These were just a few of the questions that motivated us at BioLogos to commission a survey of pastors on origins.  In 2012, the Barna Group conducted 743 telephone interviews with pastors from across the US, from churches big and small, and from all Christian denominations.  This comprehensive, in-depth survey provides a fascinating analysis of views held by clergy today.   In the coming month, we’ll be digging deeper into the survey results, but for now, here are some key highlights:

#1: Pastors hold a diversity of views on origins.

Overall, while a slight majority of the pastors surveyed fall under the label of Young Earth Creationism (54%), sizeable portions of clergy accept Progressive Creation (15%) and Theistic Evolution (18%).

The numbers varied widely based on a number of factors, however. Pastors of mainline churches were most likely to accept Theistic Evolution, while non-Mainline, Charismatic, and Southern Baptist pastors were overwhelmingly Young Earth Creationists. Pastors of larger churches were also more likely to accept Theistic Evolution.

Regionally, the highest percentage of YEC pastors was found in South, while the highest percentage of pastors accepting TE was in the Midwest. Pastors from the western states were the least likely to accept TE.

#2: Most pastors think science and faith questions are important.

Regardless of their views, the majority of pastors surveyed feel that the Church needs to look at how it handles issues of science. 72% of pastors with YEC views and 73% of pastors with TE views agree with the statement that “the Christian community needs to take a serious look at its understanding of science and human origins in order to maintain its witness in the world.” (The numbers are slightly lower for pastors who hold to Progressive Creation and who are uncertain).

Similarly, 66% of YEC pastors and 61% of both TE and Progressive Creation pastors agree that “younger adults today are more concerned than ever about whether faith and science are compatible.”

#3: Clergy think disagreements on science and faith harm our witness (but for different reasons).

Clergy across all three viewpoints feel that disagreements are harming the Church’s outreach, but they differ in how they view that harm.

YEC pastors overwhelming agreed (85%) that “Christian disagreement on matters of creation and evolution is compromising our witness to the world.” However, a majority of TE pastors disagreed with the statement (63%).

Conversely, a majority of TE pastors (63%) agreed that “The church’s posture toward science prevents many non-Christians from accepting Christianity,” while a majority of YEC and Progressive Creation leaning pastors disagreed (59%).

#4: Pastors aren’t avoiding science.

The majority of pastors think that addressing issues of science for their congregations is an important part of their work. Of those surveyed, 72% felt that addressing science issues in the local community was somewhat (51%) or very (21%) urgent. When asked about science on a national and global level, even more pastors felt that addressing science issues is important (43% somewhat and 46% very). Furthermore, 79% of pastors included scientific themes in at least one sermon in the past year, and 40% had included them in at least ten sermons.

The majority of clergy across all four viewpoints also agreed with the statement “Just as scripture should influence human interpretation of science, science should also inform our understanding of scripture.” The numbers were highest for TE pastors and those who are uncertain (81% and 72%, respectively), though over half of YEC and PC pastors also agreed (52% and 65%, respectively).

Finally, although YEC’s are more reluctant than other pastors to say “science should inform understanding of scripture, they strongly agree (84%) that “The Christian community needs a greater commitment to showing how young earth creationism is consistent with science.”

#5: However, they are concerned about evolution for biblical reasons.

Over half of pastors said they had “major concerns” about the idea that God used evolution. The main reasons for that concern were that the idea “undermines the authority of Scripture” (64%), “views portions of the Bible as non-literal, like Genesis” (62%), “raises doubts about a historical Adam and Eve” (61%), and “raises questions about how and when death and sin entered the world” (59%). However, 26% of pastors saw no concern with the idea that God used evolution.

#6: The majority of clergy accept parts of scripture as symbolic.

60% of the pastors surveyed felt that “some portions of the Bible are symbolic, but all that it teaches is authoritative.” Clergy whose views fall under theistic evolution and progressive creation were more likely to accept this statement (79% and 73% respectively), but a sizeable number of YEC pastors (40% among the core followers and 49% among those leaning towards YEC) also agreed with the statement.

#7: Clergy are concerned that changing their views on origins might compromise their ministry.

Over half of pastors (58%) who fell under the YEC category agreed that “If you publicly admitted your own doubts about human origins, you feel you would have a lot to lose in your ministry.” 41% of pastors in the Progressive Creation group also agreed with the statement. Pastors who were uncertain or who fell under the Theistic Evolution group were less concerned, with only 26% and 17% respectively agreeing with the statement.

There’s a serious point in my playful invocation of Pilgrim’s Progress. Like many of the most complex human endeavors — parenting, farming, becoming a Christian — the life of a scientist is not just an “occupation,” something that occupies us for a while and might then be followed by something entirely different. Being a scientist is as much about being as doing, as much about a particular way of being formed as a person as it is a set of activities or even skills. Training in science is induction not so much into a particular worldview (though it includes absorbing plenty of the kind of cognitive presuppositions that that word suggests) as it is a kind of posture or stance toward the world, toward one’s work, and toward one’s fellow human beings, both scientists and non-scientists. And the life of a scientist is a journey, one freighted with ultimate concerns and laden with values. It is a journey into a set of virtues, the habits and dispositions that make one a person of a particular kind of character.

When we talk about faith and science, we tend to focus on the cognitive content of both endeavors, the truth claims and worldviews that animate these two crucial dimensions of modern human life. These are important matters, and I don’t at all mean to diminish them. At the same time, there are inevitable limits to what any pastor can do to constructively integrate the knowledge content of science — so vast and rapidly expanding that even scientists cannot pretend to be expert in anything but a tiny portion — with the content of Christian faith. But there is another way to approach faith and science which I believe might well be more within reach of most pastors, and more essential to their job description than being deeply literate in the latest scientific discoveries and theories — and that is simply to attend to, and prayerfully support and encourage, the scientific life itself as a vocation that can reflect the image of God and be a place for working out one’s own salvation.

So here is what I wish our pastors — and fellow Christians — knew about the life of a working scientist.

Delight and Wonder

If there is one personality characteristic of the vast majority of scientists I have met, it is delight. There is something about science that attracts people who are fascinated and thrilled by the world. To be sure, any given scientist is delighted by things that you and I may find odd or indeed incomprehensible — the intricacies of protein folding, the strata of Antarctic ice cores, or the properties of Lebesgue spaces (and no, I have no idea what that last phrase really means). But the specificity of their delights is one of delight’s secrets: like love, delight is always most potent when it is particular. It is certainly possible to find lawyers who are delighted by law (I have one friend who can go on at great length, with enthusiasm, about corporate bankruptcies), dairy farmers who are delighted by cows, or lumberjacks who are delighted by trees — but I dare say your chances are much better that when you meet a scientist you will find that they are delighted with the tiny part of the world they study day to day. (At least when they are not frustrated with it — which we’ll examine below.)

In many scientists, delight is matched by wonder — a sense of astonishment at the beautiful, ingenious complexity to be found in the world. This is not the “wonder” that comes from ignorance — “I wonder how a light bulb really works?” — but a wonder that comes from understanding. Indeed, as we progress further into humanity’s scientific era we have been able to disabuse ourselves of a mistaken early-modern notion: that the more the world became comprehensible, the less it would be wonderful. That turns out not to be true at all — ask a scientist. Wonder grows as understanding grows. Indeed, wonder only grows if understanding grows. If we replace our childhood awe of lightning with an explanation like, “It’s nothing but a transfer of voltage across a highly resistive material” (an example of what G. K. Chesterton wittily called “nothing-buttery”) perhaps the world will seem like a less wonderful place. But those who actually pursue knowledge of lightning — of electromagnetism or cloud formation or weather systems or climate — end up being more in awe of the world than they were as children. This is surely one of the remarkable features of our cosmos: the more we understand about it, the more we are in awe of its beautiful elegance and simplicity, and at the same time its humbling complexity.

To be sure, many if not most scientists do not see this wonderful world in the way that most Christians would hope for. For us, wonder is a stepping-stone to worship — ascribing our awe for the world to a Creator whose worth it reveals. For many scientists, wonder is less a stepping-stone than a substitute for worship. Yet they stop and wonder all the same.

Intellectual humility

I doubt that humility is among the first traits most people think of when they think of scientists. And indeed, some scientists (like some academics and intellectuals generally) exhibit a combination of confidence in their own intellect and limitations in their social skills that makes them seem abrasive if not arrogant. A few have made a public career of intellectual overreaching, not least in matters of science and faith. But in my experience (and certainly, let me stress, in the case of my own wife!) this is much more the exception than the rule. If intellectual humility is essentially a willingness to admit what you do not and cannot know, science cultivates humility like few other pursuits can — because in few other pursuits do you so often find out that you were wrong.

