CHRISTIANITY TODAY Washington Correspondent Beth Spring visited Carl F. H. Henry’s home to discuss the theological implications of the new physics. The following is an edited transcript of Dr. Henry’s remarks.
Human experience is always incomplete and never exhaustive. So, using only the observational [scientific] method, one can never arrive at any significant verdict about God and the good—that is, about the supernatural—since the method is by definition limited to what is empirically perceptible, and God is spirit. “The good” and values are not empirically identifiable.
Instead of approaching the question by asking whether theology depends on an ordered universe, we ought to invert that and say an ordered universe depends upon God. Only if we begin with God can we derive an ordered universe. The Bible doesn’t set out from the argument of an ordered universe, but it sets out from God to Creation and an ordered universe.
If you begin with an ordered universe, the God of the Bible is not uniformly related to the universe. He is related to it in routine ways (that is, its regularities) and in special ways (in other words, the miraculous). Any dependence solely upon the identifiable order of the universe to establish the nature of God would tend to view the miraculous with suspicion and emphasize only the continuities.
One big problem that quantum theory has left us with is the question whether any universe exists objectively to the knower. No one has actually seen subatomic particles. All the subatomic particles are inferred from hydrogen bubbles that scientists can see. But the subatomic particles that physicists postulate today have no more basis in direct empirical observation than do the Homeric gods in ancient Greek civilizations.
Quantum theory may be seen as being based on a very tenuous kind of belief system. As a society, we are shackled to contemporary gurus of science who occupy our moment of history. Yet they speak neither with divine authority nor with unrevisable accuracy.
The question whether a universe truly exists independently of the observer is fueled by the flux of scientific opinion, because scientists keep telling you what the system of nature is supposed to be like, then revising it, and nature simply can’t be all those ways.
All this considered, I don’t see anything in quantum theory that really throws down an ultimatum to biblical theism. As a matter of fact, quantum theory has been correlated with a variety of world views and a variety of opinions on the unresolved questions. This is confirmed by many scholars. Stephen Toulmin, an internationally known philosopher of science, has written that, “Scientifically there is never sufficient reason for choosing one worldview rather than another.… We are … at liberty to view the cosmic-process-as-a-whole in whatever light we please.” And philosopher Dallas Willard writes, “The current state of the physical sciences, in opposition to the crudely mechanical view which was dominant for several centuries past, is very congenial to the view of God’s presence in the world that we find in the New Testament.”
The evangelical ought not to live in fear of any of these scientific theories. If the science of a particular age comes down on the side of absolute, mechanical determinism or, in another period, absolute indeterminacy, the evangelical should greet any such absolute claims with a polite smile. Scientists themselves emphasize that when you’re dealing with the minute subatomic particles, you are faced by Heisenberg’s Indeterminacy Principle; that is, that we can know either position or momentum, but not both at the same time. But when you deal with large aggregates of scientific data, that dilemma isn’t present. The larger aggregates, over a period of time, tend to be orderly. So they are capable of assimilation to some regularity.
The Bible affirms that nature has a divinely given and perpetuated reality, independent of man. We dimly know its inner secrets, and only what is grounded in revelation is unrevisable. God is not boxed into nature, but is related to it in both repetitive and special ways. He is not uniformly related to nature, but neither is his relationship to nature erratic. He does not play roulette with the cosmos. Neither a mechanically deterministic nor an indeterministic scientific view undermines Christian theism. What it undermines is scientific humility.
