Christians have always believed that God speaks through two "books": the book of Scripture and the book of nature. "The heavens declare the glory of God" (Psalm 19:1), and "all Scripture is God-breathed" (2 Timothy 3:16). Yet both raise hard questions about how we read, interpret and understand them.
These six stories about the Bible, science and faith, retold in our own words, look at a literary detective case, the way stories shape who we are, the fine-tuning of the universe, the view of Earth from the Moon and a famous debate about how life began. Where scholars or scientists disagree, we have tried to present the debate fairly. Each ends with a takeaway for sermons or group discussion.
Stories in this collection:
- Fakes and Forgeries? C. S. Lewis and the Questions of Authorship
- A Mirror or a Window?
- The Stories That Make Us Who We Are
- The Delicate Balance: A Finely Tuned Universe
- "So Fragile, So Delicate": The Earth From the Moon
- The Mousetrap Argument: Irreducible Complexity and Its Critics
Fakes and Forgeries? C. S. Lewis and the Questions of Authorship
C. S. Lewis is one of the best-loved Christian writers of the twentieth century, famous for The Chronicles of Narnia and Mere Christianity. After his death in 1963, a number of unpublished manuscripts found among his papers were released under his name, including an unfinished science-fiction novel called The Dark Tower.
The American scholar Kathryn Lindskoog made a startling claim: some of these posthumous works, she argued, were not written by Lewis at all. In her book Sleuthing C. S. Lewis (2001) she pointed to computer analysis of the writing style of The Dark Tower, to themes she believed were out of character for Lewis and to doubts about the handwriting of the manuscript.
Lindskoog was not a crank. She had met Lewis in the 1950s, corresponded with him until his death and written several books about his work. Some others in the literary world found her arguments persuasive, and her claims sparked a long and sometimes bitter controversy among Lewis readers.
Most Lewis scholars, however, were not convinced. Those who had examined the original manuscripts believed they were consistent with Lewis's other writing, in both handwriting and ideas. All the stylistic analysis really showed, they argued, was that even a great writer cannot produce his finest work every time, especially in a rough draft he abandoned and never prepared for publication.
The debate is strikingly similar to one among biblical scholars over some of the letters attributed to the apostle Paul. Some scholars believe that letters such as the Pastoral Epistles were written after Paul's death by his followers, who published them in his name. They appeal to similar evidence: differences in vocabulary, style and themes compared with the letters almost everyone agrees Paul wrote. More conservative scholars reply, like Lewis's defenders, that such differences can be explained by different circumstances, purposes and secretaries, rather than a different author.
Takeaway: Questions about authorship are not new or unique to the Bible. Thoughtful Christians can weigh the evidence carefully and humbly, without fearing that honest study will undermine faith.
Source: Kathryn Lindskoog, Sleuthing C. S. Lewis (2001); The Sydney Morning Herald, 24 July 2001.
A Mirror or a Window?
When you read the Bible, does it work like a mirror or like a window?
For many people, Scripture becomes a mirror. When they look into it, they see reflected back what they already believe. It is a powerful mirror, because it seems to give God's approval to their existing values, opinions and way of life. But that is all it does.
For others, the Bible becomes a window. Through it they look into another world, the world of people who lived in different times, cultures and places. They learn to see life through those people's eyes and to discover how their faith was shaped. That view through the window allows them to question their own world, and to be changed by what they see.
Takeaway: If the Bible never challenges us, we may be using it as a mirror. James warns against looking into the word and forgetting what we see (James 1:22–25). Let it be a window that changes us.
Source: Illustration by Scott Higgins.
The Stories That Make Us Who We Are
In Marianne Wiggins's novel Almost Heaven (1998), one of the central characters is Melanie John, a middle-aged woman being treated in a psychiatric unit in Virginia for amnesia brought on by trauma. Five weeks earlier she had been a happily married mother of four living in the suburbs of Richmond.
On that day the whole family was driving down the highway. Her husband, Jason, the love of her life, was at the wheel, and the four children were in the back. Melanie was writing in her journal when a gust of wind snatched a page out of the window.
Jason pulled over, and Melanie walked into the field beside the road to fetch the paper. Then she heard the screech of tyres and smelt burning rubber. She turned to see another vehicle slam into the back of their car, which exploded. Jason and all four children were killed instantly.
Her mind protected her by shutting down. Every memory of her family was erased. She could remember graduating from law school and starting work at a firm twenty years earlier, but nothing after that: not meeting Jason or falling in love, not her wedding or the births of her children, not building their home, not the holidays at the beach, not the arguments or the love.
The amnesia acted like an emotional anaesthetic, numbing a pain too great to bear. But it also robbed her of herself. Inside that body, who was Melanie John now? What was her life about? Where did she belong, and what was her purpose? Without the stories of those twenty years she had no way of knowing. Without the stories of her past, there was no meaningful present, and no future she could imagine.
The novel follows her slow and painful journey as her memories return. Each one brings back a piece of her grief, but also a piece of her identity, until she can finally mourn the family she has lost and begin to know who she is again.
