18
MIRACLES, ENTROPY, AND SOCIAL THEORY
And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no. And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live. Thy raiment waxed not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell, these forty years (Deut. 8:2-4).The theocentric focus of this law is the absolute sovereignty of God over the creation, including man. God broke the laws of nature in order to sustain His people in the wilderness. This should persuade all men to obey God. God had fed Israel miraculously with manna. In the midst of their national humiliation, there had been life-giving grace. But that was not all: "Thy raiment waxed not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell, these forty years" (v. 4). Their clothes had not worn out. Their feet had not become swollen. Moses made it clear that God's grace had not been a one-time event. It had been a continuous process for four decades. He reminded them of this because a miracle sustained for decades ceases to be regarded as a miracle. It becomes a familiar aspect of daily life. It seems to be an inherent part of the environment, but it isn't. Men expect benefits in this life. When these benefits are continual, men regard them as normal.
This law was not a land law. It related to Israel's wandering, but its intent was man's universal obedience: "And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live." Jesus cited this law to Satan in the famous stones-into-bread temptation (Matt. 4:4). It is clearly a cross-boundary law.
A miracle is abnormal. It is a supernatural act of deliverance or blessing which disrupts the normal pattern of events. But the normal pattern of events is itself a manifestation of grace, beginning with life itself. This grace need not imply God's favor; it is nevertheless an unmerited gift to men and angels, both fallen and unfallen.(1) Both historical continuity and discontinuity are acts of God's grace. The former is so continuous -- a series of life-sustaining acts strung together infinitesimally close -- that its gracious character is perceived only through faith, which in turn is an initially discontinuous event that through self-discipline is supposed to become continuous.
The miracles of the wilderness era were so continuous that they took on the appearance of common grace. Moses reminded Israel of the special position which the nation had in God's eyes, as proven by their patch-free clothing. God had actively intervened in history to sustain them in preparation for the promised day of judgment. The day of judgment is a day of sanctions, positive and negative, depending on one's covenantal status. The day of negative sanctions was about to arrive inside the boundaries of Canaan. For the Israelites, this would bring the promised inheritance. For the Canaanites, this would bring the promised disinheritance; their cup of iniquity was at long last full (Gen. 15:16).
The Second Law of Thermodynamics I have written a book on the apologetic uses and misuses -- mostly misuses -- of the second law of thermodynamics.(2) I wrote it for two reasons: 1) to refute a socialist propagandist who had presented a defense of State economic planning in terms of the need to reduce entropy; 2) to refute modern Creation Science insofar as the second law has been invoked to thwart the construction of an explicitly creationist social theory. In both cases, the theorists have misused the second law of thermodynamics.
The first law of thermodynamics is called the law of the conservation of energy. It states that the total energy of the universe -- a supposedly closed system -- does not change. Potential energy may become kinetic (changing) energy, but total energy does not change. Modern physics is built on this law. The condition described by the first law of thermodynamics is one reason why there can never be a perpetual motion machine. It would have to produce more usable energy (work) than it began with. It would have to do its work and then re-supply itself with an amount of potential energy equal to or greater than it expended in doing the work. This is sometimes called a perpetual motion machine of the first kind.
The second law of thermodynamics states that in a closed system, potential energy can become kinetic energy, but kinetic energy -- energy transformed -- cannot become potential energy. Therefore, the energy available for usable work declines over time (classical thermodynamics). As an example, temperature moves from hot to cold, but it does not move from cold to hot unless external heat is applied. Another example: a brick may fall from a wall to the ground, but it will not rise from the ground to the wall unless additional energy is added to the process from outside the system, such as someone who lifts it. Put chronologically, time does not move backward. Contemporary humanism teaches that from the moment just after the Big Bang until that frozen waste called the heat death of the universe, energy is dissipated.(3) Sir Arthur Eddington called this time's arrow, and it creates a serious cosmological problem for evolutionists. Time's arrow proceeds from order to disorder, whereas evolution's arrow supposedly moves from less order to greater order -- from the simple to the complex. These two processes have yet to be reconciled by means of an appeal to the thermodynamic laws governing the universe as a closed system.
