Introduction to Faith & Science

휌 ∇ ∙ 퐄 = 휀0 ∇ ∙ 퐁 = 0 휕퐁 ∇ × 퐄 = − 휕푡

Tyler Johnson

Summer 2012

휕퐁 ∇ × 퐁 = 휇 퐉 + 휇 휀 0 0 0 휕푡

퐅 = 푞(퐄 + 퐯 × 퐁)

Faith & Science ______6

Truth and Hermeneutics______7 An Exploration into Truth ______7 Hermeneutics ______8 Recommended Reading ______8

Worldviews & Cosmic Geographies ______9 Ancient Cosmic Geography ______10 The Aristotelian Worldview (~300 BC – 1600 AD) ______11 From Aristotle to Newton______12 Newton’s Worldview (1600’s to today) ______13 The Universe since Newton ______14 Final Thoughts ______15 Recommended Reading ______15

The Theology of Genesis One ______16 Egypt ______17 Israel ______17 Babylon ______18 Israel ______18 Similarities between Accounts ______19 Differences between Accounts______20 Conclusion ______21 Recommended Reading ______21

Evolution ______22 Background ______22 An Analogy ______23 Navigating the Extremes______24 Human Nature______26 Inside the Layer Cake ______26 Recommended Reading ______27

The Big Bang ______28 A Little History ______28

The Anthropic Principle ______29 Recommend Reading ______32

Time & Eternity ______33 Eternity ______33 The Nature of Time ______34 Time and Modern Science ______36 Putting it All Together______39 Recommended Reading ______39

Numbers ______40 The Problems ______40 Mathematics ______43 A Way Forward ______46 Epilogue ______47 Bibliography ______47

Eschatology ______48 Science and the Fate of the Universe ______48 Futility and Hope ______49 Continuity and Discontinuity ______50 The Science of Hope ______50 Eschatoi Logoi (Last Words) ______52 Recommended Reading ______52

Bibliography for Faith & Science ______53 Short List – for those who don’t want to wade through the pages below ______53 Web Resources ______53 DVD Resources ______53 General Issues in Faith & Science ______53 Creation ______54 Evolution/Genetics ______54 Neuroscience ______54 Eschatology ______54 On Biblical Interpretation ______54

On the History and Philosophy of Science ______55

Appendix ______56 The Unchanging God ______56

Faith & Science

The history of the Christian Church involves a tumultuous relationship with Science. There have been times of peaceful coexistence, times of mutual edification and times of passionate dissention. The crux of the matter seems to lie in the fact that both our religious faith and science claim to offer us truth, and not just simple truth, but deep truth that speaks to the core of who we are. In technical terms both faith and science make claims on defining our ontology (ontology meaning existence or being). There is naturally tension then if science seems to make claims upon us that appear unbiblical. But there is usually more going on than just a surface-level comparison. More often than not we bring to the discussion more than just bare scientific facts and pure biblical theology. To be able to properly navigate the tension between Faith & Science we need to understand some of the deeper issues going on.

So I offer, as a starting point, 5 Theses regarding how we should approach Faith & Science:

1. The Bible is not a scientific book. I say this carefully because it would be wrong to think that the ancient writers of the Scriptures didn’t make careful observations of the way the world worked; they had a ‘science’ of their day. However, science in our Western world has been so tightly defined that it would be wrong to assume that the writers of the Bible used the same methodology, assumptions and even were seeking the same sort of answers that modern science does today. 2. Both Science and Christianity offer truth. This is undeniable to the professing Christian. Certainly science offers us true statements and ways of understanding the world we live in. If we didn’t trust that science offered us truth then we would be unable to trust in the products of science: buildings, bridges, medicine, vehicles, computers, etc. But as Christians we also believe that truth is found in the Bible and in our lives with God. 3. Our modern worldview has been profoundly shaped by modern science. By this I mean that on a very deep level we think in scientific terms. We believe the earth is a sphere and that it, along with the rest of the planets, revolves around a stationary sun. We believe that the fundamental building blocks of our world are molecules and atoms. We tend to picture the way the world works mechanically. We even expect numbers to correspond to reality in a very quantitative, mathematical way. The writers of the Bible shared very few, if any, of these same presuppositions and thus we should expect them to have a different view of the world, at a fundamental level. 4. Scientists have faith. If, as the author of Hebrews says, faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen, then certainly scientists have great faith. Scientists find assurance in the fact that their methodology brings them closer to an accurate understanding of the way the world and the universe work. Many have great hope that one day science will lead to a complete understanding of everything. But they also have strong convictions about the existence of things not seen. Much of modern science deals with things that are too small, too far away, or too abstract to see and know completely. 5. Faithful Christians are scientists. By this I mean nothing more than that we make observations about the world around us and how it works. We may not use explicitly scientific methods, but each one of us gathers and interprets information about the world we live in. This is the essence of what science does. Humanity has been doing this from the beginning.

Truth and Hermeneutics

Colossian 1:15-17 – Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities – all things were created through him and for him and he is before all things and in him all things hold together.

An Exploration into Truth The following is an excerpt from Scientific Facts in the Bible: 100 Reasons to Believe the Bible is Supernatural in Origin by Ray Comfort (Alachua, FL: Bridge-Logos, 2001, p. 17). This kind of exmple pervades his book. What does this approach say about the nature of truth?

The Bible and “Lights”

God created the “lights” in the heavens “for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years” (Genesis 1:14). Through the marvels of astronomy we now understand that a year is the time required for the earth to travel once around the sun. The seasons are caused by the changing position of the earth in relation to the sun – “astronomers can tell exactly from the earth’s motion around the sun when one season ends and the next one begins” (Worldbook Multimedia Encyclopedia). We also now understand that a “month [is] the time of one revolution of the moon around the earth with respect to the sun” (Encyclopedia Britannica). How could Moses (the accepted author of Genesis) have known 3,500 years ago that the “lights” of the sun and moon were the actual determining factors of the year’s length, unless his words were inspired by God?

If we take Comfort’s approach then we run into trouble when the Bible says things that are undeniably unscientific in a literal way. For example read: Job 38:19-24, 1 Samuel 2:8, Psalm 93:1, Matthew 4:8. We cannot impose our understanding of how the world works upon the ancient writers of the Bible and call in holy inspiration. If we do, we diminish the Biblical writers and God’s inspiration; he is not just our God today. The Bible would have never made it to us, if the original readers, and readers throughout the ages, didn’t find truth in it. This means that before modern science, readers of the Bible found it to be true on some level. They would have never revered as Holy Scripture something that was utterly meaningless to them;1 ancient people saw the world differently than us, but they were no fools.

In Mark 4:30-32 (and parallels), we have scientifically untrue words coming from the mouth of Jesus himself! Orchid seeds are smaller than mustard seeds. What do we do with this text?

It is quite possible, even expected, that we would be able to describe some events in the Bible more thoroughly with modern science. We should also expect to find that some statements the Bible makes don’t make sense with modern science; it was written in a very different context. Neither of these makes the Bible

1 Ray Comfort suggests that “before the days of nuclear warfare, [Ezekiel 39:12-15] would have made no sense to the reader” (p. 44). Call me crazy but this approach seems to suggest that unless the Bible is scientifically verifiable, it cannot be true. And that approach puts the onus of truth in the hands of Science, not Faith. 7 truer or more false; we just have better descriptions of what could have been going on. I believe that we can trust in the truth of the Bible, but we cannot always trust that the Bible will agree with our Science. The Bible offers truth on a different level.

One of the key differences in scientific truth and Biblical truth is that scientific truth is shaped by the scientific process, which has a small amount of circular logic to it. Simply forming a hypothesis regarding the outcome of an experiment can easily blind someone to other truths that the experiment could reveal. Science can confirm theories, or suspicions, but it fails to absolutely offer the full story of reality. There will always be more to explore.

Hermeneutics All of this brings us to a discussion on hermeneutics. Hermeneutics essentially means ‘how we read the Bible’. It deals with the kind of presuppositions we bring to the text, or the lens through which we view the text. It is a fascinating subject to study because, as we all know, ‘hind sight is 20/20’ and from our perspective we can look back and see what presuppositions prior interpreters brought to the Biblical text and why, and thus what conclusions they came to as to what the text says. The harder part is seeing in which we ways we are biased towards a certain reading of the text, or the ways that we tend to ignore certain aspects. We will never understand our biases perfectly, but admitting that we all come to the text with some preconceived notions is an important step in being able to properly interpret the Bible. The idea is that the more we read the Bible attentively, trying to be aware of our biases, the more the Bible will reveal other aspects of our faith that we had previously neglected. For example, one can read the Bible and see how God demands Mercy and Justice, but this may blind them to texts like 1 Corinthians 6:7, 7:17-24. We tend to be myopic in our reading.

Thesis 3 suggests that our modern worldview has been profoundly shaped by modern science. If this is true then we will have some deep instincts to read anything, including the Bible, with a kind of scientific lens. We’ll get into this in more detail next week, but for now we must remind ourselves that we don’t read the Bible to find scientific facts. Instead of a textbook, I believe we do best to read the Bible as the story of God. A story about how God interacts with his creation, how God loves his people, how God has authority over every other power in this universe, whether seen or unseen.

Recommended Reading Jasper, David. A Short Introduction to Hermeneutics. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004.

Klein, William W., Craig L. Blomberg, and Robert L. Hubbard, Jr. Introduction to Biblical Interpretation. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc, 2004.

Polkinghorne, John. Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science and Religion. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.

Worldviews & Cosmic Geographies

Cosmic Geography – How a person/culture imagines the universe to be structured. “a culture’s cosmic geography plays a significant role in shaping its worldview and offers explanations for the things we observe and experience” (Walton 2006, 165)

Worldview – A deep, understanding about how the many facets of the life work together. Like a jigsaw puzzle that consists of many beliefs that together form a larger picture. “a worldview is not merely a collection of separate, independent, unrelated beliefs, but is instead an intertwined, interrelated, interconnected system of beliefs” (DeWitt 2010, 7)

This week we’re going to take a brief look at the history and philosophy of science. Essentially what I want to look at is how various cultures have understood the universe, from the ancient Near East (Israel, Mesopotamia, Egypt, etc.) to today. This should give us an idea about how much science has influenced our worldview and how much it has defined our assumptions, and how tenuous some of those assumptions may actually be.

To start, think about all you know about the structure of the universe. Like any other modern, Western person you imagine our earth as a spherical planet, revolving around the sun within our solar system. You are aware that our solar system is part of a larger galaxy and you’ve probably heard that there are innumerable such galaxies throughout the universe. However, if you were asked to prove any one of these characteristics could you? Unless you have flown in space, or flown around the planet, your basic observations of the shape of the planet would probably suggest to you that it was flat. This is pretty standard. My 5 year old daughter occasionally speaks as though the earth was flat. What would persuade her to conceive of it otherwise? Our language even shows remnants about this kind of cosmic geography when we talk about the sun ‘rising’ or ‘setting’. Those phrases are scientifically incorrect, but they point back to a time when the dominant worldview did not envision the universe as we do today.

Other cultures have not always shared the same worldview that we do. Yet, just like ours is based on (scientific) observation, every other culture has unconsciously developed a worldview that makes sense of their observations. And just like our current cosmic geography has improved upon previous ones, we have every reason to believe that we do not currently have a complete understanding of how the world works, and it is quite likely that there will be radical changes to our current cosmic geography and worldview in the (near) future.

As we look at previous cultures’ cosmic geographies it is important to remember that they had every reason to believe the world worked as they thought. As we look at ancient Israel it is important to remember that “Yahweh did not reveal an alternative cosmic geography to Israel” (Walton 2006, 175), or in other words, God did not speak to them about a world they didn’t understand. To suggest that the Bible speaks in terms of today’s science suggests that today’s science offers final truth.

Ancient Cosmic Geography “In the ancient world they also had a cosmic geography that was just as intrinsic to their thinking, just as fundamental to their worldview, just as influential in every aspect of their lives, and just as true in their minds. And it differs from ours at every point.” (Walton 2006, 166)

Structure

 Heavens are the place where the gods dwelt, they were divine  Waters above the sky (firmament)  Sky (firmament) is solid, it is the boundary between heaven and earth; it holds back the cosmic waters. It is held up by mountains.  Celestial bodies (sun, moon, stars) are all approximately equal distance away from the earth; they are below the firmament since they can be seen. Their patterns were noticed, constellations were named, and gods were often attributed to the celestial bodies.  Earth, a single continent, and a flat disk.  The sea is conceived as one body of water, above, below and surrounding the earth.  Below the earth is the netherworld, the place of the dead, entrance is through the grave.

“Beyond this physical description, it is important to realize that their cosmic geography was predominantly metaphysical…The role and manifestations of the gods in the cosmic geography was primary.” (Walton 2006, 167) Figure 1 - The Universe according to Ancient Near East Culture

The Aristotelian Worldview (~300 BC – 1600 AD) Aristotle yielded the next coherent worldview, which nature to it; cold’s natural place was at the center of the universe while hot’s dominated the Western world from approximately 300 BC to 1600 was at the periphery. Earth was naturally drawn to the center of the universe AD. It grew out of Greek philosophy and thus had some assumptions and thus earthen object fell to earth. Water was similar to earth, but not that we may not agree with, such as that the universe is eternal. It quite as heavy. Fire’s natural place was in the sky so it would rise. Air was like was a violation of Greek logic for something to come from nothing fire, but not quite as light. (remember that Paul wrote Col. 1:15-17 within this culture). This framework allowed Aristotle to explain why heavy things fall (what Structure we call gravity) and why things such as fire rise. It was quite ingenious.

 Earth is center of universe (universe is a sphere)  Earth is spherical  Astral bodies in order of distance from earth. These 7 look similar to the naked eye, but move across the sky differently than the rest of the stars. o Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn  Heavenly bodies revolved around the earth  Heavenly realm (beyond the moon) is eternal and does not change  Earthly realm (below the moon) is temporal and suffers birth, death and transience

Aristotle saw the universe as being teleological (that is having a goal, purpose or function) and essentialistic (that is objects have essential natures that cause them to behave in certain ways). He also believed in four earthly elements: Earth, Water, Air and Fire. And the quintessence, or ether, a fifth element that pervaded the heavenly realm (there was no concept of void space).

