As I write this, we are almost two years into the COVID pandemic with no clear end in sight. And let’s just recognize that it’s been horrendous.
Many of us are grieving lost loved ones. Our lives at home, work, school, church, and play have been radically altered by the virus and by the measures we’ve taken to try to control the virus. And it’s not just the alterations, it’s the chaos of constantly changing situations, recommendations, and virus variants. We find friends and relatives suddenly veering sharply to the “left” or to the “right” in their politics and rhetoric.
This has all happened during a perfect storm of political, religious, social, and technological changes that has created a cultural crisis of authority. The public square for productive dialogue was already shrinking and now seems it might be permanently closed. The political maneuvering, the incessant noise of social media megaphones, the 24/7 news cycles and click-driven profit incentives have created a culture-wide frenzy of outrage and confusion. How did wearing a mask or not wearing a mask come to be considered a political, social, and even spiritual statement?
I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted by all of this, and I certainly have no grand scheme to propose to fix all this. But I think a first, halting step forward would be to just give each other a break. These have been tough times, and none of us is at his or her best.
I pray that the thoughts I have to offer here may be of some encouragement and may increase mutual understanding in our disagreements. I’m motivated in this by two specific loves I’ve been blessed to pursue together in my vocation: God’s church, and the exploration of His created order. When I was a student at Covenant College in the early 1980s, God kindled in me a love for this strange and wonderful human endeavor we call science, particularly in the areas of molecular biology and immunology.
And now I’m back teaching at Covenant where an essential component of our mission is to contribute to the flourishing of God’s church. I have the daily privilege to open up the amazing works of our Lord in the created order to my younger brothers and sisters in the body of Christ. I am deeply concerned over the bruising conflicts in our church over “disputable” matters related to COVID and trends I see driving us either to weaponize the “follow the science” slogan or to contemptuously dismiss “the science” and those who “follow” it.
I invite you to step back from the fray and press the reset button on any investment you may have made in the phrase “follow the science.” Let’s use the familiar creation-fall-redemption-consummation framework to sketch a brief theology of science and then do a little work on the messiness of this endeavor we call science, before circling back to address the responses when “the science” divides us.
Science As a Human Endeavor and a Christian Calling
Creation: God has crafted a world that displays His creativity, wisdom, and beauty. He calls humans as creaturely co-creators to search out and “unfold potentials latent in his created order.” The gifts bestowed on image-bearing humans at creation and the fruitfulness of human endeavors are derived from God’s grace and purposes in Christ. Image-bearing and the callings that go with it encompass individual and collective human tasks, and the project of unfolding often requires diverse yet cooperative work across many generations.
In creation, God was free to order reality in any way He saw fitting. So we humans should start our investigations with humility, looking to see how God did in fact order things, rather than presuming how He must have. This theological principle (voluntarism) rooted in creation ex nihilo and the omnipotence of God was a major driving force in establishing the “new experimental philosophy” of the scientific revolution 400 years ago. Taking scientific data into account reflects good theology.
Fall: Human rebellion in the Fall led to a severance of relationship with God, and thereby all relationships, (to self, to other humans, and to the rest of the created order) are damaged. We certainly see the disorder in all these relationships playing out in the sciences: the use of science to buttress idolatries (for example, naturalism), self-promotion and power trips, and the misuse of scientific knowledge. In scientific endeavor itself, as in every human endeavor, we see the usual range of bad behaviors.
We “follow the science” when we dial our phones, drive over a bridge, [or] get a knee replacement. We are properly scandalized when scientific misconduct or clear conflicts of interest distort the help that the sciences might give.
Redemption: Thankfully, even in the Fall, God’s “yes!” in Christ shows up immediately. At great cost to Himself, God promises not to leave the world to its just fate, but to deal evil a fatal blow, to raise up a people for His own, and to continue to enable human life to flourish. Even after the Fall, various creational callings (say, to expertise in virology and immunology!) continue. He provides ample witness to Himself in both special and general revelation.
It also pleased God to mitigate the evil unleashed in the Fall to maintain dignity, value, beauty, sustenance, and joy in human life. He enables noble ideals, good behaviors, and dedication to the unfolding work to which He had originally called image-bearers, so that by His common grace, no human is as bad as he or she might be.
For His chosen daughters and sons, whose hearts have been transformed by God’s special grace, work in the world becomes a form of grateful worship, conscious stewardship, and gospel proclamation in word and deed. We proclaim the great works of God in our salvation, and we work in His name to unfold the created order and to close the gap between the way things are in a sin-sick world and the way things ought to be.
Consummation: At the end of all things, our Lord will vindicate His justice in judgment and bring His goodness and mercy to full visualization by gathering his people before His throne in the new heavens and the new earth (pro-mask, anti-mask, and “Do these masks really work?” Christians all there together). All that is good and right in history will be supernaturally purified and brought to its highest ends in the celebration of the exaltation of Christ.
Though He promises that all work done in His name has lasting significance, the consummation reminds us that we finite creatures, even as sons and daughters of the King, cannot fix all ills in this life. As excellent as the gifts granted to humans might be, and as much as their use brings glory to God, they will always fall short in themselves. Our finitude and our sin absolutely require the power of the resurrected Jesus to bring purposes of God to their completion.
On one hand then, our theology overall would seem to put us in a generally favorable mind about an institution and its members dedicated to scientific investigation. The way modern science in general seems to work resonates with a variety of Christian understandings about the world and the way humans are created and called to operate in it. In fact, confidence in the general reliability of scientific endeavor is certainly more solidly rooted from a Christian perspective than a naturalistic one. To be systematic disparagers and skeptics of science would be to dishonor our Lord by refusing some of His good gifts.
We also have good theological reasons not to immediately assume the worst about the processes resulting in scientific consensus and those individuals involved. We can appreciate the fact that scientific communities have a set of self-professed high standards that include honesty, transparency, inclusion, qualified claims, and peer review. In fact, our praying for and supporting the flourishing of the sciences follows the spirit of God’s directives to the Jewish exiles in Babylon in Jeremiah 29:7: “Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”
On the other hand, we have good theological reasons for being watchful about idolizing the deliverances of science and the powers it might seem to offer. Scripture is our first guide to faithful responses to God’s revelations. In Scripture, God provides helpful limits for our theological and scientific work while at the same time providing freedoms to creatively respond to his revelations. In instances where scientific consensus seems to run afoul of scriptural teaching, we are dedicated to careful analysis and prayer to discern what Scripture might in fact require. Even where disagreements arise as to exactly where lines of fidelity should be drawn, the views of various Christians will bear a strong family resemblance. An excellent example of this in regard to origins is set out in the PCA’s Creation Study Committee report.
Our theology also helps us steer clear of triumphalism in the sciences. In our finitude we are going to make mistakes in our work, get some conclusions wrong, and struggle to see to how close our ideas coincide with realities in the created order. Further, in scientific endeavor (as in every human endeavor and as in our own lives) we see a usual range of bad behaviors: bias, dishonesty, conflicts of interests, greed, defensiveness, and the like.
Finally, the consummation reminds us that we must await the Lord’s return for the fullness that we seek. Some amazing science and skill are behind every heart surgery that is to be celebrated, but we also know the patient eventually will physically die. The consummation gives us hope in the present and the future, while graciously tempering our tendency to idolize our gifts.
So thus far I hope you can see an appropriate “middle” position on “following the science” begins to emerge as we consider our theology of science in this fashion. We have good reasons both to appreciate the successes of science as God’s good gift and to freely admit the limitations of science as a human endeavor. This both/and means that, in practice, science is messy. To several examples of this messiness I now turn.
Science Can Be Messy
Textbook descriptions often leave the impression that good science is simply a technical exercise in which rules of logic are applied to sensory data sets, automatically and unambiguously generating the appropriate conclusion. To disagree with this science is just an obstinate refusal to accept the way things are. But this view is mistaken in many ways. As Christian philosopher Del Ratzsch in his book “The Battle of Beginnings” puts it:
“Our senses and our reason are not simply detachable from deeper streams that flow within us, so we cannot construct a ‘pure’ science employing only those detached faculties. Since humans are integral beings, theorizing, evaluating and so forth involve multiple aspects of one’s self. This broader self-involvement in one’s scientific activities is neither completely avoidable nor regrettable. It is simply the way human persons work, and science being a human pursuit reflects this integral character as well.” (pp. 119, 126)
Scientific judgments are always human judgments, certainly not automatic, and often carrying ambiguities.
Textbook presentations of scientific advances often inadvertently leave the impression that good science proceeds in a regular, linear fashion and that for an accepted explanation, the data all cleanly align and are explained by the new advance. In actuality (ask any natural science graduate student) scientific work typically proceeds with regular bouts of puzzlement and confusion. Rarely do all the data suddenly fall into place; in most cases, anomalous data arise and remain to be accounted for, sometimes for a long time.
Good scientific work requires determination and patience when faced with a variety of false starts and dead ends. It requires a variety of provisional judgments to be made, commonly with incomplete or less than ideal data, or even in the face of anomalous data. In fact, tenacity in the face of some countervailing data in the shorter term is key to longer-term success.
Real science is pretty frustrating on the day-to-day level of investigation. In our current situation, the spectacle of this kind of messiness is being played out in real time in a charged social and political atmosphere, and it doesn’t inspire confidence. All of us are trying to make quick decisions in the midst of it, and we find ourselves angry and frustrated and fearful. But the root problem here isn’t necessarily “bad science.”
As the sciences have proceeded historically, there is a natural trajectory toward specialization as we spread out and “fill the earth.” As this has occurred, the responsibility of scientists to better communicate their work for understanding and accountability has long been discussed in the scientific community. Clear communication of science has become more challenging. Techniques, terminology, and ways of making judgments are increasingly specialized and context-specific.
Many scientists find that having the gifts that make them good in their area of specialization are not often accompanied with the gifts for “cross-cultural” communication. Thus, others may step in (well-meaning or otherwise) to try to do the communication job, raising the likelihood of inaccuracy, distortion, or oversimplifications that may border on deceit.
I am deeply concerned over the … trends I see driving us either to weaponize the “follow the science” slogan or to contemptuously dismiss “the science” and those who “follow” it.
We’ve certainly seen gyrations in communication attempts by scientists and others during this pandemic. We can certainly hope for better public health communication in future pandemics, but even under the best of circumstances and good intentions, this is a difficult task. For example, early COVID recommendations were often very broad-brush, easily understood. However, we were justifiably frustrated because the actual value of the recommendations varied for different people, places, and circumstances.
More recently, in response to being too generalized early on, recommendations have gotten very difficult to understand and apply. After a recent COVID test, I got four pages of small print to try to cover the various recommendations in a variety of specific circumstances. I appreciated the effort, but the “guide” was extremely difficult to follow and was unlikely to be used at all. This can be improved and ought to be, but let’s just recognize that good clear mass communication under these circumstances is hard … because it’s hard.
Drawing Some of This Together
I think it’s helpful if we recognize that our shared beliefs as Christians in the Reformed tradition put all of us on a middle path with regard to “following the science.” We “follow the science” when we dial our phones, drive over a bridge, get a knee replacement, board a plane, or worship God as we contemplate the expanse of the universe or the intricacies of a cell. All of us trust God by taking advantage of His mediate care in all kinds of ways as we enjoy good health care, while also praying for and recognizing His immediate care.
We are properly scandalized when scientific misconduct or clear conflicts of interest distort the help that the sciences might give in understanding and application. We have our critical antennae up when it seems that naturalism is being peddled in the guise of “following the science.” We really do have much to agree about in regard to questions about following the science.
Returning now to the more contentious COVID-related science, from my vantage point as one trained in molecular biology and immunology, I have significant empathy with the challenges faced by people studying these things and responding on the fly to new developments. Though I have certainly been frustrated by the shifting stories and recommendations, I haven’t really been surprised by the irregular and unpredictable nature of the field, nor the setbacks, the miscommunications, and continuing uncertainties.
For my part, I have been comfortable basically “following the science” in this case as best I can (vaccinations, masking, distancing, etc.) and have encouraged anyone who asked to consider doing so as well, and provided my reasons as best as I could. And I certainly have sympathy for all us living through this cultural moment in the confusion, fear, and hostility that have come to us and the hesitancy people have about various recommendations.
To be transparent, though, I’ve certainly had times when I lashed out at those who disagree with the path I’ve taken. So like everyone else, I need to preach the gospel to myself every day … and I’ll end with an exhortation that I myself need.
We need to remember our ultimate allegiance in this fractured world is to our Lord and His body the church. We shouldn’t tire of good-faith efforts to find the best way forward, seeking out trusted voices and showing grace to all in that process. We need to remember that we will get through this, and that we’re going to have to live with one another afterward. We need to be kind to our church leaders and others who must make practical COVID-related decisions in the midst of a pretty messy situation.
Finally, we need to take seriously the scriptural commands in regard to making a disputable matter our signature issue and fomenting contention among God’s people with it. We can do the broken world around us a considerable favor by modeling all this with soft hearts that are quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger. May it be so, Lord Jesus!
Tim Morris is professor of biology and dean of sciences at Covenant College, where he’s been on the faculty since 1995. Morris received his B.A. from Covenant College and his Ph.D. from the University of Florida.
For further study:
“Soul of Science,” Pearcey and Thaxton
“Science and Its Limits,” Del Ratzsch
“Where the Conflict Really Lies,” Alvin Plantinga
“Science & Grace,” Tim Morris and Don Petcher
Covenant College’s Philosophy of Education Statement
Read more of byFaith’s COVID-19 coverage here.