Even though we tell the story of science through its high points — the discoveries and confirmed theories that won Nobel Prizes and launched new eras in technology — the actual practice of science, for nearly every working scientist, involves far more failure than success. This is especially true for experimental science, the kind that requires the most direct interaction with recalcitrant reality. On most days, in most labs, the data do not add up, Matlab has an untraceable bug, the laser is on the fritz, and all the cultures have been contaminated when the undergraduate research assistant sneezed. And while each of these everyday setbacks requires immense amounts of patience and persistence to overcome, they are only the quotidian version of the perplexity that begins early in the study of science. Every scientist, in the process of their training, has had to repeatedly discover that their intuitions about the world are simply wrong, or at least incomplete. Even great scientists have come up against the sheer oddity and unpredictability of the world — Albert Einstein, for example, never fully accepted the uncertainty at the heart of quantum mechanics, something that is now universally accepted by physicists.

This regular confrontation with the limits of one’s own knowledge and skill is not to be taken for granted. The other divisions of the academy, the social sciences and the humanities, deal with matters of such variability and complexity that it is often difficult to say conclusively that anyone, or any theory, is entirely wrong. Marx’s and Freud’s grand theories may not seem nearly as plausible as they once were, but there are thousands of people following their lines of thought without losing the respect of their intellectual peers. But Ptolemaic cosmology or Lamarckian evolution now have, simply, no followers. They have been proved wrong beyond a reasonable doubt (although Lamarck’s ideas, interestingly, turn out to have a grain of truth in a way very different from what he expected). Who is likely to be more intellectually humble — someone who early in her training, and daily in her work, learns that her assumptions have been wrong, or someone who can always argue his way out of any intellectual predicament? It is perhaps no accident that “grade inflation,” in which undergraduates’ grades ratchet ever upwards in a nod to the consumer realities of the modern university, is much less pervasive in the sciences, where you can’t cajole your way into an A. The honest, and humbling, truth is that there is likely more intellectual humility in the average physics laboratory than in the average theology classroom.

For more from the "What I Wish My Pastor Knew" series, visit The Ministry Theorem.

Motivated Belief

As we noted earlier [in this book], scientists are not inclined to subscribe to an a priori [i.e., knowledge that is not dependent on experience or empirical evidence] concept of what is reasonable. They have found the physical world to be too surprising, too resistant to prior expectation, for a simple trust in human powers of rational prevision [i.e., foresight] to be at all persuasive. Instead, the actual character of our encounter with reality has to be allowed to shape our knowledge and thought about the object of our enquiry. Different levels of reality may be expected to have their idiosyncratic characters, and there will not be a single epistemic [knowledge-based] rule for all. A physicist, aware of the counterintuitive natures of the quantum world and of cosmic curved spacetime, is not tempted to make commonsense the sole measure of rational expectation. Because of this, we have seen that the instinctive question for the scientist to ask is not “Is it reasonable?”, as if one knew beforehand the shape that rationality had to take, but “What makes you think that might be the case?” Radical revision of expectation cannot be ruled out, but it will only be accepted if evidence is presented in support of the new point of view that is being proposed. Science trades in motivated belief.

One of the difficulties that face a scientist wanting to speak to his colleagues about the Christian faith is to get across the fact that theology also trades in motivated belief. Many scientists are both wistful and wary in their attitude towards religion. They can see that science’s story is not sufficient by itself to give a satisfying account of the many-layered reality of the world. Those who acknowledge this are open to a search for wider and deeper understanding. Hence the wistful desire for something beyond science. Religion offers such a prospect, but many scientists fear that it does so on unacceptable terms. Their wariness arises from the mistaken idea that religious faith demands that those who embrace it should be willing to believe simply on the basis of submission to some unquestionable authority—the claimed utterances of a divine being, the unchallengeable assertions of a sacred book, the authoritative decrees of a controlling community, whatever it may be—simply declared to be unproblematic deliverances of infallible truth. [This describes the attitude that Polkinghorne likes to call “top-down thinking,” vis-à-vis “bottom-up thinking,” which is mentioned at the end of this excerpt.]

The picture that many scientists have of religious revelation is that it is a collection of non-negotiable propositions, presented to be accepted without further argument or attempt at justification. According to this view, faith is simply a matter of signing on the dotted line without taking too much care about the small print. These scientists fear that religious belief would demand of them an act of intellectual suicide. I believe this to be a quite disastrous misconception. If an uncritical fideism [reliance on faith alone] is what religious belief requires, then I would have the greatest difficulty in being a religious person.

What I am always trying to do in conversation with my not-yet-believing friends is to show them that I have motivations for my religious beliefs, just as I have motivations for scientific beliefs. They may not share my view of the adequacy of these motivations, but at least they should recognize that they are there on offer as matters for rational consideration and assessment. Theology conducted in the context of science must be prepared to be candid about the evidence for its beliefs. This task is one of great importance, since the difficulty of getting a hearing for Christian faith in contemporary society often seems to stem from the fact that many people have never given adequate adult consideration to the possibility of its being true, thinking that they “know” already that there can be no truth in claims so apparently at odds with notions of everyday secular expectation.

While science and religion share a common concern for motivated belief, the character of the motivating evidence is, of course, different in the two cases. [SNIP]  Theology lacks recourse to repeatable experimental confirmation (“Do not put the Lord your God to the test,” Deuteronomy 6:16), as in fact do most other non-scientific explorations of reality. Judgments such as that of the quality of a painting, or the beauty of a piece of music, or the character of a friend, depend upon powers of sympathetic discernment, rather than being open to empirical demonstration. Moreover, I have already said that I believe that no form of human truth-seeking enquiry can attain absolute certainty about its conclusions. The realistic aspiration is that of attaining the best explanation of complex phenomena, a goal to be achieved by searching for an understanding sufficiently comprehensive and well-motivated as to afford the basis for rational commitment.

Michael Polanyi (Source)

Neither science nor religion can entertain the hope of establishing logically coercive proof of the kind that only a fool could deny. No one can avoid some degree of intellectual precariousness, and there is a consequent need for a degree of cautious daring in the quest for truth. Experience and interpretation intertwine in an inescapable circularity. Even science cannot wholly escape this dilemma (theory interprets experiments; experiments confirm or disconfirm theories). We have seen [in another chapter] how considerations of this kind led Michael Polanyi to acknowledge the presence of a tacit dimension in scientific practice, depending on the exercise of skills of judgment, and to speak of science as necessarily being personal knowledge, not absolutely certain but still capable of eliciting justified belief. Recall that he said that he wrote Personal Knowledge to explain how he might commit himself to what he believed (scientifically) to be true, while knowing that it might be false. This stance recognizes what I believe to be the unavoidable epistemic condition of humanity.

When we turn to religious belief, it too cannot lay claim to certainty beyond a peradventure [uncertainty or doubt]—for believers live by faith and not by sight. Yet faith is by no means the irrational acceptance of unquestionable propositions. I believe my religious faith to be well motivated and that is why, for me, Christianity is worthy of acceptance and commitment. Religious people are content to bet their lives that this is so. If theology is to prove persuasive to enquirers in the context of science, it will have to set out the motivations for the assertions that it makes, expressed in as honest and careful a fashion as possible. I believe that the argument will need to have the character of bottom-up thinking, making appeal to specific forms of evidence.

Looking Ahead

In a couple of weeks we will continue exploring Polkinghorne’s approach to “motivated belief,” with further excerpts from this chapter.

References and Credits

Excerpts from John Polkinghorne, Theology in the Context of Science (2009), copyright Yale University Press, are reproduced by permission of Yale University Press. We gratefully acknowledge their cooperation in bringing this material to our readers.

JIMMY LIN: Currently I’m on faculty at Washington University at St. Louis, where I am a research instructor in the pathology department. Also, a year and a half ago, I founded the Rare Genomics Institute (RGI)—a nonprofit that helps find cures for people with rare diseases.

ER: What qualifies as a “rare disease”?

JL: These are diseases like cystic fibrosis and Huntingdon’s disease—diseases that affect less than 200,000 Americans each year. There are over 7000 different rare diseases, and less than 5% of them have any therapy. Altogether, they affect about 25-30 million people.

