The approach to truth : scientific and religious by Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Tyndale Press, 1963 27 pages
Although set in the time when it was published – the 1960s – this lecture, originally given to a medical audience, is full of wisdom for our own time – and for more than a medical audience.
Following the outline development of philosophical and scientific thought with quotes from the great names of history – Francis Bacon, Descartes, Newton, Einstein, Freud, Marx, Darwin, Wittgenstein, AJ Ayer, and Karl Popper, Martyn Lloyd-Jones shows the limits of the scientific method and the inadequacy of psychoanalysis and philosophy in arriving at anything more than temporary or partial conclusions, valuable though they may be in and of themselves.
The lecturer quotes Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician and philosopher of the 17th century (1623-1662), who said, ‘The supreme achievement of reason is to bring us to see that there is a limit to reason.’ Did not Shakespeare say much the same thing ? ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’
To quote Pascal again, ‘The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.’
If then mankind is ‘totally incapable of arriving at a knowledge of truth by means of the scientific theory…’, the scene is set for revelation to be the means by which truth may be grasped.
‘It is’, to quote the author,’ the exact opposite of the scientific method.’
As St Paul says, ‘God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise.’
(1 Cor. 1 26-27)
Despite preceding the rise of New Atheism by many decades, this published lecture is worth reading for its restatement of the related values of reason and faith by a master teacher.