The Hump of the Camel

These next two posts are a reply to the claim that the extent to which God is involved providentially in the world has always been a matter of uncertainty within Christianity, and that we can’t decide from the faith whether, for example, God actively governs which species arise by evolution or largely leaves it to nature. This is not uncommonly expressed in terms of an age-old “freedom v determinism” debate in theology.

Several years ago now a conversation with erstwile fellow Humpist James Penman (the pseudonym of a professional church historian) led us to conclude that the common doctrine that the natural creation is fallen together with mankind is of recent origin. This ultimately led to my e-book God’s Good Earth, and our research can be found in Section 2 (Chapters 5 & 6) of that.

Now I want to suggest that the supposed longstanding “debate over providence” is also of recent origin – in fact, far more recent than even the “fallen creation” teaching. Continue reading →

I was gratified by the comment made by Jay Johnson recently, apparently concurring with me that some commonly voiced positions in “Evolutionary Creation” present a significantly different view of God from that historically associated with Christianity:

Many so-called Christian understandings of evolution are based more on philosophical reasoning than on anything resembling a biblical concept of God.

Continue reading →