Tuesday 25 October 2005

Peter Jensen, ID, and the God of the gospel

Thanks to Daniel for pointing out this interview in which the Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, discusses the current Intelligent Design controversy. Jensen discusses theistic evolution, and explains his approach to interpreting the Genesis creation stories.

As Jensen notes, for theistic evolutionists “God has created the world using the evolutionary process.” I myself prefer to say simply that the God of the gospel is the creator, and that the evolutionary process has no direct relationship to this theological concept of “creation.”

To speak of creation is to speak of the relationship in which we stand before God. To confess that God is our creator is to confess that God is both free and gracious. At each moment our existence depends entirely on the gracious creative act of God. And God the creator remains entirely free, never depending on anything outside himself. Thus in both freedom and grace, he is the God who creates ex nihilo, the God who speaks a free and gracious “Yes” to his creature. As the free and gracious creator, this God is the God of the gospel, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our existence rests solely on his “Yes,” the “Yes” that he has spoken to us once and for all in Jesus Christ.

1 Comment:

Anonymous said...

If this remains entirely metaphoric and you don't assert a physical, real, material creation, then its meaningless. As plain as the English words used to declare it, to say God is our creator has to mean that he creates us; from there, you can talk about its realization as a relationship--a point with which I do not disagree. Anything other than this is being cute and pretentious at best, and exactly the reason that most people won't pick up a theology in their lifetime. It means absolutely nothing except the importance you attach to it in your own mind. It is as pointless as declaring salvation without the historical reality of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ in a moment in history.

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