What has Digital Learning to do with Theological Education?

During the onset of COVID-19, a meme went viral on social media, asking, “Who led the digital transformation of your company: your CEO, CTO or COVID-19?” The answer was obvious. In a mere few weeks, the whole world stumbled into digital learning as a result of the COVID-19 lockdowns. This is true also of theological schools. and many of us are now examining the roles that digital learning plays in theological education and the opportunities it offers.

This paradigm shift is occurring within a broader context: From the enrolment decline in Western seminaries, the rise of digital training alternatives, and the disruptive challenges of Industrial Revolution 4.0 to the shifts in global geopolitics. In this article, I shall survey these changes, before examining the merits of digital learning for training adults in seminaries.

Shifting Sand in Theological Education

I begin with some of the emerging challenges and opportunities in Asia and, in particular, Singapore.

While digital distance education is mainstream in North American seminaries, the adoption rate is far less in Asia, due either to the lack of resources or a preference for in-person teaching. In Singapore, for example, only one school had adopted a Blended Learning approach to train its students prior to the pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic changed everything, of course. Almost overnight, seminaries worldwide became online schools. Having discovered the benefits of online learning, many have continued to employ these training modes even when pandemic restrictions have eased.

This being said, the real long-term disruptors of theological seminaries are neither pandemics nor other seminaries. Rather, they are the alternative modes of training delivered through digital platforms, such as FaithlifeTV and SeminaryNow which can offer training anytime, anywhere at a fraction of the cost. Due to their investments in fixed assets and faculty, it will be difficult for traditional seminaries to match the disruptive prices of the new platforms (Joshua Gans, Disruption Dilemma, 66).

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These digital platforms are only one facet of the broader impact that digital disruptions are making on theological education. The advent of Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR4) is heralding a rapid merging of the “physical, digital and biological worlds” that will fundamentally change the way we work and live. To help future generations flourish in this new environment, Institutes of Higher Learning must transform themselves into nimble institutes of lifelong learning that can help students pick up new competencies to retool themselves regularly. The challenge for seminaries is similar and two-fold. Firstly, how do we prepare Christians to engage the new ways of living and the ethical challenges that IR4 inadvertently poses? Secondly, how might the emerging educational technologies inform the way we educate and disciple Christians? We shall focus on the second question as we explore the merits of digital learning for seminaries.

Digital Learning and Theological Education

a) Technology and Theological Education

Up until the 2000s, discourse about digital learning has been the domain of educators. As they see it, the impact of computing on classroom learning has largely been marginal. As an educator, Larry Cuban, puts it, “Computer meets classroom, classroom wins.” This being said, educational technology did contribute to the progress of one sphere of higher education: Distance education. This has been employed extensively by many theological colleges to train laypeople and church leaders who don’t have the time or means for full time training.

b) New Voices

The last decade, however, has seen a new voice entering the fold: The developers of new educational technologies or business models, from Khan Academy and AltSchool, to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) platforms such as edX and Coursera. These make varied claims from how digital technologies enhance learning to the reinvention of higher education. At first glance, these new players offer much promise for transforming the face of education. edX, for example, delivers more than 2,800 courses to 34 million students worldwide. Previously, such courses would be available only to the privileged few enrolled physically in the universities.

These being said, Neil Selwyn observes that these newcomers have very little understanding of the nature of education itself. There is also significant conflict of interest between their commercial goals and those of public education (See Neil Selwyn, Is Technology Good for Education?, Chapters 1-5). Nonetheless, Selwyn believes these technologies are here to stay and much reflection is needed on how human teachers can partner them. This involves identifying aspects of human teaching that are irreplaceable.

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c) Additional Concerns in Theological Education

Besides these concerns, many theological educators also reject digital learning on theological grounds. As they see it, “the fact that Christ took on human flesh indicates that theological education, too, should take place in the flesh, in a face-to-face environment.” Jones et al, however, have pointed out that much of the Apostle Paul’s teachings were actually conveyed through his epistles. No doubt, the apostle did not regard the written word as “a primary medium of his apostleship”. Nevertheless, like his Greco-Roman peers, he did assume that his letters can not only convey his teachings but also mediate his social presence and authority to his readers (Jones et al, Teaching the World, Chapters 2-3).

Theological education, however, is not just about helping students acquire cognitive content. It is also about the discipleship and formation of the students. For this reason, Jones et al stress the importance of recruiting online faculty who are theologically competent and also have the spiritual maturity to be a model for and to mentor their students.

Conclusion

In light of the above, what does this mean for theological education in the decade ahead? First of all, it seems that Blended or Hybrid learning is here to stay. After 2 years of COVID-19, most Christians are now comfortable, I believe, with the use of digital alongside in-person learning. This also presents exciting opportunities for equipping God’s people, not only locally but also those in the region. This is because who previously cannot attend classes in Singapore (due to time, ministry and/ or financial constraints) can now do so.

Secondly, since attention span is likely to be shorter on the “Zoom” space, educators will need to move away from lectures to higher order learning activities during the tutorials, such as case discussions, debates or project presentations.

Lastly, digital educational platforms appear to hold much promise as a means of extending a school’s ministry to the less privileged in Asia, and also acting as an avenue for promoting contextualised theology. What it entails will depend on how schools collaborate on this venture.

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On 24 June 2022, the Supreme Court made a landmark 5-4 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which established the constitutional right to abortion in the United States in 1973. The ruling is a triumph for pro-lifers (both religious and non-religious) who have been working hard for five decades to see this day.

But the ruling has sparked anger among pro-abortionists and the liberal justices who had argued for the constitutionality of abortion as a basic right. CNBC reported the scathing dissent of the court’s liberal judges who wrote:

The majority has overruled Roe and Casey for one and one reason: because it has always despised them, and now it has the votes to discard them. The majority thereby substitutes a rule by judges for the rule of law.

Using the familiar rhetoric of rights, equality and freedom, justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, in expressing their outrage at the ruling, write:

The majority would allow States to ban abortion from conception onward because it does not think forced childbirth at all implicates a woman’s rights to equality and freedom.

They continue by arguing that the ruling in many ways violates the woman’s control over her own body and also the way she wishes to live her life. ‘Today’s Court’, they write, ‘does not think there is anything of constitutional significance attached to a woman’s control of her body and the path of her life.’ ‘A State can force her to bring a pregnancy to term, even at the steepest personal and familial costs,’ they add.

Nothing is said about the moral status of the foetus (and his or her freedom, equality and rights) as attention is focussed, as it is usually the case with liberal discourse on abortion, only on the woman. Much is made in particular of the ‘bodily rights’ of the pregnant woman, as the statement by the dissenting justices makes clearly evident.

The assertion that the woman has the right to control her own body has without doubt become one of the most powerful pro-choice slogans in modern society. In this article, we briefly examine the arguments made by one of the most influential voices that justify abortion on the basis of the bodily rights of women – that of Judith Jarvis Thomson.

