Biblical Studies

Creation & Evolution

«Faith in Christ is not in conflict with true science, because it is not in union with ignorance». —St Philaret of Moscow.

• John Burnett, "Adam, High Priest and King". This is a follow-up of "What the Bible Really Says". This time I explore the creation stories of Genesis 1–3 in terms of their references to the Temple and Israel's history. If we read those stories as science, we not only do bad theology and bad science, but we completely miss the rich world of meaning that they really do show. Fundamentalism happens because we don't see what the biblical authors themselves thought their story was about. (If you use A4-sized paper, click here.)
• John H. Sailhamer on the Creation stories of Genesis. This is Chapter 1, Sections I.A-B (pages 81-116) of Sailhamer's masterful The Pentateuch as Literature: A Biblical-Theological Commentary (Zondervan: 1992). The creation stories in Genesis are not at all what most people assume. When read in their own context, they are a brilliant introduction to Israel's covenant life. They are not at all designed to answer scientific questions. Once you see that, you're free at last from all efforts to defend the "scientific value" of the Bible with bogus science.
• Stephen M. Barr, The Design of Evolution. "True contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence. Divine causality and created causality radically differ in kind and not only in degree. Thus, even the outcome of a purely contingent natural process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan." Seems like a no-brainer, but it's amazing how hard it is to convince people that creation did not / does not take place on the same level of causality as the generation of things in time. Article from First Things 156 (October 2005), 9-12.
• George Theokritoff, with Elizabeth Theokritoff, “Genesis and Creation: Towards a Debate”. Review of Seraphim Rose, Genesis, Creation and Early Man: The Orthodox Christian Vision (St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood: Platina, California, 2000) in St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 46-4 (2002), pp. 365-90.
• Stephen Jay Gould, "Nonoverlapping Magisteria", An article which appeared in Natural History, March 1997, on creationism and evolution.
• William Carroll, "Thomas Aquinas and Big Bang Cosmology". Why the Big Bang is not a scientific proof of, or substitute for, the philosophical/theological notion of creation.
• Bernard W. Anderson, "Exodus Typology in Second Isaiah". Chapter XII of B. Anderson & W. Harrelson, eds., Israel's Prophetic Heritage: Essays in Honor of James Muilenburg. Harper & Brothers, 1962. pp. 177-195. Now why would I put this under "Creation and Evolution"?
• Margaret Barker, “Paradise Lost: Adamic Imagery and the Environment”: Religion, Science, & the Environment Symposium IV: The Adriatic (symposium held under the auspices of the Patriarch of Constantinople, 5-11 June 2002). On Adam and the Tree of Life.