Month: December 2018

PART A. THE REVELATION OF GOD IN NATURE

There have been many times when people have asked me “How can you be a born-again Bible-believing Believer in Yeshua and aScientist?”  – as if these things are insome way fundamentally incompatible.

My answer is usually a wry “ How can you not!” – because to me, they are fundamentally inextricable. How can I believe in a Creator God and not study his Creation?  Conversely, how can I study his Creation and not see God?

Is faith somehow opposed to reason? Is faith irrational – a blind leap into belief? I think not. My faith is based on my experience of the world, my understanding of the Universe, my empirical experience of that Universe and a personal revelation of God through a meeting with Yeshua. It is not blind. It is not irrational. It is a reasonable interpretation of the Universe which is borne out more and more as I study God’s revelation by means of science. Today, even atheistic scientists, because of some of the new discoveries they are making, are reluctantly having to admit the possibility that the evidence is pointing towards the existence of God.

The Bible teaches us that God is a God who wishes us to know Him – not just know about him but to actually know him intimately.  His self-revelation is essentially threefold:

1. The written record – Holy Scripture (the Bible)   – through the historical record of God’s dealings with humankind (especially his dealings with the people of Israel), the poetry and music of the Psalms, the wisdom literature and the prophetic word;

2. His incarnation as Yeshua (Jesus), the Messiah – the living Word (see John 1:1), and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit ;

3. His nature as revealed in God’s creation.

It is this last that I wish to focus on in this series of teachings.  The Bible clearly teaches us that nature reveals the glory of God. The Psalmist wrote this:

The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament shows His handiwork.
Day unto day utters speech,
And night unto night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech nor language
Where their voice is not heard.

Psalm 19: 1-3

But now ask the beasts, and they will teach you;
And the birds of the air, and they will tell you;
 Or speak to the earth, and it will teach you;
And the fish of the sea will explain to you.
 Who among all these does not know
That the hand of the Lord ha sdone this…

Job 12: 7-9

When Job in his extreme suffering accused God of injustice (Job 29-32), God replied thus:

Listen to this, O Job;
Stand still and consider the wondrous works of God.
Do you know when God dispatches them,
And causes the light of His cloud to shine?
Do you know how the clouds are balanced,
Those wondrous works of Him who is perfect in knowledge?

Job 37: 14- 16

And God challenges Job to consider His majesty and power as revealed in the created world:

 Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said:

 “Who is this who darkens counsel
By words without knowledge?
 Now prepare yourself like a man;
I will question you, and you shall answer Me.

 “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Tell Me, if you have understanding,
 Who determined its measurements?
Surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
 To what were its foundations fastened?
Or who laid its cornerstone,
 When the morning stars sang together,
And all the sons of God shouted for joy? …

Job 38 :1-7 

And in the face of this demonstration of God’s majesty and power, Job is silenced.

In the face of God’s self-revelation in nature, we have no excuse before Him. Even if no one has ever taught us, or if we have never read the Bible, indeed even if we are illiterate, we can still know God for he is revealed in nature, if we have eyes to see.  What is more, we are warned not to suppress this knowledge.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,  because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.  For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse,  because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

                                                                  Romans 1: 18-21

In ancient times people were much more in touch with nature and much more aware of the majesty and awesomeness of God than we are today. Today we mostly live in cities and have little connection with nature.  Most of us have never even seen the stars in all their glory because there is too much light in our modern world. When I was growing up my playground was the stream, the trees, the ponds around our farm, and my playmates were animals. This intimate experience of nature caused me to contemplate the existence and character of the universe and all this eventually led me to a belief in a Creator God, whose wonder I clearly saw expressed in nature.  Today’s children are largely cutoff from nature and many never have first-hand experience of the natural world. I have had students who had never been outside of Jerusalem! How sad that is.  We, as a society, are thus being denied a powerful revelation of God.  It is even more tragic that many Bible believers suppress that knowledge because of a fear of Science and its discoveries. 

It has not always been so. Many of the first scientists were monks. They had the literacy, the education and the time and money to carry out research. So how is it that the Church has come to oppose science to such a great extent? The religious establishment is a conservative force dedicated to preserving the Faith. It is therefore naturally suspicious of any ‘new’ knowledge, especially anything that appears to contradict existing understandings.

For example,      

When Galileo, in the 16^thCentury, came out in support of Copernicus’ theory that the Earth was not the center of the universe, and the Sun did not revolve around the Earth, he was considered a heretic, tried by the Roman Catholic Inquisition and forced to renounce his views. Galileo spent the last years of his life under house arrest, and his writings were banned.

The Catholic Church of Galileo’s day read passages like that of Psalm 19:4-6 (see below) literally that the Sun circled the Earth, because of the common belief of the time. 

In them He has set a tabernacle for the sun,
Which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
And rejoices like a strong man to run its race.
Its rising is from one end of heaven,
And its circuit to the other end;
And there is nothing hidden from its heat

Psalm 19:4-6

Since that time however the sheer weight of scientific evidence for a sun-centered solar system has caused Christians to revise their interpretation of these verses. It is now understood by most that these verses are not to be taken literally but are poetic metaphor, as even the grammatical structure of the passage attests, for example the use of similes (like a bridegroom… like a strong man). It is clearly metaphorical, written from the understanding and viewpoint of the people of that time.  I doubt there are many Bible-believing Christians or Jews who still believe that the sun circles around the Earth. In the mid-19^th century the Catholic Church had to admit its error and it rescinded its ban on Galileo’s published writings.

