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JCTS First Issue Published

The premier issue of the Journal of the Creation Theology Society has been published! For a first issue, this one is packed! — over 200 pages! Thanks to the labors of our Senior Editor Steve Boyd and his staff (Lee Anderson and Doug Smith) CTS members will soon be receiving their hard copy of JCTS in the mail (snail mail).

In the near future we will establish a members-only page on our website so a digital copy can be viewed. Stay tuned for that future announcement, right here on the CTS blog.

In addition, we will soon be making it possible for anyone to purchase a digital copy of CTSJ articles or the full issue online.

Update on CTS Journal

As we enter the Passion Week and look to Resurrection Sunday, we have the Journal of the Creation Society (JCTS) in typesetting stage with a goal to having it off to the printer as soon as possible. Keep an eye out for future announcements. This inaugural issue almost fills a full-sized book and will make a significant contribution to biblical creation studies, especially with its interdisciplinary nature.

Faculty Job Opening

Truett McConnell University is now officially looking for a full-time professor of New Testament (assistant, associate, or full rank). The deadline for application is April 1, 2022. Here is the job description, or you can see the job announcement listed on the TMU Employment Opportunities webpage. 

 

 

Call for Papers: Origins Conference 2022

Now that Origins Conference 2021 has wrapped up, we invite all CTS members to look forward to Origins Conference 2022. For everyone who attended the recent conference in person or online, the various presentations stir our enthusiasm for research and writing in the field of creation science. What topic would you like to pursue with a view to presenting a paper for the general sessions of the next Origins Conference? We have set no specific theme for the general sessions, so you have a great deal of freedom in choice of topic.  Any topics dealing with the text, philology, hermeneutics, theology, and apologetics of Genesis 1–11 and any other texts dealing with primeval history will be gladly accepted for consideration.

To submit your proposal, follow Guidelines for a Paper Proposal (click on link to download this one-page aid).

Deadline for Proposal: September 1, 2021

Deadline for Paper Submission: January 31, 2022

Submit to: Dr. Steven Boyd at sboyd@creationtheologysociety.org

Why so early? Since CTS papers that go through the full approval process will be published in our Journal of the Creation Theology Society, we must have time for

  1. our consideration of your proposal and response to you,
  2. your research and writing,
  3. our submitting your paper for peer review (minimum of 3 peer reviewers),
  4. peer reviewers’ return of their comments,
  5. your completion of necessary revisions, and
  6. our approval for your final paper to be presented and published.

CTS’s inaugural issue of the Journal of the Creation Theology Society (JCTS) will feature this year’s Interdisciplinary Session papers and edited transcription of the panel discussion. We will also publish Origins Conference 2021 general session abstracts from our sister societies (Creation Biology Society and Creation Geology Society). The journal plans to include CTS papers from general sessions only after those papers have undergone full peer review and editing procedures. Simply presenting a paper in the general session does not guarantee publication in the journal.  

We will publish our inaugural volume in both hard and digital copies around year’s end or early in 2022. Watch the website for its announcement.

4 Weeks until Origins Conference

Soon the 2021 Origins Conference will be taking place in three physical locations, as well as online. All three Creation societies (Creation Theology Society, Creation Biology Society, and Creation Geology Society) will participate and welcome attendees in St. Louis MO, Dayton TN, and Santa Clarita CA starting at 4:00 PM PDT (7:00 PM EDT) on Wednesday, July 28. The conference will adjourn at 2:30 PM PDT (5:30 PM EDT), Saturday, July 31. If you have not yet registered, please go to this registration link to do so. 

During the conference a number of the attendees will present papers on a variety of topics and conduct a Q&A following each paper. A special Interdisciplinary Session will feature three papers and a panel discussion on The Fountains of the Great Deep and the Windows of the Heavens in the Genesis Flood Narrative.

The full schedule of the sessions and locations for the physical meetings will be published soon online — watch for it on our CTS website, as well as on the Creation Biology Society website.

Last Chance for Founding Membership

Our special price for a Founding Membership ($100) that lasts for two full years saves members $50. However, that money-saving opportunity comes to an end at midnight, June 30, 2021. If you have not yet joined the Creation Theology Society, we encourage you to do so this month. Please go to our Membership page now and join us in our mission of promoting the role of Theology (the “Queen of Sciences”) in Creation Science. 

