Scripture, Evolution and the Problem of Science, Pt. 1
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Today's entry was written by
Kenton Sparks.
Kenton Sparks is professor of Biblical Studies at Eastern University and author of several books, including his latest God's Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship
My general theme is the perennial conflict between faith and science, but the immediate precipitating issue is evolution. More than any other avenue of scientific inquiry (even more, it would seem, than the search for “God” in our neurons) evolution seems to bring scientific insight into direct conflict. This conflict is not only with the facts of Genesis 1-2, but also with the very theological bases of the Christian tradition itself: the special creation of humanity, the fall, and the entrance of death into the world.
In the next several posts, I do not aim to solve the theological problems raised by evolution as much as rethink the nature of the conflict between faith and science itself so that a more lasting solution to these theological dilemmas can be posed.
Part 1: The Bible and Science: Old Strategies for an Old Problem
Let us begin with one of the great fathers of the early church, St. Augustine. Writing in his 5th century commentary on the book of Genesis, he lamented the embarrassment created when Christians interpreted the Bible without recourse to science:
Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions … Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.1
One issue that confronted Augustine was a conflict between the best cosmological thought of his day (the Ptolemaic view that a spherical earth was orbited by the heavenly bodies of the cosmos) and two other Christian views, according to which the heavens were either a vaulted half-dome or a flat disk suspended above a flat earth. As his above comment suggests, Augustine’s response was to advance an interpretation of the Bible that made room for the science.2
This set of priorities may strike some evangelicals as a bit odd, but it was in keeping with Augustine’s general approach to the apparent contradictions and problems in the Bible itself. Whenever two biblical texts seemed to contradict each other on a “literal” reading, Augustine was quite willing to assume that one or both were figural or allegorical. In a similar way, Augustine found it important to use his interpretive strategies to harmonize Scripture with the accredited results of science.
Regarding the shape of the cosmos, Augustine argued that the vaulted “half-dome” presented in Genesis 1 complemented the Ptolemaic view of a spherical earth. So Genesis gives us a partial picture of the larger scientific whole. As for the other Christian theory, which maintained on the basis of Psalm 103:2 that the heavens are disk-shaped3, Augustine explained that this psalm is allegorical and shouldn’t be used as a literal description of scientific facts. So here and at many other points in his commentary, Augustine found it advantageous to treat the biblical text as allegorical or figural when this suited the scientific evidence.
We can draw three insights from Augustine’s work and approach. First, the problem of apparent conflict between the Bible and science is not a new problem but rather a perennial one, nearly as old as the Christian Bible itself. Secondly, Augustine regarded it as important to let the scientific evidence have a say in how the Bible should be interpreted. He did not assume that the science was wrong simply because it contradicted what he took to be a literal reading of Scripture. Third, one of Augustine’s favorite exegetical strategies for resolving theological conflict was to closely consider the genre of the biblical text. If the biblical text contradicted good science, he recognized the possibility that the text was not a literal, scientific text.
This does not mean, however, that Augustine was unwilling in principle to take a strong stand against contemporary science. For instance, Augustine strongly resisted scientific objections to the biblical claim, in Genesis 1:6-7, that there were “waters above the heavens.” After rejecting both the scientific evidence against the Bible and the allegorical possibilities in the Bible, he concluded that these waters actually did exist because “the authority of Scripture in this matter is greater than all human ingenuity.” Of course, were he alive in the era of space exploration I suspect that he’d head in another direction and direct us to allegorize the heavenly waters. But in Augustine’s day, as he points out in some detail, the scientific evidence appeared to be fairly ambiguous.
From this I’d draw one last observation from Augustine’s work: whenever he considered the scientific evidence very strong, he adjusted his view of the Bible to make room for the science; when he considered the scientific evidence to be weak, he sided with Scripture. I would suggest that this element in Augustine’s approach brings us face to face with the scientific and theological question that confronts modern Christians: Is the evidence for evolution so overwhelming and clear that we must adjust our views of Scripture and theology to make room for it? Or is the evidence actually very weak and carelessly cobbled together by godless scientists who wish to discredit the Christian faith? I will come back to this question in a later essay.
