When I started studying theology at the university many warned me that it was going to be a great challenge for my personal faith in God as the Creator and Lord of all, Jesus as the Son of God and the Messiah and the Holy Spirit as God's Spirit, relevant to us in the spiritual and physical world.
But I do not see that it should be a challenge. The entire university has as it's aim to be strictly scientific in it's approach and as such there is a basic difference between the "knowledge of God" ["theology"] and actually knowing God. In my world there should be a constant, underlying rule that seperates fact and faith, as 'faith' per definition is a non-factual sphere of life and science is per se void of faith as it builds on scepticism; faith and scepticisme being opposites.
With this in mind it does not give me sleepless nights when I learn that for example modern science is quite certain that the city of Jericho (that Joshua and the rest of Israel marched around for seven days whereupon the walls collapsed) had not existed even close to the time when the Israelites allegedly were coming out of the desert, that a vast part of the Old Testament was probably written or at least radically edited under the exile in Babylon in the 6th century BC or that evolution seems more probable than creation. Is this supposed to rock my faith in God? No, because my faith in God does not rest upon how factual the Old or New Testament is or any such thing, for this would not be 'faith' but rather pseudo-science.
I believe that the proof of the saving and transforming power of Christ, the still mercy and grace of God and the furious violence of the same is personal. It must be not just be experienced, but known in the core of our being and consciousness; an area where fact, probabilities and scientific method lose relevance, for this is where only we individually and God can go.
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As an addition to this post, I recently wrote to a theologian from Copenhagen, Niels Henrik Gregersen, who writes on the relation between science and religion, asking him for references to his articles. In one article (title roughly translates, "Creation and Self-organization" - an area of evolution) he formulates the following, "Natural science solves riddles but in terms of religion we address secrets." I guess this is a more romantic way of saying that science is an unemotional way of figuring out how the world functions, while the religious sphere of thinking addresses the why.
I am often dependant on formulating these 'conclusions' for future fixed points of reference.
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