Journal of the ACMS
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Letter from the Editor
Journal of the ACMS, 2004 Inaugural Issue
Welcome to the Journal of the Association of Christians in the Mathematical Sciences! To launch this journal, I have selected twenty-eight articles from the Proceedings of the fourteen biennial ACMS conferences. Within the literature on science and religion, they constitute a unique electronic anthology focusing specifically on the relationship between mathematics and Christian belief.
While preparing this anthology, I was deeply impressed by the importance of the questions the ACMS community is addressing, by how little attention they have received relative to what they deserve, and by the depth of the thought that our members and guest speakers have put into these questions. The papers address a broad range of issues including the ontology of mathematical objects, epistemology, the relationship of mathematics to the physical world, education, values, infinity, modernism and post-modernism, and the relationship of mathematics to the arts.
Reading these articles has convinced me of three things: Beliefs that Christians commonly share have profound implications for our understanding of the nature of mathematics and its significance. The overall contours of those implications are fairly clear. We have not yet adequately addressed some vital questions.
I would like to challenge the ACMS community to address these questions. They are not easy, and many of them will require significant scholarship. But if we can address them well, they have the potential to make a major contribution to the discipline of mathematics, to our students, and to our own thinking. Before I can present the questions, though, I need to expand on the first two convictions.
It seems to me that there are three classes of Christian beliefs that are particularly relevant to our understanding of mathematics -- beliefs about God, beliefs about the physical world, and beliefs about humanity. In summarizing these, I am going to address only beliefs that have been widely shared by Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant Christians throughout the Christian era -- I call these beliefs "historic Christianity."
One critical belief about God is his aseity (that is, God exists and is self-existent -- his existence does not depend on anything else). Furthermore, God is the creator of the physical universe and is sovereign over it in that everything that is not God depends on his creative and sustaining activity for its existence. He is eternal, omniscient, and personal. He is loving in that He possesses a consistent posture of good will toward all of his creation and he is eager to reveal himself to humanity.
The most relevant belief about the physical world is that it is entirely, without exception, the product of God's creative activity and it depends on Him for its ongoing existence. Furthermore, God regards it as a good world and is pleased with what he has done in making it.
Two beliefs about humanity are especially applicable. One is the imago Dei - that human beings are made in the image of God. Theologians are not of one mind about what this means. However, it certainly includes at least the following -- that while human bodies are made of the same substance as the physical world and are subject to its physical laws, human beings are distinguished from the physical world by consciousness, moral responsibility, a special role in the physical world as stewards of it, and were created to enjoy a continuous intimate relationship with God. It also probably means that God has imprinted aspects of His nature on human beings, although no consensus has developed as to which aspects of human beings express the image of God. Some classical thinkers emphasized reason; others have emphasized love, moral responsibility, and creativity. The second relevant belief about humanity is that is "fallen." That is, human beings have broken their relationship with God, seeking an autonomous existence that does not depend on God.
Note that this taxonomy omits one major category of Christian beliefs -- those about Jesus Christ. Historic Christian belief has always proclaimed that God seeks to restore his broken relationship with humanity and that his efforts to do so find their fullest realization in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, it sees Christ as central both in the act of creation and in its ongoing governance. Nevertheless, important as these beliefs are for Christian thinking, I have not been able to clearly identify what role they play in the relationship between mathematics and Christian belief. Hence, the perspective I'll articulate below is one that believing Jews, Muslims, and other monotheists could also affirm. I'll return to this observation in the questions.
A Christian perspective on a discipline usually does not address technical matters within the discipline. For example, the Pythagorean theorem is the same for Christian believers as for others who do not share that belief. Rather, it provides a framework within which questions of meaning, value, and purpose can be addressed. Such questions necessarily involve concepts not accessible to mathematics (or science). I believe that the main characteristics of a Christian approach to mathematics follow from the framework of Christian belief outlined above. The characteristics are these:
Nevertheless, I find this broad framework to be relatively clear, there are a number of questions that we need to address. Here are some that I have been able to identify:
We have done a great deal of good work this past twenty-seven years, but we have a lot more to do! The task before us is far more extensive than any one individual among us can carry out-many members of our community will need to contribute and much dialogue is needed. Some of us may want to incorporate these questions into long-term research projects. May God be with us as we work together to know him better and to proclaim his wonders!
James Bradley, Calvin College, Founding Editor