Considering Creation

My first series at Desert Springs will be Foundations of the Faith from Genesis.  I’ll be spending 3 weeks on Genesis 1 (I’ll be moving more quickly through the rest of Genesis).

The first week I’ll be focusing on what it says about God (communicating Frame’s Lordship attributes).  The second week will focus on creation.  And the third will focus on humanity and the creation mandate.

There are many interesting questions to ponder or address from this chapter and these topics.  Here is some of what I’ll be using.

Diving right into the recent controversy involving Bruce Waltke, I’ll be using his commentary.  I don’t agree with his recent comments regarding evolution, but he is a first rate Hebrew scholar.  I look forward to reading that section to see if he includes anything about it.

I’ll also be using an old standby for me: Creation and Blessing by Allen Ross.  It is a great commentary that I’ve been using the duration of my pastoral ministry.  I highly recommend it.  If I had the time, I’d probably pick up John Currid’s commentaries (Vol. 1 & Vol. 2) as well.  But one can only do so much study.

I just finished Robert Godfrey’s God’s Pattern for Creation.  It tries to balance the historical and figurative.  I’m not sure how successful he is.  He tries to apply the often non-chronological aspects of Hebrew historical accounts to Genesis 1, but it purports to chronological unlike the other accounts.  So …

I’ll start Douglas Kelly’s Creation and Change.  I had Dr. Kelly for Systematic Theology 1, so I’m looking forward to this book.  It has a reputation for “exegetical theology” so he’s going to deal with the text primarily.

Dealing primarily with the controversial issue of evolution I picked up Three Views on Creation and Evolution.  We’ll see.  I want to be familiar with the material more than convinced of a view.

When I get to the creation mandate, and the development of culture after the Fall, I’ll be reading Culture Making by Andy Crouch which was the hot blog book about a year ago (or more since time flies faster as you grow older).