The Relations of Science and Religion / The Morse Lecture, 1880

by Henry Calderwood

The testimony of science dealing with the evidence open to observation is that the laws of nature, such as the laws of gravitation, transmutation of energy, and the development and support of living organism, are fixed and unchangeable, so that persistent antagonism to them is only conflict of a weaker force with a stronger which must end in disaster or destruction to the weaker. Over against this we do not find it possible to place any statement, either in the form of direct affirmation, or of inference deducible from the implications of Christ's actions or words, which can be regarded as directly contradictory. On the contrary the deeds and sayings of Christ carry a multitude of suggestions in strict harmony with this general teaching of science. When He would indicate to His hearers how they are guided in their judgment by the uniformity of natural law, He points to the signs which they interpret in the aspect of the atmosphere morning and evening. When the suggestion is placed before Him that He should cast Himself from an eminence in token of His superiority to ordinary risks, He does not hint at a suspension of the law of gravitation, but teaches that man should not transgress the divine will by rashly exposing himself to danger. When He would teach men to combine labor and trust, He points them to the uniform provision for the clothing and adorning of the vegetable world which can not in any measure care for itself. And so we might proceed, were there any need for multiplying evidence as to a feature of Christ's teaching manifest to every Bible reader.

The record of Scripture presenting the narratives of Christ's miracles does not at any time represent our Saviour as interposing to stay for a brief period the action of fixed law, or to prevent the application of such law in the history of a particular individual. In all these wonders of healing nothing more happens as to actual result, having a general bearing on procedure in the physical world, than does happen when a cure of a critical phase of disease is accomplished by some newly discovered appliance at command of medical art. These two cases are essentially different as to mode of action, but they are strictly identical as to result, and this identity amounts to a demonstration of harmony with scientific requirements, as these actually guide men to the discovery of new methods. That there is identity of result only in some cases does not affect the argument, but arises from the essential features of the comparison, as a product of supernatural intervention must transcend what is ultimately attained by laborious processes of human research. But that there is in any case an identity of result under the very different conditions, is an indication that supernatural intervention is not an interference with the laws of nature such as would be involved in their suspension or subversion. There is a great difference between recovery from suspended animation and resurrection from the dead as in the case of Lazarus, but the fixed order of the universe is no more disturbed in the latter case than in the former.

A further consideration bearing on the miracles of Christ needs to be stated, though it comes more directly into relation with philosophy than with science properly so called. Every one of these miracles was performed avowedly for moral ends, and under application of moral conditions, while for immediate physical effects. There is moral law as well as physical law, and our Saviour subordinates the latter to the former in determining the use He makes of supernatural agency. The evidence of this is interwoven through the very texture of the narrative, so that an attempt to sever His miracles from their moral purpose can result only in tearing the narrative into fragments,—mutilating the record which must be studied and interpreted as it has been put into our hands. Moral law is as unchangeable as physical law, though the character and form of its sway differ from those of physical law, and it is easier for man wilfully to violate the higher law of life than to violate the lower. Yet so closely are the higher and lower connected in human history, that the easy violation of moral law is followed by painful consequences under the reign of physical law. It lay within the purpose of Jesus to deliver from both, and it is only in recognition of this combined or complex purpose that we discover the rational basis on which supernatural deliverance from disease becomes a natural vehicle for presenting to rational beings requisite evidence of divine intervention on their behalf as they are entangled in the disastrous consequences of violating unchangeable moral law. If on other grounds it be apparent that supernatural interference for restoration of health or life does not involve interference with physical law by which the government of the universe could be in any degree affected; on the grounds now contemplated we come to recognize a harmony of higher and lower orders of fixed law bearing on the history of the human race, and for this harmony of law our Saviour manifested a supreme concern.

With these brief statements before us, we are now prepared for turning in a different direction to ascertain what is the special view of miracle which has found currency within some scientific circles, carrying the explanation of intense antipathy to its acknowledgment, and unhesitating declaration that the whole body of scientific teaching, and even the characteristics of scientific method, are adverse to the very conception of miracle. For the purpose now in view it may be well to present in close connection the successive utterances of a single author, who may be taken as representative of a class. The work of Professor Schmidt on The Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism will supply illustrations of the kind to which reference has been made, as this author states at the outset that the doctrine of descent finds its antagonists among those "who perceive, more or less distinctly, the danger with which the new doctrine threatens their standpoint of miracle."[DK] From this allusion it appears that he regards a doctrine of descent as opposed to what he describes as an "incomprehensible act of creation."[DL] Accordingly he celebrates the praises of this theory in these terms,—"it interprets by a single principle those great phenomena which without its aid remain a mass of unintelligible miracles."[DM] In harmony with these utterances he speaks of gradual evolution of the organs of special sense, such as the organs of hearing and smell, as giving a negative to "the sudden and incomprehensible origination of these organs in an immediate state of completion."[DN]

