Time Immortal

Inigo Montoya’s phrasing just never gets old, does it? In this particular case, I’m applying it to a list of 20 “reasons” why evolution and the Bible are not compatible, published by Apologetics Press. The list seems, at first, to be quite persuasive…but as will become obvious, it should only be persuasive to those who know very little about both evolution and about the Bible.

I confess that such lists amuse me, if only because they again prove right the Augustinian teaching that “[u]sually, even a non-Christian knows something about the Earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the Sun and moon, the cycles of the years and seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men…. Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by these who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.”

Most lists of this nature are comprised of entries that reduce to one (or both) of two basic fallacies: ignorance of Scripture or ignorance of science. As we move through the list, then O Reader, let’s see if we can spot which error is the more prominent in each entry.
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Charles Tysoe writes in with some comments and questions concerning Dr. Denis O. Lamoureux’s new book, Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution, which I had previously urged the good Reader to purchase.

Full disclosure: you’ll be supporting Time Immortal by doing so, as I contributed a few of the illustrations to the book.

It’s an important work, for one simple reason: it demonstrates that faith and reason, science and Religion, can go hand in hand without any kind of conflict.

Depends on how you define the terms; Religion is a very broad field, Biblical Christianity a very narrow one.

DOL privileges scientific method as a hermeneutical sieve for what the Bible says about creation. There is no warrant for this epistemologically.

I would like to know just what is the “method-incident’ principle, where did it originate, who uses it? I looked up the indexes of the major works on hermeneutics cited and couldn’t see it anywhere. On Google I found six hits, next to nothing by Google’s standards; I found an allusion to its use by (some?) Roman Catholic writers on a Catholic blog.

What’s up?

DOL sent me a working draft (much shorter) years ago, I emailed him after listening to tapes of the pilot course he taught at Regent.

I don’t agree with his “science of the day” conclusions, they are very poorly supported.

Anyway, thanks for your time.

I’d really like to know about the method-incident principle. If you give me some references I’ll hunt them down.

I really think DOL has “reconciled” evolution, Christianity and Biblical “inerrancy with a sort of Mad Hatter (Lewis Carroll) method; “a word means precisely what I want it to mean”.

I’ve read most of Dr. Lamoureux’s papers online, including his most recent in PSCF. In another paper, I believe in Christian Scholars’ Review on Darwin’s religious beliefs I think he was very selective in trying to demonstrate that Darwin remained a Christian theist.

DOL seems most anxious on a personal level for evolution to be true. More so that other writers like F. Collins.

regards,

Chuck Tysoe

Who’s anxious? Evolution — the scientific theory, as demonstrated by the evidence — is true! Would that more Christians — even and especially Catholics — could accept this simple fact and get on about the business of understanding that there is nothing fundamentally conflicting or contradictory about accepting that human beings evolved from earlier primates and that all life was created by God (and the attendant belief that human beings occupy a special place in the order of creation because they have been made in the image and likeness of God).

Christians need to step beyond viewing “creation” and “evolution” as being concepts which one must debate between. To believe that God exists and that He created all life in the world is not the antithesis of accepting the extant evidence for evolution; truth cannot contradict truth, and as Christians in search of the truth we must strive to achieve a synthesis in regard to this issue. More simply put, we have to get over ourselves and drop the “debate model” approach to discussions of science and religion; we must understand that Biblically sound Christianity is compatible with the belief that a providential, present, creator God effected the creation of all life, including mankind, “through an ordained and sustained evolutionary process.”

Now, good Reader, what Chuck is referring to when he speaks of the “method-incident” principle is actually the “message-incident” principle. I’m honestly not sure whether it is a principle of Dr. Lamoureux’s own devising, or whether it has roots in other academic sources; the principle itself draws heavily, I think, on Aristotle.

In its broad strokes, the principle is thus: the Bible — all of it taken together, or any portion thereof — must be interpreted with attention given to two separate aspects that may be present in the text: the “message” or divine teaching that the text is attempting to convey to the reader, and the “incident” or phenomenological perspective of the writer. And although Google only reveals a handful of references to this principle in a formal sense, it should be noted that Christian hermeneutics actually make fairly heavy use of it in several respects already.

