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Category Archives: Theology
The Ascension, perception, and worldviews
I commented on an instructive exchange at BioLogos a week or so ago. A guy calling himself WalkerColt asked: How does the Ascension fit into the accommodation view? Jesus seemed to hold to the three-tiered view of the cosmos (Jn 17:1). Did Jesus ascend ‘up’ to accommodate the view of the witnesses? How do we believe this to be an actual event in history if it is explained using this ancient cosmology? Moderator Brad Kramer replied: The trick here is reject the false dichotomy between the “everything in the Bible must have happened exactly as it was written or the whole thing is false” position and the “anything that sounds … Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy, Science, Theology
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Tentative thoughts on original sin
The idea of a single couple as the progenitors of the whole human race, especially on the time-frame suggested by Genesis 3, is difficult to support from history, archaeology, genetics or palaeontology. It is not actually mandated by the Bible’s testimony either, being more an obvious assumption in the absence of perfectly accurate knowledge of the genre of the garden account. It is, however, quite possible to postulate an historical Adam who is not the sole and specially-created progenitor of mankind. That I’ve covered elsewhere, but one of the biggest remaining problems is how it can still be true that “sin came into the world through one man.”
Posted in Adam, Creation, Genealogical Adam, Science, Theology
18 Comments
More on the unfallen creation
Thanks to Timothy Hicks for prompting this “update” on the “myth of the fallen creation”, and in particular on the aspect that it is not taught in Scripture. In fact, the extent of the Fall “in the natural world” shrinks even as you watch it.
Posted in Adam, Creation, Theology
11 Comments
Patristic plagues on popular positions
One complaint people like myself and Eddie Robinson have about writers on theistic evolution is their selective use of the Church Fathers to show that they supported, or would have supported, evolution against Creationism or Intelligent Design. I want to show here that their views on the current scene would probably have been more like “a plague on all your ignorant houses”. How you build an orthodox theology of nature is then up to you!
Posted in Creation, Science, Theology
2 Comments
Selfishness in evolution: which self?
A comment by Sy Garte on a recent post, and some recent reading, prompts this. He said: In fact, I am in quite the minority of environmentalists, since I do not necessarily view ALL extinctions as a bad thing by definition. For those who do, I tend to ask, “bad for whom?”
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology
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Power
Merv Bitkofer, responding to physicist Tim Reddish, kindly introduced my name into another BioLogos discussion in which the autonomy of creation came up. I responded along my usual lines about the illicit (and incoherent) fusing of ideas of genuine secondary causes with the language of freedom and coercion. I don’t want, or need, to repeat all that here as the piece Merv linked to there says enough. But I feel the need to say something more of the kind of theology underlying “freedom of creation” ideas, partly because it was strongly hinted at in Dr Reddish’s posts, and partly because, by the power of God fortuitously I received an academic … Continue reading
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Theology
4 Comments
Evolutionary theologies – a thought for the day
I believe the evolution of life happened, albeit that the mechanisms have barely been glimpsed, and that providence is bigger than science. But I notice a tendency amongst theologians who accept evolution to suggest that, whenever fundamental theological questions like the nature of God, or the nature of man, are discussed, only an evolutionary view of the world enables them to be rightly approached. It’s worth remembering that for over 1000 years in Old Testemnt Israel, and for 2000 years in Christianity, they were dealt with quite adequately under the working assumption of special creation and fixity of species, usually in seven days. Those assumptions included the worldviews of Jesus, … Continue reading
Posted in Science, Theology
3 Comments
The dead end of evolutionary dead ends
I had a brief conversation on BioLogos with someone who’d been a little troubled by the ancient arguments about “vestigial organs”, found in Darwin and echoed in textbooks for kids since as proof of evolution. I ended up suggesting that in very concept the idea is worthless and ought to be dropped. The trouble is that, like much of the popular presentation of evolution, it is actually not a good argument for evolution, but a polemic “case for evolution against creation”, and so is ideologically driven, even though it’s of no value to science and less to theological discourse on creation.
Posted in Creation, Science, Theology
9 Comments
The principle of divine uniformity
The end of John’s gospel contains what amount to a couple of prophecies by the risen Jesus. They come at the end of the famous passage where Jesus reinstates Peter, after his triple denial, through a rather painful triple reaffirmation of his love for the Lord. Forgiveness didn’t come completely cost-free to Peter.
Posted in Creation, Science, Theology
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Prophecy and divine action
I described in the last post the way that changes in a society’s worldview seem to threaten Christian faith, only for it to be later vindicated either by new information, or by closer re-examinaton of the old suppositions, or simply by the spirit of the age going the way of all human fashions. One good example in Christian theology is the way that the historical Jewish background to Jesus’ ministry, long lost, has been rediscovered, and particularly (for the purproses of this post) the importance of his prophecy about the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.
Posted in Creation, Theology
2 Comments