The Patheos symposium on the future of evangelicalism introduced another set of essays on August 4th under the rubric of “Transforming Culture.” Karl Giberson, a physicist, scholar on science and religion, and Vice President of the BioLogos Forum, has written a short essay that expresses his worry about the future of America’s conversation on science and religion.
Creationists are more entrenched than ever, building a $27 million Creation Museum and media outreach, circulating a magazine to almost 70,000 readers, and insisting on a young earth because, according to Al Mohler (president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary), the “theological price” of alternative views is too costly. A Pew Forum poll conducted in 2007 showed that only 25% of evangelicals believe in evolution and 10% in evolution through natural selection––a statistic that puts them at odds with the scientific consensus, reinforcing the cultural perception of Christian anti-intellectualism. The New Atheists have emerged, defining the terms of engagement in the debate on science and religion. And the Intelligent Design crowd has lost its stamina, becoming a scientific embarrassment.
I am sympathetic to Giberson’s proposal for via media:
What seems to be appearing on the horizon is a well-articulated culture war of religious belief. Both the atheists and the creationists/ID supporters are in full agreement that there can be no peace between the religious and scientific views of the world. Neither is interested in any synthetic middle ground where one might simultaneously embrace a science shorn of its over-reaching scientism and a faith freed from a simplistic biblical literalism. As the voices grow louder and more insistent, the perch between them will grow ever more precarious, making it all but impossible to avoid sliding by default down a slippery slope toward one or the other.
Here is the question that I want to briefly explore: What are the issues that need to be addressed in order for Christians to achieve a “synthetic middle ground” in the debate? There are at least two.
The first issue relates to the vocations of science and religion. Alister McGrath and Francis Collins rightly promote what they call “partially overlapping magisteria” (POMA), “reflecting a realization that science and religion offer possibilities of cross-fertilization on account of the interpenetration of their subjects and methods” (qtd. from The Dawkins Delusion?). Where the biblical claim about the universe is primarily concerned with human redemption, the scientific claim is exclusively concerned about the processes of nature. This should be straightforward enough, but I am amazed at how often ultra-Darwinists overreach with metaphysical statements while biblical literalists wrench the Bible out of context, turning it into “primitive science.”
The second issue relates to the doctrine of creation. Where there is an absolute distinction between Creator and creation, there is a relative distinction between human and non-human creatures. Let me begin with the first distinction. If God is an actor in the cosmic drama, errors are bound to occur. Look no further than Isaac Newton’s God-of-the-gaps. But God is the playwright, as Anglican theologian Diogenes Allen writes in his chapter on “The Limits of Science” in Theology for a Troubled Believer:
God is not a member of the universe, and any attempt to have God involved within the processes that science studies is theologically utterly unacceptable. And almost as important, we need to realize that biblical religion does not affirm God’s reality because its writers were trying to explain the working of the natural world. Biblical faith is a response to God’s initiative, rather than the result of an investigation of nature. Thus not only is God not part of the world, but the grounds for belief in God are also quite different from that found in science. Pascal, Kierkegaard, and Karl Barth never tired of stressing both these points.
The next distinction is explained by Reformed theologian Colin Gunton, who has made a significant contribution to the doctrine of creation. His chapter “Establishing: The Doctrine of Creation” in The Christian Faith delineates three ways that God creates through mediation: creation by personal word, creation by craftsmanship, and creation by ministry. What matters for this discussion is the third way, where “worldly agencies are enabled by divine action to achieve their own ‘subcreating,’ not in the absolute way that God creates, but relatively, as creation from what already is” (cf. Gen. 1:11, 20, 24). Focusing too much on “men and women as the chief ministers of creation,” Gunton says, can “‘blind us to the fact that the difference between human and non-human creatures is relative, not absolute.” He continues:
God grants to the lesser creatures their own capacity to generate beauty and truth. The garden needs to be tended, but the gardener does not make the plants grow, merely provides some of the conditions for their growth. If this side of things had not been as neglected as it has in the history of theology, the theory of evolution might not have proved the stumbling block to belief that it has in recent times.
In conclusion, Christians can achieve a “synthetic middle ground” in the debate if they get a better handle on the vocations of science and religion and a more robust doctrine of creation.
