Can We 'let Heaven And Nature Sing'?
Children's sermon
Illustration
Preaching
Sermon
Worship
Object:
(Originally published for January 1, 2006)
The recent court decision in Pennsylvania banning so-called "intelligent design" from public school science curricula has brought the evolution vs. creationism debate back into the headlines -- and since this week's lectionary readings (especially Psalm 148) address the theme of creation, it's an opportune time to examine this topic from the perspective of Christian faith. As both a physicist and a pastor, Immediate Word team member George Murphy brings special expertise to issues of science and theology, and in this week's installment he helps to clarify some contentious issues and suggests that there need not be a conflict between scientific integrity and belief in the Creator. Team member Carter Shelley contributes another perspective, focusing on a literary rather than scientific approach to the subject of creation and biblical literalism. In addition to illustrations and a children's sermon, this installment also includes an additional resource -- a brief story detailing a discussion between a pastor and a student confused by the debate over evolution. (If you're interested in more stories like this, check out our sister publication StoryShare. Each week StoryShare provides several inspirational parables based on the lectionary texts.)
Can We "Let Heaven And Nature Sing"?
by George Murphy
THE WORLD
On Sunday, January 1, our celebration of the Christmas season will continue with texts including Psalm 148, which calls for the whole universe to praise God. As the popular carol puts it, heaven and nature are to sing to their creator. But just a few days before Christmas a federal judge ruled that the Dover, Pennsylvania, school board had been wrong in requiring that science classes include mention of "intelligent design" because that was an essentially religious claim about creation. (The full 139-page decision by Judge John Jones III is available at http://www.pepperlaw.com/pepper/pdfs/DoverOpinion.pdf.)
There don't have to be conflicts between the Christian belief that living things are creatures of God and scientific theories that describe how those things have evolved. In order to address the issues connected with intelligent design, and in particular to see if and how this week's texts can help us speak to these issues, we of course have to know what the debates are all about. There are two meanings that we might attach to "intelligent design," and therein lies the source of some confusion. The phrase can apply first to a fundamentally religious claim, the belief that the world and its parts are the creation of a deity who has purposes for them. In this sense intelligent design is something that's affirmed by Christians and people of other theistic faiths as well. Many people who refer positively to polls about intelligent design have this religious concept in mind.
The narrower sense of intelligent design (what is often abbreviated "ID") is the claim that we can infer from the scientific study of some parts of the world (and some biological systems in particular) that they are the results of intelligent design. Furthermore, it's argued that those systems cannot be understood without the concept of intelligent design, so the concept of intelligent design needs to be made part of our scientific theories. Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box (Free Press, 1996) argues that biochemical structures like oft-mentioned bacterial flagellum are "irreducibly complex" and cannot be explained by a gradual process of evolution, while William A. Dembski's Intelligent Design (InterVarsity, 1999) concludes that only intelligent design can explain the "specified complex information" in biological systems.
ID is not necessarily opposed to evolution. Some ID supporters accept the general picture of the development of life given by evolutionary theories and supported by a considerable amount of scientific evidence. But they argue that these theories can't explain all the relevant phenomena without the ID concept. Other ID proponents, however, reject evolution entirely and are more akin to those who espouse "creation science."
Many scientists think that claims about the inability of current theories to explain phenomena are overstated, if not simply wrong. We don't need to enter into those questions here. (Kenneth R. Miller's Finding Darwin's God [HarperCollins, 1999] can be consulted by those who are interested.) What is of more interest is the claim that the idea of a designer is needed to explain those phenomena.
It's sometimes said that the hypothetical designer might be some natural agent. But clearly that can only be a temporary solution to the problem of how complexity originated in the universe: we can immediately ask who designed those designers. The problem that ID writers pose for themselves is solved only if the designer is not a natural agent. In fact, it's clear from many ID presentations that the designer is supposed to be God.
There is, in other words, an inevitable religious component of the ID argument, as the decision in the Dover case stated. That presents clear legal problems when attempts are made to introduce ID into public school science classes -- though it would be possible to discuss it in classes on comparative religion or current social issues. Debates about intelligent design have been part of our culture wars for several years and are not likely to end soon. Christians, and especially leaders of Christian churches, need to ask first about the theological value of ID arguments. Right now, we want to see what insights the lectionary texts for this coming Sunday may give us.
Of course, a great deal has been written about evolution and ID in connection with the recent court case. A good short essay by Eric Cornell, a Nobel Laureate in Physics, appeared in the November 14, 2005 issue of Time magazine. (One of this week's illustrations is a brief excerpt from that article.)
THE WORD
Is there a conflict between belief that the world is the creation of a purposeful God and a rule that science should not appeal to supernatural causes to explain natural phenomena? That rule is sometimes called "methodological naturalism," and it means that, whatever their religious beliefs may be, scientists are not to appeal to God to explain what happens in the world. This should not be confused (though it often is) with "metaphysical naturalism," the essentially atheistic claim that there simply is nothing other than the natural world. Methodological naturalism is in accord with the way Christians have traditionally understood God normally to act in the world. God supplies our "daily bread," for instance, not by providing food miraculously but by acting with and through the natural processes of sunlight, weather, soil chemistry, and all the other things that make grain grow.
For this coming Sunday, the First after Christmas and also the Name of Jesus, we have several texts that relate to the idea of creation. They do not, however, speak about how God brings living things into being and sustains them. In fact, few biblical texts do. The emphases of this week's texts are different.
Psalm 148 (for the First Sunday after Christmas) could be called the "Hymn of the Universe," borrowing the title of a collection of essays by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (Harper & Row, 1965). In it the whole creation is called upon to praise God, from angelic beings down to "creeping things." Nothing is said explicitly about creative activity, but the idea that God is the creator of all things is implicit here. In accord with the old saying that "the law of praying is the law of believing" (lex orandi, lex credendi), our view of creation is first of all to be doxological.
Two things in particular deserve mention. First, the "waters above the heavens" are listed, an element of an archaic cosmology that we also have in Genesis 1:6. The praise of the creator by creation is expressed in terms of a picture of the universe quite different from that of modern science, in which there is no solid dome of the sky with a cosmic ocean above it. But this does not invalidate the call for the universe, however we may understand it, to express the praise of God.
Of course one might argue that the psalm is too anthropomorphic, that many of the things listed here -- snow and frost, cattle, and so forth -- can't really praise God. But then we note that human beings -- and finally the people of Israel -- are listed at the end. It is humanity, and particularly the people who have received God's historical revelation, who know the creator and can give voice to creation's worship.
God's historical revelation -- that's really the key. We are, after all, still in the Christmas season, celebrating what we believe to be the climax of that revelation, God's coming among us in the baby born of Mary. The gospel for this Sunday, Luke 2:22-40, tells of the infant Jesus being brought to the Temple and the inspired responses of Simeon and Anna. It is in this baby, not in any natural phenomena, that God is to be known.
That comes out perhaps even more clearly in the gospel for the Name of Jesus (celebrated on January 1), Luke 2:15-21. This festival isn't observed by all churches, but it's a natural follow-up to the story of the birth: A Jewish boy is baptized and given his name at the age of eight days, as verse 21 says. (It would also be easy enough to include that verse with the First Sunday after Christmas reading.) This particular name is significant -- Jesus or Yeshua, YHWH is salvation. He is the one in whom the creator and savior is revealed.
Jesus is, of course, pictured as a remarkable child in Luke. In verses 41-52 he will amaze the teachers of the law in the Temple. But he looked pretty much like any other Jewish baby boy of the time. Jesus doesn't, so to speak, glow in the dark. In verse 40 and again in verse 52 we're told that he had to grow. God came among us under the limitations of our humanity, and had to learn the alphabet and other things as all children do. This is the idea that is expressed in one of the suggested Second Lessons for the Name of Jesus, Philippians 2:5-11, which speaks of how the pre-existent Christ "emptied (ekenosen) himself" and took a servant's form.
