Category: Theology

On the Origins of Scientific Naturalism

Part Two

As further background to my forthcoming study of our topic, please consider also the following essay, written in response to an examination question during my 2011 sojourn at Biola University.

Dr. Cornelius George Hunter

Historical Perspectives

Thomas Alderman

Unit 4 Reading Response

Question #4

Word Count: 698

Question #4: Leibniz’s theology mandates a non-intervening creator, for god is all the greater if his world operates autonomously. How does this “greater god” theology support theological naturalism? What are the other three theological arguments, identified in pp. 19-33 of Science’s Blind Spot, that support theological naturalism? How do they support theological naturalism? Did Charles Darwin reason from theological naturalism in arguing for his theory of evolution? Historian Alan Charles Kors writes that 18th century French atheism arose from “within the deeply Christian learned culture.” Can this also be said of theological naturalism and Darwin’s theory of evolution? Is theological naturalism biblically orthodox? Most models of the relationship between Christianity and science treat Christianity with a broad brush, and do not substantially discern variations, and biblically orthodox versus unorthodox influences. Consequently, the unorthodox influences have typically been under appreciated or gone unnoticed. Do we need a new model that acknowledges unorthodox influences? Is it true that after the 17th century, theology no longer was influential in science?

Response: Scientific Naturalism

     Naturalism is the view that nature is one interlocking system of physical (i.e., impersonal) causation.  It comes in two forms: “strong” (atheistic) naturalism, which posits that only matter exists; and weak (deistic) naturalism, which holds that if God exists, his existence and activities are not scientifically detectable and therefore not the concern of science.

     A majority of scientists today, especially in the field of biology, are naturalists; of those, the vast majority are deists, few of whom can guess the genealogy of the idea.  It arose in the late Seventeenth Century with the supplanting of Aristotelian physics by atomistic mechanical philosophy.  It became part of the anti-clerical agenda of the so-called Age of Reason of the Eighteenth Century, and for further spurious reasons became nearly synonymous with science.

     Most, or nearly all, of the arguments for naturalism were theological (hence, “theological naturalism”).  Certain assumptions were made concerning the nature of God which were inconsistent with His continuing involvement in nature.  Many could be characterized as variations on the theme of God’s perfection: since God is perfect, He must have created a perfect universe.

     Further assumptions were then made concerning what a perfect universe would look like.  As Immanuel Kant (1754-1804) put it, God is wise; therefore, Creation should reflect that wisdom by being beautiful, perfect, and harmonious.  As others put it, there is nobility and perfection in regularity and order; God’s immutability implies a natural order which operates autonomously; and ultimately, God would not create a universe which required any adjustment – by miracle, for instance.

     In each case, naturalistic philosophers began with a conception of God.  It was not the biblical God – in both the Old and New Testaments, God is revealed as acting in history in many ways, both by miracle and by providence.  Prophecies have been fulfilled, and God’s fingerprints – or rather, His very signature – are everywhere in nature.  Romans 1:20.

     Indeed, God is perfect; however, He is not accountable to human reasoning: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.”  Isaiah 55:8.  The point, however, is not that the naturalists of the Seventeenth Century were not Christian; the point is that they were theists, and their naturalism was a consequence of their theology.

     In any event, the God of the naturalists became undetectable to science; for if God is not involved with nature, there is no activity to detect.  Neither can a spirit, or an immaterial God, be physically detected – or so it is assumed.

     Science has no difficulty detecting the personal, however: human agency is identified routinely in archeology and forensic science.  The criteria for identifying design – when the putative agent is a human person – are simple, straightforward, and metaphysically neutral.  The same criteria, applied to “natural” phenomena, lead in the same way to the same kind of conclusion: natural phenomena result from the activity of an intelligent, or personal, agent.  But science is not permitted to follow that evidence where it leads, because, so they say, to posit a divine person is not science at all.  Why is it not science?  Because science (again, so they say) has to do with the discovery of naturalistic – which is to say, mechanistic, impersonal – explanations for natural phenomena.  Why is that?  They do not say.  And again, most of them do not know.

