Care of creation and theology

Faith & Science Conversation
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Replying to several posts, on total depravity:
A quote from Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion (Book II, Chap. III, Sect. III)

“If every soul is capable of such abominations (and the Apostle declares this boldly) [in Romans 3:10-18], it is surely easy to see what the result would be, if the Lord were to permit human passion to follow its bent.
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In the elect, God cures these diseases in the mode which will shortly be explained; in others he only lays them under such restraint as may prevent them from breaking forth to a degree incompatible with the preservation of the established order of things
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Thus God, by his providence, curbs the perverseness of nature, preventing it from breaking forth into action, yet without rendering it inwardly pure.”

John Calvin and the Natural World by Davis A. Young appears from the fact that my father just handed it to me as a reference on this, and from a brief look at it, to be a very good reference on such matters.

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22

The problem of existence of evil is not what I’m concerned at all. My concerne is what IS evil.

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23

That is a great question. I have to admit I’m not sure of the answer either. What do you think it is?

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No, John Muir rejected the harsh Calvinism of his upbringing. I don’t even see that he was a traditional Christian. And I see no evidence that Calvinism is friendly to environmentalism.

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Calvin did actively promote studying the sciences, to further appreciate God’s creation. “Environmentalism” wasn’t exactly a buzzword in the 1550s, though.

My family (and others I know) demonstrate that they are compatible, anyway.

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26

“Natural Evil” is not a biblical concept. We describe frightful events as evil. Why? Because our theology condemned God’s good Earth. The Creator never did.

Only Adam and Eve ate the fruit. To be evil, a being must make the choice to harm another being. God made the universe good. Tsunamis are not evil, they are a natural reaction to an underwater quake. There is no choice involved. God made lions good. They eat people, so we fear them. But the lion’s choice is not to harm but to eat, which is not evil.

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Well, that’s kind of what I understand “natural evil” to be. It includes things in the world that don’t happen because of human agency. So even though a tsunami does not intentionally try to kill someone, it can still result in things happening that we would consider evil. If a tsunami killed someone I loved, I would consider that something evil had happened, even though I’m aware that, as far as I know, a conscious agent did not intentionally cause it. So I’d agree that it’s not necessarily biblical, but I still think the term “natural evil” can be useful in distinguishing between different kinds of bad things.

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Does any historical study support that claim? I hear few times that Calvinism change so much from 1700 that is quite hard to grasp its evolution.

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Question of what is evil is one of this questions that you need to ask every day and in every new situation. I’m concerned here about this problem in the context of that thing that is important for Biologos community: natural world or God’s creation.

Even words that I choose to describe world around are not neutral in my opinion, but I’m not native English speaker, so my view my skewed in different direction. Speaking about “evil natural world” and “evil God’s creation” is very different thing to my ear. Second rouse some alarm clock in my head, first not, as calling something “God’s creation” immediately implies that such thing is good.

People which I meet here seems to believe that natural world must be understood as good God’s creation and this is only way to go. But my historical knowledge tell my that is far from obvious statement and through ages many strains of Christians despised natural world and as such they feel that they should restrain they actions involving it. I still need to check if this is true that many leaders of Industrial Revolution were borough up in believe that profit is good and world is just a heap of crap, so they had see no problem in construction of very profitable industrial complexes that polluted surroundings. I DON’T know if this is true, but seems plausible enough that it is bogging me.

This is so general, that can be viewed as pointless, but I consider it as first step in explaining what is warring me. Today in secular world thought believe in preserving of environment is quite widespread, so for many people this is “natural” that we should care for environment. But, opinion of the world is a whimsy thing and often superficial. If opinion of secular world change and decide that world is heap of crap that should be used to satisfy human pleasure, what Christians would do? Follow along since it would be “natural” to consider worth as things to use or try to stick up to believe that are some unjustified use of things around us?

This is still fare from the heart of the matter, but it just come to my mind that I should read few materials about this problem, that I found due to Biologos community, and I don’t want to speak up before reading them. I apologized for that, I would try go back soon and explain some of my daily worries to you.

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This is one of the great typos! So … you’re saying that “Calcinism” hasn’t exactly calcified as much as some would think? :grin:

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31

That is from

Given that I have yet to find anything in the Institutes that I would disagree with, I think modern orthodox Calvinists are quite similar in their beliefs to Calvin (with different emphases, given the different cultures, of course). Heterodox pseudo-Calvinists (PCUSA leadership, e.g.) are quite different in their beliefs.

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32

:sweat_smile:

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33

Thank you. I put it on my list of works to check in future, if God allows.

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I still can’t write whole answer, but I found one example of such problem about which I want to write. From environmentalism that I know they are mostly for using “renewable energy” (term that to my taste is too loaded) and consider nuclear energy as morally evil. They maybe don’t say this directly, but you can read this between the lines. My background is in physics and as most that I know physicist I have soft spot for nuclear energy, even among most decided environmentalists among them.

To my there is noting moral evil in using nuclear power plant. Yes, there is dangerous of catastrophe like in Fukushima 10 years ago and problem with extracting uranium and storing of nuclear waste, but in this fallen world you can’t totally avoid problems or even disasters. One must consider good and bad things that in current situation nuclear energy has, but this is just a need of wisdom, not for treating nuclear power as morally evil.

I open to hear arguments that supporting nuclear power plan in any situation is morally evil, but my opinion is now different. This puts my at odds with many environmentalist in general, I don’t know what with Christina environmentalists.

I can’t expand this topic, but I hope this is sufficient and I just want to avoid spending to much time writing about this.

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35

I agree with your view, which is why I uphold Wesleyan theology as the foundation of protestant theology.

However, I would not attribute theology to the the reasons behind the views of conservative Christians. Theology is not the reason to oppose evolution or to wage the cultural war. No, its politics and ideology. . .

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You mean conservative Christians as opposing to liberal Christians on political spectrum or conservationists Christians, which want to preserve some part of natural habitat?

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I mean Christians who see themselves as theologically conservative, but who are now the captives of the radical political right.

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I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t want to talk about politics here, we can do it on private channel. Politics and ideology are very important to man, but this is not a place to discuses such important and hot topics.

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Another example of problem is recent information about creating embryo of human-monkey hybrid. Is this thing morally evil? One person that I respect very much, wrote many years ago that such things are abuse of human power, plain and simple. Theologically this is clear cut to me: this is gross abuse of human power over human body, in things that God don’t granted to human use. Human genome is part of human body with his own purpose and it shouldn’t be used as experiment to mix up with monkey genome, to check what will come from this. Probably I watch to many horror movies in my life, especially as kid, because some pictures from them of awful hybrids are going through my mind now. Creepy.

I know that is not first genetically mixed organism, if I remember they were goats with some genome of spiders, to allow to extract spiders threads from they milk. I mention this problem since is quite recent and quite

But, since not every one share my theological view, can I argue that these is evil to person with different religious perspective? Even another Christian? Thought question to be honest.

But crucial to these discussion is another thing: does making such research have any link to care of creation? My intuition is yes, it have. For me caring for creation, of which both human body (human soul as angels and devils is them for another discussion) and monkey are parts, means that you respect they particular laws and current forms of creation. And this prohibits attempts to skip over boundaries between species that are part of creation. At least I don’t hear about such thing since development of eukaryotes cells. Maybe I don’t know something, I’m more math/physics guy than biologist.

But these is my understanding of concept “care of creation” and it is quite new to me, so maybe other think that is all right to do such things. To these days I didn’t read any Biologos article on this topic, but there is so many of them, that I just missed this one.

I think these is proper theological question. Is such genomics experiments “destruction of natural world” or not, from the view of natural world as God’s good creation? And for me these is problem with more questions marks than answers.

Should I write more about my concerns about evil in these context? Or is these enough? I still have few things to write about these topic, but they maybe not as interesting to you as these.

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I do not want to be rude, but I assume that when you ask a real question, you expect a real answer.

I do not like to “mix politics and religion” either, but the facts are the facts and we ignore them at our peril. I personally think that if we care about theology and we care about people, then this is the place “to discuss such important and hot topics.”

Be that as it may, I have said my piece. If you want to continue the discussion on a private channel, that is fine.