When I first held my youngest grand-daughter, Erika, in my arms and looked at her, I asked, “Who are you? Where have you come from? What will your life be like?” Her perfectly formed face, eyes, nose, ears, fingers and toes fascinated me, as did my two daughters’ when they were born. I was also aware of Erika returning my gaze. What was she thinking? “Who is this person? Where did he come from? Why am I here?”
Why am I? Who am I? How do I make sense of my life? Am I just an accident? Am I just a higher animal? Am I just a collection of chemicals and genes? Who is the baby I hold in my arms? What does her life mean? Why is she so precious to me her grandfather and all who love her?
What is the value of your life? Why are you who you are? These are questions I have asked all my life. Where do you look for answers to these questions? I look to the Bible. In it is contained the wisdom of the ages. I know that there are many who discount the Bible in favor of a rationalistic approach to the meaning of your life and mine. Here is one such approach.
Scientism, according to one standard definition, is ‘an exaggerated confidence in the methods of science as the most (or the only) reliable tools of inquiry’. The main tenets of this philosophy are bracingly summed up in a series of questions and answers. Is there a God? No. What is the nature of reality? What physics says it is. What is the purpose of the universe? There is none. What is the meaning of life? Ditto. Why am I here? Just dumb luck. Does prayer work? Of course not. Is there a soul? Is it immortal? You must be kidding. Is there free will? Not a chance! What is the difference between right and wrong, good and bad? There is no moral difference between them. (Anthony Kenny’s review of The Atheist’s Guide to Reality, Alex Rosenberg, Times Literary Supplement, June 22, 2012, p.24)
What is your response to such a catechism? Mine is: How does he know? What is the basis of his dogmatic claims? How does he live? How does he make moral decisions? How can he be so dismissive of the prophets, the apostles, and Jesus? I am amazed when I read in the popular press derogatory comments about the Bible, such as, “Modern science has disproven the Biblical view of origins in Genesis.” Anybody who makes such a statement is ignorant of both the limitations of science and the interpretation of Scripture.
There are different kinds of truth. There is theological truth, truth about God and his work, and empirical truth, truth about the structure of nature. The former comes through divinely inspired revelation, and the latter by scientific experiment and observation. Knowledge of God and his ways is of a totally different category than knowledge of physics and biology. The scriptures teach one kind of truth, and science another. Both truths derive from God and yet they cannot be measured by the same standard or criteria. They are as different as seeing yourself in a video or an MRI. Both pictures are true, but they portray different images. Failure to understand this has led otherwise highly intelligent people to the wrong conclusions.
Many atheists are unable to appreciate the complexity of life, and the diversity of wisdom. They are like other materialists, or physicalists, who cannot understand poetry, enjoy music or appreciate feelings. When I was young I read these words which contributed to the opinion I expressed above.
Many a great man of science has found himself miserable in old age because in youth he stopped his ears to music and poetry, and because for the sake of his reason he vigorously banished wonder and imagination from his mind. Moreover, and this is a most important matter, the long road of scientific exploration is strewn with theories once thought by men who expounded them to be gospel truth, but discarded later as incorrect and sometimes even ludicrous, even though they may have served a useful purpose in their turn. Reason alone is thus a dangerous guide to truth. We need never be overawed by science. The very latest discovery may be wrong….Even the best of our guesses and the greatest and truest of our discoveries are only victories in the field of partial truth. Always remind yourself that we can only understand bits of things. If we understood all there is to understand of the Earth our knowledge would be only of a bit of the universe. Add all our bits together, and how small is the sum. (The Children’s Encyclopedia, ed. Arthur Mee, Vol.2, London, p.864)
The book of Genesis, for example, is a divinely inspired collection of ancient writings that provide a remarkable narrative of primeval history. It is not a scientific dissertation in which one academic speaks only to another academic about his research. Instead it reflects the realities of life with all its messiness, loose ends, accidents, and contradictions. As a result it can be understood by the common reader. It is accessible to everyone. It is compelling literature about the life of God and humanity, not a dry scientific paper. The Bible, and Genesis in particular, tells us only what we most need to know about God, the world and our salvation. It reveals to us the divine origin of the species. It is not necessary to have to choose between science and Genesis. Science cannot explain everything, and the Bible does not claim to be a scientific text book.
There is an equal and opposite danger of preachers or theologians attempting to prove the truth of Genesis by trying to reconcile the teaching of Genesis with the latest findings of science. As I have written, the problem is that science is always changing. Commentaries written a hundred years ago that attempted to harmonize the latest findings of geology and archeology with Genesis have been rendered redundant because of new scientific discoveries. Genesis was written several millennia before modern science. It spoke into a culture that entertained all sorts of religious and philosophical ideas. It was written to address false ideas about God, the world and salvation.
It is a mistake to try to harmonize Genesis with science. That is not why it was written. To concentrate on trying to prove the truth of Genesis in terms of scientific theory is to misinterpret the message of Genesis, and to misapply its truth to us today. There should be no conflict between the teachings of science and the teachings of Genesis. Christians have always welcomed the discoveries of science, and have believed that they present no direct challenge to Christian belief. In 1865, 717 of the leading scientists of the day signed “The Declaration of Students of the Natural and Physical Sciences”:
We, the undersigned Students of the Natural Sciences, desire to express our sincere regret, that researches into scientific truth are perverted by some in our own times into occasion for casting doubt upon the Truth and Authenticity of the Holy Scriptures. We conceive that it is impossible for the Word of God, as written in the book of nature, and God’s Word written in Holy Scripture, to contradict one another, however much they may appear to differ… We cannot but deplore that Natural Science should be looked upon with suspicion by many who do not make a study of it, merely on account of the unadvised manner in which some are placing it in opposition to Holy Writ. We believe that it is the duty of every Scientific Student to investigate nature simply for the purpose of elucidating truth, and that if he finds that some of his results appear to be in contradiction to the Written Word, or rather to his own interpretations of it, which may be erroneous, he should not presumptuously affirm that his own conclusion must be right, and the statements of Scripture wrong; rather, leave the two side by side till it shall please God to allow us to see the manner in which they may be reconciled.
These scientists “wanted to resist the tendency to denounce science for the sake of defending scripture. Rather, they wanted to affirm science as a gift from God and to lay science and the scriptures side by side, believing that the author of both would not allow them to ultimately contradict.” (David Wilkinson, Reading Genesis 1-3 In The Light of Modern Science, in Reading Genesis After Darwin, ed. Stephen C. Barton & David Wilkinson, Oxford University Press, 2009, p.129)
Why then has there been so much conflict between the teachings of Genesis and the teaching of science about origins? It is a question of how you interpret Genesis. Each of us comes to the Bible with a set of questions or perspectives. Sometimes we ask questions of the text that it was not meant to answer.
When we come with the belief that our interpretation of Genesis is the only valid one, and that anyone who differs is unbelieving, we make it impossible to consider other possibilities. Genesis has been interpreted in a variety of ways over two thousand years. Some people think that what they have been taught has always been the only true, orthodox, traditional interpretation when, in reality, there have been many others.
Anglican evangelical theologian J.I.Packer, expresses what I believe to be true.
I believe in the inerrancy of Scripture…but exegetically I cannot see that anything Scripture says, in the first chapters of Genesis or elsewhere, bears on the biological theory of evolution one way or another…Scripture was given to reveal God, not to address scientific issues in scientific terms, and…as it does not use the language of modern science, so it does not require scientific knowledge about the internal processes of God’s creation for the understanding of its essential message about God and ourselves. (Alister McGrath, J.I. Packer: A Biography, Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 1997,p. 200)
I look at Holy Scripture from many different angles. But the most important question I ask of the passages are: what is God saying to us today through his Word about his purpose for your life and mine. The fundamental questions of the secular world are: Who is God? Who am I? Why am I here? What am I for? How can I give my life meaning? How do I get faith? What is this life all about? Why is the universe here? Why is there something rather than nothing? I look at Genesis from a New Testament perspective. I am write as a follower of Jesus Christ. I look at Genesis through the spectacles of Christian belief.
I consider what is meant by the beginning of all things. How does God reveal himself to us? What is the process of creation today? What is the nature of our human condition, our uniqueness, our purpose, our temptation and fall? I consider the problem of evil, the breakdown of relationships between Cain and Abel, the judgment of the Flood, and the confusion of languages at the tower of Babel. What is the relevance for all these to our lives today?
I believe in the truth and authenticity of the Holy Scriptures. I believe that God speaks to us through these words according to our need. Without this divinely revealed truth we cannot know the answers to life’s great questions. Without the truth of the Bible we are condemned to the doubt and agnosticism of the otherwise brilliant literary critic, George Steiner. He wrote in his memoir,
All of us are guests of life. No human being knows the meaning of its creation, except in the most primitive, biological regard. No man or woman knows the purpose, if any, the possible significance of its ‘thrownness’ into the mystery of existence. Why is there not nothing? Why am I? (George Steiner, Errata: an examined life, Yale, 1998, p.60)
To the contrary, God has revealed to us the answers to those questions if we will but receive them. The Bible, is God-revealed truth, given to us to answer these questions, to know the meaning of our creation and the purpose of our existence. God gives us two books: the book of Nature to declare his glory and the Holy Scriptures to make wise the simple, give joy to the heart, and give light to our eyes.
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