Introduction

Scientists are people who try to make sense of the past and predict the future by organizing observations of physical realities in a systematic way. Many scientists are also Christians and they often actively contribute to theological discussions about origins, because much information about the past can be extracted from the natural world. It is rare, however, to see them engage in eschatological reflections,¹ even though the doctrine of last things is foundational to Christianity, both at the ecclesiological and individual level. Part of this reluctance could be explained by the obvious lack of observational data available for events that have yet to occur. However, a deeper challenge to conversations on eschatology from a scientific perspective lies in the very nature of the end time events described in the Bible, such as Christ’s second coming, the resurrection of the dead, and the establishment of a new heaven and a new earth where death is no more. Belief in these biblical descriptions requires, at a minimum, the acknowledgement of a gap in our understanding of the physical processes that would be involved in the manifestation of such events. It would certainly elicit a strong resistance from those scientists who are committed to naturalism, a philosophical posture that excludes the possibility of God.²

The existential threat that eschatology presents to a certain view of science lies in its infringement of the principle of methodological uniformitarianism. Methodological uniformitarianism is, in the words of S. J. Gould, “a procedural principle asserting spatial and temporal invariance of natural laws.”³ This principle eliminates “supernatural explanations of material phenomena; for this uniformity denies divine intervention (the suspension of natural laws) and affirms that elucidation of earth history belongs to the domain of science.”⁴ Appealing to supernatural intervention to explain the resurrection of the dead or the translation of the saints in the air (1 Thess. 4:16-17) breaks the cardinal tenet of methodological uniformitarianism. Therefore, a scientist who accepts uniformitarianism as indispensable cannot believe in the literal nature of these events, unless they were to somehow unfold under the constraints of uniformitarian laws and processes. An eschatology that affirms the reality of the supernatural would be deemed “unscientific.” A Christian could contend in return that a strictly uniformitarian worldview is inadequate to explain all of reality. For humans to exclude the possibility of divine supernatural intervention in the universe would be akin to clay telling the potter “you have no hands!” (cf. Is 45:9). After all, historical truth can certainly be bigger than the space afforded it by a definition of science. The problem with this response, however, is that in modern culture science is predominantly perceived as the main gateway to truth. Labeling something “unscientific” implicitly conveys a challenge to its value and respectability. A clear demarcation (you either call yourself a scientist and then exclude all these miraculous possibilities, or you shouldn’t call yourself a scientist)⁵ can become a powerful way of diminishing differing perspectives.

Given the stigma attached to the concept of supernatural intervention, it is not surprising that “much of the development of modern theology of a more liberal sort can be seen as an attempt to maintain Christian teaching about God’s involvement in ‘salvation historyʼ without resorting to accounts of supernatural intervention in the natural order.”⁶ The result has been a series of attempts to find ways in which biblical eschatology can be integrated with a traditional naturalistic understanding of physics, cosmology, and earth history.⁷ However, other Christian scientists are more interested in a view of history (including end time events) that embraces God’s supernatural intervention.⁸ These scientists, who attempt to reach out to the modern mindset, have to address two questions for their view of reality to look attractive and coherent. The first is more philosophical, and asks if methodological uniformitarianism is essential to science. Am I betraying the principles of science in affirming the existence of a God who acts in ways that surpass the laws of the cosmos? The second is more ontological, and asks if the principle of uniformitarianism is true. Are the laws of the universe absolutely invariable in space and time, are they adequate and sufficient to describe all that was and all that will be?

Question 1: Is supernatural intervention incompatible with science?

There are two processes at play in the practice of science: the first is the work of gathering observations of material realities and physical phenomena (the data, or empirical evidence); the second is the attempt to define rules and patterns that describe accurately how these physical realities interact (the laws of nature). A common contention is that these processes would be compromised by affirming the reality of supernatural intervention. This section will discuss some of the major objections raised by those who oppose the notion of the supernatural.

