Test All Things: The Bible, Faith, and Science

By Gijsbert van den Brink

To many people, science and the Christian faith are worlds apart. As a result, those who love both the Bible and science often have something to explain. Hasn't science taken over the role of religion in our days? And what relevance can such an ancient book as the Bible possibly still have in our hypermodern times? This study attempts to elucidate the Bible's continuing appeal and significance in an age characterized by science and ever more sophisticated technology. It does so by means of ten soundings in individual biblical texts, which are applied to the thought world of contemporary science. The results are remarkable and offer a lot of food for thought.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Jul 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666761580

Gijsbert van den Brink

Gijsbert van den Brink ist University Research Professor for Theology & Science and der VU Amsterdam.

Book preview

Introduction

Few developments have changed our daily lives in recent centuries as radically as the rise of modern science. We hardly realize how different life was when we didn’t yet deal with the many applications of scientific research. I still remember how one of the professors with whom I took classes pointed us to the faucet; most people nowadays have quite a number of them in their homes. We usually open them without a further thought. In fact, we rarely think about how strange it really is that we take them for granted. But during most of human history, and still in many places in the world today, the water supply is, of course, an extraordinarily complex business. Not only obtaining water, but also purifying and distributing it, were daunting tasks: complex, dangerous, and certainly time-consuming. Whether you had to go to the pump in the village or to a nearby river, so that you could carry water back to your house, getting clean water was always a big undertaking.

You don’t normally think of faucets as one of the great achievements of modern technology, and I think that is why my professor used them as an example. There is, of course, a lot of know-how and organization behind the faucets that we open every day: a whole network of water pipes, sewers, water treatment plants, etc. Even such an old phenomenon as faucets still has a huge impact on our everyday lives, let alone all kinds of later technological developments that are the result of scientific research. Our lives have truly changed unrecognizably from that of someone living in, say, the sixteenth century. For this reason, it is always an interesting thought experiment to imagine how a person from the past that you admire—say someone like John Calvin or, perhaps, your own great-grandfather or great-grandmother—would react if they could be moved into our world with a time machine. Undoubtedly they would be totally amazed by everything that they would see and experience. It would probably take some time before they would even understand how our lives work. Unfortunately, we will never know what they would really think and what they would say to us about it. Possibly, however, after they would have thought about it for a time, they would point out that even though much has changed, human beings themselves have remained the same.

The World of Science and the Bible

The enormous changes that have come with the rise of science and of what we call the scientific worldview have also had consequences for the way we experience our faith. Honesty compels us to recognize that these developments have caused the Bible to take a more distant place, in many ways, in our lives. To use a concise word that one often finds in the literature, our world has become disenchanted. We look everywhere for causal connections, for cause-and-effect relationships, and we no longer think in terms of spirits or gods that work behind the scenes to influence events. What does that mean for the faith in the God of Israel, the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ? And how can the Bible still speak authoritatively to us in a time that is marked by our technological achievements? Those are important questions. But we also reverse our perspective: how does the Bible shape our view of the exalted and dominant place that contemporary science and technology have now taken? How can the Bible help us to get a sharper view of their limitations and risks? These are some of the questions that we want to explore through a series of Bible studies about faith and the sciences.

In these explorations, the Bible is our point of departure. We view the Bible as the Word of God, through which God speaks to us humans and shows us the way, also today. At the same time, we realize that the Bible is also a book that was written by people a long time ago but not unlike us. They were inspired by God’s Spirit, but, as we shall see, they were not necessarily separated from their own personal, cultural, and historical backgrounds. In numerous places in the Bible we obviously find the traces of those backgrounds. Over the past couple of centuries, theological and historical research has opened our eyes to this. In the Bible studies that follow we will see how taking such research seriously can help us to understand what is going on in the texts to be discussed and how that illuminates our own situation.

In brief, we take as our starting point what theologians like Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck have called the organic theory (or doctrine) of inspiration: the Spirit has moved people to write texts that would later form the Bible, but has employed them with all their human qualities, as the people that they were—so in an organic way. This double nature of the Bible—Word of God and human word at the same time—is often experienced as rather problematic. That may be the case because we are a bit too eager to know exactly what is the relationship between these two. However, it is better to see the beauty, and even the uniqueness of the Bible in these two aspects. Apparently, that is how God wanted it to be. It is precisely through this colorful collection of human writings, handed down in shreds of papyrus and rolls of parchment, that God wants to address us, guide us, help us, and, especially, wants us to get to know him. It is with grateful expectation that we can turn to the Bible, time and again.

The Complex Relationship between Science and Faith

In the Bible studies that follow, we will focus on the relationship between faith and science—meaning by science not just the natural sciences, but academic scholarship more generally conceived. We know from history that this relationship is very complex. At times both were diametrically opposed to each other. But most of the time it just seemed that way and many other issues played a role in the background. That was the case, for example, in the infamous Galileo affair—which has become iconic as the conflict par excellence between scientific insight and coercion by communities of faith. Historians have been able to discern much more precisely what actually happened in the Galileo case and, as a result, have drastically adjusted this picture. The case turned out to be much more complex than Galileo’s science simply coming into conflict with the faith of his church at the time. Numerous other issues—among which was Galileo’s difficult character—also played a role. In any case, this does not appear to have been a conflict between faith and science, if for no other reason than Galileo’s giving a religious explanation to his findings. On the other hand, you cannot say that the relationship between faith and science has always been very harmonious. There have definitely been tensions and conflicts, and some of these still occur today.