Regarding the problem of science and Scripture, one option that Augustine did not consider in any of his work was the possibility that the biblical cosmology was actually wrong. So far as I know, we must leap forward about one thousand years to find a notable Christian theologian who said something like this. I refer to John Calvin and his commentary on Genesis.
In Calvin’s day the science was modestly more advanced than in Augustine’s day and, as a result, the Bible’s claim that there were “waters above the heavens” presented a more serious problem for him. The difficulty was exacerbated because Calvin’s interpretive tradition tended to reject allegories, so that Scripture, as a literal depiction of the cosmos, was brought into a very direct conflict with science.
Would Calvin side with the truth of literal Scripture or the accredited facts of science? Here is Calvin’s comment about the “waters above the firmament”:
For, to my mind, this is a certain principle: that nothing is treated here except the visible form of the world. Whoever wishes to learn astronomy and other esoteric arts, let him go elsewhere … Therefore, the things which he [i.e., Moses] relates, serve as the decorative objects from that theatre which he [i.e., God] places before our eyes.From this I conclude that the waters intended here are such as the crude and unlearned may perceive. The assertion of some, that they embrace by faith what they have read concerning the waters above the heavens, notwithstanding their ignorance of them, is not in accordance with the design of Moses. And truly a longer inquiry into a matter open and manifest is superfluous [emphasis mine].4
One should not, Calvin says, believe “by faith” that there are waters above the firmament when one knows good and well that this is not the case. In Calvin’s view, Genesis merely accommodated itself to the ancient and errant human view that such waters existed.5
Calvin similarly argued that accommodation was at work in the chronological system used to enumerate the various creation days of Genesis 1. Because the text reflects an acceptance of the ancient view of time, says Calvin, “It is useless to dispute whether this is the best and legitimate order or not.”6 In other words, accommodation was for Calvin what allegory was for Augustine … a useful interpretive tool because it made the Bible’s apparent scientific “errors” irrelevant. God does not err in Scripture … but Scripture does reflect the errant views of the ancient biblical audience.
Calvin’s approach parallels Augustine’s in numerous respects. Foremost, we see that Calvin took the science very seriously and recognized that the scientific evidence can become so clear to educated minds that it can no longer be “trumped” by Scripture. He was so committed to this perspective that he was willing, in this case, to admit that the biblical cosmology was wrong.
Secondly, like Augustine, Calvin turned to genre as a solution to the problem of Scripture’s error. However, where Augustine used allegory to make Scripture correct, Calvin used accommodation to absolve God of error in Scripture. Scripture does reflect an errant view, said Calvin, but the error is not God’s error … it is the error of the ancient human audience, perpetuated in the Biblical text because the Bible is not a science book. To put it in Calvin’s own words, “Whoever wishes to learn astronomy and other esoteric arts, let him go elsewhere.”
If Calvin was right, then we should by all means avoid an interpretive habit that assumes that, in our pursuit scientific knowledge, the Bible is always a better resource than the tools and traditions of the modern academy. I will take up this point in part 2.
1. Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis (2 vols.; trans. J. H. Taylor; New York: Paulist Press, 1982), 1.42-43.
2. My remaining relate to Augustine’s commentary in The Literal Meaning of Genesis, 1.1-61.
3. “[God] stretches out the heavens like a skin” (Ps 103:2).
4. Calvin, Commentaries on the First Book of Moses called Genesis, 79-80. Calvin’s approach to Genesis is given more general expression in his Institutes: “For who is so devoid of intellect as not to understand that God, in so speaking, lisps with us as nurses are wont to do with little children? Such modes of expression, therefore, do not so much express what kind of a being God is, as accommodate the knowledge of him to our feebleness. In doing so, he must, of course, stoop far below his proper height.” See John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (2 vols.; London: Clarke, 1949), 1.13.1.
