Christian scientific apologetics in the 21st century
Department of Astronomy, University of Sofia
The advances in science during the last two centuries challenged some basic Christian doctrines – in particular, the doctrine of creation. Many Christians in the Western world engaged actively in development of “scientific apologetics”, i.e. apologetics in the field of science, and initiated debates on the fundamental theories of contemporary cosmology (the Big Bang theory) and biology (evolution of life). What are the key positions of scientific apologetics now, as the frameworks of these theories seem to be experimentally confirmed and established in the scientific communities worldwide? I argue that a consistent scientific apologetics shall not take a side in the disputes on the purely scientific problems of theories but rather focus on the worldview questions which these theories lead to. As examples, I will briefly review two issues in astrophysics that raise in-depth worldview questions: the beginning of the Universe and its fine tuning (“anthropic coincidences”). Also, a worthwhile for a scientific apologist is to elucidate the common historical roots of science and theology (in the prescientific era) and to show that they are not only of historical interest – indeed, their interaction and complementarity allow for building up a holistic, deeply satisfying view on reality.
A personal introduction
My personal struggle with the supposed contradiction between science and Christian faith was initially internal: I became a Christian believer as being a second-year university student in Physics and desperately needed a clear understanding whether of my new faith is compatible with a scientific career. People who know life under Communism from experience and the propaganda images of religion as incompatible with science, can imagine what kind of processes took place in me. Later the struggle became external: the expectation (from fellow Christians) was that I — being a scientist — must develop scientific apologetics to ‘combat the atheistic theories’ of evolution (cosmic and biological). This personal story is illustrative of the confusion in the minds of people with different beliefs (religious or non-religious) caused by the notion of war between science and religion (in particular, Christianity).
My understanding of apologetics: substantiation, application and enrichment (broadening) of a genuine Christian worldview which is capable of being communicated both to unbelievers and believers. Apologetics is not merely a method to defend the Christian faith or to prove its basic claims neither a kind of catechism with ready-made answers to difficult questions of unbelievers. It is a Christian dialogue with the world in its variety and both sides in this dialogue can and should learn from each other. I am convinced that a Christian has nothing to fear from in the course of such dialogue — the world is God’s creation and belongs to God and the believer’s interaction (including debates) with the world eventually would teach him or her something about the richness of God’s purposes and works in the life of man. In this framework ‘scientific apologetics’ has to deal, on the one hand, with comprehension of science as a unique human enterprise and with evaluation of the theological significance of its discoveries. The underlying conviction should be that the efforts to understand and interpret them would reveal something more about the greatness and wisdom of the Creator. On the other hand, the other main task of a Christian scientific apologist is to demonstrate: i) that the picture of nature revealed through scientific investigation is in agreement with the framework of Christian theology; and ii) that scientific knowledge itself is not able to give answers to the most important worldview questions but instead ‘fuels’ them. In this talk I will attempt to outline some prospects and threats for a meaningful scientific apologetics in the twenty-first century.
1. The ‘science vs. religion’ issue: origin and reactions
First I’d like to discuss briefly the historical origin of the so-called ‘Science vs. Religion’ issue, this influential narrative about the age-old animosity between science and institutionalised religion which allegedly was always impeding scientific enterprise. In my view, this narrative is a difficult intellectual heritage from the modern era and one has to refute it thoroughly so that scientific apologetics can be possible at all.
1.1 From natural philosophy to science
Interestingly enough, at the root of the issue ‘science vs. religion’ is the birth of modern science itself in Europe in the 16th — 17th century (the first scientific revolution). This was an epoch highly-laden with theological discussions available to many people — just to mention the Protestant Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. The process of laying the foundations of science cannot be separated from this spiritual atmosphere. In fact, the writings of the ‘fathers’ of different scientific branches (Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Boyle, Linnaeus) are full of essentially theological reflections. Some of the basic principles of modern science were derived from the Christian doctrines of creation and man: rationality of nature, universality of its laws, man’s capability to discover them and his authority to perform experiments in creation.[1] One can add here the understanding – especially cherished by the Protestant reformers and later by the Puritans[2], [3] — that the devotion to ‘natural philosophy’ is worthy of appraisal and serves for the glory of God. Together with the affluent scientific discoveries of the time, all these factors contributed to the separation of natural philosophy from the ‘main body’ of philosophy and religion. Subsequently, natural philosophy was transformed into science in the contemporary sense of this word — with its clearly distinctive field, language (scientific notions), methodology and models.