THOMSON’S ARGUMENT

In 1971, the American philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson published an article entitled, “A Defense of Abortion” in The Journal of Philosophy and Public Affairs that became the most famous and influential argument for abortion on the basis of the woman’s right to her own body.

Known as the ‘Violinist’ argument, Thomson maintains that even if the unborn child is intrinsically valuable and has moral rights – an assumption that is held by many if not all pro-lifers – abortion is still morally permissible.

She writes that it is ‘of great interest to ask what happens if, for the sake of argument, we allow the premise [that the unborn is intrinsically valuable]. How, precisely, are we supposed to get from there to the conclusion that abortion is morally impermissible?’

More specifically, Thomson wants to show that even if the unborn has the right to life, it does not follow that the pregnant woman is morally obligated to use her body to sustain its life. In order to demonstrate this, Thomson uses the fictitious story of someone who wakes up to find that he has been artificially connected to a famous violinist who is dependent on his kidneys to survive.

I reproduce the story in full:

You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist’s circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, ‘Look we’re sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you – we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist now is plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it’s only nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.’ Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation? No doubt it would be very nice of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you have to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or still longer? What if the director of the hospital says, ‘Tough luck, I agree, but you’ve now got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because remember this. All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you have the right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person’s right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him.’ I imagine that you would regard this as outrageous …

For some, Thomson has, as it were, checkmated the classical conservative pro-life argument against abortion that centres on the intrinsic value of the foetus. She has presented what some have regarded as a compelling argument that the moral status of the unborn child is inconsequential to the woman’s decision to end the pregnancy.

The persuasive force of her argument has led some conservatives to change their minds.

ANALYSIS AND CRITIQUE

Although some would say that Thomson has clinched the game for the pro-abortionists, closer scrutiny and analysis would make the serious inconsistencies and problems with her analogy and argument clearly evident. Space allows me to very briefly highlight some of them.

Basic flaws

We begin with some of the basic but critical flaws in Thomson’s violinist analogy.

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The most obvious problem with this analogy and the parallel it hopes to establish is that there is a profound difference between a woman who is pregnant with a child and a victim of a kidnapping who is artificially attached to a renal patient. The child is not surgically attached to its mother. It is the result of the natural process of procreation.

The problem with Thomson’s analogy is that it presents the unborn child as an invader of sorts, thereby distorting the mother / child relationship into one that is at best characterised as a stranger / stranger relationship, and at worst that of a host and a predator.

Another basic flaw is that in a pregnancy, the child in the womb – although dependent on the mother – cannot be said to be receiving treatment, as is the case of the violinist. Thus, it is totally misguided and misleading to regard abortion as withholding treatment, when it is actually the deliberate taking of a human life.

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Troubling Implications

Thomson’s argument concerning the woman’s right to control her own body even if it means killing her unborn child has many troubling implications. As Richard J. Poupard explains:

The bodily rights argument is compelling if and only if we grant that a woman’s right to control her own body is so sacrosanct that carrying another human being inside of her has no bearing on that right. In other words, for this view to prevail, we must concede that because of the autonomy she has over her body, a pregnant mother has the absolute right to do whatever she wants with it in order to retain that autonomy, regardless of what it does to the child she is carrying. This includes killing the child in the case of elective abortion.

But Thomson’s arguments have even graver implications. If her justifications for abortion on the basis of personal liberty are sound, they can be used to sanction the killing of any dependent person if his or her existence restrains the liberty of another. As Greg Koukl has put it:

In the end Thomson’s … arguments prove too much. They allow us to kill any human being who is dependent upon us, young or old, if that person restrains our personal liberty.

Moral Volunteerism

Implicit in Thomson’s violinist analogy is the view that has been dubbed as ‘moral volunteerism’. As Francis Becker puts it,

By using the violinist story as an illustration of how the principles about which relationships should be ethically applied, Thomson seems to be saying that moral obligations must be voluntarily accepted to have moral, and thus legal force.

But this surely flies in the face of the way in which morality and the law are universally understood and practised.

Becker’s scathing critique of Thompson’s approach is therefore justified:

Because Thomson does not adequately address what most of us recognise as the deep connection between sexual intercourse, human reproduction, and the pre-political obligations of parents to offspring … her argument languishes in a one-dimensional universe of autonomous adult-choosers who are artificially constructed by Thomson to lack the precise number of natural moral obligations that her science fiction scenario is employed to demonstrate in the first place.

Limits to Bodily Freedom

Although the freedom to exercise control over one’s body is in some ways important, the fact remains that in civilised society that freedom is – and should be – limited. Reason and common sense tell us that in any society unbridled liberty would lead to only anarchy and chaos, not civilisation.

Every individual in modern society is governed by laws, which are put in place to ensure that the freedom that is their right to exercise does not result in irresponsible conduct. These laws remind free citizens of their moral responsibilities to the community to which they belong.

Surely one of the most primal of such moral responsibilities is that of the mother to her helpless and unborn child.

Wrong to Harm, Right to Kill?

The argument that says that because bodily autonomy is absolute, the pregnant woman has the right to kill the child in her womb has introduced a nonsensical contradiction to morality and the law. It has brought about the situation in which it is perfectly legal to kill a child through abortion, but it is a prosecutable offense to harm it.

For example, in the 1950s the drug thalidomide was used to treat nausea and insomnia in pregnant women. Physicians, however, soon discovered that this drug was responsible for causing serious birth defects such as the malformation of ears, the absence of arms, and phocomelia (hands or feet attached to shorted arms or legs).

Thalidomide was banned in the United States in 1961.

What if a pregnant woman, in the name of bodily autonomy, insists on taking thalidomide to treat her nausea and insomnia knowing full well that it would severely harm her baby? Should she be allowed to do so? Should her doctor prescribe it for her? Would society applaud her actions and for her courageous insistence on her right to bodily autonomy?

The answers to these questions are obvious. Yet, they demonstrate all too clearly the moral confusion that clouds our minds. Richard Poupard puts it this way:

If the right to autonomy is absolute, as it needs to be to defend the ultimate act of intentionally killing a human person, how could we fault the mother in this case? Which is worse: causing harm to a child or intentionally killing that same child? If a mother can kill a child because it is intruding on her bodily autonomy, then it is unreasonable to disallow her to harm the same child using the same reasoning.

CONCLUSION

The rhetoric of personal autonomy has a powerful sway over our society and culture. It has been used to defend and justify murder, the deliberate and wilful taking of human life. It has been used to legitimise practices such euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide and abortion.

In our world, personal and bodily liberty have become sacrosanct – an inviolable principle, and a hallowed natural right – and are used to promote what Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI have called ‘the culture of death’.

