Why Creation Matters for the Gospel [The Ezra Institute Podcast for Cultural Reformation]

Well, welcome back everyone to the podcast for cultural reformation brought to you by the Ezra Institute and a little bit unusually today I'm going to be your host. It's usually passed a date right, but I'm going to be hosting today's conversation because we have a couple of very special guests that we're looking forward to speaking to today. This is Dr Stephen Lloyd and Paul Garner and they lead a ministry in the United Kingdom in Cambridge called biblical creation trust. And we're going to be discussing today the some of the implications of the biblical view of creation and what it means for our culture. So come we'll be right back. We'll see you in a moment. Welcome everyone. It's great to see you and a special welcome to Dr Stephen Lloyd and Paul Gardner. Welcome to the show. I think this is your first time on the podcast for cultural reformation with the Ezra Institute. We appreciate your time joining us. Well, it's great to be here. Yeah, thanks. Looks like you're both snuggled up in the same study somewhere there. Is that you actually at the offices of the biblical creation trust right now. Yes, that's right. Yes, we've had these offices this year. It's been a great benefit to us to have a physical presence here in Cambridge. And you can see part of our library behind us and yeah, so it's great to be here and to be able to join you today, Joe, from from Cambridge. Well, thanks for coming on the show, Jen. I'm actually, as you know, not that far away, just about 35 minutes down the road in my own Ezra office here. And I've been looking forward to having this conversation with you both about the your ministry, the work of biblical creation trust. And some of the implications of the biblical teaching about creation that's so important, but often neglected today. So Paul, why don't you open us up by just just tell us a little bit. First of all, tell us a little bit about yourselves. Maybe you first then you Stephen. And and then tell tell our audience a little bit. Is it not familiar with you? Nobody will have heard from you on the Ezra platform before. Tell us a little bit about biblical creation trust. So introduce yourselves first and then tell us about the ministry. Sure. Well, I'm Paul Garner. I'm a researcher and lecturer with biblical creation trust. My background is in the sciences. I'm not a pastor or a theologian. I was trained in the earth sciences geology and for my postgraduate work. I did some paleobiology. So I studied dinosaurs dinosaur diversification was the subject of my master's thesis. And I've been working for BCT since 2002. And then Stephen joined us, I think in 2007. That's right. Yeah. So I'm Stephen Lloyd and my background is, I guess, as a research scientist. I was I was here in Cambridge many years ago. And then I was in Christian ministry. I was a pastor for nearly nearly 20 years. And a couple of years ago left that to work full time with with biblical creation trust to really help launch this project that we're calling the sort of Cambridge House project to to set up a sort of creationist study center here in Cambridge. Yeah, now that go ahead, Paul. Well, I was just going to say a bit about biblical creation trust, you know, just to have introduced, you know, what BCT is about. So we're basically a creationist ministry with a research focus. We sort of grew out of the work of the biblical creation society, which was an organization founded back in 1976. But they launched sort of biblical creation ministries as it was then now biblical creation trust in 2002. To support me full time as a researcher and lecturer. We're basically our mission is to help the church address issues arising from contemporary challenges around the theory of evolution, the whole subject of origins and to do that in a theologically and scientifically robust way. We want to unite Christians around the biblical teaching on creation. We want to help to maximize the churches apologetic impact as it seeks to reach out to the world. And we do that through research primarily we have a research focus and we believe that sort of the strategic way forward to make that sort of wider impact in the church and the culture. And I think we sometimes say we're trying to change the landscape of the creation debate because it's not always conducted in the most sort of helpful way. And I think we're trying to put a slightly different scientific agenda that's much more positive and a different theological agenda to that we will come on to that there's a theological richness to creationism that sometimes gets overlooked. Yeah. Well, we'll get into that some of that in a moment. Who was some of the do you know who some of the inspirational figures were behind the launch of the first iteration of the organization. I mean, obviously using in the 70s there was it people like Dr Henry Morris and some of the the key American teachers in the early days with what where was the inspiration. Okay, where did it come from for the organization's founding. Well, obviously Henry Morris and John Wickham when they wrote the Genesis flood back in 1961 that really launched the modern revival of creationism. And so that had a big impact including in the evangelical world here in Britain. But the biblical creation society was really a homegrown sort of organization. And it was really founded actually by theology students back in 1976 who were very dissatisfied with the dominant position of theistic evolution that was dominant in the evangelical world and still is really. And they were very dissatisfied with that. And so they founded the biblical creation society explicitly on a biblical basis. We you know we begin with scripture begin with the Bible that frames you know our entire sort of worldview and how we think about these issues of origins. And some quite big names were involved in the biblical creation society back in the day. Don Carson wrote for our journal. Gordon Kedi was involved Nigel Cameron. You know these are names. I'm sure that many will be familiar with. And so there was some sort of quite prominent sort of biblical scholars, theologians who were sort of influential in the early days of what was in the BC. And I think the other people that have become very influential are really on on both of us sort of almost slightly independently is the sort of stream of of researchers that really began sort of. Working more noticeably probably in around the 1990s as opposed to grad student I was part of a sort of email network in the very early days of email where. There was a whole group of these researchers discussing together and you have people on this like cut wise and Todd Wood who collaborates with a lot