Episode 40: Science and the Saviour - Understanding in the Eternal Son

The eternal wisdom of Christ enriches our scientific endeavors.

By framing science within the context of four revolutionary Christian principles, we challenge the materialist worldview and inspire a unique confidence in the search for universal truth.

As we step beyond the empirical limits of modern science, we confront the profound existential questions that scientific methods alone cannot answer.

Our conversation navigates through the realm of divine knowledge — where God the Son's knowledge transcends the boundaries of human understanding — offering insights into the very purpose of the universe itself.

We illuminate the vast expanse of knowledge held by the divine, providing a beacon for both our intellectual and spiritual quests. Join us as we examine the harmony between faith and reason, and how a Christ-centered perspective offers answers that satisfy our deepest curiosities about the cosmos.

The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:30

Well, welcome back to the Christ-Centered Cosmic Civilization podcast. We want to now gather together some of the thoughts we've had about science and creation. We may come back to it in future episodes, because there's many aspects that still need attention but with a realistic appreciation of the limitations and possibilities of our scientific understanding, but with a proper confidence, based on the word of Christ, to give logic to both our own minds and to the universe itself. Science takes us into a real knowledge of the universe. Now, that is a bold claim to make. If our minds are so easily confused and our bodies often mislead us in a world that seems so full of variation and decay, then how can we have such confidence in arriving at a genuine understanding of the universe? How is it that we Christians, and really we Christians alone, can have this wildly confident expectation in understanding ourselves and the universe? Why do we have this stubborn determination to assert the reality, the rationality, the reliability of the universe and of our own minds capacity to understand, genuinely understand something of that, to have something that approximates to truth about the universe? Well, what we're going to do now is explore four revolutionary foundation principles about creation and the universe that enable this to happen. We've touched on these things, as we've gone to a degree, but I think we need to take time to set out these four basic foundations of a biblical Christian worldview that give us this crazy confidence in the possibility of science. I'll tell you, I'll list all four of them now and then we'll start to go through them. It may take us two or three episodes to do that, to unpick it all.

Speaker 1: 3:44

But here are the four principles. Firstly, the eternal Son understood truth from all eternity and he shares his mind with human beings who are made in his image. The second is this the creation of the universe was freely made from the Father through the Son, by the Spirit, and is ruled by the great high priest, jesus Christ. God the Son. Thirdly, the whole of the heavens and the earth were created very good. Death and decay, evil and sin are corruptions rather than creatures. And fourthly, the infinite God, or let's just say the living God, because the word infinite is very difficult word that only became applied to the doctrine of God in the fourth century. It's an indefinable word and it's not that good. Anyway, let's not get distracted with that. The living God became flesh and lived among us and he rose from the dead to claim this kind of life as his own for all eternity, and he will return not to destroy the universe but to make it his home forever and ever. So let's begin with that first one. The eternal Son understood truth from all eternity and he shares his mind with human beings. We're going to again this is something we'll need to look at in more depth when we look at language, which I hope to do quite soon.

Speaker 1: 6:12

But let's start with this how can we know the truth? It's one of the deepest questions of all and one that's been asked most urgently in the modern age. And the reason for that intense asking of the question of truth knowledge. What is the basis of knowledge? How can we be sure of our knowledge? And then setting up kind of standards for knowledge that are considered to be safe or objective and so on. That has happened really.

Speaker 1: 6:53

That crisis of knowledge comes out of, really in a way, the Reformation, where there's this fragmentation of the biblical Christian worldview and an inability to resolve that collision of worldview and this sense that we don't know who is right, and out of that enormous uncertainty, because if the Christian worldview is the context for knowing all things and that seems to be fragmented. There's an enormous crisis of knowledge that spawns out of that. And we get that. The 17th century and Descartes with his whole. Everything can be doubted. Everything can be doubted. Is there anything that I can't doubt? And he goes for that idea that he can't doubt himself, which now we find humorous rather than impressive. But anyway, look, the search for knowledge, for truth. Now, if science is the search for knowledge, particularly knowledge of the physical world, then the question of truth is at the centre of the scientific project.

