Like Luther

My first book was little more than analysis and some small amount of original interpretation of scripture. My second, a major work of interpretation and reinterpretation, made much use of science. Not surprisingly so, since it’s purpose was to understand, evaluate, and reconcile if possible, the multitude of apparent contradictions between the Biblical and scientific accounts of creation. Those contradictions have long kept a lot of people (I myself was one of those) from having much confidence in the Bible as truth, let alone as God’s own voice and exposition.

The chapters on creation, which I call the “creation account”, are often difficult to believe for the “educated” and scientifically literate nowadays. I, myself, as a teacher of university students, was usually able to break young Christians away from their faith by critiquing that account. As it reads in the KJV, and essentially every other English version (which really simply repeat the KJV, ignoring what four centuries of science have revealed), the creation account is easily ridiculed and hard to reconcile. But the science I used to break the faith of many proves a two-edged sword. It can turn linguistic translation into a forensic exercise and truly liberate the deep and profound truths hidden in the ancient Hebrew language so painstakingly preserved for this very time in our history. Now, I like to compare the revelations that the use of modern scientific knowledge can wring out of a text first writ some 3500 years ago by the scribe(s) who couldn’t begin to fathom, let alone express, what the creation involved, with the best of Biblical prophesy!

Since that work, 8 to 10 years ago, I have continued to develop a forensic-like approach to interpreting both science and scripture. I continually get richer understanding and appreciation of both forms/sources of wisdom, and what they can tell us about God and his nature. This incredible creation we live in that doesn’t just reflect his nature, but partakes in and expresses it. And I am convinced we can all benefit greatly by studying it. That is why I am building this blog, as a record and archive of the revelations and insights I feel God leads me to and blesses me with.

I used to worry I might overstep, perhaps even let my abiding love and confidence in (good) science mislead my interpretation of scripture. I don’t any more. Cautious, slow to conclude, I feel I’m like a good forensics investigator. And I wholeheartedly accept the declaration of Romans 1:19, 20:

“what can be known about God is evident among them (even godless scientists!) because God has shown it to them. From the creation of the world His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what He has made.” (HCSB) And I accept, as well, the conclusion of that verse: “As a result, people are without excuse (for not knowing or acknowledging God, and Him as Creator)!”

Science began as a fulfillment of that scripture. Only about the time of Darwin did it start to lose that foundation, as some saw in Darwin a chance to come up with an alternative to a Creator rather than a picture and explanation how the Creating might have progressed and been achieved. I, too, thought evolution was an alternative, a non-God theory. I was still of that persuasion when I signed off on the publication of my reinterpretation of “Hey Mom, What About Dinosaurs?” I don’t any more. I’ve seen that even should the history of life be as most scientists think it is, it cannot contradict God as its intelligent designer, the divine inventor of even such a method and process as that! And I’ve found many scientists (and theologians) think that way.

I’ve learned that both scientists and Christians want to understand better the Creator, and are quite capable of believing in both science and God. If there is anything that hinders them in doing so, it is because they isolate one from the other, often because of the partisanship of the culture wars of our society, and fail to take advantage of each in an interactive search for the truth they all so earnestly desire to apprehend. I no longer fall for that trap, that snare of hell. I do what I do, and I share it here with you!

Let me give you an example. I recently read this in an article in Christianity Today:

“It is not just those enamored with the prosperity gospel who have pursued health, wealth, and happiness as if they were divine rights and signs of God’s blessing. Or who have avoided adversity and poverty as if they were curses. But God’s ways are more mysterious than we perceive.

“God so governs the universe by his secret providence that while nothing happens apart from God’s decree, his hand remains largely hidden from us. What could be more natural than the changing seasons? Yet there remains such unevenness and diversity that every year, month, and day is seen to be governed by a new providence of God.

“Church father Basil the Great said that fortune and chance are pagan terms, and ones the godly should not use. But even though all things are ordained by God’s plan, for us they seem fortuitous – their order, reason, and necessity seem accidental. Yet in our hearts it nonetheless should remain fixed that nothing will take place that the Lord has not previously foreseen.

“Nothing will more effectively preserve us in a straight and undeviating course in this economy than a firm persuasion that all events are in the hand of God, and that he is as merciful as mighty. This should lead us to gratitude in prosperity, patience in adversity, and a wonderful security respecting the future.

“Prone to blame God in adversity and praise ourselves in prosperity, we murmur against God if he does not grant us quiet nests. We imagine that adversity can only come from Satan – as if he were a second god – and thereby fail to recognize that nothing happens, even when intended by Satan for evil, isn’t turned by God to the wider purpose of our salvation. Nothing can thwart God’s purposes toward us in Christ.”

There’s more than one thing in that theological perspective that can be helped by a bit of scientific theory. What first caught my attention was where the author runs up against the very long-debated matter (mystery) of God’s sovereignty and our free will. No less than the great divide between Calvinism and Arminianism hearkens to that issue. The question dogs the less discerning or questioning among both believers and those who might be but won’t – because they cannot resolve that “God so governs the universe by his secret providence that while nothing happens apart from God’s decree…” bit.

I find no problem, not even any contradiction in that mystery because of what I’ve learned from science. Let me explain.

Two of the most well-established and productive scientific paradigms of this modern nuclear-computerized-physics-astronomy-space-oriented world we live in are absolutely like that same perplexity: Quantum Mechanics and Relativity.

Relativity rules! It is the basis of almost everything you and I know about the world, and universe. Gravity, planets, rocket ships, how we bounce around (and break) in a car wreck, and everything we see with our eyes, obey the laws of Relativity. The world, all the things in it, from grains of sand to cannon balls, even galaxies and the light and other radiations that reveal them to us are very precisely predictable by the laws of Relativity. The big things, the things, as I said, we can see and touch and feel, will behave and “move and have their being” just as that scientific theory says they will.

But Quantum Theory says something else. It says that the tiniest things that the bigger ones are made up of, the atoms and electrons and even smaller components like quarks, and what they are all doing – even where they actually are (when it is so obvious those atoms are inside the marble or cannon ball or planet circling the sun) is absolutely not certain, not predictable, not capable of being located, or their behavior at this moment, be described. They seem to have VERY free will (had they consciousness). And Quantum theory is about as established and proven as Relativity. We build our computer-driven world, and explain even astronomical and cosmological doings and nature by it. At the small, too small for our eyes to see, things are not doing as we think they must. Almost as if God is not so totally in control. Almost as if He doesn’t care!

That is the nature of His creation! The behavior of a grain of sand, or cannon ball, or space satellite, or planet, all do do what we, or He, wants. They end up where we want them to go. Work as we want them to. Produce what we need. All the while the population of their individual parts are just sort of doing things without, ignoring, resisting, being crazy (maybe popping off into outer space now and then).

If that is how God designed the creation, then that is a pattern He is well acquainted with. Comfortable with. Enjoys. And is still in control of – of the final (or intermediate, according to our eyes) outcomes. If that is “His invisible attributes”, that is how He might equally not worry about, need to be so sovereign over us, and our every deed and act and word that “nothing happens apart from God’s decree”. We can have free will, even while we are chosen, or He has a “plan for us”, and a plan for the rise and fall of nations, and the last day! If our computers can predict where a crazy mass of countless particles will go when launched into space, to within inches of our calculations, how much more can God’s mind, which is so big as to have created the universe as easily as a playhouse for your daughter, be able to leave us as much free will as we can comprehend, and yet know where we, or someone else, will accomplish each and every one of His purposes and plans?

See how easily science and scripture can explain, make sense of, remove seemingly mutual contradictions of each other? For both the believers and non believers?

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