We are ‘flesh‘, made of the ‘dust of the earth’. We are part of creation; we eat, excrete, procreate, suffer and die just like the other creatures. The very idea of ‘dust’ describes our creaturely status. No humanist could speak more definitely of our lowly origins. Far from making us too otherworldly, the Bible cuts us down to size: ‘You take away their breath, they die and return to the dust,’ says the Psalmist. But if the Bible writers are realistic, they are in no way negative. The Bible affirms life, and joyfully encourages us to enjoy life’s pleasures. It tells us that if God has seen fit to create us as physical beings there is nothing in our make-up or anatomy to be ashamed of. Read more
Humanity’s fall is not just a theological statement; human history and experience show us that the image has been defaced in us all. As Paul puts it, ‘We have all fallen short of God’s standard’. But does this mean that God’s image has never been seen in its fullness since the beginning? No, because Jesus Christ is the perfect image of God. That is the New Testament’s bold declaration. The task of his mission was to lead us back to God and to restore the image in us.
This is where the New Testament connects the study of Christ with the study of humankind. Because Jesus is both true likeness of God and perfect man, he is the promise of a renewed humanity. To be ‘in Christ‘ is to belong to a ‘new humanity‘, just as to be ‘in Adam’ is to belong to the old, sinful humanity. The apostle Paul wrote of the ‘new nature which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator’. As the ‘image of the invisible God‘, Jesus is the model of what men and women were created to be. Read more
In some ways we are no different from any other species on earth. We are creatures subject to the usual conditions of space and time. But we know that human beings ’stand out’ from other beings in several ways. Some of these are plain enough; they partly explain humankind’s superiority over other creatures: our creativity, our intellectual, linguistic and cultural achievements.
But the Bible adds a further and remarkable point. People stand out not by what they do but by what they are. This is expressed right at the beginning, in the creation story of Genesis 1. God said, ‘Let us make man in our image after our likeness.’ It is a theme taken up and developed in other parts of the Bible: we are not like the other creatures; we share God’s nature in a special way. Read more
One writer has confessed, the longer I live, the more faith I have in Providence, and the less faith I have in my interpretations of Providence.’
Providence is the care God takes of all existing things. So its range and depth are immense. The word itself is taken from
Abraham’s promise to his son Isaac on the way to sacrifice: ‘My Son, God will provide the lamb for the burnt offering.’ ‘There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow,’ says Hamlet in Shakespeare’s play. This is God’s rule as moral governor over all the universe.
There is also God’s forgiveness of the sinner. God’s great acts of salvation are all part of God’s activity in providence: Read more
Modern science developed in one place only, and over a restricted period of time. The place was Western Europe; the time, from the sixteenth to the seventeenth centuries. It is not immediately obvious why conditions were then particularly favourable. Much of the intellectual background of Western Europe at that time
“I have shown man the glory of your works, as much of their unending wealth as my feeble intellect was able to grasp.”
Johannes Kepler was not original — it was derived from classical antiquity. In technical invention, the Chinese had reached a higher level of sophistication than the Europeans, and at a much earlier stage. Why then was the decisive step to modern science not taken centuries before in Greece or China? Read more
The implications then of the opening words of the Bible, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth’, are immense, greater than anything we can conceive. The first words of John’s Gospel re-echo the words in the beginning‘. The beginning of what? The author of Genesis doubtless meant the beginning of the world, or better the beginning of God’s creative activity. It is a theme unimaginable to Greek philosophers or contemporary secular science.
Greek understandings of the beginning
Thoughtful Greeks, in the five or six centuries before Christ, had great interest in the question, in what sense did the world have a beginning? Read more
We begin then by looking at creation from the differing perspectives of the biblical narrative and some other ancient stories.
This will help to show the distinctiveness and power of the Bible’s account of creation.
Creation in the ancient Near East
The recitation of creation stories in the ancient world bore little resemblance to our detached discussions on creation today. To these ancient peoples it was a matter of worship. Their sagas were not like the telling of fairy tales, but recitations of the annual religious festivals. Recounting these stories had the serious purpose of seeking both to preserve the order of society and to guarantee order and life before the threats of chaotic forces. Read more
During the first part of the nineteenth century, scientists began the serious study of fossils. This showed a clear succession of life on earth, with some forms (such as the dinosaurs) becoming extinct and new ones arising. At the same time geologists, looking at the natural processes at work on rocks, began to suggest that the world was older than the traditional 6,000 years.
Charles Lyell, who was staunchly opposed to evolution, calculated in 1859 that life had been on earth not less than 300 million years’. Speculations that extinct species had perished in Noah’s flood or that they were remains of previous creations destroyed by God seemed increasingly improbable. But those who denied that God had created each species uniquely did not at this stage find general acceptance. This was because no one could envisage how biological change (evolution) could take place. Read more
In recent years there has been a widely-reported resurgence of occultism in the West. This has coincided with a strong movement, in other parts of the world, to return to traditional religious practices. Far more people are now aware of the reality of the spirit world than a generation or two ago. And when we look at the Bible, we find that God has created a universe of which non-material beings form a very real part.
Today people would acknowledge the influence of outside forces on human beings. We are not so autonomous as we once supposed. To an extent, we can be controlled, and sometimes we are. People’s experience, in many parts of the world today, goes along with Jesus‘ teaching to suggest that personal outside forces (angels, demons, spirits) can and do influence the behaviour of human beings. Read more
We study other religions not to find fault, but to consider what is admirable in what others have found and to enlarge our own experience. Each of the religions we have covered has a particular genius, something central it has to offer. Read more