August 6th, 2010 | 9:52 am | #1
I have come to the conclusion that Young Earth Creationism necessitates a neo-Nestorianism in that there is one god who wrote the Bible and an other god who created all of these distant stars and buried dinosaur bones.
When one looks at the flexibility of the various hermeneutics of faithful believers when regarding say, the Real Presence in the Lord’s Supper, or the differing end times scenarios, it is curious that on this issue we demand such rigidity.
Why, “If ‘day’ doesn’t mean 24 hours then the whole edifice of Christian theology collapses!”
But not
“If ‘is’ doesn’t mean ‘is’ in the words of institution, then nothing in the bible is trustworthy!”
Or
“If ‘1,000 years’ doesn’t literally mean ‘1,000 years’ in the book of Revelation then the whole salvation story is out the window!”?
August 6th, 2010 | 12:48 pm | #2
Excuse me, I meant to say neo-Marcionism not neo-Nestorianism. My bad.
August 6th, 2010 | 5:12 pm | #3
You seem to have bought into the misconception that this is a contest between Creationists and science, when this is in fact a contest between Creationists and Neo-Darwinists over what is the correct science and what are the appropriate conclusions to be drawn from the evidence.
August 6th, 2010 | 5:16 pm | #4
Christopher said:
Where the biblical claim about the universe is primarily concerned with human redemption, the scientific claim is exclusively concerned about the processes of nature.
I suggest that there’s a false assumption in that statement. I wonder if anyone else thinks so?
To Pastor Spooner, I’m curious how we should read this bit of Scripture:
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. [Ex 20:8-11]
It’s a problem when we cannot recognize genre in Scripture; it’s another when we say that Scripture does not recognize genre in Scripture when it is interpreting another passage of the selfsame anthology.
August 6th, 2010 | 6:16 pm | #5
Thanks Christopher, but let me respectfully disagree.
“For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.”
But not “rested” as in ‘God was tired.’ I know that God is omnipotent so I interpret the word rested accordingly.
I know that that three weeks ago I broke a fossil of a sea creature off the top of Sandia mountain which is 10,000 feet high, and I have other fossils on the cliff face in my back yard (about five miles away from the mountain top) which is at 7,000 feet. There are numerous layers of crisscrossing strata between them. So, I have reason, not to doubt the inerrancy of the Bible, but to conclude that God is using the word day, in a manner different that 24 hours. God was telling Moses to rest a day a week. I think it unwarranted to extrapolate from the Exodus text an interpretation that applies to a completely different context, especially considering that God has placed this fossil in my hand.
August 6th, 2010 | 6:18 pm | #6
Wait, yet an other correction! I mean Frank, not Chris. I gotta slow down. Sorry Frank.
August 7th, 2010 | 5:51 am | #7
How to advance a via media in the fray of a contentious issue?
I agree with you, Christopher. We need a lot more study of the nature of scientific and theological discourse, and I believe one can do much worse than Alister McGrath as a guide and mentor in this task. One can also do a lot worse than Tim Keller, Diogenes Allen, Thomas Torrance, John Polkinghorn, Pope John Paul II, and, reaching a bit further back, St. Augustine, just to name a handful of the theologians who have helped me learn to distinguish the proper nature and limits of scientific discourse and its relationship to theology. Science uses natural explanations for natural phenomenon. As such, it is by definition mute about theological and atheological premises. Philosophy, specifically metaphysics, can and should speak of metaphysical realities and relate them to science. Theology should do the same.
I am saddened by the heat and friction this issue generates. I wonder if a lot of bad energy might be dissipated if Creationists/ID advocates would consider that biblical faith need not rewrite the rules of science and if Neo-Atheists would realize that science need not include metaphysical assertions to preserve its integrity.
To Christopher’s second point, the need to strengthen our doctrine of creation:
Diogenes Allen, CHRISTIAN BELIEF IN A POSTMODERN WORLD
Robert Sokolowski, THE GOD OF FAITH AND REASON
Etienne Gilson, GOD AND PHILOSOPHY
Finally, I want to add one more point–a third strategic objective: Americans need to learn a bit of background to understand how the issue of science and religion has become so contentious. I can think of no better place to start than with the following:
George Marsden, UNDERSTANDING FUNDAMENTALISM AND EVANGELICALISM, especially the chapter entitled “Why Creation Science?”