Detectability

On the observational level, the first issue with the supernatural is its detectability: truly “supernatural” entities are beyond the realm of empirical observation, and therefore cannot be studied by science.⁹ This claim would be correct if we conceived of God (or other supernatural beings) as inaccessible and segregated to a metaphysical domain. However, the Christian message hinges on the idea that the supernatural interacts with the natural, that “the Word became flesh” (John 1:13), bridging the divide between earthly and heavenly things (John 3:11-13). The word “intervention” implies an interaction with the physical world. Therefore, if it is true that we cannot scientifically examine the agent behind a supernatural intervention, we can nevertheless access and observe the results of this intervention. I might not be able to fully understand how God activated geologic processes during the flood, but these processes formed rocks and deposits that can be studied. The empirical effects of a supernatural cause are detectable and should be deemed a subject of scientific study, even if the mechanics of their causation are not fully understood. This conclusion is similar to the argument championed by the Intelligent Design movement, which posits that it is possible to infer that an intelligent agent was involved in a process by looking at the results of this process, even without knowing much about the agent himself. For example, analysis of the DNA molecule as an information carrier leads to the inference that it was designed, even if we do not know the specifics of how the design was implemented or who the Designer was.¹⁰

God of the gaps

Another common objection to supernatural intervention is that it runs into the “God of the gaps” problem and becomes a “science stopper.”¹¹ Isn’t there a risk to invoke supernatural causes as a cover-up for ignorance or lack of effort in understanding the real processes at play? Wouldn’t it be wiser and more rewarding to seek naturalistic explanations of physical realities rather than leaving the door open for mysterious causes for which we cannot provide specific mechanisms? These objections voice the concern that accepting the reality of supernatural intervention would undermine the application of the principle of simplicity, one of the basic operational principles of science. This principle states that “we will postulate no unnecessary theoretical processes as long as observable ones can successfully explain past changes.”¹² Appealing to the supernatural could indeed break the principle of simplicity if it required an unnecessary (and unknown) mechanism in the presence of a known one that can already account for what is seen. However, there are areas of scientific investigation where the principle of simplicity would seem to point away from naturalistic models. Take, for instance, the field of chemical evolution.¹³ Not only does the naturalistic model lack a modern analogue for abiogenesis, it also requires the astronomically improbable scenario of molecules arranging themselves in complex and extremely specific functional sequences. Therefore, rather than being a methodological hurdle for those who are open to the possibility of supernatural intervention, the principle of simplicity may represent a valuable tool that positively highlights areas where the inference of God’s action in history should be considered.

Consistency and regularities

The strongest objection against supernatural intervention is that it compromises the predictive and interpretive power of induction and deduction. If there are different ways of producing the same effect (e.g., the growth of a mature tree on the third day of creation vs the growth of a new tree after creation week) how can we decide what was at play in the past? If the regularities that govern nature today can be changed in the future, how can we confidently predict what will happen to a system? In the words of Gould, “without assuming this spatial and temporal invariance we have no basis for extrapolating from the known to the unknown” and “have no warrant for asserting that modern processes acted similarly in past ages.”¹⁴ Christianity does not negate the existence and importance of regularities in the functioning of the universe, rather it includes these regularities among the ways in which God sustains the world (cf. Col. 1:16,17). The upholding of these regularities could in itself be considered a form of supernatural intervention.¹⁵ We are asking, however, if God also interacts with this order in ways that transcend its regularities and what issues this would create for our epistemological abilities.

With regard to these questions, we should begin by asking if phenomena that are considered instances of God breaking the laws of nature simply reflect our limited understanding of those laws. In most versions of the game of checkers, men cannot capture backwards but kings can. A player who did not read the section of the rulebook describing the motion of kings would call a backward jump by a king “illegal,” when in reality it is not. If God’s action never bends the laws of nature, a “supernatural” process could ultimately be explained in a way that is consistent with uniformitarianism, after gaining a fuller knowledge of all the variables involved in the process.¹⁶

The second question to ask is if supernatural intervention leaves a distinctive signature in the effects it creates. If material entities affected by supernatural action were to preserve some permanent properties that set them apart, then it would be possible to maintain an effective and coherent system of abductive reasoning,¹⁷ capable of identifying instances of supernatural intervention. A parallel way of thinking is used by Intelligent Design advocates to infer the presence of design: molecular machines in the cell possess distinctive properties (irreducible complexity and specified information) commonly known to be the product of intelligent design, and therefore the best possible inference is that they also are the result of intelligent design.¹⁸ Biblical descriptions of miracles appear to indicate that while distinctive phenomena could be witnessed at the time of the manifestation of a miracle, it is not clear that one could posteriorly discern from the effects of the miracle that a supernatural act was involved. Did the wine at Canaan, the leftovers after the feeding of the five thousand, and Lazarus after his resurrection yield physical evidence of a special interaction with the Master? This remains an open question.