Aristotle defined these in terms of the dichotomies hot-cold and Figure 2 - Aristotle's Cosmic Geography wet-dry. Thus, Earth = cold & dry, Water = cold & wet, Air = hot & wet, Fire = hot & dry. Each of these elements had an essential 11

From Aristotle to Newton Over the years as people made more detailed examinations about how the stars moved and how the sun, moon, and planets moved, it became clear that there were holes in Aristotle’s conception of the universe.

In the 1500’s Copernicus published his sun-centered theory of the universe. In the early 1600’s AD Johannes Kepler described the movement of the planets in terms of ellipses. While neither of these scientists offered a coherent worldview, they offered theoretical challenges to how their cultures had conceived of the universe for centuries.

It was Galileo (1564-1642), using the new telescope, who offered the empirical evidence for the theories of Copernicus and Kepler. Galileo is well known for his debacle with the Catholic church and I want to note a couple of things. First, Galileo released his findings decades after the Protestant Reformation, so the Catholic church was in the mode of rejecting new ideas. Second, Galileo’s work seemed to prove that the earth wasn’t the center of the universe, and an earth-centered universe seemed to cohere with some Biblical passages. Third, if the earth was no longer the center of the universe, what did that mean for the nature of mankind? The religious system had operated for centuries under the assumption that the earth was the center of the universe and that must have had implications for the kind of special role that mankind had in God’s creation. If the earth was just one of many objects orbiting the sun, then what was humanity’s role in the universe?

In summary, here are some of the issues that challenged the Aristotelian worldview2:

 If the earth is rotating on an axis, and revolving around the sun, what keeps us on the earth and why do heavy things fall?  What keeps the earth in motion?  Why do we not notice the effects of the great speed at which the earth is moving?  Why do the planets move with variable speeds?  Just how big is the universe?

In Aristotle’s worldview objects behaved because of internal, essential natures. With Newton’s new science “objects no longer behave because of internal essences; rather, objects behave as they do largely because of the influence of external forces”. “In short, the teleological and essentialistic view of the universe, which went hand in hand with the science of the Aristotelian worldview, is replaced by a mechanistic, machine-like view of the universe, which goes hand in hand with the new science.” With this conceptual change about the nature of the universe people’s view of God changed as well. “Although the details of the conception of God changed during the Aristotelian worldview, one central Aristotelian conception remained: the idea that God was a necessary component in the minute-to-minute workings of the universe. In other words, in the Aristotelian worldview, God, or something like God, was needed for scientific reason, that is, as a constant source of the motion of the heavenly bodies.” With Newton’s new science there was no need for God’s continual involvement in the world. His laws of motion and universal gravity explained why things moved and behaved as they did. “God came to be viewed as a sort of watchmaker-God, this is, one who designed and constructed the universe, and set the universe in motion.” (DeWitt 2010, 178-179)

2 Adapted from (DeWitt 2010, 165-167) 12

Newton’s Worldview (1600’s to today) In 1687 Sir Isaac Newton published his Mathematical Principles of Universal Gravitation is the idea that everything that has mass exerts a Natural Philosophy, or Principia. This work finally offered a coherent gravitational force on everything else, proportional to its mass. Thus picture of how to understand the universe considering the challenges the huge, massive sun attracts the planets into orbits. The earth’s that faced Aristotle’s worldview. Newton finally made sense of the new mass keeps the moon in orbit and the moon’s mass causes the data. We have been raised with Newton’s worldview and his earth’s tides. understanding of the universe pervades ours, with few exceptions. Again this coincides well with our understanding of how things Core to Newton’s finding are the three Laws of Motion and the work since we, our parents, and grandparents all grew up learning about principle of universal gravitation. These are: the world through Newton’s paradigm.

 1st Law – Inertia  2nd Law – Force = Mass * Acceleration  3rd Law – For any action, there is an equal and opposite reaction

The First Law is often stated as ‘an object in motion states in motion, and an object at rest stays at rest, unless a force acts on it’. While we all understand this today, take a moment to consider how difficult it is to explain our everyday observations with this; everything we see moving stops or changes direction and often without visible forces (consider the path of a thrown ball).

The Second Law directly relates the force used to move something with the mass (weight) of the object and the acceleration the force will cause. Consider hitting various sized balls with a baseball bat and you get the idea.

The Third Law says that every action has an equal reaction in the opposite direction. Think about firing a gun and feeling the recoil. This law is key to modern rocketry.

Figure 3 - Newton's work led to a mechanistic view of the universe

The Universe since Newton “We do not honestly know the true nature of space and time” - Shahn Majid

While Newton’s framework had remarkable success in describing the way most of the universe worked, challenges came from new scientific theories and experiments. It turns out that even Newton was operating under assumptions and conceptions that may not completely fit with reality. Let’s explore.

Challenges to Newton’s framework

 1880’s – Michelson & Morley conducted experiments to determine more about the nature of light. Specifically they were interested in the kind of medium (ether) that filled space and allowed light to propagate. They were unable to detect any evidence of ether and their results were not fully understood until Einstein.  1905 – Einstein publishes his Special Theory of Relativity (his General Theory will come later). The Special Theory was able to explain the new evidence regarding the nature of light, but it had the disconcerting effect of also relativizing both Time and Space, two concepts that Newton thought were absolute and intrinsic to the very structure of the universe.3 Einstein’s work suggested that Time and Space are perceived differently by different observers.  1907 – Minkowski theorizes that Special Relativity can be understood geometrically by understanding Time and Space as 4-dimensional Space-Time. Thus, showing that Space and Time are intrinsically inseparable.  1916 – Einstein finishes his General Theory of Relativity in which he describes gravity, not as a force, but as a curvature of space-time cause by the presence of a massive object (Fig. 4). This answered challenges to how Newton’s gravitational force acted over long distances.  1920’s – Quantum Theory takes off and begins to answer some questions, but pose many more. No longer is the universe clearly deterministic, but it seems to be ruled by probabilities. The boundaries Figure 4 - A graphic representation of how space-time (the between matter and energy begin to dissolve. And blue grid) is bent by the presence of a mass. Light from the we become acutely aware of the fact that Science star moving behind the sun follows the curvature and thus has never been an impartial observer. We can bends around the mass. This was verified during a solar eclipse in 1919. never observe a system without interfering in it. We have evidence of non-locality, meaning that two objects can interact in such a way that afterward a change in one causes a change in the other, even over great distances, with no discernible connection.

3 “Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external” Isaac Newton, quoted in (Connes, et al. 2008) 14

Final Thoughts It is interesting to see how various cultures before us made sense of how the universe worked, and how this understanding pervaded their other beliefs. If nothing else we can see that each culture’s view of God was enmeshed in their view of how the whole of the universe was set up. This makes perfect sense for the Christian who believes that God created all things. How we understand that creation will inform how we understand God.

We are in a time of transition now, a long, slow transition. We are moving from a purely Newtonian view of the world, to a new view that has yet to be established. The advances of modern science have posed challenges to the worldview that Newton gave us, but we do not yet have a new understanding that will make sense of all the pieces; our worldview puzzle has been shuffled and we haven’t been able to put the pieces together to see the big picture yet. I believe the place we are in is historically similar the time period before Newton when Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo (and others) had suggested that the world didn’t work as Aristotle imagined it. Newton was able to put the pieces together and paint the big picture. We are waiting for the new science that will paint the new big picture. Excitingly there are some working on this ‘new science’ that acknowledge that issues of Faith and God may provide insight into the structure of reality.

I think this shifting in worldviews is part of the current tension between Faith and Science. The Church rebelled against the evidence of Galileo because his claims questioned the current worldview, which means his claims questioned some of the deep convictions of how the world worked, and who and where God was. Today we no longer struggle to understand a God who made and works within a massive universe, but as modern science challenges our worldview, which is rooted in Newton’s science, we can’t help but think that science is actually challenging God himself. Again this is more because our conception of God is related to our Newtonian view of the world, than anything theological. God is the same yesterday, today and forever. But neither our worldview, nor our conception of God can claim that kind of eternal truth.

The Bible has spoken truth to devout Christians throughout the continual advances of science and the shifting of worldviews. This is testimony to the kind of truth that the Bible offers, and should cause us to think about how that relates to modern science.

Recommended Reading DeWitt, Richard. Worldviews: An Introduction to the History and Philosophy of Science. 2nd Edition. Chichester, West Sussex, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.

Lindberg, David C. The Beginnings of Western Science. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Walton, John H. Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006.

Figure Credits Figure 1 – http://awilum.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Michael-Paukner-Hebrew-Cosmos.jpg Figure 2 – http://cde.nwc.edu/SCI2108/course_documents/history/greeks/greek_astronomy.htm Figure 3 – http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/images/planetaria.gif Figure 4 – http://connectjunaid.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/general_relativity.jpg

The Theology of Genesis One

“Theology found in the science of that time an instrument it could use unhesitatingly to unfold the content of faith.” - Gerhard von Rad, on Genesis 1

When I mention the theology of Genesis 1, I’m guessing that the first thing most people think of is creation. Which makes sense, the first verse of the Bible says “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (ESV). There is an ongoing debate about how to make sense of the creation account in Genesis 1 and the claims of modern science. One of the problems that arise from this debate is that often the conversation loses its focus on God, focusing rather on peripheral issues and making them paramount. Certainly the text speaks of God’s creative activity in the world, but is that all it speaks of?

For this session we’re talking about the Theology of Genesis 1, later we’ll discuss issues of Evolution and the Big Bang. I think it is important, though, to understand the theology of Genesis 1 before we try to understand how to read it today. Genesis 1 isn’t the only ancient creation account that exists. We have pagan creation stories from Egypt and Mesopotamia. So considering that the Ancient Hebrews thought more along the lines of their cultural counterparts than they did us Modern, Western folk, I think it is important to see how the text spoke Truth about God in the cultural milieu from whence it came. In other words, I think it is valuable to compare Genesis 1 to other ancient creation accounts before we compare it to modern ones. This will hopefully lead to some valuable theological insights that will transcend the vast cultural rift between us and ancient Israel. Figure 5 - The Universe according to Ancient Near East Culture 16

Egypt Israel Three main creation accounts came out of ancient Egypt each named for the city Israel’s account of creation has many structural similarities they were found in: Memphis, Heliopolis, & Hermopolis. Each account follows a with the Egyptian ones. What is interesting is not only what very similar pattern – we’ll look at two. is the same, but what differs (bolded in the list below).

Hermopolis Memphis Genesis 1 1. Pre-creation condition: lifeless 1. Pre-creation condition: lifeless 1. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was chaotic watery deep (Nun) chaotic watery deep (Nun) over the face of the deep (waters) (v. 2) 2. Breath/wind (Amun) moves on 2. Breath/wind (Amun) moves on 2. The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters (v.2) the waters the waters 3. Creation of supernatural light 3. Thought and word of Ptah creates 3. God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light (v. 3) (generation of Atum) Atum (light) 4. Emergence of primordial hill “in 4. Emergence of primordial hill “in 4. God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the midst of Nun” midst of Nun” waters” (v. 6) 5. Procreation of sky (Shu) when 5. Procreation of sky (Shu) when 5. God separated the waters creating an expanse and God Nun was raised over the earth Nun was raised over earth called the expanse sky. (v. 7-8) 6. Formation of heavenly ocean 6. Formation of heavenly ocean 6. God made the expanse and separated the waters under (Nut) by separation (Nut) by separation the expanse from the waters above the expanse (v. 7) 7. Formation of dry ground (Geb) by 7. Formation of dry ground (Geb) by 7. God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be separation separation gathered together and let dry land appear” (v. 9) 8. Humanity accidentally created by 8. Sun created to rule the world as 8. God calls forth vegetation from the earth…later tears of Atum the image of Rê animals (v. 11-12; 20-25) 9. Sun created to rule the world as 9. Earth sprouts plants, fish, birds, 9. God create lights in the heavens to separate day and 4 the image of Rê reptiles, animals night and to mark the seasons, etc (v. 14-18)

10. Creation of gods’ statues cult 10. God created the human in his own image//in the image of God he created him//male and female he sites, food offerings 4 created them (v. 27) These lists were 11. On the 7th day God rested from all his work that he adapted from: Johnston, Gordon 11. Ptah completes activity and H. "Genesis 1 and Ancient had done (2:2) Egyptian Creation Myths." “rests” in satisfaction Bibliotheca Sacra 165, no. 658 (April 2008): 183-184. 17

Babylon Israel From Babylon we get one of the best-known ancient creation accounts, Israel’s account of creation shares many similarities with Enuma Elish. Enuma Elish. Enuma Elish is written in praise of the god Marduk who While the structure has similarities the main correlations here are becomes the head of the pantheon through defeating the god Tiamat. conceptual and even linguistic. For example, the deep (waters) of After the battle it recounts Marduk’s creations, and again there are Genesis 1:2 in the Hebrew are tĕhôm, which is a word related to the interesting parallels with Genesis 1. name of the Babylonian god Tiamat.

1. Before heaven and earth there was only “primordial Apsu, their 1. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the face of begetter, And Mummu-Tiamat, she who bore them all, Their waters the deep (waters). And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face commingling as a single body” (I:1-5) of the waters. (v. 2) 2. Marduk “split [Tiamat] like a shellfish into two parts: Half of her he 2. God made the firmament and separated the waters that were under set up and ceiled it as sky” (Tiamat was the god of the primordial the firmament from the waters that were above the firmament. waters) (IV:137-8) God called the expanse sky. (v. 7-8) 3. Marduk fixes Esharra (other god) as the firmament (IV:145) 3. God made the firmament (v. 7) 4. He makes the gods of the Sky, Land and Sea “occupy their places” 4. God gathers the water of heaven into one place and dry land (IV:146) appears. (v. 9-10) 5. Marduk sets up the stations of the great gods as stars in the sky. He 5. God creates lights in the heavens for signs and seasons and to mark sets “astral likenesses” to designate years, months, & days. (V:1-6) days and years (v. 14-15) 6. Marduk creates the moon to govern the night (V:12) 6. God makes the “lesser light” to rule the night (v. 16) 7. Marduk resolves to create mankind “charged with the service of the 7. God resolves to “make mankind in our own image, after our own gods/That they might be at ease!” (VI:6-7) likeness. And let them have dominion…” (v. 26) 8. Marduk creates mankind by slaughtering Kingu (Tiamat’s partner 8. So God created the human in his own image//in the image of God and cause of the battle). “Out of his blood [the gods] fashioned he created him//male and female he created them (v. 27) mankind” (VI:29-33) 9. After Marduk finishes setting the cosmos in order the city of 9. God finishes his work of creating, of setting the cosmos in order, Babylon and Marduk’s temple are built. (VI:45-81)5 and rests (with the cosmos as his temple? cf. Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One).

