In this race of every theistic and atheistic religions,
Christian world today has also marched ahead in providing scientific cases for
the validity of the scripture. While reading the Bible, the readers put their
own insights to particular verses claiming as if it points to some scientific
case. Here, I don’t mean to say that the Bible has no science in it but my
intention is to convey that we have been missing some important point to
consider when we try reading the Bible with modern scientific lens.
Often times, we set our mind in a statement that the Bible is
inspired word of God and hence is true. We firmly believe that the scripture
possess every answers of this universe ranging from giant galaxies to
micro-organisms. We then don’t believe anything unless it is mentioned in the
Bible. Modern readers have indeed done a great mistake in understanding the
scripture and its purpose.
It is crystal clear that God himself has revealed to people in a
way their mind dimension could perceive him. God’s absolute message was
conveyed based on contemporary understanding of the people. God never intended
to convey any scientific teachings in that ancient era. Plus point, the authors
wrote the revelation and message being based on their prevailing cultural
context.
An excerpt
from ‘The Bible and Science: Do the Bible and Science Agree’ available at https://www.bibleandscience.com/science/bibleandscience.htm
decodes an important message:
God did not choose to use technical scientific
terms to communicate with us. God used the common language, and familiar
phrases of their day. God could have told us that the sun does not rise nor
set, but that the earth is spinning around the sun. God instead used the common
language of sunrise and sunset which was literal to the writers back then, but
which modern concordists excuse as phenomenal language that we still use today.
God is trying to communicate absolute spiritual truths, not shifting scientific
theories.
God’s
purpose of inspiration is clearly stated in II Timothy 3:16 which says that the
Bible is inspired by God so that it is profitable for instruction in
righteousness not instruction in science. To take a poem and use it as a
scientific text is wrong. It is like trying to use a hammer as a screwdriver.
It does not work. One must understand the historical context and meaning of the
original language that the Bible was written in.[ii]
In order to
understand the scripture, we must get the right idea of the contemporary
prevailing theology, culture, language, understanding, and perspective. It is
of course heart rendering situation if the scripture had Flat earth
understanding in it. Yet, one thing we must understand that even if the ancient
understanding was a Flat earth, God’s message was a real emphasis. Could they
understand His message and instructions if he had used modern terms such as
galaxies, microbes, atoms, molecules, nuclear energy, protons, neutrons,
quantum physics, and so on? There is little evidence that the writer of Job
actually meant to talk about astronomy, or that the writer of Hebrews was in
any way addressing modern atomic theory.[iii]
Skeptics
today with lots of studies often proclaim unscientific realm of the scripture
to which Christian response goes as saying those were not original intent.[iv] Let
us not forget that science itself is progressive and there was evolution in
theories on basis of investigation and discoveries. Ancient science is not the
same as modern science and here we are expecting the ancient readers writing
modern science? God would probably use the contemporary understanding and
cultural context in order to effectively communicate with the people. Remember,
the Bible has not ever been written with an aim to convey scientific knowledge!
It should be rather expected that the scripture had to be written in such a way
which reflects the cultural mindset of the original context.
