Does the Bible Teach Science?

In the category “nothing new under the sun” here’s a paragraph from John Woodbridge’s 1985 article “Does the Bible Teach Science” explaining that the issue is not whether the Bible speaks authoritatively on the natural world but how to faithfully interpret the statements that do.

Contrary to the interpretations found in the works of Vawter, Rogers and McKim, and Roland Mushat Frye, the choice that Christians faced until the middle of the seventeenth century was generally this: Should each passage of an infallible Bible which speaks of the natural world be interpreted literally or should some interpretive allowance be made for the fact that a number of passages are couched in the language of appearance? The choice was not between a belief in a completely infallible Bible and a Bible whose infallibility was limited to faith and practice. Parties from both sides of this debate included “science” and history within their definition of infallibility, but they interpreted passages which dealt with the natural world in differing ways. Those persons who did believe the Bible contained errors included, among others, Socinians, libertines, skeptics, deists, remonstrants like Grotius, and members of smaller radical rationalist sects. (quoted in D.A. Carson, Collected Writings on Scripture, 69)

The minor point here is that Christians will sometimes disagree on how to interpret biblical passages that touch on history and science. The major point is that if you skip the interpretative work altogether because the Bible supposedly makes mistakes or only speaks on “theological” topics, you’re building your house far outside the suburbs of historic orthodoxy.