Seven Days that Divide the World: Language, Scripture, and Science

This is the third post in a series. See the following links for parts one and two:

Introduction

Part One

In this post I will try to be a bit more charitable than I was in the last post on the subject. I understand what Lennox was doing in setting the stage for the debate at hand, but it seemed to insinuate a false equivalency between the two issues which I found misleading. And I overreacted, because I really don't like that sort of thing. Anyway, onto the next chapter.

Lennox begins chapter two with a brief section on language and how we ought to read all books, but especially the Bible. In short, the first question you ask is what the author was intending to communicate. Then, you ought to look to the most natural understanding of a passage. If something is poetry you ought to read the words poetically; if a work is historical then you should expect straightforward historical renderings. He also cautions us in reading texts from foreign cultures (such as the culture that produced Genesis), as if the natural meaning that we derive from a text is also the natural meaning that culture would derive. Sometimes there can be more than one natural meaning for a word. In Genesis, the word "earth" refers both to our planet as a whole and to the dry land mass, both of which are plenty accurate uses of the word earth. 

Also, literal understanding will not always work. Any person practicing common English today knows this one unassailable fact: whenever someone uses the word "literally" you can almost guarantee that whatever they say ought not to be taken literally. When I go for a fast run (in those halcyon days pre-Achilles injury) I would tell Owen I was flying, but of course I was only jumping from one foot to the other down a dirt road at a vigorous pace. Jesus tells us he is the door and the bread of life, but let us not attempt to walk through him or eat him. You get the point. We use metaphor all the time to convey a literal meaning. Language is confusing. But it makes sense to start with the most natural sense, and if that doesn't make sense then progress to the next level of meaning (metaphorical or otherwise). 

From this linguistic introduction, Lennox moves us into a discussion of how the Bible and science relate to one another. The Bible, obviously, does not speak to us in advanced scientific language. Calvin wrote in his commentary on Genesis: "Nothing is here treated but the visible form of the world. He who would learn astronomy and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere." And this is intentional on the part of God, Lennox argues. Scientific understanding is constantly changing. If God inspired Moses to write Genesis in twenty-second century scientific terms no one would understand it (and people in the twenty-fifth century would complain about all of the errors it contained). Calvin wrote that "the Holy Spirit would rather speak childishly than unintelligibly to the humble and unlearned."

Furthermore, Augusine warned against tying our doctrine too closely a scientific interpretation in his work On the Literal Meaning of Genesis:

"Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics [knowledge of the earth and heavens]; and we should all take means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and then laugh it to scorn. . . If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe these books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason."

Stone cold, Gus. But salient. I am all for fighting for the right interpretation of Scripture and willing to endure ridicule for defending clear Christian doctrine, but if something has been proven false and we cling to it for its own sake then we are going to look silly to a lot of people and dilute the gospel message.

Lennox here suggests separating the matters that are core to the Christian faith from those that are less central and allow for variation in opinion. Beyond that, we also need to be prepared, he suggests, to distinguish between what Scripture actually says and what we think it means. As it relates to his fixed earth example, once Christians made peace with a metaphorical interpretation of the pillars of the earth they were still able to take comfort in the metaphorical meaning. The earth might not be literally fixed in place, but it is fixed in God's affections and stable by his Son who upholds creation with his own power (metaphorically of course).

The incident of the fixed earth (and this I agree is a good principle) teaches us to be humble and be prepared to distinguish between what the Bible says and what we think it says (or wish it says). We shouldn't tie our interpretation of Scripture to the science du jour, but neither should we avoid science altogether and abdicate that ground. Finding a balance is difficult, but so, contra our Prosperity brethren, is everything else in the Christian life.

Seven Days That Divide the World: To Everything Turn, Turn, Turn

Lennox begins his book with an historical anecdote concerning another doctrine that was jettisoned by the church when scientific gains showed it to be demonstrably false: the immovability of the earth and its centrality in the cosmos.

