There are many people who have contributed to the completion of this book. The staff at Wiley-Blackwell have once again been a pleasure to work with. This project spanned a time when there was some turnover in the editor's chair from Jeff Dean to Deirdre Ilkson to Marissa Koors. I was pleased to work with all of them, as well as the very able staff who saw this project through to completion.

Almost all of the work for this book was conducted while I was a faculty member at Bethel College (Indiana). A summer research grant was helpful in writing several chapters. I was able to teach an upper-level course on science and religion to a group of high-capacity students, during which the topics for many of these chapters were explored. Thanks to the library staff who encouraged me and always went the extra mile in securing resources. Several of the chapters here were used as a class project by Prof. Jennifer Ochstein's editing class; I appreciate their careful reading and eye for detail. Huge thanks are due to Mahala Rethlake, one of the significant success stories of the Bethel philosophy department, who gave a careful editing pass and formatted the entire manuscript. My former colleagues in the religion and philosophy department remain a source of constant encouragement, stimulation, and enjoyment. Special thanks to Terry Linhart, the chair of the department, for his support and friendship through some rocky times. And I am especially grateful to Chad Meister, with whom I have spent countless hours over coffee discussing these (and many other) topics. The fact that I am no longer employed at Bethel does not take anything away from the positive experiences I had there.

The BioLogos Foundation has provided an enriching environment for me the last couple of years. Through my work there I've been fortunate to rub shoulders (both electronically and in person) with some of the leading voices in the dialogue between science and Christianity. President Deb Haarsma has been uniformly supportive (and understanding when the lines demarcating my jobs became blurry). The graciousness with which she approaches the dialogue between science and Christianity should be a model for all.

Finally, my family must be acknowledged. My parents are not academics in the professional sense, but my father, Ron Stump, started his career as a science teacher, and I am very thankful for the orientation toward the natural world he provided. My mother's side of the family did have some academics, and I'm sure that much of my penchant for introspection comes through her—Nancy (Ummel) Stump. Both sides of the family passed down their Christian heritage and provided the categories through which I was introduced to theology. I am so proud of my sons, Casey, Trevor, and Connor. I love it when they want to discuss the topics I research and write about; but I love it even more when they teach me about the things they are most interested in. My wife Christine gets her own page immediately following.

In the last few decades of the 20th century, a widespread scholarly interest developed in issues related to science and religion. This interest has shown no signs of abating, as conferences are organized, books written, and even university departments are now being formed. The academic field is maturing as the second generation of scholars in this field reflects on the seminal work of the founding generation. One of the implications of the maturing of the field is the need for a more fine-grained analysis of the issues. So instead of more general works on science and religion, this book introduces the relationship of science to Christianity.

Of course, there are some commonalities among religions with respect to their interactions with science, but as we get into specific doctrines it is the differences in both the sciences and in the various world religions that become important after a basic introduction to this fascinating interdisciplinary field. For example, the nature of God in Christian theism is very different from the understanding of God or gods in Hinduism or of ultimate (non)reality in some forms of Buddhism. And even within the traditional monotheistic religions which affirm the same creator God, there are significant discrepancies in understanding how God relates to the natural world and how God has revealed the divine nature to humans.

Focusing more narrowly on Christianity is not at all to suggest that it is the only relevant religion in dialogue with science. Other books should be written (and are being written) on Buddhism and science or Islam and science, etc. These religions have their own histories and methodologies and should be accorded the respect that is due them rather than trying to subsume them under a generic heading and discussion of religion, or by giving them a paragraph or two of attention in a work that is in reality discussing Christianity. It is a fact that Christianity has been the dominant religious system that has interacted with the sciences throughout history—a fact that is explored in the book.

But now I want to be clear that this book is not a work of Christian apologetics. I am not arguing for the truth of Christianity (or of any particular scientific theory, for that matter). Rather, I will attempt to present the issues as fairly and objectively as possible, discussing the strengths and weaknesses of particular interpretations. Undoubtedly there are places where my own biases shine through, but I'm not trying to advocate for specific positions.

The study of science and Christianity draws from a number of different disciplines. Besides the obvious ones of the various sciences and Christian theology, history has a prominent place in my exposition of these topics. Fundamentally, though, this is a philosophically oriented treatment of science and Christianity. Lines of demarcation are notoriously difficult to draw, but in the strict sense of the term, the scholars engaged in research in this field are not scientists (at least qua researchers in this field). That is, they are not conducting experiments or even writing up the results of empirical discoveries for journals like Nature or Science. Some scholars in this field have done those things, but those are contributions to science, not to the discipline of science and Christianity. Instead, in this discipline they are reflecting on the results of science, particularly with respect to the claims of Christian theology. Nor are the science and religion scholars playing the part of the theologian—though the lines are somewhat less distinct in this case. Again, the job of scholars in the field as I understand it is to reflect on the work of theologians as it relates to scientific discoveries. So in this sense, they are doing a philosophy of science and Christianity. It is in that vein that I write about the field.

Science, Christianity, and the systematic study of their interaction

The history of science's interaction with Christianity is dependent on the histories of the subjects considered individually. It is not too difficult to give a starting point to Christianity: there is little doubt that Jesus of Nazareth lived in the first third of the 1st century CE, that he was put to death by the Roman government around 30 or 33 CE, and that his disciples believed him to have resurrected from the dead. Originally, Christians were a sect of Jews who believed Jesus to be their long-awaited Messiah, but they increasingly became a distinct religious group in the 1st century as Gentiles were invited to join the movement. After 70 CE when the Romans laid siege to Jerusalem and destroyed the Jewish temple, Jews and Christians largely went their separate ways. Christians themselves suffered through periods of intense persecution from the Roman government, but within a few centuries they became the dominant religious group of the Roman Empire, and hence of what is known as Western civilization.

