Re: [asa] Creationism Conference (The Queen of Sciences)

I see that I stirred up a good deal of discussion & won't try to respond to everything point by point. But a few clarifications -

1st, there are some phrases in my original post that seem to have been overlooked. I said that a putative general revelation - I would rather just say "observation of the world and reason" - "tells us nothing about who the true God or about the Incarnation & atonement." I did not deny that a person may conclude from observation of the world that "there is a God." But it simply does not tell us who that God is - i.e., that he is the one who brought Israel out of Egypt & raised Jesus from the dead. It tells us nothing about God as Trinity or the Incarnation. Nothing. & that has always been recognized by Christians who argue for a natural knowledge of God.

2d, I used the image of theology of the queen of the sciences to develop a metaphor. Note my language - "If (as used to be said) theology is the queen of the sciences, the other sciences are her ministers." David O & Ted D have had some interesting things to say about the "queen of the sciences" idea but my purpose in evoking it was simply to have a picturesque way of describing the roles of theology & the natural sciences other than the well-worn "2 books" one.

& I went on to say, "But a wise queen will listen to her ministers in their areas of competence." (Emphasis added.) Bernie says quite rightly that when it comes, e.g., to the question of 6-day creation or evolution, evolution wins. That is because theology listens to the sciences when they speak about their own areas of competence and, as I said further, will "if necessary reconsider its interpretation of biblical texts in that light."

But it is wrong to say that the sciences always trump theology. The serious danger of the ideas of natural knowledge of God and natural theology is that people will begin to think that they can learn everything they need to know about God and God's will for us by studying the world - or in other words, from "natural revelation." Nor is this a mere theoretical danger - it was pervasive in the eighteenth & nineteenth centuries with the thought of the Enlightenment & deism, & is quite explicit in something like Lessing's "Education of the Human Race." I could give numerous examples & Ted D could no doubt do so more thoroughly. What it produced at best was a kind of unitarian deism with an emphasis on morality & some kind of hope for an "afterlife." & you can find this sort of thing today - e.g., Paul Davies.

The proper procedure in theology, as I emphasized in the PSCF article I referenced, is to start with God's historical revelation that culminates in Christ. Then we know who God is and can turn to what science tells us about the natural world and in some ways learn more fully how the God revealed in Christ is active in the world. We do that by looking at scientific knowledge in the light of that historical revelation - that's why I used the title The Cosmos in the Light of the Cross for one of my books. & that's the kind of thing that the prophet is doing (in an OT context) in Is.40:18-25 that was cited here. He isn't pointing to the heavens as independent proof that YHWH exists. If any Babylonians had been listening in (this is written to those in exile) they would have said - "Big whoop! Marduk is the one who stretched out the heavens." (& after all, to all appearances Marduk had defeated YHWH.) Rather, the prophet is speaking to Jews from the standpoint of the faith of Israel & simply claiming - if you prefer, revealing - that the God in whom they'd believed, the God of the Exodus, was the creator of the whole world.

& note that at the beginning of the last paragraph I made the qualification "in theology." In studying the world, OTOH< we don't need to do any theology or say anything at all about God. The queen shouldn't micromanage her ministers.
 
Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/

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Received on Tue Jun 24 14:49:57 2008