I got into it again a little bit this week with some folks on another blog. Now when I say, “got into it”, I truly mean a respectful dialogue, though definitely one with some difference of opinion. I love that blogging allows me to do that, and I love that there are some blogs where respect does abound as opposed to many where people seem to be freed by the invisibility of the internet to simply bash each other and be disrespectful.
To the point for today though. The topic was roughly related to epistemology and the relationship between faith and science. (If you want to read some of the dialogue, you can check it out here.) What I want to say today though, is that we as Christians must continue to recognize that there is a bit of a tension between the two, but that it can be healthy and we need not fear it. Too often people seem to do what they always do with tension, try to relieve it. If I think that faith and science seem to be going different directions, then I either trust faith and tell science it’s simply wrong and throw it out the window, or I trust science and tell faith that it must have at least a few if not many things wrong.
Don’t lose the tension, respect both faith and science. Remember, in this world we’re not going to get it all and that’s ok. I’d like to close with a reading I found in my devotions (on the same day as this discussion, certainly a gift from God) on this relationship which I thought put things rather well.
Baron Friedrich von Huegel, Selected Letters
“All science . . . is essentially the ceaseless seeking, the ceaseless restating, the ceaseless discovering of error, and the substituting of something nearer to the truth. I do not see how Science can be asked to start with a definite God, with a definite Future Life, with anything like a church; I think it cannot even end with anything more than a vague reverence and sense of a deep background-a very elementary Theism will, at best, and can hardly, be reached by it; such Theism will be, I believe, its maximum.
Now Religion, on the other hand, begins with a full affirmation of a Reality, of a Reality other and more than all mankind. It is certain of God, certain of Christ, certain of the Church. It is a gift from above downwards, not a groping below upwards. It is not like Science a coral-reef, it is more like a golden shower from above. Assimilate Religion to Science, and you have leveled down to something which, though excellent for Science, has taken from Religion its entire force and good; you have shorn Samson of his locks with a vengeance. On the other hand, force Science up to the level of Religion, or think that you have don so, and Science affirms far more than, as such, it can affirm, and you, on your part, are in a world of unreality. . . .
For myself, I must have both movements: the palace of my should must have somehow two lifts-a lift which is always going up from below, and a lift which is always going down from above. I must both be seeking and be having. I must both move and repose.”
