Category Archives: Theology

Intertextual Adam

Posted on 06/11/2018 by Jon Garvey

I think one of the main reasons why the existence of an historical Adam and Eve is considered unimportant (or unlikely), at least by Christians who generally take the Bible seriously, is that references to Adam are apparently so sparse throughout Scripture.

Posted in Adam, Genealogical Adam, History, Theology | 7 Comments

Politics, if Adam had not sinned

Posted on 05/11/2018 by Jon Garvey

I’m always struck by the way even the best of us can easily impose on Scripture what we want it to say because of our cultural prejudices. Egregious examples are the libertarian, non-judgemental Jesus shown to be a parody of the rather more gritty biblical Christ in my last post, or the even more radical post-modern Jesus imposed only by interpretive contortions on the real person we find in history (satirized here).

Posted in Adam, Politics and sociology, Theology | 2 Comments

Does Jesus judge the nations?

Posted on 30/10/2018 by Jon Garvey

Somebody’s leading a discussion on Christian gratitude and generosity. He cites Deuteronomy 6, where Moses reminds people, once they arrive in the promised land and have cities they didn’t build, houses they didn’t provision, cisterns they didn’t dig, and crops they didn’t plant, not to forget the Lord who brought them there from slavery in Egypt. But one man, an older Christian, says he has a problem with that, because these things were taken from the Canaanites, sometimes by violence.

Posted in Creation, History, Politics and sociology, Theology, Theology of nature | 2 Comments

Free will and final causation

Posted on 25/10/2018 by Jon Garvey

In a Peaceful Science thread continuing the discussion of the view mentioned in my last post, John Harshman criticises what he calls the incoherence of the very idea of free will.

Posted in Adam, Philosophy, Science, Theology, Theology of nature | Leave a comment

The noble savage

Posted on 23/10/2018 by Jon Garvey

A guy called Jeremy Christian has posted his own view of “Adam and Eve and all that” on Peaceful Science, delighted to find something in Genealogical Adam that mirrored thoughts he’d been having for a long time. I’ve not interacted much with him there, but would like to discuss one area of agreement and disagreement in more depth here.

Posted in Adam, Creation, Genealogical Adam, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology | Leave a comment

Still on politics (and the Church)

Posted on 19/10/2018 by Jon Garvey

I’m not usually much of a political animal, but my last post has set me off on a track. I first encountered radical politics first hand when I saw this daubed over a shop front in my home town of Guildford, Surrey, probably in 1967: “Long Live The Great Victory Of The People’s Glorious Proletarian Cultural Revolution!”

Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology | 1 Comment

What the Bible should have said #13

Posted on 17/10/2018 by Jon Garvey

As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up to him and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”

Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology | 1 Comment

The Indus Valley and randomness

Posted on 15/10/2018 by Jon Garvey

YouTube, somehow tapping into my brainwaves, suggested this video to me, about the effort to interpret the alphabetic inscriptions of the Indus Valley civilization.

Posted in Creation, Genealogical Adam, Science, Theology | 3 Comments

Another loose end on sequential Genesis 1-2

Posted on 12/10/2018 by Jon Garvey

Does Genesis 2 follow on, or expand on, Genesis 1? I believe the former, and it was discussed a while ago at Peaceful Science, my own most recent argument being here.

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Denying creation

Posted on 10/10/2018 by Jon Garvey

Writing on the gender differences in the account of the Fall in the garden prompts me to reflect on a factor in the modern (or actually, postmodern) zeitgeist that profoundly affects our reception of the whole biblical doctrine of creation, let alone Adam and Eve. This arises from my old bogey of Promethean thinking, spelled out at length in God’s Good Earth but in brief here, but which has its own peculiar manifestation only in our times.

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