Nature's Witness

If you read one book on the relationship between faith and science this year, it should be Daniel Harrell‘s Nature’s Witness:  How Evolution Can Inspire Faith.

Harrell is Associate Minister at Park Street Church in Boston.  Park Street has been a leading evangelical church for 200 years.  Given its location in Boston, near some of the world’s greatest universities, Park Street’s missional context requires it to maintain a significant level of intellectual rigor.  It is important that a Pastor in this church has been able to take on the challenge of examining evolutionary biology honestly and forthrightly from the perspective of evangelical faith.  

There are three key strengths to Harrell’s book that I think are lacking in varying degrees in similar books recently authored by scientists such as Francis Collins.  First, Harrell recognizes the discomfort this subject causes for many evangelicals, and uses a conversational style that diffuses some of that angst.  Second, Harrell is thoroughly trained in evangelical theology (he studied at Gordon Conwell Seminary), and therefore is more careful with scripture and theology than some other faith-and-science writers.  Third, Harrell offers some frameworks for resolving the tensions that arise from honest efforts to relate an evangelical commitment to scripture and a fearless look at the scientific evidence.  He is not willing to accept false dichotomies between the truths of nature and the truths of scripture, yet he is able to make space for the tensions that inevitably result from any efforts at synthesis.

Harrell’s overall approach is summed up in this passage:

The controversy between Christian faith and evolution is exacerbated by increasing mounds of scientific data that lend weight to evolution. Paleontology, biochemistry, cosmology, physics, genetics—you name the discipline—each regularly puts forth newly discovered evidence in support of Darwin’s simple idea of descent with modification. While some people of faith choose to keep their doors closed, shutting out science is not necessary. Christian faith by definition defies human conceptions of reality (1 Cor 3:19). Its claims are grounded in extraordinary events that defy scientific explanation (most importantly the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus). But God is not only present where science is silent; he remains present even where science speaks loudest. The expansiveness of the universe, the beauty and complexity of organic life and the remarkable makeup of human consciousness—naturally explicable occurrences—are also interpreted by Christians as manifestations of God (Rom 1:20). Christianity consistently asserts that all truth is God’s truth, implying that faith and science, despite differences when it comes to explaining why, nevertheless should agree in regard to what is. Why bother talking about God if God has no relation to observable reality?

The last line in this paragraph — why bother talking about God if God has no relation to observable reality — is essential to a missional stance today, I think.  We cannot shut our church doors to reality, we cannot bury our heads in the sand, we cannot deny what is obvious.  If our faith requires us to run and hide from discoveries about the natural world, it is not a faith worth having.  If our only apologetic response to surprising evidence from nature is to villify, attack, question the motives of the discoverers, and construct an elaborately obscuratanist epistemology grounded in massive conspiracy theories (all of the world’s scientists are lying to us!), then it should be no surprise if “church” becomes more and more irrelevant in our culture.  Thankfully, there are more an more people like Harrell who are capable of winsomely thinking things through in the best tradition of evangelical faith.

I hope to do a series on this book, as follows:  (1) more on God and reality; (2) the problem of divine action; (3) important theological tensions; (4) missional conversations on faith and science in local churches.