Re: [asa] Re: on TE and PT, a response to Gregory

Burgy wrote:

My own understanding is that, in PT, the diety CHOOSES to try to
persuade rather than "cannot."

<SNIP>

David Ray Griffin, Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Theology at
Claremont, a prolific writer on issues of science and religion, has
written a watershed book, one which has received the Book Award for
2000 from the (UK-based) Scientific and Medical Network. This volume,
one in the SUNY series in Constructive Postmodern Thought, argues a
Whiteheadian based philosophy that religion does not require
supernaturalism and science does not require materialism. Griffin
describes himself as a panentheistic Christian, one who sees God as
more than the universe and yet the universe as part of God. He sees
God at work in the universe, but in a "persuasive" rather than in a
"coercive" way.

****

Ted comments:

Burgy, I believe your opening comment is mistaken. In PT, unless I am
mistaken (in these murky waters one can always fail to see some of the
rocks), God simply cannot act coercively; persuasion is the only possibility
for God to influence events. PT is deeply motivated by theodicy, even more
so than by evolution--a point that is often missed by IDs I talk to, who see
the influence of evolution and naturalism but miss the theodicy. If God
actually has the power to create ex nihilo, then God had the power to make a
world different from the nasty one in which we actually live. And, God
would have the power now to prevent much or all of the suffering we
experience as a result both of nature and of human acts. If God has this
power and did not/does not use it, then God is not a God of love. PT takes
love over power (as they see it), and thus their God is not omnipotent.
Their God has the power of persuasion, but not the power to create ex nihilo
nor the power to raise Christ bodily from the grave. You see the logic.

Please reread my most recent posts on PT, and my own position on theodicy
and God's omnipotence will be clarified by these further comments. I say,
with George MacDonald, "The son of God suffered unto the death, not that men
might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His." I
understand that many will not see this as an adequate philosophical response
to the problem of theodicy, but IMO it is more satisfying and more truly
Christian than the response of PT. This response also loses much of its
force, IMO, if one does not believe in the literal Incarnation--the Creator
God who brought the universe into existence out of nothing has also become
literally one of us in his actual suffering upon the cross. I realize that
this might be the old "heresy" of patripassionism, but to be frank I believe
that it's much worse to say that God is impassive in the face of suffering,
as classical theism tends to say at this point. PT goes way too far in the
opposite direction, IMO, and by abandoning omnipotence PT, quite ironically,
becomes less able IMO to explain in theological terms the great fact that
both nature and the nature of nature are contingent--as modern cosmology has
shown.

Ted

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Received on Fri Feb 1 11:31:53 2008