Category Archives: Creation

The Ransom Theory revisited #3

Posted on 28/01/2018 by Jon Garvey

I thought I’d tidy up a few loose ends left by the last two posts. One thing that has never seemed quite credible to me, in the Patristic expressions of the Ransom theory, is simply the suggestion that Satan was outwitted and blindsided by the death of Christ. Origen, Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine all spoke of God deceiving Satan (justly, as the arch-deceiver), the latter even using the analogy of Jesus as bait in an animal trap (an image to which Gregory the Theologian objected). But Satan was a bright guy: did he really have no inkling, up to the Passion, of what was going on? After all, the … Continue reading →

Posted in Adam, Creation, Theology | 11 Comments

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

More on Natural Theology: A New Exchange with George Murphy

Posted on 18/01/2018 by Edward Robinson

Over on BioLogos, George Murphy has responded to my previous post here on the Hump. As I have no posting privileges at BioLogos, I will have to engage Dr. Murphy from my position here. This is an awkward arrangement, but it will serve for the moment. I add, however, that Dr. Murphy is free to sign up here on the Hump as a commenter and respond directly, free of charge, to this post or to any others in the future; I’m sure that his interests sufficiently overlap with the Hump’s that he would be a valuable addition to not just this but other conversations here.

Posted in Creation, Edward Robinson, Science, Theology | 2 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

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

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!

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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