According to the Bible, Jesus has a great aptitude with physics, chemistry, and biology. As verses like Hebrews 1:2 and John 1:3 attest, the whole universe was made through him! Even now, Jesus holds everything together—from quantum particles to distant galaxies (Col. 1:17). He is the author and upholder of creation—just as surely as he is the author and upholder of salvation.
According to a quote often attributed to Johannes Kepler, the 17th-century astronomer, when we study the cosmos, we are “thinking God’s thoughts after him.” Thus, when a group of astrophysicists jump for joy at hearing a billion-year-old gravitational wave for the first time, they’re hearing a sound that was spoken in joy. When researchers delight in discovering an intricate pattern, they are sharing the delight of a maker who imagined the pattern in the first place. When chemists use a catalyst to make more out of matter, they are mimicking the cosmos-catalyzing work of Christ.
Jesus made it all. That makes all scientific engagement inescapably personal—especially for people of faith. Science helps us know God more.
According to the 16th-century Belgic Confession, God speaks through two books: the Bible and creation. And in order to read creation, we need science.
We also need good books like Kenneth Keathley’s Faith and Science: A Primer for a Hypernatural World. In a world where so much rhetoric casts faith and science as opponents, it’s important to get an honest lay of the land. We need to learn the truth—that faith and science have not always been in conflict and that, historically, the church has held a high view of God’s gift of science. Keathley clearly explains what the Bible teaches about creation and general revelation. He shows, too, how people of faith have taken different approaches to making sense of the intersection of faith and science.
In particular, he argues, people of faith have labored to distinguish between scientific knowing and faith knowing. As Keathley observes early in his book, “Science and faith both look at the universe God created, but they ask different questions. … Science studies creation to understand what the world is and the processes that bring everything about. Faith explores God’s plan and purposes for the world. Science studies the ‘how.’ Faith seeks to understand the ‘why.’”
As I read Faith and Science, I learned a few things, mostly about that curious word in the book’s subtitle: hypernatural. Keathley defines hypernaturalism as the “extraordinary use of natural law by the God described in the Bible. When God acts hypernaturally, He employs natural law and natural phenomena in an extraordinary way to bring about His will.”
As Keathley explains it, hypernatural moments occur when providence (the natural way God made things to work) and miracle (direct supernatural intervention) intersect, yielding an outcome that outruns “what can be accounted for naturally.”
Keathley cites several biblical examples. Peter, for instance, finds a gold coin in a fish’s mouth after Jesus instructs him to look inside the first fish he catches (Matt. 17:24–27). Daniel spends a night in the lion’s den but isn’t consumed. God parts the Red Sea with a natural wind. And he destroys Sodom and Gomorrah with what, according to some speculation, might have been a comet. Even prophecy has a hypernatural edge when it involves ordinary events playing out precisely as predicted but according to a supernatural orchestration.
Taking in Keathley’s definition, part of me wondered if hypernaturalism already exists within the parameters of providence. Since God made everything, then surely everything is already, by nature, tinged with God’s miraculous capacity. If so, why create a distinct category of hypernature?
Perhaps this category helps people hold two opposites together: that the world operates in an empirically explainable way (a more basic definition of providence) and that God occasionally intervenes to accomplish his will (through an exercise of special providence). Hypernaturalism describes one facet of how providence and miracle overlap.
Keathley sees hypernaturalism as having one basic goal: “to demonstrate that providence, not simply chance or necessity, is the driving force behind all of creation.” In his view, there are no gaps between the natural workings of the cosmos and the supernatural providence of God.
For most of his book (chapters 4–8), Keathley offers fascinating examples of where he sees hypernaturalism at play in the universe—beginning with the concept of a Big Bang. After briefly explaining this theory (that the universe began at a singular point in time) and reminding readers that it originated with a Catholic priestand physicist named Georges Lemaître, Keathley notes how it challenged an “eternal view of the cosmos” that held sway for millennia.
If the universe had always existed, then scientists could understand it without reference to any higher power. But a Big Bang needed something (or someone) to get things started. Today, the Big Bang theory is broadly accepted in the scientific world. Keathley sees the Big Bang as a hypernatural event—God got things going and, through the laws of physics, made something out of nothing. As Keathley writes,
The big bang theory implies that there is a Cause greater than the universe—something outside our world as we know it caused this big bang to occur. It also demonstrates that the universe is contingent and not self-originating …[and] shows us that there are limits to scientific inquiry. … While it does not provide definitive proof of God’s existence, it does fit remarkably well with the biblical doctrine of creatio ex nihilo.
Keathley also sees hypernatural dynamics in the finely tuned nature of the universe—a design so intricate and complex that it invites the question “Who thought this up?” Of course, the more science understands nature, the more finely attuned it seems. The deeper science looks, the more detail it sees.
In fact, I’ve come to believe that scientific investigation will never reach the end of creation’s mystery, in either its infinite or its infinitesimal dimensions. Perhaps there is no end to the wisdom that God will reveal through the finely tuned nature of creation. Perhaps the work of science will continue in a new heaven on earth—forever.
To that end, the idea of hypernaturalism is a compelling pointer. What if the mystery of how God works through the natural and supernatural is equally eternal? What we’re trying to articulate now, with our limited theological and scientific capacities, might be the same stuff we’ll be thinking about for all eternity. In that case, we’ll never really exhaust the mystery of how deeply all things hold together in Christ.
Affirming this can be quite freeing. It relieves some of the pressure believers feel to lock down every detail of how God exercises his sovereignty in the realm of nature. Knowing we’re not meant to resolve all the mysteries of providence, we can gratefully leave them in his hands.
A humble acknowledgement of mystery can pave the way for generous dialogue between competing perspectives on faith and science. Near the end of his book, Keathley models this gracious spirit in describing the difference between old-earth creationists (OEC) and evolutionary creationists (EC):
It seems that the difference between EC and OEC lies in where each sees special divine action occurring. EC argues that the universe was sufficiently front-loaded, rigged at the beginning, so that life was able to evolve in at least one place—earth. They would say that the hypernatural moment was the initial moment of the Big Bang. By contrast OEC argues that, in addition to the Big Bang, the fossil and genetic evidence indicate that a number of hypernatural actions can be detected at various stages of natural history.
Keathley himself identifies as old-earth creationist. Yet he chooses to see the best in the motivations of believers with different views (including young-earth creationists as well). He can recognize how each worldview seeks to affirm God’s cosmos-creating power and glory, honor Scripture, and respect all that is good in the gift of basic science.
In my experience, most Christians agree that God providentially cares for humanity via the technologies, medicines, and other scientific discoveries. We’re all thankful for these gifts—for what we know, and for what is yet to be known. But one thing I’ve learned from the scientists I’ve met over the years is that they always know what they don’t know. With every discovery comes a whole new set of questions.
Theologians can learn from this kind of humility. When it comes to understanding the ways of God, who is infinitely more mysterious than the workings of the universe, perhaps we could take our lead from Augustine, who once wrote in his Confessions that he can experience far more than he can understand about the Trinity. Much the same might be said about God’s weaving of the natural and the supernatural.
John Van Sloten is a writer, teacher, and pastor. His latest book is God Speaks Science: What Neurons, Giant Squid, and Supernovae Reveal About Our Creator.
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