In any physical process -- potential energy to kinetic energy -- there will always be heat loss or heat dispersion, also described as an increase in randomness, within a closed system (statistical thermodynamics). This loss of coherence is sometimes called entropy. Entropy is a measure of the increase in randomness. The work performed by a machine is a one-time event. The energy has been dissipated, some of it into heat loss. In a machine without oil or some other lubricant, the grinding of metal is audible to all: heat is being produced and then dissipated. There is no lubricant in nature that can overcome all of this heat loss. This is entropy's law. This is a second reason why there can be no perpetual motion machine: heat loss. The machine cannot regain all of the energy expended in work because some of that kinetic energy is lost through heat dispersion.
Perpetual clothing is the equivalent of a perpetual motion machine. This passage proves that, in principle, a perpetual motion machine is possible, but it takes supernatural resource inputs to make it run. The system -- nature -- is not closed all of the time. Whenever it is closed, however, clothing always wears out through friction. Everything wears out. Feet swell and then wear out. People attached to feet wear out. This is the second law of thermodynamics at work. Where work is performed in a closed system -- no new infusions of energy or anything else from outside -- the second law guarantees that there is a permanent loss of potential energy, so that some day, potential energy will dissipate -- become random -- and cease to perform any work. The universe eventually will go into permanent retirement, sometimes called the heat death of the universe. This is inevitable, unless . . . unless the second law of thermodynamics is violated by what is known in Christian circles as the final judgment, or unless the second law of thermodynamics is violated by miracles, or unless the second law of thermodynamics is not actually a law but merely a familiar process regionally and temporally that is not in fact universal. Most physicists regard it as universal,(4) which is why most physicists: 1) deny any final judgment other than the impersonal heat death of the universe; 2) deny the existence of miracles.
Once you admit the existence of miracles that are generated and sustained from outside the system of the universe, you thereby deny the universality of the second law of thermodynamics. If the universe is an open system, then the second law need not always apply. Unless you see God as a kind of pipeline operator who siphons off useful energy from other parts of the universe in order to overcome the negative effects of entropy in this region of the universe, you must regard miracles as a violation of the second law. To define miracles as consistent with the second law, you would have to explain the patch-free clothing of the Israelites as having caused a loss of potential energy somewhere else in the immense closed system called the universe. "Entropy still ruled in the wilderness, but its effects on Israelite clothing were offset by God, who drained off potential energy from some other region." Ultimately, this strictly physical approach to miracles would force Christians to explain the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ in terms of permanently lost potential energy and the existence of a heat sink into which wasted energy was dispersed.
In the Garden of Eden(5) Adam had a nose. He had a sense of smell. But what was there to smell? The fragrance of flowers is a product of the second law of thermodynamics: the move from order to disorder. The millions of tiny particles that activate our sense of smell are distributed randomly, which is why we smell them rather than step in them. They do not pile up.
Consider another example. What if Adam had wanted to build an internal combustion engine? Without a carburetor, the liquid known as gasoline would not power an automobile except in one fiery propulsion event. The carburetor breaks up the liquid into tiny droplets and distributes them randomly in a heat chamber where these particles can be ignited safely by an electric spark. Were it not for the second law of thermodynamics, there would be only one explosion, not thousands per minute.
What if Adam had wanted to play a friendly game of solitaire? He would have pulled out a deck of cards and shuffled them. No cheating here! Shuffling a deck of cards makes the order of the cards unpredictable. Why? Because their order has moved toward randomness. Why? Because of the second law of thermodynamics.
