finitum non capax infiniti

Today I had the great opportunity to attend two lectures at Eastern University that were part of The American Scientific Affiliation’s regional meeting. The two speakers were Peter Enns, biblical scholar at large, and Edward (”Ted”) Davis, Distinguished Professor of the History of Science at Messiah College. A few of my friends and I attended the lectures, but they will remain nameless for their own protection!

Pete lectured first on the topic of “Genesis and Evangelicals” and focused on the rise of modern biblical scholarship and how that affects the ways in which we view Scripture. Modern biblical scholarship has pointed out both internal issues of the Pentateuch (i.e., anachronisms, divine names of God, duplications, etc.) and external issues of the Pentateuch (i.e., ANE archaeology including texts, inscriptions, and artifacts as well as science). He then spent time on the documentary hypothesis as put forth by Julius Wellhausen and how his work changed the face of biblical scholarship as the most influential biblical scholar of his time. One thing that Wellhausen’s thesis did for scholars of all stripes (evangelical, ‘liberal,’ etc.) is point out the development of the OT that was the result of hundreds of years of tradition and history tied together. This challenges all of us to think about the question of what the Bible is all about.

When one looks at the OT, one sees that Israel reflects her neighboring societies. Like other societies of the time, Israel also had a Semitic language, customs, kings, sacrificial systems, prophets, wisdom literature, laws, etc. By noticing this, one will easily recognize that there is hardly any aspect of the OT where the historical context does not play a role. When one thinks about the incarnational analogy, one should hardly object to the fact that this is, indeed, the case. There needs to be a synthesis where modern biblical scholarship, orthodoxy, and science can work together to help us learn more not only about the Bible, but also about the God who gave us the Bible, science, and church history.

Ted Davis then lectured on the topic of “Religion and Science in America.” This was something new to me, so I’m probably not going to do his lecture justice. He focused on a few Christians throughout American church history who attempted to use science to better understand Scripture, such as Cotton Mather, Robert Blackwell, Benjamin Silliman, etc. There was a shift that happened throughout this history where earlier scholars attempted to use science to proof the validity of the Bible on such issues as Noah’s flood, special creation of humanity, date of the earth, and the existence of death before the fall. This gave rise to such things as the day-age theory and the gap theory. One thing these scientists were grappling with is how to synthesize their scientific findings with their Christianity; more specifically, how are they to understand the Bible’s view of creation and origins when science seems to be telling another story. One of the views that came to the forefront was ‘concordianism’ which viewed science as one book that God has given man to reveal himself and Scripture was another book that God has given man to reveal himself. One should not view these two ‘books’ as being in competition with each other, but as two books in harmony with each other. This view seemed to be dominant in some circles (and still is today in certain circles) but others rejected this view outright, especially with the rise of Darwinism in America. Perhaps the best way of looking at the issue is not to see two books speaking about the same thing, but to take each ‘book’ on its own terms. In other words, when one stops reading Scripture as a history and science manual, one will see that it does not necessarily compete with or contradict science or even a modified view of Darwinism, such as theistic evolution.

Both lecturers did a fine job getting their points across and I benefitted from hearing both of the lectures. The question and answer time was interesting. One could tell that it was a room full of scientists as most of the questions were directed towards Dr. Davis. My cursory knowledge of science (i.e., unless Brian Greene has written about it, I probably don’t know it!) excused me from asking any questions.

I did, however, have a penetrating question for Pete: why in the world did you not bring your MacBook?!?! I was shocked and appalled to see him using a PC, but will excuse him on this account because it probably wasn’t his choice. He’s much too smart to make such a plebeian error such as that!