Why The Evidence Shows the Earth is Old

I have been told that I am not a Christian. I have been accused of not taking the Bible literally.  I have had to listen to the charge that “we can’t believe what science tells us because scientists are fallen.” As a science teacher and a Christian, it is important to me to look at both subjects objectively and rationally, realizing that salvation is based on belief in Christ, not the age of the earth. I think the evidence from both the Bible and current science support an old earth view. You can be a Christian and at the same time accept the scientific evidence that overwhelmingly shows the earth to be 4.56 billion years old.

Really good science is done by non-Christians. In fact, science that actually confirms what the Bible teaches is done by people who assume a naturalistic position. While I am sure there are dishonest scientists, the vast majority look honestly at the evidence.  Just because they may have a non-Christian world view does not mean that they will come to bad conclusions. For example, we accept all kinds of scientific research done by atheists in the areas of medicine, automobile and airline technology, and electronics.  Why do we question it when it has to do with the age of the Earth?

Most scientists know that when they propose a model for nature, it is probably not fact and is probably not representing exactly what nature is like. Scientists generally enjoy that our view of nature constantly changes and what we state as “fact” now might not be “fact” 50 years from now. For a scientist to become famous, they usually need to find evidence that overturns an accepted paradigm or disproves an existing theory, so most are trying to do just that! In terms of evolution, the mechanistic model for how life evolves has changed in the last few years; this is why we continue to do research. However, there are areas in science that have been studied so exhaustively they do disserve the “fact” label. One example is speciation; the fact that micro-evolutionary changes in an isolated population can cause a new species to emerge.

When we claim to take the Bible literally, we must be clear about what that means! Genesis was not originally written just for us. It had to make sense to every person reading it throughout history. It was written in a different language, in a different cultural background, and originally for a different people group. We have to be careful not to impose our cultural understanding on the text. Scripture is inerrant, but our interpretation of it is not. We need to be humble in our claims of what Genesis (and any other text) is teaching. I take the Bible literally; to me that means that we attempt to figure out the purpose and meaning of what the original author wrote.

Scholars have been analyzing Genesis for thousands of years and there is no conclusion as to the one correct way to interpret the creation account. There are several possible interpretations that are not “literal”; many theologians take the account to be figurative. Genesis does not specify that creation was done in six 24 hour days. The earliest commentaries on Genesis from first century Jewish scholars show a mix of views on the age of the earth and 24-hour creation days. Philo wrote that the six days are figurative and are a metaphor for order and completeness. Josephus was undecided about the meaning of the expression “one day.”

It is important to realize that those who advocate long periods of time for the six “days” of creation are not saying that the context requires that these be understood as periods of time. They are simply saying that the context does not clearly specify for us one meaning of day or another, and if convincing data about the age of the earth, drawn from many different disciplines and giving similar answers, convinces us that the earth is billions of years old, then this possible interpretation of day as a long period of time may be the best interpretation to adopt.[1]

Jewish Genealogies are theological and they have gaps. You cannot use them to date a historical event in the Bible. The “witness who was there” did not tell us the age of the earth because the writings were concerned with teaching something more important.

It seems fair to conclude that the genealogies of Scripture have some gaps in them, and that God only caused to be recorded those names that were important for His purposes. How many gaps there are and how many generations are missing from the Genesis narratives, we do not know. The life of Abraham may be placed at approximately 2000 B.C., because the kings and places listed in the stories of Abraham’s life can be correlated with archaeological data that can be dated quite reliably, but prior to Abraham the setting of dates is very uncertain.[2]

New Testament writings do not confirm that Jesus believed in a literal, historical interpretation of Genesis 1. The proof texts that Ham gives for this on his website can all be easily interpreted from the point of view of Genesis being a theological treatise. In fact, as I have written in earlier posts, many of the early church fathers (who were closer in time to the teachings of Jesus) were tolerant of several views of the creation week; early Christian writings on the subject were also inconclusive and open to several views. Justin Martyr and Irenaeus (a student of Ignatius, Papias and Polycarp, who were all students of the Apostle John) both suggested that the “days” could be thousand year epochs. Clement of Alexandria (a third generation student of Mark and a fourth generation student of Peter) echoed Philo’s teaching that the six days are figurative and are a metaphor for order and completeness. Augustine wrote quite a bit about the creation days and concluded that the Genesis creation day is different from our understanding of a day.

