FAITH AND WISDOM IN SCIENCE
By Tom McLeish
Oxford University Press. 304 pages. £9.99
ISBN 978 0 198 757 559
Tom McLeish holds the Chair of Natural Philosophy at York University. His book Faith and Wisdom in Science has been received as ‘rich’, ‘insightful’, ‘superbly crafted’, ‘eloquent’, ‘inspiring’, ‘grand’, ‘profound’, etc. Regretfully, I beg to differ.
Some things in the book are helpful. For example, he argues, against the atheists, that science doesn’t rule out religion or make theology irrelevant; he acknowledges the difficulty of relating the ‘two cultures’ of the sciences and the arts; he is unhappy at the way science has been politicised. He also provides a shrewd evaluation of the practice of science in modern academia – the ‘publish or perish’ ethos, the inadequacies of peer reviews, and the futility of ‘research assessment exercises’.
His description of some of the wonders that a scientist sees is engaging, and his account of how a scientist ‘works’ in practice is one that I recognise personally as authentic. I agree that scientific investigation and discovery, the asking of questions and the forming of hypotheses, are all important elements of a Christian’s calling, whether we formally call the activity ‘science’ or not.
McLeish is also right to say that we live in a world that is out-of-joint, one that exhibits both order and chaos – and that a proper use of science may repair some of nature’s disjointedness, as in medicine.
But I think he seriously exaggerates the place of science in theology and in so doing distorts the very foundations upon which theology rests. At root, he has a low view of Scripture, and a consequently inadequate view of the Fall and its consequences. I cannot cover everything in this short review, but a detailed version is available online1.
His twin themes from the Bible are wisdom and reconciliation, but sadly both are gravely distorted. He fails to clarify his understanding of key Christian doctrines relating to Creation, the Fall, the Curse, or how he sees their effects on (a) nature and (b) mankind. He at least appears to make God responsible for evil. His treatment of the biblical notion of wisdom is seriously imbalanced, and his idea of reconciliation owes more to the Enlightenment dream of progress than biblical exegesis.
Wisdom
His discussion of wisdom takes its cue from Job 28, in which the biblical author, while expressing admiration for the technical ingenuity of mankind – ‘searching the sources of rivers’, ‘tunnelling through the rocks’ etc – then emphasises the need for a wisdom from above; no amount of human ingenuity can produce that kind of wisdom. As Kline in the Wycliffe Commentary puts it (echoing commentators down the centuries): ‘In spite of amazing achievements in scientific enterprise, men are unable, by the techniques or treasures of science to attain wisdom.’ To Job’s rhetorical question in v.12, namely, ‘where (then) shall wisdom be found?’ God’s answer is an unequivocal ‘through the fear of the Lord’ (v.28)’: that is, through something distinct from technological prowess, something which God does.
McLeish takes the opposite view. He even finds the traditional understanding ‘banal.’ Rather, the way of wisdom is exemplified by vv.1-11 – the fear of the Lord means ‘participation in a creator’s deep insight into the structure of what he has made.’ And this of course, means doing science. When Job abhors himself and repents in dust and ashes (42:6), for McLeish this can only mean that he ‘simply retracts his case and moves on’. Where? To figuring out the answers, so that he can ‘participate in the continuity of creation’s story’!
As a scientist myself, I believe that ‘biblical wisdom is the root and womb of true science’. Spurgeon affirms that ‘in every bone, joint, and muscle, sinew, gland, and blood-vessel, you mark the presence of a God working everything according to the design of infinite wisdom’. All Christian scientists should rejoice to ‘think God’s thoughts after Him’ (Kepler) when they see such evidences of His design.
But McLeish fails to distinguish between biblical wisdom (Col.1:9, 1 Cor.1:20) and wisdom ‘according to the flesh’ (1 Cor.1:26).
Design
Design is absent from McLeish’s presentation; he is a convinced Darwinist. He scorns churches that ‘reject an ancient origin for our world, and the gradual evolution of life on our planet for a literal interpretation of [Genesis].’ It is ‘impossible for anyone informed about the way we have arrived at our present view of the cosmos … to take this view seriously’. To ‘demonise’ evolution is a terrible sin. The ‘literalist’ approach to Genesis is ‘distorted’ and ‘betrays a shallow disrespect for the Bible’. It ‘imprisons the minds of … honest believers … into dark cells of ignorance’. Indeed, ‘the church has a word for this sort of wrong teaching … it is called a “heresy”.’