Speaker 1: 8:22

There have been times when atheists and materialists have tried to hold up science as the only possible path to truth, as if the material world at its most superficial presentation, as if that were the only reality and as if the universe was self-interpreting and self-generated. So even now you sometimes come across that idea. It seems a bit old now, a bit dated, but you do come across it, this really strong conviction, that reality. We should insist that any view of reality that goes beyond the superficially material is illegitimate, because the only safe tool of knowledge is science, understood in the most narrow way. However, because the word science means knowledge, it forces us to engage with these fundamental questions of how we can know anything at all and we cannot stay at that kind of shallow, blind faith level that reductionist materialism is happy to stay. We've seen that. That reductionist materialism will just say, well, why is the universe real, rational, reliable? And they would just sort of go because it is. It just is. But there is a deeper and better ground of knowledge than the mere blind faith that somehow everything might make sense. And we're not satisfied with answers that just go, things like it just does, or because I said so, that just isn't good enough and it doesn't answer the questions and it doesn't explain the phenomena.

Speaker 1: 10:45

Now the Bible tells us that Jesus is the truth and that in him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. And it was on this basis that churches spread life and civilization around the whole world, beginning with Christ and his scriptures. The world makes sense and all human arts and sciences may begin to germinate, grow and flower. Plato thought that the deepest insight was to realize that we know nothing at all. But church knows that the deepest truth is to know Christ, to know this eternal Son of the Father who is filled limitlessly with the Spirit. Christ Jesus is the foundation of all things and he holds everything together. He gives meaning and purpose, as well as structure and existence, to everything.

Speaker 1: 12:01

Now, here's the key point about knowledge, though. Before the world began, god, the Son, the eternal Son, had perfectly expressed all truth, and this is this deep insight or revelation that scripture has that he is called the Son, the eternal Son, but he's also given this title logic, logic or truth, as if in him and this is as John and Genesis say he is that even before the universe ever began to be. So it's not that he has this logic or truth or understanding subsequent to the universe beginning and that he learns knowledge and truth and understanding from the universe or from his study of the universe. No, it's that he was this logic and truth, with full understanding, all of that, everything hidden in him and stored up in him before the foundation of the universe, before anything of the universe began, so that he understands. He is like, if we want to put it in homely language, he has already thought through, labeled, categorized, understood, digested all things, every possible truth, before the universe even began.

Speaker 1: 14:03

So he is eternally born out of the Father. So the Father is like this fountain of divine life, and he eternally begets this Son. And that's important to know, because there's this verse in the Bible, and it gets quoted several times, where he says you are my Son. Today I've begotten you, like he's already his Son, and yet he begets him again and again, as continuously. There's this ever-fresh relationship where the Son is always this perfect, fresh, new expression of his Father and in him is this from the Father also comes the Spirit, who is energy power.

Speaker 1: 15:03

So he is this logic, word, reason, understanding emerging from the Father and also emerging from the Father is this energy power. That is the Spirit and he, the Son, is the Christ and I think really he's eternally like that, eternally filled with the Spirit without measure. Of course, when he becomes a human being, we see how he is filled with the Spirit without measure also, but it's eternally so, he's like that, so that even before the universe began, you've got this perfect expression of the Father, like a thought, through logical grasp of all truth, with this power and life of the Spirit. All of that is part of the eternal, or that is the eternal life of the living God, father, son and Holy Spirit. That is already the life that they live as this one God, eternally.

Speaker 1: 16:25

So, by the power of the Spirit, the Son is eternally equipped with everything he needs to know, appreciate and express the truth of the Father. It's already accomplished in him. So the infinite wonder of the mind and will of the Father has already been exhaustively and perfectly known and expressed by God, the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and that is something that we need to meditate a lot about, because it changes completely how we understand the universe and understand ourselves and how we see the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus, the eternal, spirit-filled Son of the Father, already knows all that can be known, or all that should be known, and he holds that truth in perfect balance, expressing it just as it needs to be expressed. So that's important too, that it's not just knowing truth in a totally abstract sense.

Speaker 1: 17:58

What is also important is how the truth is to be expressed, the form as well as the content. Both are equally important, the content and the form. And sometimes some traditions overplay the content and say, oh, the form doesn't matter, and some spend all the time on the form of truth, the rhetoric of it. But in truth, in reality, form and function go together so perfectly and beautifully in this eternal living God Father, son and Spirit. But when we come to this living God, we come to one who has already accomplished all this perfectly, beautifully, and it is inviting us to share in it, not to compete, not to and neither to be crushed by this, but to be liberated by this. To know that the weight of the universe does not rest on us, does not crush us. We don't have to understand and make sense of everything. It's rather that we get to. We get to understand everything on the basis that it's already been perfectly done, and then we can begin to share in that.

