CHRISTIAN THINKING/THINKING CHRISTIANS
The Idea of Christian Scholarship:
Four Perspectives-Evangelical, Lutheran, Reformed, and Catholic
[Roger Lundin, Wheaton; Tom Christenson, Capital; Leegwater, Calvin; Stephen Barr, Delaware]
University of Delaware, Newark DE
September 19-20, 2003 (cancelled)/February 20-21, 2004
[sponsored by Lutheran Campus Ministry]
[Arie Leegwater, Calvin College, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry,
DeVries Hall, 1726 Knollcrest Circle SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546-4403]
I. Description of Christian Scholarship: general remarks
[not an apology for or defense of Christian scholarship. There is a time and place for that. I would like to explore: “What is Christian scholarship about?”]
A.. Some basic assumptions:
Taking faith in the sense of religious faith, and primarily in the active sense of believing I take Christian faith to be both a gift and a blessing from God, and a “sure knowledge” of certain basic and deepest realities. In faith I know who God is; I know that I am one of his fallen, but redeemed, creatures, that I and all other creatures are part of God’s good creation, which though fallen, is being redeemed through the work of Jesus Christ. Thus I have a deep trust and quiet confidence in the “givenness” of God’s initial address to me in his revelation in the Scriptures and creation. Creation is revelation, too! That address invites me to patiently listen with bated breath. It elicits a position of receptivity, listening, rather than first seeing.
But, God’s loving address to me also asks for my heart felt response in deeds that display his glory. A response, that in the reformational tradition in which I stand and share, is as broad and deep as all creation. In the myriad of relationships in which I find myself: husband, father, citizen, congregant, professor, scientist, consumer, etc, I want to live out this faith knowing that God will usher in his kingdom, but allows us humans to be his cultural agents and representatives. In my work and scholarship in the natural sciences, for instance, my faith allows me, in fact encourages me, to explore God’s creation, to delineate as well as I can, lawful regular patterns of behavior, to attempt to even “describe” chaotic events. I take God’s revelation in creation seriously, since I do not consider the Scriptures to be a “recipe book” as to how to develop, for instance, detailed biological theories or quantum mechanical ideas of chemical bonding. God invites me and the body of Christ at large to work out their salvation in fear and trembling utilizing all of his revelation to us. Therefore, I think a doctrine of creation is central and foundational for any scientific enterprise be it natural or social. Christian scholarship rests on a robust “doctrine” of creation.
B. Why of Christian scholarship:
Good articulate Christian scholarship should be done in thankfulness, and
can be of genuine service to the body of Christ as well as be a blessing to others.
I view my work as a Christian academic as a calling, infused by a faith that invites allegiance, but is open to the wonders of God’s world. That sense of wonder and joy in exploring it is what I have tried to convey to my students over the years. I have encouraged them to be critical of received chemical theories, to be historically sensitive to the traditions embodied in their scientific textbooks, and to help them identify issues and problems where Christian insights may bear fruit. These are issues related not only to the application of science or focused on questions of distributive justice in science’s technological offspring, but also ones that need to enter the very heart of theorizing. This approach means that I am not a social constructionist when it comes to scientific theories, despite the fact that I know full well that theories do involve an element of construction. Rather theories have some basis or touchstone in creational reality, which accounts for their explanatory and heuristic power.
C. The challenges to Christian scholarship
The challenges to Christian scholarship are in the main of a dual nature:
(1) one is more internal, i.e. how to continue to have a distinctive voice in scholarship faithfully working out of a tradition, without becoming insular. or isolated. In my reformed circles it is expressed as a tension between the antithesis and common grace: what should distinguish us and
what we hold in common.
[“To be in the world, but not of the world.” Remember well, that it not us versus others. The antithesis runs through all our lives as well]
(2) The other as I see is more an external challenge: i.e. not to accede to the idea that Christian scholarship is best characterized as a value-added interpretation to a more or less common set of facts or realities, or at best one of many other interpretive slants on an issue. Christian scholarship has a “bite” to it. It rests on well-grounded beliefs, but also requires engagement with others in interpreting and understanding the common world we live in. I do not think that these challenges are necessarily peculiar to Christian scholarship. It holds for any good scholarship conscientiously performed out of a commitment to a tradition. In these latter days when post-modernism seems in the saddle, Christian scholarship must let its voice be hear but not allow its voice to be drowned out by a cacophony of voices or give way to a relativistic position.