In the context of the endless theological controversies and wars in the name of religion throughout seventeenth century in Western Europe, the amazing success of scientific approach led many people to the idea that this might be the new and the only secure way to establish truth. A more subtle manifestation of this zeitgeist was the notion that the field of a scientist is universal in scope (the objective truth valid for all) while that of a priest/pastor is mostly to enlighten on moral issues and church doctrines. The latter seem to become increasingly a matter of personal beliefs (i.e. not of general interest). Thus the emerging popular image of modern science diminished the significance of the Church and the religion altogether concerning human knowledge.
1.2 Scientism: science as a weapon of ideology
It is questionable whether this cultural development was the chief historical reason for the birth of scientism. But it is certain that prominent philosophers of the Enlightenment took advantage from it in order to propose their agenda against Christianity. In the eyes of many of their contemporaries, science had gained credibility as the main force to change the world. So people like Voltaire, Marquis de Condorcet, Montesquieu, Comte etc. presented world history as a continual and continuing progress and perfection of human nature through the increase of positive/scientific knowledge which supposedly would eventually substitute any religious worldview.[4] In other words, they attributed to science a mission which goes far beyond its field and goals. Newly emancipated from philosophy in general, science was — figuratively speaking — ‘called under the battle flags’ to serve to the purposes of a new, militant secularist philosophy. Christianity was stylized as the enemy of this movement towards well-being as testified by the long period of the ‘Dark Ages’, an impressive pejorative notion coined to signify medieval culture.[5] It is important to note that no one of those influential thinkers was a scientist; at least, science was not his main activity. For those thinkers science was not a calling but a weapon to fight the Christian worldview and culture with. And of course, they used and still use each scientific achievement which seems to be inconsistent with the Biblical account to attack Christianity: e.g. the Big-Bang cosmology and the theory of evolution of life.
The scientistic narrative has been successfully refuted by a number of historians of science as anti-historical and propagandistic in its essence,[6] lacking interpretative power within the historical context[7] and as ‘vulgar triumphalism’ which divides history into heroes and villains.[8] But such a critical approach to scientism and its unmasking as an ideology is hardly the case outside some circles of experts. The scientistic narrative has been successfully and increasingly popularised since the second half of the nineteenth century (see Draper[9] and White[10]) up to nowadays (Dawkins). Its influence is maintained through the most high-school textbooks which typically offer only a chronology of scientific discoveries but do not discuss the philosophical and/or religious roots of the scientific ideas. They tend to present a linear historical development of science, keeping silent about errors, false concepts and dead-ends along the way. Thus the warfare picture of the relationship ‘science vs. religion’ was strengthened and different Christian groups and theologians played a non-negligible role in this process.
1.3 Christian reactions to scientism
There is a large variety of Christian reactions to the advance of the scientistic agenda in Western societies. It would be far beyond the scope of this report to discuss them in detail. I would rather mention three trends that deserve special attention. Two of them accept, in a direct or indirect way, the image of warfare between science and Christianity and operate principally within its framework.
The most influential trend on popular level — in particular in the USA, — is fundamentalism. Originally, in the first half of the twentieth century, this movement gained momentum as a strong reaction to the liberal Protestant theology, at that time extensively imported from Germany in the American theological seminaries. Warning against the theological misconceptions of the ‘modernists’ (i.e. the liberals), the fundamentalists instead called the believers to stick to the ‘fundamentals of faith’, for instance to the doctrines of original sin, resurrection, atonement, divine inspiration and inerrancy of the Scripture. Obviously, these ‘fundamentals’ did not refer to the age of the Universe and of the Earth, to the evolution of life and of living organisms, to the mechanism of natural selection etc. In fact, the Darwinian controversy and the revolution in cosmology were not so important for the early American fundamentalism. Moreover, some of the leaders of this movement (such as J. Orr and B. Warfield) sought to harmonise their conservative theological view with the evolutionary theory.[11] Later the situation changed. The movement became increasingly dominated by adherents of the so called dispensationalism, an essentially eschatological view which stresses enormously the sinfulness of man, the moral decay in the modern secular society and the Second Coming of Christ. The result was practical lack of interest to the developments in culture and science (see M. Knoll); they were viewed through the glasses of a literal interpretation of the Bible and perceived, in principle, as threats to the spiritual life of a devoted Christian. In the second half of the 20th century fundamentalism was actively engaged in the raging ‘culture wars’ in American society. Realising that the church is going to lose the battle for the minds of the younger generation and of educated people altogether, some fundamentalists with an academic background elaborated whole systems to refute the mainline contemporary theories in biology and astronomy: the so called young-Earth creationism (which seeks extensive support from the Bible) and Intelligent Design (ID; without reference to the Bible). Both demonstrate the point I made above: the image of warfare between science and Christianity has been accepted and the battles take place on the scientific field. Later I will comment briefly how scientific are the means used in those battles.
