Sometimes it seems I either strongly like a talk here at Oxford or strongly dislike it—there seems to be no middle ground in which to relax, but rather two extremes that either rouse my polemical passion or, on the other hand, draw me along in apologetic agreement. The last talk at GCU qualifies as the former for, although the speaker seemed like a genuine enough sort of fellow, precious little he said struck me as either sound or harmless.
The title of the talk was “Science and the Hiddenness of God.” Pretty attractive topic, in my opinion, and I anticipated the sort of message that showed how science, properly understood and used, directs one to God. Or something along those lines; really, I just thought it would be interesting to hear from a scientist who was interested in theology. Almost right off the bat, I realized my expectations would prove misleading.
I’ll try to give a fair account of what the speaker’s message was, but I think of it more in terms of the ideas he was attacking and expressing more than as an outlined argument, so his points may well come across as more beggarly than they in fact were. He started by giving a bit of personal background: he was raised in Hong Kong, went to an Anglican school—where Christianity, he said with apparent disapproval, was the wrapper around all they learned—then went to Cambridge (the “Other Place” as it’s called here) to study chemistry. At this point he belonged to the creationist camp of Christian scientists. The worldview of such Christian scientists he described by mentioning their unofficial motto: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His Hands.” (He actually may have used Psalm 111:2 to highlight this idea: “Great are the works of the LORD; they are pondered by all who delight in them.” However, I can’t remember exactly which verse he used, and the former is the more familiar and direct for this line of reasoning so I’ve stuck with it.)
Here he began the argumentative phase of his talk, starting with his break from the creationist ranks. He realized that he did not think about Creationism the same way he “did science;” also, he mentioned that all these creationist scientists were, in fact, scientists—the whole problem, in his mind, came about by them not understanding that different literary genres exist. Reading Genesis 1 as strict historical fact misled his compatriots into an overly simplistic understanding. He realized that separate genres existed in the Bible, and he could mould his understanding of various passages based on the independent understanding he brought to the reading of the Bible. Creationist complaints against secular science, he began to believe, were not actually scientific. Around about here he made here his strongest point. He argued that when creationist scientists bring a complaint against, for example, the secular evolutionary account, saying that “Current theory does not explain this particular point,” and then use that to dismiss current theory, they are making an elementary blunder against the very thing that drives science. If he went to his supervisor and said “Current theory does not explain this, therefore we must dismiss current theory,” his supervisor would have been appalled. For science progresses when it is realized something doesn’t fit within current theory...when something doesn’t “fit,” you experiment until you add to current theory, you don’t dismiss it. Science is current theory moving, millimetre by millimetre, across the face of knowledge, propelled by realized gaps in present understanding. Before I continue, I will note—even though I’m trying to hold my counterargument until later—that I think he portrays creationist scientists unfairly. They are not acting contrary to science, and are not guilty (as a whole group) of what he claims: instead, sometimes science encounters or needs paradigm shifts, and creationists merely seek to address a previous shift perceived as erroneous. Science does not progress smoothly and evenly, for the course of scientific understanding has often been bumpy—or nearly stagnant—in the past. And “progress” does not continually go on when a previous error is perceived—no one does a mathematical proof or a laboratory experiment like that.
Anyway, he also made the point that science was like a great and elaborate edifice—one cannot remove a single column from a cathedral and expect it to tumble. Science is more resilient than that. Creationists picking at particular points cannot alter the building. Of course, if the analogy is used, one must accept that different cathedrals can be built if different materials and plans are made; even using the same foundation, vastly different structures can arise. The Gothic cathedral of Saint Denis was constructed on the same foundations as the earlier, much simpler, church upon which it was built. If creationists imagine a light, airy, and inspiring Gothic cathedral where the bulky basilica of secular science now stands, can they be blamed for trying to knock down a few walls to bring in illuminating sunlight?
While I’m showing my colours, a point about different “genres” in the Bible before I continue. The “genre approach” is often overemphasized. Though different sections of the Bible tend towards a method of expression that we can ascribe to one particular modern genre over the other, we should beware projecting our narrow cultural view backwards into a timeless Book. The whole Bible belongs, first and most importantly, to the genre it alone occupies: inspired Scripture. It is one cohesive Book much more than it is 66 independent accounts. Though different sections contain different styles, breaking a particular passage out of its place in the unified whole and approaching it simply as an independent piece belonging to a modern genre can become dangerously imbalanced. This is NOT to say that viewing the Bible through genre-inspired lenses cannot be useful—sometimes, it may be necessary—but we should keep foremost in our minds when doing so that these “different sections” of the Bible were not WRITTEN as distinct genres. Assigning them post facto to segregated genres each with distinct “rules” for understanding them can be to miss the underlying message. We don’t need to be modern literary critics to understand that different verses should be taken differently; do we take Pharaoh’s words the same way we take Moses’? But we are ill-served by those who put everything they dislike or don’t understand into the genres of “allegory” and “myth.”
