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rsirkel
Registered Member
Date Joined May 2002
Total Posts : 183
| Posted 10/29/2006 10:16 PM (GMT -6) |   | Hi feelinahole
From the first chapter "His creation of the universe out of nothing, however, far from meaning that the universe is characterized by sheer necessity either in its relation to God or within itself, implies that it is given a contingent freedom of its own, grounded in the transcendent freedom of God and maintained through his free interaction with the universe. It was this doctrine of the freedom of the creation contingent upon the freedom of God which liberated Christian thought from the tyranny of the fate, necessity, and determinism which for the pagan mind was clamped down upon creaturely existence by the inexorably cyclic processes of a self-sufficient universe. Just as there is an order in the universe transcendentally grounded in God, so there is a freedom in the universe transcendentally grounded in the freedom of God." Speaking of what the 4th and 5th century fathers held before the descent into the deterministic paradigm.
I understand we don't have the time to read everything but Torrance presents and concurs with much of what Boyd has taught in "Satan and the problem of Evil". This is the work of a very influential Reformed theologian who has a wide following among scholars. Possibly we can learn from his references of from the early writings that the early church did understand the contingency of the creation.
Peace
Ron | | Back to Top | | |
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rsirkel
Registered Member
Date Joined May 2002
Total Posts : 183
| Posted 11/4/2006 11:23 AM (GMT -6) | | Another snippet from Torrance speaking of the contribution of Sartre and similar existentialists to the notion of contingence:
"The paradoxical fact, however, is that necessitarianism seemed to be so glued to the back of his mind that Sartre could not think of the relation of a transcendent God to the world except in a necessitarian way, and thereby failed to appreciate that there could be a rational bearing of God upon the universe which, instead of menacing it and negating its freedom or undermining its self-identity, is the continual creative source of its contingent intelligibility and of its astonishing freedom and variety."
Speaking of disorder or evil:
" What hope could there ever be for a humanity that crucifies the incarnate love of God and sets itself implacably against the order of divine love even at the point of its atoning and healing operation? But the resurrection tells us that evil, even this abysmal evil, does not and cannot have the last word, for that belongs to the love of God which has negated evil once and for all and which through the Cross and resurrection is able to make all things work together for good, so that nothing in the end will ever separate us from the love of God........But the sheer physicality of the resurrection and crucifixion events, which belong inseparably together, has behind it the incarnation, the staggering fact that God himself has come directly into our creaturely being to become one of us, for our sakes.....God does not give up his claim that the creation is "good", but insists on upholding that claim by incarnating within the creation the personal presence of his own Logos, the creative and ordering source of the creation, thereby pledging his own eternal constancy and rationality as the ground for the redemption and final establishment of all created reality."
Peace
Ron | | Back to Top | | |
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