished scientists
> and
> thoughtful theologians, who are orthodox in their understanding of God
> while
> at the same time they fully accept evolution. I've talked about this *a
> lot* on this list and won't repeat all of that again. The significant
> point, which is almost always missed, is that such a group did not exist
> in
> the 1920s or even I think in the 1940s and early 1950s. It's a post-war
> phenomenon, and esp a post-1960s phenomenon. The polarization of
> evolution
> OR orthodox Christianity that did accurately describe the 1920s, and that
> does accurately describe what all YECs and many IDs and Dawkins & Co
> believe
> to be true, does not accurately describe the recent landscape. (I
> mentioned
> this in my American Scientist article a couple of years ago.) Jon Wells
> and
> Phil Johnson may be stuck with the wrong glasses through which to view
> this,
> but they've got plenty of company out there; even the late Arthur Peacocke
> would have agreed that you need a very new view of God in order to embrace
> modern science.
>
> But you don't. It's actually the other way around.
>
> Key aspects of the orthodox Christian view of God (e.g., omnipotence,
> freedom to act counter to reason, genuine incarnation and bodily
> resurrection) actually help us make sense of the world shown to us by
> modern
> science, in ways that do not make as much sense on other views of God. At
> least, that is my view both personally and as an historian of Christianity
> and science.
>
> Ted
>
>
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Received on Tue Jan 30 18:10:31 2007