Category Archives: Creation

Robert J Russell on Creation’s Freedom

Posted on 09/06/2012 by Jon Garvey

I’m slowly wading through Russell’s Cosmology – From Alpha to Omega, in which, amongst other things, he covers his “quantum indeterminacy” hypothesis for NIODA (non-interventive objective divine action), as advertised in Ted Davis’ blogs at BioLogos. If I have a criticism overall, it’s that he seems to be playing a game that accepts science’s assertions about nature’s being (at the Newtonian level) a closed system. This being assumed, he seems to say, how can we assert God’s activity in the world without his interfering with natural law, which science won’t allow. To me, the obvious first move is to question whether there is adequate evidence for science’s deterministic assertion in … Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology | 2 Comments

Imago dei

Posted on 01/06/2012 by Jon Garvey

I’m glad that penman’s double blog has gained approbation from regular readers. We’ve been tossing such ideas around for a year or two now – in my case since I first toyed with the concept of MRCA. The take home message was the possibility of taking the spiritual creation of mankind as a historical event more or less in the time-frame of the Genesis account. Penman refines that a bit, taking Adam and Eve as chosen members of a Homo divinus race recently endowed with the imago dei. He sees that endowment as a kind of species-wide spiritual awakening. I note that John H Walton has recently been thinking along … Continue reading →

Posted in Adam, Creation, Genealogical Adam, Science, Theology | 5 Comments

Human will and God’s sovereignty

Posted on 31/05/2012 by Jon Garvey

Following on from my last post, I want to pursue the idea that God is somehow sovereign over human decisions, even though man is endowed with a libertarian will and is held accountable for his actions. It’s the toughest cookie in the free-will debate. But I want first to remind you that my standpoint is what the Bible teaches, not what philosophical reflection would necessarily conclude. As I said in the last piece, an Evangelical objection must be to find a better explanation for the Biblical data, not simply cry “unfair”.

Posted in Creation, Theology | 13 Comments

Human freedom (but no evolution)

Posted on 31/05/2012 by Jon Garvey

Thomas Cudworth has been ably putting the arguments I have previously made against the woolly theology on BioLogos in a series on Uncommon Descent. He did it better than I could, even if I had the ear of UD. I’m grateful to see the issue aired so fully, though it has not been mentioned on BioLogos itself, of course. One issue that’s come up on those threads is the correspondence, or lack of it, between human freedom and the nebulous BL concept of freedom in creation. Thomas was, understandably I think, keen not to restrict his argument to any one Christian tradition about free-will, since his purpose was to show … Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, Theology | 13 Comments

Guest Post by J Penman – The Place of Adam (Pt 2 of 2)

Posted on 30/05/2012 by James Penman

EVOLUTIONARY CREATIONISM  AND REFORMED THEOLOGY I said that there are several different ways in which we could envisage Adam fitting into an Evolutionary Creationist scenario. The key question is how Adam relates to the rest of the image-bearing race in terms of (i) their original possession of the divine image, and (ii) the transition into a state of sin and death.

Posted in Adam, Creation, James Penman, Science, Theology | 10 Comments

Guest Post by J Penman – The Place of Adam (Pt 1 of 2)

Posted on 29/05/2012 by James Penman

EVOLUTIONARY CREATIONISM  AND REFORMED THEOLOGY To clear the air… I am a Reformed believer. My spiritual home is in the historic Reformed faith, specifically the family of churches that looks historically to the Westminster Confession as providing its theological framework. I am not a liberal, a Barthian, or any other such animal. My doctrine of scripture is Warfieldian. Alongside Warfield, my favorite theologians include Calvin, Turretin, Shedd, Dabney, Girardeau, and Louis Berkhof. I also have no problem, biblically or scientifically, with the General Theory of Evolution. The evidence for a family-tree of life, with modern forms descended from previous ones over geological time (Ken Ham‘s dreaded “millions of years“), seems … Continue reading →

Posted in Adam, Creation, James Penman, Science, Theology | 2 Comments

Biologists and theodicy

Posted on 19/05/2012 by Jon Garvey

I finally had time to catch up on the detail of a long thread on Uncommon Descent  in which theistic evolution and theistic evolutionists were vivisected at length. At over 180 posts the subject of the original article is probably irrelevant. At one point a discussion about the prevalence of physicists over biologists in theistic evolutionary theory developed, and Ted Davis suggested the following reason as one possibility:

Posted in Creation, Medicine, Science, Theology | 3 Comments

Irenaeus (and others) on original sin

Posted on 17/05/2012 by Jon Garvey

I had reason to dig around in some of the Patristic literature recently, and came across Irenaeus’ (late 2nd century) teaching on Adam and sin whilst looking for something else. It reminded me that I haven’t yet recorded in this blog what Irenaeus actually teaches, which is an oversight as many modern writers in the evolution/theology field, and outside it, question the traditional teaching on original sin, most often by attributing it to Augustine in the west. The Eastern Church, they say, never taught the idea of hereditary sin. Even John H Walton, much of whose excellent work I have been reading of late, mentions this as a plain fact … Continue reading →

Posted in Adam, Creation, Genealogical Adam, Science, Theology | 9 Comments

Teleology already has a foot in the door

Posted on 12/05/2012 by Jon Garvey

I’ve just read a lecture by Steve Fuller, in which he mentioned that, at around the time of the Scopes trial, it was pretty well impossible to find a scientist working in a Christian institution (and I assume this largely means US denominational universities) who would accept the reality of either miracles or the physical resurrection of Christ. I would suggest it would have been almost equally hard to find a theologian in the same institutions who believed in them either, at that time. I’ve not checked any sources, but it makes sense – even when I was young there was a strong feeling that science and the supernatural were … Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology | 1 Comment

On philosophy of science and religion

Posted on 11/05/2012 by Jon Garvey

One reason I have for being suspicious of current evolutionary theory is a generic one. The theory was conceived and pursued with materialist assumptions. If those assumptions are wrong, then it’s inconceivable that the details of the theory would remain unchanged. No outsider could say where such changes were needed – it’s a job for the specialists in each field. It’s like the conversion of an unbeliever to Christianity: the change is bound to affect beliefs and practices in relation to work, to relationships and to use of resources. If not, nothing really happened. Assumptions, in other words, always affect outcomes.

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology | 3 Comments