Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 04:4 (Dec 1961)
Article: The Relevance Of Scientific Thought To Scriptural Interpretation
Author: G. Douglas Young

BETS 4:4 (Dec 1961) p. 117

The Relevance Of Scientific
Thought To Scriptural Interpretation

G. Douglas Young

In what way can an appeal be made to science and its conclusions to help us interpret the Scriptures? How can scientific information, i.e., information from the world of science, aid in the interpretation of Scripture?

I see no way to address myself directly to this question. Some attention to definitions and/or presuppositions is first required. It would hot be proper here to present an apologetic for a view of Scripture. But it is necessary to have in mind clearly what our view of Scripture is our view of its authority—the Scripture about which we are concerned to find the relevance of science as an aid to interpretation.

Is this Scripture a pre-scientific document, with all the implications that this usually implies? Since it was written long before the modern world of scientific knowledge, are we at liberty to reject what it says about scientific things if that does not square with our modern scientific knowledge? No, by no means. If we give some thought to how it was Written we can quickly see that that is not the way out for us.

It is not the state of knowledge of the human authors of the Bible that is here significant. How they acquired the information they subsequently recorded is not germane to our discussion. They were, perhaps, unlearned and ignorant men, judged by our standards doubtlessly so. It is irrelevant that the authors were living in a pre-scientific age and that they could have had no knowledge comparable to what we have today. How they acquired their information is not relevant to this discussion. This, the acquisition of information by the writers of Scripture, the theologians call revelation. It is distinct from inspiration, which has to do with the communication of information.

Inspiration, as it refers to Scripture, we define as a supernatural act of God the Holy Ghost on the Writers of our Sacred Books by which influence their words were rendered also the words of God, and therefore free from any error of doctrine, fact or judgment.

It really does not matter what scientific knowledge the human authors had in detail. It matters that God supernaturally moved with and upon them as they wrote so that their words were also His. The sacred writers were guided in their writing in such a way that while their humanity was not superseded it was yet so dominated that their words became at the same time the words of God, and thus infallible.

This has been through the centuries and continues to be today the formulation of the church on what the Scripture is. We do not, therefore, escape the problem by blaming the ignorance of the human authors and then using modern scientific...