Science and proof
I’m sure our Lord is relieved every time His people find new scientific explanations for biblical events.
I mean, I read an article about someone trying to contrive a survival scenario within a whale for three days in order to scientifically validate the Jonah story. More recently, I read an article on BBC’s website which states that “a strong east wind, blowing overnight, could have pushed water back at a bend where an ancient river merged with a coastal lagoon,” thus allowing the Israelite to cross the Red Sea.
By: Daniel Giesbrecht
Notwithstanding the “scientific” problems with these explanations (e.g. the biblical narrative seems to indicate that the Israelites would have probably crossed into Saudi Arabia), I think they are trying to achieve something that is even worse than disproving the rationality of the stories. The original narratives claim the unique and miraculous intervention of Yahweh on behalf of His people. To reinterpret the supernatural agency out of these accounts is conceding to your naturalist “opponents.”
When we come to Christ’s resurrection, what shall we say? That it was merely a hallucination? Or maybe the disciples’ wishful thinking, since they were looking to express analogies they found in nature, such as that of Winter’s “death” and Spring’s “rebirth?” Yes indeed, miracles are necessary to your faith: “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:17).
On the other hand, instead of defending our narrative, can we put forward positive proofs of God’s existence from phenomena in nature? Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion by David Hume and Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant were written a long time ago, and show us the devastating problems with trying to come to knowledge of God from nature. Then it follows that the chaos as well as the “intelligent design” in the universe must all be identified with God. The God of the philosophers is most certainly not God in Christ as revealed by our humble scriptures. There is a metaphysical domain of truth upon which much of our faith lies. We cannot put all of our eggs in the rational basket.
And Trinity Western University is the place where I finally learned to relax my apologetic frenzy, six day creationism, to think better philosophically, and to let God be God.
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