informed by science involved by christ

263 Pages·2013·0.86 MB·English

INFORMED BY SCIENCE
INVOLVED BY CHRIST

INFORMED BY SCIENCE
INVOLVED BY CHRIST
How science can update, enrich
and empower the Christian faith
Klaus Nürnberger
Copyright © 2013 by Klaus Nürnberger.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013904352
ISBN: Hardcover 978-1-4836-0595-1
Softcover 978-1-4836-0594-4
Ebook 978-1-4836-0596-8
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by
any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
copyright owner.
Design, typesetting, layout and cover: Klaus Nürnberger
Front cover picture: the galaxy M51.
Back cover picture: the galaxy M82.
Credit: European Space Agency & NASA: ESA/Hubble.
http://hubblesite.org.
Quotations from the Scriptures are taken from the New Revised Standard Version, the
New International Version, or they reflect the translation of the author.
This book was printed in the United States of America.
Rev. date: 06/10/2013
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305686
Contents
1 Science and faith as gifts of God ........................................................................11
2 Why does it matter? ............................................................................................26
3 Becoming a scientist to the scientists .................................................................33
4 Opening up a closed universe .............................................................................48
5 The biblical tradition — the objective reality of faith ........................................58
The ‘reality’ of revelation ...............................................................................59
The ‘truth’ of biblical revelation ....................................................................68
6 The power of the Spirit — the subjective reality of faith ..........................................73
The onset of faith in God ...............................................................................74
‘Real’ faith in terms of developmental psychology .......................................77
‘True’ faith in terms of the Christian conviction ............................................94
7 The ‘real’ God of science and the ‘true’ God of faith .......................................101
God’s creative power as revealed by science ................................................102
God’s benevolent intentionality proclaimed by faith ...................................115
In which sense must God be considered a person? ......................................120
God’s creative and redemptive action ..........................................................129
8 The ‘real’ humanity of science and the ‘true’ humanity of faith .............................140
The ‘real’ human being as a biological creature ..........................................141
Human consciousness ..................................................................................146
The ‘real’ human as a spiritual being ...........................................................156
The ‘true’ human being—sharing God’s intentionality ................................166
9 Jesus Christ — the ‘real’ representative of the ‘true’ God ................................179
A historical reconstruction of the Christ event ............................................180
Jesus of Nazareth—the ‘real’ representative of the ‘true’ God ..............................185
The elevated Christ ......................................................................................196
The Spirit of Christ in the Body of Christ....................................................206
The Trinity ....................................................................................................210
10 The ‘real’ future of reality and the ‘true’ future of God ....................................216
The future of the universe and the ‘coming Kingdom’ ................................217
Human mortality and ‘life beyond death’ ....................................................231
Facing the fact of our mortality ....................................................................239
Glossary ...................................................................................................................247
Index ........................................................................................................................257
Acknowledgements
The manuscript has been peer reviewed by Prof Ted Peters (Berkeley), Prof
Anne Kull (Tartu) and Prof Danie Veldsman (Pretoria). I am most grateful that
they spent their precious time on my work. I also wish to thank my wife, Maxi, and
Mrs. Anouk de Klerk for editing the manuscript, the publishers for accepting it into
their programmes, and the Research Office of the University of KwaZulu-Natal for
financial assistance. Countless people have helped me find my way in this critically
important issue. May it be a blessing to my readers!
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Preface
There are countless Christians whose faith is being threatened by the formidable
and inescapable challenges posed by modern science. These challenges relate to the
pre-scientific world view assumptions in which the Christian faith has been packaged
for close on two millennia, rather than to the content of the message itself. Sticking
to assumptions that are no longer tenable can only undermine our integrity and the
credibility of our message.