D. Christian scholarship: what Christian scholarship?
A characteristic of much scholarship in the natural sciences in many Christian
circles is the attempt to either equate science with a particular literal reading of
the Scriptures, or to denigrate the Scriptures to such an extent that they no
longer speak, or are allowed to speak, to the major broad scientific issues of the
day.
The first is evident in much of the scientific creationism which is on offer.
Despite its best intentions I think it downplays God’s revelation in creation and is
saddled with an evidentialist epistemology. [More could also be said about
its leanings toward dispensationalism, stress on discontinuities, etc.]
For those who hold the latter position the purview of Christian scholarship and the
problems it should tackle relate more directly to social relationships or ethical
issues raised by scientific discoveries or to their theological implications.
An important challenge, as I see it, is to press the claims and excitement of
Christian scholarship into the “hard” sciences as well. In other words I think it
important that the vision of Christian scholarship be something that all divisions of
a college can share and contribute to.
Historical memory is an important ingredient to have in the exercise of Christian
Scholarship, even for physical scientists. One reason being that we are in this
venture for the long haul, and the Christian community has done much reflection
on these issues throughout history. The overriding challenge is to keep the
Christian tradition alive and vibrant in its scholarly pursuits without turning on
itself, but keeping its face open to the world.
II. Reformed Take on Science and Scholarship
A. Positives:
- Affirmation of Creation:
· God’s theatre-Calvin: Scripture as spectacles to understand Nature
Calvin: “true knowledge is born of obedience”
· Strong sense of Creator/creature distinction
· Belgic Confession: Art. 2: Two book metaphor: Protestant/Catholic
[a particular reformed emphasis: cannot read the one book without the other]
· Creational continuities: [Creation /Fall /Redemption/Consummation
2 Peter 3:10 NIV “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be burned (consumed) NIV: “will be laid bare” [literally: will be found].
- Scientific practice as a calling-as a God glorifying vocation
· E. g. Early Calvinist support for Copernican astronomy
- Science viewed as an exploration of a given creation: with a built-in fabric and potentialities for novelties. Metaphor of listening. Nature is not passive, but responds in its own way revealing God’s glory.
· Tends toward a realist position/rather than a strict conventionalist.
· We can acquire (limited) knowledge of nature. Scientific insight not to be equated with general revelation.
· Limited: “For the Christian scientist no creaturely event or thing can be reduced to its scientific explanation. No scientific account can grasp or encompass the radical character of the creature’s dependence on the Creator. There is always a sense in which the very structures themselves defy analysis and explanation. Their individuality and uniqueness harbor the mystery of creation, that is, the divine origin and continued sustenance of all things.”
· Dynamic unfolding of creation: not a static picture:
· Role of humans “actor” in a multifaceted way.
- Role of religion: Humans are seen as religious creatures. Religion seen as a (the) defining mark of humanity. Scientific practice is religiously conditioned, not conditioned initially by something that is in conflict or in competition with it.
Herman Bavinck: No inherent separation of religion and science [Grace restores Nature], but also no naïve Biblicism which confuses the language of Scripture with the language of science.
- Reality of suffering, the surd of sin distorts our insights: radicality/reality of sin
· No overly optimistic view of human efforts in the sense of F. Bacon: “new science if practiced properly would ameliorate, or somehow eradicate, the effects of the Fall”
- Historical awareness: Historically situated ways of viewing the world influence questions asked and answered, research programs developed. [R. Hooykaas for first two, Hugh Kearney, etc.]
· Organic (Aristotle)
· Mechanical (17th century)
· Alchemical (Renaissance)
· Energetic (Late 19th century)
· Nature as an entangled bank (Darwin
· Nature as contingent decimation(Gould)
· Nature as information processing
B. Negatives: Science is not: [More controversial]
[position held be various reformed/puritan types]
- “Thinking God’s thoughts after Him”
Here I am thinking of Kepler and Galileo: peculiar to mathematical sciences?
