Christianity has a marvellously complex and nuanced doctrine of creation. At its core are two important concepts about God which we may call transcendence and immanence. Transcendence speaks to the central claim that God is wholly other, entirely different and outside of creation. He is not part of it ; he created it and stands […]
John 5:17-18 : “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” Last week we lost one of our greatest ever scientists, Dr Stephen Hawking. I was moved to look one of his lectures on line (found here at http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-beginning-of-time.html) where I read of his account of […]
Evolution – Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Monkey? Ever since I was a boy growing up in Christian circles, my Christian friends and colleagues have not just been against the emerging consensus on evolution, but actually afraid of it. I have always found it interesting to ask, “Why ? Just what is at stake? […]
Evolution and Origins – the Beauty of “Both-And” (Evolution part 2) The issue of faith versus evolution is so old that one college professor told me recently he was “bored stiff” with it. The basic issue is the unhelpfulness of dualistic language – did we evolve, OR were we created? Contrary to popular belief , […]
Evolution 1 – What’s the Question Again ? I have been writing about various trends of Christian thought concerning what is wrong with the world, the nature of evil. I’m going to give that rest for a while, and move on to something that is profoundly right with the universe, something I believe […]
Necessary Evil 3 I have been arguing that the Fall, Adam and Eve’s sin, does not explain the origin evil at all. I want to take it one stage further. A more challenging development of this argument is that it was inherent to the plan and even foreseen by God. Firstly, Mankind was probably not […]
As part of this series I have been exploring the idea that what we call evil is actually not so surprising, and indeed was part of the original plan, or at least an inevitable consequence of it. What are the objections to this line of thinking, for I can hear them coming! : Objection 1 […]
Necessary Evil ? Does evil exist for some sort of purpose? Is it an unavoidable part of this creation, and more tellingly, was it always there? One of the foundational theories of evil in Christian circles is that of the “Fall”. This is the point in the biblical narrative where sin is seen to […]
I have argued that God has created everything ; the doctrine of “ex nihilo” underpins everything Christians believe about God. So, there is a logical need to ask why that included the possibility of evil? This applies even if we put the blame for evil acts on fallen beings like Satan, evil spirits and […]
A Logical argument – Is Evil Inevitable by Definition? There is an anecdotal story about a Jewish man who engages a tailor to make a pair of trousers. After weeks of delay and endless frustration, the man confronts the tail and says, “Even God only took 6 days to make the whole world!” “Yes”, […]