Category Archives: Creation

Would you Adam and Eve it?

For Christians (and Jews and others) seeking to maintain the historicity of a first human couple, Adam and Eve, there are really three broad ways to proceed. My aim here is to cast doubt on one of them, from a biblical standpoint, and so I’ll break the usual pattern of such discussions by stating my own position first, and then leaving it to one side!

Posted in Creation, Genealogical Adam, History, Science, Theology | 8 Comments

The heavens declare the crisis in mental health…

Before the age of atheism, the natural human response to the beauties of nature was to see in them the power and wisdom of God, just as Romans 1:20 reminds us. The perennial danger was to worship the creature, rather than the Creator. But the pagan hunter feeling the wind on his skin as he looked across the veldt, the Saxon poet weaving birds and beasts into his measures, Francis Bacon attesting that the closer one studies nature the more God’s hand is perceived, or the peasant woman toiling to collect water from the stream, and pausing at the bejewelled kingfisher passing by… the common heritage of all these was … Continue reading

Posted in Creation, Politics and sociology, Theology of nature | 1 Comment

God’s purposes in creation – inscrutable or logical?

I’ve just bought the new book God’s Grandeur – The Catholic Case for Intelligent Design. It’s edited by Ann Gauger, whom I befriended over at Peaceful Science a few years ago, before she was hounded off by the constant sneering of the resident militant anti-theists there. Having brought back to mind my longstanding interest in biological origins, I thought before getting into it to do a blog on the surprisingly uncertain support for Darwinian evolution in the fossil record. Indeed, the more I’ve looked at the evidence over the last decade, the more I’ve come to the conclusion that the evidence itself, freed from materialist metaphysical preferences, points more to … Continue reading

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology of nature | 2 Comments

The danger of (post)modern syncretism

The Puritans are (and always were) misunderstood as believing that they were morally or spiritually purer than their fellows. But in fact their basic tenet was rather that there is such a thing as “pure religion,” in the sense of the original gospel of Christ and the apostles untrammeled by syncretistic additions from other religions. This, of course, was the basis for the Protestant Reformation. It is (as the first of Martin Luther’s Wittenberg theses stressed) a religion of repeated repentance leading to constant assurance of salvation.

Posted in Creation, History, Philosophy, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology | Leave a comment

The astonishing Genesis 1-11

The word from my pastor is that our church will be basing its Sunday teaching for the next few months on Genesis 1-11 – the “Protohistory” (in Gordon Wenham’s usage) or, to quote another OT scholar, “the Old Testament of the Old Testament.”

Posted in Creation, History, Theology | 6 Comments

It’s the epistemology, stupid

Gavin Ashenden, some-time chaplain to the late queen, after long soul-searching left the Anglican church for Roman Catholicism, around three years ago. That’s out of the frying pan into the fire as far as I can see, but I respect his conscience and his intellect, and indeed his work helped me bottom out some of the ideas in my own e-book on the Great Deception, Seeing through Smoke. He was unwilling to live by lies.

Posted in Creation, Politics and sociology, Prometheus, Theology | 2 Comments

RIP Mike Heiser

I feel I need to say a few words of tribute for biblical scholar Mike Heiser, who has, I hear, recently succumbed to pancreatic cancer at too early an age.

Posted in Creation, Theology, Theology of nature | Leave a comment

Murmurs of content

On Saturday, having suddenly grown a year older, I was invited by our daughter’s family to lunch, followed by a visit to the Somerset levels to see one of the famous starling murmurations there.

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology of nature | Leave a comment

The heavens declare the official narrative

I’m beginning to notice, in my own country, that people living in a propaganda state tend to lose their humanity and become more xenophobic and more, perhaps, “brittle” in their dealings with others.

Posted in Creation, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology of nature | Leave a comment

The star of Bethelehem and divine sovereignty

My pastor’s degree dissertation on Satan in Revelation 12 & 13 (so that’s why you’re preaching through Revelation Mike!) mentioned in passing astronomical/astrological interpretations of the “woman and dragon” vision of Revelation 12. That put me back on the trail of Mike Heiser’s interesting YouTube clips on the star of Bethlehem, which are in turn highly dependent on Ernest L. Martin’s book on the subject, available for free download here.

Posted in Creation, History, Science, Theology, Theology of nature | 8 Comments