This idea of divine self-limitation, or kenosis, has been used by a number of theologians to talk about the way in which God limits divine action to what can be accomplished through natural processes. (See, e.g., John Polkinghorne [editor], The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis [William B. Eerdmans, 2001].) If God's action in the world in general is patterned on the Incarnation in this way, then we would not expect there to be natural phenomena which cannot be understood in terms of natural processes. That makes ID claims about finding scientific evidence for a designer questionable. For further details I'll refer to an earlier article of mine, "Intelligent Design as a Theological Problem," which can be found at http://puffin.creighton.edu/NRCSE/IDTHG.html.
ID proponents sometimes call attention to texts such as Psalm 19:1-6 and Romans 1:19-20, which seem to speak of a knowledge of God which can be gained from nature. "Of course we can't be saved by such knowledge," they may argue, "but we can know by observing the world that there is a God who created it." The possibility of a natural knowledge of God and a natural theology has been debated extensively, but we needn't enter into those discussions now (grant for the sake of argument that that's what those texts are speaking about). The kinds of natural phenomena that the psalmist and Saint Paul had in mind must have been things that they and people of their time knew about -- which doesn't include the biochemistry of the blood clotting cascade (one of Behe's examples) or the mathematics of information theory appealed to by Dembski. So these texts aren't really relevant to the things that ID proponents claim as evidence.
Finally, Psalm 8 (for the Name of Jesus) gives us another view of creation, and in particular of humanity's place in the world. At first it seems a rather grandiose notion, that God has placed "all things" under our feet. Hebrews 2:5-9 points us in the right direction -- "But we do see Jesus." It is Christ in whom the words of the Psalm are fulfilled. Again, our understanding of creation is to be christological.
CRAFTING THE SERMON
How are we to preach on these texts in a way that makes helpful connections with the debates about ID and evolution in public schools? Most of you will probably be using the readings for the First Sunday after Christmas, but I would encourage you not to ignore those for the Name of Jesus entirely. There is a natural connection, and as I pointed out, it's simple enough to include Luke 2:21 at the beginning of the gospel reading for this Sunday.
There are, basically, two options if you're going to deal with the theme we've suggested: focus on the gospel reading or on Psalm 148. In the first case the emphasis would be on God's self-revelation in the ordinariness of a human child rather than in scientifically inexplicable natural phenomena. This does not mean that we need to ignore the concern of ID proponents about "naturalism," if by that we mean the metaphysical variety that denies the reality of God and God's action in the world. But the point we should make is that God chooses to be known in the natural: "We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know," as Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it (Letters and Papers from Prison, enlarged edition [Macmillan, 1972], p. 311).
And seeing God's presence and activity in nature is one way to approach Psalm 148. The modern scientific understanding of nature is not in competition with the doxological character of this psalm. We live in the twenty-first century, and the things that are listed as praising God are those things understood by science. It is the stars which are investigated by astrophysicists, the winds studied by meteorologists, the plants and animals observed by botanists and zoologists which are to express the worship of God, and human beings studied by anthropologists are to give voice to those praises.
The bacterial flagellum and the blood clotting cascade declare God's praise, just as a Bach cantata or a poem by Emily Dickinson praise Bach or Dickinson -- by showing forth their creator's wisdom and skill. And they do that whether we understand their details or not. One of the things that we want to convey is that our sense of awe and wonder at the universe as God's creation need not be threatened by advancing scientific understanding. The fact that we now understand the metabolism and genetics of living things doesn't make them any less amazing, and our knowledge of how stars shine makes them more, and not less, wonderful. If we can help people to understand this, debates about evolution won't necessarily go away: there are real scientific and theological issues to be considered. But Christians can participate in those debates without being defensive. Those discussions concern how God has created, not whether God has created.
ANOTHER VIEW
The Bible As A Faith Document Full Of Divine Truth
by Carter Shelley
With C. S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe still playing in movie theaters, let me suggest another way to discuss the issue at the heart of the "intelligent design" debate besides George Murphy's article about science, nature, and intelligent design. How do we read and understand the Bible? Do we read it literally or figuratively? Is the language of the Psalmist and the language of Genesis chapters 1 and 2 factual and in need of defense from biology teachers and atheists, or is it theologically true while simultaneously scientifically unlikely?
Such questions would have astonished and dismayed C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Madeline L'Engle. Each of these devout Christians and fantasy writers read and understood the Bible as a faith document loaded with truth -- but "Truth" with a capital "T" is not the same thing as fact. Christians who describe themselves as fundamentalist believe the Bible is literally true. Thus, Genesis chapter 1 records how God created the world in seven 24-hour days, and Genesis chapter 2 describes the fall of Adam and Eve, the first man and the first woman, from whom all humanity is descended. Some of the "intelligent design" proponents, as George notes, are fundamentalists and hold that every word printed in the Bible is literally true -- but what they really mean in making these pronouncements is: "These events are factually accurate to Christians and therefore should be taught in public schools." Facts and truth are not synonymous.
The video cameras that recorded the 9/11 attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Center offered a factual account of that tragic event. Americans and others experienced this event through the videotape televised throughout the world. Granted, we saw it through the lens of someone else's camera, so we saw it as the cameraperson filmed it, but its factual record was soon reinforced as we learned the names of the individuals who died when the towers collapsed. Information was added that verified these people's lives and existence. They had birth certificates, social security numbers, and, sadly, death certificates. Facts can, and are, interpreted, but post-Enlightenment modern culture has criteria for what is factual and what is not that most twenty-first-century societies share.
Lewis, Tolkien, and L'Engle understood the differences among fiction, fact, myth, and truth. The Genesis creation texts (not our lectionary texts for this Sunday, but definitely central to the ID premise) can and are read in each of these ways. An atheist might say these accounts are fictions made up to convince people there is a God who created the universe. A fundamentalist believes they accurately describe how God actually created the world. Scholars of ancient civilizations, classics scholars, and linguists like Lewis and Tolkien call these narratives myths. When the word "myth" is applied to a biblical text it is often heard to mean "fiction" or a lie. Yet myths often reveal truth more fully than do facts and eyewitness accounts. A Christian who reads the Bible as a faith document, that is, as a book that reveals to us truths about God and truths about humanity, holds to those truths as tenaciously.
C. S. Lewis found the fundamental truths of the Old and New Testament so compelling that he wrote six fantasy books for children that recount all of the Bible's major themes: sin, forgiveness, sacrificial love, greed, remorse, salvation, judgment, and so forth. In fact, the parallels between Lewis' world of Narnia and the Bible were so overt that his friend and colleague Tolkien disparaged the works as too obviously allegorical. It wasn't the truths the Bible contained that Tolkien objected to, but the overt way they appear in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and the other Narnia books. It's worth noting that Tolkien's objections have not been shared by the many children and adults who love the books. It's also worth noting that Tolkien's own masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, also contains numerous biblically based truths; however, the connections and identifications are less obvious and more thematic. Tolkien writes of good and evil, of darkness and light, but Tolkien also represents the multiple shades of gray and the many internal struggles a man, woman, or hobbit must face within his own soul. Both Lewis and Tolkien found ancient myths, legends, and fairy tales rich containers of truth and inspiration for their own research and writing. Neither man would have put such literature in the same category as the Bible. For each man, the Bible remained the central source of divine truth. As such, they understood it to be divinely inspired and always relevant to human faith and life, but it did not need to be factual in all details to be true in its most essential ones. ("God so loved the world that he gave his only Son," etc.)
In her nonfiction work The Rock That is Higher: Story as Truth (Harold Shaw, 1993), Madeleine L'Engle addresses the literalism vs. inerrancy view of scripture head-on in a chapter titled "Story as the Search for Truth." The exchange cited below took place between L'Engle and a member of the audience at Wheaton College, where L'Engle was a guest speaker. The subject the woman raises is the inappropriateness of a Christian writer -- a designation L'Engle resists -- writing about a "medium," one of the characters in her novel A Wrinkle in Time:
"You are writing about a medium," one woman accused.
"No, no," I said, "She's a happy medium."
She repeated, "You are writing about a medium."
"Meg was always accused of not having a happy medium," I explained, "so I gave her one. It's a play on words. It's a joke. It's funny."
The students thought it was funny. The questioners didn't.
