RE: [asa] Romans 1:20

The problem I have with this response is that it leaves the natural theology
critic in the awkward position of betting against God in order to be right.
What if Flew one day decided that he would continue his conversion from
deism to theism or all the way to being a follower of Christ?

And afterwards what if he said it was the evidences of a designer that
eventually led him to seek Christ? How can we rule this out? Perhaps as
Dick said the seed here fell upon stony ground and didn't take root? How can
we conclude definitively that the seed was bad because it didn't take root
when there are other factors?

Consider another hypothetical scenario, suppose someone grows up in a
foreign country outside of the Christian influence of America and in fact
never even meets a Christian. Suppose they are drawn to science and explore
the universe through science and find from a purely secular perspective an
enigma in all the just right characteristics of the universe that happened
just so to allow life.

Suppose then this person converts to deism still from a purely secular point
of view and then starts exploring all the world's religions to see if any of
their testable truth claims can survive the scrutiny of being compared to
the scientific record. And suppose then that after eliminating all the
others they conclude that Christianity is valid and real and the Bible is
inspired, and therefore they become a Christian.

In this scenario, can we so confidently say that "that natural theology does
*not* lead a person to Christ" ?

Choose your answer carefully because that person is Hugh Ross and that is
exactly his testimony.

Thanks

John

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of Don Nield
Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2007 10:21 PM
To: John Walley
Cc: 'George Murphy'; 'David Campbell'; asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: [asa] Romans 1:20

In a recent interview with Benjamin Wiker, Antony Flew has explicitly
said that he is now a deist, not a theist. His case is a very good
illustration of George's point that natural theorlogy does *not* lead a
person to Christ.
Don

John Walley wrote:
> How can you deny that Flew's conversion to theism is the work of the Holy
> Spirit? He is not going to get straight to Christ without passing through
> these intermediate steps along the way. And even if he never does it
doesn't
> prove it still wasn't the work of the Spirit. But it is ridiculous to say
> that because he isn't all the way there yet that it wasn't God trying to
get
> him there.
>
> John
>
>

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Received on Fri Nov 16 13:02:08 2007