A second trend which seems to operate within the image of the supposed (sometimes hot, sometimes warm) war between science and theology, is the recognition of the dichotomy between the two and insistence on the treatment of both within a strictly drawn limits in terms of goals and methods. This trend is based on the historical separation of natural philosophy from theology mentioned above. In contrast to fundamentalism, it respects science as a unique human pursuit with undisputed and proven contribution to our increasing knowledge of reality. Compared to religion, science has a quite different approach and, also, quite different topics: for instance, it can say nothing on God’s character or on issues of ethics. So, it should not be conceived as a competitor to any faith but rather as unrelated to the religious worldview altogether. On the part of non-religious scientists, this trend is exemplified by the American paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould who formulated the so called ‘principle of non-overlapping magisteria’ referring to science and religion: “Each subject has a legitimate magisterium, or domain of teaching authority — and these magisteria do not overlap… The net of science covers the empirical universe… the net of religion extends over questions of moral meaning and value.”[12] In other words, science and religion can be conceived as unique tools to handle separate aspects of reality. On the part of theologians who are proponents of this concept, one could mention the ‘two-realms approaches’ to the doctrine of creation by some representatives of the twentieth century Protestant theology (such as Bultmann and Tillich). In their interpretation, the doctrine of creation is not a description of particular event but rather a “basic description of the relation between God and the world”, a symbolic expression of timeless truth.[13] Figuratively speaking, this approach apparently attempts to preserve a ‘holy land’ for theology which cannot be invaded by scientific explanation.
The third main contemporary trend in the Christian reactions to scientism tries consecutively to get rid of the warfare imagery in the relationship science vs. religion. Indeed, it seeks to establish a fruitful partnership (or at least, dialogue) between scientists and theologians which can possibly lead to a more comprehensive and informed worldview. I would say that this approach is an attempt to return to the spirit of the pre-scientific era (at least in Christian Europe): in terms of the quest for a non-separated, holistic view on reality and of respect to the scientific endeavor as stemming from the God-given capability and function of man to understand and cultivate the world. From this perspective, science in its essence cannot be a threat for the Christian faith since it has been positively sanctioned by the Creator since the very beginning of human race; even more, it is part of His plan for humanity as a knowledgeable, wise and responsible governor (oikonomos) of His creation. The separation of science from theology was a necessary and helpful, ‘technical’ step in the historical development but should be in no way viewed as a necessary separation in the mind and in the perception of reality, let alone as a harbinger of a new evolutionary stage of humans when they are supposed to get to know this reality only by scientific means. In the words of H. van Till, science and theology should not ‘function in isolation from one another, but [be] partners in theorizing — each engaged with a constructive effort to make its own contribution toward a better understanding of the nature of humanity and of the universe that we inhabit’.[14] In general, this concept is in agreement with my personal understanding of how one should address the ‘science vs. religion’ issue as the heritage from the modern era.
2 Does contemporary Christianity need scientific apologetics?
In view of the considerations so far, the answer to this question can be summarised fully in the suggestive phrase ‘Yes, but…’. ‘Yes’ is required by the claims of Christianity to offer an all-encompassing worldview, a view about the Creator and His purposes in the created Universe and about humanity, its potential and its future. One can hardly imagine a relevant Christian response and approach to the twenty-first century culture without taking into account the global changes and the changes in human mentality brought by the development of science and the diversity of possible changes in the future.