5. For discussions of Calvin’s accommodation theology, see Jon Balserak, “‘The Accommodating Act Par Excellence?’: An Inquiry into the Incarnation and Calvin's Understanding of Accommodation,” Scottish Journal of Theology 55 (2002): 408-23; Ford L. Battles, “God Was Accommodating Himself to Human Capacity,” Interpretation 31 (1977): 19-38; David F. Wright, “Calvin’s Pentateuchal Criticism: Equity, Hardness of Heart, and Divine Accommodation in the Mosaic Harmony Commentary,” Calvin Theological Journal 21 (1986): 33-50.
6. Calvin, Commentaries on the First Book of Moses called Genesis, 79-80.
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February 6th 2010
I think that it is wissse to make room for science in Scripture because science studys nature which is what God created.
Reply to this commentFebruary 6th 2010
Professor Sparks,
Reply to this comment“In Calvin’s view, Genesis merely accommodated itself to the ancient and errant human view that such waters existed.”
I beg to differ with you, but I don’t think Calvin says that the Scripture reflects an “ancient and errant view” at all. What it says about “the waters above the heavens” is literally true, says Calvin, though not in the sense in which some people then believed. In the very passage you quote, Calvin says that he believes that the “waters above the heavens” to which the text refers are the clouds—that which “the crude and unlearned may perceive” with their own eyes—not some other waters far above the clouds which the eyes cannot see. This, he says, is the intended meaning of the text. He points out that rain is naturally produced from the clouds, but that “the deluge sufficiently shows how speedily we might be overwhelmed by the bursting of the clouds, unless the cataracts of heaven were closed by the hand of God. . .” (cont.)
February 6th 2010
(cont.) Calvin continues, “Since, therefore, God has created the clouds, and assigned to them a region above us, it ought not to be forgotten that they are restrained by the power of God, lest, gushing forth with sudden violence, they should swallow us up: and especially since no other barrier is opposed to them than the liquid and yielding air, which would easily give way unless this word prevailed, ‘Let there be an expanse between the waters.’ So in Calvin’s view, the biblical text does not err in the least, although it describes the natural world, not in the technical language of science, but in the pheonomenological language of visual description. The firmament, Calvin believed, refers to the atmosphere (“the liquid and yielding air”), which acts as a firm barrier to separate the “waters above” (the clouds) from the waters below (the seas). As far as I know, Calvin never attributes error to the biblical writers in their descriptions of the natural world.
Reply to this commentFebruary 6th 2010
Um, the clouds are part of the atmosphere. Clouds form in the lower part of the atmosphere, the troposphere, which extends from the surface of the earth up about 11 miles.
Reply to this commentFebruary 7th 2010
Beaglelady,
Reply to this commentI’m simply saying what Calvin’s view of the “waters above the firmament” was. He says that the firmament is the atmosphere itself, and that the “waters above” are the clouds above the air which men breathe. He says that this is what what the text intends to say. So Calvin attributes no error to the text whatsoever. To say that he attributes error to the text is to misrepresent his views on Genesis 1. Calvin does rejects the view held by some in his day (and by some creationists in our day) that the “waters above” are waters “way out there” beyond the stars in the sidereal heavens which astronomers study. Not at all, says Calvin. That’s not what the text refers to. “Whoever wishes to study astronomy. . .let him go elsewhere.” What Moses is referring to when he speaks of the “waters above” is what everyone can see with his own eyes—namely, the water-filled clouds, which the oxygen-rich atmosphere keeps at bay from us. So Calvin does not abandon the principle of literal interpretion with regard to Genesis 1, for he affirms what he believes to be the literal meaning of the text.
February 7th 2010
Hello Martin,
We’ll simply have to disagree. I think that Calvin’s point is crystal clear. True, Calvin DOES take Genesis literally. But he believes that it literally gives us what ancient people wrong thought about cosmology. That this is the case is widely recognized by Calvin scholars.