This creates what we call a “long tail problem”—it’s hard for a top-down research system to create research programs for all 7000 rare diseases. So instead, we are creating a bottom-up platform from which the patients themselves can create research projects and help fund them. We connect patients with physicians and researchers, customize a research program with top medical universities, design the experiment, and then use an online fundraising platform to fund the study through [mostly] friends and family of the patient.

Basically, we create a “foundation in a box.” By partnering with the Rare Genomics Institute, patients and their friends and families who want to study rare diseases don’t have to go through the hoops of creating their own nonprofit or lab—we do that for them. So, instead of creating 7000 different nonprofits, we create a generalized platform from which studies can be conducted.

ER: Who qualifies for care through the Rare Genomics Institute?

JL: Anyone with a rare disease can come to us. The main thing we’re doing right now is diagnosis. When families come to us, they either don’t know the disease that’s affecting them or their child, or they don’t know the gene that’s wrong.

For instance, if a child had a condition that doctors couldn’t identify, his or her parents might come to us for help. What we’d do then is sequence the genes of the mother, father, and child, and compare them to reference genome to determine what mutations each of the parents have. Depending on what the disease is and what the gene causing it is, we can filter out mutations that don’t mean anything using the parents’ genomes—then, after filtering, we can potentially pinpoint the genes that fit the genetic pattern of the disease. This is the first step.

After that, we are building infrastructure to determine the effect of these changes and a way to help. For example, after looking at the literature, we can perhaps design experiments using cells extracted from the patient; this part of the process is different for every disease. Then, if we can determine that there is, for instance, a pathway missing a specific enzyme, we can try using drugs, a bone marrow transplant, or gene therapy to try to put healthy cells into the child… But there’s a variety of diseases, of course, so there’s a variety of different approaches—and we’re just starting to explore these aspects.

ER: How did RGI get started?

JL: It really started when I was in medical school at Johns Hopkins—there was this boy that came to our clinic to be seen. My research was in cancer genome sequencing, and the family had come to our department looking for answers about what was wrong with their son. At that point, the family was almost hopeless—they had gone to so many doctors, run so many tests—I decided I wanted to try to help children like this. That’s when my friends and I decided to start the Rare Genomics Institute.

Currently, there are about 50 researchers associated with the organization, and we are all volunteers. It’s growing much, much faster and been more amazing than we’ve ever imagined—we’re already making an impact. In May of last year, we were able to discover a new disease using the world’s first crowd-sourced, crowd-funded genome. Working with researchers at Yale, we delineated a disease of which our patient was the first identified.

Right now, we’re in the middle of raising funding and hiring staff to make this organization one that is self-sustaining, and to increase its impact even more.

Excerpts from Michael Hickerson Interview

MH: …you call yourself a doxologist. What’s the full term you used in your Jubilee bio?

JL: Medical and scientific doxologist.

MH: How did you decide on that term and what does it mean to you?

JL: I listen to a bunch of teaching by J.I. Packer , who teaches theology at Regent College and is one of the leading thinkers on these things. Interestingly, before any one of his classes, he says “Theology is for doxology,” and then the whole class sings the Doxology together out loud in class. I thought, “Wow, that is so great,” because everybody sometimes learns theology just for intellectual things [instead of for worship].

That’s not just true for theology, it’s for everything: biology is for doxology; chemistry is for doxology. That’s when I started to think, I should consider myself, first and foremost, as a person who praises God in what I do. And then no longer make “Christian” the adjective, right? “Doxologist” is the noun. But then what kind of doxologist am I? So I call myself a medical and scientist doxologist. I would call someone, for example, in the marketplace, a business doxologist. Or, someone who does art, an artistic doxologist. To really have the noun as our identity, and then our vocation as just a descriptor of how we do that.

MH: That’s a great point. A noun is always stronger than the adjective. So, you want that to be the focus, rather than the add-on.

JL: In our current culture, we’re defined by our jobs. It’s having a vocation. I wanted to shift away from that. I didn’t want to be a doctor first and foremost, or a scientist, but one who praises God. And evidently, within science you don’t want to call yourself a Christian Scientist. That’s another religion, so . . .

MH: [laughs] That’s right. I run into that, as well, when I’m teaching or talking about science to Christians. You always run into that stumbling block.

JL: With “scientific doxologist,” people don’t confuse them. You do have to explain what it means. And that gets in a little story actually, on what it means about vocation. It’s a small lesson — a teaching point when you do talk to people about vocation and calling. That’s why I use it.

MH: I guess my final question would be what spiritual practices help sustain you? What helps you stay in contact with God and keep a good foundation?

JL: First, I am interested in many, many different things. I sort of mix it up in terms of spiritual practices. Besides the fundamentals, of course, of quiet time, devotional reading, and scriptural reading, I do theological study because I have to do that academically. I find a lot of time with God through the spiritual disciplines, such as times of solitude — which is very interesting for someone who is in academics to no longer think about ideas but just to be quiet before God — how silence, time to think by yourself, or sitting in silence is also something you should foster.

In terms of spiritual formation, what you really need is definitely a good community of people. I have a very supportive community at my church. I’m the deacon of devotions, so that of course keeps me on track. It encourages me as I, in my own spiritual walk, encourage other people. Fundamentally, I think for all Christians, whether you are academic or no matter your vocation or calling, being in the Word and prayer are the most important things. Doing that and being spiritually fed is what is important.

Genesis 8:1: But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and all the domestic animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided; 2 the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained, 3 and the waters gradually receded from the earth.

The Flood narrative of Genesis 7-9 has played a prominent role in science and religion debates for over three hundred years and gave rise in earlier centuries to geological theories such as old earth catastrophism. While literary studies have uncovered the chiastic structure of the Flood story (see Gordon Wenham, “The Coherence of the Flood Narrative” Vetus Testamentum 28 (1978):336-48) and with it the theological pivot point of the entire narrative (Gen. 8:1 – “And God remembered Noah…), much of the popular attention remains on the questions regarding details (Is there THAT much water in the world to cover ALL the mountains to a depth of 15 cubits? Could you really fit two or seven of every animal species in an ark that size?)

Looking at a smaller matter, we find at the beginning and the middle of the narrative indications of an ancient Near Eastern worldview. As the story is told, the flood was not merely the result of excessive rain, but actually the convergence of the waters above the earth with the waters below the earth. It is, as one translation puts it, as if the sluice gates at the deep and of the heavens were thrown open and water poured in from above and below. This is a consistent picture from the Old Testament of a three-tiered universe—a dome above the earth holding back the heavenly waters, a flat earth with water on its surface, and water under an earth which is held up by pillars.

That the story is told using the cosmology of its time should not be unduly unsettling, nor that the story is reinterpreted as new understandings of the universe come into favor. By way of example, consider John Calvin and his understanding of the structure of the universe. Although committed to the principle of sola Scriptura, Calvin recognized that the Bible would have been written in terms its original recipients would have understood.

Calvin inherited the medieval cosmology of his time, a way of viewing the world heavily influenced by Greek thought and one which was about to receive shocks from astronomers such as Copernicus and Galileo. But not just yet. Calvin still subscribed to the common conception of his day in which the four elements—earth, air, fire, and water—comprised the earthly sphere and possessed unique characteristics. The nature of air and fire was to rise, while the nature of earth and water is to sink. Earth, being heavier than water, should sink to the center of the cosmos and water should compose the next layer. Both earth and water are spherical, i.e., naturally form spherically around the cosmic center. Thus the heavier spherical element of earth should be encased entirely within the lighter spherical element of water.

Notice what this does to the flood story. For Calvin, the amazing thing is that the world isn’t constantly under water and subject to flooding. In the cosmology of Calvin’s day, it does not take an act of God to cause a universal flood, but rather an actively present and restraining hand of God to keep the waters back in everyday circumstances and make inundation by water something other than universal.

Obviously, Calvin was wrong. Or perhaps we should say that medieval cosmology was flawed and justifiably gave way to new conceptions of the universe. The answer is not to return to an ancient Near Eastern cosmology, but to reinterpret cautiously within new and better cosmologies and to pay closest attention to the text and the theology of scripture.

The geological and planetary sciences bring their own unique contributions and are of more interest than the latest expedition to discover the ark on Mt. Ararat. Is the flood story a universalization of a catastrophic regional event that burned itself into the psyche of ancient cultures in the Mediterranean basin? Various theories regarding a Black Sea venue for a catastrophic flood event are still in process of being sorted out. It’s intriguing. Or the question where the water on Planet Earth comes from? Was it always here as an emanation of vapors from the earth’s crust in its early formation, or has it accumulated over eons through the steady bombardment of earth by small, icy comets? It’s an intriguing scientific question that is in the midst of determination through testing.

