Magyar Egyház, 1956 (35. évfolyam, 1-11. szám)
1956-02-01 / 2. szám
10 MAGYAR EGYHÁZ forever. No idea about the origins of things, no matter how widely accepted, or on what authority, is or ever can be more than a THEORY, accepted by those who hold it BY FAITH of some kind And the Christian, whose faith in God is based on long experience of tender communion with a Heavenly Father, has far more reason to hold this Heavenly Father’s story of our origins by faith, than any one else has to hold another, man-made account by faith. And our account has the further advantage of coming from one who was THERE AT THE TIME — the Eternal! So you see that, when it comes to the question of the origin of things, everybody must understand by faith. We, however, in contradistinction to our opponents, understand by virtue of the same faith by which we understand that our salvation depends on Jesus Christ only. And this is a mighty faith, a world-overcoming faith, which cannot be shaken. But what is the content of what the Christian understands by faith, as compared to what others understand on some other kind of faith? Let me say without hesitation: the Christians understands that the world was created by the word of God, according to the account given in the Bible in Genesis 1. We do not, and we never will abandon this precious page of the Bible to any supposedly modern, scientific account! When I make this clear statement, there will come to your minds an echo of the formerly much publicized quarrel between science and religion, which culminated, you might say, in the sad farce enacted in Tennessee in the famous Scopes trial. I do not wish to resurrect the ghost of this ancient controversy. I do not believe that there is any quarrel between science and religion. The truth is one thing, and what is true is true in science or religion. The difficulties arise when one, or the other tries to overstep the boundaries which, I feel God in His wisdom has set for each. When the church no longer has faith enough to hear the Scriptures afresh every day, and instead insists upon some traditional interpretation of the Scriptures as the last word on the subject: or when the men of science leave their examination of facts and the ideas which can reasonably be drawn from the facts, and instead pretend to be world saviors and apostles of a new age of enlightenment — then it is that these two sister branches of human knowledge come into head on conflict, and only then. When both religion and science are humble and reverent, however, they supplement each other in a wonderful way, and hold the possibility of great good to the human race. What has all this to do with creation? Around creation, which, as we have said, we understand by faith, have raged some of the bitterest conflicts between science and religion. Scientists have heaped ridicule on the account of the creation given in Genesis 1, and Christians have made heavy use of such bitter words as “blasphemy” and “atheism” in replying to the scientists. But let us lay aside bitterness. We, as Christians, cannot discard even one single word of the Sacred Scripture: but we need not do so, in order at the same time to understand and appreciate the legitimate findings of natural science. To be sure, when scientists leave their proper sphere, and say, for example that there is no such things as a creation, but that matter always existed and always will, Christians must counter with a firm, No! God is eternal, not matter. Scientists have recently proved that matter can be destroyed (they proved this when they “split the atom” — the foundation of the atomic bomb) — so matter cannot be eternal, even if the idea had anything to commend it. Our faith gives us to understand that the Eternal God created matter out of nothing, by His word, just as we read in the Bible, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form and void.” On the other hand, when Christians insist on a certain interpretation of the Bible, simply because it is traditional, scientists may say to us, “Stop a moment, and consider this evidence, which we have discovered.” A case in point is the matter of the time involved in the account in Genesis 1. Six “days” are mentioned tnere as being involved in God’s creative plan. In the past, most Christians, but by no means all, have taken those days as literal days of twenty-four hours each. But even before all the controversy in this matter, some e.g., Calvin, questioned how these could be literal days, when literal days are measured by the sun, and the sun was only created on the fourth of these socalled days. Others have pointed out, that there are several places in the Bible which call our attention to the fact that a “day” has a different meaning to God than to men, e.g., Psalm 90:4, “A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is passed, or as a watch in the night,” and 2 Peter 3:8, “With the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” Here then, is a matter of interpretation, and we must readily admit that the interpretation formerly so widely held, that the creation was accomplished in six literal days, is not the only one admissable. Therefore, when scientists ask us to consider the evidence of the rocks, where the many strata indicate succesive development and destruction of the scenery of the earth, we, as believing Christians, can give just weight to this evidence, and, if it seems convincing, as I for one am ready to admit, then we may interpret the days of creation in accordance with these scientific facts. A third problem is probably all we will have time to consider. It is the problem of evolution. Evolution, as it is usually understood, theorizes that life found its origin in some primeval ooze, and thereafter has developed from simpler to more complicated forms. Even man is held to have developed from some less intelligent, more animal-like form, as the culmination of this process. The Bible, on the other hand, teaches that life arose from the Divine word, that the fish and animals and birds came into being at His command, and that He made man “in His own image.” These two views have tantalized modern man for several generations, now. The theory of evolution has gone even further in its challenge to the usually accepted concepts of religion by assuming the role of a philosophy and spreading abroad the notion of irresistible progress as a natural and expected thing in life, which will inevitably bring about the golden age for which mankind has so long longed. Christians find two flaws in the theory of evolution as most objectionable. The one is the unvarranted extension of a theory of the development of physical life into the realm of universal philosophy — the idea of progress of which I just spoke. The other is the assumption that all the development that has taken