The ‘but’ part of the answer represents a few necessary specifications:
Christian scientific apologetics should not be perceived as a forced response to threats for the faith posed by science. The ‘science vs. religion’ issue has to be recognised as strongly influenced by the culture wars in the last two and a half centuries between secularists and proponents of Christian norms (but not necessarily of personal Christian faith!) in Western societies. One does not need the framework ‘science vs. religion’ at all — to put it mildly, — to address problems raised by contemporary science from the theological perspective.
Scientific theories and/or discoveries have the potential to inspire philosophical conflicts, i.e. debates on worldview questions. However, those theories are not the main reasons for worldview debates referring to science. The main reason, of course, is the deeply human quest for truth, for satisfaction of our deepest longings. This is true for every human being, including a scientist. Therefore, as a first step to taking a stance on a scientific theory or problem, a Christian apologist must properly distinguish between science, a worldview of an individual scientist and the ideological use of science (e.g. scientism) and articulate this. For example, people like Richard Dawkins, P. W. Atkins and the late Francis Crick are notorious with their scientistic and strongly anti-theistic views. However, the latter are offered to the general public in the form of lectures and books claimed to be just popularisations of modern science. Answers to metaphysical questions regarding purpose, meaning, value, source of existence are treated in this context as if they are self-evident or easily derivable from straightforward and doubtless extensions of scientific reasoning.[15] This hidden agenda should be unmasked, preserving the appreciation of the efforts to popularise science.
In case a particular scientific theory poses a real challenge to Christian doctrines or worldview, the good apologists should be cautious to avoid the fallacy I label ‘crossed levels of confrontation’. Worldview debates which involve science run in principle on two levels: philosophical (on questions such as completeness, adequacy, self-consistency) and scientific (looking for support from the implications of particular theory). Of course, the scientific level includes necessarily permanent evaluations of the theory in question and, hence, indirectly, purely scientific debates in which a theory is opposed by other theory/ies. To ‘cross the levels of confrontation’ means to make an illegitimate jump from one of the levels to the other and to confront e.g., a theory by philosophical/theological means. Instead of confronting the opposing worldview which refers to some scientific theory, one attacks the theory itself. A typical example is the approach chosen by S. Wilberforce in his assault on T. Huxley in the famous first debate over Darwin’s theory of evolution and further efforts to refute this theory by direct or indirect quotations from the Bible. An example for ‘crossed-level confrontation’ in the opposite direction are the attacks of R. Dawkins against Christian doctrine with arguments from contemporary evolutionary biology. Interestingly enough, the figure of Darwin has been increasingly viewed as the main foe of Christianity in many Protestant churches while the philosophers who used his theory for their agenda have been left somehow in the background. In the same vein, scientists who work in the framework of the standard Big-Bang cosmology or of biological evolution are automatically stamped as ‘atheistic/materialist scientists’. Such a type of bad scientific apologetics is a remarkable ‘own goal’ (in football terms) contributing to the caricature of religion as the ‘arch-enemy’ of science which denounces its recent developments.
The ‘crossed-level confrontation’ sets temptations to look for (quasi-)scientific counter-arguments. Indeed, to refute a theory, one should either develop one’s own models (providing tests for their validity) or, at least, point out their inconsistencies or failures. Examples of such consecutive approaches are the ‘Creation science institute’ of the young-Earth creationists and the arguments of the ID proponents. In most cases, such approaches are rightly attacked as ‘preaching of a God of the gaps’ (in human scientific knowledge).
Last but not least, a sound apologetics in the field of science needs a sound, historically relevant interpretation of Biblical notions and ideas that seem to convey scientific truths. I stress the word ‘seem to’ since to understand the relation of the Biblical narrative to a scientific picture of the world is a problem worth of in-depth investigation itself. The main source of confusion on this issue is the presupposition that the Bible aims to offer us ‘models’ of creation.
Now, let’s return to the ‘yes’-answer to the question about scientific apologetics and to bring some arguments in its support. An all-encompassing worldview recognises and is fuelled by worldview questions that arise from human experience with reality. The theories and the discoveries of contemporary science provoke many questions about human origin and destiny, about meaning and purpose in nature — questions of increasing complexity in comparison with the cultural situation one century and even several decades ago. An important task for a scientific apologist is to highlight them and to demonstrate that they are in fact worldview questions, i.e. which go beyond the limits of science. This very effort would already be a good job done; the objective in a follow-up discussion would be to show that the Christian answers to these questions make sense and are more satisfying then the alternatives. (Indeed, this is the general task of apologetics, not only in the field of science.) Moreover, Christian apologists could point out that some insights of modern science could enrich theological reflections and enable an in-depth understanding of the Biblical doctrine of creation and humanity. Let’s take for example two achievements of modern cosmology.
