Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 54:215 (Jul 1897)
Article: Science And The Supernatural
Author: Anonymous

BSac 54:215 (July 1897) p. 568

Science And The Supernatural

To The Editor Of The Bibliotheca Sacra:

Dear Sir:—In the Tribune of Sunday the 14th appeared an article entitled “Religion and Science,” in which I find the following expressions: “In the opinion of many clear-minded Christian thinkers a point will soon be reached—if indeed it has not been reached already—when no compromise with science will be possible. Christianity cannot throw supernaturalism overboard without ceasing to be Christianity. But can it retain its belief in the supernatural and at the same time accept the methods and conclusions of science? …

“They believe that ultimately religion must fight science, and that therefore all attempts to temporize with it are not merely useless but harmful.”

I desire to express most emphatically, both as a man of science and a professor of religion, my dissent from the views expressed and implied in the above quotation.

In the first place, as a man of science, I would protest against the suggestion that the methods and conclusions of science are in any way inconsistent with the acceptance of the supernatural.

What is the supernatural, in the view of science, except that for which nothing that we know or have deduced in the way of law or the observable succession of phenomena will account? In other words, any inexplicable phenomenon, until an explanation is discovered, is supernatural, i.e., beyond the application of what we call natural law.

The rainbow was a supernatural phenomenon prior to its explanation; and in my opinion the hatching of a chicken from an egg is just as much beyond the reach of our present scientific knowledge as to its cause and origin as is the restoration of vitality to a dead body.

Unless, then, the man of science is assumed to believe his knowledge to be final and complete (which I am confident all men of science will disavow), it is not reasonable to assert that to him anything claimed by

BSac 54:215 (July 1897) p. 569

enlightened believers in historic religion as the foundation of their belief is inconsistent with a strict adherence to the methods and results of scientific study. In other words, the man of science studies the phenomena which are within the ever-enlarging range of his powers of perception and deduction, and he would be simply abandoning the methods of his own subject if he went beyond this range to deny the existence of that which is outside of his present horizon.

To make my meaning plain I had best take a concrete case. The man of true science, as I understand him, is not, and certainly need not be, an atheist. Without pretending to know how