Preaching Suggestions

When preaching on the story of the Flood, it is easy to get lost in the debates over particulars. As mentioned elsewhere, to tackle all the peripheral issues threatens to turn a sermon into a geology lecture. Other settings are better suited to addressing those questions, and those are best addressed open-endedly.

A brief explanation of ancient Near Eastern cosmology can be helpful to contextualize the story. If there are those who are tempted to think that a cosmology embedded in the Bible must be inspired and definitive, one can note that cosmology has changed by the New Testament. The Bible itself isn’t wed to a particular structure of the universe.

What is important is to keep the theology of the text front and center, and in that theology there are at least three non-negotiables from the flood narrative. First, human sin and violence threatens to undo a good creation (the flood is a de-creation event, a return of the waters mentioned in Genesis 1:2). Second, God remembers Noah, and never forgets his promises. Third, the end of the flood is a covenant with the whole earth regarding the stability and endurance of the natural order.

Conversations about science and faith can be like that. People hold clearly discordant points of view, and it would be dishonest to ignore the conflict. Yet some voices emphasize the dissonance without any note of harmony to put it in context. Too often, science and faith becomes a hostile battle of worldviews, sounding angry, dissonant chords even among fellow Christians. But civil, gracious dialogue is possible. On the BioLogos Forum, we invite authors from a range of positions, including some that don't agree with all our beliefs, but we strive to set these dialogues in a context of respect and civility. When authors are fellow Christians, we don’t shy away from disagreements, but remember the broader context of our unity as fellow believers, the harmony that binds us together.

My own story is more harmonious than dissonant. My interest in music was paralleled by my interest in math and science and my involvement in church. My family and teachers encouraged my interests in science, and I remember how fun it was to play math games with my dad and brother. And every week we were in church: twice on Sunday, plus Wednesday night club, youth group activities, and Bible quizzing. While my church accepted the young earth position, they didn’t emphasize it, and I was never told that a particular science view was essential to being a Christian. When I encountered the evidence for the age of the universe and the evolution of life, I also found Christian authors who showed me how this scientific evidence could fit with Christian beliefs.

But others have experienced more dissonance. Nearly four years ago, Dr. Francis Collins launched this website with the story of a young university student in the midst of a profound personal crisis, what Dr. Collins called “a wrenching crisis of worldviews shaking her deepest foundations.” Without a context of harmony, too many people – young and old – feel they have to choose between two incompatible positions, either Christian faith or the findings of science. BioLogos exists to show another way. We hold fast to the authority of the Bible and the core beliefs of Christianity, and at the same time, accept the rigorous conclusions of mainstream science.

It is with these chords of dissonance and resolution in mind that I come to this opportunity to lead BioLogos. I have long sensed God’s calling to serve the church as part of this dialogue. Some of you know of me from a book I wrote in 2007 with my husband Loren, called Origins. I’ve been speaking and writing on science and faith for many years, but I did this around the edges of my primary career of teaching and research in astronomy. While I thoroughly enjoy teaching students and doing research, over the last year I have recognized God’s hand in leading me to shift my fulltime work to the science and faith dialogue. Now I’m looking forward to using and developing my gifts in service of BioLogos.

Joining me as a new member of the leadership team is Dr. Jeff Schloss, who will serve as our Senior Scholar. Many of you are already familiar with his work, and know he brings not only a strong track record of scholarship in evolution and philosophy, but tremendous skill in communicating to lay audiences. Jeff and I share a deep commitment to the unity of the body of Christ and a desire to remove barriers for people to come to Christ. I am delighted to have him on board.

Jeff and I inherit a strong and vibrant organization from our outgoing President, Dr. Darrel Falk. Darrel brought his deep love and concern for the church, along with his considerable creativity and hard work, to this effort. We plan to continue and build on the excellent programs he established.

One of the pleasures of my first few weeks on the job has been getting to know the BioLogos staff. Kathryn, Lisa, Stephen, Mike, Laura J, and LeAnne each bring key skills to the organization, as well as energy and a passion for the mission of BioLogos. The team keeps BioLogos functioning behind the scenes, from finances to computer programming to event planning. Two team members, Mark Sprinkle and Tom Burnett, have decided to move on to other opportunities after a year of dedicated service to BioLogos. As web editors, Mark and Tom revamped the blog, making it a forum for rich scholarly dialogue and vibrant testimonies, and drawing in new authors to write on a great mix of topics. They also organized the archived material, so that the best of BioLogos is readily accessible. We wish them well in their new endeavors. Joining the BioLogos team is Emily Ruppel as Interim Web Editor. You may know Emily from her work to develop and edit the e-zine God & Nature for the American Scientific Affiliation; she will join us part time at BioLogos while she continues to work with ASA.

We believe God has great things in store for BioLogos. We will continue to focus on connecting with scholars, pastors, teachers, and lay people, but in the months ahead, we will also be sharpening our vision and engaging afresh in strategic planning. We’ll be considering new audiences, new programs, and new priorities. I invite your comments below on directions you’d like to see BioLogos take.

In just a few years, this organization has impacted the lives of thousands of Christians and brought an important voice to discussions taking place within the church. Thanks to the strong support from The John Templeton Foundation and many other generous donors, the vision of Francis Collins is thriving. BioLogos is on the cusp of enormous opportunities and huge potential. While transitions are times of risk and vulnerability, they are also times of great opportunity. My prayer is that God will give us wisdom and guidance to be good stewards of this opportunity. May God continue to use BioLogos to bring harmony to a conversation that has emphasized dissonance for far too long.

For more than a century, evangelicals and fundamentalists have typically rejected both evolution and higher biblical criticism. Sometimes there are good reasons: the claims of some biblical scholars are so outrageous and the claims of some scientists so anti-religious, that a strongly negative response is entirely appropriate. Too often, however, the evangelical encounter with modern science conforms to what historian Mark Noll has called “the scandal of the evangelical mind”—namely, “that there is not much of an evangelical mind.” Attitudes toward science have been crucial to this analysis. As Noll says, “since 1960 creationism has done more than any other issue except abortion to inflame the cultural warfare in American public life.” (p. 192)

Readers who want to know more about Noll’s book and its reception should go here and here. His conclusions about evangelicals and science are fully consistent with those I am about to present.

Evangelicals in Tension with Science

Evangelicals exhibit considerable tension and ambivalence when it comes to science, especially human evolution. On the one hand, evangelicals enthusiastically embrace the findings of science, when it comes to most applications in medicine and engineering. They also accept the experimental sciences, such as physics, chemistry, physiology, or thermodynamics. They have no problems with gravitation, the periodic table, the circulation of the blood, or the law of entropy. Here, their attitude is highly empirical: if it can be shown from repeatable experiments and observations, it’s true and presents no challenge whatsoever to religious belief.

On the other hand, evangelicals are quite hesitant to accept some conclusions of the so-called historical sciences, such as geology, cosmology, and evolutionary biology. Fundamentalists reject the very legitimacy of those sciences, and have created their own alternative explanation, “creation science,” which comports with their particular views of biblical authority and hermeneutics. Evangelicals are more ambivalent. As we’ve seen, many evangelicals accept the big bang and modern geology, with a 4.65 billion-year-old earth and the enormously long history of living things before humans arrived on the planet. But evolution–understood here to mean the common descent of humans and other organisms–presents very serious problems for many, perhaps most, evangelicals. This motivates them to look for alternative views.

The alternatives evangelicals embrace are precisely those we have studied in this series. Some eagerly support the YEC view. Others prefer one of the many varieties of the OEC view. Many like the strident tone of the ID movement, with its vigorous assault on biological and cultural “Darwinism” and its near-universal rejection of human evolution. For most evangelicals, however, TE is probably not a viable option at present, for biblical and theological reasons.

Reconciling Evolution with Scripture

Most evangelicals do not see any reasonable way to combine human evolution with the following beliefs:

• the uniqueness of humans, who alone bear the “image of God”
• the fall of Adam and Eve, the original parents of all humans, from a sinless state, by their own free choices to disobey God
• the responsibility of each person for their own actions and beliefs, within a universe that is not fully deterministic
• the redemption of individual persons by the atoning sacrifice of Christ.

