I Timothy 6:20,21
Keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: which some professing have erred concerning the faith.
ALEXANDER CARSON (1776-1844): The world in general, and philosophers in particular, look upon Christians as a weak-minded people, who are prone to believe without sufficient evidence. The man of science, even when he can find no fault with the man of God, still thinks himself justifiable in considering him as utterly below himself in mental powers. He thinks there must be a soft place in his head somewhere.
A. W. PINK (1886-1952): In the first days of the Christian era the attack of the enemy [on the Bible] was made openly—the bonfire being the chief instrument of destruction—but, in these ‘last days’ the assault is made in a more subtle manner and comes from a more unexpected quarter. The Divine origin of the Scriptures is now disputed in the name of “Scholarship” and “Science,” and that, too, by those who profess to be friends and champions of the Bible.
A. W. TOZER (1897-1963): The modern vogue of bringing science to the support Christianity proves not the truth of the Christian faith but the gnawing uncertainty in the hearts of those who must look to science to give respectability to their faith…Whenever I find men running to science to find support for the Bible, I know they are rationalists and not true believers.
ALEXANDER CARSON: They make the dogmas of human science an authority paramount to the testimony of God in the Scriptures. This is the boldness, the blasphemy of infidelity.
LORD SHAFTESBURY (1801-1885): Really, I have more to fear from the defenders of religion than I have from its assailants. More mischief seems to be done, in many instances, by those who undertake the cause of the Bible, than by those who would overthrow it.
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES (1899-1981): Now here, it seems to me, is the very thing that certain evangelical people are tending to do…They are tying themselves to modern, scientific teaching, and nothing is more dangerous than that. We must base ourselves on the Scriptures, and if this has always been true, it seems to me it is especially true today. We are living in an age of great change, great scientific change…Modern science itself teaches us that we are not anti-scientific and we are not obscurantist if we do not accept statements as absolute truth simply because they are made by certain prominent and great scientists. We know that great scientists have made very dogmatic statements in the past, which by now have proved to be wrong…All I am saying is that it is very dangerous for us to base our position, our exposition of the Scripture, upon the pronouncements of science. These are changeable, constantly moving.
LORD SHAFTESBURY: The “scientific friends” are as dangerous as the “scientific enemies.” Revelation is addressed to the heart, and not to the intellect. God cares little, comparatively, for man’s intellect; He cares greatly for man’s heart. Two mites of faith and love are of infinitely higher value to Him than a whole treasury of thought and knowledge. Satan reigns in the intellect; God in the heart of man. Try the Scriptures intellectually merely, and you will encounter no end of difficulties, and these difficulties will agitate and darken your moral and spiritual perception of the truth. Try them by the heart, and you find such a flood of comfort, conviction, and assurance, that all difficulties will vanish, and even those started by science, will fade away; for faith and gratitude will set them down to ignorance and incapacity, and revel in the whole force of the discovery that knowledge, material and philosophical, is for time, but love, for eternity.
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): The comparing of matters of revelation with matters of science, things supernatural with things natural and common, is going by a wrong measure. Spiritual things, when brought together, will help to illustrate one another; but, if the principles of human art and science are to be made a test of revelation, we shall certainly judge amiss concerning it, and the things contained in it.
JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): We must carefully notice these two things—that a knowledge of all the sciences is mere smoke, where the heavenly science of Christ is wanting; and man, with all his acuteness, is as stupid for obtaining of himself a knowledge of the mysteries of God, as an ass is unqualified for understanding musical harmonies.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): The science of Jesus Christ is the most excellent of sciences. Let no one turn away from the Bible because it is not a book of learning and wisdom. It is. Would ye know astronomy? It tells you of the Sun of Righteousness and the Star of Bethlehem. Would you know botany? It tells you of the plant of renown—the Lily of the Valley and the Rose of Sharon. Would you know geology and mineralogy? You shall learn of the Rock of Ages, and the White Stone with a name graven thereon, which no man knoweth, saving he that receiveth it…What’er your science is, come and bend o’er this book; your science is here.
When the Bible is fully accepted as God’s own revelation of Himself, the mind has come to a quiet anchorage―If it ever comes to a decision whether we shall believe God’s revelation or man’s science, we shall unhesitatingly cry, “Let God be true and every man a lair.”