Except for Augustine, the early church leaders expressed their views [on the Genesis creation account] tentatively. There is no indication that they sharply debated the issue or took a dogmatic stance. Instead, they charitably tolerated a diversity of views.[3]

Almost everything about observational astronomy contradicts a recent creation! We do observe the past directly. When you look out into space, the light you are seeing is from the past! We view the moon as it was 1.3 seconds ago, the sun as it was 8 minutes ago and the Andromeda Galaxy as it was 2.5 million years ago. We actually have a “picture” of the universe when it was 380,000 years old. The horizon “light travel time problem” no longer exists with the recent data we have from the Planck satellite.

We are also observing the past directly when we are studying fossils and when we are investigating old atmosphere trapped in ice cores. When radiometric dating is used correctly and corroborated with several dating techniques (as is usually done) it is accurate. Here is a long explanation for the accuracy of radiometric dating: www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens2002.pdf

The discoveries in the past 50 years are getting closer to confirming that the laws of nature have remained constant throughout the history of the universe, so you can extrapolate what you see now to what has happened in the past. For a discussion of this, go here: www.reasons.org/articles/sandage-test-affirms-biblical-creation-model-and-constant-laws-of-physics

The Bible does not have to be interpreted as teaching that there was a global flood.  I believe the Genesis flood is better understood as a local phenomenon from both the evidence in the Bible and the evidence from nature.  Go here (there are two parts) for a discussion of Biblical evidence: www.reasons.org/articles/exploring-the-extent-of-the-flood-part-one

www.reasons.org/articles/exploring-the-extent-of-the-flood-what-the-bible-says-part-two

It is not contrary to the Bible if animals and plants died before the fall. For a good explanation of this, go here: www.reasons.org/articles/animal-death-before-the-fall-what-does-the-bible-say

In conclusion, I want to again stress that salvation is based on belief in Christ, not the age of the earth. The purpose of this post reflects the overall purpose of the blog: To show skeptics and Christians that you can believe the Bible, you can be intellectual and you can use your mind without having to fear or belittle science. Current science that shows the earth to be 4.56 billion years old does agree with what the Bible teaches. When interpreted correctly, Christian scripture and nature should be in harmony. God created the universe and inspired the Bible; both should agree.

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[1] Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, Zondervan, 1994.

[2] ibid

[3] Hugh Ross, A Matter of Days, NavPress, 2004.

Creation or Evolution? A False Dichotomy

     As mentioned in my previous blog from February 4^th, scholars have been analyzing Genesis for thousands of years and there is no conclusion as to the one correct way to interpret the creation account in the first chapter. There are several possible interpretations ranging from literal to analogical to mythical. For a complete treatment of all the Christian views on Genesis 1 go here: www.pcahistory.org/creation/report.pdf or here www.reasonablefaith.org/defenders-2-podcast/s9

     There has to be some truth in almost every one of the views. Genesis 1 is very carefully crafted to accomplish several goals. It gives the framework for how creation is organized; it gives us the function of several of the entities in nature and it provides an analogy for the human work week while at the same time introducing the theology of the Sabbath to the Jewish people. Because the Hebrews had been in Egypt for 400 years, their view of the creation and of Yahweh had been corrupted by the Egyptian culture and religions, so Genesis 1 was also corrective instruction; establishing who the real God was while putting nature in its appropriate place as separate from God.

     What I would like to explore in this blog is the possibility of the Genesis creation account matching with the scientific findings of today. What if the account was meant to do all the things mentioned above, but also was written so skillfully so that it would not contradict what actually occurred as the universe was created? As I have mentioned several times in this blog: “When interpreted correctly, Christian scripture and nature should be in harmony. God created the universe and inspired the Bible, so both should agree.” I am not proposing that Genesis 1 is teaching science, but I am suggesting that at the very least, it will not contradict nature in the end. As I compare Genesis 1 to current science, all Bible quotes come from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, 2001, Wheaton: Standard Bible Society. Biblical text will be quoted first in each section in bold font, followed by the current science information or perspective on that section. Much of the material for comparison comes from Reasons to Believe, a ministry headed by Hugh Ross. Their website is: www.reasons.org

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Current science has determined that the universe had a beginning 13.7 billion years ago (bya). See the February 1^st blog to read more about how this matches with current Big Bang cosmology. The earth formed 4.56 bya and the moon formed 4.52 bya.

“The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” The earth began with no life on it.  More importantly, this verse takes us onto the earth and allows us to look at the remainder of the account from the perspective of someone standing on the surface of the earth; giving us the point of reference from which to observe the rest of creation.

“Let there be light, and there was light.” This has been troubling for scientists for the obvious reason that we have light showing up before the sun does. When the earth was young, it had a heavy blanket of clouds, gas, and dust around it. The atmosphere then cleared up enough to allow diffuse light to come through, but a translucent layer of cloud and gas remained enveloping the planet for a while. It is interesting that the verb used here in the Bible indicates letting natural laws run their course to allow the light to appear. If we are viewing this from the perspective of someone standing on the surface of the earth, you couldn’t tell where the light was coming from. This matches our scientific planet formation model.

“Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” Science agrees that there was water on the surface of the earth 3.8 bya.

 “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” Science agrees that we had land on the surface of the earth 3.0 bya.

 “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” The verb used here is again interesting in that it seems to say that God is commanding or allowing the earth to bring the vegetation into existence; letting plants appear from the natural course of events running their course on the earth. Could this indicate some kind of evolution? It is also my understanding that the Hebrew words for trees and plants are very general and could apply to almost any plant-like organism. In terms of fossilized plants, cyanobacteria are the oldest known fossils, dating to 3.5 bya. We have found that there were complex, multicellular, photosynthetic organisms (Rafatazmia chitrakootensis & Ramathallus lobatus) on the land 1.6 bya. A recent discovery is summarized here: http://www.reasons.org/blogs/todays-new-reason-to-believe/earliest-complex-vegetation-and-the-bibles-history-of-life. The date at which we find the first primitive plants is about 543 million years ago (mya). Trees show up about 410 mya and the first seed bearing plants appear 390 mya. 

 “And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness.” This is another place that seems to trouble those that know science the most. How can you have light and plants before the sun? Some will say that the genre of the writing doesn’t demand that the account be chronological; instead it is topical. This, of course, would solve this problem. Another perspective is that the sun is placed later in the week to displace it from a prominent position, as the sun was actually a god in the Egyptian creation account. However, if this is the literal order, we can rationalize it to current science because as a planet develops, the atmosphere will transition from translucent to transparent. Again, the verb used here seems to indicate natural laws running their course. If this is from the perspective of the surface of the earth, then at this point in the creation event the sky became clear enough to actually see where the light was coming from.

 “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” Again, Biblical Hebrew is very general, so it is difficult to know exactly what specific life forms are being created on days five and six. There wasn’t life in the water until 570 mya and the first land animals showed up 350 mya. If the Bible is meant to be chronological, these dates create an issue when compared to the dates for the plants appearing; trees at 410 mya and seed bearing plants at 390 mya.  If the text is referring to the complex, multicellular, photosynthetic organisms that show up 1 bya as plants, then there is no dating conflict. The first birds are found at 150 mya, with the evolution of birds thought to have begun in the Jurassic period; definitely after most plants. The Hebrew verb used in day five implies initial creation by God, so this would match with the first appearances of whichever life forms are described here; something like the Cambrian explosion in the fossil record.

“Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” Again, if the Bible is chronological and you take this mean that all land animals were created on day six, then there is a problem with birds appearing before the land animals.  But the verb used here again implies nature going through its natural course and the manufacture of something from existing materials, so day six could be describing the animals that evolve from the types created earlier.  For example, the day six creation could be referring to the major radiation of mammals and the origins of primates.

“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” Modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) showed up somewhere between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago.

If the non-literal interpretations of Genesis are correct, then we have no need to even try to match the creation account to what current science is discovering. But if we take Genesis 1 to be describing the creation of the universe and the world literally, then it is possible to show that there is no disagreement with current science. This does require that you take the account to be from the perspective of someone standing on the surface of the earth so that the clearing of the atmosphere affects when one such person would first see the sun and moon as the light giving entities. This simple perspective change then allows the creation account in the Bible to match what current science has discovered about nature. You must also understand that Biblical Hebrew is very general, so it is hard to know what specific types of life are being created in each day. The Bible definitely describes an ordered creation of life in almost the same order as evolutionary theory describes.  The Bible definitely describes sudden appearances of “types”, with periods of time where the earth and life are allowed to run their natural course.  This matches the fossil record, which also shows explosions of “types” followed by periods of evolutionary change. 