now. And it was really through people like that that I learned what creation research was and how you can actually do scientific research from a from this perspective and actually learn a lot about doing science. And even learning science in a secular context I was actually learning a lot from you know these Christians in their particular approach to creation. So Stephen you mentioned that the kind of uniqueness or at least the slightly different approach that you guys are trying to take to the whole creation evolution discussion and debate. A lot of the public debates that used to happen. You don't really happen now. Some would say that the evolutionists have long since been running scared of public debates with creationists they didn't fare too well for a long time. But the sort of debate environment in general has been on decline in the public universities for a variety of reasons of course the rise of the woke agenda and everything else. But nonetheless the discussions are still happening and sometimes there are more maybe a more relational level a lot that the questions haven't gone away. So before we get into some of the meeting potatoes here can you just lean in a little bit to when you said that there's a sort of a kind of a slightly different approach that you guys are trying to take. I mean I read some of Kurt Wise's books a years ago I found them extremely helpful. I memory serves isn't the paleontologist or in the geology field. Yeah that's right he studied under Stephen Jay Gold. One of the world's leading evolution biologists of it. Yes I remember reading some of his criticisms there. So I'm familiar with a fair amount of the cross section of people that have been involved over the years. But just just tell us a little bit about what's what's biblical creation trust space in this there are you know there are other organizations in the general area. Tell us a bit more about what you guys are really leaning into and you know you talk about the research and how that can really help equip the church right now and maybe shift the narrative a little bit. I mean I think we're trying to be an interface between some of this sort of research and the church because you know a lot of this isn't really very well known or understood in the church or for that matter anywhere else. So it is partly trying to introduce people to some of the sort of best work that's being done that goes beyond as simply just a sort of an anti-evolutionary clinic. I mean there's obviously a place for that you need to do that to some degree but ultimately we need to re it's not just critiquing the other view it's all how do we explain this stuff you know there's there's fossils there's rocks with you know various chemical signatures in them there you know there's biological data. How can we actually explain that better within this sort of biblical framework. Can we actually have more satisfying science through through doing this work and I think when people catch that there's something incredibly attractive about that vision and very attractive actually as a scientist to be able to do something quite new and radical in that so that's really what we're trying to try to inspire people with that sort of vision. I think much of the research that we do is not driven primarily by apologetics by sort of responding necessarily to evolutionary arguments but if we're able to sort of build creationist models integrating scriptural and scientific data and show that we can explain the world better than the conventional sort of evolutionary models that is a very compelling apologetic and so I think you know there is a kind of an apologetic impact of what we're doing. Research is really the lifeblood of this movement you know we don't have we we don't have the arguments our fingertips if we're not doing that kind of basic research in the first place so that's really our focus it's very much the base around that strategic focus on research. And I think that actually has an impact more widely in apologetics because people tend to see this whole sort of creation debate well this is sort of the science Christianity thing you know how do the two relate are they in conflict that sort of thing. And that is still a question but actually when you start getting into the theology of creation it really relates to far more sort of fundamental apologetic issues like the goodness of God how we can you know believe in the goodness of God in a world full of suffering. You know issues of animal suffering issues of human identity and other things will probably come on to so so so that actually that the apologetic significance of this is is much much bigger than sort of trying to you know show where evolution has gone wrong or something sure. 100% and I think the putting forward a positive vision and a positive articulation of the the creation or position within the sciences themselves I think is absolutely critical and maybe that's been an area where we've not been as strong in the past a lot of the listeners to our show are in North America in the United States and Canada. And they will be listening to this and I think some of them will be quite surprised to hear two English accents from Cambridge talking about the importance of creation over against and creation research over against the evolutionary paradigms because that's often seen as a while that's kind of an just you know happens in America and certainly the of the impression in Britain in the churches as well that's kind of an American. And so there can fundamentalist thing is an creation and the end with the creation evolution debate and all of that and so there's going to be listeners listening thinking I didn't think there was strong understanding of the importance of creation over against the evolutionary paradigm in the British church in the English church I mean I found often my experience in Britain has been in the past at least all kinds of snobbery and ignorance as well as snobbery against the creation position as though really you're just you know sticking your brain into the into the garbage or into the bin as we would say in England by thinking along these terms and to start talking about creation research and justifying the framework or models scientific models based on the creation or paradigm how is that something that's going on in Britain. So I think there'll be people who can be very encouraged hearing the two of you talking about this but that sets up kind of my first major inquiry here for our discussion is where are we at right now in the church and culture you've talked about Paul you mentioned the importance of the interface of what you are doing with the church and that's this is where you feel that your your ministry's priority lies. Well you both