5 This list is based off of the text of Enuma Elish as found in: O'Brien, Joan, and Wilfred Major. In the Beginning: Creation Myths from Ancient Mesopotamia, Israel and Greece. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982. 18

Similarities between Accounts From the lists above is should be clear that there are many similarities between the creation accounts of the different cultures. This should not be a surprise to us as it affirms the historicity of the Biblical text. The writers of the Bible had their own time and context and their understanding of the way the world works was very similar to the cultures around them. This is to be expected if we believe God worked in history and truly called Abraham, truly knew Moses, truly inspired the prophets, and so on. We must acknowledge that the Bible was written to the ancient Israelites, but for all humanity throughout history, including us. The writers of the Bible were human writers, inspired by the Holy Spirit and we do great disservice to the Bible if we diminish either part of the dual-authorship. Now, on to some comparative discussion.

Egypt and Israel As the lists above show, the creation accounts of Egypt have some structural parallels to Genesis 1. Each starts with a primordial, chaotic, futile watery deep. A breath/wind/Spirit (the Hebrew word ruah can mean all three of these) moves over the waters. Light is created by various methods. A firmament is made and it separates the waters, forming sky. Dry ground comes from the waters. It is at the ending of the accounts that most of the differences take place and these will be discussed below, but in general the Egyptian and Israelite accounts have many of the same features in their creation accounts and many of them occur in the same order.

Babylon and Israel There are many similarities between Enuma Elish and Genesis 1 as well. Both are written to extol a god, Marduk in Enuma Elish and God in Genesis. Again both start with a primordial, formless watery deep. Both speak of the waters being divided and sky being formed between them, showing that they shared a similar cosmic geography (see Figure 1, and section, Worldview & Cosmic Geographies). There is an interesting linguistic parallel between the two also. In Genesis 1:2 there is “darkness over the face of the deep (waters)”. The Hebrew word for “deep (waters)” is tĕhôm. Enuma Elish was written in a language called Akkadian (an old Babylonian language) which was a sister language to Hebrew (much like French & Italian, or Spanish & Portuguese are today). The Hebrew word tĕhôm is related to the Akkadian word Tiamat. Tiamat is the god of the primordial sea that Marduk battles in Enuma Elish. This parallel has led many to suggest that the human author of Genesis knew the story of Enuma Elish and was implying that even the Babylonians gods were under God’s control, since God tames the tĕhôm. Again there are many similarities between what is involved in creation and what order things are done in.

These similarities beg some questions: Is the author of Genesis aware of these other creation accounts? Is Genesis 1 adapted from these accounts? Did the author rely on these accounts at all? These questions are popular in scholarship but too often the conversations delve into speculations that are of little help.

Here is my understanding of the reason for the similarities. Like I mentioned above, the author of Genesis 1, whoever it was, lived in a world where creation stories were told. The whole nation of Israel was formed amidst nations like Egypt and Babylon. It is to be expected, if the Bible is historically reliable, that there will be commonalities in the way people talked about the world and even its creation. Israel wasn’t formed in a vacuum and we have every reason to believe that they thought like their neighbors did in many fundamental ways. There was probably a common understanding that before God (or the gods) brought order and function to the cosmos all there was a kind of primordial water. There seems to be a common understanding that these

19 waters were divided by a firmament thus creating sky and the potential for land. And so on. It is too simplistic to say that the author of Genesis 1 borrowed from the Egyptians or Babylonians. Rather the author was immersed in the same kind of worldview and same kind of cosmic geography and the same kind of stories about how things came to be as they were.6 Now on to the difference, for this is where the true theology of Genesis 1 is found.

Differences between Accounts To truly understand the theological statement that Genesis 1 would have been making in its day, we should look at the differences between it and the creation accounts of the surrounding cultures. These differences would have stood out to the original hearers, especially if they had only heard pagan creation accounts before. Let’s explore.

Egypt and Israel One of the most noticeable differences between the Egyptian accounts and Genesis 1 is that Egypt was clearly polytheistic. Not only that, but every aspect of the cosmos was a god. The primordial water was Nun, Amun (breath/wind) moved over it, Atum (light) was created. All ancient cultures believed that the gods were active in the world and that the world operated by the gods, even Israel believed this (in a monotheistic way). But most other cultures also believed that the gods were part of the creation. Within this context “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” is remarkable because it speaks of a God that is wholly other than creation. The God of Genesis 1 is not in any way part of the creation; he is before and therefore beyond it. The implications for this are far reaching within an ancient conceptual mindset where gods are bound to the limitation of how the world worked. In the ancient world the gods worked through aspects of creation (sun, water, etc.) but they were still bound by the greater cosmos. None of them transcended creation.

This ‘wholly other’ God is also beyond manipulation. In the ancient world gods were served and appeased so that favor would come to the worshippers. In other words the gods could be manipulated by those who worshipped them. The gods could be coerced into doing certain things, and they often were. Genesis 1 speaks of a God who cannot be manipulated because he is beyond the things of this world.

A final aspect that comes from this ‘wholly other’ God is that he is not, even in part, human. There is no anthropomorphizing the God of Genesis 1. In the ancient world “the gods were viewed as having all the same qualities, good and bad, as humans but without as many limitations”7. Viewing gods as super-humans made them open for manipulation, morally ambiguous, and ultimately not sovereign. The God of Genesis 1 cannot be manipulated, sets the moral standard, and is utterly sovereign.

Babylon and Israel While Enuma Elish and Genesis 1 share many of the same differences as discussed above, there are some more that show up as well. The most striking difference is the element of theomachy (war between gods)

6 David Lindberg makes the observation that “There is a strong tendency within oral traditions to identify causes with beginnings, so that to explain something is to identify its historical origins. Within such a conceptual framework, the distinctions that we make between scientific and historical understanding cannot be sharply drawn and may be nonexistent.” – David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science, page 7 7 (Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible 2006, 103) 20 in Enuma Elish. This is part of the anthropomorphizing discussed above and leads nicely towards manipulation. If there are many gods, and they acts as humans, then enough petitioning, sacrificing, etc. may be able to manipulate a god to take up war against another god for your benefit. The God of Genesis 1 has no rivals, is not flippant and cannot be coerced, by you or your enemies.

The second biggest difference that sticks out in comparing Enuma Elish and Genesis 1 comes with the creation of humanity. Marduk creates mankind by slaughtering the god who betrayed him thus starting the battle between him and Tiamat. Marduk creates mankind to serve the gods, so that the gods might “be at ease”. Genesis 1 offers a stark contrast: Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created the human in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them (v. 26-27). Not only is God’s place in the universe different in Genesis 1, but so is humanity’s.

Humans were not an accident like in the Egyptian account, and they weren’t created to serve the gods as in Enuma Elish. In Genesis 1 humans are made in the image of the One True God. Not only this, but humans are given dominion over all the earth. In the pagan creation accounts it is the gods who have this dominion. Genesis 1 elevates humanity to the same level as the pagan gods, even if they don’t have all the ‘powers’.

Conclusion In its own context it is clear that Genesis 1 is telling us more than just the material origins of this world.8 When read next to competing claims of origin we can see that Genesis 1 agrees with the pagan literature on many fronts. It is in the differences that the theology explodes and the One True God of Israel, eternal and sovereign becomes known. The text is far more about God and his relationship to his creation than it is about how the various material elements of this world came into being. Our challenge today is to keep our focus on what the text focusses on and not allow ourselves to get sidetracked by issues that the text does not directly address. I980 Old Testament scholar Gehard von Rad wrote concerning Genesis 1: “Theology found in the science of that time an instrument it could use unhesitatingly to unfold the content of faith”. Do we have the same liberty? Can our theology find in the science of our time an instrument that we can use to unhesitatingly unfold the content of our faith? Now we move on to Evolution and the Big Bang.

Recommended Reading Walton, John H. Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006.

—. The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2009.

8 John Walton argues persuasively that Genesis 1 doesn’t even concern material origins. See The Lost World of Genesis One 21

Evolution

“Theology found in the science of that time an instrument it could use unhesitatingly to unfold the content of faith.” - Gerhard von Rad, referring to Genesis 1

Controversy sells. You only have to type “creation” in to Amazon.com’s search engine to find a slew of books devoted to ‘defending’ one view of the origins of the universe against the opposing heretics. Whatever the topic the general trend seems to be that the more extreme stance an author takes, the more books he/she will sell; “You don’t sell books by being in the middle” said a professor of mine long ago.

Evolution has been a topic of controversy for decades and there are many popular authors on various sides of the debate who have sold large numbers of books by taking an extreme position in the controversy. For these the controversy is often boiled down to a black-and-white decision with dramatic implications. One side suggests that to reject any part of evolution is to live a lie and reject the ‘truth’ science has discovered. Another side argues that to accept any part of evolution is equal to rejecting the resurrection of Jesus Christ and that faith in God is completely antithetical to the ‘lies’ of evolution.

I contend that we must find a way to live between the extremes of Evolutionism and Creationism, between Richard Dawkins and Ken Ham, between Daniel Dennett and Hugh Ross, between accepting all the possible implications of evolution theory and demonizing the terms ‘evolution’ and ‘Darwin’. My reasons for this are three-fold and come from my Biblical and Theological understanding of Mission, Truth and History.

Background First I want to recapitulate some previous information that I think is germane to the discussion of Evolution. First off, I want to remind everyone of the Five Theses I laid out at the beginning on how we can successfully engage Faith & Science. These Theses are discussed more in Handout 1, but for now I want to suggest that many of the extreme views within the Evolution debates ignore one or more of these, and we would do well to hold all five in tension.

1. The Bible is not a scientific book – Some extreme positions have a tendency to argue against science by reading the Bible (especially Genesis) scientifically. That is to say that they assume that Genesis was intended to answer the kind of questions that we want to ask it; questions that ultimately stem from modern science. 2. Both Science and Christianity offer truth – This is ignored by various sides of the debate with either side suggesting that they alone hold the key to a complete understanding of Reality. We shouldn’t demonize evolution, nor should we reduce all of Reality to its mechanisms. 3. Our modern worldview has been profoundly shaped by modern science. – This becomes evident in the debates which often assume the creation accounts of Genesis are answering the questions we are asking, and speaking with the same assumptions as we have. This is simply not the case.

4. Scientists have faith. – It takes a lot of faith to boil down the immense complexities of the universe and of Humanity to only random mutations and chance. Just the ability to explore the topic shows that there is more going on. 5. Faithful Christians are scientists. – We must acknowledge that the Bible has an intense interest in creation: The Psalmists speak of it, Genesis speaks of it, Paul appeals to it (Rom 1:20). To ignore science is to separate the creator from the creation, thus falling into the Manichean heresy. For science does nothing but observe the created world. It is the interpretation of that observation that must be attended to.

My second reminder is that we all grew up with an essentially Newtonian worldview (see Section, Worldview & Cosmic Geographies). This worldview causes us to err on the side of deism rather than a kind of natural paganism. That is to say we tend to see God as the “uncaused causer” or as a “clock-maker” who set up the world and then let it run, perhaps watching from a distance. We (rightly) don’t generally think of God as being infused in all the earth; Genesis 1 shows us that the God of the Bible is wholly other (see Section, The Theology of Genesis One). We certainly are not full-fledged Deists, but our tendency is in that direction and I think this proclivity must be acknowledged.

An Analogy I’m going to use an analogy of Reality that I got from John Walton. He says that many people see Reality as a pie and slowly, piece-by-piece, science is replacing faith in that reality. Against this he suggests that Reality is like a layer-cake. The first layer is the material, observable world that we live in and Science seeks to understand. The top layer is the immaterial, invisible world that God inhabits and that we have no scientifically quantifiable access to.

Figure 6 - The cake my wife made our daughter for her 5th birthday, used as an analogy for Reality 23

The idea of the analogy is to say that Science can only show us a piece of Reality. It domain is limited to the material, the observable and the quantifiable. While this domain may grow and become more complex, it will never fully be able to explain Reality. This is because there is more to the universe than observable, quantifiable material. The upper layers of the cake represent God’s realm which is completely outside the purview of scientific investigation. It isn’t that Science isn’t allowed into that realm, but rather that it is beyond the methodology of Science. Science simply does not offer the tools to explore the realm of God, Theology does. The middle layers are metaphysical in nature and interesting because somehow we believe that God is active in our world. Somehow the layers are all connected. The idea is that every slice of the Reality cake will involve not only the material, but also the divine. We will refer to this analogy again later.

Navigating the Extremes As I mentioned earlier I will take three different approaches for why we need to disconnect ourselves from any of the extreme positions that are taken in this debate and find a way to cogently speak about how our faith fits into evolution theory. The first is an appeal to Missions, the second an appeal to Truth, and the third an appeal to History.

Missions In Tim Kimmel’s book Grace-Based Parenting he discusses the need for parents to be able to prepare their kids for the challenges they will face when they leave the house. Instead of raising them in a culture that fears the corruption of the wider world, Christian parents should seek to raise their children in a way that encourages them to want to reach out and bring the light of Christ into the world. This can only be done by engaging the world where it is at. And as Figure 2 shows, the majority of our nation, believes there is truth in evolution, and those numbers are growing.

