Dictionary of Christianity and Science

Zondervan, Paul Copan, Tremper Longman III, Christopher L. Reese, Michael Strauss

• Publisher: Zondervan Academic
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780310496069
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion & Science

The definitive reference work on science and Christian belief

How does Christian theology relate to scientific inquiry?What are the competing philosophies of science, and do they "work" with a Christian faith based on the Bible? No reference work has covered this terrain sufficiently--until now.

Featuringentries fromover 140 international contributors, the Dictionary of Christianity and Science is a deeply-researched, peer-reviewed, fair-minded work that illuminates the intersection of science and Christian belief. In one volume, you get reliable summaries and critical analyses of over 450 relevant concepts, theories, terms, movements, individuals, and debates. You will find answers to your toughest questions about faith and science, from the existence ofAdam and Eve to the age of the earth, evolution and string theory.

FEATURES INCLUDE:

• Over 450 entries that will help you think through some of today's most challenging scientifictopics, including climate change, evolution, bioethics, and much more
• Essays from over 140 leading international scholars, including Francis Beckwith, Michael Behe, Darrell Bock, William Lane Craig, Hugh Ross, Craig Keener, Davis Young, John Walton, and many more
• Multiple-view essays on controversial topics allow you to understand and compare differing Christian viewpoints
• Learn about flesh-and-blood figures who have shaped the interaction of science and religion: Augustine, Aquinas, Bacon, Darwin, and Stephen Hawking are just the beginning
• Fully cross-referenced, entries include references and recommendations for further reading

Advance Praise:

"Every Christian studying science will want a copy within arm's reach." -- Scot McKnight, Northern Seminary

"This is an invaluable resource that belongs in every Christian's library. I will be keeping my copy close by when I'm writing." -- Lee Strobel, Elizabeth and John Gibson chair of apologetics, Houston Baptist University

"Sparkles with passion, controversy, and diverse perspectives."-- Karl Giberson, professor of science and religion, Stonehill College

"An impressive resource that presents a broad range of topics from a broad tent of evangelical scholars."-- Michael R. Licona, Houston Baptist University

"I am certain that this dictionary will serve the church for many years in leading many to demonstrate that modern science can glorify our Creator and honor his creation." -- Denis O. Lamoureux, University of Alberta

"'Dictionary' is too humble a label for what this is! I anticipate that this will offer valuable guidance for Christian faithfulness." -- C. John Collins, Covenant Theological Seminary

Get answers to the difficult questions surround faith and science!

Adam and Eve | the Age of the Earth | Climate Change | Evolution | Fossil Record | Genesis Flood | Miracles | Cosmology | Big Bang theory | Bioethics | Darwinism Death | Extraterrestrial Life | Multiverse | String theory | and much, much more

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CALVIN, JOHN. The sixteenth century was a period fraught with change, from the unfolding of the Protestant Reformation to the Copernican Revolution (see Copernicus, Nicolaus). From the sphere of theology to astronomy, the Aristotelian worldview was under pressure. In the midst of newly emerging dynamics for European society and thought, the Reformer John Calvin (1509–64) grew to become one of the most significant and enduring voices of the early modern era. As pastor and lecturer in the city of Geneva for nearly half of his life, Calvin’s theology developed as he preached, lectured, and published copiously. His writings, particularly his Institutes of the Christian Religion, engaged the topic of Christianity and science in a number of notable regards.

Consistent with a medieval mind-set, Calvin regarded the branches of the liberal arts as the “maidservants” of theology, and he cautioned against elevating them to the level of “mistress.” Distinction was, therefore, maintained between knowledge of earthly matters and knowledge of heavenly matters, the latter of which was the greatest wisdom of all to Calvin. By maintaining the fundamental difference between creature and Creator, Calvin denied that human wisdom could ever wholly penetrate the heights of heavenly knowledge in his commentary on 1 Corinthians 1:20: “Man with all his cunning is as capable of understanding by his own powers the mysteries of God as a donkey is capable of understanding a concert” (Holder 2006, 38).

