Dear Dr Newman

This letter has just come into the office. I thought it expressed some great sentiments, so here 'tis, with slight edits (apologies to RG, the author).


Dear Dr Newman,

It was a great encouragement to hear you speak at Leura on Sunday. Unfortunately, I was not able to hear your subsequent talks, as prior business commitments prevented my attendance at them.

Today, so many Christians seem to be intimidated by science, or what is presented as science. But without coming to grips with what science is, and that much which is passed off as science is more philosophising in scientific language and terms than actual science.

Even further, there are those Christians who have been so overwhelmed by the prestige of science that they have gone beyond recognising it as a valid occupation of the mind, it being our work of coming to grips with the creation God has set us within. They have instead allowed the philosophising underlying all modern life, which is largely dressed up as science, to displace the word of God!

I am referring, of course, to the questions that cluster about origins, and the contest often and erroneously created between the words of holy writ and the current beliefs of scientists, popular apologists and public commentators; usually relayed by the press or television programs.

It quite distresses me that Christians have been swept up with the press of contemporary opinion, without due reflection, in my view, and adopted the idea of evolution as providing the means God used to create. It was therefore very pleasing to hear you clearly explain that science is about what is, not speculation on unique events such as our Lord’s miracles, or indeed his acts in creation; which must constitute his grand miracle.

The Holy Spirit, in the Bible, sets out our relationship to God between the two poles of creation and re-creation. To allow the speculative ideas of ‘evolution’ with their origin in pagan thinking, and mid 19th century ideas that sought to disconnect God and his creation, to intrude on the Biblical revelation as if to supplant it (which I must say, it has done in many minds) is grievous. It removes God and his loving brooding Spirit from the scene. After all, evolution is the doctrine of the universe making itself (Roms 1:25) and can only rely on myriads of errors and dead ends. It is riven with death and destruction. This is the very antithesis of the God who is love creating in love, to bring forth those in is image. After all, he said it is “very good” not “marred and troubled!”

The scriptures I reflect on in this connection are these.

I start of course with the creation account in Genesis and see no reason to depart from the straightforward reading of the text (also Ex 20:11), the tradition of the early church and the reformers, that God created in six days. The widespread view of the current church, that we can set aside the revelation with all sorts of strained interpretations shows more the influence of a world that starts its thinking without God than the church making a prophetic confrontation on the basis of God’s word with the deceiver. If there were a view apart from the direct meaning of the Scripture, the early interpreters would have relayed it, as even in their day there were pagan doctrines of a very old cosmos that had created itself.

Of course, Paul’s direct and indirect references to creation, and his reliance on this teaching in his instruction about the new creation always influlences my thinking, but the capstone is Hebrews 11:4, where we are told the means of God’s creation: his word, out of nothing and without intermediary processes (“By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible”). Faith here is not what the world thinks of faith, as ‘wishful thinking’ but is reliance on God’s word for that information otherwise not available.

Once more, thank you for your work and your helpful sermon. I pray all the best for you.