The question on its face is fair given that old earth creationists (OEC) appear to accept scientific consensus on everything but human evolution. But the question’s assumptions must be examined and its terms should be defined. First, I do not believe scientific consensus should dictate what I believe regarding human beings if that consensus appears…

First, let me outline my approach to Scripture and science briefly. In seeking to integrate Scripture and science as the “two books” of God, I allow each to critique the other. This makes many people uncomfortable: some would allow science to critique the Bible, but never the other way around (the “eager-to-please” position), while others…

Christians are those who strive to believe and obey the voice of God, revealed and preserved in holy writ. It is a classic position with implications for faith in the modern world, not least the tensions that some experience between biblically informed convictions and many of the claims of natural science. Even if scholars might…

Wolfgang Musculus’s (1497-1563) Christological interpretation of Psalm 114 demonstrates an interesting interpretive strategy. As the psalmist appropriates the exodus as a story of God’s deliverance within his own context, Musculus extends this hermeneutic and adopts the exodus as an illustration of God’s ultimate act of redemption through Christ. God’s People Always Have an Exit “When…

Here I will quote from several sections in Hans’s response to my first essay and offer responses to each of them. Hans writes: Most intriguing is your concept of non-interventionist objective divine action, the idea that “God acts in nature without blocking, suspending, or undercutting the normal regularities of natural processes.” You also emphasize how…

I am honored beyond comparison that my colleagues and role models of scholarship took the time to read and respond to my suggestive paper. I would like to offer an all too brief and unfairly loaded rejoinder to each—I hope the conversation will spur others of like kind among those reading. I should also note…

In response to my first essay, Hans asked whether there is a special category of God’s way of interacting with the world known as ‘special providence?’ It is hard to know exactly what this means. The biblical literature clearly knows of ‘miracles,’ without which there would be no Christian faith. Three words in particular are used…

Something Like an Introduction To begin, an anecdote: I was asked recently to referee a paper for a philosophy of religion journal. I ended up declining to review the paper because I knew who its author was, but I did read it. I’ll not name the author here, of course, but I will tell you:…

As with most Reformation commentators, Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560) finds Psalm 110 to be a prophesy about Christ’s eschatological kingdom. In his interpretation, he draws an interesting doctrinal inference, noting that Christ’s succession of David is different than earthly succession, pointing to the eternality of his roles as king and priest, which draw attention to his…

Just to clarify Hans, the three occasions mentioned in my piece as indicating divine intervention I have extracted from Wallace’s writings partly because I wanted to show that belief in evolution by natural selection does not necessarily imply either atheism or the impossibility of divine intervention in the evolutionary process. Wallace, as Darwin’s co-discoverer of…

What Did I Mean? The word “creationism” means different things to different people, so it is necessary to define it right off the bat in discussions like these, so as not to result in more confusion than progress. In my essay I wrote that I understood “creationism” as: “the idea that some parts of nature…

Introduction As the only philosopher in a symposium on “Biblically Sensitive Philosophy,” I feel considerable pressure to represent my people well. But I feel a competing interest to defend the value of biblical texts as data for philosophical consideration and analysis. Indeed, the latter claim needs defense. Some of the challenges that Dru discusses in…