"You are putting Jesus on par with Einstein and Buddha," I was told. The accusation was based on the page where the children are listing those on our planet who have fought against evil. They start with Jesus and then go on to name some of the other men and women who have sought truth. This, I felt, was completely scriptural, in accordance with the marvelous passage of Paul's:
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among brothers.
I tried to explain that no, I was not putting Jesus on a par with Einstein and Buddha, and I tried to quote from Paul and was interrupted with the reiteration that I was putting Jesus on a par with Einstein and Buddha until finally I had to say, "Please, will you let me finish quoting Paul," which I was able to do only with further interruptions.
When I managed to finish, the attacker simply repeated, "You are putting Jesus on a par with Einstein and Buddha."
At that I replied, "Lady, I am not putting Jesus on a par with Einstein and Buddha. You are." Which the students appreciated. It was true. I wasn't. She was.
But the saddest question of all was, "Do you believe in the literal fact of the Resurrection?"
I replied, "I stand with Paul: No Resurrection, no Christianity. But you can't cram the glory of the Resurrection into a fact. It's true! It's what we live by!" Had the questioner not heard a word of my talk?
***
As I reread the pages of Madeleine L'Engle's book, I realized that her insights into the distinctions between fact, truth, and faith are the ones that speak to me. Because my discipline of choice and training is literature and not science, L'Engle's insights help me understand and explain why the Bible's most sacred revelations about God, Creation, and Christianity are revealed most fully in the figurative language, poetry, metaphors, parables, letters, and heroes of the Old and New Testaments, and not through the "objective" historical-critical analysis of biblical texts. The latter are essential to biblical exegesis and good preaching, but they do not persuade either biblical inerrantists or intelligent design proponents to reconsider their views.
"Truth is frightening. Pontius Pilate knew that, and washed his hands of truth when he washed his hands of Jesus.
"Truth is demanding. It won't let us sit comfortably. It knocks out our cozy smugness and causal condemnation. It makes us move. It? It? For truth we can read Jesus. Jesus is truth. If we accept that Jesus is truth, we accept an enormous demand: Jesus is wholly God, and Jesus is wholly human. Dare we believe that? If we believe in Jesus, we must. And immediately that takes the truth out of the limited realm of literalism.
"But a lot of the world, including the Christian world (sometimes I think especially the Christian world), is hung up on literalism, and therefore confuses the truth and fact. Perhaps that's why someone caught reading a novel frequently looks embarrassed and tries to hide the book, pretending that what he's really reading is a book on how to fix his lawnmower or take out his own appendix. Is this rather general fear of story not so much a fear that the story is not true, as that it might actually be true?" (pp. 89-90)
"The Bible is not objective. Its stories are passionate, searching for truth rather than fact, and searching in story." (p. 93)
"One of the main discoveries of the post-Newtonian sciences is that objectivity is, in fact, impossible. To look at something is to change it and be changed by it.
"Nevertheless there is still the common misconception, the illusion, that fact and truth are the same thing. No! We do not need faith for facts; we do need faith for truth." (p. 94)
ILLUSTRATIONS
Nancy Murphy, who won the Templeton Prize for her work in science and religion, recently noted (in an article in the December 27 issue of The Christian Century) the following about current arguments on intelligent design:
"The intelligent-design movement has the unfortunate effect of promoting the view that science and Christian teaching are incompatible. I leave it to the scientists to get into the details of why ID fails scientifically. The more significant failure is its misunderstanding of divine action.
"Christians have traditionally understood God to act in at least two ways: by performing special acts (special providence, signs, miracles) and by constantly upholding all natural processes. The ID movement assumes that God works only in the first way. Therefore, to show that God has acted, the ID movement believes one has to identify an event in which no natural process is involved. This is their point in trying to argue that particular events in the evolutionary process cannot be explained scientifically."
***
David C. Steinmetz, professor of the history of Christianity at Duke Divinity School, comments in the same issue of The Christian Century (December 27) on the third-century biblical scholar Origen:
"In [Origen's] view readers should distinguish between stories that are both true and factual (like the story of the crucifixion of Jesus) and those that are true but not factual (like the parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son).... [T]he same is true for the account of creation. Origin could not believe that light and darkness existed before there were sun, moon, and stars.... These 'absurdities' (as Origen labeled them) were unsubtle hints from God that he wanted the account of creation read in an altogether different way, not as history but as truth 'in the semblance of history.' Truth embedded in 'the semblance of history' is truth conveyed through fiction. But truth conveyed through fiction is still God's truth; no one has an excuse not to pay attention to it."
***
Helmut Thielicke, in his book How the World Began, suggests that "Many people think ... that [God] can be found in nature, in a sun-drenched clearing in the woods, a sunset in the mountains, the sublime expanses of the ocean. But the strange thing is that even here there immediately arises two difficulties which hide the face of God from me. In the first place, the phosphorescent beauty of the sea does not tell me that I must change my way of life and that I have been unfaithful in my marriage. Nor does it ask whether I am wasting my life with pure trivialities or whether I have found the one thing needful."
Thielicke then reflects on a story of eight men trapped in a rubber boat after a plane crash, without water or provisions, in blazing sunlight and deadly loneliness:
"All of them, weatherbeaten men who loved the elements, begin to hate, really hate this torturing space between the ocean wastes and the blazing sky. All love and worship of nature completely evaporates. Nothing is left but a body- and soul-destroying desolation.
"Suddenly one of them begins to pray the Lord's Prayer. And strange to say, suddenly the desolate, destructive elements are transformed for them. They know that God has pathways even here, that he has one pathway to lead them to their earthly or eternal home. And they are filled with a great peace, even though their skin is peeling and thirst is repeatedly driving them to the brink of madness.
"What has happened here? It was not the grandeur of the ocean that revealed to them the image of God; on the contrary, here there were only visions of dread and mocking hallucinations. No, it was the Word of the Lord in the Lord's Prayer that suddenly drew near to them and transformed the ocean. It is not nature that opens the door to God. It is the other way around; God opens the door to nature."
***
In his poem "The Dog Inside Mine," the poet Alberto Rios speaks of the power of ancestry to influence the latest generations -- in animals or in humans. The poet hears in his dog's barking the echoes of the barking of all his canine ancestors.
Here is a selection from the poem:
The dog barks
Or is barked
By the dogs inside
The dark of him,
The black in his eyes,
The depths of his mouth,
Something from in there...
-- from The Smallest Muscle in The Human Body (Copper Canyon Press)
For copyright reasons, the entire poem cannot be reproduced here, but it can be found in the archives of Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac radio show for April 2, 2005. Click on this link and scroll down until you come to the installment for April 2:
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/programs/2005/03/28/index.html
***
For a brief study of the historical origin of phrases like "intelligent design" and "creation science," consult the June 17, 2005 issue of "A Way With Words," the e-newsletter of David Wilton, who runs the website www.wordorigins.org. For this issue, click on:
http://www.wordorigins.org/AWWW/Vol04/AWWW061705.html
***
In a 1996 speech, a Christian leader offered an endorsement of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The leader, a champion of traditional biblical teaching, told a meeting of scientists that evolution wasn't incompatible with Christian faith. "New knowledge leads us to recognize in the theory of evolution more than a hypothesis," the leader said. "The convergence, neither sought nor induced, of results of work done independently one from the other, constitutes in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory [of evolution]."
The man who said this was Pope John Paul II.
Stories that talk about the conflict between Darwin and religion often paint both sides in extremes -- evolutionists who don't believe in God and creationists who literally believe in the story of Adam and Eve.
But the pope's comments show that there's a lot of middle ground between Darwin and religious dogma. Not only is there is a rich variety of views on creation in Christianity but in all religions as well.
-- John Blake, "EVOLUTION & RELIGION: compatibility test. How the five major religions do and don't open their doors to Darwin's theory," in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, February 7, 2004
***
Let me pose you a question, not about God but about the heavens: "Why is the sky blue?" I offer two answers: 1) The sky is blue because of the wavelength dependence of Rayleigh scattering; 2) The sky is blue because blue is the color God wants it to be.