talked about that how we really educate in a certain sense the specially church leadership in the churches that there is actually great work being done on this where we are within first of all the church in the UK and you may have other observations about the west right now on this issue you kind of alluded to it right now that the stick evolution is the dominant paradigm but have we made headway since seven years ago. Have we made headway since 76 have we gone backwards where are we at how are you received lean into that little bit where where would you assess where we are at with the church on this issue right now in Britain. Yeah I mean I think that I mean you're right that this to give a solution is very much shaping the sort of opinion formers in the church it's not necessarily dominant amongst Christians as a whole but in terms of the people who have influence and leadership it certainly has been very dominant and that's really a sort of a hangover from some very influential evangelical leaders of the past I mean people like you know John start. There was all of a barclay who really set up the very very involved in the sort of university Christian Union ministry and and obviously very godly gifted you know brilliant people but very much took a sort of sort of the stick evolution line are sort of you know there's sort of two books we keep the sort of science and religion almost separate because because of a focus almost on evangelism. You know let's not get distracted by this whole sort of you know science religion thing let's not make this be an obstacle to people coming to face it's all incredibly well motivated and you know in many ways very very understandable and in that context you are really saying that this creation issue is is is a secondary thing it's and and really not to be to be discussed too much because it becomes this distraction and so that means it's actually very hard to even get a discussion going. Now I think things have changed I think there are there's probably a greater variety of views but there is I think still an incredible ignorance of how to to understand creation in its sort of fullness in the way that we would see it it's very much just labelled as will do believe this creation was done in six days or not and that's that's the sum of the issue. I think I'm going back to what you sort of began with about this idea that you know creation is just this American sort of import you know actually the oldest extent creation is organization the world is here in brick the creation science movement which began as the evolution protest movement back in 1932. So we have a very long tradition of skepticism about evolution and a belief in creation and I think although as Stephen says, Theistic evolution has sort of been the dominant paradigm among those who are opinion form as those who are leaders of student churches those who are running student ministries you know that kind of thing. There is I think a lot of skepticism among evangelical lay people even in the wider culture it might be quite ill informed it might not be very well thought out but I think there is a lot of skepticism I think a lot of it is focused on sort of anti evolution of politics perhaps in the church rather than so developing a Christian mind. In areas like geology and biology which is so what we're interested in doing. But I think it is very interesting how you know the new atheism and all of that which that that it's kind of past its high tide mark if that feels like a tide that's going out and it seems to us that you know now is actually a very good time to be doing the sort of work that we're doing here in Cambridge where we're going to do a lot of work. We are in a different context at the moment. People are more ready to question things today I think which is a great opportunity yeah. Yes that whole sort of non overlapping magisterium type argument that's you know borrowed from Rome ported over into evangelicalism in a certain form to some degree. And sort of became popularized in terms of well it's not the gospel. You know creations no this is not a gospel issue. I would certainly argue that absolutely is a gospel issue if by the gospel we mean well what is the gospel of the kingdom and that it involves the declaration of Christ who is first our creator before he's our Redeemer I mean the gospel of John begins with Christ as creator. In the beginning was the word you know the passage and and actually to my mind if we go wrong at the foundation. We miss apprehend the gospel and you guys know that the theistic evolutionists. Especially is the their advanced in movements like I think it's biologos in the United States and so on you end up with without a historical Adam more often than not. That whole biblical world view of creation into a fallen world into redemption and consummation as the as the overarching structure of a Christian world view seems to get lost and disappears and so. I still hear current in the church today in the not just Britain but in the Western church well this is not a gospel issue and it's divisive. And and therefore a lot of passes are afraid as you said to kind of open up what they seem what they perceive to be a can of worms of potential division in their church if they take a biblical affirm biblical view affirm scriptural view. And the issue of creation itself so what I would sort of want to go a bit further here then is in those contexts where where we have been I mean first of all it is encouraging to hear that we have a good British pedigree in this whole area that you mentioned Paul. But and it's always been there and you know about twenty three years ago I published my first book I think it was 23 years now maybe more in the UK called a time to search and one of the two chapters in there one one is called the science of belief. And the the other is called fish and philosophers and in there I do a kind of a world view critique of evolutionism and put the biblical paradigm in its place and a friend of mine who actually had just finished his PhD in zoology at Oxford proofread it. And he was he was he was truly impacted by it we have we had long discussions about it. And that was at a time where some of these older evangelicals you've referred to with just about still around that and and I was told by some people were pretty close to me and I won't mention their names very influential people still in the public eye in the Christian church today you said I think you should take those chapters out of the book they divide they could be. Divide they could be divisive it may discredit the broader purpose of the book which is focused on the gospel we won't get into all of those details now that i've said enough on that but the what are the implications