Category Archives: Theology

The curse of care homes

Posted on 30/04/2020 by Jon Garvey

Internationally much has been said in the last week about a wave of COVID-19 in care homes. My Canadian cousin said it showed how dangerous they are, though of course it just shows that they are full of the elderly, the main target group of SARS-CoV-2.

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

Substance and a smidgen of style

Posted on 22/04/2020 by Jon Garvey

Well, Mick Jagger’s doing it and Paul McCartney’s doing it, so I thought I’d do it even though I don’t need to keep public interest alive under lock-down like they do… So yesterday I recorded a new song, and experimented with recording the effort in video. I think the thing’s come out OK, and Hump readers can view it absolutely free, gratis and for nothing below the fold.

Posted in Music, Theology | Leave a comment

Style over substance

Posted on 15/04/2020 by Jon Garvey

One group to do badly out of COVID-19 is the guild of celebrity charismatic prophets, who have uniformly both failed to predict it (except in the “Last September God gave me a secret message I can now reveal” manner), and who even got their false retrospective words from God wrong as they decreed instant death on the virus by Easter (or Passover, for some reason). Particularly instructive to watch on YouTube is Kenneth Copeland, whose spuriously authoritative curses on the thing, and demand for an instant vaccine NOW, almost tip him into apoplexy (though as he has also prophesied he will live to 120, I guess he’s safe). He dug … Continue reading →

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

Good Friday

Posted on 10/04/2020 by Jon Garvey

I’ve noticed something interesting in Britain during this COVID-19 crisis – perhaps not that surprising, but maybe a significant sign of the times.

Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology | Leave a comment

By nature objects of wrath

Posted on 02/04/2020 by Jon Garvey

I’ve belatedly realised one plausible reason why Paul places homosexual acts at the head of his list of the sinful results of denying the true God in Romans 1:18ff. On the face of it, that particular activity doesn’t seem obviously to follow on from idolatry, nor to be uniquely evil.

Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology | 2 Comments

A little science is a dangerous thing

Posted on 30/03/2020 by Jon Garvey

Using an electronic copy kindly sent my new Hump commenter MartinV, I’ve been looking at a recent book by John Schneider, The Darwinian Problem of Evil (it’s not released in UK until the end of the month). I won’t do a review, but from the comprehensive Introduction I found it to be a summary of the kind of theodical problems and novel theological solutions against which I reacted at BioLogos several years ago. Although the new book postdates my own God’s Good Earth, I’d see mine as a response to his, rather than the reverse (and indeed, Schneider does not interact with my work).

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

The banks of sweet primroses

Posted on 28/03/2020 by Jon Garvey

Well, I guess that a large proportion of my readers around the world will be locked in against the Coronavirus pandemic, in one way or another. A friend in Sri Lanka is facing enforced curfews, and there are massive queues for food when they are lifted, which rather defeats the object.

Posted in Creation, Theology of nature | Leave a comment

Lying for Jesus = lying to Jesus

Posted on 24/03/2020 by Jon Garvey

In my former life as a doctor, I was a GP, but ended up specialising in back pain, for a variety of contingent reasons.

Posted in Medicine, Science, Theology | 2 Comments

God’s River of Love

Posted on 16/03/2020 by Jon Garvey

Long ago God formed a River of Love. It flowed from the foot of the cross of Jesus Christ, and ran with the clear water of life, a water so powerful that when it washed against those who bathed in it, it turned their rebellion and enmity against heaven into a love that reflected God’s own, and poured out from them to share the good news of forgiveness and healing to other people. As for those who drank of that water, they were enabled to live forever in the very presence of God.

Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology | 2 Comments

Hump retrospective 7: the natural evolution of mankind

Posted on 09/03/2020 by Jon Garvey

…with consciousness, spirit and eternal life Sy Garte, in his excellent new book The Works of His Hands, mentions three intractable problems in science (because there seems no way they can arise through “materialistic natural causes”); and all three are origins questions.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 5 Comments