My scientific research has been in areas connected to optical phenomena, and I can tell you a lot about the Rayleigh-scattering answer. Neither I nor any other scientist, however, has anything scientific to say about answer number 2, the God answer. Not to say that the God answer is unscientific, just that the methods of science don't speak to that answer.
Before we understood Rayleigh scattering, there was no scientifically satisfactory explanation for the sky's blueness. The idea that the sky is blue because God wants it to be blue existed before scientists came to understand Rayleigh scattering, and it continues to exist today, not in the least undermined by our advance in scientific understanding. The religious explanation has been supplemented -- but not supplanted -- by advances in scientific knowledge. We now may, if we care to, think of Rayleigh scattering as the method God has chosen to implement his color scheme.
-- Eric Cornell, "What Was God Thinking? Science Can't Tell," in Time magazine, November 14, 2005
***
In one incident where the Church determined what was true and then demanded that science come up with that conclusion, Galileo was put on trial and his work banned for over 200 years. His heresy was that he had observed that the earth went around the sun and not the other way around. He also made the heretical statement that the sun was not a perfect body, as he had observed sunspots on its surface. Of course, his worst offense was that he wrote in the common language of the Italian people and not just in the Latin of the scholars.
***
A man who strongly believed that the world was created in six days also believed, just as strongly, that anyone who didn't believe creation took place in this way could not be a true Christian. One day his pastor asked him: "What does your belief in the way God created teach you about how to live your life?" The man thought about it and then replied that it taught him that God was creator and should be worshiped and praised. The pastor then asked: "If someone else reads the creation story and understands it as a poetical way of talking about what God has done, but still is moved to acknowledge God as the Creator who should be worshiped and praised -- are you really so different from him?" There was a look of surprise and comprehension that came across the man's face as he began to realize that two sincere Christians could disagree and still respect one another.
***
Stories such as that about the search for Noah's ark are examples of where science and belief are confused. In trying to prove scientifically that Noah and his ark really existed, folks are placing science as the ultimate judge of religious truth. Rather than affirming what they believe, they use science, or at least scientific-sounding talk, to be the final arbiter of religious truth.
AN ADDITIONAL RESOURCE
Making Man Out Of Monkey?
by Terry Cain
Psalm 8 (the Psalm for the Name of Jesus and New Year's Day) is an excellent starting point for approaching one of the hottest issues currently frustrating many people: the debate between evolution and intelligent design. The story of a discussion between a perplexed college student and his pastor may lead us into the heart of the matter.
Pastor Kate received a phone call one day from one of her church members who was a student away at college. Jamie was home on vacation, and he told Kate that he was struggling over an issue that not only came up in one of his classes, but also was one of the main topics of conversation on campus. An appointment was made, and Jamie came into the office the next day for a visit.
"What seems to be on your mind today, Jamie?" asked Pastor Kate.
Jamie quickly got to the point of his concern and told her about how the topic of evolution was being taught in his biology class. Whenever the subject was discussed outside of class, which was often these days, students were almost equally divided on the issue. Some felt that evolution was simply a theory, and a mistaken one at that. If evolution had to be taught in school, and apparently it was necessary, then they believed that the theory or idea that there was an intelligent agent, God, who had created our world and was maintaining it should at least have equal time. Jamie went on: "The other side claims that the creation story in our Bible is only a myth, and that evolution explains our world and there is no need for God."
"Well, which side do you come down on, Jamie?"
"Don't be mad at me, Pastor, but I kinda want to believe evolution, even though I was raised as a Christian to believe in God," responded Jamie. "And that's what's troubling me."
Kate picked up a Bible and handed it to the student. "Jamie, you seem to be caught in the trap that I believe so many people have fallen into today. If I hear what you are saying, you think that it is a matter of 'either/or'; that one side must be right and the other side wrong, and we must choose one or the other. Jamie, turn to the 8th Psalm, and let's look at it together. Notice the first verse that speaks about how glorious God is and how God's majesty is praised as high as the heavens. My friend, astronomy has revealed a universe -- heavens -- that is so vast and wonderful that it staggers the imagination. Our universe is so big that light from most of the stars left those stars before we were born and is only now getting here to earth for us to see it. And do you know how fast light travels?"
"We learned in one class that it was about 186,000 miles a second," answered Jamie.
"To put that into perspective, Jamie, if you turned on a flashlight, pointed it at the horizon, and could bend the ray of light around the earth, it would go around the world seven and a half times in that second. At that unbelievable speed some distant galaxies are so far away it takes millions of years for the light to get here. We know there are billions of stars in most galaxies and there are billions of galaxies in our universe."
"Wow, you really know your astronomy, Pastor," said Jamie.
"Instead I might say, 'I know my God,' Jamie. The third verse tells us how God put all these stars and galaxies into place. The terrific vastness of the universe -- infinite possibly -- tells me how great and wonderful is our God. All is so orderly and wonderful and awesome that it reveals to me a God that is the ultimate in greatness. Add to the wonders of space the wonders of our world close around us -- the marvelous eye to see, great music, the beauty of a rose, the power of love -- and God's design jumps out at us! What I am saying, Jamie, is that it is impossible for me to not believe in both, a form of evolution and God's hand in creation and maintenance of our universe."
Jamie thought for a few moments and then asked, "What about the creation story in Genesis and the world being created in six days?"
"First of all, Jamie, there are two creation stories in Genesis: one from Genesis 1:1 to 2:4a, and another one that begins at 2:4b and goes on. They do not agree with each other on the order or the details of creation. They are only symbolic explanations of the religious ideas about God's creation, and certainly were never meant to be scientific. Six days is a euphemistic phrase for periods of time. Such statements are not to be taken literally, just as we do not take Jesus' comments about camels passing through a needle's eyes and plucking out our eyes literally. By the way, you can recognize the two creation stories by the way Genesis has used a different term for God in the first story than the term used throughout the second story. I hope that all this helps, Jamie."
Jamie got up to leave, looked Pastor Kate in the eye, and said, "This has been very helpful. I am leaving this room with a universe that is more beautiful and a God that is far greater than the ideas I came in with! Thank you so much!"
Terry Cain is a retired United Methodist pastor who served his entire ministry in eastern Nebraska, including 25 years in Lincoln. He is the author of Shaking Wolves Out of Cherry Trees and Lions and Cows Dining Together. Cain is a graduate of Nebraska Wesleyan University (B.A.), St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City (M.Div.), and San Francisco Theological Seminary (D.Min.).
CHILDREN'S SERMON
A very important Sunday
Object: a photo of a newborn baby
Based on Luke 2:22-40
Good morning, boys and girls. I'm going to tell you a story about something that has happened to each one of you, although none of you remember it. One Sunday, very soon after you were born, your parents dressed you in very special clothes. Here's a photo of a newborn baby, who is also dressed in special clothes. (show the picture) I believe your parents made certain that they were dressed in very special clothes, too. They woke up early and brought you to church for the first time. If I'm not mistaken, on that Sunday, they were one of the first families in church. It was a very special day for your parents and for you. After the service, many members of the congregation made their way over to see you. Many of the members, especially the older members, wanted to hold you. They said many nice things about you. All those things made your parents feel very good.
Although you don't remember it, your parents do. After this event took place, your parents continued to bring you to church Sunday after Sunday. Eventually you grew old enough to come down in front each Sunday morning to listen to a story like this one.
Just as your parents first brought you to church, Jesus' parents did the same thing. They took Jesus to the temple. It was a very important event in their life, just as it was for your parents. When Mary and Joseph took Jesus to the temple something very special happened that they didn't expect. Two very old persons, named Simeon and Anna, were at the temple that day. They were very faithful to God. They knew that someday something wonderful would happen to them. It happened the day Jesus, as a baby, was brought to the temple. Simeon and Anna both held Jesus. They both praised God as they held Jesus. They told Mary and Joseph something special. They said that Jesus was going to be the person to tell the world about God's love. Mary and Joseph were amazed when they heard this.
Today, when church is over, ask your parents about the time you first came to church. Just like Mary and Joseph, your first visit to church was a very important date in your life.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, January 1, 2006, issue.