This means that the second law of thermodynamics operated before the Fall of man. This was admitted once by Henry M. Morris, who elsewhere has built his apologetic for creationism on the second law. In an essay addressed primarily to scientists rather than the general Christian public, he made this statement regarding the operation of the second law in Eden: "The formal announcement of the second law in its post-Fall form is found in Genesis 3:17-20. . . . Thus, as best we can understand both Scripture and science, we must date the establishment of the second law of thermodynamics, in its present form at least, from the tragic day on which Adam sinned. . . ."(6) To speak of the "second law in its post-Fall form" and "in its present form at least" is an unobjectionable way to discuss the second law. It suggests that we must distinguish the pre-Fall and post-Fall operations of the second law. This implies that we should distinguish a cursed from an uncursed operation of that law. We live in a cursed-entropy world, not an entropy-cursed world. But as far as I am aware, nowhere else in his writings does Morris discuss the implications of this distinction, nor do his colleagues in the Creation Science movement. This is a major weakness in that movement. A discussion of entropy prior to Adam's Fall is long overdue in Creation Science -- so overdue that I suspect that a full discussion would raise objections to the ways in which the movement has used the second law in the past, as well as the ways in which the members of the movement have refused to use it.
The correct use of the second law of thermodynamics in Christian apologetics mandates tight constraints. To argue that the world is running down because of entropy is incorrect. Prior to Adam's rebellion, the second law of thermodynamics operated in a world that was in no way running down. The second law today operates differently from the way it did in Eden. That is, the physical effects of the second law of thermodynamics were in some fundamental way changed by God after the Fall of man. These effects have been cursed.
Entropy is a fact of life, like death and taxes. Prior to the Fall of man, it was equally a fact of life, before death and taxes had appeared. Despite entropy's cursed effects, we can and should work to achieve longer life spans and lower taxes. The Bible prophesies a future era of longer life spans (Isa. 65:20). Why not lower taxes to match? Why not reductions in entropy? Entropy is a cost. We can find ways of lowering costs. Motor oil reduces metallic friction and therefore reduces entropy. With respect to entropy's economic costs, they have been steadily reduced since the Industrial Revolution. That entropy exists, there can be no doubt, although if it operates in the subatomic realm, it has not yet manifested itself. That entropy, as a cost of production, can have significant effects on a particular social order is also not doubted. But that a serious social theory can be constructed in terms of entropy as an ever-growing social cost is highly doubtful, as socialist Jeremy Rifkin's failed attempt indicates. He ceased writing about entropy within few years after he announced it as a major intellectual breakthrough, substituting time-management as the culprit of capitalism.(7)
Continuity and Discontinuity The Christian's case against Darwinian evolution can be based on the second law of thermodynamics only on the unstated assumption that today's universe is not governed by the physical laws of the pre-Fall universe. The Christian must be very careful how he uses the second law. He cannot accurately say that entropy did not exist in Eden, because it did operate there. Pollen's move from an ordered to a disordered (random) state -- entropy -- was what activated Adam's sense of smell. What was missing in Eden was hay fever, not entropy. Entropy was not cursed before the Fall; today it is. But this is not how modern defenders of Creation Science usually state their case. They state it incorrectly, as if the second law of thermodynamics did not operate prior to the Fall. They do not distinguish between the uncursed and cursed effects of the second law; instead, they distinguish between a world before the second law was imposed by God and today's fallen world under its despotic rule. They argue that the second law came into existence as a result of God's curse. Morris writes: "This law states that all systems, if left to themselves, tend to become degraded or disordered. . . . This, then, is the true origin of the strange law of disorder and decay, universally applicable, all-important second law of thermodynamics. Herein is the secret of all that's wrong with the world. Man is a sinner and has brought God's curse on the earth."(8) In 1982, he wrote: "It is well to be reminded that the two greatest laws of science -- the universal principles of conservation and decay -- are merely the scientific formulations of, first, God's completed and conserved work of creation, and second, His curse on the creation because of sin."(9) It is as if he had forgotten his properly qualified statement in 1981: "The formal announcement of the second law in its post-Fall form is found in Genesis 3:17-20. . . . Thus, as best we can understand both Scripture and science, we must date the establishment of the second law of thermodynamics, in its present form at least, from the tragic day on which Adam sinned. . . ."(10) Morris' inaccurate formulation of the second law is widely cited in creationist circles, where it is invoked repeatedly in the apologetic against Darwinism. Hardly anyone knows about his correct formulation, which would force creationists to qualify this apologetic and thereby weaken it rhetorically, though strengthen it logically.