Back to his argument. He made much of what is called the God Hypothesis, seeking to discount it entirely. This hypothesis, in short, is the belief that you need God in order to properly explain things. It has been used and misused much over the millennia: before “modern science,” curiosity was assuaged by appealing to the supernatural to explain natural phenomena; in the Christian tradition, God has often been at the beginning and the end of logical-philosophical reasoning and even ponderings on the mechanical arts; scientific debate has often included an appeal to God or Biblical authority—sometimes misunderstood by proponents on either side—such as the famous geocentric/heliocentric debate. The example the speaker used was Newton, who used the God Hypothesis to explain the orbits of the planets for, according to his calculations, the orbits should not be stable, eventually spinning off out of control. God was needed, Newton wrote, to nudge the planets back into their orbits every once in a while.
The speaker then came to Laplace. This fellow, a bit later than Newton, did Newton’s own calculations and showed that the planets did not need God to nudge them into place. The anecdotal-yet-plausible story is that, when Laplace showed his calculations to Napoleon, the little emperor asked him where God was in all his calculation. Laplace’s answer was “I have no need for that hypothesis.” This becomes the Laplace Principle, the point that we can understand science perfectly without God; that we can “do science” without appeal to God or the supernatural. In fact, the speaker said that if he could pass on just one sentence to future generations, who would lose all other scientific knowledge, he would choose to pass on the Laplace Principle.
The real point of the talk, true to his title, was the Hiddenness of God. This was really a polemic against Psalm 19:1 (which I already noted), and Romans 1:19-20 “what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” Against, as well, other verses and the great weight of historical and modern Christian experience. His standard response to those who say that the heavens declare the glory of God, or that God can be glimpsed through the study of Nature, is “Where? Show Him to me...I can’t see any sign of Him in the stars.” He also maintained that if you started with the Cross and studied Creation, you’d find the God in Creation (hidden, significantly), that you’d expect; if you started with Creation and tried to glimpse God, you wouldn’t find Him because He was, in fact, hidden. His understanding of the Cross led him to deny the points about the Heavens declaring God’s glory and about God being made known through His works.
He then attempted some Biblical exegesis, going through the Bible chronologically to show that one of its key messages was the increasing hiddenness of God. He started with the Garden—God walked with Adam; then went to Abram, when God appeared to Him—rightly stressing the implication that “to appear” means “to have been hidden”—then to Exodus, when the people of Israel asked God to not appear to them again...and He never again appeared to the whole people of Israel. With Elijah, we have the last appearance of God to nonbelievers, immediately after which we have God appearing to Elijah not in the flame or earthquake or wind, but in a still small voice. In the last historical book of the Old Testament, Esther, God doesn’t even make an appearance.
Then, of course, we have the New Testament, where God appears—but only in the unexpected setting of a manger. Then, the crux of the matter: on the Cross, when Christ was mocked and told to demonstrate that He was in fact God’s Son, His response was Psalm 22. “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” The focal point of the entire Bible contains a cry to the God Who has forsaken, not only unbelievers, not only the faithful, but His very Son.
A compelling argument, and perhaps he presented it better than I have. Yet it has, in my opinion, glaring errors and painful falsehoods. My least favourite thing was his treatment of the Cross, and the argument of God withdrawing into hiddenness throughout the Bible that his treatment required. Of course, his iconoclastic approach to Christian tradition bothered me as well. Also, though, is his fierce allegiance to a secular scientific tradition that, in my opinion, is a cultural affectation injurious to deep knowledge. Since this post is getting long, I’m going to explain my problems with his Biblical and Christological interpretation here, and then (hopefully) post later about my problems with his particular scientific philosophy.
The basic premise of the Bible outlining God’s general and progressive withdrawal from man is slightly troubling to me. If anything, I think the Bible shows the opposite of that—God reaching out to a resistant, reclusive man in ever more dramatic ways, culminating in the Incarnation. That is sort of what Grace is, God extending His hand to unwilling man; God is not always OBVIOUS, true (and I imagine this point will come up again), but nor does He seek to hide Himself—He would be perfectly obvious if only we knew where to look. Sin, of course, disrupts our ability to look in the obvious places. We do not, to use Biblical language, “lift up our eyes and look to the heavens” and remember the One who knows each star by name. Sin is the missing piece of the puzzle in the speaker’s explanation. Why was God not walking in the cool of the evening with Abram as he had with Adam? Because Sin had disrupted Paradise. Why did God no longer appear to the collective people of Israel after Exodus? Because, due to Sin, they asked Him not to—it wasn’t Him trying to hide, it was Israel turning away from Him. Yet He refused to remain hidden, and found new and creative ways to become apparent.
In highlighting passages that showed God growing more hidden as the Bible goes on, the speaker skipped over some important counter-examples. God appeared to Moses in a more intimate way than Abraham, talking with him face to face, even though Moses came after Abraham; God’s Presence rested continuously within the Temple, long after Moses. Though one could argue God was “hidden” inside the Temple, the fact that the people always knew where to find Him (though they could not approach, due to their own failings) reveals the fundamental error of such language. The cry of God throughout the Old Testament seems to be “and they will be My people and I will be their God.” This does not suggest hiddenness to me.