A final aspect to keep in perspective while discussing regularities and supernatural intervention is the role of agency among the possible causes of an event. Laws help to predict the behavior of a system under specific conditions but might not be the most appropriate tool to predict if or when an agent will actualize those specific conditions. Engineers can design bridges to withstand a large range of stresses, including some caused by human agents. But they can’t predict if or when a person will be placing an explosive charge on a bridge. Agents harness the rules and materials of nature to accomplish their purpose and create something that would not be created otherwise.¹⁹ Engineers, who are also intelligent agents, routinely consider the possibility that humans may use their free will to interact with material entities in a variety of ways, and therefore design blast-resistant bridges that would not otherwise exist. Free choices of intelligent agents constitute a class of events that is not strictly predictable, even when expressed within the constraints of natural laws.²⁰ Allowing for God to act in ways that supersede the laws of nature does not introduce the unpredictability already intrinsic to the causal process of agency. It does, however, raise the question of when and why He would choose to act in a non-uniformitarian manner.

In considering this question, we should first notice that non-uniformitarian supernatural action cannot be performed by material realities within the cosmos, including humans. Therefore, the regularities of uniformitarianism would still be applicable to a vast amount of interactions that occur in the universe. Then, we would have to inquire if there are specific and predictable reasons why God would choose to operate outside of uniformitarianism. If we knew of specific triggers to non-uniformitarian supernatural action, we could still maintain a basic level of interpretive or predictive ability of past and future phenomena. The checkers analogy can be used one more time to illustrate this point. Italians play checkers differently than most of the rest of the world in that men cannot jump kings. Nevertheless, one could still play checkers effectively in Italy, if they knew that being in Italy implies the adoption of a different set of rules.

The issue of consistency vs arbitrariness of God’s action is also a major theological concern, especially in relation to the problem of evil. If God is good and able to intervene in nature, which criteria determine His decision to act in specific instances?²¹ It appears that when we adopt a view of God that includes His ability to supersede methodological uniformitarianism, we are still seeking for regularities to make sense of His action in history. A germinal suggestion of possible criteria underlying God’s supernatural intervention, mostly based on 2 Peter 3, is offered later in this paper.

Attempts to reconcile uniformitarianism and the Bible

Perhaps, instead of accepting the notion of supernatural divine intervention, our hermeneutical approach to the Scriptures should strive to uphold methodological uniformitarianism even when it comes to biblical accounts of divine action, including eschatological depictions. What follows is a discussion of two different strategies that attempt to accomplish this goal.

The “Flatland” approach

Flatland²² is a novella published in 1884, written by E. A. Abbott, that describes a fictional two-dimensional world (Flatland) inhabited by planar geometrical shapes. In the second part of the book, the protagonist, a square, receives the revelation by a sphere of the existence of solids and a third dimension. This revelation helps the square make sense of the miraculous appearance and disappearance from his field of view of a circle of varying diameter. The cause of this phenomenon is the intersection of the moving sphere with the Flatland plane, first perceived by the square as a point appearing out of nothing (at the moment of tangential contact between the sphere and the plane), growing into a larger and larger circle and then diminishing in diameter, until it disappears out of the plane. This amusing literary depiction is a good analogy to the view that miracles are not violations of the laws of nature but a reflection of our limited understanding of God's action in the cosmos. What if the apparent rupture of natural laws during “supernatural” events was just the equivalent of the Flatlanders’ ignorance of an extra dimension? E. G. White effectively captures this idea in the following passage “As commonly used, the term "laws of nature" comprises what men have been able to discover with regard to the laws that govern the physical world; but how limited is their knowledge, and how vast the field in which the Creator can work in harmony with His own laws and yet wholly beyond the comprehension of finite beings! […] God does not annul His laws or work contrary to them, but He is continually using them as His instruments.”²³

