Todd Wood Meets Todd Wood

Today, I have been studying Isaiah 43 and the Hebrew words in relation to God as the sovereign Creator.  My study on scriptural origins has led me to a curious pursuit of a whole variety of contemporary book conversations (both popular and academic).

 

I owe Hanna Rosin on this one.  She wrote a book, God’s Harvard (Harcourt, 2007).  And this book introduced me to Todd Wood!  I can’t believe this!  A Todd Wood much smarter than me.  But who also actually believes in the glorious Creator!  And I would assume that Todd also believes in the omnipotent God who creates ex nihilo.  This has made my day!

This is taken from chapter eight of Hanna’s book:

Every summer the Baraminology Study Group holds its annual conference at one of the handful of “old earth” creationist schools with science departments. . . .

 

At lunch on the opening day of the conference, they bonded over their favorite topic:  the dunce-cap creationists.  The baraminologists see themselves as the bad boys of ICR—the Institute for Creation Research—mad geniuses who will soon leave those amateur scientists in the dust.  “Man, the notion that someone spends hours of their time posting that nasty stuff on the Internet,” someone said.  “It’s just slop before swine.”

 

“It’s slop fromthe swine,” corrected Todd Wood, who got his Ph.D. from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics at the University of Virginia.  “Most of us tend to have advanced degrees; we have couple of chemists, geologists, an astronomer, a bunch of biologists, a math whiz,” Wood continued, turning to me.

 

Whereas creationists tend to be?

 

“Uhh.  Profoundly uneducated?”  Wood answered.  “Oh, I don’t know.  I think a lot of them just repeat some bad information found on the Internet.  It’s frankly appalling to see a so-called creationist and evolutionist go at each other and hack and slash for hours.  I think sometimes they do it just for fight.”

 

A creationist who makes it through a respectable graduate program has two options:  Stay undercover or come out and fight.  Although she never tried to hide here beliefs, Gruenke took the quiet road in graduate school, keeping her views mostly to herself and sticking to cell research.  The fighter among them is Kurt Wise (192-193). . . .

 

In 1989 Wise got a job at Tennessee’s Bryan College, named after William Jennings Bryan and located just down the road from the court where the Scopes trial took place.  There he started the Center for Origins Research, an outpost for young-earth biologists.  On a creationist Web site he came across Todd Wood, whose views were similar to his, and a decade later, recruited Wood to Bryan. . . . In 1995 Wise, Wood, and several like-minded scientists turned an Internet discussion group into the BSG (197).

Our church family is studying Isaiah 43 this Wednesday evening.  On Sunday nights, we are studying Genesis.  This summer, we will be using Answers in Genesis curriculum for our children’s Vacation Bible School.  It is nice that Todd Wood in Idaho Falls, Idaho in the midst of all his theological studies and discussing creation ex nihilo with LDS friends can also pick the mind of Dr. Todd Wood in future days on scholarly, scientific analysis.

 

This is just incredible that I have found this out.  Thanks again Hanna.

  

12 comments

  1. Todd,

    No offense, but we haven’t actually discussed the topic of creation as found in the bible. I am still waiting for that, as my post was intending to start such discussion. But thanks for linking to my post anyway.

  2. I also just attended a lecture from a well-known scholar visiting our campus today named Gary Rendsburg.

    (You can see his website here:

    http://jewishstudies.rutgers.edu/faculty/grendsburg/

    )

    His talk was about Hebrew literary forms in the biblical texts, but he did talk briefly about Gen. 1.1 as well as its implications for that fact that it is in the construct state. He said the waters are obviously there when God begins to create. (He actually said that the “waters” were “preexistent”).

    Just thought I’d throw in another interesting tidbit.

  3. I said:

    “He said the waters are obviously there when God begins to create. (He actually said that the “waters” were “preexistent”).”

    I meant to say:

    He affirmed that the chaotic “waters” are there when God begins to create. (He said that the “waters” were “preexistent”).

  4. You like my discussion, Dart. 🙂

    I am waiting for Ostler’s books in the mail. This might be weird, but I do my best concentrating with books.

  5. I like Rendsburg’s stuff. It’s too bad he ended up at Rutgers, which has no graduate program (but he was being really stifled at, um, can’t remember where he was before that.)

    Rendsburg was the protege of Cyrus Gordon, and lots of REndsburg’s papers are available from his site.

  6. Dart, I just got an email from Amazon that one of Ostler’s books is unavailable, and they cancelled this from my order.

    I will try to seek a reorder somewhere else.

  7. Todd,

    You should order them from independent sellers (i.e., used and new). Usually always faster and cheaper.

    —

    Nitsav,

    I read some of his papers on his website, and his lecture on campus was also really interesting. He does mention Cyrus Gordon in almost all of his lectures.

    My Hebrew professor studied with him and offered him an opportunity to lecture here.

  8. Oh and Todd, I forgot to ask.

    On your other post you quoted a book saying thus:

    “This Gospel, then, is that God is our holy Creator and righteous Judge. He created us to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever, but we have all sinned, both in Adam as our representative head, and in our individual actions (Rom. 5:12; 3:23). We therefore deserve death—spiritual separation from God in hell (Rom. 6:23; Eph. 2:3)—and are in fact already spiritually stillborn, helpless in our sins (Ps. 51:5; Rom. 5:6-8; Eph. 2:1) and in need of God to impart spiritual life to us (Ezek. 37:1-4; John 3:3). But God sent His Son Jesus Christ, fully God and full man (Phil. 2:5-11), to die the death that we deserved, and He raised Him up for our justification, proving that He was God’s Son (Rom. 5:1; 1:4). If we would have Christ’s perfect righteousness credited to us, and the penalty for our sins accounted to Him, we must repent of our sins and believe in Jesus Christ for salvation (2 Cor. 5:21; Mark 1:14-15).”

    Although various doctrines of imputation and original sin are treated at length in Blake’s second book which you will be reading soon, I’m sure, I want to ask anyway what happens to little children who die without faith in Jesus on your view. Can you give me a direct answer? It seems to me from your view (and quote of the notion of “federal head”, etc.) that they must surely be damned. I’d like to know your straight-up answer.

  10. Todd, thanks for the answer.

    Can you expound on your view in this post or a future one.
    I’d be curious to understand your reasoning in connection with the doctrines you seem to hold of predestination, imputed righteousness, original sin and federal head, salvation by faith alone through grace alone, the fate of the unevangelized, etc.

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