for if we take that kind of a view that this is just not central is just not that important Paul Stephen you know we your nice guys your good Christian brothers but why you wasting your time with this is not the gospel it's not germane to. What's really confronting the church today. You know why didn't you focus on something more important well how would how would you respond to that what are the implications for not taking this issue seriously. I mean I saw it's like storm yeah yeah good i mean I think what you said about the storyline is actually really helpful because because that is ultimately what this is about it's keeping that storyline coherent and some of the way I often. You know can begin a talk is you know what what's the key question in this debate what it's why did Jesus have to die you know why why did you have to physically die on the cross will we say what he's dealing with the penalty of sin you know what so you're saying the penalty of sin is physical death well hang on that must mean that you can't have physical death before you have sin before you have Adam that immediately is going to impact how you understand hominin fossils and date them and everything else so so from something no one can. No one can argue is not central to the Christian faith across of Christ you've actually got a very clear implication for origins and this is something we are trying to do in lots of ways with our theology start with something central and say well what does this tell us about origins it's almost arguing backwards so it's not almost starting with Genesis and where does this go it's starting with the gospel and what does this tell us about how we should understand Genesis yeah. I think one of the great strengths of the creation is viewpoint is that it focuses our attention on the history of scripture the history of that storyline of redemption right from the very beginning and I mean that's obviously why it's so contested but so often what we find is that evangelicals just seem to lose their nerve when it comes to the beginning of the story. You know we we see that they're quite happy to affirm history is out the scripture but once it gets back before the time of Abraham it all gets kind of shadowy pre history you know we're all familiar with those Bible charts where you have all the dates you know all the historical dates back to Abraham and then there's kind of question marks before Abraham. ham. And this I think is a real blind spot among conservative evangelicals. James Bar, who was no fundamentalist, you know, he was, he was a professor of Hebrew Oxford. I mean, frankly, he didn't care whether the Bible was true or not. But as a Hebrew scholar, he was concerned about what it said and what it meant. And he wrote a whole series of papers, gave lectures back in the 80s and the 90s where he talked about biblical chronology. And it's really fascinating. You know, it's worth going back and reading that the things that he wrote. So, you know, he talked about art, Bishop Usher, you know, his much derided chronology from creation down to later events in biblical history. And he made the point that what Usher was doing there was not peculiar or unusual. He was standing in this long tradition of Christian scholarship. You know, he said, the biblical authors really did intend you to understand these dates in a precise way, in a way that you could use them to build a chronology. And that was what Christians have been doing from the earliest times. And he said, but when I talk to conservative evangelicals, they're just, you know, they're just squeamish about this. They don't want to go there. And so they come up with all these sort of, well, you know, the Bible doesn't really give us a date for the creation of Adam. And it doesn't tell us a date for the flood. And you know, they want to keep it all vague. And Bar just had no time for that. He just said, look, you're taking the chronology of the Bible seriously. But you're actually not taking the chronology of Genesis 1 to 11 seriously. And there's absolutely no coherent reason for taking one seriously and not the other. And so I think this, this sort of squeamishness, which I think comes from honorable motives, because of Steven sort of touched on earlier, it's because they want to insulate the Bible from scientific and historical criticism. But the society to almost focus on the gospel. So let's get bogged down on that. We just want people to hear the gospel. Yeah. So they want to kind of insulate the Bible from criticism in that way. And so they come up with, you know, theistic evolution where God is sort of working invisibly behind the scenes. But the cost of doing that is basically a relevance, because the Bible then, those early chapters, at least, become disconnected from reality. And if they're disconnected from reality, why on earth should people listen to anything that we have to say? You know, it kind of plays into the hands of those who see faith as arbitrary, who see faith as kind of private rather than public. And the other thing is it actually swaps one apologetic problem for another, for others. Actually, that I would argue a harder to deal with. So the science problem, I think, we've got strategies to deal with the scientific questions. But by adopting theistic evolution, you then get all of these problems which Stephen has touched on. What about death? Where did death come from? Is death the consequence of sin? Why did Jesus have to physically die? And actually, I think those are much harder questions to deal with. And theistic evolution leaves us, I think, without a coherent framework for answering them. Yeah. I've been involved in certain debates on that. One of the things I've tried to point out to the theistic evolutionists is that in the evolutionary account of reality, death is the engine of life. It completely backwards to the Christian account of reality. In Paul, the Apostle describes enemy as the last, describes death as the last enemy to be defeated. Whereas evolution says, no, death is the creative friend of life because it's that from which all kinds of life come and continue to emerge and diversify and so forth. So it has though, and so it seems to me that what the Christians try to do there is take two completely incompatible worldviews and weld them together in a catastrophic fudge that actually satisfies neither side. You're certainly not going to satisfy Richard Dawkins with that. And you're not going to satisfy the serious believer. And that skepticism, though, that you talked about too, I just wanted to pick up because I remember some years ago, and this is vague in my mind now, because it was a number of years back, but there was a survey done over the British public and surveys have been