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Opening Announcement: Â鶹Éç Radio 4 and Â鶹Éç Sounds. In this week’s Sunday Worship from Northern Ireland, Professor John Lennox reflects on the relationship between faith and science in conversation with Andrew Roycroft who introduces the service.

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Music: Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity from the Planets (Holst)

London Symphony Orchestra from The Planets (Delta Music)

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Andrew Roycroft: Welcome to Sunday Worship. Today, we’re meditating together on how science, faith, wonder, and worship fit together in the Christian faith. We live in a world that is beset by wonders all around us, beauty, immensity and diversity that can leave us wide-eyed and breathless. Whether it is the mind-blowing vastness of space, the intricacy of cellular life, or the vibrant biological mosaic of the natural world, there is so much to grab our attention and stir our imagination. As scientific understanding of our world advances, how can those who hold to Christian theism still find space for their faith, and how can the wonders of the world feed our worship of God?

I am joined today by Professor John Lennox. John Lennox is an Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at University of Oxford, Emeritus Fellow in Mathematics and Philosophy of Science in Green Templeton College, Oxford, and President of The Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics. He is on record as saying that ‘faith is a response to evidence, not a rejoicing in the absence of evidence’. In that spirit our conversation today dwells on the evidence that the natural world presents to us, and how wonder is fuelled by the facts of this phenomenal world in which we live. This service is designed to feed our faith and stir wonder and worship in the hearts of all who listen to it.

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Song: Creation Sings the Father’s Song (Keith & Kristyn Getty and Stuart Townend)

Keith & Kristyn Getty. From Awaken the Dawn (Getty Music)

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Prayer (Reader): Almighty God, we exalt and worship you as our Creator, our Sustainer, the Lord of Life, giver of every good thing. We magnify you for the wonders of our world and the capacities you have given to us to observe. Help us as we marvel at the scale of the universe to rejoice in the scope of your love. Aid us as we observe the work of your hands to perceive the concern of your heart that we might know you, receive you through your son, and live for you. May our service today bring great praise to your name and may our contemplation of who you are and what you have done remind us of who we are and the place you have given to us in your world. We ask this in the name of your Son Jesus Christ. Amen.

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Music How great thou art (Swedish Melody)

Celtic Music. From Homeward (Oak Ridge Records)

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Andrew Roycroft: Professor Lennox, in our conversation today, we are considering creation in its manifold beauty and thinking through how looking beneath the surface, mining the discoveries of science, can act as fuel for faith in God, rather than as a foil to it. We will be isolating some specific aspects of the cosmos for consideration later on, but broadly, as a man of faith and a man of science, how has your study of the universe informed your worship?

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John Lennox: The expression man of faith and man of science can sometimes give the impression that faith is not involved in science, and the rational approach of science is not involved in faith in God. Both of these are actually false because there is in fact a close connection between science and faith in God. For instance, the motor that drove the scientific revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries through men like Galileo, Kepler and Newton was their faith in God as creator. [...]

For instance, the driving force behind Galileo's questing mind was his deep inner conviction that the creator who had endowed us with senses, reason and intellect intended us not to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them. Such discovery for Johannes Kepler amounted in his famous phrase to saying I was merely thinking God's thoughts after him, since we astronomers are priests of the highest God in regard to the Book of Nature, it benefits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather above all else of the glory of God.

And it's the same for me. And the first thing that leads me to worship God is the fact that science can be done, or to put it more precisely, that the workings of the universe are describable in the language of mathematics, whereas the workings of the biosphere are describable in the language of genetics. Wonderful circumstances that tell me that this is a word-based universe. These facts resonate deeply with the opening statement of the fourth gospel. In the beginning was the word. All things came to be through him. So the very languages of science lead me to worship God as the creator word.

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Andrew Roycroft: Our worship today is structured around Psalm 8, a poem that invites us to marvel at wonders above us, wonders within us as human beings, and wonders around us in the beauty of the natural world we are called to steward and cultivate. The first four verses of the Psalm focus our mind on wonders above the immensity of the heavens.

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Reading 1: Psalm 8:1-4

Lord our Lord, how magnificent is your name throughout the earth. You have covered the heavens with your majesty. From the mouths of infants and nursing babies, you have established a strong hold on account of your adversaries in order to silence the enemy and the Avenger. When I observe your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you set in place, what is a human being that you remember him, the son of man that you look after him?

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Andrew Roycroft: This creation Psalm begins by looking up into the heavens and magnifying God for what we can observe in the skies. The second decade of the twenty-first century finds humanity gazing above in new ways, with the recent Artemis 2 mission putting the moon in full focus once again. Professor Lennox, one of your hobbies for many decades has been amateur astronomy. What captivates you about the heavens, and how can astronomy and astrophysics enrich our reading of Psalm 8 and of the Christian faith? Can you describe some of the emotions that attend gazing into the heavens, for you?