For example, when we interpret Ephesians 5, it is common to separate the “incident”al aspects of the text — some of which can seem sexist at first — from the theological “message” that Paul is attempting to convey, by illustrating the relationship of Christ to the Church through the imagery of the relationship between husband and wife. The purpose of the passage is not to convey a somewhat sexist message; it is to present a model of the way we relate to Christ, and Christ to the community of His faithful. But to understand as much, we need to separate, categorically, the teaching from the imagery used to present it.

I will go into more detail on this in the coming weeks, as I have obtained permission from Dr. Lamoureux to do a chapter-by-chapter review of his book. The principle under discussion is outlined in the book’s fourth chapter, and so I would instruct Chuck — any any other interested readers — to stay tuned as I work my way through the text.

In the meantime, I would like to address a few other points:

1. Chuck notes the distinction between the broader category of “religion” and the narrower category of “Biblical Christianity.” While this categorical distinction is correct, I find that I nevertheless bristle at the term “Biblical Christianity,” because I am used to seeing it used almost exclusively in a sola scriptura sense — and I reject, categorically, the validity of that particular doctrine of Martin Luther’s.

   The facts are thus: the Bible does indeed contain the inerrant, infallible message of God to His people. But the Bible is not the sole vector by which we can discover truths; indeed, the Bible tells us as much. In the Book of Job, chapter 12, it is said:

   [7] “But ask the beasts, and they will teach you;
   the birds of the air, and they will tell you;
   [8] or the plants of the earth, and they will teach you;
   and the fish of the sea will declare to you.
   [9] Who among all these does not know
   that the hand of the LORD has done this?
   [10] In his hand is the life of every living thing
   and the breath of all mankind.

   Is this not true? All things are of God’s making, but can we not look to these things to learn more about that wondrous creation? Will not the very Earth grant us to find answers, if we but seek them out?

   Science is — or should be — a search for truths about the physical world in which we live, and the physical realm with it occupies. That’s a limited category — and then a subset — of truth, but it is still truth in its own right. Logically, one truth cannot contradict another. So if it is true (and it is) that God is the creator of all things, and if it is true (and it is) that humanity evolved from a succession of “lower” life forms, then these truths must be compatible. It must be the case that God effected the creation of humanity in His own image through an ordained, sustained process of evolution. The Lord is creator. The study of the world reveals this to us, in that it reveals the manner by which the Lord effected creation.

   If we adopt the sola scriptura approach and bury our heads in the sand, refusing to acknowledge that there are other sources of truth that exist in addition to Scripture (if, that is, we bald-facedly ignore that “the heavens declare the glory of God,” among other things), then of course we will miss this point. But our missing out does not mean that evolution is incorrect; it means that we are incorrect. Christians would do well to keep in mind that just because we claim the Bible to be on our side in a debate does not mean that it actually is on our side, nor does it mean we are agents of truth.

   So I question what Chuck means by “Biblical Christianity.” If he means sola scriptura, he’s off base. If he means a Christianity whose teachings and tenets are in conformity with the teachings of Scripture, then I whole-heartedly agree with his categorization.

2. Chuck also notes that Dr. Lamoureux “privileges scientific method as a hermeneutical sieve for what the Bible says about creation,” and asserts that there “is no warrant for this epistemologically.”

   The first statement is essentially true, the second essentially false.

   In his book The City of God (or get it for Kindle!), Augustine of Hippo (St. Augustine) remarked on a matter about which would-be Christian evangelists should take great care:

   Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men…. Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by these who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.

   What Augustine is driving at here is that there are other modes of learning apart from the theological, and that even those who have not received the Bible can be very wise about many aspects of God’s “very good” creation, including at a scientific level. They may understand many things which are true about the natural world, its operation, and its origins. Augustine warns that it would be folly of the worst order for a Christian evangelist to such people to be seen “talking nonsense on these topics” about which the non-Christians may be wise, and instructs that “we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.”

   What does this mean?