done in the US as well. And it does seem to be that it doesn't matter how much evolutionary indoctrination happens in the schools and in the universities, about half of people just aren't convinced. And which is very, very interesting. And I remember the new atheist getting very upset about this a few years ago about the, you know, there must be a big failure in education. We've had this endless indoctrination on this issue for so long. And yet actually, it hasn't really moved the needle with the unbeliever. Sometimes you almost find it's the Christians who are more reluctant, more squeamish, as you said, get into this than the non-Christians themselves. This failure to perceive that the evolutionary paradigm comes to us as a totalizing worldview that begins, you know, with the quantum fluctuation of the vacuum. There is no point in the story, where you can just suddenly say, oh, well, now God jumps into these gaps. It's a totalizing story and account of reality. And yet, Genesis 3.15, if we're going to take the word of God seriously, gives us that first announcement of the gospel right back there in Genesis. We have to take, as you've said, Genesis 1 through 11 just as seriously. Let's talk a little bit about then, you know, we've touched on it a bit, but the role of the biblical creation account in worldview formation. Because if you, this is very much related to what you guys have just talked about, when you look at the culture today and the places in which the maximal pressure is being placed on Christian teaching, it's very interesting that in areas where the surrender of Genesis and the doctrine of creation has been critical, marriage, the nature of marriage, human identity as male and female, the whole area of gender roles, gender distinctions, gender distinctives, the confusion of what does it mean to be a human being? Are we just a random collocation of atoms, are you know, Bertrand Russell? Are we just a sociological phenomena? Are we just biochemical machines? And then that moves into even more contemporary or equally contemporary questions in the area of technology and AI and what is it? What's the difference between the artificial and the human, the synthetic and the truly human and so on? But it seems to me that the questions that are really confronting our culture right now in a multiplicity of areas take their root from a biblical standpoint in the book of Genesis, human beings made in the image of God. And if the church should not surrender the biblical teaching about creation, maybe there'd be a lot less confusion even in the church today around these key issues around life. You know, think about beginning and end of life issues, for example, the abortion issue, youth and Asia, which is, well, it's already rampant in Canada and it's a live debate continues to be a live debate in the UK. All of these issues about what it means to be human ultimately center in in Genesis and creation. What are your thoughts there? I mean, as we as we look at the culture right now, how can we positively rebuild in some of these areas by taking Genesis seriously? Will you write that these are almost the presenting issues that Christians are often very exercised about, issues of marriage and sexuality and all these things. And rightly so. But I think often miss the sort of what's happened that they're symptomatic of yeah, this deeper problem. And it's almost because we've lost that confidence in that whole biblical narrative that this whole other view has taken over. And it links to what we were saying before about sort of the sort of basis in reality. Because you know, Chris, I hear many sermons rightly talking about our unique human identity as the image of God and how God has made us special. And you think that's great, that's true, that's what Genesis teaches. But almost in the next sermon, you get told, well, of course, what you believe about, you know, exactly whether Adam existed or how he was created or whatever, really, really doesn't matter very much. Well, those two things don't go together. You can't just, you can't say God made a special, it's actually he didn't make a special. It just becomes sort of almost theological bluster, theological hot air that we have this special human uniqueness, but it's not actually based on any reality, anything actually happened in history. And I think that really weakens our position. And it tends to actually rather spiritualize our human identity. Yeah, it becomes this sort of spiritual thing that you can't really sort of almost verify or identify very clearly, which I think actually has real implications for some of those other aspects of the debate, you know, so with AI and whatever, the sort of importance of the physicality of our of our humanness. And I think one of the beauties of creationism is the way it holds the physical and spiritual together in a way you obviously see in the incarnation. And that sort of beautiful consistency you get in Christianity, where the spiritual and physical are co-hosts, they're held together and that to me is just crucial for so many, so many issues. Yeah, if the evolutionary narrative is correct and we're trying to sort of baptize the evolutionary narrative, you know, and say, well Adam was, you know, a hominin who was chosen by God, you know, from out of a population. Well, he was physically identical, his body was identical to all of those other hominins. And so what does the image of God mean? Well, it's something added to his physical nature, but his physical nature was shared, you know, with these these non-human animals. Like his parents. Like his parents. And that has all kinds of implications then for how we understand human identity, our embodiveness, it has implications, I think, the whole gender debates and the relationship between gender and sexuality. You know, are these things rooted in physical truth in biology, you know, in the way that God made us? Or are they just things that are sort of added to us, you know, things that we can change because we perceive them in a different way. So I think there are really sort of wide implications here. And Stephen's right, I mean, the seeds of many of these modern problems was so in a long time ago when Christians really vacated the intellectual arena. And that's partly why we're doing what we're doing because we want hinders to recapture that. We're wanting to sort of get back to that research base and do something new and original and challenging that actually tackles these problems at their root, rather than kind of troubleshooting problems, you know, the symptoms of the deeper problem. Yeah, I mean, part of the tragedy has been the danger was being almost seen as more holy if you vacated those spaces, whether it be the scientific or