Evangelicals cannot and must not be separated from these crucial beliefs about human dignity, freedom, responsibility, sin, and redemption. The 64-dollar question is: can these beliefs be maintained without simultaneously affirming the necessity of an historical, separately created first human pair? The answer is probably in the hands of evangelical academics, especially theologians and biblical scholars. Can they be persuaded that the scientific evidence for evolution is sufficiently strong to warrant a re-examination of the traditional view? Can a credible gospel and credible science be harmonized?

There exists an enormous gap between popular conceptions of science–conclusions, methods, and attitudes–and those of scientists themselves. This gap is not unique to science among practitioners of specialized knowledge, and it is not unique to evangelicals among the lay public. But it is real and very significant, and it affects theologians and biblical scholars no less than anyone else. Those who try to bridge this gap are mostly scientists (in their role as educators at colleges and universities and insofar as they write books for lay readers) and science journalists. Many influential members of those professional communities are skeptical or even strongly hostile toward Christian beliefs, and this can exacerbate an already difficult state of affairs. If ways can be found to popularize good science, while showing appropriate sensitivity to the concerns of evangelicals, it would be a very good thing.

Signs of Hope

Certainly there are reasons to hope. The conversation about science and religion is considerably broader now than it was at the time of the Scopes trial in 1925. Back then, many Protestants faced a very grim choice. On the one hand, they could follow politician William Jennings Bryan and the fundamentalists, rejecting modern science in the name of biblical authority and orthodox beliefs. On the other hand, they could follow theologian Shailer Mathews and the modernists, rejecting biblical authority and orthodox beliefs in the name of modern science. There was no one out there like John Polkinghorne, Francis Collins, Joan Centrella, Owen Gingerich, Simon Conway Morris, William Phillips, or Ian Hutchinson—to name just a few of the many top scientists today who accept evolution while affirming the divinity of Jesus, the bodily resurrection, and the actual divine creation of the universe. But they are all scientists, not theologians (except for Polkinghorne, who is both). In Galileo’s day, it was the scientists who eventually convinced the theologians and biblical scholars to accept Copernicus’ theory of the earth’s motion around the sun. But, it took a long time, and the process was difficult and often painful. Thus far, the biblical scholars and theologians who have tried to move the conversation forward have not been very well received, as Richard Ostling has so capably reported. I suspect we are in for more of the same.

It’s Your Turn to Talk

That’s what I think. What do you think? I’ll mainly be listening quietly, since I’ve now said all I wanted to say. Thank you all for hanging in there for ten months—far longer than I had originally anticipated. After a short respite I’ll return with a new series, but I’ll keep the topic under wraps for the time being.

Werner Heisenberg, in a letter to Albert Einstein¹

For many people, science invites awe and religion invites insight. When awe and insight engage, science-and-religion happens.

Ron Cole-Turner²

If we can understand the experiences of the people who work every day in the lab, our dialogues concerning science and religion will be far more fruitful than they would be otherwise. I realised this when someone recently asked me what the highlights had been during my own time as a biologist. I explained that what I appreciated most was the privilege of experiencing science first-hand. My horizons have been expanded, and I now have a better understanding of how vast and complex the natural world is. Appreciating the grandeur of the universe seems to be a universal for humankind, including research scientists in their own peculiar way. Everyone has something to add to a conversation about experiences of awe, as I discovered when I blogged on it recently and invited a number of friends and former colleagues to comment. This sense of awe is a perfect starting point for discussions of science and theology.

Life in the Laboratory

I had always loved finding out how things work, and that was one of the reasons why I chose biology, but actually working ‘at the coal face’ was an eye opener. Living organisms are extremely complicated, so one has to choose only a tiny part of an organism to study: maybe a single gene or a feature of its behaviour. It can take years to understand just one aspect of that tiny part in enough depth to be able to publish an academic paper about it. Experienced scientists describe how the sum of human knowledge is so small as to be insignificant in comparison to what is out there, and I can now appreciate that a little bit. I can also appreciate what fun it is to survey all that un-knowledge, grab a bit of it and try to figure it out.

In the world outside of the lab we hear the headlines about new discoveries, but we have no idea what is behind that one-liner. In reality the story of a discovery in biology may well have started with a graduate student who nervously began their new project, a more experienced scientist who sacrificed precious time to train and supervise them, and the lab head who looked over the data every now and then. There would have been long days and nights in the lab and many false turns before the first piece of promising data emerged. No doubt there were anxious re-runs of experiments to confirm the results, and moments of elation as things started to make sense. The work would have been presented to critical colleagues who suggested further experiments. Frustrating months would have been spent generating the final pieces of data, weeks bent over a computer writing a dense and meticulously referenced paper, submission to a journal, the referees’ criticisms, a few more experiments, resubmission, and a long wait. Finally the paper was accepted and the whole research group joined in the celebration. And this is only the simplest possible version of events – the process of producing successful research can involve large numbers of people over several years, international collaborations, promising leads that go stale, and surprising results from unexpected places.

The ‘real world’ of science is a million miles away from the debates on science and religion that happen in churches, universities and schools throughout the world. Behind every piece of research is a team of people representing different faiths and belief systems, a variety of cultures, social backgrounds and personality types. Perhaps scientists are all a little crazy (who would put in the hours otherwise?), but they’re definitely all motivated in different ways.

The factors that attract people to science are many, though inspiring and supportive parents or teachers can play a large part. The reasons why individuals decide to stick with research, despite all the demands and uncertainties that a life in science brings, are interesting and at times surprising. There is the fascination of understanding the natural world, the value of original research, the prospect of new technologies further down the line, and the privilege of making new discoveries. There is also the opportunity to ask new questions, and the immense satisfaction when things come together and begin to make sense. So far, so predictable. More unexpected drivers are the enjoyable process of tinkering with experimental systems, the opportunity to exercise great creativity, the beauty of scientific data, and a feeling of immense awe when one gets a rare insight into the way the world operates. The rewards for doing science range from the utilitarian to the downright spiritual.

Awe in Science

Awe is an important part of the experience of science – one could almost say it’s a universal. When a scientist feels awe it is usually in response to something complex, precise, ordered, powerful or beautiful. There is an element of unexpectedness and delight, maybe even respect, fear or reverence. Awe always involves the need for some sort of mental adjustment or accommodation: we need to make room in our internal map of the world for this new and amazing experience. The physicist Werner Heisenberg vividly described this process of taking on board a startling new concept when he wrote of his discovery of atomic energy levels:

“In the first moment I was deeply frightened. I had the feeling that, through the surface of atomic phenomena, I was looking at a deeply lying bottom of remarkable internal beauty. I felt almost giddy at the thought that I had now to probe this wealth of mathematical structures that nature down there had spread before me.”

Moments of awe are the rare high-points in science, both rationally and emotionally. Finally something is understood. That understanding and the new possibilities it opens up are wonderful, and the story is told and retold. Scientists, as you might expect, respond scientifically, with new questions and investigations. But they also respond in other ways depending on their personalities: aesthetically, using visual representations of the data in different ways; philosophically, as they discuss the ethical implications of the research or the surprising intelligibility of the universe; or spiritually, as they try to make sense of those feelings of awe and wonder at the immensity and beauty of the world.

When Elaine Howard Ecklund carried out some research into the beliefs of scientists in elite US universities, she discovered a surprising fact: 20% of the people that she and her research team spoke to were not members of any religious group, but considered themselves spiritual. For some of these scientists the experience of beauty, awe and wonder in their work led them to believe that there is something beyond science – one could perhaps call it ‘transcendent’ – an experience that motivated some of them in their research, their teaching, and their lives outside of the lab. I remember having a conversation with a colleague who had experienced something along these lines, so I’m not surprised to hear that many others feel the same.

According to the scientist-theologian Alister McGrath, experiences of the transcendent might involve a sense of the ‘numinous’ – a feeling that something ‘other’ might be behind what one is seeing. Or perhaps someone might encounter a deep truth about the unity of reality that strikes them in a particular way. Perhaps more common would be a moment of unexpected clarity – what some might call an epiphany – where suddenly things make sense. Experiences that might be called ‘transcendent’ are rare, but they leave a lasting impression.

The language used by many scientists when they describe the process of discovery is of a reality that was always there. Perhaps it’s not surprising that scientists are ‘realists’; they think that there is a real world outside of ourselves that waits to be discovered. Science does not answer the ultimate questions about the universe, but scientists are human beings so we just ask those questions anyway – sometimes looking for answers in unexpected places.

