Is God’s Creation like a really good wine, “aged to perfection”, as they say?
I am pretty much a teetotaler, but my doctor has told me, off the record, that perhaps a glass of red wine per day would be a good thing. I have heart disease in my family, but I am such a lightweight that when it comes to alcohol, I still tend to shy away.
So if I was at the wedding at Cana (John 2:1-11), I probably would have been just fine drinking some water. But a crisis arose at the celebration when the wine began to run short. The mother of Jesus came up to her son, wanting him to do something about it. The servants knew that there was only water in those jars, as per Jesus’ instructions. But the headwaiter soon noted to the groom that what he had tasted was the best wine of the entire evening! The servants, and soon everyone there, saw what had happened. It was indeed a miracle!
Did you know that the wedding at Cana has a lot to do with the controversy between Young and Old Earth Creationism? Read on and find out why… Continue reading
I was just a few months old when the death of President John F. Kennedy shook our nation 50 years ago. But everyone who knew of the Kennedy assassination at that time knows exactly where they were at the moment when they heard the news. Like 9/11 in our day, the story of the Kennedy tragedy shaped a generation. However, there was another cultural event on November 22, 1963 that was overshadowed by the Kennedy shooting: the death of C. S. Lewis.
Clive Staples “Jack” Lewis: famous Christian of the 20th century, influential apologist, and still today a popular author of children’s fantasy… and yet, I often wonder how much the Christian church has truly been been shaped by the life and work of this Oxford don.
What does Lewis have to say? If I had to sum it up in one word, it would be imagination. It was a vision of a Biblically-informed imagination that brought this atheist to faith, a man filled with animosity towards his father, and who had a very odd, even scandalous relationship with a much older woman. Lewis endured the mindless insanity in the French trenches of World War I, but he rarely talked about it. Lewis, like any human that I know, had moral failures and terrible skeletons haunting him in his closet. But it was the creative energy of thinking about the love story of the Bible, God’s relentless pursuit of bringing a rebellious and alienated people into relationship with Himself, that broke through Lewis’ cynicism, despair, and denial.
We need more of C. S. Lewis’ vision of a Christian imagination today in Christ’s church. Many Christians get so absorbed by the literal truth of the Scriptures that they forget about the revelatory power of the figurative, the transcendent beauty of a turn of a phrase, the deep wisdom of Biblical poetry, the whoop and wharf of story, and the subtle Truth of myth.
I think Lewis can still help us with that.
I have been listening to a wonderful and provocative audio book by Alister McGrath,C. S. Lewis – A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet. In promoting the book, McGrath gave a series of lectures, including the following sponsored by the Lanier Theological Library in Houston, Texas in the spring of 2013.
May we as followers of Jesus be shaped by the imaginative vision of C. S. Lewis. His friends knew him as “Jack”.
In the ancient Babylonia creation myth, Marduk defeats Tiamat, a sea monster. For many years in the church, the fascination with sea monsters and the spiritual symbols they represent have captivated the imagination of people who read about Leviathan in the Bible. But not everyone sees things that way.
In this past week’s Symposium meeting, we received this one comment from a participant:
I suppose that the Leviathan creature described in Job might be difficult to explain with the Old Earth theory.
This raises a really good question, but probably more than what the comment necessarily indicates. So, yes, who is this mysterious Leviathan creature as mentioned in Job 41? This comment surely has this question in mind, but consider this from a wider perspective: What are the concerns that Christians have when they read the Bible that inform how they interpret the Bible?
This is a pretty well-worn argument between Old-Earth and Young-Earth creationists. The idea is that if Leviathan and Behemoth refer to dinosaurs, then down goes the argument that there are no dinosaurs in the Bible, and then we can conclude that dinosaurs overlapped mankind’s existence on earth (which would support a Young-Earth view).
There are five verses in the Bible that refer to the Leviathan (according to the English Standard Version):
How do you share the Christian faith when matters of science are held up against Scripture? What do you say to your neighbor, your co-worker, or family member? How do you handle potential controversy over these issues? Are the Bible and science compatible or not?
Creation and science, and particularly how science and the record of nature fit within the Bible, is an important topic for all of us. Do you have any questions or comments? Even if you were not able to join us at the Symposium, please submit them below in the comments section, and we will do our best to answer them. (For answers to Week One questions, see this link.)
In response to requests after the first symposium we did record the panel discussion and Q &A from the audience at this session, and here it is.
Mary Schweitzer. A mother, North Carolina State University researcher, and innovative dinosaur tissue detective……..Or is she a dupe, misled by her scientific colleagues?
As we lead into week two this coming Sunday of our 2013 Facts and Faith Symposium, we will be exploring the intersection of Biblical faith and Science as it relates to the age of the earth. One question we received this past week was:
What happened to the dinosaurs, and how were they destroyed?
This is a hot question these days, in view of the recent dinosaur discovery in southern Utah. According to National Geographic, researchers have found a new ancestor to the terrifying Tyrannosaurus rex, nicknamed the “King of Gore”. This is an eery reminder of yet another famous discovery of yet another dinosaur …. in Hell.
Veracity 