Moral Entropy, Creation, and the Battle for the Mind

By Kenneth O. Gangel

[Kenneth O. Gangel, Professor in Church Ministries, Miami Christian College, Miami, Florida]

In science the second law of thermodynamics states that disorder in a closed system increases with time. Stated more specifically, the word entropy assumes the dissolution of matter and energy in the universe to an ultimate state of inert uniformity. In short, everything is going downhill. This article proposes that there is also the problem of moral entropy, which may be dubbed the “law of theo-dynamics.” This principle holds that the moral, spiritual, ethical, and cultural qualities of society are consistently deteriorating because of the presence of sin. This process began at the Fall and will ultimately culminate in worldwide degradation and the onslaught of evil, stoppable only by the return of the Lord of creation Himself.

An obvious presupposition here is that divine law is operable in both natural and moral spheres. Without such a basis one faces a terribly pessimistic subject, but the open-eyed realist in the late twentieth century certainly must view the world around him with an awesome concern for its headlong plunge into Satan’s stronghold.

When the city of Rome was being overwhelmed by barbarian hordes under Alaric in A.D. 410 and it seemed to thinking people that civilization was coming to an end, that total chaos would ensue, that all hopes of progress and orderly living were to cease, then Augustine, building upon the writings of his predecessors but illuminating them enormously from his own giant intellect, bequeathed to the world between A.D. 414 and 426 his own contribution, The City of God. Here he endeavored to assure his readers that there is still meaning and purpose in it all, that God is still the great planner, and that though events in the earthly sphere seem to be completely without reason or order or hope, in the spiritual realm God remains in sovereign control and world history is moving exactly as he intends it to.[1]

Augustine was primarily concerned with the relationship between man and God; man and nature; man and sin; God and nature; and man in society. Through the Dark Ages these ideas were retained (albeit at times in a most fragmented and inconspicuous form) until Thomas Aquinas reconstructed the thesis into an elaborate and logical world view which has been called “the medieval synthesis.”

Demonstration of the Problem

Biblical Patterns

Buswell, one of the great evangelical theologians of the twentieth century, argues that the historicity of the sin of Adam is essential to understanding the problem of sin in today’s world. To put it another way, neoorthodox and existential theologies with their mythical view of the early chapters of Genesis may accept some doctrine of original sin, but they do not believe that the Fall of man was a particular event which took place in history. Brunner, for example, accepted the theory of evolution and argued that Adam cannot be taken literally as the original ancestor of the entire human race.

Against this, evangelicals assert that the sin of Adam was a representative act and that the Fall was a historical event. Buswell argues that the numerical identity of Adam and the historicity of his act are essential to Christian theology. “It must be pointed out that such an attitude toward the doctrine of original sin (as that held by the existentialist camp) would undermine the doctrine of the atonement as a literally accomplished fact, a transaction once and for all, at the cross of Calvary.”[2]

The first six chapters of the Book of Genesis offer a clear demonstration of moral entropy in action as the following texts (all from the New International Version) clearly affirm.

“God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day” (Gen 1:31).

“The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame” (Gen 2:25).

“To Adam he said, ‘Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, “You must not eat of it,” cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return’“ (Gen 3:17–19).

“Now Cain said to his brother Abel, ‘Let’s go out to the field.’ And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him” (Gen 4:8).

“Lamech said to his wives, ‘Adah and Zillah, listen to me; wives of Lamech, hear my words. I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me’“ (Gen 4:23).

“When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the Lord said, ‘My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years.’ The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the Lord said, ‘I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them’“ (Gen 6:1–7).

The first text states that the original creation was good and the second follows with the statement that sexual immorality was unknown in the first family. Then the serpent acts and the curse on Adam brings with it not only painful toil but also the prospect of physical death. Adam’s son becomes a murderer, and the first murder in history is fratricide. But Lamech may have been right when he argued that his degradation was seventy times worse than Cain’s, for he was not only a murderer, but made up songs about it! Ultimately this first civilization came to a culmination just before the Flood. The Fall affected the mind of man to such an extent that “every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time” (Gen 6:5).

Whatever the number of years between Adam and Noah, man’s moral condition was all downward. No wonder Isaiah wrote about humanity in his day that “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa 53:6).

