Re: [asa] Humanity and the Fall: Questions and a Survey

A number of the comments that "seem to rile" me are questions & erroneous statements & inferences about things that I've already made clear here - sometimes in earlier conversations with you. If I'm "defensive" it's because I don't like misrepresentations being spread. The only thing that might link me with Spinoza is the use of the natura naturans/naturata language, & I made it abundantly clear earlier that by that I mean the creator/creation distinction & that I referred to that scholastic terminology only to try to find a way to deal with your concerns about the terms nature, natural usw.

What I said I didn't see anything inherently wrong with was the term panentheism, & I cited Paul's language in Acts 17 & later Augustine's image as used by Peacocke as concepts well within the Christian tradition to which the term can be applied appropriately. But of course I did not mean that I approve of everything that takes that name, & in particular, process theology. & with regard to that, I have previously pointed out problems I do & don't have with it.

& I don't think I ever said that "'hominids into humanity' could take place in 'only' a theological sense, but NOT in a 'historical' sense." What I have said is that humans in a theological sense - the creatures who are represented by the man & woman in Gen.1-3, those with whom God has communicated, who bear the image of God &c, cannot simply be equated with Homo sapiens. To coin a phrase, "theologically modern humans" may not be identical with either "anatomically modern humans" or "behaviorally modern humans." God did communicate with humans for the first time, in a way that is represented in the Genesis stories, at some point in real time on the real earth. However, we have no historical record of that event, Gen.1-3 not being texts of that type. Whether or not you wish to call that event "historical" I will leave to you.

I've made it clear that I doubt that the beginnings of the human race, in the theological sense, can be traced to a single male-female couple. I am, however, not dogmatic about that & nothing in the model I sketched in http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2006/PSCF6-06Murphy.pdf would have to be changed if it were traced to a single couple.

I don't feel obligated to set out everything I think, let alone all my tentative views, in this venue. If you're interested in those things you might look at some of the PSCF articles of mine that are available at the ASA site - not to mention other articles & books.

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Gregory Arago
  To: George Murphy ; asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2008 10:18 AM
  Subject: Re: [asa] Humanity and the Fall: Questions and a Survey

  George, No need to be so defensively offensive! My comment said 'seems to welcome...Baruch Spinoza' and I have always invited your clarification. Later I quoted your own words, so please don't claim I am 'trying' to misrepresent you. This is ridiculous! No one that I've read on this list has suggested that you were a pantheist. Just because you see nothing wrong with panentheism (i.e. "fail to see anything inherently wrong with it") doesn't make you a panentheist either! In fact, I do welcome the contribution of Spinoza, but that doesn't make me a Spinozian and certainly I am NOT a Darwinist (though I imagine being a TE/EC means one is at least partly wearing Darwin's colours).

  The questions I put to you, however, tend sometimes to be avoided in the defensiveness. "Could you please expand on this a bit George, how you are 'not irrevocably opposed' to 'intervention'? I thought you were!! I also don't understand how 'hominids into humanity' could take place in 'only' a theological sense, but NOT in a 'historical' sense. This may be a source of great misunderstanding or a gap in understanding between you and I; maybe you aren't implying this."

  Here my effort is taken to ask you to clarify so that I won't misunderstand. My comments seem to rile you because they uncover aspects of your position that you have not made clear on the list or that simply are not clear to an outside observer. Really, there likely is something under the surface of your supposition that, "a lot of people on the list think that both panentheism & process theology are forms of pornography." Perhaps it would be helpful for you to START a thread explaining why they aren't what people think they are. This is not meant to be provocative, but encouraging. It is up to you whether or not you wish to accept it that way! :-)

  If you don't want to answer the question of whether or not you reject human polygenism, as Pope Pius XII did, that is of course your prerogative too!

  Gregory

  George Murphy <gmurphy@raex.com> wrote:
    Gragory -

    Stop trying to make me into something I'm not. If you don't understand what I've said (as is often the case, as below) & are interested in understanding it, ask me privately instead of broadcasting misrepresentations on the internet.

    I welcome no contribution by Spinoza. In earlier discussion of ID & related topics I explained that I used the term "nature" in the sense of "everything that isn't God" or "creation," and pointed out that this corresponded to the scholastic distinction between natura naturata & natura naturans. The fact that this terminology was used by Spinoza to explicate his pantheism doesn't mean I'm a pantheist.

    Shalom
    George
    http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
      ----- Original Message -----
      From: Gregory Arago
      To: George Murphy ; Terry M. Gray ; David Opderbeck
      Cc: jarmstro@qwest.net ; asa@calvin.edu
      Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2008 3:22 AM
      Subject: Re: [asa] Humanity and the Fall: Questions and a Survey

      A couple of points, first, noting that George's theology seems to welcome a great contribution by Baruch Spinoza (http://www.friesian.com/spinoza.htm). For example, his references to 'natura naturata' and 'natura naturans,' as distinguished from saying 'natural' and 'supernatural' or 'creature' and creator/Creator.' The idea of "nature in the active sense" seems indeed to depict Peacocke's panentheism, which I discovered in conversation with him fails to complete the hermeneutic circle between physics/biology and psychology/anthropology. This seems a difficult circle to travel! It would perhaps be helpful for George to spell out explicitly his appreciations for process theology and 'nothing wrong with panentheism', probably in the context of his TE/EC views, instead of being so defensive that others are 'not getting it' sufficiently. We all measure the constellations in our own unique way.

      George wrote: "I am not irrevocably opposed to the idea of some special divine intervention to convert some group of hominids into humanity in a theological sense. As I think my last post indicated, I recognize that there are difficulties with the view that there was no such intervention."

      Could you please expand on this a bit George, how you are 'not irrevocably opposed' to 'intervention'? I thought you were!! I also don't understand how 'hominids into humanity' could take place in 'only' a theological sense, but NOT in a 'historical' sense. This may be a source of great misunderstanding or a gap in understanding between you and I; maybe you aren't implying this. For me, the historical dimension cannot be avoided in the 'evolution/emergence/extension/connection' of human beings in covenent with their (our) Creator, whereas you seem to imply a mystical (implied not negatively) relation between history and theology. From an orthodox Orthodox position, this makes sense as well.

      The second point, of great significance to a human-social thinker, if perhaps less so to a physicist/theologian, science and religion dialoguer, is that a 'group' must consist of MORE THAN 2; two are not yet a 'group.' Three can be a family. This is important for picturing 'Adam and Eve' in the Garden of Eden. Pope Pius XII 'rejects human polygenism explicity' (in the words of David O.), does George Murphy (and the Lutherans...)?

      I find Terry's perspective liberating in its realism for both visible and invisible things. This includes noteworthy the expressed belief by a few people recently on the ASA list in the 'historical' (in addition to the theological) 'reality' of two persons 'Adam' and 'Eve.' Those who consider 'Adam and Eve' or the 'Fall' as 'unreal' historically may indeed be too swept up in a neo-Darwinian evolutionary scenario to allow for certain historical elements in the Bible their rightful interpretive place. They push away the history to support their mystical theology. George recently stated that human history began with Abraham. As people here have said, the baby is sometimes thrown out with the bathwater.

      But y'all have probably grown tired of my criticism of the limitations of evolutionary theories in providing a hermeneutic suitable for 21st century scientists and scholars. I guess its necessary to continue 'putting science in its place,' as we all must do beliving in extra-scientific things in our understanding of God and the universe.

      Gregory A.

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Received on Thu May 1 11:21:06 2008