Relocating To Elfland

I don’t know what I was expecting when I began listening to Hans Halvorson’s presentation at the recent Calvin College lecture series on Philosophy of Science, Faith, and Science, but it is a staggeringly brilliant piece of analysis. I would have to think when I have read or heard anything better on the subject of how the natural sciences interrelate with Reformed theological reflection upon scripture.

Halvorson’s Reformed intuitions (inculcated from childhood) lead him to conclude (with Augustine and Calvin, to name no others) that God is free over against His creation. This may sound obvious, but of course it has enormous implications for our thinking about whether certain actions predicated of God in scripture are scientifically “possible.”

He argues that proponents of the Divine Action Project have treated “nature” as something essentially autonomous, as something with the freedom of which God will not interfere; and that this notion of radical, autonomous freedom is anti-Augustinian. Think about it. Naturalistic, uniformitarian science and Pelagian soteriology are metaphysical sisters!

I hope this lecture gets trumpeted from the housetops in Christian colleges and universities.