Sermon from December 12, 2004

John Polkinghorne is President of Queens College, Cambridge University. He is a theoretical physicist, an ordained Anglican priest, and theologically orthodox. Listen again to what he says about the laws that govern the physical universe. "God allows the world to be itself and does not stop tectonic plates from slipping and producing an earthquake, because they are allowed to be themselves just as we are allowed to be ourselves." (Christian Belief in a Scientific Age, 13)

In other words God created the physical universe to "run on its own," so to speak. That doesn’t mean that God has nothing to do with it. But it does mean that we can count on creation to behave predictably. The Jewish poets who wrote the Psalms saw this regularity in creation and rejoiced in it. Here is a typical statement of their praise from Psalm 89:1-2.

I will sing of the LORD's great love forever;
with my mouth I will make your faithfulness known
through all generations.
I will declare that your love stands firm forever,
that you established your faithfulness in heaven itself.

I will declare that your love stands firm forever, says the poet in praise of God. But how do we know that the invisible God loves us in a way that will not waver with changing circumstances? To answer that question the poet looked around for a common example of God’s reliability, and he found it in the regularities of creation. His more elegant way of saying that at the end of verse two goes like this: you established your faithfulness in heaven itself.

Every year, for example, the days get shorter and shorter, and in our fantasy we wonder what it would be like if darkness kept extending its presence. But around December 20 every year for perhaps millions of years, the sun stands still on the rim of the earth, and our part of the earth begins a journey north into more and more light.

Then, every year, the days get longer and longer, and in our fantasy we wonder what it would be like if daylight kept extending its welcome presence. But around June 20 every year for perhaps millions of years, the sun stands still on the rim of the earth, and our part of the earth begins a journey south into more and more darkness.

The Creator God, whom we worship, has established His reliability in the regularities of the physical world, which sustain human life. God’s reliability, or, as Christians prefer to call it, God’s faithfulness not only reminds us that God’s love stands firm forever; it also makes possible the natural sciences.

What kind of science would be possible, if the value of pi changed with the seasons, or the freezing point of water underwent small changes every Leap Year? However, this reliability has become the occasion for a major objection against the Christian faith. The Scottish philosopher, David Hume, said in a famous essay, "A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature" (An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding). How did he know that? Did he know nature that well? Did he know God that well? Many scientists disagree with him. Here’s the question: does a Christian doctrine of creation do justice both to the laws of physical creation and also to the biblical claim to miracles? Let’s have a go at that.

Assessing the Evidence
Let’s start with anecdotal evidence. George and Margaret Wilson belonged to our church in Upstate New York. They led our congregation in worship with guitars before it was fashionable to lead worship with guitars. George had a health problem. X-rays had revealed a mass in his right lower jaw, and surgery was indicated.

The elders of our church and I met with the Wilsons at their house on Saturday afternoon to share communion and to have a service of prayer and anointing with oil for healing. On Monday, George’s surgeon operated on him. Late that afternoon, I called Margaret to ask how George was doing. She said, "Well, they opened him up, and there was nothing there." We drew the conclusion that God had miraculously healed George.

But maybe the surgeon operated on the wrong jaw. Once in a blue moon that sort of thing happens. But he didn’t go back and operate on the other jaw, so I don’t think that happened. Maybe the radiologist misread the x-ray. That is possible. I, of course, had no access to the x-ray, but no one ever told the Wilsons that he misread it. Maybe what happened to George was a spontaneous remission of the cancer.

Spontaneous remission of cancer is a phenomenon that doctors are familiar with. If that’s what happened to George, the remission was not only spontaneous; it was also quick. It happened between the last x-ray of his jaw a few weeks before surgery and the Monday he was operated on.

Is spontaneous remission of cancer a violation of the laws of nature, or does it signal the presence of a law we don’t yet understand scientifically? If the latter, maybe the God who created that law calls it into action in answer to prayer. What is certain is that no doctor or faith healer, or praying congregation controls such remission. What is also certain is that when I saw George seven or eight years later, he was still doing very well.

Several years ago, a teaching Internist at Christiana Medical Center spoke to our Evangelical Ministers Fellowship. He told us about double blind studies of the effects of prayer on a group of people suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. Half of them received prayer for their healing, and half did not. The people who prayed and the patients they prayed for did not know each other. The patients did not know other people were praying for them. The patients who received prayer improved much more than the group of patients who did not receive prayer on their behalf.

Are those violations of the laws of nature, or do they signal the presence of spiritual forces that lie outside the proper domain of science, but which, nevertheless, have the power to act on the physical world? If so, maybe the world is more sophisticated than David Hume and other skeptics have thought.

I don’t offer these examples as slam-dunk proof that miracles happen. I offer them as evidence that people like David Hume and Stephen Hawking, who reduce the world to what they can prove mathematically and in a laboratory, are not always reliable guides to the nature of the universe we live in. The God, who created this intricate physical world out of nothing, may have a few surprises for atheistic humanists like Hawking. A little more humility on their part might be in order.

