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.

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.

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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

Science’s mediaeval assumption

Posted on 14/12/2017 by Jon Garvey

One interesting aspect of Dante’s Divine Comedy (around which to reading I’ve finally got…) is to see the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas being applied just a few decades after his death, when it was still new and controversial. Thomas actually makes an appearance in heaven, but spends the majority of his speech eulogising St Francis of Assisi, which is not improbable given the priority he put on faith over philosophyat the close of his life. One thing that Dante deals with is the Great Chain of Being, a key mediaeval idea which I wrote about here.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 3 Comments

Habit-forming methodological naturalism

Posted on 11/12/2017 by Jon Garvey

All the main participants in the “two person bottleneck” thread on BioLogos have, as I write, gone to lick their wounds in teaching or research. It’s going about as inconclusively as I predicted here.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 2 Comments

Mightily Hands On

Posted on 07/12/2017 by Jon Garvey

One of the several taboos that appears to separate theistic evolution (in its modern, “Evolutionary Creation”, form) from the “uncleanness” of Intelligent Design is the idea that God could not be “just another cause within the universe”. This precludes at a stroke allowing God to be involved in any chain of efficient causation amenable to observation (and particularly, of course, scientific observation).

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology, Theology of nature | 7 Comments

Distinguishing the sources of teleology

Posted on 04/12/2017 by Jon Garvey

I mentioned briefly in my last post one of the things that struck me most from reading Perry Marshall’s Evolution 2.0. And that was the fact that intrinsic teleology and external teleology are not mutually exclusive, and yet might not be easy to distinguish.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 3 Comments

How (exactly) science leaves no room for God

Posted on 30/11/2017 by Jon Garvey

On his blog Shadow of Oz, biologist Wayne Rossiter, a principled opponent of theistic evolution, notices a re-posted BioLogos article by, ironically, the editor of Rossiter’s own book critiquing TE, Robin Parry. Rossiter’s post points out the fatuousness of the following argument:

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science | 1 Comment