These few extracts may suffice to indicate the mental attitude of those who show aversion to the acknowledgment of miracle. With Schmidt the "miraculous" is another name for the incomprehensible; to him the suggestion of miracle is disagreeable as implying the impossibility of scientific explanation. If these things be kept in mind, it will be clear how widely apart this notion is from the Christian conception of miracle. The one view is that observational science can make no account of miracle: the other is that thought concerning a supernatural Being really involved the conception of miracle. Science can assign no place to the incomprehensible, can make no account of it. Religion finds a higher sphere of comprehensibility in the action of supernatural power. The two positions are radically distinct, and do not come into actual conflict. Hence religion has no opposition to the view of miracle just stated, which amounts to little more than a negative definition of science. To say that science can take no account of the miraculous, is only in other words to say that science is explanation of natural phenomena by recognition of the action of natural causes, consequently the miraculous does not come within the boundaries of science. This is self-evident, and on this footing theology has no account to make of what is only a semblance of opposition, involving no real conflict. Creation, for example, can not come within the compass of observational science; but creation may nevertheless be a rational conception in dealing with a purely rational problem, which does not at all belong to physical science. In the same manner it appears that the whole series of our Lord's miracles are outside the area of science, which, as it has nothing of authority to advance against them, has not even a basis on which to offer any testimony concerning their possibility.

One topic more requires to be briefly considered as constituting an essential of religious thought, namely the acknowledgment of divine interposition for the answer of PRAYER. Our question is, How this conception of divine answer to prayer stands related to scientific thought concerning the government of the world by fixed law? If the laws of nature are fixed, how can the government of the world allow for fulfilment of human desire as expressed in supplication? The question to be discussed has two sides, the one concerned with the conditions on which an answer to prayer is expected; the other with the exact significance of the scientific conception of the government of the world by fixed law. If there be a rational basis for prayer as encouraged by the teaching of Scripture, there can be no such dilemma as would be implied in supposing that law is fixed yet not fixed, or that law is unchangeable in all cases save in the history of the man of prayer, in whose behalf the laws of nature are liable to be held in check. There may be among Christian men considerable diversity in the clearness of apprehension with which they grasp the meaning of the divine promise to answer prayer; but there is no one taught by the Scriptures as to the privilege of prayer, who thinks of it as implying that the laws of the universe are liable to be held in suspension because the desires of his heart are rising to God in humble, earnest supplication. The man trained to recognize this truth affecting God's government that "He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good; and sendeth rain on the just, and on the unjust," does not readily fall into the mistake of supposing that all the laws of the universe are at His bidding, because of the divine encouragement to prayer. The Christian prays only under divine warrant, and this does not convey any such suggestion.

First, then, we can clear away at once the cruder thoughts of the unintelligent believer in the power of prayer; and those of the scientific objector to prayer, who is not instructed in scriptural doctrine. Prayer does not imply a probable reversal of the laws of nature; but it does imply a moral government in the midst of the physical world, and the subordination of the physical to the moral under regulation of an all-wise and almighty Ruler. The question before us concerns this subordination, and the possibilities which it implies.

Towards the attainment of exact conceptions here the first requisite is a clear understanding of the scientific doctrine of the government of the world by fixed law. In whatever sense we take the word "law" as applicable to God's government of the universe, there is no law which is fluctuating, or liable to have one signification at one time, and a quite different signification at another time; a narrower range of application at one period, and a wider range at a later. Such fluctuation would imply a suspension of a law of nature, and the conception of such a thing is inconsistent with absolute rational government, alien equally to the principles of science and of religion. Laws physical, moral, and spiritual are equally fixed laws.

But the laws of the universe are a harmony, and in the midst of the interdependence of laws distinct in character, the harmony of the whole is secured by the subordination of physical law to moral and spiritual. It is in the midst of this harmonized relationship of the diverse laws of the divine government that the spirit of prayer lives, and makes good its rational consistency. And it is only on condition of acknowledgment of diverse laws, including moral with physical, that the scientific man can interpose any criticism as to the efficacy of prayer. Any denial of a moral government in the midst of the physical universe, under sway of a God of righteousness, places an objector entirely out of the sphere in which criticism can proceed. Physical law determining conditions of bodily life is fixed law; moral law deciding the conditions of right conduct in intelligent life is fixed law; spiritual law deciding the conditions of fellowship with the Father of our spirits is fixed law. The believer in the Bible has no hesitancy in acknowledgment of all this; he is a believer in fixed law in a higher and grander sense than scientific teaching indicates, and he believes in the harmony of all existence under an unchangeable government, notwithstanding all the wrong doing in the world, and the dreadful misery resulting from it. His belief in the harmony of the universe rests on his belief in the fixedness of law physical as well as moral, and moral as well as physical.

But the fixedness belonging to various orders of law, subsisting in a state of interdependence, and involving subordination of lower to higher, needs some more exact interpretation. The fixedness of law, physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual, in no case involves fixedness of result, but varying results according to diversity of conditions. There is fixedness of physical law, but withal there is diversity of weather, and seasons, and harvests, and that because a variety of conditions are harmonized under fixed law. There is fixedness of intellectual law in accordance with which accuracy of thought is determined, but diversity of result according to the materials with which we deal. And so it is with moral and spiritual law, providing for the regulation of our higher life.