Re: [asa] Neo-Darwinism and God's action

Randy,

I think you have understood him correctly.

Personally, I think the only way out of this "problem" is to have God
involved in some way in every single thing (even the most minute and
the most fleeting) that happens. The Reformed theologians (and others)
have called this concurrence and it is a sub-category of the doctrine
of Providence.

Westminster Confession of Faith:

III, 1
God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his
own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass:
yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence
offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or
contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.

IV, 2
Although, in relation to the foreknowledge and decree of God, the
first Cause, all things come to pass immutably, and infallibly; yet,
by the same providence, he ordereth them to fall out, according to the
nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently.

Random events are in the category of contingency. Thus, according to
this historic Presbyterian and Reformed way of understanding
scripture, even chance events are ordained by God.

Logan Gage is mistaken to think that there is no difference between
physical and metaphysical randomness. God "orders" some of his
"decree" to "fall out" by chance events. Such events look entirely
like chance events to us the human observer, even though they are
completely ordered by God. Even Calvin talks about the ill-fortune
(bad luck) of the fellow killed in the forest when a branch fell on
him while passing by. But, no doubt, for Calvin it was part of God's
plan and decree. I suppose it's semantics of sorts. I'm happy to call
things that look like random events in terms of statistical analysis,
random, even though I know that from God's perspective and purpose
they are not at all random. From God's point of view nothing is
random, it's all decreed and ordained. (And that goes also for the
free choices of free agents!)

Some discussion of all this applied to process theology, open theism,
and intelligent design can be found in my paper "Give Me Some of That
Old-Time Theology: A Reflection on Charles Hodge’s Discussion of
Concursus in Light of Recent Discussions of Divine Action in Nature"
found on-line at http://www.asa3.org/gray/GrayASA2003OnHodge.html

TG

On Feb 14, 2008, at 8:16 PM, Randy Isaac wrote:

> Jack Haas just drew my attention to Logan Gage's response to my
> letter in the Jan 2008 issue of CT. I would greatly appreciate your
> views on the last two paragraphs of his article. We have touched on
> randomness several times in this forum and I believe it continues to
> be one of the fundamental questions. Logan seems to believe that if
> there is divine guidance there will necessarily be evidence of non-
> randomness. Or have I misunderstood him?
>
> Randy
>

________________
Terry M. Gray, Ph.D.
Computer Support Scientist
Chemistry Department
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523
(o) 970-491-7003 (f) 970-491-1801

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Received on Fri Feb 15 13:05:43 2008