Redeeming Science: A God-Centered Approach

by Vern Sheridan Poythress

Many people think science is antagonistic to Christian belief. Science, it is said, shows that the universe is billions of years old, while the Bible says it is only thousands of years old. And some claim that science shows supernatural miracles are impossible. These and other points of contention cause some Christians to view science as a threat to their beliefs.

Redeeming Science attempts to kindle our appreciation for science as it ought to be-science that could serve as a path for praising God and serving fellow human beings. Through examining the wonderfully complex and immutable laws of nature, author Vern Poythress explains, we ought to recognize the wisdom, care, and beauty of God. A Christian worldview restores a true response to science, where we praise the God who created nature and cares for it.

Genres: Science, Theology, Christian, Nonfiction, Christianity, Philosophy, Religion

386 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 13, 2006

About the author

Vern Sheridan Poythress was born in 1946 in Madera, California, where he lived with his parents Ransom H. Poythress and Carola N. Poythress and his older brother Kenneth R. Poythress. After teaching mathematics for a year at Fresno State College (now California State University at Fresno), he became a student at Westminster Theological Seminary, where he earned an M.Div. (1974) and a Th.M. in apologetics (1974). He received an M.Litt. in New Testament from University of Cambridge (1977) and a Th.D. in New Testament from the University of Stellenbosch, Stellenbosch, South Africa (1981).

He has been teaching in New Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia since 1976. In 1981 he was ordained as a teaching elder in the Reformed Presbyterian Church Evangelical Synod, which has now merged with the Presbyterian Church in America.

More information about his teaching at Westminster can be found at the Westminster Seminary website.

Dr. Poythress studied linguistics and Bible translation at the Summer Institute of Linguistics in Norman Oklahoma in 1971 and 1972, and taught linguistics at the Summer Institute of Linguistics in the summers of 1974, 1975, and 1977. He has published books on Christian philosophy of science, theological method, dispensationalism, biblical law, hermeneutics, Bible translation, and Revelation. A list of publications is found on this website.

Dr. Poythress married his wife Diane in 1983, and they have two children, Ransom and Justin. He has side interests in science fiction, string figures, volleyball, and computers.

The family lived on a farm until he was five years old. When he was nine years old he made a public commitment to Christ and was baptized in Chowchilla First Baptist Church, Chowchilla, California. The family later moved to Fresno, California, and he graduated from Bullard High School in Fresno.

He earned a B.S. in mathematics from California Institute of Technology (1966) and a Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard University (1970).

Reviews

[Philip · Rating 1 out of 5]

For some time now a number of ministers and mentors have encouraged me to have a look at Vern Poythress’ work. Here, I have been told on multiple occasions, is a Great Christian Scholar who really Thinks Things Through. Reading between the lines, the praise surrounding Poythress could easily be summarised as “Serious Clever Christians Read His Books”.

So it was with a certain degree of anticipation that I started reading Redeeming Science, in which Poythress seeks to lay out the interactions between Christianity and science. He largely does this in two interweaved strands: by discussing more philosophical issues – in broad terms, how to “do science” in the light of God; and by tackling specific scriptural issues such as Genesis 1-3.

The first of these strands introduces the book in an essay titled “Why Scientists Must Believe in God”. Scientists, Poythress argues, presuppose the existence of scientific laws; their job is to figure out what these laws actually look like. And the existence of scientific law implies a “law-giver” (p.19) which Poythress identifies as God. This is little more than the teleological argument, and by itself the teleological argument is not a persuasive proof for God’s existence. I do agree with Poythress that scientists must believe in God, but only for the same reasons that we must all believe in God (i.e. the Gospel). At best one could argue that the teleological argument points us in the direction of belief in God. However, it does not definitively bring us to that belief. Poythress’ argument in this opening chapter is therefore unpersuasive.

Unfortunately, this argument underpins much of what is presented throughout the rest of the book. Because I found it unconvincing all subsequent arguments resting upon it felt undermined.

The Bible never explicitly mentions science; therefore, many of the discussions about science and scientists felt forced. In particular, his discussion of Adam, Solomon and Christ as three models of scientists in Chapter 11 felt contrived. Poythress tries to glean specifics about science from discussions of wisdom in scripture. It is unsurprising, then, that much of the book feels like it could have been addressing not just scientists or science but all Christians and wisdom.

Poythress’ arguments are often confused or contradictory. In one section he emphasises that we must not try and draw scientific conclusions from scripture (p.98, quoting Calvin), but then goes on to spend the following 50 pages doing just that. More instances pop up, and I’ll highlight the most frustrating of these as I go on.

The chapters of this book evaluating science in the light of the creation accounts (and vice versa) are fundamentally flawed on two levels.

First, he is a New Testament scholar discussing the Old Testament. This means he is often out of his depth. He does not appreciate the difference between ’adam (Adam the man) and ha’adam (humanity, or Adam as an archetype). Poythress’ discussion of whether Eve was created from a rib or side of Adam (p.250-1) is limited by his lack of expertise. He acknowledges that sela‘ is only ever used as “side” in the rest of the Old Testament, but argues for “rib” since sela‘ was used to refer to anatomical ribs and not just “sides” in later Hebrew texts; he argues “rib” is necessary to make sense of Gen 2:21-22. However, this ignores a far larger body of linguistic evidence (including the use of similar words in other languages such as Akkadian and the Midrash Rabbah) which pushes things in favour for (at best) multiple ribs; he also ignores Gen 2:23 (“bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh”) which again could count against the single rib argument. He asserts with no justification that Adam was made from dust (p.254) and crucially does not study how the Hebrew “dust” is used in the rest of the Old Testament. His understanding of the ancient Near-East culture is insufficient: he does not realise that Gen 1-3 cannot concern material creation since the Ancient Near East did not thing in terms of material creation (see the works of John H. Walton, who in what seems to be a first is a scholar writing only about his area of expertise). Poythress' attempt to understand Genesis 1 is hence highly unsatisfactory.

Second, he somehow manages to spend a lot of time discussing science without ever actually citing any mainstream peer-reviewed scientific literature. (He cites dozens of theological journal articles and books, but only five “hard science” journal articles.) I am astounded that someone of Poythress’ stature is comfortable writing that there are serious gaps in the fossil records (with the implication being the gaps are bad enough to place macroevolution in doubt) (p.247) without any form of citation (be it of peer-reviewed scientific literature or otherwise). Poythress lists four books to provide a survey of “the difficulties with undirected macroevolution” (p.81). These books are written either by fringe scientists or non-scientists and have been lambasted by the mainstream scientific community as either logically flawed or intellectually dishonest (or both). Why can’t he find some literature that is respected by the peers of the authors? This is not the level of scholarship I expect from a Great Christian Thinker. This isn’t even what I would expect from a halfway-decent undergraduate student.

To his credit, he successfully debunks a series of pseudoscientific theories that attempt to justify a young universe (changing speed of light etc) without resorting to any of the relevant standard textbooks or papers. But citing suitable scientific literature would have only made his case stronger; I also felt he missed a few obvious flaws in the arguments presented.

When discussing macroevolution Poythress frequently lapses into criticising what he terms “evolutionary naturalism” (particularly in chapter 18). His criticisms of evolutionary naturalism are fine, if repetitive, and usually come shortly before or after he warns the reader not to get confused between macroevolution and evolutionary naturalism. By the end of the book I had the impression that Poythress’ suspicion of macroevolution arises mainly from the fact that a handful of scientists advocate evolutionary naturalism.

His discussion of intelligent design (chapter 19) is equally muddled. At one point he will emphasise the difference between primary and secondary causes of events (primary cause always being God; secondary being the mechanism used by God to actuate the event). Later on he will forget about the need for a secondary cause (or argue it isn’t even necessary).

Poythress is very much taken with the idea of irreducible complexity and spends a large amount of time discussing the flagellum bacteria. Unfortunately, he seems completely unaware of the scientific consensus which says that, actually, the flagellum is reducible.

Much of chapter 19 is spent refuting some of the arguments of one Intelligent Design critic, as if that somehow defeats all Intelligent Design criticism. A reader unfamiliar with the topic might be led to believe that this makes the case for Intelligent Design pretty strong. However, Poythress never addresses (or even mentions) the main criticism levelled at Intelligent Design: that it is nothing more than a God-of-the-gaps theory (a form of argument from ignorance). As the cases of irreducible complexity are gradually shown to actually be quite reducible (as in the case of the flagellum), the gaps where God were invoked get smaller and smaller until eventually the evidence (and fundamental motivation) for Intelligent Design disappears.

Poythress goes on to dismiss the alternatives to Intelligent Design as having “laughably low probabilities” (p.281). Ironically, Richard Dawkins’ argument against Intelligent Design uses the same basic idea. Even if the probability of an event occurring is “laughably low”, that doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. All we know for sure is that something has happened, and that in reality there are not a few but many, many outcomes which all have pretty low probabilities. Additionally, when one considers the timespans involved in which these events could have happened (hundreds of millions of years), the probabilities are harder to dismiss by laughing at them.

In the final three chapters of the book Poythress tries to show us how Christians should approach various scientific sub-disciplines (physics, maths and chemistry). As a physicist actively engaged in research I was looking forward to this part of the book and anticipated it as the culmination of everything that had come before. What, as a Christian, should make my approach to physics distinctive?

Poythress notes that basic physical laws, the solar system and music all rely on patterns and ratios. He notes that in Exodus God also uses ratios to describe the dimensions of the tabernacle (chapters 20-21). Poythress notes that Newton’s Second Law of Motion is rotationally invariant. He notes that God is also invariant (p.307). Poythress notes that there’s a lot of symmetry in physics. He notes that there is symmetry in the design of the Most Holy Place (p.309). Poythress says mathematics is stable. He notes that God is also stable (p.320).

So Christians get to notice that some of the words used in physics are (almost) also used in the Bible. Is that it?

Indeed, “Is that it?” more or less sums up my response to Poythress’ main arguments in this book. Scientists must be Christians because of the teleological argument. The creation of Earth in Gen 1 is not literal, but the creation of Adam and Eve in Gen 2 is. Evolution is problematic; Intelligent Design is better. Christian scientists can join a few dots that non-Christian scientists can’t. I really wanted to enjoy this book, but it failed to persuade me on any of the issues it discussed.

And yet Serious Clever Christians Read His Books. Something doesn’t quite add up.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poythress advances the teachings of Vantillian presuppositionalism into the realm of science. He's primarily concerned with showing the truth claims, particularly related to creation, found in the Bible are an expression of God's sovereign reign over creation and his power in sustaining the cosmos. This is the strongest, and most helpful aspect in the book.

He helpfully describes natural law as, "the law of God or word of God, imperfectly and approximately described by human investigators." God is the creator and law giver--even scientific laws. Man can approximately understand, interpret, and integrate them into their worldview, but as he demonstrates later in the book, our understanding of scientific laws is growing, but never complete. He uses the example of Newtonian physics as a way that God makes science accessible, but Einstein proved that while Newton was close to the truth, he still had much to learn and understand.

Poythress shows how science has become a modern form of idolatry. He writes:

"Modern people may no longer make idols in the form of physical images, but their very idea of “scientific law” is an idolatrous twisting of their knowledge of God. They conceal from themselves the fact that this “law” is personal and that they are responsible to him. Or they substitute the word “Nature,” personifying her as they talk glowingly of the works of “Mother Nature.” But they evade what they know of the transcendence of God over nature."