From a biblical perspective, however, uniformitarianism can only go so far. One singularity, the creation ex nihilo, is sufficient to break uniformitarianism. The Bible does not portray an infinite, self-contained universe, with “no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end”²⁴ but affirms a beginning for all material realities originating from the Word of God (Gen. 1:1; John 1:1-3). We could postulate a “soft uniformitarianism,” whereby once the laws of nature are established they cannot be superseded. But if there was a time when the present laws were not, then there could be a time in the future when they will be different. If we accept that God precedes the laws of nature, His acting according to them becomes a choice, not a constraint. In the words of E. G. White, “the Lawgiver is greater than the laws of nature, and that Omnipotence is at no loss for means to accomplish His purposes.”²⁵

The other problem with this type of “soft uniformitarianism” is that many scientists would still find it tough to digest, because it does not endorse naturalism. This is not a view where the universe is a closed system. God is an agent that can interact with the system from outside, albeit in a uniformitarian fashion, at least after the creation. In stating his view of how a commitment to naturalism is necessary for a scientist, R. C. Lewontin explains that “we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.”²⁶ It seems that a God who does not rupture the regularities of nature would still be perceived as suspiciously trying to put His “Divine foot in the door.” It could be that the real problem with miracles, for those who resist the supernatural, is not that we don’t know how they work but that they are caused by God.

The “Platonic hermeneutics” approach

If humans are limited in their knowledge of the laws of the cosmos, a similar argument centered on our ignorance could be built with regard to the study of God’s self-revelation in Scripture. What if God had to tailor the account of His action in history to the shortcomings of a fallen human race? What if only myth and symbols could convey a complex reality? In the allegory of the cavern,²⁷ Plato likens the human condition to that of people imprisoned in a dark cave, looking at the shadows of objects moving in front of a fire and projected against the end wall of the cave. The prisoners think the reflections constitute the real world, when in fact the illuminated world, with real entities, lies outside the cave. With the term “Platonic hermeneutics,” I refer to an approach to Scripture that sees biblical accounts of supernatural intervention as dark flickering reflections, like those in the myth of the cavern. The term also encapsulates a hermeneutical approach to biblical narrations of eschatological events that emphasizes immaterial, spiritual concepts over their physical and historical quality.

A student of Scripture may find that a dualistic contraposition between the heavenly and earthly or the carnal and the spiritual is not extraneous from some biblical passages. However, the Christian solution to this contraposition is the incarnation, not the separation of two domains. The Bible tells the story of an encounter, manifested in the calling of the patriarchs, in the election of Israel, in the coming of Christ, in the inspiration of biblical writers, and in the reunion with the saved at the second coming. Both the denial of God (naturalism) and the minimization of His involvement in the creation (a deistic form of uniformitarianism) go in the opposite direction than the central biblical narrative of God’s solution to the loss of communion with humanity.

Incarnation does imply that God meets humans where they are and speaks in a language that they can understand. But if the goal of divine communication is to deliver clarity and understanding, why would the message point to realities that never were or never will be? Why would God lead generations of followers to believe in a blessed hope that won’t physically exist or in a creation week that did not occur? Perhaps, the issue is one of progressive revelation, where the ancients were not ready to take in the truths we can now absorb. Beliefs of early Christians were rudimentary and simplistic, until the enlightened uniformitarianists came out of the cave and could afford to look at reality face to face. This view of forward progress away from darkness should be tempered with the realizations that incomplete understanding of God’s revelation accompanies humanity throughout time, that present truth does not imply negation of past truth, and that the pragmatism of God, His adjustment to our limits, does not entail a negation of His principles. In fact, one could argue that the central issue of the great controversy, the reason why Christ came, was the upholding of God’s principles, to prevent the accuser from charging God of being arbitrary and complacent with humans. God’s power can indeed find completion in our weakness (2 Cor. 12:9).