Aristotle believed in a fixed earth that was also eternal. When Aristotle was Christianized by Aquinas in the thirteenth century, Aquinas deemphasized the eternality of the earth as inconsistent with Genesis which taught that the earth had a beginning, but had no problem retaining the fixed earth idea. After all, there were Scriptures that seemed to support that notion:

Tremble before him, all the earth; yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved. (1 Chronicles 16:30)

Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved. (Psalm 93:1)

He set the earth on its foundation, so that it should never be moved. (Psalm 104:5)

For the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and on them he has set the world. (1 Samuel 2:8)

Lennox notes that the Bible also seems to indicate that the sun moved around the earth:

In them he has sent a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat. (Psalm 19:4-6)

The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. (Ecclesiastes 1:5)

So when Copernicus proposed a heliocentric view of the cosmos this was startling and called into question by both Protestants and Catholics. Martin Luther railed against the idea in his Table Talk. Calvin, likewise, rejected the notion.

About 80 years later, Galileo published Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, a work validating the heliocentric theory and earning the ire of both Aristotelian philosphers and Christians as well as becoming the prototype of the church-is-anti-science nonsense. Though the "mistreatment" of Galileo is often overhyped (his imprisonment was in the estates of his wealthy supporters and he was never tortured), nevertheless the case does represent a black eye in the Science vs Religion smackdown, especially seeing as how none of us, even committed Christians, remain these days as fixed-earthers. Lennox's closing question is to ask Christians to consider that if we have abdicated our fixed-earth belief because of compromise and thereby made Scripture subservient to science?

While I understand his point here, and anecdotes are fun, they don't exactly make for good policy. Say you know someone who defended a home robbery attempt with their firearm, then you are all like "rah rah guns save lives." Or say you know someone whose five-year old found the family gun and shot his sister, and then you are all like "guns are evil!" Neither position is really validated by your test case. 

It strikes me as the same in this instance. Sure, the Church gave up on the fixed-earthedness of an overly literal reading of obviously poetic passages, but we are asked to give up something more by accepting an old earth governed by Darwinian forces. I mean, we have all been moving-earthers our whole lives, but I still talk about the sun coming up and no ardent scientist has ever said, "Hey you blankety-blank, don't you know that the sun is fixed and we are spinning around it at 67,000 miles per hour in an elliptical pattern that means it is dark when you get out of work in the winter and some places in Alaska don't see the sun for a whole month? What are you, anti-science?"

In other words, science these days isn't telling us, as Galileo did, that we simply misunderstand something about the way God created the world. Science today is telling us that there is no God and something about primordial ooze and that if you believe in God you are just as stupid as someone believing in a flying spaghetti monster (which would be dope, if it was real). The stakes are a bit different, as what is being called into question is more severe. 

I know Lennox knows this, and perhaps I am being uncharitable here, but anecdotes frustrate me. I understand his broader point--the Church should be willing to change when it is definitively proven to be wrong in its understanding of something and has done so in the past--and I will withhold further judgment until I know what Lennox suggests we replace a straightforward understanding of Genesis with, but if you are ever writing a book, please don't start with an interesting story that is at best tangentially related to the one you are attempting to tell. I read this book one time that started that way, and it didn't turn out well.

Seven Days that Divide the World, Part One

The question of the origins of our earth and the people, creatures, and plants populating it remains as relevant today as ever. What are we, as Christians, to think about all of this? Can we stomach a 4.5 billion year old earth and 16 billion year old cosmos? Does Biblical fidelity require that we take the Bible literally (or literalistically) in its seven day account and withstand the mockery of modern scientists? Can we stake out some middle ground between the two? A sort of god-in-the-gaps theistic evolution or Old Earth cosmology combined with a special creation of Adam and Eve in the garden?

For years I have been noncommittal on this issue. I went to a church in college where the pastor had majored in the physical sciences as an undergrad and was well-known locally as a defender of the Young Earth movement. His enthusiasm never quite wore off on me, but he conveyed the issue as monumentally important and indeed elemental to our Christian faith. He often used Jesus' words in the Gospel of John--"If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe me, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things" (3.12)--as a sort of prooftext for this idea that the physical claims of the Bible bear great weight concerning the truth of the metaphysical claims. 