Jon H. Roberts, DARWINISM AND THE DIVINE IN AMERICA, PROTESTANT INTELLECTUALS AND ORGANIC EVOLUTION, 1859-1900
August 7th, 2010 | 9:00 pm | #8
I certainly agree that the “middle way” of Francis Collins, and others, is the most sensible approach. Clearly, there’s no intrinsic conflict between belief in the Christian God, and belief in evolution, by natural selection.
The notion that there is a conflict, is an unfortunate product of the efforts of, ironically, the atheists, and the Christian literalists. They both, oddly enough, agree, that the bible should be read literally.
Having said that, there’s some, at least ambiguity, in the notion, that God is not in creation. Of course, as Allen implies, God, being the creator of space and time, is not “in” space and time, like an object. But He CAN be, if He so chooses. And here’s the ambiguity: He’s the second person in the Trinity, as Jesus Christ, who clearly walked the earth, eat, drank, slept, healed, etc. Therefore, God is, or was, at least, IN the world, as an object. The key to a reasonable theology, here, is to somehow coherently, reconcile God transcending space and time, and also being in it.
One also has to square God answering prayers, which puts him in the world.
August 8th, 2010 | 11:05 am | #9
Shameless plug time:
Francis J. Beckwith, “Intelligent Design, Thomas Aquinas, and the Ubiquity of Final Causes.” BioLogos Foundation (22 May 2010) Get it here:
http://biologos.org/uploads/projects/beckwith_scholarly_essay.pdf
August 8th, 2010 | 9:17 pm | #10
Pastor Spooner:
May I say that your explanation is completely nonsensical — it makes utter hash out of Exodus, let alone Genesis.
See: In Ex 20, when YHVH tells Moses about the sabbath day, he says this is the same day of the week in which He Himself rested after all creation. There is no hint of God’s exhaustion: only the plain statement that God made this day holy by resting on it.
If Ex 20 does not refer to a day, then surely Gen 1 does not refer to a day. But if Ex 20 refers to a day of the week, then we have to ask ourselves why we insist that the phenomenological description of Genesis does not align with the phenomenological description in Exodus when speaking of the same event.
August 9th, 2010 | 6:36 am | #11
Why is there a conflict between science and religion? Once it was because Christians felt threatened by Darwin, Lyell, etc. and their disagreement with Genesis cosmogony. There’s still a flavor of that in the debate. Increasingly, however, it is a science-to-science conflict, and also a conflict between dogmatic philosophical naturalism (PN) and a position that either denies PN or takes it as an open question. PN is often conflated with “science,” but it’s not even nearly the same thing.
Somehow, though, the dispute continues to be labeled as religion vs. science. Stephen C. Meyer’s Signature In the Cell is a book about science, through and through. But it denies PN, and as an inference from evidence in the natural world, it suggests mind as the source of biological information. And at my local Books-A-Million, it’s shelved in the religion section.
Its being shelved there announces to the world that it’s a religion vs. science book, but that’s a distorted view. The book takes a position within science and philosophy that contests other scientific/philosophical views. It ought to be on the science shelves.
This illustrates the major thrust of the debate, at least as far as Intelligent Design is concerned. (I won’t go so far as to say there’s an identical issue in the case of the Creation Museum.)
Why the distortion? Why label Signature in the Cell a religion book? Because for many, religion’s assertions are easier to set aside without dealing with them. Few have responded to Meyer’s thesis, and as long as they can keep it at arm’s length from science, they can continue to think it’s okay if they don’t.
Part of the reason the science vs. religion conflict continues is because it serves naturalists’/evolutionists’ purposes to mislabel the debate that way.
August 9th, 2010 | 7:36 am | #12
By the way, I recognize there are also Christians whose view of science is significantly distorted. This too is a significant problem in many respects.
In the case of Intelligent Design and the question Christopher raised here, however, it’s not terribly relevant. ID’s proponents—the ones who understand the issues, that is, including all the major leaders—know how to distinguish between science, philosophy, and religion. It is ID’s antagonists who keep conflating the three.
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