Science And God’s Revelation In Nature -- By: Carl F. H. Henry

Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 03:2 (Spring 1960)
Article: Science And God’s Revelation In Nature
Author: Carl F. H. Henry


Science And God’s Revelation In Nature

Carl F. H. Henry

Editor: Christianity Today

The twentieth century lives, thinks and moves beneath the canopy of science, whose bold venturesomeness has turned “thick-coming fancies” into common-place realities of our era. Whoever stutters while stressing this debt to science, too little senses the changed conditions under which the human species exists in modern times.

Scientific knowledge fascinates us as the radiant mirror of the vexing behavior of our complex universe. In the dimension of power, science now rules space and time with commanding dominion. Its task seemingly scarce begun, science shapes one swift transformation after another of our mode of human life.

No Christian observer can view this vivid setting for day-to-day survival, however, without a feeling of dark anxiety as well as of deep appreciation. Science has now wrested from nature a sovereignty whose abuse could lead virtually to destruction of the physical world, heretofore considered the exclusive prerogative of Deity. Not only is science preoccupied with power, virtually usurping the throne of omnipotence, but many scientists more and more obscure Jesus Christ as Truth. No Christian century since the first has assumed more obviously than our scientific age the irrelevance of Jesus Christ to the space-time world. No strata of society binds its spirit to agnosticism more insistently than the scientific community. Nowhere have the assertive words of Jesus, “All power is given unto me,” and “I am the Truth,” fallen upon ears so unresponsive as among men of scientific pursuits. Could this exiling of Jesus Christ by men of science contribute to the growing misuse of truth and power by anti-Christ in the modern struggle between the nations of the world?

Now many scholars detect in some scientific circles a quite opposite tendency—if not a revival of spiritual faith and a return to supernatural religion, at least a decline of naturalistic dogmatism and a new openness to the theistic vision of the universe. Writing on “Science and Religion” in Contemporary Evangelical Thought, I noted this gratifying turn in contemporary philosophy of science. The existence of American Scientific Affiliation, composed of qualified scientists actively committed to a theistic world-view, is one of several considerations precluding any dismissal of the whole scientific enterprise as essentially anti-Christ. In the recent volume The Evidence of God in an Expanding Universe (John Clover Monsma, editor), 40 American scientists of varying prominence declare affirmative views on religion. Yet it is difficult to read Dr. Monsma’s compilation without three distinct impressions. The evangelica...

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