3 Worldview questions posed by recent scientific progress: two examples
3.1 The Big Bang cosmology
The twentieth century witnessed both the birth of cosmology as physical science and its very turbulent ‘youth’. Within several decades, perhaps without precedents in the history of science, theoretical considerations and numerous observations lent mutual support for creation and elaboration of an extended and successive model of cosmic evolution. It was originally labeled ‘Big Bang cosmology’ by its opponents who strove to retain the picture of an eternal or steady-state universe. Their attempts failed and nowadays ‘Big Bang’ is no more a pejorative term but popular name of the standard cosmological model, strongly supported by diverse and affluent observational data. As we know, according to it, the Universe is not eternal but has a beginning in time (~14 Gyr), from an ultracompact, very hot state whose preconditions are still beyond the capabilities of the established physical theories. Moreover, Stephen Hawking, Rodger Penrose and George Ellis extended the equations of General Relativity to include space and time (the so-called Penrose-Hawking singularity theorem) which led to the suggestion that time itself should have a beginning, from the initial cosmic singularity. Various attempts to avoid this conclusion — e.g. scenarios with many universes (‘multiverse scenarios’) or quantum vacuum fluctuations — in fact postulate entities which are not observable and even not deducible from other principles.[16] It seems that the issue of the beginning of time will remain forever out of reach of empirical or theoretical resolution. Thus a theistic and an atheistic view on the problem are epistemologically leveled; both cannot present scientific proofs in their support. However, our increasing knowledge of nature shows a clear trend: it suggests that every part or aspect of the physical reality, at each spatial scale, does have a beginning. This is true of individual men and women, of the species Homo Sapiens, of our planet, of our Sun, of the very matter which constitutes living and non-living entities and, finally, of space and time. Even if one speculates that our Universe has a predecessor, some mystical Father-Universe, it seems hard to believe that it is eternal; the entire history of scientific discoveries points towards the opposite.[17] So, there are good scientific reasons to believe that physical reality is not eternal. It is ontologically contingent, i.e. it needs a cause, a ground for its existence. Only the ‘One Who is’ can be the permanently present cause of so many present beings, in a universe, which is contingent, together with space and time.
Without going into details, it suffices to say that this overall picture is consistent with the Biblical account and the Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo (Gen. 1:1, Rom 4:17, Col 1:16, Rev 4:11). Two NT passages also suggest, that time was created together with the world referring to God’s deeds and promises ‘before times of ages’ (πρὸ χρόνων αἰωνίων; 2 Tim. 1:9, Tit 1:2). Interestingly, this is in contrast with the concept of Newton which gave the framework of classical physics altogether — according to Newton, God created originally space and time, ‘setting the stage’ for creation of nature. The relativistic framework in which space-time is intertwined with matter is more consistent with Christian thought. But again, I am not speaking here about consistency with some ‘Biblical model of creation’ but rather about a conceptual agreement.
The standard cosmological model and its implications contribute without doubt to the enrichment of contemporary theological reflections. The emergence of the cosmos and the consequent unfolding of space, time and — in the Grand-Unification theories (GUTs) — of the physical laws themselves, may add valuable insights to the concept of God’s thoughts (‘ideas’) and acts (‘energies’) immanent in the created world. Also, the enormous spatial and temporal scales of the Universe discloses a deeper level of understanding of the Scriptural claim that ‘the heavens declare the glory of God’ (Ps. 19:1). One should not expect that the Universe is commensurable with human scales if its purpose is to reveal the greatness of its Creator. On the other hand, it has been planned to provide a home for living creatures and humanity — which provides a link to another argument from modern cosmology.