Truett McConnell University Creation Lecture Series

Truett McConnell University (Cleveland, GA) will host and livestream The 2021 Paige and Dorothy Patterson Spring Lecture Series March 23–25. This year’s topic is “Creation: The Historical Adam.” Speakers include Drs. William Barrick, Jeremy Lyon, Kurt Wise, and Andrew Fabich.

Download the PDF for the above flyer.

Visit the Truett McConnell Facebook page for more information (including schedule of lectures and link to livestream).

Creation Theology Society 2021 Call for Papers — UPDATE

The newly-minted Creation Theology Society (CTS) requests the honor of your contribution to the 2021 Origins Conference to be held July 28–31. Please see more details about the restructured meetings under Conferences. Any topics dealing with the text, philology, hermeneutics, theology, and apologetics of Genesis 1–11 and any other texts dealing with primeval history will be gladly accepted for peer review. Accepted conference papers may then be submitted to be reviewed for publication in the inaugural issue of the Journal of Creation Theology and Science (Series A). The special topic for this year’s annual Interdisciplinary Themed Session is “The Fountains of the Great Deep and the Windows of the Heavens in the Genesis Flood Narrative.” This interdisciplinary session of the conference will comprise two invited papers dealing with the biblical text, an invited paper providing a historical review of the geological/geophysical mechanisms proposed for initiating the Flood, and a panel discussion. The submission of papers related specifically to this topic are encouraged as we seek to move research forward at this year’s conference and in the journal. 

The style of the papers must conform to the most recent edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. Submissions shall be made in Times New Roman 12 pt. font, double-spaced, and shall include an abstract (under 300 words), keywords, and bibliography. The new, extended deadline for submission is May 3, 2021. Questions should be directed to the executive editor of CTS at sboyd@creationtheologysociety.org. We look forward to receiving your submissions.

Cogitations on Interdisciplinary Creation Research

A signal feature of the Creation Theology Society (CTS) is highly valuing interdisciplinary collaboration in creation research. This is immensely beneficial in both directions: the scientific, grammatical, and hermeneutical breakthroughs that can occur by proceeding from an accurate understanding of the biblical text; and the results which can obtain by applying scientific, linguistic, and mathematical methodology to the text—as the following testimony proves.

I’ve been involved in several interdisciplinary creation research projects and have seen firsthand the excellent results which can come from such undertakings. First, the RATE project (Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth), which was very successful in looking at the problem of radioisotopic dating from a number of different perspectives: geology, geophysics, and physics and then my work on the genre of Genesis 1:1 through 2:3 using statistical methodology. (Employing such atypical techniques to the text has been the hallmark of my approach, beginning with my dissertation). In this case, instead of being satisfied with the usual qualitative approach to distinguishing genre from genre, I worked with two statisticians to develop a quantitative model (a logistic regression model) for predicting genre. The best model was based on the relative frequency of wayyiqtol (which traces the flow of the events in a narrative). At a statistical confidence level of 99.5% the model predicts that the probability that Genesis 1:1–2:3 is prose, not poetry, is between .999942 and .999987.

Second, was the FAST project (Flood Activated Sedimentation and Tectonics), which led to the third such effort, the Cataclysm Chronology Research Group, an ongoing collaboration between a team of Hebraists and a geologist, Dr. Andrew Snelling, in which a close reading of the text in terms of the real world implications of what it is saying show that there is temporal discontinuity in the text at points. This then led to challenging the long-standing understanding of the dominant Hebrew narrative form and developing a semantic methodology for ascertaining sequence based on ‘temporal reasoning’, which will be applied to the 261 verbs in the Flood account. In addition, set theory and the concepts of general functions can be applied to the mapping of the recounting of Divine pronouncements and commands in the Flood account to their later reports of actualizations and compliance, respectively, by considering each verb as a point with multiple coordinates representing essential characteristics.


The fourth example is the documentary Is Genesis History?, which exemplifies a presentation to the public of the evidence from a range of disciplines for the historicity of Genesis 1-11.


And finally, in the fall of 2019 at the inaugural Bulwarks and Frontiers Conference scientists and scholars from diverse specialties had an opportunity to listen to, learn from,  and query one another as they each presented their assessment of the status of creation research in their particular discipline.

The birth of CTS promises such interdisciplinary collaboration on a grand scale between rigorous study in the Hebrew text and the hard sciences and consequent amazing results. Come join us and experience the thrill of discovering how God’s Word and world interface!