Creation (26)
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If the world's finest minds can unravel only with difficulty the deeper workings of nature, how could it be supposed that those workings are merely a mindless accident, a product of blind chance?
The duke of Silesia was so infatuated, that he affirmed, Neque inferos, neque superos esse; that there was neither God nor devil. We may see God in the works of his fingers. The creation is a great volume in which we may read a Godhead, and he must needs put out his own eyes that denies a God.The Ten Commandments, 53
It is absurd for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything.
When Darwin published his works, it was thought that the key to the process was found at last, but in course of time it was found that the key did not fit the lock. Darwin truly said that his theory depended entirely on the possibility of transmitting acquired characteristics, and it soon became one of the corner-stones of Weismann's biological theory that acquired characteristics are not inherited.Systematic Theology, 185
experiments in the United States to introduce artificial hearts to patients had to be withdrawn some decades ago when the fatalities topped 200 with no realistic hope of medical experts being able to improve their technology. Forty years of research and development and forty billion dollars went down the drain. If such gargantuan efforts and expense could not fashion a functioning heart-substitute, it becomes all the more difficult to imagine a heart being constructed by the serendipity of random mutations and natural selection.Taking Leave of Darwin, 112-113
The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.
By the "wisdom of God," he designates this magnificent theater of heaven and earth replenished with numberless wonders, the wise contemplation of which should have enabled us to know God. But this we do with little profit; and therefore he invites us to faith in Christ--faith which, by a semblance of foolishness, disgusts the unbeliever.Institutes, Book 2, Chapter 6
she was formed not from just any part of his body, but from his side, so that it should be shown that she was created for the partnership of love, lest, if perhaps she had been made from his head, she should be perceived as set over man in domination; or if from his feet, as if subject to him in servitudeThe Sentences, Book 2, Dist 18, Ch 2
We take it for granted that we are born with hinged bones to provide low-friction articulations, eye protectors (eyelids), tears secreted by the lachrymal glands to lubricate the eyes so that they don't feel scratchy, and an optic nerve to transmit electrical impulses to the brain to decode visual cues so that we can know where we are. We shrug off as unremarkable the fact that broken bones will, unlike broken vases, mend, or the fact that minor wounds will heal by the process to which medical people refer with a complacent lack of affect as "bodily regeneration."Taking Leave of Darwin, 113-114
We should therefore be more appreciative of nature's ingenuity and the sheer ease with which we see, hear, talk, eat, drink, make love, and reproduce our kind. Such should be the central core of school biology lessons, promoting a sense of wonder in the young mind at the very fact of existence. The reason that it does not form that core is that scientists and the educational establishment subscribe to the materialistic-mechanistic model of human functioning, and therefore tend not to "do" wonder.Taking Leave of Darwin, 113
Faced with the onslaught of microbes, how does the normal human body defend itself and stay healthy? To begin with, it keeps out as many potential pathogens as possible with barriers such as the skin and other non-specific defences. The skin, which is waterproof, is impenetrable to most invaders, and it provides fatty acids that many microorganisms find toxic. Areas not covered by the skin, such as the eyes, mouth, lungs and digestive tract, are more vulnerable, but they have alternative defences. Tears, saliva, urine and other body secretions contain lysozyme, an enzyme that can kill certain types of bacteria by splitting the molecules found in their cell walls. Mucus in the nose and the airways engulfs bacteria and stops them penetrating the membranes. Cilia - tiny beating "hairs"- then push the mucus out of the airways into the throat, where it is swallowed. In the stomach, acid kills most of the microorganisms in food, as well as starting the process of digrestion.
