Pages

Monday, August 06, 2012

The Omega Point

Arminian author and theologian Roger Olson has hosted a guest post by Bev Michell:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2012/08/a-guest-post-the-biblical-story-of-god-and-us-that-includes-evolution-from-a-frequent-visitor-here/

Olson presumably agrees with the content of the post. Here are some of the highlights (or lowlights):

This universe came into existence in the face of a spiritual rebellion against God’s will.

It did? This suggests a preexistent insurrection, prior to the creation of the universe. Who was rebelling against God’s will before God made the world?

Our creator is waging a cosmic battle against rebellion, chaos, disorder and confusion – a physicist would say, a battle against entropy.

This demotes God from Creator to demiurge. God reshapes preexistent chaos into order. God is not the Creator, but the cosmic reorganizer.

Maximum entropy equals maximum disorder. There is a spiritual battle, a rebellion against God, that comes from a great deceiver who wants only chaos and darkness (Rev 12:7-9). In the first verses of the Bible we see God’s response to chaos, darkness and emptiness – he simply and powerfully says “Let there be light.”

So sin is equivalent to entropy? Is Satan a metaphor for entropy? Redemption saves us from the three laws of thermodynamics?

The living world that biologists explore is constantly changing, and it has been changing for more than 3.5 billion years, with no end in sight…The evolving cosmos and the evolving bios to which we belong are clearly works in progress; not independently either, but part of a huge, long-term, unfolding masterpiece. And amazingly, all of the participants are part of the process. All are unfolding in relation to everything else in an unimaginable, magnificent symphony.

Of course, many people look at the evolutionary narrative and see a meat grinder rather than a symphony. How natural selection grinds up biological organisms, including human beings, then spits them out in bleeding chunks.

In fact, from a Christian perspective, the singularity of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Son of Man, the God-man, is the very heart of creation as well as the essential beginning of the Gospel. He is the apex of creation while also being the one through whom creation flows.

But he’s not the apex of creation. For Bev just told us that the bios is a work in progress, constantly changing and evolving with no end in sight. A million years from now, Jesus will be an evolutionary throwback, belonging to a primitive species.

This resurrected Lord now takes up residence with the Trinity, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and looses the Spirit, the very Spirit of Creation, upon the earth for our edification, guidance and empowerment.

Notice the apposition: she juxtaposes Jesus over against the Trinity, including the Son–as if the Son is a different entity from Jesus. Jesus is taken up into the Trinity, in distinction to the persons of the Godhead.

The whole post reads like warmed over Teilhard de Chardin.

1 comment:

  1. 13.7 billion years? And so incredibly confident of this. I don't get the confidence.

    Why couldn't the universe have been created a few thousand years ago? An Onmipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent God is overwhelming for our pea-brains in the first place; so why don't we simply believe His word.

    The Body of Christ surely does have its diversity.

    ReplyDelete