Robert J Russell on Creation’s Freedom

Posted on 09/06/2012 by Jon Garvey

I’m slowly wading through Russell’s Cosmology – From Alpha to Omega, in which, amongst other things, he covers his “quantum indeterminacy” hypothesis for NIODA (non-interventive objective divine action), as advertised in Ted Davis’ blogs at BioLogos. If I have a criticism overall, it’s that he seems to be playing a game that accepts science’s assertions about nature’s being (at the Newtonian level) a closed system. This being assumed, he seems to say, how can we assert God’s activity in the world without his interfering with natural law, which science won’t allow. To me, the obvious first move is to question whether there is adequate evidence for science’s deterministic assertion in the first place.

Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology | 2 Comments

Two interpretations of Romans 8

Posted on 04/06/2012 by Jon Garvey

Romans 8.28-39 is, unquestionably, about assurance. And it touches upon the “doctrines of grace” covered in a few recent threads. A few years ago a charismatic friend of mine (now deceased) used to point to verse 38, where it says:

For I am convinced that neither life nor death, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of Christ that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And he would nod gravely and say, “There’s one important omission from that list – ourselves. God has done everything for us, but we have to make sure we ourselves overcome, or we may be lost.”

Continue reading →

Posted in Theology | 3 Comments

Series on the Covenants of God

Posted on 04/06/2012 by Jon Garvey

Since we’ve had some discussion here about the covenants in the Bible, and covenant theology, I thought I’d put some links to a series of articles I did in a magazine called  Prophecy Today between 2004 and 2005, in case anyone finds it useful.
Continue reading →

Posted in Theology | Leave a comment

Mind the Biggles

Posted on 03/06/2012 by Jon Garvey

When I was about 4, the first aeroplane whose name I learned from my father was the de Havilland Tiger Moth. I used to watch the little silver biplanes doing lazy aerobatics above me over the Surrey hills on which we lived. Yesterday I actually had the opportunity to fly in a vintage 1943 Moth, thanks to a belated birthday present.

Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Imago dei

Posted on 01/06/2012 by Jon Garvey

I’m glad that penman’s double blog has gained approbation from regular readers. We’ve been tossing such ideas around for a year or two now – in my case since I first toyed with the concept of MRCA. The take home message was the possibility of taking the spiritual creation of mankind as a historical event more or less in the time-frame of the Genesis account. Penman refines that a bit, taking Adam and Eve as chosen members of a Homo divinus race recently endowed with the imago dei. He sees that endowment as a kind of species-wide spiritual awakening.

I note that John H Walton has recently been thinking along similar lines – Genesis 1 dealing with the creation of mankind in God’s image, and Genesis 2-3 dealing with the priestly representative of the race who failed. Note that these kinds of ideas essentially defuse many of the evolutionary problems associated with a historical Adam and Eve, making them valuable for Christians wanting to resolve science and Biblical issues. They may be considered less valuable to Christian natural scientists wanting to keep human origins within their own domain!

Continue reading →

Posted in Adam, Creation, Genealogical Adam, Science, Theology | 5 Comments

Human will and God’s sovereignty

Posted on 31/05/2012 by Jon Garvey

Following on from my last post, I want to pursue the idea that God is somehow sovereign over human decisions, even though man is endowed with a libertarian will and is held accountable for his actions. It’s the toughest cookie in the free-will debate. But I want first to remind you that my standpoint is what the Bible teaches, not what philosophical reflection would necessarily conclude. As I said in the last piece, an Evangelical objection must be to find a better explanation for the Biblical data, not simply cry “unfair”.

Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, Theology | 13 Comments

Human freedom (but no evolution)

Posted on 31/05/2012 by Jon Garvey

Thomas Cudworth has been ably putting the arguments I have previously made against the woolly theology on BioLogos in a series on Uncommon Descent. He did it better than I could, even if I had the ear of UD. I’m grateful to see the issue aired so fully, though it has not been mentioned on BioLogos itself, of course.

One issue that’s come up on those threads is the correspondence, or lack of it, between human freedom and the nebulous BL concept of freedom in creation. Thomas was, understandably I think, keen not to restrict his argument to any one Christian tradition about free-will, since his purpose was to show that no historic traditions, even the Wesleyan, elevate freedom to such a level as to attribute it to the non-human (and the non-angelic) creation. He has resisted attempts (by ubiquitous blogger Bilbo, mainly) to divert the discussion into the theology of human freedom. I agree it’s irrelevant to his series, as I believe it is to most of the general evolution discussion, though it clearly relates to the human sciences and hence to how human qualities like “will” originated.
Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, Theology | 13 Comments

Guest Post by J Penman – The Place of Adam (Pt 2 of 2)

Posted on 30/05/2012 by James Penman

EVOLUTIONARY CREATIONISM  AND REFORMED THEOLOGY

I said that there are several different ways in which we could envisage Adam fitting into an Evolutionary Creationist scenario. The key question is how Adam relates to the rest of the image-bearing race in terms of (i) their original possession of the divine image, and (ii) the transition into a state of sin and death.

Continue reading →

Posted in Adam, Creation, James Penman, Science, Theology | 10 Comments

Guest Post by J Penman – The Place of Adam (Pt 1 of 2)

Posted on 29/05/2012 by James Penman

EVOLUTIONARY CREATIONISM  AND REFORMED THEOLOGY

To clear the air…

I am a Reformed believer. My spiritual home is in the historic Reformed faith, specifically the family of churches that looks historically to the Westminster Confession as providing its theological framework. I am not a liberal, a Barthian, or any other such animal. My doctrine of scripture is Warfieldian. Alongside Warfield, my favorite theologians include Calvin, Turretin, Shedd, Dabney, Girardeau, and Louis Berkhof.

I also have no problem, biblically or scientifically, with the General Theory of Evolution. The evidence for a family-tree of life, with modern forms descended from previous ones over geological time (Ken Ham‘s dreaded “millions of years“), seems to me well-grounded in the fossil record and in genetics. I would not press it so far as to insist on a single common ancestor for all modern life, but (to co-opt a science fiction mantra from Blakes 7) “all life is linked” in a grand genealogy. Maybe there was a single common ancestor, although I can see no logical reason why there couldn’t have been several original forms that interacted either directly or through modified descendants. However, I don’t have a problem with the factuality of transitional forms; the transitions from fish to amphibian, reptile to mammal, and reptile to bird, all have exceedingly plausible justifications in the fossil record. Nor do I dispute the biological descent of modern humanity from pre-modern ancestors.
Continue reading →

Posted in Adam, Creation, James Penman, Science, Theology | 2 Comments

Bumpy Music

Posted on 25/05/2012 by Jon Garvey

For those of you who are interested (or haven’t had a CD forced upon you) my new solo album Bumpy Music is finally up on my website. I think you”’ agree it’s pretty different from the previous album, 14th Century Marmoset since I had some songs to use up and was missing doing rock.

Continue reading →

Posted in Music | 1 Comment