The Ongoing Debate: Science and Religion

Yesterday was Apple’s WWDC, and after watching the highlights, I was again in awe of what we are capable of producing through technology. It absolutely baffles the mind sometimes.

This feeling of awe in the face of scientific advancement is actually one I am quite used to having; I double-majored in college in Neuroscience and Philosophy, and spent two summers interning at a stem cell laboratory.

As a seminary student, now perhaps more than ever am I increasingly interested by the ways in which science and religion – contrary to popular belief – are capable of complimenting one-another.

Don’t believe me? Look no further than the recent offering of Dr. Curt Thompson, “Anatomy of the Soul.”

image and book made available, free-of-charge, through the Tyndale Media Network

We are told in Luke 10:27 to, “…love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”

Dr. Thompson encourages us to do so, not only by applying our mind in the scientific field, but by studying the mind and knowing it as well. Showing us how the mind functions in relation to emotions, relationships, personality, Dr. Thompson reveals that spiritual practices can enrich our mental capacity.

In discussing sin, the Fall, and the Resurrection, Dr. Thompson posits that spiritual transformation and renewal occurs in the mind as well as the heart.

Dr. Thompson also encourages the reader to love, mercy, and justice, and shows the neurological capacity therein.

Science and religion do indeed go together; through the advances of science and technology we are able to more clearly understand the world God has created, and therefore come to a better understanding of His might, majesty, beauty, and glory.

To be a fly on a wall in that room….

We read in Acts 9: 9 that following Saul’s encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus, he spent three days fasting at the house of Judas on Straight Street.

As a pharisee, Saul would have been very familiar with the practice of fasting and praying – though we can only guess if he ever pursued those practices motivated by truth and in a God-honoring fashion.

He goes to the house of Judas and – maybe for the first time – experiences what it truly means to be in communion and fellowship with the Creator of the universe in Spirit and truth, the God whom he has supposedly been serving up to this point in his life.

Now, if I could have been a fly on a wall in that room…..

For three days Saul communes with Jesus Christ. What does he pray about?

Does he confess his sins of pride? Does he repent of his sins of persecution the early church? Does he ask why God desired to use him? Did he seek wisdom and guidance for the next step in his life?

We read in the beginning of Galatians that Paul spent three years in Arabia (Gal 1: 17-18) alone, so we know his fellowship with Christ was sweet and fulfilling, and we can only imagine that these three days in Damascus were the beginning of that journey.

So why is it that I make it so hard to confess to God, to repent, to simply pray? Why is it a task, a job, a chore?

Here is Saul, infamous persecutor of the early Christian church, Saul who held the cloaks of those who stoned Stephen, Saul the man whom Christians feared the most, and what is he doing?

Here is gripped by the great grace of almighty God, doing nothing but devoting himself to eager, honest, and heartfelt communion with his loving Creator.

O God, teach me fervent prayer like your servant Paul.
Soften my heart like his, and may I always be hungry for Your truth and desperate for Your presence!

To have been a fly on that wall….

A brief interaction with anthropology: A discussion of the origins of man and the direness of his present condition

