Thursday, January 25, 2024

It is the 25th of January 2024. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

Pop quiz: what law tells us that: “for a gas, pressure, and volume are inversely proportional”? You know- more pressure, less volume. Less pressure, more volume. That’s right: Boyle’s Law. Named for Robert Boyle, the father of modern Chemistry.

But Robert Boyle would not be satisfied with the scientific accolades as they were but a byproduct of his deep faith in Christ and belief that God had designed a world for us to understand, and by understanding it, understanding the Creator himself.  

Pardon the mini-science lecture, but Boyle’s law is supremely significant as it further proved the idea that the world was made up of many small things (later called molecules, atoms, etc…). The medieval view that everything was made up of earth, wind, fire, and water animated the alchemists. Boyle’s genius was that things were more complicated than that- and that was, in fact, an argument for the existence of God.

A brief bio: Robert Boyle was born 397 years ago, on this day in 1627. Born in an Irish Castle, the family were wealthy English immigrants to the country. He was the 13th of 14 children who were all well taken care of. At 8, he enrolled at Eton College; in 1639, at the age of 12, he joined a brother on a tour of Europe. He would study in Geneva and travel broadly, learning from the new breed of intellectual- the experimental natural philosopher (or what would come to be called a scientist). But his faith was central to his identity. He worried that his faith was simply an accident of where and to whom he was born. He wrote: “The greatest number of those that pass for Christians profess themselves such only because Christianity is the religion of their Parents, or their Country, or their Prince.”

He prayed, doubted, and spoke with his tutor. One night, he was awakened to thunder and lightning so severe he believed it was the second coming. He vowed then to devote himself to his faith. In the morning, he felt bad for having converted under those conditions and waited for a cloudless day so that he could make the same vow, this time not under duress.

He stressed the need for an examined faith and noted that this led to doubt, but this was necessary, he believed, to grow.

This modeled his peculiar scientific method of writing down not only the experiments that worked but also those that didn’t work. He believed you could learn from your errors by acknowledging them, just as working through doubts could increase faith.  

His experiments and notebooks led to his calling to Oxford in 1654, where he would be one of the founders of the Royal Society of London. But he rejected both a call to be its president and an offer to be made a bishop. He was most interested in the dissemination of faith. He personally funded a translation of the Bible in Irish. As the first president of the Company for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England, he helped missionary John Eliot with the means to translate and publish his Algonquin Bible.  

Boyle believed that God had given us “3 books” of nature, conscience, and the Bible. Bishop James Ussher encouraged him to learn Greek and Hebrew for a deeper understanding of Scripture, and despite his failing eyesight, he was able to learn Greek. He was friends with the Puritan Richard Baxter, who praised his “philosophy” on account of it being animated by his theology. He was known for his charity to dissenting Christians and his desire to speak reasonably with non-believers and those of different religions. He knew the work of Descartes and Grotius (early philosophers with apologetic inflections) but didn’t want to assign himself to any school. His various apologetic works would mention the strengths and weaknesses of various attempts to prove God's existence, the divinity of Christ, and the reliability of the Bible. He would seem to lay most weight in the argument from design- the “use of parts in animals, especially the eye, the valves of the heart… and the temporary parts of a fetus and the mother”.

In 1688, on account of his failing health, he moved into his sister's estate in London, where he set up a laboratory, received guests, and wrote at least one book a year until his death in 1691. Born on this day in 1627, he was 64 years old. A happy birthday to the father of chemistry and famed scientist, but that is on account of his faith and his desire to know God and his creation.

The last word for today is from the daily lectionary- from Romans 9:

6 It is not as though God’s word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. 7 Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children. On the contrary, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” 8 In other words, it is not the children by physical descent who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 25th of January 2024, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who thought “Boyle’s Law” had something to do with not watching the water in the pot. He is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who will not make a joke about gas, pressure, and volume- I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.