Category Archives: Faith and Science

Genesis Recast: The War with Science is Over

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The end of the semester has been particularly busy, so it’s been a while since my last blog post. I’m planning on doing a number of posts in June, but until then I can announce some upcoming events.

Conference in Western New York on Evolution and the Bible

The event I want to focus on here is a major conference being planned for western New York state addressing how the biblical accounts of creation might be compatible with contemporary evolutionary accounts of the cosmos and humanity.

The conference, entitled “Genesis Recast: The War with Science is Over,” is scheduled for September 18-19, 2015 (Friday evening and Saturday) at The Chapel at Crosspoint in Getzville, NY.

Jim Walton of The Third Choice

The conference is organized by Jim Walton (brother of Old Testament scholar John Walton); he will host the conference and introduce the speakers. After having been involved in pastoral ministry in Buffalo, NY for over twenty years, Jim became Founder/ President of The 3rd Choice, an apologetics/ evangelistic/ discipleship website designed to engage people in conversation about matters of faith.

The rationale for the conference is that Genesis 1-2 is a huge obstacle to faith in our country right now. Millions of students are turning away from faith because of “science,” and they think that the early chapters of Genesis have been proven to be fictional. Millions of Christian students are struggling to reconcile Genesis 1-2 with contemporary science, and it’s an unnecessary tension. This conference intends to help change the conversation.

Keynote Speaker John Walton

The keynote speaker is Dr. John Walton, professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College. He will give two talks, Friday night and Saturday morning, which will focus on the material from his books The Lost World of Genesis One (IVP Academic, 2009) and The Lost World of Adam and Eve (IVP Academic, 2015).

John Walton’s interpretation of Genesis 1 and 2 is informed by contemporary biblical studies and how creation accounts functioned in the ancient Near East. His approach has been immensely significant in helping evangelical Christians understand Genesis 1 and 2 better, which does not predispose us either for or against evolutionary science; that needs to be studied on its own merits. Walton has just completed a world lecture tour, to a very positive response on the part of the attendees.

Other Speakers on the New Testament, Science, and the Church

Walton’s presentation on Saturday morning will be followed by Dr. Craig Evans (a well-respected New Testament scholar from Acadia Divinity College, in Nova Scotia), Dr. Steve Schaffner (a scientist working in the area of genetics at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT), and Skye Jethani (a pastor, consultant, and executive editor of Leadership Journal).

You can find short Bios of the speakers here and longer bios here.

This is the tentative schedule for the conference.

Conference Sponsors and Registration

The event is being co-sponsored by The Chapel at Crosspoint, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and Campus Ambassadors at the University of Buffalo, and the Biologos Foundation.

Because the organizers/ sponsors are very excited about the conference and its potential for raising awareness of the compatibility of biblical faith and contemporary science in the entire Western NY area and possibly beyond (Pennsylvania, Ontario, Ohio), they are keeping the cost of attendance ridiculously low for an event of this caliber, in the hope that many students, professors, pastors, and others can attend.

The cost for registration is $20 in advance, $25 at the door, and only $10 for students.

I will post information on how to register as it becomes available.

Tell your friends about this event, and let’s pack the auditorium.

See a follow-up post on the conference here.

The Intersection of Evolution and the Fall

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I am about to head off to a conference at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Chicago called “Re-Imagining the Intersection of Evolution and the Fall,” to present a paper on Genesis 3 in light of evolution. This three-day conference (March 26-28, 2015) grows out of a research group I’ve been a part of for the past two years that has been tasked with addressing how orthodox Christians may think about the origin of human evil (the “Fall”) in the context of what we know about the evolution of humans on this planet.

The group has two biblical scholars (myself included), along with scholars specializing in theology, philosophy, biology, ethics, and history. Many of the scholars have expertise in more than one discipline, and many have previously written on this topic.

Here is the lineup of the research team, in alphabetical order, along with their disciplinary specializations:

  • William Cavanaugh (theology, political theory)
  • Celia Deane-Drummond (theology, biology)
  • Darrel Falk (biology)
  • Joel Green (New Testament, theology, neuroscience)
  • Peter Harrison (history of science)
  • J. Richard Middleton (Old Testament, theology)
  • Aaron Riches (theology)
  • James K.A. Smith (philosophy, theology)
  • Brent Waters (theology, social ethics)
  • Norman Wirzba (theology, environmental ethics)

Here is a list of the bios for each person on the team.

Each of us will be presenting our findings in plenary sessions at the conference. You can access the conference schedule here and you can read a brief summary of the content our our presentations here.

A more detailed summary of my own paper can be found here.

Beyond the plenary presentations, there will be multiple sessions of concurrent presentations by other scholars (twenty-two in all); some of these look very interesting. I even know some of these presenters; one of them is Matthew Hill, who has been an adjunct professor at Roberts Wesleyan College and now teaches philosophy at Ann Arbor University. A book based on his dissertation, called Evolution and Holiness, will be published by InterVarsity Press next year.

The papers from the conference (both the plenaries and possibly some of the concurrent papers) will be collected in a volume published by Eerdmans, scheduled to appear sometime in 2016. The volume will be edited by William Cavanaugh and James K. A. Smith, who are the co-chairs of the research team.

I’ll post some reflections about the conference when I get back.

Redeeming Reason with John Mullholland

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I met John Mulholland, who works at the University of Chicago Law Library, back in 2007. Over the years John has been a consistent proponent of a holistic Christian worldview, including its relevance for the university, and has organized many conferences on the subject, helping many to reflect on what it means to serve Christ in academia.

At John’s invitation I came to speak at an event called “The Redemption of Reason” at the University of Chicago in October 2007; I gave two talks, one on God’s validation of Job’s lament in the speech from the whirlwind, a second on the meaning of the imago Dei as God’s call for whole-life service.

Recently I became aware of a Facebook page that John has been involved with, that is grounded in the heritage of Charles Malik, the Lebanese Christian intellectual and diplomat who was president of the UN General Assembly.

Malik, who was Eastern Orthodox, studied with Alfred North Whitehead and Martin Heidegger and earned a PhD in philosophy from Harvard, and later taught in both the US and Lebanon. He entered the civil service in Lebanon and besides service to that country he was instrumental in developing the UN charter of rights and served as president of the UN General Assembly from 1958-59. Malik also wrote in the area of theology and I have heard his name dropped and seen his works cited especially when I was a campus minister with Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, back in the 1980s.

One of my M.A. students (Cord Sullivan), who is coming on staff with IVCF at the University of Buffalo, has a Malik quote as the byline for his email: “more potently than by any other means, change the University and you change the world.” Now you can see why this Facebook page is called the “Charles Malik Society for Redeeming Reason.” I’m glad I discovered it.

Recently, John posted some comments there about the talk on “Restoration” I gave at Jubilee 2015.

A gift of Shalom from Professor J. Richard Middleton for this little venture, where we seek to engage the university and culture as Christians with the Good News of Jesus. Middleton, NT Wright and others now see an holistic message of salvation, which empowers us to do both deeds of mercy, but also deeds of creation in science, art, medicine, et al.

Nicholas Wolterstorff echoes this work by Middleton and others with remarks about God’s call to us all to be messengers of Shalom in this world, agents of God’s mission – see esp. p.72

Then John quotes some of my blog post on the Jubilee conference, and concludes by saying:

Click around Middleton’s blog to find more resources. Here is the table of contents for his new book, A New Heaven and a New Earth.

I recommend the postings on the Malik/Redeeming Reason Facebook page for inspiration and enlightenment on seeking God’s kingdom in the academic realm.

Thanks, John, for your service in the cause of Christ that goes back a long way!