Copyright 2006 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 517 South Main Street, Lima, Ohio 45804.
The recent court decision in Pennsylvania banning so-called "intelligent design" from public school science curricula has brought the evolution vs. creationism debate back into the headlines -- and since this week's lectionary readings (especially Psalm 148) address the theme of creation, it's an opportune time to examine this topic from the perspective of Christian faith. As both a physicist and a pastor, Immediate Word team member George Murphy brings special expertise to issues of science and theology, and in this week's installment he helps to clarify some contentious issues and suggests that there need not be a conflict between scientific integrity and belief in the Creator. Team member Carter Shelley contributes another perspective, focusing on a literary rather than scientific approach to the subject of creation and biblical literalism. In addition to illustrations and a children's sermon, this installment also includes an additional resource -- a brief story detailing a discussion between a pastor and a student confused by the debate over evolution. (If you're interested in more stories like this, check out our sister publication StoryShare. Each week StoryShare provides several inspirational parables based on the lectionary texts.)
Can We "Let Heaven And Nature Sing"?
by George Murphy
THE WORLD
On Sunday, January 1, our celebration of the Christmas season will continue with texts including Psalm 148, which calls for the whole universe to praise God. As the popular carol puts it, heaven and nature are to sing to their creator. But just a few days before Christmas a federal judge ruled that the Dover, Pennsylvania, school board had been wrong in requiring that science classes include mention of "intelligent design" because that was an essentially religious claim about creation. (The full 139-page decision by Judge John Jones III is available at http://www.pepperlaw.com/pepper/pdfs/DoverOpinion.pdf.)
There don't have to be conflicts between the Christian belief that living things are creatures of God and scientific theories that describe how those things have evolved. In order to address the issues connected with intelligent design, and in particular to see if and how this week's texts can help us speak to these issues, we of course have to know what the debates are all about. There are two meanings that we might attach to "intelligent design," and therein lies the source of some confusion. The phrase can apply first to a fundamentally religious claim, the belief that the world and its parts are the creation of a deity who has purposes for them. In this sense intelligent design is something that's affirmed by Christians and people of other theistic faiths as well. Many people who refer positively to polls about intelligent design have this religious concept in mind.
The narrower sense of intelligent design (what is often abbreviated "ID") is the claim that we can infer from the scientific study of some parts of the world (and some biological systems in particular) that they are the results of intelligent design. Furthermore, it's argued that those systems cannot be understood without the concept of intelligent design, so the concept of intelligent design needs to be made part of our scientific theories. Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box (Free Press, 1996) argues that biochemical structures like oft-mentioned bacterial flagellum are "irreducibly complex" and cannot be explained by a gradual process of evolution, while William A. Dembski's Intelligent Design (InterVarsity, 1999) concludes that only intelligent design can explain the "specified complex information" in biological systems.
ID is not necessarily opposed to evolution. Some ID supporters accept the general picture of the development of life given by evolutionary theories and supported by a considerable amount of scientific evidence. But they argue that these theories can't explain all the relevant phenomena without the ID concept. Other ID proponents, however, reject evolution entirely and are more akin to those who espouse "creation science."
Many scientists think that claims about the inability of current theories to explain phenomena are overstated, if not simply wrong. We don't need to enter into those questions here. (Kenneth R. Miller's Finding Darwin's God [HarperCollins, 1999] can be consulted by those who are interested.) What is of more interest is the claim that the idea of a designer is needed to explain those phenomena.
It's sometimes said that the hypothetical designer might be some natural agent. But clearly that can only be a temporary solution to the problem of how complexity originated in the universe: we can immediately ask who designed those designers. The problem that ID writers pose for themselves is solved only if the designer is not a natural agent. In fact, it's clear from many ID presentations that the designer is supposed to be God.
There is, in other words, an inevitable religious component of the ID argument, as the decision in the Dover case stated. That presents clear legal problems when attempts are made to introduce ID into public school science classes -- though it would be possible to discuss it in classes on comparative religion or current social issues. Debates about intelligent design have been part of our culture wars for several years and are not likely to end soon. Christians, and especially leaders of Christian churches, need to ask first about the theological value of ID arguments. Right now, we want to see what insights the lectionary texts for this coming Sunday may give us.
Of course, a great deal has been written about evolution and ID in connection with the recent court case. A good short essay by Eric Cornell, a Nobel Laureate in Physics, appeared in the November 14, 2005 issue of Time magazine. (One of this week's illustrations is a brief excerpt from that article.)
THE WORD
Is there a conflict between belief that the world is the creation of a purposeful God and a rule that science should not appeal to supernatural causes to explain natural phenomena? That rule is sometimes called "methodological naturalism," and it means that, whatever their religious beliefs may be, scientists are not to appeal to God to explain what happens in the world. This should not be confused (though it often is) with "metaphysical naturalism," the essentially atheistic claim that there simply is nothing other than the natural world. Methodological naturalism is in accord with the way Christians have traditionally understood God normally to act in the world. God supplies our "daily bread," for instance, not by providing food miraculously but by acting with and through the natural processes of sunlight, weather, soil chemistry, and all the other things that make grain grow.
For this coming Sunday, the First after Christmas and also the Name of Jesus, we have several texts that relate to the idea of creation. They do not, however, speak about how God brings living things into being and sustains them. In fact, few biblical texts do. The emphases of this week's texts are different.
Psalm 148 (for the First Sunday after Christmas) could be called the "Hymn of the Universe," borrowing the title of a collection of essays by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (Harper & Row, 1965). In it the whole creation is called upon to praise God, from angelic beings down to "creeping things." Nothing is said explicitly about creative activity, but the idea that God is the creator of all things is implicit here. In accord with the old saying that "the law of praying is the law of believing" (lex orandi, lex credendi), our view of creation is first of all to be doxological.
Two things in particular deserve mention. First, the "waters above the heavens" are listed, an element of an archaic cosmology that we also have in Genesis 1:6. The praise of the creator by creation is expressed in terms of a picture of the universe quite different from that of modern science, in which there is no solid dome of the sky with a cosmic ocean above it. But this does not invalidate the call for the universe, however we may understand it, to express the praise of God.
Of course one might argue that the psalm is too anthropomorphic, that many of the things listed here -- snow and frost, cattle, and so forth -- can't really praise God. But then we note that human beings -- and finally the people of Israel -- are listed at the end. It is humanity, and particularly the people who have received God's historical revelation, who know the creator and can give voice to creation's worship.
God's historical revelation -- that's really the key. We are, after all, still in the Christmas season, celebrating what we believe to be the climax of that revelation, God's coming among us in the baby born of Mary. The gospel for this Sunday, Luke 2:22-40, tells of the infant Jesus being brought to the Temple and the inspired responses of Simeon and Anna. It is in this baby, not in any natural phenomena, that God is to be known.
That comes out perhaps even more clearly in the gospel for the Name of Jesus (celebrated on January 1), Luke 2:15-21. This festival isn't observed by all churches, but it's a natural follow-up to the story of the birth: A Jewish boy is baptized and given his name at the age of eight days, as verse 21 says. (It would also be easy enough to include that verse with the First Sunday after Christmas reading.) This particular name is significant -- Jesus or Yeshua, YHWH is salvation. He is the one in whom the creator and savior is revealed.
Jesus is, of course, pictured as a remarkable child in Luke. In verses 41-52 he will amaze the teachers of the law in the Temple. But he looked pretty much like any other Jewish baby boy of the time. Jesus doesn't, so to speak, glow in the dark. In verse 40 and again in verse 52 we're told that he had to grow. God came among us under the limitations of our humanity, and had to learn the alphabet and other things as all children do. This is the idea that is expressed in one of the suggested Second Lessons for the Name of Jesus, Philippians 2:5-11, which speaks of how the pre-existent Christ "emptied (ekenosen) himself" and took a servant's form.
