Category Archives: Theology

When I was young, the issue of Christ’s miracles was a big problem to Christians. Scientific determinism had infiltrated the public mind so thoroughly that the Bible’s miraculous claims were one of the greatest stumblingblocks in apologetics. Even within Evangelical churches rationalising the miracles as social or psychological events was common. I find it fascinating how much that has changed over forty years. Of course, atheists have become more vocal and rationalistic, but within the general community, there is much more of an attitude that, should the historical claims about Christ be true, then his miracles make sense. Yet it’s hard to pin down the reasons for this subtle shift … Continue reading →

In my last post I showed how, to the theistic evolutionists of his time, Darwin’s original theory was capable of delivering, without God’s direct intervention, all that the Biblical doctrine of creation described (with the exception, mainly, of mankind’s spiritual qualities). To people like B B Warfield, then, evolution was a true efficient cause, for which God as the original Creator was the primary cause. But then the theory changed.

I want to show how changes in evolutionary science have led to changes in the theology of Christians who accept it. It should cause us to question if theology should be so much the handmaid of a variable science. Charles Darwin developed his evolutionary theory in the context of a worldview that was, essentially, deterministic. Newtonian physics, of course, was thoroughly so. So, essentially was the uniformitarianism of Charles Lyell’s geology (particularly as it led to a complete eclipse of any catastophism at all, presumably in reaction to the Biblical Flood narrative). The overriding social idea of the time was of progress, and particularly of progress towards the triumph of … Continue reading →

I finished my last post by suggesting that any divine action in the natural world would inevitably resemble chance in its deviation from the predictions of lawlike processes. I queried whether a genuinely indeterminate chance might or might not be distinguished from God’s actions, and hence God’s work be considered “detectable.”

I’m returning, like a dog to its vomit, to the old questions revolving around “freedom” in creation, and the “detectability” of God’s work. That’s partly because it keeps coming up (eg on the new Alvin Plantinga thread on BioLogos), partly because certain people keep challenging me about it even if I’m dealing with something different, and partly because I haven’t finished thinking about it yet. I’m looking here at the implications of global hypotheses about God’s involvement in the Universe. What I’m not much concerned with today are what, or why,  particular people might hold these views. As usual I’m dealing mostly with the non-human creation, but I’ll be drawing … Continue reading →

When I first read Francis Collins’ The Language of God in 2007, it was from the viewpoint of appreciation that the head of the Human Genome Project was a fellow-Christian, defending the compatibility of science and faith. That was before I had any dealings with BioLogos the organisation. But now I thought it might be useful to return for a more critical look at the book, one 14-page chapter of which is, essentially, a manifesto for BioLogos as a concept. What does Collins mean by it, and to what extent does the present BioLogos reflect that?

May I draw your attention to a very good and accessible article by William Dembski on conservation of information for dummies? It’s very suitable for mathematical dummies like me, but also for those of a Darwinian persuasion, whose responses to Dembski, from my reading over the last years, have all shown a complete lack of understanding of the issues he raises.

Penman and I were discussing John H Walton’s thesis that the Genesis 1 creation account is actually a temple inauguration text, the temple in question being the whole cosmos. That led on to talk about G K Beale’s extensive study of the Bible’s use of temple imagery right through to Revelation. Penman suggested that someone should explore whether this might be a global theological organising principle, in the manner of covenant theology. The more I think about it, the more I believe he’s right.