The Church, the Schools and EvolutionConant, J. E. (Judson Eber)
Religion
The Church, the Schools and Evolution
Conant, J. E. (Judson Eber)
Evolution; Religion and science
Then there is Paul's classification of these faculties just referred to. It
is passing strange that so many even in our denominational schools have
missed it. He devotes a whole section of First Corinthians, from 1:17 to
2:16, as noted above, to a scientific statement of the natural and total
incapacity of the intellect to discern spiritual truth. Consider it a
little more in detail. He says that natural human wisdom, "_sophia_," which
Aristotle defines as "mental excellence in its highest and fullest sense,"
is utterly incapable of operating in the realm of spiritual investigation.
For after "the world by mental excellence knew not God, it pleased God by
the foolishness (to the natural mental capacities) of the thing preached to
save those that =believe=." Not those that =understand=, for "the natural
man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God (that is, spiritual
things), for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know (or
understand) them, for they are =spiritually= discerned (or understood)."
The essential difference between natural and spiritual faculties, as well
as the utter incapacity of the natural faculties in the spiritual realm,
are so clearly brought out in this passage that it is impossible to miss
it.
By this it is not at all meant, however, that mental training and
intellectual capacity have no place in certain branches of Bible study.
Every believer in the Book welcomes the keenest minds and the most expert
scholarship in that branch of Bible study, for example, which seeks, by the
investigation of the manuscripts and the variant readings, to arrive at the
very words that were written by the inspired writers; or, for example, in
that other branch of study which seeks to discover the history and origins
of the various books of the Bible. But it =is= meant that when men seek to
know the =spiritual truths= of the Bible, they are utterly unscientific if
they fail to use that faculty in their investigation which the Textbook
itself prescribes.
To sum it up, faith opens the way for God to quicken into activity a
spiritual capacity through which =He= educates a man in spiritual things
entirely independently of the schools.
The man who really intends to be scientific, then, will approach the Bible
in that attitude of =faith= which will lead him to =will to do God's will=
as the Bible reveals it. He will then be where he can =believe= his way to
an understanding of spiritual truth.
3. The =Different Kinds of Truth= Must Be Separated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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