Removing the Barrier: Genesis

The Genesis creation account has been a stumbling block for both Christians and non-Christians. A common objection to even considering the Christian faith has been, “I tried to read the Bible, but I just couldn’t get past the first chapter Genesis.” Sadly, the controversy that has come with these opening chapters of the Bible has kept countless people from ever hearing the important parts that come later; the truth about Christ has been hidden by misunderstandings about the creation account. Misconceptions about Genesis have also kept many Christians from studying science, creating a mistrust of science in the Christian community. As stated in the January 9^th post on this blog, “When interpreted correctly, Christian scripture and nature should be in harmony. God created the universe and inspired the Bible, so both should agree.” If we read the Genesis creation account correctly, it doesn’t have to be a barrier to either science or Christianity.

In order to understand what a particular text is telling us, we need to know what the author meant to communicate, as well as what it meant to the original audience. Genesis was not originally written just for us. It had to make sense to every person reading it throughout history. It was written in a different language, in a different cultural background, and originally for a different people group. We have to be careful not to impose our cultural understanding on the text. Scripture is inerrant, but our interpretation of it is not. We need to be humble in our claims of what Genesis (and any other text) is teaching.

Scholars have been analyzing Genesis for thousands of years and there is no conclusion as to the one correct way to interpret the creation account. There are several possible interpretations that are not “literal”; many theologians take the account to be figurative. The main purpose of this article is to show skeptics, especially those that may have been turned off by Genesis in the past, that the Biblical creation account doesn’t have to be read as six consecutive 24 hour days and that the text is consistent with the earth being 4.5 billion years old.

It is important to realize that those who advocate long periods of time for the six “days” of creation are not saying that the context requires that these be understood as periods of time. They are simply saying that the context does not clearly specify for us one meaning of day or another, and if convincing data about the age of the earth, drawn from many different disciplines and giving similar answers, convinces us that the earth is billions of years old, then this possible interpretation of day as a long period of time may be the best interpretation to adopt.[1]

Historically, most scholars have emphasized that the Genesis creation account does not specify the date or the time period over which the creation took place. The view that the earth is 6000 to 10,000 years old is not taught in the Bible. The 6000 year date came from Archbishop James Usher in the seventeenth century and almost no evangelical scholar today holds this view. The earliest commentaries on Genesis from first century Jewish scholars show a mix of views on the age of the earth and 24-hour creation days. Philo wrote that the six days are figurative and are a metaphor for order and completeness. Josephus was undecided about the meaning of the expression “one day.” Early Christian writings on the subject were also inconclusive and open to several views. Justin Martyr and Irenaeus suggested that the “days” could be thousand year epochs. Clement of Alexandria echoed Philo’s teaching. Augustine wrote quite a bit about the creation days and concluded that the Genesis creation day is different from our understanding of a day.

Except for Augustine, the early church leaders expressed their views [on the Genesis creation account] tentatively. There is no indication that they sharply debated the issue or took a dogmatic stance. Instead, they charitably tolerated a diversity of views.[2]

Genesis is more about theology than it is about science. Since the Bible is a theological text, the emphasis is about God and what He wants us to know about Him. The crucial, undebatable points of Genesis are as follows:

1.      God is the creator of the universe.

2.      Creation (nature) is separate from God.

3.      Creation is ordered and under the control of God.

The creation story in the first chapter of Genesis is the introduction of this theology. The day-by-day structure of the narrative shows that creation is very systematic and the text makes it obvious that the true God is the only one doing the creating. The seven day motif also sets up the Jewish doctrine of the Sabbath. As an aside, for the scientist, nature being separate from God allows us to do science!

An interesting interpretation of Genesis comes from Johnny Miller and John Soden, in their book, In the Beginning… We Misunderstood. Miller and Soden show how the main purpose of the Genesis creation account is to correct the Hebrew people’s improper view of creation that had been corrupted by 400 years of living in Egypt. They claim that the teachings were necessary to break free from ancient Egyptian creation myths and teach the Hebrew nation the correct way to think about the beginning of the universe. This view does explain why Genesis 1 roughly matches an Egyptian creation myth, while Genesis 2 has the general pattern of Ancient Near Eastern creation myths.

