I just finished reading The Lost World of Genesis One by John Walton, hot off the presses from IVP. Below is my review. This is one of the most interesting books I’ve read in a while, offers a convincing reading of Genesis 1 that most of us (myself included) have never considered… If you can get your hands on a copy, I highly recommend it!

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Reviewed by Timothy McNinch. The Lost World of Genesis One. By John H. Walton. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press Academic, 2009. Pp. 192. $16.00.

With this concise study, John Walton (professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College) has delivered a significant contribution to the ongoing conversation at the intersection of faith and science. Drawing upon the insights offered by ancient Near Eastern cultural and literary studies, he proposes

PBS’s NOVA is showing a new series on human evolution called “Becoming Human”. The second installment is on tonight for those of you interested. I watched the first one last week and found it fascinating.

Here’s a link to the PBS site.

I accidentally stumbled across a series of YouTube videos today by a comedian stage-named Eddie Current, that satire evangelical Christianity on a number of fronts. This one, called “God’s Cool Designs”, was one of my favorites.

a heads up: there are a few graphic images…

OK. One more preliminary post before we get into specific issues/questions. I think I should try to articulate my approach to the Bible and to Genesis. Otherwise, we might end up talking in circles about whether a particular theological avenue of inquiry is “legal” in light of the Bible’s plain teaching.

I’m an evangelical Christian, and with most of my fellow evangelicals I highly value the Bible as a unique piece of literature. I believe it has (mysteriously) a dual authorship: it’s books were written by men, but there is some sense in which these writings are also from God. So the canon of Biblical Scripture comes to us as the “inspired word of God”. It’s teachings are “authoritative” in the lives of believers. And the Bible, as a whole, is categorically “true”. I believe these things about the Bible not because I can empirically demonstrate them, but I take these statements to be accurate on the authority of a tradition I choose to trust.

On the other hand, I don’t go as far as some of my evangelical brethren, in that I don’t claim that the Bible is “inerrant”. In fact, I think the Bible contains many errors.

I’ve gotten a handful of comments about my initial post (offline… c’mon now, put those comments online–you can be anonymous if you want!), and one of the things I’ve heard is: Why are you doing this? Is evolution really that important of a theme?

I think it is. There are real consequences, I believe, for failing to address the issue of evolution honestly. I’ve worked for years with Christian college students who are beginning to study science. They all have to deal with evolution. There are basically three typical responses to college-level education in evolution, and none of them are good:

I’m not talking about the evolution of theology, though I do want to ask about how theology is changing. And I’m not talking about theistic evolution, though I probably agree with some form of the philosophy. I’m thinking of this as perhaps the flip side of the “theistic evolution” coin.

Theistic evolution presumes “theos”, then looks for ways to see God at work in biological evolution. I feel a need to explore what happens when we presume evolution, and then ask what happens to “theos”, i.e., “evolutionary theology”. Now, I do presume God; I am and will always be a theist. But if I want to take the scientific method seriously as a (yes) limited, but still real and valuable epistemological source, there are some theological questions I need to ask. And I haven’t heard many others asking them. So, I thought, why not blog it?