Creation as an Introduction to Christian Thought

by Henry Vander Goot

Overview

This volume outlines a comprehensive worldview perspective of "creation, fall, and restoration." There is no need to be dependent on what the dominant, after freedom culture dispenses as alternative perspectives. Use the spectacles of the Scriptures to help see creation realities more properly. This is best accomplished through Christian education.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798385252329
Publisher:	Wipf & Stock Publishers
Publication date:	07/31/2025
Pages:	154
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.44(d)

About the Author

Henry Vander Goot was professor of religion and theology at Calvin University (1976-92) and CEO of Bargain Books (1992-2023). He is the author of Interpreting the Bible in Theology and the Church (1984); editor of Creation and Method: Critical Essays on Christocentric Theology (1982); and editor of Life Is Religion: Essays in Honor of H. Evan Runner (1981).

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“This book makes a bold and provocative claim: The eclipse of creation in modern thought has had ruinous consequences for Christian thinking and living. Effectively combining personal biography, critical historical reflection, and concrete, practical application, Vander Goot sets forth a persuasive creation-based worldview argument, targeting especially the influential Christomonistic thinking of Karl Barth and the seductive mythology of evolutionism.”

—John Bolt, Jean and Kenneth Baker Professor of Systematic Theology, Emeritus, Calvin Theological Seminary



“This slender volume makes an outsized contribution to contemporary Christian thought. Henry Vander Goot reminds us that the opening chapter of Genesis settles us into a familiar world, the one in which we actually live. He calls for something much more ambitious than a ‘theology of creation.’ Today’s church needs to nurture Christian philosophy, an approach informed by scripture that seeks to see and understand reality, which is at once more available to reason than our secular sciences imagine—and more wonderful and humane.”

—R. R. Reno, Editor, First Things



“In this book Henry Vander Goot has attempted something audacious: rescuing traditional Christian ideas of creation both from the secular evolutionists and from contemporary christological pieties. He demonstrates that both kinds of thinking, seemingly opposed as they are, have vacated purposiveness from the natural world, replacing ordered design with assertions of progress or salvific escape. This vacating has left us morally adrift. His book operates as a tonic against the gnostic impulses animating so much of contemporary thinking about the world, secular and religious alike, and in the process provides a framework for tackling one of the central challenges of the age: the integration of notions of self, God, and world that alone can lead to personal integrity.”

—Jeffrey Polet, Director of the Ford Leadership Forum, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation

Editorial Reviews

This book makes a bold and provocative claim: The eclipse of creation in modern thought has had ruinous consequences for Christian thinking and living. Effectively combining personal biography, critical historical reflection, and concrete, practical application, Vander Goot sets forth a persuasive creation-based worldview argument, targeting especially the influential Christomonistic thinking of Karl Barth and the seductive mythology of evolutionism.”

—John Bolt, Jean and Kenneth Baker Professor of Systematic Theology, Emeritus, Calvin Theological Seminary



“This slender volume makes an outsized contribution to contemporary Christian thought. Henry Vander Goot reminds us that the opening chapter of Genesis settles us into a familiar world, the one in which we actually live. He calls for something much more ambitious than a ‘theology of creation.’ Today’s church needs to nurture Christian philosophy, an approach informed by scripture that seeks to see and understand reality, which is at once more available to reason than our secular sciences imagine—and more wonderful and humane.”

—R. R. Reno, Editor, First Things



“In this book Henry Vander Goot has attempted something audacious: rescuing traditional Christian ideas of creation both from the secular evolutionists and from contemporary christological pieties. He demonstrates that both kinds of thinking, seemingly opposed as they are, have vacated purposiveness from the natural world, replacing ordered design with assertions of progress or salvific escape. This vacating has left us morally adrift. His book operates as a tonic against the gnostic impulses animating so much of contemporary thinking about the world, secular and religious alike, and in the process provides a framework for tackling one of the central challenges of the age: the integration of notions of self, God, and world that alone can lead to personal integrity.”

—Jeffrey Polet, Director of the Ford Leadership Forum, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation

From the Publisher