If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard a Sydney Anglican say something like, “God could have done it by evolution or creation…it doesn’t really matter”, I would have been able to retire long ago on the interest alone.
Apart from such sentiments betraying a really impoverished understanding of who God is and an even more defective ability to read plain Scripture, it also reveals an indifference to the cost of believing something which is patently false. Bad ideas have bad consequences, and the epistemological standard that there are some areas of thought about which one can believe anything, would seem to be a principle uniquely identified with the postmodern left rather than a tag attached to the supposed conservatism of the Sydney Anglicans.
Yet, here it is, the idea that God can do anything he well pleases to do because he is God. God, according to Peter Jensen, can even give up being Creator and allow non-being, chance, to run the universe. This is far worse than deism because at least with this proposal God is still sitting on his throne whereas, with Jensen’s idea, he vacates heaven and takes a holiday to goodness knows where and allows the pagan immanent no-thing to, somehow, bring things into being.
The unexamined insistence that belief in evolution poses no genuine threat to faith and that there is no parlous fallout from holding such an idea is perhaps even more disturbing than Jensen’s belief in the idea itself.
Herbert Spencer, the wicked mastermind behind Social Darwinism (the belief that the weak should die off for the strong), reveals in his autobiography that,
“Doubtless my intellectual leaning towards belief in natural causation everywhere operating, and my consequent tendency to disbelieve alleged miracles, had much to do with my gradual relinquishment of the current creed and its associated story of creation – a relinquishment which went on insensibly during early manhood. Doubtless, too, a belief in evolution at large was then latent; since, little as the fact is recognised, anyone who, abandoning the supernaturalism of theology, accepts in full the naturalism of science, tacitly asserts that all things as they now exist have been evolved…”
Spencer, it could be reasonably argued, was the intellectual drive behind compulsory sterilisation of the disabled, the Pro-Choice movement, disregard for Afro-American welfare and other less fortunate groups, and a belief that social welfare and community health programs were positively harmful. What sustained this philosophy was, in part, his disdain for the miraculous of the Genesis creation account and his upholding of evolution.
Peter Jensen and others in the Sydney Anglican cult believe that they can have God doing anything, even the inanely impossible, and not have it produce any inimical consequences. That, I wish to emphasise, demonstrates an arrogance and an utter absence of wisdom. As I previously said, all ideas have consequences and the idea that God could, would, use a principle in which the weak die off for the strong, can’t be an idea that would lead people to the God that was revealed in Christ.
“The proof of God’s amazing love is this: that it was while we were sinners that God died for us.” (Romans 5:8)
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4 comments:
John said:
with Jensen’s idea, he vacates heaven and takes a holiday to goodness knows where and allows the pagan immanent no-thing to, somehow, bring things into being.
au contrere! Sydney Episcopalians being thorough-going Calvinists believe that God is Omniscient and Omnipresent. They therefore hold that God knows in advance what is will happen and nothing happens without God having planned for it.
Yet many such as the Archbishop hold to that evolutionary, chance (or intelligence guiding chance) death and struggle world view John has pointed out.
I don't know how they sort it all out because it really is a bowl-of-spaghetti theology and of no use to the lost.
Sam Drucker
Yes, throw in the Calvinist theology and it really transforms into a salad.
However, my point - and I'm still working this through - was that if you are an evolutionist then you believe there is an independent creative principle "in" nature that creates new biological information. One can't just say that God creates this everytime but it's evolution doing it. That's semantic nonsense. It's either a principle or it's God. Paul was very clear when he stated that it is Christ who is the upholding principle of the creation, not another principle. Jensen's creation theology is plainly further evidence of the paganisation of Christianity that SADs are now pushing.
John, as you said "it is Christ who is the upholding principle of the creation" so if in all he said and did when Incarnate was the upholding of the weak then how can Theistic Evolutionists within the Diocese appropriate to Him a creating and sustaining of creation activity alien to his observed activity. As our Lord Jesus said "If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand."
What an absurd theological position is taken up by a now degraded Diocese.
I really do worry about the future for the Sydney Anglican Diocese.
Is anyone from within it bold enough to venture here an explanation for their theology? - an explanation I hope is consistent with the Word of God.
Neil
There are a couple more things to say, on this, I think.
Firstly, it says that starting point of salvation history doesn't have to have anything to do with the real world, in which, oddly, salvation history is played out, or that God cannot, or does not want to or need to reveal that there is a direct link between us and him. It says that we can be disconnected from God, with the link but a pretence, reflected in tales, myths, not the texture of the real.
Secondly, it puts between God and his putative creation something other than Christ, in fact, the creation, cosmos, 'nature' rather than the creator in Christ.
The idea that we can put Genesis 1 to one side, in its real terms, pulls apart much of how we understand God and his covenental relationship with us.
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