Author Archives: Jon Garvey

In my last post I examined “the incarnational model of Scripture” as an example of doing theology by buzz-word. Another example is the “kenotic model of creation”, though “kenosis”, like “incarnation”, is a word that gets, like sand, into everything – there’s a kenotic model of Scripture too, just as there’s an incarnational model of creation. It seems as if you give a theologian a yellow crayon, and come home to find he’s scribbled over everything with it.  The Amazon blurb for a John Polkinghorne book says: The development of kenotic ideas was one of the most important advances in theological thinking in the late twentieth century. So one supposes … Continue reading →

Alvin Plantinga has cited this quote from Langdon Gilkey more than once in connection with divine action: … [C]ontemporary theology does not expect, nor does it speak of, wondrous divine events on the surface of natural and historical life. The causal nexus in space and time which the Enlightenment science and philosophy introduced into the Western mind … is also assumed by modern theologians and scholars; since they participate in the modern world of science both intellectually and existentially, they can scarcely do anything else. Now this assumption of a causal order among phenomenal events, and therefore of the authority of the scientific interpretation of observable events, makes a great … Continue reading →

Two episodes of an excellent audio presentation by John H Walton have been posted on BioLogos, laying out his position on the understanding of Genesis 1-3, to which I have frequently alluded before (search on “Walton”). He was particularly good in the first episode in showing how the Egyptian cosmogony, full of figures of gods and goddesses, did not lead them to expect that one could throw a stone at the earth god or see the figure of the sky goddess in the heavens. The ANE conception of reality was functional, not material. But I think it is time to develop some implications for the current agenda of theistic evolution, … Continue reading →

The comments I made on Biologos , which prompted my last post here, have aroused some largely hostile response (as I expected), mainly around my daring to restrict the word “creation” to God. Since the Renaissance, that indeed has been a red rag to society’s bull, just like any suggestion that “freedom” may be less of an absolute than moderns like to believe. The most interesting thing to see was the mystification that anyone might have a problem with a novel idea in theology, as if one weren’t free to create such things at will.

Following on from the previous post, let me give an example of how the rubber might hit the road according to the two different doctrines of God, ie classical theism and theistic personalism. My example lies in the significant, and contentious, area of providence with reference to human free-will.