Starting a Chapter on Christianity and Science with a Little Help from C.S. Lewis

I've been working on a new book about religions (in the plural) and science. As I move into the chapter on Christianity and science, I’m pondering this line from Stephen Prothero: 

“There is a persistent, unexplored bias in the study of religion toward the extraordinary and away from the ordinary. In the United States this bias manifests in a strong attraction (even among scholars who are atheists) toward hardcore religious practitioners….” Prothero, God is Not One

Nowhere is this more applicable than with Christianity and its relationship with, where too often the loudest and most strident voice is heard. The fundamentalists rage against “godless” evolution and the climate change “hoax,” while millions of believers have no significant problems with either. Though this approach makes good copy for the media, I won’t work for this book. 

Why don't we like talking about reasonable religious believers?

Fundamentalist approaches to Christianity can certainly ungird a "believe-no-matter-what-you-discover" approach to faith. Exploring questions becomes the much-dreaded "doubt." Nonetheless, unbelievers often supply the worst distortions. They assert that Christian faith is opposed to scientific reasoning. Consider this from the arch-atheist, Richard Dawkins, 

"Faith means blind trust, in the absence of evidence even in the teeth of evidence." Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

Here I bring in St. Clive, aka Clive Staples Lewis, to assist. (Nothing new for me about that!) Certainly, there are believers who have faith despite the evidence, but St. Clive, whose book, Mere Christianity, still sells millions and guides their understanding of the Christian faith, writes this,

Faith is “the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

That seems to be reasonable approach to faith. Faith is faithfulness to our commitments.

A word then about what this means for Christian faith and science... A reasonable faith, like the one Lewis presents, is one good historical ground for the rise of modern science in 16th and 17th century Europe. Of course, scientific endeavors flourished in the 8th-14th centuries in Muslim countries (a topic for another post). Still, this approach to faith and reason, to state it ever so succinctly, is cause of why the Scientific Revolution occurred in Christian Europe. Faith in the God who creates gives us an ordered creation to study. As the Nobel Laureate UC Berkeley physicist Charles Townes once noted (and as I've quoted before), 

"For successful science of the type we know, we must have faith that the universe is governed by reliable laws and, further, that these laws can be discovered by human inquiry." Charles Townes

That's a start to my chapter. More to come I suspect...

Translators

There is an Italian saying I heard quoted in almost every comparative literature class I took as an undergraduate: "translator, traitor"—or, because the Italian sounds better

Traduttorre, traditore

In the quip’s cynicism and brevity lies its power, but we know that translation is not entirely betrayal because it promotes the material translated into a new audience. And sometimes it creates alliances and friendships. Translation can even be an act of courage and even defiance—taking insights in one language and daring to put them in another. But it is demanding, and sometimes translation feels like working on the electricity in a house while the power is still on. 

As I think about it, to bring together science and Christian faith—or any religious commitment, for that matter—means we have to be committed to translation.

This definition of translation found here

As I pondered that that idea, I realized that my life has been about translation. The first time I pursued this task intentionally was in college when I majored in Comparative Literature. And a few years later, I tried to hone this skill through reading biblical studies in their original languages. In the process, I learned about eight languages (and sometimes even got close to mastering one or two). 

This, of course, is a literal form of translation. But, when I extend the term, I realize that, as a first year student at U.C. Berkeley, I was engaging in another form of translation. Having grown up in a religiously non-affiliating household, I became a Christian and found myself translating my Christian convictions into the language of a secular university. And then later, in my PhD, I took a deep dive into religion and science and worked at how these two could speak to one another.

The twentieth century Oxford and Cambridge scholar C. S. Lewis learned this in speaking about the Christian religion to a broad audience during World War II through, among other means, the British Broadcasting Company. (Later these "Broadcast Talks" were published as the widely bestselling Mere Christianity.) As he reflected on this and his various books for the public (meaning not the intellectual elites at Oxford, Cambridge, and the like), Lewis highlighted the theme of translation. 

"My task was therefore simply that of a translator—one turning Christian doctrine, or what he believed to be such, into the vernacular, into language that unscholarly people would attend to and could understand." C.S. Lewis

This change implied simplification that, for scholars, felt at times like betrayal. (It's no secret that his good friend and brilliant philologist J.R.R. Tolkien largely disliked Lewis's books of popular theology.) From Lewis's perspective, translation required less nuance in language and simpler sentence structure. For many academics, it also requires simplifying ideas, even rounding off some edges of scholarly controversy—this is of course contained in the negative connotations of »popularizer."