Spirituality in Science

At the beginning of this piece I mentioned my growing realisation of the size of the scientist’s task. The seeming inexhaustibility of the created order can be overwhelming, but many see this as something positive. There is so much more to explore. As the Jesuit philosopher Enrico Cantore has said, the mystery of the universe lies not in ignorance, but in dazzling intelligibility. Where do these thoughts of transcendence, reality and mystery lead? For Einstein, they were a religion. A Mind other than our own was somehow responsible for this world that we can make sense of using the language of mathematics. For others, the reality we see in the world leads to ideals that transcend differences of language, culture and religion.

We search for meaning, and we long for more. CS Lewis famously describes the world we live in as a pale reflection of the one to come.³ For those who already believe in God, what we see in science makes sense. We live in a world that operates according to principles that we can understand and describe mathematically. We can utilize what we find for good or evil (and everything in between), and what we discover is both beautiful and awe-inspiring. William Whewell, the nineteenth-century polymath and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, said that ‘We must find the right thread on which to string the pearls of our observations, so that they disclose their true pattern.’

For me, what we see in science is not evidence for God, but works well as a thought experiment. What would you expect if God existed? In the context of faith, science increases my sense of awe and wonder and helps me to worship God in a more genuine way. The Christian songwriter Matt Redman said that we sometimes ‘take the extraordinary revelation of God and somehow manage to make Him sound completely ordinary’. Science has the power to expand our horizons and helps us to see how great God is. The dazzling intelligibility of the world increases our humility, as we realise that because we ourselves are a fragile and finite part of the universe, we will never be able to fully grasp what we see in an objective intellectual way.⁴ Our response to what we see in the world is rational, emotional and active: worship as well as systematic theology.

The highest mountain peaks and the deepest canyon depths are just tiny echoes of His proclaimed greatness. And the brightest stars above, only the faintest emblems of the full measure of His glory.⁵

Notes

The main sources for this piece are Enrico Cantore, Scientific Man: The Humanistic Significance of Science (New York: ISH Publications, 1977); Olaf Pedersen, “Christian belief and the fascination of science” in Physics, Philosophy and Theology: A Common Quest for Understanding, Eds. Robert John Russell, William R. Stoeger & George V. Coyne. (Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory, 1988), 125-140.; Alister McGrath, The Open Secret (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008).

1. From Enrico Cantore, Scientific Man: The Humanistic Significance of Science (New York: ISH Publications, 1977)

2. Ron Cole-Turner, ‘What Do You Find Most Interesting or Surprising About the S&R Discussion Today?’, Science & Religion Today, 21st May 2012, http://www.scienceandreligiontoday.com/2012/05/21/what-do-you-find-most-interesting-or-surprising-about-the-sr-discussion-today-ron-cole-turner-answers/

3. In C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory. SPCK, 1942

4. Jame Schaefer, Theological Foundations for Environmental Ethics: Reconstructing Patristic and Medieval Concepts (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2009), Chapter 1.

5. Matt Redman, Facedown (Eastbourne: Survivor, 2004).

Augustine had a great deal to say about those chapters in Genesis that are especially controversial within Christianity today. In fact, Augustine dedicated about as much as any other Christian writer to the first few chapters of Genesis, so there is little guesswork we have to do in ascertaining what he believed Scripture to claim about creation. First of all, Augustine clearly rejected the notion that God had created the earth in six 24-hours periods. Instead, he believed that the universe was created instantaneously, and that the six days reported in Genesis were a metaphor for the various levels of dimensions of the created realm—something akin to what ancients referred to as the ‘Great Chain of Being’. But this is not to say that Augustine believed that the world was created as it is today in that instant. Rather, he affirmed that God created the world with inchoate potential for further development, like an acorn that will grow into a great tree when planted in the ground.

Augustine therefore affirmed that Creation has evolved and continues to evolve, though not driven by random natural processes, as affirmed by classical Darwinism. Instead, such evolution is governed providentially both via the inchoate potentialities present in the world from its beginning and by God’s ongoing governance of the universe.⁴ We should be careful not to turn Augustine too quickly into a modern advocate of theistic evolution, but the similarities are nevertheless significant. Augustine affirmed these ideas not on the basis of an attempt to accommodate Scripture to scientific discovery, but based upon his own reading of Scripture! Indeed, I think it fair to say that the great father of Western Christianity was something of a proto-evolutionary theist, and therefore one whose work deserves far more attention by those seeking to be faithful to both Scripture and Christian tradition while making sense of the claims of contemporary science.

Of course, we need to be careful not to push such claims too far. Augustine himself resists such a move by recognizing both the contingency of human interpretations of Scripture and the dangers of unintentionally imposing our own views on Scripture. A rather long, but significant quote from Augustine makes this point all too clear:

Let us suppose that in explaining the words, “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and light was made,” one man thinks that it was material light that was made, and another that it was spiritual. As to the actual existence of “spiritual light” in a spiritual creature, our faith leaves no doubt; as to the existence of material light, celestial or supercelestial, even existing before the heavens, a light which could have been followed by night, there will be nothing in such a supposition contrary to the faith until unerring truth gives the lie to it. And if that should happen, this teaching was never in Holy Scripture but was an opinion proposed by man in his ignorance.

On the other hand, if reason should prove that this opinion is unquestionably true, it will still be uncertain whether this sense was intended by the sacred writer when he used the words quoted above, or whether he meant something else no less true. And if the general drift of the passage shows that the sacred writer did not intend this teaching, the other, which he did intend, will not thereby be false; indeed, it will be true and more worth knowing. On the other hand, if the tenor of the words of Scripture does not militate against our taking this teaching as the mind of the writer, we shall still have to enquire whether he could not have meant something else besides. And if we find that he could have meant something else also, it will not be clear which of the two meanings he intended. And there is no difficulty if he is thought to have wished both interpretations if both are supported by clear indications in the context.

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, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. 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. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.

If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?

Reckless and incompetent expounders of holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.⁵

I am tempted here to let Augustine have the final word, but I think there are three final points worth highlighting here as a way of connecting this quote to the two books theory and thereby concluding our discussion of Augustine:

1. The Book of Nature is clearly revelatory of God’s providential work in Christ, and even nonbelievers are capable of comprehending its complex order through the proper use of reason and experience (i.e. science properly understood).
2. The Book of Scripture is clearly revelatory of God’s providential work in Christ, and therefore is true and authoritative in all matters. The problem is that we often misinterpret Scripture by imposing our own preconceptions upon it rather than allowing it to speak for itself.
3. God’s two books can and should be read together in harmony when we are open to allowing them to speak for themselves on their own terms. Ultimately, they cannot contradict each other because the source of both is the same God and if they seem to be in contradiction it is because we have misread one or both of them, and we need to be willing therefore to allow ourselves to be open to thinking about either one in different ways, trusting that God will ultimately lead us to see the truth of the whole.

Notes

4. In truth, these two kinds of providence are one and the same for Augustine because God in some ‘stands’ outside of time as its eternal creator. So, for Augustine, eternality is not everlasting time, but the complete lack of temporality altogether. In this sense, all of creation at all times is eternally present to God, and there is ultimately no difference between God’s governance over creation at its beginning from God’s governance at any other moment in its history. In a way, God governs all of history all at once.
5. This quote is excerpted from St. Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, 2 vols., translated and annotated by John Hammond Taylor, SJ (Paulist Press, 1982), volume one of which can be read here.

The first video, “10 Questions with Katherine Hayhoe”, introduces the scientist in a brief and lighthearted interview. Hayhoe is presented with 10 questions concerning her personal life and beliefs. When asked, she explains that one thing people should know about Christianity is that having a relationship with the God of the universe is one of the most incredible experiences that a person can have. As the video unfolds, the viewer quickly begins to realize that, despite her unique profession of two seemingly incompatible beliefs, Hayhoe is a remarkably sane and “normal” individual. Her role model, she explains, is her father-- the person who first introduced her to science and showed her that it could be “really cool”. On a more serious note, the scientist admits that being both a scientist and a Christian can be difficult. The most frustrating thing about her position, she says, is the amount of disinformation which is targeted at her very own Christian community.

