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Science and Christian Faith
II. SCRIPTURE AND THE SPECIAL SCIENCES Approaching more nearly the alleged conflict of the Bible or Christianity with the special sciences, a first question of importance is, What is the general relation of the Bible to science? How does it claim to relate itself to the advances of natural knowledge? Here, it is to be feared, mistakes are often made on both sides—on the side of science in affirm ing contrariety of the Bible with scientific results where none really exists; on the side of believers in demanding that the Bible be taken as a text-book of the newest scientific dis coveries, and trying by forced methods to read these into them. The truth on this point lies really on the surface. The Bible clearly does not profess to anticipate the scientific dis coveries of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Its design is very different; namely, to reveal God and His will and His purposes of grace to men, and, as involved in this, His general relation to the creative world, its dependence in all its parts on Him, and His orderly government of it in Provi dence for His wise and good ends. Natural things are taken as they are given, and spoken of in simple, popular language, as we ourselves every day speak of them. The world it de scribes is the world men know and live in, and it is described as it appears, not as, in its recondite researches, science reveals its inner constitution to us. Wise expositors of the Scrip tures, older and younger, have always recognized this, and have not attempted to force its language further. To take only one example, John Calvin, who wrote before the Coper- nican system of astronomy had obtained common acceptance, in his commentary on the first chapter of Genesis penned these wise words: “He who would learn astronomy and other recondite arts,” he said, “let him go elsewhere. Moses wrote in a popular style things which, without instruction, all ordi nary persons indued with common sense are able to under stand. * * * He does not call us up to heaven, he only
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