3.2 The ‘anthropic coincidences’
The Big Bang cosmology revived the cosmological argument for the existence of God. About the same time, the teleological argument got a new momentum by the formulation of the so-called `Anthropic Principle’ by Brandon Carter[18] and its thorough presentation in the seminal book by Barrow and Tipler published a decade later.[19] The first objection raised against this principle in the scientific community was motivated by the concern that the import of teleology would undermine the scientific investigation itself. However, the study of ‘anthropic coincidences’ have been performed by many brilliant scientists and most of them are not theists at all. At the roots of each investigation, including the scientific one, lays the ‘wonder about this wonderful world’ (Socrates) and this wonder must not be stilled because of fears of the return of teleology. The possible misuse of teleology should not prevent the careful study of these ‘anthropic coincidences’, taking into account their large number. Other early claims that the anthropic principle should be reduced to mere ‘coincidences’ have been inadequate. For instance, the search for conventional explanations of the anthropic coincidences as arising from some fundamental physical theory cannot avoid the very impression of coincidence. As St. Barr puts it: “If [the existence of] life requires dozens of delicate relationships to be satisfied, and a certain physical theory also requires dozens of delicate relationships to be satisfied, and they turn out to be the very same relationships, that would be a fantastic coincidence”.[20]
Of course, one can still insist that a mere coincidence has happened. But again, like in the problem with the beginning of time, there is no evidence for such claim and thus its metaphysical nature is unmasked; it is no longer purely scientific. The proponents of such a view have to admit that the Universe has the appearance of having been designed so that humanity appears at some point in its history. (Dawkins, for example, has expressed this practically with the same words in regard to living organisms.[21]) Those who firmly believe that ‘science can ultimately give answers to all possible questions’ continue to look for natural explanations. A new hope for them came from the above-mentioned multiverse scenarios or a subgroup of them, multi-domain scenarios. In the former case one supposes the existence of a multitude (actually, a continuum) of space-times or universes which are not causally related and characterised by different sets of cosmological parameters while in the latter case there is only one space-time in which there many expanding domains with various physical characteristics existing.[22] Both frameworks seems to offer a purely naturalistic explanation why we live in a universe with so many ‘anthropic coincidences’ — it is suggested to be a result of huge statistics, i.e., although the possibility is very small, the continuum of universes/domains does still make it different from zero. Then our ‘anthropic universe’ might not be a special place designed to harbour life and conscience but simply one of the huge number of existing worlds. However, a closer examination of such arguments shows that they are not able to refute the theistic claim about a fine-tuned universe. Even if a fine tuning can be avoided at the level of our universe/domain, this tuning is simply raised at a higher level. Indeed, a universe which produces multiple domains is a very special sort of universe. It is provided with laws that can give rise to existence of domains of sufficiently rich variety so that life could be possible in at least one of them. In this case, this itself is an additional anthropic coincidence.[23]
The multiverse scenario is even more problematic from a philosophical perspective. First, instead of seeking for an explanation of a single universe, it postulates a continuum of universes whose existence does not need an explanation. In fact, it claims that all conceivable and logically consistent universes do exist while habitable universes (like our own) exist like one of the possibilities. This statement is equivalent to removal of the distinction between possible and real — anything which is possible is actualised. Second, the multiverse scenario cannot provide an explanation of the orderliness of nature and lawfulness of our Universe, its obedience to a set of neat and orderly mathematical rules. If the scenario is true than one can expect that our Universe is an exception among the exceptions: it allows for life and consciousness and, independently, it is highly structured and ordered. The inescapable conclusion is that someone made a choice out of all possible worlds. And the issue of choice made so that life and consciousness can be possible raises further worldview questions concerning the purpose of such a choice and, further, concerning the meaning of life in cosmological perspective. Instead of providing ultimate answers to questions people have asked in the pre-scientific age, the modern cosmology raises even deeper worldview questions which can find satisfying answers from a theistic and, in particular, Christian point of view. This stresses the importance of a task which I deem to be one of the tasks of scientific apologetics par excellence: to offer an evaluation of scientific proposals and theories in terms of their philosophical consequences.
To sum up, the ‘anthropic coincidences’ and their studies open many opportunities to enrich and deepen theological reflections on God’s purposes in creation and even, I dare to say, for the salvation of humanity. For instance, humanity appeared at the ‘right time’ in the history of the Universe to get ‘optimal view of the extent and splendor of God’s creation’.[24]
4 Nature of science and history of science itself:
prospects for scientific apologetics
Basically, the Christian message to the world is about healing, in the deepest sense of the restoration of the wholeness of the created world. Applied to science, this can, and should, include healing of science from misunderstandings which attribute to it quasi-religious significance and/or view it as a substitute of religion. As said earlier, it is necessary to deconstruct the ‘science vs. religion’ narrative inherited from the Enlightenment. But there are other, even more important aspects which concern the very nature of science, its methodology and its deep relationships with Christian theology throughout the centuries.
