Biblical Anthropology is Science

Alice C. Linsley

“There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.” --Stephen Hawking


Hawking's statement has been criticized as an absurd opposition between religion based solely on authority and science based solely on observation. However, Hawking is correct in asserting this distinction. All religions claim textual authorities or, in the case of pre-literate societies, oral tradition. Science does well to the degree that empirical approaches are necessary to verify laws, patterns and substances of the material world.  However, true religion and true science are not so different in their method.  Both make assertions based on observation.  They simply observe things differently.  The scientist must work with the material world, so I work with the biblical text.  Religion observes the material world and its metaphysical extension.

As a biblical anthropologist, I apply science to the study of the Bible.  I'm seeking data on the pages of the biblical text that either confirm or disprove my hypothesis. When it comes to analysis of the kinship patterns of Abraham's Horite people the results are replicable by anyone and the results would be the same regardless of who, where and when the analysis was done. When something is both replicable and universal it is authoritative.

The ancient Afro-Asiatics layed the foundation for many branches of science. They made discoveries in animal husbandry, plant cultivation, the discovery of antibiotics, metal work, astronomy, geometry and algebra. For the ancient Afro-Asiatics, who were both scientists and deeply religious, there was never a conflict. They observed patterns in the heavens and on earth and what they observed spoke to them about the Creator. St Paul says that this is how God designed things.  He wrote that God's eternal power and divine nature are clearly perceived by means of what God created. In other words, the order of creation reveals the invisible qualities of the Godhead (Romans 1:20). Hawking is a very bright man, but he doesn't hold a candle to the Apostle Paul when it comes to understanding the antecedents of the natural world and its metaphysical extension.

Even Jacques Derrida, an Arabic-speaking Jew from Algeria, identified a constant metaphysical presence which has been called by different names. Derrida wrote, “It would be possible to show that all the terms related to fundamentals, to principles, or to the center have always designated the constant of a presence, ... essence, existence, substance, subject, ... transcendentality, consciousness or conscience, god, man, and so forth.”

False science does not succeed in being authoritative because it ignores "the constant of a presence" or makes Man that constant. We might argue with Hawking over the significance of human existence, but his assertion that religion is based on authority and science on observation is mostly true. Ultimately, true religion and true science seek to encounter and describe what is real and true.  Both bow to "the constant of a presence" at the center.  However, western science often grows frustrated by the necessity of negative definition. It is an approach more comfortable to the eastern mind. Saying "something isn't" is also a statement about presence, and this is how God's divine nature and non-material reality is most often described in the Semitic world.


Related reading:  What Does a Biblical Anthropologist Do?; Is Biblical Anthropology an Oxymoron?; Genesis and Jacques Derrida; Biblical Anthropology and Antecedents

The Biblical Worldview vs that of Materialists

“For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes....” Romans 1:16

Alice C. Linsley


It is difficult for materialists to approach the study of the Bible, religion, or the question of faith with anything resembling objectivity.  The material world is all there and miracles are, in the words of David Hume, "a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent."  An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (Section 10)  This is not the biblical view of miracles, but that hardly matters when one relegates the Bible, religion, and faith to the realm of fantasy, invention and superstition. Materialists regard religion in general as the invention of deluded minds. To their way of thinking those who believe that miracles happen and Jesus Christ is the Son of God are naive, brain-washed or stand to profit from their connection to the religious establishment. Their confidence, contrary to the evidence, rests on the assumption that this Gospel concerning Jesus Christ is a conspiracy, a fabrication.

No wonder they prefer to ignore scientific research that verifies biblical claims. For example, materialists are generally not interested in biblical archaeology or biblical anthropology because both draw on science to verify as historical events and persons of the Bible.
 
St. Anthony the Great articulated the biblical worldview when he wrote: "God’s providence controls the universe. It is present everywhere. Providence is the sovereign Logos of God, imprinting form on the unformed materiality of the world, making and fashioning all things. Matter could not have acquired an articulated structure were it not for the directing power of the Logos, who is the Image, Intellect, Wisdom and Providence of God.”

In the biblical view, miracles are patterns in a singular universe that reflects a divine plan.  They are not discerned by those who insist on randomness.

The materialist is shaken by the reality of which St. Anthony speaks. He is so thoroughly shaken that he must escape into fantasies about a universe governed by randomness, about the human being as just another creature, and about there being nothing beyond what we can experience. He invents creatures to fit his  theory of human origins but has no physical evidence for such creatures, since they never existed. He attributes Christianity to the Jews and then illogically insists that the Jews corrupted Jesus' true religion. He often lifts up the Gnostics as having the right end of the stick and then pokes fun at the idea of secret knowledge for a chosen few.

Most materialists should be delighted with the discovery that Abraham and his ancestors looked forward to the appearance of the Son of God in human form and believed that He would be born from their blood line. They might argue that the promise of the Son is so terribly old that it should be relegated to the realm of extinct entities. But it is also possible that their confidence would be shaken by the fact that the Jews didn't invent Christianity.

The Messianic Faith did not originate with the Jews. It came by divine revelation to their ancestors which they call their "Horim" and which is rendered "Horite" in English Bibles. The Horite Hebrew have been traced back to 4000 BC. The term "Christ" unfortunately does not remind most people of the Messianic promises and how they have been perfectly fulfilled in the Man-God Jesus Messiah.

Materialists can't explain how this belief in the Son of God could be preserved through thousands of years. Why bother to preserve something so irrelevant to modern life?

None are able to explain how the 318 bishops who came to the Council of Nicaea from around the world and had not formerly communicated with each other should agree on the nature of Jesus as Messiah. Such preservation of Truth can't be explained by material mechanisms.

The materialist worldview is riddled with holes and a thoughtful materialist recognizes this. This is why many materialists are nihilists deep down.  Randomness can't express the patterns that comprise the fundamental geometry of the universe.  In randomness there are no patterns by which we can deduce meaning.  Without patterns we must conclude that there is no meaning to the universe.  Ultimately, we slip in nihilism. That's one of the ironies of Philosophy - that the materialist worldview must deny itself and conclude that there is nothing.