Category Archives: Theology

God’s purposes in creation – inscrutable or logical?

Posted on 16/05/2023 by Jon Garvey

I’ve just bought the new book God’s Grandeur – The Catholic Case for Intelligent Design. It’s edited by Ann Gauger, whom I befriended over at Peaceful Science a few years ago, before she was hounded off by the constant sneering of the resident militant anti-theists there. Having brought back to mind my longstanding interest in biological origins, I thought before getting into it to do a blog on the surprisingly uncertain support for Darwinian evolution in the fossil record. Indeed, the more I’ve looked at the evidence over the last decade, the more I’ve come to the conclusion that the evidence itself, freed from materialist metaphysical preferences, points more to … Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology of nature | 2 Comments

The Sabbath was made for man

Posted on 07/05/2023 by Jon Garvey

One of the insights I gained when writing The Generations of Heaven and Earth was what theologian Claus Westermann wrote about the command given to Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. He suggested that it was only the command that made relationship possible between man and God, thus enabling true human freedom. As I summarised it in my book: “The freedom of this relationship arises only from the command; without the command there would be no freedom.” Now this is a particularly bold statement in that Westermann has just quoted Gerhard von Rad’s words about the preceding permission to eat from any tree of the garden: “God begins … Continue reading →

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A personal valediction

Posted on 05/05/2023 by Jon Garvey

I’m of that age when my friends and heroes alike begin to be seriously thinned out by death. The most recent hero was Ray Shulman, writer and multi-instrumentalist in the band Gentle Giant, once described as “the greatest bass player you’ve never heard of.” He died a week or two ago. Then last month I came across an obituary about my closest childhood friend, who started school the same day as me, then followed me in a move to another school, as well as being in the same Wolf Cub pack. Eventually we were only separated by the eleven-plus exam, and he went on to become a sub-editor on a … Continue reading →

Posted in Music, Theology | Leave a comment

The danger of (post)modern syncretism

Posted on 28/04/2023 by Jon Garvey

The Puritans are (and always were) misunderstood as believing that they were morally or spiritually purer than their fellows. But in fact their basic tenet was rather that there is such a thing as “pure religion,” in the sense of the original gospel of Christ and the apostles untrammeled by syncretistic additions from other religions. This, of course, was the basis for the Protestant Reformation. It is (as the first of Martin Luther’s Wittenberg theses stressed) a religion of repeated repentance leading to constant assurance of salvation.

Posted in Creation, History, Philosophy, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology | Leave a comment

Why some lies take over the world

Posted on 21/04/2023 by Jon Garvey

I’ve written before about the case of Bruce/Brenda/David Reimer and his tragic fate at the hands of Dr John Money and Johns Hopkins University, on this blog in 2015 and 2019, and in my e-book Seeing Through Smoke. I’m reminded of it again by a video about it hosted by Jordan Peterson (himself a psychologist, of course). I think there’s a good case to be made that this cruel fraud, perpetrated upon an unfortunate boy and his whole family with devastating results, is the principle source of the whole societally destructive transgender issue today. Therefore you definitely need to know about it, and I’d like today to try and explore … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics and sociology, Science, Theology | Leave a comment

The astonishing Genesis 1-11

Posted on 28/03/2023 by Jon Garvey

The word from my pastor is that our church will be basing its Sunday teaching for the next few months on Genesis 1-11 – the “Protohistory” (in Gordon Wenham’s usage) or, to quote another OT scholar, “the Old Testament of the Old Testament.”

Posted in Creation, History, Theology | 6 Comments

Too far gone to reform

Posted on 23/03/2023 by Jon Garvey

A segment by Tucker Carlson notes how few of the American public, relatively speaking, see the significance of recent news events like the Chinese-mediated rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, not to mention the alliance now formed between China and Russia. As Tucker points out, we are actually witnessing the end of American (for which, in practice, read “Western”) hegemony in the world. He’s not wrong about the complacency, yet I remain surprised. It seems to me that the very blindness of governments and people alike to this, which resembles Belshazzar’s partying complacency on the eve of defeat by the Medes in Daniel, or indeed Jesus’s analogy between his own … Continue reading →

Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology | 4 Comments

Universalism and the spirit of the age

Posted on 17/03/2023 by Jon Garvey

“I can’t believe a loving God would actually inflict eternal judgement on sinners.” I heard that remark the other day, the like of which you’ll also have heard frequently in Christian circles, even extending to leading Evangelicals. Somebody responded with a remark about “hellfire preachers,” prompting me to realise that the only “hellfire preachers” most of us have ever encountered are the fictional ones criticised in remarks like that, or manufactured by woke activists to get usually moderate street preachers arrested. A teenage neighbour of mine was actually disciplined by the youth leaders at Spring Harvest once, for telling the non-Christian friend she had brought with her that she couldn’t … Continue reading →

Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology | 2 Comments

The spiritual gift of careful listening

Posted on 11/03/2023 by Jon Garvey

In a comment on another site, on the subject of the mass state-censorship of Twitter comments recently exposed by Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger and others, I happened to speculate that it may not be the bigotry of random individuals that fosters “hate,” as in “hate-speech.” Rather, historically it seems to be that it is when governments and others in authority organise that bigotry, by Jim Crow laws or state propaganda, that lynchings and pogroms occur. Does the anonymous idiot who posts “Everything is a Jewish conspiracy” actually cause synagogues to be flamed, or is it not more the case that ideologically-motivated political leaders making blanket condemnations of Israel and the … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology | 3 Comments

Christian asceticism in suburbia

Posted on 02/03/2023 by Jon Garvey

A good friend of mine predicted a couple of decades ago that the next big thing, in popular religion, would be asceticism. He was, I think, foreseeing a reaction against the rampant hedonism of the times. I think there is indeed an element of that reaction seeping into our culture, so he’s been proven right about the fashion trend, at least to an extent. But I think there is a real, and largely involuntary, asceticism of the truly spiritual kind that is proving to be a necessary Christian accomplishment in our times.

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