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With Matt Fell
314 Plays6 months ago
On PEP Talk today, Kristi and Steve chat with Matt, one of Kristi's old school friends! He wasn't a Christian at all back then, but over the years, Jesus wonderfully drew him in. Now working on a PhD at Cambridge, he reflects on the amazing ways that a scientific, enquiring mind can find satisfaction in a God-centred worldview. If you or your friends think Christianity is anti-science or anti-intellectual, Matt's testimony is great food for thought!
Matthew Fell is a PhD student in the Divinity Faculty at the University of Cambridge. His thesis considers the implications of evolutionary theory for the Christian understanding of the soul and its creation. Alongside his studies, he is an associate lecturer at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, and the director of a discipleship and church internship programme that serves the Newfrontiers network across Europe. Matthew is a passionate believer that modern science can open theological questions and dialogue with people rather than shut it down.
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Transcript
Introductions
00:00:11
Speaker
Welcome to Pip Talk, the persuasive evangelism podcast, and I'm Steve Osman, part of the speaking team at Solas. It is great to have you listening today. And I am co-hosting as ever with the lovely Kristi Mayer. And today we are also joined by Matt Fell, who I'll introduce in just a moment. Kristi, how are you doing today?
00:00:32
Speaker
Steve, I'm doing even better because of our guest. I'm so excited about this person. Indeed. Matt, thank you so much for joining us.
Matt's Family and Friendship
00:00:44
Speaker
How are you today? I am very well. Thank you very much. We are six weeks into having a new member in our household. Sleep levels are a little low, but I've got a good strong cup of tea here to see me through. But I'm also just
00:01:02
Speaker
Delighted to be on the podcast and shall I? Am I allowed to tell the listeners the kind of backstory of Christine? It's funny because I just learned this that you two do have a bit of history. You know each other from the past. So yeah, I was gonna say you look quite sprightly. So I wouldn't have said that there's a new edition in the home. So you're looking very aware. I will take sprightly. Good. Take it. But yes, please do tell us about how, yeah, how do you know Christine?
00:01:32
Speaker
Well, Kristy was head girl at my school. And we were on school council together. I was on my council, yeah. We went to school together, we sat in history classes together. We had friendship groups, we went to parties together, we knew each other.
00:01:57
Speaker
It feels like a long time ago. I mean, I don't know if you're happy, you can scrub this afterwards because it's kind of revealed our age. But you know, this last year, we've lived away from home longer than we've lived at home. And so all that stuff was 18 years ago, crazy thought. But yeah.
Journey to Christianity
00:02:22
Speaker
But it's fantastic because I, so I didn't, so Matt at the time you didn't, you weren't a Christian, you wouldn't have called yourself a Christian and it was only a few, well it was a few years after that that we were on a field somewhere and Matt walks up to me at this Christian conference and just says, Christie, I'm a Christian and I'm now working for this Christian charity.
00:02:43
Speaker
What? This is the least thing that I ever expected. It's just amazing. And then after that, I think we were walking across the fields and you shared with me this wonderful story of Lord's kindness to you. And we'd love to hear that, Matt. Is that all right, Steve? So if we look at the part by hearing, how did you come to faith? Yeah. How did you receive it? Yeah. Okay.
00:03:09
Speaker
So I didn't grow up in a Christian family. In fact, in my family, we had Jehovah's Witnesses, we had some Muslims, a lot of new age, kind of, you know, yoga teachers and things like that, but no Orthodox Christian believers. And I kind of always grew up
00:03:33
Speaker
quite a new age outlook, I suppose, just kind of thinking, you know, all kind of religions kind of are the same, and there's probably something good in each one, but no one is true. And I had a very kind of suspicious view of the church and thought,
00:03:51
Speaker
Overall Christians were kind of, people who didn't really think were very critical, naive. And so that was kind of just how I was brought up. And I went off to university at 18 to do history and literature. And when I say to do history and literature, I don't know if I did much of either of them, if I'm totally honest.
