














Fri, 29 Mar 2013 11:58:03 -0700 Matt J. Rossano
Searching for Motivated Belief: Understanding John Polkinghorne, Part 2;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication To understand more clearly where Polkinghorne lies on the larger landscape of science and religion, let’s consider his approach to the Resurrection. Many contemporary thinkers, including some theologians and clergy, believe that “science” has somehow made it impossible to believe in the Resurrection, the deity of Jesus, and even belief in the transcendent God of the Bible. In my last post, I presented John Polkinghorne’s attitude to scientific and religious knowledge and explained his approach to natural theology. Today, we briefly examine his theology of nature and his attitude toward the Resurrection.

Understanding John Polkinghorne: Theology of Nature



Situating John Polkinghorne: The Resurrection of Jesus







Matthias Grünewald, The Resurrection (a wing of the
Isenheim Altarpiece, ca. 1515), Unterlinden Museum,
Colmar, France



Looking Ahead







Thu, 14 Mar 2013 07:00:08 -0700 Ted Davis



Creator of the Stars at Night

Creator of the stars of night,
 thy people's everlasting light, 
O Christ, Redeemer of us all, 
we pray you hear us when we call.

In sorrow that the ancient curse
 should doom to death a universe, 
you came, O Savior, to set free 
your own in glorious liberty.

When this old world drew on toward night, 
you came; but not in splendor bright,
 not as a monarch, but the child 
of Mary, blameless mother mild.

At your great Name, O Jesus, now
 all knees must bend, all hearts must bow; 
all things on earth with one accord,
 like those in heaven, know you are Word.

Come in your holy might, we pray, 
redeem us for eternal day;
 defend us while we dwell below 
from all assaults of our dread foe.

To God Creator, God the Child,
 and God the Spirit, sane and wild, 
praise, honor, might, and glory be 
from age to age eternally.


Did David Hume "Banish" Miracles?;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication “I flatter myself,” Hume triumphantly proclaimed, “that I have discovered an argument . . . which, if just, will, with the wise and learned, be an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion, and consequently, will be useful as long as the world endures.” Alvin Plantinga’s series on Divine Action in the World gives considerable attention to the question of miracles and whether they are “contrary to science”. To follow up on this contentious issue, we’d like to feature this excerpt from Rick Kennedy's book Jesus, History, and Mount Darwin: An Academic Excursion. During Rick’s climb into the Evolution Range of the High Sierras of California, he reflected on why historians are so loath to accept accounts of supernatural events. Many academics point to the Enlightenment scholar David Hume as offering the most compelling argument against the possibility of miracles.

For more of Rick Kennedy’s reflections, see his full BioLogos series.

Keeping History Safe

In the cold morning air with the sun not yet over the ridge, the place to begin preparation for summiting Mount Darwin is to ponder the reasonableness of miracles. Many Totalizers would like to ban miracles from university consideration and inquiry. Trouble is: human history is awash with credible people reporting miracles.

Modern academic tradition tends to try and maintain order. For historians it behooves us professionally to avoid accounts of alleged spiritual events. We find comfort in a little logical gymnastics that keeps history safe for us to wander in, a deceptively formulaic avoidance method that helps us avoid what people are telling us about extraordinary events in the past.

David Hume popularly articulated this logical gymnastics in an essay titled “Of Miracles” that was eventually printed in Enquires Concerning Human Understanding (1748). “I flatter myself,” Hume triumphantly proclaimed, “that I have discovered an argument . . . which, if just, will, with the wise and learned, be an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion, and consequently, will be useful as long as the world endures.”

His everlasting check on superstition begins with a circular argument that because miracles can’t happen, a reasonable person should not even listen to reports of them. Hume taught that though the normal job of a historian was to listen to the testimony that comes down to us from the past, there is a point at which you can close your ears. Hume knew that historical testimony can get wild, so he came up with a way to domesticate the wildness, a way to make history a zoo rather than allow it to be a jungle. His “Of Miracles” has been tremendously influential in the discipline of human history over the last two hundred and fifty years, not because his ideas are strong, but because his ideas are useful. Get rid of “superstitious delusions,” and the discipline of history can be turned from a safari into a form of home economics. Hume’s domestication of history is seductively simple. Instead of following the Aristotelian tradition of linking the credibility of hard-to-believe testimony to the credibility of the testifier, Hume recommended disregarding the testifier and focusing only on the testimony. This effectively removed the persuasive power from hard-to-believe testimony. Miracles need the credibility of an eyewitness in order to have persuasive power. Hume cut the power source from the unwanted testimony.

Essentially, Hume adopted the modeling technique that Darwin later used and is best seen in Global Positioning System (GPS) units. Hume recommended gathering testimony from the past and every region to create a general model of what humans generally experience. Using this mass of information, one should generalize standards of common experience. Now if anyone reports a miracle, the alleged event can’t be true because it does not conform to the generalized standards of common experience. (Of course, Hume had already refused to allow that any reports of miracles could be used even to generalize common experience.) It’s tricky. Its logic is circular. But it works to weed out awkward, quirky information. It is as if a domineering GPS unit created a sphere to serve as an abstraction for the earth, then insisted that the earth can’t have wobbling poles and flattening in the upper latitudes because the sphere in the GPS shows it can’t be true. Given a useful and trustworthy GPS, don’t listen to a scientist who might tell you something different than what the GPS tells you.

The circularity of this argument has been noted ever since Hume first proposed it, but Hume was a good writer and said what a lot of people wanted to hear. Miracles are impossible so miracle reports can’t be true. Don’t even listen to reports of them.

Balancing Likelihoods

Also embedded in Hume’s essay is the awkward “rule of logic,” most often called “Balancing Likelihoods.” By combining math and logic in an odd way, Hume’s “Of Miracles “ offered another way for historians to avoid thinking about miracles. Balancing Likelihoods has many names but is probably best stated by David Hackett Fischer, in his Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought, as “the rule of probability:”

“[A]ll inferences from empirical evidence are probabilistic. It is not, therefore, sufficient to demonstrate merely that A was possibly the case. A historian must determine, as best he can, the probability of A in relation to the probability of alternatives. In the same fashion he cannot disprove A by demonstrating that not-A was possible, but only by demonstrating that not-A was more probable than A. This is the rule of probability.”

This seems to be practical but is impossible. Balancing Likelihoods, in the way described by Fischer, cannot be used by historians in any normal practice. It is a talisman to keep history mentally safe from the wildness that is reported to exist. Logicians, especially mathematicians, have long criticized intellectual constructions like this. The “probability” that Fischer writes about is seemingly mathematical, but the math is simply implied to give a sense of strength to human feelings.

Before Hume wrote “Of Miracles” probabilistic logic had been advancing rapidly and there was a great hope that mathematical analogies would strengthen human thinking—even Christian apologetics. “Pascal’s Wager,” the most famous mathematical apologetic from the seventeenth century, equated eternal salvation with mathematical infinity and then applied it to a gambling formula. Antoine Arnauld, in The Port-Royal Logic (1662), and John Locke, in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) and Discourse on Miracles (1706), carried probabilistic math and logic into the handling of reported miracles. A half-century later, however, Hume reacted against Arnauld and Locke’s teachings that mathematical analogies could help in the discussion of the credibility of miracles. Hume insisted that to handle a reported miracle, a historian had to create two separate ratios, pro and con, for believability. The ratios were then to be weighed against each other. This is Fischer’s “rule of probability” quoted above. In the language of Hume’s era, this was proclaimed as the “calculus of good sense.”

Lorraine Daston, in Classical Probability in the Enlightenment (1988), offers an excellent study of Hume and the many eighteenth-century mathematicians who wanted to help bring rigorous quantitative thinking to what today would be called the humanities. Daston writes that by the 1840s, mathematicians realized that “the ‘calculus of good sense’ had become antithetical to good sense,” and that today most of what these early probabilists were trying to do is considered “patently absurd.”

In 1901, one of America’s preeminent philosopher-mathematician-logicians, Charles Sanders Peirce, wrote three essays attacking the way historians had adopted Hume’s bad logic: “A Preliminary Chapter, Toward an Examination of Hume’s Argument Against Miracles, in its Logic and in its History,” “Hume’s Arguments Against Miracles, and the Idea of Natural Law,” and “On the Logic of Drawing History from Ancient Documents especially from Testimonies.” Peirce showed that historians are in error when they talk of judging testimony by balancing probabilities because “in a scientific sense, there are no ‘probabilities’ to be judged.”

Probability, Peirce wrote, “is the ratio of the frequency of occurrence of a specific event to a generic event.” A testimony “is neither a specific event, nor a generic event, but an individual event.” Peirce further pointed out that what people were justifying by claiming Balancing Likelihoods was really simply relating “what they prefer to do” to what they don’t prefer. “Likelihood is merely a reflection of our preconceived ideas.”

Historians like me who teach in universities about the reasonable credibility of Jesus’ resurrection need to be students of Peirce not Hume on the subject of assessing the credibility of reports that come down to us from ancient history. Dealing wisely with reports of events verging on the incredible is just part of the normal job of being grounded in the social study of our complex human past.

“Come to history as a doubter,” Richard Marius advises in a historical methods manual. “Skepticism is one of the historian’s finest qualities. Historians don’t trust their sources. . . . Nothing is quite so destructive to a historian’s reputation as to present conclusions that prove gullibility.”

But Marius is wrong. In practice, historians have to trust more than doubt. In practice, historians, especially ancient historians, can’t rely on doubting. Historians have to be close listeners, discerning listeners, wise listeners, who sometimes have to make harmonies and stretch for belief.

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 04:00:44 -0700 Rick Kennedy
Divine Action in the World, Part 4;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication It is a very common idea that if you believe in miracles, you are somehow not accepting science. My conclusion is that that’s not true at all, either under the old or the new picture; there isn’t any conflict between thinking God acts specially in the world and enthusiastically endorsing all of contemporary physics or whatever science you like. Ok, now I want to talk briefly about the new picture—that, I said, was the old picture—now, the new picture: classical science has now been superseded. The Laplacian and Newtonian world pictures have both been superseded, in particular, by quantum mechanics.

The main thing to see here—there is a lot to be said about quantum mechanics and most of it I don’t know since I am not a quantum mechanic, but fortunately we do not need to know a whole lot about it to see the important point here—the important point is this: the laws of quantum mechanics are probabilistic rather than deterministic.

So according to Newtonian mechanics, if you are given a complete description of some system and there isn’t any outside causal influence on the system, then if you ask what is that system going to be like in five minutes, there will be a particular answer. It will be a completely definite answer. Maybe you are not able to get that answer yourself; in fact, there are a lot of problems with actually working this out in detail (maybe you are not capable of doing that), but the laws entail a particular and completely definite answer to all the physical questions about that system. But that isn’t how it goes with quantum mechanics.

In quantum mechanics, if you are given a system of particles, then the quantum mechanical laws don’t say which configuration they will be in, but instead they assign probabilities to the possible outcomes. So there will be a whole continuum of possible outcomes, and the quantum mechanical laws will assign probabilities to these. Some of the outcomes, if you think of it like a distribution like that, at these edges these outcomes will be extremely unlikely; will be assigned extremely low probabilities—those in the middle, a much higher probability and so on, but it won’t tell you just which one will happen, just which one, in fact, will ensue. It only assigns these probabilities.

If that is the way things stand, then even if you leave out the bit about closed systems, miracles, walking on water, rising from the dead, they are clearly not incompatible with these laws, because these laws are just probabilistic. They say like probably things will be this, this, or this. This way of being has a probability of .13, for this one over here, a probability of .007. Miracles of walking on water [and] rising from the dead, these things are not incompatible with these laws. No doubt, with respect to these laws, they are very improbable, but of course, we already knew that.

So the point here is just this: with respect to the new picture, you don’t even have to add the thing about the systems being closed. Even if the system is a closed system, the laws still won’t entail a particular determinant outcome. Hence, these laws are not incompatible with such miracles as walking on water or somebody rising from the dead. In that way, the new picture is quite different than the old picture. It is quite an important difference—a very substantial and important difference.

Now the next thing I want to note though that very many philosophers, theologians, and scientists who are wholly aware of this quantum mechanical revolution still apparently find a problem with miracles and with special divine interaction, generally. There is the divine action project so called by Wesley Wildman in a paper he wrote. It has been a fifteen-year series of conferences and publications that began in 1988. So far these conferences have resulted in five or six books of essays involving some fifty or more authors from various fields of science together with philosophers and theologians including many of the most prominent writers in the field, for example, John Polkinghorne and Arthur Peacock, Nancy Murphy, Philip Clayton, and many others. This whole divine action project is a very serious and impressive attempt to come to grips with the topic of divine action in the world.

Now the interesting thing here is that nearly all of these authors believe that a satisfactory account of God’s action in the world would have to be non-interventionistic. [It] would have a satisfactory account of divine action in the world. [It] would have to be such that it doesn’t involve God’s intervening in the world, really, doesn’t involve God’s acting specially in the world. So says Wesley Wildman, he says, “The project tried to be sensitive to issues of theological consistency.”

