Christian faith and science must both contribute to our understanding of the world.

It behooves prudent and temperate people to believe what God has said, but not to ask about the modes and causes of actions, inasmuch as they are beyond us. Let it be said to busybodies, “Show me by your reason the essence of things visible. Tell me by what skill he fashioned his handiwork in its polymorphic variety.” Though you were to search out that sort of thing, you will still find yourself at a loss and distressed that you don’t understand the transformation wrought by rebirth, though you may know the reason for birth.

  - Gregory of Nyssa, On Holy Easter 665

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

  - Isaiah 55:8, 9

Gregory’s remarks may seem to discourage the work of science, but it’s not necessary to read them in so radical a manner. He was, after all, a careful scholar and widely learned, one of the leading intellectual lights of his generation.

Gregory is simply arguing for some appropriate limits to the use of reason as a way of knowing. Reason, he insists – today we would say, “science” – cannot know everything. It can’t even sort out and explain all the things we can see. How, then, can we rely on it to explain those we can’t?

Christian faith, on the other hand, can explain unseen mysteries – chief among them, how the Gospel of Jesus Christ works with transforming power in the lives of people. Christians can explain this clearly and rationally, although, in the end, the explanation must be received by faith if it is to be known.

The early theologians – such as Gregory (ca. 330-395) – understood and appreciated the powers of reason. But they knew its limits as well. Reason simply could not explain or account for the Christian movement and the ongoing work of God in bringing people to Himself. Reason, they knew, was not the judge of truth, but its servant.

Science can be understood as reason in the service of general revelation. Its work is most complete when it leads to conclusions, products, and the like which bring praise and glory to God and benefit to God’s world (Prov. 25:2; 1 Cor. 10:31). Christianity is reason in the service of special revelation, by which we understand realities and mysteries which exist beyond the realm of the material world.

Both general and special revelation fulfill the purposes of the Word of God, Who stands in and over both, and upholds the cosmos and everything in it – including all our Bibles and all the rules of logic – by His Word of power.

Both science and faith, therefore, find their fullest meaning and make their most complete contribution when they serve the eternal purposes of the Word of God, in Whom is all the fullness of wisdom and knowledge.

When science and religion operate according to sound reason, exercised in the light of general and special revelation, and with a view to the glory of Christ, they unite to produce a duet of glory and blessing. But neither must overstep the bounds of its focus or capabilities. And neither must seek to establish epistemological hegemony. Special revelation does not tell us about the fine details of the material world. General revelation does not explain the causalities or the sustaining and transforming power behind the material cosmos.

Yet both general and special revelation lead us to Christ. Reason, properly submitted to divine revelation, will do so as well – whether it is being used within the arena of faith or that of science.

T. M. Moore