The birth of science is more difficult to pinpoint. The English word “science” comes from the Latin scientia, but this was used to refer to a wide range of knowledge, certainly outside the parameters of what we would consider science today. Closer to our conception of science is what was called “natural philosophy.” Natural philosophers were those who studied the natural world, as opposed to moral philosophers, who studied ethics. The methods of natural philosophers were varied, and so in 1834 the Cambridge University professor William Whewell (1794–1866) coined the term “scientist” to distinguish the empirical approach of some researchers from the more general “natural philosophers.” It is this usage that has become standard.

However, if we were to consider the relationship of Christianity with science only as it has been understood since 1834, we would be omitting much that is relevant to our study here. As far back as we have written records, human beings have been asking questions about the world around them. Perhaps beginning with the ancient Greeks, we find the attempt to give answers in terms of what we today call natural causes, as opposed to the supernatural causes invoked by mythologies and religions. In that sense we can consider the relationship between Christianity and the science (or proto-science) of providing natural explanations.

It should be acknowledged that the religion of Christianity and the practice of science are much more encompassing social practices than merely systems of beliefs. It might be argued that the rituals associated with Christianity are more important and defining for the religion as a whole than are the beliefs. Likewise increasing attention has been given since the previous generation of philosophers of science to the non-cognitive dimensions of the scientific enterprise. The relations of these social dimensions need to be explored, but our focus in this book is on the cognitive dimensions of science and Christianity. More specifically, what are the beliefs of each that intersect? What are the methods of inquiry, and how do these interact?

This kind of study has been more systematically pursued since the 1960s and 1970s. Ian Barbour is generally taken to be the godfather of the academic discipline of science and religion. His 1966 book Issues in Science and Religion was the starting point for a generation of scholars who began to reflect more seriously on the relationship between science and religion. Soon after Barbour, along came Arthur Peacocke and John Polkinghorne. The three of them form the triumvirate of scientist theologians who had that rare combination of knowing science from the inside along with being able to reflect upon it insightfully with respect to religion. They have been a foundational source for the science and religion scholars of today.

The significant growth of the academic discipline of science and religion in the past generation has an economic causal factor. The John Templeton Foundation gives millions of dollars each year to a wide variety of research programs in science and religion. Nearly everyone working in the field has benefited from this largesse.

Features and outline of this book

Each chapter of this book is separated into numbered sections. The numbers are keyed to the “Questions to be addressed in this chapter” box at the beginning of each chapter, and to the “Summary of main points” box at the end. These are not designed to reduce the complexity of the material into easy bullet points but to help in dividing up the content of each chapter into more manageable chunks.

There are ample boxes throughout the text that provide longer quotations from important sources, more detailed explanation of key concepts, and some pictures. It is hoped that these are enriching resources and not distracting. At the end of the text is a timeline of the historical figures discussed in the book and a glossary that provides definitions for specialized terminology. Terms included in the glossary are printed in bold font in the text. And all Scripture quotations are taken from the NRSV translation unless otherwise indicated.

Each chapter also includes a short annotated list of resources for further reading on that subject. This book loosely tracks many of the topics of The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity, which I edited with Alan Padgett in 2012. Many of the articles there provide good next steps for exploring the topics introduced here.

Chapters 1 through 3 function as a kind of unit. They deal with the ways in which science and religion (particularly Christianity) have been related, and offer some historical episodes as illustrations of these. Chapter 1 considers the extreme relationships of conflict and independence, and it is not too hard to find instances of these throughout history. But there are also nuances to these positions that ought to be considered as well. Chapters 2 and 3 present what I think are among the strongest cases historically of science and Christianity directly and substantially influencing each other. For Christianity influencing science, the best case is in the very founding of modern science; we look at the case for and against that in Chapter 2. For science influencing Christianity (at least on the largest scale), we look to the thesis of secularization: has science caused the secularization of society? This is the topic of Chapter 3. Then Chapter 4 is also historical in a sense, though dealing with the more recent history of Young Earth Creationism and the Intelligent Design movement.

Chapters 5 and 6 address foundational topics that underlie much of the dialogue about Christianity and science. Christians can't do without the Bible (Chapter 5), and most scientists feel they can't do their jobs properly without methodological naturalism (Chapter 6). We'll see in both these cases that there are methodological approaches that are profitable for the dialogue, and approaches that can stop any productive dialogue.

Chapter 7 tackles natural theology, which has been one of the chief points of interaction between science and Christianity. Besides some of the classical forms of natural theology, I look at a more popular contemporary version many call the “theology of nature.” Chapter 8 covers what was often the focal point of science and religion discussions in the previous generation: cosmology—including the Big Bang, fine tuning, and the multiverse. Today, evolution has moved into the most prominent position for discussion. It is the subject of Chapter 9.

Chapters 10 and 11 focus on interaction problems. The first is how God interacts with the world, or what is often called “divine action.” It is sometimes described by analogy with interaction of human minds and bodies, though some might claim such an analogy does little to clarify the situation. This human interaction problem, along with the theological implications of the soul, forms the subject of Chapter 11.

If God is understood as interacting with the world, then questions inevitably arise about why more evils aren't prevented. Especially with what we now understand as an unfathomably long history of animal pain and suffering, the problem of natural evil is particularly acute. It is addressed in Chapter 12. Many attempts at explaining natural evil appeal to a final promised state in which individuals—both human and animal—who have wrongly suffered will find ultimate fulfillment. The conclusion of the book reflects and speculates on the end times as understood from the perspective of science and from Christian theology.

I hope that each of these chapters stands on its own, but there is also a sense in which I've tried to order them so as to pull the reader along from one topic to the next. If the book accomplishes nothing other than spurring further interest in these topics of science and Christianity, I will count it a success.