Scholarship has at points interpreted Calvin’s cautions toward human reason more polemically than he seemingly intended. Although Calvin affirmed that the revealed wisdom of the gospel was greater than all human philosophy and, in fact, was the true foundation of epistemology, this notion did not impede his advocacy of liberal arts learning insofar as that knowledge did not seek pride of place.

Critical to the issue is Calvin’s teaching on the doctrine of the fall, whereby the original sin of Adam rendered human perception of the world distorted and blinded in a hereditary manner though the inherent goodness of creation was never lost. Calvin elevated special revelation by explaining that apart from the “spectacles” of Scripture, humanity was susceptible to the traps of idolatry and confusion to the point of inexcusability before God. Yet limited human understanding in no way rendered the universe less of a “mirror” of the invisible God or less of a “theater” of God’s glory, particularly in terms of its beauty and order. Nevertheless, only those with faith rooted in Jesus Christ and grounded in the revelation of Scripture could then rightly perceive the general revelation of God as Creator and truly appreciate the wonder of God’s providence.

Meanwhile, Scripture’s role in explaining the natural world is best understood in light of Calvin’s overarching principle of accommodation. Because Scripture is written for the “common folk” so that they might receive a sufficient knowledge of salvation, God accommodates heavenly wisdom according to human capacities much as a “nurse” communicates to a child. Consequently, Calvin denied that a precise explanation of the natural world is the intention of Scripture; in contrast, Calvin taught that Scripture recounts the world according to common perceptions. Nonetheless, Calvin encouraged unequivocally the advancement of knowledge in terms of astronomy, medicine, and all the natural sciences as an avenue for developing a greater appreciation for God’s glory and providence as well as for bettering human life.

Due to Calvin’s supportive attitude toward natural philosophy, his fundamental affirmation of the created goodness of creation, and his belief that all truth is a gift of God, scholars have increasingly regarded Calvin’s thought as playing a role in paving the way for the flourishing of the sciences in subsequent centuries.

Jennifer Powell McNutt

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND RECOMMENDED READING

Gamble, Richard, ed. 1992. Calvin and Science. New York: Garland.

Holder, R. Ward. 2006. John Calvin and the Grounding of Interpretation: Calvin’s First Commentaries. Leiden: Brill.

Schreiner, Susan E. 1995. The Theater of His Glory: Nature and the Natural Order in the Thought of John Calvin. Grand Rapids: Baker.

———. 2009. “Creation and Providence.” In The Calvin Handbook, ed. Herman J. Selderhuis, 267–75. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

Zachman, Randall C. 2009. “The Beauty and Terror of the Universe: John Calvin and Blaise Pascal.” In Reconsidering Calvin: Current Issues in Theology, 6–34. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION. The Cambrian Explosion refers to the relatively rapid increase in the diversity of animals that occurred during the Cambrian geological period a little more than a half billion years ago.

Based on the geological record, most scientists believe that life arose about 3.5 billion years ago. The early cells in the fossil record resemble simple bacteria, and there is no sign of the more sophisticated, multicompartmental cells known as eukaryotes until about 1.8 billion years ago. Roughly 300 million years later, according to fossil findings, multicellular eukaryotes arose, but likely there was little diversification of these cell-colonies until much later. By about 750 million years ago, however, at least eight different groups of multicellular eukaryotes had come into existence (Erwin and Valentine 2013, 4). Evidence for the creation of animals related to modern sponges, as well as others of unidentified affinity, have been found in rocks dated within a geological period known as the Ediacaran at 550 to 575 million years. Rocks of this age also contain beautifully preserved animal embryos. Furthermore, independent molecular evidence suggests the origin of both sponges and cnidarians (a grouping that includes jellyfish) by this time as well.

The Cambrian period is officially dated as beginning 541 million years ago, and it is characterized by the rapid diversification of animals that manifest bilateral symmetry. As the University of California’s Museum of Paleontology website puts it: “The fastest growth in the number of major new animal groups took place during the second and third stages of the early Cambrian, a period of about 13 million years. In that time, the first undoubted fossil annelids, arthropods, brachiopods, echinoderms, mollusks, onychophorans, poriferans, and priapulids show up in rocks all over the world.” Although 13 million years is not a short time, it is short relative to the length of time that life has existed on earth.

