How exactly do you prepare for something that is not going to happen? Maybe watch episodes of Star Trek where Kirk says ‘Beam Me Up Scotty?’ I’m just saying…… Read more

I have to also disagree with the statement on p. 127 that all of creation was designed “not for humans but for God”. Wrong, it is quite specifically designed for human and animal life, God doesn’t need it! Or better said, it is designed for human life so that we can both have a relationship with God, being in his image, and with the rest of creation, and of course worship the creator of it all. Under thesis 4 we... Read more

As for thesis 3 discussed beginning on pp. 124ff. namely that God orders creation into a temple, I have a hard time finding this theme in Gen. 1-3. God rests or ceases from his work and admires it. This is all about God’s activity. There is nothing said at all about worshipping by the human beings of God, nothing about sacrifices either. None of the language of Biblical worship shows up in these chapters. Instead, we hear about what Adam... Read more

On p. 113 Scot suggests that the authors of Gen. 1-11 were familiar, at least at the level of ideas, with some of the concepts found in other ANE creation and flood stories. In an age before there were many texts, and mostly oral traditions, one wonders how the authors of Genesis would have come across such traditions in the Holy Land. Might it not be better to suggest that various of these cultures knew of events in the past,... Read more

I am extremely pleased to tell you that the first volume of C.K. Barrett’s sermons is about to show up on Amazon as well as on the Wipf and Stock website, with major endorsements by Barclay, Dunn, Moberley, Willimon, Timothy George and many others. Many of you have been enjoying the excerpts I’ve been posting in the last nine months as I have worked on the sermons, and asked when they could get the whole shebang. Well, you can start... Read more

By historical Adam and Eve I simply mean real people in space and time, the progenitors of God’s people who were the sinners in question that set in motion the train of murder and death and iniquity that followed, no sooner than they stepped outside the garden (see the story of Cain and Abel). I do not think it is adequate to suggest that the writers of the NT or for that matter of the intertestamental period were simply referring... Read more

In regard to point 5) (see the previous post) I agree with Scot that I don’t think the later Christian notion of seminal transmission of a sin nature from Adam is a necessary conclusion from what the Bible says. It is the curse that affects the whole human tribe, not Adam’s sin nature. 6) since all have sinned and lack God’s glory now, it is not necessarily the case that without the historical Adam we don’t need the Gospel of... Read more

For me, where the problem really comes in in Scot’s presentation is on pp. 107-08 where Scot says that when the adjective ‘historical’ is attached to Adam and Eve it means ALL of the following things: 1) 2 actual persons named Adam and Eve existed suddenly as a result of God’s creation; 2) those two persons have a biological relationship with all subsequent human beings; 3) their DNA is our DNA; 4)those two died and brought death into the world;... Read more

I must admit, I am less willing to critique all the intelligent design folks the way Venema does at the end of his last chapter. I think there is far more to some of their arguments than some would allow. Some of these folks are actual scientists who are also people of faith and are struggling to make sense of both the Bible and evolution. Good for them. We need more, not less efforts to bring the two disciplines together... Read more

THE THEOLOGY CHAPTERS Scot’s first chapter deals with four principles with which to read the Bible. As Scot says at the outset “Theology which is designed to investigate that nonempirical reality in some ways, can provide a map onto which we can locate science and which can challenge science.” (p. 95). Exactly my point. The empirically observable and testable world is not all there is to reality. Scot’s concern is “we will all gain clarity if Christians learn how to... Read more