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Category Archives: Creation
Music in the natural world
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:
Posted in Creation, Science, Theology
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Roots and branches of openness theology
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.
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology
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Francis Bacon, Owen Barfield, Ian Dury, ID
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
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Jaki – Science and Creation
One of the books often cited with approbium on the Christian roots of science is Fr Stanley Jaki’s Science and Creation. It’s one of the best early (1986) attempts to reverse the Victorian myth that science and religion are incompatible, by showing, to the contrary, how only the Judaeo-Christian concept of creation really made science as we know it possible.
Posted in Creation, History, Philosophy, Science
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Chickens, eggs, concurrentism and Job
One of the strands running through some of these posts is that if we want to understand God’s ways in creation (and therefore scientific questions like evolution), we must also understand how he acts now. I’m speaking here as to Christians, who accept Scripture’s inspiration and authority, but who sometimes say these questions of God’s governance in the world are moot. The same (they say) is therefore true of God’s involvement in natural processes and the vexed question of natural evil. There seems to be a feeling that the kind of philosophical-theological views proposed in such concepts as concurrentism are imposed upon the biblical text. But I’m going to argue … Continue reading
Posted in Creation, Science, Theology
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Observing how new orthodoxies arise
Preston Garrison has drawn my attention to a piece by “RJS” on The Jesus Creed, about a christological view of creation. It’s very familiar to me as exactly the same scheme to which I reacted in my series both on divine kenosis and my own seven part series on Christological creation.
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What the new creation teaches about the old
The Christian doctrine of creation is incomplete without a consideration of the concept of the new creation. Not only is Christianity inextricably linked to the idea that, in Christ, the whole cosmos will soon be renewed, but that renewal has been revealed as the end towards which the old creation was always headed.
Posted in Creation, Science, Theology
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This is what I meant
I did a series last year (starting here) on the fundamental difference between the original Christian idea of freedom, and the almost universal modern perversion of freedom into “autonomy”, even within the churches. The series arose from my research on the historical teaching on the goodness of creation. Without grasping the radical difference in these two concepts of freedom, one cannot understand why the whole “free process” theology underlying most theistic evolution now is so far adrift from historic Christianity. In fact, it’s hard to comprehend historic Christianity at all.
Posted in Creation, Theology
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Conway Morris and Behe – an example of convergence?
One of our readers pointed me to a useful overview by Simon Conway Morris of his thinking on his pet theory of convergent evolution. I don’t want to review it here, as it’s clear enough in itself. But I will summarise it in relation to The Hump’s recently coined approach to things scientific, Classic Providential Naturalism.
Posted in Creation, Science, Theology
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Easter thoughts
For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit. (1 Peter 3.18) G K Chesterton famously answered the question, “What’s wrong with the world?” with two words: “I am.” Christ did not become creation – he became man. And he did not die for suffering, but suffered for sins. Yet in doing so he redeemed both the suffering of man and the suffering of creation, both of which are the result of our sin. The cause is a deeply sobering thought. The solution is one of the … Continue reading
Posted in Creation, Theology
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