Recently, I've had a few conversations with some friends about the relationship between science and scripture. They left me disheartened. On the one extreme I found friends who, believing they were being faithful to scripture, systemically rejected nearly our entire body of well-established scientific discovery. On the other extreme, I found friends who thought that scripture has been proven outdated, unreliable, and little more than fairy tales in light of modern scientific findings. I'm not sure if it is balancing or disorientating to have friends with such diverse perspectives!
To be fair, most of my friends fall somewhere between these extrema: my Christian friends tend to hold a high regard for scientific discovery and a number of them are actively involved in it, and my non-Christian friends tend to at least recognize some value in the teachings of scripture.
Nevertheless, these conversations reminded me of a number of errors, both historically and presently, that have muddled peoples thinking on the relationship between scripture and science. Here I'd like to offer a brief sketch of what seem to be some of the most common ones.
Scripture, not Aristotle
Perhaps the most famous example cited to show that scripture is opposed to scientific discovery is the case of the Catholic Church's persecution of scientists such as Kepler and Galileo. After all, their arguments that the earth rotated the sun contradicted the Biblical account, right?
Perhaps the most famous example cited to show that scripture is opposed to scientific discovery is the case of the Catholic Church's persecution of scientists such as Kepler and Galileo. After all, their arguments that the earth rotated the sun contradicted the Biblical account, right?
Not quite.
It turns out the history surrounding these men is rather more complex, and political, than a simple the-scientists-said-this-but-the-Bible-said-that. The politics of the matter aside, to understand some of the dynamics involved, one has to consider another actor on the stage of intellectual thought: Aristotle.
By the medieval ages, the Catholic Church had altogether embraced Aristotle and his works as authoritative. For instance, one can trace the enormous influence Aristotle's works had on theologians such as Thomas Aquinas. One place this came through was in the Church's understanding of Justification, that is, how one is made right with God. They had embraced Aristotle's view that "men become builders by building and lyreplayers by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts" (Nicomachean Ethics, II.1).
This became a central point of controversy in the Reformation when Luther and others argued that Scripture taught justification by faith in contrast to the position of the Church which they believed amounted to justification by works.
Aristotle didn't just write about ethics; he also offered a cosmology in which the earth was fixed and the sun rotated about it. True, the Church appealed to biblical accounts such as Joshua commanding the sun to stand still to argue against Kepler and Galileo's work, but they did this because they were reading Scripture with an Aristotelian lens. Significantly, Kepler and Galileo were both dedicated Christians and offered readings of Scripture entirely consistent with their discoveries, but these were rejected because they challenged the authority of Aristotle, and hence the Church. This also explains why Galileo's discoveries of spots on the sun or craters on the moon were so offensive. Nowhere did scripture claim that the moon or sun were without blemish, but Aristotle had.
In fact, at the time Kepler recognized this, even labeling himself "the Luther of astrology". The Protestant Reformation, replacing the authority of the Church and its reliance on the opinions of the Church Fathers with the study of the book of scripture itself, opened the way for the scientific revolution that replaced the authority of ancient figures such as Aristotle with the study of "the book of nature" itself. For more on this, check out The Bible, Protestantism, and Rise of the Natural Sciences.
I find in this history a warning to modern Christians: we need to be sure that the ideas that we're defending in the name of faithfulness to scripture are actually the most faithful reading of scripture and not just ideas that we've latched onto and glossed over with Biblical language from some other source.
Science, not Scientism
Just as some ideas are labeled as teachings of scripture that really shouldn't be, we can label some ideas as scientific that shouldn't be. My favorite example to highlight this is the statement by logician Bertrand Russell: "What science cannot tell us, mankind cannot know."
Now, Russell was a fine logician who really upset attempts to ground mathematics upon set theory in the early 20th century by considering a set with the paradoxical property that it contained as an element every set that was not a element of itself. That might sound odd and rather confusing, but Russell was demonstrating that the current rules of set theory could lead to contradictions (which we really seek to avoid in mathematics). In particular, one could ask if this set of his was an element of itself and reason that if it was, then it must not be, but if it wasn't, then it must be, either way giving a contradiction. The point being, this led to the need for mathematicians to be a bit more careful in how to think about and discuss sets to avoid this kind of contradiction.
Why is this relevant? Because analyzing Russell's statement--"What science cannot tell us, mankind cannot know."--leads to a very similar paradox of contradiction. All one needs to do is ask if we can know that Russell's statement is true. Suppose we can. Observe, Russell's statement is not a scientific one. It is outside the scope of what one will ever discover with the scientific method. Hence, by its own criteria we cannot know that it is true!
At best, this leaves the possibility that it is true, but that we can never know of its truth. It turns out to be a statement of faith--and a hopeless faith at that. There is not even the possibility that one day we could know if such a statement is true.
Russell's statement embodies what has been called scientism. We see it alive in the academy when disciplines such as the humanities are disregarded as unscientific and hence considered without value. Indeed, not every discipline conforms to the scientific method, but perhaps other fields of investigation--be it that of the historian, economist, or even a theologian--require different methodologies. In fact, even to consider such questions of truth and how we can know it moves us beyond the realm of physics into metaphysics. A scientist cannot claim the unique superiority of his own method as a scientist--rather he must do so as a philosopher!
We Were Made for Both
Now that we've sketched some of the boundaries of scripture and science to prevent us from the ditches on either side, there is one final danger that we ought to avoid and that is the danger of thinking the study of scripture and science are altogether unrelated: that one can walk the road of scientific discovery and not have it affect her life or faith, or that one can study scripture and not have it affect the way she makes sense of the universe.
Now I understand the attraction to such a view: as highlighted above scripture has been inappropriately used to stifle scientific discovery and people have wrongly called on science to stifle faith. It is no wonder then that many have been drawn to the idea that science and religion are two different lines of inquiry that have authority to speak to different kinds of questions; they are non-over lapping magesteria.
Broadly, there are some features of this thinking are quite helpful. We shouldn't expect scripture to answer every scientific question that we may have nor should we expect to conduct a scientific experiment to verify, say, the doctrine of the trinity. Some truth can only be known through special divine revelation (the book of scripture) and some truth has been left to general revelation (the book of nature). In fact, scripture encourages us to seek out those truths that have been hidden in the creation (Proverbs 25:2).
But these are not to remain isolated, independent ventures. Reflecting on the natural world led David to sing of the Creator (Psalm 19), and yet, in the same Psalm, he moves naturally to a praise of the Torah. In another Psalm, David recorded how it was his study the Torah that led him to be wiser than the established authorities (119:99-100)--an experience that both Luther and Kepler can identify with.
The greatest problem with the idea of non-overlapping magestria is that it forgets that we ourselves stand at the intersection: dirt created in the image of God. We are physical beings, but also theological beings. To divide our study of the world from our study of God is against our very nature. And standing in this intersection, we are not alone. Throughout history God has acted concretely in the physical world. Parting waters, healing the sick, and bringing down strongholds. Above all, in the incarnation, God Himself in the person of Jesus is found inhabiting our physical world as a real man. Notably, after His resurrection, the tomb was empty--He was raised and enthroned in heaven with a Man's body. The Christian cannot just consider God as an abstraction or philosophical exercise detached from our world, and hence, our study of the world. The scars on His hands won't allow for that. The Creator is forever connected with His creation.
No comments:
Post a Comment