Here’s
how Pete Enns puts it:
The
Bible…was an not an abstract, otherworldly book, dropped out of heaven. It
was connected to and therefore spoke to those ancient cultures. The
encultured qualities of the Bible, therefore, are not extra elements that we
can discard to get to the real point, the timeless truths.[v]
Let’s say, hypothetically, that God had revealed himself to
the ancient Chinese people, some of whom thought the world rested on the back of a
giant tortoise (that’s what the chart above means by “Earth
sat on a large animal”). And then God inspires a certain Chinese person to
write, “God has set the world firmly on the back of the turtle; it shall not be
moved” (see Psalms 104:5). Can that statement
still be God’s Word, even though it references an inaccurate picture of the
world? Certainly! The inspired revelation in this statement has nothing to do
with a turtle, and everything to do with God’s faithfulness. The turtle is part
of the cultural framework which allows the revelation to make sense to the
people who first said it! The same is true of the “ancient science” in the
Bible. It can’t be used as a weapon against the authority of God’s Word,
because it has nothing to do with what the Bible is ultimately trying to
communicate.[vi]
Now this absolutely makes sense! We, living in 21st
century in this scientific era still use the words ‘Sun rise’ and ‘Sun set’, have
no problem with it but why then we shall have lots of sweating regarding the
ancient cultural understanding in the scripture? Plus point, if the Bible was
written in this age we would never expect it as same scripture in its use of
language. For instance, God used the terms Behemoth and Leviathan
in Job 40 and 41 to convey God’s sovereignty over such mighty untamable beasts
showing human’s foolishness in questioning God. If this was to be written
today, we wouldn’t even expect Blue whale, Polar bear, tiger or dinosaurs to be
mentioned there but straight forward nuclear weapon!
Ted Burge, in chapter 10 of his book
Science and the Bible: Evidence Based Christian Belief, gives a profound
example of how the scriptural language can vary as per cultural context while
maintaining the proper and absolute theological message:
In the light of present scientific knowledge, and
of subsequent events in history, perhaps the writers of Genesis, inspired by
God’s continuing revelation of himself, would have written something like this:
In the beginning, God said “Let there be. . .,”
and he created the unified forces of physics, with perfect symmetry, and
prescient precision.
And out of nothing, and into nothing, God, by a
free decision, set up the spontaneous production of particles, in newborn space
and time, producing a silent, seething sphere, infinitesimally small, and
unimaginably hot.
There was evolution and emergence1( p.
84) the first stage of Creation.
During
a tiny fraction of a second, an expansion took place, and the perfect symmetry
of the forces was broken, step by step, as the temperature dropped, to produce
the forces of nature we know today.
God’s
well-tuned laws made innumerable particles, of every requisite kind, in a
steadily expanding chaotic cooling sphere. And the universe cooled for nearly a
million years, until electrons could stay joined to nuclei to form familiar
atoms.
There was evolution and emergence, the second
stage of Creation.
With atoms and molecules as building blocks, the
attracting force of gravity took over, and after about a thousand million
years, God saw the first stars and galaxies forming in an expanding cosmic
universe.
There was evolution and emergence, the third
stage of Creation.
Individual stars contracted under gravity, and
became hot enough for nuclear fusion to produce chemical elements not seen
before, until, after about eight thousand million years, stars were exhausted by
their radiance, and God saw them begin to die, some dramatically, by exploding
as supernovae, releasing all the chemical elements known today.
There was evolution and emergence, the fourth
stage of Creation.
And God saw that it was very good, for now all
the ingredients were available, and gravity formed a second generation of
stars, some accompanied by planets and satellites, including the sun, earth
and, later, the moon, in our galaxy of the Milky Way.
There was evolution and emergence, the fifth
stage of Creation.
Bathed in alternate daylight and darkness, during
the next thousand million years or so, conditions on earth became favorable for
the eventual generation of life.
There was evolution and emergence, the sixth
stage of Creation.
During these last three thousand million years,
life has evolved as God intended, and through numerous cycles of birth,
survival, procreation and death, species have multiplied and progressed, plants
and animals of every kind, and some have become extinct. Then, a mere three hundred
thousand years ago, there arrived, in the likeness of God, Homo
sapiens, intelligent humans, with freedom to choose, living together in
community, knowing good and evil, pleasure and pain, aware of honor due to
their dominion, and acquainted with death.
There was evolution and emergence, the seventh
stage of Creation, and the universe entered the Age of Humanity.
Human beings have hardly changed in physical
form, during the last 40,000 years, but their knowledge has grown, their
understanding has deepened and their beliefs have developed.
And God saw that it was good, but it was not good
enough, for free will led to sin and suffering, and guilt and disbelief could
lead to despair and the death of the human spirit.
