The Hump of the Camel

When I was preparing my previous post it wasn’t actually the parallel of Aquinas’ teaching on God with Calvin that struck me most, though that suited the point of the post better. It was how much what I was reading cast light on the Scriptural presentation of God (or vice versa), just as it did when I first read Calvin. Both are an attempt to put consistent philosophical flesh on what is assumed by the Bible writers, however paradoxical it sometimes appears. Continue reading →

I came across an essay by a theistic evolutionist on the history of the understanding of nature. Dealing with Thomas Aquinas he said:

Moreover, nature’s autonomy allows for the accidental and random. “It would be contrary to the nature of providence and to the perfection of the world if nothing happened by chance,” he wrote (cited in Haught 41). Randomness, then, is an essential feature of God’s creation.

The use of citation rather than primary source is a bad sign. The autonomy mentioned referred to what we now call natural laws, God-given, rather than “freedom”, so that’s clear enough. But the bit on “chance” reminded me of all the articles on randomness on BioLogos, in which it’s never made quite clear whether it’s random to God as well as us. I’ve written here, and on BioLogos itself, about the apparent incoherence of TE statements that God uses laws and chance, under providence, through his sustaining power, to do his will. As regular readers will know, I’ve been frustrated because no one ever says whether God directs this chance, or simply makes do with whatever it happens to produce. The only reply I’ve ever really had is “It’s a mystery.” Continue reading →

Here’s another set of contrasts. In my last post I looked at the mindless inefficiency of neutral-theory evolution and junk DNA in juxtaposition with the wonder of one particular group of organisms, the raptors. But one might also contrast them with the intelligent and rational actions of the human beings who have discovered, and applied, these “undeniable truths”. Continue reading →

I had the privilege yesterday of getting up close and personal with various raptors at the Hawk Conservancy Trust in Hampshire. I got to meet various species of owls, a young secretary bird and some vultures, and actually to fly one of the African vultures and some Harris’ Hawks. These are in deed very special creatures. Continue reading →

When I was young, the issue of Christ’s miracles was a big problem to Christians. Scientific determinism had infiltrated the public mind so thoroughly that the Bible’s miraculous claims were one of the greatest stumblingblocks in apologetics. Even within Evangelical churches rationalising the miracles as social or psychological events was common.

I find it fascinating how much that has changed over forty years. Of course, atheists have become more vocal and rationalistic, but within the general community, there is much more of an attitude that, should the historical claims about Christ be true, then his miracles make sense. Yet it’s hard to pin down the reasons for this subtle shift in worldview, probably because I have been part of it. It’s an example of the kind of sea-change in society that is associated with, and may even help explain, the popularity of one kind of idea over another, even in the matter of scientific theories. Continue reading →

In my last post I showed how, to the theistic evolutionists of his time, Darwin’s original theory was capable of delivering, without God’s direct intervention, all that the Biblical doctrine of creation described (with the exception, mainly, of mankind’s spiritual qualities). To people like B B Warfield, then, evolution was a true efficient cause, for which God as the original Creator was the primary cause. But then the theory changed. Continue reading →

I want to show how changes in evolutionary science have led to changes in the theology of Christians who accept it. It should cause us to question if theology should be so much the handmaid of a variable science.

Charles Darwin developed his evolutionary theory in the context of a worldview that was, essentially, deterministic. Newtonian physics, of course, was thoroughly so. So, essentially was the uniformitarianism of Charles Lyell’s geology (particularly as it led to a complete eclipse of any catastophism at all, presumably in reaction to the Biblical Flood narrative).

The overriding social idea of the time was of progress, and particularly of progress towards the triumph of European civilisation (hence the attraction of Eugenics in later years). Negatively, this was reflected in Malthus’ idea that the struggle for survival meant, sadly, that the weak and unfit would give way to the more industrious and intelligent – an idea that Darwin, as we know, deliberately co-opted into his theory. The Origin of Speces itelf modelled natural selection on artificial selection, seen mainly as the tendency of human breeders to judge the “best” stock, not merely that suited to a particular role. And lastly, rather than pitching his theory against the evolutionary scientific alternatives of the time, he proposed it as an alternative to Special Creation. Continue reading →

I finished my last post by suggesting that any divine action in the natural world would inevitably resemble chance in its deviation from the predictions of lawlike processes. I queried whether a genuinely indeterminate chance might or might not be distinguished from God’s actions, and hence God’s work be considered “detectable.” Continue reading →