Daring to trust God and science to cooperate
Review of "God Speaks Science" by John Van Sloten and "Dawn" by Dekker, Oranje, and Van Den Brink.
Dawn: A Proton’s Tale of All That Came to Be
Cees Dekker, Corien Oranje, Gijsbert Van den Brink
Intervarsity Press, 2022.
When God Speaks Science: What Neurons, Giant Squid, and Supernovae Reveal About Our Creator
John Van Sloten
Moody Press, 2023.
Two long-time Alberta members of the Christian Reformed Church have recently and pleasingly contributed to the fraught relationship between science and faith. Both books aim to explore the “mind of God” and God’s ongoing creational and sustaining work, though using different literary styles and techniques.
Harry Cook, Professor Emeritus at Edmonton’s King’s University translated from Dutch a brief novella that I call a “devout creation fantasy.” Three authors of the Reformed tradition collaborated on Dawn: A Proton’s Tale of All That Came to Be to curious readers accessible to early teens and up. Scientist Cees Dekker, children’s author Corien Oranje, and theologian Gijsbert Van Den Brink creatively massaged their respective disciplines and gifts to write this delightful imagined history of the universe. It begins with God’s creating the Big Bang and ends ominously about midway through the current millennium.
In a thoroughly different genre Pastor John Van Sloten of Calgary published the short, yet expansive God Speaks Science: What Neurons, Giant Squid, and Supernovae Reveal about Our Creator. This bold yet humble science geek’s effort stands as a uniquely reverent exploration of several fields of science. Though long curious about applied science, Van Sloten gathered nine Christian researchers’ and practitioners to give witness to their own work and experience in medicine, astronomy, biology, neuroscience, language acquisition and creation care.
The books’ differing narrative styles
Each chapter of God Speaks Science begins with those scientists describing their own Christian convictions in their respective fields. Van Sloten follows their testimonies with stories of personal acquaintances, giving concrete examples of the scientists’ thoughtful introductions. Then he presents a brief section he calls Lectio Scientia as a guide for reflection and conversation. Next follow clear explanations of how we can be in touch to a real, if limited extent with “the empirical mind of God,” a phrase that occurs frequently in the book. Van Sloten fittingly ends each chapter with a short prayer. The methodical, repeated structure of each chapter steadily accumulates instances of what Van Sloten considers God’s continuing Self-Revelation in the theoretical and applied sciences.
Dawn also explores God’s Self-Revelation in an irenic, whimsical and witty imagining of time and material existence from The Big Bang to some centuries past ours. Using the tricky pathetic fallacy narrative mode, Dawn’s authors introduce first-person narrator Pro, a proton in a carbon molecule who lives a very long life carrying him from pre-history to a selection of biblical narratives and beyond.
Thus, Pro speaks from various objects and organisms as Creation evolves according to complex design. For billions of years, Pro migrates among rocks, trees, animals, and more as a sub-atomic particle. All these tropes politely nod to the theory of theistic evolution. Aware of its own existence, Pro wryly observes: “[As] part of a carbon atom . . . you always have someone to talk to . . . and have an extremely long life. But you don’t have a say about where you’re taken.”
At one point, Pro resides in a fish that breathes through gills underwater and with lungs on dry land. At other times Pro lives in a rock, a bird, a rodent and more. In Paradise, Pro witnesses humanity’s creation and tragic Fall in moving, lyrical ways you must discover for yourself. By the time Abram and company start their pilgrimage to the land God will show them, Pro is living in the skin of a sheep, soon becoming part of a tent in the caravan. Later Pro witnesses compelling and evocative episodes of Jesus’ birth and life.
Pro carries the story from dramatic start to worrisome end as three astronauts search for a new place for human life; people have polluted the earth perhaps beyond recovery. This delightful book serves as an evangelistic invitation for unbelievers as Christian astronaut SaeJin finally urges her companions not only to entertain belief in God, but also to accept the revelation of Christ in faith. Throughout, Dawn serves as a cautionary tale of humanity’s fatal error in denying God’s creational and sustaining gift of personal and cosmic redemption.
Different books with a shared impact
Both books encourage the need to employ the imagination in scientific studies, Bible reading and history. Van Sloten’s words speak wisely to the distrust of imagination in evangelical circles: “The scientific imagination is made in the image of a scientifically imaginative God.” The familiar, yet always daring Reformed assertion “All of Life is Religion” fits both Dawn and God Speaks Science. Kudos to Intervarsity Press and Moody Press for releasing these books that intelligently and devoutly challenge Christians to probe God’s world with humble confidence and expansive faith.
If you’re looking for serious, readable and winsome books to mull over both faith and science, these fill the bill. My younger grandchildren would love to read Dawn aloud with me. God Speaks Science would provide a stimulating read for adult church education. Both could find comfortable and possibly much-needed places in Christian school literature and science classes respectively. So, sell a bit of all you have and buy these books for yourself or as birthday gifts for thoughtful friends or family members.