This idea of divine self-limitation, or kenosis, has been used by a number of theologians to talk about the way in which God limits divine action to what can be accomplished through natural processes. (See, e.g., John Polkinghorne [editor], The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis [William B. Eerdmans, 2001].) If God's action in the world in general is patterned on the Incarnation in this way, then we would not expect there to be natural phenomena which cannot be understood in terms of natural processes. That makes ID claims about finding scientific evidence for a designer questionable. For further details I'll refer to an earlier article of mine, "Intelligent Design as a Theological Problem," which can be found at http://puffin.creighton.edu/NRCSE/IDTHG.html.
ID proponents sometimes call attention to texts such as Psalm 19:1-6 and Romans 1:19-20, which seem to speak of a knowledge of God which can be gained from nature. "Of course we can't be saved by such knowledge," they may argue, "but we can know by observing the world that there is a God who created it." The possibility of a natural knowledge of God and a natural theology has been debated extensively, but we needn't enter into those discussions now (grant for the sake of argument that that's what those texts are speaking about). The kinds of natural phenomena that the psalmist and Saint Paul had in mind must have been things that they and people of their time knew about -- which doesn't include the biochemistry of the blood clotting cascade (one of Behe's examples) or the mathematics of information theory appealed to by Dembski. So these texts aren't really relevant to the things that ID proponents claim as evidence.
Finally, Psalm 8 (for the Name of Jesus) gives us another view of creation, and in particular of humanity's place in the world. At first it seems a rather grandiose notion, that God has placed "all things" under our feet. Hebrews 2:5-9 points us in the right direction -- "But we do see Jesus." It is Christ in whom the words of the Psalm are fulfilled. Again, our understanding of creation is to be christological.
CRAFTING THE SERMON
How are we to preach on these texts in a way that makes helpful connections with the debates about ID and evolution in public schools? Most of you will probably be using the readings for the First Sunday after Christmas, but I would encourage you not to ignore those for the Name of Jesus entirely. There is a natural connection, and as I pointed out, it's simple enough to include Luke 2:21 at the beginning of the gospel reading for this Sunday.
There are, basically, two options if you're going to deal with the theme we've suggested: focus on the gospel reading or on Psalm 148. In the first case the emphasis would be on God's self-revelation in the ordinariness of a human child rather than in scientifically inexplicable natural phenomena. This does not mean that we need to ignore the concern of ID proponents about "naturalism," if by that we mean the metaphysical variety that denies the reality of God and God's action in the world. But the point we should make is that God chooses to be known in the natural: "We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know," as Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it (Letters and Papers from Prison, enlarged edition [Macmillan, 1972], p. 311).
And seeing God's presence and activity in nature is one way to approach Psalm 148. The modern scientific understanding of nature is not in competition with the doxological character of this psalm. We live in the twenty-first century, and the things that are listed as praising God are those things understood by science. It is the stars which are investigated by astrophysicists, the winds studied by meteorologists, the plants and animals observed by botanists and zoologists which are to express the worship of God, and human beings studied by anthropologists are to give voice to those praises.
The bacterial flagellum and the blood clotting cascade declare God's praise, just as a Bach cantata or a poem by Emily Dickinson praise Bach or Dickinson -- by showing forth their creator's wisdom and skill. And they do that whether we understand their details or not. One of the things that we want to convey is that our sense of awe and wonder at the universe as God's creation need not be threatened by advancing scientific understanding. The fact that we now understand the metabolism and genetics of living things doesn't make them any less amazing, and our knowledge of how stars shine makes them more, and not less, wonderful. If we can help people to understand this, debates about evolution won't necessarily go away: there are real scientific and theological issues to be considered. But Christians can participate in those debates without being defensive. Those discussions concern how God has created, not whether God has created.
ANOTHER VIEW
The Bible As A Faith Document Full Of Divine Truth
by Carter Shelley
With C. S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe still playing in movie theaters, let me suggest another way to discuss the issue at the heart of the "intelligent design" debate besides George Murphy's article about science, nature, and intelligent design. How do we read and understand the Bible? Do we read it literally or figuratively? Is the language of the Psalmist and the language of Genesis chapters 1 and 2 factual and in need of defense from biology teachers and atheists, or is it theologically true while simultaneously scientifically unlikely?
Such questions would have astonished and dismayed C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Madeline L'Engle. Each of these devout Christians and fantasy writers read and understood the Bible as a faith document loaded with truth -- but "Truth" with a capital "T" is not the same thing as fact. Christians who describe themselves as fundamentalist believe the Bible is literally true. Thus, Genesis chapter 1 records how God created the world in seven 24-hour days, and Genesis chapter 2 describes the fall of Adam and Eve, the first man and the first woman, from whom all humanity is descended. Some of the "intelligent design" proponents, as George notes, are fundamentalists and hold that every word printed in the Bible is literally true -- but what they really mean in making these pronouncements is: "These events are factually accurate to Christians and therefore should be taught in public schools." Facts and truth are not synonymous.
The video cameras that recorded the 9/11 attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Center offered a factual account of that tragic event. Americans and others experienced this event through the videotape televised throughout the world. Granted, we saw it through the lens of someone else's camera, so we saw it as the cameraperson filmed it, but its factual record was soon reinforced as we learned the names of the individuals who died when the towers collapsed. Information was added that verified these people's lives and existence. They had birth certificates, social security numbers, and, sadly, death certificates. Facts can, and are, interpreted, but post-Enlightenment modern culture has criteria for what is factual and what is not that most twenty-first-century societies share.
Lewis, Tolkien, and L'Engle understood the differences among fiction, fact, myth, and truth. The Genesis creation texts (not our lectionary texts for this Sunday, but definitely central to the ID premise) can and are read in each of these ways. An atheist might say these accounts are fictions made up to convince people there is a God who created the universe. A fundamentalist believes they accurately describe how God actually created the world. Scholars of ancient civilizations, classics scholars, and linguists like Lewis and Tolkien call these narratives myths. When the word "myth" is applied to a biblical text it is often heard to mean "fiction" or a lie. Yet myths often reveal truth more fully than do facts and eyewitness accounts. A Christian who reads the Bible as a faith document, that is, as a book that reveals to us truths about God and truths about humanity, holds to those truths as tenaciously.
C. S. Lewis found the fundamental truths of the Old and New Testament so compelling that he wrote six fantasy books for children that recount all of the Bible's major themes: sin, forgiveness, sacrificial love, greed, remorse, salvation, judgment, and so forth. In fact, the parallels between Lewis' world of Narnia and the Bible were so overt that his friend and colleague Tolkien disparaged the works as too obviously allegorical. It wasn't the truths the Bible contained that Tolkien objected to, but the overt way they appear in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and the other Narnia books. It's worth noting that Tolkien's objections have not been shared by the many children and adults who love the books. It's also worth noting that Tolkien's own masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, also contains numerous biblically based truths; however, the connections and identifications are less obvious and more thematic. Tolkien writes of good and evil, of darkness and light, but Tolkien also represents the multiple shades of gray and the many internal struggles a man, woman, or hobbit must face within his own soul. Both Lewis and Tolkien found ancient myths, legends, and fairy tales rich containers of truth and inspiration for their own research and writing. Neither man would have put such literature in the same category as the Bible. For each man, the Bible remained the central source of divine truth. As such, they understood it to be divinely inspired and always relevant to human faith and life, but it did not need to be factual in all details to be true in its most essential ones. ("God so loved the world that he gave his only Son," etc.)
In her nonfiction work The Rock That is Higher: Story as Truth (Harold Shaw, 1993), Madeleine L'Engle addresses the literalism vs. inerrancy view of scripture head-on in a chapter titled "Story as the Search for Truth." The exchange cited below took place between L'Engle and a member of the audience at Wheaton College, where L'Engle was a guest speaker. The subject the woman raises is the inappropriateness of a Christian writer -- a designation L'Engle resists -- writing about a "medium," one of the characters in her novel A Wrinkle in Time:
"You are writing about a medium," one woman accused.
"No, no," I said, "She's a happy medium."
She repeated, "You are writing about a medium."
"Meg was always accused of not having a happy medium," I explained, "so I gave her one. It's a play on words. It's a joke. It's funny."
The students thought it was funny. The questioners didn't.
