Christianity and the sciences have fallen on hard times in the last century and a quarter or so. Gone are the days when Henry Drummond openly celebrated the theory of evolution as the Theistic alternative to Spontaneous generation, or Cotton Mather rejoiced in Isaac Newton as the great expounder of God’s governance of the universe.
And yet, Christians are still obligated to explore and participate in the sciences. That such has fallen on hard times is no excuse. To help us do that, Gray Sutanto, James Eglinton, and Cory Borck have released Herman Bavinck’s Christianity & Science.
Despite weighing in at just over two hundred pages, Christianity & Science manages to pack in:
- what “science” means for a Christian
- what “science” is overall
- the place of science in society
- the place of science in the university
- the difference between “natural science”, theology, and the humanities
- the place of revelation in science
- the essential value of Christianity for science
- the need for a Christian university (that studies science)
And that’s not even a complete list! Along the way, Bavinck makes the case for studying science:
“Whoever is serious about religion cannot limit revelation to a mystical working of the infinite in the human inner life. The human being is not isolate in the world. He is bound to his environment with every fiber of his being. Like someone who is hungry but will take no food from outside himself and thus starves to death, so is the religious man who isolates himself from the world and must live off his own inner affections, impoverished.” (168-169)
If we do not want to be thus impoverished, we must embrace the study of science as a way of understanding what God has taught about Himself through the natural world.
While dense in places (because: Bavinck), this excellent little volume is absolutely worth having on your shelf as a starting place for reflection on the connection between theology and science.
Dr. Coyle Neal is co-host of the City of Man Podcast an Amazon Associate (which is linked in this blog), and an Associate Professor of Political Science at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, MO
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