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

Terry quoted from the WCF to describe how randomness in the contingencies of
secondary causes can be understood within a Reformed view. I am currently
reading the Haarsma's new book (_Origins_), and they describe God's
governance in the Reformed framework too. David O. questioned whether Gage
had ever read Augustine. These examples show that Gage's either/or logic is
out of step with theology going back for many centuries. The basic paradox
of God's sovereignty-providence vs. contingency-secondary causes has been
recognized and fairly well explored theologically already. I don't
understand why people think that modern science adds anything fundamentally
new to this topic.

The casting of lots is an ancient practice which clearly shows that people
have always understood the meaning of randomness (a fair set of dice) while
also believing by faith that God might providentially choose from among
possible outcomes to bring about his purposes. The casting of lots worked as
a mechanism for "letting" God choose precisely because it was recognized to
be random in its physical secondary causation. If someone were to find out
that the dice (or sticks or whatever) were manipulated, they would condemn
the cheater and would not trust the judgment as being from God.

Given that I am reading the Haarsma's book, I have been formulating some
questions/criticisms relating to the traditional Reformed view. In response
to Terry's post, I was thinking of bringing those up now, but I think
I'll save that for a separate thread.

Doug Hayworth
Rockford, IL

On 2/15/08, Terry M. Gray <grayt@lamar.colostate.edu> wrote:
>
> 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.
>
>

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Received on Fri Feb 15 14:37:12 2008