Category Archives: Creation

Exile on Man Street

Posted on 27/06/2018 by Jon Garvey

I’ve been suggesting in recent months that the Bible is usefully seen as a story in three parts, the very first of which is about the purpose of God to bring in a new spiritual creation, in which his glory would fill all things, through Adam – a purpose which proved abortive because of the temptation of the serpent and the sin of Adam and Eve. If that’s a reasonable assessment, then the whole of the history of Adam’s race (that is, us) has been a story of exile from a world, and a role, that was glimpsed and then lost, and not simply a story of how natural mankind … Continue reading →

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Adam and scriptural inspiration

Posted on 19/06/2018 by Jon Garvey

When I was doing a home Bible study on the Genesis creation narrative a few weeks ago, one guy asked me, “Who was there to write it down?” I’d not yet explained how to approach the text, so it was a good introduction to that, as well as a good question, and you’ll guess the answer wasn’t “God saw the whole thing,” although he certainly did.

Posted in Adam, Creation, Genealogical Adam, History, Theology | 7 Comments

Evolution on form

Posted on 14/06/2018 by Jon Garvey

I was reminded to return to the subject of “universals” by a comment on an old post by a new subscriber, Mark Chenoweth. It seems worth raising again, given the new degree of rapprochement between some TEs, IDists and OECs, characterised by the forthcoming Dabar Conference in Illinois. And also by the fact that I recently cut my hand by falling out of our field into the lane whilst chasing a squirrel… don’t ask.

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

Does it follow?

Posted on 11/06/2018 by Jon Garvey

Does Genesis 2 follow from Genesis 1, that is? One of the objections made to the Genealogical Adam hypothesis is that the idea that the story of the Garden follows sequentially from the Genesis 1 Creation account is wrong, and that they are actually different accounts of the same events.

Posted in Adam, Creation, Genealogical Adam, Science, Theology | 3 Comments

The sum total of truth

Posted on 01/06/2018 by Jon Garvey

The Renaissance humanists saw the human being as a microcosm, because the mind of man can reach out to encompass the farthest reaches of the universe, or the smallest particles of matter. It can even raise itself to contemplate the things of heaven, and God himself. The last shows why the microcosm view, which gives man such a central importance in the creation, is both a glorious truth and a misleading half-truth at the same time.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 4 Comments

Armchair theodicy

Posted on 11/05/2018 by Jon Garvey

When I was writing my forthcoming (promises, promises) book, God’s Good Earth, I added a disclaimer in the introduction that I was not going to attempt the kind of theodicy (following Leibniz) that is so often used to argue that the world itself must be evil through human sin, or through the autonomy granted by God to a demiurgic Nature.

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

Now you see them – now you don’t

Posted on 08/05/2018 by Jon Garvey

One of my current research aims is to demonstrate that the Bible itself has an awareness of other people existing in the world at the time of Adam, despite being overtly silent about them. I approached this from the point of view of the “compositional strategy” of the Torah and Tanach here, and from the point of view of hints about people other than Adam in the text here.

Posted in Adam, Creation, Genealogical Adam, Theology | 9 Comments

Convergent evolution of origins discourse

Posted on 05/05/2018 by Jon Garvey

On Thursday I drove two hundred miles across England to attend a meeting on Christian approaches to origins – only to find the meeting had been cancelled and the organisers forgot to tell me.

Posted in Creation, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology | 12 Comments

Religion before Adam

Posted on 01/05/2018 by Jon Garvey

On the Genealogical Adam model – and indeed on any model dealing with an historical Adam – one has to account for the fact that humanity appears to have had some kind of religious or spiritual life almost as far back as artifacts can be found.

Posted in Adam, Creation, Genealogical Adam, Theology | 39 Comments

The impossibility of ontological chance

Posted on 27/04/2018 by Jon Garvey

I want, again, to critique the notion that “God uses chance” in evolution, off the back of my last piece, whose main burden was that admitting such chance into the picture utterly destroys the already dubious ability of the laws of nature to achieve divine aims, such as the evolution of mankind. Now I want to consider “randomness” from the viewpoint of divine being. Consider, for a moment, what it means for us to exist, given the truth of Christianity – as far as we can consider what is a rather deeper matter than we are used to assuming it to be.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 52 Comments