We can look back at this incident and shake our heads today, but I believe we are living at a time when many Bible-believing Christians are making similar mistakes.  In our own time, Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and other new scientific theories have challenged our understandings of Scripture and have evoked similar knee-jerk reactions.

What do we do when science appears to contradict the other revelations of God, especially the Bible? There is a perception that if there is a contradiction then either the Bible is wrong or the science is wrong.  This generates fear among Believers that somehow Science is a threat to their faith, and this in turn leads to a defensive reaction. However there is a third possibility. Perhaps it is our interpretation of the Bible that needs revision– just as was the case in Galileo’s time. I believe in the Holy Scriptures. I believe they are the unerring word of God, and that every word in the Bible is true. I believe however that though Scripture is infallible, ourinterpretations of it often are not. There is much symbolism, metaphor, and poetry in the Bible. Some passages are clearly symbolic, some are clearly literal, but others are not easy to interpret. We need to approach these with an open mind and humility, and ask the Holy Spirit to help us rightly discern the truth in them. We need to accept the possibility that sometimes our traditional, received interpretations may be incorrect.

Of course it may also be that the science is wrong. Scientific knowledge is not infallible. Our interpretations of evidence can be wrong. New evidence may overturn our theories. Scientists also need to exercise humility.

All honest scientists know that scientific observations and measurements can never infallibly prove anything to be correct, it can however prove something wrong. It takes only one confirmed, contradictory instance to prove a theory wrong, however we can never be sure that some new evidence will be discovered that will disprove our theory, thus we cannot ever be 100% sure our theory is correct.  Karl Popper, the father of the Philosophy of Science, gave us the famous raven example to explain this.

We can hypothesize that all ravens are black. We can then go out and test this hypothesis by observing, let’s say,1000 ravens. If all 1000 ravens are black this tends to support the theory but, if we find even one raven that is not black, then our theory is disproved. However even if all the ravens observed are black we can never know if the next raven we observe might be ‘non-black’ – therefore we can never know for sure that our hypothesis is correct. New evidence in the future could always potentially disprove it.

Ironically it has recently been discovered that ravens are not black at all, but have beautiful violet colors that are visible to birds, but not to humans who cannot see that part of the electromagnetic spectrum.  This is an example of how new technologies can give rise to new evidence that forces us to overturn our theories.

Not so long ago Physicists thought they had more-or-less come to the end of their field. Newton’s Three Laws of Motion adequately explained all observable phenomena and generated accurate predictions.  However our technology subsequently improved and when scientists started studying the subatomic world of protons, neutrons and electrons, and the even smaller fundamental particles that make up these subatomic particles, they found that Newtonian physics didn’t work. A new theory had to be developed and Quantum Physics was born. Quantum Physics has led to an explosion of knowledge and understanding about our universe, which we are only beginning to explore, and which has shown us that the universe is much, much more complex and strange than we could ever have dreamed. Currently newer evidence is beginning to throw doubt on ‘traditional’quantum physics and another theory is in process of being developed.

God has given every human being an insatiable desire to learn and understand our world. We are fundamentally curious.  We ask questions: Why? and How?and for What purpose? Science is all about trying to find answers to those questions.  Science does this by uncovering cause and effect relationships – this happens because this happens.  Every cause is also an effect, and we can construct cause and effect chains (or rather networks).

For example, if I was to ask why you were late to work today, you might answer that you had a flat tire. But then I can ask, “Why did you have a flat tire?”, and you might tell me that you ran over a nail. I could then ask why the nail was on the road, and you might say it fell off a passing truck – and so on and on. If we trace cause and effect chains, further and further back towards the primary cause, it is inevitable that eventually we will encounter God.  Today Science is reaching this point. Scientists are in danger of having to admit that the best answer to the ‘whys’and ‘hows’ of the universe is a creator God.

Science can only deal with the observable and measurable world and thus it is intrinsically limited.  However with our increasingly sophisticated instruments we have hugely expanded the part of the universe that can be observed and measured. When I was born scientists did not know if there was anything beyond our galaxy, the Milky Way. Now we know that our galaxy, as vast as it is, with its around 2-4 billion stars, is only one of perhaps another 2 billion galaxies in the universe. The Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, has sent us back images of deep space, giving us a view of the universe which we now know is much larger, and much older than we formerly believed. In the other direction, our microscopes and other instruments have revealed a smaller and smaller world and we are currently exploring the subatomic world, which is challenging many of our traditional perceptions of the universe. In the last hundred years there has been an explosion of scientific knowledge and this is forcing us all to revise our understandings of the world in which we live.

In the next Parts  we will look at some of these new discoveries and their implications for our Faith. I want to put it to you that we have nothing to fear from these new scientific discoveries and theories. Rather we should embrace them, as more and more they point towards a great Creator who upholds the universe by his hand, and gives breathe to all living beings – just as his Word says. In fact I have found these new discoveries to be faith-building, rather than faith-destroying.