Angels, pp164-173

Respect to Culver for including chapters 19 and 20. No matter what we make of his style or his theological sophistication, I think Culver makes a serious attempt to reflect the Scriptures in his writing. I am increasingly impressed by his background reading too.

I liked Culver's recognition that miracles appear to be scarce in the biblical history (top p173 - I think I criticised him for implying the opposite in an earlier post.) But I appreciated that he did this while pointing to the work of angels, manifest and 'out of sight'.

On pages 172 - 173, I was again conscious of a tension between accepting 'natural laws' and acknowledging supernatural causes in our world. Which of these takes precedence?

Note especially the sixth paragraph of p172, beginning, 'These remarks by no means exhaust...' Culver earlier mentions the lack of coverage that angels receive in evangelical writers such as McGrath and Reymond. I think that biblical/orthodox Christian theologians have yet to provide us with a coherent theology that combines modern knowledge of our world with basic biblical ideas of the world. (I'm aware that McGrath has contributed a substantial volume on science and theology, but I haven't read it.)

Do we need an 'evangelical orthodox Bultmann' for the 21stC? Or should we just start to reckon with angels and demons more often in our thinking?