Faced on all sides with the world’s assumption that it isn’t intellectually respectable to believe the Bible, we prize men like John Lennox, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and the scourge of Richard Dawkins and atheists everywhere.
Early in this book we have an inkling of future battles in the hostile reception he received from Cambridge dons on arriving as a Bible-believing undergraduate there in 1962. Two generations later, it is a joy to read such a convincing statement of the rationality of Christian belief. ‘Both science and the Bible’, he writes, ‘insist on the importance of rational argument’. The book has an evangelistic thrust and can confidently be given to friends or colleagues with that purpose.
Professor Lennox shows the reasonableness of the resurrection in chapter 8 and the reliability of the Bible in chapter 7. In his defence of the miraculous he says, ‘If one admits the existence of a Creator, the door is inevitably open for that same Creator to intervene in the course of nature. There is no such thing as a tame Creator who cannot, or must not, or dare not actively get involved in the universe he has created. Miracles may occur’ (p.81).
ET readers should be aware that, on the age of the universe, Lennox sees a three-part structure in Genesis 1:1 – 2:3. This takes 1:1-2 as a statement regarding the creation of the heavens and the earth; 1:3 – 2:1 as six days of ‘God’s creation and organisational activity, culminating in the creation of human beings in his image; and 2:2-3 the seventh day of God’s rest—Sabbath’ (p.72-73). This enables him to separate the question of the age of the earth from the interpretation of the days, so that ‘the beginning of Genesis 1:1 did not necessarily take place on Day 1’.
Lennox maintains that the antipathy between science and Christianity is contrived not real. He shows the complementarity of the two. He references a distinguished line of believing scientists like Michael Faraday and many Nobel prize-winners in recent decades.
Scientific endeavour can describe the world and its processes. The Bible alone explains. Lennox uses the baking of ‘Aunt Matilda’s cake’ to demonstrate both the value and limitations of science. You need to get the book to find out!
Tim Curnow
Llantrisant
