uted to the sixteenth century Italian Cardinal Caesar Baronius—“The
Bible teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go”—was an
important hermeneutical guide as I entered into serious study of biology.
On the faith side of things, an early emphasis on Jesus Christ as the fi rm
and trustworthy center for faith was absolutely essential. I was blessed to
have this point emphasized and exemplifi ed from a young age onwards by
mature believers at home and in numerous congregations. At a time when
there was not much literature approved by holiness movement leaders that
would help a young Christian biologist, I recall three books that served
me well, though I admit to not asking if they might be approved reading.
These were The Wisdom of Evolution by Raymond Nogar, a Dominican
Priest; The Christian View of Science and Scripture by Bernard Ramm; and
later on, The Limits of Science by Peter Medawar. 1
My entire professional life was lived as an active researcher, teacher, and
sometimes administrator among biologists in a major Canadian university.
All the while, I also fellowshipped with Baptists then, for many years, with
Pentecostal congregations. Because of the people I was blessed to work
and live with, at home, university, and in the faith community, it was actu-
ally a pleasant experience to spend nearly thirty years “in between” these
two ways of knowing. It taught me that there are indeed distinct ways of
knowing, but, equally important, that certain things cannot be known
scientifi cally. I had already accepted that scientifi c knowledge, even strictly
speaking historical knowledge, was not the primary messages of Scripture,
and this was also an immense navigational help.
The bold declaration of our need for the Holy Spirit to guide us in all
truth uniformly made by pentecostal and charismatic theologians is essen-
tial and very timely. In my own general fi eld of experimental biology, there
also are old-new ideas coming to the fore that present analogous challenges
to the ones faced by theologians who argue for a greater pneumatological
emphasis. This is not to say that some biologists are going all spiritual—
but many are becoming much more integrationist (whole organism and
system) in their thinking, questioning and experimenting. And, after all,
is that not exactly what the Holy Spirit does for our faith understand-
ing—integrating all those loose theological ends, all those biblical puzzles,
and knitting them into a beautiful whole? As James K.A. Smith puts it,
“Pentecostal worship is ‘experiential’ because it assumes a holistic under-
standing of personhood and agency.” 2 Holistic thinking will be an essen-
tial ingredient for progress on many fronts in this new century—including
the faith–science dialogue. I agree with Amos Yong that we need “a pneu-
298 B. K. (BEV) MITCHELL