By TC Lo (盧天賜); December 4, 2020
God can freely act in any way according to His will because He is sovereign. His ways of acting are oftentimes unfathomable. When it comes to God’s creation and governance, the Bible says, “For He spoke, and it came to be; He commanded, and it stood firm” (Ps 33:9). His actions do not necessarily have to be explainable in our scientific terms but it does not mean that they can never be. Whether God’s actions could be scientifically understandable or not, they will never contradict true science because God is the legislator of the natural law based on which science operates.
C.S. Lewis rightly remarked, “Men became scientific because they expected law in nature and they expected law in nature because they believed in lawgiver.”
But sometimes through the lenses of modern science, we can see the reasonableness and the greatness of God’s creation, because science also originates from God (Ref. 1). God can use science as a medium for His actions. Let us use the following examples to illustrate that God’s deeds sometimes can be harmonized with scientific explanation.
Example 1: The creation of human being as recorded in Genesis 2:21-22 can possibly be described in scientific (medical, in this case) terminology. Referring to the creation of the first woman, Eve, the Bible says,
“So the Lord God caused the man, Adam, to fall into a deep sleep (anesthesia); and while he was sleeping, he took (surgical incision) one of the man’s ribs and closed up (surgical stitching) the place with flesh (Gen. 2:21).”
Why removing the rib but not other part of the body? According to Dr. Leaf Huang (黃力夫), a professor of biochemical pharmacy in North Carolina University, who discovered that bone marrow taken from the rib contains the richest and most active stem cells of the human body. Stem cells are cells with the potential to develop into many different types of cells in the body.
The Bible continues, “Then the Lord God made (transgenic cloning) a woman from the rib (source of stem cells) he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man (Gen. 2:22).”
God used the rib taken from that Adam (the bone marrow has stem cells, in large quantity, and the most active) to cause (transgenic cloning; but there is no such phenomenon as prematurely senile observed in the case of the cloning a sheep, “Dolly” in the laboratory.)
One may also ask, why did God create man first and then woman? I don’t know, it is God’s will. But because men have X and Y chromosomes, while women only have X chromosomes so she lacks the genetic material of Y chromosomes to make man. So it makes scientific sense to make man first and then made woman out of man. This is also an unique insight of Professor Leaf Huang.
Example 2: Jesus’ suffering. “And being in anguish, he (Jesus) prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground (Luke 22:44)”
How could sweat contain blood? This could be explained by a medical condition known to scientists in the medical field as “hematidrosis” (hematic means “of blood”). This is not a common phenomenon, but is related to a high degree of psychological stress experienced by a distressed person.
The reason is that when a person is extremely anxious, some chemicals are released inside the body, which breaks the capillaries in the sweat glands. As a result, a slight bleeding is injected into the sweat glands and the sweat that comes out is dyed red. This situation would cause the skin to be extremely fragile, so when Jesus was beaten by the Roman soldiers the next day, His skin was very, very sensitive, making the pain even more unbearable. (Ref. 2)
Example 3: The Power of God’s Word. The omnipotence of God is often expressed by His Words and commands throughout the Scripture. Consider the following verses:
These were the words spoken by God through the angel to Mary: “For nothing is impossible with God. (Luke 1:37)”
“By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. (Hebrew 11:3)”
“For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm. (Psalm 33;9)”
The universe (matter) is created by God’s words (power or energy). Here we see the principle of mass-energy exchange in modern physics, E = mc^2 where E is energy (or power), and m is mass.
In Genesis, from 1:1 to 2:3, we read the phrase “For God Said” at the onset of each stage (or “day”) of the creation process. These “For God Said” can be construed as injection of information. God’s word is not just brute force like the destructive atomic bomb, but words filled with life-giving information needed for creating the orderly cosmos including organic things and human beings. On the “day” when Adam was made, this “For God Said” phrase occurred three times, indicating much more information was needed to make man than that which needed to make the organic and animal worlds. The fact that God’s deeds can sometimes be harmonized with science is because God is the author of science. He ordained natural law based on which scientists can make predictions.
In general, Christians believe that science and theology (faith) will not conflict with each other. But for those who adhere to “Strong Rationalism” insist that science and theology are incompatible with each other. Strong rationalism believes that “things that cannot be proved by scientific methods and logical reasoning are unacceptable.” The word “proof” in their mind refers to an emphatic evidence that no one with normal logical thinking can give reason to deny it.
This statement is actually self-destructive, because the statement itself cannot be “proved” by “scientific methods and logical reasoning” of its validity. Richard Dawkins and his party belong to this category. But for those who hold “Critical Rationalism”, there is room for dialogue. Critical rationality, however, refers to the “proof” that does not require “two plus two equals four” kind of strict affirmation, because it is impossible to prove things in this manner. For example, trying to “prove” the existence of God is futile. Even the Bible does not prove it like this, the Bible just makes authoritative claims or assumptions that God exists.
“Critical Rationalism” means that when people make different explanations to the same set of data, critical rationality only needs to compare each of theses explanations and see which one offers is the strongest Explanation Power so as to accept it to be true.
Such rationalism is acceptable to Christians—and scientists. From the above several examples, although we cannot really assert whether God actually acted according to the stated methods, it is enough to show that science and faith can be harmonious, rather than opposing one another.
In the same manner, some Christians adopt the “Strong Literalism” method of interpretation to certain scriptures. This too can lead to setting “science” against “theology”. This is not without precedence. The early Roman Catholic’s attack on Galileo’s “heliocentric theory” is just one example.
References:
- https://hocl.org/blogs/tincheelo/?p=513
- “The Case for Christ” by Lee Strobel; page 195.