In the second video, “Climate Change Evangelist”, Katharine Hayhoe delves into deeper discussion of the perceived conflict between climate change and Christian faith. She explains that admitting her identity as a Christian scientist can be uncomfortable. Since evangelicals are the targets of much disinformation concerning science in general -- and specifically the science surrounding climate change -- many people in the church have a misguided view of the subject and do not look kindly at her career choice. One woman encountered by Hayhoe at a church in Texas, for example, believed that global warming was a lie taught in schools to mislead her children. In an effort to realign misguided views like these, Katharine Hayhoe and her husband wrote a book addressing the deep-rooted emotions often associated with climate change. People fear that addressing the climate issue will bring forth changes in the economy and uproot their way of life. However, Hayhoe encourages her viewers to act out of love, as the Bible calls us to do, rather than out of fear. Acting out of love inspires us to consider the poor and disadvantaged people around the globe when we respond to the reality of a changing climate.

In the final segment of this three part video montage, Hayhoe addresses the question of what climate change means. Specifically, she is concerned about how global warming affects people on a personal level. While global warming generally brings to mind melting ice caps and polar bears, its implications are far more widespread, affecting the lives of everyone around the world- from cotton farmers in Texas to public health workers in Chicago. If nothing is done to change current emission levels, the number of days per year which exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit, for example, will begin to increase dramatically, and if emissions are increased, many areas will even develop extreme conditions like those seen currently in Death Valley. Hayhoe’s goal is to demonstrate clearly that the only way to preserve the world for future generations is to significantly reduce dependence on inefficient means of getting energy and instead transition to cleaner renewable energy sources.

Editor's Note: These videos first appeared on the Nova program "The Secret Life of Scientists & Engineers".

The inevitable companion to the idea that the Church has held back scientific progress is that we must look outside Christendom to discover the origin of modern science. But this is also false. Modern science stands as one of the great achievements of Western civilization. And, despite what we have often heard, it is certainly an achievement of the West, not of Islam, China or even ancient Greece. Many historians of science are still reluctant to admit this. This may be because the fad of post-modernism bit them hard and has refused to let go. They have developed a habit of praising Arabic and ancient Greek science as successful on their own terms but they have lost sight of the fact that, viewed objectively, the theories advanced by early science were quite false.

Of course, we should have respect the Greek and Islamic natural philosophers who struggled to comprehend the world. But most of what they taught, through no fault of their own, was woefully inaccurate. This was because their aims for science were nothing like ours. They wanted to understand nature in terms that made sense of their ethical or religious beliefs, and formed their theories accordingly.

To take just one example, pre-modern medicine was an unmitigated disaster, far more likely to kill patients than cure them. Treatments such as bleeding and purging could only weaken the constitution of the sick, reducing their bodies’ capacity to fight off infection. It is no surprise to find that the most celebrated doctor of antiquity, Galen of Pergamum (left), considered himself as much a philosopher as a healer. Given the ineffectiveness of learned physicians, it’s little wonder that people put so much stock in miracles and magic. Perhaps the most surprising thing is that doctors were able to maintain their professional status through all the centuries that they could do little more that hasten their clients to the grave. Luckily for us, we can be much more confident that modern medicine really can cure us of many diseases. So the history of science should be the story of how we went from being fundamentally wrong about the natural world to being, in large part, right.

Science as we imagine it today, with laboratories, experiments and a professional culture, is a recent phenomenon that did not appear until the nineteenth century. But its origins can be found much earlier and we usually look for them in the period known as the ‘scientific revolution’. It is commonly believed that the recovery of Greek philosophy during the Renaissance gave Western civilization the inspiration it needed to launch this revolutionary way of looking at the world. In this view, hardly anything of consequence for science occurred between the fall of Rome and the era of Copernicus and Galileo. Carl Sagan produced a timeline of scientific progress in his book Cosmos (1980) showing nothing at all happening between AD415 and AD1543. But this is an illusion foisted on us by the same mentalité that declared science and religion must be in conflict. The truth is that to understand why modern science arose uniquely in the West, we have to travel all the way back to the Middle Ages.

Dispelling Myths

Before we do that, we should finally dispose of the two myths about scientific progress that we noted above. Firstly, as we have seen, the popular view remains that religion has held back science at every opportunity. Many people still believe that science has advanced by fighting superstition and making the world safe for rational enquiry. It is true that certain religious doctrines contradict some scientific discoveries. The creation/evolution controversy is a case in point, but such quarrels have been surprisingly rare. Even the infamous trial of Galileo, the other example of conflict most often cited, was an aberration in the Catholic Church’s usual supportive attitude towards science.

On the other hand, the problems with the thesis that science and faith are locked in a historical conflict are formidable. For a start, the so-called ‘scientific revolution’ in the seventeenth century coincided with the period when Christian belief in Europe was at its strongest. Only after science had triumphed did religion start to suffer any sort of decline. And, if Christianity really had tried to hold back scientific progress, the chances are that it would have succeeded. Modern science would not have arisen in Christian Europe at all.

As it happens, much of the evidence marshaled in favor of the conflict thesis turns out to be bogus. The Church never tried to outlaw zero or human dissection; no one was burnt at the stake for scientific ideas (not even Giordano Bruno); and no educated person in the Middle Ages thought that the world was flat, whatever the Bible might imply. Popes have had better things to do than banning vaccination or lightning conductors on churches. The thought of a pope excommunicating Halley’s Comet is absurd, but this has not prevented the tale of Calixtus III (right) doing just that from entering scientific folklore. It is remarkable that authors today, who consider themselves skeptics, can swallow some of these stories whole. Carl Sagan introduced his readers to a ‘baloney detector’ in his book, The Demon-Haunted World (1997). It is a great shame he never used it on his own writings. He presented a completely fictitious account of the murder of the pagan philosopher Hypatia in Cosmos and falsely blamed Christians for the destruction of the Alexandrian library.

Zealous Victorian historians did find occasional examples of ecclesiastical stupidity, such as the Boston pastor who warned that lightning strikes caused earthquakes. They rewrote history to make these marginal figures into leaders of opinion. Religious dissidents who paid the ultimate price for their faith were recast as champions of reason. Pope Boniface VIII issued a bull intended to stop crusaders sending their bones home for burial; he would have been most surprised to hear that, according to Andrew Dickson White, he had legislated against human dissection. Whenever a priest questioned a scientific theory, which they often did in their capacity as amateur scientists, this was held up as an example of religious obstruction. Historians have been debunking these legends for over a century now, but they continue to be recycled by each new generation.

The role of ancient Greek and Islamic thought

The other myth about the rise of science is that westerners only had to pick up the baton from the ancient Greeks, or, as has been more recently alleged, the Islamic caliphate. In reality, modern science is qualitatively different from the natural philosophy practiced by the likes of Aristotle or Avicenna. Aristotle started from the passive observation of nature and then built up a system based on rational argument. This had two enormous disadvantages: compared to controlled experiments, passive observation is usually misleading; and not even Aristotle’s powers of reason could prevent blunders in his arguments.

His discussion of motion is a case in point. He observed that everyday objects tend to stop when nothing was pushing them. From this observation, he deduced the principle that all moving objects must be moved by something else. He elevated this principle to the status of a logical certainty and then used it to explain other kinds of motion. He even thought that it successfully proved the existence of God. If the universe as a whole is full of movement, he argued, it requires an exterior unmoved mover,—that is, God—to keep it going. But of course, Aristotle’s initial observation was just a specific instance without any general applicability. We now know that objects do not stop when there is no force on them. They tend to keep going in a straight line: a principle enshrined as Newton’s First Law. Other observations led Aristotle to decree it certain that a vacuum can never exist; that heavy objects fall faster than light ones and that the earth must occupy the centre of the universe. All wrong. Aristotle, alas, was mistaken about almost everything. This was not because he was a fool but because he was practicing a natural philosophy that could never lead to true theories.

Alhazen

Islamic science suffered from similar drawbacks. Advances made by Muslim natural philosophers were significant, but rather more modest than we are usually led to believe. The importance of Alhazen’s investigations into the properties of light is indubitable. They were used by Roger Bacon in his own writings on perspectiva and thence were integrated into the modern theory of vision developed by Johannes Kepler. Even so, Alhazen’s experimental method was limited and not carried forward by his immediate successors. Similarly, the intuition of Ibn al-Nafis, in the thirteenth century, concerning the circulation of blood between the heart and the lungs is deeply impressive. But there is no evidence that he had any impact on the rediscovery of this phenomenon by Michael Servetus and Realdo Columbo three centuries later.

