According to standard geological timeframes, we human beings are a thing of yesterday. I remember reading somewhere (I cannot remember where) that if earth’s history were compressed into a 24-hour day, then all of human history would comprise roughly the last two seconds of that day (not two minutes). Amazing. From the perspective of sheer time, Planet Earth has had much more to do with sponges swaying in the ocean or spiders scurrying along the forest floor than human beings engaging in relationship and art and worship. As a Christian theologian, I have really wrestled with this. Sure, our relatively…

Perhaps the most momentous issue involved in the debate between young-earth creationists and various varieties of old-earth creationists is animal death/suffering before the human fall. In his book A Biblical Case for an Old Earth, David Snoke writes, “in my experience, this is [i.e., whether animals died before Adam and Eve sinned] is the fundamental issue of Bible interpretation caught up in the debate.” My experience has been the same as Snoke’s. It is here, in the realm of animal death/suffering, that we push through the hermeneutical issues of how to read Genesis 1 into the deeper consequences of different…

My article “On the Fall of Angels and the Fallenness of Nature: An Evangelical Hypothesis Regarding Natural Evil” is now out in the April edition of Evangelical Quarterly. I hope it does not seem self-serving to share about the article on my blog, but a number of people have asked me about it since I referenced it in my correspondence with Doug Wilson on creation issues several weeks back. So I want to give a brief outline of the argument here, in hopes it might be helpful to others, and to try to open up avenues of dialogue around this…

I’ve been thinking a lot about creation/science issues lately, so I read Doug Wilson’s recent piece on the interpretation of Genesis 1 with great interest. I wasn’t planning on writing anything more in this area, but you know how it goes when you start thinking about something, and then you start jotting down your thoughts, and then before you realize it you’re ready to hit “publish.” This is not a thorough response, just a couple of particular thoughts generated by Wilson’s piece, and here or there they may be more informed by the larger discussion than Wilson directly. These are…

Did poison dart frogs from Brazil, arctic Wolves from Northern Canada, and giant salamanders from Japan travel to the Middle East to get on Noah’s flood? Or is there another way to read this story?

Kevin Bauder recently wrote an article criticizing Tim Keller’s views on creation. Bauder suggests that Keller can only affirm biblical inerrancy as Richard Nixon could affirm that he did not commit a crime, since he is “determined to torture the Genesis narratives on the rack of evolution.” Moreover, because he allows for death before the human fall, Bauder thinks that “Keller is undermining the gospel itself.” Bauder concludes by asserting that Keller’s creation views therefore compromise the mission of The Gospel Coalition: Tim Keller is one of the founders of The Gospel Coalition. If nothing else, The Gospel Coalition needs…