Invoking the second law of thermodynamics is a strictly negative apologetic tactic, and, as we shall see, it falls on deaf humanist ears. The Christian uses this argument to refute a Darwinist's assertion that ours is the only world there has ever been or will ever be. The Christian says: "If this really is the only world there has ever been, then the second law of thermodynamics tells us that things could not have evolved from less order to more order. Entropy denies Darwinism." To which the faithful Darwinian replies: "But the second law applies only to closed systems, and the earth is not a closed system." The proper Christian response is: "Then how did the universe itself evolve from disorder to order?" To which the no longer faithful Darwinian responds: "In the nanosecond of the Big Bang, when the second law did not apply."
The Darwinist must invoke cosmic discontinuity -- the evolutionist's equivalent of the Bible's doctrine of creation out of nothing -- in order to secure the present continuity of nature's evolutionary processes. Many leading Darwinists have now capitulated to discontinuity, e.g., defenders of what is known as "punctuated equilibrium," the physically unexplainable, extremely rapid, comprehensive biological transformations of entire species.(11) But this does not shake their faith in the naturalism of the laws of evolution, any more than the existence of miracles shakes the Christian's faith in the universality of the laws of thermodynamics. Each side explains the existence of exceptions to the not-quite universal laws of thermodynamics in terms of its respective presuppositions regarding the origins of the universe. In short, neither side is willing to admit that the universe has been governed by the second law of thermodynamics throughout history, if we define history as including either the garden of Eden or the Big Bang.
The Christian's legitimate apologetic use of the second law of thermodynamics is therefore extremely limited in scope: to force the Darwinist to abandon uniformitarianism, i.e., the original Darwinian doctrine that the processes of nature that we observe today have always been operational. This doctrine is what provided the pre-Darwinian geologists with their evolutionary time scale, which was crucial to their denial of the accuracy of Genesis 1. This discovery of what John McPhee has called "deep time" led to the next intellectual revolution: Darwinism.(12) Darwin adopted Hutton's and Lyell's uniformitarian geology before he restructured biology.(13) But rare is the contemporary Darwinist who is silenced by the uniformitarian argument for cosmic continuity. He is willing to invoke cosmic discontinuities whenever convenient, now that he and his peers have agreed that Darwin's continuity-based arguments have permanently shoved the Bible's God out of the universe and out of men's thinking. Having made such effective epistemological and cultural use of Darwinian continuity, evolutionists today feel secure in invoking discontinuity whenever convenient, in much the same way that the creationists invoke miracles. Punctuated equilibrium -- unexplainably huge discontinuities in macro-evolution -- is modern Darwinism's equivalent of the Israelites' crossing of the Red Sea.
Darwinists want their cosmic miracles to be impersonal, so as to avoid considering God's final judgment. They want final judgment to be the impersonal eternal heat death of the universe long after they and everything else has died, not the highly personal eternal flames of the lake of fire. In contrast, Christians want their historical miracles to be personal, long before everything has died, in order to invoke God's final judgment. They want to escape the meaninglessness of the impersonal heat death of the universe in order to believe in the meaningfulness of God's highly personal judicial declaration, "Not guilty!"
Is the Social World Running Down?(14) Those who invoke the second law as an argument against Darwinism are almost always premillennialists. Most of the others are amillennialists. As pessimillennialists, they also are highly tempted to argue that the social order is analogous to the physical order. It, too, is visibly running down. Nothing can restore it except: 1) the premillennial return of Jesus Christ to set up an earthly millennial kingdom (where the second law will be annulled or else overcome by regular miracles); 2) the amillennial return of Christ at the final judgment (after which the second law will be annulled).
