BEN: In the later part of the book you suggest that not merely Jesus’ words, but perhaps especially his crucifixion has something to contribute to the discussion of natural theology, perhaps not least because it reveals most clearly how God is involved in human history. Unpack this for our readers. Perhaps say something as well about how the resurrection of Jesus contributes to the discussion of natural theology. TOM: The argument of chapter 7 is that there are many ‘signposts’… Read more

BEN: Missing from your good discussion is much interaction with one of the pet texts used to talk about natural theology, namely Rom. 1.18-32. It appears to tell us that the reality of the real Biblical God and his power is evident in all of creation, and so there is no one who has no knowledge of the real God. Rather what has happened is ‘they have exchanged the truth of God for a lie’. Now one cannot exchange something… Read more

BEN: One of the recurrent themes I picked up in this new book is the stress on God’s continued and constant involvement in his creation and in human history for that matter, especially in the history of His people, but with a very cautionary word about trying to read off ‘God’s will’ much less God’s judgments from natural disasters like the Lisbon earthquake. The Bible is surely no advocate of a Deistic or watchmaker deity that merely observes the world,… Read more

America’s love affair with American made cars shifted into another gear when the Ford Mustang, Cobra, GT, and the Chevy Corvette came to the fore in the 60s. This particular movie is in part about that, but more than anything it’s about Henry Ford Jrs’ desire to beat Ferrari in various big races, particularly the 24 Hours of LeMan. This movie focuses on the true story of Carroll Shelby a car designer, and former LeMan racer himself, and his friend… Read more

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BEN: In regard to history itself, you talk a lot about critical realism as opposed to either radical subjectivity or assumed positivistic objectivity when it comes to the human analysis of data. How does critical realism differ from, say Derrida or reader-response theories of Fish and others? Is there really nothing but texts, and is it really true that meaning is entirely in the eye of the beholder, or merely created in the interaction between the ‘reader’ and his source… Read more

BEN: It appears that one of your main concerns in this book is to insist that since history and historical figures like Jesus are part of the realm of space and time, that what they have to say or contribute to the discussion of natural theology should not be eliminated a priori, just because that material comes from a source of revelation, the Scriptures, and so it would be a category mistake to include it. You attribute this exclusion to,… Read more

BEN: One of the real strengths of this book is that you are able to chronicle the intellectual history from ancient Epicureanism to the present and show how the dominant world view today is not much different from ancient Epicureanism in the way it brackets out God and ‘the supernatural’ from history and ‘natural causation’. Since most of our audience will associate Epicureanism with hedonism, the pleasures of the palate and the flesh, explain what you mean by Epicureanism, and… Read more

BEN: As you rightly note, the Gifford lectures committee has seldom invited a Biblical scholar to come and discourse on ‘natural theology’ (as opposed to ‘unnatural’ theology?), and it seems especially ironic that the last ones before you were James Barr and before that Rudolph Bultmann. Bultmann could hardly be more different in perspective than you. Why do you suppose Biblical scholars are so seldom invited? Do you think the committee somehow thinks ‘natural’ theology is somehow not really connected… Read more

As he sums up his argument in Chapter 8, Tom emphasizes the following: “What counts for the whole argument– the whole biblically based, theologically oriented argument– is new creation. Not skeptical historiography.not existentialized eschatology, but a new creation, a rescued, renewed and transformed creation in which the first creation, the ‘natural’ world is not cancelled out, as though by (in the modern sense) a ‘supernatural’ irruption or invasion, but rather rescued, put right and transformed. The point is precisely that,… Read more