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John Lennox: The first scientist I ever had a discussion with was Dr. Eric Lindsey, director of the Observatory in my hometown, Armagh. A schoolboy at the time, I asked him what his astronomy told him about the big question of what, if anything, was behind the universe. He told me that one cannot look up into the starry sky night after night without sensing that there is a mind behind it. And later in life I got a good telescope of my own and began fully to appreciate the awesome beauty of the vast size and age of the universe. Looking at the fuzzy ball of stars that is our nearest galaxy Andromeda M31, two and a half million light years away from us, containing something like a mind numbing trillion stars, or catching sight of the wonderful colours of the much nearer ring nebula M57, 2,000 light years away, it makes my mind and heart sing with the psalmist that the heavens really do declare the glory of God.

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Andrew Roycroft: One phenomenon that the Artemis 2 crew is facing, in common with the Apollo missions of another generation, is the ‘overview’ effect: the emotional, psychological and spiritual impact of having viewed the entire planet. Thinking back to 1972, when the ‘Blue Marble’ picture first entered our shared consciousness, what impact did that photo have on you? How does that picture frame our place in the universe?

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John Lennox: I remember that photograph very well in 1972 and I found it quite stunning. It shows us how small we humans are as we whirl through space on our beautiful blue planet. And it should produce in us a healthy humility. However, size is not necessarily the measure of value. A diamond is worth a lot more than a lump of coal, although they are essentially the same stuff. And Sam 8 points out that God is mindful of us. And it is the fact that we humans have been specially made in his image that gives us dignity. The heavens show God's glory, but they were not made in his image. We were. And it is that awesome fact from which our true value derives and which determines our place in the universe.

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Music The Uncreated One (King Forevermore) (Aaron Keyes)

Keith & Kristyn Getty. From Quintology: The Life of Christ (Getty Music)

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Andrew Roycroft: The nature of being human has captured the minds of philosophers and the hearts of poets across history. Our quiddity, the riddle and rhapsody of human life, is intriguing, beguiling and ultimately confounding. In Hamlet, William Shakespeare put the following lines on the lips of his main protagonist. What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving, how express and admirable, in action, how like an angel, in apprehension, how like a god, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals.

Many centuries earlier, the Psalmist David made the majestic dignity of human life the core of his praise to God for creation. His writing invites us to rejoice at wonders within, the intricacy and purpose of our given life as people.

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Reading 2: Psalm 8:3-5

When I consider your heavens,

the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars,

which you have set in place,

what is mankind that you are mindful of them,

human beings that you care for them?

You have made them a little lower than the angels

and crowned them with glory and honour.

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Andrew Roycroft: In the early 21st century we are grappling in new ways with what humanness is. The un-stinting march of Artificial Intelligence into our daily lives, coupled with the wonders and warnings that the scientific and engineering worlds bring to our attention with increasing frequency, is giving us fresh pause to think about what a person is. Professor Lennox, David asks in Psalm 8:4, ‘what is a human being’? Does his answer satisfy you? If so, why?

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John Lennox: Yes, I not only find it satisfying but challenging. David says three things about human beings in this text. Firstly, that they were created a little lower than the heavenly beings, which presumably means that human beings are not pure spirit as Godnd angels are, but are part spirit and part animal. Yet secondly, they are crowned with glory and honour, which I take to imply that they were made in the image of God as we have just discussed. Thirdly, God has given them genuine authority and responsibility as stewards of His creation to develop it and care for it, for its ultimate owner, God Himself.

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Andrew Roycroft: In your writing on AI, you have described human beings as having a material base, an aesthetic sense, innate curiosity, as well as possessing sophisticated high level language. How do these remarkable features of human identity move you to worship?

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John Lennox: Apart from having a material base as machines do, humans are distinct from AIs because they are living beings which AIs are not. They are conscious of the world and other humans around them which AIs are not. They have an aesthetic sense which AIs do not. They are moral beings which AIs are not and they have language that enables them to communicate with each other and with God. In short, they are made in the image of God with the capacity to know and worship God which AIs are not.

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Andrew Roycroft: And in a world, as you've described it, that seeks to uncouple intelligence from consciousness, how is gathering for worship and fellowship an act of cultural resistance.

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John Lennox: That's a very interesting idea. Gathering for worship implies that we are conscious of a need for friendship and fellowship, and the communal worship of God resists the secular pressure to find our meaning and value in this world. And it reinforces the overarching truth that there is a God whose world we inhabit and whose people form a community of worship and witness to their Redeemer, Lord and King Jesus Christ. The existence of such a community is a challenge to the naturalism that tends to dominate Western culture and which I am glad to say is challenging a new generation to think again.

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Andrew Roycroft: And how does God taking flesh in the person of Jesus Christ transform our worship of Him through Psalm 8?

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John Lennox: That Jesus Christ is God incarnate is the central claim of Christianity. The word who is the Creator God, who never came to be, came to be flesh and dwelt among us. This is the ultimate stunning answer to the question of Psalm 8, What is man?