Genesis is not presenting a new local deity to Israel, but, as the introduction to the Pentateuch, it is calling for Israel’s absolute allegiance to God, who claims absolute sovereign control. At the same time, the account demotes all the gods of Egypt and every other civilization with which Israel may have contact.[3]

The view that Genesis is a theological text, with the fact that scholars throughout history have disagreed on what a creation “day” means, ensures us that a scientist who holds to the earth being 4.5 million years old can be confident that they are not “creating a partition in their head” (see January 9^th blog entry). Skeptics can also be certain that to become a Christian does not require you to think that God created the universe in a week only thousands of years ago.

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[1] Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, Zondervan, 1994.

[2] Hugh Ross, A Matter of Days, NavPress, 2004.

[3] Johnny Miller and John Soden, In the Beginning … We Misunderstood, Kregel, 2012.

Big Bang Cosmology & Christian Creation Theology

As we continue to do science and discover more and more about nature, we find that what we discover actually supports what the Bible has always taught about the universe! One of the most tested, and confirmed, scientific theories of our time is that all matter, energy, and time had a beginning. Creation out of nothing is one of the basic doctrines of the Christian faith. Jews and Christians have held this view for thousands of years; despite scientists that taught otherwise. The Aristotelian view of the universe as eternal was the standard scientific model for 2000 years prior to the mid to late 20^th century, when we started to discover that the universe actually had a beginning!

Thinking that the universe was eternal in the past did create a paradox; first attributed to the German amateur astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers in 1823. His “dark night sky” paradox had, in fact, been discussed throughout the history of science. If light had been coming toward the earth for an infinite period of time from an incomprehensible number of stars that cover every inch of the sky, why is the majority of the night sky dark? If the universe has existed from infinity past, then the sky should always be filled with light.

The first empirical evidence against a past eternal universe came in 1914, when Vesto Slipher showed that several nebulae (at that time, defined as “any diffuse astronomical object”) were moving away from the earth. In 1916, Albert Einstein discovered that his equations of general relativity actually predicted an expanding universe; implying that the universe was not fixed and had to have a beginning! He “fudged” his equations to make them fit the current view of a fixed, unchanging universe; later calling that act the biggest mistake of his career.

Alexander Friedman, a Russian mathematician working in the 1920’s with Einstein’s theories, used the mathematics to show that the universe is expanding. A Belgian Roman Catholic Priest, George Lemaitre, simultaneously realized the implications of general relativity and in 1927 published his “hypothesis of the primeval atom.” He showed how the universe had to be homogeneous with a constant mass and a growing radius. A few years later, Edwin Hubble provided confirmation of what Slipher showed; that velocities of galaxies moving away from us must result from a general expansion of the universe. The implication here is that if the universe is expanding, then it must, at some time in the past, have been denser. If we run the expanding universe in reverse, then there had to have been a time when all matter was compressed together in an infinitely dense clump.

While the debate over whether the universe had a beginning continued, George Gamow, a chemist, showed in 1946 that only an universe expanding from an extremely hot condition could account for the present abundance of elements. The smoking gun finally came in 1965 when Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson detected radiation left over from the creation event and showed that the universe had to begin in a very hot and dense state. Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose solidified the argument and created some controversy when they showed in 1970 that all space, matter, time & energy must have been created by an agent outside of space and time.

In the last 25 years, the COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer satellite), the WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) and the Planck Spacecraft (from the European Space Agency) have all collected data that has strengthened the hot big bang model and confirmed that the universe had a beginning. Current Big Bang Cosmology teaches that all matter, time, and energy were created out of nothing in a hot, dense, singularity that has been expanding and cooling since. The data is so strong that debate among scientists is no longer if there was a beginning; now it is mostly a discussion over what caused the beginning.

About three thousand years ago, the author of Genesis wrote, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”  An excellent case can be made that this first sentence in Genesis is describing creation ex nihilo, creation out of nothing.  God did not create out of any pre-existing materials and the phrase “the heavens and the earth” means everything; the entire universe.  In one sentence, Genesis 1:1 separated itself from all other creation accounts and from almost every religion throughout history.