Figure 7 - Though the public opinion doesn't match the professional opinion, it is clear that the majority of the public believe in some sort of evolutionary process. Source: http://www.pewforum.org/Science-and-Bioethics/Public-Opinion-on-Religion-and-Science-in-the-United-States.aspx

With that being said, we need to be able to engage a discussion of evolution in a way that the world can hear and understand. To do that we will need to acknowledge that parts of the evolution theory are true. If we cannot speak the same language as the world, we cannot effectively witness to them. If we cannot acknowledge that there is any shred of truth in things seen (the Theory of Evolution) then how can we expect them to believe there is any shred of truth in our convictions about things unseen? If we don’t listen to them, why should they listen to us?

Truth The theory of evolution has truth in it. As faithful Christians we cannot deny the fact that, on some scale, creatures adapt to their environment. With the new advances in genetics we would look like fools if we denied the fact that we share 98.4% of the same genetic structure as some apes do. We also would look like hypocrites if we accept the great medical advances that this genetic knowledge affords us, but refuse to accept the support that this same knowledge grants to the evolutionary theory. The truth is that Darwin made some very clear observations about the world, and some justifiable suggestions on how it all happened. As John Polkinghorne puts it “we can agree that natural selection has been an important factor in the development of life on Earth, it is by no means obvious that it is the only type of process involved”.9

Francis Collins often poses the question of why God would give us a creation account that conflicts with the evidence found in His creation. Is God just testing our faith? Or have we misconstrued the purpose of the creation account as John H. Walton argues in The Lost World of Genesis One. We need to take seriously what the Bible says about creation, but we also need to take seriously the evidence that God’s creation gives us. Only when the two work together in harmony will we be approaching fullest picture of Truth.

History The age-old adage goes something like “if you don’t know your history, you’re bound to repeat it”. I think we can learn something about the current debate regarding Evolution from the history of Faith & Science. Long ago Galileo made some startling discoveries about the nature of the cosmos. With the new telescope Galileo was able to confirm some of the prevailing theories about the movement of planets and the earth’s position in the universe. While the theories were not objectionable to the Catholic Church, the empirical evidence was. Thus Galileo was disallowed to continue his research or publish his findings. So what was really going on here?

The section on worldviews covers the background of this in more detail, but here is a brief description of what was going on. Galileo was making his observations in a culture that was rooted in the Aristotelian worldview. Among many things this worldview is built on the idea that the earth was the center of the universe, and that the stars (including the visible planets) were all part of the divine realm that circled the earth. The earth being at the center of the universe helped explain why things moved as they did in a pre-Newtonian understanding. It also reinforced the idea that the whole world was creation for humanity. The stars and planets were all part of the divine realm where God (or the gods) was. This divine realm was characterized by the fact that it was unchanging. Galileo’s discoveries threw all of this up in the air. If the earth was not the center of the universe then there was not an explanation of how things moved. Also, if the earth was not the center, then how should they understand the role of humanity in the cosmos? Likewise if, as Galileo confirmed,

9 Polkinghorne, John. Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science and Religion. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. Page 50 25 the speed of the planets’ orbits varied that meant that the divine realm wasn’t divine. If that was true then where was God in the universe? So Galileo’s discoveries were rejected, not because they were false (few if any educated people would take this stance today) but because they challenged the dominant ways of thinking of God, humanity and how they were all related.

I think we can learn from this. The theory of evolution seems to challenge our view of God, our view of humanity and our view of how God works in the world. Rather than seeing this as an assault on our faith, let us rather use this to gain a deeper understanding of God and ourselves. It seems quite likely that in 500 years the science of that day will make our current understanding seem somewhat quaint or even mystical. However, it seems equally likely that in 500 years their science will be rooted in the best science of our day, and that includes the theory of evolution. It’s not going away, because there is truth in it.

Human Nature In his book Exploring Reality John Polkinghorne (who will ardently support evolution) discusses human nature with regard to the recent discoveries of evolution. He lays out the following ways that reductionist evolution fails to explain the place that humanity has in the world. In other words, he gives suggestions on what might be involved in being made in the image of God. In contrast to all other life on earth he finds that humans have the following distinctions:

 We are self-conscious beings in a radically new way  We possess language that is capable of far more depth and beauty than any other animal  We possess a great range of rational skills. Our ability to study deep concepts shows this.  We possess great creative powers such as art, music, culture.  We are moral beings unlike anything in the animal kingdom  We have a capacity for God-consciousness. We are aware of and can commune with our maker.  We are plagued by sin and cause destruction in ways animals don’t and can’t.10

John Walton says that the word image is referring to “a representative in physical form, not a representation of the physical appearance”.11 He argues that the image of God is related to functions and “and confers on us dignity, entrusts us with responsibility, and implants in us a certain potential, namely the capacity to mirror our Creator.12

So to affirm that evolution has truth does not diminish our place in the universe. It may cause us to rethink what it means to be made in the image of God, but it does nothing to diminish that image.

Inside the Layer Cake I used the analogy of a layer cake to describe Reality. I now want to consider the middle layers; what is God’s relationship with his creation? As I mentioned, the Newtonian worldview steers us towards a picture of God as being distant and removed. This is remarkably different than what the ancients would have imagined. For the ancient mind, there was no natural/supernatural dichotomy. The gods were active in the world and the

10 Ibid, 42-44 11 Walton, John. Genesis. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001. P. 130ff 12 Ibid, 137 26 world functioned because of them and for them. Talking about ‘laws of nature’ or ‘natural processes’ would have been gibberish to them. They simply did not separate the way they observed the world to work, with the way their gods (God) worked.

We would do well to learn from them. Our God is active in the world; he is involved in our lives and is involved in the inner workings of his creation. We do a disservice to our conception of God if we imagine that he was only involved in our world while he was creating it and that by resting he is just sitting back and watching it unfold. This is a very deistic way to view God, but one that is often read into the text of Genesis 1. We need, instead, a concept of God continuing to create. We need to take seriously Paul’s words in Colossians 1:17 that in Christ all things hold together. The word in the Greek for ‘hold together’ has the dual meaning of being composed of and continuing/enduring. So it isn’t enough to say that through Christ all things were created, we must continue and say that without Christ, nothing would continue to be. Our daily existence is dependent on Christ, ours as well as all creation. We need to develop a conception of God that involves him in, not just our everyday lives, but in the everyday workings of the world. The theory of evolution actually fits quite nicely into this kind of theology, but more on that next week when we talk about the Big Bang.

Recommended Reading Collins, Francis S. The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. New York: Free Press, 2006.

Giberson, Karl W. Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution. New York: HarperOne, 2008.

Giberson, Karl W., and Francis S. Collins. The Language of Science and Faith. Downers Grove: IVP Books, 2011.

Walton, John H. The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2009.

The Big Bang

A Little History In the mid-20th century science faced a conundrum. The recent advances in modern science were describing a universe that was far larger than anyone had ever expected. Modern cosmology showed that our galaxy was some 100,000 light-years across and had somewhere on the order of 300,000,000,000 stars. Not only this, but the universe had numerous other galaxies ridiculously far away from our own. Current number suggest that there are somewhere along the lines of 300,000,000,000 galaxies in our universe each with approximately 300,000,000,000 stars. These numbers suggest that there are some 90,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in our universe! Louis Giglio has a video called Indescribable that talks about the size of the universe and what that says about God. I highly recommend it.

One problem that came with a universe of this size was how to understand the motion of the galaxies. There were two basic options. The universe was either static or it was dynamic; the galaxies are either in motion or not. The prevailing view of the cosmos was a steady-state view where the stars were fixed in their positions. However, this didn’t work well with the new size of the universe. The problem is gravity. Gravity is an attractive force13 between any two objects of mass. It is the reason that we are attracted to the surface of the earth. It is also the reason that we have the tides, as the moon’s gravity exerts a force on the waters of the earth.

The problem with a static view of the universe can be demonstrated with a thought-experiment. Imagine two billiards balls on a billiards table. The attractive force between them is negated by the pull of the earth and the friction of the table surface. If these same two balls were placed in empty space, far from any other massive objects, then one would find that the attractive force of gravity would slowly bring the two balls together.

This is the main issue with having a static universe that is as big as we now know it is. A single galaxy could be seen to be stable, balancing the effects of gravity with the appropriate amount of spin. With multiple galaxies thought, a static universe would not be static for long, because gravity would soon cause the galaxies to start moving towards each other. There were some early scientists who suggested models of the universe that would allow for the massive number of galaxies but with none of them in motion, but these had their own problems and didn’t fit the empirical evidence well.

So it was determined that the universe must be in some sort of motion. There were three main options, either it was expanding, contracting, or moving randomly. Edwin Hubble, the scientist the satellite is named after, began studying the problem of the motion of the universe and rather than finding the various galaxies in random motion, he found that they are all moving away from each other, and from us, at a rate proportional to

13 Newton described it as a force, but according to Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity it is actually a curvature of 4-dimensional space-time. This distinction is negligible for the analysis above. 28 their distance from us. Stephen Hawking likens this to a balloon, with many dots on it, inflating. At any point each dot is moving farther away from every other dot. In the same way the universe is now understood to be expanding with every galaxy moving farther away from every other galaxy.

If the universe is expanding then it makes sense that in the past it would have been smaller than it is now, and in the deep past it would have been smaller yet. Well this naturally leads to some point where the universe was at its smallest, and it is at that point that we have what is called the Big Bang. It is a fairly logical progression from the discovery of the expanding universe to some sort of initial starting point. Interestingly the idea of the universe having a starting point met some resistance in the field of Science because it smacked of theism. Many scientists were uncomfortable with the Big Bang Theory because it suggested a creator. How odd it is that now Christians are often the ones quickest to dismiss the Big Bang Theory.

The Anthropic Principle “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” – Psalm 19:1

In reference to Genesis 1, premier Old Testament scholar Gerhard von Rad wrote, “Theology found in the science of that time an instrument it could use unhesitatingly to unfold the content of faith”. If we had that same liberty, and I think we do, then using the science of our day (Big Bang, Evolution and all) as an instrument to unfold the content of faith would look very much like the Anthropic Principle.

The anthropic principle grew up over time with a number of scientists who found that some of the physical constants that determined the shape that the universe took were very tightly constrained. In other words, there are certain attributes of the universe, such as gravity, that require very specific values in order for the universe to eventually produce life. This is sometimes referred to as ‘fine-tuning’ and it suggests to many that there is more than just wild chance steering the universe. Polkinghorne writes “The universe was billions of years old before life appeared on it, but it was pregnant with that possibility from the beginning”14.

The anthropic principle gives us a view of a creation that started with the Big Bang and was slowly guided towards carbon-based life and finally humanity. It gives us a history of creation in which God is actively involved in the everyday workings of the world. It has been said that the anthropic principle is a kind of anti- Copernican revolution, meaning that where Copernicus found that humanity was no longer the geographical center of the universe, the anthropic principle suggests that humanity is the teleological (purpose-oriented) center of the universe. It establishes humanity’s unique status in the cosmos.

There are a number of books that describe the various ideal situations that combine to form the anthropic principle. The classic text is by Frank Tipler and John Barrow and is called The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, which is over 700 pages and is rather dense. More popular books have been published on the topic by Martin Rees and Paul Davies, but these are not written from an orthodox Christian point of view and I have yet to find a full-length book that approaches the concept from a Christian perspective. Francis Collins discusses it briefly in The Language of God, and John Polkinghorne builds it into many of his books, but these are fairly truncated accounts. A quick, concise read is John Polkinghorne’s Faraday Paper No. 4 available online, called The Anthropic Principle and the Science and Religion Debate. It gives a good overview of what the anthropic principle says and how it points to God.

14 (Polkinghorne, The Anthropic Principle and the Science and Religion Debate - Faraday Paper No. 4 2007) 29

How it works The anthropic principle suggests that the universe is fine-tuned to support carbon-based life and specifically humanity. It suggests that chance alone cannot explain the incredible precision inherent in some of the qualities of the universe. Here are some examples; there are many more that could be listed.

Stephen Hawking writes that the initial energy of the Big Bang had to be ridiculously precise. Modern Science tries to understand how the universe looked right after the Big Bang using computer models. They have found that the initial rate of expansion of the universe had to be very precise, otherwise gravity would have won out and collapsed everything again. In fact, from Hawking says that this rate of expansion could not have been off by “1 part in a hundred, thousand, million, million” (1/100,000,000,000,000,000) otherwise the whole universe would have recollapsed.15 Francis Collins adds to this that “if the rate of expansion had been greater by even one part in a million, stars and planets could not have been able to form”.16 So from the very beginning of the universe we can see God’s hand at work.

God’s involvement continues; the weak nuclear force is a force that works in nuclear reactions. There is very little wiggle room in the strength of this force. If it were smaller then water could not form, and stars could not burn long enough to sustain life. If it were larger, supernova explosions could not happen and carbon would not appear anywhere in the universe except within stars.

This last one has dramatic effects on the ability for life to exist in the universe. Without carbon there can be no carbon-based life-forms and only stars provide the right environment for the production of carbon. (This implies that we are all made from stardust which is pretty fun.) There is a popular story about the scientist Fred Hoyle who was trying to understand how the carbon molecule was formed. He found that it could only be formed under very intense conditions, but also very precise conditions. These conditions had to produce a resonance that would intensify the bonds between the three helium atoms (which combine to make carbon) long enough for a stable carbon molecule to form. This resonance is related to a force called the strong nuclear force and had that force been different by even 1%, carbon couldn’t form and carbon-based life would be impossible. Polkinghorne writes that “Hoyle, atheist though he was, is reported to have said that the universe was a ‘put-up job’”17 meaning that Hoyle could not justify this kind of precision by mere chance.

A number of scientists have noted the extreme amount of order and uniformity that must have been imbedded in the early universe. Roger Penrose suggests that the odds of this happening are 1 in 10123 or 1/1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00018. This amount of order in the early universe is vital to its long-term stability. But even more interesting is the fact that there is a precise amount of disorder within this order. This disorder was necessary for the formation of anomalies such as matter, stars and galaxies, which were necessary for the formation of carbon, which is necessary for the formation of life. There is a very delicate balance in our wild universe between the uniformity that allows order, and the anomalies that

15 (Hawking 1988, 121-122) 16 (Collins 2006, 73) 17 (Polkinghorne, The Anthropic Principle and the Science and Religion Debate - Faraday Paper No. 4 2007, 2) 18 Quoted in Ibid 30 allow newness and life. This parallels very well to our understanding of God.19 C.S Lewis’ famous quote from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe describes God as a wild lion who “Of course is not safe, but he’s good”.

