Category Archives: Theology

Heavily overlapping magisteria

Posted on 08/06/2018 by Jon Garvey

When I wrote a recent piece on the limitations of science, compared to the sum total of truth (and even of knowledge), I was building on discussions with Joshua Swamidass, who liked the article, I’m pleased to say. He might be less in agreement, perhaps, with another thought about science, and that is the dependence on all kinds of “soft” human qualities that make science impossible to define, except by rather ad hoc conventions which, in any case, are full of exceptions.

Posted in Philosophy, Science, Theology | 2 Comments

Sons of God

Posted on 05/06/2018 by Jon Garvey

Some things in the Bible are probably unknowable from our current state of knowledge – and conceivably, our future state, too. This may seem hard to accept since the Scriptures are God’s revelation to us, but then nature is also God’s revelation, and the limits of our comprehension themselves remind us to be humble before God. We see through a glass, darkly, but tend to forget that in our pride.

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The sum total of truth

Posted on 01/06/2018 by Jon Garvey

The Renaissance humanists saw the human being as a microcosm, because the mind of man can reach out to encompass the farthest reaches of the universe, or the smallest particles of matter. It can even raise itself to contemplate the things of heaven, and God himself. The last shows why the microcosm view, which gives man such a central importance in the creation, is both a glorious truth and a misleading half-truth at the same time.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 4 Comments

This world is not my home…

Posted on 29/05/2018 by Jon Garvey

Basil of Caesarea is not only one of the Fathers I cite in God’s Good Earth as a supporter of the teaching of an unfallen creation, but he wrote a complete series of homilies on the days of creation, expounding Scripture in conjunction with the science of his time. In other words, he was both deeply interested in, and a great admirer of, the creation. So I was struck by reading an apparent anomaly in his other writings yesterday:

Posted in Adam, Genealogical Adam, Theology | 4 Comments

True literalism

Posted on 27/05/2018 by Jon Garvey

The quotation from Calvin I cited here set me in mind of the equivalent situation in studying the Bible, as opposed to nature, and of a common accusation that “simple folks” make about scholarly investigation of, for example, the Genesis creation texts.

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Restaurant eavesdroppings

Posted on 24/05/2018 by Jon Garvey

…Fortunately not from the seagulls, but the human sort, whilst I was on holiday last week. You know how hard it is not to pick up on words spoken at conversational levels from the next table in a restaurant, once they catch your ear. In this case one of the foursome who sat down next to us had already spoken to me when he nearly knocked over my cider with his rucksack and laughingly apologised.

Posted in Theology | 1 Comment

Armchair theodicy

Posted on 11/05/2018 by Jon Garvey

When I was writing my forthcoming (promises, promises) book, God’s Good Earth, I added a disclaimer in the introduction that I was not going to attempt the kind of theodicy (following Leibniz) that is so often used to argue that the world itself must be evil through human sin, or through the autonomy granted by God to a demiurgic Nature.

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

Now you see them – now you don’t

Posted on 08/05/2018 by Jon Garvey

One of my current research aims is to demonstrate that the Bible itself has an awareness of other people existing in the world at the time of Adam, despite being overtly silent about them. I approached this from the point of view of the “compositional strategy” of the Torah and Tanach here, and from the point of view of hints about people other than Adam in the text here.

Posted in Adam, Creation, Genealogical Adam, Theology | 9 Comments

Convergent evolution of origins discourse

Posted on 05/05/2018 by Jon Garvey

On Thursday I drove two hundred miles across England to attend a meeting on Christian approaches to origins – only to find the meeting had been cancelled and the organisers forgot to tell me.

Posted in Creation, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology | 12 Comments

Religion before Adam

Posted on 01/05/2018 by Jon Garvey

On the Genealogical Adam model – and indeed on any model dealing with an historical Adam – one has to account for the fact that humanity appears to have had some kind of religious or spiritual life almost as far back as artifacts can be found.

Posted in Adam, Creation, Genealogical Adam, Theology | 39 Comments