Antony Flew died on April 8.  I hadn’t heard.  For those who don’t know the name, he was a renowned atheist, who later opened up to theism, or at least a deistic form of it.  At one point he was quoted as saying, “I’m quite happy to believe in an inoffensive inactive god.”  So far as anyone knows, he never became a Christian.  Albert Mohler has some worthwhile thoughts over here.  As he says, “rejecting atheism is not enough.”  I’ll take that and up the ante: “Presenting arguments for vanilla forms of theism is not enough.  Our apologetics have to aim consistently for the defense and promotion of Christian theism from beginning to end.”

2 responses to “Mohler on Flew”

  1. Indeed, much written in the area of science and Christianity turns out to be simply theistic, or worse, deistic. Morris and Petcher, “Science and Grace” (Crossway, 2006) is an excellent example of the riches to be mined from a fully Trinitarian perspective. They suggest that Calvin’s minimal discussion of the Trinity in creation has tended to de-emphasize God’s immanent and personal presence in the creation. Fully treating both the transcendence and immanence of God is important, and they rightly advance the significant contributions of the prominent 20th-century scientifically-informed Reformed theologians Thomas Torrance and Colin Gunton, whom I have also found helpful in their Trinitarian approach. This they do by unpacking the activity of Father, Son, and Spirit in creation and providence, especially considered covenantally, and in cosmic redemption. Drawing on the work of Reformed theologian Meredith Kline, they show that already in Genesis 1, “the covenant relationship God establishes with His people…flows naturally out of His Trinitarian involvement with His creation” (p. 99).

    • I haven’t read the works you’ve cited, but I would advise caution in describing Torrance and Gunton as “Reformed.” They were both followers of Karl Barth. Klaas Schilder, Cornelius Van Til, and other confessionally Reformed theologians have taken issue with Barth on a wide range of theological issues. The most significant would probably be Barth’s view of revelation and his distinction between historie and geschichte at critical junctures such as creation and the resurrection. For good reason Van Til evoked Machen’s portrayal of liberalism as something other than Christian when he titled his critique of Barth, “Christianity and Barthianism.”

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