At the heart of the Christian faith is the idea that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. To be clear: this idea runs counter to human experience and is thoroughly “anti-scientific.” Over 100,000 years of human experience teaches that when people die, they remain dead. And this experience is borne out by centuries of…

On and off between the years 1542-1563, Calvin wrestled with and returned to Genesis; his commentaries have been known and loved ever since, especially in the English-speaking world. They remain a well-worn resource for preachers and teachers, with Genesis not the least within the Canon. The Calvin Studies Society translations are widely available. Calvin’s sermons are…

Becoming reasonably conversant with contemporary developments and bringing biblical teaching to bear on commonplace assumptions is a perennial challenge for thoughtful Christians. One of the more pressing questions the church now confronts is a perceived conflict between the findings of the Human Genome Project and the Christian tradition regarding the common origin of humanity in…

Today marks the one-year anniversary of John Webster’s death. At the time he was, in my opinion and others’, the greatest living theologian writing in English, and perhaps in any language. This is the tenth installment of a series of tributes to the man and his theological project, a work in progress that was tragically…

Gavin Ortlund joins the Creation Project after recently earning a PhD in historical theology from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA. His dissertation, which will soon be published by Brill, is titled “Ascending Toward the Beatific Vision: Heaven as the Climax of Anselm’s Proslogion” and focuses on St. Anselm’s doctrine of heaven in the Proslogion. As one might guess from…

Augustine (A.D. 354-430), the “Doctor of Grace” from north Africa, is arguably the most significant theologian in the Western tradition. He had once been a Manichee, during which time he would have affirmed a kind of good vs. evil dualism, as well as seeing matter as evil, and seeing creation as an act of necessity….

As one in the public square regularly, I often find myself in contentious space. I sometimes am the “token” evangelical chosen to defend what many see as indefensible or presenting a perspective some have trouble appreciating. It makes for interesting conversation. What is amazing is that I often find the opposition is not because someone…

In a previous post I mentioned that I drafted an “Elder Affirmations about Creation & Evolution” to articulate for the leadership of our church a set of convictions that we share in common and that might provide an outline for a teaching position for our church. I received several inquiries about this document and thus…

In my previous post I discussed the value of using ancient Near Eastern (ANE) texts to sharpen and enhance our understanding of the world of the Old Testament. In terms of the Creation Project, I want to explore ANE texts that address cosmology in order to understand better how the ancient Israelites might have interpreted Genesis 1. In this post…

It is one thing to affirm the truth, authority, and reliability (inerrancy) of the Bible in the early chapters of Genesis, which I surely do, but is quite another thing to understand how God intends that we understand them. Some argue, for example, that Genesis 1 (meaning here Gen. 1:1-2:3) clearly teaches that God created…

  The final chapter of John Stott’s classic text, Between Two Worlds, is devoted to two personal characteristics which he judged to be essential to the task of Christian preaching: courage and humility. It is through the balance of these two traits that Christian preachers can faithfully execute their stewardship as ministers of the Gospel. He…

Johann Spangenberg (1484–1550), a Lutheran pastor, authored one of the best selling postils1 of the sixteenth century, the Postilla Teütsch, which helped to prepare children to understand the lectionary readings. In this post on Luke 5:1-11 for the Fifth Sunday after Trinity, Spangenberg asserts that Christ’s words penetrated the hearts of the disciples—not merely their…