Category Archives: Creation

Outsiders’ insights

Posted on 03/01/2016 by Jon Garvey

I’ve in the past waxed enthusiastic about the BBC radio programme In Our Time, in which presenter Melvyn Bragg asks a specially assembled panel of (genuine) experts intelligent questions about some chosen topic, which might range from the Battle of Marathon to Alice in Wonderland, or from Genghiz Khan to Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Just before Christmas they did a good one on Michael Faraday.

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

Climate change and Christian faith

Posted on 31/12/2015 by Jon Garvey

My wife’s cousin, an academic historian, was staying over Christmas. We were watching the news, of which the first half was about the severe storms causing extensive flooding in northern England and southern Scotland, and the the second half about unprecedented snowfall and tornadoes sweeping the United States. Cousin suddenly remarked, “I think God’s trying to tell us something.”

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Arminius and natural providence

Posted on 28/12/2015 by Jon Garvey

Back in 2012 I posted a piece about the views of the Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius on creation. The start of my argument was that the still-prevalent semideistic “freedom of creation” teaching amongst theistic evolutionists is most logically taken as a projection of the Arminian teaching on human free-will.

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Cheetahs, gazelles, arms race – just so, just so

Posted on 21/12/2015 by Jon Garvey

Wherever one happens to glance, it seems, evolution is not quite as we are taught to be fact. I went to Wikipedia for a picture of a cheetah, and found instead the deconstruction of another Kiplinesque story – that of the cheetah-gazelle arms race.

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Eternal verities

Posted on 18/12/2015 by Jon Garvey

I want to present an important distinction that’s been made clearer to me during my reading of N T Wright’s magisterial series Christian Origins and the Question of God. And that is the importance of history to a truly biblical faith.

Posted in Adam, Creation, Theology | 13 Comments

Humanity, evolution and concurrence.

Posted on 11/12/2015 by Jon Garvey

Nearly two years ago I wrote on the difficulties evolution presents to philosophical realism – the existence of universals like “human nature” – and what it would take for us as Christians to be able to hold the first without losing the latter. It’s a real philosophical problem, and involves who we are. Another recent conversation with Timothy Hicks relates to that issue.

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“God of the gaps” – an accusation from ignorance

Posted on 07/12/2015 by Jon Garvey

Every couple of days, it appears, the “God of the gaps” argument is mentioned in comments at BioLogos, usually with reference to its alleged use by Intelligent Design proponents, but often in an attempt to steer round it whilst still acknowledging a truly theistic understanding of creation and evolution. It seems to function in a kind of negative capacity, in the same manner as discussions of immigration or terrorism that begin, “Of course, I’m not a racist, but…”

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 5 Comments

Tentative thoughts on original sin

Posted on 30/11/2015 by Jon Garvey

The idea of a single couple as the progenitors of the whole human race, especially on the time-frame suggested by Genesis 3, is difficult to support from history, archaeology, genetics or palaeontology. It is not actually mandated by the Bible’s testimony either, being more an obvious assumption in the absence of perfectly accurate knowledge of the genre of the garden account. It is, however, quite possible to postulate an historical Adam who is not the sole and specially-created progenitor of mankind. That I’ve covered elsewhere, but one of the biggest remaining problems is how it can still be true that “sin came into the world through one man.”

Posted in Adam, Creation, Genealogical Adam, Science, Theology | 18 Comments

More on the unfallen creation

Posted on 28/11/2015 by Jon Garvey

Thanks to Timothy Hicks for prompting this “update” on the “myth of the fallen creation”, and in particular on the aspect that it is not taught in Scripture. In fact, the extent of the Fall “in the natural world” shrinks even as you watch it.

Posted in Adam, Creation, Theology | 11 Comments

Patristic plagues on popular positions

Posted on 26/11/2015 by Jon Garvey

One complaint people like myself and Eddie Robinson have about writers on theistic evolution is their selective use of the Church Fathers to show that they supported, or would have supported, evolution against Creationism or Intelligent Design. I want to show here that their views on the current scene would probably have been more like “a plague on all your ignorant houses”. How you build an orthodox theology of nature is then up to you!

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology | 2 Comments