Not many pessimillennialists will actually go into print on this point. In a flyer produced by the Bible-Science Association and the Genesis Institute (same address), we read the following: "The creationist realizes that the world is growing old around him. He understands that things tend to run down, to age, to die. The creationist does not look for the world to improve, but to crumble slowly -- as in erosion, decay, and aging."(15) This is a philosophy of self-conscious defeat, a cry of cultural despair. It is also not the kind of philosophy that anyone would normally choose to challenge socialists or other humanists.
The whole idea of social entropy as an aspect of physical entropy is wrong-headed. First, the entropic process of cosmic physical decay takes place in humanistic time scales of millions of years. Such a time scale is irrelevant for social theory, whether Christian or pagan. Societies do not survive for millions of years -- not so far, anyway.
Second, what does it mean to say "the world will [or will not] improve"? What world? The geophysical world? What does an ethical or aesthetic term such as "improve" have to do with the physical world? Scientific evolutionists have been careful to avoid such value-laden adjectives with respect to historical geology or biology, at least with respect to the world prior to mankind's appearance. Without a moral evaluator, says the Darwinist, there can be no meaning for the word "improve."
Christians should be equally careful in their use of language. The Christian should argue that God evaluates any improvement or degeneration in the external world, and therefore men, acting as God's subordinates, also make such evaluations. But there is no autonomous impersonal standard of "world improvement," as any evolutionist readily admits. So, the flyer apparently had as its point of reference not the geophysical world but rather man's social world.
The flyer says that things tend to run down. "Evolution demands that things `wind up' even as we see them run down. Therefore the evolutionist looks for things to improve." This implies that Christians should not look for things to improve. Again, what do we mean by "improve"? If things only tend to run down, this implies that sometimes things don't run down. If so, then there must be decay-offsetting progressive forces in operation. What might these be? The main one is the gospel of salvation. Regeneration restores ethical wholeness to men. Another offsetting factor is obedience to the law of God. God's law enables men to rebuild a cursed world. In other words, ethics is fundamental; entropy isn't. This is why entropy, to the extent that any such phenomenon applies to the affairs of men, is only a tendency.
The reason why I keep citing this short document (tract) is because it is the one creationist document I have seen that even mentions social theory, and even then only vaguely. I would have been happy to consider other documents from Creation Scientists that deal with entropy in relation to social theory, but I have been unable to find any. In 1988, I searched the complete set of the Creation Social Sciences and Humanities Quarterly and found nothing on the topic. There is zero interest in this topic in modern evangelicalism. There is almost as little interest in the relationship between creationism and the social sciences. By 1895, 36 years after the publication of Origin of Species, Darwinism had captured virtually every academic field. By 1995, 34 years after the publication of Morris and Whitcomb's Genesis Flood, this thin quarterly magazine had 600 subscribers.
Why this silence on social theory? It may be that the entropy paradigm is so powerful that six-day creationists have become pessimistic about the possibility of constructing the foundations of a self-consciously biblical social science. Perhaps they have been baffled by some variation of this question: "If entropy is the dominant factor in life, how can there be progress in social institutions, including the family and the institutional church?" The answer that I offer is simple enough: both the resurrection and bodily ascension of Jesus Christ have made possible the historical overcoming of many of the cursed aspects of entropy in the physical universe, and to whatever extent that entropy-related curses affect social institutions, these effects can be offset even more rapidly than in the physical realm. Why? Because the three main institutions of society -- family, church, and State -- are covenantal. Point four of the biblical covenant model -- sanctions(16) -- offers legitimate hope in comprehensive healing in history. This healing is both personal and institutional.(17) The closer we get to man, who is made in God's image, the more the covenant's sanctions of blessings and cursings become visible.