So God sent his only Son, the Word made flesh,
who dwelt among us, as Jesus of Nazareth, suffered, died and was raised from
the dead, and showed his glory, full of grace and truth.
And that was the beginning of the New Creation.[vii]
I know
that this may not sound good to many readers and they may accuse the author for
compromising with the scripture. However, with deep insight, the above
modification are indeed cultural contextual understanding and the core
theological message yet remains same.
Here
again, I repeat that I am not literally denying traces of scientific cases in
the Bible. Yes, the Bible is rich in knowledge of different fields but this
doesn’t conclude that it has the answers of everything. We cannot go on either reading
modern science or accusing scientific errors into every verses of the Bible by
vaccinating our own assumptions.
Another
point to be noted that as I had earlier mentioned, for instance the issue of
Flat earth, we can neither say the scripture teach it nor we can say we have
been reading in between lines. We have to analyze properly with ancient mindset
whether or not they themselves believed in a literal Flat earth. We often see
the earth has been depicted as a disc and covered around with a dome like structure
where the sun, moon and stars are situated. However, we have to study in depth
how ancient near east understood the figure. Did they perceive it as a literal
disc or something artistic understanding? Is the understanding of Flat earth
today we have same as that the ancient near east had? Basically, Professor
William Laine Craig says it’s absolutely not.[viii]
It is
hence essential to rightly recognize the language of the scripture used in that
time. We are not in either situation of reading science in the scripture or
suspecting scientific errors in the scripture. God progressively used languages
that even a man with minimum education could have understood.[ix]
But God chose the foolish things of
the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame
the strong. 1 Cor. 1:27 NIV. Despite
of other neighboring faiths had greater knowledge in the ancient time, they
hardly knew the spiritual truth of God. However, even by using a language of
simplicity where we often see scientific disaster, God revealed and taught
great spiritual truth to the then people. In John 3:12, it is so sweetly
expressed that despite Jesus speaking with such cultural contextual words to
describe earthly things, people at that time yet did not fully comprehend then
how can we expect them to understand modern scientific terminologies? God’s
message was so beautifully expressed even with phenomenological language
prevailed at that time no matter even if they looked scientifically senseless.
In everyday life, we are content to
describe things the way they appear without always going into the precise
science behind what we observe. For example, we still talk about the sun rising
and setting even though we know that it is the earth that revolves around the
sun and not the sun that revolves around the earth. It is not wrong for us to
speak in such a way unless our intent is to give a scientifically precise
description of astronomical movements. In a similar way, the Bible often uses
phenomenological language, as in today’s passage where we read that the sun
stood still during a battle (Josh. 10:13a).
Scientifically speaking, God must have caused the earth to stop moving briefly,
not the sun, in order for this to happen, but the intent of the text is not to
give a science lesson about solar movements but to describe an incredible act
of God that enabled the Israelites to win their fight.[x]
We do not require the weatherman on TV to use scientifically
precise terminology when chatting about the forecast—we do not get confused if
he mentions a “sunrise” or “sunset,” even though those are not the technical
terms for what’s actually happening in the solar system. We are comfortable
with the use of phenomenological language, and we should be able to recognize
it in Scripture. God communicated to humanity in a way we could understand and
appreciate. The moon does shine, albeit with reflected light, so it is entirely
appropriate for the Bible to speak of the moon as a “light.”[xi]
There are indeed other examples where readers either input
excessive scientific case to the scripture or accuse the scripture for positing
scientific nonsense. We should be very careful in interpreting the text. Plain
text reading is not always a sound method of interpretation and reading in
between lines add further salt to the existing wound!
We have to wisely understand the purpose of the scripture and
our focus is rather what it conveys faithfully about God and spiritual truths
concerning the proper historical, grammatical and cultural context and use of
language and its understanding in the then contemporary time.
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