     There was another notable argument against God’s direct involvement with nature, based on the need to explain how evil can exist in a world created by a loving, omnipotent God.  It can exist, it was said, because nature is autonomous from God.

     The autonomy of nature was central to Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.  A naturalistic theory for life was necessary in order to exculpate God from natural evil.  Said Darwin,

I cannot see . . . evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us.  There seems to me too much misery in the world.  I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae [the parasitic wasp] with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars. . . .”

     To Darwin it was impossible that God would make a world in which there was so much inefficiency and waste.  By 1859 he found theological naturalism ready to hand, and he made the best use of it he could.

On the Origins of Scientific Naturalism

One

We have seen1 that modern science was the product of Christian scientists of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries such as Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton.  We have also seen2 that unfortunately, by the end of the Nineteenth Century that theistic consensus had been largely supplanted by a new paradigm, best known as scientific naturalism.  That shift has proven so important to the mission of the church that I set myself to understand how it could have occurred.  The next several posts to this weblog will address that theme.  As a sort of primer, please enjoy the following essay, my answer to an exam question from my time at Biola University in 2011, addressing that very question.

Dr. Cornelius George Hunter

Thomas O. Alderman

Historical Perspectives – Unit 2

Reading Response Question #4.

Word Count: 697

Exam Question #4: Christopher Kaiser argues that ancient and medieval Christian creational theology interacted with science in four main ways.  What are the first three of those four modes of interaction (excluding the “ministry of healing”) and what difference did they make in the cultivation of science?  How did the later medieval development of conceiving of God’s “two powers” set up natural philosophers to significantly depart from the original creationist tradition?  How does Kaiser’s research inform your view of how science and religion have related (history) and how they should relate (a matter of philosophy and theology)?

The Rise of Naturalistic Science

The myth of the conflict between faith and reason is perpetuated almost entirely through ignorance of the time when science was conducted as the “handmaiden” of the Gospel, and of the spurious reasons why that model lost its hold on the Western mind.

Christopher Kaiser3 lays his axe to the root of the myth by showing by whom, when, and why it first germinated.  The theme of the book as a whole is the multifaceted dialogue of Christianity with science between the Fourth and Twentieth Centuries.  Kaiser emphasizes four topics in the dialogue:

The comprehensibility of the world: A rational God has created both a rational world and a rational humanity capable of comprehending that world.

The relative autonomy of nature: The regularities of nature stem from the physical laws which God has imposed on physical matter. 

The unity of heaven and earth: The heavens are governed by the same laws as the Earth. 

The ministry of healing and restoration. [Kaiser, 5.]

In all of these areas of dialogue, the biblical view was far more conducive to empirical investigation of nature than the classical view.  Aristotle’s conception of the cosmos was based more on his suppositions about the divinity of the celestial objects and his assumptions about what kinds of motions would be suitable to the divine. By contrast, the biblical view invites man to investigate and see what God has actually done.

Nature is seen as comprehensible for several reasons.  One, it is subject to God’s command and laws.  Two, the same Logos which ordered the world is also reflected in human reason, which is ours as created in the image of God.  Three, the universe is finite.

The biblical view of the unity of heaven and earth also encourages empirical investigation.  The sun, moon and stars move at God’s command and in accordance with his laws.  Josh 10:12; Job 9:7.  And Christ is Lord over all things.  Matt. 28:18; John 1:3-4.

The relative autonomy of nature, or the notion that nature was created by and governed by a rational God and hence amenable to the human rational faculty, was also rooted in scripture.  Plants and animals were created to propagate after their kind, Gen. 1:11f., 21f., 24f. God governs the universe: the sun, moon, and stars (Job 38:33; Ps 104:9; the tides (Job 38:8-11); the seasons (Gen. 8:22); and the wind, rain, and lightning (Job 28:25ff.; 38:24f.; Ps. 148:8). 

