Philosophy of creation, fall , redemption

1. Philosophy of creation, fall, redemption Essentials of Philosophy 2B Mst 20/2/18

2. creation

3. Presenting issue: creation & evolution How can Christians differ on such an issue? Let’s try to unpack the underlying worldview (i.e. philosophical) elements driving either side of the debate.

4. Overview of creation in the bible & the A.n.E.

5. Creation out of nothing v. creation out of chaos • Plato’s Timaeus as a model for creation using an Urstoffor hylē • Justin Martyr…subsequent church’s change on this • Pre-existent or eternal matter: a popular classical belief (e.g. Ovid): • Pluses: eases the problem of evil: God may be working with somewhat recalcitrant matter (Plato, Timaeus; David Ray Griffin) • Minuses: sets up a second fundamental reality alongside God, impinging on his utter, exclusive existence. • Biblical evidence (going backwards): • Heb. 11:3: world not made out of anything visible.

6. A definite beginning versus an eternal world • Aristotle’s rationale for an eternal world: the impossibility of a (First) cause without its effect? (check) • The impossibility of a material effect without a material cause: ‘nothing comes from nothing’. Therefore there has always been something. • Aquinas: an eternal world could still be created by God, i.e. fundamentally dependent upon him. • Yet we know by revelation that the world has a beginning. • And it is actually fundamental to divine action alone to make something of nothing • Summa contra Gentiles text, and/or • Commentary on the Sentences

7. Necessity and freedom in God’s creation • William of Ockham represents strongly voluntarist end of spectrum. God’s free and effectively inexplicable will is behind the created order. • Creatio ex nihilo implies a freedom/voluntarist position. • Aristotelian and emanationist theories see the universe as the natural and necessary output of God, like light from the sun. Therefore creation has to be eternal, since the sun cannot help but shine. • A deterministic system (e.g. a Newtonian cosmos) doesn’t leave obvious room for God to act directly in the world after creation. • Some recent thinkers have found room for God’s action in lowest-level indeterminate systems (the quantum level) or the highest level of emergent phenomena. • But should we in fact view natural events as the normal pattern of God’s operation, which he therefore can alter whenever he wishes?

8. A dependent versus an autonomous creation Bible references expressing creation’s dependence Bible references expressing creation’s causality

9. Direct creation versus mediated creation • Primary/secondary causation overlap with “Dependent v. Autonomous Creation” • Direct creation tends to go with instantaneous creation, and mediated allows development more readily.

10. Creation and time • Scenarios: • God exists for eternity past, then decides to create this world for it to exist for a limited period. • God cannot exist without being Creator, so this creation is eternal. • God cannot exist without being Creator, so there has been an endless series of creations (Origen). • Creation depends on God for its fundamental being, and we can’t tell whether or not that is an eternal condition (Aquinas speaking philosophically, drawing on Aristotle). • Time has no meaning, and therefore existence, outside of the created order, since time measures change. Therefore creation has a definite beginning, but there is no ‘before’ period to ask about God’s actions then (Basil, Augustine, Aquinas speaking dogmatically). • Outcome: God is not in time, trying to navigate it and steer history toward his own ends. Instead, time is in God, every moment in history being equally real and present to him, but not controlling him.

11. The place of humanity in creation • Use Matt’s ‘keystone species’ phrase (source?) • Image of God in Genesis 1:26-27: significance • Commission in Genesis 1:28-30…

12. The value of Human Creation Psalm 148:1-10 Genesis 1:3-25 Genesis 1:26-31 Psalm 148:11-14

13. Humanity in the ‘great chain of being’ “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, 4 what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? 5 Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beingsand crowned him with glory and honour. 6 You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet…” Psalm 8:3-6 (ESV)

14. Back to creation and evolution • [Griffin’s claim that] evolution is friendly to his process theology (& limited God) than to the strong creation concept of creation ex nihilo

15. fall

16. God and evil: the theodicy question • Prior distinction: moral evil (from human agents) and natural evil (all the rest) • Moral evil can be blamed on culpable humans rather than God, and explained in terms of fallenness and even Satanic influence. It still creates some problem as far as why God allows human evil to run. • Free will argument (Alvin Plantinga): … • Natural evil is the keener problem for God’s justice • David Hume (1711-76), Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779), 186 – character Philo (see inset): the choice, in the light especially of natural evil, between the goodness and the power of God. • Option 1: Sacrifice God’s goodness [who takes this road?] • Option 2: Sacrifice the power of God: process theology: David Ray Griffin* - an opponent calls this “God on a leash,” or, “He’s doing the best he can.” Precedent in Plato for a God working with ‘recalcitrant’ matter, and responsible only for the good, not natural evil. • Option 3: resign ourselves to God’s incomprehensibility (one option in Hume’s Dialogues) • Option 4: Leibniz’s ‘best of all possible worlds’ • Option 5: There is no real natural evil (attributed to Augustine by D. R. Griffin)

17. The genesis fall and the nature of evil • The Fall as a theological interpretation of events in the Garden. What is lost? What might be gained? • The question of the genre of Genesis 2–3 – gen. construed as myth v. history • What does the account imply about the origin of evil? • Inherent within creation, or intrusive? Impersonal or personal origin? • Resident within humans from beginning? Would this mean it’s once again part of the natural order? • Resident within spiritual beings prior to our creation? Problem of regression here? • Evidence in Genesis that human sin affects other creatures? Nature? • Evidence in Genesis that the effects of the Fall persist to the present? • Is it important that the Fall be a historical event (and that Adam & Eve be historical individuals)? • Role of Romans 5:12–21 • Does it concern natural or moral evil, or both? • Is death necessarily an evil? • Why should death follow sin? Simply willed punishment of God? Rupture of natural/moral orders at once.

18. redemption “Everything in its right place”

19. Creation’s destiny of restoration • Human reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:18-20): we are called to willingly participate • Reconciliation achieved by Christ is of cosmic scope: Col. 1:20 (ἀποκαταλλάσσω). • Restoration/renovation of nature: Rom 8:18-23 • Creation set free (ἐλευθερόω) – from decay!! I.e. a whole different mode of operation, in conjunction with & anticipated by… • The redemption of our bodies (τὴν ἀπολύτρωσιν τοῦ σώματος ἡμῶν)! • This appears to presume that the cause of death or decay of any kind is rooted in the sin of Adam (Rom 5:12). • Ethical living can be understood as living in co-operation with God’s creative/redemptive design for the world.

20. Creation and eschatology in science & theology Creation, Fall, and restoration? or rise & fall of the universe?