First published today on Network Norfolk:
In this age,
the most science-friendly, progressive and technologically enriched age, many
people believe that the world has little room for Christianity anymore. There
are two false premises here: first, that science can ever act as some kind of
substitute for Christianity; and second, that science is like our mother, and
Christianity is like an annoying cousin that will soon pass away and only live
on in the ashes of our memory.
Both premises get this wrong: Christianity is more like our parent, and science is more like its daughter. Christianity helped give birth to science - it laid down the truth-seeking, fact-finding qualities that would eventually help usher in empirical science, which began its infancy in about the 12th century, and has taken the shape of an upwards curve ever since.
Now, given what I've just said, this next part may seem counterintuitive - but that does not mean that we needed Christianity, or any religion, for science to come along. Science would have demonstrated its utility on our progress whether we were religious nor not. The fundamental reason for this is because science is only a tiny subset of how we interface with the world - it is like a daughter because it comes along after to explain things we've already partially discovered. It is like putting on a pair of glasses to give focus to an otherwise blurry vision.
Given that Christianity is explaining something outside of the purlieus of science, yet also heavily reliant on science as its canvas or substrate, it can only be enriched by science in the same way that other things in life are enriched by science - through explanatory methods. And we mustn't therefore put the cart of science before the horse of initial probing, because we usually find the causality is the other way around. Biblical accounts of salt preserving food from decay happened long before we understood how the preservation works. The same is true of canned food - we were putting food in cans long before we knew about how germs operated to food's detriment. We knew that penicillin kills bacteria long before we learned how it destroys the cell walls of bacteria during gestation.
But just as scientists were more the beneficiaries of new technology than the benefactors (and not the other way around as so many think), so too was science a beneficiary of Christianity, not a rival to it. There's no doubt that extremist religiosity has retarded the progress of science over years too, and that is a shame, because the rewards of Christianity and the rewards of science, while different in scope, are part of the same goal - improvement and transformation.
Whether science helps you cure a disease, travel to Africa as a missionary, print Bibles, speak the gospel through a microphone in an auditorium, feed the hungry or shelter the homeless, it is not a rival or a substitute for other human progressions. Similarly, the methods of science, such as empirical enquiry, logic, analysing data, and interpreting facts and test-based evidence are very much part of the domain of interpreting the truth of Christianity too. Even Plato said that philosophy begins in wonder.
Religious language sits on the border between the revealed truths and the truths still shrouded in mystery. It exists at the gateway between what is revealed and what remains mysterious. Theological language, such as that found in the stories, metaphors and allegories in scripture, opens the gate so that that which was too profound and complex to be fully expressed, could be partially expressed in hints of what is to come. This process is also central to the Incarnation, where God became a man in Christ in order that we could know Him and know the true depth of His love for us.