Unfortunately, the seeds of the unraveling of this consensus were present almost from the beginning of the Church Age.  It was Augustine (354-430) who posited that God implanted “seminal” causes in nature at Creation “so as to have their effects in a predetermined sequence.”  Kaiser, 41.  Thus the “ordinary course of nature,” was contrasted with the power which God reserved to act contrary thereto. Thierry of Chartres (d after 1156) developed this idea further by explaining the work of the six days of Creation as the mechanical outworking of physical principles.

The Church’s uncritical stance toward non-biblical authorities led her to a slow surrender of the authority of God over His creation.  The Scholastics pushed Augustine’s distinction between God’s regular power and his absolute power so as to form a separation between the natural and the supernatural.  God had been seen as acting continuously to uphold the creation; now, that seemed unnecessary: He only acted when He wished to overturn the natural order of things. The relative autonomy of the cosmos was being pushed into full autonomy. Ultimately, the rationalistic spirit of the time led to the conception of nature as inherent in the elements of which it consists, and hence the notion that miracles are violations of the laws of nature (William of Conches, c. 1120).

This made science a purely rationalistic endeavor, leaving the Church with authority in matters of religious faith and morals only, and it constitutes the epistemological dichotomy which besets us today. As Stephen J. Gould has stated, “Science treats factual reality, while religion struggles with human morality.”

Even the greatest theologians of the Church are fallible, and the more influential they are, the more damage they can do.  The human rational faculty is glorious, but must be exercised in reverence.  Augustine also taught that wherever the truth is found, it is the Lord’s, and he taught that our understanding of scripture may inform our natural philosophy, and vice versa.  But until an idea is confirmed by both the Word and the data, we should be tentative in our opinions. 

1 (Exploding the Myth of Conflict Between Science and Religion, (https://joshualetter.com/2024/12/05/science-and-religion-exploding-the-myth-of-conflict/)

2 https://joshualetter.com/2024/12/27/science-and-religion-exploding-the-myth-of-conflict-4/

3 Christopher Kaiser, Creation and the History of Science, (William B. Eerdmans 1991)]

Person of the Century

On X today, February 2, 2026, Charles Krauthammer nominates Winston Churchill for Person of the Twentieth Century.  I concur.

For Christmas a few years ago my daughter-in-law gave me Andrew Roberts’ Churchill biography.  I thanked her as follows.

March 7, 2020

Dear Mary,

I just finished Andrew Roberts’ Churchill and I want to say again, thanks!

It was quite a few years ago that I first realized how indebted we are to “the Greatest Generation,” and I have since then had a heightened interest in the history of the 50-year period prior to my birth in 1949.  One of my regrets is that I did not quiz my parents more closely about their experiences.

But now I realize for the first time the extent to which we owe our freedom and prosperity to one man.

Roberts concludes by saying (p 975) that if Hitler had delayed the Anschluss [the annexation of Austria] and Czech crises for a few years, Churchill’s moment would have passed.  Halifax would have become Prime Minister, and he would have sought, quite reasonably, to discover Hitler’s terms of peace.  Those terms might not have been very onerous, since all Hitler needed at that moment was a single front.  Churchill saw that if the Soviets were alone, they would more likely face defeat; whereupon there would be nothing to prevent Hitler from disavowing the settlement with England, who in turn, then, would also have been alone.  Then it would have been too late for the US to re-arm.

Churchill maintained that it was the British people who had the lion heart, and that he merely “had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.”  Roberts denies that: “[I]t was much more the case that Churchill had the lion heart and also gave the roar, and in so doing taught the British people to rediscover the latent lionheartedness in themselves.”  (p 980.) 

Whether one believes in Providence, as I do, we can only regard these things with gratitude and awe.

By the way, thanks, too, for the WhatsApp call the other day for Leona to chat with us.  So great to see her walking and flourishing as she is clearly doing in every way.  Thanks for thinking of us.

Love,

Tom

THE OLIVET DISCOURSE A Comment

Thomas Alderman, November 29, 2025

All three Synoptic Gospels – Mark, Luke, and Matthew – contain Jesus’ discourse concerning future events, known as “the Olivet Discourse” because He delivered it while gazing from the Mount of Olives at the magnificent Herodian Temple across the Kidron Valley.