One last observation by Polkinghorne: we discussed earlier the vast size of the universe. It turns out that this size is remarkably important to the long-term life of the universe. According to Polkinghorne the roughly 300,000,000,000 galaxies in our universe, each with approximately 300,000,000,000 stars, are necessary to give the universe time enough to produce life. He writes “only a universe at least as big as ours could have lasted the fourteen billions years required to enable human beings to appear on its scene”20

Interpretation Much of the work in developing the anthropic principle has been done by secular scientists, and for this reason the interpretation of the data hasn’t always pointed to God. There are essentially three main options for what the anthropic principle means.

1. God played an active role in the creation of every aspect of the universe. He didn’t just light the fuse and step back, but he has been involved in every tiny detail of its evolution. Humanity has always been the teleological (purposed) center of the universe. 2. We are just lucky. The odds were against the formation of a universe that could produce life, but it happened anyway. Yay! 3. The beyond-astronomical odds of our universe being just fit for life are no more than just statistics that point to the necessity of a multiverse. If the odds of our universe producing life are 1 in a million, then there must be at least a million other universes. If the odds are 1 in a trillion, trillion, then there must be at least a trillion, trillion other universes. The vast majority of the other universes had inferior initial conditions and remain lifeless and futile.

It should be obvious that any of these options go beyond the realm of scientific inquiry. Number 2 perhaps doesn’t, but it is just not a satisfying conclusion when faced with the evidence and suggests a presupposition that there can be nothing behind the workings of the universe. Option three requires as much faith, and is just as metaphysical in nature as option one. There is one other option we could entertain, which would be God creating a mature universe. This is somewhat necessary for a 10,000 year old earth, since most of the stars that we see are more than 10,000 light-years away, and thus it would take more than 10,000 years for their light to reach our eyes. This begs the question of why God would create something that appears old, but isn’t. Is God trying to deceive us, or test us? It also leads to the rather existential possibility that God created everything five minutes ago and even my writing of this sentence is actually just part of the built-in memory that God embedded into the universe.

The issue is clearly outside the purview of science and thus falls into the realm of theology. Thus we can describe (very scientifically) how our God, who creates and sustains every passing moment, has created all things, and has placed humanity, made in His image at the center of it. The anthropic principle is our best bet at allowing theology to use Modern Science as an instrument to unhesitatingly unfold the contents of faith. It can’t prove God’s existence, science never can, but it can aid us in worshipping the God who is behind all that we see and don’t see. Louis Giglio’s Indescribable video takes on new depth when we understand, that not only

19 C.S. Lewis talks about God in this way in The Problem of Pain. 20 (Polkinghorne, The Anthropic Principle and the Science and Religion Debate - Faraday Paper No. 4 2007, 2) 31 is God so great that he made the universe as he did, but that God is so personal that everything that is so awe- inspiring about the universe was created with the purpose of bringing into existence humanity in the image of God.

Recommend Reading Collins, Francis S. The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. New York: Free Press, 2006.

Hawking, Stephen W. A Brief History of Time. New York: Bantam, 1988.

Disclaimor: Hawking is not a Christian so some of his interpretation should be taken lightly, but he offers a lucid description of the advances of modern science, especially in the early chapters.

Polkinghorne, John. Belief in God in an Age of Science. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.

—. "The Anthropic Principle and the Science and Religion Debate - Faraday Paper No. 4." The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion. April 2007. http://www.st- edmunds.cam.ac.uk/faraday/resources/Faraday%20Papers/Faraday%20Paper%204%20Polkinghorne_E N.pdf (accessed July 12, 2012).

Time & Eternity

Time has long been an issue in Christian Theology. The problem is that we believe in a God who is eternal, who is infinite, a God who not only transcends time, but created time from some outside perspective. We, however, are fully temporal, and we believe that somehow God is involved in our lives. We have no real way of thinking about a timeless existence.

There is another issue at stake here. The attributes of God that Christian Theology has long affirmed and relied on, are quite closely related to the view of the divine held by Greek philosophers, and not always easily reconciled with the God we find in the Old Testament. Is there a way to do justice to both the immanence (involvement in the material world) of God and the transcendence (being beyond the material world) of God? How does an eternal God interact with his time-bound creation? How does eternity relate to temporality? Is time simply an illusion, or are new moments truly new?

Eternity Part of the problem of understanding how God engages time is that we have a very hard time imagining what eternity is like. We are inextricably bound by time, and all that we experience happens in time. If God is not bound by time what does that mean? How can we imagine such an existence? Can we imagine it?

There are two traditional ways that eternity has been conceived.21 The first is a sort of timeless moment where all events, past, present , and future, all congeal into one unchanging union. In this view of eternity there are no cause-and-effect relationships. Change doesn’t occur and all moments in time blend together in some sort of undifferentiated, eternal Now.

The other view is that of unending time, where time acts in eternity just as it does for us here, but without an end. In this view the past is forever lost, the future is unknown and the present is really all we can experience. This is the view that I personally had as a child and I remember I would lay in bed at night, unable to sleep as my mind pondered this kind of eternity; it freaked me out.

Modern theologians have begun to consider a different view of eternity. Instead of either two options listed above, many 20th century theologians have begun to imagine eternity as some sort of ““supra- temporality” that is both the source and fulfillment of the temporality of creation”.22 This kind of an eternity is far more difficult to imagine, but perhaps that is a good thing. Instead of the above options for eternity, where all moments in the past, present and future are either united to the point of loss of distinction (option 1) or differentiated to the point of only having the present available (option 2), theologians now talk about eternity

21 For an in-depth look at this discussion see, Robert John Russell. Time in Eternity. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012 22 Ibid, 5 33 having some kind of differentiated unity in which all time, past, present and future, are somehow all united and accessible, but without losing their distinctiveness.

Genesis 1 speaks of God creating all things and taken with texts like John 1:3, and Colossians 1:16-17 it is clear that time & space were included in God’s creative activity.23 Not only did God create time & space, but according to the Bible Christ continues to uphold his creation, in time (Heb. 1:3, Col. 1:17). This paints a picture that is coherent with more modern views of eternity. Eternity is not something utterly different than created temporality, but rather is the source of all creaturely time.24 This modern view of eternity takes seriously the claims that Christ is continuing to uphold his creation, that Christ is still active in the creative process. It closely binds the various parts of reality, much like the three parts of the Trinity are bound together.

God the eternal father, Christ the incarnate savior, and the active Holy Spirit are somehow bound together in a way that transcends our ability to explain. Somehow the three persons of the trinity all share the same will, intention and mission, but each has a distinct nature and each seems to have a distinct relationship with time. God can only be described in triune terms (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) because we believe that God is timeless yet active, that God is incorporeal yet incarnate, that God is Holy yet gracious. Somehow this intra- Trinitarian relationship exists and it suggests implications for how we view time. We cannot view God as simply the one who created all things and then sat back and watched it happened (Deism), yet this is the option that traditional views of eternity seem to offer.

The Nature of Time Philosophers have wondered about the nature of time since the ancient Greeks. Scientists, theologians, and philosophers still debate about it and there seem to be two options, if we paint with a broad brush. Either the passage of time is actually an illusion, or time is truly flowing. If time is an illusion, then we only think that new things are real, but in fact they have been forever known to God. If time is truly flowing, then there is real opportunity, real potential and real newness.

I grew up with the viewpoint that time is an illusion, even though I would have never articulated it that way. My conception of God’s eternity was of God looking over a timeline from the very beginning of time, to

23 It was probably beyond the conceptual world of the ancient Israelites to conceive of Time and Space as abstractly as we do today. They were concerned about the how the world functions and naturally time and space were vital to its functioning. They were not concerned about how a timeless, eternal God brought something out of nothing. This was is a very Greek thought and Augustine covers it thoroughly in his The Literal Interpretation of Genesis (which ironically covers very few of the issues that we might consider ‘literal’ these days, e.g. he wasn’t concerned about 6 literal days, but he was deeply concerned with how God spoke before the creation of time, since speech can only happen within time). The ancient Hebrew’s concept of ‘beginning’ then, was probably not as nuanced as ours is and as the Greeks’ was. Thus, many scholars today don’t feel it necessary to read Genesis 1:1 as the absolute beginning of all time and space and materiality, creation ex nihilo (from nothing). This doesn’t mean that the Bible doesn’t attest to such a view. John 1, Colossians 1, Hebrews 1 all talk about Christ being before all things and all things being made and upheld through Christ. But we need to be vigilant in reading what the Bible says, not what we want it to say. To read our current conceptions of time and space into Genesis 1 is to read the Bible scientifically, which may satisfy our current intellectual curiosity, but cannot yield timeless truth, because Science is not timeless. For more on this see Walter Brueggemann. Genesis. Atlanta: John Know Press, 1982, John H. Walton. Genesis. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001, Gordon J. Wenham. Genesis 1-15. Waco, TX: Word Books, 1987, but especially John H. Walton. The Lost World of Genesis One. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2009. 24 I wrote a paper for a theology class that had to do with God’s immutability, or inability to change. It is related to the concept of all time flowing from God’s eternity. I’ve attached it as an appendix. 34 the very end of time and I was somewhere in the middle (See Figure 1). Thus God could watch things unfold, but it seems he was unable to affect anything in the past, or the future. All of time was laid out before God and he was just waiting to consummate things with Christ’s return, so that he could finally hangout with his creation once we entered eternity. This is the way I conceived God’s relationship with his creation, but I’m not sure it’s Biblical.

Figure 8 - Time & Eternity, where Time is essentially an illusion to those of us who experience it

The other option for the nature of Time is that it is truly flowing and the future is truly open. This view works well with the view of God we see in the Old Testament. The Old Testament talks about God being remarkably active in his creation. God walks through the Garden (Gen 3); God barters with Abraham (Gen 18); God changes his mind because of Moses (Ex 32). God uses prophets to warn the nations, but often with a clause involving their ‘turning back to him’ which would result in a different activity of God. There is an element of contingency in God’s relationship with his people. God’s relationship with his people is defined by the term khesed, which refers to “God’s everlasting loyalty to the promises and commitments God made to the people, even when one generation or another fails to respond to that love”25 often translated ‘steadfast love’. John Polkinghorne writes that this khesed “requires, not fixity of experience (which is the negation of responding love) but unchangeable benevolence of will (which is the way in which he is steadfast)”.26 The God of the Bible appears not to be looking upon an unchanging future, but he seems to be truly allowing his creation to become something new.

This isn’t to diminish God’s control or sovereignty. If God is intimately active in our world we can truly believe that “The steadfast love (khesed) of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (Lam 3:22-23, emphasis added). God’s sovereignty remains even if he doesn’t micromanage every event and even if he responds to our freedom. My wife suggests the image of God painting a picture. A person can paint a picture of a barn, and can achieve a painting of a barn, but can still respond to the process of painting. A dribble of paint, poor surface texture, or poor quality of paint will not deter the skilled painter from achieving a picture of a barn. God is an infinitely skilled painter. I think it would be wrong to think of him standing back and examining the painting that is History, rather than painting it. God’s sovereignty is far greater, at least in my mind, if we imagine him truly working within our history, truly responding to our freedom and steering everything to his eschatological goal: New Creation.

25 Bruckner, James K. Exodus. Peabody: Hendrickson, 2008, p 183 26 Polkinghorne, John. Science and Providence. Boston: New Science Library, 1989. p. 81 35

This suggests an alteration to the conception of God looking over the timeline of history. Instead of the timeline extending from Creation to New Creation with us somewhere in the middle, an active God suggests that this timeline only goes as far as our current experience. This allows the future to truly be open. It allows God to actually bring new mercies every morning, or every moment. It takes seriously the view of God that we see in the Old Testament, while still hanging on the view of God that Christian Theology affirms. The idea of an open future also coheres well with modern science.

Time and Modern Science There are two main areas of modern science that have implications for how we view time and eternity. The first is Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity, which abolishes the idea of absolute time. The second area is that of Quantum Mechanics which has serious implications for how we understand the unfolding of events.

Time in Special Relativity The most dramatic effect that Modern Science has had on how we conceive time has been Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity, which showed that time is not absolute. Where Newton could write, “Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external”27 , now we know that Time itself will actually be perceived differently by two observers who are moving at different speeds. Time is not absolute, and is not a fundamental constituent of our reality; it is in fact dependent on light, or at least the speed of light.

How it works

The theory of Special Relativity (SR) is not terribly easy to explain and is remarkably counterintuitive. Nonetheless it is how our universe operates so I will make an attempt.

Suppose there are two trains travelling on two parallel rails. They are each going 50 mph. Now if these trains are going in opposite directions (Figure 2) than we would expect them each to measure things a little differently. For a person riding in Train A, the tree would appear to be moving at 50mph and Train B would appear to be moving 100mph, both going ‘backwards’ to the Train A rider. A rider in Train B would experience the same thing but with directions switched. A person sitting in the tree would measure each train going 50mph in opposite directions. This is our intuitive view of reality.

Figure 9 - Trains moving in opposites directions.

27 Quoted in Connes, Alain, Michael Heller, Shahn Majid, Roger Penrose, John Polkinghorne, and Andrew Taylor. On Space and Time. Edited by Shahn Majid. Cambridge: University Press, 2008. 36

Likewise if the two trains were going in the same direction we would have a similar addition/subtraction of speeds. In Figure 3, a person riding Train A would see the tree moving at 50mph backwards and Train B moving at 25mph backwards. A rider in Train B would see the tree moving at 25mph backwards and Train A moving at 25mph forwards.

Figure 10 - Trains moving in same direction.

This is all well-and-good and we fully expect things to behave in such a manner. However, light breaks this rule. Light does not act as the trains do. The speed of light in a vacuum (c) is about 300,000,000 meters per second, or 671,000,000 miles per hour. What is interesting is that the speed of light is measured the same regardless of a person’s motion toward or away from it. So in Figure 4, we have both trains moving at an unrealistic 1/2c, or half of the speed of light. What is interesting is that according to SR every observer will measure the same speed for the passing ray of light. For a passenger of Train A, the passing light will be measured at c. For the passenger of Train B, the speed of the passing light will be measure at c. Even the kid hanging out in his tree house will measure the speed of the passing light beam at c. To add to the confusion a passenger in Train A will not measure Train B’s speed as c, the speed of light, but as something quite a bit less, and vice-versa. The simple addition of velocities that we used with the slow moving trains only works for objects that move slowly as compared to the speed of light. For things that move near the speed of light a more complicated equation is needed, because the speed of light is always measured the same.

Figure 11 - Superfast Trains traveling at half the speed of light

So what is actually going on with the trains in Figure 4 is that essentially their reality is shrinking/expanding relative to the speed of light. According to SR time and space are intricately connected and are not absolute. As Train A gets faster meters and seconds will actually change their value (their size), at least compared to a person in the tree or Train B. Time is no longer absolute but will actually respond to one’s

37 motion relative to the speed of light. A timeline, as viewed from eternity, would look, at best, somewhat fuzzy if SR is accounted for (See Figure 5).

Figure 12 – Time & Eternity with SR accounted for

Quantum Mechanics We could say a lot more about Quantum Mechanics (QM), but I just want to highlight one of its core implications for reality. QM suggests that on a fundamental level, our reality is not deterministic. It cannot be described by simple cause-and-effects, but is rather based on probabilities. Newton’s science suggested that if one had all the relevant data, a person could perfectly predict the future based on the cause-and-effect interactions between objects. QM suggests that this is not true, but rather every interaction has a number of probable outcomes. So instead of the straight timeline of events that Newton’s science seemed to offer, QM’s timeline looks more like a tree where at every junction there are multiple possible paths, which expand into a hugely divergent view of possible future realities (See Figure 6).

Figure 13 – Time & Eternity with QM accounted for 38

Putting it All Together I have long imagined time & eternity according to Figure 1 and from what I read this has been the traditional picture, but perhaps there is a better way. Science challenges the validity of this model (Figures 5 & 6), but so does the Old Testament, so does the incarnation. Without absolute time, per SR, we cannot imagine a single timeline over which eternity hovers. The progression of that timeline is viewed differently depending on a person’s motion. This means that there is no absolute consensus on the timing of an event, no simultaneity if you will. Events are seen to occur at different times to different people if they are moving at different speeds. What does this mean for cosmic events like the incarnation and the resurrection?

The traditional model suffers too under the stories we have in the Old Testament. The picture of God that the Old Testament gives us is one where God is active, God engages. The future does not seem predetermined in the Old Testament. God seems to have imbued his creation with an extraordinary amount of freedom and potential. While God does not change, it seems as though the future is not absolutely set in stone either.

This true openness to various potential futures works hand-in-hand with QM. QM says that reality is not deterministic. It is not governed by simple cause-and-effect interactions. There is true potential at the most fundamental level that we can observe for new things to happen. Probabilities rule the atomic world and we have every reason to believe that God rules the probabilities.

The picture that we get then isn’t of an atemporal, timeless eternity from which God watches things happen. Instead we have our time flowing out of the eternity that God inhabits. This allows God to interact with our time, yet remain eternal. Science seems to be pointing pretty strongly in the direction of God being active in the continual creation of his universe (see section on Big Bang) and the Bible points to this kind of thinking too. While the end picture (New Creation) may be determined, the process of painting that picture goes on. I don’t believe that our experience of time in an illusion, nor do I think that God is watching from afar. Instead I believe that the evidence (both Biblical and Scientific) supports a God who is actively engaging his creation, steering it to its purposed end.

Recommended Reading

Lane, William Craig. Time and Eternity. Wheaton: Crossway, 2001.

Polkinghorne, John. Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science and Religion. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.

—. Science and Providence. Boston: New Science Library, 1989.

Each of the above books has a chapter devoted to Time. They are quite good.

Russell, Robert John. Time in Eternity. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012.

Numbers

Colossians 1:15-17 – Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities – all things were created through him and for him and he is before all things and in him all things hold together.

Numbers in the Bible are confusing. At times they make perfect sense, they match the context well and they seem to be behaving just as we would expect them to. At other times they are just plain unruly. It seems that there is no one, standard model for how to consistently interpret the way the Bible uses numbers. Context must be accounted for, as well as literary genre and realistic plausibility. It is frustrating that scholarship has not been able to give us logical arguments for why some of the numbers appear as they do, and we certainly will not solve any of the puzzles here. I hope to offer a little bit of insight into what the problems are and perhaps how to approach them.

The Problems Problems may not be the best word choice. I’m not aware of any place in the Bible where core theology is based on numbers. Certainly there are interpretations that hinge on numbers, but these don’t seem to affect the deep theology in the text. So to call what follows ‘problems’ really says more about us than it does the Biblical text. It suggests that we don’t have a full grasp of how numbers were understood and how they are used in the Bible, rather than the Bible being in error. That being said, the problems are many, and they differ between testaments.

Old Testament The Old Testament is full of confusing numbers, many of which seem unrealistic. The ages of the patriarchs in the first few chapters of Genesis seem ridiculously high – this isn’t to say that they are incorrect, just to note that they don’t make sense to our modern sensibilities. There are some numbers though, that are ridiculously high and don’t actually seem plausible. In fact, they almost certainly cannot be taken literally.

In Exodus 12:37 the number of men leaving Egypt is said to be “six hundred thousand (600,000) men on foot, besides women and children”. Estimates put the total number of people to at least 2 million (2,000,000) and of course “very much livestock, both flocks and herds” (v. 38). This number is very large and we tend to think of large numbers abstractly, that is somewhat removed from reality, and leave it at that. However, reality comes crashing in when we begin to paint the picture of 2 million Israelites leaving Egypt.

To start, if there were 600,000 men in the Israel camp, then why did they fear the 600 chariots of Pharaoh? Exodus 14:6-7 says that Pharaoh took “six hundred chosen chariots…” and when the Israelites see them coming verse 11 records that ‘they said to Moses, “Is this because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness”’. Why were they so afraid if they had 1000 men to each of Pharaoh’s chariots?

That is just the beginning, if the number of Israelites truly was around 2 million and they marched in a tight military formation (unlikely), and we don’t account for their belongings (including livestock), then their line would have stretched for over 200 miles. This means that the front of the line would have reached Mt. Sinai, 40 when the back was just leaving the Sea of Reeds! There would have been a couple weeks from the front to the back, so just crossing the sea poses some issues.28

The problems grow as we continue into the book of Numbers. There are two times in Numbers where a census is taken, chapter 1 and chapter 26. Each records the number of Israelites per tribe and then adds a sum- total at the end. The first census comes to 603,550 (Num. 1:46) and the second comes to 601,730 (Num. 26:51). These numbers represent “all in Israel who are able to go to war” (Num. 1:3) and thus probably only represent 20-25% of the total population.29 This means that there were probably around 2-3 million Israelites at this time. The population of Kansas, as of 2011 is about 2.8 million people. The land area of Kansas is about 82,277 square miles, which gives a population density of about 34 people per square mile. The Sinai Peninsula is about 23,000 square miles and if there were 2.5 million Israelites traveling then there would be about 109 people per square mile, which is about 8 times more than Clay County, KS has.30 So you can see the stress that such a large number, with livestock, would put on the land, especially since the Israelites were not evenly spread around the peninsula, but were centralized around Mt. Sinai. Lasor, Hubbard and Bush state that “Every bit of available evidence, biblical, extrabiblical, and archaeological, seems to discourage interpreting the numbers in Numbers literally”.31

One of the most popular explanations for why these numbers are so large has to do with the Hebrew words behind the numbers. The Hebrew word for thousand, eleph, can also mean ‘military unit’. The Hebrews didn’t have numerals for writing numbers, so they had to spell them out. So, for example, in Numbers 1:21 when the first census of Reuben’s tribe is recorded it is written as ‘six and forty eleph five hundred’. So if eleph means 1,000 then this would yield 46,500. However, if eleph mean a military unit, then this would mean 46 units, totaling 500 men. This kind of analysis yields numbers that seem much more plausible considering the story and the context. It isn’t without problems, though, because the summations at the end of the censuses don’t fit with this reading and not every large number in the Old Testament works into this kind of framework.

There are other issues with number in the Old Testament. There are internal discrepancies especially between 1 & 2 Chronicles and the books of Samuel and Kings. There are discrepancies between the Hebrew text and the Greek and Latin translations. There are discrepancies that creep up when trying to plot the reigns of kings or cohere genealogies. Throughout the Old Testament we see numbers being used in a way that does not match how we would expect them to be used today.

New Testament The New Testament (NT) does not exhibit quite the same kind of problems with numbers that we find in the Old Testament, but it has many peculiarities and quirks of its own. Like the OT there are seemingly implausible situations, like Jesus being tempted in the desert for forty days during which he ate nothing (Luke 4:2).32 The NT has some unique issues with numbers, ones that seem to challenge the historicity of the text.

28 See (Walton, Matthews and Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament 2000, 87- 88) for more on the numbers of the Exodus. 29 (Lasor, Hubbard and Bush 1996, 103) 30 This is over 50 times less than the population density of Cook County, IL, which includes the city of Chicago and some suburbs, and has a population density of about 5,515 people per square mile. 31 (Lasor, Hubbard and Bush 1996, 105) 32 I think this is usually gotten around by appealing to Jesus’ divinity, but that seems to discredit his humanity. Medically it is possible to go without food for 40 days, but this requires an ample supply of water. 41

There were 12 disciples who eventually became 12 apostles. On this point the NT is unambiguous. There are, however, slight variations in who actually made up the disciples. Below is a list of the disciples according to four different books of the NT. While most of the list is the same there two notable differences.33 For some reason Matthew and Mark record Simon as being a Cananaean and Luke (who wrote Luke & Acts) records him as being a Zealot, not a big deal. Harder to reconcile is the name Thaddaeus with Judas, son of James. Many assume that they are one in the same person, which is quite likely since many people back then had a couple of names (often an Aramaic name and a Greek name), but certainly Luke could have added a note such as “who was also called Thaddaeus” for clarity’s sake. My purpose in pointing this out is not to discredit the historical nature of the disciples, but simply to note that the authors seemed more concerned with there being twelve disciples/apostles than with getting their lists perfectly accurate and in coherence with the others. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul even separates his nomenclature and speaks of ‘the twelve’ separate from ‘the apostles’.

Matthew 10:2-4 Mark 3:16-19 Luke 6:14-16 Acts 1:13 Simon (Peter) Simon (Peter) Simon (Peter) Peter Andrew James Andrew John James John James James John Andrew John Andrew Philip Philip Philip Philip Bartholomew Bartholomew Bartholomew Thomas Thomas Matthew Matthew Bartholomew Matthew Thomas Thomas Matthew James, son of Alphaeus James, son of Alphaeus James, son of Alphaeus James, son of Alphaeus Thaddaeus Thaddaeus Simon, the Zealot Simon, the Zealot Simon, the Cananaean Simon, the Cananaean Judas, son of James Judas, son of James Judas Iscariot Judas Iscariot Judas Iscariot Matthias (Acts 1:26)

A similar situation exists with the length of Jesus’ ministry. It is often said that Jesus’ ministry was about three years long. But this is only based off of John’s gospel where Jesus attends three Passover’s in Jerusalem. In the three other gospels we have Jesus celebrating a Passover just once, at the time of his death. These gospels would suggest that Jesus’ ministry was less than one year long. How do we go about reconciling these divergent accounts? Certainly Jesus was a faithful Jew who celebrated the Passover yearly.

The most curious numbers in the NT of course come in John’s Revelation. There are whole eschatologies (theologies of the end times) built on the number 1,000 in Revelation 20, and then we have to reckon with the infamous ‘number of the beast’ in chapter 13. But also curious are the 144,000 in chapters 7 & 14, a number which has been taken quite literally by numerous commentators and sects.

So how do we move forward with this? How can we understand the Bible’s usage of numbers well so that we don’t get caught up in battles that we don’t need to fight? Well I’m going to start with everyone’s favorite subject, mathematics

33 Matthias was Judas’ replacement, so his name is not aberrant. 42

Mathematics Whether or not you are a ‘math person’ you probably have a pretty decent arsenal of mathematical tools at your disposal, at least compared to anyone who was writing at the time of the Bible. The basics of arithmetic are taught in elementary school, and even if you’re out of practice, you could probably work through a long division problem with time. This ability already sets you above most of the ancient world, whether Hebrew or Greek.

From my recollection, one of the areas of math that people found the most difficult, in elementary school, was story-problems. In general, students seem to be able to replicate multiplication tables and with practice they can work through division problems, but story-problems are another issue altogether. This simple illustration points to a radical difference in how we view numbers/math as compared to the ancients.

My son is three and can count to ten. That is to say he can recite the numbers 1-10 in the correct sequence. Ask him how many cars he is playing with though, and he is unreliable with his answer. Just like all of us, he has learned his numbers in the abstract. He has yet to relate the numerals he recites to the reality that is before him, at least in a consistent manner. This is precisely how we are taught mathematics as well. We learn to memorize additions between small numbers and then we learn to extend this to larger numbers and subtraction. We memorize multiplication tables and from there work out how to do long division. We spend much of our time learning math with no real connection to the real world, and then we struggle when story- problems force applicability upon us.

The ancient world was completely different. In the ancient world numbers and mathematics had direct correlations to the physical world and to practical applications. This extended well into the modern era after Christ’s birth. The Egyptians were the most advanced mathematicians until the Greeks – whose mathematics were based off the Egyptian’s – yet their reasons for using and manipulating numbers as they did were always practical. In his book Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous idea, Charles Seife writes about the Egyptians, “They never progressed beyond measuring volumes and counting days and hours. Mathematics wasn’t used for anything impractical, except their system of astrology.”34 I fully agree with Seife’s first sentence, but his second claim is incorrect.