More significant than whether or not there is a trend of God’s hiddenness in the Old Testament (and I think there’s not, but rather an interplay of God’s holiness, His justice, restraint, patience, and most of all, His love) is what the New Testament tells us about all this. Fitting Christ into an argument for the hiddenness of God gets one nowhere, I strongly believe. After all, His Name is Jesus—the LORD Saves—and He is called Immanuel—God with us. Using His cry of Psalm 22 upon the Cross does not show God’s hiddenness...although it does reinforce the idea that sinful men do not see Him where He is. For He was on the Cross in front of them, Son calling to Father, and though the Roman centurion recognized Him as the Son of God, most did not. Then again, most people missed the fact that something significant happened even after an eclipse, earthquake, the veil of the Temple being torn, and dead people walking through the streets of Jerusalem! How is God hidden through all that—or through His very ministry and its denouement on earth?
Jesus’ cry of “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” should be appreciated more fully. Now, I hesitate to write about this because of the weightiness of it, and though I’ll choose my words with care I’m sure I’ll place a misemphasis on something. I don’t want to diminish the anguish of Christ on the Cross at all—it was for this moment that He sweated blood the night before. This moment, when the Father (in some way, somehow, that I do not understand) turned away from the Son was I think the most anguished moment in humanity. Yet Jesus was not simply—it seems to me—expressing doubt or despair about the Father...He knew the Scriptures intimately well, and knew what psalm He was referring to. It is a psalm of painful lament, but one of trust and certainty too. Being the Rabbi that He was, I am convinced Jesus had the whole psalm in mind when He spoke. After all, these words are also contained in Psalm 22:
“I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart has turned to wax; it has melted away within me.
My strength is dried up like a potsherd,
and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death.
Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me,
they have pierced my hands and my feet.
I can count all my bones; people stare and gloat over me.
They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.”
We know such words speak directly to Jesus’ experience on the Cross...but they are not the theme of Psalm 22. The theme is, I think, found in such verses as this: “Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the praise of Israel” and “All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads: ‘He trusts in the LORD; let the LORD rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him.’ Yet you brought me out of the womb; you made me trust in you even at my mother's breast. From birth I was cast upon you; from my mother's womb you have been my God.” The significant thing about this latter passage is that in both Matthew and Mark’s accounts of this, Jesus’ cry is recorded right after the crowd mock and insult Him, telling Him to come down if He really is the Son of God. Jesus’ response to that? Psalm 22, which includes vivid trust in being in God’s hands since birth as a response to just such a challenge.
This psalm also contains such displays of trust and purpose as this: “I will declare your name to my brothers; in the congregation I will praise you...For he has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one; He has not hidden His face from Him but has listened to His cry for help.” And later, “The poor will eat and be satisfied; they who seek the LORD will praise him—may your hearts live forever! All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him.” The psalm ends with these words: “Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord. They will proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn—for He has done it.” Mark and Matthew both, then, tell us that soon after Jesus cried out the beginning of Psalm 22, He gave up His Spirit. His mission was done—from “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” to “For He has done it!”...the bookends of the Psalm frame Jesus’ Crucifixion.
I’ll wrap up with this observation—using Jesus’ cry to highlight God’s hiddenness seems, to me, to ignore the deeper reality going on here. Immanuel completing His rescue of us—the wilful sinners who turned away from God, Who has pursued us ever since—that is the theme of the Cross. That is the theme of the Bible; if God is hidden from time to time, it is because of man’s choice, not His, either directly because man turns his gaze away from God, or indirectly because sinful man cannot bear God’s holy Presence. Laced throughout the Bible are claims that God can be known nonetheless: that was why He called Abram, after all. Instead of tracking God’s “hiddenness” through the Bible, a better theme would be God seeking to make His home with us in ever more intimate ways: with Abraham He occasionally met but was not pressingly close; with the Tabernacle, He made His home among the people, but it was a temporary dwelling; with the Temple, He made His dwelling among the people a permanent thing; with Jesus, He came down to live amongst us; with Jesus’ resurrection, He sent His Spirit to live WITHIN us.
All in all, I found the speaker’s Biblical interpretation not at all compelling. It was done with an agenda and according to a trendy worldview, one that wants to segregate Nature from the supernatural—one that elevates what can be quantified over what can be known of quality. Hopefully I’ll get to a discussion of his allegiance to his particular scientific philosophy in another post. However, I think his Biblical treatment called for answer more strongly: it seemed to ignore the problem of Sin, that God’s apparentness is hidden only by man’s sinfulness. It’s hard to justify his claims that the heavens do NOT declare the glory of God in any verifiable way, and that God’s invisible qualities have not been made known throughout Creation (suggesting, by extension of Paul’s passage, that man has an excuse for not knowing God?), without a casual handling of the Scriptures as pertains to sin.
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