LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2016, Page 214

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IV. THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS­­—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS

used to differentiate the good and bad parts of Scripture. A popular version
of this view is that Scripture is reliable in its theological and “spiritual” claims
(especially in its claims about how human beings may be saved), but not in its
“secular” claims concerning matters of historical or scientific fact.181
The combination of these two assumptions leads to the idea that reason
is the best instrument for distinguishing truth and error in Scripture. And
in science, it led to the view that a scriptural faith provides no guidance for
the scientist. Reason thus becomes the only judge both of God’s Word and of
God’s world.
Further, these assumptions lead to two troubling consequences for the
Christian scientist. First, it can easily seem that science is liable to prove Scripture wrong, which may either dissuade a Christian from going into science
for fear of what they may find, or lead them to compromise the faith because
they think that science has shown at least some of its claims to be simply
untenable. Secondly, Christian scientists may find it impossible to see how
their faith could possibly provide insight about how their professional work
should be done.
To be sure, Scripture does not claim to supply the techniques (or means)
of science (such as how to devise experiments or to test theories), but it does
not follow that it has nothing important to say about the nature and purpose
of science. To allow autonomous reason to make these latter determinations
may encourage Christian scientists to pursue their work in ways that make
coherent sense and yet are not God-pleasing because they violate His moral
boundaries for their vocation.
Over time, autonomous reason also encouraged the development of a
number of ideologies which are either hostile toward, or in significant tension
with, the Christian faith. Both historically and psychologically, the rise of the
idea that reason can manage to discover truth by itself is closely tied to the
idea that the physical world can manage by itself, in the sense that the world
is a closed system of law-governed matter. As we saw in the last chapter, this
materialistic view became increasingly prevalent during the Enlightenment,
and many claimed that human beings are no more than physical machines
passively obedient to physical laws.
Contemporary Christian scientists, who wish to pursue their vocation
faithfully in light of Christian truth, are strongly advised to study materialism. They should learn how to recognize its implications and critique its
assumptions, as this ideology has had an enormous impact on the main-

stream, institutionalized conception of what science is and does. While
materialism is the central dogma, radiating out from it are a variety of subsidiary views which reflect its influence in one way or another. So we will first
discuss materialism and then consider these further ramifications. Our goal is
to clarify what the basic claims are, why they are in tension with the Christian
faith, and how they can be resisted by a thoughtful Christian scientist.

a. Materialism
A worldview is an ostensibly coherent account of the world which
includes foundational assumptions of metaphysics (what is real?), epistemology (how do we know?) and ethics (how should we live?). As developed
in the modern period, materialism is a worldview which makes two main
metaphysical claims.182 First, it says that the bedrock of reality is purely
physical: at the foundation of all things, we find only the sort of objects and
forces disclosed by physical science, such as elementary particles and electromagnetism. Second, it says that anything else that exists is dependent on this
physical bedrock. Perhaps minds and moral values exist, but if they do they
reduce to, or at least wholly depend on (“supervene” on, “emerge” from), the
physical—and so have no independent reality.
In contemporary philosophy, there are three main kinds of materialists,
distinguished by how they treat phenomena that appear to transcend materialistic categories, such as consciousness, free will, the soul, and moral values.
Eliminative materialists simply assert that such phenomena do not really
exist: they are an illusion that will not be recognized in our “final theory”
of reality.183 Reductive materialists claim that the apparently transcendent
phenomena are actually identical to physical objects or states like brains
or brain states.184 Non-reductive materialists admit that these phenomena
are something more than the physical bedrock, but say that the phenomena
nonetheless supervene on or emerge from that bedrock.185
In any of these views, the physical defines the boundaries of what exists:
there cannot be any entities which are independent of the physical. Thus
(unless they radically redefine the concepts in ways that obviously differ from
182
For a recent, systematic exposition and critique of materialism, see George Bealer and Robert Koons, eds., The Waning of Materialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). For a
more accessible (but profound) critique of the central planks of materialism, see Thomas Nagel,
Mind and Cosmos.
183
See for example, Paul and Patricia Churchland, On the Contrary: Critical Essays: 1987–1997
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Bradford Books, 1999). For a more accessible account, see Patricia
Churchland, Touching a Nerve: The Self as Brain (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2013).
184
A prominent example is philosopher Jaegwon Kim. See, for example, his Mind in a Physical World: An Essay on the Mind-Body Problem and Mental Causation (Cambridge, MA: Bradford
Books, 2000).

181
This is the typical view of neo-orthodox theology, which seeks to protect the Gospel from
historical investigation by insisting that it belongs to a special realm of supra-history accessible
only by faith. In this view, it does not matter if the Scripture contains erroneous historical claims
as they have no impact on the Gospel. This view seems flatly inconsistent with Paul’s insistence
that if Christ was not raised, our faith is futile (1 Cor. 15:17). We will show the inadequacy of
this view as a model for biblical exegesis in the next chapter.

185
Probably the most famous proponent of this view is philosopher John Searle. See, for
example, his Freedom and Neurobiology: Reflections on Free Will, Language, and Political Power
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).