Kent
Reply to this commentFebruary 7th 2010
The atmosphere doesn’t keep clouds at bay—clouds are part of the atmosphere. Fog is really clouds at ground level. But if the firmament is really earth’s atmosphere, are the sun, moon and stars really set in our atmosphere?
Reply to this commentFebruary 7th 2010
Professor Sparks,
Reply to this commentThank you for your response. I am curious, however, what you think Calvin means when says “the waters intended here are such as the crude and unlearned perceive”? By “the waters intended here” I understand Calvin to mean “the waters to which Moses is referring” and by “such as the crude and unlearned perceive” I understand him to mean “such as the uneducated observe with the naked eye”—namely, the clouds. This understanding of the word “waters” stands in contrast with a more esoteric understanding that would place the waters outside “the visible form of the world,” where only an astronomer or a practitionerin the “esoteric arts” could see them with special instruments. Such an understanding of the word “waters” is alien to Moses’ thinking, Calvin says. He only “Intends” to speak of the clouds—that which adorns the “theatre God places before our eyes.” Am I misreading Calvin? If not—that is, if Calvin believed “waters” refers to the clouds, how does that involve an erroneous ANE cosmology?
February 7th 2010
Hi Martin,
Whatever Calvin means when he discusses the “waters above the heavens,” all of the following is true of them:
(1) They are as the unlearned perceive them.
(2) Moses writes according to the perspectives of the unlearned
(3) We should not believe that there are “waters above the heavens,” which, Calvin says, is wrong.
(4) If we are looking for good information on the cosmos, turn to astronomy, not Scripture.
So yes, I think that you’re misreading Calvin. He straightforwardly denies that there are “waters above the heavens” (as Scripture indicates) and castigates those who naively believe, “by faith,” in those waters.
Reply to this commentFebruary 7th 2010
Martin Rizley wrote (in Calvin’s view…): “the biblical text does not err in the least”
Of course not; how could ‘it’ *possibly* err? It is elevated by some Christians to be ‘beyond error.’ For them, it is the epitome of objective truth, isn’t it, unburdened by *any* human frailty, copying errors, or manipulations over several hundreds of years. : )
I find Martin’s view unnecessarily rigid & under-informed @ ‘science.’ A very small percentage of Christians currently living on the planet are ‘sola scriptura literalists.’ Those who are, count among the *least* scientifically astute of religious monotheists.
What is he doing pro-actively to learn more science, rather than critique it? Is he reading F. Collins’ book or just reviews of it?
A word to the wise for Dr. Starks, in facing ‘anti-science’ there among Baptists, Calvinists, Pentecostals, Presbyterians & other ‘evangelical’ Christians, one need deal more with ‘text-centrism’ than with lack of scientific knowledge. America is a highly scientific nation. It might be worth a word about ‘scientism’ & about communication above insisting that ‘evolutionary universalism’ is compatible with Christian doctrines.
Reply to this commentFebruary 7th 2010
Correction: Dr. Sparks.
Reply to this commentFebruary 8th 2010
Gregory,
Reply to this commentI don’t know why you are taking me to task about “my” views of Scripture, when you will notice that I said nothing about my personal views of Scripture in my comments to Dr. Sparks. I was talking about Calvin’s view of Scripture and whether or not Calvin imputes error to Moses in what Moses says about the heavens. It seems to me that Calvin is saying that Moses did not err in his description of God’s handiwork in Genesis 1 precisely because it was not Moses’ intention to answer technical questions of science, but simply to give a phenomenological description of the heavens that the unlearned can readily grasp. To say that Moses “erred” in what he wrote would be to misunderstand his intention, since he did not intend to give a technically exact description of the exact location of the “waters above” in relation to the stars. To get a scientific or technically exact description of the heavens, says Calvin, one must consult astronomy, not the Bible, for such a description is outside the purview of Moses’ intent.
