Monthly Archives: March 2014

When The Hump was relaunched with multiple authors around last October, after various events at BioLogos, I cobbled together a kind of working brief to the prospective writers whimsically entitled The Hump Strategy (or “Evolutionary Creationism in a cheap camelskin coat”). The reference to a certain infamous wedge should be obvious to those in the know. In the light of Sy Garte’s call to arms in a comment yesterday I fished this document out for inspiration (rather than reading through the whole of what is now approaching a million words on the blog). The summary with which I concluded was this:

Physicist Ian Thompson was kind enough to agree with the recent post in which I suggested that, if we are theists, we probably ought to expect a universe in which God interacts personally in natural, as well as in human, affairs. He pointed us to an excellent article of his own in which he argues the same. I want to explore that theme further through the work of Michael Denton.

I’ve argued in the past that Open Theism is only the logical outworking of classical Arminianism, and that Arminianism itself is an outworking of the Renaissance insistence on autonomy as the basis of freedom. This is fundamentally different from the classical understanding of freedom as found in the Fathers like Augustine, in the mediaeval scholastics like Aquinas and in their intellectual descendants in the Reformed tradition like Calvin, Luther or Edwards. One is looking, essentially at two different metaphysical assumptions rather than merely two theological interpretations, and in fact they roughly correspond to the categories of the “concurrentism” (classical) and “mere conservationism” (Arminian) I’ve explored recently.

I saw an instance yesterday of how much the church scene over origins seems to differ between the US and the UK. We had the first full all-day rehearsal for a modern oratorio in which I find myself playing electric guitar, classical guitar and, bizarrely, detuned bazouki. But there’s also a full orchestra and choir. That mix itself was quite amusing: as I played one of the power-chord parts marked in the score as “Who-ish“, an old male pro on 1st clarinet in front scowled at me, while the young female amateur on second clarinet gave me a solid thumbs-up. Who would I rather please? But lunchtime was what raised … Continue reading →