John Polkinghorne, our physicist/theologian, strikes just the right note, when he says. "I believe that we can take with all seriousness all that science tells us about the workings of the world and still believe that the God who holds it in being has not left himself so impotent that he cannot continuously and consistently interact within cosmic history" (p. 84).

A proper scientific frame of mind means openness to evidence. Evidence for what we call miracles is a present phenomenon, not just a memory from the ancient past. To call them violations of the laws of nature sounds like dogmatism, not openness to Truth.

The Propriety of Miracles
Now, our question was: does a Christian doctrine of creation do justice both to the laws of the physical creation and also to the biblical claim to miracles? Well, so far our answer is yes. A Christian doctrine of creation allows the physical world to behave according to its own laws, just the way natural scientists have been saying for 450 years. A scientist can’t ask for more. That same doctrine affirms miracles in the physical world. It leaves room for spiritual forces that lie outside the proper domain of science, but which, nevertheless, have the power to act on the physical world in ways that the natural sciences may not be able to explain or control.

So far, so good, but what should we say about the miracles themselves? Are they worthy of the Creator? In other words, is God a cosmic magician, who does conjuring tricks to impress His wide-eyed subjects and perhaps cow them into submission? Or is the nature of miracles consistent with the way God has revealed Himself in the reliability, intricacy and beauty of the physical world

In what follows I am deeply indebted to C. S. Lewis and before him to Athanasius, the fourth century bishop of Alexandria, Egypt. They taught me to answer our question by appealing to the miracles of our Lord, as the New Testament has passed them on to us. For our purpose, two miracles will serve us well. Look first at John 2:6-11.

Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, "Fill the jars with water"; so they filled them to the brim. Then he told them, "Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet."

They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside and said, "Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now."

This, the first of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed at Cana in Galilee. He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him.

Lewis pointed out that every year God turns water into wine in the vineyards of earth. He sends the rain, the vine draws it up into itself and then produces grapes; those grapes ripen and, if left to themselves, ferment and finally decay and return to the earth. Man has learned to control the fermentation and bottle it for his joy and pleasure.

What God does every year slowly, God did once quickly at the marriage feast of Cana through Jesus Christ. Lewis put it this way: “Each miracle writes for us in small letters something that God has already written, or will write, in letters almost too large to be noticed, across the whole canvas of Nature” (Lewis, Miracles, 138).

Then, there is the strange miracle of Mark 11:12-14, 20. The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again." And his disciples heard him say it.... In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots. You may rightly ask about the meaning of such a miracle, but look around you, and all around you stand trees withered to their roots. It is the way of creation. The miracle, again, was to speed up what happens slowly to trees every year.

In John 5:19 Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does." Every year the Creator of all things turns water into wine or a few grains of wheat into tens of thousands; every year He withers trees to their roots and heals illness and injury, usually over appropriate periods of time. Jesus saw His Father doing this year after year, and so He did it too, only very fast and very local. It was as if to say, "Look! Here in this Man is the power that is at work throughout creation."

And there is something else about the miracles of the New Testament. It is the restraint with which they are done and with which they are reported. Jesus changes water into wine only once. He turns a few loaves into many loaves only twice. He withers only one tree. Most frequently, He heals broken bodies and broken spirits. Even then, He leaves many people untouched, unhealed. The four Gospels seem less interested in the miracles than in what they mean. These are not the conjuring tricks of a celestial magician. They are glittering tokens of God’s sojourn within our human drama, which speak of better things to come.

A Christian doctrine of creation does justice to the laws of the physical creation by allowing the physical world to behave according to its own laws. It does justice to the biblical claim to miracles by leaving room for spiritual forces that lie outside the proper domain of science, but which, nevertheless, have the power to act on the physical world in ways that the natural sciences may not be able to explain or control. The restraint, almost the shyness with which the Creator acts on the physical world to work miracles bears further witness to the reason and beauty of the Christian doctrine of creation.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
In this sermon, it predecessors this fall, and those yet to come I wish to imitate God’s restraint. Trying to do justice to the many sided doctrine of creation encourages restraint. In so doing I hope also to imitate real scientists, who patiently follow the evidence and their intuition in pursuit of truth.

I often refer to the natural sciences, not only because of their explanatory powers, but also because I believe that Christianity and the natural sciences have a future together. I also believe that Christianity does something for science that science can’t do for itself: it offers an explanation of why science works.

I have resisted some natural scientists, when they drew conclusions about the universe that were not scientific but personal in nature, and also when they applied scientific discoveries in ways that seemed to me to violate God’s intentions and endanger the well being of the human family.

The natural sciences do not and cannot explain all reality. At the end of the day we all stand mute before mysterious spiritual forces that have the power to act on the physical universe without destroying the integrity which the Creator hard-wired into the laws of nature. Those mysterious spiritual forces entered the human family decisively in Bethlehem of Judea. They have entered our experience decisively, as we bear witness by our presence here today. Someday they will act decisively to make a new creation.