Hans, as always, it is a pleasure to interact with you whether in person or in writing. You raise cogent points that get to the heart of the matter and ask insightful and probative questions. This case is no exception. Let me do my best to respond to your questions in the space available. Are…

These are all good questions and I will direct my additional comments toward three basic issues Hans raises: 1) the role that current scientific understandings do or should play in shaping biblical exegesis; 2) how biblical understandings might shape interpretations of data and natural history proposals; and 3) regulations for scientific community and navigating the…

First, I agree I was a little loose in my language switching between “science” and “nature.” But I don’t want to accept a high wall of division between them, either. Science is the study of nature, and to the degree that we do good science, what science tells us is what nature tells us. Clarifying…

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…

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:…

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…

Introduction: Theology and Philosophy (In General) Lesslie Newbigin saw Western intellectual history as the confluence of two streams, one flowing from Greco-Roman antiquity, the other from the Christian Scriptures. The barbarian tribes that called Europe home during the medieval and early modern periods “were taught to think in Greek and Latin, but the story that…

There is no single view about the authority of Scripture held amongst analytic theologians. There is no single view about how to use Scripture in theological argument among analytic theologians either. This should come as no surprise to those acquainted with analytic theology. It is, after all, a methodological approach to doing theology that is…

A Quick Story In 2007, I gave a paper at Oxford University for the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion titled “Why God Might be Poly-present, not Omnipresent.” Though not a gem of an essay, I basically argued that Scripture consistently presents God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—in particular spatial location, not ubiquitously present everywhere…

When we talk about “translation,” we understand that we have in mind two languages. Translation is to render something originally in one language in the other language. Saying that the Bible teaches a wrong cosmology also implies a difference: a correct version and a wrong version. Where “accommodation” is invoked the biblical version might not…

Theories abound on the inspiration of Scripture, from God dictating precise words to the Holy Spirit inspiring biblical authors in much the same way musicians speak of being inspired when they create a masterpiece. One theory of inspiration that holds great sway among American evangelicals particularly, states that the Bible is true in all that…

During the first day of my college course on the relationship between science and religion, I have my students draw a diagram of the scene that they envision in Genesis 1:2. “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the…