Dr. Bob Cole (CTS board member) will present The Biblical Theology of מין/Created Kind in the Hebrew Bible as the topic in our CTS Spring Symposium 2024. Mark the date and time in your calendar: Thursday, March 21, 8:00 PM (EST).
The symposium will be conducted on ZOOM (link plus pass code 980922). You may invite interested friends by giving them the information directly or refer them to this blog post. Please do not publish this information on any other website or on social media.
On the evening of December 8 CTS hosted its first Online Fall Symposium with twenty-one CTS members logging in. The topic for our symposium was “The Biblical Flood in the Literature of the Dead Sea Scrolls” led by our President, Dr. Jeremy Lyon. Wipf and Stock published Jeremy’s Qumran Interpretation of the Genesis Flood in 2015. If you have an interest in this topic, this book provides very helpful translations, descriptions, analyses, and discussions of four scrolls: the Genesis Apocryphon (1QapGen), a Genesis pesher (4Q252), a fragment of an admonition based on the Flood (4Q370), and a fragment of a paraphrase of Genesis and Exodus (4Q422).
The Fall 2022 Online Symposium video can be accessed via this link. In this way, those of you who were unable to join us can still hear the presentation and the subsequent Q&A.
Watch for announcements regarding future online symposia. We plan to offer at least two each year — one in the Fall and one in the Spring. The symposia provide only members the privilege of live-stream watching and participation. Every active member receives a Zoom invitation ahead of time so they can join the symposium. Post-symposium access to the videos are available to anyone through the CTS website.
Registration for Origins Conference 2022 now available online at this link.
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
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.
Shortly after my salvation my pastor introduced me to The Genesis Flood by Whitcomb and Morris. At the time I was a lab assistant for my high school biology teacher. After graduation I received a National Science Foundation grant to perform ecological research at Pingree Park, the science camp for Colorado State University. I pursued a potential career in wildlife management in junior college before the Lord led me into biblical studies at a Bible college and on into seminary and a Doctor of Theology degree in Old Testament and Hebrew from Grace Theological Seminary, where I sat under Dr. Whitcomb as one of my mentors. Two other creationist mentors had also made a huge impact on my interest in the book of Genesis, Dr. Leo Lapp and Dr. Bernard Northrup. Through a half century of teaching, along with several decades of involvement in Bible translation ministries overseas and Stateside, I’ve been invited to write an exegetical commentary on Genesis, which is a work in progress.
In addition to research, writing, and publishing in the area of biblical creationism, I have been actively involved with co-leading biblical creation trips in Grand Canyon with Canyon Ministries for the past 13 years. I am currently the chairman of that ministry’s board of directors. My background has prepared me to understand the importance of creation theology.
The Scriptures make it clear that creation came about through an all-powerful and all-wise Creator. Therefore, what we call “creationism” or “creation theology” really amounts to a study of the God who brought everything into existence. Whereas the hard sciences focus on evidence within the physical creation, the “queen of sciences,” theology, delves into the realm of the ultimate source of creation, the Creator Himself.
When we emphasize the Creator, we cannot escape dealing with His written Word by which He reveals to us how and why He created. For theologians the goal must be to exegete the Scriptures with accuracy so we might learn what God has revealed for us. Having thus expounded divine revelation, biblical scholars position themselves for supplying revelatory information with which believing scientists might guide their research and develop their models.
For years Kurt Wise has begged many of us to do just what we propose to do through this new society. We’ve designed CTS to link with sister societies like Creation Geology Society and Creation Biology Society for the academic cross-fertilization necessary to ongoing creation research. We might have responded slower than you desired, Kurt, but we’re ready to launch CTS and pour ourselves into the tasks at hand. We invite all of you reading this blog post to join us — get involved. Become a member of CTS now.
The Creation Theology Society (CTS) provides a venue for a Bible-believing community of scholars to perform research in the evidence contained in the biblical text, to prepare their resulting studies with the involvement of peer review, and to present to creation scientists significant biblical data to aid them in their examination of the physical evidence. Such operations closely parallel the way biblical scholars have acted as catalysts for archaeological research in Bible lands. With Bible in hand, theologians and historians walked over the geographical setting of biblical events in order to identify significant biblical sites for archaeological investigation. CTS scholars will walk through the biblical text to identify significant details that might instigate scientific investigation.
From the beginning of the modern creation movement—often associated at least in some way with the landmark publication of The Genesis Flood, by John Whitcomb and Henry Morris in 1961—there have been many challenges. Over the decades, one of the glaring issues with the creation community has been the lack of biblical scholars who have been willing to critically engage in creation research. To be clear, there have been some biblical scholars involved, but they have been the exception. Scientists, nevertheless, forged ahead with research, publications, and outreach, without much help from the field of biblical scholarship.
In the meantime, much of the field of biblical studies has been capitulating to the ideas of evolution and/or millions of years. While this is a valid general criticism of the history of the modern creation movement up to this point, this is in no way a criticism of the faithful scientists who have engaged in this important research. Rather, this is an indictment on the field of biblical scholarship as a whole, which, for various reasons, has not to this point taken the lead in creation studies.
In recent years, however, a number of scientists and biblical scholars have recognized this major lacuna in the scholarly creation community and are now seeking to address it. As a result, we have formed the Creation Theology Society. We believe that the Bible is God’s self-revelation to humanity, forming the foundation for truth and knowledge. Thus, divine revelation must be the respected and authoritative lens through which we seek to understand the world around us. Consequently, theology, historically understood as the “queen of the sciences,” must inform scientific investigation, since correct interpretation of creation depends upon correct interpretation of God’s Word.
The purpose of this new society is as follows: “In the tradition of theology as the queen of the sciences, the Creation Theology Society seeks to develop a community of biblical scholarship that initiates and undergirds interdisciplinary creation research.” We are glad to come alongside the Creation Biology Society and the Creation Geology Society to, hopefully, set the standard and to model interdisciplinary creation research for the creation community as a whole. We believe that we work most effectively when we work together in interdisciplinary fashion. In my own experience of working with creation scientists, whether co-leading teaching trips through Grand Canyon, doing conferences, or collaborating on research, I have always found it mutually beneficial and enriching for biblical scholars and scientists alike when we work together. We all benefit when we work together, that is, when we function as the body of Christ as it pertains to creation research and education. We look forward to all that God will do through this society and we hope that you will be a part of this ongoing work.