00:04:13
Speaker
I went to university and I lived a very kind of haven't garnered life kind of lots of drama shows and being in bands and that kind of stuff and I threw myself into student life and
00:04:29
Speaker
it kind of all imploded during my second year at university. I was kind of struggling to apply myself, a romantic relationship I'd been in broke down. I think I was learning things about myself I didn't like. And so, you know, it was the noughties and I decided to do what most white middle-class people do and I went traveling to find myself. And so I went and spent three months in India and Nepal.
00:04:58
Speaker
And I went largely because of the kind of more new agey influences upon me growing up. And I thought let's go and hang out in some temples and climb some mountains and that will do my soul some good. But I ended up spending three months with Christians.
00:05:18
Speaker
So first I ended up spending a month in Goa with some Indian Pentecostals working in an orphanage that they ran. And they had about 60 young boys who were largely children of sex workers who had been taken in.
00:05:39
Speaker
You know, it really does something to your view of the world and to your view of Christians when you have an eight-year-old boy who's been through just some awful things talking to you very honestly and openly about his hope in Jesus. And seeing the way the people who ran that orphanage just loved people, cared for the poor.
00:06:04
Speaker
And interestingly, I think seeing that in contrast to the kind of elements of Hinduism and Buddhism I was interested in, which were very much about detachment, just this very different posture towards suffering in the world.
00:06:19
Speaker
I really shook me. So I then traveled around, went off to Mumbai, spent time getting more Christians and eventually I decided that too many too many Christians I needed to escape so I flew off to Nepal and spent two weeks trekking in the mountains but ended up walking for two weeks with an American airline pilot who was born again Christian and as soon as he heard about what I'd been up to pounced upon that
00:06:45
Speaker
And so we had two weeks discussing, and then I did a bit more traveling back in India, met more Christians. And then I came back to the UK and tried to kind of bury that. I thought that was interesting, but back to student life. And I was in a bar.
00:07:01
Speaker
one night and to my shame, I was showing off to some ladies, I was trying to impress, you know, I've been to the Everest, let's talk about that. And, you know, dropped, I spent a month working in an orphanage, you know, I thought that's gonna cash in. And little did I realize these ladies were believers and they invited me on that alpha course. So I then went on that alpha course, I proceeded to be the,
00:07:28
Speaker
The guy on Alpha who thought he knew better, I thought all the Christians were dummies and the team just loved me and were patient and took my questions seriously even though they were probably quite ridiculous on retrospect and then we did a weekend away and I think during that weekend I realized that
00:07:55
Speaker
I did believe that there was a God and I believed that that God was good and that God was love and somebody asked me how did I know that and I couldn't quite answer it and they said well we believe that God's love is shown for us at the cross when
00:08:15
Speaker
when Christ who is, you know, God who has taken humanity onto himself suffers and dies for our forgiveness. And in that moment, despite not having all my questions answered, despite still a kind of hesitancy to be a kind of associated with the church and Christians,
00:08:33
Speaker
I just could not escape from Christ. He won me in that moment. Sometimes I talk about it as I kind of felt like I was grabbed by the scruff of the neck, but it wasn't a violent, it was just my heart was so compelled by the beauty of Jesus. And from that point on I started going to church and probably took a good year to really kind of
00:08:58
Speaker
come to things that I now hold to be kind of core convictions, you know, a while to accept the Bible was the Word of God, Jesus rose again from a grave, entertaining all sorts of crazy ideas, and church more people just so patient and kind.
00:09:15
Speaker
And then, yeah, I was baptized within 12 months. And, man, I think that was, yeah, that must have been 16 years ago now. Oh, man. Thank you. That is, man, that is just so encouraging and so cool to hear. What an amazing testimony. It just makes you think, I mean, like, John 3 16, so clear. Forgot to sort of love the world. And I mean, that includes you in just the way that God, like, pursued you and pursued you, even when it seems
00:09:45
Speaker
that you were just kicking against him. I just think it's just a fantastic picture of God's love that just keeps coming after us again and again.
Intersection of Science and Faith
00:09:56
Speaker
And yeah, I have so many questions I could ask you, but I do maybe want to just slightly change gears because now it seems you went then on Alpha, you became a Christian and it seems you went from
00:10:09
Speaker
I suppose thinking that Christians are maybe those kind of people who don't think very deeply about things, you know, it's either it's faithful, you have it, you have it or you don't. But you are actually doing your PhD, finishing up your PhD in Cambridge.