   Well, at a basic level, it means that as Christians, we have to be wise not only about the teachings of Scripture, but also about what is being learned — by Christians and non-Christians alike — about the natural world through processes of inquiry. We have to be able to expand our own understanding accordingly, so that we can present the message of faith to those who have not heard it in a wise manner, so that Christ and His message of salvation are not, by proxy, “taken to task by these who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books.” We must not be “[r]eckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture,” who “understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.” For if we do, we bring no glory to Christ, but are in fact as a stumbling block for those to whom we are trying to bring his message.

   And we know what Christ says about those who cause others to stumble in their journey toward Christ (c.f. Mark 9:42).

   In other words, we have to admit, in our honesty, that what is true cannot contradict what is true. If there appears to be a conflict between the revelation of Scripture and the revelation of science, and if the revelation of science in question is amply justified by evidence and reasoning, then we can only assume that our own preconceived interpretation of Scripture must be incorrect in some manner. In that sense, we should indeed use science — including the scientific method — as a kind of “hermeneutical sieve” for what the Bible says. The alternative is to become “a disgraceful and dangerous thing…talking nonsense on [those] topics” about which others may well be very learned.

   And there is excellent epistemological warrant for this approach. Revising a hypothesis in the face of new evidence is a cornerstone of the scientific method (one kind of epistemic system), and the Bible likewise instructs us to apply wisdom in the interpretation of Scripture.

   For example, consider 2 Thes. 2:

   [13]But we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God chose you from the beginning to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth.
   [14] To this he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
   [15] So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter.
   [16] Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace,
   [17] comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word.

   We can see here that St. Paul actually places great importance on the Church holding fast to the traditions which the apostles taught to them. The traditions themselves go unspecified here, but the point is nevertheless that tradition forms an integral, necessary part of the practice of the Christian faith, and is itself a mode of teaching which the Church should strive to consider and convey.

   Right here, we see the rejection of all tradition as a mode of Christian practice to be unbiblical. Moreover, we also begin to see the seeds of something else emerging — Scripture is not the only teaching authority which Paul himself recognizes or suggests the use of (which further argues against sola scriptura). Turning, briefly, to Ephesians 3, we can also observe that Paul taught thusly:

   [7] Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace which was given me by the working of his power.
   [8] To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ,
   [9] and to make all men see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things;
   [10] that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places.
   [11] This was according to the eternal purpose which he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord,
   [12] in whom we have boldness and confidence of access through our faith in him.

   Here we see that Paul further expands the notion of where teaching authority, which would include interpretive authority over Scripture, is found: the Church itself is, in Paul’s desire, the means by which the wisdom of God should be made known to the world. This is confirmed in the first letter to Timothy, chapter 3:

   [14] I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these instructions to you so that,
   [15] if I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth.

   The Church — not Scripture — is “the pillar and bulwark of the truth.” That is a Biblical teaching. So let’s tie this all back. We have the Church as the pillar and bulwark of truth, the means by which the wisdom of God (expressed in the Word of God) is to be made known to all nations and peoples. That means that the Church must be possessed of authority to interpret Scripture (the Word of God), and that it should do so while holding fast (and thus considering) the traditions which have been taught to it (which, presumably, could include academic and scientific traditions, as exemplified by the Church’s operation of e.g. the Vatican Observatory in this day and age).

   This does not mean that Christians lack the right of private judgement, of course — each person must work out his or her own salvation with fear and trembling, as Paul noted. But it does begin to suggest that each Christian should establish a relationship to the Church as that of a student to a teacher. Right of private judgement, again, exists, as does the right of each person to interpret out of Scripture for him or herself. But that interpretation must ultimately be in harmony with the teaching and interpretation of that which is the pillar and bulwark of God’s truth, as expressed through God’s Word: the Church. And pace Augustine, it is thus on the Church where the responsibility of preventing its people from speaking the language of folly to the learned, about the workings of the natural world, is placed. And those of us who would seek to speak on such matters should take pains to ensure that what we say is informed by the traditions of the Church on the matter, including the excellent academic traditions thereof.

   Even if that means altering or outright correcting our interpretations of particular Biblical teachings because of scientific discoveries.

Anyhow, good Reader, do stay tuned: the book reviews will commence in the next few days.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!