the political arena or whatever else, that kind of great reversal as misseologists call it, that movement away from the engagement that actually gave us the great universities and the Cavendish physics laboratory there at Cambridge. The great inscriptions and the motos of our great university, they were a reflection of Christian engagement, the analyzing of our convictions. Sorry, can I just interrupt you there because the if you look at the statutes of many Cambridge colleges, it talks about the colleges there to to be a place of education, religion, learning and research. That's how these places were found, that's how the university was founded. And you got that sort of religion in that, which to modernly is sounds really weird, you know, we're religion, that's just a private thing if that suits you, you know, it's sort of up in the air somewhere, it's got nothing to do with the education, learning and research. But that is not how the original founders saw it. And in a way, what we are trying to do, I think in the creation ministry, is to bring those together and to say, well, actually the religion in the sense of Christianity and the biblical witness we have there is actually the foundation really for all of those other things. And almost all of those other things, the research, the learning is ultimately part of our worship of God, you know, it's both founded on this and it's what it's for. So the whole thing is beautifully integrated and it's almost trying to recapture just almost where these things actually began in the first place. So I like to say, well, we're not actually doing anything very, very novel, you know, this is just getting back to what's normal. And you see it there above the door of the Cavendish, don't you? We've got the Psalm 111 verse 2, great other works of the Lord, study by all who delight in them. And that's really that if you like, that's kind of mototex for what we do, great other works will be lost, studied by all who delight in them. That's what we're trying to do through our research, through our education programs, you know, so all the things that we're doing. Seems to me that fundamentally we've got to repudiate any kind of dualism. You went back to Stephen to the creation of Adam. He was made a living being. And there was something I think we've had a tendency, especially in the after the scholastics, especially in trying to sort of bring our Aristotle and Christianity another synthesis project that I think was less than successful. Where we try and sort of view the human person as an uncomfortable assemblage of a spirit and this material body and God sort of somehow had to glue them together, you know, it turned all souls, dropped down from on high into mid, but that's not the, that's not how the creation account comes to us. The human, the human person is a unity. Paul says in Romans 12, you present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, because this is your spiritual act of worship. And I think you're right that this, this, the danger of turning the Christian gospel here into a mystery religion, a kind of nosticism that is disconnected from reality. And I think that that almost that sort of nostic attitude is reflected in our in contemporary secular views of gender and sexuality and so forth where that where even the, you know, those in the secular sciences now, even among the the so-called new who are now old atheists are sort of horrified by the decay of science in the West because this because actually what the evolutionary worldview has created and and and it's presence in the church has meant that, you know, we kind of feel insecure and squeamish about addressing these cultural issues because we actually don't have, I mean, if, if marriage, for example, if male and female identity of marriage, as it's given to us in scriptures, in fact, not the case and the, and as you mentioned, Paul, the basic unit of evolution is population, not the individual and Eve wasn't created in the way scripture says, then really, these are these distinctions that we have today socio culturally are less than fully real than not grounded ultimately in creation. And then we then we can have sociological critical theories like those of Judith Butler that says, well, sex is fictive, it's a creation of language repetition and nothing more. Is there a physical body prior to perception and cultural reflection? Then nobody really knows. You know, that kind of thing that is current in the university departments could have been refuted by clearly by the true church by God's people being faithful in this whole, in this whole area. So in light of all of that and recognizing that this is obviously so critical not just to, you know, we can't put what you guys are doing and what Ezra talks about in this area into some kind of egghead research box over here that's not really that relevant to the rest of us Christians. We just believe the gospel and do evangelism. You know, this is central and it's central to the discussions and the debates that are taking place in the public space in the culture right now. It's central to what's going on in the universities. And, you know, what is a human being? That the fundamental level, what does it mean to be human? This is what the Genesis account answers. This is what the word of God answers for us. And this is what you guys are saying as a paradigm needs to be central in the life of the church and which you are bridging the gap between the scientific research and that interface with the Christian community. So how can, what is it that you would be saying today to, you know, the Christian church, the Christian community in the West in Britain, but beyond in America and in Canada today and so on. But perhaps especially in the UK, because I find my experience and, you know, my regular travel back was on Fords is that we're more squeamish in Britain right now on these subjects than our North American brothers and sisters. Not that the dangers aren't the same, but we're the it's easier I find in the churches at least to address these issues head on. What might be some of the the strategies that what are the ways we can most effectively engage and transform the landscape on this right now? I mean, I have in my notes here that, you know, there's there are two sort of there's a ditch on either side of the road on one side there's biblicism which says, well, the only the only worthwhile knowledge that you can have about anything is found in the Bible and you know, the science these guys are doing scientific research just it's not important. And then on the other side, the the scientist and which says, well, actually, you know, this kind of yeah, there's a vague I mean, among Christians, a vague there's a there's a spiritual