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July 21 - July 25, 2017
since God is the author both of his Word the Bible and of the universe, there must ultimately be harmony between correct interpretation of the biblical data and correct interpretation of the scientific data.
Aristotle believed not only that the universe was old, but that it had always existed. Aquinas had no difficulty reconciling an eternal universe with the existence of God as Creator in a philosophical sense, but he admitted that there was difficulty reconciling it with the Bible, since the Bible clearly said there had been a beginning.
even before Copernicus published his book, Martin Luther had rejected the heliocentric point of view in rather strong terms in his Table Talk
Galileo, far from being an atheist, was driven by his deep inner conviction that the Creator, who had “endowed us with senses, reason and intellect,” intended us not to “forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.”
scientists use metaphors all the time without batting an eyelid. They, of all people, should not complain when the Bible uses them.
It would be a pity if, in a desire (rightly) to treat the Bible as more than a book, we ended up treating it as less than a book by not permitting it the range and use of language, order, and figures of speech that are (or ought to be) familiar to us from our ordinary experience of conversation and reading.
We cannot keep science and Scripture completely separate, for the simple reason that the Bible talks about some of the things that science talks about. And they are very important things—like the origin of the universe and of life.
one of the fascinating tasks we are encouraged to do in God’s universe is to do just that — to find out many things for ourselves.
according to Genesis, it was God himself who told the first humans to name the animals: he was not going to do it for them (Gen. 2:19–20). That is very interesting, because naming things is the very essence of science (we call it taxonomy); and so it was God who started science off!
Rather than scientific language, the Bible often uses what is called phenomenological language — the language of appearance. It describes what anyone can see.
The Bible, though not a textbook of science, precisely because it is God’s revealed Word, has truth to tell us about the same kind of objective reality that science discusses, in particular about the nature and origin of the cosmos and of human beings. We must therefore try to understand that truth.
if my views on something not fundamental to the gospel, on which equally convinced Christians disagree, attract ridicule and therefore disincline my hearers to listen to anything I have to say about the Christian message, then I should be prepared to entertain the possibility that it might be my interpretation that is at fault.
It is Scripture that has the final authority, not our understanding of it.
metaphors stand for realities.
The biblical text might just be more sophisticated than we first imagined, and we might therefore be in danger of using it to support ideas that it never intended to teach.
Lack of belief in God is no more a guarantee of scientific orthodoxy than is belief in God. What is clear, concerning both Galileo’s time and ours, is that criticism of a reigning scientific paradigm18 is fraught with risk, no matter who engages in it.
it was God who put the universe there, and it would be very strange if we had no interest in it.
both the young-earth and the ancient-earth creationist views go back a long way. Neither of them is a recent invention.
problems in interpreting a passage often spring from failing to see exactly what the text says because we are impatient to get at the meaning.
There is a danger of understanding the text as saying less than it does, but also a danger of trying to make it say more.
the fact that some early church fathers had difficulties with interpreting the text should give us some comfort, make us more humble, and, in addition, show us that the difficulties are not all generated by modern science but arise from a serious attempt to understand the text itself.
it is just not adequate to choose an interpretation simply on the basis of asking how many people held this interpretation, and for how long.37 One has to ask why they understood it that way at that time, and one also has to ask if there are compelling reasons for changing that understanding.
Genesis affirms that (human) life has a chemical base, but Genesis denies the reductionist addendum of the materialist— that life is nothing but chemistry.
It is simply false to suggest, as some do, that the only alternative to young-earth creationism is to accept the Darwinian model.
Humility is often seen in the greatest scientists. It is also a Christian virtue.
every worldview must start somewhere. The Biblical worldview begins with God; the atheist worldview begins with the universe.
Nothing makes sense about Jesus Christ unless he is precisely who he claimed to be — the Word of God incarnate.
The sad irony of the Enlightenment is that it puts the light inside man by making human reason the ultimate arbiter.
in a world where achievement and merit count for so much, we human beings find it difficult to understand and accept that God’s forgiveness and peace cannot be earned by our work, effort, or merit, but must be received as a free gift.
