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Tuesday, October 28, 2014

The cosmic magician


“When we read in Genesis the account of Creation, we risk imagining God as a magician, with a wand able to make everything. But it is not so,” the Bishop of Rome affirmed.
“He created beings and allowed them to develop according to the internal laws that he gave to each one, so that they were able to develop and to arrive and their fullness of being. He gave autonomy to the beings of the universe at the same time at which he assured them of his continuous presence, giving being to every reality. And so creation continued for centuries and centuries, millennia and millennia, until it became which we know today, precisely because God is not a demiurge or a magician, but the creator who gives being to all things…The evolution of nature does not contrast with the notion of creation, as evolution presupposes the creation of beings that evolve.” 
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/francis-inaugurates-bust-of-benedict-emphasizes-stewardship-43494/
Of course, "magician" and "magic wand" are pejorative characterizations, but the underlying idea is fiat creation. Making something directly. Not from preexisting stuff. Creation ex nihilo. 
That's not something we "risk imagining" when we reader Gen 1-2. That's not something we imagine. And that's not risky. Rather, that's precisely what it depicts. A God who needn't create some things from other things. Rather, a God who makes some things from scratch. Especially, and not coincidentally, when it comes to the origin of the world. 
Actually, theistic evolution is demiurgical. A God who organizes the world from preexisting matter. Emergent properties. By contrast, Yahweh wills the world into existence. Commands the world to be.

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