Christian Faith in a Postmodern World
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Hebrews 13:8 says that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Since the first century, there have been many schools of thought concerning the existence of God and faith in his true nature. We find that from the time before Christ came to earth as God incarnate, up to the 1200s, science and physics were not major players during this age known as the “pre-modern” era. The “pre-modern” era encompassed the viewpoint that every object has a reality, called the absolute. People and all things made were considered particulars in which was seen as a shadow of the absolute, and that reason plus logic is what was required to reach the absolute good.
The Renaissance centuries, highlighted in the 1700s during the period of the Enlightenment period, brought about a paradigm shift towards the physical world. Allen asserts that a major project of the Enlightenment period was to base traditional morality and society on reason, the natural revelation given to man, and not on religion. This period, termed modernism, was influenced by Aristotles philosophy, and from that school of thought emerged the conflict between Christianity and science. Major events that tipped off this battle were the combinations of Copernicus findings that the earth revolved around the sun, the trial of Galileo, and the Frenchs social critics who used the trial as a means of propaganda to portray Christianity negatively. The age of Enlightenment brought out the likes of Sir Isaac Newton, regarded as the father of physics due to his discovering the laws of motion, philosophers, and another controversial figure, Charles Darwin, whose book, “The Origin of Species” is the reason why we see on some cars those Darwinism inscribed fish magnets being ate by the fish representing Christ and the Word.
The 1900s to the present is what we consider as the “post-modern period. Technology and science are both growing at an exponential rate, and so is the gap between Christian faith and science. We are living in a fast food society, where almost everything is readymade, and the advances being made are unlike anything the world has ever seen. These things have further intensified the debate between faith in God and faith in reason and logic. There was one particular paragraph that Allen wrote describing the nature of true faith:
Religion is neither a theory nor a hypothetical speculation in search of verification but actual interaction with a reality. Faith is above all to consent to the good that God has in store for us. To perceive that good and to say “yes” to it opens us to contact with God. We experience Gods presence. With that relation to God we are able to recognize the traces of God in nature, history, and human experience. Neither in physics nor in mathematics, for example, are we invited to receive a good, to commit ourselves to its realization, and in that realization to find our faith confirmed. In physics and mathematics there is no possibility of knowledge through this kind of faith [Allen 10]
The Word states that without faith, it is impossible to please God, because to even come to God, one must believe that He exist [Hebrews 11:6]. Even though that faith starts out as a mustard seed, true trust and belief in God and the Savior causes that seed to grow and bear fruit once the time is right. This faith is based on things not seen, whereas science uses reason and logic based on things tangible, so naturally, there are conflicts in interest amongst the two. One major series of events that brought this war to the forefront was Galileo and his voiced opinions against the current beliefs of his day. Regarded by Allen as the defining moment casting science and religion as foes, this trial set the precedence of the way faith and science would relate.
Galileo Galilei was born in 1564, and came to be recognized as the father of experimental physics. He developed a strong interest in Copernicus theory which challenged the accepted notion contained in Aristotles philosophy, Ptolemys astronomy, and the churchs teaching that the sun and all the stars revolved around the earth, which remained stationary. In 1609, Galileos discovery of the telescope enabled him to confirm his beliefs in the Copernican theory by viewing the Milky Way, the valleys and mountains of the moon, and his most important discovery supporting his claim, Jupiter having 4 moons orbiting around it.
In 1613, Galileo published his “Letters on the Solar Spots”, which was interpreted by the Roman Catholic Church as a Copernican doctrine that violated scripture. Galileo argued that his publications werent an attack on scripture, but that the scriptures, which are truth, should sometimes be understood figuratively. He sent his Letter to Castelli as means of reconciling faith and science, but