Kuyper on Overlapping Magisteria

by Mark WardOct 19, 2012Culture2 comments

[All knowledge] proceeds out of faith. All science presupposes that we ourselves believe; presupposes a belief that the laws of thinking are correct; presupposes beliefs about life; and presupposes above all faith in the principles from which we proceed…. The conflict is not between faith and science, but between the claim that the present state of the cosmos is normal or abnormal…. It is not faith and science, but two scientific systems that stand, each with their own faith, over against each other…. They are both in earnest, disputing with each other across the entire domain of life and cannot desist from the attempt to pull to the ground the entire edifice of each other’s contradictory claims.

—Abraham Kuyper’s 1898 Stone Lectures at Princeton

← previous POST NEXT POST →

NEVER MISS A POST

Get each new post in your email inbox.

Identity: A Biblical Worldview of Yourself (Part 1: Cultural Analysis)

I delivered the following talk during the Sunday school hour at Tri-County Bible Church in Madison, Ohio, pastored by my longtime, respected friend Joe Tyrpak. Watch or read. Or both. Or neither—and skip to the end for some book recommendations.Today in Sunday school...

Review: The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? by Michael J. Sandel

The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? by Michael J. SandelMy rating: 5 of 5 starsI loved Sandel's book Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? His power is incisive analysis: he cuts to the Augustinian heart of divisive issues using classic...

Review: The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self

The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution by Carl R. Trueman.My rating: 5 of 5 stars I'm hoping to publish in a journal a more extensive review of this excellent—though long and at times...

From My Correspondence: Is Western Music White Supremacist? A Christian Response

This video on “white supremacy” in Western music theory recently got some attention from intelligent friends and acquaintances. It claims that Western music theory is racist—white supremacist, to be precise—for teaching only the musical style of 18th century European...

« Older Entries

Next Entries »

2 Comments

Aaron Blumer on October 21, 2012 at 11:14 pm

Great quote… but I don’t get the bold part.
- Mark L Ward Jr on October 22, 2012 at 10:40 am
  
  What he’s getting at is that the present state of the cosmos is abnormal because of the Fall, that Genesis 3 and Romans 8:20–21 ought to be part of our lenses as we view the world. Otherwise we’re going to conclude what David Barash did in the L.A. Times a few years back:
  
  Current believers in creationism, masquerading in its barely disguised incarnation, “intelligent design,” argue similarly, claiming that only a designer could generate such complex, perfect wonders. ¶ But, in fact, the living world is shot through with imperfection. Unless one wants to attribute either incompetence or sheer malevolence to such a designer, this imperfection — the manifold design flaws of life — points incontrovertibly to a natural, rather than a divine, process, one in which living things were not created de novo, but evolved. Consider the human body. Ask yourself, if you were designing the optimum exit for a fetus, would you engineer a route that passes through the narrow confines of the pelvic bones? Add to this the tragic reality that childbirth is not only painful in our species but downright dangerous and sometimes lethal, owing to a baby’s head being too large for the mother’s birth canal.
  
  What the Bible attributes quite directly to the Fall (Gen. 3:16), Barash calls “natural.” If a Christian who works in science won’t bring the Fall into his work, he has no way of disputing Barash. Because Barash is right: if there’s a designer and there’s no Fall, that designer is malevolent.