Reflecting on the pervasiveness of this phenomenon, the celebrated Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, Robert George, writes:

Contemporary liberal political theory abets the culture of death. My point in so bluntly saying so is not to be polemical or even provocative; rather, it is to be soberly descriptive; self-described liberal political theorists in the United States and elsewhere have, over the past two decades or so, quite explicitly set for themselves the task of justifying and defending the regime of abortion, euthanasia, and, increasingly, infanticide that constitutes the culture of death in contemporary world.

Christians who think that all this is mere rhetoric are surely blind to what’s happening right before their very eyes!

“Come out of her, my people” (Revelation 18:4)

Revelation 18 opens with an angel speaking authoritatively. A declaration is made concerning the destruction of Babylon (a cipher for Rome), as due punishment for her sins.

But in verse 4, the angel falls silent. It is now God who calls out: “Come out of her, my people”.  Apart from the epistolary segments (1:1-3:22), this is one of only two other places in Revelation where an imperative is directed at God’s people.^[1]

God commands his people to flee Babylon for two reasons: (a) not to share in her sins, and (b) not to suffer her plagues.  Babylon’s offenses include: (1) inebriating the nations with immoral passion (18:3a, c.f. 14:8, 17:2b), (2) fornicating with the kings of the earth (18:3b, cf. 17:2a, 18:9a), (3) deriving mercantile wealth through sensual luxuries (18:3c, cf. 18:7, 18:9b), and (4) murdering the saints (18:24, cf. 17:6).

The original recipients of this revelation-prophecy-letter (see 1:1, 1:3, 1:4 respectively) were to beware, lest they get caught up in Babylon’s sins. And this remains a warning for present-day readers of the text.

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This article elaborates on the wider system of economic inequality and excess in the Roman Empire, which threatened to divert the Church’s worship away from the Lamb and to dishonour God’s image found in humanity.

Economic disparities and devaluation of human life

The list of cargoes in Revelation 18:12-13 give a window into the economic disparities of the era. Economic historians estimate that in the mid-2^nd century, slightly after the time Revelation was written, between 10% to 22% of the Roman Empire’s population struggled to eke out a living, with consumption substantially below subsistence levels.  The majority (55% to 60%) were at around subsistence levels. On average, while there was no widespread destitution (otherwise the population would have been on the decline), most people simply ‘got by’ and life was by no means luxurious. There was no true modern middle class, but economically ‘middling’ non-elite groups accounted for 10% of the total population and 15% to 25% of total income.  The elite top 1.5% of households, however, controlled around 15% to 25% of total income.^[2]  An example: citron wood (18:12c) from North Africa was used to fashion dining tables costing up to 1.2 million sesterces, the price of a large landholding. In comparison, the daily labour wage was four sesterces (one denarius), meaning that a mere wooden table cost a mind-blowing 820 years’ worth of ordinary labour.  In the 1^st-century Roman Empire, a privileged few were extremely wealthy, while the vast majority languished at or near subsistence levels.

Roman elites showed little concern for those at the bottom of the spectrum, the very ones who took final place in Revelation’s cargo list, that is, slaves (18:13). Ancient slave-traders were often termed ‘merchants of bodies’. The Greek text of verse 13 in fact uses the term ‘bodies and human souls’ (somatohn kai psuchas anthropohn) to describe the same object – human slaves. But the exepegetical Greek kai implies that these bodies are not mere commodities; they are in fact human persons. To be fair, the Roman Empire practised a different form of slavery than antebellum USA.  Roman slaves were frequently freed from service (manumission), and some were well-educated and highly-skilled, serving as trusted teachers of elite children or given authority as managers of noble households.  Nevertheless, the fact remains that slaves’ lives remained entirely in the hands of their masters.  The mention of slaves in the list of mere cargoes is an indictment that Rome’s wealth is undergirded by disdain for human life.

The first hearers amidst the Roman economic system

The original recipients of John’s letter – Christians living in seven cities in Asia Minor – were well-acquainted with Rome’s economic power.  Ephesus was among the largest urban centers on the Mediterranean coast, boasting a thriving harbor, at which three key trade routes converged. Sardis had a thriving economy in fabrics and luxury clothing, its carpets being found even in far-flung palaces in Persia. Thyatira was home to at least ten different trade guilds. Laodicea, a prosperous commercial centre, was acclaimed for its glossy black wool and ophthalmological products.  Purple garments (18:12b) were a conspicuous display of affluence and social status, with the rare dyes extracted from tiny shellfish or from plant roots, in which the clothing and dyeing industries in Thyatira, Laodicea, and Hierapolis may have been involved. Overall, residents in the seven cities would have benefited materially from the economic activity led by Rome.

Yet, Revelation 18 revealed that despite its benefits, Asia Minor’s trade with Rome was a source of temptation. The original recipients were warned to exit, lest they be punished together with that whore of a city.

Going out – then and now

“Come out of her” did not refer to a physical departure from Rome, since the first recipients did not reside there in the first place. Hence the call is a symbolic one, to dissociate from the evil and luxurious indulgences associated with Rome.  DeSilva writes:

John wants to foster critical distance from the practices of idolatrous worship (including imperial cult) and from the imperial economic system […] He also seeks to fix in his hearers’ minds the violence, the unjust economic practices, and the masking of the full truth that maintain the imperial economy into which the merchants and tradespeople of the cities of Asia are invited.^[3]

Importantly, distancing oneself is for the purpose of bearing witness, not mere separationism.  G.K. Beale affirms that “absolute physical removal would contradict the essence of the Christian calling to witness to the world”.^[4]  N.T. Wright notes that God created structures of authority, but “the problem comes when those structures arrogate to themselves powers beyond those of being humble servants of God’s good purposes for his world and his image-bearing creatures,”  and so the reader must “discern the point where one passes into the other, and to exit physically or spiritually”.^[5]  “Come out from her” is not a rejection of society, but of the church bearing an image of God’s intended life to society.

For both the seven cities and the modern city of Singapore, exit-as-witness involves rejecting the idol of acquisitiveness.  This means living simply, rejecting consumption for the sake of gaining social status or for keeping up an image.  This means affirming that economic growth is important – but only as a penultimate means and never an absolute end in itself.  This means exiting those social norms which imply that our possessions define us, that our consumption patterns make us part of the ‘in’-group, that these indulgences bring true meaning and satisfaction.  By choosing to live simply rather than luxuriously, we – like the book of Revelation – unveil an alternative reality to our contemporary world.

Finally, the issue is stewardship, not wealth.  John’s complaint is not against wealth per se, but with its misuse.  Revelation acknowledges that the Lamb receives wealth (5:12), and the wealth of the nations will be brought into the New Jerusalem (21:26, cf. Isa 60:3-11).  Rome’s problem was that prosperity was wrongfully squandered on wasteful indulgences instead of being used to succour the needy.