February 8th 2010
Dr. Sparks, Although I agree with what you say in points 1, 2, and 4 above, I strongly disagree with what you say in point 3. Nowhere does Calvin say without qualification that we should not believe there are “waters above the heavens.” After all, the Bible speaks of “waters above the heavens,” and Calvin does not take issue with that biblical description when it is interpreted according to the intention of Moses. Since Moses was referring to the clouds when he spoke of “the waters above the heavens,” then we most certainly should believe in the existence of clouds! On the other hand, Calvin does say that we should not believe there are “waters above the heavens” in the way that some people misinterpret that phrase by ignoring Moses intention. These are the people Calvin refers to as those who “embrace by faith what they have read concerning the waters above the heavens, notwithstanding their ignorance of them,” Such individuals do not intepret the text “in accordance with the design of Moses,” and therefore, we should not give any credit to their misinterpretation of the infallible Scriptures.
Reply to this commentFebruary 8th 2010
Martin,
Are you saying that “waters above the heavens: refers to clouds? How do you know this?
Reply to this commentFebruary 8th 2010
Dr. Enns, I’m not saying that I share Calvin’s view. I am saying that Calvin clearly states in his commentary on Genesis that he believes Moses is referring to the clouds when he speaks of the “waters above the heavens.” See my quotes of Calvin in posts #4021 and #4022. Calvin calls the clouds “the cataracts of heaven” which God “assigns to a region above us” and which are “restrained” by his power. Moreover, Calvin says, it is the word of God which says, “Let there be an expanse between the waters” that keeps these upper waters (i. e., the clouds) from “giving way,” “gushing forth with sudden violence” and “swallowing us up.” So Calvin plainly says that Moses was referring to the clouds when he spoke of “the waters above the heavens” and that there was no error in this description, when Moses’ intent is understood. I was not trying to make a theological point or defend Calvin’s view in responding to Dr. Sparks post. I was solely interesting in establishing a point of historical accuracy—namely, that Calvin did not charge Moses with error, although he believed others fell into error by misinterpreting Moses and misunderstanding the “phenomenological” character of his descriptions of nature.
Reply to this commentFebruary 9th 2010
Martin,
Gotcha. Thanks for clearing that up. My mistake.
Reply to this commentFebruary 9th 2010
Hi Martin:
I don’t have the quote in front of me, but Calvin does criticize those who believe “by faith” that there are waters above the heavens. And he describes this view as stemming from an ancient (and by implication, errant) view that Moses adopted in view of his audience, which really did believe that these waters existed.
I’ll try to grab the quote when I get to the office.
Thanks,
Reply to this commentKent
February 9th 2010
BTW, I am arguing that Calvin (like many who have used the concept of accommodation in their theology) has implicitly admitted a human error in Scripture without realizing it. In other words, when one turns to accommodation (in which God adopts the errant views of his biblical audience), this only saves God from error ... it nonetheless leaves the human error. But notice here how the responsibility for error has shifted away from the text (which does reflect error) to God (who doesn’t err). It’s a sleight of hand that accommodationists have generally used unconsciously.
In essence, they are inerrantists who admit error.
Reply to this commentFebruary 9th 2010
Here’s the quotation from Calvin’s Genesis commentary:
“From this I conclude that the waters meant here are such as the ignorant and unlearned may perceive. The assertion of some that they embrace by faith what they have read concerning waters above the heavens, in spite of the fact that they know nothing of those waters, is not in accordance with the design of Moses. Truly, a longer inquiry into a matter so open and obvious is a waste of time.”
Reply to this commentFebruary 9th 2010
Kent, of course, this means that for Calvin, Moses himself “knew better” and was just catering to the ignorant, right? I think you and I are saying that the writer of Genesis 1 believed what he wrote and was still wrong, and that’s O.K. Right?
Reply to this comment