Searchers

In academic journals there may appear articles, lengthy and short, reciting evidence for this and/or that point-of-view relative to some issue. Recent to this writing there appeared various defenses for the date (possible) for the birth of Christ appearing in the January/February, 2014, issue of Biblical Archaeology. There are four dates bandied about relative to Jesus’ birth. The two leading ones are 4 B.C. and 1B.C. One archaeologist made firm defense for 4 B.C. Another, in countering the first, not only argued in favor of the 1B.C. date, but wrote: The most often preferred candidate, the 4 B.C. eclipse, is, in my view, far and away the least likely one. (In human search analysts don’t permit the possibility of a miracle star.)

Such is the life of scholars – common disagreement that not only comes down on a personal conviction of the scholar, but may reduce the observations of other scholars acting with the same evidence, educated by the same preceding scholar/teachers, and yet coming out with views diametrically opposed to one another. It is comforting to persons of faith that although we can’t provide physical evidence that can be readily replicated for many matters relating to God, we are not alone in holding differences between us from those who extrapolate from hard evidence. Hard evidence is verifiable to human senses, and can be replicated by others. Those totally committed to hard evidence find faith persons to be wishful, perhaps closed minded, perhaps unworthy of true academic life. Persons of faith often find the strict scientific mind to be too limited to one pattern of learning that we have identified as scientific, so limiting ourselves to a single dimension of the human experience, generally known as the physical or scientific, in the search for truth and solutions. The physical is seen as verifiable. It is likely that this tension will continue, except for those who can overlook the competitive features of discussion and take the processes of both contexts in the education of the mind and the applications of information to the benefit of nature and beyond.

I have seldom encountered persons who say they believed in God from the search of nature’s evidence, or rejected God from that search. Even those who change belief, one way or the other, may not be able to trace their route to change to the academic discipline they engage, and to which they often ascribe as the guide of their present beliefs about God. The best known scholar with whom I have had close personal exchange was William Foxwell Albright, counted as the father of modern Archaeology. He approached that discipline with the idea that he might find proofs that the Bible was in error on various matters. When he found the evidence that proved the opposite in the areas of his search of what he thought might be history, he felt drawn to a belief in the integrity of Scripture. Even so, I believe he might have had more influence from a latent faith that grew out of his experience as the son of missionaries to South America. The matter of Christian cause has moved, for me, in the direction that if Scripture and Christian application of it does not woo persons to Christ, they are not likely to find him in faith to redemption. Neither I nor the Christians I know were drawn to Christ by the evidence of general nature, the context of natural life, but in the challenge of human nature that yearns for God’s personal approval to acceptance of us. That belongs to the spiritual nature of mankind, not to the physical nature in which we live. Nothing in history, except Scripture and verbal/life claims of those who believe Scripture can persuade sufficiently well to cause human beings to find spiritual safety in God through Jesus Christ. We need something of divine revelation to believe. The matter is that exotic and demanding. The world of mankind, whether in abject ignorance or highest sophistication, cannot touch God without faith. The touching point is in the mind, separated by the functions we may relate to heart and mind. The mind of the heart touches God in faith: the mind of the intellect touches the life of the natural world. The doubter may need to pray for a faith component that provides more information to mankind than does nature’s marvelous provision for the humanistic context of our lives. When both faith and nature are brought together, they serve to make of persons in any age group, race, nation, gender, situation/context what they were meant to become – the children of God in Jesus Christ. In addition they provide what Scripture identifies as hope – immortality.