I suspect that there is a better explanation for pessimillennialists' silence on social theory. It is not that pessimillennialists have become paralyzed in their development of social theory by the power of the concept of entropy. Rather, it is the other way around: their pessimillennialism has governed their use of the concept of entropy. Their inherently pessimistic social theory has led to a particular application of the entropy concept: the denial of entropy in the pre-Fall world. They see physical entropy much as they see the social world: inherently debilitating rather than cursed in its effects. They see entropy as the dominant factor in a physical world governed by physical decay; they see disorder as the dominant factor in a social world governed by moral decay. They see isolated islands of physical order in a world of escalating physical disorder; they see isolated islands of social order in a world of escalating social and moral decay. They view the physical universe as declining into oblivion apart from occasional miracles; they see history as declining into oblivion apart from rare events of individual salvation. The physical world must march toward physical chaos until God calls the process to a halt at the final judgment. The social world must also march toward social chaos until God calls the process to a halt at the final judgment. In neither case does the New Testament doctrine of Christ's bodily resurrection and ascension to the right hand of God play any theoretical role. In both cases, the Old Testament's curses are left unaffected by the New Testament's blessings. In both cases, the Old Testament's tale of rebellion and destruction is dominant. In neither case does New Testament biblical theology play any role. The New Testament's message of comprehensive redemption -- the Great Commission -- is denied in the name of the Old Covenant's pre-ascension setbacks.
When I published Is the World Running Down?, I did not expect Creation Scientists to respond to it in print. I was correct; almost no one did. More to the point, no one in the movement has ever written a book on entropy and social theory; mine remains the only Christian book that deals with the subject, which minimizes the connections between physical entropy and social entropy. I admit freely that physical entropy imposes costs on production processes, but the key question is social: Which social order best encourages the discovery and implementation of technological reductions in these costs? Creation Scientists do not bother to ask this question. The Creation Science movement has not produced a single social theorist since The Genesis Flood appeared in 1961. This is ominous for the Creation Science movement. It means that the movement's attempt to reconstruct modern natural science has not only failed to persuade the vast majority of natural scientists, it has persuaded no social scientists. Why is this ominous? Because the success of Darwinism can be measured by its penetration of all other academic fields within a single generation.
As I said earlier, three decades after the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, the worldwide intellectual community had become overwhelmingly Darwinian. In almost every academic discipline in the social sciences and the humanities, Darwinists had laid totally new intellectual foundations; each field had been totally reconstructed to conform to Darwinism. By 1890, the Progressive Movement in the United States was ready to restructure civil government and social theory, including theology, in terms of the Darwinian ideal of scientific central planning.(18) So were Progressivism's cousins in Europe, the Social Democrats. The absence of any similar effort, let alone success, among Creation Science's adherents outside of the natural sciences, indicates that there is either something missing in or radically wrong with the movement's entropy apologetic. This was one of my main themes in Is the World Running Down?: the incompatibility of Creation Science's entropy apologetic with biblical social theory. Our physical world is not a closed system; neither is our social world. God intervenes in nature and history. He intervened in the corporate life of Israel during the wilderness period, overcoming entropy in the area of apparel.
Pessimillennialism and Social Theory
I argue that the Creation Science movement has a hidden but widely shared eschatological agenda: pessimillennialism. Dispensational premillennialists and amillennialists want to believe that the social world must continue to deteriorate alongside the physical world, and a whole lot faster. They accept what might be called "the uniformitarianism of social deterioration." Evil is always compounding in such a view. This steady increase in evil is fast approaching that point on the social graph when the curve will turn sharply upward and begin to approach infinity as a limit: the exponential curve. In other words, pessimillennialists believe that things will soon get so bad socially that Jesus will just have to come again in person to straighten everything out by force. This time of exponential social evil is almost upon us; therefore, they conclude, the Second Coming is just around the corner. They believe that there is not enough time remaining to reverse this process of deterioration. Furthermore, there is no possibility of doing so: social entropy is as universal as physical entropy is. No long-term reversal of social entropy is compatible with the entropy apologetic. The institutional church is seen as socially impotent; the gospel is seen as exclusively personal; and fulfilling the Great Commission(19) is seen as an impossible dream.