I mentioned above that bringing together faith and science requires a commitment to translation. Maybe it's partly a temperament, or at least an acquired taste. And I wonder if the opposite inclination is why some are drawn to promote conflict or independence between science and religion (I think of Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould and his non-overlapping magisteria): they just don't believe these two languages are translatable into the other's idioms. They don't accept, or believe in, translation. 

Maybe so. At any rate, it's those of us that promote collaboration between faith and science (or in Ian Barbour's words, dialogue or integration) that force us to translate. Or at least to try. Traduttorre, traditore. I hope it's better than that.

Thinking Scientifically About Scripture (First Installment)

This week I’m preaching lectionary texts. Which I usually don’t do. I mean, I don’t preach much these days, but I rarely use the assortment of four biblical texts assembled each week by the great lectionary committee in the sky. Or at some denominational headquarters on earth.

      I’m preparing to give some talks on science and faith and my new book, Mere Science and Christian Faith. Part of that is preaching… And I’ve discovered that that thinking scientifically uncovers some important insights into Scripture. Let me start with the first sermon text.

Slow God

Psalm 90, first of all, describes a God who is much slower than we’d like. And that fact tries our patience. This God is sometimes achingly ponderous in bringing justice, as Amos

The Heliocentric Model of Copernicus

5 cries out. (I'll get to this next week.) This slow God, we know today, makes sense of the long 13.7 billion year history of the universe, and our place within it. It means that ultimately, God is eternal—and slow to us. 

      We must view life—and I love this phrase!—sub specie aeternatis—viewed in relation to the eternal. It definitely contradicts a contemporary technological fantasy, what MIT professor Sherry Turkle calls “app thinking”—that some app on our smart phone can solve every problem quickly. 

      It also reminds me of when I heard former Fuller Seminary President and theologian Richard Mouw conversation with other theologians about creation and the way so many evangelicals hold, against the grand consensus of scientists, that the earth is 6,000-10,000 years old. In this group, there was a Catholic theologian who remarked, 

“Here’s the problem with you evangelicals—you want a fast God. But God is slow.” 

Mouw decided his Catholic colleague was right. And this indeed is the God of Psalm 90. 

      

Psalm 90

Here are a few lines from the 90^thpsalm.

¹ Lord, you have been our dwelling place    in all generations.² Before the mountains were brought forth,  Note here that that  “were yet born” (according to biblical scholar Hans-Joachim Kraus)—which certainly has an evolutionary overtone. (Cf. Job 38:8.)    or ever you had formed the earth and the world,    from everlasting to everlasting you are God.³ You turn usback to dust, Note that the return to dust echoes Genesis 3:19, which certainly connects with scientific evidence that we are certainly, at least, material beings and seeks to understand what that means.    and say, “Turn back, you mortals.”⁴ For a thousand years in your sight    are like yesterday when it is past,      or like a watch in the night.Note here two passages: Psalm 84:10, and especially 2 Peter 3:8, which heads in the opposite direction “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.”

More next week…

Next week, I’ll bring in what the New Testament adds to this mix. I’ll also comment on Amos 5 where he tells us that the God who makes the heavens ("the Pleiades and Orion") has sufficient power to care for the poor. That, my friends, is science and justice rolled into one.

Hope you enjoy this. Feel free to comment below!

The Dialogue on the Soul Continues

(I return to the dialogue on the soul with my philosopher friend from the post two weeks ago...)

Me: Wow, it seems like this conversation has gone on for awhile, but we're still strolling around Oxford! And since we're now in the library at Magdalen College looking at the "New Building," let me pause for a moment. I'll lay out four steps on how the concept of the soul developed in Christian thought, especially as we think about this in light of contemporary science, which has a great deal of trouble with a disembodied soul.

Philosopher: That sounds good. At least I'll be clear on what I'm disagreeing with!

Me: First of all, the Hebrew Bible (for example, Genesis 1-2) presents the human being as a unity of body-soul Generally, this is referred to as a “psychosomatic unity.” The natural state of human beings is thus to be in this unity. (By the way, some see a tripartite breakdown of body-soul-spirit, but I think they're mistaken, and the difference isn't essential to our conversation. It's the unity that's critical.)

Philosopher: I already see some issues, but I'll let you keep going and simply pose questions from time to time...

