By Donald Schmeltekopf
How can the church, especially ministers and others in leadership positions, pursue seriously both biblical theology and scientific truth? This question remains as relevant today as ever.
The stakes are high. One Christianity Today interview quoted a Presbyterian pastor in New York City who noted that scientists and mathematicians he encounters often think they cannot become Christians due to the common misconceptions of conflicts between faith and science. Every year there are reports of high school and college students who abandon their faith because of these same misunderstandings.
The history of the relationship between faith and science is instructive. At least until the 19th century, discussion about Christian faith and science usually centered on faith and natural philosophy or faith and natural history. Generally, the view held by natural theologians and philosophers was not one of conflict between faith and science but rather complementarity occasioned by some tension.
Galileo, the 17th century astronomer and philosopher, for example, appealed to the metaphor of the “two books.” What Christians should do, he contended, is study both the Bible and nature. Both proceed from the same God, he said, in one case the written word and in the other the workings of natural phenomena.
By the end of the 19th century the conversation began to change. That was when — driven largely by the scientific revolution — modern science began to replace natural philosophy.
A major aspect of this shift was the development of science independent of religion and other forms of knowledge. Science is science, proceeding according to its own purposes and by its own standards and methods. Thus, the study of nature was no longer conceived in relation to other forms of knowledge, but within the context of discreet specializations, such as biology, chemistry, geology, physics and the like.
The tipping point was the work of Charles Darwin in his famous book, the Origin of Species, published in 1859. Through a wealth of observations, Darwin showed that existing species came about not by miraculous creation, but by a form of “creation” arising out of nature itself.
Thus, without intending it, Darwin led to the further independence of science from other knowledge and helped foster the development of scientific disciplines. The “theory of evolution” came to stand entirely on its own, even though Darwin never used the word “evolution” in his book and was himself a theist for much of his life.
Since Darwin, the relationship between faith and science has been characterized to considerable extent as one of conflict. Andrew Dickson White, founding president of Cornell University, made this argument in his widely circulated, two-volume work published in 1896 titled A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom. According to White, history showed that religion, and Christianity in particular, had negative influences on the progress of science any time Christians tried to interfere.
While historians of science have discredited this thesis — by and large Christians did not try to interfere — the “warfare” or “conflict” metaphor still remains popular among the general public.
For example, some members of the scientific community hold to a scientific naturalism that implies a Godless universe, one that is self-explanatory and without any meaning.
On the other hand, some in the Christian community insist that the creation of the world conforms literally to the seven-day account given in the first chapter of Genesis and, furthermore, that all miracles are literally true without exception.
Against the backdrop of history, it’s important to ask again: how can serious and committed Christian believers pursue biblical theology and scientific truth together?
In the first place, Christians must be careful not to claim too much knowledge about the natural world on the basis of a particular reading of the Bible. (The same, of course, applies to scientists when they make certain theological claims.) Let us remember what is evident: the Bible is not a book of science.
In the second place, Christians should have no fear whatsoever about what is true regarding the natural world. Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32). The Apostle Paul reminds us, “By him all things were made; … In him all things hold together” (Colossians 1: 15, 17).
Conflict between biblical theology and scientific knowledge is simply not warranted. The One Triune God is the Lord of both!