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

Doug, I think you might want to distinguish between God sustaining creation
-- the creation being "contingent" on God's continuing will to sustain it --
and creaturely freedom -- whether God determines in advance the actions
creatures may take. My views are broadly Reformed, but you could take an
open theism view in which God continually sustains creation but the future
of creation isn't fully determined because God allows the creation freedom.
A further interesting aspect of this sort of open theism (which again isn't
really my view) is an ontological critique -- the notion that there is no
"future" to be known until something actually happens.

On Fri, Feb 15, 2008 at 6:01 PM, Douglas Hayworth <haythere.doug@gmail.com>
wrote:

>
>
> On 2/15/08, D. F. Siemens, Jr. <dfsiemensjr@juno.com> wrote:
> >
> > I think I see a problem, which may be more semantic than
> > philosophical/theological. Is God competent to create a world with
> > metaphysical contingency, or is it merely apparent contingency? Is there
> > any level of human freedom, or is everything produced by divine
> > providence or causality? Does God determine my actions rather than know
> > what I will do?
>
>
> Doug responds:
> Okay, the discussion went down this direction anyway (see my earlier post
> in which I restrained myself from critiquing on the traditional Reformed
> concept). I used to be pretty solidly Reformed in my thinking, but now I am
> no longer comfortable with Creation in which there is only a mere appearance
> of contingency. Isn't God sovereign enough to create a world in which he
> does not have to determine all events? Behind the clever, nice-sounding
> language of the WCF statement, there is a bald contradiction: God can't
> determine all events at all levels without also being the author of sin. No
> matter how many fancy theological words you try to use, it just doesn't
> work. Part of what makes the creation so amazing is that God made something
> that is truly other than himself, something that is given the freedom to be
> itself. And no, I'm not being a Deist, because I believe strongly that God
> can and does interact in the causality/contigency stream of His creation to
> make his will known and to "woo" his bride. But I don't think that the he
> determines all events. He is sovereign over all events because he could
> determine any events he chooses. Several times recently I've heard
> preachers, etc. comment that the world and it's material structure would
> completely melt into nothingness if God stopped sustaining it by his
> thought. I am questioning that notion nowadays. What makes his creation a
> true creation is that it really does exist; it is not merely a dream in
> God's mind. Without God's sustaining input in our affairs, our universe
> would no doubt be a despairing place to be, but I do think we exist outside
> of God's mere thought.
>
> Actually, I'm not sure that I hold strongly to any of these ideas, but
> this is the only forum in which I think (hope) that it's safe to ask the
> hard questions. I look forward to reading responses and additional posts in
> this thread.
>
> Doug
>
>
>

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Received on Fri Feb 15 19:09:17 2008