Speaker 1: 19:22

So in God, the Son, form and function, truth and beauty come together in eternal perfection. When the Father sees this perfect expression of his own heart and mind, his soul delights in Jesus, delights in his Son. He delights to pour out his spirit on his Son, giving him life and power to do the Father's will. That's so what we see at the baptism of Jesus of Nazareth, when he saved 30, and we see the spirit descending on him and the Father calling out his joy, delight in his Son. That is a little kind of window into the eternal life of the Trinity. That's how the Father views his Son, how the Son looks to his Father and is filled by the spirit. That is the eternal life of the Trinity in a cameo right there.

Speaker 1: 20:42

So to get back, oh no, let me just make a footnote kind of on this See in creation we see this, that the concrete creation is the concrete form that the Father willed and the spirit gives the power to bring about. I suppose you could say in the spirit there are infinite possibilities, so all possibilities are fully known and open to the living God. Yet the Father's will is his perfect selection from all possibilities. So he says yes, his will is to these possibilities that are given to the universe. And then there's, I suppose, infinite number of other possibilities that he does not select and says no to. And in the power of the spirit, god, the Son, brings to full expression that choice and will of the Father. So it's the will of the Father, that's the kind of explanation for the particular form of the universe. And the Son, in the power of the spirit, gives expression to that will of the Father. And that is how the heavens and the earth exist and have the form and character that they do.

Speaker 1: 22:29

And our own torment and sin is that we are not content with the Father's will and we always try to imagine and bring about all kinds of possibilities that are not the Father's will. So it's as if we say I don't like the choices that the Father has made and expressed through his Son in the power of the spirit. That is not the universe I want. I want to make different choices. I want to form the universe in a different way. I want to design myself according to my will, my choices and his choices, out of the infinite possibilities that he has expressed through his Son in the power of the spirit. I'm not satisfied with that. I don't trust that. I want to make my own selection of possibilities. So I just make that comment in passing that to accept the reality, the rationality, the reliability of the universe and to rejoice in it, to accept it and rejoice in it, is already a kind of act of Christian faith. It's saying yes to the will of the Father, expressed in the Son by the power of the Spirit, to rejoice in the creation as it is, as he's designed it, as he's given it to us, as the Son holds it together by his powerful word. So when we come to this business of knowing and understanding the universe, we want to do it going with him rather than fighting against him, obviously.

Speaker 1: 24:30

But it's vital to understand that everything has already been known and understood within the living God and perfectly expressed. So theologians sometimes, or some theologians, speak of this as the archetypal knowledge of God. So that is the knowledge that God, the living God, has his own knowledge. God is the original knower and holds knowledge in its perfect form, its original or perfect form, and so the idea is so God has this archetypal knowledge, that is his own understanding of the universe, and when we seek knowledge, we are seeking to share in that, in the truth that is already, is in God the Son. We want to know, as he knows, we desire that, we want to understand at least something of the perfect and complete knowledge that is expressed in him. And this knowledge that we strive for, the knowledge that we have, that is what some theologians call archetypal knowledge, knowledge that is copied from and depends on the original archetypal knowledge of God. So science, then, is possible as archetypal knowledge based on, and really should be celebrating, rejoicing in the archetypal knowledge that's in the Logos, god the Son, who is the eternal expression, perfectly balanced, perfectly expressed, perfectly known of all things. So science is possible because God the Son has already understood and expressed the truth about everything we were designed to think. His thoughts to imitate Christ. Science is trying to imitate the mind of Christ with regard to the physical world around us. That is our first principle and before we move, we'll save the second one for the next episode. But to end this episode, I came across a quotation in Michael Ward's book on the Narnia Code Fascinating book about how the Narnia books from CS Lewis are about the planets and so on. But he has this quotation.

Speaker 1: 27:43

Modern science is brilliant at answering questions that begin with what or were or how. What are stars made of? Where are they located? How do they move?

Speaker 1: 28:00

But there are other questions that are worth asking too, questions that begin with why and who and whom. Why have the stars been made? Who made them? Whom were they made for? We'll end with that because it partly helps us just to remember the kind of archetypal knowledge that is in God, the Son, this perfect expression of the fountain of life that is the Father and so on. That knowledge that's in him is not so limited as, like the modern scientific project, is limited to the kinds of questions it asks and can answer. It's methodology doesn't allow it to answer some of the bigger questions and many, many, just everyday questions. But all our questions, when we come to God, the Son, all those questions can find satisfaction in him. And when we come to him with all our questions, we can come with this confidence that he has thought them through, he has answers. Whether he gives us the answers all the time, well, that's another question, but he does have all the answers.