Consequently, we should be skeptical about some of the claims made for Islamic science in some recent television shows and books, not to mention in Wikipedia. That said, the misattribution of scientific advances to Islamic sources has sometimes been the fault of the pioneers who actually discovered them. Alchemy is a case in point. During the Middle Ages, it was customary for Christian alchemists to write their treatises under the name of the fabled Arab savant Geber. It is not surprising that later historians mistakenly assigned developments such as the first production of powerful acids as well as the isolation of alcohol to Geber himself. Alcohol was even assigned an Arabic name by Christian authors. We now know that he probably did not write any of the works attributed to him.

On the other hand, there was one towering exception to the rule that early science tended to be bunk: both the Greeks and Arabs excelled in mathematics. This was because pure rationalism works a treat when it is restricted to geometry and arithmetic. The imams had plenty of practical uses for math, as well: the Muslim calendar follows the moon and not the solar year, while mosques had to be orientated towards Mecca. Both these religious problems required mathematical solutions. It’s also said that the complicated rules of Islamic inheritance made algebra indispensable. Even our word algebra is a corruption of al-jabr, the name of an Arabic textbook widely used by Christians.

Despite these genuine contributions, it is nevertheless fair to say that neither Aristotelian rationality nor Islamic mathematics was the key to the developments that made the modern world possible. As we shall see in the second part of this essay tomorrow, the very different cultural situation in medieval Europe allowed for Aristotle’s faulty method to be criticised by the Catholic Church, meaning that previously forbidden ideas could flourish. The Church also made natural philosophy a compulsory part of the course that it required trainee theologians to follow. So, unlike in Islamic madrassas, science had a central place in Christian centers of learning. Indeed, it was a Christian worldview that proved especially compatible with—even necessary for—the rise of modern science.

Some implications and conclusions of Theistic Evolution

Bernard Ramm argued for just such a position in The Christian View of Science and Scripture, even though he was an OEC, not a TE. Denis Lamoureux takes it further in his recent book, I Love Jesus & I Accept Evolution. A glance at the table of contents shows that he emphasizes the presence of “ancient science in the Bible” and teaches us how to interpret the Bible in light of this. Just as we don’t take biblical astronomy “literally,” with its 3-tiered universe, we shouldn’t take biblical biology “literally,” with its fixed species and separate creations a few thousand years ago.

For a concise description of Complementarity, I borrow the words of Stanford physicist (now retired) Richard Bube, who wrote three books about science and Christianity, taught a course about it for decades, and edited the Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation (now called Perspectives on Science & Christian Faith) for many years. In his book, Putting It All Together, Bube presented seven “patterns” for relating science to faith (here and here), ending with his personal favorite, Complementarity, described as follows:

“Science and theology tell us different kinds of things about the same things. Each, when true to its own authentic capabilities, provides us with valid insights into the nature of reality from different perspectives. It is the task of individuals and communities of individuals to integrate these two types of insights to obtain an adequate and coherent view of reality.” (p. 166)

I’ll offer my own example to illustrate this model. Everyone reading this column originated in the union of two cells, one from each parent. Everyone reading this is also created in the image of God. Each of these two sentences is true, but the truths they proclaim are of a different order. The first neither implies nor negates the second. You can see where this is going: for TEs, the truth (in their view) that we are descended from other primates neither implies nor negates the truth that we are created in the image of God.

The Complementarity view, as I’ve briefly presented it, might seem quite shallow—nothing more than the simple, unsupported claim that science is about HOW and religion is about WHY. Readers who want a subtler account are invited to study Christopher Rios’ article about its development. Rios quite properly stresses the work of two important British scientists from the last century, quantum chemist Charles A. Coulson and his friend, brain theorist Donald M. MacKay, one of the most prolific and thoughtful Christian thinkers of his generation. If you don’t know MacKay, I unreservedly recommend that you get acquainted, but his work is so wide-ranging that I am hesitant to recommend a single starting place. Evolution was not one of his chief interests (I don’t offer him as a prime example of TE per se), but I can’t think of anyone who wrote more about the Complementarity model of science and Christian faith.

Physicist-theologian John Polkinghorne can also be understood as a proponent of Complementarity, though I would not characterize his position solely in those terms. His overall vision captures the essence of Complementarity: theology complements the limited picture of reality given to us by science; it goes beyond science, providing a larger metaphysical framework within which both nature and the science of nature are more intelligible (see below for more). Many of his books are conceptually deep, discouraging casual readers, but they are also eloquent and very creative, making the hard work of reading them time well spent. There simply is no good substitute for diving into them yourself. I’ve reviewed one of his recent books here.

(INVITATION: If you would like to take part in a full discussion of one of his books here at BioLogos, at some point down the road, please let me know, either in a comment below or privately (tdavisATmessiahDOTedu). Don’t make the commitment lightly—you would be expected to purchase and read the book—but please take the invitation seriously and respond accordingly.)

A theology of nature starts from the assumption that God exists and then seeks to understand the whole of nature in light of this. Polkinghorne does this in many of his books (see the review linked above for some specific examples). Natural theology, on the other hand, is the effort to demonstrate God’s existence (including some of God’s attributes, such as power, wisdom, and goodness) from reason or nature, without appealing to the Bible. Many Christian authors since the patristic period have done this, often citing the first chapter of Romans, though some of the most important have had doubts about the value of the whole enterprise; two prominent examples would be Blaise Pascal (see the article by George Murphy here) and John Henry Newman.

The golden age for natural theology lasted from the late 17th century (when Boyle and Newton were outspoken advocates of using science to argue for God’s existence) down through the mid-19th century, when Darwinian evolution provided a serious challenge to natural theological arguments based on “contrivances,” aspects of nature that appeared to be exquisitely crafted for a specific purpose by the Creator. Although it’s not true “That Darwin Destroyed Natural Theology,” (see the chapter by Jon Roberts here), it is true that TE authors no longer appeal to intricate biological “contrivances” to make their case. Prior to Darwin, a leading natural theologian, the great scholar William Whewell, had already made the case for a different type of natural theology in his famous contribution to the Bridgewater Treatises, a series of eight books on natural theology from the 1830s: “But with regard to the material world, we can at least go so far as this;—we can perceive that events are brought about, not by insulated interpositions of divine power, exerted in each particular case, but by the establishment of general laws” (Astronomy and General Physics Considered with Reference to Natural Theology, p. 356 in the fifth London edition of 1836). Ironically, Darwin placed this very passage directly opposite the title page in On the Origin of Species (1859).

Just a few years later, a Unitarian chemist from Harvard, Josiah Parsons Cooke, Jr., replied to Darwin in a book called Religion and Chemistry; or, Proofs of God’s Plan in the Atmosphere and Its Elements (1864). Cooke got around Darwin by inquiring into the basic properties of matter itself—the features of the physical universe that make biology possible at all. “There is abundant evidence of design in the properties of the chemical elements alone,” he argued, especially as they combine to make the unique substance we call water. Natural theology had found a more solid foundation, “which no theories of organic development can shake.”

Contemporary TEs do pretty much the same thing. They look for evidence of “design” or “purpose” in the nature of nature itself, not in biological “contrivances.” Discussions of the “fine tuning” of the universe are common in TE literature, including Francis Collins’ book, The Language of God and Ken Miller’s book, Finding Darwin’s God. Philosopher Robin Collins (who is writing a superb book about the fine tuning of the laws of nature) provides a helpful introduction to the terms and the issues here. Polkinghorne raises fundamental questions about the very intelligibility of nature in the wonderful title chapter in Belief in God in an Age of Science. Let’s pay careful attention to what he says about his overall approach:

“This new natural theology differs from the old-style natural theology of Anselm and Aquinas by refraining from talking about ‘proofs’ of God’s existence and by being content with the more modest role of offering theistic belief as an insightful account of what is going on. It differs from the old-style natural theology of William Paley and others by basing its arguments not upon particular occurrences (the coming-to-be of the eye or of life itself), but on the character of the physical fabric of the world, which is the necessary ground for the possibility of any occurrence (it appeals to cosmic rationality and the anthropic form of the laws of nature) ... [Consequently] the new-style natural theology in no way seeks to be a rival to scientific explanation but rather it aims to complement that explanation by setting it within a wider and more profound context of understanding. Science rejoices in the rational accessibility of the physical world and uses the laws of nature to explain particular occurrences in cosmic and terrestrial history, but it is unable of itself to offer any reason why these laws take the particular (anthropically fruitful) form that they do, or why we can discover them through mathematical insight.” (pp. 10-11)

Looking Ahead

Sorry to stop mid-stream, but this is enough for now. This discussion resumes in about two weeks with more implications and conclusions of TE. There should be enough here to keep us going until then!