knowledge about salvation in the Bible. But but the only really kind of reliable knowledge about the world and history that we can have is in the hard sciences and there's a kind of profound naivety there in terms of even the philosophy of science and how paradigms and scientific revolutions happen. We won't get if we start that discussion about a kurn and popper and others will we'll never stop about, you know, how scientific revolutions take place and the naivety of that sort of scientism. But there is a ditch on both sides of the road. How can how can you guys help us think about the best way for us strategically to impact the church and then how Christians can then in terms of a biblical understanding of creation really start to impact the culture. If in no other way, Stephen Paul, then helping the gospel to land because in terms of the way we think about the gospels and I think it was you Stephen, you mentioned this, you know, well, repent of your sin and believe the gospel because Christ died for you. Well, okay, well, why did, you know, Christ need to die? And how does this, how does this actually relate to or connect with my real life in the world? Is this like just an alternative to golf that you go to church or to yoga class? I mean, you know, your spirituality. How do we make this, what's the best way for us to make these kinds of connections now? Well, I think there are lots of important things that we could do that we can do. The area where we felt called to contribute is through research. You know, we are self-consciously integrationists. You know, you talk about this division between scientists on the one hand, Biblicalism on the other. We want to build scientific models on a biblical foundation. We want to, we want to bring the Bible and science together because we think they belong together. We don't believe that these are just separate domains of knowledge that shouldn't be allowed to interact with one another and obviously scripture having the priority. But, you know, we want to integrate. The Bible is part of the evidence that we want to explain in our models. We don't want to leave the Bible outside the lab door. You know, that's our approach. Because we have this challenge, you see, you know, here we are sort of claiming that creationism is based on reality and that this actually gives us the kind of ontological grounding for all of the things that we've been talking about. You know, the Bible is talking about historical reality, but that leaves us with a challenge, doesn't it? Because people then rightly come to us and say, well, where's the evidence? You know, doesn't genetics tell us there was no Adam and Eve? Doesn't geology tell us that there was no worldwide flood? And so it's then incumbent on us to do the research and to do more than just take pot shots at evolution, but to show that by taking the Bible seriously, by understanding that the Bible, you know, gives us a historical framework in Genesis 1 to 11 that helps us to understand the history of the world, to show that we can use that framework to go out and do good science, that we can explain the data better. We're not smuggling the Bible in. We explicitly start with the Bible. And as Stephen says, this is the way that the universities originally began. And I think that then gives us the grounding to address many of these other topics. We're going back to where the rot set in, if you like, repaturing some of that lost ground. And I think also it gives us a very compelling apologetic because people will hang on to bad ideas until you can come up and give them a better explanation. And if we can give people better explanations, things that make more sense of the world around us, the things that we see humanity, the world, rocks, fossils, we can give people better explanations for those things. That is a very attractive and compelling apologetic. And I think as well, I mean, for Christians and the Church, that many people to see the beautiful simplicity of creationism. I mean, once you start going down to the these to evolution paths, everything gets terribly complicated. You've got all this strange relationship between these, you know, people that are connected to Adam and other people that are maybe not and how you can understand death and what was God doing with that in the first place. Everything gets terribly messy. That there is a beautiful simplicity to saying that we are human beings descended from one person made or two people made specially together as God's image. And the whole creation redemption pattern we have in Scripture, which again is actually integral in the whole sort of early creeds of the Church. You know, what we are, we sort of separated out this creation thing is, well, that's just almost the sort of scenery. You know, you have to have creation to get everything going. But the real, the real sort of meat of it all is about redemption. It's not like that. The creation isn't just this sort of backdrop to the rest of the story. It's integral to it. And indeed, it's why creation is in itself part of redemption. You know, Christ's work on the cross was also to a confidence and redemption of creation to bring about a whole new creation. And I think there's a beautiful consistency in that that is very attractive and actually leads you very naturally to the gospel. I sometimes say that this creation issue is almost the quickest way into the gospel that I know, you know, people say, well, this is a distraction, not at all. And the main example I sometimes give is on a few occasions, quite some time ago now, where I've been on sort of national television and asked about my creationist views. I end up talking about the gospel, not because I'm trying to change the subject and to say, well, I'm on the telly, let's talk about the gospel. It's a natural outworking of what I believe sort of scientifically, if you like, that this is all connected to Jesus dying for our sins. So I think if Christians can get to see that, they see the appeal of this and the incredible evangelistic opportunity it gives us. And you know, we've put that focus on research. But of course, research is best done in community. Yeah. You know, we're not loan ranges. And so that's really what we're doing here in Cambridge. That's our whole vision for establishing a creation study center here embedded alongside a world class university. But a kind of hub for research and education where we can persuade people where we can drain students, nurture a new generation of leaders thinkers. And this applies not only in science really, but all disciplines. We kind of want everybody to have a creationist worldview and to have that shape there, their life, their ministry, you know, whatever career they're going into. And