Until Creation Science begins to have an impact on social thought, it will be unable to counteract Darwinism, which long ago reconstructed social theory in its own image. The presuppositions underlying modern biological evolution appeared first in the social theories of the eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment, not in the natural sciences.(20) Then, after 1880, the free market social theory of pre-Darwinian evolutionism was abandoned; replacing it was reform Social Darwinism: State planning. Evolutionistic social theory laid the foundations of biological Darwinism, just as pessimillennialism laid the foundations of Creation Science's entropy apologetic. Until the eschatological agenda of Creation Science is openly discussed, Creation Science will continue to be irrelevant outside of the natural sciences. Until pessimillennialism is abandoned by Creation Science, Creation Science will continue to be irrelevant in the area of social theory. Pessimillennialism makes impossible the development of a specifically biblical social theory.(21)
Premillennialists presumably believe in "universal social entropy." But there is neither a formula governing social entropy nor any way scientifically to identify or measure this supposed phenomenon, unlike physical entropy. Premillennialists implicitly assume that this universal social entropy will be reversed or offset during the future millennium. They do not say this explicitly, however. Premillennialists refuse to discuss the topic of entropy's operations during the coming millennium. Perhaps they choose not to think about such matters; in any case, they refuse to write about them. Henry M. Morris ignores the topic in his commentary on the Book of Revelation. He says that entropy will be repealed after the final judgment,(22) but he is conveniently silent with respect to entropy during the millennial kingdom. Most premillennialists believe that things will no longer decline morally and socially during the millennium.(23) Presumably, premillennialists also believe that the effects of physical entropy will somehow be offset during the millennium. They never discuss this, and so I cannot know for sure what they believe on this point. I doubt that they do, either. On the other hand, if entropy's effects will be offset cosmically, then the millennium will constitute one gigantic miracle. If they will be offset at a price by normal scientific and technological progress, then we can in theory do the same thing now without the bodily return of Jesus to rule from Jerusalem or Colorado Springs or wherever He will set up headquarters. In either case, entropy is not a permanently debilitating factor in social organizations. Either a series of miracles will offset it, as took place in the wilderness era, or mankind's efforts in reducing costs will offset it.
Amillennialists see no permanent future reversal of social decline in history; a better day is not coming on this side of the Second Coming. In this sense, amillennialists are what Rushdoony once said they are: premillennialists without earthly hope. Neither of these pessimillennial creationist groups sees any advantage in devoting time and money to a study of biblical social theory. Why bother? Isn't everything is going to hell in an entropic handbasket? Isn't everything doomed? Wouldn't any investment of time and money in developing a creationist social theory constitute a waste of scarce economic resources, like polishing brass on a sinking ship?
Moses had an answer for such rhetorical questions: no!
Conclusion A very clever professor of engineering once stated a specific form of the second law of thermodynamics: "Confusion (entropy) is always increasing in society. Only if someone or something works extremely hard can this confusion be reduced to order in a limited region. Nevertheless, this effort will still result in an increase in the total confusion of society at large."(24) If knowledge were the product of physical creation -- or if life were -- then his theorem would be correct in this sin-cursed (but not entropy-cursed) world. Moses' account of the wilderness indicates that life is not strictly physical. Other laws apply. It is worth noting that the famous physicist, Erwin Schrödinger, insisted that life is governed by laws different from those established by modern physical theory. In his book, What Is Life?, he wrote: "What I wish to make clear in this last chapter is, in short, that from all we have learnt about the structure of living matter, we must be prepared to find it working in a manner that cannot be reduced to the ordinary laws of physics."(25)
To persuade Israel that promise precedes law, and therefore that grace precedes law, Moses reminded them of their experience in the wilderness. God had overcome the laws of nature by feeding them with manna and by keeping their clothing from wearing out. In modern terminology, God had suspended the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy in these areas had been reduced to zero. There had been neither wear nor tear on their clothing.
This was miraculous. Moses expected Israel to understand this. God's active intervention into the processes of nature had been continuous for four decades. He had overturned the laws of nature in order to humble them without killing them. To keep them both humble and alive in the wilderness as a test of their covenantal commitment, He had performed a series of miracles that constituted one long miracle. They had passed the test. Now, Moses was telling them, God would secure the long-promised kingdom grant for them through military conquest. But their continued covenantal corporate obedience would be required by God in order for the nation to maintain this kingdom grant.