"You are putting Jesus on par with Einstein and Buddha," I was told. The accusation was based on the page where the children are listing those on our planet who have fought against evil. They start with Jesus and then go on to name some of the other men and women who have sought truth. This, I felt, was completely scriptural, in accordance with the marvelous passage of Paul's:
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among brothers.
I tried to explain that no, I was not putting Jesus on a par with Einstein and Buddha, and I tried to quote from Paul and was interrupted with the reiteration that I was putting Jesus on a par with Einstein and Buddha until finally I had to say, "Please, will you let me finish quoting Paul," which I was able to do only with further interruptions.
When I managed to finish, the attacker simply repeated, "You are putting Jesus on a par with Einstein and Buddha."
At that I replied, "Lady, I am not putting Jesus on a par with Einstein and Buddha. You are." Which the students appreciated. It was true. I wasn't. She was.
But the saddest question of all was, "Do you believe in the literal fact of the Resurrection?"
I replied, "I stand with Paul: No Resurrection, no Christianity. But you can't cram the glory of the Resurrection into a fact. It's true! It's what we live by!" Had the questioner not heard a word of my talk?
***
As I reread the pages of Madeleine L'Engle's book, I realized that her insights into the distinctions between fact, truth, and faith are the ones that speak to me. Because my discipline of choice and training is literature and not science, L'Engle's insights help me understand and explain why the Bible's most sacred revelations about God, Creation, and Christianity are revealed most fully in the figurative language, poetry, metaphors, parables, letters, and heroes of the Old and New Testaments, and not through the "objective" historical-critical analysis of biblical texts. The latter are essential to biblical exegesis and good preaching, but they do not persuade either biblical inerrantists or intelligent design proponents to reconsider their views.
"Truth is frightening. Pontius Pilate knew that, and washed his hands of truth when he washed his hands of Jesus.
"Truth is demanding. It won't let us sit comfortably. It knocks out our cozy smugness and causal condemnation. It makes us move. It? It? For truth we can read Jesus. Jesus is truth. If we accept that Jesus is truth, we accept an enormous demand: Jesus is wholly God, and Jesus is wholly human. Dare we believe that? If we believe in Jesus, we must. And immediately that takes the truth out of the limited realm of literalism.
"But a lot of the world, including the Christian world (sometimes I think especially the Christian world), is hung up on literalism, and therefore confuses the truth and fact. Perhaps that's why someone caught reading a novel frequently looks embarrassed and tries to hide the book, pretending that what he's really reading is a book on how to fix his lawnmower or take out his own appendix. Is this rather general fear of story not so much a fear that the story is not true, as that it might actually be true?" (pp. 89-90)
"The Bible is not objective. Its stories are passionate, searching for truth rather than fact, and searching in story." (p. 93)
"One of the main discoveries of the post-Newtonian sciences is that objectivity is, in fact, impossible. To look at something is to change it and be changed by it.
"Nevertheless there is still the common misconception, the illusion, that fact and truth are the same thing. No! We do not need faith for facts; we do need faith for truth." (p. 94)
ILLUSTRATIONS
Nancy Murphy, who won the Templeton Prize for her work in science and religion, recently noted (in an article in the December 27 issue of The Christian Century) the following about current arguments on intelligent design:
"The intelligent-design movement has the unfortunate effect of promoting the view that science and Christian teaching are incompatible. I leave it to the scientists to get into the details of why ID fails scientifically. The more significant failure is its misunderstanding of divine action.
"Christians have traditionally understood God to act in at least two ways: by performing special acts (special providence, signs, miracles) and by constantly upholding all natural processes. The ID movement assumes that God works only in the first way. Therefore, to show that God has acted, the ID movement believes one has to identify an event in which no natural process is involved. This is their point in trying to argue that particular events in the evolutionary process cannot be explained scientifically."
***
David C. Steinmetz, professor of the history of Christianity at Duke Divinity School, comments in the same issue of The Christian Century (December 27) on the third-century biblical scholar Origen:
"In [Origen's] view readers should distinguish between stories that are both true and factual (like the story of the crucifixion of Jesus) and those that are true but not factual (like the parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son).... [T]he same is true for the account of creation. Origin could not believe that light and darkness existed before there were sun, moon, and stars.... These 'absurdities' (as Origen labeled them) were unsubtle hints from God that he wanted the account of creation read in an altogether different way, not as history but as truth 'in the semblance of history.' Truth embedded in 'the semblance of history' is truth conveyed through fiction. But truth conveyed through fiction is still God's truth; no one has an excuse not to pay attention to it."
***
Helmut Thielicke, in his book How the World Began, suggests that "Many people think ... that [God] can be found in nature, in a sun-drenched clearing in the woods, a sunset in the mountains, the sublime expanses of the ocean. But the strange thing is that even here there immediately arises two difficulties which hide the face of God from me. In the first place, the phosphorescent beauty of the sea does not tell me that I must change my way of life and that I have been unfaithful in my marriage. Nor does it ask whether I am wasting my life with pure trivialities or whether I have found the one thing needful."
Thielicke then reflects on a story of eight men trapped in a rubber boat after a plane crash, without water or provisions, in blazing sunlight and deadly loneliness:
"All of them, weatherbeaten men who loved the elements, begin to hate, really hate this torturing space between the ocean wastes and the blazing sky. All love and worship of nature completely evaporates. Nothing is left but a body- and soul-destroying desolation.
"Suddenly one of them begins to pray the Lord's Prayer. And strange to say, suddenly the desolate, destructive elements are transformed for them. They know that God has pathways even here, that he has one pathway to lead them to their earthly or eternal home. And they are filled with a great peace, even though their skin is peeling and thirst is repeatedly driving them to the brink of madness.
"What has happened here? It was not the grandeur of the ocean that revealed to them the image of God; on the contrary, here there were only visions of dread and mocking hallucinations. No, it was the Word of the Lord in the Lord's Prayer that suddenly drew near to them and transformed the ocean. It is not nature that opens the door to God. It is the other way around; God opens the door to nature."
***
In his poem "The Dog Inside Mine," the poet Alberto Rios speaks of the power of ancestry to influence the latest generations -- in animals or in humans. The poet hears in his dog's barking the echoes of the barking of all his canine ancestors.
Here is a selection from the poem:
The dog barks
Or is barked
By the dogs inside
The dark of him,
The black in his eyes,
The depths of his mouth,
Something from in there...
-- from The Smallest Muscle in The Human Body (Copper Canyon Press)
For copyright reasons, the entire poem cannot be reproduced here, but it can be found in the archives of Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac radio show for April 2, 2005. Click on this link and scroll down until you come to the installment for April 2:
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/programs/2005/03/28/index.html
***
For a brief study of the historical origin of phrases like "intelligent design" and "creation science," consult the June 17, 2005 issue of "A Way With Words," the e-newsletter of David Wilton, who runs the website www.wordorigins.org. For this issue, click on:
http://www.wordorigins.org/AWWW/Vol04/AWWW061705.html
***
In a 1996 speech, a Christian leader offered an endorsement of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The leader, a champion of traditional biblical teaching, told a meeting of scientists that evolution wasn't incompatible with Christian faith. "New knowledge leads us to recognize in the theory of evolution more than a hypothesis," the leader said. "The convergence, neither sought nor induced, of results of work done independently one from the other, constitutes in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory [of evolution]."
The man who said this was Pope John Paul II.
Stories that talk about the conflict between Darwin and religion often paint both sides in extremes -- evolutionists who don't believe in God and creationists who literally believe in the story of Adam and Eve.
But the pope's comments show that there's a lot of middle ground between Darwin and religious dogma. Not only is there is a rich variety of views on creation in Christianity but in all religions as well.
-- John Blake, "EVOLUTION & RELIGION: compatibility test. How the five major religions do and don't open their doors to Darwin's theory," in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, February 7, 2004
***
Let me pose you a question, not about God but about the heavens: "Why is the sky blue?" I offer two answers: 1) The sky is blue because of the wavelength dependence of Rayleigh scattering; 2) The sky is blue because blue is the color God wants it to be.