“But surely things improved in the New Testament times,” some may argue. “The very presence of God’s Holy Son on the earth should have cleaned up the system, stemmed the tide of moral entropy, and turned the minds of man back to the Creator.” Not so, writes Paul. “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse” (Rom 1:18–20).

But can the early chapters of Genesis be trusted to give a definitive account of the beginnings of the battle for the mind? According to Francis Schaeffer, “Absolutely every place where the New Testament refers to the first half of Genesis, the New Testament assumes (and many times affirms) that Genesis is history, and that it is to be read in normal fashion with the common use of the words and syntax.”[3]

It is interesting to note that all the New Testament writers except James refer to Genesis 1–11,[4] and all of their references are positive in nature.

Natural Patterns

Business and professional ethics have so deteriorated in society that even the secular press bemoans the low level of morality in contemporary Western culture. All of that presupposes what Buswell calls “the sense of ought,” a trans-cultural and timeless innate grasp of right and wrong, derived from initial creation by God Himself.

The fact that man generally has a moral sense, regardless of the inconsistencies in the outworking of this moral sense, seems to me to constitute evidence that man has fallen from a higher status. How could a mere naturalistic evolutionary process ever give rise to the sense of moral obligation, not mere desire, obligation to moral standards which ought to be realized regardless of desire?[5]

The blunting of the sense of ought, or as Paul puts it, the searing of one’s conscience “as with a hot iron” (1 Tim 4:2), is further complicated in the natural pattern of moral entropy by what might be called unrealized capacities. Among evolutionists, Eiseley is somewhat of a maverick. He argues that the very earliest human being had a remarkable brain size, certainly much larger than what was needed in a primitive society.[6] He concludes that today with man’s capacity to design computers and split atoms, man has essentially the same brain as the earliest known humans. He is at a loss to explain what he calls “the dream animal” because there are almost no clues to his origin! Barcus comments on this “arrival of mankind.”

In fact, the arrival of mankind at all on the scene is a most unusual, and probably unrepeatable, biological event. [This is the same observation Monod makes.] For the human race as we know it to have emerged at all, to have survived at all, required not one but four conditions: (1) The brain had to triple in size [from a pre-human skull]; (2) This had to happen after birth, or mother and infant would both have died; (3) A longer period of initial growth [childhood] had to become a social habit; and (4) Family bonds had to become permanent rather than seasonal if the helpless infant was to grow to adulthood. It is simply amazing to Eiseley that all four of those conditions converged. If any of them had not occurred, humanity would not have emerged.[7]

Obviously no problem exists here for one who believes that God did it precisely the way the Scriptures describe. But the point is that the puzzle pieces are so fragmentary in the evolutionary hypothesis that a thinking evolutionist like Eiseley cannot account for the unrealized capacities in the human mind and therefore he rejects his commitment to a blind chance theory in favor of some movement of purpose in humanity. It is fascinating to note the way he is drawn through a recognition of design and order in the universe to an irresistible conclusion: humanity is “a most unusual, and probably unrepeatable, biological event”!

Yet included in the natural pattern of moral entropy is also the problem of disordered drives. Men like Hitler and Mao Tsetung possessed an undeniable genius. The natural brilliance of the mind is there, but its corruption by sin leads to a utilization of creative powers toward evil rather than good. To explore another dimension, modern man tends to miss part of God’s plan for his life by the very nimrodian behavior of urban obstruction which takes man away from Thoreau’s “Walden Pond.” To be sure, gazing at the magnificence of a rosebud never saved anyone, but man’s disordered drive, which takes him away from the sense of identity in creation, is a constant reminder that he is not a machine.

Psychological Patterns

This “law of theo-dynamics” (moral entropy) is aptly observable in the psychological realm. Three behaviors are literally rampant on a worldwide scale in contemporary culture: inhumanity, abnormality, and irresponsibility. Iran trembles with anarchy in the streets; political assassinations are systematically carried out in Cambodia; revolution and civil war can be found in multiple locations on the continent of Africa; and the whole concept of human rights has become a political football to justify or condemn whatever the user of the phrase wishes to defend or attack. Man’s inhumanity to man is possibly the most obvious evidence that man’s mind is corrupted by sin. Zoologists point out that there is no observable cruelty among animals comparable to the cruelty which man sometimes exhibits toward his peers.