Some time ago – between six and ten thousand years – God saw fit to call into existence this world, desiring its inhabitants to exist in obligation to Him. He formed man in His image and gave him dominion over creation (Genesis 1: 26-28). We know what happened next: Satan tempted Adam and Eve, they ate of the tree, and as a result man is now disabled from serving and loving God to the extent He deserves (the disabling not removing the obligation). In the ensuing generations a great plague has taken this world in its grip, ensnaring it and refusing to let it go: famine, poverty, war, murder, and abortion cover the lands created and sustained by the hand of the Creator. What happened, specifically, that man is now seemingly lost, purposeless, and aimless?
Dr. Kelly, in Chapter one of his book Creation and Change, clearly puts forth the issue of origins, “The question of origins is one of the most significant that a person ever faces: where we came from is crucial to understanding who we are and where we are going.”  I submit, in concurrence with Dr. Kelly, that the issue of origins is essential to our examination of this world’s present condition.
It should appear to even the most cursory observer that man’s actions, whereby he permits disease, destruction, and desolation to come down on his neighbor both across the street and across the globe, are unbecoming at best and utter evil and worst. Yet, should one delve deep into the origins of humanity, I believe one would see precisely why man acts the way he does.
To begin our discussion of man’s origins it will be helpful to gain an overarching view of our present situation; for this I turn to noted Scotsman scholar Thomas Boston. According to his work Human Nature in its Fourfold State, Boston sees the past, present, and future of man as such:
“ First, What man was in the state of innocence, as God made him. Secondly, What he is in the state of corrupt nature, as he hath unmade himself. Thirdly, What he must be in the state of grace, as created in Christ Jesus unto good works if he ever be made a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light. And Lastly, What shall he be in his eternal state, as made by the Judge of all, either perfectly happy, or completely miserable, and that forever.”
In summation, Boston sees the history of  (regenerate) man as tracking through the stages of innocence, fall, grace, and glory. This means that when Adam ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, he plunged his posterity into the murky depths of the fall (we shall see precisely why his posterity suffered along with him later on). As a result, man has forgotten where he came from; he has forgotten his origins. To understand those origins completely, we must examine more deeply the Biblical account of creation to ascertain modern man’s state in light of his greatest ancestor, Adam.
On the sixth day of creation, God created man; out of the dust God formed Adam and breathed, “the breath of life,” into his nostrils. Adam was created in the image of God and filled with His very Spirit (Genesis 1: 26-27; 2:7). As created in the image of God then, all of mankind has access – in a limited fashion due to his ectypal nature in contrast to God as the archetype – to God’s communicable attributes. Of these we can include spirituality, knowledge, wisdom, veracity, goodness, righteousness, holiness, volition, freedom, and others.  Again, this is not to say that man displays these traits ultimately, but only insofar as they are components of his overall finite constitution.
In particular, Adam existed in a state of, “original righteousness.” Specifically, God placed him in a state of immature innocence, whereby he possessed true knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. Following the Fall Adam retained knowledge but lost his righteousness and holiness. Also included in the constitution of man are elements such as intellectual power, natural affections, and moral freedom. Man did not lose his rational and moral nature in the fall – these faculties were touched but not removed by the Fall.
Additionally, as created in the image of a personal God, man has personality. God, as a personal being, interacts with the other persons within the Godhead (for how can a personality be expressed unless one is in communion with other individuals?). And so man also has a personality, and interacts with other individuals in expression of this personality.
So, Adam was created in the image of God, and these were some of the defining attributes of that transaction. And as Thomas Boston has already alluded to, man did not inhabit his state of innocence long, but proceeded next to the Fall, occurring when Adam ate of the apple off the tree of knowledge of good and evil. But what does this have to do with Adam’s posterity – the human race – and how one individual treats another? To explore that we will delve into the relationship that existed between God and Adam.
Known as the Covenant of Works , this relationship revealed God both as absolute Sovereign and loving Father, seeking welfare and happiness for His dependent creation – man (specifically, Adam). God condescended to come down to man and willfully entered into this relationship to enable man in his pursuit of obedience. As a result of this relationship, Adam was given the task of being the representative head of the human race, enabling him to act for all his descendents.
This representation, known as the federal headship of Adam, means that when Adam passed from innocence into the Fall (having failed during his probationary period), all his descendents enter directly into the Fall. Adam was the representative head of the human race, and all humanity feels the effects of his actions; as Adam fell, so did all of mankind.
Now there are two topics in need of further investigation appropriate to our present discussion: the first is an historical and religious explanation as to the importance of one individual’s representation of an entire group, and the second is an application for what this means to us today. We will first consider the former.
Sociologically speaking, representation is the foundation of society, as understood through the Judeo-Christian lens. Family, church, and government all find their base in one’s representation of a larger group or organization. Community is a good thing, and representation gives order and structure to community.
To see its centrality to existence, one need to look no further than the Totalitarianism that plagued much of Europe for the early and middle parts of the 20th century. Dictators like Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini viewed the traditional modes of representation as a threat, and therefore saw fit to disenfranchise citizens from community through propaganda, only to crush their spirits on an individualistic basis.  “[I]t was not any German tradition as such but the violation of all traditions which brought about Nazism.”  Totalitarianism, then, ensures there is a solid, “distinction between the citizen and the individual;”  for herein lays the government’s ability to crush: When one is forced to exist and identify as an individual (as opposed to a citizen, a smaller part of the whole), they have no desire to oppose, rebel, question, or fight.
“In totalitarian states, neither army nor church nor bureaucracy was ever in a position to wield or to restrain power…No group or institution in the country is left intact, not just because they have to ‘co-ordinate’ with the regime in power and outwardly support it – which of course is bad enough – but because in the long run they are literally not supposed to survive.”
So why, then, is the traditional model of representation, found in society for a majority of history as established within the Judeo-Christian model of existence, threatening to the propagation of an evil like Totalitarianism? Removed from any mediating authority, individualized humans will look to the central, civil governing power of totalitarian dictators. The institutions that God has put in place preserve His creation for His purposes, and dictators desire to sever individuals whom they seek to rule from those protective boundaries.
Looking beyond the political and sociological implications of representation, there are obvious religious implications as well. Through the Covenant of Works and Adam’s federal headship, there is within all of humanity a binding factor of racial (as pertaining to the human race) solidarity. Beyond genetic linkage and genealogical inter-relation there is a deeper, spiritual connection of the human race.  As all fell when Adam sinned, so salvation is provided for the elect in a corporate nature; that is, so as one man’s actions condemned all of Adam’s posterity, so in Christ’s single expiatory death was salvation and life eternal purchased for His bride. The scriptural evidence for this concept is clear, concise, and overwhelming:
“Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned… For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous. ” (Romans 5: 12, 19 NASB).
“For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.”
(I Corinthians 15: 21-22 NASB).
God’s plan for redemption is corporate in nature, in that just as one man’s sin resulted in death for all, so does Christ’s singular death result in propitiation of sins and eternal life for the elect. As a result of this man, who suppresses the truth of God in unrighteousness (Romans 1: 18-32), would desire to act in opposition to any institution espousing divine principles, and as such, totalitarianism seeks an existence contrary those organizations having divine foundations – any unit of society employing principles of representation.
According to the purposes of this paper and the space provided, this should serve as adequate discussion of our first principle regarding the importance of representation throughout history and religion. However, there is still a second issue needing an unearthing, and that is how the federal representation of Adam has bearing on society today. Why? Because man has forgotten his origins; he has forgotten where he came from and where he is going.
“Western civilization is for the first time in its history in danger of dying. The reason is spiritual. It is losing its life, its soul; that soul was the Christian faith. The infection killing it is not multiculturalism – other faiths – but the monoculturalism of secularism – no faith, no soul. Our century has been marked by genocide, sexual chaos and money-worship.”
Man was originally created in the image of God, and following the Fall man retained the image of God within him. This truth is attested to by the commandments of God given Israel at Mt. Sinai, “You shall not murder,” (Exodus 20:13 NASB). Murder was an offense against the image of God in man, and thereby not permitted.  Man still retains the image of God within his being, yet he has forgotten this truth. “We live in a secularized society and in secularized, sociological law.”
