You Don't Use Science to Test Scripture!

Matthew 24:35
“Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.”

How often have you heard people say that the Bible must be wrong because science disagrees with it? That attitude certainly isn’t new. It was common in 1932 when Dr. Harry Rimmer wrote his classic book, The Harmony of Science and Scripture. Even back then, Bible skeptics were using science to test Scripture. But as Dr. Rimmer pointed out, when science has matured to the point of infallibility, then and only then could it be used to test Scripture.

To emphasize that point, he mentioned a list of fifty-one scientific facts published by the French Academy of Sciences in1861, all of which contradicted some statement from Scripture. When Rimmer sat down to write his book some 70 years later, he noted that the Bible hadn’t changed in all that time, but “the knowledge of science has so vastly increased that there is not a living man of science today who holds one of those fifty-one so-called facts that were at one time advanced in refutation of the inspiration of the Scripture.”

The modern craze to test Scripture by science reverses the natural order, he said. “After twenty-five years of research on this subject, we are willing to admit that where science and the Bible are in utter harmony, that agreement establishes the certainty of that science.”

To Dr. Rimmer, using science to test Scripture was like a seven-year-old boy telling a seventy-year-old man how to grow up. How right he was! You just don’t use science to test Scripture!

Prayer:
Heavenly Father, unlike science textbooks that are constantly being revised, Your Word never needs to be updated. Amen.

Notes:
Harry Rimmer, The Harmony of Science and Scripture, pp. 58-59 (Eerdmans Publishing, 22nd printing, 1973). Photo: Harry Rimmer (1890-1952).