With majestic simplicity the author of the opening chapter of Genesis thus differentiated his viewpoint, not only from that of the ancient creation myths of Israel’s neighbors, but also effectively from pantheism, such as found in Eastern religions like Hinduism and Taoism, from panentheism, whether of classical neo-Platonist vintage or twentieth-century process theology, and from polytheism, ranging from ancient paganism to contemporary Mormonism.[1]

The New Testament writers and the early Christian church fathers ascribe the existence of the universe to God alone; God is described as the ultimate source of all existing things.[2] Creation ex nihilo was defended in the second century by one of the early church fathers, Irenaeus, in Against Heresies. The Gospel of John begins with a statement about who created and the fact that He created all things!

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things were created through Him, and apart from Him not one thing was created that has been created.^[3]

The parallel between big bang cosmology and what the Bible teaches is astounding. Christian theology teaches that all matter, time, and energy were created out of nothing by God and this teaching was around thousands of years before science “discovered” it!

The best data we have are exactly what I would have predicted, had I nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, and the Bible as a whole.[4]

For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.[5]

Our current model for the universe includes the fact that space is, and has been since the beginning, expanding.  Job 9:1–10 and Zechariah 12:1 in the Old Testament teach that God “stretches out” the universe. There is some controversy if this “stretching out” is the same kind of expansion that current science is referring to, but it does make you think, especially since Jewish theologians prior to 20^th century science wrote about an expanding universe.

The claim that the Bible teaches current cosmology does not come from our present knowledge of science being read back into the Biblical texts. Jewish and Christian scholars, using only the Biblical texts, both described current cosmology long before the first evidence for our current theory. In the second century, Irenaeus defended creation out of nothing. Saint Augustine in his Confessions from the 4^th century affirms the doctrine of creation out of nothing and states that there was a beginning of time and matter. The following passage was written by a Jewish Scholar, in the 12^th century (notice the mention of the expanding universe):

At the briefest instant following creation all the matter of the universe was concentrated in a very small place, no larger than a grain of mustard. The matter at this time was very thin, so intangible, that it did not have real substance. It did have, however, a potential to gain substance and form and to become tangible matter. From the initial concentration of this intangible substance in its minute location, the substance expanded, expanding the universe as it did so. As the expansion progressed, a change in the substance occurred. This initially thin noncorporeal substance took on the tangible aspects of matter as we know it. From this initial act of creation, from this etherieally thin pseudosubstance, everything that has existed, or will ever exist, was, is, and will be formed.[6]

Christian doctrine for the last 2000 years has held that the universe had a beginning. For the vast majority of this time, the prevailing scientific view was that the universe was past and future eternal. Today, the scientific evidence for an absolute beginning to time, space, and matter continues to mount. Since God created the universe and also inspired the biblical writings, we should not be surprised with this astounding agreement between the Christian scriptures and nature.

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[1] Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, 2003, InterVarsity Press.

[2] Ephesians 3:9, Revelation 4:11, Romans 4:17, 11:36, 1 Corinthians 8:6, Colossians 1:16, Hebrews 11:3

^[3] The Holy Bible: Holman Christian standard version. 2009 (Jn 1:1–3). Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers.

[4] Arno Penzias, Nobel Prize – Astronomy.

[5] Robert Jastrow, American astronomer, physicist and cosmologist, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

[6] Nahmanides, commentary on the Torah, 12^th century

The Mysterious True Nature of Reality

Both science and theology use evidence to formulate models of what we think the world is like and what we think God is like. Often what the evidence shows us is that nature and God are beyond our comprehension! The evidence leads to mysteries that we cannot fully comprehend; many times reality must be described in a way that doesn’t make sense. In theology, the trinity and the dual nature of Christ are both paradoxes that cannot be totally understood by our human mind. In science, quantum mechanics and the nature of light have the same issues of mental obscurity.

The Doctrine of the Trinity teaches that one God is three persons.  This is not illogical nor is it contradictory; but it certainly is a paradox! God is three “whos” and one “what”; this is not a logical contradiction. It is stated well in the Athanasian Creed from the fourth century.

Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith. Which faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And the catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the persons, nor dividing the substance.

For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit. But the godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, is all one, the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal.[1]

Our minds cannot comprehend the Trinity, but this is what is described by the writers of the eyewitness accounts of what Jesus taught. This evidence leads us to the conclusion that one God is also three persons. The Trinity may be above reason, but it is not against reason.