So is Ken Ham to be bracketed with Arius and Pelagius? Yet McLeish is curiously ill-informed: many whose expertise is in the ‘present view of the cosmos’ tend to have significant doubts about evolution. By February 2019, more than 1,000 impeccably credentialed scientists had bravely signed a public statement of Scientific Dissent from Darwinism. Even amongst evolutionary biologists of the highest rank, many worry about its explanatory deficits. As Gerd Müller observed in his keynote address to a Royal Society meeting (November 2016), neo-Darwinism cannot account for ‘novelty, modularity, homology, homoplasy or the origin of lineage-defining body plans’. In fact, ‘the theory largely avoids the question of how the complex organizations of organismal structure, physiology, development or behaviour – whose variation it describes – actually arise’.
Nor does McLeish seem to know much about creationism. He believes that creationists ‘insist that all species were created fully formed by special fiat of God and are not connected by any evolutionary tree’. A cursory glance at any of the main creationist websites, or a perusal of some recent publications, should disabuse him of that belief.
But it fits the pattern: as with his treatment of Scripture – where he largely disregards other commentators – McLeish consistently ignores relevant literature that might challenge his views, citing only his own prejudices, or something that supports his argument.
Reconciliation
McLeish’s idea of wisdom seems to differ little from the standard theistic evolutionary idea of ‘complementarity’, with the addition of his idea of reconciliation.
Paul’s expression ‘the ministry of reconciliation’ (2 Cor.5:18) excites him. Science doesn’t merely unfold an evolutionary progression throughout the universe, it becomes ‘the name we give to the … task of … participating in the mending (of) our relationship with nature.’ Certainly, science can ameliorate some of the effects of the Fall. But he completely ignores the context of 2 Corinthians 5:18, where sin and the atoning death of Christ are fundamental to the whole discussion of reconciliation. What McLeish fails to make clear is that the initial creation has been spoiled as a consequence of the Fall and the Curse. As Jeffrey, Ovey and Sach have observed, Genesis 3 describes ‘the reversal of many of God’s plans for the original creation, the unravelling of what was once very good.’ None of this appears in McLeish’s scheme: to describe the events of Genesis 3 as ‘punishment’ is a ‘superficial’ understanding; pain and suffering are ‘the necessary process by which new life comes into being’, etc. McLeish appears to think of ‘reconciliation’ in line with the Enlightenment notion of progress – a ‘direction from ignorance and puzzlement towards dawning understanding’. Again, he seems unaware of many critiques of this notion as applied to science.
In any case, McLeish’s advocacy of ‘science as reconciliation’ appears to be little more than an acknowledgement of the original creation mandate to Adam (although McLeish is noncommittal about Adam’s existence!) and its outworking within the New Covenant. He could have got there by a much safer and more orthodox route if he had followed Francis Schaeffer’s Pollution and the Death of Man, for example.
He also seems unaware that this doesn’t fit with his espousal of Darwinism. His case for ‘a balanced and humble mastery’ of nature is fundamentally at odds with his belief in Darwinian evolution, as even Thomas Huxley admitted2, ‘Evolution … in itself … is incompetent to furnish any better reason why what we call good is preferable to what we call evil.’.
In the process he has belittled several Christian doctrines, including Adam’s sin and its effects. His treatment of the biblical notion of wisdom is seriously imbalanced, and his idea of reconciliation owes more to the Enlightenment dream of progress than biblical exegesis.
Most fundamentally, there is very little of Christ in this book. Although wisdom and reconciliation are so conspicuous, one wouldn’t know that Christ is the wisdom of God, nor that He died to secure our reconciliation. In one of his few references to our Lord, he states that the first of the ‘signs’ of John’s Gospel (at Cana) signifies that ‘Jesus is standing in a balanced and healthy relation to the physical world’. Really? John 20:30-31 gives us the true reason – ‘that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ and that by believing you may have life in his name’. Finally, while McLeish also has much to say about the future hope of the cosmos, Christ is absent from his description of the new creation, as is the church.
The most worrying aspect of this book is that McLeish is instrumental (according to the magazine Impact) in ‘training’ future church leaders via UCCF. I hope that he doesn’t promulgate such dangerous views under the auspices of that organisation.
Colin R. Reeves, Thurlaston, Warwicks Emeritus Professor in Operational Research, June 2019 Coventry University
