LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2016, Page 204

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IV. THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS­­—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS

scientific findings or to impose Christian interpretations on scientific facts,
thereby confusing the two realms. The result is often a curious mélange of
science and theology which draws fire from both the best scientists and the
best theologians.68
Niebuhr’s fifth model (“Christ transforming culture”) recognizes, to its
credit, that there is likely to be a great deal of apparent conflict when the ideas
of finite, fallen humans meet the transcendent Word of God. But rather than
distancing itself from science, like the Christ against culture approach, in this
view the solution is to transform and redeem science so that it honors Christ.
In one way this is very helpful. Science is not a self-sufficient enterprise,
but rests on frequently unexamined presuppositions. A transformationist, inspired by Paul’s admonition to “destroy arguments and every lofty
opinion raised against the knowledge of God,” and to “take every thought
captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5), may skillfully expose in secular thought
the presence of philosophical assumptions about the nature and purpose of
science which are antagonistic to Christianity. For example, it may reveal
the limitations of assuming “methodological naturalism,” a rule of scientific
procedure which asserts that scientists may infer only natural causes for
every phenomena. This may be a perfectly reasonable rule of thumb in many
areas of science, but when it is treated as an absolute criterion of knowledge it
excludes not only miracles but also God’s providential activity in all of nature.
However, just as transformationists may be tempted by the theocratic
impulse to Christianize government, so they may also attempt to Christianize
science once and for all. This makes the same mistake as the synthesis model.
In Niebuhr’s phrase, it “absolutizes the relative”: it attempts to find ultimate,
eternal, infallible truth in science which can only offer penultimate, temporal,
fallible conjectures and models. This is, in effect, an epistemology of glory,
one which tries to reach up and know God by reason. What is needed instead
is an epistemology of the cross, which accepts the creaturely limitations of all
our mental constructs and humbly receives illumination from above through
faith in Christ and His Word.69
In contrast to these other paradigms, the “paradox” model, attributed
by Niebuhr to Luther and Lutheranism, has several resources to develop a
more wholesome relationship between faith and science. First, since it does
not look to anything in this world as a source of final answers, it declines
68
Arguably, a good example of this is the theistic evolution of Denis Alexander and Francis
Collins, roundly criticized by both scientists and theologians in Norman Nevin, ed., Should
Christians Embrace Evolution? Biblical and Scientific Responses (Philipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing,
2011). The problem can also arise when studying the neuroscience associated with religious
experience, as discussed above.

scientism as offering what C. S. Lewis called “the sweet poison of the false
infinite.”70 In other words, the paradox model recognizes that, like all human
works, science cannot “save humanity” or “save the world.” But, second, the
paradox model affirms that science can indeed aid us in loving and serving
our neighbor, so that Christians have good reason to explore and employ
useful scientific theories and ideas, even if they contain some errors or are
misused by others. Rather than wholesale rejection or uncritical embrace, the
appropriate Lutheran posture to scientific theories is one of dialogue. One
may rightly criticize some aspects or applications of a theory while affirming
others. A theory which is false in its universal claims may still be helpful in
a limited domain. A Christian scientist should not accept that materialistic
evolution is the final and complete explanation of the origin and diversity of
life, of consciousness, reason and morality, for that denies the essential role
of God’s creative Word. But that does not prevent the scientist from using
the theory in more limited cases where it is empirically confirmed, such as
studying resistance to antibiotics or treatments for HIV. Likewise, one can be
skeptical of psychiatric approaches that rely almost exclusively on medication
(because, for example, they ignore spiritual factors or alternative, cognitive
therapies which accord the patient more dignity as someone made in the
image of God), while granting the value of drugs in many cases.
It is precisely because Christians have a place to stand, on Christ, who
is “the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8), that they do not
have to lean on their own understanding (Prov. 3:5–6), including science, as
a place for final answers. As Veith argues, this actually frees Christians to be
both more skeptical and more open-minded toward the world’s ideas than
the secularist.71 Having rejected a transcendent foundation, the secularist is
more likely to invest a favorite theory with a kind of religious significance,
sometimes precisely because it is thought to provide a substitute for God.
Thus Richard Dawkins approves of Darwinian theory in part because he
thinks it makes it possible to be “an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”72 Clearly
this is to make a much stronger claim for the theory than the fallible empirical
method and available data can support. This is no surprise, given the fact that
humans are inherently religious, and as Luther explains, whatever we set our
heart on and rely on for all good things is god for us.73
If we compare a scientific theory to a dance partner, the contrast is that the
secularist may inappropriately cling to that partner as a place of final refuge,
70
C. S. Lewis, Perelandra (New York: Scribner, 1944), 70. This phrase is also the title and leading
theme of chapter 1 of Gilbert Meilaender’s The Taste for the Other: The Social and Ethical Thought
of C. S. Lewis (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978 ).
71
Gene Edward Veith, Loving God With All Your Mind: Thinking as a Christian in the Postmodern
World (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2003).

69
For a brilliant discussion of the distinction between an “epistemology of glory” and
an “epistemology of the cross,” see Jeff Mallinson, “Epistemology of the Cross: A Lutheran
Response to Philosophical Theisms,” in Adam Francisco, Steven Mueller and Korey D.
Maas, eds., Theologia et Apologia: Essays in Reformation Theology and Its Defense Presented to Rod
Rosenbladt (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2007).