Me: Second, As the Jewish people became more interested in eschatology and thus resurrection, the teaching of the resurrection of the body became increasingly important. This is a bit more complicated because it implies a correlate A. Jewish psychosomatic unity needs to be distinguished from the immortality of the soul of some Hellenistic thought, most notably in Plato (but not restricted to him), where the soul fits more or less uncomfortably in the body, and the point is to release the soul from its prison. Nonetheless, I do admit Plato's dualism--and the many other similar forms-- is the perspective taken by many Christians today.

Philosopher: This is a dumpster fire--not just your ideas, but a real dumpster fire right

there. At  any rate, I think you're blaming a lot on Plato. Isn't he just a representative of that which has been believed everywhere, always and by all?

Me: There you go, you sly, sagacious, philosophical dog, throwing in an allusion to Vincent of Lerins! At any rate, I'll give a direct answer to your question: No. And this brings me to correlate B: There is no widespread unity of perspectives on soul in religions and philosophies throughout history. Something close to substance dualism—where there are two entities, “body” and “soul” that together make the human being, but that are, in principle separable—may be the majority opinion, but I’m not sure how one could know, and it is by no means universal. For example, Hindu substance dualism holds that the soul transmigrates through different lives into the different bodies (not all of which are human). In contrast, Siddartha Gautama (aka the Buddha) and many Buddhists do not hold this view.

Philosopher: Before we go any further, I have to ask you for a definition. We philosophers don't travel very far without defining terms.

Me: We have indeed now traveled to a pub that has the same name as one of my favorite taprooms in my hometown, Chico! How cool is that! Let's grab a pint and on the way inside, I'll offer a common definition of substance dualism: 

A form of dualism in the philosophy of mind that states two types of substances exist: the mental and the physical. It is a fundamentally ontological position: it states that the mental and the physical are separate substances with independent existence. (adapted from  http://www.philosophy-index.com). 

How does that work? I'm taking this to represent a commonly held view. In it, I want to emphasize the independence and separability of these two substances. This is inconsistent with biblical teaching and most Christian theology throughout history, despite whatever else you philosophers might conjure up. (Did I really just say that?)

Philosopher: That's a great idea--the pint that is--but I'm not sure why substance dualism is incompatible with Christianity.

Me: I arrive then at my third step: As the Christian church developed its ideas of the resurrection of the body after the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. It distinguished itself in some ways from a Jewish conception in which once the Messiah arrived the general resurrection would occur tout de suite. Christians realized that there was some intermediate state in between our death and the general resurrection, but that this was unnatural for human beings. This would be an unclothed soul (2 Corinthians 5). The texts are notably sketchy on what this is and point toward the mystery of what is to be revealed (1 Corinthians 15). Jesus’s resurrected body, however, allowed him to eat (Luke 24), which contradicts an assertion that he was pure spirit after the Resurrection.

Philosopher: Hmm... I can see we need to take some time to work out these ideas. But we've got time and wow, we've also got a really nice view! It's almost like we were transported from the Handle Bar, which has no view, to a rooftop bar on High Street. 

Me: You're right--it's almost like a foretaste of God will bring, in the twinkling of an eye, something unexpected, a whole new, higher view. At any rate, let me close with this, step four: Our ultimate hope is to be fully restored and unified human beings that are a unity of both bodies and souls. In the new heavens and the new earth described in Revelation 21, there are many activities that imply and require a body. That's what we long for: a new body-soul for the new creation.

Philosopher: I definitely see that there are several distinctions left to be drawn and a number of points of disagreement. No worries. I hope this is some ways a literal foretaste of our future hope and that our resurrected bodies will allow us to share a pint together in the life to come.

Me: We can definitely toast to that!

Sage Advice

Here’s a piece of sage advice:

“The easiest thing to create is a pile of garbage. Just throw a piece of paper in the corner of a room, and watch what happens in just a few minutes.”

Think about it—when some expresses an attitude that brings down an organization or a community, it doesn’t take long for others to follow. When you, as one particular example, create garbage discussions of faith and science, almost anyone can come along

and thrown in a piece of garbage advice.

Incidentally, I like this proverb better than the better known, “one bad apple spoils the whole bunch” (despite of course the Jackson Five’s contributions), which is essentially a more passive image. A garbage pile elicits active, if at times unconscious, contributions, but it demonstrates that we indeed play a part with our actions.