The story is a powerful reminder that we are made of our stories. Our sense of who we are, why we are here, where we fit and where we are heading is like a map that helps us make sense of life, and that map is drawn from the stories we remember.
That is true for individuals, and it is true for whole cultures. As well as our personal stories, we are shaped by the stories our society tells: stories about what life is for, what success looks like and what we should and should not value. Those stories shape us whether or not we notice them.
Takeaway: Scripture gives Christians an alternative story to the one our culture tells, a story of creation, fall, redemption and new creation. When we forget that story, we forget who we are.
Source: Marianne Wiggins, Almost Heaven (1998).
The Delicate Balance: A Finely Tuned Universe
One of the most remarkable things about our universe is how delicately balanced it seems to be for life to exist at all. In his book The Creator and the Cosmos (1993), the astrophysicist Hugh Ross lists more than two dozen physical factors that, he argues, must fall within extremely narrow ranges for life of any kind to be possible.
One example he gives concerns the balance between electrons and protons. Unless their numbers match to an accuracy of one part in ten to the power of thirty-seven or better, Ross argues, electromagnetic forces would overwhelm gravity and galaxies, stars and planets could never have formed.
To picture how precise that is, Ross suggests imagining the whole of North America covered with coins piled all the way to the Moon. Then imagine a billion other continents the same size, also covered with coins to the Moon. Paint just one coin red and mix it in with the rest. Blindfold a friend and ask her to pick out the red coin at the first attempt. Her chance of success is roughly one in ten to the power of thirty-seven.
Ross and many other scientists who are Christians see this kind of fine-tuning as a pointer to a universe carefully designed by a Creator. Other scientists offer different explanations, such as the possibility of many universes, and the debate continues. But the sense of wonder at how finely balanced our world is has struck believers and unbelievers alike.
Takeaway: Fine-tuning does not prove God in a laboratory, but it invites us to wonder. "Since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities… have been clearly seen" (Romans 1:20).
Source: Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos (NavPress, 1993).
"So Fragile, So Delicate": The Earth From the Moon
Only a handful of people have ever seen the Earth from the surface of the Moon, and many of them have said the experience changed them for ever.
James Irwin flew on Apollo 15 in 1971 and became the eighth person to walk on the Moon. Looking back at the Earth hanging in the blackness of space, he was struck by how beautiful, warm and alive it seemed, and also how small. It looked so fragile and delicate, he said, that if you touched it with a finger you felt it might crumble and fall apart. Irwin returned home with a renewed Christian faith and spent much of the rest of his life speaking about it.
Takeaway: Seen from a distance, our planet is a small and fragile gift. Wonder at creation should lead both to worship and to careful stewardship (Genesis 2:15).
Source: Recollections of astronaut James Irwin.
The Mousetrap Argument: Irreducible Complexity and Its Critics
The theory of evolution describes life developing through many small steps over a very long time. The eye is a classic example. Some animals, such as certain jellyfish, have only a few light-sensitive cells; others, such as starfish, have slightly more developed eyes. Over immense periods, the argument goes, such simple structures gradually developed into eyes as complex as our own.
In 1996 the biochemist Michael Behe challenged part of that picture in his book Darwin's Black Box. Behe accepted that the universe is billions of years old and that living things share common ancestry. His point was that when Darwin wrote, no one knew what went on inside a living cell. Molecular biology has since revealed astonishingly intricate chemical machinery, even in creatures with the simplest eyes.
Behe argued that some of these systems are "irreducibly complex". He compared them to an ordinary mousetrap. A mousetrap needs a wooden base, a U-shaped metal hammer that snaps down on the mouse, a spring to power the hammer, a holding bar to keep it cocked and a sensitive catch that releases the bar when a mouse nibbles the bait. Take away the spring, or replace the wooden base with paper, and you do not get a slightly cruder mousetrap; you get one that does not work at all. In the same way, he argued, some cellular systems need all their parts at once, so it is hard to see how they could have been built up one small step at a time. He concluded that they point to intelligent design.
Behe's argument has been widely criticised. Most biologists reject the idea of irreducible complexity, arguing that complex systems can develop when parts that once did other jobs are gradually adapted to new ones, and a US federal court in 2005 ruled that intelligent design was not science. Many Christian scientists accept evolution and see God's hand in the whole process rather than in gaps it cannot yet explain. The debate continues to raise deep questions about how faith and science relate.
Takeaway: Christians do not need to fear scientific debate. Whatever the mechanisms of life turn out to be, the Bible's claim is that God is the Creator behind them all (Colossians 1:16–17).
Source: Michael J. Behe, Darwin's Black Box (Touchstone, 1996); scientific responses to irreducible complexity.
Final thoughts
A literary mystery, a mirror and a window, a novel about memory, a finely tuned cosmos, a fragile blue planet and a mousetrap. Each invites us to read both Scripture and creation with honesty, humility and wonder.
Which of these stories would help someone you know think more deeply about faith and science?
More stories you may like:
These stories are retold in our own words for teaching and reflection. Sources are credited under each story.