73
Martin Luther, The Large Catechism, Part 1.2, The Book of Concord, ed. Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000], 386 (hereafter KW).

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while the Christian can and should hold the partner only lightly. The partner
may be interesting and helpful, but it is not our spiritual spouse: that place is
already taken by Christ. Or, to use a comparison to an automobile, Christian
scientists should be happy to “test-drive” any scientific theory to evaluate its
merits, but they should see as folly any attempt to preserve that theory in pristine form (by dismissing or rationalizing away the accumulation of contrary
evidence) because it gratifies a displaced spiritual need.

Likewise, all the things God creates are what they are not finally because
of what they are made of, but because of His intentions and purposes. Thus a
scientific analysis of a human being into cells or particles will not reveal that
he is made in the image of God or is personally known by God, but the latter
remain part of the final truth about who and what that person is. In the same
way, a socioeconomic analysis of parenthood or work will not disclose the
truth that they are callings from God, and a psychological profile of a Christian friend will not reveal the fact that he is an instrument in God’s hands
to bring others to faith. And although modern science continues to speak of
nature as governed by laws, which suggests a personal lawgiver, its methods
cannot detect God providentially shaping all things to work together for good
for those who love Him (Rom. 8:28).

6. A Christocentric approach to creation
A major problem with many well-meaning attempts to understand
science in Christian terms is that they are implicitly deistic: God creates the
universe and governs it through laws, but is otherwise uninvolved in it. This
modern picture of a distant God and a spiritually empty nature is precisely
what Lewis lamented in The Discarded Image. It is not enough to connect a
“God of the philosophers” with nature. We should seek to recapture the
idea of a God who is actively present in His continuing creation, preservation and providential shaping of this world. As we have seen, the fact that
contemporary science may have little interest in this topic is no reason not
to develop a complementary theology of nature. And it may be that, as it
dialogues with scientific theories held lightly, there is mutual illumination
that does not distort the proper message and purpose of Scripture or science.
Paul tells us not merely that “all things were created” by Christ, but also that
they were created “for him,” and that “in him all things hold together” (Col.
1:16–17). This can be read as supplementing John’s account that all things
were created through the Word (John 1:1–3), by further affirming that Christ is
still personally present as the unifying thread throughout the fabric of creation.
This authorizes what Harry Blamires calls the “sacramental cast,” 74
which sees everything created by God as testifying to Him and governed by
His ongoing purposes. It provides a reason to resist the “nothing buttery”
attitude of scientific reductionism. This attitude reflects the assumption that
any apparently remarkable phenomenon is really nothing but something less
remarkable: for example, morality is nothing but instinct, life is nothing but
chemistry, and consciousness is merely a brain process.
In general the reductionist supposes that a created whole is nothing but
the aggregate of its parts, and that we have a complete inventory and grasp of
the parts. The Scriptures reject this view because we cannot fully understand
what something is except in its relation to God. Thus God tells the prophet
Jeremiah that He knew him before He formed him in the womb (Jer. 1:5),
implying that what Jeremiah is as a person known by God cannot simply be
reduced to the particular biological material formed during gestation.

74

Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (New York: Norton, 1986), 6.

Thus even where the reductionist paradigm works in science—and in
many areas it is spectacularly successful—it should not be regarded as providing the whole truth. Relative to certain parameters (e. g., what is a thing
is composed of or which of its properties can be measured quantitatively
using the senses or physical instruments) it may give a satisfying explanation of phenomena. But the tractable, the measurable, and the quantifiable
appearances of a thing do not exhaust it. In Kantian terms, noumena (things in
themselves) are more than phenomena (things as they appear to us in experience), and the Bible may often reveal to us deeper qualities of things than
science can discern.
As we have seen, it is dangerous and inappropriate to try to use science to
“prove” scriptural truths, as if Scripture is nothing but a disguised textbook
and as if science has final authority. But it is possible to point to scientific data
which, combined with reasonable philosophical assumptions, provide good
evidence for God’s involvement in the natural world. The evidence itself consists of highly specific information found in nature, which cannot reasonably
be explained by undirected, physical causes. Two examples of this are the
fine-tuning of the laws of nature for complex, intelligent life and the detailed
instructions for assembling living creatures found in DNA.

Fine-tuning
Since the 1970’s cosmologists have discovered increasing evidence that
the physical constants governing the four fundamental laws of nature (gravitation, electromagnetism, and the weak and strong nuclear forces) are not
arbitrary, but are finely-tuned to permit a life-friendly universe. For example,
as reported by Robin Collins, an expert in the philosophy of physics, “Calculations by Brandon Carter show that if gravity had been stronger or weaker
by 1 part in 1040, then life-sustaining stars like the sun could not exist.”75
Astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez and philosopher Jay Richards also note
75
Robin Collins, “The Fine-Tuning Design Argument: A Scientific Argument for the Existence
of God,” 2, available at: http://www.discovery.org/a/91.

Harry Blamires, The Christian Mind, 173f.

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2016 Convention Workbook

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