Aug
19
A “Fundamentalist” View of Science and Christian Faith
“In 1909 God moved two Christian laymen to set aside a large sum of money for issuing twelve volumes that would set forth the fundamentals of the Christian faith, and which were to be sent free to ministers of the gospel, missionaries, Sunday School superintendents, and others engaged in aggressive Christian work throughout the English speaking world.” — from R.A. Torrey’s ‘Preface’ to the 4-volume edition (1917) of The Fundamentals (reprinted by Baker Books, 2000)
“Fundamentalism” doesn’t mean what it used to. Sure, essentially (pun intended) it’s a move back to the basics, the essentials, the foundational teachings and principles of a (usually) religious system. The Christian fundamentalist movement of the late-19th to early-20th century was in response to growing attacks on the claims of Christianity by secularists, skeptics, and the growing number of “liberal Christians” influenced by likes of Frederick Schleiermacher.
The Fundamentals (12 vols.)
What many Christians did who latched onto this “fundamentalist” movement over the ensuing decades was to become rather insular and withdrawn from society at large, develop a very suspicious nature about “science” and other “things of the world”, and adopt a rather legalistic and sanctimonious attitude regarding various behaviors. I’m not going to argue the pluses and minuses of such efforts, but it has resulted in the term “fundamentalist” (or “fundie”) now being used as an insult, even sometimes among fellow Christians. Not surprisingly, it carries the connotation of being backwards, ignorant, irrational, anti-science, and even just plain stupid.
But, that would not be true of all the original “fundamentalists”. I am speaking here of those who wrote the essays found in The Fundamentals, from which Preface I quoted above. These included very well-respected and learned men like Canon Dyson Hague, M.A.; Prof. George Frederick Wright, D.D., LL.D.; Prof. James Orr, D.D.; Prof. Benjamin B. Warfield, D.D, LL.D.; Rev. R.A. Torrey, D.D.; Rev. A.C. Dixon, D.D.; Philip Mauro, Attorney at Law; et al. These men were very engaged and quite familiar with the research and writings of the intelligentsia of their day. In The Fundamentals, they addressed a broad spectrum of topics: e.g., the inspiration and reliability of Scripture, archaeology, prophecy, the existence of God, the deity of Christ, the Trinity, various other theological doctrines of Christian orthodoxy (e.g, the Incarnation, atonement, justification, salvation by grace), missions, philosophy and various “isms”, and, of course, science’s relation to Christianity and the Bible.
It is this last area that I wish to focus on (as I often do) by citing a few excerpts from Orr’s “Science and Christian Faith” article (The Fundamentals, vol. 1, Ch. XVIII)….
From the opening paragraphs:
“In many quarters the belief is industriously circulated that the advance of ‘science,’ meaning by this chiefly the physical sciences — astronomy, geology, biology, and the like — has proved damaging, if not destructive, to the claims of the Bible, and the truth of Christianity. Science and Christianity are pitted against each other. Their interests are held to be antagonistic. Books are written, like Draper’s Conflict Between Religion and Science, White’s Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, and Foster’s Finality of the Christian Religion, to show that this warfare between science and religion has ever been going on, and can never in the nature of things cease till theology is destroyed, and science holds sole sway in men’s minds….
If by a conflict of science and religion is meant that grievous mistakes have often been made, and unhappy misunderstandings have arisen, on one side and the other, in the course of the progress of science, — that new theories and discoveries, as in astronomy and geology, have been looked on with distrust by those who thought that the truth of the Bible was being affected by them, — that in some cases the dominant church sought to stifle the advance of truth by persecution, — this is not to be denied. It is an unhappy illustration of how the best of men can at times err in matters which they imperfectly understand, or where their prejudices and traditional ideas are affected. But it proves nothing against the value of the discoveries themselves, or the deeper insight into the ways of God of the men who made them, or of real contradiction between the new truth and the essential teaching of the Scriptures. On the contrary, as a minority generally perceived from the first, the supposed disharmony with the truths of the Bible was an unreal one, early giving way to better understanding on both sides, and finally opening up new vistas in the contemplation of the Creator’s power, wisdom, and majesty. It is never to be forgotten, also, that the error was seldom all on one side; that science, too, has in numberless cases put forth its hasty and unwarrantable theories and has often had to retract even its truer speculations within limits which brought them into more perfect harmony with revealed truth. If theology has resisted novelties of science, it has often had good reason for so doing.”
On ‘Science and Law — Miracle’:
“[L]aw in the Bible is never viewed as having an independent existence. It is always regarded as an expression of the power or wisdom of God, And this gives the right point of view for considering the relation of law to miracle. What, to begin with, do we mean by a ‘law’ of nature? It is, as science will concede, only our registered observation of the order in which we find causes and events linked together in our experience. That they are so linked no one questions. If they were not, we should have no world in which we could live at all. But then, next, what do we mean by ‘uniformity’ in the connection? We mean no more that this — that, given like causes, operating under like conditions, like effects will follow. Quite true; no one denies this either.
But then, as J.S. Mill, in his Logic, pointed out long ago, a miracle in the strict sense is not a denial of either of these truths….
I do marvel at the assurance of any one who presumes to say that, for the highest and holiest ends in His personal relations with His creatures, God can work only within the limits which nature imposes; that He cannot act without and above nature’s order if it pleases Him to do so. Miracles stand or fall by their evidence, but the attempt to rule them out by any a priori dictum as to the uniformity of natural law must inevitably fail. The same applies to the denial of providence or of answers to prayer on the ground of the uniformity of natural law. Here no breach of nature’s order is affirmed, but only a governance or direction of nature of which man’s own use of natural laws, without breach of them, for special ends, affords daily examples.”
On ‘Scripture and the Special Sciences’:
“If the intention of the first chapter of Genesis was really to give us the ‘date’ of the creation of the earth and heavens, the objection would be unanswerable. But things, as in the case of astronomy, are now better understood, and few are disquieted in reading their Bible because it is made certain that the world is immensely older than the 6,000 years old which the older chronology gave it. Geology is felt only to have expanded our ideas of the vastness and marvel of the Creator’s operations through the aeons of time during which the world, with its teeming populations of fishes, birds, reptiles, mammals, was preparing for man’s abode — when the mountains were being upheaved, the valleys being scooped out, and veins of precious metals being inlaid into the crust of the earth….
The ‘six days’ may remain as a difficulty to some, but, if this is not part of the symbolic setting of the picture — a great divine ‘week’ of work — one may well ask, as was done by Augustine long before geology was thought of, what kind of ‘days’ these were which rolled their course before the sun, with its twenty-four hours of diurnal measurement, was appointed to that end? There is no violence done to the narrative in substituting in thought ‘aeonic’ days — vast cosmic periods — for ‘days’ on our narrower, sun-measured scale. Then the last trace of apparent ‘conflict’ disappears.”
Now, Prof. Orr did not hold to a strong biblical inerrancy and was also favorable toward a form of theistic evolution, so I clearly would have disagreed with him on some things. However, imho, he had some very good things to say on these matters. I hope readers will also see that he hardly fits the “fundie” stereotype.
