Category Archives: Creation

The wisdom of predation

Posted on 15/03/2018 by Jon Garvey

Here’s a nice little news item along the lines of the story I referred to on wolves back in 2013, here. It shows one way the idea that we got from “fallen creation” teaching since the sixteenth century – that predators are a result of the fall and so are evil – has damaged our world. I explore this false, but near-universal, teaching of a fallen creation fully in my book, God’s Good Earth, which I’m pleased to say now looks like coming to publication at some stage not too far off.

Posted in Creation, History, Prometheus | 3 Comments

Methodologies, like theories, have limits

Posted on 12/03/2018 by Jon Garvey

I think my reply to the last critique made by Jay313 to my recent C S Lewis post warrants a longer treatment than an inline comment. So here it is as a post.

Posted in Creation, History, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 27 Comments

Genealogical Adam – another observation (from Equus)

Posted on 09/03/2018 by Jon Garvey

Here’s another small piece of corroborative evidence for the plausibility of the Genealogical Adam Hypothesis (that Adam is not the sole genetic ancestor of modern humanity, but is nevertheless our common genealogical ancestor, with all that entails for our spiritual solidarity with him as federal head).

Posted in Adam, Creation, Genealogical Adam, Science, Theology | 10 Comments

C S Lewis’s argument from reason

Posted on 06/03/2018 by Jon Garvey

In his 1947 book Miracles, C S Lewis presents an argument against naturalism that has become one of the most influential philosophical arguments of its type of the last century. Very briefly, it says that under naturalism, mankind evolved purely by natural selection, for survival alone. His brain, therefore, could only (by the very tenets of materialistic evolutionary theory) be orientated towards survival, and not truth. There is no way then, under naturalism, that one could rely on human reason to discover truths about the world – including, of course, naturalism itself.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 18 Comments

Genealogical Adam – an observation from Eridu.

Posted on 02/03/2018 by Jon Garvey

As I’ve been studying the overall “shape” of biblical theology, in the light of recent work by Evangelicals like John Sailhamer, Seth Postell and a bunch of others including N T Wright, one of the common themes is that the ancient prophets had a much fuller grasp of the universal scope of salvation – we may even say, in a qualified way, of the gospel – than has been recognised either by older scholarship or “the man in the pew.”

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

The Lord is not slow

Posted on 23/02/2018 by Jon Garvey

The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. Let’s start with a really basic Christian truth: “No man comes to the Father except by me.” Or from another text, “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.” Now one of the challenging things about the Christian narrative is why, if sin is so deadly and Christ’s work so necessary, the history of salvation seems to unfold so slowly.

Posted in Adam, Creation, Science, Theology | 74 Comments

Irenaeus and what the Bible is about

Posted on 14/02/2018 by Jon Garvey

In my last post I pointed out the close match between the description in Genesis chapter 10 of the migration of Semitic peoples to lower Mesopotamia, and the story of the Akkadian Empire of Sargon the great, and also the general correspondence between the table of nations and the western (but not eastern) Neolithic radiation. I suggested how this was an indicator that the writer of Genesis must have been fully aware that non-descendants of Adam existed at this time, and quite plausibly in the time of Adam himself, given his habit of ignoring outsiders.

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

Being on the side of science

Posted on 09/02/2018 by Jon Garvey

The conversation on BioLogos about the implications of Lenski’s E. coli experiment continued, between Richard Buggs and Joshua Swamidass, after I wrote my piece on it here. It turns out that, after discussion, they agreed that, in contradiction of my conclusion, the situation with respect to human genetics is less unpredictable, rather than more, as I suggested there, because of the highly mutable nature of bacteria in comparison to mammals. Lenski therefore seems to have been dropped from the discussion as irrelevant. As Joshua writes, “Retractions are good”!

Posted in Creation, Politics and sociology, Science | 7 Comments

Three Testaments?

Posted on 07/02/2018 by Jon Garvey

Following on from my recent post, N T Wright provoked another thought, through an offhand reply in a video of his. He described Genesis 1-11 as “The Old Testament of the Old Testament”. And that of course is true, both in its time frame – the world before the call of Abraham into covenantal (= testamental) relationship – and its provenance, in a classical Mosaic torah framework at least, as the ancient traditions that Israel already possessed at the time of the Exodus.

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

What’s the Bible about?

Posted on 05/02/2018 by Jon Garvey

I’m looking for a succinct summary of the Bible for a Bible Overview course. That’s only worthwhile, of course, if one regards the Scriptures as telling (in the popular phrase) “His Story”, rather than their being a disparate collection of pious thoughts from Jewish religionists, cobbled together over their history from even more disparate and contradictory sources. Yet even that might add up to single story if one believes that God is in charge of history, and has a plan for it.

Posted in Creation, Genealogical Adam, Theology | 4 Comments