Oshea Davis That would be a good topic to focus on. Below is a excerpt from my book. It starts with Edwards and then I comment on it. “It is certain to me that the world exists anew every moment, that the existence of things every moment ceases and is every moment renewed. For instance, in the existence of bodies, for there to be resistance, or tendency to some place; it is not numerically the same resistance that exists the next moment, tis evident, because this existence may be in different places. But yet this existence is continued so far, that there is respect had to it in all the future existences; this is evident in all things continually. Now past existence cannot be continued so that respect should be had to it, otherwise than mentally. Indeed, we every moment see the same proof of a God as we should have seen, if we had seen [him] create the world at first. Revelation 4:11, For thy pleasure they are and were created.” - Jonathan Edwards, Miscellanies 125a, editing by author This is typical Edwards regarding what is called the Doctrine of Occasionalism. Occasionalism is the true application of God’s sovereignty over the metaphysical. Some Calvinist and Christians deceive themselves telling themselves that God is Sovereign Over All things, but when pressed with issues of evil, suffering, epistemology and in this case metaphysics they deny it, whereas Edwards having learned from the scriptures and not from inductive observations, does not fall into the trap of theological inconsistency. Edwards is famous for saying God must re-create existence every moment for existence to, well, exist. The thesis of is this: “every moment we see the same proof of God, [as] if we had seen Him create the world at first.” How can this be Oshea? Every moment all physical and metaphysical existence “ceases” or stops and then must be “renewed” or recreated as a result. (Heb.1:3) Only God has life in Himself, (John 5:26). Or that only God’s existence is independent so that from one moment to the next God continues to exist. Everything else needs God every moment to make it exist by recreating it. This is Edwards’ broad statement. Now he goes into specifics for other reasons why God must recreate every moment. Existence cannot uphold itself into being, thus, cause and effect (i.e. metaphysical) within the creation is not a product of the physical creation, but a continual product of God’s mind recreating every moment and regularly working within each moment cause and effect as He wishes and sees fit. Since cause and effect is not from the physical creation, then if God’s mind chooses not to work the causality that He wants into the physical then there will be no cause and effect period. Keeping this limited I will only focus on this important statement: Now past existence cannot be continued so that respect should be had to it, other than mentally.” Consider that creation at this moment would continue to the next moment so that the causality of existence at this moment-in-time has a 100 percent influence to the next moment. This cannot happen, for creation cannot exist to the next moment without God re-creating it, since creation does not have such power. Yet, hypothetically if it could exist moment to moment then nothing in existence would ever change direction or that cause and effect within existence would be implausible without God’s mind wisely choosing put into the creation His logic of what cause and effect should be! We are accustomed to seeing cause and effect, but only by God’s “Mind” choosing regularly what it is to be. And so, we irrationally think it is natural for physical matter to operate the way we see it. Edwards says no. If my arm is at rest at this moment and the “mindless” causality of the past physical moment had a 100 percent influence of the next then my arm would never stop being at rest! And what would it mean for another object to hit my arm if the causality of the past moment had 100 percent causality over my arm to be at rest, to be hit by another object which the past moment had a 100 percent causality over it to keep moving? It would be implausible. The unintelligent causality of creation is simply not plausible by itself, and again this is not even considering that the creation cannot keep itself in existence to begin with. By divinely recreating every moment this problem is solved. In recreating every moment God Mentally keeps creation existing, and He sovereignly and wisely chooses to respect “some (i.e. in degree)” resistances and tendencies of the past moment to their corresponding bodies and then also sovereignly chooses to what “degree” to respect what the next moment(s) of the future will be as He wants it to happen. These so-called “laws of nature” are nothing more than God willfully choosing to act in a regular way every moment; The Infinite Existence is choosing to create every moment and then regularly choosing how and to what degrees the resistances and tendencies of the past moment should payout in the next moment; God is willfully choosing to recreate physical and metaphysical reality every moment in a consistent way. It is not that certain molecules automatically behave in a certain way; rather, God antecedently conspired of how He wants causality to work in His creation and out of His own freedom creates molecules and objects out of pure creativity and then recreates them every moment and moves within these certain molecules in a regular predetermine way: choosing to respect certain degrees of resistances and tendencies differently to one group of molecules from another, purely out of His own freedom and desires; and by being regularly enough, we can trance them out and have science to be a practical usefulness to us. To see more about the Biblical role of science see my book: The Undefeatable Worldview. In recap, the way we see cause and effect is not a natural occurrence of existence, but only by God’s Mind. Therefore, by seeing “how much” involved God is in every moment of creation it is truly as much a miracle as if we saw God create the beginning of the world. God must use the same energy that was used to create everything in the beginning out of nothing in every moment afterwards, so that in a sense God has never stopped creating with the same breath-taking degree as He did in the beginning. And not only that, but He must with infinite power and wisdom chose in what degrees of the resistances and tendencies of the past moment to bring into the next and then chose what resistances and tendencies of the next moment to bring into the present moment (stars, our thoughts, our emotions, our cars, stars, the earth, every drop of water, every pebble of sand, ever atom and molecule, and the movement of electricity (etc.). Thus, with every passing moment as we see the world it is truly as if we are watching when God first brought the physical and metaphysical into being by awesome power. - Oshea Davis
Posted on: Wed, 23 Oct 2013 13:23:28 +0000
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