Why animal diversity appeared so rapidly at that time is not known for certain, but there is strong evidence that this was preceded by a period of rapid increase in oceanic oxygen, so many investigators believe this increase may have been an important factor stimulating animal diversification. Furthermore, there is considerable evidence that some of the key genetic information needed to build more sophisticated multicellular organisms was being slowly assembled over the preceding 200 million years.

Interestingly, land plants had a similar “explosion” associated with new plant groups and growth forms, but it occurred about 140 million years later during the Devonian geological period. This rapid diversification in terrestrial plants was followed in turn by a rapid diversification in arthropods, like insects.

The history of life is characterized by episodic “mini-explosions” in new body forms, and this is often associated with some type of ecological change (e.g., the diversification of mammals that occurred soon after the dinosaurs went extinct). The Cambrian explosion is especially noteworthy though, because the different animal forms that arose at that time were very different from each other, and almost without exception no other major innovation in animal body plan was ever developed again. Today, and apparently for the past 500 million years or so, it appears that genetic changes that modify the embryo in a manner that would bring about a major change in morphology either have not occurred or, if they have, they are less viable and subsequently lost.

One of the current mysteries in biology is what was different at the time of the Cambrian explosion such that genetic change enabled major new body plans to be developed. Although unanswered at this point, it is a question of great interest and active investigation. The mystery associated with the rapidity and uniqueness of the Cambrian explosion has caused many Christians to propose that God’s design activity is especially apparent during this period of time. Others stress that the entire evolutionary process occurs in response to the creation command and occurs through God’s ongoing presence. According to this view, one need not look for specific times when science does not yet have an explanation of a phenomenon.

Darrel R. Falk

REFERENCES AND RECOMMENDED READING

Erwin, Douglas, and James Valentine. 2013. The Cambrian Explosion: The Construction of Animal Biodiversity. Englewood, CO: Roberts and Company.

Meyer, Stephen. 2013. Darwin’s Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design. New York: HarperOne.

CARNAP, RUDOLF. Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) was a highly influential, German-born analytic philosopher who made important contributions in logic, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science.

Carnap was born in 1891 in what is now Wuppertal, Germany. Just before the outbreak of World War I, Carnap studied philosophy and mathematics at the University of Freiburg and the University of Jena (where he was a pupil of Gottlob Frege). Having finished his military service, Carnap returned to Jena where he completed a dissertation on the philosophical foundations of geometry.

By 1926 he was a member of Moritz Schlick’s (1882–1936) famed Vienna Circle, a group of philosophers and scientists attempting to work out a “scientific” conception of the world—which in their eyes was equivalent to a scientific materialist worldview. This group of logical positivists is perhaps best known for its verifiability principle, which claimed that all cognitively meaningful statements must be either analytically true (i.e., true in virtue of the meaning of the terms) or empirically verifiable through observations of the senses. Importantly, because they thought they could not be verified by experience, the positivists dismissed the claims of aesthetics, ethics, theology, and traditional metaphysics as meaningless pseudostatements that are neither true nor false. The verification principle has primarily been criticized for not meeting its own criterion: the principle itself is neither analytically true nor empirically verifiable.

In 1931 Carnap took a position at Prague’s German University. But seeing Europe’s growing darkness, Carnap emigrated to America in 1935. There he influenced many notable philosophers as a professor at the University of Chicago and UCLA.

By 1936 Carnap was arguing that scientific or empirical statements are not subject to verification but to confirmation. Because empirical hypotheses can always be overturned by further sense experience, Carnap thought that they are subject to increasing probabilistic confirmation or disconfirmation (in light of our evidence) rather than verification. Thus began his lifelong pursuit of an adequate inductive logic, a lo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Bible Versions
• A
• B
• C
• D
• E
• F
• G
• H
• I
• J
• K
• L
• M
• N
• O
• P
• Q
• R
• S
• T
• U
• V
• W
• Y