Emerging Scholars Blog

InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network

Christianity and science series

Summary and Reflection on the Christianity and Science Series

Introduction

You lost me: why young Christians are leaving church — and rethinking faith by David Kinnaman with Aly Hawkins (BakerBooks, 2011).

Are Christianity and science at war? This was a major concern for me when I came to faith in Christ 22 years ago in the middle of my career as a biology professor at Iowa State University. Although it did not prevent me from coming to faith in Christ, it continued to trouble me and caused doubts about my faith in the early years after my conversion to Christianity. I wondered whether modern science is really compatible with belief in God and whether it is possible to reconcile the Bible’s account of creation with the scientific account of natural history.

These questions also trouble young adults today. A recent five-year study, headed by Barna Group president David Kinnaman, identified antagonism between churches and science as one of six reasons why three out of five young adults disconnect from church after age 15. The study found that a quarter of young adults believe that Christianity is anti-science and the same proportion say that they have been turned off by the evolution-versus-creation debate.

These questions led me to develop the Christianity and science honors course that I have been teaching at Iowa State University for the past 14 years. In this last post in the , I want to summarize and reflect about some of the key ideas that we have considered. [Read more…] about Summary and Reflection on the Christianity and Science Series

Nature as a Christian Apologetic: Intelligent Design Revisited

Introduction

The Open Secret: A New Vision for Natural Theology, by Alister E. McGrath (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008).

This is the second of a two-part series addressing the question of whether nature can be used as a Christian apologetic. Natural theology is a discipline that systematically explores the proposed link between God and nature. The traditional approach to natural theology seeks to prove God’s existence from what is observed in nature without reference to the Bible or other religious texts. The problem with this approach is that nature is ambiguous with respect to the question of God’s existence. In my last blog post, I discussed a second approach, proposed by Alister McGrath. In this approach nature is viewed as an “open secret” which is publicly accessible but its true meaning can only be known from the perspective of Christian faith. This Christian natural theology does not attempt to prove the existence of God from nature but rather sees what is observed in nature as reinforcing an existing belief in God.

In this post, I want to revisit the intelligent design argument (see blog post 10) from the perspective of McGrath’s idea of a Christian natural theology. There are two types of intelligent design: biological and cosmological. Biological intelligent design asserts that some biological structures are too complex to have been produced by natural selection. Cosmological intelligent design asserts that science is not able to answer certain basic questions about the origin of the universe and its basic properties. In this post we are going to focus on cosmological intelligent design and in particular a phenomenon known as cosmic fine-tuning which is perhaps the strongest argument for intelligent design. [Read more…] about Nature as a Christian Apologetic: Intelligent Design Revisited

Nature as a Christian Apologetic: The Open Secret

The BT Tower was an official secret for decades, meaning it did not appear on official survey maps, despite being a conspicuous 627′ London landmark. Is it a better symbol for natural theology than a watch on a beach?

Introduction

In previous blogs, we’ve seen that God reveals himself to man through nature and through scripture and we’ve been addressing questions about how man’s interpretations of these revelations can be reconciled. In the next two blogs we are going to address a different question: can nature be used as a Christian apologetic? In other words can Christians use nature in some way for evangelism?

The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge. — Psalm 19:1-2

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. — Romans 1:20

These verses imply that something about God can be known from nature. Romans 1:20 further suggests that there is moral accountability for what is revealed in nature. Natural theology is a discipline that systematically explores a proposed link between God and nature. The traditional approach to natural theology sought to “prove” God’s existence from what is observed in nature without reference to the Bible or other sacred documents. William Alston, a Christian philosopher, defined natural theology as

the enterprise of providing support for religious beliefs by starting from premises that neither are nor pre-suppose any religious beliefs.

Problems with the traditional approach to natural theology

[Read more…] about Nature as a Christian Apologetic: The Open Secret

What about Adam and Eve? Part 2

Introduction

Four Views on the Historical Adam, Matthew Barrett and Ardel B. Caneday, general editors. Stanley N. Gundry, series editor. Zondervan, 2013.

This is the fifth in a series of blog posts concerned with Christian questions about evolution. One of the biggest questions is what to do about Adam and Eve. In my last post I said the Bible teaches that God reveals himself to man in two ways. One is through Scripture (the Bible) and the other is through what we observe in nature (using science). I then compared the stories of the creation of mankind in the two books. While there are apparent differences between the two stories, there must be a way of reconciling these differences since they both come from God.

Reconciling the two stories

The two stories raise several types of questions.

  1. The origin of humans. Was this due to special creation by God or was it due to God guided evolution. If evolution, then in what sense is mankind set apart from the rest of creation and in what sense are humans created in the image of God?
  2. Adam and Eve. Were they real people and was Adam the father of all humankind?
  3. The doctrine of the Fall. Are Adam and Eve essential to the Bible’s central storyline of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation? Is Paul’s teaching about the representative roles of Adam and Jesus essential to the understanding of the origin of sin and the redemption from sin? Does the story of the creation of Adam and Eve and their fall communicate real history or does it simply communicate timeless truths?
  4. The relationship between God’s two books of revelation. Does one have primacy over the other or is it possible to settle the apparent conflict in a way that respects both sources of revelation?

The way that I want to address these questions is through the review of a book entitled Four Views of the Historical Adam (Zondervan, 2013). There are a spectrum of views among Evangelical Christians about how to reconcile the story from Scripture with the story from nature. This book presents essays from four Biblical scholars who represent the four major Evangelical positions. [Read more…] about What about Adam and Eve? Part 2

What about Adam and Eve? Part 1

Introduction

This is the fourth in a series of blog posts concerned with Christian questions about evolution. One of the biggest dilemmas is what to do about Adam and Eve.

  • Were they real people?
  • How were they created?
  • Was Adam the father of all mankind?
  • What about the story in Genesis 3 of the fall of Adam and Eve and consequently all of mankind into sin?
  • Do the creation stories in Genesis communicate real, historical events or are they myths that God is using to communicate timeless truths?

These are the concerns I want to address in this and my next post.

Two book model of revelation

God reveals himself through the Bible/Scripture (special revelation) and through what we observe in nature (general revelation).

In my first post in the  series I talked about dealing with the tension between science and the Bible. The Bible teaches that God reveals himself to man in two ways. One is through scripture (the Bible) and the other is through what we observe in nature (using science). This is perhaps best seen in Psalm 19 and in Romans 1:20. [Read more…] about What about Adam and Eve? Part 1