The result of Platonic hermeneutics becoming mainstream in the church would be a toning down of the supernatural in eschatological depictions, or its complete spiritualization. The former would result in views like the New Jerusalem being considered a real city in the future, but built by a human society renewed by the work of the spirit. The latter would seek purely spiritual applications from end time imagery to realize the “eschaton” in the everyday life of the Christian. This neutralization of the supernatural is similar to the strategies used to interpret protological passages, where the creation is either read as a historical but oversimplified account (e.g., day-age theory of creation week) or is approached as a poetic/mythological text providing only theological lessons. It would indeed be paradoxical if Seventh-day Adventists were to embrace a hermeneutical stance where neither the seventh-day nor the advent were grounded on literal, historical events.

Question 2: Are naturalism and uniformitarianism true?

Ultimately, the question of real importance is not how belief in the supernatural affects science, but what is the truth about reality. Are naturalism and uniformitarianism simply philosophical assumptions, which some deem necessary for the practice of science, or do they accurately describe how the universe has always operated and will always operate? To answer this question we to turn the Scriptures,²⁸ and in particular to 2 Peter 3.

In this epistle, Peter²⁹ is addressing the problem of the negative influence spread within the community of believers by false prophets and teachers. In chapter 3, he singles out a particular argument presented by mockers who question the veracity of the promise of the second coming. Their challenge to Christian eschatology is anchored on the principle of uniformitarianism. The core of their argument is essentially an extrapolation based on a uniformitarian view of history: “all things continue [διαμένει diamenei] as they were [οὕτως outōs] from the beginning of creation” (2 Peter 3:4, NKJV), therefore it would be naïve and unwarranted to expect a future change in how things are. The verb diamenō and the adverb outōs (which could be translated as “in the same way”) convey the notion of permanence and invariability of conditions through time. Note that the mockers provide a starting point for this uniformity of conditions: “from the beginning of creation [ἀπ’ἀρχῆς κτίσεως ap’archēs ktiseōs].” It is unclear if this phraseology is simply a way of saying “forever” or if it represents an implicit acknowledgement of a beginning for the universe and therefore endorsement of what we defined earlier as a “soft” form of uniformitarianism.

Peter’s rebuttal

Peter’s response to the mockers’ argument consists of three main points, which find a striking application to the philosophical discussions on the relation between the supernatural and science.

“They willfully [θέλοντας thelontas] forget.” The argument of the mockers rests on partial evidence. It is based on a conscious, a priori, commitment to disregard a set of possibilities. R. Lewontin’s acknowledgement of “a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism,”³⁰ comes to mind. But what is it exactly that the mockers are willingly disregarding? This is explained in the next two points of Peter’s response.

We are dealing with God. The mockers willfully forget the role of God in history. Peter remarks how it is “by the word of God” that the heavens were, the earth stood out of water, the ancient world was destroyed,³¹ and the present heavens and earth are kept for the day of judgment. The generic reference of the mockers to the beginning of creation omitted any mention of God. To this, Peter juxtaposes a clear proclamation of the reality of God and His agency in the cosmos. He is therefore openly rejecting the naturalistic assumption shared by many modern scientists. Later in his exposition, Peter also reflects upon how God’s way of doing and seeing things is different from ours (2 Peter 3:8), implicitly remarking the limitations and presumption of humanistic interpretations of reality.

There have been discontinuities. The other aspect the mockers willfully forget is that things have not always been the same. The first singularity indicated by Peter is the existence of heavens “of old [ἔκπαλαι ekpalai]” (2 Peter 3:5, NKJV)³² and the emergence of the earth from water by the Word of God. These references to the creation are followed by the second discontinuity of the past, the time when “the world that then [τότε tote] existed” (2 Peter 3:6, NKJV)³³ was flooded and destroyed. By affirming the truth of these unique divine interventions, Peter is challenging the mockers’ view of uniformitarianism. In fact, by means of an ingenious rhetorical strategy that flips their argument against them,³⁴ Peter asserts that true uniformitarianism warrants that the same kind of divine action that happened in the past will happen in the future. Not only there was a creation, not only there was a flood, but there will also be a day of judgment. What is truly invariable throughout this history is the Word of God, not the physical realities it brought into existence. The Word which preserves the present world is “the same [αὐτῷ auto]” (2 Peter 3:7) one by which the heavens were of old (2 Peter 3:5) and by which they were destroyed (2 Peter 3:6).