The Discourse poses a number of hermeneutical challenges, but one in particular causes some to stumble.  Jesus predicts the destruction of the Temple.  He also predicts His own return “in clouds with great power and glory.”  But then He emphasizes that “this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.”  Manifestly, the generation living when Jesus spoke has been gone a long time – yet Christ has not returned.  Did Jesus make a mistake?  Or did the Gospel authors err in recording what He said?  And if He or they erred in this instance, where else might they have erred?  Is the New Testament reliable at all?

According to William L. Lane, author of the New International Commentary on the New Testament (NICNT) Book of Mark,1 “In the Gospel of Mark there is no passage more problematic than the prophetic discourse of Jesus on the destruction of the Temple.”2  Other scholars concur: Hans Bayer, Professor Emeritus, Covenant Theological Seminary, declares it to be “one of the more difficult things to understand in the Gospels.”  At the same time, since the Olivet prophesy is among the most difficult New Testament texts, its vindication, if that were possible, would be of interest to the honest seeker.  Many have therefore attempted to rescue the Discourse with various explanations as to how Jesus’ predictions could all have been true.  I set myself to understand those attempts in the hope of reaching an opinion on the question.

Continue reading “THE OLIVET DISCOURSE A Comment”

Science and religion: Exploding the Myth of Conflict

A Five-Part Series

Part Two: The Scientific Revolution Arose only in the West for a Reason

As we saw in Part One, there are reasons science arose in the West. At the same time there are also reasons why it did NOT arise anywhere else: their theology did not permit it.

Barbour argues that “science in its modern form [arose] in Western civilization alone, among all the cultures of the world,” because only the Christian West had the necessary “intellectual presuppositions underlying the rise of science.”1  These included, as noted in Part One, the belief in a rational God who created an orderly cosmos and humans in his image as also rational beings precisely because he wished to be known.

Greece.

Ancient Greek philosophy is a case in point.  Many Greek philosophers “assumed they could deduce how nature ought to behave . . . based on only superficial observations of natural phenomena or without actually observing nature at all.”2.  Thus, Aristotle’s conception of the cosmos was based more on his suppositions about the divinity of the celestial objects and his assumptions about what kinds of motions would be suitable to them, given their divine nature.  Supposing that a circular motion was most perfect, for example, Aristotle concluded that the orbit of the sun around the Earth must be perfectly circular.  (Of course the sun does not orbit the Earth, and the Earth’s orbit of the sun is elliptical, not circular.)  He also reasoned that the Earth must be eternal and the center of the universe.

Egypt

Despite Egypt’s technical prowess in building the pyramids, Egyptian mathematics and geometry remained a practical art.

Any possibility for scientific breakthroughs was destroyed by 

the polytheistic, animistic precepts central to Egyptian religion.  In polytheism, each god governs its domain according to its own rules; uniformity and hence intelligibility are elusive.  In animism, likewise, many gods inhabit natural things such as trees and animals.

Eastern pantheistic monism

The Hindu and Buddhist precept that all is One implies that all distinctions are illusory – a real curiosity-killer!  The study of nature requires duality: the knower and the thing which is known.  They are not the same thing.  Just as importantly, classification is an indispensable scientific exercise.  E.g., a dolphin is not a porpoise, and a bacterium is not a virus.  Study of the Creation entails careful distinctions.  But in Eastern thought, to realize one’s oneness with the cosmos is to pass beyond knowledge.  This is hardly a view that encourages scientific inquiry.

NEXT WEEK: Part Three: There is Conflict, but it is Between Naturalism and Science

ENDNOTES

1Barbour, Religion and Science, 27.

2Stephen C. Meyer, Return of the God Hypothesis (Harper Collins 2021), 32.

Pearl of Great Price

Will Durant said it well: The portrayal of Jesus in the Gospels must be true, because no one could have invented such a character:

That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels.  After two centuries of Higher Criticism, the outlines of the life, character, and teaching of Christ, remain reasonably clear, and constitute the most fascinating feature in the history of Western man.

Will Durant, Historian1

But Simon Greenleaf said it even better:

Lastly, the great character they have portrayed is perfect. It is the character of a sinless Being; of one supremely wise and supremely good. It exhibits no error, no sinister intention, no imprudence, no ignorance, no evil passion, no impatience; in a word, no fault; but all is perfect uprightness, innocence, wisdom, goodness and truth. The mind of man has never conceived the idea of such a character, even for his gods; nor has history or poetry shadowed it forth. The doctrines and precepts of Jesus are in strict accordance with the attributes of God, agreeably to the most exalted idea which we can form of them, either from reason or from revelation. They are strikingly adapted to the capacity of mankind, and yet are delivered with a simplicity and majesty wholly divine. He spake as never man spake. He spake with authority; yet addressed himself to the reason and the understanding of men; and he spake with wisdom, which men could neither gainsay nor resist. In his private life, he exhibits a character not merely of strict justice, but of flowing benignity. He is temperate, without austerity; his meekness and humility are signal; his patience is invincible; truth and sincerity illustrate his whole conduct; every one of his virtues is regulated by consummate prudence; and he both wins the love of his friends, and extorts the wonder and admiration of his enemies. He is represented in every variety of situation in life, from the height of worldly grandeur, amid the acclamations of an admiring multitude, to the deepest abyss of human degradation and woe, apparently deserted of God and man. Yet everywhere he is the same; displaying a character of unearthly perfection, symmetrical in all its proportions, and encircled with splendor more than human. Either the men of Galilee were men of superlative wisdom, and extensive knowledge and experience, and of deeper skill in the arts of deception, than any and all others, before or after them, or they have truly stated the astonishing things which they saw and heard.2

1From The Story of Civilization, Vol. III: Caesar and Christ, by Will Durant, p. 557.

2Simon Greenleaf (1783-1853), The Testimony of the Evangelists: The Gospels Examined by the Rules of Evidence (Full text: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34989/34989-pdf.pdf (last visited 4.5.24).)  (Greenleaf, of course, one of the founders of Harvard Law and the Nineteenth Century’s foremost authority on the law of evidence, set out to refute Christianity and became a follower of Christ instead.)

He is Risen!

     On this Easter weekend it pleases me to share with you something of what I’ve learned from Gary Habermas’ On the Resurrection: Evidences (B&H Academic, 2024).

     There is virtual unanimity among scholars, both liberal and conservative, that the details of the events which gave rise to the Gospel story probably happened  – with the sole exception of the empty tomb, which is accepted by “only” a clear majority of scholars.  That is to say, more particularly, that the scholarly community agrees that the disciples believed they had seen the risen Christ, it transformed them from cowering fugitives into on-fire evangelists, and many of them were martyred for it.  None recanted. 

     As to the Resurrection itself, a strong minority of scholars believe Jesus arose.  For those who do not, there are no plausible naturalistic explanations for the events described above.  Their only theory is a hidebound naturalistic prejudice that there is no God and hence no miracles.  But if God exists then naturalism is false and miracles can and will happen whenever God wants them to. 

     Applying well-accepted historiographical criteria for historicity, it would be almost impossible for the evidence for the Resurrection to be any stronger than it is.  Indeed, considering that we are at a distance of 2,000 years, it is astonishing how extensively documented are the events of the New Testament, such that one can only ascribe it to a meticulous providence.  What are those criteria?  (Time permits only a cursory recounting; I hope to flesh out the following in future posts.)

