As I have said, the testing of Adam began from the first. This business culminates, in the view of conventional Christianity, with the Fall--the eating of the forbidden fruit--but there is ample evidence that from the first Adam was experiencing negative results from what we can only understand as negative attributes or behaviors that he displayed. Adam had placed before him the reality that actions have consequences.
We should not forget, however, that those consequences were determined by God. Ultimately, we must remember that all causes and effects are determined by God. This all goes hand in hand with the consideration, that I have mentioned before, that there is fundamental conflict between regarding God as the first cause--supposedly provable because empirically all effects are caused--and regarding God as well as a miracle-doer--supposedly littering human history with empirically uncaused effects that undercut the neat logic of the First Cause proposition.
In reality, God is the determinative cause of everything. There is nothing that happens that cannot be either a natural occurrence, a miracle, or both. In an unstinting theistic world-view there is no difference. This, apparently, was the approach of Jesus. We can call him a miracle-doer because he calmed the waters, but the real miracle was Jesus acting as though there is no essential difference--no special-case rending of the universe's fabric--in either a wave swamping a boat or the occupants of the boat flattening the wave just by the asking.
No comments:
Post a Comment