Punctuated equilibria

This powerful passage of the word of inspiration paints a picture of earth history that consists of three distinct economies: the ancient (after creation and to the time of the flood), the present (after the flood), and the new (after the day of judgment) (2 Peter 3:13). Although these three economies initiate from acts of God that surpass the boundaries of uniformitarianism, there is reason to believe that each one of them represents, after its origination, a system where God upholds underlying regularities. After the creation, sustaining a natural order was God’s way to provide an environment that allowed for humans to plan, make reliable inferences, and ultimately exert free will through choices. The centrality of this order for the original creation is implied by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil being located in the middle of the garden of Eden (Gen 2:8) and by God’s statement of the certain consequences of eating the fruit of that tree: “of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen 2:17, NKJV). This divine statement formulated the most fundamental law of that world, the transgression of which introduced sin on this earth.

Several biblical passages affirm the divine commitment to uphold regularities in the present postdiluvian world. The first is found right after Noah’s exit from the ark: “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, and day and night shall not cease” (Genesis 8:22). This promise seems to be echoed in Jesus’ description of the Father’s attitude towards humanity: “He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Mt. 5:45, NKJV). Finally, Peter also describes God’s Word as actively preserving and reserving the present heavens and earth until the day of judgement (2 Peter 3:7). From these texts, it seems that upholding regularities in a fallen world is necessary to provide a fair backdrop for the great controversy to unfold, until a clear and unassailable judgment can be pronounced.

That the new heavens and the new earth will also be characterized by regularities can be inferred from passages like Revelation 21:4, which states the categorical absence of death and pain from the new creation, and Isaiah 65:21-23, which highlights stability and predictability in the description of life on God’s holy mountain. Perhaps, the greatest benefit of the consistency of this eschatological order will be the certainty that sin will be no more.

Does God act arbitrarily?

The three instances of non-uniformitarian intervention indicated by Peter (the creation, the flood, and the day of judgment) provide us with a compass to understand the guiding principles behind God’s choice to act in the cosmos. At the creation, God’s action is an expression of love, revealed in the free choice to bring other realities into existence ex nihilo, i.e., without being constrained by pre-existing conditions.³⁵ At the flood, God’s action is a response to the manifestation of sin in history, implying that the unfolding of the cosmic conflict had dynamic effects, both requiring divine intervention but also limiting it to maintain the integrity of the precious gift of free will. At the day of judgment, God’s action is an expression of His character of Justice and His determination to definitively eradicate sin. Therefore, we find that the most precious aspects of the character of God (love, freedom, justice) are recapitulated in the three singularities of history. The same aspects are found, for example, in the proclamation of the name of God (Ex. 34:6-7), where there is reference to His goodness, to His constant and proactive engagement with humanity in the context of a sinful world, and to His unwavering commitment to uphold justice.

Conclusions

We can respond to the initial question of eschatology being a threat to science by considering Peter’s view of history. Peter affirms the superiority of the Creator over His creation and opposes the attempts to minimize or deny God’s involvement in the physical world. He also establishes a linear understanding of history, consisting of three distinct economies, the ancient, the present, and the future. Scientific investigation can coexist with this understanding of history only by acknowledging: 1) the reality of God the Creator, as preexisting and distinct from His creation; 2) that there have been divinely caused processes in the past, when God intervened in nature; 3) that - in truly uniformitarian fashion - these past divine interventions warrant the possibility of a future one.

Accepting these interventions does not negate: 1) the possibility that God can work through His laws, rather than violate them; 2) that regularities are an important aspect of the world in each of the economies established by God’s intervention; 3) that we may be able to detect a signature of divine agency in physical realities, making it easier to understand when God’s intervention was involved. We can also learn that there is a rationale behind God’s “non-uniformitarian” interaction with human history. God’s intervention is not arbitrary but is consistent with His character and follows the principles of love, freedom, and justice, with the ultimate goal of the eradication of evil.