so that's really the vision behind what we're calling Cambridge House. And first step was sort of physically locating here and having the offices, but our longer term goal is to have a fully fledged study center here in Cambridge. It's a fantastic goal. This ultimately helping everyone in the various disciplines recognize the the continuity of creation and redemption. And I think that's a very, very critical point that I think you highlighted Stephen that has gone missing, I think in much evangelicalism. The historical continuum within which creation, redemption stand to one another. You know, near Orthodoxy came along with the likes of Carbats and everything else. And it's as though as though Christianity begins with sin, begins with with the fall of man. And that's where it seems a lot of evangelical theology has got stuck. It it doesn't go back to actually the goodness of God's creation. God's creation or law order and the structures that he's established for creation. And that Christ is indeed renewing and restoring. The other impression you often get is because of this lack of the historical continuum being present is that it's as though redemption is about us escaping from the world. You know, barely with our skin, just about with a resurrected body finally at the end. Not the reconciliation of all things to God. Not Romans 8 where the creation which been subject to a bondage to corruption is going to be released from its bondage to decay in terms of the glorious freedom of the children of God that that's our inheritance as it were our adoption of sons, the redemption of our bodies and that creation's destiny is tied to our destiny in that in the reality of that historical continuum. We are creatures. We're part of this creation. This is our world. This is people often, you know, a lot of evangelicals very sort of flippantly talk about, you know, this world is not our home. That's not true. This world is our home. God created it as our home. Christ came into it. It was incarnate into it was raised physically in a physical body from the dead. He's the first born from the dead and he's now restoring and reconciling all things to the father. I love the way Paul outlines it all in 1 Corinthians 15, you know, Adam, 1st Adam and then Christ the first fruits and then the kingdom is handed over to the father and just get it restored recovering that creation or worldview. I think it's central. I want to commend you guys for the work that you're doing at biblical creation. Trust this interface of the research, getting that understanding of that research downloaded into the churches so that this can not be seen as an icky squeamish discussion, but one which is really, really important and central to the life of the Christian church and of the fruitfulness of the gospel that actually the more a creation or worldview is inculcated, the more people will be actually able to comprehend the preaching of Christ because suddenly it won't be like a disconnected gospel headline. It will actually make sense of that there's a story behind this and I'll make sense of our headlines. So before I sign off any last thing that you might to Stephen and then Paul, any last thing you'd want to say to our listeners before we wrap up the show. I think we need to be a bit bolder. I think as Christians we've been a little bit sort of cowled by the opposition and by, you know, feeling like a minority, I mean, maybe particularly so in Britain, but to me, people today are looking for answers. There's some sense that the sort of narrative that seems to have produced a lot of prosperity and everything for decades since the Second World War is beginning to unravel and there's a, I think the beginnings of looking for something else. So that we need to be in there not sort of, almost reiterating what they're getting from everyone else and putting a sort of Christian gloss on it, but actually a distinctive Christian view that yes, is controversial. Yes, it is different, but that is precisely its attraction because it's grounded in truth, it's grounded in reality. And to almost take the sort of risk involved in that, we're going to be a bit sort of risk averse, I think. And saying, well, look, if we really believe scripture is true, then let's stick our neck out and say, well, actually looking at these rocks, that these fossils, that this biological phenomena are on the basis of the truth of scripture, we should actually get some better results. So let's put that to the test. And that's risky, but it's also incredibly fulfilling as you do that. And the research that's already been done, I think we have a track record of success. I mean, it's actually quite astonishing when you think of how small the creationist movement is, how underfunded we are. Really, we've only been doing this kind of research for a relatively short time and actually to see some of the results is quite impressive. I think we should see the problems in culture as an opportunity. We can not only critique what's going on in culture, I think we've got the opportunity to do something really new and original and exciting. I think we have an opportunity to set the agenda with new research, but that does require long term thinking. It requires hard work and resources. It's not a short term fix, but I do believe it has the potential to be transformative. And maybe if I could just finish by saying, if anybody does want to find out about the work of the Cambridge House project, they can go to our website, which is chproject.org.uk. And that will tell you more about what we're doing and the student ministry that we're running here, and we had a summer school back in June. And our vision is that maybe in 10 years time, we'll have a new generation of students and scholars who are working within a creationist worldview, doing research in their own disciplines, but there'll be cultural change in the church. It's a big vision. It's ambitious. We can only pray that Lord will bless what we're doing and provide for what we're doing. But we want to see creation of this part and parcel of normal Christian life and ministry, because we think that's absolutely vital for the health of the church. Fantastic. Well, I want to encourage all of our listeners who are tuning in today to check out the work of biblical creation trust and this project in Cambridge, check out the resources, look at what's going on and find ways to get involved. Paul and Stephen, thank you very much for your time today for joining us for the podcast for Cultural Reformation. I'm sure there'll be an opportunity in the future to have you back. And all that remains for me to say, as always, is for from him and through him and to him are all things to Christ be the glory. We'll see you next week.