October 290, 2002 - God commands us to know and love Him, but we limited and sinful humans cannot plumb the depths of God’s being by ourselves. We need the Book of the Law, the Bible, which we can only understand in the fullest sense by the gracious work of the Holy Spirit. We should thank God that the Scriptures are perfect, necessarily reflecting their perfect Author, who is infinite in sublimity, being, blessedness, and wisdom.
Comprehending the Divine Nature also requires studying the universe He created -- the general revelation, the Book of Nature. The Bible proclaims that the universe is His creation and He declared it very good. God’s awe-inspiring creation points to an even more awesome God. In the face of this reality Job was compelled to worship God, and we too will give glory to Him as we grapple with correctly perceiving what He has made.
Job was the holiest of men, but his many afflictions fueled a growing ennui and cynicism. God didn’t reprove Job by stiffly reciting the ordo salutis or even the Decalogue, as wonderful and necessary as those things are in the right circumstance. God told Job about Creation:
Who made it? (Not Job)
Who sustained it? (Not Job)
Who was powerless against those elemental forces unleashed by nature? (Yes, Job!)
But Job was a godly man, and he knew the correct response: face bowed to Earth, he repented and praised God for what is so manifestly revealed through the created order. When we perceive Creation correctly through the cloaking mists - the flesh, the world, and the devil - that shroud our understanding, we give glory to God and rejoice in what He has made.
The Scriptures are perfect for correction, instruction, and training in righteousness, so that we can be equipped to perform God’s will. God has preserved the Scriptures so that they have no error. But sometimes we give the Book of Nature short shrift. The Bible itself bears witness to God’s role in a universe that bears His mark and testifies to His handiwork. Thus not only are scientific truths God’s truths, but any other truth unearthed by any other field of endeavor must likewise be God’s creation. The Word of God says so.
But this leads to tensions, to say the least. If science is a God-given means to learn about His creation, then we will sometimes have to resolve paradoxes (not inconsistencies) between the Book of the Law and the Book of Nature. Every Christian in the sciences crashes into this predicament at some point. When I am convinced that contemporary science and religion don’t mesh at a certain point, I pitch my secular peers’ interpretation of things -- I cannot become an evolutionist in the face of Genesis. But I should not blindly jettison the science without a hard look at the Scripture, to see if my exegesis has been correct all along. We can misinterpret Scripture; we are sinful beings. John Polkinghorne is right when he asserts that theology and science have the same goal: to find the truth. Without that simple, magnificent goal our scientific exercises would be futile.
Thus, science gives us real insight into the workings of things. It works because there is a truth to uncover, a truth that reflects the God of truth who created everything. But can science tell us anything about God? Should we even ask this question?
Job would say “Yes!” God used daily observations as the crux of his debate with Job. After all, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows the work of His hands.” Paul was bullish on general revelation, using it both to provoke the lounge-lizard Athenians on the Areopagus and to condemn all who reject God and pursue wickedness. Thus in Romans 1 he effectively removes the chimera, “But what about the heathen in Africa?” by insisting that anyone who rejects Jesus is condemned already, since rejection would entail purging from one’s mind everything that God shouts at us from nature: “I exist! I made all this! I sustain you! I am eternal! I have unlimited power!” Paul is speaking of the fallen nature, even. To use Abraham Kuyper’s term, Paul is an Abnormalist; he peers at the Universe in its debasement by the Fall—yet it is still so magnificent he must glorify God because its message is so clear to him.
As a scientist, I get to study the Book of Nature. And even better--there’s always more to learn. Though a modest laborer in science, I have discovered a few things that no human had ever seen before. Glory to God in the Highest!
Scientists, though , should close their ears to the sirens of materialism and anti-supernaturalism. We need special revelation to live godly in Christ Jesus. Cornelius Van Til said that even before Adam sinned, he couldn’t glean everything from his perfect surroundings. “Do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” Adam was told. Why were these words necessary if we could know everything just by astutely observing a pure world? How much more so must we, with sinful hearts, turn to Scripture to interpret our “groaning” universe in these days beyond the Fall?
Scripture and science can work together synergistically, with Scripture leading the way. Suppose a garden-variety heathen with no scientific knowledge looks around to comprehend the universe. He will probably invent gods about as big as his immediate environment and as moral as the folks around him. In other words, his gods will be narrow-minded, tribal, and perfused with evil. Yet the Scriptures gave the Hebrews a notion of a God very unlike those of the surrounding nations, a God of infinite scope and holiness. This God made a tiny nation into a people whose importance to world civilization is far greater than its numbers warrant.
Modern Christians often don’t believe what the Bible says about God and His creation. We read the words, but we change little in deed and belief. The heavens declare the glory of God. “Do I not fill heaven and earth?” says the Lord. We yawn, staving off sleep, but at least we got our quiet time in. The universe is overwhelmingly grander than our grandparents imagined, and it reveals starkly to us what the Scriptures told the Hebrews thousands of years ago. The magnitude and splendor of the universe are now revealed in science as well as Scripture. If we can’t appreciate God and His Word much better through what we now know of the natural order, we’re without a clue.
There are surprising roles science can play in a life of faith. My petty problems are pretty insignificant compared to the glory of God’s creation. I am important to God, the apple of His eye, a citizen of a royal nation and a holy priesthood, and even His beloved child by adoption, but I can never forget His immensity, nor that He is a consuming fire. The supernova 1987A in the Large Magellanic Cloud was an incomprehensibly prodigious blast, and it reminds me of the imagery in Jonathan Edward’s “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” We think we can resist God, but we cannot; whole planets that might have orbited the star that went supernova were consumed just like sinners will be if they do not fall down before Jesus and cry out for forgiveness. We who know the Man Jesus Christ should praise Him continually that we have, in spite of our demerits, been granted eternal life.
But science doesn’t just remind us of our insignificance, of our evanescence in the scheme of things. I study biological macromolecules--the big, complex bundles of atoms that comprise the building blocks necessary to make us and run us. These molecules-- proteins, DNA, and complex sugars-- fold into convoluted structures that define their function. I overheard two professors in grad school agree that Genesis 1 and 2 explained the origin of these big molecules as well as anything did. John Polkinghorne in Faith of a Physicist reminds us that of all the wondrous things about the universe, the most praiseworthy is that God has made conscious beings who can appreciate it. I praise God that we who are redeemed in Christ will one day enjoy a perfect universe forever as we glorify Him.