Category Archives: Theology

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 →

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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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The implications of Genesis historical verisimilitude

Posted on 24/02/2023 by Jon Garvey

As I get to the end of Mallory’s Morte d’Arthur I understand why it’s a great book rather than simply a collection of knightly names and tournaments. That won’t stop it getting banned once the woke censors finish with Dahl and Shakespeare and get round to spotting its sexism, Islamophobia, colonialism and gratuitous violence. But one thing it cannot be accused of is historical verisimilitude.

Posted in History, Science, Theology | 5 Comments

It’s the epistemology, stupid

Posted on 21/02/2023 by Jon Garvey

Gavin Ashenden, some-time chaplain to the late queen, after long soul-searching left the Anglican church for Roman Catholicism, around three years ago. That’s out of the frying pan into the fire as far as I can see, but I respect his conscience and his intellect, and indeed his work helped me bottom out some of the ideas in my own e-book on the Great Deception, Seeing through Smoke. He was unwilling to live by lies.

Posted in Creation, Politics and sociology, Prometheus, Theology | 2 Comments

RIP Mike Heiser

Posted on 17/02/2023 by Jon Garvey

I feel I need to say a few words of tribute for biblical scholar Mike Heiser, who has, I hear, recently succumbed to pancreatic cancer at too early an age.

Posted in Creation, Theology, Theology of nature | Leave a comment

When kings go out to war

Posted on 15/02/2023 by Jon Garvey

When I mentioned Le Morte d’Arthur recently I observed in passing the blase way in which mediaeval aristocrats fought wars with their relatives for their power, consigning thousands of their unsung soldiery to death in the process.

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