Wealth belongs to God and should be used for his purposes.  Stewardship means utilising wealth to bless fellow human beings, the bearers of imago Dei; not treating others as mere items on a list of goods or as a means to accumulate further riches.  Stewardship also means treating human beings with dignity – going beyond mere handouts, but enabling individuals and communities to identify and build on the skills, talents, assets, and resources which God has already given. The ABCD model – Asset-based Community Development – is an important example of this.

In conclusion, Revelation 18:4 entreats Christians across the ages to distance themselves from idols – not merely physical images, but anything that diverts worship away from the Lamb, including the present-day ‘gods’ of acquisitiveness and consumerism.  This is not a call for Christians to literally exit the globalised economic system, but to choose stewardship over greed, simplicity over indulgence.  Our economic choices must not denigrate, but value the image of God in fellow human beings.  Our lifestyle choices ought to bear witness against the cultural norms of status-driven materialism – a witness that over the approval of our peers, above the comforts of a refined society, we will give honour and worship only to the Lamb who is upon the throne (Rev 5:11-14).

References:

[1] The other imperative is at Rev 6:11 where the saints under the altar are told “rest a little longer”.  Instances of imperatives directed at others but not the church include John commanded to prophesy and to write (10:4-13), the angel calling on all humanity to give God the glory (14:7), and calling to birds to feast on human carrion (19:17).

[2] Peter Temin, “The economy of the early Roman Empire”, Journal of Economic Perspectives (2006): 133-151; Walter Scheidel and Steven J. Friesen, “The size of the economy and the distribution of income in the Roman Empire”, Journal of Roman Studies 99 (2009), 61-91.

[3] David A. DeSilva, Seeing Things John’s Way: The Rhetoric of the Book of Revelation, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 71.

[4] G.K. Beale, The Book of Revelation, New International Greek Testament Commentary Series, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 898.

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[5] N.T. Wright, Revelation for Everyone, (London: SPCK, 2011), 160-161

The views in this article are entirely his own and do not represent the official position of the Trinity Annual Conference or the Methodist Church of Singapore.

One of the most significant and yet controversial developments in genetic science in recent decades is the Human Germline Genetic Modification (HGGM) technology. By employing a set of techniques, scientists hope to be able to change the genetic composition of the human germline (i.e., eggs, sperm, the cells that give rise to eggs and sperm, or early embryo) for the benefit of future descendents who will inherit them.

The main purpose of HGGM is to ‘cleanse’ the gene pool of ‘deleterious’ and inheritable genes that would predispose people to certain diseases. This approach, according to some scientists, is to be preferred to traditional therapeutic strategies. For example, molecular biologist Daniel E. Koshland, Jr. could argue that ‘keeping diabetics alive with insulin, which increases the propagation of an inherited disease, seems justified only if one ultimately is willing to do genetic engineering to remove diabetes from the germline and thus save the anguish and cost to millions’.

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The ultimate goal of HGGM is therefore to eradicate harmful genes responsible for diseases like cystic fibrosis from the whole population.

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In this sense, HGGM must be distinguished from somatic cell therapy that involves the genetic modification of cells in the body apart from the reproductive cells. Somatic cell therapy treats the person with a genetic disease in a way that does not affect his or her offspring. While there is currently an international moratorium on HGGM, many countries in the world allow somatic cell therapy.

Although it is the intention of many scientists to use HGGM for therapeutic purposes, some are advocating that it should also be used to enhance certain desirable traits in the future generation. While many theologians and ethicists are opposed to this, the debate is complexified by the fact that the distinction between eliminating harmful genes and improving hereditary is very often blurred.

The main concern about HGGM is safety. Because these techniques edit the genetic makeup of the gametes, the changes inherited by future generations are deemed irreversible. Thus, the European Council for the Protection of Human Dignity states in its 1997 document that ‘Whilst developments in this field may lead to great benefit for humanity, misuse of these developments may endanger not only the individual but the species itself’.

Many scientists and ethicists maintain that it is simply impossible to envision the consequences of HGGM at this point. The debate sometimes gravitates to the question about the acceptable criteria for ascertaining whether it would be safe to proceed with HGGM. Although the current standard and protocol for research states that an intervention is considered adequate if it enjoys 70% success, some are arguing (for obvious reasons) that in the case of HGGM the requirement should be no less than a success rate of 100%.

In 1979, the influential philosopher and ethicist Hans Jonas in his remarkable book, The Imperative of Responsibility reminded us that in the midst of the tantalising progress of science and technology we must always pause to consider our responsibility to the future generation. The advance of science should not only fill society with a sense of hope, Jonas argues. It should also fill us with a sense of fear.

It is only when fear has its rightful place in our reflections on the promises of science and technology, he wisely counsels, that we will come to see that the ‘starry-eyed ethics of perfectibility has to give way to the sterner one of responsibility’.

Because the long-term adverse consequences of HGGM for future generations are not yet known or fully understood by scientists, and in light of the ethics of responsibility that Jonas emphatically advocates, both religious and secular institutions are opposed to the use of this technology on humans.

Dignitatis Personae, issued by the Roman Catholic Church in 2009, states that ‘Because the risks connected to any genetic manipulation are considerable and as yet not fully controllable, in the present state of research, it is not morally permissible to act in a way that may cause harm to the resulting progeny’.

This is echoed in a statement on HGGM issued by the United Methodist Church in 2012, which states quite categorically that ‘We oppose human germ-line therapies (those that result in changes that can be passed to offspring) because of the possibility of unintended consequences and of abuse’.

‘With current technology’, it continues, ‘it is not possible to know if artificially introduced genes will have unexpected or delayed long-term effects not identifiable until the genes have been dispersed in the population’.

In similar vein, the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) calls for a moratorium on HGGM in a statement issued in 2015: ‘The ISSCR calls for a moratorium on attempts to apply nuclear genome editing of the human germ line in clinical practice. Scientists currently lack an adequate understanding of the safety and potential long-term risks of germ line genome modification’.

The call to acknowledge our responsibility towards future generations serves to remind us that no human being – present or future – should be excluded from our moral community or moral consideration. It must therefore be taken very seriously.

When we speak of ‘culture’, what do we mean? It is a notoriously slippery term, especially so when an Australian is writing for an unseen global readership! Culture can be ‘your culture’, ‘my culture’ or ‘our culture’. It can be as broad or as specific as one wishes. But in order to discuss its relationship with Christianity, we will need a working definition. For its inherent value in this discussion, I consider T.S. Eliot’s definition as powerful: “culture is an incarnation of the religion of the people”.[1] By this, the great poet meant that culture arises from beliefs; it is the offspring of beliefs.

If Eliot is correct, then it is the spiritual capital of a race or nation that forms the backbone of its culture. This can be seen in very explicit ways (in religious architecture, for example). But it can also be extremely integrated and organic in its expression. For example, a culture that holds a high place for children will exhibit different characteristics to one that does not. The set of beliefs in operation in a society concerning an afterlife will be seen to have effects on a culture’s approach to war, environmental issues, health care, and disability.

