The Tribunal of the Supreme Inquisition -- what a title! -- made this finding: "We say, pronounce, sentence, and declare, that thou, the said Galileo ... has rendered thyself vehemently suspected of heresy by this Holy Office..." (73). What was Galileo guilty of? He believed the sun was the center of the universe and the official interpreters of the Bible thought the Bible clearly taught the earth was at the center. He was deemed a heretic.
The implication is clear: though one cannot appeal to Galileo for any and everything Christian scientists might claim, we need to realize that sometimes science shows that what we think the Bible says is not what the Bible says. That's where we need to settle in if we are going to be truly Biblical, truly Christian, and truly scientific. If we conclude that science says something clearly and demonstrably, we ought to be willing to reconsider what we thought the Bible was saying. This doesn't make science authoritative; it makes our interpretations in need of the Protestant principle: reformed and always reforming so that we grow in understanding what the Bible really does say.
Essentially, Galileo warns us that the Bible teaches us how to go to heaven and not how the heavens go. That science and faith complement one another. That there is no final conflict.
If you could say one thing to Bible-believing Christians about human origins, what would it be?
When it comes to evolution, Hamilton sketches why it is that Christians have trouble with an "unsupervised, impersonal" form of origins -- contradicts a literal reading of Genesis 1, diminishes the role of God in history, and it suggests that humans are nothing but animals -- not Eikons (images) of God.
But Hamilton argues that "unsupervised, impersonal" is not science and science should go no further than science can go. He then sketches -- fairly in my read -- creation science, intelligent design, and theistic evolution. (He mentions the little-known fact that BB Warfield, the architect of inerrancy doctrine, believed in theistic evolution, something JG Machen was not happy about.)
Hamilton opts for theistic evolution.
If you could say one thing to Bible-believing Christians about human origins, what would it be?
When it comes to evolution, Hamilton sketches why it is that Christians have trouble with an "unsupervised, impersonal" form of origins -- contradicts a literal reading of Genesis 1, diminishes the role of God in history, and it suggests that humans are nothing but animals -- not Eikons (images) of God.
But Hamilton argues that "unsupervised, impersonal" is not science and science should go no further than science can go. He then sketches -- fairly in my read -- creation science, intelligent design, and theistic evolution. (He mentions the little-known fact that BB Warfield, the architect of inerrancy doctrine, believed in theistic evolution, something JG Machen was not happy about.)
Hamilton opts for theistic evolution.
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Kyle -- thank you for the link to the Doming/Wimmer article -- it was very helpful. (I was post #39, but my name didn't appear after I refreshed). And thanks to Dopderbeck for the examples, which are better than I stated, and right on point.
In a nutshell, Doming and Wimmer seek to resolve the problem by saying that creation did not enter into any greater decay and death because of the Fall; instead, they say that, although the full degree of death and decay existed before the Fall, the final reconciliation envisioned by Romans 8 will include salvation of space/time from the death and decay that has always existed.
This doesn't seem consistent with what some theologians say about Romans 8 and Genesis (including, I think, N.T. Wright, although I'm not sure). But it is at least a way to resolve the apparent conflict.
Kyle #41
Thank you for the link to that paper. I have been working much of this out on my own over the past year - that is how to understand some orthodox and historical Christian theology (which I am not particularlyy wedded to) in a broader way. But I have been reinventing the wheel it appears since I don't have the theological background of these writers. I found myself nodding and saying, "yes, that's what I've been trying to get at" but I hadn't been able to put it all together. So, what they said!
I have always thought that the Bible is only one way in which God reveals truth, science is another, logic and reason yet another (and I haven't forgotten the inspirational role of the Holy Spirit). THe article talks about working backwards in theology with relation to the necessity of having a single pair of ancestors so that our universal tendency to sin could be explained, and with it the need for Christ's atonement. I have seen that sort of view often expressed, eg. there must have been a fall (sorry RJS), otherwise what did Christ die for? Which is a very good question. I think we have to consider the possibility that God reveals things to us through science so that we will know that our understanding of Scripture's truth is faulty along with the faulty theology that results. (Although often I imagine see the opposite - not a faulty view of Scripture informing theology, but a faulty theology informing scripture.)
dopderbeck,
You said: "laws of physics, which haven't changed" Now you're certainly many times smarter than me, but even I know that a)theories in physics have changed, so at least our interpretive framework is "changing" and b) doesn't quantum mechanics dictate that there are random and unpredctable things that happen in physics and nature?
And your view is not neccessarily in conflict with a robust Open Theist understanding of sovereignty.
Tony (#49) -- dunno if I'm smarter than you -- probably not! Good pushback on the "laws of physics" -- yes, quantum mechanics changes the notion of what "laws of physics means." BUT -- Newtonian physics still properly describe events we can observe, like the physical forces that give rise to hurricanes and tornadoes. Quantum physics doesn't do away with classical physics, but it does show that no description of nature can be fully reduced to classical physics.
The point I was trying to make is that the universe would have to be radically different at a fundamental level for the earth's weather systems not to produce hurricanes and tornadoes. Of course, God could have radically altered classical physics after the Fall, but neither scripture nor the study of nature suggest that this was the case (in fact they both suggest exactly the opposite). In effect, this kind of radical alteration would be a "new" creation -- but the Biblical story suggests that God has created only once. Also, such a radical alteration would wreak havoc with the "fine tuning" of the universe. There are numerous physical constants that have to be just right for life on earth to exist. Change them even a little, and there would be no life -- at least no carbon-based life as we know it.
I prefer to think that "natural evil" -- tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, etc. -- would not have been devastating for human beings absent the Fall because human society and technology, in proper fellowship with God and with each other, would have allowed us to manage and protect ourselves against the harm these events can cause. Take Hurricane Katrina for example -- how many of the worst-hit victims were suffering from racial and economic oppression? How much of the worst damage resulted from unwise and even greedy decisions about zoning, etc.? This isn't a complete answer, but in my mind it's more fruitful than trying to rewrite the physical constants of nature.
#50 Yes, agreed, I had forgotten about Asimov's comments on the rainbow until this post. (Isaac Asimov, "Asimov's Guide to The Bible", Avenel Books, New York, 1981.)
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