For example, the idea of God sustaining nature and its law-like regularities with one hand, while miraculously intervening, abrogating or ignoring these regularities with the other hand, struck most members as dangerously close to outright contradiction. Most participants certainly felt that God would not create an orderly world in which it was impossible for the Creator to act without violating the created structures of order.

Now, when you think about that, there has got to be something wrong with that—the created structures of order (as we now understand them) are understood from the quantum mechanical point of view, and you don’t violate them. God wouldn’t be violating these structures, these laws by causing somebody to rise from the dead (or as far as that goes, by creating a full-grown horse) because the laws don’t say exactly what is going to happen. They only assign these probabilities. Again, no doubt the probability of a full grown horse suddenly emerging right here is very low, but not incompatible with the laws.

There is one more point I want to make here. I think the people that did this divine action project were still sort of hung up on the same sort of thing that people were hung up on before… the same sort of thing those theologians that I mentioned were hung up on… I want to say two things about that.

First of all, even as I say, you set aside the restriction of the laws to causally closed systems; even so, you still won’t get any contradiction with divine special action. That is one. The other thing I want to say is that you really can’t even say what intervention is! I mean, what is intervention on the quantum mechanical level? What would that actually be? There is a way of saying on the old picture what divine intervention would be, but there isn’t anything, as far as I can see, available on the new picture.

Suppose you ask one of these people, “Ok, you don’t like intervention, so tell me, what would an intervention be? Could you tell me what it is?" I mean, if you can’t tell me what an intervention would be, then it is sort of peculiar to be so much against them—you tend to be against things such that you know what they are, not against things such that one cannot even say what they are.

Well, here is one possibility: you might say God does something (A) that causes a state of affairs that would not have occurred if God had not done (A). So imagine the interlocutor saying, “Well that is what divine intervention would be, whether divine intervention would be,” but that can’t be right because then any act of conservation would be an intervention, and they are not worried about conservation, they are just worried about special divine action. So that could not be a good suggestion.

The second one might be this one: God performs an act (A), which is neither conservation nor creation, but causes a state of affairs that would not have happened if he had not performed that action (A), but isn’t that really just acting specially in the world? I mean we are trying to give an account of acting specially in the world, which does not involve intervention. Well, if this is how we understand intervention, well then intervention and acting specially in the world would be the same thing. From that point of view, what they really are trying to do (if you did accept [option] two) you would be trying to give an idea of, an account of divine action in the world that didn’t involve divine action in the world, and of course, that is going to be really hard!

Well, you might try other ones, too. For example, number three: God performs an act that is very improbable given the previous states of the world, but then you want to ask, “Well, what’s the problem with that?” If that is what intervention is, what should be the problem with it? Why shouldn’t God perform improbable acts? If God wants to perform improbable acts, who is to prevent him? That is ok, no problem with that.

Or, number four: there are various lower level generalizations not entailed by quantum mechanics on which we rely, and that is true. I mean things like bread nourishes, people don’t walk on water or rise from the dead—these are generalizations—we all rely on them and believe them, and you might say God intervenes when he causes an event contrary to one of those generalizations, but again, what would be the problem with that? We would think these lower level regularities and generalizations are like the law of the Medes and Persians so that once God has established each one of them, not even he can act contrary to it. In any event, this sort of objection isn’t scientific, it is philosophical or theological.

So, I say, there is nothing in science, either under the old or the new picture, that conflicts with or even calls into question special divine action—including miracles. My general conclusion is that lots of people have raised this problem; they say miracles are incompatible with science. H. Allen Orr said that as well as the philosophers and theologians I mentioned earlier. It is a very common idea that if you believe in miracles, you are somehow not accepting science; you are going contrary to science. My conclusion is that that’s not true at all, either under the old or the new picture; there isn’t any conflict between thinking God acts specially in the world and enthusiastically endorsing all of contemporary physics or whatever science you like. Thank you.

From a presentation sponsored by Biola University’s Center for Christian Thought, and delivered February 12, 2012 at EV Free Church, Fullerton, CA. Used by permission.

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 04:00:33 -0700 Alvin Plantinga
Divine Action in the World, Part 3;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication Classical science as such is perfectly consistent with special divine action including miracles, walking on water, rising from the dead, creating ex nihilo a full-grown horse, and so on. There is no science-religion conflict here at all; there is only a religion-metaphysics conflict. So then, to get hands-off theology or anti-interventionist theology, we need more than just classical science as such. Classical science as such does not give that to us. It does not preclude God acting specially in the world. These theologians and philosophers say that, but the fact of the matter is that it’s not true; to get hands-off theology, we need more than classical science.

We need to add that the physical universe is closed. That’s what we have to add, or alternatively, we have to add determinism, which will come to the same thing here where the natural, the common definition of determinism is this: the natural laws plus the state of the universe at any one time entails, determines, the state of the universe at any other time.

You get the idea? So, you have got the state of the universe, the whole universe, at one time—a complete description of it; a description that says where each particle is and what its velocity is and what its direction is and what its mass is and so on (all these parameters); you have got a complete description. That, together with the laws of nature, will entail the state of the universe at any other time, will imply the state of the universe at any other time so that if you were sufficiently smart, (I doubt anybody here is that smart) and you knew exactly what the universe was at that time ‘t’, you could just deduce what it is at any other time, in the past as well as in the future.

Here is a paradigmatic statement for this way of thinking, this deterministic way of thinking. Pierre Laplace said,

We ought then to regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its previous state, and as the cause of the one which is to follow. Given for even for one instant a mind which could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective situation of the beings that compose it—given a mind like that, a mind sufficiently vast to subject these data to analysis, it would embrace in the same formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the lightest atom. For it, nothing would be uncertain and the future as well as the past would be present to its eyes.


Napoleon is alleged to have asked Laplace, “But what about God in your system?” and he is reputed to have responded, “I have no need of that hypothesis”. But that’s the thought—his thought is the universe is such a sort that if you have a detailed knowledge of any one bit of it at any one time, that if you knew the state of the universe at any one time, and you knew all the physical laws, and you were really smart, you could just deduce what it would be at any other time.

Right, and that’s what we could think of as determinism, and of course, if determinism were true, then God would not act specially in the world. If determinism were true, it would follow that God never acts specially in the world, because if he did act specially in the world at some time, then that great mind that Laplace talks about would not be able to conclude that God is doing that from knowing what the universe was like at some other time.

I think the thing to say here is that this Laplacian picture including determinism is accurate only if the universe is causally closed, only if the material universe is causally closed. Only if God does not act specially in the world, because if God did, then that great Laplacian mind would not be able to make these calculations. So we could think of the Laplacian picture as the Newtonian picture plus closure, plus the idea that the physical universe is causally closed, and this is the picture that’s guiding the thought of Bultmann, Macquarie, and Gilkey—these theologians.


I think there are two interesting ironies in their saying this. The first irony is that as a matter of fact, classical science doesn’t have this implication at all. It doesn’t imply that God doesn’t or couldn’t act specially in the world. It doesn’t imply that at all because the classical scientific laws together with the conservation laws are statements about what closed systems are like, and any system in which God did something (created a full grown horse let us say) would not be a closed system, and thus would not be one of the systems the law is talking about.

The other irony is that in the name of being scientific enough, these theologians were urging on us a picture of the world that was scientifically out-of-date (by a long time) when they were urging it. Classical science had already been superseded by quantum mechanics and relativity theory—both general relativity and special relativity. So they were urging on us, saying “Well God can’t act specially in the world.” They were urging this on us first by misunderstanding classical science and then secondly, by failing to realize that classical science is not the eminent kind of science anymore. So, I am inclined to think they should be ashamed of themselves.

So, we can think of the laws as describing how things go when the universe is causally closed, when it is subject to no outside influence. Here is a statement from J.L. Mackey. J.L. Mackey is himself no friend of theism, not a Christian or a believer in God at all, but what he says here seems to me to be correct:

What we want to do here is to contrast the order of nature with a possible divine or supernatural intervention. The laws of nature, we must say, describe the way in which the world, including of course human beings, works when left to itself, when not interfered with. A miracle occurs when the world is not left to itself, when something distinct from the natural order as a whole intrudes into it.

If you ask yourself now what then would the form of the natural laws, what kind of form would they take, if Mackey or something like Mackey were right, then it would go like this: NL—for natural laws—when the universe is causally closed, that is when God is not acting specially in the world, then P, where P would be the way we ordinarily think of the law.

It would go like this: When the universe is causally closed: then for any two particles or any two physical objects they attract each other with a force directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them, and the same for the other laws; they would all have a preface "when the universe is causally closed". That seems a quite good description of the laws of nature, and it fits well with the Newtonian picture, and so far the natural laws offer no threat to divine special action, including miracles.

So, I say there is in classical science as such no objection to special divine action or to human free action. In the same way as this deterministic or Laplacian picture precludes divine action, it also precludes human free action in the world (we could talk about that in the discussion period if you like, but I don’t want to talk about it now because I don’t have that much time). Classical science, just as such, does not make any objection to special divine action or to human free action. To get such an objection, we must add that the universe is causally closed—that is a metaphysical or theological add-on, not part of classical science. Classical science as such is perfectly consistent with special divine action including miracles, walking on water, rising from the dead, creating ex-nihilo a full-grown horse, and so on. There is no science-religion conflict here at all; there is only a religion-metaphysics conflict.


Mon, 03 Sep 2012 04:00:37 -0700 Alvin Plantinga
Divine Action in the World, Part 2;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication Physics tells us lots of other things, but it does not go on to say “and furthermore the whole material or physical universe is a closed system”. That would be more like a theological or philosophical add on, that would not be part of the science just as such; you won’t find that in any physics textbooks. Modern theologians and scholars participate in the world of science, and the world of science (or the scientific method) precludes God’s acting in the world specially. It is ok that he creates the world and creates it with certain laws, but then after that, if he does anything further in it, that would be interference. Why is that?

The idea is, as we will see in a minute, the idea is that science proposes certain kinds of laws, and if God did something special in the world, he would be going contrary to those laws, and that couldn’t happen. Now, it is not just theologians who say this kind of thing, but also philosophers. So, for example, Philip Clayton says,

Science has created a challenge to theology by its remarkable ability to explain and predict natural phenomena. Any theological system that ignores the picture of the world painted by scientific results is certain to be regarded with suspicion.

Ok, fair enough, maybe that’s right, but then he goes on,

…but science is often identified with determinism. In a purely deterministic universe, there would be no room for God to work in the world, except to the sort of miraculous intervention that the 18th century philosopher David Hume and many of his readers found to be so insupportable. Thus many, both inside and outside of theology, have abandoned any doctrine of divine action as incompatible with the natural sciences.

That is the problem: incompatible with the natural sciences. Special divine action is incompatible with the natural sciences, and it is not only theologians and philosophers who say this sort of thing, also many scientists do. For example, many of you are probably aware of Richard Dawkins, and I know he has got a friend named Peter Atkins. Richard Dawkins is one of the dreaded four horsemen of atheism. There are the four horsemen of the apocalypse, the four horsemen of Notre Dame, and now there are the four horsemen of atheism, and Richard Dawkins is—I guess he’s the chief horse, you would have to say—maybe the biggest horse.

Dawkins has got this book called The God Delusion. Now, he has written some books that I think are good books. For example, The Blind Watchmaker is a very good book, very much worth reading, but this book The God Delusion seems to me to be more like an ignorant screed than a real contribution to any particular discussion at all. So scientists like Dawkins and Atkins, I would think of (not to put too fine a point on it) as sort of dancing on the lunatic fringe, but there are other scientists, very sensible, respectable ones, like H. Allen Orr.

Well, what happened was this: H. Allen Orr reviewed a book of Richard Dawkins. The name of the book was A Devil’s Chaplain, and H. Allen Orr said that Dawkins did not know anything about religion. His review was not very positive because he [Dawkins] completely misunderstood religion, and he was far too censorious about it, far too condemnatory... Orr wrote this review in the New York Review of Books.

Well then, another scientist wrote in on the next issue in the letter’s column and said, “Well, look, you know, religions in general, many religions posit miracles and that is a bad thing’ and then H. Allen Orr said in response, “Right…it is not that some sects of one religion invoke miracles, but that many sects of many religions do. Moses, after all, parted the waters and Krishna healed the sick. I agree of course that no sensible scientists can tolerate such exceptionalism with respect to the laws of nature.”

They can’t tolerate it. Of course, if God really does do miracles, it is not going to matter a lot whether scientists or anybody else tolerate it—I mean, it is not really up to them, you know? You can’t really tell God, “Well I won’t tolerate that!” You can give it a try, but you know you are not going to be very successful. It reminds me a little bit of a 19th century woman transcendentalist philosopher whose name was Margaret Fuller. Margaret Fuller once announced, she said, “I accept the universe,” whereupon Mark Twain said, “Good grief, I didn’t know it had been offered to her!”