4.1 Science as divinely sanctioned enterprise
From the Christian theological perspective, the impetus to study the world and develop science and technologies is part of the cultural and governing capability of man — the divine sanction is pronounced upon humanity since its creation (Gen. 1:27,28). Moreover, to ‘cultivate and subdue the earth’ is not only a capability; it is a duty to our Creator and thus He expects that science will emerge and evolve in the course of human history and blesses this development. But science — like all other human activities — is not an end in itself; although it should contribute to the understanding of the world and its cultivation, its pristine goal is to reveal the glory of God. This glory should become more and more visible, both in the universe which we strive to understand and in the personality of every human being unfolded and enriched through science. I would stress especially the latter: to do science and even interact with it is a part of the complex process of our growth to mature personalities, created in the image of God. Science is a non-abolishable part of the quest of ourselves, in each epoch, at each stage of the development of science and technologies. Therefore scientific enterprise permanently raises worldview questions and philosophical issues and cannot be separated from them. Such a separation (so typical for our century) was foreign to the fathers of science in the last two pre-Enlightenment centuries — not because they still lived in an age of domination of religion but because their striving to understand nature was inseparable from the longing for understanding of the Creator or, at least, for a clear answer whether He does exist. Although they developed methodological naturalism, with its ad hoc separation between subject and object of scientific investigation, their mind was not naturalistically shaped. Actually this was the case even after the Enlightenment, though often hidden. Science has never been a simple product of a process of data accumulation which — supported by some useful hypotheses — eventually leads to successful theories. Indeed, any results from observations or experiments involve a complex network of interpretations, expectations, preconceptions; at least some of them are of a philosophical or religious nature. In the words of the philosopher of science Russel Hanson all scientific observations are ‘theory-laden’; we see through ‘the spectacles behind the eyes’.[25] Matters of taste, judgments of elegance and economy play an important part in the development of science; considerations of beauty and symmetry are crucial in theoretical thought.[26] All these aspects belong to the worldview of the individual scientist and they affect the way he poses his questions to nature. The restoration of this ‘holistic’ picture of scientists as philosophers of nature and as philosophers in dialogue with nature is important in our age. It is a key to a holistic perception of the entire cosmos. And again, it is more than consistent with the Biblical view of man.
4.2 Modern science in the context of medieval Christian culture
Indeed, history of science demonstrates clearly that theological reflections on the Biblical doctrines of man, creation and God’s purposes have been the fertile medium for the emergence of science. In particular, the formation of science in the modern sense of the term cannot be explained apart from the medieval Christian culture and the century-long efforts to elaborate a Christian philosophy of nature. A wonderful illustration is the history of universities in Western Europe which became prototypes of the modern scientific and academic institutions. Here are some main aspects of the process[27]:
a) Monasteries and monks of particular religious orders catalysed the birth of the new academic communities providing teaching and library resources. As early as in the twelfth century the first cathedral schools were founded and the subsequent rise of medieval cities led to the formation of guilds of experts (universitas). The latter were initially active in a local cathedral school but soon became quasi-independent communities sanctioned only by the church authorities. Many emerging universities acquired special privileges from kings or feudal lords.
b) The cathedral schools offered education according to a programme of the seven ‘liberal arts’ (ars liberales) – it provided the pattern for the academic curriculum in the universities elaborated in the next centuries.
c) The larger universities have been a dynamic medium for discussions. The disputations became increasingly important and contributed to the development of the scholastic thought. For instance, the seminal work of St. Thomas Aquinas Summa theologiae is a model for clever disputation with replies to the raised objections and not a set of tenets of the Christian faith.
d) Last but not least, one could find in the medieval university communities a prototype of what is called nowadays “scientific network”. The universitas (the students and sometimes the professors) were moving bodies. Well-known is the phenomenon of the wandering scholars (goliardi) who gave lectures in different places. Thus the emerging academic communities in Western Europe established communications between each other. Some favorable circumstances for the emerging of these networks were the lack of university administrations and border control and the general acceptance of Latin as international scholar language.
