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.

Patristic (and later) use of Rom. 1:20 as natural theology

Posted on 19/01/2018 by Jon Garvey

Whilst natural theology is a hot topic at The Hump, Eddie Robinson’s recent pieces here  and here regarding the BioLogos thread mentioning natural theology, in connection with Lutheranism, prompted me to do a rapid, and of course, incomplete survey of the Church Fathers on this subject.

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology | 10 Comments

I nearly meet a fossil

Posted on 16/01/2018 by Jon Garvey

You know that thing where you can claim to have all-but met someone because you met someone who has? In that way, I’ve met the Queen because my brother shook hands with her royal glove. Well, yesterday the wife and I met, in this indirect way, the celebrated David Attenborough – whose programmes I first watched back in in 1959 – via the intermediary of a new fossil Jurassic ichthyosaur, on which he has just had a documentary broadcast.

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology | 4 Comments

Function ≠ evolutionary explanation

Posted on 13/01/2018 by Jon Garvey

On two occasions in the last week, BBC radio scientific programmes have claimed to offer “evolutionary explanations” for observed human phenomena, though admittedly one might (memory is hazy) have been a food programme interviewing a scientist.

Posted in Politics and sociology, Science | 6 Comments

The handwriting of offences

Posted on 10/01/2018 by Jon Garvey

Scholar Michael Heiser has made it his business, in books, blogs and YouTube clips, to rehabilitate the supernatural beings who are, in fact, prominent in both Scriptural Testaments, but who are usually airbrushed out by that wonderful ability we have for selective inattention to what the Bible actually says.

Posted in Adam, Creation, Genealogical Adam, Theology | 14 Comments

Reality, illusion and purpose

Posted on 05/01/2018 by Jon Garvey

In my last post, on occasionalism, I alluded to the recent suggestion that the universe is a “simulation” in the context of the defensiveness people feel over the importance of the secondary causes in our world being “real”: The more powerful objection against occasionalism, it seems to me, is the vague idea that if, in the end, there is no solid basis to physical reality, then God is making us live in a world of illusion. Hence the feelings resonating around the recent suggestion that the universe is a “simulation” in which we are living.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Theology | 1 Comment

Rising to the occasion

Posted on 02/01/2018 by Jon Garvey

Early last year I did a couple of pieces (the most useful here) on a new formulation of the metaphysical position on divine action of occasionalism, called “divine compositionalism”, being developed primarily within the field of science. I liked it.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 6 Comments

Etymology and truth

Posted on 30/12/2017 by Jon Garvey

Did you know that the etymology of “etymology” is the Greek etumon = “true”? That’s ironic because one of the basic Exegetical Fallacies Don Carson highlights to preachers in his excellent book of that name is the etymological fallacy. Etymologies often deceive because words, in fact, constantly change their meaning, as I began to discuss in relation to their inherent metaphoric nature here.

Posted in Science, Theology | Leave a comment

Christmas Gifts

Posted on 23/12/2017 by Jon Garvey

One of the less obvious blessings from which we benefit not only here at the Hump of the Camel, but more widely, is that creation is seriously on the theological agenda at all. Wherever we stand on origins, it’s hard to remember that for much of the twentieth century, creation doctrine was sidelined in most branches of the Church.

Posted in Creation, Theology | 2 Comments

Command, relationship and freedom

Posted on 21/12/2017 by Jon Garvey

Someone has lent me Creation by Claus Westermann, a name familiar to me from my days of biblical studies in the psalms. In some ways it’s a bit disappointing, dating from 1971 and therefore, hailing from Germany, rather too assured of the “assured” results of the documentary hypothesis and history of religions theory. He actually uses that adjective “assured” – I’ve been looking for some source that didn’t use it merely ironically for years!

Posted in Adam, Creation, Theology | Leave a comment

Separating Genesis 1 and 2

Posted on 17/12/2017 by Jon Garvey

At the beginning of last month I did a brief series exploring how, expanding an existing modern account of biblical theology, there is really no conflict with the general outline of human history uncovered by the sciences. I particularly suggested how the writer of Genesis might have fully intended 1:1-2:4 to speak of creation, and Genesis 2:5ff to move the subject on to a new initiative of God towards man.

Posted in Adam, Genealogical Adam, Theology | 6 Comments