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

On Feb 15, 2008, at 10:19 PM, David Opderbeck wrote:

> Terry said: I will
> gladly admit (as do all Reformed theologians) that there is some
> mystery here, but we seek to let scripture determine how to think
> about this rather than unrestrained human philosophizing.
>
> But in fairness to Pinnock and Sanders (open theists), they argue
> that their position is thoroughly scriptural and that it is the
> compatibilists who are picking and choosing. I tend to agree that
> the balance is more as Terry has said, but something makes me uneasy
> about trying to squeeze scripture too tightly into a systematic
> theology box here.

The difference is where the Open Theist and the Compatibilist -- or
even the classical Arminian -- stops speculating. You even see this in
Gage's challenge to Randy.

> If Isaac actually thinks an intelligent being can guide randomness,
> then it is up to HIM to explain how that works—not the other way
> around. I have claimed that it is impossible.

Open Theism and Molinism IMHO are obsessed with the how it works
question. Calvinists are incurious here, leaving it to mystery. This
is not to say that Calvinists are always innocent of over-speculation.
An example of where Calvinism does get over-speculative is the infra/
supra lapsarian debate. As for the details I'll let Terry deal with
your questions, David. I found that he has avoided the speculation
trap both inside and outside of our tradition better than anyone I know.

I am currently part of the Evangelical Free denomination which leaves
open all of the internal debates with evangelicalism -- including
Calvinism vs. Arminianism -- with one notable exception, Open Theism,
which is considered out of bounds. It is notable that the discussion
of theology is dissuaded on Uncommon Descent, to the point I got
banned for it. Which is shame because as we see here Intelligent
Design can and does lead to heresy -- at least heresy as defined by my
broadly evangelical denomination. Please note I am being deliberately
narrow here and am critiquing a specific teleological argument being
made by IDM as being a heresy trap and not all of them. For example,
the fine tuning argument does not cause such problems.

Rich Blinne (Member ASA)

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Received on Sat Feb 16 10:16:28 2008