In a recent post, I used this quote from Jeremy Begbie: … humans are not automatons, bound by iron necessity to their environment, but exercise a freedom, an openness that God has granted them. And this itself can be set in a wider context, for such freedom, presuming it is not an illusion, is part …
It’s an on-going debate as to whether maths is discovered or created. I was wondering today if we can find a middle way between these. The sketch of the idea is this… In his book Resounding Truth, Jeremy Begbie emphasises that creation has a flexible order — there is structure but in our development of …
Having started down the creation-as-speech-act train of thought I (re)discovered that Lawrence Osborn makes a similar connection in his book Guardians of Creation. Here are a few quotes At eight points in Genesis 1 God speaks creatively: ‘And God said, “Let…”‘… This use of speech as a metaphor for the divine activity of creation suggests …
OK, we set up the speech-act ideas, plus an interesting re-thinking of cause-and-effect. Let’s explore a bit more. Another interesting aspect of Vanhoozer’s speech-act discussion is the Trinitarian spin he puts on it. Let’s start with a quote: There is a connection, I submit, between pneumatology and perlocutions. To return to speech act theory: a …
OK, let’s bring together what we’ve said so far: we’ve noted that the Bible describes God’s acts of creation primarily in terms of speaking; and that Speech-act theory allows us to clarify that speaking frequently does more than convey information. What I want to do is push Vanhoozer’s idea beyond God’s interactions with humans to …
OK, I introduced the idea of speech-act, as explained by Kevin Vanhoozer. Now the other side of the story — looking at the way God creates and acts by speaking. A key passage is clearly Genesis 1. Right from the start we have ‘And God said…’, with the typical formulation And God said, Let … …
To start I need to talk about the whole idea of speech-acts. I’m borrowing heavily from Kevin Vanhoozer (as usual , so let’s start with a quote from First Theology. Speech acts belong to the twentieth philosophy of language. The main point is that in speaking we also do certain things. Words do not simply label; …
OK, I want to try and push something (tentatively) that has floated in the background of a couple of posts recently: the idea of ‘scientific laws’ as the response of creation to God’s call (e.g. see here). To flesh this out a little bit, I want to attempt a link-up with the idea of ‘speech-acts’ …
Following their discussion of ‘laws of nature’, Morris and Petcher look at some of the consequences of the perspective that they have developed. Particularly helpful are two inter-linked discussions of the ‘openness’ and (apparent?) randomness in creation. (I should say before plunging into these that their discussion at this point goes some way to dampening …
Bringing together the discussion of God’s relationship with creation some thoughts on miracles, Morris and Petcher propose this definition for a natural law (1): A law of nature is God’s sustaining of, or man’s description of, that pattern of regularity that we observe in nature as God works out His purposes towards His own ends …