Engaging Science in the Life of Your Congregation
With so many issues to discuss, Christians can easily get the feeling that science is always attacking the faith. It is essential to balance such conversations with positive responses to God’s creation. After all, the primary response to the natural world in the Bible is to praise the God who made it.
Series: Excerpts from “Evolving: Evangelicals Reflect on Evolution”
We need to hear stories from others who have wrestled with evolution and Christian faith. What arguments made them change their views on science? How did they hold fast to their relationship with God? The essays in this series will eventually comprise a book, provisionally titled, “Evolving: Evangelicals Reflect on Evolution.”
Comparing Interpretations of Genesis 1
For concordists, the temptation is to interpret every Bible verse to match the current scientific picture. For non-concordists, the temptation is to interpret every Bible verse that appears to disagree with science as figurative.
Searching for Motivated Belief: Introducing John Polkinghorne
Several times in my series of columns about “Science and the Bible,” I briefly discussed a few ideas from John Polkinghorne, one of the leading Christian thinkers of our time. Although I presented him mainly as a representative of the “Theistic Evolution” (TE) view, much of his published work is about other topics, several of them largely or entirely unrelated to TE. It’s time we got better acquainted with him.
Series: A Faith Journey in a Medical Science Career
(Needs a summary)
Denis Alexander on Understanding Creation Theology
In this video Conversation, Denis Alexander asserts that contemporary Christians are not taking the early chapters of Genesis seriously enough.
A Scientific Commentary on Genesis 7:11
Although committed to the principle of sola Scriptura, Calvin recognized that the Bible would have been written in terms its original recipients would have understood. Calvin inherited the medieval cosmology of his time, a way of viewing the world heavily influenced by Greek thought and one which was about to receive shocks from astronomers such as Copernicus and Galileo. But not just yet.
Dissonance and Harmony
People hold clearly discordant points of view, and it would be dishonest to ignore the conflict. Yet some voices emphasize the dissonance without any note of harmony to put it in context. Too often, science and faith becomes a hostile battle of worldviews, sounding angry, dissonant chords even among fellow Christians. But civil, gracious dialogue is possible.
Psalm for the January Thaw
God shows himself not just in the orderliness of nature, but powerfully, joyously and always surprisingly in its beautiful "non-order" as well.
Augustine of Hippo and Two Books Theology, Part 2
Augustine had a great deal to say about those chapters in Genesis that are especially controversial within Christianity today.
Series: To Serve and Preserve—Genesis 2 and the Human Calling
In this series, David Buller pays careful attention to the original language and cultural context of Genesis 2, revealing that our responsibility to care for creation is a sacred task given to us by God, not merely a modern secular activity. By taking Scripture seriously, we learn that we have a God-given mandate to be diligent stewards of His creation.
Series: Confronting Our Fears
In this series, U.S. Navy Commander Mike Beidler shares his own personal journey from accepting young-earth creationism to embracing evolutionary creationism.
Frenetic Sequence
We tend to think of creativity in terms of flashes of insight and brilliance, of novelty, and especially of unexpected things bursting upon the scene. But creativity is no less creative and no less remarkable when it proceeds step by step, according to discipline, according to rule.
Series: Genesis Through Ancient Eyes
In this talk, originally delivered at the BioLogos President's Circle meeting in October 2012, Dr. John Walton discusses the origin stories of Genesis 1-3, and why their focus on function and archetypes mean there is no Biblical narrative of material origins.
Growing in Faith
As he endeavored to learn more, David was intrigued by Francis Collins book The Language of God because Francis did not present evolution as a rival theory to Christian faith, but as something that described God's method of creation.
Series: Pre-Modern Readings on Genesis 1
Many people assume that until Darwin came along, devout Christians everywhere read and understood Genesis in the same way. But Dr. Pak points out that some of the most revered figures in Christian history--Origen, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin--offered insightful but distinctive interpretations of the text that are often overlooked today. First presented at a symposium in Raleigh, NC, Dr. Pak's paper is presented here as a three part series.
Stumble On
The song is built around the image of a river flowing through a canyon it has sculpted—an image that can easily be played out as a picture of the way that the Lord has been at work preparing a path for us in the material world, complete with signposts to his former and present activity.
David Lack: Evolutionary Biologist and Devout Christian
Charles Darwin’s personal struggles and ultimate rejection of Christianity are well documented, and people are eager to link his loss of faith to his evolutionary theory. David Lack, on the other hand, began his scientific career as an agnostic, but shortly after publishing his famous book on the evolution of "Darwin's finches", he converted to Christianity.
Science and the Bible: The Framework View
Although the Framework View has existed for about ninety years, its attitude toward the Genesis “days” is similar to that held by Augustine. He taught that God created all things at once and told us about it in the pattern of six days, in order that we could understand it. The days themselves, however, were “unknowable” and not meant as a “literal” description of the passage of time.
Series: Beauty, Science and Theology
It doesn't take a scientist to appreciate the beauty with which God has arrayed his creation. But scientists do have the opportunity (and training) to appreciate different kinds of beauty than do most non-scientists, whether they are ordinarily "hidden" in the extremes of scale, the elegant processes of an experiment, or in the abstraction of mathematics. Indeed the appreciation of various kinds of beauty has always played a critical role in motivating scientists to investigate the world, and in helping them decipher its workings. In the three-part essay, Ruth Bancewicz explores some of the ways beauty, science and theology intertwine.
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