So there is something overweening about accepting the universe or saying you're not going to tolerate miracles one way or the other. It is not going to matter that much one way or the other. So the real problem here is that science promulgates natural laws; the real problem seen by these philosophers, theologians and scientists is that science promulgates natural laws, but if God did any miracles or acted specially in the world, he would have to contravene these laws; you have to go against them. He would have to break these laws, and that is contrary to science. One famous kind of statement along these lines is by Rudolf Bultmann: “Someone who avails herself/himself of modern medicine and uses the modern radio, not to mention television, computers, digital cameras, the kind of phones you can send messages on, such a person cannot also believe in the spirit and wonder-world of the New Testament.”

Ok, now my question is: is all this really true? I want to talk first about what I will call the old picture, and then I want to talk about the new picture. Bultmann and his friends are apparently thinking in terms of science that would be Newtonian mechanics. You know Newton’s laws of motion, Newton’s law of gravity, together with the later physics of electricity and magnetism that you find represented by Maxwell’s equations. So he is thinking about classical science, the kind we all learned about in high school (Newtonian physics was, of course, extremely influential).


So here is the Newtonian world picture then: God has created the world, (Newton thought God created the world) and the world was like an enormous machine which proceeds according to fixed laws. These are the laws of classical science, Newton’s laws of motion and Maxwell’s equations…Newton’s law of gravity and the like, but that is not sufficient just thinking that. That is not sufficient for anti-interventionism or hands-off theology. Newton himself, you would think, accepted the Newtonian world picture—I mean, if Newton didn’t accept it, who would? It would be kind of a scandal if he didn’t.

Newton himself accepted the Newtonian picture, but he did not accept hands-off theology. Newton’s laws describe how the world works provided that the world is a closed isolated system subject to no outside causal influence. So Newton himself thought that God had to intervene every now and then and adjust the orbits of the planets, and if he didn’t do that, their orbits would spiral off into incoherence. He thought that God acted in the world regularly, so he didn’t accept hands off theology.

What he did accept was that his laws described the world as the world is—provided it’s a closed or isolated system, provided there isn’t any causal influence from outside the world. The great conservation laws that are deduced from Newton’s laws (conservation of energy, conservation of momentum, and conservation of angular momentum and so on), these great conservation laws deduced from Newton’s laws, they are stated for closed or isolated systems.

You see a bit there from a widely used college textbook called University Physics, by Sears and Zemansky. In it they say, “This is the principle of the conservation of linear momentum: when no resultant external force acts on a system, the total momentum of the system remains constant in magnitude and direction.” They also say the principle of the conservation of energy states that “the internal energy of an isolated system remains constant.” This is the most general statement of the principle of the conservation of energy.

So, you get the idea, these laws—Newton’s laws, his law of gravitation, his laws of motion, conservation laws that are deduced from Newton’s laws—these apply to closed or isolated systems, where there isn’t any causal input from the outside... If that is true, there is nothing here to prevent God from changing the velocity or direction of a particle, or for that matter, creating ex-nihilo a full-grown horse.

I say God could create ex-nihilo a full grown horse in the middle of time square in New York City, without violating any of these laws for the following reason: energy is conserved in a closed system, but any system in which God acted in such a way would not be a closed system. So the laws tell us how things go with closed systems, but they don’t say anything about systems that aren’t closed.

If you consider God is creating a full-grown horse ex-nihilo, say on the stage here, then any system that included that horse—this whole building, for example, the whole city of Los Angeles, the whole state of California, the United States, the whole earth—any system that included that horse would not be a closed system. There would be input from outside the system into the system, but if that is the case, then the conservation laws don’t apply to that system. They only tell you what things are like in a closed system.

So these principles, I say, apply to isolated or closed systems, but then there is nothing to prevent God from creating ex-nihilo a full-grown horse. Energy is conserved in a closed system, but not in just any old system or at least the laws don’t say anything about unclosed systems, and it is no part of Newtonian mechanics or classical science generally to declare that the material universe, the whole physical universe is a closed system; that’s not part of physics. Physics tells us that for any two objects there is a force, that they attract each other with a force which is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportionally to the square of the distance between them. It tells us that; it tells us lots of other things, but it does not go on to say “and furthermore the whole material or physical universe is a closed system”. That would be more like a theological or philosophical add on, that would not be part of the science just as such; you won’t find that in any physics textbooks.


Sun, 02 Sep 2012 04:00:41 -0700 Alvin Plantinga
Divine Action in the World, Part 1;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication I want to talk about a certain kind of objection to Christian belief that some people raise. They claim that central doctrines of Christianity are contrary to science, and therefore, are suspicious or incredible such that one can’t be rational in accepting them. My talk is entitled “Divine Action in the World.” I want to talk about a certain kind of objection to Christian belief that some people raise. They claim that central thoughts, central doctrines of Christianity, are contrary to science, and therefore, are suspicious or incredible or such that one can’t sensibly hold them—can’t be rational in accepting them.

There are several different kinds of arguments that people bring along these lines; I want to talk about just one. So first… the Heidelberg catechism, one of the forms of unity of the church I go to (the Christian Reformed Church), says

Providence is the almighty and ever-present power of God, by which he upholds as with his hand heaven and Earth and all creatures and so rules them, that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty. All things, in fact, come to us not by chance, but from his fatherly hand.

And part of the way it comes to us—not by chance, but from his fatherly hand—part of the way God has designed our world, is that there is a great deal of regularity and dependability in our world. Of course, if it were not for this regularity and dependability, we couldn’t do the things that we actually do. I mean, for example, if I just wanted to walk off the stage—if, for example, all the sudden those stairs over there suddenly turned into a ladder going up—well, that would make it really difficult.

If you are trying to build a house, for example, you have this hammer, but all the sudden the hammer turns in to a goose or a pigeon. Again, that would make things really difficult…or if the nail turned into a worm…or if you get in the car and turn the key and the car turns into a camel, things would be really hard, much harder than they are. This regularity and dependability in our world is an essential condition of our being able to live in the world in which we actually do.

If the world were irregular enough, we would not even be able to live in it, but there are also, according to classical Christianity here (the Heidelberg catechism, for example) there are also special divine actions; sometimes God does things specially. There are miracles in Scripture: the parting of the Red Sea, for example, Jesus walking on water, Jesus changing water into wine. There are miraculous healings: Jesus rising from the dead, Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, and so on. And according to classical Christians, many of them, perhaps most of them, are special divine actions. God, for example, responds to prayers. He works in the hearts and minds of his children to effect sanctification. There is, what Calvin called, the internal testimony or witness of the Holy Spirit, and there is what Thomas Aquinas called the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit. So, these things are all special actions on the part of God. God constantly causes events in the world. Ok, so far fair enough—what is the problem?

Many theologians seem to think there is a science-religion problem here. I don’t think any of the theologians of Biola think this, (I don’t know, but I doubt it) but many theologians do. For example, Rudolf Bultmann says, “The historical method,” which of course he thinks that is the method we should use, “includes the presupposition that history is a unity in the sense of a closed continuum of effects in which individual events are connected by the succession of cause and effect. This continuum, furthermore, cannot be rent by the interference of supernatural, transcendent powers.”

That’s what he says. Alright, there is this continuum that cannot be rent by the interference of supernatural (that would be God) or transcendent powers. So, it is a little bit like the laws of the Medes and Persians. You probably remember Daniel. Daniel was a favorite of King Darius, and well, the other courtiers became jealous of Daniel (they didn’t like it that the king liked him so well). So, they came to the king and said, “Oh king, live forever, we think it would be a great idea if you passed an edict to the effect that you alone can be worshipped. Everybody has to worship you and nothing else.” Well the king thought that over for a minute, and that sounded pretty good to him so he said, “I guess that it is a pretty good idea.” So he made this edict; he made this declaration: “Only King Darius is to be worshipped—no one else, nothing else.”

These courtiers knew that Daniel worshipped God, and they thought probably Daniel would keep right on worshipping God despite this edict. So they were watching Daniel, and he was, in fact, worshipping God. So they came to the king. Now the penalty for worshipping something else was to be thrown into the lion’s den and they said, “Well, king live forever, looks like Daniel has been violating this edict. You have got to throw him in the lion’s den.”

Well, the king didn’t want to do this because he really liked Daniel. He thought this was a miserable way to proceed, and he didn’t want to do it, but then they said to him, “O king live forever, and remember a law of the Medes and Persians cannot be abrogated, even by the king himself.” So once it’s put in place, not even the king himself can change it or abrogate it or go against it.

That is sort of the suggestion that you get here from Bultmann. Bultmann thinks, “Maybe God created the world and set it up in a certain way, but once he did that, not even he can interfere in it”—he uses that word interference—“not even he can do anything in it. He just has to keep hands off.” It is like the law of the Medes and the Persians.

Another theologian who agrees is John Macquarrie, who says,

The way of understanding miracle (and that would be one kind of special divine action) that appeals to breaks in the natural order and to supernatural intervention belongs to the mythological outlook, and cannot commend itself in a post-mythological climate of thought. The traditional conception of miracle is irreconcilable with our modern understanding of both science and history. Science proceeds on the assumption that whatever events occur in the world, can be accounted for in terms of other events that also belong within the world, and if on some occasion, we are unable to give a complete account of some happening, the scientific conviction is that further research will bring to light further factors in the situation that will turn out to be just as imminent and this worldly as the factors already known.

Ok again, no room there for special action. And the third thinker here, Langdon Gilkey (still another theologian), says something similar, but I will pass. I will not read that one in the interest of saving a little bit of time, but these three theologians, plus many others want to assert that there is something wrong with the idea of God acting in the world, acting in the world in a way that goes beyond creation and sustaining, or creation and holding things in existence. So they think, “Ok, God created the world; God sustains it in existence”…that is ok with them, but anything beyond that, God performing any miracles, raising Jesus from the dead, or for that matter working in somebody’s heart and mind in a special way, that, they say, is a real problem. The question is, what is the problem?

Well, the next little bit here…according to the Christian and theistic idea, God is a person; he has knowledge, loves, and hates. He has aims and ends. He acts on the basis of his knowledge to achieve his ends. He is all-powerful, all-knowing, and wholly good. Thirdly (noted above by the Heidelberg catechism), God has created the world. Fourth is God conserves and sustains and maintains in being this world he created, but fifth, at least sometimes, God acts in a way going beyond creation and conservation in miracles, but also in his providential guiding of history, his working in the hearts of people, his internal instigation of the Holy Spirit, and so on, and it is with that fifth category that these people have a problem. It is God’s special action in the world—action beyond conservation and creation—and miracles would be an example.

So we might think of these theologians as endorsing what we could call hands off theology. God has got to keep his hands off. God could create the world. God conserves the world, sustains it in being, but he can’t do anything else—that is as far as he could go. It is hands off theology, and Bultmann, even in this context, even talks about interfering. I mean if God did something in the world that would be interfering, which, when you think about it, is a sort of strange thing to say—I mean if God created the world, he is the omnipotent, omniscient, holy, good creator of the world—when you accuse someone of interfering, you are saying they are doing something they should not be doing, right?

So Bultmann thinks if God did something in the world that would be interfering, and he should be ashamed of himself. Ok, now why is this a problem? Their suggestion is that somehow it is contrary to science. It is contrary to science the suggestion that God acts specially in the world. I didn’t read that bit, but Gilkey says, "The causal nexus in space and time which the enlightenment science and philosophy introduced into the western mind is also assumed by modern theologians and scholars. Since they participate in the modern world of science, both intellectually and existentially, they can scarcely do anything else.”


Sat, 01 Sep 2012 04:00:45 -0700 Alvin Plantinga
David Lack: Evolutionary Biologist and Devout Christian;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication Charles Darwin’s personal struggles and ultimate rejection of Christianity are well documented, and people are eager to link his loss of faith to his evolutionary theory. David Lack, on the other hand, began his scientific career as an agnostic, but shortly after publishing his famous book on the evolution of "Darwin's finches", he converted to Christianity. David Lack

In my previous essay, I discussed “Darwin’s finches” and how surprisingly little Charles Darwin himself had to say about them. In fact, it was actually the British ornithologist David Lack (1910-1973) who conducted the critical research that immortalized the finches in biology textbooks and popular lore. In 1973, the eminent German zoologist Ernst Mayr wrote:

Already well known among professional ornithologists, his work on the Galapagos finches gave David Lack world fame… There is no modern textbook of zoology, evolution or ecology which does not include an account of his work.1

Ernst W. Mayr
Ernst W. Mayr

Decades have passed since Mayr wrote these words, and David Lack’s name has largely faded from public discourse. On the other hand, the Galapagos finches have become one of the most recognized symbols of evolution in the world today. Does it really matter whether Lack or Darwin gets credit for describing the evolution of these remarkable birds?

