The typeset PDF of JCTS Volume 2 (2023) has been delivered at long last to the printer! Thank you again for your patience and understanding regarding the Boyd family’s health needs this past year.
In the meantime, we are releasing one more article (by Kurt Wise) as a preview. It is available, along with the previous one (by Bill Barrick), as a free download from our website’s Journal page.
The CTS Board extends their New Year’s greetings to all our readers. Happy New Year 2025!
JCTS‘s Executive Editor, Dr. Steve Boyd, has released an article as a preview to the Volume 2 (2023) issue. He has made it available as a free download from our website’s Journal page. Steve also plans to post a second preview article in the near future. These previews will allow our CTS members and website visitors a taste of what is in store for members and journal subscribers when Volume 2 finally comes off the press.
Meanwhile, all of the CTS Board extends their New Year’s greetings to all our readers. Happy New Year 2024!
The small arboreal eyelash viper (Bothriechis schlegelii) coiled in a tree or bush might appear relatively harmless. Its venom, though rarely fatal, can cause a lot of pain and discomfort. Our words, though sometimes flowery and eloquent, also can generate a lot of pain. When we use labels to identify others with unbiblical positions or beliefs, the damage we create can cause more than personal pain—a label can spur some people to ostracize the person thus labeled. The best sounding labels might actually be inaccurate, unfair, and maligning. Labels and classifications may be unavoidable, especially in theological circles (consider the labels “Calvinist” and “Arminian,” for example), but the creator or user of a label must make certain the label is not a serious misrepresentation due to a lack of adequate and honest research.
When we think we have accurately and fairly identified someone with regard to their ideas, their interpretations, or their models, the best way to confirm our conclusions involves talking with them personally or engaging in one-on-one email conversations. We might find out that we just plain misunderstood the other person. Or, we might discover that an editor failed to catch a problematic sentence or word that the author had not intended to use. Just consider how often our “smart phones” and our “smart computer programs” alter words that produce ridiculous statements. A word processing program automatically changes “pericope” to “periscope.” A publishing program inverts the Hebrew text so that even a solo word reads backward. A researcher fails to read the context of an excerpt from a book before passing the selection on to someone else out of context and misrepresenting the author’s viewpoint. These things happen. It is one reason professors insist on firsthand sources.
In the Creation Theology Society’s (CTS’s) “Principles and Values” we focus on being a community characterized by Christian ethics and activity. CTS, therefore, purposes to promote “agreement and unity” and to provide “opportunities for irenic discussion in areas of disagreement.” Our “Goals” include:
CTS believes “A Call to Unity” further advances those principles, values, and goals. The statement clarifies what we mean by “irenic interaction.” CTS is not the first to observe the need for the biblical creationist community to renew our commitment to unity, civility, and respect. Dr. Randy Guliuzza, President of the Institute for Creation Research, called all of us to these values in three different issues of Acts & Facts over the past three years. In “The Power of the Next Idea,” Acts & Facts 49, no. 11 (Nov 2020): 5–7, he wrote, “Unfortunately, in our August issue we were harsh in our criticism of several fellow creation scientists and called them some names. I regret that we did that and am truly sorry for the hurt it inflicted. We will endeavor to not engage in those behaviors in the future. Please forgive us” (ibid., 6). Then he published “Unity Worthy of Our Creationist Heritage” in Acts & Facts 50, no. 1 (Jan 2021): 5–7, in which he identified the practice of demeaning someone with whom we have a disagreement:
Academic leaders’ playbook for dispensing professional sorrow includes several effective means. A few actions they regularly attempt are suppressing opposing views by simply ignoring contrary research or killing it through an abusive peer review process; ruining another scientist’s credibility or assassinating their character by public humiliation either in person, in blogs, or in so-called “peer reviewed” papers; and bringing on professional exile by shunning rogue scientists at conferences or in employment. (p. 6)
CTS recommends Dr. Guliuzza’s most recent article, “The ICC and a Covenant for Civility and Respect,” Acts & Facts 52, no. 3 (May-June 2023). The humility and integrity exhibited in these three separate articles over a three-year period stands out particularly in regard to apologizing three times for the publication of an article ICR admits violated the principles of unity, civility, and respect. That remarkable action exemplifies for all of us the way we should be interacting with one another. No other biblical creationist organization or publication has made such an apology in recent memory. It is time for more of us to live up to the biblical instructions God gave us in His Word for our obedience to His standards of unity, civility, and respect.
If you agree with our commitment to unity, civility, and respect, please follow the instructions below the heading Signatories at the end of “A Call to Unity” to become a signatory.
Also, please consider becoming a member of CTS to help us continue
Issue 1 of the Journal of the Creation Theology Society has been printed and is in the mail to all our members! Click this link to go to the Journal page for the latest information and for a free download of a sample article.
Soon we will announce a Members Only page where members can access the digital version.
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.
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.