ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub

organized, differently framed world. But what He has created is a monument of His might, wisdom, and goodness. All has been created as He willed it should be created; each separate thing, whether great or small, every sun and every blade of grass came into existence when, and where, and as He willed, and for His omnipotence the creation of a sun or a blade of grass is equally easy. He could therefore have caused the world to come into existence from nothing completely ordered, organized, and developed as we see it now; or He could also have created simple elements, and have given them the power of developing gradually to their appointed form. The one was as easy for His omnipotence as the other, and which of the two He did depended on His wisdom and His freewill. The laws which are in force in the visible world are His laws; He might have given others had He so willed, they are in force so long as it pleases Him; if He so willed He might at any moment change, suspend, or annul them, and His wisdom alone will decide whether He shall change or interfere with them, or allow them to continue in uninterrupted and constant operation. He sees everything, He guides everything, He provides for everything: it is His might and wisdom which uphold the stars in their courses, which clothe the lilies of the field and feed the fowls of the air, and without His knowledge and will there falls no sparrow from the roof and no hair from our head.

Such, feebly delineated, for not even the tongue of an angel could describe Him worthily, is the God who according to the words of the Bible has created heaven and earth. We must believe in this God if we would

understand the account given in Holy Writ of His working, and if we would read aright the book of nature which He has created. To the man who believes in this God, His action as shown in the pages of the Bible will fully harmonize with that which is shown in the pages of the book of nature. But where this belief in the true God is wanting, or only exists in a stunted and perverse form, the endeavour to bring the Bible and nature into harmony will succeed only partially or not at all.1

When you hear very well-meaning people express their doubts of the possibility, or even their conviction of the impossibility of an agreement between the Bible and science, you will find on closer examination that this is often caused by their misconceiving either what the Bible or what science really says; but sometimes there is a more serious reason, namely, that such people, although without knowing or wishing it, have no clear idea, and no firm conviction, of the Christian doctrine of creation; either, leaning towards pantheism, they conceive of God as existing only in the world, and acting in the laws of nature, and they forget His supermundane existence; or, leaning towards deism, they reduce to a minimum the relation between God and the world, and the influence of God on the world. Subjectively a man may be an excellent Christian and Catholic, and yet objectively, "in theologicis" he may be anything but definite and firm. If we would come to a clear understanding with such people, we must go

1 "The man who brings God with him will find Him in nature, and he who does not bring Him will not find Him."-Quenstedt, Klar und Wahr, p. 24.

back to the fundamental cause of the difference of opinion. To argue about the Mosaic Hexameron with one who had no clear and definite idea of what the Christian means by "God created the world," would be as mistaken as to endeavour to prove the doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the sacrament to one who does not acknowledge Christ as God and man.

V.

NATURAL SCIENCE AND FAITH ARE NOT OPPOSED.

...

It was in consequence of an inconceivable misunderstanding of the real facts, that forty years ago a famous German thinker, Schleiermacher, wrote to a younger friend, the theologian Lücke, in the following terms: "Looking at the present state of natural science, which is becoming more and more an all-embracing cosmogony, what do you forbode in the future, not only for our theology, but for our evangelical Christianity? . . . I fear that we shall have to learn to give up many things which many are accustomed to think of as inseparably bound up with the essence of Christianity. I will not speak of the six days, but how long will the idea of the creation as it is usually believed hold out against the power of a cosmogony constructed from irrefragable scientific combinations? What is to happen then? As for me I shall not see that time, but shall have gone to my rest; but you, and the men of your age, what will you do?"1

The words in which the spies sent by Moses into the promised land reported what they had seen have been quoted as a parallel to this timid speech. "Nevertheless the people be strong that dwell in the land, and the cities are walled, and very great. . . .

We be not

1 Theologische Studien und Kritiken von Ullmann and Umbreit, 1829, p. 489.

able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we. And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched unto the children of Israel, saying, The land through which we have gone to search it is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people we saw in it are men of great stature. And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come out of the giants; and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight."1

Nevertheless the children of Israel conquered the land which God had given them for a possession, for God was with them. If we are sure that God is with us also, and that His Church is built on an immoveable rock, we need not fear lest her doctrine should not stand before the giants of natural science, and besides there need be no conflict between them; hitherto we have every reason to assume that theologians and men of science can exist peaceably beside one another. Natural science cannot call in question the theological view of the creation, about which Schleiermacher was apprehensive. Whatever may be the objections to the theological doctrines that the visible world is not from all eternity, and that it came into existence through the will of God, these objections, as I have shown in my last lecture, cannot proceed from natural science. Kurtz says with truth, "The man of science who imagines, or would persuade others, that the result of his scientific inquiries has been to make him disbelieve the Biblical account of creation, is deceiving himself.

1 Num. xiii. 28 seq. See Hengstenberg's Ev. Kirchen u. Ztg. 1830, p. 394.

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »