James Nisbet Commentary - 1 Corinthians 14:15 - 14:15

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James Nisbet Commentary - 1 Corinthians 14:15 - 14:15


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FAITH AND SCIENCE

‘I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also.’

1Co_14:15

In these words St. Paul, the greatest preacher of Christ the world has ever seen, declares that he, at any rate, must combine the claims of his emotions and heart with those of his reason and understanding. Moreover, he presses on his Church at Corinth the absolute duty of doing the same. ‘In understanding’ they are to ‘be men.’ The Christ Whom he preached appealed to their reason. This duty is not always felt as such by religious people. They are sometimes content that the understanding should be in abeyance. Let us consider from some points of view the relations in our own case of the spirit to the understanding, to use St. Paul’s terms; or, as we should now express it, of faith to science. And the point of view that is perhaps most illuminating and least familiar is the consideration of the gains to faith from the advance of science. I am not speaking to men of science; I am speaking to an ordinary congregation. How is science helping our faith as Christians?

I. The most obvious, though not the greatest, gain to faith consists in the vast extension of our knowledge of the material world and of the system of Nature of which our bodies and minds form a part. It was the sight of Nature that first brought to men’s minds the conviction of the existence of the Supreme Object of faith. ‘O Lord our Governor, how excellent is Thy Name in all the world; Thou that hast set Thy glory above the heavens,’ was the natural exclamation of a sensitive and reasoning mind which had nothing before it except the most obvious facts of Nature. The heavens and the earth, the mystery of physical life, and the working of God’s Spirit in mind and conscience and heart—these are the ever-present marvels that lift man’s thoughts to God. Nature has spoken in this way to all ages and peoples. No comparison can be made between the conceptions as to the extent of the universe, the nature of matter, and the evolution of life and mind of even a hundred years ago and those of to-day. The grounds for the old inference are therefore greatly extended. If the works of Nature were wonderful and inexplicable to our fathers, and lifted their thoughts to God in adoration and humble service, to us they are a thousand times more wonderful and more inexplicable.

II. In the next place, greater even than the gain of an extension of knowledge is the gain of new standards for estimating and graduating knowledge, and of a new temper in which knowledge is regarded. It is from scientific investigation that the world has first thoroughly learnt that human faculties for knowing are narrowly circumscribed by our senses, and therefore that there are regions of knowledge which lie beyond our reach; that human knowledge admits of every imaginable degree, varying from mathematical certainty to the faintest surmise; that the right attitude towards most statements of physics is one of provisional acceptance, subject to correction; that suspension of judgment is a wholesome and rightful attitude of mind on many points of intellectual interest; and that truthfulness of mind is of such importance to character that to fear investigation, to conceal difficulties and slur over inconsistencies, to overstate convictions, to become an advocate instead of a truth-seeker, are faults that darken and degrade the soul. These postulates of scientific method, with the patience and loyal sincerity they bring, the humble waiting for new light, and the reliance on facts, have revolutionised the methods of human thought. They have been universally accepted in science. And now they claim and are gaining admission in theology. That is one of the great gains that have come to faith from the advance of science. Science has taught the world that truth is not won by a priori methods, by deductions from authority, or from axioms, however obvious they may seem; still less from insistent and menacing asseverations. The whole story of the growth of natural knowledge is one long refutation of the method of guessing at principles and then laying them down as absolute facts; it is one long vindication of the opposite method—of studying what is; of provisionally generalising from what we see; and constantly correcting our generalisations. It has taught the world that creation is a process, life is a process, knowledge is a process, revelation is a process; and that of none of these processes can we see the end. This lesson has profoundly altered the method in which men now must study all subjects, including theology.

III. Science, further, therefore helps us to see that the different forms of faith and worship are not related to one another as one true, and all the rest false; but as higher and lower, as adapted to varied stages in intellectual and moral development, as processes of approximation to truth, of education of the spirit of man. It is therefore making possible not only a spirit of tolerance, but, what is far greater, the existence of a really Catholic Church, in which in all humility the various Christian bodies in our own land, and on a wider scale all the nations of the world, will be content to do their work side by side, not as jealous and aggressive rivals, but as ministering to different temperaments and types and stages of development amongst men, exponents of the manifold wisdom of God. Surely thus our world must appear in the eyes of the All-seeing Father.

IV. And finally, perhaps the greatest of the gifts which science is indirectly conferring on the Christian faith is this—it is opening our eyes to the fact that in reading the Bible and in interpreting Christianity men have hitherto largely misplaced the emphasis—we have not placed it where Christ and His Apostles placed it; and the result of our mistakes has been our divisions, our antagonisms, and the ineffectiveness of the Christian spirit to grapple with the evils in national life and the inborn propensities of human nature. It may be that science, in roughly dissipating some of our illusions, is an instrument in the hands of God for revealing to us realities, and is opening the way to a fuller realisation of Christ’s mind and purpose than the world has yet seen. Is not the core of the Christian revelation the fact that by the revelation of Himself Christ has shown us our power of rising through sonship to the new life of personal holiness and social righteousness? And is not the evolution of thought making this rising to a new life more and more evidently the substance of our faith, and hope, and effort?

Science cannot touch this belief, nor philosophy overturn it. Here the soul has her own sanctions and experiences; here we come to the ‘things which cannot be shaken’—the duty to live the life of Christ on earth; literally and truly to be His Body, the means through which His Spirit shows itself in acts of love and fellowship.

—
Rev. Canon J. M. Wilson.

Illustration

‘To nearly all men, as they grow older, the veil of words becomes more transparent and more obviously a mere veil, and discussion about the veil becomes of less interest, and the tenacity of disputants, who seem unaware that it is a veil, seems surprising, even childish. And what is true of most of us individually, as we grow old, is true of the generation in which we live. The world is growing older; our children are born older than we were; more of them see that it is a veil which is put before them in theology, and they cannot interest themselves in it so eagerly as our fathers did. We need not regard this as want of faith, but as the search for better forms in which to clothe it, and as part of the natural growth of the world towards fuller knowledge.’