The whole matter of abnormality offers additional negative support for moral entropy. Barbour argued as early as 1930 that many of the facts of the disordered mind are better explained by the biblical view that they are the result of sin, than by the mythological “unconscious” or the “id” (Freud) or by “racial memories” or the “collective unconscious” (Jung).[8] Obviously one must add to that the popular Skinnerian excuse of blaming everything on one’s environment.

Irresponsibility is the third problem in the psychological arena. The Apostle Paul was appalled by the fact that the wicked world, knowing God’s righteous decree, not only does things deserving of death, but regularly approves those who practice them (Rom 1:32). No wonder Henry referred to modern technological society as a “barbarian culture.” Even the secular psychiatrist Menninger took pen in hand to ask, “Whatever became of sin?”[9]

The answer to Menninger’s question is that man has worked out a peaceful coexistence with sin through the philosophy of existential relativism. The battle for the mind rages in the social as well as the natural sciences. The nature of democratic capitalism in America requires individuals to be innovative, risk-taking, and competitive, while contemporary American education tends to foster dependency from the cradle to the grave. Inhumanity, abnormality, and irresponsibility are taken for granted and true humanity, normality, and responsibility are downgraded as out-of-date values. This is illustrated by the following quotation from a junior high civics textbook.

The problem was that President Hoover had a conservative traditional view of how the economy functioned. He was a man who believed in the old values of individualism and self-reliance. He believed that each person had to support himself, and was responsible for his own problems. He did not want to use the power of the federal government to help people.[10]

When reading a paragraph like that, one wants to respond, “We could use more men like Herbert Hoover.”

Description of the Dilemma

Individually, Man’s Mind Is Corrupt from Within

Jesus said, “Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him” (Matt 12:34b–35). Obviously sinful images from the external world continue the entropic pattern. But it is because they find a point of contact with the sinful self within. Howard urges Christians to let their minds be guided by “the touchstone of orthodoxy,” and with a brilliant prose style he declares that there is no moral democracy any more than there is a mathematical democracy.

A hundred years ago or a thousand or ten thousand, for that matter, mountebanks and wizards and false prophets had to whip up what following they could on the strength of their own voice and their own tricks. Now every jester has an instant, vast, and utterly credulous audience via the talk shows. The audience is credulous, I say, because they have been schooled in the tradition of moral and intellectual democracy, in which every idea is worth exactly as much as every other idea, and in which we are committed to giving equal time, not just on the air or in the columns of newsprint, but also in our minds—equal time, I say to Isaiah and Beelzebub, for example, or to St. Thomas Aquinas and Mick Jagger, or the blessed virgin and Bella Abzug. We see the talk show hosts, sitting in vapid amiability while their guests lively dismantle the entirety of history and myth and we pick up this frame of mind. We take on an earnest, humorless frame of mind that gravely receives all data as “input,” so that we hear one person telling us about the joys of open marriage, and another about what an emancipation it is to find that one is no longer a man or a woman but a person, and still another when we learn to address God as our androgyne which art in heaven—we hear all this, and our only response is, “What I hear you saying is…” or “I need this input” or “Heavy,” or some such trenchant comment.[11]

Yes, the battle for the mind rages on the individual level, and the words of Jesus still echo down the corridors of history: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matt 22:37).

Socially, The Collectivity of Corrupt Minds Is Tearing the Universe Apart

Again, it was the Apostle Paul who warned of the disastrous social effect the united nemesis of diseased minds could wreak on a culture. “Those who live according to their sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace, because the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by their sinful nature cannot please God” (Rom 8:5–8).

One example of a mind which cannot please God because of its earthly orientation is the new humanism. Economist Boulding is delighted with the progress of human society. He says modern man has lived through the dramatic crisis and now it is possible for man to begin developing his full potentials and capacities.[12] Soon man will be able to overcome poverty, disease, famine, and possibly even war. The coming of the knowledge explosion is irreversible and Boulding is enthusiastic. One thinks rather that Boulding has been born approximately eight decades too late. Such naive pronouncements of juvenile humanism marked the turn of the century, only to be buried by two world wars, a depression, and continuing cynicism about whether anyone still knows the difference between right and wrong!

Along with the new humanism, there is also an increasing cultural radicalism. Lasch, writing like an ancient prophet, argues that a once rugged and resourceful nation is now seething with a destructive oedipal rage, masquerading as the pleasure principle.

Having overthrown futilism and slavery and then outgrown its own personal and familial form, capitalism has evolved a new political ideology, welfare liberalism, which absolves individuals of moral responsibility and treats them as victims of social circumstance. It has evolved new modes of social control, which deal with the deviant as a patient and substitute medical rehabilitation for punishment. It has given rise to a new culture, the narcissistic culture of our time.[13]

Such are the coconspirators in the attack on the mind—social colleagues linked together for the advancement of moral entropy.

Scientifically, Man Refuses to Acknowledge the Cause Or Even the Reality of the Problem

If there is no God—and therefore that non-god was never involved in a personal creation—then man has no responsibility to Him because a non-being could hardly be self-revealed as the Christian claims. The bleak, dark conclusion which logically awaits anyone willing to travel the total road of evolution is spelled out by Monod. Man is alone in a universe of “unfeeling immensity” in which he arrived by chance. And arriving by chance he may as well give up idle dreams of having a “destiny.” There is no destiny. There is no purpose. There is no significance. And therefore there are no laws, no duty, and no morality![14]

But Skinner hastens to the rescue. Yes, contemporary man is a mechanical person stripped of freedom and dignity, but the personality can be designed and engineered from the outside by an intricate system of social pressures. Men cannot handle the problems around them because they have not developed as fast as technology, so they must turn the technology on themselves and use social engineering to manipulate human behavior. But who writes the prescriptions and pushes the buttons? Or to put it another way, who engineers the engineers? Skinner has a simple answer—”Trust me.”

We wish we could. Skinner pleads his case well. But there is that little slip twixt the cup and the lip that holds us back. There is danger here. For Skinner’s social engineer has a completely different idea about what people are. We are machines. We do not have a divine origin. Our nature is caused entirely by our environment. If one wants to change what we are, one simply changes our environment. There is no definition for human. We are what we make ourselves—no, not even that—we are what our environment makes of us. We are pawns.[15]

But is there no hope in the scientific community? Are not more and more scientists beginning to question the hypothesis of animalistic evolution in their search for new meaning? Certainly Planck has openly admitted the limitations of science, though he systematically makes religion subject to science and arrives, at best, at a fictitious symbionic relationship.

But there is another, far broader law, which has the property of giving a specific, unequivocal answer to each and every sensible question concerning the course of a natural process…. but what we must regard as the greatest wonder of all, is the fact that the most adequate formulation of this law creates the impression in every unbiased mind that nature is ruled by a rational, purposive will.[16]

Even three years before Planck’s article, Caldin questioned the authority of science as a determiner of truth.

Science, then, is not an adequate description of nature: it is a portrait made by an observer with a particular point of view and a definite limitation of his vision. From natural science we cannot learn what material nature is for, how and why it exists at all, and why it has any laws…. Science by itself throws no light on its own value, nor on values in general. It is not a royal road to knowledge of every kind.[17]

Delineation of the Solution

The Medieval Synthesis: Tradition and Reason

Earlier in this article reference was made to Aquinas whose philosophy is certainly traceable back to the realism of Aristotle. Whether or not one agrees with the medieval synthesis, one must admit that it was an orderly package, a world view which linked the supernatural with the natural and promoted a unity of purpose with religious zeal.

In this medieval synthesis, every line of thought and study was integrated with one objective ideally in view, which was to clothe the mind of man with the garment of understanding that would enable him to come humbly but with assurance into the presence of God and worship Him knowingly, recognizing the extent of his responsibilities and accepting his position in the economy of things with proper dignity, and—so they supposed—having also a full understanding of God’s thoughts. I say “ideally,” because it has to be admitted that this high aim of education was often replaced by the much lower one of maintaining the status quo.[18]

Such a world view, inadequate as it was, certainly was better than the existential nothingness which philosophy offers today. It may be true that medieval man was walking in a dark world with only a small candle to light his way, but that is perhaps better than walking in the light with no eyes at all.

The Modern Synthesis: Science and Reason

The Renaissance destroyed the medieval synthesis, demonstrating its weakness and fragmenting its world view. So the wedding of science and religion entered the divorce court of the new learning as the purpose of education increasingly became the emancipation of man rather than the worship of God. Historian Walker comments on this development.

When we trace the history of theology and science, …we find that they slowly diverged from each other and in the course of time became isolated departments of knowledge expressing contradictory views of the universe. As Hardwick has pointed out, the human mind has a faculty of creating prisms for itself, and eventually the scientific spirit incarcerated itself in a materialistic scheme of the universe which completely cut it off not only from religion but from all fruitful speculation concerning man’s nature. In like manner, the self-sufficient pedantry of the church scholars had the effect of enclosing religion in a rigid casing of thought, which completely isolated it from all the new discoveries being made by the scientists. Insulated from each other’s ideas and pitifully satisfied with the sufficiency of their respective beliefs, it was inevitable that in the end scientists and teachers of religion should come into conflict.[19]

So reason, happily wed in the days of Aquinas to tradition and religion, now flirts with the new girl on the block—science, and though a formal wedding was never consummated, they immediately began to live together.

Apparently the compromise with religion is so desirable under the modern synthesis that Jastrow, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and professor of astronomy at Columbia University, offers a “new Book of Genesis” based on the “big bang theory.”

Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: The chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy.[20]

In the battle of the mind this writer certainly prefers an open, honest foe like Monod rather than the hypocritical compromise of Jastrow.

The Miracle Synthesis: Revelation and Reason

Neither the medieval synthesis nor the modern synthesis satisfies the claims of evangelical Christianity. The title suggested for this third alternative could also be called “The Message Synthesis” with a focus on the self-revealed God, “The Master Synthesis” with a focus on the lordship of Christ, “The Mystery Synthesis” with a focus on the unveiling of the gospel in the New Testament, or “The Meaning Synthesis” since it alone among all the philosophies of modern man offers genuine rationality for time and eternity.

But the word miracle is chosen because that is precisely what creation is. The God who formed man is the same God who re-forms man, and therefore the revelation of regeneration is the answer to the world’s dilemma.

In the miracle of creation, God made man. In the miracle of the Incarnation, He gave man the God-man. And in the miracle of regeneration, He gives man the opportunity to be restored to Him. But what is a miracle? Custance gives this clear definition. “I believe that miracles are occasions upon which God suspends or supersedes or accelerates or in some way modifies the natural order so that an event occurs which is entirely exceptional. A miracle then, according to this view, would be an indication that God is interfering in the natural order by an act of will because it pleases Him to do so.”[21]

It is the God of miracles who created the unfriendly porcupine which can carry up to thirty thousand quills with which it repels its predators. Though exclusively a defensive animal, the porcupine is a killer since a fox or timber wolf might die of starvation, unable to eat because of the quills in its mouth. It is said that only one North American animal can kill a porcupine with impunity a large member of the weasel family called the “fisher,” which has developed a knack of flipping porcupines over on their backs and attacking the unprotected underside. Why should one creature alone be able to do this? It is one of the mysteries in the endless fascination of the God of creation.

The flight of wild geese is a study in aerodynamics. The leader of the “V” formation breaks trail through the air, and each bird thereafter gains “lift” from the updraft created by the wing action of the one in front of it. Being the leader is not easy, and that is why one can see the birds change the lead position periodically, as if by prearrangement. It all works so smoothly that spectators rarely stop to ponder what a remarkable system it is.[22]

It is the God of the porcupine, the weasel, and the geese who seeks to transform the mind of man so that through the haze of sin which surrounds him he can see again the purity of the Creator. Paul wrote, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing, and perfect will” (Rom 12:2). The word for “mind” here is νούς found also in Romans 14:5; 2 Thessalonians 2:2; and 1 Corinthians 2:16 (where the same apostle says to believers, “But we have the mind of Christ”).

So how should Christians press the battle for the mind? What practical solutions are there in combating the black plague of sin in heart, home, and humanity? Three suggestions are offered.

