If you grew up in Sunday school you may have been told, quietly or loudly, that science and faith are enemies — that you must choose. This series rejects that premise. The author of Genesis is also the author of every photon, every quark, every vibrating string of energy at the bottom of physical reality. To love Him with all your mind (Matt 22:37) is to take both books with full seriousness.
Dennis Zetting’s A Quantum Case For God — the book this twelve-week series engages — makes a modest and powerful claim. Not that science proves God, but that the discoveries of modern quantum and string physics have eroded every scientific basis on which one might confidently assert that a creator God cannot exist. And, in many specific cases, the physics reveals exactly the kind of reality scripture predicts.
This week sets the stage. We look at the doctrine of two books, the Pauline claim that creation is a legible witness, and the thread that will tie every following week together: God speaks; reality answers.
τὰ γὰρ ἀόρατα αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ κτίσεως κόσμου τοῖς ποιήμασιν νοούμενα καθορᾶται, ἥ τε ἀΐδιος αὐτοῦ δύναμις καὶ θειότης, εἰς τὸ εἶναι αὐτοὺς ἀναπολογήτους.For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
οἱ οὐρανοὶ διηγοῦνται δόξαν Θεοῦ, ποίησιν δὲ χειρῶν αὐτοῦ ἀναγγέλλει τὸ στερέωμα·The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
τῷ λόγῳ τοῦ Κυρίου οἱ οὐρανοὶ ἐστερεώθησαν, καὶ τῷ πνεύματι τοῦ στόματος αὐτοῦ πᾶσα ἡ δύναμις αὐτῶν.By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.
The Doctrine of Two Books
Augustine of Hippo (354–430) wrote: «It is the divine page that you must listen to; it is the book of the universe that you must observe.» The metaphor traveled through Aquinas, Bonaventure, Galileo, Bacon, Kepler, Newton, and into the Reformation. Calvin called the world theatrum gloriae Dei — the theater of God’s glory. The instinct is the same in all of them: the same God authored both. Read either honestly and you arrive at the same Author.
The Thread That Ties Every Week
Genesis 1 records ten times that «God said.» Psalm 33 says the heavens were made by His word and framed by the breath of His mouth. Hebrews 11:3 says the worlds were framed by the spoken word of God. John 1 calls Christ Himself the Logos — the Word — through whom all things were made. Speech is vibration of air. Vibration of air is the macroscopic shadow of a vibrating string at the bottom of physical reality. The whole physical universe, on the modern account, is one continuous, sustained vibration. The whole physical universe, on the biblical account, is a sustained Word. The two books say the same thing.
Pleasant Springs Church — Discipleship School