THE CITY
Easter, as the nodal point, the nexus between BC and AD. It was when Christ came into the world, rather than when he left it, that the old world ended and the new world began. Viewed from the perspective of the Incarnation, the kingdoms of Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome are transformed from brutal empires into God-ordained precursors of something greater (as was prophesied in Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream of the Giant in Daniel 2). Jesus’ birth was not a haphazard event. He came, Paul tells us, in the fullness of time (Galatians 4:4), at a precise moment when the world—partly through the efforts of the four kingdoms just listed—had been made ready for his coming. Too often, the history that is taught today in our schools and universities lacks this sense of drama, of the slow working out of an overarching plan that yet leaves room for human glory and folly, triumph and tragedy. The message that the Incarnation speaks to professors of history is that God’s presence and purposes can be discerned in and through the seemingly arbitrary progression of time and events. The Bible may perhaps best be defined as a record or chronicle of God’s actions and interactions in human history, culminating with his physical entry into history. As part of that account, we are given frequent glimpses, as in Daniel 2, of how God’s actions towards Israel necessitate his (generally anonymous) interactions with her pagan neighbors. Just as God works through those who praise him and those who know him not, so he guides the destinies both of peoples that serve him and kingdoms that reject him. There have been many historians of America who have caught this vision and sought to discern the hand of providence in the life of our nation. But there is no reason to confine this providential history to America. The Incarnation, as the journey of the Magi suggests, was the true shot heard round the world.
B
y such methods, and I mean these methods to be descriptive rather than prescriptive, may the central Christian doctrine of the Incarnation be integrated into the Arts and Humanities. But what of the natural and social sciences? Can they too benefit from an academic wrestling with the Word made flesh? I think they can. Biology: When Evangelicals consider the interplay between faith and learning in the sciences, they tend to think in terms of the debate between naturalistic evolution and intelligent design. I am personally 90