Books - Mathematics: Is God Silent? by James Nickel

Why Study Mathematics?

It Is the Language of Creation

by Kate Deddens

Mathematics: Is God Silent? 

by James Nickel

Mathematics: Is God Silent? answers the question posed in its title with a resounding “No! God is by no means silent!” As we are told in Romans 1:20, God is manifestly visible in His creation: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being under­stood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse” (NIV, 1984). Since mathematics is the language of creation, mathematics is a vital medium through which we perceive, describe, comprehend, and give glory to our Creator. Nickel explains the Christian view of mathematics and demonstrates how that understanding makes sense of the world, has led to many scientific discoveries, and provides an ethical compass to guide technology.

Nickel explains that the Christian view of mathematics is the only one which explains why mathematical concepts are so practical and useful in the physical world. Many modern philos­ophers, scientists, and mathematicians dismiss mathematics as a concept manufactured by the human brain and therefore uncon­nected to “reality.” If mathematical ideas were simply linguistic expressions of the human mind, they would not be deeply synchronized with the truths of creation. However, mathemat­ical ideas do reveal a great harmony with physical reality. As Francis Schaeffer points out in the video, How Should We Then Live?,[1] it is precisely because of the harmony between mathemat­ical concepts and physical reality that airplanes actually do fly.

Nickel points out that secular mathematicians and scientists themselves describe this truth with words such as “incredible,” and “unreasonably effective,” and “mysterious.”[2] The Christian understands that this connection stems from the doctrine of creation: “Man’s mathematical constructions and the workings of the physical world cohere because of a common Creator” (Nickel, xx). In fact, “since mathematics deals with things visible (the structure of the physical world) and things invisible (the structure of human thought), it would be reasonable and befit­ting to deduce that the person of Jesus Christ is the ‘cohesive’ that holds the structure of mathematics together” (Nickel, 5).

The belief that God created the universe in an orderly fashion has inspired the stunning advances in mathematics, science, and technology that have brought Western civilization to the space age and beyond. Nancy Pearcey writes in The Soul of Science, “The history of mathematics was decisively shaped by its inter­action with Christianity” by the beliefs that “the world has an ordered structure because God made it; that humans made in God’s image can decipher that order.”[3] Even evolutionary anthropologist, Loren Eiseley, agrees with Pearcey’s conclusion: “We…observe that…it is the Christian world which finally gave birth in a clear articulate fashion to the experimental method of science itself” (Nickel, 143).

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