So one cannot but agree with the historian D. Boorstin in his claim: “Our university, like the Church, is a legacy of the Middle Ages, and few modern institutions have so clear a genealogy.”[28]
Thus a valuable approach for a contemporary Christian apologetist is to elucidate the common historical roots of science and theology in the prescientific era.
Conclusion
Christians in the twenty-first century should neither develop apologetics ‘against’ scientific advances, nor elaborate approaches for ‘scientific proofs’ of Biblical doctrines. Sincere and in-depth interest in achievements in science, without ideological prejudice, is of crucial importance and may provide fruitful ideas as to how to address the philosophical issues generated by them. In particular, contemporary cosmology cannot avoid the main worldview questions but instead gives a new impulse to them, pointing to a richer and wider understanding of God’s plan and provision for the Universe and for our planet.
Each discussion on worldview questions raised by recent scientific findings and theories works for the benefit of Christian apologetics — especially in the context of the post-postmodern world with its ‘pragmatic’ orientation and general suspiciousness towards philosophical/ideological narratives. The simple revival of such discussions would legitimise Christian explanations as meaningful and making sense. The goal of a Christian apologist is to show that these explanations are the ‘more probable hypothesis’ (Bishop Butler).
In conclusion, I would join the late J. Polkinghorne in his call for the revival of a ‘new style natural theology’ — which seeks insight rather than logical demonstration and which sees theology not as a rival to science but as a discipline that complements natural sciences in a search for understanding of the physical world.[29]
[1] Nancey R. Piercey, Charles B. Thaxton, The Soul of Science. Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy, (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 1994), 17-42 (Ch. 1).
[2] John Dillenberger, Protestant Thought and Natural Science, (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., 1960), 128-132.
[3] Charles Webster, Puritanism, Separatism and Science, 1986, in God and Nature, eds. David Lindberg, Ronald Numbers, (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1986), 192-217.
[4] David Lindberg, Conceptions of the Scientific Revolution, in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 6.
[5] Carl L. Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers, (Yale, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1932), 105-108.
[6] Thomas Kuhn, The Relations between History and History of Science, in Historical Studies Today, (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972).
[7] Mary Hesse, Science and Human Imagination: Aspects of the History and Logic of Physical Science, (New York: Philosophical Library, 1955), 10.
[8] Robert Westman, Proofs, Poetics and Patronage, in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 169.
[9] John W. Draper, History of the Conflict between Religion and Science, (New York: D. Appleton, 1875).
[10] Andrew D. White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology, (New York: Dover Publications, 1960).
[11] David N. Livingstone, Darwin’s Forgotten Defenders: The Encounters between Evangelical Theology and Evolutionary Thought, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans and Scottish Academic Press, 1987).
[12] Stephen J. Gould, Non-overlapping magisteria, Natural History 106 (1997): 16-22.
[13] Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, (London: Nisbet, 1953), 280-281.
[14] Howard van Till, Science and Christian Theology as Partners in Theorizing, in Science and Christianity. Four Views, (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 198.
[15] Ibid., 201.
[16] Stephen Hawking, Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to the Black Holes, (New York: Bantam Books, 1988), 136.
[17] Stephen M. Barr, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, (Notre Dam, Indiana: University of Notre Dam Press, 2003), 58-64 (Ch. 8).
[18] Brandon Carter, Large Number Coincidences and the Anthropic Principle in Cosmology, International Astronomical Union Symposium 63 (1974): 291-298.
[19] John D. Barrow, Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1986).
[20] Barr, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, 138-148.
[21] Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, (New York: Norton & Company Inc, 1986), 1.
[22] George Ellis, Multiverses: description, uniqueness and testing, in Universe or Multiverse?, ed. Bernard Carr, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
[23] Barr, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, 149-157.
[24] Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos, (Colorado Springs, Colorado: Navpress, 1993), 56.
[25] Norwood Hanson, Perception and Discovery. An Introduction to Scientific Inquiry, (Berlin: Springer, 2018), 115-129.
[26] John Polkinghorne, One World: the interaction of science and theology, 1986, SPCK, Ch. 2.
[27] David Boorstin, The Seekers. The Story of Man’s Continuing Quest to Understand the World, (New York: Vintage Books, 1999), 97-109.
[28] Ibid, 97.
[29] John Polkinghorne, Contemporary interactions between science and theology, Modern Believing 36 (1995), No. 4: 33-38.