Again and again, he shows that science is a moral and spiritual pursuit. Modern science has rejected the possibility of a personal God who sustains the world, and replaced it with mechanistic processes and laws. Even Christians have adopted this idolatrous belief. Christians speak of a division between "the natural" and "the spiritual." In fact, God is sovereign over all--including what we so boldly assert as "natural."

He follows Van Til in critiquing neutrality. He writes, "...secularism conceals its own religious commitments by claiming that it is independent of religious commitment. It reinforces this half-truth by tolerating in its midst a small minority of “kooks” and eccentrics, including animists. The small minority of animists are welcome to practice their animistic views in private. As individuals they are welcome also to exercise their civic freedom by refraining from practicing science. By creating space for the kooks, secularism displays its alleged tolerance and religious neutrality and thereby confirms its claims and its plausibility for the modern person."

This is great stuff, and Poythress' critique of secularism is devastating because he is faithful to the teachings of Van Til. Unfortunately it is two steps forward and one step back--he's an old earth creationist seeking to maintain "scientific credibility."

Poytrhress shows these cards early on, writing:

"In the case of apparent discrepancies between the Bible and science, we must therefore be ready to reexamine both our thinking about the Bible and our thinking about science. We must not assume too quickly that the error lies in one particular direction. In the modern world, we find people who are always ready to assume that science is right and the Bible is wrong. Or, contrariwise, others assume that the Bible is always right and modern science is always wrong. But the Bible is always right, and should be trusted on that account."

Poythress tries to have it both ways--he wants biblical innerrancy, but he also wants to retain scientific credibility. He wants to have things both ways. Unfortunately, to do so, he has to use all sorts of creative devices to fit reconcile the Bible to science. Poythress argues for the "analogical day theory." This view "says that Genesis 1 sets up an analogy between God’s work and human work. God works six days and then rests on the seventh day. Man is to imitate this pattern by his Sabbath observance (Ex.20:11). God’s works are real (historical) acts of God in time and space. But God’s work is analogous to man’s work, rather than being on the same level." This may not seem controversial at first, but consider that this opens the door to redefining "day." Poythress claims, "Genesis 1–2 does not specify a particular clock-time length for the totality of the acts of creation." So rather than affirming day to mean a twenty-four hour period, he opens it to undefined periods of time (old earth).

So much of the book is concerned with Genesis 1 and 2 and the various ways Christians interpret it. He defines and evaluates the different options. This is an interesting part of the book, of course, but it is unfortunate that Poythress seems to sell out so easily to evolutionists and "scientific credibility."

Early on, Poythress rejects the idea that death did not exist prior to the fall. He writes, "we do not have any firm basis for saying that animal death started only after the fall of man. Again, we must beware of presuming to dictate to God what kind of world he had to create. It had to be “very good” in his sight; but that is not the same as saying that it must match what some of us may think ideal."

Of course it is true that the Bible nowhere states clearly that there was death on the earth prior to the fall. But one must also affirm that the entire force of the Bible clearly advances the notion that death did not in fact exist prior to the fall. He does not really do much to advance his claim, rather, he seems to believe that the boldness of his claim, along with the lack of any proof text to the contrary, will win over his readers.

Naturally, he uses this same sort of logic to argue that Genesis does not necessarily indicate the the Noahic flood was global. He uses semantic arguments to argue that "Genesis 6–9 by itself does not clearly indicate exactly how extensive the flood was. It covered an extensive area—the ordinary “world” of the ordinary person in the ancient Near East. Possibly it covered the entire globe, but Genesis does not turn this possibility into a certainty. Consequently, we must go out and look at other parts of the world, alert to what further information may appear there."

Nowhere does Poythress interact with the distinction between a theological cosmology and a scientific cosmology. The Bible's theological cosmology has earth at the center of the universe--meaning that planet earth is the theological center of the Bible. Earth is the center, not because of man, but because of God's unique work on planet earth. Upon planet earth God made man in his own image. His only Son took on the flesh of man and atoned for the sins of mankind. God has promised a new heavens and new earth. Earth is the theological center of the universe.

The scientific cosmology does have the sun at the center of our solar system. In no way does this contradict the Bible. The two perspectives can live in harmony together, but man's tendency is to affirm the scientific cosmology. In fact, man's tendency in history, has been to worship the sun.

Nowhere does Poythress consider the sun, having been made on the fourth day, as an implicit rejection of sun-worship--particularly prominent in Egypt, where the Israelites left, under the leadership of Moses, who is the acknowledged writer of Genesis. The sun is not a necessary aspect of creation--the sun was created AFTER "vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit..." The sun replaced God. God was and is the true light. The consequences of this understanding are profound.

Where Poythress believes moderns anachronistically cast "clock time" back upon the Bible and 24 hour days, "clock time" is in fact an aspect of creation. "Clock time" was created on day one. We've missed this because we, like the Egyptians, think too much of the sun, and not enough of the true light--God. We must have a theological cosmology, rather than scientific, at the core of our worldview.

The book, as another review wrote, is "Simultaneously great and atrocious."

[Josh Bauder · Rating 2 out of 5]

There’s a lot to like here. Poythress is nothing if not gracious, charitable, and fair, even and especially when engaging viewpoints that he does not share. Deeply committed to the inerrancy of Scripture, he ultimately favors an old-earth theistic perspective on the origins of Life, the Universe, and Everything. However, he treats the Mature Creation theory (the notion that God created the world with the appearance of age, exemplified by belly buttons, tree rings, and visible stars) as plausible, particularly when used to explain the apparent age of rocks and visible light. Less plausible—even, in his view, indefensible—is the frequent young-earther claim that rock dating methods are totally unreliable, skewed by a convenient combination of flood geology and materialist conspiracy.

But Poythress is weak when doing philosophy. His failure to carefully define science and miracle at the outset leads to significant confusion in the early chapters. In these chapters, Poythress embarks on an unusual defense of the claim that all scientists are actually theists, whether they admit it or not. Now, this claim is probably true. We need look no further than Romans 1 for evidence: What can be known about God is plain to the ungodly; His eternal power and divine nature are clearly shown in the things that are made. But Poythress goes further. He posits that those who believe in scientific laws implicitly believe in God because the scientific laws themselves are God. How do we know that? Because, says Poythress, all the attributes belonging to God (eternality, immutability, invisibility, truth, omnipotence, personality, etc.) also belong to scientific laws.

This strikes me as questionable reasoning, and Poythress’s defense of it doesn’t boost its credibility. Take, for example, this syllogism derived from Poythress's argument:

1. Anything with reason is a person.
2. All scientists agree that scientific laws are rational.
3. Ergo, scientific laws are personal.

The reason this doesn't work is that Poythress has conflated two meanings of the word rational. When we talk of people being rational, we're referring to a quality of mind by which they can consciously think, grasp concepts, deduce, and choose. But when we speak of scientific laws being rational, we mean something different. We don't mean that scientific laws possess consciousness, mind, or will; we're saying that the law is comprehensible to rational beings; that the law can be understood by persons, not that it is itself a person.

Poythress does the same trick again by insisting that since scientific laws can be expressed in words and symbols, the laws themselves are language-like; and language, like rationality, belongs only to persons, ergo scientific law is personal. This logic I find invalid. At no point should we affirm that scientific law is the thing doing the writing or the symbolizing, only that, like countless other impersonal things, it can be expressed through writing and symbols by rational persons.

The effort gets even more bizarre when Poythress tackles the attribute of righteousness. "If one attempts to disobey the law of gravity by jumping off a tall building," he writes, "he will suffer consequences. There is a kind of built-in righteousness in the way in which laws lead to consequences." Well, this is just silly, and it fails to acknowledge that the same consequences follow if one attempts to obey the law of gravity by jumping off a tall building. Obedience and disobedience are irrelevant precisely because, contra Poythress, the scientific law in question is impersonal.

Poythress is anxious to personalize scientific law in part, I think, to avoid a deistic approach to science. He strongly rejects the idea that God created a ticking machine which, despite a glacially-slow trend toward disorder, basically self-perpetuates while God busies Himself with other projects. "We ourselves may think of 'scientific law' as a kind of cosmic mechanism or impersonal clockwork that runs the world most of the time, while God is on vacation. God comes and acts only rarely through miracle. But this is not biblical… [God is involved] in caring daily for his world in detail" (28).

But Poythress simultaneously maintains "the eternality and omnipresence" of scientific laws, and he recommends that we use the universal assumption that "the [scientific] laws in back of technology are constant" as grounds for persuading others about God.

So we have a rather problematic contradiction: constant laws, but not mechanism or clockwork? Invariability of the rules, but daily intervention by God? Obviously those of us who affirm God's robust sovereignty don’t want to suggest that He has left the universe on autopilot to do its thing while He goes off somewhere else. But aren’t we led into other big problems if we go along with Poythress? If scientific law is not a reliable mechanism, then aren’t we denying that scientific laws exist at all? We would have to say that there are no regularities, general explanatory principles, intelligible patterns or systems—it just looks like there are. The whole time God is directly intervening on the physical world so that every event in the universe is, properly speaking, a miracle. Most of the time, admittedly, this intervention looks exactly the same; that is, what appears to be a law of gravity is just God intervening miraculously billions of times every second on myriad types of bodies all in exactly the same way—but at any moment he might choose to act miraculously in a different way.

Is there an alternative to this? Are there ways of rejecting deism without agreeing with Poythress that the laws governing the universe are God Himself acting directly, miraculously, and continuously? You bet there are. For instance, we could regard scientific law as comprising an impersonal, invisible gridwork created by God to govern some aspects of the physical world, principally motion—and that in miraculous events God suspends or circumvents that gridwork. At no point do we suggest God abandons His creation to work itself out; all events, both common and miraculous, proceed from the ordination of God. But the gridwork of scientific law serves as an organized system of means mediating between God’s will and common events; whereas an actual miracle uses no means, but is a direct act of God.

I happened to listen through Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism while working on this review, and a paragraph from Chapter 5 seemed particularly relevant:

A supernatural event is one that takes place by the immediate, as distinguished from the mediate, power of God. The possibility of the supernatural, if supernatural be defined in this way, presupposes two things—it presupposes (1) the existence of a personal God, and (2) the existence of a real order of nature. Without the existence of a personal God, there could be no purposive entrance of God's power into the order of the world; and without the real existence of an order of nature there could be no distinction between natural events and those that are above nature—all events would be supernatural, or rather the word "supernatural" would have no meaning at all. The distinction between "natural" and "supernatural" does not mean, indeed, that nature is independent of God; it does not mean that while God brings to pass supernatural events, natural events are not brought to pass by Him. On the contrary, the believer in the supernatural regards everything that is done as being the work of God. Only, he believes that in the events called natural, God uses means, whereas in the events called supernatural He uses no means, but puts forth His creative power. The distinction between the natural and the supernatural, in other words, is simply the distinction between God's works of providence and God's work of creation; a miracle is a work of creation just as truly as the mysterious act which produced the world.

The explanation offered by Machen gives us a viable alternative to Poythress, one which sustains the traditional equilibrium between God's immanence and His transcendence.

[Rick Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this book, Poythress seeks to provide a philosophical and theological basis for the practice and teaching of science. An excellent book, if uneven at times.

[Jeffrey Romine · Rating 5 out of 5]

For any readers out there who like to read books on science in the context of theism vs atheism, this is a must read. Seldom have I thought to myself that I want to read a chapter over again, but here I did. Poythress published this in 2006, and if I had been aware of it when my book published in 2016, I certainly would have quoted him many times. Our bibliographies are similar, and now I find myself wanting to track down his citations that I was not aware of.

[Nat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poythress is a very intelligent scholar who brings together in his own thought reformed theology, science, and higher mathematics in a way that is quite unique. From a reformed perspective, and specifically from the approach led by theologians such as Van Til and more recently John Frame, this book would probably be considered perfect. But Poythress is a bit too presuppositional for my liking and I found some of the more abstract chapters just uninteresting and tedious in a way that Van Tilians just often are. Some of the exegesis, particularly of Genesis 1 and 2, felt weak and contrived in a few areas due to Poythress's prior theological convictions (Gen 1:1 and Gen 2:21-23 stood out, see scholars such as J. Walton for, I think, a more convincing take on these verses).
Otherwise, Poythress's discussion on the various approaches to Genesis 1 was excellent and the survey of exegetical possibilities combined with the discussion of scientific hypotheses is the best I've come across. His defense of the analogical and framework approaches was very helpful combined with his excellent discussions on the weaknesses of the Young Earth positions e.g. 24 hour days, and mature creation. He also offers a solid defense of Intelligent Design, particularly drawing on Behe and Demski.
The initial discussion heavily drew heavily on reformed epistemology and ontology in analysing the nature of scientific law. Poythress uses his discussion to deduce that the law is divine and in fact, is the divine word. It was a very interesting argument and if it is true it is fascinating. I had though, a suspicion that the assumptions about what scientific law is though are heavily influenced by Calvinism, to begin with, Taylor describes something like this in the Secular Age. It is then interesting that this theological position generated, in a way that has almost been forgotten, the reformed assumptions that went into the science that then went on to be so incredibly successful. In which case, if my suspicion is right and Poythress has indeed got it backward, there might be a way of remounting the argument from the other direction.

[Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Crystal thinking. My dad will explain something, and then explain it again from a different angle, and then use about four more angles until he's sure you understand.

The depth of analysis seeps through the pages without drowning an average reader. One of the best taekaways is seeing the shallowness and distortion that comes when you flatten the world into a merely horizontal affair, which is what all the sciences do. It is particularly problematic however in the social sciences which handle the complexity of human beings, but try to do so without acknowledging God, sin, moral absolutes, or humans made in the image of God.

There are some good foundations laid here for how a Christian should do sociology, and thankfully it is not throw the whole thing out and start over. There are constantly useful observations made through secular sociology that are able to build and grow and improve over time because they are borrowing or leaning on the consistencies and regularities that God has built into the world. A Christian armed with this knowledge can repurpose observations that otherwise have no transcendent rhyme or reason to appeal to.

The other classic move my dad makes here is the critique of the snobbery and arrogance of academia. There is much hidden pride that comes in your ability to "stand back from the whole thing" and gain hidden knowledge, without realizing that your standing back is itself a dependent act and is itself socially constructed unless you're depending on God.

His linguistics and hermeneutics background comes heavily into play as he looks at particle, wave, and field perspective of sociology - the individual acts, the context of the behavior, and the larger field that the behavior is grouped in. (Jigsaw piece in puzzle, context of putting together a whole puzzle, field of puzzles)

[Karen · Rating 1 out of 5]

I got to chapter 9 and stopped there. I follow a young earth creationist view and was rather surprised at Poythress' arguments against the young earth view. I chose to keep reading though. What stopped me was his statements about people of the ancient near east and their view of the entire earth. The idea that he presents of a local flood instead of the flood covering the entire earth. In spite of the evidence around the world that the earth was covered with water. Evidence of earthquakes, volcanoes, and more. The plateau in North Dakota, dinorsaur bones buried quickly and deeply in Montana, South Dakota, and other places (fish fossils and more sea creatures as well) where there should not be remains of fish and shellfish! The hogbacks in the Front Range of Colorado that were created by the flood waters receeding. The carving of the Grand Canyon that could only happen by huge floodwaters going through! Creation.com had an excellent review of the problems and concerns with this book which I so appreciated! They did a great job sharing in detail what I was thinking.
https://creation.com/review-vern-poyt...

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Redeeming Science delves into an apologetic view on Christianity. The author, Vern Poythress, a man for whom I have the utmost respect, writes clearly and logically about the dependence of all creation and all of scientific study on God.

Frequent themes include the unity and diversity of the Triune God as displayed in creation, and the "divine attributes of scientific law" and how, while they deny it, all practicing scientists rely heavily on God's attributes.

It is VanTil's presuppositional apologetic applied to science. A Christian who appreciates the beauty of science and mathematics will greatly appreciate this book. While the author intends the book for a Christian audience, I can't help but feel that non-Christian scientists ought to read it so that they can see where their own worldviews fall short of explaining the discrepancies between their own practices and what they say they believe.

I even learned something new about math with the "casting out of nines"?! I can't believe that I've never heard of that before...The beauty of the Lord is astounding.

[Clemens · Rating 1 out of 5]

Poythress' work on the philosophy of science was recommended to me by a Protestant minister who I told about my studies in that field. Unfortunately, he hasn't read any of the recent literature in the field on the relation between theory and experiment, or the fallacies native to experiments in the first place (Collins's 'Experimenter's Regress' and Pickering's 'Against Putting the Phenomena First' come to mind, as do the names of Ian Hacking and Peter Galison). Therefore, Poythress' understanding of science remains positivistic and outdated - and he wilfully constructs it as something easily criticisable from a metaphysical point of view. But that has been done many times already. Science has been redeemed, just not by Christian semi-fundamentalists' conceptions of Biblical truths.

[Mike Blyth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book hoping it would add to my understanding of "Faith and Science," especially in the questions of evolution and creation. I was disappointed to find little useful or persuasive information.

What I appreciated most was Poythress' careful exposition of the fact that God is the ongoing ground of all creation, so that it is impossible to separate scientific laws from God, nature from God, natural processes from divine processes, and so on. Thus whether they recognize it or not, scientists are studying God's truth, indeed his character.

The author pushes quite hard against materialistic scientists who are blind to this, but, unfortunately, he touches only very gingerly on the other side of the same equation, i.e. believers who fail to see that a naturalistic explanation of something does not exclude God as its primary cause, since he is the ground of everything in an immanent way, not in a deistic sense. He does in fact mention this, as when he points out that God could have originated caused the bacterial flagellum by from nothing, from existing matter, or even through evolution and it would not diminish his role as creator.

The book is very weak on scientific issues such as the age of the universe, geological history, and evolution, and is not worth reading for those perspectives. Young earth flood geology and "mainline" geology are spoken of as if they are on the same footing, though with stronger the evidence for the latter. The geological evidence itself is not discussed.

Regarding evolution, the book echoes a Discovery Institute ID approach (indeed being endorsed by Hugh Ross and Fazale Rana) without precluding anything from 7-day creation to evolutionary creationism. It repeats a few of the standard arguments such as the irreducible complexity of the flagellum, but in no way engages criticisms of ID.

The book does speak rather approvingly of something I had not heard before, "ideal time," a twist on the apparent-age argument. So called "ideal time," perhaps better named "virtual time," refers to the entire apparent history of the universe embedded at the time of creation to make it look mature. In this view, God not only created the universe with apparent age, but also with an entire, coherent history: "The universe appears to be 14 billion years old because God created it mature. Moreover, the universe is coherently mature, in the sense that estimates of age deriving from different methods arrive at similar results" (p.116).

So far, this is just an extended statement of apparent age. The interesting part is next: "But then the fossils do not represent the remains of animals or plants that were actually alive millions of years ago. They represent a coherent mature structure that shows how God would have worked, millions of years ago, if he had started back then creating and extinguishing various kinds of animals over long periods of time" (p. 116). This is what the author calls "ideal time," the way history would have been if God had not fast-forwarded.

Whoa, wait just a minute, how is that again? The omnipotent, eternal, omniscient Creator is expressing a counter-factual situation, "How I would have created the universe if I had done it differently," then embedding all of that into a real universe? I suppose it could be the most efficient way of instantiating a new universe ... why wait for billions of years for actual state transitions of matter when you can simply start with one of the advanced states?

Fascinatingly, the book then goes on to approve of scientists who study this "ideal" history! Referring to geologist Davis Young's complaint that the mature history view would imply he is wasting time studying the geological past, Poythress says, "All his effort is quite meaningful as an investigation of the processes that he is seeing in ideal time. The coherence of processes in ideal time is also an aspect of the display of God's wisdom, and Young makes a genuine contribution by studying this wisdom." Perhaps this makes prehistoric geology comparable to literary criticism: geologists are important because they reveal the themes in God's novel of what he would have done.

In any case, this all seems pointless since there is, by definition, no way to distinguish real and ideal time. Rather, it's simply a device that allows one to accept a 14-billion year old universe concurrently with a recent creation: "Yes, the universe is 14 billion years old, but God actually started it at the 13.99999 billion year point, 10 thousand years ago."

Nor does the author explain how this in any way helps reconcile any view of Genesis with any view of science. Suppose, for example, you believe in 7-day creation with all the sea animals created together, but are not sure how that fits with geological evidence. What does it mean to say that geology shows "how God would have worked," i.e. totally differently? Why would have God worked completely differently than he did? What does that even mean? Why would he leave evidence that he acted differently than he actually did? It is certainly not something I could ever explain in an discussion with an unbeliever, and it is certainly not something that would help me personally.

In the end, the book is probably most useful for people with strong Reformed backgrounds who are interested in faith-science issues, and those with the same background who hold to a strict young earth creationism but are willing to consider alternatives proposed by someone else with Reformed credentials. (I know, I didn't go into the aspects of the book that make it strongly Reformed, but it is.)

[Dave Hayes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book after reading a series of articles by Poythress on Genesis 1 and 2. His reminder that the Genesis record is a sparse account was helpful.

The obvious, but vital observations about the fact that clocks weren't invented by Moses gives rise to the need for considering interactive time, as opposed to clock time.

Poythress also makes much of the many analogies from creation to our present world. These observations are helpful in understand imaging, likeness and how Genesis teaches us much about our great God and how to glorify him.

Well worth a place on any bookshelf!

[Mike Bright · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a thorough discussion of the relationship between science and religion from a conservative Christian perspective. Although clearly stressing the Christian side, Dr. Poythress is fair to secular scientists. I found his arguments compelling, but I am already on that side. I don't think this book would be compelling to a non-Christian. However, I appreciated Dr. Poythress' dedication to Scripture. He made a number of analogies that were new to me. I don't think I would make all the arguments he did, but they were interesting.

[Adam T. Calvert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall I enjoyed the main message of the book, and I'll take away a better understanding of science-as-a-discipline, its foundation, its practice, its weaknesses, its value, and its ability to glorify God -- all great things to be able to take away from a reading of a single book!

But I did find some of the sections a little difficult to get through (his talk on imaging was pretty difficult to grasp on one reading). I also think Dr. Poythress was a little inconsistent in some of his views. For instance, on the one hand, he maintains that the Bible was written in simple language to be understood by all cultures, and it was not written (especially Genesis 1 and 2) to be a science textbook with technical details on how God created the world. But then later he makes great strains, in technical language, to show that the 'Analogical Day Theory' makes more sense than the '24-Hour Day Theory' based on his 'analogical' hermeneutic, which I find hard to believe was used by the original audience.

Regarding the creation account in Genesis it seems he has not read many primary sources on the 24-Hour Day Theory, but simply operates on the premise that "if C. John Collins addresses the issue, it's best just to agree with him." As good and philosophical and interesting as Poythress' work was in this area, I think it still leaves much to be clarified. In the end he ends up being a six-day creationist (or does he?) with some caveats: "We are nearly, but not quite, saying the same thing as the modern 24-hour-day viewpoint" (p. 222). It's really interesting because his arguments are quite convincing in some areas, but at the same time they don't always seem to coincide with what he originally said about the nature of God's Word and how it is to be interpreted. But there are also areas where his arguments don't seem to be convincing at all! For a very critical review on his work regarding the creation account and also the flood, see http://creation.com/review-vern-poyth... (I do agree with some of the points this review brings up - especially those pertaining to the creation and the flood; however, I think there is more to be said for this work than just Dr. Poythress' regrettably unbalanced view of these two areas). Whatever one's position though Dr. Poythress certainly challenges all to think through their position more deeply and make sharper, Biblically-based distinctions (even if he himself does not seem to do it).

But creation is certainly not the only thing his book addresses. Poythress writes on the necessity of God for 'science' even to be possible (a transcendental argument for the existence of God). He addresses the basis of science found in the cultural mandate given to Adam, how Christ has redeemed science in becoming the last-Adam, and how Christians can continue to redeem science by operating it under the authority of God's Word and applying it to His glory. He deals with the nature of reality, the nature of truth. He writes on a Christ-centered approach to physics, chemistry, mathematics, and other disciplines, and he touches on a host of other interesting topics as they pertain to investigative science and how it is to be used to the glory of God. He also gives some insightful demonstrations on the science of beauty and art - based on proportionalites given in God's Word!

Poythress is extremely intelligent and also very humble. His writing can push the reader to the limit in thinking, but he is gracious in encouraging the reader that abstract concepts really are a difficult matter. However, all the while he somehow gets across his knowledge and ever points the reader to Christ as the final and absolute source and interpreter of any and every science.

While one may not always agree with what Poythress states or concludes, this book is definitely going to make one think. It can get very technical at times and is not intended for every audience.

But I would certainly recommend it to:

(a) Pastors who want to know more about the philosophy of science and be able to stir about in their flocks a love for glorifying God in all they do,

(b) Educated layman in the church who have a desire to learn about the nature and philosophy of science from a Christian point of view, and

(c) All Christian science teachers who want to know the foundations of what it is that they teach and the implications of it, which can so strongly improve their ability to bring everything back to God's Word and upward to God's glory.

However, because of Dr. Poythress' views on the creation week and the flood, I would also recommend to the same audience several other books by six-day creationists (24-Hour-Day-View advocates), which will provide a more balanced approach to that topic. These would include books by authors like John C. Whitcomb, Henry Morris, Jason Lisle, Donald DeYoung, Jonathan Sarfati, and many other folks who write or have written for 'Answers in Genesis,' 'Creation Ministries International,' and 'The Creation Research Institute.'

May our Lord bless you in your studies as you know Him more!

-Adam T. Calvert

P.S. Because of Poythress' generosity in dispensing the knowledge God has given him, you can get an electronic form of this book for free at the following URL: http://www.frame-poythress.org/poythr...

[Laurent Dv · Rating 4 out of 5]

Van Tilian and neocalvinist view of science, a good theology of science. Good defense of analogical view on Genesis 1 days. Very good explanation of Genesis 1 (context, applications for a christian view of creation, meaning of heaven, earth, phenomenalistic vocabulary)

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read for every science teacher, especially those in Christian schools. An excellent chapter on math, too!

[Lynley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was long. Also there was an entire chapter of straight up math. But I like math so that was fine.

[Justis Richards · Rating 4 out of 5]

The arguments in this book on creation literally blew my mind

[Patrick S. · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first part of this books starts out as a Van Tillian presuppositional approach to how we know things. Poythress' first chapter needed a little help. He says he's not claiming some type of pantheistic system but an initial reading seems to suggest that. It wasn't after another slow read through that I understood that Poythress was saying (that ONLY true natural laws reflect God's characteristics). After that, I thought this book might have some promise.

Where the book fails is Poythress' understanding on not only Genesis 1 but especially the Flood. While his understanding on Genesis 1 doesn't topple the first half of his book, he builds a week argument for a local Flood. However, he doesn't interact with some of the most basic arguments against his position.

The book then splits at Chapter 11 and any momentum (other than using the first three chapters) takes a halt to this new line of thinking. The main thrust of his argument is that not only can Christians do work but the Christian worldview is necessary to do science. And while there are a few gems throughout the remainder of the book, it really falls short on content. He makes his case fine but he will fail to define his terms well enough or fail to deal with an obvious objection or sometimes he just won't be clear enough on his position. Poythress' intelligence is without question and it shows in the later sections, his philosophy can be shakey at times.

The last quarter of the book doesn't really add much to his thesis. It just seems to be, look how cool nature is - it shows the beauty of God's design. All those topics are interesting and can be written about well and purposefully, however, they don't really belong here and especially with very little philosophical or theological implications stated. "It's pretty" doesn't really work well with epistemology.

I would not be willing to recommend this to people who are wanting to know more on the topic. There are other books that have done it better, even from a more scientific approach and even a better Reformed epistemology approach. I would, also, not be picking this book up again to reference again. It's not all bad by any means. There are just some sloppy points and the few gems are not worth the effort. Final Grade - D

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Science is a process of describing the way the universe works. It codifies experimental data into a series of "laws"--equations that effectively predict the outcome in a given circumstance. Scientists rely on these laws, and assume that they exist--in fact, part of the atheist's argument is that the more predictable the universe, the less we need to rely on the existence of a god to explain it. Poythress contends the opposite: that the existence of natural laws is testimony to the existence of an eternal, unchanging God controlling everything. The laws are reliable because God is faithful. When a scientist studies natural laws, he is not studying some impersonal machine, but the continuous actions of a consistent God.

After all, why should there be natural laws? Why should actions in the world be repeatable? Why should the same equations work equally well at the bottom of the ocean or on the surface of the moon? That the world does work this way is a central principle on which all science is based, but there is no reason for it, apart from God. This is the concept behind Poythress's seemingly outrageous statement: all scientists, whether they acknowledge it or not, believe in God, because they rely on the character of God for their work.

Poythress lays out his argument clearly and relentlessly, leaving little ground to object from the point of view of either Scripture or science. He takes apart the question of Genesis 1 with similar confidence, bringing the reader to understand what Genesis does and does not say, distinguishing between teachings that are theologically indispensable for those who take the Bible seriously, as opposed to issues on which Genesis simply does not speak. At each step, he is logical, easy to understand, and humble. There is no ranting here, no vitriol, no cheap shots at opponents' positions. He wants his readers to love Scripture and love science, just as he does, and it shows.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poythress does an incredible job breaking down worldviews, science, and faith. His grasp of science in general and his detailed understanding of theology and the Bible, help build the nuances one needs to appreciate the world around us. I most appreciated his gracious rebuttal to Young Earth Creationism (YEC) using both Scripture and science and his fair explanation of other interpretations of the Genesis account. I have a much deeper understanding of the Genesis account and much more detailed explanation for what I believe with regards to the Bible's account of creation. I also feel more confident with regards to how to approach science as a Christian in a way that is worshipful and in awe of the work God does in our universe.

As a lay person, there were moments when the book was definitely pushing me to reach higher, and I felt like it stretched my understanding of God, of science, and of my faith.

My single critique and why I dropped of a star, has to do with the final few chapters. Poythress has a graduate degree in mathematics and that is very apparent as the book draws to a close. I found his point, to highlight the beauty of God in mathematics, physics, chemistry, got lost under the myriad of examples he provided. Had I been his editor, I would have limited his examples to one or two and condensed the last few chapters into one comprehensive one. I would suggest anyone who reads this simply to skim the last few chapters.

[Leandro Couto · Rating 4 out of 5]

An extremely well researched book, offering an extensive bibliography, and Poythress (a true polymath) exposes well the Christian scientific worldview. His main point is that science fully depends on God, for He is sovereign above all natural and supernatural matters, and the difference between the two is in our limited point-of-view. He offers several views on reconciling the Creation in Genesis and Science, some of them are very good. He draws many parallels between scientific laws and truth and God's attributes, which to me is another highlight. The nitty-gritty analogies later in the book (Biology, Chemistry, Math) I found to be more hit and miss, depending on your personal interests, but the first half of the book is very enlightening, and Poythress is respectful, bible-affirming and God-fearing. A great book with some complex technical and philosophical parts.

[Gordon]

I have finished this book and my overall analysis is that it was okay. There were definitely some good things throughout the book. I found his presentation of different views on evolution and his distinction between evolution and naturalism to be helpful.

But there were times that I felt the author was getting lost in his thoughts and it was difficult to understand what his point was. I often found myself wondering who the intended reader was for this book. I felt like the average person would have a tough time understanding many of the examples that were presented from biology, chemistry, physics, and math. I know I had trouble understanding some of them.

[Jay Brand · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful, courageous call for science to accept Biblical revelation as its foundation. Because God created the world and inspired the Bible, it only makes sense that the two views of truth would be compatible; in fact, because Jesus Christ is "the Truth" (and He created the world and inspired the Word), it would be impossible for these two magisteria to be fundamentally incommensurate--as the late Stephen J. Gould claimed. Of course, Dr. Gould was trying to protect religious faith from ridicule, and for that, I applaud his efforts. Nonetheless, science, rightly understood, will enhance and nurture faith rather than undermining it--as this book maintains.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book sat on my shelf for a while while I plucked up the courage to read it. I needn't have waited. The writing was clear and straightforward but perceptive and deep.
Highlights were the wonderfully tolerant, balanced and fair treatment of the "creation debate" and the joyful look at how God expresses himself through music, physics, chemistry and mathematics.
This will be my go-to handbook for a brief yet useful Christian theology of creation, intelligent design, and other scientific theories.

[John Lussier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poythress writes about science from a God-centered approach. Of course, for him this means a particularly Christian variety of God, but I'm down with that so I didn't mind.

Strength: overall program of looking at science from the viewpoint of Christian theology. Comes to some surprising conclusions.

Weakness: gets bogged down by conservative Christian hot topics like young earth creationism. Does very little to address technology and focuses more on the theoretical sciences (math and physics).

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

i always felt that science neither proves nor disporves GOD - evyerone approach it based on their worldview. it's unfortunate that the study of science has become mainly secular field of study. it was a breath of fresh air to read someone approaching science w/ a biblical worldview. as an added feature, i felt dr. poythress presented good arguments for evidences of GOD by showing the correlation between natural law and attributes of GOD.

[Ross Gunderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poythress does what he does best in this book. The reader should keep in mind that Poythress is a Mathematician and Biblical scholar. He does well in giving biblical insight into the passages which usually ask for scientific clarity. He also does an excellent job of provoking thought. You can definitely learn from his wisdom. I had the lucky opportunity of having dinner with the man. :)

[Philip · Rating 3 out of 5]

Humble, Scripture-based, God-centered argument for either the mature creation 24-hr view or the framework/analogical day theory, ultimately favoring the latter.

Note: I only read Chpts 1, and 4-10, discussing theories on the age of the earth and the meaning of "day" in Genesis 1, which were part of the required reading for an apologetics class.

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gotta be honest and say that I haven't actually finished this one. But I have read the first five or so chapters several times and come back to them every few years. They really shaped my understanding of how my faith and my discipline (science) can coexist and even work together. Helpful insight for the Christian who is considering the value of science as a means of knowing.