Empirically, the idea of a transformation from one species to another appears problematical in view of the practical experience of animal husbandry, where even selective breeding has proved unsuccessful in bringing about fundamentally new species.Taking Leave of Darwin, 73
So far is it from being of no concern to theology, therefore, that it would be truer to say that the whole doctrinal structure of the Bible account of redemption is founded on its assumption that the race of man is one organic whole, and may be dealt with as such. It is because all are one in Adam that in the matter of sin there is no difference, but all have fallen short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:22 f.), and as well that in the new man there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman; but Christ is all and in all (Col. 3:11). The unity of the old man in Adam is the postulate of the unity of the new man in Christ.Warfield, Benjamin B. The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield: Studies in Theology. Vol. 9
The assertion of the unity of the human race is imbedded in the very structure of the Biblical narrative. The Biblical account of the origin of man (Gen. 1:26–28) is an account of his origination in a single pair, who constituted humanity in its germ, and from whose fruitfulness and multiplication all the earth has been replenished. Therefore the first man was called Adam, Man, and the first woman, Eve, "because she was the mother of all living" (Gen. 3:20); and all men are currently spoken of as the "sons of Adam" or "Man" (Deut. 32:8; Ps. 11:4; 1 Sam. 26:19; 1 Kings 8:39; Ps. 145:12; etc.). The absolute restriction of the human race within the descendants of this single pair is emphasized by the history of the Flood in which all flesh is destroyed, and the race given a new beginning in its second father, Noah, by whose descendants again "the whole earth was overspread" (Gen. 9:19), as is illustrated in detail by the table of nations recorded in Genesis 10
God created an awesome world. God intentionally loaded the world with amazing things to leave you astounded. The carefully air-conditioned termite mound in Africa, the tart crunchiness of an apple, the explosion of thunder, the beauty of an orchid, the interdependent systems of the human body, the inexhaustible pounding of the ocean waves, and thousands of other created sights, sounds, touches, and tastes—God designed all to be awesome. And he intended you to be daily amazed.
There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.
God was under no constraint, no obligation, no necessity to create. That He chose to do so was purely a sovereign act on His part, caused by nothing outside Himself, determined by nothing but His own mere good pleasure; for He "worketh all things after the counsel of His own will" (Eph 1:11). That He did create was simply for His manifestative glory.
Women were created from the rib of man to be beside him, not from his head to top him, nor from his feet to be trampled by him, but from under his arm to be protected by him, near to his heart to be loved by him.
Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
the startling claim that a man who had recently lived and been crucified by the Romans was the one in whom all things are held together. What holds the universe together is not an idea or a virtue, but a person: the resurrected Christ. Without him, electrons would not continue to circle nuclei, gravity would cease to work, the planets would not stay in their orbitsThe letters to the Colossians and to Philemon (pp. 125-126). Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co.
Science spotlights three dimensions of nature that point to God. The first is the fact that nature obeys laws. The second is the dimension of life, of intelligently organized and purpose-driven beings, which arose from matter. The third is the very existence of nature.There is a God (88)
With respect to fishes, birds, and beasts we read that God created them after their kind, that is, on a typical form of their own. Man, however, was not so created and much less after the type of an inferior creature. With respect to him God said, "Let us make man in our image"... the creation of man stands out as something distinctive.Systematic Theology, 183
it is quite evident that [Genesis 1] is intended as a record of history, and is clearly so regarded in Scripture, cf. Ex 20:11; Neh. 9:6; Ps. 33:6,9; 145:2-6; (2) the opening of Genesis "lacks nearly every element of acknowledged Hebrew poetry" (Strong); and (3) this narrative is inseparably connected with the succeeding history, and is therefore most naturally regarded as itself historical.Systematic Theology, 158
When the Babylonian account was discovered, many scholars hastily assumed that the Biblical narrative was derived from the Babylonian source, forgetting that there are at least two other possibilities, namely, (a) that the Babylonian story is a corrupted reproduction of the narrative in Genesis; or (b) that both are derived from a common, more primitive source.Systematic Theology, 151
Perhaps, he is said to have completed his work on the seventh day because he blessed and sanctified it, as Scripture immediately adds. For blessing and sanctification is work, as Solomon did some work when he dedicated the temple.Libri quatuor in principium Genesis, 1
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