Insofar as evolutionary theory contrasted with religious belief, it makes a big difference. In a culture that is eager to equate evolution with atheism, it should come as no surprise that these birds are only known as “Darwin’s finches”. Darwin’s personal struggles and ultimate rejection of Christianity are well documented, and people are eager to link his loss of faith to his evolutionary theory. David Lack, on the other hand, began his scientific career as an agnostic, but shortly after publishing his famous book on the evolution of Galápagos finches, he converted to Christianity! 2

A Christian at the forefront of evolutionary biology

Lack’s Christian conversion did not mark the end of his scientific achievements, either. In fact, he continued as a prolific researcher until just weeks before he died. Among his many achievements, he was Director of the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology (1945-1973), Fellow of the Royal Society, and President of both the International Ornithological Congress (1962-66) and the British Ecological Society (1964-65). His fellow scientists held him in great esteem:

He was described as one of the most outstanding among world ornithologists; he was certainly this, but he was also one of the world’s leading evolutionists. All the time one saw developing his use of birds as material for the study of wider, deeper, biological problems.3

David Lack in search of Chimney Swifts
David Lack at the International Ornithological Congress, 1962.

Clearly David Lack was an outstanding scientist, and his commitment to Christianity did not tarnish, hinder, or undermine his research on evolution. But we might also ask, what was Lack like as a Christian? Did he keep his faith hidden from view, afraid that it might compromise his reputation as a scientist? Ernst Mayr, who interacted with David Lack professionally and personally for nearly 40 years, had this to say:

I have known only few people with such deep moral convictions as David Lack. He applied very high standards to his own work and was not inclined to condone shoddiness, superficiality and lack of sincerity in others. This did not always go well with those who preferred to compromise in favour of temporary expediency. David had been raised in an environment in which great stress was layed on moral principles and this attitude was later reinforced by his Christian faith. This explains his extraordinary unselfishness and modesty, and his great devotion to his family, to his students, to his friends, and to all the things that he lived for. The equanimity, indeed serenity, with which he faced death after his terminal cancer had been diagnosed is further evidence of the strength which his faith gave him.4

Like Asa Gray5 before him, and Francis Collins6 after, David Lack was an sincere, devout Christian, as well as a leading scientist who employed evolutionary theory to make brilliant discoveries about the natural world. Though Lack did not see any conflict between his scientific and Christian beliefs, he was sympathetic to the concerns of his fellow Christians. Therefore, ten years after publishing his masterpiece on Darwin’s Finches, Lack wrote another book entitled Evolutionary Theory and Christian Belief: The Unresolved Conflict.

Originally published in 1957, this book deals with the very same science and faith questions that Christians struggle with today— topics like randomness and chance, death in nature, miracles, and evolutionary ethics. While it would be unreasonable to expect anyone to completely resolve these matters, Lack offered numerous insights both as a devout Christian and one of the world’s leading biologists.

Let’s take a brief look at how Lack addressed some of these questions.

Blind Chance or Divine Plan?

Evolutionary theory does not invoke supernatural forces in explaining the history of life on Earth; instead, it relies on naturally-occurring processes to account for the vast diversity of life. Additionally, it explains animal behavior largely in terms of survival and reproduction, without appealing to any higher purpose of life. Taken together, does this imply that God is absent, and that our lives are ultimately meaningless?

David Lack responded,

Behind the criticism that Darwinism means that evolution is either random or rigidly determined lies the fear that evolution proceeds blindly, and not in accordance with a divine plan. This is another problem that really lies outside the terms of reference of biology. It is true that biologists have inferred that, because evolution occurs by natural selection, there is no divine plan; but they are being as illogical as those theologians whom they rightly criticize for inferring that, because there is a divine plan, evolution cannot be the result of natural selection.7

When rendering judgment on the ultimate meaning of life, biologists are speaking from their person beliefs, not from scientific authority. Moreover, Lack pointed out that many science enthusiasts have employed the concept of “randomness” in ambiguous and misleading ways:

Mutations are random in relation to the needs of the animal, but natural selection is not. Selection, as the word implies, is the reverse of chance.8

In support of his view, Lack pointed out that convergent evolution has produced uncanny resemblances between distantly-related species across the world, notably among marsupials in Australia. Different evolutionary trajectories can lead to very similar results.9

Death in Nature

After addressing concerns about the seeming “randomness” of evolution, Lack turned to another great concern, the role of death in natural selection:

Various writers–some Christian and others agnostic–have been troubled about natural selection not only because it seems too random, but also because it is so unpleasant.10

Image courtesy John Marsh Photography via Flikr

Genetic mutations are generally harmful, and for evolution by natural selection to produce new forms of life, an awful lot of organisms must die. For many Christians, it is inconceivable that a loving and merciful God would allow death on such a vast scale.

But Lack also pointed out that rejecting evolutionary theory doesn’t actually get rid of the problem of death. Regardless of what we think about evolution, the brute fact of mass extinction remains. Fossils of innumerable animals, plants, and microorganisms clearly demonstrate that the vast majority of species that have ever lived are now dead. It may be quite troubling for us to observe that our planet is a giant graveyard of natural history, but rejecting evolution will not change this fact.

Some Christians conclude that death could not have been part of the divine plan; instead, it must be the work of the devil, or the result of human sin. But this interpretation contains an implicit assumption that death is always evil. Is this really true? David Lack offered two intriguing insights:

See more on death and the Fall.

Blue-cheeked Bee-eater (Merops persicus) pair in
courtship, seen in Basai, Gurgaon, India.
Image courtesy Koshy Koshy.

  1. For a population to maintain a stable size, all births must be balanced by a corresponding number of deaths. A world in which no animals die is a world in which no animals are born. That means no reproduction, no courtship, and by implication, no singing birds—much to the dismay of ornithologists and people in love!


  2. Some people, taking cues from Isaiah 11:6-7, suppose that in a perfect world, animals only eat plants. But in fact, plants themselves depend on the bacterial decay of dead organisms. If animals didn't die, then essential nutrients would disappear from the ground, and plants could not continue to grow. Eventually, there would be nothing left for animals to eat, and all life would cease.11


Many Christians are uncomfortable with evolutionary theory because it denies a miraculous, supernatural origin of life. They fear that if those miracles are denied, it might lead people to reject the possibility of miracles altogether, including the central feature of the Christian faith—the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

As a devout Christian, David Lack certainly affirmed the fundamental tenets of the gospel. But at the same time, he explained to his readers that invoking miracles to account for unusual features of the natural world is not particularly helpful when trying to deepen our understanding of God’s great multitude of creatures:

[The biologist's] research depends on repeated observations. It need not, as popularly supposed, consist solely, or even mainly of measurements and experiments, but unless events are repeated, they cannot be assessed by science. Hence truly unique events come outside the domain of science, though biologists are not usually convinced when told they must, therefore, leave such problems as miracles to others. For one of the chief ways in which research has advanced is through the discovery of apparent exceptions to the known rules, and if further study shows the exceptions to be replicable, new regularities are revealed from which modified rules can be propounded. This method has been so successful that the biologist tends to doubt whether there are any types of irregularity, or seeming irregularity, that will not yield to it.12

But just because a scientist cannot repeat a particular event doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Both natural history and human history contain unique events that only happened once. As we peer into the past, the difficulty of discerning fact from fiction inspires us to further investigate the mysteries that surround us.


David Lack’s book Evolutionary Theory and Christian Belief was quite insightful, but his enduring achievements took place in evolutionary biology, a place where many Christians are afraid to tread. While it is significant that he himself found no contradiction between his faith and his science, perhaps the greatest testament to the compatibility between Christian faith and evolution is the life he led as a believer in both. As we saw in Ernst Mayr’s candid praise, Lack reflected the light of Christ through both his personal and his professional relationships.

Today, many voices in our culture still insist that evolution is incompatible with a sincere faith in Jesus, but a careful look at history demonstrates otherwise. In the future, perhaps more people of faith will have confidence to study biology knowing that one of the most iconic symbols of evolution—the Galapagos finches—owe their fame in large part to a devout Christian named David Lack.


1. Mayr (1973) “David L. Lack.” Ibis: 433.
2. Larson, E. J. Evolution's Workshop: God and Science on the Galapagos Islands. New York, Basic Books, 2001: 218. See also Lack, David. (1973) “My life as an amateur ornithologist.” Ibis: 431.
3. Alister C. Hardy (1973). "David L. Lack." Ibis: 436.
4. Mayr (1973) “David L. Lack.” Ibis: 433.
5. For more about Asa Gray, see the BioLogos FAQ “How have Christians responded to Darwin’s Origin of Species?
6. See Francis Collins’ autobiography The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for his Belief (New York: Free Press, 2007) (book info)
7. Lack, David. Evolutionary Theory and Christian Belief: The Unresolved Conflict. Methuen & Co., 1957: 67.
8. Lack, p65.
9. For more on convergent evolution and the possibility that evolution could be compatible with some form of divine purpose, see the work of Simon Conway Morris, especially The Deep Structure of Biology: Is Convergence Sufficiently Ubiquitous to Give a Directional Signal? Templeton Press, 2008.
10. Lack, p72.
11. Lack, pp75-76.
12. Lack, p82.


Tue, 07 Aug 2012 04:00:52 -0700 Thomas Burnett
The God Who Acts: Robert John Russell on Divine Intervention and Divine Action, Part 3;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication The Enlightenment view of an “interventionist” God does not accurately reflect a biblical understanding of a Creator who is both transcendent and immanent—fully present and continuously involved in his creation. The Enlightenment view of an “interventionist” God does not accurately reflect a biblical understanding of a Creator who is both transcendent and immanent—fully present and continuously involved in his creation. Not only is this sense of intervention theologically flawed, it depends on outdated science—deterministic physics and reductionistic philosophy. Now that quantum mechanics suggests that nature displays a fundamental indeterminism, it is no longer necessary to insist that God must “suspend” or “violate” natural laws in order to directly act in our world.

Given this background, Robert John Russell has proposed that divine action can be non-interventionist while still being objective—God really does act in the world. Russell calls his conception non-interventionist objective divine action (NIODA). NIODA is a theological framework that is consonant with both scripture and contemporary science, and it frees us from Enlightenment conceptions of that have distorted our understanding of the Bible for centuries. But NIODA requires time and careful reflection to fully appreciate, as it can be misunderstood as rejecting God’s miraculous work (which it certainly does not). More accurately, it is a way to understand both the “miraculous” and the “non-miraculous” processes of nature as being fully within the sphere of God’s divine action.

Consider, for example, the central miracle of the Exodus from Egypt—the Hebrew crossing of the Red Sea. The parting of the Red Sea is an objective act of God which most Christians would describe as a genuine 'miracle'. However, we might ask if such a miraculous event is necessarily conceived in interventionist terms. Russell’s concept of Quantum Mechanical NIODA could certainly serve as the physical foundation for an event of this type, and the chaotic amplification (e.g. ‘Butterfly effect’) of quantum events as manifested through a weather system (a 'strong East wind') readily provides a physical mechanism for God’s parting of the waters of the Red Sea. In this way, objective Divine actions such as this could be called 'non-interventionist miracles'. The reason why is because this type of scenario is truly a ‘miracle’ in the most common or obvious sense of the term (a dramatic deliverance of God's people not owing to chance) and yet no regularities of nature need be 'suspended' to bring about this sequence of temporally unlikely events. Below we’ll look at some of Russell’s responses to other common misconceptions about this way of thinking about God’s actions.

NIODA is not visible through the lens of natural science

Russell acknowledges that we may recognize instances of divine action through faith, while those same instances may only appear as random events through the lens of natural science:

Where faith will posit it, science will see only random events described, as far as they can be by science, by the theories of physics, chemistry, biology, ecology, and so on. The positive grounds for an alleged divine action are theological, not scientific. This [NIODA] hypothesis is not drawn from science even though it aims to be consistent with science. Science would not be expected to include anything explicitly about God’s action in nature as part of its scientific explanation of the world. Theology, however, in its explanation of the world, can and should include both. This is as it should be for the mutual integrity of, and distinction between, the two fields of inquiry. [p. 126]

Just because divine action is not visible through the lens of science, it does not mean that science is incompatible with faith, but rather that science is not the exclusive basis of knowledge. As an academic discipline, natural science is constrained by its methodologies. Fortunately, human understanding is not limited to natural science alone. Theology can play a mediating role by acknowledging scientific discoveries and pointing to divine action in the world. It is not an either/or scenario.

NIODA is not meant to “prove” that God acts

Belief in divine action does not have its foundation in natural science, but from deep theological reflection that draws from other sources, including scripture, tradition, experience, and reason (see, for instance, John Wesley’s Quadrilateral). Thus NIODA is not a "scientific proof" or even a precise explanation of how God acts. It simply maintains that “God’s direct or basic acts—although ultimately mysterious and unknowable in themselves—result in an objective event effecting the course of nature without intervention.” (p. 126)

Russell is keen to distinguish NIODA from Intelligent Design:

[NIODA] undercuts the rationale of intelligent design as an approach to God’s action in evolution by arguing for such action without divine intervention, by describing it as a theological and not a scientific theory, and without calling for a “new science” that includes an appeal to “agency” within biology. (p. 215)

Here Russell asserts that NIODA is a theological theory, not a scientific theory. He does not view contemporary natural science as deeply flawed or in need of dramatic revision. Specifically, God does not need to supernaturally “intervene” in order to create life through evolutionary processes. Russell does not call for a new science that appeals to a designer in biology.

NIODA is not a God-of-the-gaps theory

Russell also makes it clear that NIODA is not meant to fill gaps in scientific knowledge, but to draw theological insights from aspects of science that do have adequate explanations:

An epistemic gaps argument is based on what we do not know about the world. It invokes God to explain things that we do not yet understand. But many gaps in our current understanding of nature will eventually be filled by new discoveries or changing paradigms in science. The argument is that we ought not stake our theological ground on transitory scientific puzzles. In a moving letter from a Nazi prison cell, Dietrich Bonhoeffer urges us to reject such a ‘stopgap’ argument as he calls it. Instead we must discuss God’s activity in the world in terms of ‘what we know, not…what we don’t know.’ [p. 126]

As Russell sees it, God works through the natural processes described by quantum mechanics, not against them (after all, natural processes are themselves are a result of general divine action). Moreover, because nature displays indeterminism at its most fundamental level, God is free to act in unique and special ways through what materialists can only describe as “chance”:

By avoiding a “gaps” strategy, quantum-based NIODA allows us to affirm that God is the transcendent Creator ex nihilo of the universe as a whole and that God is the immanent ongoing Creator of each special event who acts objectively in, with, and through the processes of Nature (creatio continua). Non-interventionist objective special divine action thus offers a robust response to atheistic challenges to the intelligibility and credibility of Christian faith in light of “chance” in nature since the presence of “chance” does not imply an absent God and a “pointless” and dysteleological world but an ever-present God acting immanently with purpose in the world. [p. 169]

NIODA does not rule out special providence, miracles, or the efficacy of prayer

As we saw in part 2 of this series, the divine action described by NIODA is real (objective), but it is not "miraculous" in the sense of suspending natural laws. Thus it is consistent with what we know about how the physical world generally operates. However, Russell points out that that NIODA is not the only way that God acts in the world. The 'interventionist-miraculous' events depicted in the Bible are just a different category of divine action than NIODA. God is continuously acting to carry out the general processes of nature, and he also acts in special ways in carrying out his unique relationship with humans:

The remarkable distinction made possible between miracles and NIODA in an indeterministic world offers theologians for the first time the opportunity to distinguish between objective divine providence in light of science (see, for example, my version of theistic evolution in chapter 6), and those events in scripture and the life of faith which do require the language of miracle, such as the nature miracles and healing miracles in the New Testament. [p. 129]

In Russell’s conception, there is both general divine action and special divine action. General divine action (aka general providence) can usually be described by what scientists and philosophers call natural laws. Special divine action (aka special providence) takes place in irregular, unpredictable ways as God interacts with humans, both individually and collectively, throughout history. This would include, for instance, both the miracles of the Bible and God’s interaction with humans through prayer. Keep in mind, however, that special divine action is not necessarily “better” or “more special” than general divine action. It is just something that God does in addition to the consistent, faithful, ongoing action by which he sustains and guides everything in the universe.

“More than a miracle”: The bodily resurrection of Jesus

When discussing the miracles of the bible, Russell specifically mentions the resurrection of Lazarus (John 11:1-46), a man who had lain dead in a tomb for four days. Raising a man from the grave is a miracle in the truest sense, and a reason to celebrate the mighty acts of God. But in spite of this special divine action, Lazarus would eventually die again, as all humans do, subject to the same natural processes that age and destroy us.

On the other hand, Russell notes that there is one particular case of divine action that stands out from all the rest—the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Jesus, who laid dead in a tomb for three days, was resurrected and transfigured in such a way that he would never die again. This is what Russell would call “more than a miracle”, since the natural course of affairs was not just temporarily altered, but permanently transfigured within the body of the resurrected Christ. (For further discussion, see Russell’s chapter 10 on the resurrection of Jesus and Christian eschatology)


In this three-part series, we have explored how Christians have thought about divine action throughout history, particularly we’ve struggled with the idea of supernatural intervention since the Enlightenment. We have also discussed Robert John Russell’s contention that the concept of intervention is fraught with both theological and scientific problems. Finally, we’ve considered Russell’s NIODA as a framework that is based on a biblical understanding of divine action and draws insights from contemporary science. NIODA reflects both the fundamental indeterminacy of the world and the evidence that non-miraculous processes could possibly lead to the incredible diversity and interrelationships of life on earth.

The goal here has not been to give an exhaustive account of all the material in Russell’s book, but to introduce the BioLogos community to some academic reflections on the nature of divine action. In a future series, we’ll focus on the second half of Russell’s book, which deals with several continuing challenges:

  • Developing a coherent foundation for theistic evolution (chapter 6)
  • The problem of natural evil as it relates to evolution (chapter 8)
  • The future of the cosmos in light of the resurrection of Christ (chapters 9 and 10)

We look forward to exploring these topics together with you!

From Chapter 4, “Does ‘The God Who Acts’ Really Act? New Approaches to Divine Action In Light Of Contemporary Science,” in Cosmology: From Alpha to Omega by Robert John Russell, copyright © 2008 Fortress Press. Reproduced by permission of Augsburg Fortress Publishers. All rights reserved. No further reproduction allowed without the written permission of the publisher.

Fri, 25 May 2012 03:59:18 -0700 Thomas Burnett
The God Who Acts: Robert John Russell on Divine Intervention and Divine Action, Part 2;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication In scripture, God is everywhere and always present, always knowing and always acting. There aren’t any phenomena that proceed completely independently of God. “Supernatural Intervention” was invented during the Enlightenment

The Newtonian worldview introduced during the Enlightenment (and famously promoted by Laplace) proposed a fully mechanistic universe in which all phenomena are rigidly determined by natural laws. If this were true, then theology would be left with two possible scenarios:

Scenario 1. God really acts in nature, but in order to do so, God must suspend natural laws and intervene in a supernatural way.

Scenario 2. God only appears to be acting in what are in fact the ordinary processes of nature, but in actuality does not act in either a special or objective way.

As the Enlightenment worldview became popular, conservatives adopted scenario 1—God's actions are interventionist and supernatural, whereas purely natural processes operate independently of God. Liberals, on the other hand, generally opted for scenario 2—all phenomena are a result of natural laws describable by science, and God’s actions are purely subjective—merely in the minds of believers and not in objective reality (see Russell’s description of Schleiermacher in the previous post).

Today, nearly three hundred years later, most people still unquestioningly accept this intellectual framework and assume there is no alternative to these two scenarios.

Interventionism relies on old, outdated science

Beginning in the 20th century, the account of the world provided by the natural sciences progressed beyond being a set of rigidly deterministic natural laws that could infallibly predict all future events. Instead, much of current fundamental science depends on laws that are statistical and probabilistic, predicting with high degrees of accuracy, but unable to describe (much less dictate) what must be the case in every instance. Speaking of this in-built indeterminacy, Russell maintains,

If this surmise is correct, it would mean that the presence of statistics in the mathematics of these fields does not arise from our ignorance of the underlying deterministic forces but from the fact that there are, in reality, no sufficient underlying forces or causes to fully determine particular physical processes, events, or outcomes. Scholars call this view of chance “ontological indeterminism” to distinguish it from chance as mere “epistemic ignorance”.

In this scenario, one cannot “exclude” God from the universe by appealing to pre-determined natural laws. Simply put, the illusion of absolute scientific certainty collapsed with the discovery of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics opens up space for a philosophical and theological interpretation of nature that moves beyond the rigid causal determinism of Enlightenment physics. Thus contemporary Christians do not have to continually appeal to an interventionist God that must intrude into a completely determined, practically godless system of natural law. This is because, in light of our best current science, such a deterministic causally-closed system of natural laws is not an accurate description of physical reality. As early quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger explained, “physical laws rest on atomic statistics and are therefore only approximate.” From a theological perspective, then, it would appear that God built into the cosmos probabilistic processes over which he is in complete control, but which we can not (rather than merely do not) have specific predictive knowledge.

But besides being dependent on outdated science, the continued use of the Enlightenment approach to divine action is also theologically flawed: “supernatural intervention” acknowledges God's transcendence but devalues God's immanence. Indeed, if intervention is taken to mean that God ordinarily stands apart from creation and human history, and only occasionally enters into direct relationship with it, then it is a concept foreign to the character of God as depicted in the Bible. In scripture, God is everywhere and always present, always knowing and always acting. The regular courses of the sun, moon and stars, the regularity of the seasons, and even meteorological phenomena like wind, rain, and lightning are seen as exemplifying the continuous action of God in and through the natural world (Job 38; Prov. 8:29; Ps. 148:1-12; Jer. 31:35; 33:20). There aren’t any phenomena that proceed completely independently of God. Therefore, God does not have to intervene as if from “outside” the physical creation because the triune God is already sustaining and governing all of creation. Thus Russell is confident in rejecting scenario 1 (God acts in nature by suspending natural laws) and maintaining that this ordinary kind of divine action is non-interventionist.

Divine action is an objective reality

Turning our attention from the conservative interpretation of divine action to the liberal one (scenario 2), Russell rejects this interpretation as well. God does not only appear to act in the world, God does in fact act in the world. Divine action is not just a subjective phenomenon experienced by humans (i.e. those who have faith). Rather, whenever God acts in a particular circumstance it is an objective event, not reducible to subjective human experience:

An objective act of God might involve a medical healing, being saved from a near disaster, or a sudden inspiration that leads one to decisive an unanticipated action. Such events would not have occurred without God acting in some distinctive way in relation to them. Our attribution of meaning and intentionality to God in relation to them is, or at least might be, based on our response to what God is actually doing in and through these events. We might be wrong (in some cases) in calling them an objective act of God but we are not wrong in employing the category of objective divine action to claim theologically that that God can act in extraordinary ways in the world. (p.121)

Because human judgment and interpretation are subject to error, it may be difficult to discern whether a particular event is a direct act of God. In this way the objective divine acts of God may still be hidden from the eyes unaided by faith (c.f. Psalm 77:14-20). But despite our limited abilities to perceive the subtle details of divine action, we can still confidently conclude that God is free to act in decisive ways to bring about his purposes and goals, both in the lives of individual humans and for the world as a whole.

Non-Interventionist Objective Divine Action (NIODA)

By embracing the objective reality of divine action in the world, but also recognizing the theological problems associated with “intervention”, Russell proposes a theory of non-interventionist, objective divine action (NIODA). Though it is a mouthful to say, NIODA is not nearly as complicated as it sounds. As we saw above, God's involvement in the world is non-interventionist in so far as he does not have to suspend natural laws in order to act (natural laws, after all, are themselves a description of God’s will for and action in the world). God's activities are also objective in the sense that they are not just a figment of human imagination. God truly acts in powerful ways, both in the natural world and in the lives of humans. This leads Russell to proclaim,

We can credibly believe that God really did do what the Bible testifies to, and we may in the process begin to overcome one of the basic reasons for the split between theological liberals and conservatives. (p. 112)

This split is often perceived as a conflict over science, but at a more fundamental level, it is a misunderstanding of the nature of divine action. As we have seen, the concept of “supernatural intervention” was a product of the Enlightenment, and it has created a false dichotomy between natural science and Christian faith.

But this has not always been the case, and Russell points out that until recently, Christians have thought quite differently:

Rather than seeing divine acts as occasional events in what are otherwise entirely natural and historical processes, both the Hebrews and the early Christians conceived of God as the creator of the world and of divine action as the continuing basis of all that happens in nature and in history. (p. 112-13)

Divine action is not limited to the original creation of the universe ex nihilo and supernatural interventions; instead, God is continuously involved in directing and developing the cosmos. The early church called this process creatio continua. The effects of ongoing, consistent divine action in nature (i.e. general providence) are best understood through natural laws and theories developed by scientists; not only that, but scientists need not demand instances when natural laws are suspended or overturned in order to recognize God’s action. Yet as we shall see in part 3 of our series, God’s general providence—when understood as NIODA—does not undermine the reality of special providence, the miracles of the Bible, or the efficacy of prayer.


Thu, 24 May 2012 06:00:43 -0700 Thomas Burnett
The God Who Acts: Robert John Russell on Divine Intervention and Divine Action, Part 1;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication The notion of God’s acting in the world is central to the biblical witness. From the call of Abraham and the Exodus from Egypt, to the birth, ministry, death and raising of Jesus, God is represented as making new things happen. Introduction

(Written by the BioLogos editorial team)

In a recent lecture in Washington, D.C., Intelligent Design advocate Stephen Meyer noted that scientists and theologians are generally uncomfortable with the idea of "supernatural intervention" in natural processes such as evolution. He then posed the question, “What's so bad about supernatural intervention?” Meyer’s comment touches on a point of particular tension among Christians engaged in understanding how our science and our theology interact: the nature of divine action.

