Vision
Science and Religion
The American Association for the Advancement of Science has generously offered to help theological seminaries educate their students in the worldview and workings of secular science. According to a report on NPR by Lucky Severson, “The society asked seminaries to apply for grants that would enable them to incorporate more science into religious studies. They were surprised when 28 applied. Ten were accepted” (“Science for Seminaries,” January 30, 2015). According to Jennifer Wiseman, Director of the Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion at AAAS, “And it turns out that many people actually look to their religious leaders for guidance on all kinds of things, but things including issues related to science and technology. And a lot of those religious leaders have had very little exposure to science in their training.” I would like to believe this is a well-intended effort, but the hubris of it is hard to swallow: Ignorant pastors misleading their flocks on the only reliable source of knowledge about everything! The AAAS has undoubtedly identified a real problem among those charged with the task of making disciples in a world dominated by science and technology. Most pastors are not well informed or thoughtful about such matters, or about many other matters of culture, vocation, and society. Where this is the case, pastors should seek to improve general knowledge. Where they will not, they should be unfrocked. However, I wonder if AAAS will also be offering grants to major schools of science to help them incorporate more theology into their curriculum? Yeah, I don't think so.

Disciplines
The Professoriate
Fewer young people today aspire to become university professors, and the blame for this falls on university professors themselves. So argues Jacques Berlinerblau in a January 19, 2015 post at The Chronicle of Higher Education (“Teach or Perish,” http://m.chronicle.com/article/Teach-or-Perish/151187/). University professors in the humanities have been more interested in grinding some political or personal ax than in shaping the minds and mentoring the lives of young people: “Somewhere along the way, we spiritually and emotionally disengaged from teaching and mentoring students. The decision—which certainly hasn’t ingratiated us to the job-seeking generation—has resulted in one whopper of a contradiction. While teaching undergraduates is, normally, a large part of a professor’s job, success in our field is correlated with a professor’s ability to avoid teaching undergraduates.” Publication and specialization have taken precedence over teaching, with the result that students no longer find the humanities an arena of sweeping visions and high aspirations, challenging to their imaginations or worthy of their investment of time and attention. The humanities are dying not because of neglect, but because of abuse. If this is ever to change, Berlinerblau, opines, we will need a new kind of professor:“The successful candidate will be skilled in, and passionately devoted to, teaching and mentoring 18- to 22-year-olds, as well as those in other age groups. Additionally, she or he will show promise as an original and creative researcher.” Here is an opportunity for visionary Christians to step into one of the most influential arenas of service in our society. If pastors possessed better general knowledge and more experience with the “light of nature” (The Westminster Confession of Faith) they might actually inspire some young people to consider the professoriate as their calling from the Lord.

CreationalTheology
The Westminster Confession of Faith (1.6) explains that certain aspects of the life of the faith must be learned via the “light of nature.” The “light of nature” here refers to the understanding of God and His will which can be derived, by study and deduction, from His revelation in creation or culture (Pss. 19.1-4; 68.18; Prov. 25.2). God is revealing His glory through such means, and we are charged with the duty of discerning His glory there and, with it, something of His will. We can discover the light of glory hidden in creation and culture, but we must be diligent to study these works of God if we are to discern Him speaking by them (Ps. 111.2). This is work for those who are wise, who have prudence to discern God’s Word in creation, according to the teaching and guidelines of His Word in Scripture (Ps. 36.9). Creational theology, as we may rightly call it, must be done within the guardrails of Biblical and systematic theology (for an introduction to the practice of this discipline, see my book, Consider the Lilies: A Plea for Creational Theology). The more adept one is at rightly dividing the Word of truth, and the more skilled one is at using the analogy of Scripture and the analogy of faith, the more capable and fruitful will be his work in the area of creational theology. On the larger scale, how does such a doctrine counsel us with respect to the dialog that ought to occur between such disciplines as, say, the arts or the sciences and theology? Cut off from the light of Scripture and sound doctrine, those seeking true knowledge in any other discipline must inevitably come short of the glory of God. Cut off from the “light of nature,” any whose calling is to make disciples must expect to come woefully short in their endeavor.

Outcomes
Science Babel?
Is it a problem that English has come to be the dominant language of science? Michael D. Gordin traces the history of the ascendancy of English in the sciences in a recent post at Aeon (“Absolute English,” 4 February 2015, http://aeon.co/magazine/science/how-did-science-come-to-speak-only-english/?utm_source=Aeon+newsletter&utm_campaign=b3e148b6d0-Daily_newsletter_February_4_20152_4_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-b3e148b6d0-68631581). A combination of politics and scientific advance has driven other languages to the margin and made English the ruling tongue in research, breaking with centuries of polylingualism in the sciences. Mr. Gordin doesn’t seem to be too troubled by the fact that 99% of all scientific research is published in English, except that he wonders whether precious time in research is lost on the part of those who have to learn English just to stay in the game. One might be tempted to espy some Babelesque tendency or even conspiracy here, but I don’t think we need to worry about that. The greater threat from the scientific community is not the language of English speakers, but the presumptuous and triumphalist language of scientism. It will take well-informed theological minds to resist the aspirations of this mindset.

Envoi

The Spark of Art and Spirit
        Czeslaw Milosz, 1911-2004

First day of class: The lies begin,
as students everywhere embark
upon their path of self-deceit.

Condemned to droning lectures, thin
with truth, they take their notes and mark
their textbooks, that they may repeat

the sought-for information in
exams when called upon to bark
for their degrees – a process neat

and quick, by which they hope to win
a cubicle, a space to park,
adoring lovers, and complete,

unbridled freedom. Truth is spin
and life is lust without the spark
of art and spirit. Time will beat

them finally, as, to their chagrin,
their youthful day fades fast to dark
and nothing but the end will meet

them. Thus the sickness that sets in
while they’re preparing for the lark
they hope their lives will be, will eat

away their souls, and they’ll grow thin
within, decrepit, wretched, stark
exemplars of an age replete

with things, but having nothing. Sweet
the antidote, would they but eat.    

From Fault Lines

T. M. Moore