So this was my major input for a significant developmental period of my life, one in which I furthermore did everything within my power to escape science altogether. Holla at a business major. But I could never quite escape the feeling that maybe the Bible didn't need to be read that way, and as much as I respected and still do respect my college pastor I could never quite believe that the world's scientists (even a good number of the Christian ones!) were in a secret cabal dedicated to defeating a literalistic interpretation of Genesis 1. So I did what any lazy person does: kicked the can down the road. 

But lately that tactic has been unsatisfying. It might have something to do with having kids now and the prospect of having these questions addressed to me, not in some abstract way, but by an adorable little blond-haired, blue-eyed boy who is deeply inquisitive about this world and looks to me as the Explainer. And I don't want to be a liar to my son and daughter. 

I was talking about this recently with a friend who is in a similar position. Neither of us wants to teach our kids comfortable, well-intentioned lies, but neither do we want to be needlessly unfaithful to Scripture. If Young Earth is true, in the face of the overwhelming testimony of the scientific community, I don't want to be too cowardly to teach that to my kids. On the other hand, I don't want to teach them Young Earth Creationism because I am too cowardly to square with scientific truth. He and I both sort of feel as if we will never be fully settled on this issue. And so his question to me was how, practically, do we teach it to our kids. And we settled, unsatisfyingly but probably prudently, on teaching the confusion. Teaching our kids that it is OK to not know everything for sure, and that Scripture was not given to us as a universal compendium of knowledge. 

But I still wanted to know more, and I wanted to know where to turn for answers to this question. I remember an old episode of the Simpsons where there is some debate between Creationists and evolutionists and the evolutionist is a Harvard PhD and the Christian debater has a degree in Truthology from Christian University. It might be a caricature, but that is how this debate feels too often. I don't believe that anyone--secular or religious--comes to science without preconceived notions of what they might find or what they wish to believe, but it often seems as if Christians start with Genesis as if it were a science textbook and proceed accordingly. As admirable as dedication to Scripture is, it can lead down some wrong roads and end in needless reductionistic/antagonistic thinking when it is read incorrectly.

And you can buy a book that will tell you just about anything. I remember being in a lecture once with my Renaissance lit professor and a student spouted out some nonsense, I forget even what it was now. The professor asked him where he had come up with such a ludicrous notion. He said with confidence that he had read it in a book. My professor lifted his thespian's brow and said, "Well, you need to read better books."

Which is to say, I am hopeful that I have found a better book on this subject. I am reading Seven Days that Divide the World by the Oxford mathematician and philosopher of science John C. Lennox. It is a popular level book intended for an audience such as myself and hopefully like you: a Christian who is inquisitive about these issues and wonders how it might be possible to reconcile the claims of science with the doctrine of Creation. And I therefore intend to do something that I haven't done in quite some time: read a book slowly and blog my way through it. I hope to learn something by slowing down and hopefully this can be beneficial for you all as well. So join me, if you so desire. We may not lay these questions to rest (what, after all, would be the fun in that?), but I hope our understanding is increased as well as our charity for the "other side," whomever that might be for you in this debate.

On that note, as I close I want to say that while it is easy and common for our broader culture to mock the views of Young Earth Creationists, I find it abhorrent when other believers do so. As I have moved away personally from Young Earth views I have often asked myself what I might be losing out on by heeding the scientific discoveries of the past two centuries (and longer), and it has made me understand the tight-fistedness with which Young Earth believers hold on to their beliefs and sympathize with them (the loss feels real). And I want to profess humility on this issue: I am not a scientist nor will I ever be mistaken for one. I have never even watched The Big Bang Theory. Do I believe that God could have created the world in six literal days, resting on the seventh? 100%, absolutely yes. Do I believe that is what science tells us? Increasingly no. Do I believe that is the mandatory interpretation of the beginning of Genesis? Again, increasingly no. There. Cards. Table. Meet.

More to come.