Author: Dr. Rob Cook
Abstract:
Thank you all for the expert, thoughtful, challenging and sometimes humorous replies (Tony’s allusion to the theory of Chrysippus the Stoic reminded me of the equally nasty, ‘If God had not wanted us to eat animals he would not have made them out of meat’!). I was relieved that neither my theology nor my scientific understanding was seriously challenged although I was aware that the contention that predation seems intrinsic to the universe would be difficult for many evangelicals to accept. In reply to the cry of Dan’s professor, ‘speculation is the devil’s work’ I would claim that all theology is speculative to a degree since the old foundational epistemology is dead, otherwise why would ‘bible believing Christians’ disagree about so many particulars (literal Adam and Eve? Social trinity? Double predestination? Hell as eternal conscious suffering? The damnation of all non-Christians? Penal substitution? Literal millennium etc. etc.). Theology is explorative, heuristic, building revisable models for we see through a glass darkly and we need to remain alert to all fresh discoveries as we seek to understand God’s two books – the book of the Word and the book of the World and if we are tempted to claim that the former is our sole authority, we must realize that it itself points beyond itself (e.g. Ps.8) to God’s other book.
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