My scientific research has been in areas connected to optical phenomena, and I can tell you a lot about the Rayleigh-scattering answer. Neither I nor any other scientist, however, has anything scientific to say about answer number 2, the God answer. Not to say that the God answer is unscientific, just that the methods of science don't speak to that answer.
Before we understood Rayleigh scattering, there was no scientifically satisfactory explanation for the sky's blueness. The idea that the sky is blue because God wants it to be blue existed before scientists came to understand Rayleigh scattering, and it continues to exist today, not in the least undermined by our advance in scientific understanding. The religious explanation has been supplemented -- but not supplanted -- by advances in scientific knowledge. We now may, if we care to, think of Rayleigh scattering as the method God has chosen to implement his color scheme.
-- Eric Cornell, "What Was God Thinking? Science Can't Tell," in Time magazine, November 14, 2005
***
In one incident where the Church determined what was true and then demanded that science come up with that conclusion, Galileo was put on trial and his work banned for over 200 years. His heresy was that he had observed that the earth went around the sun and not the other way around. He also made the heretical statement that the sun was not a perfect body, as he had observed sunspots on its surface. Of course, his worst offense was that he wrote in the common language of the Italian people and not just in the Latin of the scholars.
***
A man who strongly believed that the world was created in six days also believed, just as strongly, that anyone who didn't believe creation took place in this way could not be a true Christian. One day his pastor asked him: "What does your belief in the way God created teach you about how to live your life?" The man thought about it and then replied that it taught him that God was creator and should be worshiped and praised. The pastor then asked: "If someone else reads the creation story and understands it as a poetical way of talking about what God has done, but still is moved to acknowledge God as the Creator who should be worshiped and praised -- are you really so different from him?" There was a look of surprise and comprehension that came across the man's face as he began to realize that two sincere Christians could disagree and still respect one another.
***
Stories such as that about the search for Noah's ark are examples of where science and belief are confused. In trying to prove scientifically that Noah and his ark really existed, folks are placing science as the ultimate judge of religious truth. Rather than affirming what they believe, they use science, or at least scientific-sounding talk, to be the final arbiter of religious truth.
AN ADDITIONAL RESOURCE
Making Man Out Of Monkey?
by Terry Cain
Psalm 8 (the Psalm for the Name of Jesus and New Year's Day) is an excellent starting point for approaching one of the hottest issues currently frustrating many people: the debate between evolution and intelligent design. The story of a discussion between a perplexed college student and his pastor may lead us into the heart of the matter.
Pastor Kate received a phone call one day from one of her church members who was a student away at college. Jamie was home on vacation, and he told Kate that he was struggling over an issue that not only came up in one of his classes, but also was one of the main topics of conversation on campus. An appointment was made, and Jamie came into the office the next day for a visit.
"What seems to be on your mind today, Jamie?" asked Pastor Kate.
Jamie quickly got to the point of his concern and told her about how the topic of evolution was being taught in his biology class. Whenever the subject was discussed outside of class, which was often these days, students were almost equally divided on the issue. Some felt that evolution was simply a theory, and a mistaken one at that. If evolution had to be taught in school, and apparently it was necessary, then they believed that the theory or idea that there was an intelligent agent, God, who had created our world and was maintaining it should at least have equal time. Jamie went on: "The other side claims that the creation story in our Bible is only a myth, and that evolution explains our world and there is no need for God."
"Well, which side do you come down on, Jamie?"
"Don't be mad at me, Pastor, but I kinda want to believe evolution, even though I was raised as a Christian to believe in God," responded Jamie. "And that's what's troubling me."
Kate picked up a Bible and handed it to the student. "Jamie, you seem to be caught in the trap that I believe so many people have fallen into today. If I hear what you are saying, you think that it is a matter of 'either/or'; that one side must be right and the other side wrong, and we must choose one or the other. Jamie, turn to the 8th Psalm, and let's look at it together. Notice the first verse that speaks about how glorious God is and how God's majesty is praised as high as the heavens. My friend, astronomy has revealed a universe -- heavens -- that is so vast and wonderful that it staggers the imagination. Our universe is so big that light from most of the stars left those stars before we were born and is only now getting here to earth for us to see it. And do you know how fast light travels?"
"We learned in one class that it was about 186,000 miles a second," answered Jamie.
"To put that into perspective, Jamie, if you turned on a flashlight, pointed it at the horizon, and could bend the ray of light around the earth, it would go around the world seven and a half times in that second. At that unbelievable speed some distant galaxies are so far away it takes millions of years for the light to get here. We know there are billions of stars in most galaxies and there are billions of galaxies in our universe."
"Wow, you really know your astronomy, Pastor," said Jamie.
"Instead I might say, 'I know my God,' Jamie. The third verse tells us how God put all these stars and galaxies into place. The terrific vastness of the universe -- infinite possibly -- tells me how great and wonderful is our God. All is so orderly and wonderful and awesome that it reveals to me a God that is the ultimate in greatness. Add to the wonders of space the wonders of our world close around us -- the marvelous eye to see, great music, the beauty of a rose, the power of love -- and God's design jumps out at us! What I am saying, Jamie, is that it is impossible for me to not believe in both, a form of evolution and God's hand in creation and maintenance of our universe."
Jamie thought for a few moments and then asked, "What about the creation story in Genesis and the world being created in six days?"
"First of all, Jamie, there are two creation stories in Genesis: one from Genesis 1:1 to 2:4a, and another one that begins at 2:4b and goes on. They do not agree with each other on the order or the details of creation. They are only symbolic explanations of the religious ideas about God's creation, and certainly were never meant to be scientific. Six days is a euphemistic phrase for periods of time. Such statements are not to be taken literally, just as we do not take Jesus' comments about camels passing through a needle's eyes and plucking out our eyes literally. By the way, you can recognize the two creation stories by the way Genesis has used a different term for God in the first story than the term used throughout the second story. I hope that all this helps, Jamie."
Jamie got up to leave, looked Pastor Kate in the eye, and said, "This has been very helpful. I am leaving this room with a universe that is more beautiful and a God that is far greater than the ideas I came in with! Thank you so much!"
Terry Cain is a retired United Methodist pastor who served his entire ministry in eastern Nebraska, including 25 years in Lincoln. He is the author of Shaking Wolves Out of Cherry Trees and Lions and Cows Dining Together. Cain is a graduate of Nebraska Wesleyan University (B.A.), St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City (M.Div.), and San Francisco Theological Seminary (D.Min.).
CHILDREN'S SERMON
A very important Sunday
Object: a photo of a newborn baby
Based on Luke 2:22-40
Good morning, boys and girls. I'm going to tell you a story about something that has happened to each one of you, although none of you remember it. One Sunday, very soon after you were born, your parents dressed you in very special clothes. Here's a photo of a newborn baby, who is also dressed in special clothes. (show the picture) I believe your parents made certain that they were dressed in very special clothes, too. They woke up early and brought you to church for the first time. If I'm not mistaken, on that Sunday, they were one of the first families in church. It was a very special day for your parents and for you. After the service, many members of the congregation made their way over to see you. Many of the members, especially the older members, wanted to hold you. They said many nice things about you. All those things made your parents feel very good.
Although you don't remember it, your parents do. After this event took place, your parents continued to bring you to church Sunday after Sunday. Eventually you grew old enough to come down in front each Sunday morning to listen to a story like this one.
Just as your parents first brought you to church, Jesus' parents did the same thing. They took Jesus to the temple. It was a very important event in their life, just as it was for your parents. When Mary and Joseph took Jesus to the temple something very special happened that they didn't expect. Two very old persons, named Simeon and Anna, were at the temple that day. They were very faithful to God. They knew that someday something wonderful would happen to them. It happened the day Jesus, as a baby, was brought to the temple. Simeon and Anna both held Jesus. They both praised God as they held Jesus. They told Mary and Joseph something special. They said that Jesus was going to be the person to tell the world about God's love. Mary and Joseph were amazed when they heard this.
Today, when church is over, ask your parents about the time you first came to church. Just like Mary and Joseph, your first visit to church was a very important date in your life.
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The Immediate Word, January 1, 2006, issue.
Copyright 2006 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 517 South Main Street, Lima, Ohio 45804.