The answer is that human beings are so made that God could become one. And he did. The transhumanist homodeus agenda is that our salvation will come through bioengineering and merging with machines to become super intelligent gods. The Christian Good News is the polar opposite of this, that we can have salvation as a free gift of God's grace because God has become man to affect that salvation and bring us back to Himself. Those who acknowledge that they have failed to live as they should, repent of it, and receive Jesus as the Savior who died for them, find forgiveness, peace with God, and the gift of a power to live for Him. This is what has made my life what it has been and is. It is Christ who has given me a sure hope for the world to come that is not based on my merit, but on what He has accomplished. Following Him as the Creator and Light of the world has filled my life with meaning and worship and has been my greatest joy.

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Music All things bright and beautiful (John Rutter)

The Cambridge Singers From The Choral Collection (Decca)

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Andrew Roycroft: Psalm 8 ends by widening its lens, allowing the reader and singer to see the world in which human beings have been placed, encouraging us to bear witness to the wonders around us, to take stock of the beauty of the earth, and to own the stewardship of the earth that is part of being human.

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Reading 3: Psalm 8:5-9

You made him a little less than God and crowned him with glory and honour.

You made him ruler over the works of your hands.

All the sheep and oxen, as well as the animals and the wild, the birds of the sky and the fish of the sea that pass through the currents of the seas.

Lord, our Lord, how magnificent is your name throughout the earth.

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Andrew Roycroft: The poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, captured something of the wonders around us when he wrote, The world is charged with the grandeur of God, and generations of poets and ordinary people have stood in awe of the beauty and diversity of this planet. How does scientific endeavour and research enrich that sense of wonder, Professor Lennox?

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John Lennox: According to Genesis, one of the tasks God gave to the first humans was to name the animals. This activity, we call it taxonomy, is one of the fundamental academic disciplines, and in the deepest sense naming things involves getting to know them intimately, what they are made of, how they function, and anyone who has watched a David Attenborough wildlife documentary. We'll know some of the wonders that this process can reveal in the nature that surround us, even in a garden.

Beauty and diversity bring responsibility, to steward the natural resources of the world in a way that honours God and cares for His creation. From cultivating our gardens to caring about the climate, how can working the soil and engaging in husbandry magnify the name of the God who gives us all things?

The first way is simply because God gave the first human such things to do. One of the key teachings of the New Testament is that all of our work, and not only our specifically religious activity, can be done unto the Lord. Paul wrote, Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord, not for human masters. And the poet John Keble grasped this when he wrote the famous lines, The trivial round, the common task, will furnish all we ought to ask, room to deny ourselves a road to bring us daily nearer God.

Sadly, we often measure our work in material terms of food, clothing and housing. These things, though important, are intended by God as the byproducts of our work, not its goal. According to Christ Himself, the goal of work should be to seek God and His righteousness, which attitude can transform all work, however humble, into an experience of the living God Himself.

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Music Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis (Vaughan Williams)
Academy of St Martin in the Fields from Vaughan Williams (Argo)

Andrew Roycroft: Earlier in our service we referenced the work of Gerard Monley Hopkins. Just now we will hear his poem Pied Beauty read by Sandra McCracken.

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Reader: Glory be to God for dappled things –

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;

And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

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All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Praise him.

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Andrew Roycroft: Almighty God, maker of heaven and earth, we bless you for the beauty, diversity and complexity of this world in which you've placed us. Thank you for the vast splendour of the heavens, the deep dignity of our nature as human beings and the glorious colours and textures of the natural world.

Thank you for entrusting us with the care and keeping of the earth and help us to be faithful in our stewardship of resources and our treatment of one another.

We pray for those engaged in research across our world. Give them ever greater insight into the things that you've made and the ways in which you provided for our well-being and flourishing as people.

We pray for all in authority over us locally, nationally and on a world stage. May their conduct of office bear the givenness of this world in mind at all times and may policy makers always see the good of people in society as their goal.

Help us to rejoice in the world you've made today and every day. Help us to care for creation, to cultivate beauty in our own lives and to live with generosity towards others. We ask all of this in the name of your Son who walked this earth, endured the cross, ascended into heaven and is coming again, Jesus Christ. Amen.

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Thank you for joining us this morning as we have meditated on faith, science, wonder and worship. What a universe our planet is part of. What a world of wonder there is in being human. What joy there is in the tender tillage of the earth. And how all of these things move us to worship the God who gave them. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all now and forevermore. Amen.

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Music : For the beauty of the earth (English traditional melody)

Sara Groves from Abide with me (Sponge Records)

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Closing Announcement: Sunday Worship with Professor John Lennox and Andrew Roycroft came from Northern Ireland and was produced by David Walker.

Next week, on the Sunday after Ascension, Sunday Worship will be at Hoddinott Hall in Cardiff, the home of the National Chorus of Wales who will lead the music in a service on the theme Risen, Ascended, Glorified.