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.

Tyndale House and me

No, that’s TYNdale.

Posted in History, Theology | Leave a comment

To save Judaeo-Christian values, or to be saved?

To the Messianic Judaism that informed my last post, I must add, firstly, a book I was recently lent on the importance of Christian Unity. The author, to me, seems a confused individual in that in stressing the centrality of unity, he condemns on nearly every page all those Christians who don’t, those who are lukewarm, those who aren’t really Christian (by whose definition?) etc.

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

To Law or not to Law?

I’ve been working through an English translation of a Hebrew manuscript of Matthew’s gospel, called the Du Tillet manuscript. It is interesting in having a plausible claim to being closely related to Matthew’s original Hebrew autograph on which the canonical Greek version is based. The manuscript was published in 1555, having been confiscated from a Jewish scholar in Rome when the Pope passed an edict banning the Talmud, leading of course to the grabbing of anything in Hebrew, which few Gentiles could read. We know nothing of its prior provenance.

Posted in Theology | 7 Comments

The tradition of magical thinking in Darwinism

One way of detecting an ideological, as opposed to scientific commitment to a theory is when very obvious shortcomings are simply glossed over for long periods of time.

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

Music, the universal language

When I was at school, I borrowed a balalaika (souvenir of a Russian school cruise) from another kid, in order to play a self-penned song called Boris and his Balalaika, which used the only three chords I knew on guitar in 1969. I reckoned it couldn’t be harder to play on three strings than six, and would be more authentic for the youth club social.

Posted in History, Music | 2 Comments

Soft sacerdotalism

Tom Wadsworth’s 2021 paper, The Shift, for the ETS (available here) gives a good account of how the New Testament’s primarily “horizontal” concept of “meeting for mutual edification in the Spirit” became a vertical “meeting to serve God in worship” by the fourth century. Essentially, the Christian assembly became temple worship redividus despite the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, and the culprit was sacerdotalism.

Posted in Theology | 2 Comments

What the Spirit says, and how he says it

Tom Wadsworth, whom I referenced recently, is particularly strong on the idea that teaching and exhortation in church is not simply the job of a credentialed Pastor, but of multiple people in a fellowship. I expressed some caveats to this in my linked piece, but it is a particularly strong idea when linked to the role of the Holy Spirit in co-ordinating Christian assemblies so that they are, indeed, edifying to all because all participate.

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Science simony

Our own commenter Shopwindows recently coined the excellent Virgilian aphorism for corruption in science: “I do not trust Geeks bearing grifts.” Physicist and YouTuber Sabine Hossenfelder gives an excellent, and disturbing, example of this not in the politically controversial fields like climatology or vaccinology, but in fundamental science.

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

Christians need to learn who their friends are

Currently London is hosting a conference of the ARC (Affiliation for Responsible Citizenship). Attending is Toby Young (now Lord Toby Young, PBUH), the founder and chief honcho of the excellent Free Speech Union and the Daily Sceptic website. Both are rare defenders of independent thought on the British scene.

Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology | 5 Comments

Darwin’s “Designative Virtue”

Evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein was on Joe Rogan’s show, commenting on the fact that Tucker Carlson has expressed his scepticism about Darwinian evolution. He says that Tucker is happy to meet to be instructed on why he’s misunderstood the problem, which for a generally decent bloke is a disappointing recycling of the commonest Darwinian response to criticism from anyone who can be shoe-horned into the “layman” category – even if they are also evolutionary biologists. I came to the conclusion years ago that no-one understands Darwinism.

Posted in Creation, Science | 2 Comments