Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Science vs. Faith

An excerpt from Mark Noll's book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind,
"Attempts to think-both profoundly and as Christians- about history, nature, the arts, and society have been frustrated by the very success of an institutional arrangement that maintains several mutually distinct forms of academic endeavor."
Unless the soul can be quantified in a scientific way, the great divide between evangelism and modern academia seems an uncrossable chasm. I don't think it's about proving God's existence or us being good enough for Him to show us proof of himself out of pure generosity. I think it's about slowing down as a society; about not getting so caught up in all the shiny marvels we discover daily under a microscope. Life is about the delicate balancing act between the two disciplines. If we grow so enamored with the past(keeping to the Old Testament ways) as the evangelical faith has, we will never be able to grow into a new future. Look to the future too closely and passionately and we'll overlook the serendipitous lessons from our forefathers.

A delicate dance indeed.


I believe that while our theology differs from evangelists' we can also learn a great deal from one another. There are few writing and teaching gnostic scholars just as there are few evangelical writing and teaching scholars. The money just isn't there. And unless that scholar feels particularly moved to 'evangelize' cheaply, they just wont do it. Everyone has bills to pay. Why not keep your theology to yourself instead?

If this chasm could be bridged between the secular and the spiritual, imagine how learning could progress! Imagine how society could be changed for the better.

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