Vibrant Dance 2: Duncan: Six 24-Hour Days, A Reformed View

{RJW Note: The final plenary position paper was given by J. Ligon Duncan, the Senior Minister at First Presbyterian Church, Jackson Mississippi, and Distinguished Visiting Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary. For whatever reason, I didn’t ask him at the conference for his notes. I emailed him a couple of days ago, and have not yet heard back, so tonight’s summary will be exclusively from the notes I took during the talk. I apologize for not getting the something from him at the time. Starting tomorrow, coverage will be over the breakout sessions and panel discussions.}

All Christians must be committed to some form of realism—correspondence and coherence and revelation are all important. Inerrancy is also important. We do have different ways of knowing things, and it is important to be aware of them and their reliability. We need to recognize that ontology precedes epistemology. {The fact that we exist takes precedence over how we know it.} For example, “I know my wife knows me” but sometimes it is hard to explain why I know.

It is impossible not to admit the presence of supernaturalism in Genesis 1, but it doesn’t mean the functions of this world are not capable of study by human activity. In other words, just because I say God sent a thunderstorm, doesn’t mean it is wrong to study meteorology. The fact of God’s action in the world as either an ultimate cause or even a specific one doesn’t preclude the fact of the orderly laws of nature, which we are able to study and have a responsibility to study.

Vibrant Dance 2011: Day 1 Recap

Today was the first of the two day conference on the Vibrant Dance of Faith and Science, Theology Edition:  Creation—Biblical Options. All of the presenters come from more of a theological or philosophical background rather than a science background, so it was a change for me. I plan to give a short recap of each day’s sessions and in future posts discuss each of the talks I attended, so that it can be delivered in blog-sized bites.

There were seven plenary sessions and a breakout session interspersed with times of worship, breaks and meals. The first, by Dr. Craig Blaising, Provost and Executive Vice President of Southwest Baptist Theological Seminary, set the tone by establishing a framework for discussion in terms of generally accepted principles of Biblical interpretation (hermeneutics) and understanding knowledge (epistemology). He also laid out the importance of Creation as a Christian doctrine and the key questions that tend to come up in debate.