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traditional theistic beliefs186), materialists typically deny the existence of God
and the human soul, and they also often deny objective moral values.

non-existence of a non-physical being like God. Indeed it may be that when
we take a broader view of things, the best explanation of the human ability
to discern the natural kinds of creatures that populate nature and the laws
that govern their physical behavior is that God made these creatures and
laws, and also made our minds in such a way that we are attuned to their
discovery. It is important for the Christian scientist, therefore, to distinguish
clearly between primary and secondary causes. Most of the time, scientists
are engaged in exploring the immediate causes within nature (secondary
causes) of an interesting phenomenon. They are not looking for the ultimate
explanation of why such phenomena exist, why such phenomena are correlated with those immediate or secondary causes, or why such phenomena are
even intelligible to the human mind (primary causes). With some justification
scientists can often (if not always188) say that questions of primary causation
are the province of philosophy and theology. But the important point is this:
to the extent that science looks only for secondary causes of phenomena, it is
simply silent on the matter of primary causes, and so has nothing directly to
say about the existence (or non-existence) of God.

In the Christian view, God is a pure spiritual (immaterial) being who is
not composed of, or dependent on, physical particles or forces: God existed
as a wholly non-physical being before the physical universe even existed.
Likewise the soul is traditionally understood as an immaterial element which,
while designed to be integrated with a human body in a single whole person,
transcends the body, so that at physical death and before the resurrection, the
soul can exist without that body.187 Moreover, the objective moral values recognized by Christian theism are not derived solely from nature but ultimately
from the will of a transcendent, supernatural being.
A clear recognition of the direct incompatibility between Christian theism
and materialism is essential here because the influence of materialistic ideas
on contemporary science will often be unconscious. Most fundamentally, it
is easy to assume that science as currently practiced is able to disclose the full
truth about reality and not to notice that much of science aims only to detect
materialistic entities. Thus if such science by its very nature is not looking for
(or able to detect) God, the soul or objective moral values, all this should tell
us is that science (at least so practiced) is a limited instrument, not that these
transcendent entities do not exist. If science is not even looking for X (or is
unable to detect X if it is looking for it), the failure of science to find X tells us
literally nothing about the existence of X.
More specifically, consider each of the three kinds of being denied by
materialism: God, the soul, and objective moral values. All scientific observations and measurements depend on physical organs (such as eyes and ears)
and instruments (microscopes, telescopes, spectrophotometers, seismographs, etc.). These organs and instruments are (at least normally) directly
sensitive only to physical entities and processes. So if one focuses on the
immediate causes of an observation or a measurement, these will typically
be physical variables. But nothing follows from this about the existence or
186
Thus a process theologian or a pantheist may speak of “God,” but this is a reference to some
immanent feature of nature (or to nature as a whole), and not to a being that transcends nature
as in Christian theism. Likewise, some “Christian physicalists” may speak of the soul, but for
them the soul is simply the form or organization of physical matter, which is not what traditional Christian theists mean by the soul. Likewise, for consistent materialists, “moral values”
typically refer to properties determined by the capacity to feel pleasure and pain (as in Peter
Singer’s utilitarianism) or to the result of “reflective equilibrium” as we discuss our moral intuitions (as in Sharon Street’s moral anti-realism), but this is not at all the idea of a transcendent
moral law binding human behavior.
187
It is important to note that in the beginning God designed us as integrated wholes of mind,
body and spirit (1 Thess. 5:23), and that the separation of the soul from the body and our need
to be raised from the dead are consequences of human sin (Rom. 6:23). Thus the Christian
affirmation that God can maintain our souls in existence at physical death is a reflection of
God’s mercy despite our tragic disobedience. It is not, as in gnosticism, a picture of our ideal
existence. The body is not, as the gnostics taught, a prison-house of the soul: God intends to
reintegrate soul and body at the resurrection.

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2016 Convention Workbook

This is important because a number of atheist scientists have tried to
claim that science somehow disproves (or counts against) the existence of
God.189 For their argument to get started, these atheists would first need to
show that the science in question was looking for God and capable of detecting His presence. Otherwise, a simple response is to say that is not surprising
that scientists who were not looking for God and/or were not able to detect
Him found no evidence of His existence. If we investigate a windowless
room, we can find no evidence for the existence of the Sun. This is true, but
we also cannot discover any evidence against the existence of the Sun. This
is because our mode of investigation was incapable of discovering the Sun
even if it did exist. So it is worth asking such apologists for atheism exactly
why they think their theories and observations have any bearing on the issue
of God’s existence. Unless they can show that their investigations concern
the existence of primary causes, they are simply irrelevant to the question of
God’s existence.
Some similar points apply to the soul. Neurological observations and
measurements can reveal the state of the brain, as our senses and instruments
(such as various brain scanning techniques) are responsive to physical variables. But the fact that these observations and instruments are not capable of
directly detecting the soul is not by itself a reason to think that the soul does
not exist. To be sure, there may be broader facts about human cognition that
188
It is arguable that some areas of science make a consideration of primary causes unavoidable, for example, when science theorizes about the origin of the universe, or the fact that it
appears to be fine-tuned for both intelligent life and scientific discovery.
189
See for example, Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion; Victor Stenger, God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2008);
Lawrence Krauss, A Universe From Nothing.

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