Speculation on intervention by God

I’m new to BioLogos so my thought may have been expressed before. I did scan through some earlier topics on intervention.
I believe God created the Big Bang and all the matter, energy, and natural processes and law by which it would enfold. ButI’m wondering if then He let go as He commanded. No God-guided mutations or directed asteroids or anything other than natural processes, until a new species of pre-humans evolved. In Earth years that would have some 14+ billions later, but to God it may have been a moment. Then for some reason He wanted a love relationship. Maybe He saw how good it was in watching His animals care for their offspring? He “adopted” those pre-humans and supernaturally transformed them into humans, a group who would be able to know and love him in return…a group of humans who have a souls/spirits and free will and consciences. Thereafter natural processes like evolution continued but because of love, God intervened and continues to intervene in any way He wished.
Granted that it’s hard to fathom the will and actions of God but He delights in our efforts. Are these new ideas? Who has written about them in more detail? What do you think about them?

John Piper talks about God’s motivation in his The Pleasures of God, which is actually a prequel to his seminal book, Desiring God. I don’t know offhand where he stands with respect to evolution, but you may have noticed that I am a firm believer in God’s intervening providence, not at all that it is scientifically detectable. A frequent M.O. is empirically detectable, though, in the lives of his children, and I have reason to believe he has intervened similarly with respect to evolution, not that we can know when or where.
 

A favorite verse of mine speaks to Jesus’ motivation, and I think God’s overall motivation, too, in creating the cosmos:

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
-Hebrews 12:2

That sounds a little bit like the idea of God empowering creation. Here is a short essay that seems to have some overlap with what you are thinking:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14746700.2013.750958

Ultimately, one question could be how do God’s creating activities relate to the “laws of nature?” In what sense is God involved or not in say, Faraday’s law which describes various electromagnetic phenomena? Or in what sense is God involved in random mutations? There is a broad range of perspectives but that seems to be the things you are really trying to figure out.

He’s done this infinitely many times before and doesn’t intervene apart from incarnating. He’s that awesome.

The problem as I see it is whether we see God as a divine watchmaker which comes from Deism or we see God as a shepherd which comes from the Bible. Yes God made the universe as a womb for the development of life, but the whole point is a relationship with living things not the design of machines. The designer of a machine may indeed just sit back and watch it go, but the shepherd is always guiding and protecting. This idea of “God-guided mutations” is trying to mix the two metaphors, to have God take up genetic design, which is again not the work of a shepherd. Life is a process of self-organization, where living organism grow, learn, and develop by their own choices. But they do not and cannot do so in vacuum. Life requires an environment which includes farmers, shepherds, teachers, parents, and it is the Christian experience that this includes God also.

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God humbly submits to the prevenient laws of nature in instantiating them from forever. He has no choice, as in Love. I very much doubt that He even has to om in the keys of c, G and h.

[To speculate is to go beyond what we rationally know. We rationally know that God does not intervene in physical - including psychological - reality. There isn’t any rational requirement to invoke Him.]

Matthew….Thank you for the Moritz article. There is some overlap for sure. He talks about God’s special creation (fast, supernatural events), and indirect creation (slow, God given natural processes). I see both these working. For example I see special creation in the Big Bang and God’s adoption and transformation of pre-humans into humans created in/as His image. God’s indirect creation has been at play since the Big Bang but it seems to me that special creation reoccurred only after He created humans. Thereafter both have operated as God wills it.

Yes I’m trying to sort that out. At this time I lean toward thanking God for creating Faraday’s Law (and all physical, chemical, biological laws and processes) and letting them play out. I think that genetic mutations are more in line with indirect rather than special creation. What are your thoughts on this?

So if you think God is creating genetic mutations… does that include the ones which cause congenital illnesses? Or are those things which God considers insignificant and thus ignores them?

Yes, as I mentioned above, to increase his joy.

We do have reason to believe he intervenes in providence in his children’s lives. You may have seen my references to Maggie’s sequence and to the evidence from George Müller’s life*, and there are accounts in both Old and New Testaments of God’s working in intervening providence, and there are any number of accounts in the last two millennia, including numerous instances in my life. There are rational (@Klax :slightly_smiling_face:) and objective correlations between otherwise disjoint empirical events that infuse them with meaning, demonstrating one of God’s primary M.O.s in his interventions.
 



[quote=“Dale, post:16, topic:45521”]
Yes, as I mentioned above, to increase his joy.
[/quote]ion unfold

Yes…I like that. He (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) was filled with joy to see His creation unfold. And to increase His joy he “adopted” and transformed a group of pre-human into humans in/as His image to have a loving relationship. He continues to intervene in His ordained natural and supernatural ways.

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[quote=“tomstinard, post:17, topic:45521, full:true”]

His joy cannot increase except poetically. Why would He have to “adopt” a bunch of monkeys and transform them? How did He transform them? He’s always had loving relationships in Himself, when incarnate and in the transcendent. But now? In His absent presence? We have yearning. Where does He intervene in nature, life naturally? Or supernaturally.

Yes.  

Where? How? When? Why? Can you show me? Not in a cold reading of significance in to a perfectly natural situation that no disinterested rational observer could possibly agree with of course.

The multiple objective correlations in the real lives of Maggie, George, Rich, Glenn, myself and innumerably many others (including in scripture) belie the false presuppositions of MPC’s rationality. They have nothing to do with cold reading.
 

That’s funny.

You completely failed the assignment.

Shalom.  

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I see your point…He is God, full of joy, how could he increase His joy? Not sure…maybe Dale or someone else could wade in. I do believe he increases my joy frequently.

Assuming He could increase His joy, maybe he watched all His wonderful creatures caring for their offspring and thought he might a piece of that “parental action”.

How did He transform pre-humans into humans? I think special, supernatural creation, like when Jesus gave sight to the man born blind.

By increasing the size of his family, would be my only answer. The Hebrews verse specifically refers to Jesus’ joy, anyway:
 

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Hebrews 12:2

Increasing his children’s joy would increase his joy, too, as is a human father’s.

He got it right first time, in the beginning. And there is no beginning of beginnings. Consciousness evolves; life autonomously transforms itself.