Category Archives: Theology

All made up and nowhere to go (2)

Posted on 15/06/2023 by Jon Garvey

The old critical scholars, back in the days when there was a liberal source-critical consensus, used to say that Genesis contains two incompatible creation stories, the first from the “E” source and the second, the Eden narrative, from “J.” Or at least that was the gist, as many scholars seemed to assign odd verses to a different source at a whim. But they had a point: if Moses wrote Genesis, or the bulk of it, and Genesis 2 is a re-focused view of the creation, then he left in some inconsistencies at a rather fundamental level, beyond merely a shift of imagery.

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All made up and nowhere to go (1)

Posted on 14/06/2023 by Jon Garvey

In a recent post, I critiqued “Old Adam” views of Genesis 2, mainly on biblical grounds. Rejecting such views either means embracing “No Adam” theories (including, of course, “Metaphorical Adam” theories), requiring a complete heterodox re-working of Jewish and Christian theology, which I won’t discuss here, or accepting a “Young Adam” within the last few thousand years.

Posted in Genealogical Adam, Science, Theology | 4 Comments

Genesis birds disprove solid raqia

Posted on 10/06/2023 by Jon Garvey

In our recent YouTube livestream, Rob Rowe drew my attention to something I’d missed in the debate about whether Genesis teaches “obsolete science” that there is a solid dome over the world separating it from a celestial ocean. I’ve dealt with this topic in my book, and in a good few old posts here (search on “raqia”). Rob pointed out that in The Lost World of Adam and Eve, on page 37, John H. Walton states that he has now become convinced that the word traditionally translated “firmament,” which he long believed to mean a solid sheet, actually means “the space created by the separating of the waters…”.

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Unexpected livestream on my book

Posted on 04/06/2023 by Jon Garvey

Months ago I was put in touch with Rob Rowe, who has a YouTube apologetics channel based in Australia. I heard nothing until yesterday, when on a couple of hours notice he set up a livestream to discuss The Generations of Heaven and Earth, which together with Q&A lasted over two hours. Fortunately I hadn’t forgotten too much of what I’d written.

Posted in Adam, Creation, Genealogical Adam, History, Science, Theology | 2 Comments

Nature or denature?

Posted on 26/05/2023 by Jon Garvey

There are some lessons to be learned, I think, from a couple of remarkable statistics gleaned from recent surveys. One, from last November, found that only 49.7% of Cambridge students identified as heterosexual, with 11.9% as homosexual and 29% as bisexual. Another, more recently, finds that 10% of British 16-18 year olds would like to change their gender.

Posted in Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology | 3 Comments

Worship-is-us, yeah?

Posted on 23/05/2023 by Jon Garvey

Someone at church suggested a new song for Sunday services, and being in the band I went to YouTube to look up how it goes. The clip was of the writer singing his own song. He was a young man with a strange haircut, tattoos and an expensive Gibson J45 guitar. He stood on stage amid well orchestrated lights, accompanied by a band of equally young chaps and young blonde ladies, all looking worshipful if they weren’t actually playing instruments, in which case they just looked like musicians. Somewhere, I suppose, there was a congregation. “It’s all about you, Jesus…”

Posted in Music, Theology | 7 Comments

Would you Adam and Eve it?

Posted on 19/05/2023 by Jon Garvey

For Christians (and Jews and others) seeking to maintain the historicity of a first human couple, Adam and Eve, there are really three broad ways to proceed. My aim here is to cast doubt on one of them, from a biblical standpoint, and so I’ll break the usual pattern of such discussions by stating my own position first, and then leaving it to one side!

Posted in Creation, Genealogical Adam, History, Science, Theology | 8 Comments

The heavens declare the crisis in mental health…

Posted on 18/05/2023 by Jon Garvey

Before the age of atheism, the natural human response to the beauties of nature was to see in them the power and wisdom of God, just as Romans 1:20 reminds us. The perennial danger was to worship the creature, rather than the Creator. But the pagan hunter feeling the wind on his skin as he looked across the veldt, the Saxon poet weaving birds and beasts into his measures, Francis Bacon attesting that the closer one studies nature the more God’s hand is perceived, or the peasant woman toiling to collect water from the stream, and pausing at the bejewelled kingfisher passing by… the common heritage of all these was … Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, Politics and sociology, Theology of nature | 1 Comment

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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