Author Archives: Jon Garvey

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About Jon Garvey

Training in medicine (which was my career), social psychology and theology. Interests in most things, but especially the science-faith interface. The rest of my time, though, is spent writing, playing and recording music.

Freedom and Autonomy #2

Posted on 08/06/2013 by Jon Garvey

The first post in this series has already generated some good comment, which shows how live the issue of “freedom” is for many of us. I’ve decided on a slight change to plan – I feel the argument will be clearer if I deal with the biblical position first, and then proceed to how people have understood it historically. But keep in mind the thesis I’m presenting is not “free-will v predestination”, but that: (a) Theologies based on the centrality of human and natural freedom and God’s “letting go love” are novel. (b) The explanation for them is found in the enthronement of autonomy as a primary “good” over several recent … Continue reading →

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Freedom and autonomy #1

Posted on 07/06/2013 by Jon Garvey

Another big task, which really needs someone to put into a book, so I think it will spread into multiple posts. Sorry. The task is to lay the case out for overturning a concept that came into the Church’s thinking maybe 600 years ago, and has gradually gathered ground until, in the last few decades, it has been systematically and exponentially destroying the prophetic and apostolic doctrine of many branches of Christianity, like some Trojan Horse computer virus. I mean it. This time it’s not the doctrine of a fallen creation – though it helps explain that – but something more fundamental: the belief in human autonomy. I will try … Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, Theology | 13 Comments

Wallace and [Gromit’s] Spirit’s World of Invention

Posted on 06/06/2013 by Jon Garvey

It would be mean-spirited of me not to cash in on the centenary of Alfred Russell Wallace’s death, and the opportunity was given by the BioLogos token-atheist Lou Jost the other day on this thread. He was putting down Roger Sawtelle with a post of the standard “You just don’t understand the theory of evolution” genre:

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology | 2 Comments

Confusion worse confounded

Posted on 05/06/2013 by Jon Garvey

Milton: Paradise Lost, ii. line 996 (though I confess I got it from Martin Magnus on Mars by William F Temple, 1956). The incoherence of the “creation free to create itself” theology of much modern theistic evolution, and especially “the angel of the church at BioLogos“, has been a major theme here on the Hump. So much so that it’s hard to think of the most informative link, but this one is relevant.

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology | 3 Comments

The hermeneutic of suspicion and the paranoid society

Posted on 03/06/2013 by Jon Garvey

A very good article here. It is primarily about the ascendency of the hermeneutic of suspicion in contemporary (meaning mainly post-modern and feminist) theology, but usefully beds that into the state of society itself. US theology and society are in its sights, and rightly so, but the rest of the world is far from immune: Dan Brown is popular over here, too, as are more academic manifestations of the idea that knowledge is a function of power, not of truth. We’re slightly less obsessed with conspiracy theories as yet, though. Slightly.

Posted in Creation, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology | 57 Comments

Fecundity in Genesis 1 – Amazing

Posted on 01/06/2013 by Jon Garvey

The creation accounts of Genesis are the introduction to the five foundation works which make up Israel’s covenant document, the Torah. The centrepiece of that is the covenant on Mount Sinai in Exodus, in which God gives the nation he’s called and rescued the promise of (a) a numerous people (b) a land and (c) blessings from his presence (in return for covenant obedience summarised in the Decalogue and under threat of punishment for disobedience in various places, especially Leviticus). The climax of Exodus is the descent of God to the tabernacle to dwell with his people. One key (and unique) feature is that Israel is called to demonstrate Yahweh’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology | 71 Comments

Patristic views of Romans 8

Posted on 29/05/2013 by Jon Garvey

The work I’ve done on the changed position of the Christian Church regarding the supposed damage inflicted by the Fall on nature was prompted by revisiting the usually cited biblical supports for a “fallen creation.” See here and the several posts following. I concluded that there is a very poor scriptural case for it. Amongst them was the passage in Romans 8.18-27.

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology | 14 Comments

Soapy Sam

Posted on 28/05/2013 by Jon Garvey

One of the celebrated incidents of the science v religion myth is the debate of Thomas Huxley with Samuel Wilberforce at Oxford in 1860. It’s presented as the clash of enlightened science with biblical obsurantism. There was no contemporary record of the debate, though, and even the famous quip of Huxley about preferring to be descended from an ape than a bishop is likely to be, at best, exaggerated. But we do have access to Wilberforce’s review of Origin of Species in the Quarterly Review, which is quite an illuminating counterbalance to the myth. It shows, once more, how much one can learn by not taking received wisdom as fact.

Posted in Creation, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology | 41 Comments

Dusting off the Gap Theory

Posted on 26/05/2013 by Jon Garvey

Contrary to what is popularly supposed, young earth views did not predominate amongst conservative Christians at the time Darwin published The Origin of Species. I’m grateful to historian of science Ted Davis for pointing that out to me in one of his BioLogos posts. In fact, it’s obvious from the Origin itself, in that although Darwin’s main “opponent” is special creation (a slight straw man itself by 1859), he makes no attempt to argue for deep time, although he does mention the need for it in passing.

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On broadening the vision of theistic evolution

Posted on 22/05/2013 by Jon Garvey

In my recent long essay, I contrasted the commonest modern manifestions of theistic evolution with the approach of TE’s first representatives in Darwin’s time. I showed that the latters’ central distinctive was divine teleology. This contrasts directly with the cautiously expressed undirectedness of evolution in the Origin of Species, due to Darwin’s near-atheist agnosticism, and even more with the insistent secularism of Huxley and his successors, which has become the default position in biological science. I also demonstrated that modern TE, formulated academically by the science and faith scholars (mainly liberal Protestant and Catholic) and popularised by authors often from within the biological professions (also multi-confessional but with a higher proportion … Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology | 37 Comments