Evidence from the Apostolic Writings also lead us to the conclusion that Jesus was God and a human at the same time.  Comprehending this doctrine is a bit easier than the trinity, but still a mystery!  How can something be two different things at once?  Here is a description from the Council of Chalcedon:

We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a reasonable soul and body; consubstantial with us according to the manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the virgin Mary, the mother of God, according to the manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the prophets from the beginning have declared concerning him, and the Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers has handed down to us.[2]

These mysteries are not limited to Christianity!  Paradoxes also are forced by the evidence when studying the natural world. Take light and electrons for example.  Under one set of conditions they will do exactly the same thing as water waves and sound waves.  Change the situation and they will act as if they are little tiny baseballs.  Try to come up with a mental picture of that!  Light and electrons acting as if they are both particles and waves is a paradox, but is a major doctrine of science.

Paradoxes abound in the world of the very small. We must use quantum mechanics to describe really tiny things.  The evidence forces us to believe realities like an electron can be anywhere in the universe at any given moment and can even go back in time.  Richard Feynman, who definitely understood quantum mechanics better than almost anyone on the planet during his lifetime, remarked, “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.” Quantum mechanics and light may both be above reason, but they are not against reason.

In order to understand and explain reality we need to compare our theories, models, and explanations with something familiar.  Since we don’t have much experience with God or with very tiny things, so we have a tough time imagining what they are like!  The data we have on God and much of the data we get about light and sub-atomic particles is unlike anything we have ever experienced before! 

The difficulty really is psychological and exists in the perpetual torment that results from your saying to yourself, "But how can it be like that?" which is a reflection of uncontrolled but utterly vain desire to see it in terms of something familiar. [3]

Objections to the Trinity break down in the fact that they insist on interpreting the Creator in terms of the creature.[4]

It should be expected that God and nature are both a mystery. Since God created the universe, we should not be surprised that we see a reflection of the creator when we study nature.  Light is two things that are one. God is three things that are one. No one truly understands quantum mechanics. No one truly understands the nature of God. God’s creation and revelation are both hard to understand fully, but neither are illogical.

If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could

make it easier. But it is not. We cannot compete, in simplicity, with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We are dealing with Fact. Of course anyone can be simple if he has no facts to bother about.[5]

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[1] Athanasian Creed

[2] Chalcedonian Creed

[3] Richard P. Feynman, The Messenger Lectures, 1964

[4] Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, Baker, 1984

[5] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Simon & Schuster, 1952

Science & Theology – A Synergetic Relationship

Science is the study of nature. Theology is the study of God. It is a common teaching and belief that since nature is the material world and God is immaterial, science and theology embody two totally different ways of knowing and represent, as biologist Stephen Jay Gould taught, “two completely different, non-overlapping magisteria.” In her book, Total Truth, Nancy Pearcey explains that our culture has separated "truth" into two categories. Theology fits in one category which is subjective and unverifiable. The other category is considered to be verifiable: hard, factual, scientific knowledge. The more I study science and the more I study theology, the more I find that the two categories actually overlap and that there is absolutely no need to keep them separated.

Both science and theology are concerned with knowing the truth about the world; both study the handiwork of God. One studies God’s inspired writings and attempts to interpret their meaning, while the other studies God’s creation and tries to make sense of it. Both use remarkably similar techniques! The Reverend Doctor John Polkinghorne, who has a doctorate in physics and is also ordained as an Anglican priest, notices the similarities between his two disciplines and states, “Theology, as much as science, must appeal to motivated belief arising from interpreted experience.”[1]

Both disciplines look at evidence to determine an explanation for that evidence, and then both test the explanation by seeing if new evidence will fit with that description. Wayne Grudem, in his Systematic Theology, describes the process of “doing theology”: 

1. Find all verses in the Bible relevant to the topic you want to study. 

2. Summarize the points made in the relevant versus. 

3. Summarize the teachings of the relevant versus into one or more points about that subject. 

4. Compare your summary to other writings on the subject and/or talk with others in the church about your summary. 

5. If your views are radically different from others writings on the subject, then you will need more evidence to modify or strengthen your position. 

When doing systematic theology, Grudem states:

…we are free to use our reasoning abilities to draw deductions from any passage of Scripture so long as these deductions do not contradict the clear teaching of some other passage of Scripture.[2]

Compare the above steps for “doing theology” to the commonly accepted steps for “doing science”: 

1. Collect relevant evidence. 

2. Evaluate (summarize) your evidence. 

3. Formulate a conclusion (one or two main points) based on your evidence. 

4. Submit your conclusions to a peer review process (allow others to compare your work). 

5. If your conclusions disagree with others, collect more evidence to either strengthen or modify your conclusion.

Science uses a peer review process and reproducible experiments to test the explanations. Theology uses peer review as well; others in the church cross check explanations with the latest research on the earliest recoverable Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek manuscripts. Both use something a bit different as evidence, but the process to evaluate the evidence is very much the same. Both also refer to past experts for help, as Newton and Maxwell are part of any standard science text just as much as Augustine and Aquinas are part of a theology text; both areas have their accepted doctrines. Obviously, science and theology are studying different areas and usually are asking different types of questions (as they should, since they are different disciplines), but the process of science and the process of theology are very much in harmony, and both use hard, factual knowledge.

      As I wrote about in the previous post, science itself was born out of Christianity because reasoning and using evidence is what Christians did! To the early Christians, faith was believing because of the evidence.  Christianity, as described in the Bible, is itself “scientific” as it is historically based on evidence, testing, reason, and logic. Jesus continuously gave concrete examples and signs. In Mark 2, Jesus says he healed so that you may believe; he gave signs to show that he was the Christ. He was not afraid to show physical evidence to Thomas. In Acts, Paul reasons with non-believers and Peter reminds people of the evidence they saw. John’s entire gospel is an evidential apologetic and explains his faith in his first epistle:

He opens his letter with the evidence of his own eyewitness encounter with Christ. Notice how many senses he appeals to:

What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we beheld and our hands handled concerning the Word of Life, and the life was manifested, and we have seen and bear witness and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us, what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also…

Then he closes his letter like this:

And the witness is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, in order that you may know that you have eternal life.

To John, faith wasn't a blind leap. It wasn't wishing on a star. It was grounded in evidence that led to knowledge. It was certain.[3]

The New Testament furnishes its readers with evidence of its claims and implores them to investigate what has been written. Faith, as described in the Bible, is based on evidence and reason—not merely a blind, subjective leap. 

The Biblical authors repeatedly encouraged their readers to search the evidence to investigate the claims of Christianity (1 Thessalonians 5:19-21 and 1 John 4:1) so they could be convinced of the truth of these claims (Romans 14:5, 2 Timothy 1:8-12 and 2 Timothy 3:14). This encouragement is consistent with the notion that the evidence will lead us to a rational conclusion about the nature of Jesus. In fact, Jesus also encouraged his followers to consider the evidence he provided about his deity (John 14:11 and Acts 1:2-3). Christian faith is not blind. Instead, the Christian faith encourages investigation related to Jesus and to the world around us.[4]

            If you really want to understand the world and the true nature of reality, you must not limit yourself to only one domain.  There is no reason why they can’t go hand in hand, as they have historically done.  Both science and Christian Theology can teach you truth and each can enhance the other; showing you two different symbiotic aspects of the universe. You can approach both Christianity and science using evidence, reason and logic.  When you do, you will discover how much they complement and enhance each other.  In Romans, we are told to look at nature to learn things about God, while knowing about the Creator can give us a different perspective on the creation.  As Rev. Dr. Polkinghorne says it:

…science describes only one dimension of the many-layered reality within which we live, restricting itself to the impersonal and general, and bracketing out the personal and unique.[5]

If interpreted experience is to be the basis of our understanding reality, then our concept of the nature of reality must be sufficiently extensive to be able to accommodate the richness of our experience.[6]

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[1] John Polkinghorne, Quantum Physics and Theology, Yale University Press, 2007.

[2] Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, Zondervan, 1994.

[3] Gregory Koukl, Stand to Reason, Solid Ground, February 2000.

[4] J. Warner Wallace, Christianity Promotes Rational and Evidential Exploration, http://ratiochristi.org/pepperdine/blog/post/christianity-promotes-rational-and-evidential-exploration/1588?tab=all_blogs_tab#.UtGb2p5dWSo

[5] John Polkinghorne, Exploring Reality, Yale University Press, 2005.

[6] Ibid.