  • Early attestation. (Check.)
  • Eyewitness testimony.  (Check.)
  • Multiple attestation.  (Check.)
  • Dissimilarity.  (“[A] particular saying may be attributed to someone . . . if it cannot plausibly be [attributed to] . . . the words or teachings of other roughly contemporary sources.”  Habermas, 47.)  The very idea of imagining the sayings of Jesus as coming from anyone else is ludicrous.
  • Palestinian origin.  (Sayings in the Aramaic language, for example.)  The raising of Jairus’ daughter and the cry of dereliction come to mind.
  • Embarrassment.  (Frankly acknowledging words or events which place the author or others in a negative light may reflect a commitment to truth-telling.)  Mark and Peter, for example, are unflinching in describing Peter’s repeated failures.
  • Enemy attestation. The Jews to this day claim that the body was stolen, which means the tomb must have been empty.

He is risen!

The Recovery of the New Testament

Was the New Testament corrupted? Or has it been restored?

Thomas Alderman 2024

The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, by Bruce M. Metzger (Oxford University Press, 3d ed. 1992; 4th ed. with Bart D. Ehrman 2005)1.

I. Introduction.

The Apostle Peter exhorts believers to “be ready always to give an answer to every man who asks of you a reason for the hope that is in you.”  1 Peter 3:15.  We certainly ought, therefore, to be prepared in advance to answer those who insist that the text of the New Testament has been so corrupted that we cannot know what its authors were trying to tell us.

It’s a claim that cannot be lightly dismissed. 

Continue reading “The Recovery of the New Testament”

Toward an Epistemology of Love

N. T. Wright, Loving to Know: The 2019 Erasmus Lecture (First Things Magazine, February 2020, pp. 25-34.)

 

To transcend the divided field of knowledge – the antitheses between fact and value, objective and subjective, reason and faith, science and religion – requires an epistemology of love – a love, that is, which recognizes the material universe for what it is, “the loving gift of a wise creator.”

N. T. wright places the origin of these antitheses in ancient Epicurean philosophy, which held that “The gods may exist, but they are in an entirely different sphere to ourselves, taking no notice of us and certainly not intervening in our world.” He traces this view of the cosmos through the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution to the present.  To this day, he says, “most Westerners – including, alas, many Christians! – don’t realize that they are looking at the world through Epicurean spectacles.”

The intellectuals of the Enlightenment were receptive to Epicurean philosophy because it justified their “antipathy to  [hierarchical] top-down social, political, cultural, and religious systems . . . which were perceived as denying a proper aspiration for freedom.”  What they failed to realize, and what many today also do not realize, is that Epicurean cosmology is just as “top-down” as divine creation.  It says, essentially, that since the gods are not involved in mundane things, the universe must therefore create itself – “so that the evolution of species was approached not simply as a newly discovered bit of inductive knowledge from below but as the necessary postulate from . . . the Epicurean assumption that if the gods do not act within the world then the world must make itself.”

Wright’s observations help explain how it is that modern science acquired its naturalistic bias.  It is indeed a thing requiring some kind of explanation.  It is completely evident, after all, that naturalism – the prejudice that the material world of space, time, matter and energy is all that exists – is not something that science has discovered.  It was not found in a test tube, or on a distant planet.  Where did it come from?

Epicurean philosophy pre-dates modern science by more than 1800 years, so it was ready and waiting when the Enlightenment philosophers needed it.  Wright says that this helps to show that “modern Western culture is not a new thing based on modern science as is so often assumed, but an ancient worldview with some modern twists and footnotes.”

Wright’s antidote is to view the cosmos as a gift from a loving Father, and he has an answer for those who charge that theism’s openness to divine activity in the universe discourages scientific inquiry:

An epistemology of love, seeing the creation as the outflowing of divine creative love, must pay attention to that creation.  It isn’t enough to know that it is God’s creation, and so to infer that we already know all that’s important to know about it.  Love demands patient curiosity.  Love transcends the objective/subjective divide, because as the image-bearing stewards of creation, as liturgists of creation’s praise, as prophets called to speak creation’s reality, we humans are called not to a cool, detached appraisal of the world, nor to a self-indulgent grasping of it, but to a delighted exploration and exposition, in which respect and enjoyment go together.

. . . .

. . . Our delighted, sensitive, respectful, and curious exploration of creation is the response of love to the love we have received.