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

I appreciate your reply. We agree more than we disagree. I have had
fairly extensive dialog with David Griffin, particularly on the areas
where we disagreed. We used his book in an ILIFF course several years
ago taught by Bill Dean. The impression I took away included the
understanding that PT theologians are not all of one set and one
position, but disagree with one another as much as -- say -- Baptists
and Mormans. In particular, I once alluded to Bill Dean (an EXCELLENT
professor) as a PT and he quickly disavowed that particular label,
although he did have high regard for Whitehead and Griffin.

jb

On 2/1/08, Ted Davis <TDavis@messiah.edu> wrote:
> 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 13:06:32 2008