Much of the confusion in this area, however, stems from the inexact meaning of intervention, which—like evolution or Darwinism—implies different things to different people. All Christians affirm that God works powerfully in the world, doing extraordinary acts of creation and salvation. In common conversation, then, intervention tends to mean simply “acts that are recognizably or obviously God’s,” whether as dramatic as the parting of the Red Sea or as subtle as an individual believer hearing a clear call to repentance or to mission from the Lord. Even in this most casual sense, intervention tends to mean special occasions of God’s providential care, rather than his ordinary sustaining work.

But to Christian scientists and philosophers trying to understand God’s action in creation—especially how he might go about his sustaining role—intervention has another connotation: namely, that recognizing something as “divine action” requires it to be in violation of the natural laws which God himself established. Put another way, many Christian thinkers associate the word intervention with the idea that to act in the world God “must” act from outside the world. That view is a central tenet of deism, not Christianity. One response to Meyer’s comment, then, is to ask whether intervention is the only (or even a helpful) way of thinking about God’s work in biological creation. Is there another way of talking about “divine action” that does not restrict God's work to only extraordinary events? Can we conceive of divine action in a way God is never absent, distant, or in any way removed from the creation he sustains at every moment?

Finding such an alternative vocabulary to talk about the different ways God acts in his creation is the purpose of this short series introducing the work of theologian and physicist Robert John Russell. Russell’s book Cosmology: From Alpha to Omega explores the history of Christian thinking about divine action and proposes one model for how we might understand it in light of Scripture, the traditions of the church, and contemporary scientific explorations of the material world.

To be clear, Russell argues that God does unmistakably act in the world. He singles out the bodily resurrection of Jesus not only as a prime example, but as a truly unique event distinct even from Christ’s other miraculous acts during his ministry on earth. That is, the resurrection was an in-breaking of God’s new reality into the present one, something “beyond miraculous.” This series, though, offers his perspective on the more basic issue of how God might be at work in what we have called the “ordinary processes” of his world.

We begin our three-part series below with Professor Russell’s description of how views of divine action have changed throughout history (excerpted from Chapter 4 of Cosmology: From Alpha to Omega).

Historical background to the problem of divine action

The notion of God’s acting in the world is central to the biblical witness. From the call of Abraham and the Exodus from Egypt to the birth, ministry, death and raising of Jesus and the founding of the church at Pentecost, God is represented as making new things happen. Through these “mighty acts,” God creates and saves. Rather than seeing divine acts as occasional events in what are otherwise entirely natural and historical processes, both the Hebrews and the early Christians conceived of God as the creator of the world and of divine action as the continuing basis of all that happens in nature and in history.

The view that God works in and through all the processes of the world continued throughout Patristic and Medieval times. For example, God was understood as the first or primary cause of all events—where all natural causes are instrumental or secondary causes through which God works. The conviction that God acts universally in all events, and that we act together with God in specific events, was maintained by the Reformers and the ensuing Protestant orthodoxy. John Calvin (1509-1564) argued that God is in absolute control over the world and at the same time maintained that people are responsible for evil deeds. Questions about human freedom and the reality of evil were seen more as problems requiring serious theological attention than as reasons for abandoning belief in God’s universal agency.

Moreover, faith in God the creator was articulated through two distinct but interwoven doctrines: creation and providence. The doctrine of creation asserts that the ultimate source and absolute ground of the universe is God. Without God, the universe would not exist, nor would it exist as “universe.” Creation theology, in turn, has often included three related but distinct claims: 1) the universe had a beginning; 2) the universe depends absolutely and at every moment on God for its sheer existence; and 3) the universe is the locus of God’s continuing activity as Creator. The first two have traditionally been grouped in terms of creatio ex nihilo(creation from nothing), and the third in terms of creatio continua (continuing creation).

The doctrine of providence presupposes a doctrine of creation, but adds significantly to it. While creation stresses that God is the cause of all existence, providence stresses that God is the cause of the meaning and purpose of all that is. God not only creates but guides and directs the universe towards the fulfilling of God’s purposes. These purposes are mostly hidden to us, though they may be partially seen after the fact in the course of natural and historical events. The way God achieves them is hidden, too. Only in the eschatological future will God’s action throughout the history of the universe be fully revealed and our faith in it confirmed. General providence refers to God’s universal action in guiding all events; special providence refers to God’s particular acts in specific moments, whether found in personal life or in history.

Divine intervention arises in the Enlightenment

The rise of modern science in the seventeenth century and Enlightenment philosophy in the eighteenth, however, led many to reject the traditional views of divine action. Although Isaac Newton (1643-1727) argued for the essential role of God in relation to the metaphysical underpinnings of his mechanical system, and in this way defended the sovereignty of God in relation to nature, Newtonian mechanics depicted a causally closed universe with little, if any, room for God’s special action in specific events—and then only by intervention: that is, by acting as from outside that closed system. A century later, Pierre Simon Laplace (1749-1827, pictured left) combined the determinism of Newton’s equations with epistemological reductionism (the properties and behavior of the whole are reducible to those of the parts) and metaphysical reductionism (the whole is simply composed of its parts), to portray all of nature as a causally closed, impersonal mechanism. This in turn led to the concept of interventionism: if God were really to act in specific events in nature, God would apparently have to break the remorseless lock-step of natural cause and effect by intervening in the sequence and violating the laws of nature in the process.

The eighteenth century also saw the rise and fall of deism, in which the scope of divine agency was limited to an initial act of creation. According to deism, the universe was like a clock which, once built and set in place, proceeded to run on its own. David Hume (1711-1776) challenged the deistic (and theistic) arguments for God as first cause and as designer. In response, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804, pictured right) constructed a new metaphysical system which emphasized the mind’s role in organizing sense-data through universal categories of intuition and forms of sensibility. According to Kant, the sphere of religion lies not in our knowing (the activity of pure reason) but in our sense of moral obligation (the activity of practical reason). It is our ethical system, not our knowledge of nature, that requires us to postulate God, freedom and the immortality of the soul. The consequence of Kant’s thought for the West was the philosophical separation of the domains of science and religion into “two worlds”—a move which was to have an immeasurable effect on Christian theology up to the present.

Theology splits into conservative and liberal interpretations of divine action

As a consequence of the philosophical division of science and religion, theology in the nineteenth century was faced with a fundamental challenge not only to its contents and structure, but even to its method. The variety of responses to this challenge tend to fall into two groups: “liberals” largely accepted and worked within the terms of the discussion that modernity dictated while “conservatives” upheld traditional formulations and tended to reject “modernity.” The earliest and most influential figure among liberals was Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), who responded to Kant by locating religion as neither a knowing nor a doing. Instead religion is grounded in personal piety—the feeling of absolute dependence.

Schleiermacher held that theological assertions emerge from the immediacy of the religious self-consciousness. He understood God’s relation to the world in terms of “universal divine immanence” [the idea that God is present to the entire cosmos at all times], and he blurred the distinction between creation and providence by collapsing the later into the former. In a famous move he defined miracle as “. . . simply the religious name for event. Every event, even the most natural and usual, becomes a miracle, as soon as the religious view of it can be the dominant.” Schleiermacher’s arguments became characteristic of liberal Protestant theology throughout the nineteenth century and continued into much of twentieth century theological work.

The second half of the nineteenth century saw the rise of Darwinian evolution, which combined random variation and natural selection to explain biological complexity. To some in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the fundamental role of chance in nature seemed to undercut any notion of divine action in the world; to others, such as the Anglo-Catholic liberal movement in Britain and America, Darwinian evolution could be accommodated and even integrated into theology without interventionism, since God works immanently in and through the very processes of nature. In contrast, religious conservatives tended either to reject evolution as a whole or give it a limited acceptance with the proviso that the objective acts of special providence constitute divine interventions in nature.

The rise of neo-orthodoxy in the twentieth century

Protestant theology in the first half of the twentieth century was largely shaped by Karl Barth. In his rejection of nineteenth-century liberal theology, Barth returned theology to its biblical roots and focused it on the God who is “wholly other.” Recognizing that a religion founded exclusively on subjective experience is vulnerable to the critiques of Feuerbach and Freud, Barth and his followers held fast to the objective action of God in creating and redeeming the world. “The Gospel is . . . not an event, nor an experience, nor an emotion—however delicate! ... It is a communication which presumes faith in the living God, and which creates that which it presumes.” The ‘God who acts’ became a hallmark of the ensuing “biblical theology” movement which arose in the 1940s and 1950s. To many this movement seemed to offer a tertium quid between liberal and conservative theologies.

But do Barthian neo-orthodoxy and the biblical theology movement actually produce a credible account of divine action? On the one hand neo-orthodoxy attempts to distance itself from liberal theology by retaining biblical language about God acting through wondrous events and by viewing revelation as including an objective act. Yet on the other hand, it, like liberalism, accepts the modern premise that nature is a closed causal system, as depicted by classical physics. The result is that neo-orthodoxy seems to assert a contradiction: God does act objectively in nature (as conservatives believe) and God does so without intervening, violating, suspending or obstructing the ordinary processes of nature understood as a closed causal system (as liberals believe).

A third way between liberal and conservative theologies

Any purported “third option” will require an intelligible concept of objectively special providence which does not entail divine intervention. Such a concept could serve as a genuine tertium quid to conservative and liberal notions of special providence, combining strengths borrowed from each. Specifically, we will seek to speak about special divine acts in which God acts objectively in an unusual and particularly meaningful way in, with, and through events which serve to mediate God’s action. We will seek to do so without entertaining—in fact by refusing—the additional claim that God must intervene in, or at least suspend, the laws of nature. Those laws are themselves the result of and description of God’s continuous creation, after all. I call this type of divine action Non-Interventionist Objective Divine Action (NIODA).

In part 2 of this series, Tom Burnett will explore in more depth what Russell takes to be wrong with the Enlightenment concept of “supernatural intervention.” Part 3 will explain and clarify Russell’s theory of NIODA.


Wed, 23 May 2012 07:54:29 -0700 Robert John Russell
A BioLogos Response to William Dembski, Part 1;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication We think that God created all living organisms, including humans, through the evolutionary process. But acceptance of creation through evolution does not mean that we reject the notion of a miracle-working God. On the contrary...

This ongoing series grew out of a conversation that Kenneth Keathley, the Senior Vice President for Academic Administration at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and I had last year. We agreed that he would solicit a set of essays from scholars at Southern Baptist Seminaries who would specifically identify their concerns about what they perceive to be the BioLogos view of creation. In response to this request, Dr. William Dembski of Southwestern Baptist Seminary submitted the essay “Is Darwinism Theologically Neutral?” Although I do not consider my view Darwinian, I am sure that my view and that of others associated with BioLogos is perceived that way by some, so this gives me an opportunity not only to respond to his analysis, but to clarify my position on creation and how I think it is distinct from what Dembski calls “Darwinism."

God’s Activity in Creation

I will begin by summarizing my view of the nature of God’s activity in creation. I think that God created all living organisms, including humans, through the evolutionary process. Acceptance of creation through evolution does not mean that I reject the notion of a miracle-working God. On the contrary, I believe in the miracles of Scripture, and I believe that we’ve experienced God’s supernatural activity in our own lives. I stand in awe of a personal God whose activity is not constrained by natural laws, but also includes supernatural acts.

But what are the natural laws? Are not the the laws of nature simply a description of God’s ongoing and non-ceasing activity in the universe? The Law of Gravity, for example, is not something that God set up in the beginning, thereafter recusing himself from further involvement and exiting from the scene. Instead, the Law of Gravity works as it does because of the ongoing activity of God’s Spirit in the universe. So consistent is that activity that it can be described mathematically through scientific analysis. If God ceased to be active, however, then not only would the matter of this universe no longer function in a way which enables a mathematical description of gravity, matter itself would cease to exist. Paul, referring to Christ, writes “All things are created by him and through him.” Continuing, he goes on to state that “He himself is before all things and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17). So he created in the beginning and, indeed, “…without him not one thing came into being.” (John 1:3) But it doesn’t end there: his ongoing activity is necessary for the universe to function. As the writer to the Hebrews declares “He sustains all things by his powerful word.” (Hebrews 1:4) The laws of nature, then, are simply a description of the ongoing activity of God which—because it is so consistent, dependable, and pervasive—points to the trustworthiness of God. Put another way, the activity of God is not restricted to that which we call the supernatural; it is all God’s activity. It is just that some aspects of God’s activity are so consistently repeatable that we can develop laws which describe the regularity of the divine activity which “holds” and “sustains” the universe. This latter type of activity is no less magnificent just because God does it continuously. Indeed, the Psalmist marveled at God’s natural activity and worshipfully reflected upon it.