Declare war on theological ignorance. That is what Paul did in Athens when he proclaimed a real God in place of an unknown one (Acts 17:22–23). Nothing is to be gained by ignoring the theological dimensions of the creation conflict. In the final analysis the issue is theological, not scientific. Either God said what He meant and meant what He said, or the entire message of redemption is unreliable. Sometimes man is lulled into comfort by the ignorance of his own limited worlds, somewhat like the little girl who was asked by her grandmother why she never cried in the dark at home but always did so at grandmother’s house. The child replied, “But, Grandma, at home it’s my own darkness.”

Declare war on theological indifference. Too many believers are careless about the accuracy of their theology. They have no time for the exegesis and exposition which lays the groundwork for theological and philosophical systems. In one sense, such indifference is just another form of ignorance. Jaarsma attacked it over three decades ago.

Faith is not the asylum of ignorance to which are assigned the things we believe but do not understand. Nor is faith the sphere of religion and reason or understanding the sphere of knowledge. Neither is faith based on reason in the sense that we believe a thing true or false because we understand it. The Christian faith is the source of knowledge which is basic to the true understanding of all things experienced.[23]

Declare war on theological intellectualism. Theological interectualism is that snobbery of contemporary existential religion which accepts Jastrow’s “new Genesis” as the happy compromise, thereby throwing man back into the pit of modern synthesis. One wonders whether there is more danger in intellectualism or ignorance, for like choosing “tails” on a two-headed coin, one loses whichever way it falls.

Of course, attacking intellectualism does not mean declaring war on intellect. The believer is to offer his renewed and dedicated mind as a sacrifice to God. In response to Monod’s mournful wail of no destiny, contemporary Christian poet Joe Parks has written the following song Destiny:

Before the worlds were made
Or stars above displayed
A loving God had made a great design.
Before the planets flew
Or earth broke into view
Their form was fashioned in the Master’s mind.
Now we can see that from Eternity
His perfect wisdom carried out a plan.
And we are all a part
Of what was in His heart
The moment when He first created man.[24]

Notes

1. Arthur C. Custance, Science and Faith, The Doorway Press, vol. 8 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1978), p. 109.
2. James Oliver Buswell, A Systematic Theology of the Christian Religion, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1962), 1:298.
3. Francis A. Schaeffer, No Final Conflict (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1975), p. 18.
4. Matthew 19:4–5; 24:37–39; Mark 10:6; Luke 3:38; 17:26–27; Romans 5:12; 1 Corinthians 6:16; 11:8, 9, 12; 15:21, 22, 45; 2 Corinthians 11:3; Ephesians 5:31; 1 Timothy 2:13–14; Hebrews 11:7; 1 Peter 3:20; 2 Peter 2:5; 3:4–6; 1 John 3:12; Jude 11, 14; Revelation 14:7.
5. Buswell, A Systematic Theology, p. 256.
6. Loren Eiseley, The Immense Journey (New York: Vintage Books, 1957).
7. Nancy B. Barcus, Developing a Christian Mind (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1977), pp. 61, 62.
8. Buswell, A Systematic Theology, p. 259.
9. Karl Menninger, Whatever Became of Sin? (New York: Hawthorne, 1973).
10. The Challenge of America (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1973), p. 633.
11. Thomas Howard, “The Touchstone,” Christianity Today, January 5, 1979, p. 12.
12. Kenneth Boulding, The Meaning of the 20th Century (New York: Harper & Row, 1964).
13. Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York: Northon, 1978).
14. Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity (New York: A. Knopf, 1971), p. 180.
15. Barcus, Developing a Christian Mind, p. 80.
16. Max Planck, “Religion and Natural Science,” Scientific Autobiography and Other Writings (New York: Philosophical Library, 1949), p. 184.
17. E. F. Caldin, “Value and Science,” Endeavour (October 1946), p. 161.
18. Custance, Science and Faith, p. 112.
19. Kenneth Walker, Meaning and Purpose (London: Pelican Books, 1944), p. 28.
20. Robert Jastrow, “A New Genesis,” Miami Herald, October 22, 1978, p. E1.
21. Custance, Science and Faith, p. 208.
22. “A Knowledge of Nature,” The Royal Bank of Canada Monthly Letter, July 1978, p. 3.
23. Cornelius Jaarsma, “Christian Theism and the Empirical Sciences,” Monograph of the American Scientific Affiliation, August 1947, p. 71.
24. Joe E. Parks, Destiny (Grand Rapids: Singspiration, 1971).