Category Archives: Creation

God and Evolution, and TE, and ID

Posted on 17/06/2014 by Jon Garvey

Sometimes I think I’ve never had an original idea in my life. It’s not at all that I like to follow the crowd. On the contrary I love discovering new truths. On occasions I’ve had a wonderful new insight, say from the Bible, or have drawn strands together from primary sources, and have shared it with friends who say they’ve never heard of that before, and think it’s great. A few months later, I’ll read the self-same thing in John Calvin or C S Lewis (or usually some much lesser luminary).

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The changing face of theistic evolution (maybe)

Posted on 15/06/2014 by Jon Garvey

I’m posting below a reply I’ve made on BioLogos to a post by the president thereof, Deborah Haarsma. This is for the usual reason that BioLogos deletes comments after 6 months, and I don’t want this to be lost. In a thread discussing recent survey results on US belief about origins, she linked to an essay by Robert Bishop, which is a not only unexceptionable, but excellent survey of the biblical doctrine of creation. Read it if you want to know what I believe, and why. Its application to evolution is also good, but (paranoically or not, given BioLogos‘ track record) I notice some possible departure from the doctrine previously … Continue reading →

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Convergent theology

Posted on 08/06/2014 by Jon Garvey

After writing about the abuse of Irenaeus’s thought, and the resulting re-packaging of the doctrine of sin, I thought it would be good to check up on the history of that doctrine, and pulled out Louis Berkhof’s Systematic Theology. It’s written from a Reformed position but always covers other views pretty thoroughly. To my surprise, I found immediate support for my reading of Irenaeus, even though I was aware Berkhof wrote before “the Irenaean theodicy” had been invented by John Hick:

Posted in Adam, Creation, Theology | 4 Comments

More on the new creation

Posted on 06/06/2014 by Jon Garvey

Doing the recent piece on Hosea and the essential mystery of God (which I now see Louis Berkhof’s Systematic Theology entitles “God Incomprehensible but yet Knowable” in his 2nd chapter), I was put in mind of the slightly dysfunctional discussion we had on God’s torturing babies infants for pleasure in a previous column.

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Irenaeus and Augustine – heavyweight contest or tag team?

Posted on 04/06/2014 by Jon Garvey

Once again on BioLogos, Irenaeus has been enlisted as a recruit for an evolutionary view of sin, providing a debunking of Augustine’s view of both  sin and the fall. As I and others pointed out there, this “Irenaean theodicy” is actually filtered through the view of the very much more modern, and probably less evangelical, John Hick. The basic premise, though, is that rather than sin being the radical historic fall of an actual first man into a state alien to his God-given nature, “sin” (now largely repackaged as “selfishness”) is an inevitable part of our evolutionary heritage, and so is to be seen (this is where Irenaeus comes in) … Continue reading →

Posted in Adam, Creation, Theology | 15 Comments

Terms and conditions apply

Posted on 27/05/2014 by Jon Garvey

Time to move away from free-will, I think. I’d like to take a look at the appropriateness, or otherwise, of the term Evolutionary Creation. Not that I would expect, or want, to achieve any change of usage. Short descriptive terms are always of ambiguous value, as Eddie Robinson pointed out in his comments on “classical theism” here a week or two ago, but we couldn’t really do without them. My historian cousin was saying just that last week when we were discussing the shortcomings of the term “Renaissance”. Still, it’s good to question exactly what such labels imply, because that sometimes reveals deeper assumptions or blind-spots in the coining of … Continue reading →

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Determinism isn’t dreary (whatever else it may be)

Posted on 23/05/2014 by Jon Garvey

Having done a piece recently on free-will, referring back to the work of one of America’s greatest philosophers, Jonathan Edwards, I see that V J Torley has done a new column on the same theme. His interest is more the denial of the will in materialism than the theological debate, but I want to pick up on one of his intial points for my own purpose:

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Theology | 26 Comments

Music in the natural world

Posted on 20/05/2014 by Jon Garvey

Our dawn chorus, though usually initiated by a resident cock pheasant, Philip, squawking for food, has been dominated recently by a blackbird, probably brain-damaged. The blackbird is one of Britain’s most inventively melodic birds (check out this YouTube clip). But this one has become obsessed with a simple diatonic motif, in Bb, which it will usually repeat back-to back before breaking up into half-hearted warbles. Here is my transcription:

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Roots and branches of openness theology

Posted on 18/05/2014 by Jon Garvey

A week or two ago I finally got down to reading Jonathan Edwards’ Freedom of the Will, of 1754, which I downloaded a while ago when the discussion on the blog drifted from “nature’s autonomy” to “free will”. These discussions have a tendency to do that, and Edwards seems to confirm my previous view that this is almost inevitable, given the theological roots of both.

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Francis Bacon, Owen Barfield, Ian Dury, ID

Posted on 11/05/2014 by Jon Garvey

It’s just astonishing how things fortuitously/providentially connect together. PNGarrison has kindly sent me a chapter of a difficult (oh dear…) book by Owen Barfield, which he has painstakingly transcribed for me. Thanks Preston. Barfield was C S Lewis’s great mentor – which has to be a recommendation – and the book, Saving the Appearances, is about the development of the way humans have viewed the world across history. The Amazon reviews tend in general to say, “This book has changed my life: I don’t understand much of it, but I keep coming back to it.” Having read one chapter, I see what they mean. It’s on my Amazon wishlist, and I’ll … Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 9 Comments