On the other hand, the God we know through Scripture and personal experience also works in ways that are not mathematically predictable. We call this aspect of God’s action supernatural, and we seem to think of this facet of God’s work—this law-defying activity—as being more God-like. Indeed calling it super-natural suggests we think of it as God’s “turbo-charged” activity. But are not miracles simply a reflection of God choosing to work in a unique, non-customary manner to accomplish God’s purposes in God’s time? (See here for more detail.) When God works in this way, Scripture generally presents such activity in the context and purpose of God’s desire to enter into or renew a relationship with an individual or with a community of people. For example, God’s miraculous involvement in the lives of the elderly couple, Abraham and Sarah, led to the birth of their son, Isaac, and marks the beginning of God’s very special relationship with their descendents. God’s interaction with Moses through the burning bush initiated a new phase of God’s relationship with the Hebrew people as they moved out of slavery and back into the Promised Land. And of course, the supreme examples of miraculous activity are the incarnation, the empty tomb, and the resurrected Body. We worship a personal God whose desire for an ongoing loving relationship with humankind is first laid out in the early chapters of Genesis, but does not end there. In all divine activity—supernatural and natural—God is just being who God is: Creator, Sustainer, and loving Father. There are not two sets of activities, even though we label them “super” and “ordinary.” All are “super,” because all describe the activity of our supernatural God. Some are regular, predictable and ongoing, while other activities of God are not, for reasons often based in the fact that God is lovingly responsive and relational.

The Genesis narrative gives us no details about the mechanism by which God brought the universe and life into existence. God gave the charge: “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky..., “ “Let the waters bring forth…,” “Let the land bring forth…,” “Let the birds multiply…,” and, in response, we are told, it happened. Scripture does not explain how it happened, although as we read God’s other book—the book of nature—we see that God’s work extended over a long period of time. In these details, the Bible does not say whether the “bringing forth” was fulfilled through God’s natural activity (that which is regular, ongoing, and can be described by science) or God’s supernatural activity (that which is not regular and predictable). Given the many examples of supernatural activity in Scripture, we human beings tend to expect that for something as special as creation of stars or new species, supernatural activity would have been required. But we cannot derive this from the scriptural account and, therefore, it is wise not to second-guess how God might have worked based on the Scriptures.

Indeed, the distinction is softened by Scripture itself, which often speaks of God’s natural activity in ways that sound supernatural. For example, the Psalmist writes of God opening his hand to feed the living creatures (Psalm 104:28). We know how God does this and so did the Psalmist—he did it through natural means—but it was still God’s process and God’s provisions. Job speaks of thunder as being the voice of God (Job 40:9). We know God’s natural activity produces thunder and we can describe the laws that are responsible for it, but the fact that we know how it works certainly doesn’t negate the point being made in the book of Job. When the Psalmist describes the heavens as being the work of his fingers (Psalm 8:3), this does not negate astronomy’s description of the regular and ongoing processes that give rise to stars in God’s universe. Those processes are natural, but they are every bit as much God’s activity as if he were to take huge balls of matter and miraculously fashion sparkling stars with his hands.

Still, given that there is extensive supernatural activity exhibited in God’s interaction with Israel and in the life of Jesus, it is entirely possible that he did work supernaturally in fulfilling the creation command, as well. Even though the miracles described in the Bible primarily serve some theological or pastoral purpose that stems from God’s earnest desire to make his presence known and to deepen his relationship with humankind, we should reserve judgment about whether only God’s natural activity was responsible. It is not clear though, that supernatural activity would often be God’s chosen mode of action millions of years before humans had arrived. Thus, we should not assume with certainty that God would choose to use supernatural flurries of activity if his ongoing regular activity—that described through natural laws—would accomplish the same end, albeit over a longer period of time. For all we know, God may prefer slowness, even though we seem to be inclined to think that faster is better. After all, in the history of Israel and the church, God gave no new prophecy for 400 years before the coming of Christ, and it took the early church five centuries to come to a clear—albeit mysterious—understanding of the Trinity. Even now, two thousand years after Christ, we wait for his return.

In the next part, Darrel responds to Dembski’s lists of non-negotiables and clarifies how he sees BioLogos as different from “Darwinism”.

Wed, 02 May 2012 07:03:43 -0700 Darrel Falk

















Miracles and Science, Part 5;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication By getting rid of the miracle stories in the Bible, Bultmann and his followers hoped to make the Christian story more palatable to modern man. Although I recognize the emotional weight of this sentiment, I am not convinced that it is an intellectually coherent approach, mainly for reasons of self-consistency. This is the fifth and final blog in a series (see Part 1 here) by Ard Louis, taken from his recently-posted scholarly essay.

David Hume argued that miracles are chiefly seen among ignorant and barbarous people and are thus not to be believed. Is this a valid argument?

In part because history is littered with claims for the miraculous that seem bizarre, or smack of superstition, and in part because the incredible advances of modern science and technology inspire awe, we can intensely feel the attraction of identifying with the latter and not the former. This disposition is exemplified in the following quote by the theologian Rudolph Bultmann, a man famous for his attempts to de-mythologize the New Testament:


By getting rid of the miracle stories in the Bible, Bultmann and his followers hoped to make the Christian story more palatable to modern man. Although I recognize the emotional weight of this sentiment, I am not convinced that it is an intellectually coherent approach, mainly for reasons of self-consistency. If the New Testamentitself asserts, both directly and indirectly, that the historicity of the resurrection is foundational to Christianity, then it would seem to stand or fall by that fact.

The importance of presuppositions

As a physicist, I have a natural penchant for wanting to see how an idea relates to more basic principles. And to analyze the validity of a quote like the one above, we must take a cold hard look at our fundamental presuppositions. In the words of John Polkinghorne:

If we are to understand the nature of reality, we have only two possible starting points: either the brute fact of the physical world or the brute fact of a divine will and purpose behind that physical world

Where does each of those two fundamental starting points take us? When we use them to construct a worldview, what kind of sense does it make of experience, morality, truth, beauty, and our place in the world? These are not easy questions. There is so much mystery around us. Perhaps the best way to move forward would be to borrow Mermin’s tapestry analogy and carefully investigate whether the different threads of historical evidence, philosophical consistency, and personal knowledge can be woven together into a worldview that is robust.

In particular, does our tapestry posses those qualities of coherence and (surprising) fruitfulness that characterise the best scientific tapestries?

If I start from the brute facts of nature, I personally am unable to construct a tapestry that is both rigorous and rich enough to make sufficient sense of the world. By contrast, if I assume a divine will and purpose behind the world I believe that I can construct a much more compelling tapestry that incorporates all of the threads of human existence. Within that purposeful world, the case for Christianity is much more persuasive. To use a famous quote from C.S. Lewis:


It is the sum total of all those arguments that convinces me of the veracity of biblical miracles.

Nevertheless, I recognize that no matter how cogent, say, the historical evidence for the resurrection is, if I start from a different worldview, as Martin and Rudolph Bultmann do, then it will be virtually impossible to accept the existence of biblical miracles. (In the end I think this is what Hume is really saying). Miracles cannot be interpreted independently from the theological context in which they function. They are part of a package deal.

I don’t know what Martin would make of all that. We would surely need more than one glass of wine to complete this discussion (but wouldn’t it be fun?).


Finally, what would I say to John and Ruth? If they are like many Christians I know, they might feel a slight uneasiness with science, a subconscious fear fed by the pontifications of some popularizers such as Richard Dawkins who seem keen to equate science with atheism. So perhaps I would first point out the obvious limits of science. But then I might tell the story of Leibniz and Newton’s exchange, and point out that Newton was a good enough theologian not to turn the alleged instability of the planets into a God of the gaps argument. Similarly, if it is true that we don’t yet understand how birds can navigate so accurately over large distances, then surely it would bring more glory to God to search for the mechanisms by which such remarkable feats are accomplished:


-Proverbs 25:2

Perhaps because evolution has been a particularly favorite bludgeon of the science = atheism cabal, a Christian mini-industry has sprung up to debunk it. Unfortunately, this only feeds the public misperception that the core of the conflict between science and faith concerns scientific mechanism (evolution did or did not occur) rather than one of the philosophy and interpretation of science.

God could, of course, have regularly used miracles to create throughout the time-span of natural history. He is free. But whether he did so in natural history is fundamentally a question of biblical interpretation. (We don’t have direct access to the mind of God. We therefore need special revelation to know when, for his own redemptive purposes, God performed miracles in the past.) Surely it is even more glorious if God could design a physical system that creates itself through the regularities of his sustaining action. Like many of my Christian scientific colleagues who hold to a high view of Scripture, I believe the biblical text allows itself to be interpreted in this way, that sentient beings arose primarily through the ordinary “customs of the Creator,” and that moreover it glorifies God to seek to understand these patterns.

John and Ruth might then ask: if I emphasize the integrity of the regular action of God in sustaining the universe, and even in creating us, then why should miracles occur at all? Can they occur today? Rather than answer that theological question directly, let me resort to a musical analogy borrowed from Colin Humphreys. Suppose you are watching a pianist play a classical piece. You will notice that there are certain notes that he plays, and certain ones that he never does. The choice of notes is constrained because the music is being played in a particular key signature. But then, occasionally he may break this rule and play an unusual note. Musicians call these accidentals, and a composer can put them in wherever she likes (although if there are too many the music would sound strange). As Humphreys puts it,

If he is a great composer, the accidentals will never be used capriciously: they will always make better music. It is the accidentals which contribute to making the piece of music great. The analogy with how God operates is clear: God created and upholds the universe but, like the great composer, he is free to override his own rules. However, if he is a consistent God, it must make more sense than less for him to override his rules.

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 08:00:02 -0700 Ard Louis
Miracles and Science, Part 4;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication Science, as well as tools from historical disciplines, can be brought to bear on biblical miracles. For example they can be split into those that are examples of providential timing (type i miracles) and those that can only be viewed as directly violating physical cause-effect relationships (type ii miracles). This is the fourth blog in a series (see Part 1 here) by Ard Louis, taken from his recently-posted scholarly essay.

Two sorts of miracles


An example of a possible type i miracle would be the crossing of the river Jordan by the people of Israel:





One could argue that God must nevertheless employ divine action to set up the conditions necessary for a type i miracle to occur at the right time. In that sense both kinds of miracles may involve violations of normal physical cause-effect relations, but in type i this is more hidden. Note that I am not arguing that miracles break ultimate cause-effect relationships. Within a divine economy, they may make perfect causal sense. Language like “violation of physical cause-effect” reflects our limited access to the mind of God.

The Resurrection: beyond science?

There are also miracles in the Bible that defy description in terms of current science. Perhaps the most significant of these is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. If anything, science has strengthened the case for this not being a type i miracle. For example, in John 19:34 we read:



And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. (I Corinthians 15:14)

Given that almost every great Christian thinker in history has emphasized the fact that miracles must be understood within the context of a theological purpose, perhaps one could invert this argument and say that it is not surprising that the central event in history would be miraculous.

So where has this argument brought us? I have argued that the precise relationship between miracles and science has been the subject of a long and unresolved debate with strands reaching back to the early Church fathers. Theologians wrestle with questions that concern the differences between God’s regular sustaining action and His special non-repeating actions, i.e. miracles, and how these fit in with redemptive purpose. There is a link to the question of demarcation in science, since within a robust biblical theism the regular working of God’s action, the “customs of the Creator” (or natural laws) are, almost by design, amenable to scientific analysis. Biblical miracles, in contrast, are always linked to special theological purpose and are therefore, almost by definition, non-repeatable and a-scientific.

The decisive significance of worldviews

If my colleague Martin and I would have time to get this far in conversation, I’m sure we would have swiftly passed the red herring of natural science being the touchstone upon which to examine biblical miracles. But Martin could point out that Hume made a number of other arguments against miracles, namely:

  • Witness testimony is often suspect.

  • Stories get exaggerated in the retelling.

  • Miracles are chiefly seen among ignorant and barbarous people.

  • Rival religions also have miracle stories, so they cancel each other out.

These arguments are substantial, and I refer to footnote 3 in my essay for an introduction to the voluminous literature they have inspired. However, we can take a little stab at the first two objections. It is true that witness testimony cannot always be trusted and that stories change with time. But these are the same problems that face legal systems and historians. Nonetheless, we can employ the tools of these professions to examine biblical miracles.

Take, for example, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is significant extra-biblical historical evidence that he indeed lived. Much has been written about the general trustworthiness of the Gospels. For example, there is much internal evidence, in both the style and content of the narratives, that the writers themselves were convinced that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead. Tradition holds that 11 of the 12 original apostles were martyred for this belief that turned a group of cowards into a people who “turned the world upside down.” Although it is well beyond the scope of this blog series, a very strong case for the plausibility of the resurrection can be made. Similar analysis can be brought to bear on other miracle claims, including those of other religions. After all, every meaningful system of thought must be open to careful scrutiny.

But I suspect that often, underneath the surface, it is really the third argument that carries the most persuasive force. In my next post, we will address this argument and draw some conclusions.

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 07:59:31 -0700 Ard Louis
Miracles and Science, Part 3;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication How can we then judge whether or not the miracles of the Bible are reliable? Since the word miracle has taken on so many different meanings, it is important to first examine the biblical language. This is the third blog in a series (see Part 1 here) by physicist Ard Louis, taken from his recently-posted scholarly essay.

Miracles and the Bible


The New Testament predominantly uses three words for miracle:

  • teras, a wonder

  • dunamis, an act of power

  • semeion, a sign

Sometimes it combines all three, as in Acts 2:22:

Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles (dunamis), wonders (teras) and signs (semeion), which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know.