It is anachronistic (inappropriate to the era) to say that the Egyptian system of astrology was impractical. Just saying that diminishes the role of astrology in the Egyptian culture and reads modern cosmology into the ancient world. If you recall the Egyptians had a well-developed pantheon (group of gods) that was intimately involved in the physical world. Figure 1 shows this pictorially: the god of the air is between the god of the earth and the god of the sky, the gods of the sun and moon sail through the sky in their boats, etc. This is how the Egyptians understood the world to be structured and to operate.

34 (Seife 2000, 12) 43

Figure 14 - Egyptian Cosmic Geography

Along with this was the common ancient concept that the heavens were divine. There were seven ‘stars’ that moved differently than the rest of the heavens and they were thought to have special significance. In Egypt, mathematics were developed to predict the seasonal flooding of the Nile, but also to understand the movement of the stars so that the gods could be better served. The Egyptian believed that the gods had created humans to serve their needs and tracking the stars better allowed the Egyptians to serve the gods; mathematics developed among priests. Astrology was not a mythological pseudo-science; it was their way of understanding their gods, and thus their reality. Numbers were used in pure practicality, whether constructing pyramids, doling out payments, or tracking the motions of the stars/gods. Numbers in the ancient world had a correspondence with reality that went far beyond quantity.

Again we see a difference here between our current understanding of numbers and the ancient’s. Our scientifically minded culture almost universally assumes that numbers cohere with reality in a strictly quantitative sense. Whether we are thinking of numbers in the abstract or in the concrete we see little value to them beyond the quantity they denote. In physics numbers mean nothing without units. An answer isn’t complete without specifying what quantity is being represented. For example, if we have the paradigmatic story-problem of two trains rushing towards each other from different locations and the question asks how long until they meet, then an answer of 6 is insufficient. Is that 6 seconds, minutes, hours, days? Likewise, if we are asked to calculate the speed of a rocket ship, then we must indicate whether our answer is in miles-per-hour, meters-per-second, or some other adequate units of measure.

The only modern example that I can find of a number whose relevance goes beyond the quantitative is the number 13. For whatever reason, this number carries with it vestiges of an earlier culture that attributed

‘bad luck’ to it. Certainly most of us consider this a superstition, but consider the impact it actually has on our world. Buildings are built with no thirteenth floor, because somehow denoting the 13th level as the 14th abdicates those who occupy that level from any sort of ill fortune. Even some of the most scientifically used buildings are reticent to assign the numerals 13 where appropriate. This qualitative, superstitious use of the number 13 gives us a sense of how numbers were understood to the ancients.

We find many numbers in the Bible that have symbolic significance: Three, Four, Seven, Ten, Twelve, Forty, One-Thousand are the more common ones.35 Why they have significance is not always easy to discern. The number twelve seems to stem from the twelve sons of Jacob, which become the twelve tribes of Israel. The number is used rarely before Jacob’s sons but frequently after. The number seven shows up immediately in the first chapter of Genesis. It is the framework for God’s creative activities. The number seven had significance beyond Israel in the ancient world. As mentioned before, there were seven ‘stars’ that moved differently across the sky (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Sun, Moon) and since the stars were encased in the divine realm, the number seven took on divine properties.

The number three may have been related to the three part structure of the world: heaven, earth, sheol (underworld) and thus may have had a sense of wholeness or completeness. Four was directly related to the structure of the earth (four corners, four winds, in Greek thought there were four basic elements) and suggests earthly order. Ten, which is core to our decimal system, probably took on special significance do to our ten fingers. It indicates human completeness. Forty is terribly significant in the Bible, but its origin is unknown, it seems to suggest a complete cycle. One-Thousand is simply a very large number representing vastness. For many numbers in the Bible, the quality of the number is more important than the quantity of that number. This is true even if we cannot understand the exact nuances of that quality.

This qualitative understanding of numbers is common among ‘primitive’ people. There are still cultures today that seem to be unable to understand numbers as abstract concepts. Georges Ifrah writes “Amongst these populations, number is “felt” and “registered”, but it is perceived as a quality, rather as we perceive smell, colour, noise, or the presence of a person or thing outside of ourselves”. He continues by saying “that does not mean that they have no perception of quantity. It is just that the plurality of beings and things is measured by them not in a quantitative but in a qualitative way, without differentiating individual items”.36

35 (Freedman 2000) 36 Both references from (Ifrah 2000, 5) emphasis added 45

A Way Forward We must first realize how mathematically inclined we are, even if we aren’t. And we must realize that our mathematics and our numbers are very abstract. The most abstract of all numbers is the number zero, which along with infinity has no real-life corollary. The ancients did not know the number zero. It was introduced in the 4th century B.C. as a place holder (like the zero in 203), but the concept did not enter the Western world until the 9th century A.D. For a long time people were either unable or unwilling to accept the concept of nothingness.

This shows a bit how practical ancient mathematics was. The Egyptians made use of the 3-4-5 triangle – through knotted ropes – to achieve right angles for their construction projects, but they never generalized the idea into what we now know as the Pythagorean theorem (a2+b2=c2). This would have been too abstract for them, beyond their conceptual ability and their practical needs.

Not only do we use numbers abstractly, but our ability to Figure 15 - A Right Triangle imagine these has increased. We are used to big numbers. We are aware that there are roughly 7 billion (7,000,000,000) people on the earth and we are used to seeing thousands of people at a time (concerts, sporting events, etc.), if not in person then on TV. The ancient people did not have this conceptual reality. They were not accustomed to dealing with the large numbers that our society gives us. Science offers us ridiculously large numbers, so much that we even have a special notation to deal with them (1,000 = 103; 50,000 = 5x104; etc.). At some point our ability to reckon with these numbers in any meaningful way ends and we just begin to think of them as ‘really large numbers’. For the ancients, who were not used to the large numbers we experience, they reached this cognitive limit sooner. One-Thousand represented a very large number for the Israelites because they were unaccustomed to regularly experiencing this amount in reality.

Despite our abstract approach to numbers and our ability to reckon with large numbers we still believe that numbers are quantitatively indicative of reality. That is to say that even when numbers are ridiculously huge and even if we cannot see them in our everyday world we believe that numbers offer us an accurate view of reality, quantitatively. We believe that matter is made up of atoms, even if we are told that atoms are so small that a million of them stacked together make up the thickness of a piece of paper. This is a ridiculously abstract concept with huge (or tiny) numbers. Yet we believe that these numbers are indicating the actual size of the atom and that they are making no claims upon the quality of the atom.

The ancients dealt with numbers only practically and only as the numbers related to their direct experience with reality, which included God (gods). They believed that numbers indicated reality, but in a much more qualitative sense. We may find their use mythical, but their mythology was their science. It described the world they lived in and how that world operated. Numbers were understood to be true to reality, but that didn’t mean that they necessarily related to quantity and materiality of the world as ours do. The

46 whole conceptual world of the ancients was different and had different foci that ours does.37 Numbers were used for a variety of reasons that we will probably never fully understand.

Epilogue There are many ways that people misuse the numbers in the Bible. Perhaps the most obvious is the kind of doomsday literature that tries to pin down when Christ will return. These kinds of analyses are most certainly doing damage to the original intent of the text. Without centuries of mathematical advancement we most certainly would not understand numbers as we do today. If we read only our conception of numbers into the text then we likely distort the original meaning and we end up making the text say what we want it to say. We make it answer our questions. The worst part of this is that we end up losing sight of what the Bible was really trying to communicate. It becomes, to steal a phrase, an adventure in missing the point.

Bibliography Freedman, David Noel, ed. Eerdmanns Dictionary of the Bible. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000.

Ifrah, Georges. The Universal History of Numbers. Translated by David Bellos, E. F. Harding, Sophie Wood, & Ian Monk. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2000.

Lasor, William Sanford, David Allan Hubbard, and Frederic William Bush. Old Testament Survey: The Message, Form, and Background of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996.

Seife, Charles. Zero. New York: Viking, 2000.

Walton, John H. Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006.

Walton, John H., Victor H Matthews, and Mark W Chavalas. The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2000.

37 See especially (Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible 2006) 47

Eschatology

Eschatology is the study of the last things. It covers the theology about what will happen when Christ returns and makes all things new.38 It is also the core of our Christian hope. The root of this theology is found, first and foremost, in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. This becomes the paradigm for our hope, bodily resurrection. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15, if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised…if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins…If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied (1 Cor. 15:13, 17, 19). The whole chapter is an excellent discussion of eschatology.

There are many strands of eschatology these days and some rather extreme positions. The point of this class is not to engage every idea out there, but I do want to set the stage a bit before we delve into science. Thus I propose some general guidelines for what I think is good eschatology.

A good Biblical Eschatology is…

 Rooted in the Bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ (Eschatology always talks about Jesus)  Consistent with the whole Bible (The same Jesus in the Gospels and the Revelation)  Hopeful (I don’t think we should have to scare people into wanting to spend eternity with God)  Open to discussion (There are simply too many details we can’t pin down)

Science and the Fate of the Universe Science offers us a bleak view of our fate. The expansion of the universe is balanced by the attractive force of gravity and it is unknown which will win out in the end. If the universe continues to expand, and gravity loses, then eventually the universe will become a homogenous expanse of low-grade radiation. If gravity proves the victor then at some point the universe will stop expanding and will begin to collapse. This collapse will eventually include everything and the universe will end in a catastrophic Big Crunch. Neither of these scenarios offers us any kind of hope whatsoever for the future of humanity. But don’t worry; long before either of these options would begin to affect us, our sun will have enveloped the earth as it becomes a red giant, on its way to death.

There are certain secularists who seem to accept the fact that our earth will not sustain life forever. These people seem to realize that our sun will one day burn out and thus humanity must find a place to live beyond earth, or even our solar system. Elon Musk, CEO and founder of SpaceX, believes that the ‘spark of human consciousness’ must be preserved and the only way to do that is to find ways to survive in space or on

38 An excellent book on eschatology, written for the general public, is N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope. New York: HarperOne, 2008. For a more comprehensive treatment see Jürgen Moltmann. The Coming of God. Translated by Margaret Kohl. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996. C.S. Lewis’ classic allegory The Great Divorce is without rival. 48 other planets. SpaceX is the most successful of the commercial space ventures as it has docked with the International Space Station. Musk and those like him seem to have bought wholeheartedly into science’s prediction of earthly demise, but they have truncated this extrapolation and fail to realize that, according to their science, “the total result of human progress, of every effort and aspiration and ideal will be annihilation in the deathly cold of inter-stellar space”.39 Even in the noblest of human endeavors, the futility of the universe cannot be denied.

Futility and Hope The Bible knows this futility. It acknowledges it well. Ecclesiastes starts with the preacher saying that everything is meaningless and questioning what a man gains from all his hard work. Paul picks up this theme in Romans 8 and says that the creation was subjected to futility. The word for futility here is the same word used in Ecclesiastes 1 and Paul is drawing out the same theme of meaninglessness that the Old Testament authors recognized in the world. This futility is well known to many non-Christians in the world and many Christians feel it too. The difference for Christians is that, with Christ, this futility is actually the starting point for hope.

Paul says that not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. (Rom. 8:23-25) This is one of my favorite passages in the Bible and one of the most important for our eschatology. It acknowledges the futility of this world, it recognizes that things aren’t right and it asks us to hope in what we cannot see, namely a bodily resurrection in line with Jesus’.

But there is one aspect of this passage that is easy to overlook, one that has direct implications for our scientific view of the future. Verses 20-21 say, for the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. This is an aspect of eschatology that we easily forget, that the creation itself will be redeemed. It isn’t just about us; it is about all that God created.

If that is true then we have to acknowledge a limit to the claims that science can make on our future. Science works under the principle of continuity, or rather it assumes continuity. One of the most basic tenets of scientific exploration is the belief that what we find true today can be extrapolated into the past and the future. This can only be true in an ordered system that doesn’t have dramatic, disjunctive interruptions in processes. This is believed to be true about our universe. Science believes that the universe is ordered enough that the laws governing phenomena today are universal through time and space.

This is a key tenant of our faith as Christians as well. If God had not set up a stable universe, with only the occasionally rare, disjunctively interfering ‘miracle’, then we would have no system to live within in any meaningful way. If God had not created an ordered universe, and if we could not trust the continuity of history, we would have no real way of know who God was or how he related to his people.40 Without a basic belief in an ordered, rational universe, which has always been governed by the same laws as we observe today, then the life, death and resurrection of Jesus would mean nothing to us.

39 Phillips, J.B. Your God is Too Small: A Guide for Believers and Skeptics Alike. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1952. P. 65-66 40 For more on this see C.S. Lewis’ The Problem of Pain 49

So we believe in order and continuity. But both Science and the Bible tell us that intrinsic to this ordered universe is futility. The second law of thermodynamics states that systems move towards greater disorder. That is to say that their entropy increases. The general bent of nature is to decay into a less ordered state. The Bible confirms this in its own way.

All of this is to say that God’s action in the future that leads to new creation must be a disjunctive act that is discontinuous in the timeline of history. If all we do is extrapolate our current data into the future there is no escaping its grim conclusion. Our hope is based on what we do not see. Our eschatological hope is not rooted in the progress of the human race, or political powers, or even our evangelistic efficiency. Our hope is rooted firmly in Christ Jesus breaking into history with a discontinuous act that brings about the New Creation.

Continuity and Discontinuity In thinking of the New Creation we must acknowledge that it will have continuity with the history of humanity, but will also be discontinuous. This is evident in Jesus’ resurrection body. The resurrected Jesus had a body that was human, that was made of matter, that operated much the same as any other body. It even carried the scars of Calvary. Yet it was different. Jesus was not immediately recognized by even his closest followers and somehow he had the ability to come and go through time and space in a way that was quite startling (Luke 24:36-37).

This continuity and discontinuity is well expressed on the Road to Emmaus in Luke 24. Here Jesus meets two of his followers and in talking to them he spoke to them and beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. Jesus himself rooted his resurrection body in history. He showed the continuity between the first creation and the New Creation. Yet at the same time, while Jesus was talking to them, they did not even know who he was. They could not recognize him for some reason that we don’t know, but we can infer that this was part of the discontinuity between the Jesus’ first body and his resurrection body.

