"[U]ntil science comes up with a testable theory of the laws of the universe, its claim to be free of faith is manifestly bogus."

The thesis of this essay -that there is an irreducible commitment to faith in the scientific project - is obviously true.

Moreover, there is a further irreducible faith commitment in science that is, according to Rodney Stark, ultimately monotheistic - that there is a rational design to the universe that is immutable, absolute and approachable by human reason.

I'm coming to the opinion that the faith commitment of science is also "sacramental." "Sacramentality" is the opposite of docetism, gnosticism and related doctrines that hold that reality is "maya." Sacramentality argues to the contrary that physical reality in itself is real and fixed and approachable and yet is valuable and worth pursuing because it is an avenue connecting humanity to something deeper and more basic.

Science requires a "sacramental" orientation. If reality is "maya", then what is the point of paying to much attention to an illusion that is in a constant state of change. Likewise, if reality doesn't connect up with something more basic and deeper, then what is the point of studying the meaningless epiphenomenon of the universe. If reality is all "sound and fury signifying nothing," then why bother at all? And, finally, if the connection between reality and deeper significance can't be approached by human reason, then the scientific project dies in its cradle.

Perhaps the absence of a sacramental perspective explains the fideism of the Truly Reformed. Sacramentality fosters a sense of trust in human action. Just as we believe that we can journey toward the truth, we trust that those who lived in the past were also able to journey to the truth, and, so, we can trust them to have laid a foundation that we can build on. That attitude is called "tradition." It is no accident that the metaphor of a dwarf seeing farther for standing on the shoulder of giants was appropriated by Isaac Newton from a saying popularized by the cathedral schools of the Middle Ages.

On the other hand, a distrust of reason is coterminous with a distrust of tradition. It is interesting that in St. Thomas More's "Dialogue Concerning Heresies" the crypto-Lutheran "messenger" argues for the total sufficiency of Scripture, the weakness of human reason and that reason is an enemy of faith because "reason contradicts faith on every point." It is left for More to argue that "the other liberal arts are also to be a gift from God and not to be thrown away" and "just as God helps us to eat but yet not without our mouth...so too there is no doubt that by study, effort and exercise in logic philosophy and the other liberal art, reason is strengthened and invigorated and judgment...much matured." More concludes:

"And therefore, in my opinion, in a mad frame of mind are these Lutherans who would now have all branches of learning, save Scripture alone, completely thrown away. These things (if one has the time for them) are, as it seems to me to be taken and had, and with reason brought (as I said before) into the service of theology. And as Holy Saint Jerome puts it [in Epistle 70], "The Hebrews well despoil the Egyptians when Christ's learned men take from the pagan writers the riches and learning and wisdom that God gave to them and employ the same in the service of theology about the profit of God's chosen children of Israel, the church of Christ, which he has out of the hard, stony pagans made the children of Abraham."

So, perhaps, sacramentality fosters trust in human reason which fosters a trust in tradition which fosters the ability to build upon past knowledge which in turn is essential to the progressive development of human knowledge, whether it be scientific, moral or philosophical. The alternative would seem to be that each person decides everything for themselves during their one lifetime, but no one lives long enough, or is wise enough, to recreate the advances made by the giants of human thought that have come before us.

Update:

At the recent Evangelical Theological Society meeting, J.P. Moreland was critical of the Evangelical "overcommitment" to the Bible:

The problem, he said, is “the idea that the Bible is the sole source of knowledge of God, morality, and a host of related important items. Accordingly, the Bible is taken to be the sole authority for faith and practice.”

Suppose an archaeologist discovered a portion of the ancient city of Jerusalem that was specifically described in the Old Testament, Moreland said:

Could the archaeologist have discovered the site without the use of the Old Testament? Once discovered, could the archaeologist learn things about the site that went beyond what was in the Old Testament? Clearly the answer is yes to both questions. Why? Because the site actually exists in the real world. It does not exist in the Bible. It is only described in the Bible and the biblical description in partial.

Likewise, Moreland argued, “because the human soul/spirit and demons/angels are real, it is possible, and, in fact, actual that extra-biblical knowledge can be gained about these spiritual entities. … Demons do not exist in the Bible. They exist in reality.”

Moreland also offered this nice bit of ecumenical charity:

A third area where Moreland critiqued evangelical over-commitment to Bible was in the scarcity of evangelical appeals to natural theology and moral law in their political and cultural discussions.

“The sparse landscape of evangelical political thought stands in stark contrast to the overflowing garden both of evangelical biblical scholarship and Catholic reflection on reason, general revelation, and cultural and political engagement,” he said. “We evangelicals could learn a lesson or two from our Catholic friends.”

That wasn’t as provocative a statement coming a few months after the ETS president became one of those “Catholic friends.” Catholicism is on the agenda here, and Catholics are both implicitly and explicitly discussed in the meeting’s many discussions of justification. But Catholicism doesn’t seem to be the “new open theism” at ETS.

Also interesting because of the JPII quote below was this:

No, more provocative was Moreland’s argument about why evangelicals became over-committed to the Bible. Rather than developing a robust epistemology in response to secularism, he said, evangelicals reacted and retreated. Now evangelical theologians aren’t allowed to come to any new conclusions about the truths in Scripture, and they’re not allowed to find truths outside of Scripture. As a result, he said, they’re engaged in “private language games and increasingly detailed minutia” and “we’re not seeing work on broad cultural themes.”