Positive Liberty

There is a presumption amongst reformed and fundamentalist Christians, that revelation reigns Supreme and Alone — Sola Scriptura. The fundamentalist who then insists that man’s “helpmeet,” woman, was literally built from the rib of man, sometime on the sixth (24-hour) day of creation, serves as the cliche example of this principle taken to its logical conclusion.

Skeptics — atheists in particular — mount a counter-charge (often with pomposity), that they eschew revelation and embrace Reason.

Not all Christians embrace Sola Scriptura at the expense of Reason. All truth is God’s truth.

There are two problems here to be addressed when looking at the fundamentalist’s view. First, the Bible itself does not advocate Sola Scriptura. Second, this need not be a stricter either/or situation, but rather can be a fuzzier both/and. There is a middle ground, if you will.

Explicitly, Romans 1 says that all mankind should recognize God in the creation. No one is permitted the excuse of not recognizing God because the creation “testifies.” Atheist Bertrand Russell was asked how he would respond, if after dying he was brought face to face with God. His reply: “There wasn’t enough evidence.” Romans 1:18-20 suggests that we know today as “science” is, in part, actually the study of God’s world.

Implicitly, most conservative Christians will instantly recognize what I mean when I refer to Hebrews 11 as the “Faith Hall of Fame.” In it, appears Abraham, who precedes Moses on the historical timeline. Moses is (from the fundamentalist perspective) the author of the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament, including Genesis) which tells Abraham’s story. Thus, Abraham was a man without a book of revelation. Yet he followed God. Abraham is the greatest figure of “faith” because he acted, without a book of revelation.

Sola Scriptura is strictly a religious construction. It is a Reformation doctrine that arose in response to the corruption of the Catholic Church. That response is understandable and was, initially, liberating.

But a lot of time has passed since then and the situation is different. We’ve passed through the Enlightenment, the age of Reason, the modernist/scientific era, and are now in a postmodern era where the assumption is that truth is relative, authority has to prove itself worthy, and people choose their beliefs from a cafeteria of systems.

Nailing Sola Scriptura to a door these days is an invitation to ridicule at best, and a court case, at worst.

For my purposes here, I’m going to assume that the Bible _is_ God’s Book of Revelation (in the general sense, not the more narrow apocalyptic book that concludes the canon). Whether or not my assumption tis true is an entirely separate and much more complicated discussion that I won’t yet entertain at this point, except to read the inevitable, though welcome comments that might appear in response to this post.

For my purposes here, I’ll also assume that the following statement is true: Any use of revelation requires an interpretive system. We’ll not go down that trail as of yet either (this isn’t a book, but a blog). Suffice it to say that when humanity learned, for example, that the Old Testament “firmament” didn’t exist; when Buridan, d’Oresme, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton punctured mankind’s medieval concept of an Earth-centered universe, we are compelled, rightly, to pause and question whether or not the Sun did, literally, “stand still” during one of Joshua’s battles.

Biblically speaking, both the book of Job (the oldest in scripture) and the aforementioned passage from Romans, supports the notion of a balanced system where there are two books, each of which are authored by God. The second of these books is Revelation.

But the first of these books is Nature.

From here, let me quote the “Bagnall Beach Observatory” because I can’t conclude this article any better than this . . .

The Church and Science

One of the clearest explanations of the Christian Church’s approach to science at the time of Galileo is actually given by Galileo himself. In his Letter to Castelli (21 December, 1613), Galileo wrote:

“For the Holy Scripture and nature both equally derive from the divine Word, the former as the dictation of the Holy spirit, the latter as the most obedient executrix of God’s commands; …”

Galileo’s theological interpretation is even more fully developed in his Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615) where he writes:

“…God reveals Himself to us no less excellently in the effects of nature than in the words of sacred Scripture, …”

Galileo goes on to quote Augustine and Tertullian in support of his arguments. Obviously these arguments did not begin with Galileo. They were part of Christian tradition he inherited, in which nature was understood to be a book which revealed God. However, while the early Church Fathers understood the Book of Nature to be speaking in allegories of the spiritual life, by the beginning of the second millennium the Book of Nature was being interpreted more literally by Christian thinkers. Nature, which hitherto had been a mere source of allegory for the spiritual life, was now being seen as a source of scientific knowledge which revealed God. This new approach to nature expressed itself in a new theology. In the 12th century, Hugh of St Victor (d.1142) perhaps most clearly expressed the thinking of his contemporary peers in declaring that the whole material creation consisted of letters written ‘by the finger of God’. There thus became two sources of revelation, with the Book of Nature standing alongside the Book of Scripture. Professor Peter Harrison sums up the situation concisely: “Nature was a new authority, an alternative text, a doorway to the divine which could stand alongside the sacred page.” The exploration of the natural world was thus approached as a quest for the divine - an approach to Nature which characterised many of the great scientific minds of the second millennium.

Reflection on these theological assertions resulted in a new confidence in the material world as a means to the knowledge of God. As Peter Harrison puts it, “Albert the Great (c.1200-1280), sounding rather like an eighteenth century British empiricist, announced that all universal knowledge arises out of sense experience. His famous protégé, Thomas Aquinas (c.1225-1274), agreed that ‘all our knowledge takes its rise from sensation,’ and that ‘it is the knowledge we have of creatures that enables us to refer to God.’ ”

In England, church functionaries devoted themselves to the discovery of God as revealed in Nature. Robert Grosseteste (1168-1253), first chancellor of Oxford University and later Bishop of Lincoln, pursued the study of light, explaining the rainbow as an outcome of refraction. His follower, Franciscan friar, Roger Bacon (1214-1292), wrote three major works campaigning for mathematics and experimental science. All of these men saw science, not as the enemy of religion, but as part of the religious quest. Roger Bacon credited science first and foremost as “the handmaiden of theology”.

The assumption that the natural world was a means of revelation of God became the chief impetus to the development of science, almost to the end of the second millennium.

So, far from being opposed to science, the Christian Church in the West saw it as a means to revelation of God, and this motivated an intense scientific search.

And I should note, that should still be the case today! From my perspective, there is Biblical warrant, which should motivate Evangelicals and conservative Christians, to embrace, rather than run from science — including, no, especially what the overwhelming body of the scientific community has discovered about our natural history.

What does evolution tell us about God? How would evolution inform our theology?

In the Christian faith, Reason does indeed play a role.

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