SCIENTISTS ARE NOT AUTHORITIES ON THE CHRISTIAN FAITH

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 60, 25 June 1948, Page 7

SCIENTISTS ARE NOT AUTHORITIES ON THE CHRISTIAN FAITH

(Contributed by the Ministers’ Association)

In the course of an article in Living Links, the quarterly journal of the Merchant Service Officers’ Christian Association, Dr F. W. Boreham, the well-known New Zealand Presbyterian minister, remarks:— “I notice a tendency in modern preaching to exaggerate the importance of scientific opinion. It seems to be taken for granted that the conclusions of eminent scientists and celebrated philosophers give to the Faith a sanction and an authority that it would not otherwise possess. I am not prepared to accept that assumption. “I have never felt free to parade the opinions of scientists and philosophers on distinctly religious subjects, because I have never felt that they are authorities on those subjects. At this moment, the general consensus of scientific and philosophical thought is most strongly favourable to the Faith. “But the present cordiality between the scientist and theologian is a fresh development. There is nothing to guarantee its permanence. And if scientific and philosophical thought became once more strongly sceptical, should I feel that my position as a Christian teacher was appreciably weakened? Not a bit of it. “And just because I should, in. that case, go on with my work as though nothing had happened, it seems to me to be scarcely fair or seemly to be unduly elated at the sympathetic smiles of our great thinkers, or to assume that my sage gains in authority through their endorsement “The fact i* that we have a Faith which cannot be shocked by the contempt of ‘second-class passengers’ and which, therefore, derives no real support from their corroboration and patronage. For there is always this difference between those passengers beyond the barrier and myself—they must always speak with hesitation whilst I speak with unwavering assurance.” Science and philosophy never find God, says Dr Boreham, they, merely find evidence for the existence of a God. It is the offer of a stone to a child crying for bread. For who wants only evidence?