And that’s the problem with any number of societal ills and our discussion of them. Today, it often involves assuming a victim’s role in. And I’m tired of that. Because frankly, there are some true victims in the United States (which I know, to some degree, because my wife Laura directs our local ministry for the homeless in Chico). The true victims rarely get the mic, as it were. So if you hear victimization loud and clear, be forewarned.

Take our consistent cavils by our President about the “mainstream media” as if his cozy relationship with Fox and Friendsisn’t an alliance with a wildly popular news program. How can we, except by a certain perverse logic, describe this top-rated TV show as anything but mainstream? And then of course, the media outlets that dislike President Trump return the favor by ready themselves to spin everything to the negative and pronouncing a daily dose of everything dire.

Ah, it’s tiring…

That’s also the problem with the "conflict thesis" as the most accurate relationship of science and religion (first promoted by Andrew Dickson White and William Draper in the 19th century, and that still lives on today in Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins). When we start throwing garbage out there, it attracts other pieces of similarly useless opinion to be thrown in the garbage corner. 

That’s why I found this radio interview last week about my book, Mere Science and Christian Faith to be some needed oxygen. Al Kresta is a Catholic thinker who grasps the topic of science and faith with sensitivity and insight, which meant of course that he knows how to ask questions that push the conversation forward. Instead of into the garbage pile. If you want to here it, start at about 22:40 here.

Can we make a pact? Let’s be part of the solution and not part of the problem. Let’s not create garbage.

(And, by the way, it was my father—a true sound lay philosopher—who gave me this advice, and though he’s gone, who’s insights I still treasure.)

“Let Others Wrangle, I Will Wonder,” A Travelogue

Since the last post, I’ve participated in some truly invigorating conversations about faith and science, especially as they transpire in Christian congregations. These discussions raised various thoughts in my brain—conclusions, questions, and a few big insights.

            

Last week, I and my colleague on the STEAM project, Drew Rick-Miller, invited ten Christian thought leaders to Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena last week. Our task was to evaluate the 2011-14 Scientists in Congregations project, which paired a scientist and a pastor in 37 congregation in the U.S., Canada, and even Paris, France for purpose of integrating bring faith and science in the form of classes, conferences, sermons, small group discussions, and whatever other creative and productive formats they created. 

            

Among I heard many insights worthy of recording (though I won’t do that here), the resounding answer was that it—this integration—has to feel like it’s vital. I really mean vital, as in its root, the Latin vitalis “of or belonging to life.” Does this make a difference to my life, especially my life with Christ?

Sure, the ten core thought leaders we invited didn’t need to be convinced, but as a result one wondered if we were simply hearing ourselves in an echo chamber. If we let the echoes fade away, a lingering question speaks in the silence, Why would anybody else find this interesting?I used to denigrate this approach, but in order for this conversation to take place, it has to attach to some conviction, some interest, some need that’s deeply felt. 

More recently—in fact, Tuesday—the leading sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund curated a conversation at Rice University Religion and Public Life Project and brought together various thought leaders (including several pastors) to discuss her recent research and book on the topic of “what Christians think about science.” But it was much more. In the discussion, we considered why indeed this might be a topic of consideration for the church, which it isn’t entirely self-evident.

Again, there were so many notable insights, but I will only note my favorite quote from the day together:

 “Let others wrangle, I will wonder” (Augustine). 

I love that. Because there is a great deal of fairly loud static, whether it’s the shrill cries of Richard Dawkins “Belief in God is a delusion,” or the equally disturbing declaration of Ray Comfort that greeted me as I thumbed through pages a Santa Ana Airport store on my way to Houston and thus Rice University: “If evolution is true, then the Bible is false.” Just to emphasize the obvious--this was inside a public place not within the walls of a fundamentalist church. (See the pics.) 

At the heart of the church’s enterprise is to help us wonder at the mystery of God and at the beauty of creation. Let's not lose that in the midst of din of media voices.

Augustine of Hippo

And it was this great intellectual voice from antiquity, Augustine from the African city of Hippo, that carried our conversation toward something that we in fact needed: to move past the “conflict thesis”—the idea, promoted by Cornell founder Andrew Dickson White in the late nineteenth century, that religion and science have been, and will always be, in conflict. This was Fox News vs. CNN before television existed (which, by the way, I watched on the plane home). 

Certainly, some feel the conflict—and it needs to be addressed—but that’s not going to sustain the inherent question of wonder that drives science and interests those who don’t practice science.

“Let others wrangle, I will wonder.” 

That’s something worth remembering.