The word teras (wonder) is almost always used together with one of the other words, emphasizing that the main point of biblical miracles is not to merely elicit amazement but rather to serve a higher theological purpose. For this reason, biblical miracles cannot be understood outside of the theological context within which they occur. They are not anomalous events. This principle provides a key to the proper assessment of their validity.

Nature is what God does

Miracles happen against a backdrop. In this context, it is illuminating to see how the Bible describes God’s action in the natural world. For example in Psalm 104, that great poem about nature, we read,


The first part of this verse refers to God’s direct action while the second part suggests that water flows through its own natural properties. Read the Psalm for yourself and notice how fluidly the point of view changes back and forth between what we might call the laws of nature and the direct action of God. Such dual descriptions can be found throughout the Bible. The New Testament is even more explicit:



He is before all things, and in him all things hold together (Col 1:17)


Nature is what [God] does.

Augustine doesn’t mean that nature is the same as God (pantheism), for, as he also argued, God operates outside of space and time. Nevertheless, and this is a very subtle point, a case can be made for ascribing some independent causal power to the laws of nature. On the other hand, there is no room within a robust biblical theism for the opposite deistic notion that God started the world and then left it to run on its own, completely independently, because descriptions of God’s continuous care for creation are found throughout Scripture:





God of the gaps

A similar sentiment lies behind a famous exchange between those old adversaries, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Sir Isaac Newton. The latter noticed that the orbits of the planets did not appear to be stable when calculated over long periods, and postulated that the solar system needed occasional “reformation” by God. Leibniz objected that,

if God had to remedy the defects of His creation, this was surely to demean his craftsmanship.

In other words, the regular sustaining activity of God, as evidenced by natural laws, should be sufficient to explain the regular behaviour of the solar system, without the need for additional ad-hoc interventions. Making it right the first time is more glorious than having to fix it later.

In the same context, Leibniz also emphasized the theological nature of miracles:

And I hold, that when God works miracles, he does not do it in order to supply the wants of nature, but those of grace. Whoever thinks otherwise, must needs have a very mean notion of the wisdom and power of God.

A more modern version of Leibniz’s general objection can be found in a famous statement by Charles Coulson, the first Oxford professor of Theoretical Chemistry who wrote,

When we come to the scientifically unknown, our correct policy is not to rejoice because we have found God; it is to become better scientists.

He popularized the phrase “God of the gaps” for those who, perhaps like John and Ruth, think that God is found primarily in the lacunas of our scientific understanding.

Louis' series continues here.

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 08:00:33 -0700 Ard Louis
Miracles and Science, Part 2;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication Rather than attempt to come up with a careful and precise definition of science or scientific practice, I will instead resort to a favorite metaphor of mine. It originates with one of my former teachers at Cornell who describes science as a “tapestry” woven together from many threads... This is the second blog in a series (see Part 1 here) by physicist Ard Louis, taken from his recently-posted scholarly essay.

Science as a tapestry

Rather than attempt to come up with a careful and precise definition of science or scientific practice, I will instead resort to a favorite metaphor of mine. It originates with one of my former teachers at Cornell, the physicist David Mermin, who describes science as a “tapestry” woven together from many threads (experimental results, interpretations, explanations, etc.). It is only when one examines the tapestry as a whole that it will (or will not) make a convincing pattern.

Creating scientific tapestries is a collective endeavor building on mutual trust and the communal experience of what kinds of arguments and evidence are likely to stand the test of time. In part because the skill of weaving reliable scientific tapestries relies on subtle judgements, a young scientist may work for years as an apprentice of older and more experienced practitioners before branching out on his own. In this process there are many parallels with the guilds of old. I am fond of this metaphor because it describes what I think I experience from the inside as a scientist. Moreover, it also emphasizes the importance of coherence and consistency when I weave together arguments and data to make an “inference to a best explanation.”

The strong communal element inherent in scientific practice has at times been seized upon by sociologists of science to argue that scientific knowledge is just one more type of human construct with no greater claim on reality than any other form of knowledge. But scientists as a whole have reacted to this proposition in a negative way. Although they agree that all kinds of economic, historical and social factors do play a role in the formation of scientific theories, they would argue that, in the long run, the scientific process does lead to reliable knowledge about the world.

The view of nature embraced by most scientists whom I know could be described as critical realism. They are realists because they believe that there is a world out there that is independent of our making. The adjective “critical” is added because they recognize that extracting knowledge about that world is not always straightforward. Thus, the primary role of the collective nature of the scientific process is to provide a network of error-correcting mechanisms that prevent us from fooling ourselves. The continual testing against nature refines and filters out competing scientific theories, leading to advances in the strength and reliability of our scientific knowledge tapestries.

Culture matters in science

Although there are many commonalities in the ways that scientists in distinct fields assemble their tapestry arguments, there can also be subtle differences. These differences are foisted on us in part by the types of problems that each field attempts to address. For example, as a theoretical physicist I’ve been trained in a tradition of what the Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner called “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics:”


We believe, based on a history of spectacular success, that mathematical consistency among threads is a key indicator of strong tapestries. These days, I spend much of my time interacting with biologists who tend to view my confidence in the ability of theoretical models to extract knowledge about the physical world with great suspicion. I, on the other hand, am often instinctively sceptical of the huge error bars that can afflict their data.

To a large degree, these cultural differences are forced on us by the kinds of questions we study. My reaction above arises because physics is self-limiting. As a community we simply don’t deal with problems of the same level of complexity that biology does. If an experiment is too messy we will often define it away by declaring “that isn’t physics,” and move on. Similarly, molecular biologists can afford to be more selective about their data than medical scientists or psychologists can.

But, despite these cultural differences, which can lead to heated and sometimes frustrating discussion, we do agree on a number of ground rules for defining what makes a tapestry strong. For example, what we either predict or measure should be repeatable. If I claim to see an effect in an experiment, someone else in a different lab should be able to reliably measure the same effect. That simple requirement has many ramifications for the types of problems we are able to address.

The limits of science

There are many questions that simply are not amenable to purely scientific analysis. A very lucid discussion of this issue can be found in the book The Limits of Science by Nobel Prize winner (and atheist) Sir Peter Medawar, who wrote:

That there is indeed a limit upon science is made very likely by the existence of questions that science cannot answer and that no conceivable advance of science would empower it to answer… It is not to science, therefore but to metaphysics, imaginative literature or religion that we must turn for answers to questions having to do with first and last things.



Science’s great power derives from its self-imposed limits. It is wrong to ask it to pronounce on issues outside its jurisdiction. In fact, the most important decisions in life cannot be addressed solely by the scientific method, nor do people really live as if they can. In the words of Sir John Polkinghorne, former professor of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge and Anglican priest:

We are entitled to require a consistency between what people write in their studies and the way in which they live their lives. I submit that no-one lives as if science were enough. Our account of the world must be rich enough – have a thick enough texture and a sufficiently generous rationality – to contain the total spectrum of human meeting with reality.

“Unscientific” doesn’t mean irrational

But just because we don’t live life by the scientific method doesn’t mean that the only alternative is irrationality. For example, if I were to decide to get married, a truly irrational approach would be to pick a random woman off the street. Instead, assuming I find a potentially willing partner, it is wise to go through a period of courtship during which we get to know each other. We may also ask for the opinion of wise friends. There are helpful counseling programs with compatibility lists, etc. that, in fact, often use knowledge that scientific techniques have extracted from our collective experience and wisdom. But at the end of the day I can’t demand scientific certainty before deciding to marry someone. Nor is it wise to perform repeatable experiments! I need to make a volitional step because there are aspects of marriage that I can only see from the inside. (There are interesting analogies here to making a religious commitment. Christians would argue that important aspects of the Christian life can only be understood and experienced from within a relationship with Christ. That is not to say that a step of faith is just a blind leap in the dark. It should be a decision that is informed by careful thinking and weighing of evidence. But it is more than just that.)

Another example of a method used to obtain knowledge is the legal process which, although it is a tightly organized system, is not strictly scientific. Similarly, a historian will use a combination of evidence (e.g. manuscripts) and understanding about the thinking patterns of a particular era to make informed judgements about what happened in the past. Clearly, this big question of how to extract reliable information about the world, how to separate fact from mere opinion, is indeed a very difficult and important one.

Next time we’ll examine how the Bible talks about miracles and God’s regular working through the laws of nature.

Sat, 03 Jul 2010 08:00:45 -0700 Ard Louis
Miracles and Science, Part 1;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication "Unbelievable, isn’t it, that there are still students at this university who believe in stories from the Bible", said Martin, an older colleague of mine at Oxford University. "But Martin, I answered, their faith probably doesn’t differ much from mine." I can still see his face go pale while he nearly choked. This is the first blog in a series by physicist Ard Louis, taken from his recently-posted scholarly essay.

Unbelievable, isn’t it, that there are still students at this university who believe in stories from the Bible, said Martin, an older colleague, at one of the formal dinners around which the traditional life of Oxford University revolves. But Martin, I answered, their faith probably doesn’t differ much from mine. I can still see his face go pale while he nearly choked on his glass of St. Emilion Grand Cru Classé: How can you believe in such things nowadays – Walking on water, a resurrection from the dead? Those are miracles, and aren’t you a scientist?

Oh, how interesting, say John and Ruth, a couple that I have just met at the end of a church service. You are a scientist. They look a bit unsure of what to say next and John blurts out, I read recently that we still don’t understand how birds can fly so many miles to the south and yet return to exactly the same place each summer. Scientists can’t explain this; it is a miracle, don’t you think?

I never quite know what to say next in such conversations. Perhaps nine years of living in Britain have made me too sensitive to that most cardinal of English social sins – causing embarrassment. But there is more to it than that. Behind these statements lies a tangle of complex intellectual issues related to the definition and scope of science, the nature of God’s action in the world, and the reliability and interpretation of the Bible. These have exercised many of greatest minds in history:

The debate between atheism and religious belief has gone on for centuries, and just about every aspect of it has been explored to the point where even philosophers seem bored with it. The outcome is stalemate.

So says my Oxford colleague Alister McGrath. Although these subtleties are well known to philosophers and historians of science, public discourse on science and religion often seems blissfully unaware of them.

Miracles as violations of the laws of nature?

Everyone brings a set of presuppositions to the table. To make progress, these should first be brought out into the open. Without time for an honest conversation in which we can listen to each other in depth, I won’t know exactly what Martin, John, or Ruth’s presuppositions are. But, for the sake of this blog, I will be a bit presumptuous and venture a guess. My guess would be that, although both seem to be on opposite sides of a vast divide, they are in fact influenced by a similar perspective on science and miracles, one first laid down by the great sceptical Scottish philosopher David Hume, who wrote:


This language of “miracles as violations of the laws of nature” has framed the debate ever since. Martin, John and Ruth, perhaps without realizing it, are living under the long shadow of David Hume.

Martin may think that science is the only reliable route to gaining knowledge about the world, and that, since belief in miracles is obviously unscientific, such belief must ipso facto be false. John and Ruth may feel a similar tension between science and miracles, and are therefore encouraged by any natural process that seems inexplicable. Weakening the power of science would seem to strengthen the case for God acting in the world: If we know that today God miraculously steers a bird back to its original habitat after a long return flight to the south, then it is easier to believe that 2000 years ago he turned water into wine at a wedding in Cana.

Now, as a Christian scientist who believes in the miracles of the Bible, I take issue with both of the views above. But to explain this better, I need to first take a step back and answer two critical questions: What do I mean by science, and what does the Bible say about miracles?

Defining Science

The problem of deciding where to draw the lines around science has vexed generations of philosophers. Like many unsolved issues, it has been given its own name—“the demarcation problem.” Although one can determine with some degree of consensus what the extremes of the science/non-science continuum are, exactly where the boundary lies is fuzzy. This doesn’t mean, however, that we cannot recognize science when we see it, but rather that a watertight definition is difficult to create. The old fashioned idea (still taught in many schools) that scientific practice follows a well-defined linear process—first make an observation, then state a hypothesis, and then test that hypothesis—is certainly far too simple.

In his next post, Louis will explain that science is rather more like a tapestry woven together from many threads (experimental results, interpretations, explanations, etc.).

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 08:00:28 -0700 Ard Louis
Exodus, the Plagues, and the Cosmic Battle;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication It is obviously important to spend a lot of time discussing the scientific data. But it is also important to deal with the biblical data. Why? Because our expectations about the Bible affect how we handle the scientific data. In my last post, we looked at the “cosmic battle” motif in the Old Testament. This is where Yahweh is involved in some epic struggle at creation with “sea” (or the waters or the sea monsters Rahab or Leviathan). That battle is seen clearly in several Psalms and in Job. It is also reflected in other portions of the Old Testament, like Ezekiel and Genesis 1.








Got it? Good.

The exodus was the formative experience for ancient Israelites—it is what made them a nation. Creation language permeates the exodus story. This is because the biblical writer understood the exodus as another “act of creation,” which even included a “cosmic battle.”











Tue, 09 Feb 2010 08:00:49 -0800 Pete Enns