2. An aversion to a long ‘Christian’ metaphysical tradition of analogia entis, or the position that Nature is emblematic of God’s nature. No natural theology.
· Descartes argued that conservation of momentum reflected God’s immutability.
· Three phase of matter, [solid, liquid, gas] emblematic of the Trinity.
· To take a contemporary example, hopefully to illustrate that I am not tilting at windmills.
Sir John Polkinghorne: in an abstract of a talk: “Science and the Abrahamic
Faiths: A Christian Perspective,” given August 2002 in Granada, Spain.
“Distinctive to Christianity is its belief in the Trinitarian understanding of the nature of God, so that within the unity of the Godhead there is the communion of being of the three Divine Persons. Relationality is present in deity, and the Christian sees this reflected in the relational properties of the creation that have been revealed through the discoveries of modern science—whether through the intimate association of space, time and matter in the theory of general relativity, or in the quantum entanglement of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen effect.”
For Polkinghorne this reflection of God and the world is expressed in these words:
“The deep rational intelligibility of the world, that makes science possible, and its deep rational beauty, which is the reward for the labour of scientific research, are seen by all [Abrahamic] faiths as pale reflections of the Mind of the Creator.”
C. More Positive Program or Effort: [Not just reactionary]
- Call for a reforming of the sciences: an inner reformation of the
sciences”: all the sciences? A. Plantinga: “develop a theistic science”
Put rather simply:
· No C-words: Compatibility, concord, complementarity, co-operation
convergence of science and religion.
**Futility of a Mosaic geology or astronomy.
Not a question of complementarity of religion (faith) and science.
Not a question of integration of science and religion
Science has/takes on presuppositions, which are at bottom religious in nature and do, at times, become apparent. [work on Ostwald, Pauling, Coulson]
· But R-words:
renewal, (inner) reformation, regeneration
· or I -words
integral preferred to integration or interaction.
[See Perspectives articles: 2001 exchange between Robert Sweetman and George Marsden]
a. Robert Sweetman, “Christian Scholarship: Two Reformed Perspectives,” Perspectives, 16, June/July 2001, 14-19.
b. George Marsden, “Reformed Strategies in Christian Scholarship: A Response to Robert Sweetman,” Perspectives, 16, August/September 2001, 20-23.]
2. Scientific practice is creational: It has its own integrity and empirical basis. Not deficient in the sense of being religiously shortchanged on theology or philosophy.
3. Scientific practice, and science policy particularly, are holistic. Look for, have a
nose for, efforts that attempt to “reduce our complex reality to one or two
principles
Keen sense of reductive strategies:
· mechanism (kinematics)
· geometrism (Descartes)
· energeticism (Ostwald c.s.)
· reversibility/irreversibility
· role of probability/individuality
4. Questions of ethics, social justice, stewardship, etc.
Let me develop this theme of affirming creation in a slightly different way:
Affirming Creation: Perspectives in the Natural Sciences
I. Centrality of Creation
A. Faith confession - Heb. 11:3, "It is by faith that we know that the universe was created by the Word of God, so that what can be seen was made out of what cannot be seen." (Is. 45:18-19, Psalms, Job, Jeremiah]
B. Article of faith
Apostle's Creed, Art. I "Maker of heaven and earth."
Nicene Creed, "Maker of heaven and earth."
Belgic Confession, Art. II [two books: Ken Howell/Lutheran, Catholic,
Calvinian interpretation of Copernican astronomy]
C. Creation, Fall, Redemption (Radicality of all three.)
(Three views concerning their interrelationship held by Christians)
1. Redemption in opposition to (fallen) Creation
(Grace abrogates Nature)
[Science/Religion are enemies/secular version
Think of Peter Atkins, Richard Dawkins, or Steven Weinberg, who at the conclusion of an article “A Designer Universe?” writes:
“…I learned that the aim of this conference is to have a constructive dialogue between science and religion. I am all in favor of a dialogue between science and religion, but not a constructive dialogue. One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this accomplishment.” The New York Review of Books, Vol. 46, #16 (Oct. 21 1999) p.47.]