Sometimes you also encounter the idea that faith and science have nothing to do with each other. They would be two entities (languages or even worlds) that are entirely separate from each other. This thought can give the impression of the highly educated expert who knows so much better than the ordinary masses who are always so worried about this relationship without realizing that there really is nothing to worry about here. At the same time, authors who suggest there is such an independence between faith and science write long treatises on their relationship. It is indeed puzzling how some people manage to write whole books about two things that, they say, have nothing to do with each other. In the Bible studies that follow we shall assume that faith and science do touch each other, and will therefore always alternate exegetical explorations of Scripture passages and relevant scientific or historical information. In this it will indeed become clear that the two are not separate from each other, but rather can illuminate each other and be related to each other in intriguing ways.

In this book we pay special attention to the topic that today is regarded as the foremost area of conflict in the relationship between faith and science: the question of whether the biological theory of evolution as developed by Charles Darwin and further elaborated by other biologists is compatible with biblical faith. Opinions about this are still divided—among Christians as well as among Jews, Muslims, and atheists. In 2020, I wrote a separate book about the question of whether Christian faith and neo-Darwinian evolution are compatible (Reformed Theology and Evolutionary Theory, Eerdmans). Some readers of the book found it regrettable that whereas I went into theological topics in detail, I did not (apart from the well-known chapters, Genesis 1–3) separately discuss various Bible texts that are also relevant to the topic. For this reason I now want to offer a reading of various relevant biblical passages (particularly in chapters 4–7). If we assume that the theory of evolution is more or less correct, is it still possible to give a convincing interpretation of important Bible passages that seem to point in a different direction, or does that lead to contrived explanations? Can the Bible itself shed light, perhaps, on the purpose and meaning of the evolutionary history? Even if we in these Bible studies explore the various possibilities that present themselves, we are not concerned with forcing a particular answer to these questions—the readers may think for themselves! That is also why conversation questions have been added to each chapter, to enable you as a reader to consider things further, either in a group or for yourself.

How to Use This Book

I do hope that this book will be helpful, both for people who want to deepen their personal faith or want to know how their faith relates to science, as well as for people who use it for a guide in discussion groups. I am thinking of church discussion groups or student groups at colleges or universities. Particularly as a student, I imagine, one regularly encounters questions about the relationship between the Bible, faith, and scientific scholarship. In the Bible studies presented here, this relationship is discussed not only in a general sense but also where it concerns many concrete scientific fields—so I use scientific in a very broad sense here: physics, astronomy, cosmology, biology, psychology, history, climate science, literary studies, philosophy, and, of course, biblical studies and theology. Thus, you can have extensive discussions about exciting questions that arise from your own field of study. You can also participate in such discussions if you are not a student or are no longer a student and are interested in these kinds of questions. The number of Bible studies, ten in all, can be covered in one or two seasons. The scope and profundity of these Bible studies may be a little more extensive than what is customary, but the aim is to really deepen your understanding of the topics covered. In all this, I have tried to avoid jargon and to write as clearly as possible.

The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) of the Bible has been used as the basis of these studies. The NRSV lends itself well for study purposes because of its text fidelity (formal equivalence). The New International Version, which is more oriented to the target language (dynamic equivalence), or other translations, can also contribute to your discussions. In group discussions it is always helpful to have several translations available, in print or digitally, so that you can hear how these various translations are rendering the text that is being discussed. The conversation questions at the end of the chapters aim to not be too confining, but are intended to be helpful to come to a good and meaningful discussion about the topics at hand. This also applies to the group activity that is suggested at the end of every chapter. Needless to say, the book can also perfectly be used for personal reading.

Amsterdam, June 2023

Gijsbert van den Brink

Acknowledgments

As mentioned, the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV, © 1989) has been used for all Scripture references unless otherwise indicated.

Figure 1 in chapter 2 has been adapted, with permission, from an illustration by Scott Buchanan.

The story of the chaplain and the biology professor in chapter 4 is by Dr. Michael R. Wagenman (Are Ancient Bible Stories Still Relevant? © The Banner (July/Aug 2020). Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved worldwide).

I thank my colleague, Dr. Rik Peels (VU Amsterdam) for his feedback on an earlier version of the text, Rev. Bob DeMoor for reading the book and making many helpful suggestions, and, of course, Professor Harry Cook (The King’s University, Edmonton) both for his many stimulating comments and for his wonderful translation of the Dutch precursor of this book.

Finally, this publication was made possible through the support of a grant from Templeton World Charity Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Templeton World Charity Foundation.

1

Wisdom and Science

Science as it is practiced today did not yet exist at the time the Bible was written. So we can’t go to the Bible to ask how God thinks about science. Nevertheless, indirectly, the Bible has all kinds of things to say that are important for our evaluation and practice of science, and also about the relationship between science and faith. In this chapter we’re starting to look at that. For while we may not find much about science in the Bible, it does frequently deal with wisdom. And also with knowledge, for that matter—and with insight, formation, perceptiveness, and the willingness to listen. How are these concepts related to each other, and to what we call science today? And what do they mean theologically, that is, in light of God’s relationship with us? To begin, we will investigate this on the basis of the opening verses of Proverbs. We’ll see that there certainly is similarity between science (and scholarly knowledge in general) and wisdom—but there are also differences.

Read: Proverbs 1:1–7

Wisdom—Word by Word

We decided to make our start by stepping over the threshold of the book of Proverbs, and as we do so, we enter a unique world of words. Not unlike entering a cathedral for the first time, we have to orient ourselves, and take a look around—where have we ended up precisely? The opening passage helps us to get an eye for the most important connections. When we list the key concepts in the King James Version and the New Revised Standard Version and add some other translation options, it looks like this: