The scientific relationship between God and the world | City Bible Forum
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The scientific relationship between God and the world

If the core of Christianity is Jesus what does that have to do with science? More than you'd think...
Wed 7 Sep 2011
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3 galaxies together - Nasa photoI’m no scientist, nor the son of a scientist but I’ve been emailing backwards and forwards with an atheist friend about the relationship between Christianity and science. One of the objections raised by my friend is that the core of Christianity: Jesus’ life, death and resurrection has nothing to do with science. And so, how can science and Christianity have anything to do with each other?

My friend is right. Jesus is at the core of Christianity. However, this cannot be separated from the concept that God made the world making it independent from himself yet contingent.

The world is independent of God but contingent on God. So, God is not the world and the world is not God.

This was/is historically the basis of the scientific method. How? Well, it means that the world, the physical matter, can be studied and observed on its own terms, without reference to a divine being.

This idea, that God made an independent but contingent world is not an idea that is peripheral to Christianity. It is at its centre. Consider John 3:16. Here is a sentence that is all about Jesus but only makes sense when viewed in light of the pivotal idea God made the world.

"John 3:16-17 16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him."

If we apply this verse to other ways of viewing the relationship between the world (or universe) and God it makes little sense. For example, Pantheism - God is the world and the world is God.

How can God have 'so loved the world'? He loved himself perhaps? But then why doesn't it just say that?

But then how can God send or give his son to the world? Perhaps, again he sent his Son to himself? But again why doesn't it just say that?

How does God intend to save the world which is really himself? It becomes nonsensical.

The basis on which John 3:16 needs to be read is all the way back in Genesis 1:1. ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’

If you miss this sentence you miss a lot.
This is saying, God is not the world. He is independent from it. It is independent from him. But he is the creator and so it is contingent.

Interestingly, if you read the first few sentences of John's gospel, John seems to have the act of creation in mind. John takes us back to the relationship between God and the world, before explaining how God was going to save it.

So, in short Christianity, is all about Jesus' his life, death and resurrection. But this makes no sense without the larger framework that Jesus’ life, death and resurrection was all about rescuing the world. This world and in particular the people in it were made by God and so he wants to rescue them. God wants to rescue the independent but contingent world.

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