Category Archives: Theology

Why providence is not miracle

Someone at BioLogos dismissed my distinction between providence and miracles, by saying that there is “nature” and there are “miracles” and nothing else and it’s simple. There’s little point in replying there because, apart from a rather dense thread made contentious by the usual suspects, if he won’t even investigate the army of theologians and philsophers I cited for the last two thousand years on the doctrine of providence (the Fathers, the Scholastics, the Reformers, Wesley and even Arminius), he surely won’t pay any attention to me. To some ECs holding the “intellectual high ground” means one needn’t engage with not only ones opponents in ID or YEC, but ones … Continue reading

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St Paul the Humpian at the University of Athens (GA)

Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Biology Faculty and said: “Hi Y’all! I see that in every way you are very statistical. For as I walked round and inspected your laboratories, I found a memo pinned to a notice board with this inscription: ‘Randomness is the measure of uncertainty’.

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Science and faith – as easy as riding an epicycle

Engaging with a Young Earth Creationist at BioLogos recently, Chris Falter raised the examples of Calvin, Luther and other Reformers opposing Copernican cosmology on the basis of biblical literalism. His aim was to show that this is a dangerous pursuit, and likely to pit theology unnecessarily against science, since nobody now thinks that modern astronomy contradicts the intent of Scripture.

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Progressive Creation = Evolutionary Creation

Before it got diverted on to US party-politics, Joshua Swamidass’s thread on BioLogos  looked for common ground between the four common Christian origins positions (YEC, OEC, ID and EC). This was in the light of bridgebuilding discussions he has set up between representatives of all but ID (so far – given that many IDists are also believers in evolution, this ought not to an irremediable omission).

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The clarity of mud

Last week’s Royal Society symposium – on whether the Evolutionary Synthesis should be extended, or whether (as some appeared to imply) all the dramatic new mechanisms found recently were successfully and silently subsumed into standard population genetics several centuries ago -had a slide that caught my attention. It caught the attention of ID people in the audience as well, which is how I came to be aware of it. It was in Andy Gardner’s talk expounding the virtues of “weak adaptationism”. Here’s the pic:

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A History of Providence – Part 3

In the last post I sketched in a few gaps in James Penman’s account of the doctrine of providence in the biblical and Patristic periods. In the past I’ve done some work on the mediaeval view, in the shape of Thomas Aquinas, and in perhaps drawn some more surprising conclusions from the writings of Jacobus Arminius (given the not infrequent assertion that universal providence is incompatible with libertarian freedom of the Arminian type).

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A History of Providence – Part 1A

These next two posts are a reply to the claim that the extent to which God is involved providentially in the world has always been a matter of uncertainty within Christianity, and that we can’t decide from the faith whether, for example, God actively governs which species arise by evolution or largely leaves it to nature. This is not uncommonly expressed in terms of an age-old “freedom v determinism” debate in theology. Several years ago now a conversation with erstwile fellow Humpist James Penman (the pseudonym of a professional church historian) led us to conclude that the common doctrine that the natural creation is fallen together with mankind is of … Continue reading

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Looking for autonomy in the Bible

I was gratified by the comment made by Jay Johnson recently, apparently concurring with me that some commonly voiced positions in “Evolutionary Creation” present a significantly different view of God from that historically associated with Christianity: Many so-called Christian understandings of evolution are based more on philosophical reasoning than on anything resembling a biblical concept of God.

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His own received him not

Back in March I did a piece arguing against the univocity of God’s being and ours (as the root of many current theological evils), and used the metaphor of those authors who have appeared as characters in their own fiction, but can never truly be seen as occupying the same world as their creations. It’s a useful analogy, I think. I was reminded of it again last weekend when, waiting around for news of our daughter’s new baby (It’s a girl! It’s a girl!), I was re-reading G K Chesterton’s excellent introduction to Geoffrey Chaucer. Chesterton writes how Chaucer, in Canterbury Tales, is another of that select band of authors … Continue reading

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A brief history of chance

Somebody at BioLogos, following a common line, recently expressed hesitation about whether God intended the particular life forms that we have, and based this on what he said was the long-argued question of free-will versus determinism. The idea was that God, by allowing true (ontological) randomness in evolution, was in some way casting his vote for free-will rather than determinism.

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