Rather than realizing the truth and freedom of having been created in the image of God, man instead lives a putrid existence reveling in the self-glorifying reality of secular humanism. Francis Schaffer, in his Christian Manifesto, quotes the Humanist Manifesto: “Religious humanists regard the universes as self-existing and not created. Humanism asserts that the nature of the universe depicted by modern science makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values.”
When we forget Dr. Kelly’s statement as to the importance of origins, we descend quickly from a worldview whereby we view God as Creator, Savior, and Lord, to one denigrating God and placing man’s fallen, finite, fickle rational and logic on a pedestal of religious humanism, leading to desolation, destitution, and desperation within society. “But the dignity of human life is unbreakably linked to the existence of the personal-infinite God. It is because there is a personal-infinite God who has made men and women in His own image that they have a unique dignity of life as human beings.”  Man is capable of abuse, pornography, and abortion because he does not know his neighbor is created in the image of God. Man does not understand his nature is sinful and that he is negatively biased towards the Truth of God, and therefore cannot see the state of his own predicament in its entirety.
“They [man] have very gradually become disturbed over permissiveness, pornography, the public schools, the breakdown of the family, and finally abortion. But they have not seen this as a totality – each thing a part, a symptom, of a much larger problem. They have failed to see that all of this has come about due to a shift in world view [sic] – that is, through a fundamental change in the overall way people think and view the world and life as a whole. This shift has been away from a world view that was at least vaguely Christian in people’s memory (even if they were not individually Christian) toward something completely different – toward a world view based upon the idea that the final realty is impersonal matter or energy shaped into its present form by impersonal chance.”
Man’s worldview, then, is intricately and inescapably tied up in the issue of origins. He is created in the image of God, but lives as though he were not. He was intended from his very inception to live a life honoring and glorifying God. He has however forgotten that primary task, choosing instead to live according to a humanistic worldview. “Humanism is the placing of Man [sic] at the center of all things and making him the measure of all things.”
If man has made himself the center of reality, then he has no concept of his origins that – according to Dr. Kelly – are the foundation for understanding his existence. That he suppresses the truth in unrighteousness concerning the nature of his origin as created in the image of God means man does not know his true identity; if origins reveal who we are and where we are going, then man does not know who he is and he does not know where he is going. He is, in essence, living a life without purpose, direction, or aim.
In addition to aimless and purposeless, man can also be considered blind. In what is known as the two-fold knowledge of man, it is said that man can know very little apart from a knowledge of God, “Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.”  Knowledge of man and knowledge of God are inextricably tied up together, without one there is no clear picture of the other. Man is, therefore, without an understanding of his origins in God, blind.
With no inkling as to his whence or wither, man sets out in an attempt to determine the outcome of his life. He lives according to what he believes is right, true, good, and just. He also lives unaware that no matter how right, true, good, or just something appears to him, it is ultimately finitely so, and bears no eternal consequence, except to further align his path along the road to perdition.
His only recourse is an understanding of his existence in terms of his origin – his condemnation on the part of Adam – and his need for both the wholeness and the holiness Christ’s redeeming blood brings. Man is created in the image of God, and this is the most basic foundation for his worldview; without understanding he is created in the image of God – and coming to terms with all of the implications that follow from this truth – man will continue to live hopelessly lost and without purpose.
Unless man realizes his path was set for him by Adam and will only find resolution in Jesus Christ, he will continue to engage in a life concerned with little more than fulfilling his own wants and desires. Man will continue to perpetuate atrocities because neither does he realize the responsibility he bears as the crown of creation, nor does he recognize the image of God in his fellow man.  His disabling at the fall changed nothing in his obligation, man is still held accountable for living a life pleasing and glorifying to God, whether he recognizes it or not.
“We have to understand that it is one total entity opposed to the other total entity. It concerns truth in regard to final and total reality – not just religious reality, but total reality. And our view of final reality – whether it is material-energy, shaped by impersonal chance, or the living God and Creator – will determine our position on every crucial issue we face today. It will determine our views on the value and dignity of people, the base for the kind of life the individual and society lives, the direction law will take, and whether there will be freedom or some form of authoritarian dominance.”

**Please contact me for an annotated edition of this paper, complete with footnotes and references**