There is only one way out of this impasse: Take the valid insights of modern
science on board. Do so critically but fearlessly. Science is not an enemy of God,
but a gift of God for us to appreciate the profundity and glory of God’s creative
power in action. Unpacking the biblical message of God’s benevolent intentions and
repackaging it in contemporary patterns of thought can restore the relevance, the
impact and the joy of our faith.
There are countless others who have already given up on the Christian faith as
an ill-informed, superstitious and misleading relic of the ancient past. For the more
consistent among them, there is only one source of information, science, only one
source or empowerment, technology, only one authority, their own aspirations, only
one source of motivation, their social and material advancement.
To them, my message is: The modern mindset has indeed led us to achievements
beyond the wildest imagination of our ancestors and may continue to do so. But it has
also deprived our lives and our life-worlds of a sustainable grounding and orientation.
We have lost a sense of the whole of humanity, the whole of creation, the whole of
history and our own minute but indispensable role within this whole.
The Christian faith offers us the sense of an all-encompassing embrace, a
dynamic vision of comprehensive well-being, a keen concern for any deficiency
in well-being in any dimension of life, and the invitation to participate in a vibrant
redemptive project. It offers us not personal status and material satisfaction, but
authenticity, contentment and responsibility for the whole. That is the God of Jesus
Christ in whom we believe!
At a time when the proliferation of the human race, the exponential growth of
material expectations and the breakdown of traditional obligations and constraints
are leading humanity to the brink of an economic and ecological disaster, there is
nothing that could be of greater gravity and urgency than that. We have been called
by Christ, not to accept a debilitating, superstitious and outdated world view, but to
join a dynamic movement towards a more wholesome future.
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Recent books by Klaus Nürnberger
Beyond Marx and Market: Outcomes of a Century of Economic Experimentation
(1998).
Prosperity, Poverty and Pollution: Managing the Approaching Crisis (1999).
Theology of the Biblical Witness: An Evolutionary Approach (2002).
Zuspruch des Seinsrechts: Verstellt die Lehre die Sache? (on justification by grace
accepted in faith) (2003).
Martin Luther’s Message for Us Today: A Perspective from the South (2004).
Biblical Theology in Outline: The Vitality of the Word of God (2005).
Making Ends Meet: Personal Money Management in a Christian Perspective (second
edition) (2007).
The Living Dead and the Living God: Christ and the Ancestors in a Changing Africa
(2007).
Die Bybel—verantwoordelik lees is krities lees (2009).
Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion: A Repentant Refutation (2010).
Regaining Sanity for the Earth: Why Science Needs Best Faith to Be Responsible,
Why Faith Needs Best Science to Be Credible (2011).
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The gist of the argument
‘God’ is our name for the transcendent Source and Destiny of the reality we
experience and the sciences explore. Science and faith are two ways of dealing with
this reality that are both indispensable and complementary.
To master the looming economic-ecological crises of today, we need both the
detailed knowledge of the world provided by science and the commitment to the
well-being of this world implied in the Christian faith.
For science and faith to dovetail, faith must clean up its assumptions in the light
of the scientific method, while science must avoid a naturalistic metaphysic for which
empirical reality is all there is.
Arguing from a Christian perspective, the book distinguishes between ‘reality’
as explored by the sciences and ‘truth’ as proclaimed and believed by the Christian
faith. This juxtaposition is then applied to major assertions of the Christian faith:
1. The ‘reality’ of the biblical tradition as explored by historical-critical
research and the ‘truth’ of the message that crystallised out over a
millennium of biblical history.
2. The neurological and developmental ‘reality’ of faith and the existential
‘truth’ that persuades and motivates believers.
3. The ‘real’ God, whose creative power is experienced by all humans and
explored by the sciences, and the ‘true’ God, whose benevolent intentionality
is proclaimed and believed on the basis of the biblical tradition.
4. The ‘real’ human being as a biological, spiritual and social creature and the
‘true’ human being who shares the creative and redemptive intentionality of
God.
5. The ‘reality’ of Jesus as a historical human being and the ‘truth’ of the
elevated Christ as the authentic representative of God, in whose new life we
are invited to participate.
6. The ‘reality’ of the end of life and the universe, as predicted by science,
and the ‘truth’ of God’s vision of comprehensive optimal well-being that
provides us with meaning and direction.
The book encourages Christians to take the insights of modern science on
board—critically, but wholeheartedly—as God’s way of displaying the profundity,
greatness and glory of God’s creation before us and as an instrument to master the
economic-ecological impasses humanity is facing today.
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