Here is an excellent summary of a recent conference at the Lumen Christi Institute on the relation of the natural sciences and Christian faith concerning human nature. Why do moderate-conservative Catholics always seem so far ahead of us evangelicals in developing nuanced, careful, thoughtful interactions with cultural products such as the natural sciences?
HT: The Catholic Thing, a really excellent online journal of Catholic social thought.
This continues my conversation with Daniel Harrell, author of “Nature’s Witness: How Evolution Can Inspire Faith.” Daniel is a long-time Pastor at Park Street Church in Boston, MA. Park Street is an historic evangelical church.
Dave: Daniel, one of the things I appreciate most about your approach is your focus on integrity and truth as key theological values. But the first response from many evangelical readers is likely to be: “exactly — and only in the Bible can we find inerrant truth. If supposed ‘truth’ from science conflicts with claims in the Bible, we must presume that the scientists are operating with inadequate presuppositions. The only ‘true’ science will be science that begins with the belief that the Biblical record is true.” Many evangelicals who follow this line of argument insist that young earth creationism is the only viable option, while others accept an old earth but believe the Biblical references to the creation of separate “kinds,” and particularly to the special creation of Adam and Eve, rule out Darwinian evolution.
It seems to me that this line of argument touches on a seam in evangelicalism that runs close to the boundary between groups historically considered evangelical or not-evangelical — the inspiration and authority of the Bible — which in turn hits on an underlying fault line concerning epistemology. We see in contemporary evangelicalism ongoing ferment about precisely how to define the implications of Biblical inspiration and authority, and the appropriate use and limits of human reason in exploring the ‘human’ aspects of the Bible, evidenced by the row over Peter Enns’ book Inspiration and Incarnation.
In your book, you say “[t]he Bible says ‘six days,’ but there’s no way that’s right unless astrophysics and geology are patently false . . . correctly interpreted scientific discovery will always agree with correctly interpreted Scripture and vice versa.” Can you elaborate a bit on the epistemology and theology of Biblical inspiration and authority that underlie your approach?
Daniel: When we speak of the authority of Scripture, we speak of Scripture and not our interpretation of it. An infallible Bible does not make its readers infallible too. Therefore, any stance on Biblical truth is always a provisional one. We see through that glass darkly (!) and we walk by faith. To me, this is where science can be of enormous assistance. If science correctly perceives nature, and nature bears witness to God, then science can assist in those places where Scripture is ambiguous or disputed because all truth is from God. As for “correct” interpretation, correctness in the case of Scripture depends on corroboration from history, experience and ultimately eschatology, while in science, correctness depends upon further discovery, replication and corroboration across disciplines. In both cases, revelation relies in some part on a consensus of many people across culture and time (which is why evolution and the resurrection are both so influential today).
Dave: Well, ok, but let me push back a little more, if I may, with a long-winded follow up question. Sorry it’s a long question, but I know it’s important to me and to many of my readers who above all crave authenticity in how we respond to questions like those you deal with in your book.
Let’s take the example of when the Biblical writers speak in terms of Ancient Near Eastern cosmology — a three tiered universe, a disk shaped earth with pillars supporting a solid-dome sky, etc. Is the hermeneutical task vis-a-vis the contemporary sciences here a matter of interpreting what they really meant notwithstanding surface appearances to the contrary? Or is it more fair to say that they most likely really mean what everyone else in the ANE would have meant, which we now know is inaccurate?
It seems to me that this question sits on top of some important fault lines in evangelical theology. Does contemporary science in this instance (a) help us understand the true intention of the Biblcal writer; (b) help us understand that God accommodated the writer’s incorrect background assumptions in communicating an infallible message; (c) help us understand that the historical-literal-grammatical hermeneutic is too flat for discerning the revelatory content of the text, (d) vindicate Barth’s notion that “revelation” and “text” are not coeextensive; (e) all of the above; or (f) something else?
I have to be honest — I have a hard time swallowing that the Biblical writers and redactors really intended to communicate that life on earth, including human beings, evolved over billions of years, and that contemporary science illuminates that intent. It seems clear to me that the Biblical text reflects a distinctive Hebrew version of the prevailing ANE creation myths, and that the authors / redactors had no notion at all of a slowly evolving universe. I tend to think that if an evangelical theology of the inspiration and authority of scripture can’t deal with this, then it’s not a theology that is dealing in reality.
So the question: accepting the scientific reality of biological evolution has to impact evangelical theologies of Biblical inspiration and authority beyond just the old concordist approaches, doesn’t it?
Daniel: I wish I typed better…
Let me begin by asserting that the “word of God is living and active” meaning that revelation through that word is not static. Getting to original intent is extremely problematic in my view.
Nevertheless, I would argue that the as far as the ANE is concerned, I would hold that the genres in which Scripture come to us allow for a] a factoring out of acculturated terminology– whether that’s a three-tiered universe or any other artifact of that period in which the Bible was written, and/or b] interpretation that remains true to what we believe the authors (may have) intended while incorporating contemporary understanding and further revelation/illumination.
I like Barth, and I’d probably add as to c] the caveat that the h-l-g hermeneutic is partial rather than “too flat.”
I take for granted that nature has always operated under the same principles it currently operates (which is what evolution teaches) and had the Biblical writers had access to modern science, their work would have read differently while communicating the same “word of God.” So yes to your view. Concordism is mostly a dead end. But I don’t think that means that the Bible is locked in its ancient timeframe which is why it remains such an amazing book and a powerful “sword.” Heb 4:12.