00:10:24
Speaker
and I'm going to read the title of it and then you can translate it to English for us. Wisdom within, wisdom without, an Augustinian philosophy of evolution, emergence and the creation of the soul. Now that's a mouthful but very quickly if you want to just give us a picture of what's that all about and then if you could explain a little of this
00:10:48
Speaker
I suppose it seems like there's this idea that there's science and there's faith, there's science and there's God, and there's this tension. And you know, you got to choose one or the other, not just from reading the title of your PhD, it seems that's not the case. So yeah, if you want to explain a little there.
00:11:04
Speaker
I'm always kind of surprised when somebody's dug out my profile on the university website and has learned about my thesis, but yes. So essentially the project is focused on a couple of questions. So first is, what is the soul, theologically?
00:11:25
Speaker
How does God create it? And how can we reflect on those questions in light of contemporary evolutionary science? And some of the questions that that evolutionary narrative throws up about the human mind.
00:11:44
Speaker
It's so funny because if I could plop myself back in me and Christie's history classes and school days and say that I would be doing a PhD at Cambridge on that subject, or to be honest, a PhD at Cambridge on any subject, I probably would have laughed. And so I do feel a real sense of the Lord and his kindness and good humour has taken me on a real journey when it comes to
00:12:15
Speaker
thinking and studying. And yeah, the question about faith and science is a key part of that. So let me backtrack slightly. So I thought when I became a Christian, I really thought that in order to be all in, to follow Jesus, at least this is my preconceived idea before I really knew the Lord, but beforehand I thought it would mean throwing my brain out of the window.
00:12:45
Speaker
And what I found very quickly was actually two things. One, knowing him gave me a framework for thinking about life in the world and stirred in me an earnest interest in all sorts of things.
00:13:11
Speaker
questions of history and philosophy, but also science and understanding how the world works. And knowing Christ turned the light on inside me. In John's Gospel, it talks about how Christ is the light and the life of men. And it really felt like the light went on and all of a sudden I could see the world in color and detail and had a hunger to
00:13:40
Speaker
to apply myself in a way that I'd never done before. So that was quite a surprise. Now, I was never particularly scientifically minded. I was always much more of a humanities guy, which I think is probably a disappointment to my parents because they both got kind of background in biology.
00:14:03
Speaker
It was probably four or five years into me being a Christian and I listened to some lectures. Actually, no, it was working the same company I was working for with Christie doing evangelism on university campuses and engaging with questions of science and faith and meeting
00:14:30
Speaker
Christian scientists who just loved their subject, I think probably started to change my perception. But I think, yeah, just learning about the history of Christians in science and how their faith
00:14:53
Speaker
made them be more attentive to the world, more interested in the depths of it, and have adoption of creation, but also belief in that God is triune, led them to, almost gave them a conceptual framework for looking at the world and making sense of it. And so I think that stirred in me a confidence that this is God's world.
00:15:17
Speaker
and that when human beings made in his image apply themselves to looking at that world, even if they bring interpretive lenses or agendas that are ungodly, they are still ultimately working with the truth and reality of the world that God has made, and there's a grain to the universe.
00:15:46
Speaker
And actually, as Christians, we ought not be afraid of that, but could lean in and look to that. So I think that started stirring my kind of imagination. And I started just being genuinely interested in science in a way that I'd never done before. I have a lot of regret about my school education when it comes to the sciences and not paying attention.
Language and Human Nature
00:16:11
Speaker
I had to learn a lot later in life.
00:16:17
Speaker
So that was going on in the background. How I came to my particular PhD subject was actually through an interest in language and what language tells us about being human, the way we use words and all the things that we do with our words, whether that's work really hard on explaining something in detail.
00:16:39
Speaker
or writing poetry, or declaring our love for somebody, or praying. There's something about human language which is in common with the kind of communication animals do, but it's completely different at the same time. And I found that an interesting thing to think about, and what does that tell us about being human? What does it tell us about the world in which we live in?
