Science asks the big questions that only faith can answer, says astrophysicist, theologian and Methodist minister Rev Prof David Wilkinson

Rev Prof David Wilkinson was on a train one day travelling from Newcastle, where he lives, to London nearly 400km away. As he settled in for the three-hour ride, the man next to him struck up a conversation.

“What do you do?” he asked Rev Wilkinson.

“I’m a Methodist minister and I teach theology at the university.”

As Rev Wilkinson tells it, the man’s eyes “seem to fill with fear” at the prospect that he was stuck with “a religious fanatic” for the next few hours.

In a bid to change topics, the man then asked: “What did you do before that?”

To this, Rev Wilkinson replied: “I did research in theoretical astrophysics.”

As with many people who discover that Rev Prof Wilkinson is both a man of the cloth and a man of science, the man on the train queried: “How can you be a scientist and a Christian?”

Science asks the big questions

Most of Rev Wilkinson’s life has been dedicated to demonstrating that faith and science are not antithetical.

“I am a scientist and a Christian, and it’s an exciting thing to be,” said the 62-year-old who has PhDs in theoretical astrophysics and systematic theology, and is a Fellow at the Royal Astronomical Society.

Rev Prof David Wilkinson preaching at Paya Lebar Chinese Methodist Church.

He is, in addition, the Director of Equipping Christian Leadership in an Age of Science (ECLAS), an international project based at St John’s College, a Professor in the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University, as well as the author of several books on the relationship between science and religion.

“Science gives us a lot of answers, but it also poses big questions.

“One of the questions that I think all of us are concerned about is: How can we make the world a better place?

“The second big question for me is: What’s the purpose of it all? Why are we here? What’s our purpose as human beings within the universe. What’s the purpose of the universe itself?

“And the third big question is: What is God like?”

But science has no answers

The problem, of course, is that the answers to these big questions cannot always be found in science.

In the beginning of the 20^th century, humans thought that science could make the world a better place. While science and technology did, indeed, bring humanity a lot of good – vaccines that cured, and computers and AI that made life and work more efficient – it also gave countries nuclear weapons that destroyed.

“Science can be used for good and for evil. The problem right at the heart of the human heart is this thing that the Bible calls sin or selfishness.”

That is something science cannot change.

Nor can science tell us the “whys” of things. Rev Prof Wilkinson noted that theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and astrobiologist, Dr Paul Davies, who is not a believer, had once remarked: “I cannot believe that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate, an accident of fate, an incidental blip in the great cosmic drama.”

His study of the universe had led him to the sense that there was “a deeper story to the purpose of the universe”, but it had not provided him with the answer.

Science also cannot tell us what God is like. In fact, Carl Sagan wrote in the foreword of Stephen Hawking’s best-seller A Brief History of Time that “science is about an absence of God”.

Yet, declared Rev Wilkinson, the answers to the big questions that science poses are “there in the Bible”.

Faith replies instead

It is in Colossians 1:15-20, said Rev Wilkinson, that faith provides the answers to the big questions.

1. What is God like?

A number of years ago, author of Black Holes: The End of the Universe? Professor John G Taylor explained that he did not believe in God because “how can a finite mind ever comprehend an infinite God?”.

Rev Wilkinson counters that finite minds can grasp Him if “the infinite God decides to reveal Himself to the finite mind in a way that the finite mind can understand”.

In Colossians 1:15, Paul tells us that Jesus is the “image of the invisible God”.  

“As we look at the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, we can know that God exists and that God cares and loves. So in answer to the question: ‘What is God like?’ Christians answer: ‘He is like Jesus.’”

2. What is the purpose of it all?

Paul goes on to say in Colossians 1:16-17 that at the heart of creation is Jesus.

Said Rev Wilkinson: “If you want to know the extent of creation, science can help you with that. But if you want to know the purpose of it, then you’ll find it in Jesus.”

For example, science can tell us about the laws of physics, but it cannot tell us from where the laws themselves come. Faith, though, has the answer. In Colossians 1:17, Paul tells us that in Jesus “all things hold together”.

“In what ways does science talk about all things cohering or holding together? The laws of physics.

“Paul is saying that the heart of the consistency and universality of the regularities in the universe is Jesus.”

Science can also describe the anthropic principles or the Goldilocks Enigma where circumstances in the universe are “just right”, allowing for life.

In the 1960s, Sir Fred Hoyle found that if the energy levels in carbon were only 2% different from what they are now and the energy levels in oxygen were only half a percent different, there would be no carbon in the universe.

“And that’s quite serious because you and I are made of carbon,” Rev Wilkinson pointed out.

Science, however, cannot explain how the circumstances in the universe came to be that way.

“So Sir Fred said after that, ‘Nothing has shaken my atheism as much as this discovery that the universe is fine-tuned.’”

3. How can we make the world a better place?

The brokenness of the world and the brokenness of humanity find their wholeness and healing in Jesus. He is the one who “reconcile[s] to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through His blood, shed on the cross” (Colossians 1:20).

“God made men and women to be in an intimate relationship with Himself. But through our own selfishness, our own sin, we’ve gone our own way, causing a separation to form between ourselves and our Creator God.

“That’s why, for many people, God seems so far away. It’s not because God isn’t there. We have simply gone our own way.

“Human beings, in religion, have tried to span that gap. But there’s only one thing that can – when Jesus on the cross took onto Himself our selfishness, our sin, and brought about reconciliation. That reconciliation is about Jesus somehow taking into Himself all of the pain and selfishness and mess of this world.

“And indeed, that path of reconciliation to make the world a better place is the way of the cross. It’s the way of love and self-giving and service that changes the world.”

The marriage of faith and science

Science and faith are not in opposition. In fact, if not for faith, there would be no science, said Rev Wilkinson.

“Because God is a God of order. There should be laws throughout the universe. Because we’re made in the image of God, we can understand that order.

“Because there was belief in one God, there should be consistency of the laws. Because there’s no fear of the gods of nature, we can do experiments.

“The very basis of science is in Christ in whom all things hold together. We’re only able to do our exploration of the universe or use the universe in technology or engineering because of Jesus.

“And that means that scientists and engineers and technologists are following a Christian vocation as much as anyone else,” he concluded.

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