This paper addresses the way any particular culture—Singaporean, Australian or otherwise—might relate to the Christian faith. This assumes that Christianity is more than a culture, a view that might be challenged by post-metaphysical thinkers. However, it is a widely held feature of almost all Christian traditions that its doctrine is transcendent, and cultural expressions of this faith and practice will vary. For all of its interspersions with the cultures it encounters, Christianity retains a metaphysical heart, proposing answers to worldview questions such as the nature of God, the nature of human beings, the meaning of the world, and the possibility of ultimate justice.

Since the late 18^th century, there has been strong interest in connecting the Christian religion with modern culture. A range of philosophers, theologians and cultural theorists have explored how Christianity is, should be, or shouldn’t be, in relationship with a national culture, or a set of cultures. Whilst all of this work remains interesting and pertinent, I have chosen one particular author through whom to shape our discussion.

My point of reference is the well-known work by American theologian, H. Richard Niebuhr. In the 1950s, Niebuhr wrote a very influential short book called Christ and Culture.[2] In it, he posits a series of views concerning how Christianity (by which he means something like ‘the Christian Church in the West’ might relate to the world it found itself in after the second World War. Niebuhr offered a five-part paradigm of relations between the Christians and the culture. Although influenced strongly by existentialism, the post-war mood and Barthian theology, there is ongoing value in his distinctions.

I will use Niebuhr as my background to consider these various ways that Christians in China might consider their ‘stance’ towards the broader culture. I offer these thoughts humbly, as a visitor with a love for Asian culture, and a growing but ‘youthful’ understanding of its wonderful diversity.

Niebuhr’s Five Positions

For Christians, there is an ongoing question about what it means to say “Jesus Christ is Lord” in the present day. Because this statement is both a dogmatic belief, and an expression of eschatological hope, its meaning is complex. Christians follow the theological, ethical and practical teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, but do they expect others, of different beliefs, to do so? And do they expect Christian views to gain a hearing in the arenas of politics, morality or business ethics? Furthermore, do Christians expect to participate freely in a culture, or do they expect that their beliefs will exclude them from participation at some (or many) points? Do they deliberately involved themselves in broader cultural pursuits, or do they withdraw to practise their religion as purely and unimpeded as possible?

These are the questions that spurred Niebuhr to construct his five views of how Christianity and culture can relate. Each view deserves brief mention.

First, it is possible to position Christ against culture. If a Christian sees the culture as actively or passively antagonistic to faith, he may see little or no connection between the church and the world outside it. This view is found in the statement from Tertullian, the second century Christian apologist: “What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?” In other words, Tertullian suggests that the worldviews of Christianity and the cultures in which it finds itself, are bound to clash, to be vastly different and incompatible. One of them must move. Often in history, it has been the Christians who have withdrawn from the culture, setting up monastic communities or separate schooling systems. We see this stance today in some areas of bioethics or financial affairs, where Christians may feel a need to separate from the norms of the culture in order to be faithful to Christ.

The second position takes the other extreme, to subscribe to the Christ of culture. Christians holding this view do not feel any significant tensions between the Christian worldview and the culture they inhabit. In this view, Christianity might offer the highest forms of culture and Christians endeavour to blend Christ into culture as a gift of excellence. Christianity is the ‘best of humanity’, it is argued, and therefore to christianize the culture is to improve it; this is the spiritual goal. This position was held by a number of 19^th Century liberal Protestants, who saw the task of the church as the civilizing of a culture too influenced by barbaric or pedestrian ideals.

The remaining three positions sit between the first two extremes. It is possible to think of Christ above culture, which is perhaps the most common position taken by the Church throughout Christian history. In this view, Christianity exists beyond any cultural expressions of it, but is a church for the world. Christians become involved in the culture, seeking roles of authority and influence. They have confidence in the Christian worldview as a means of rational and ethical governance of a society, all the while maintaining that there is a reality and a community beyond that of the world, and it is the church. “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” (Mk 12:17; Matt 22:20-22) might be the catchcry of this standpoint.

It is also possible to conceive, rather awkwardly, of Christ and culture in paradox. This view recognizes that Christians are simul justus et peccator (“always just, always a sinner”, a quote from Martin Luther) and therefore are as much part of the culture as they are part of the Church. In this view the culture is corrupt, and Christians are part of that corrupt culture; but they are also forgiven in Christ, held by grace. They live a paradoxical life. They are therefore right to be immersed in the culture as ‘natural man’, but ought to be doing their work there as slaves of Christ, obeying God in the midst of a sinful environment.

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Finally, there is a view of Christ transforming culture, held by the original Calvinists. Niebuhr emphasizes (perhaps over-emphasizes) the goodness of the world that God created, and the capacity to return it to the state in which it was created. Thus, Christians enact that journey back to Eden, the return to perfection, as they dwell in the world. So, to build ‘Jerusalem’ or ‘Geneva’ or ‘America’ becomes the goal of Christian endeavour. This view is profoundly optimistic in its eschatology. It sees Christian actions in the world as eternally valuable. A less extreme version of this view would see Christians as “inaugurating the kingdom of God on earth”, even if that place will not finally come to be manifest until the return of Jesus Christ.

Contemporary Criticisms of Niebuhr

Niebuhr’s paradigm is extremely helpful as a tool for discussion of these various stances. However, it has come under constant criticism, especially for the nebulous nature of the terms used. North American Christian scholars such as George Marsden and Don Carson have criticized Niebuhr’s understanding of both ‘Christ’ and ‘culture’. Marsden argues that none of Niebuhr’s categories are specific enough to help today’s Christians map their relations with the 21^st Century world. For instance, Marsden says there is little to be gained by a broad term such as ‘culture’ rather than specific enquiries into how disciplines and areas of public life such as art, politics, medicine or business might relate to the Christian worldview.

Carson wishes to suggest that the use of biblical theology modifies Niebuhr’s quadrants in a useful way. Whereas Niebuhr posits theoretical stances, Carson argues that the unfolding story of Scripture, with its “non-negotiables of biblical theology”, provides a clearer map of how Christians relate to the world. Through the acknowledgement of the development of God’s relationship with the world—from creation and then the fall into sin, to redemption in Christ and then the promise of a new heavens and new earth—Carson argues that we are given a stronger base on which to make decisions about Christian living.

Christians cannot long think about Christ and culture without reflecting on the fact that this is God’s world, but that this side of the fall this world is simultaneously resplendent with glory and awash with shame, and that every expression of human culture simultaneously discloses that we were made in God’s image and shows itself to be mis-shaped and corroded by human rebellion against God.[3]

Another author, Craig A. Carter, argues that implicit in Niebuhr’s thesis is the view that Christendom is the desirable state of culture, and one that should be restored. “The essence of the idea is the assertion that Western civilization is Christian”.[4] Niebuhr, in Carter’s view, is simply offering various methods by which that restoration might occur. A broader expression of this criticism might be that the West has laboured under the influence of Emperor Constantine’s success in integrating Christian structures and practices into the Roman Empire of the fourth Century. The contemporary Church is questioning whether ‘Constantinianism’ is a desirable project.

Social critics have suggested that Niebuhr’s conception of culture is already infected by modernist distinctions between high and low culture, between European high aesthetics and more grassroots cultural phenomena. In other words, culture is as much Madonna as Mahler, Lady Gaga as Lord Byron. It is football, dancing and gardening as much as it is fine art and classical music.

In summary, Niebuhr has provided an enduring but approximate way of describing the relationship between Christianity and culture. In reflecting on the nature of his thesis, it has struck me that there is no one category to which many Christians would happily subscribe. Most Christians see in each category something important about the way they do, or should, relate to their culture. There may be a way of understanding why this is the case.

A Christological Proposal regarding Christ and Culture

In Christian theology, Jesus plays a central role. In fact Christology is the study of the many and various understandings of him; from teacher (rabbi) to member of the Trinity, to co-Creator, to Son of Man, and so forth, Jesus is the centre of the faith. The Bible passage in Colossians 1:15-20 helps us to see the comprehensive role that is given to Jesus in Christian faith:

¹⁵The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. ¹⁶ For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. ¹⁷ He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸ And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. ¹⁹ For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, ²⁰ and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. (New International Version).

Such an all-encompassing vision of Christ’s importance leads me to consider the manner in which He may be central to understanding the relationship between Christians and culture. Could it be that each of the aspects of Niebuhr’s paradigm corresponds with different roles that Jesus Christ is given in the Bible?

Christ is against culture in his role as Judge, declaring what is righteous and shunning evil. Christ is of culture in his humanity, being fully human but bearing divinity at the same time. He is the perfect expression of Man. Christ is above culture in his Lordship, a doctrine that is both contemporary and eschatological for Christians (“now and not yet”), while we wait for his glory to be revealed. And Christ is transforming culture; he began as co-Creator (with the Father and Spirit), and continues as ‘new creator’, the one through whom peace and reconciliation is being achieved.

Where the Church is emulating Christ, it can take on each of these roles in relation to the culture, as is fitting in time and place: judge, full participant, ‘lord’ (or authority), and transforming servant. The only aspect of the Niebuhr paradigm for which such a christological focus doesn’t work is to see Christ and culture in paradox, for this involves the acknowledgement of sin and failure. Where Christians are ‘always just, always sinner’, Christ himself remained perfectly obedient to God. Perhaps this is addressed in a Bible passage such as 2 Corinthians 5:21, which speaks of Christ “becoming sin” for us. This difficult concept (a sinless man who becomes sin but remains perfect) is best understood in terms of substitutionary theory: the sinless Christ substituted for the sinful man, such that Christ is treated as if he were a sinner.

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Nevertheless, this particular difficulty with Christ and culture in paradox does not detract from the overall value of analyzing one’s stance towards the culture in terms of whichever role of Christ is most significant for any given time or circumstance.

For example, in assessing an ethical issue, it may be appropriate for the Church to take a stance as ‘judge’ of the culture, critiquing an evil law or process. Or it may be appropriate for Christians to fully participate in a culture, as citizens—for example, as part of an Olympics or a public festival of unity. At times, it will be appropriate for Christians to express the authority of the Church; I would suggest this is the case if a central doctrine of Christianity is being declared illegal or inadmissible. And it is certainly important that Christians act as “salt and light” to transform a culture, offering the good blessings of the Christian worldview to a world in need. An area where this might apply is in contributing to social services.

Overall, it is valuable to reflect christologically on the connection between Christ and culture, to determine, situation by situation, what attitude or stance Christ himself might take to a particular cultural moment or event or issue. This is likely to result in any or all of Niebuhr’s positions being valid and appropriate as a summary of how the Church and the culture might relate.

Building culture

As all governments understand, culture is something that can be built. The construction of culture can take a long time, but it need not. Sometimes, events or decisions shape a culture decisively in a short time period: the events of September 11, 2001 in America changed the country’s culture overnight. Technology changes behaviour rapidly, bringing about new cultural expressions (for example, the iPod very quickly changed the way music was purchased and appreciated).

But, if T.S. Eliot is correct, the deepest changes to culture emerge from changed beliefs. When the Bible informs belief, cultures are affected. This effect can be for the good of the culture; in fact, in every part of the Niebuhr paradigm, the relationship between the Church and the culture is for the good of the culture. Even the ‘Christ against culture’ approach includes a desire that the culture ‘see the light’ so that integration and acceptance might be possible.

An example of the cultural impact of beliefs can be found in India. The caste system in India allows, indeed insists, that not all people are equal. Some are born into situations that label them for life as inferior, even as untouchable. Things that happen to you in life are a result of karma, and history cannot fight the forces of karma, fate, nature or even entrenched culture. Such beliefs flow over into how one treats the sick, whether babies have rights, and whether a person is more valuable than an animal. As Indian Christian philosopher Vishal Mangalwadi writes in his book addressing the importance of the Bible for culture-shaping, “Notions of human dignity and rights came to India with Christian education”.[5]

The effects of Christianity on any particular culture will be unique in some elements, and general in others. Christianity contributes to many aspects of a culture, not just a narrow sector of it. The history of the impact of Christianity on a nation is always rich, complex and fascinating. As Christianity continues to grow and develop in Asia, I look forward to seeing how Asian Christians seek to relate to the culture through the wide lens of Christology, in all of its dimensions, and am very happy to be a small part of thinking about how best this can be done.

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[1] T.S. Eliot, Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, Faber & Faber, London, 1948, p.33. See also his The Idea of a Christian Society, Faber & Faber, London, 1939.

[2]  H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture, Harper & Row, New York, 1951.

[3]  D.A. Carson, Christ and Culture Revisited, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 2008, p.49.

[4]  Craig A. Carter, Rethinking Christ and Culture: A Post-Christendom Perspective, Brazos Press, Grand Rapids, 2006, p.14.

[5] Vishal Mangalwadi, The Book That Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western CIvilisation, Thomas Nelson, Nashville, 2011, p.66.

On 24 June 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States, in a 5-4 decision, overturned Roe v Wade, the landmark ruling of 1973 that established the constitutional right to abortion.

This means that individual states are able to once again ban this procedure. According to a BBC report,

Half of the states in the US are expected to introduce new restrictions or bans. Thirteen have already passed so-called trigger laws that will automatically outlaw abortion following the Supreme Court ruling. A number of other are likely to pass new restrictions quickly.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion which led to the overturning of Roe, thereby upending five decades of precedence in the U.S. He states that:

The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely – the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

He adds:

That provision has been held to guarantee some rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution, but any such right must be ‘deeply noted in this Nation’s history and tradition’ and ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.’

‘It is time to heed the Constitution,’ he asserts, ‘and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.’

Four other conservatives in the high court concurred with Alito’s judgement. However, it is pertinent to note that three of the justices were appointed by former President Donald Trump: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

Not unexpectedly, the overturning of Roe saw a very mixed reception in the United States, as it sets off waves of triumph and of despair across the nation. As Kate Zernike of The New York Times observed: ‘The split-screen reaction reflected a polarised nation: jubilation and relief on one side, outrage and grief on the other.’

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According to her report, Dale Bartscher, the director of South Dakota Right to Life, said: ‘If I had confetti, I would be tossing it high. Today, we’re celebrating a day that we’ve long dreamed of, advocated for and worked toward the overturning of Roe v. Wade.’

The Court’s liberal justices, however, were appalled by the ruling. In their joint dissent, they wrote: ‘The majority has overruled Roe and Casey for one and only one reason: because it has always despised them, and now it has the votes to discard them. The majority thereby substitutes a rule by judges for the rule of law.’

But the greatest outrage to the ruling of the Supreme Court was expressed by none other than the President of the United States himself. In a speech made on the same day that the ruling was announced, President Biden – who is Roman Catholic – said:

Today is a – it’s not hyperbole to suggest a very solemn moment. Today, the Supreme Court of the United States expressly took away the constitutional right from the American people that it has already recognised.

They didn’t limit it. They simply took it away. That’s never been done to a right so important to so many Americans.

The President goes on to assert: ‘Now, with Roe gone, let’s be very clear: The health and life of women in this nation are now at risk.’ He presents the overturn of Roe as the ‘culmination of a deliberate effort over decades to upset the balance of our law.’

And he regards this as the triumph of an ‘extreme ideology’: ‘It’s a realisation of an extreme ideology and a tragic error by the Supreme Court, in my view.’

He ended his speech thus: ‘And you with your vote, you can act. You can have the final word. This is not over.’ The President’s liberal commitments cannot be clearer!

An entire article can be devoted to analysing President Biden’s speech from the standpoint of Christian ethics, especially the social doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church and the great encyclicals of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

But my purpose here is simply to present the ‘split-screen’ view, and show just how polarising this issue will continue to be.

RESPONSES BY CHRISTIANS

 Regrettably, Christians are equally divided in their response to the Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe. As PBS News Hour reports, ‘reactions from faith leaders ranged from elation to anger’ when news broke that Roe v Wade was overturned.

Some Christians saw the ruling as a truly significant triumph for pro-lifers who have worked so hard and for so long to see this day. However, they added that although this is a major breakthrough, the work to protect the lives of the unborn must continue.

This sentiment is articulated in a statement issued by Brent Leatherwood, the acting president of the Southern Baptist Church’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. ‘The release of the Dobbs decision marks a true turning point in the pro-life movement, a moment that Christians, advocates and many others have worked toward tirelessly for 50 years …’

It adds:

As this chapter comes to a close, we must understand this is not the end of our important work. The issue of abortion has now been turned over to the states, many of which have either implemented or are considering some of the most abhorrently permissive pro-abortion proposals ever.

This view, however, is not shared by the ministers of the United Church of Christ, who in a joint statement warned that the decision will ‘endanger the lives and well-being of birthing people who do not choose to continue pregnancy.’

The statement ends with the rather spurious and misleading remark: ‘God loves and cares for people who have abortions, and so does the United Church of Christ’ – obliquely implying that the supporters of the ruling don’t.

Even the leaders of the Catholic Church, whose teaching on abortion and the sanctity of human life has been consistently and clearly articulated in numerous documents across the centuries, are divided in their response to the ruling.

For example, in a joint statement, Archbishop José Gomez, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Baltimore Archbishop William Lori, chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Pro-Life Activities declare that ‘This is a historic day in the life of our country, one that stirs our thoughts, emotions and prayers.’

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They describe Roe v Wade as an ‘unjust law that has permitted some to decide whether others can live or die’, a policy which has ‘resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of preborn children …’

However, John Gehring, the Catholic programme director at the Washington-based network Faith in Public Life, said via Twitter that:

Catholics on the right spent decades reducing church teaching to a single issue and linked arms with a conservative movement that is hostile to the church’s teachings about a consistent ethic of life and the common good. This ruling is the culmination of that misguided campaign.

DEFENDING LIFE

There can be no doubt that the High Court ruling on Roe v Wade will save many lives that would otherwise be lost through elective abortion. And at the same time ruling has inflicted a blow on what Pope John Paul II has called the ‘culture of death’ in his 1995 encyclical, Evangelium Vitae (Gospel of Life):

We are facing an enormous and dramatic clash between good and evil, death and life, the ‘culture of death’ and the ‘culture of life.’ We find ourselves not only faced with but necessarily in the midst of this conflict: we are all involved and we all share in it, with the inescapable responsibility of choosing to be unconditionally pro-life.

On the issue of abortion, the Pope writes:

The moral gravity of procured abortion is apparent in all its truth if we recognise that we are dealing with murder and, in particular, when we consider the specific elements involved. The one eliminated is a human being at the very beginning of life. No one more absolutely innocent could be imagined.

The Pope’s teaching on abortion – that it is murder (Exodus 20:13) – is in harmony with the Church’s position throughout its history. From earliest times, the Church has sharply distinguished itself from the pagan cultures by rejecting and condemning abortions and infanticides.

We find evidence of this in early Christian documents such as the Didache (50-70), and The Epistle of Barnabas (70-132). The unequivocal rejection of the practice of abortion is also found in the writings of Augustine in the fifth century, and Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth.

The magisterial Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century such as Martin Luther and John Calvin similarly condemned abortion. Luther describes abortion as stemming from the ‘wickedness of human nature.’ And Calvin argues that since the unborn child in the mother’s womb ‘is already a human being,’ ‘it is an almost monstrous crime to rob it of life …’

Christians today who are swayed by the writings of philosophers such as Judith Jarvis Thomson, David Boonin and Eileen McDonagh which argue that women have the right to end their pregnancies on the basis of personal autonomy and bodily rights must drink once again from the deep well of Scripture and tradition.

They must take heed of its wisdom if they are not be unwitting advocates of the ‘culture of death’ by championing murder in the name of personal autonomy and rights.

Richard Dawkins, the famous British atheist, famously asserts that since science works, it must be true and we must believe what it says. If Christianity clashes with science, so much the worse for Christianity. For this reason, some college students are persuaded to abandon their Christian faith once they conclude that it has been discredited by science.

The perception that science has discredited Christianity is based on two assumptions. First, the results of science are empirically verified and indubitable in contrast to the unverifiable claims of Christianity. Second, Christianity not only lacks explanatory power; it is in conflict with the empirical findings of science. For example, God becomes redundant once evolution explains the origins of species and inflationary cosmology explains the origin of the multiverse. We are reminded of the famous incident when Napoleon Bonaparte questioned Pierre Laplace why his large book on cosmology never mentioned the Creator, to which Laplace retorted, “I had no need of that hypothesis.”

However, neither Dawkins nor Laplace should be given the last word. There are other eminent scientists who do not agree that there is conflict between science and Christianity. Furthermore, science itself faces several intractable problems.

First, we note the problem of induction. For example, scientists apply the following process of reasoning when they try to identify a sample of clear liquid in a flask.

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Hypothesis: If this liquid is water, it should boil at 100 degree Celsius. [If P then Q]

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Experimental result: This liquid boils at 100 degree Celsius. [Q]

Scientific conclusion: This liquid is therefore water. [Therefore, P]

It is apparent that this form of reasoning commits the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent: [If (1) P then Q, (2) Q, (3) Therefore, P].

Second, science can only produce probabilistic truth claims. That is to say, no amount of repeated testing can generalize a universal truth claim. The prediction that “the sun will rise from the East” has been confirmed to be true billions of times. But this does not guarantee that “the sun will rise from the East” tomorrow. In short, no amount of observation can absolutely confirm a theory.

Third, David Hume has pointed out that science is beset by a serious epistemological problem. He noted that while Newton’s theory of gravity has been successful in explaining motion, in reality we can’t observe the forces themselves. Likewise, while we may conclude that a ball causes another ball to move after they collide, in reality we never observe or experience the forces of the collision. We don’t see the causal interaction between the balls, but we cannot help believing some kind of metaphysical “stuff” causes the interaction. Hume concluded his Treatise of Human Nature with a caution for epistemological modesty for scientists: “We are only acquainted with its [the appearances of objects] effects on the senses, and its power of receiving body. Nothing is more suitable to that philosophy, than a modest scepticism to a certain degree, and a fair confession of ignorance in subjects, that exceed all human capacity.”

Karl Popper seeks to evade the problem of induction by arguing that the method of science is not verification but falsification, that is, it proposes bold conjectures and tries repeatedly to show them false. A theory is scientific if it is able to state in advance what will count as falsifying it. If it is falsified by reliable and reproducible experimental results, that theory must be abandoned.

Popper seems to have proposed a neat solution to ensure that scientists maintain their methodological rigor. However, Thomas Kuhn argues in his classic book, The Structure of Scientific Revolution, that in practice, scientists do not conform to Popper’s stringent requirement. For example, scientists did not abandon Newton’s theory of gravitation when they discovered that the orbit of Uranus deviates from the path predicted by Newtonian mechanics. Instead, they resorted to post hoc explanations by positing that the irregular path of Uranus must be due to gravitational interference by a yet unseen planet further out of the solar system. Their conjecture turned out to be true!

The history of scientific controversies suggests that scientific observation and testing is theory-laden and influenced by background assumptions. Scientific knowledge is not built on indubitable foundations; it is rather held together as a web of theories/beliefs (W.V. Quine). Theories with the strongest supporting evidence are located at the centre while the weaker and contested theories are located at the fringe. The testing of truth claims is carried out in the context of a reigning scientific paradigm – a disciplinary matrix that comprises a comprehensive set of interlocking laws, theories and applications. The paradigm is accepted or rejected as a whole, based on criteria like simplicity, empirical fit and explanatory power.

Imre Lakatos suggests that science is built around a “hard core” of background theories which generates a “research programme” of “auxiliary hypotheses” for the purpose of testing. These “auxiliary hypotheses” may be altered or abandoned in response to their test results. They form a “protective belt” so that the “hard core” is not under pressure to be altered immediately, if not abandoned upon every scientific testing. Nancey Murphy applies Lakatos’ methodology to theology – the “hard core” would be the Trinitarian doctrine of God, his holiness and revelation in Jesus. “Auxiliary hypotheses” may be theoretical like original sin or practical like Jonathan Edward’s tests for valid signs of a work of the Holy Spirit.

The view that science comprises a hierarchy of truth-claims was actually presaged by John Warwick Montgomery in his article “The Theologian’s Craft.” (1966). He took a cue from Charles Peirce who described scientific investigation as a process of “abduction” whereby the scientist starts with a set of observations and then seeks to find the simplest and most likely explanation. The scientist uses his imagination in the abduction process to generate cycles of theory formation and testing in order to devise conceptual gestalts (or patterns of meaning and interpretation) within which data observed in nature is made intelligible.

As mentioned earlier, theological inquiry is analogous to scientific investigation as it specifies which theory (doctrine) forms the core that is immune to immediate testing, and which theories serve as “auxiliary hypotheses” to be tested. The Bible is the repository of irreducible objective historical facts and truths of divine revelation.  The core theory of divine revelation is that Jesus as God incarnate died for the sins of the world and rose again for its justification. The task of the biblical scholar is to discover how the truths of divine revelation were progressively revealed and developed in the Bible. The task of the systematic theologian is to work out the revealed truths discovered by biblical scholars in order to demonstrate their proper relations to the core truth and to construct conceptual gestalts that ‘fit’ the revealed truths in their mutual relations so that they capture the unity and essence of revealed truth.

Both science and theology formulate “auxiliary hypotheses” or “conceptual gestalts” (doctrines) as indirect tests for the veracity of their core theories. The test for scientific theory is whether it explains the observed physical phenomena while the test for doctrine is whether it gives a coherent explanation of the facts of religious experience. The similarities between science and theology extend to cases where truth claims are upheld despite their paradoxical nature. For example, scientists uphold the paradox of the wave-particle theory to explain the contradictory properties of subatomic phenomena while theologians uphold the conceptual gestalt of the Trinity to explain concrete religious experience. In these cases, both the scientists and the theologians are humbly subordinating their theory to match the data at hand.

Michael Polanyi notes that science is not merely an impersonal execution of an abstract algorithm of research. It entails “connoisseurship” that includes transmission of research skills from master to apprentice, the art of problem solving and discovery, and shared commitment to scientific values. Scientific knowledge is not merely objective; it is intensely personal as it requires “conviviality” as scientists are bonded together by shared commitment (faith) to scientific values in their common enterprise. Likewise, theological inquiry is intensely personal. Doctrines are not impersonal construct as they serve as guideposts which set priorities for Christian life. For example, the doctrine of Trinity may appear abstract to the uninitiated, but it touches the prayer life of the theologian.

Scientific theories and doctrines are accepted by the research and interpretative community because of their explanatory power for empirical observation and religious experience. The profound truths uncovered by science and religion should elicit awe and wonder. To quote Immanuel Kant, “Two things fill my mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the reflection dwells on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”

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