Category Archives: Creation

Revelationary politics

Posted on 19/09/2015 by Jon Garvey

Teaching the Book of Revelation, as I am at the moment to a home group, always raises interesting questions of the type “Things I always wondered about, but was afraid to ask”. In the context of Revelation it’s not surprising, because being cryptic and aimed at providing insights to 1st century persecuted Christians with a Jewish background, rather than to twenty-first century Gentiles, it tends to get left on the shelf, and the questions it raises in people’s minds left unaddressed too.

Posted in Creation, Theology | 15 Comments

One man went to mow a meadow…

Posted on 17/09/2015 by Jon Garvey

…but he didn’t, or at least not yet. Our small piece of Devonshire hillside has acted as a one-and-a-half acre paddock for a couple of ponies since we moved here. The basic management has been to use the lower (damper) part in summer, and the drier upper part in winter, strip grazing both in as convenient a way as possible, mowing the unused bits if and when they get too long. It’s good exercise to walk a mower up and down a steep hill.

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Sharing Traherne

Posted on 14/09/2015 by Jon Garvey

I’ve mentioned before something of my enthusiam for the metaphysical poet Thomas Traherne. The Eclectic Orthodoxy blog has a piece which is just a fairly lengthy quotation from one of the better known parts of his Centuries of Meditations. Read, enjoy and meditate.

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Science and divine judgement

Posted on 11/09/2015 by Jon Garvey

There was a bit of a discussion on BioLogos not long ago about the possibility of miracles in relation to scientific laws. Interesting enough, but the subject has been treated quite frequently, in point of fact, from C S Lewis through to Alvin Plantinga. And it’s not really that controversial amongst contemporary Evangelicals, the target audience. As I pointed out there there’s been an intriguing change in general attitude to miracles within my lifetime, from something no modern man could countenance to something only old-fashioned atheists reject out of hand. But there’s a related field of divine action that’s both more ubiquitous and more controversial than that of occasional miracles.

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology | 12 Comments

And talking of Elizabeth II…

Posted on 09/09/2015 by Jon Garvey

Today is actually the day that the length of her reign overtakes that of Queen Victoria, making her the longest ruling of Britain’s forty monarchs since the Norman Conquest in 1066. As an individual she now has pretty universal respect. Opinions vary about the effectiveness of her reign, from historian David Starkey’s assertion that she’s never said anything that will be remembered, to others who consider that her management of the changes in Britain, from a stiff nominally Christian state to a secular one, and from an imperial power to a more modest world-player, has been masterful.

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Gregor Mendel: My Part in his Downfall

Posted on 08/09/2015 by Jon Garvey

The title, for Uninitiated Foreigners, alludes to this celebrated autobiography  by this mad genius, lest you think I really wish to denigrate the great monk. Below the fold is a link to a British documentary about epigenetics. It’s primarily about the discovery of epigenetics in the transmission of disease down generations, but we need always to remember that the medical aspects are just a window on a process that must, by its nature, be primarily physiological and adaptive, and is turning out to be ubiquitous:

Posted in Creation, Science | 2 Comments

Early Christian timelines

Posted on 31/08/2015 by Jon Garvey

I decided to read some of the earliest Christian writings again, a decision triggered, I guess, by the discussion of New Testament “oral texts” in The Lost World of Scripture, which I recently reviewed. First up in my Penguin edition is the first letter of Clement of Rome to the church in Corinth.

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Creation and Election

Posted on 19/08/2015 by Jon Garvey

The BioLogos thread on the historicity of Adam turns out to be another important one, though the most interesting bit has got hived off to a sub-thread involving the Usual Suspects here, one Ex-Suspect and Christy (who so far is not suspected of anything, though she’d be most welcome on The Hump). I venture to suggest that amongst these there is broad agreement (though they may not fully realise it) that classical Christianity requires that Adam and Eve are not optional, and that attempts to make them so at least amount to new doctrine (so Eddie) and more strongly that such attempts amount to heterodoxy. That a significant strand in … Continue reading →

Posted in Adam, Creation, Science, Theology | 21 Comments

You heard it here first

Posted on 17/08/2015 by Jon Garvey

V J Torley, in a piece on Uncommon Descent, cites ex-Biologos TE Karl Giberson writing a blurb for atheist John Loftus’ new book, in which Giberson does a mea culpa for the weakness of his “free creation” defence of Christianity in relation to evolution.

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Why the zebra got his stripes

Posted on 12/08/2015 by Jon Garvey

An instructive little news lollipop on the BBC radio news this morning. There was an interview with a PhD student researching the reason zebras have stripes. Her team was testing the hypothesis that herds of striped targets present a confusing target for predators. They did this by simulating such a scenario on a computer game, testing humans’ ability to zap confusing patterned targets as opposed to plain grey ones.

Posted in Creation, Science | 4 Comments