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We at the Evangelical Portal would like to highlight quality books that seek to advance important discussions within the Christian community. Daniel Harrell is a minister at Park Street Church in Boston. He holds a Ph.D. in psychology from Boston College, and published "Living the Law-Virtually" at Patheos in April. Below is the Introduction to his new book, Nature's Witness: How Evolution Can Inspire Faith, posted with the permission of Abingdon Press.
Walking across the Boston Common one cold winter's eve, I was approached by a gentleman, somewhat agitated, who recognized me from church.
"Are you the minister who's writing the book on evolution?"
This didn't sound good. "Uh, ... yes?" I replied, bracing myself.
"Do you believe in the word of God? Do you believe that God created the heavens and the earth in six days, like the Bible says?" His articulation was semiautomatic-as was his tone.
I assured him that yes, I believed the Bible says that God created the heavens and the earth in six days. I also believe that rivers clap their hands and that mountains sing (Ps. 98:9) because the Bible says that too. But I don't think that the Bible means six twenty-four-hour days any more than I believe that the Bible means that rivers have literal hands.
He worried that I suffered from delusion (which as far as I am concerned is never outside the realm of possibility). However, I reminded him that there are two types of delusion. There is the delusion that believes something that is not true, and there is the delusion that fails to believe something that is true. If evolution is an accurate description of the emergence of life, as science attests, then believing it alongside the Bible should pose no threat. There's no need to fear any honest search for truth because in the end, all honest searches for truth inevitably lead back to God.
Historically, religious faith, particularly Christianity, served as the loom onto which the discoveries of science were woven. It was within a Christian theological framework that scientific disclosure found its transcendent meaning. Descartes, Bacon, Galileo, Kepler and Newton, believers all, saw their work not as replacements for faith, but as extensions of it. The idea was that the best of science and the best of theology concerted to give human beings deeper insight into the workings of the universe and, subsequently, into the divine character. Scientific discovery was received with gratitude to the Almighty for the wonder of his creation. Scientists, alongside the psalmist, would proclaim, "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands" (Ps. 19:1 NIV).
The balance between faith and science (or reason) was established in the Middle Ages by Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas, building on Augustine, established a delicate equilibrium between theology (reasoning down from faith) and philosophy, analogous to science (reasoning up from sensory data). Aquinas, unlike the Reformers who would follow, taught that human senses and rational faculties, as made by God, were competent for understanding reality, albeit from a limited standpoint. The limits were filled in by theology. Aquinas asserted that God acted through "secondary causes," creating the world according to his laws and then giving nature room to unfold in accordance with God's laws. Whatever was good science was good as far as God is concerned; science simply described what God had already done.
