Tag Archives: Bible

A Sabbatical Visit to Australia

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I haven’t had a chance to write much for this blog in quite a while, since I am hard at work on papers and talks that I will present in Australia during my sabbatical, this Fall.

I will be in Australia for a month, as Visiting Theologian-in-Residence first at St. Barnabas College, Adelaide (Sept. 18-Oct. 1, 2016) and then at St. Mark’s National Theological Centre, Canberra (Oct. 2-15, 2016), both member schools of Charles Sturt University.

My activities in Adelaide include:

My activities in Canberra:

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When I return from Australia, I will give the J. J. Theissen Lectures (on Lament), at Canadian Mennonite University, Winnipeg, MB, October 25-26, 2016.

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These presentations are all related to research for my book, tentatively called The Silence of Abraham, The Passion of Job: Explorations in the Theology of Lament (to be published by Baker Academic).

No Need to Fear Evolution

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An excellent blogger on science and religion issues, who goes by the handle RJS, has just posted an introduction to my first BioLogos blog (Why Christians Don’t Need to Be Threatened by Evolution) on the website Musings on Science and Theology. RJS’s posts are then re-posted on the Jesus Creed website, where comments are allowed (Jesus Creed is a blog run by New Testament scholar Scot McKnight; it is hosted by Patheos, which hosts a variety of religion blogs).

The post by RJS is called No Need to Fear and it goes beyond introducing my BioLogos blog. It goes on to explain (very well) my argument about Genesis 1 and what it means to be made in God’s image from my book The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1.

But then RJS has blogged about The Liberating Image before in no less than nine posts! And I did an invited follow-up post on how my thinking about the imago Dei has developed since the book. RJS also did a nine-part series on my more recent book A New Heaven and a New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical Eschatology. (For anyone who doesn’t have time to read either book, these blogs give a pretty accurate portrayal of my argument).

Having done my introductory BioLogos post on my approach to evolution (Why Christians Don’t Need to Be Threatened by Evolution) and then a second post on cosmic creation (The Ancient Universe and the Cosmic Temple), my next post will be on what it means to be created in God’s image according to the Scriptures and how that might intersect with what science is telling us about human evolution.

Interestingly, the blog by RJS (No Need to Fear) introduces some of the themes I will touch on in my third BioLogos post. So you can check it out if you want an advance taste of what I might say on that topic.

The Ancient Universe and the Cosmic Temple

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My first BioLogos post, Why Christians Don’t Need to Be Threatened by Evolution, laid out my assumptions concerning Scripture and science. This has generated a lot of discussion, especially on Facebook pages where the post was shared (one page has generated well over a hundred comments or responses, including responses to responses).

As promised, I will now begin to explore various issues at the intersection of biblical faith and contemporary science. The first such issue is how we think about the relationship of Genesis 1 (in the context of other references to creation in the Bible) to a very old and very large universe.

This post, called The Ancient Universe and the Cosmic Temple,  is now available.

It addresses cosmic creation, though not yet biological evolution (which is more controversial for many Christians). I’ll get to the Bible and evolution explicitly in the posts that follow.