Cheetahs, gazelles, arms race – just so, just so

Posted on 21/12/2015 by Jon Garvey

Wherever one happens to glance, it seems, evolution is not quite as we are taught to be fact. I went to Wikipedia for a picture of a cheetah, and found instead the deconstruction of another Kiplinesque story – that of the cheetah-gazelle arms race. Continue reading →

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Eternal verities

Posted on 18/12/2015 by Jon Garvey

I want to present an important distinction that’s been made clearer to me during my reading of N T Wright’s magisterial series Christian Origins and the Question of God. And that is the importance of history to a truly biblical faith. Continue reading →

Posted in Adam, Creation, Theology | 13 Comments

Resurrection, continuity and forms

Posted on 16/12/2015 by Jon Garvey

One of the questions that exercised the rabbis in the discussion of the general resurrection of the dead, even before the Christian era, was the question of continuity. The school of Shammai, working from Ezekiel, believed that God must clothe the dead bones (hence the need for careful burial, and even careful execution of criminals). The school of Hillel, working from Job, believed God would work inwards, filling the skin with new life. Continue reading →

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An alternative choice for “We must have been able to choose differently…”

Posted on 15/12/2015 by Jon Garvey

This is picking up some themes from a post in October.

I always remember a conversation I had with my friend Tim on “A” staircase of Pembroke College, Cambridge, back in 1971. We were discussing some current issue over coffee, and I screwed up one eye sagely and said, “Ah, things would be different…”, expecting him to fill in the gap mentally with “…if it weren’t for the Lefties,” or “…if my parents had loved me” or some other amusing platitude. Continue reading →

Posted in Philosophy, Theology | 2 Comments

Humanity, evolution and concurrence.

Posted on 11/12/2015 by Jon Garvey

Nearly two years ago I wrote on the difficulties evolution presents to philosophical realism – the existence of universals like “human nature” – and what it would take for us as Christians to be able to hold the first without losing the latter. It’s a real philosophical problem, and involves who we are.

Another recent conversation with Timothy Hicks relates to that issue. Continue reading →

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Dating the gospels

Posted on 09/12/2015 by Jon Garvey

No, I know that’s not a subject closely linked to creation teaching, science and so on, but it’s just for this once and it does kind of connect to my post on Jesus’s prophecy about Jerusalem. But an interesting post by Jonathan Bernier on the dating of the Letter to the Hebrews gives me an excuse.

When John A T Robinson wrote his book suggesting a radically early date for all the New Testament writings, he was (as an outsider) astonished at the shaky case made by New Testament scholars for late dates. That remains much the same situation today. Continue reading →

Posted in Theology | 6 Comments

“God of the gaps” – an accusation from ignorance

Posted on 07/12/2015 by Jon Garvey

Every couple of days, it appears, the “God of the gaps” argument is mentioned in comments at BioLogos, usually with reference to its alleged use by Intelligent Design proponents, but often in an attempt to steer round it whilst still acknowledging a truly theistic understanding of creation and evolution. It seems to function in a kind of negative capacity, in the same manner as discussions of immigration or terrorism that begin, “Of course, I’m not a racist, but…” Continue reading →

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

Another snippet on the subjective humanness of perception

Posted on 04/12/2015 by Jon Garvey

Folk psychology: I see a solid table

Clever materialist: How do you know it’s really as you think?

Folk psychology: All the evidence of my five senses! Continue reading →

Posted in Philosophy | 4 Comments

The Ascension, perception, and worldviews

Posted on 02/12/2015 by Jon Garvey

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 supernatural must be a total fabrication” position. I saw a screening of a new movie about Jesus that show the Ascension as Jesus disappearing into a sort of “curtain” of light, which I thought was a good job. Jesus did indeed leave this reality in some visible way, and the disciples interpreted it through the lens of the three-tiered universe.

Continue reading →

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Tentative thoughts on original sin

Posted on 30/11/2015 by Jon Garvey

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.” Continue reading →

Posted in Adam, Creation, Genealogical Adam, Science, Theology | 18 Comments