This continuity and discontinuity is core to our eschatological hope. Our hope is not in some ethereal, vaporous spiritual realm that is less real than reality. Nor is it in escaping this earth and fleeing to some distant heaven where God is waiting for us. Our hope is in recreation not annihilation. Our hope is in God returning to earth and making things right again. Our hope is in God coming and dwelling among his people like he did in the Garden. Our hope is in God being all in all. Our Christian hope goes far beyond the popular notions of heaven.

The Science of Hope If Science offers us such a dismal view of the end, and we believe that Christ’s return will be a discontinuous act that breaks into our normal time and space, then can we actually glean anything about the New Creation from our study of the old? We must again consider it in terms of continuity and discontinuity.

In his resurrected body, Christ existed in time and space and was made of matter. It is somewhat easier to see that there was some sort of transformation of his material body since he was not immediately recognized by those who knew him best, but he still ate food with his disciples. So we see a level of bodily, material

50 continuity and discontinuity. Something happened to the material, the matter, of Jesus’ body at the resurrection. It was somehow transformed into a more eternal nature.

It is harder to see implications beyond this, but the fact that Jesus could ‘walk through walls’ seems to indicate more than just a physical change. With Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity it became evident that Time and Space are not separate entities which exist independently of one another. His later General Theory threw matter into the mix as well, so that now we know that Time, Space and Matter are all dependent on one another. It would be wrong then to think that we can have matter without time, or time without space and so on. Since this is a fundamental aspect of the structure of creation, it makes sense that New Creation will have a similar structure. Or, since Christ’s resurrection body was made of matter, and this body is the firstfruit of the New Creation, then we have every reason to believe that the New Creation will involve time and space as well.

This is contrary to many who, over the centuries, have conceived eternity as a kind of atemporal, changeless, eternal now. But again, modern theologians are beginning to rethink this position (See handout on Time& Eternity). If the New Creation is marked by space and time as well as matter, then we should expect that, like Jesus’ body, this eschatological time and space will be transformed in some way analogous to the transformation of Jesus’ body after the resurrection.

There is, perhaps, not much we can concretely say about how this transformation will manifest in the New Creation. We can surmise that, since we should have hope in this new world, eschatological time and space will be somehow ‘better’ than they are now. We can imagine that in eternity, time no longer only allows us access only to the present, but somehow past, present and future are equally accessible, distinctive yet united. In this framework the present no longer bifurcates the known, static, unchangeable past, from the unknown, potential, dynamic future. Rather all time is accessible to us in a way that we cannot easily imagine or explain. At least, for time to be redeemed it must no longer be the medium through which entropy increases. If eternity is indeed somehow temporal then time must be redeemed to alleviate creation from being subjected to futility.

Space is a harder matter to consider. It is not easy to see how space is involved in the creation’s subjection to futility, nor how it could be changed in any meaningful way to be ‘better’. My only suggestion is to consider that space separates, and that much of the way the New Testament speaks of our eschatological hope is being ‘one in Christ’ and God being ‘all in all’. If unity is a core element of the New Creation, and we can expect to have resurrected bodies, then perhaps we can imagine space as somehow being more united. Perhaps eschatological space will allow the same kind of united differentiation that we spoke of with time. If we look seriously at the population of the earth through all of history then we get some very large numbers.41 Just now the population of the earth is around 7,000,000,000. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is a redeeming act for all of humanity and we go wrong if we try to presume to know all the details of how this redemption flows through history and cultures. I hope we can be optimistic about God’s love for his people and can hope that a majority of all people will enter the New Creation. If this is true, then there will likely be billions of people in eternity. Perhaps space will be redeemed in such a way so that the necessary distance between

41 It has been suggested the total number of people ever to be born is in the 100 billions (100,000,000,000). 51 these people will not be a barrier to communication, to interaction, to sharing experiences, and to joining together in worshipping God.

Eschatoi Logoi (Last Words) Many questions arise when we look at the Biblical account for our eschatological hope. I believe that science can offer us new ways of approaching age old questions. For example, there has been long discussion about how to match the conversation between the criminal and Jesus on the cross in Luke 23, and the idea of a future, general resurrection at the Parousia (return of Christ). The issue, in my mind, has to do with the nature of time. How can the criminal be with Christ ‘today’, if Christ’s return is still a future reality? There is a tension in the New Testament between the idea of individual resurrection and general resurrection, between the idea that we go to be with God when we die, yet we will all be raised together on the last day. Here science can be helpful. Special Relativity destroyed the notion of one continuous timeline that we all navigate together, thus showing that time is not an intrinsic, unalterable piece of reality. And again we must believe that Christ’s return will not be a progressive return within creaturely time, but a disjunctive event breaking into time and space, which redeems all things, including time. We can thus imagine that the time of eternity relates to ours in such a way that both individual and general resurrection happen simultaneously. That is to say that “though we all die at different times in this world, we may all arrive simultaneously on the day of resurrection in the world to come”.42 This eliminates the need for Luther’s ‘soul sleep’ or any kind of intermediate state between our death and our resurrection. We needn’t be so constrained to a timeline that these are our only options.

Science alone offers a disparaging look at the future of the cosmos. The Bible alone offers a hopeful, but somewhat confusing look. I find that the most hopeful and tangible view of our eschatological fate comes with a healthy, imaginative collaboration between faith and science. I think there is great evangelical potential in this approach. If we can expound our future hope in terms that the world understands, then we increase our ability to communicate that hope to a futile world. Peter encourages us to always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an account of the hope that is in you. If we can make that defense in terms that the world understands we will be far more effective in speaking God’s truth to an unbelieving world.

Recommended Reading Polkinghorne, John. The God of Hope and the End of the World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.

Russell, Robert John. Time in Eternity. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012.

42 (Polkinghorne 2002, 122) 52

Bibliography for Faith & Science

Below are a number of resources that I think are helpful for exploring issues involved with Faith & Science. I’ve organized it by topic and added a number scale referring to the difficulty of the content. A book with a ‘1’ rating is intended for a more popular audience and any interested reader should be able to manage the content. A rating of ‘3’ refers to a book that is written for a more scholarly audience and the content will be more difficult. A ‘2’ is somewhere in between. The bolded numbers represent a book that is available in the church library. My top picks are denoted by a larger font.

Short List – for those who don’t want to wade through the pages below (1) Your God is Too Small: A Guide for Believers and Skeptics Alike, by J.B. Phillips

(2) Belief in God in an Age of Science, by John Polkinghorne

(1) The Lost World of Genesis One, by John H. Walton

Web Resources BioLogos – BioLogos was started by Francis Collins as a way of exploring how Science and Faith work in harmony. Their belief is that“God is the source of all life and that life expresses the will of God”. The website has a slew of information ranging from introductory to more advanced.

The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion – This website has extensive resources for engaging the Faith & Science discussion. It is also the institution that created the Test of Faith curriculum, the DVD of which is listed below.

DVD Resources (1) Test of Faith: Does Science threaten Belief in God? DVD, by The Faraday Institute

(1) From the Dust: Conversations in Creation DVD, by Biologos

General Issues in Faith & Science (1) The Language of Science and Faith, by Karl W. Giberson and Francis S. Collins

(1) The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, by Francis S. Collins

(1) Beyond the Firmament, by Gordon Glover

(2) Belief in God in an Age of Science, by John Polkinghorne

(2) Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science and Religion, by John Polkinghorne

(2) One World: The Interaction of Science and Theology, by John Polkinghorne 53

(1) Questions of Truth: fifty-one Responses to Questions about God, Science and Belief, by John Polkinghorne

(2) Science and Providence: God's Interaction with the World, by John Polkinghorne

Creation (2) Science and Creation: The Search for Understanding, by John Polkinghorne

(2) Creation, by Hans Schwarz

(1) The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate, by John H. Walton

Evolution/Genetics (1) Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose?, Denis Alexander

(1) The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, by Francis S. Collins

(1) Coming to Peace with Science: Bridging the Worlds Between Faith and Biology, by Darrel Falk

(1) Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution, by Karl W. Giberson

(1) Origins: Christian Perspectives on Creation, Evolution and Intelligent Design, by Deborah & Loren Haarsma

Neuroscience (3) Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies?, by Nancey Murphy

(2) Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible, by Joel B. Green

Eschatology (2) Eschatology, by Hans Schwarz

(3) Time in Eternity: Pannenberg, Physics, and Eschatology in Creative Mutual Interaction, by Robert John Russell

(2) The God of Hope and the End of the World, by John Polkinghorne

On Biblical Interpretation (3) The Art of Reading Scripture, by Ellen F. Davis and Richard B. Hays

(2) A Short Introduction to Hermeneutics, by David Jasper

(2) Introduction to Biblical Interpretation, by William W. Klein, Craig L. Blomberg, and Robert L. Hubbard, Jr.

(1) Your God is Too Small: A Guide for Believers and Skeptics Alike, by J.B. Phillips

(2) Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible, by John H. Walton

On the History and Philosophy of Science (2) Worldviews: An Introduction to the History and Philosophy of Science, by Richard DeWitt

(2) The Beginnings of Western Science, by David C. Lindberg

Appendix

The Unchanging God The doctrine that God created our universe and everything in it ex nihilo, from nothing, has been a standard in orthodox Christianity since about 150AD. The first verse in the Bible Genesis 1:1 suggests this, but it is made more explicit in texts like Hebrews 1, Colossians 1 and John 1. There can be no doubt that the Bible, as a whole, affirms that God created all things, whether material, or immaterial. Whether concrete things like earth and water, or whether more abstract things like time and space. God created it all.

At this point there are a couple of options. The first is that God created the universe, set it in motion, withdrew and let it go wherever it would. This Deistic conception has been a popular view since at least the Enlightenment as it fits well with the scientific approach to reality; Einstein himself was essentially a Deist. The problem with this first option is that it fails to account for a large portion of the Scriptures. How can you explain the prominent Hebrew attribute of Yahweh, hesed, if it is referring to a clockwork God who wound up his creation and then sat back and watched? This God would have no relationship with his creation and thus no Covenant with Abraham, no chosen nation, no use for prophets and no reason to become incarnate. Without a personal God we have no Scripture, and ultimately no hope.

The other option then is to have a God who is in relation to his creation, a God who has endeavored to enter into his works. There is a multiplicity of nuances here as well, but I’ll only discuss two broad options. One would take a line more like an extreme Calvinist who says that God had entered into his creation, but all that happens within has been ordered and set in place for all eternity. This stance might argue that our free will or decision making processes are mere illusion as we are bound by

56 the order of events God has ordained. This view tends to emphasize God’s transcendence over his immanence.

If God has not preordained every action that will ever occur then what is the other option? Is he subject to our decisions in such a way that he is dependent on us to complete his will? This would make

God more immanent, but it diminishes his transcendence and in a way it also distances him from his creation. If God is the creator there must be a way of talking about his unchanging nature that keeps him in close relation to his creation and his creatures.

To start with, God as Creator is a transcendent concept. It says that God is wholly other than his creation and in no way dependent on it. It says that God was the only impetus for the creation of everything. In the New Testament the role of Creator is generally given to the second person of the

Godhead, Jesus Christ. This is clear especially in the prologue to John and in Colossians 1:15-20. In fact it is in Colossians 1:17 where we find Paul talking about a preeminent Creator who not only created, but is actively holding that creation together. This is the key to cohering God the Creator with God the

Unchanging.

If God is a Creator who is actively sustaining the world, as Paul seems to say, then he is able to be both transcendent and immanent. The transcendent aspect of God created the world and the immanent aspect of God is actively sustaining it. This paints the picture of a God who did not just create the world and then let it go, or create the world and hope that he could convince the creatures to like him, but rather a God who created the world and is active in the creating process. Or to say in another way, creation is given shape and meaning only because God is actively creating within the

57 structures of the original creation.43 Without this the presence of evil would have desolated creation long ago.

In this framework the question “Can God change?” loses all meaning. If God were to change it would fundamentally change the nature of the creation, the reality that we experience. While this seems as though it would be a rather noticeable event, it must be remembered that time itself is a creature of

God’s creation. A fundamental change in God could not lead to a discontinuous disruption in our space-time-matter universe, because God changing would reconstitute the whole history (as we see it) of his creation. It is along the line of stating that God created a mature universe with a built-in history and in fact he did it all just five minutes ago. It is possible, but it is an unhelpful concept as it is absolutely impossible to prove or disprove and is in no way edifying.

Anselm’s (12th century archbishop of Canterbury) justification for an unchanging God does not seem to account for God as creator and sustainer. To say that God is too perfect to change is to elevate a human construct (perfection) over the living God of the Scriptures. It fails to realize that humanity has no conception of what perfect might be except from God. The mere concept of perfection is a creation of humans who endeavor to describe attributes of God. This concept cannot then usurp

God’s place and become master. It cannot govern God, for it is part of God’s creation.

Thus a fundamental change in God becomes a nonsensical concept. His transcendence will not allow such a question to be asked. Can God change his mind? This then becomes a question, not about the nature of God’s transcendence, but the nature of his immanence. God as creator and sustainer paints a picture of God that is engaged with his creation, creating and bringing new life, and this in response to his creatures. It is like Lamentations 3:22-24 says “(the Lord’s) mercies/compassions are new every morning”. Fallen humanity depends on God’s mercies to bring new life where we allow death. Without

43 This concept has been borrowed from a chapter on the nature of time by John Polkinghorne (Polkinghorne, J. (2005). Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science and Religion. New Haven: Yale University Press.) 58

God’s active engagement with us in our fallen state we would have no hope. This active engagement means that God enters into the temporality to which we are bound and in doing so allows his relationship with his creation to change.

With the framework of God as Creator of our world, indeed of our very reality, the idea of God’s unchangeable nature gains some clarification. To be transcendent is to be wholly other. God as our creator necessitates this idea. The creature cannot know his creator apart from the creation and the more we try to define God by means of his creation the more we create an idol. We are certainly able to describe attributes of God, but this should be done knowing that these descriptors themselves are finite pieces of a creation that is subject to an infinite creator. If God truly enters a relationship with humanity then he, in some way, binds himself to humanity’s temporality and we cannot help but say that he changes with regards to our relationship with him. Throughout, however, God as Creator is still in control as he bends and mends and creates to bring his creatures and his creation closer to him.