Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
As Adam and Eve walked to the center of the Garden of Eden to meet with the LORD on their first Sabbath they conversed about the origin and age of the earth. Adam: You know, honey, we spent a lot of time yesterday making preparations for our house, and we…
Some of our forefathers believed in reading/singing the psalms in order. Today, when the psalms are even used at all, they tend to be used randomly, though sometimes tied to a church calendar or to the pastor’s sermon. The Bible does not bind us to any particular practice, but there…
Dr. Collins begins his essay with a brief statement of the Day Age view and then a brief statement of the Six Day view, focussing on the challenge to that view posed by modern "science." He ends this discussion by writing: "Two crucial points are at stake here: first, the…
In his The Construction of Social Reality , Berkeley philosopher John Searle puzzles over the ontology of the products of human construction. Certain things – granite, platypi, weeping willows – occur naturally; while other realities – stone walls, zoos and parks, Chase Manhattan Bank – exist only as products of…
In the journal Presbyterion 20 (1994):109-130, published by Covenant Theological Seminary, Dr. C. John Collins sets forth a revision of the Day Age approach in his essay, "How Old Is the Earth? Anthropomorphic Days in Genesis 1:1–2:3." Dr. Collins’s essay has been widely accepted in evangelical Presbyterian circles as an…
The Righteousness of Shem and Japheth As noted above, the action of Shem and Japheth was purely symbolic. They did not need to cover Noah with a garment, for he was already covered by the tent. Their action was a symbolic affirmation of Noah’s authority, a symbolic rejection of Ham’s…
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“The Word was God,” says John. Where’d he get that? Genesis 15:1 is the first place where Scripture uses the phrase “word of Yahweh” ( dabar-YHWH ), and already here the use of the phrase hints that the dabar is a person. The word of Yahweh “came” to Abram (15:1,…
Peter Olivi set out a scheme of prophecy chronology from Adam to Abraham to the destruction of Jerusalem. The accuracy of this is not the point, but rather the claim that the end of the temple was a decisive redemptive-historical event. “Ab Adam usque ad primam primissionem factam Abrahe, Genesis…
A number of readers have suggested that I was wrongly critical of Athanasius’s claim that without God’s sustenance creation tends toward nothing; I said that this implied that creation has some tendency “independent” of God. The readers point out that Athanasius’s claim is exactly that creation has no independence and…
Diderot’s D’Alembert’s Dream develops a mythological monistic materialist ontology in which multiplicity develops from an original “polyp” but where nothing ever becomes really distinct from the whole or from anything else. There is no freedom, no real otherness, no real possibility of love. D’Alembert describes this ontology while masturbating in…
Athanasius repeatedly says that created things, having come from nothing, have an inherent tedency to move toward nothing again. They have to be sustained by God to remain in existence. No problem with the conclusion that God keeps things in existence. But the notion that things tend toward nothing seems…
Peter Olivi is one of a number of medieval exegetes who placed enormous significance on the fall of Jerusalem. In part, this was driven by anti-Jewish polemics; they argued that prophecies foretold that the Messiah would come and the temple sacrifice would be ended - since the temple sacrifice has…
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