Both religion and science begin with a kind of faith: the scientist's belief in an orderly universe is like religious trust. Einstein made this clear: “I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and the noblest driving force behind scientific research. … The basis of all scientific work is the conviction that the world is an ordered and comprehensive entity, which is a religious sentiment.” This relates to the “intuition” Einstein credits with being a formative influence on his development of the relativity theories. So: science must assume order but cannot explain where it came from. If a scientist tries, he becomes a philosopher – or theologian!
The natural sciences show a passage from a mechanistic worldview dominated by “scale models” to a growing sense of the elusiveness of basic reality and a consequent reliance on metaphor. The most striking example of this passage is the short history of atomic physics, in which an original model of the atom, Bohr's miniature solar system, taken as scale replica, failed to function under certain conditions and had to be complemented by a quite different model, of energy quanta. Is this helpful for theology? The theory of relativity moved from Special Theory (1905) to General (1916), with physicists still seeking a Grand Unified Theory. Similarly, the Church began with its special theory of Jesus as the Christ (Council of Nicaea, 325) then developed a general theory of the Tri-unity (Council of Chalcedon, 381) but still has to work out a full doctrine of the Spirit. Would this be a universal Spirit to address the question of Pluralism? We shall consider this in our final column.
The West suffers from a cultural split – the common view in which science is seen as objective, while religion is reduced to something subjective. This dangerous two-tiered view loses the unitary universe of scripture, of classical thought, and of modern physics, which recognizes a world of continuous “fields.” God's interaction with us sets up, as it were, a coordinate system between two horizontal dimensions (our space-time continuum) and one vertical (our relation to God). This means that we do not try to use a divine Engineer (God of gaps and zaps) to solve our problems, but we cooperate with the Active Presence who is free to inhabit creation without denying our free will. The scientist studies the natural order, “causality,” but religion recognizes a divine will at work. It used to be said (e.g. in our Westminster Confession) that there are four causes, three natural or “secondary” and the final (and hidden) cause of all, God's will. But God works through second causes, so we should not look for miracles but rather exert our responsible stewardship – if there's a geological fault, don't build a city over it and blame God for the result!
In our one world we have different objects and subjects to get to know, in ways appropriate to their nature. The Austrian Jewish philosopher Martin Buber's famous distinction helps, between the “I-It” world which is objective, detached, passionless (it would be absurd to love a mere thing) and the “I-Thou” world which calls out the depths of my being as I relate to other persons, and all the more to loved ones – and absolutely to God. There may be two kinds of knowledge, but it is the same mind that thinks both ways, fully oneself only when related to human and divine being.
There can be no conflict between scientific and religious faiths, if they recognize their unity (along with the aesthetic) in explaining the world. The old warfare between them is surely over, and a fruitful dialogue between science and religion has arrived. Modern science could begin only when the order of Greek heritage combined with the dependence of Hebrew heritage to make a contingent order capable of experimental exploration. The Bible teaches that the universe is created, but its account of how this happened is not science or history but Saga (Genesis 1-11 – the first Hebrew appears in 11:14); hence arguments over evolution or intelligent design mostly miss the mark. To take these opening chapters literally (a very modern thing to do) means to reject evolution, to believe in an unbelievably huge ship, and to have languages originate at the Tower of Babel – you'd also have to accept the 17th-century Archbishop Ussher's notorious chronology: counting all the years in the Old Testament means that the creation occurred in 4004 BC (October 23!). But to understand the religious intention of this scriptural prelude is to see the world as divine creation, ordered and not chaotic – the point about Noah's ark is not animals but the eight people who were saved, the mystic number of futurity and hope.
Religion can also learn from scientific revolutions, like the radical shift in perspective from the Ptolemaic-Aristotelian to the Copernican cosmology. Just as the geocentric (earth-centred) cosmology was displaced by the heliocentric (sun-centred), so the new map of the universe of faiths must shift from a Christianity-centered to a God-centered picture of world religions. This makes God central and the religions like planets revolving around the Divine. Instead of assuming that Christianity is the centre, with other religions moving around it as errors, what if we see them all as moving around God, with their own varieties of faith and truth? Dear Reader, before you rush to judgment about false opinion (heresy), take a breath and think about this thesis. Judaism and Islam are cousins (Abraham as grandfather), Hinduism was born long before the Hebrews appeared, and Buddhism about the same time as the Hebrew prophets, both developing a faith that includes belief in a Saviour. So we need to listen to their witness (shifting from the old imperialism of mission (which assumed that we speak and they listen), comparing Saviours for instance – before expecting them to hear our part. Is there the same truth in their devotion as in ours? Are they rivals or partners or what? And (our newest hot topic): what does “uniqueness” mean in such two-way dialogue? More to come …
STUDY GUIDE
- How are science and religion related? Are they enemies viewing the world in opposite ways? Or partners helping us see things from different perspectives? Or separate and unrelated areas? See Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension (1966); T.F. Torrance, Space, Time and Incarnation (1969); J.C. McLelland, Ch. 5: “Science as Metaphor,” in Pluralism Without Relativism (2008), pp. 89-110.
- Do you agree that modern Western society suffers from a “cultural split?” which authorities dominate your own daily life and decisions? See T.F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology, (1970) “Emerging from the Cultural Split,” pp15-43.
- Is the distinction between I-it and I-Thou helpful? Think of how your relate to an object and to a person; do you experience a difference in your self in each case? See Martin Buber, I and Thou (1923).
- Read Genesis 1 to 11. What sort of literature is this? Given that until recent centuries the church read them as allegory, why did the “literal” reading develop? Gen. 1-11: www.bibletexts.com/verses/v-gen.htm
- Compare the two views of religions as being like the old Ptolemaic universe as compared with the Copernican. What are advatanges and disadvantages of such a shift? See John Hick, God and the Universe of Faiths (1973)