This Mosaic world-and-life view offers hope for society. Whenever men remain covenantally faithful through obedience to God's Bible-revealed laws, social progress is not only possible, it is assured. God's kingdom grant was given to the church by Jesus after His resurrection: "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen" (Matt. 28:18b-20). This kingdom grant was sealed by His ascension in history. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it" (John 14:12-14). Therefore, Jesus instructed us, "If ye love me, keep my commandments" (v. 15).
The Great Commission will be fulfilled prior to the final judgment: "Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith, all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him. And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all" (I Cor. 15:24-28). The termination of entropy's curse will coincide with the termination of death: the last enemy to be subdued. No more worn out clothes and no more swollen feet: what was in the wilderness evermore shall be, world without end, amen.
Footnotes:
1. Gary North, Dominion and Common Grace: The Biblical Basis of Progress (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1987), ch. 2.
2. Gary North, Is the World Running Down? Crisis in the Christian Worldview (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1988).
3. But will electrons quit moving? Will atoms still be there? Does the second law apply to subatomic realm?
4. They are not equally sure regarding the subatomic realm.
5. This section is based on "Entropy in the Garden of Eden," Is the World Running Down?, pp. 124-26.
6. Henry M. Morris, "Thermodynamics and Biblical Theology," in Emmett L. Williams (ed.), Thermodynamics and the Development of Order (Norcross, Georgia: Creation Research Books, 1981), pp. 129-30.
7. North, Is the World Running Down?, Appendix F: "Time for a Change: Rifkin's `New, Improved' Worldview."
8. Henry M. Morris, The Genesis Record: A Scientific and Devotional Commentary on the Book of Beginnings (San Diego, California: Creation-Life, 1976), p. 127.
9. Henry M. Morris, Evolution in Turmoil (San Diego, California: Creation-Life, 1982), p. 174.
10. Morris, "Thermodynamics and Biblical Theology" (1981), op. cit., pp. 129-30. Emphasis added.
11. The main proponent in the United States is Harvard University paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould.
12. McPhee is quoted by Stephen Jay Gould, Time's Arrow/Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1987), p. 2.
13. Robert A. Nisbet, Social Change and History: Aspects of the Western Theory of Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 182-84.
14. This section is based on Is the World Running Down?, ch. 3: "Entropy and Social Theory."
15. What's the Difference? Creation/Evolution? (no date), p. 2.
16. Ray R. Sutton, That You May Prosper: Dominion By Covenant (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1992), ch. 4.
17. Gary North, Healer of the Nations: Biblical Blueprints for International Relations (Ft. Worth, Texas: Dominion Press, 1987).
18. Sidney Fine, Laissez Faire and the General-Welfare State: A Study of Conflict in American Thought, 1865-1901 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1956), Part 2.
19. Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., The Greatness of the Great Commission: The Christian Enterprise in a Fallen World (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990).
20. F. A. Hayek, "The Results of Human Action but not of Human Design" (1967), in Hayek, Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (University of Chicago Press, 1967), ch. 6; S. S. Schweber, "The Origin of the Origin Revisited," Journal of the History of Biology, X (1977), pp. 229-316.
21. Gary North, Millennialism and Social Theory (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990).
22. Henry M. Morris, The Revelation Record (Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House, 1983), p. 441.
23. An exception is accountant-turned-theologian Dave Hunt. See Hunt, Beyond Seduction: A Return to Biblical Christianity (Eugene, Oregon: Harvest House, 1987), p. 250. For a critique, see Is the World Running Down?, pp. 257-63.
24. W. L. Everitt, Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois. Cited in Paul Dickenson, The Official Rules (New York: Delacorte Press, 1978), p. 48.
25. Erwin Schrödinger, What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell (Cambridge University Press, [1944] 1967), p. 81.
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