00:17:06
Speaker
And then I came across some literature on the question of how human language evolved. And I just thought it was such a fascinating question. Because what does it tell us about the world that nature has brought forth a creature that can do those things I mentioned, that can do poetry and science and pray? You know, if you look at,
00:17:36
Speaker
any kind of species in the world and look at the traits that it has, it's traits reflect the environment that it lives in. So think about fish and fins. Fish have fins and that tells you something about the environment they live in. They live in water and they can swim through it. Wings on birds tells you something about the atmosphere and what is needed to navigate the way through it.
00:18:01
Speaker
What does it tell us about the world that there are creatures such as you and I that can speak and articulate the details of the world around us? And so I got into that question and that led me into just kind of deeper questions about the evolution of the human mind and
00:18:23
Speaker
And then you're kind of in the territory, the theological territory of the soul and that fired me up. So that's kind of what got me into it. Matt, that songs, I love the way that you've just described that because I think you very gently just brought us through.
00:18:40
Speaker
You know, from going from we live in our father's world, God has created this world to look at the stuff that's in the world and look at the environment in which this stuff is in the world. And what does that tell us about the stuff that's in the world and in the world to what does that tell us about what's in me like this soul? What is this?
00:18:57
Speaker
This is just so beautifully articulated. For those who are kind of listening to this as an interested kind of bystander and who maybe may have been like you however many years ago, more humanities, like not sciences.
Reconciling Faith and Science
00:19:14
Speaker
What would your advice be to them if they're thinking, you know what, I've got some friends and their biggest objection that they have to Christianity is the science thing, like you. Isn't this just a dereliction of, I was going to say, my epistemological integrity? Isn't this a dereliction of my thinking mind? I'm throwing my mind out the window.
00:19:37
Speaker
when I'm being asked to consider Christ, like how can you possibly be a Christian and hold to such kind of scientific truths about the world? What might you say to that person who's like, oh, I just like one question, just something that I could help push that conversation on a little bit further towards Jesus. And what would your advice be to them? Hmm.
00:20:04
Speaker
I think I'd suggest two things. The first would be, I think there's a lot of, we can take a lot of confidence as Christians.
00:20:21
Speaker
by learning a little bit about the history of faith in science and some of the just towering figures in the history of science who were believers. And our culture has this very kind of cartoony narrative that believers have always been anti-science and actually that's just, it's really not true. And so the more I've learned about
00:20:49
Speaker
just the Christian tradition. The more I've read Christian writers from outside our day and age, the more I thought, wow, I'm a part of something that historically has been
00:21:07
Speaker
philosophically really rich and reflective and thorough. And that's helped. And just reading a few books on the history of science and faith. So David Bentley Hart, he's an American, he's actually an Orthodox Christian. He has a, it's quite a feisty book, but it's very enjoyable called Atheist Delusions.
00:21:31
Speaker
I think his editors made him call it that. But he has a great chapter in there on the history of science and faith. And it really blew away a lot of my misconceptions. What's his name? Rodney Stark, I think he has some helpful works on this as well. So there's some really good resources out there, which can just
00:21:57
Speaker
Just, you know, even if you just can find a blog distilling some of that stuff, just to be able to say in the pub very confidently. Actually, there's been plenty of Christians who were committed believers, loved the Bible, and on account of that, did their science really well. And just saying that just distills some, not distills some, it just takes attention, I think, out of that. I mean, you're not on the back foot and defensive.
00:22:27
Speaker
But the second thing I'd say is don't be afraid to ask searching meaningful questions. And the more I've learned about evolution in particular, which is often seen as a real threat to belief in God, the more I learn about it, the more I think actually this raises some really significant questions about order, about the kind of
00:22:58
Speaker
reasonableness of the world about how we got here. And particularly when it comes to questions about human evolution, being able to just ask, you know, what does it tell us that we're here? Why is that probing into some of those things?
Closing and Future Episodes
00:23:19
Speaker
I think, you know, often if you ask those questions, sometimes people
00:23:24
Speaker
you know, may have a stock answer and that's fine, you know, but other times it might get them to think and who knows where that pop conversation could then go. Well, Matt, you've certainly helped us to think today. Thank you so much for sharing, you know, that wonderful story of God's work in your life and
00:23:43
Speaker
and particularly now just how you're thinking through God and science and applying that so carefully and wonderfully. And to your studies, we're so thrilled that you could join us today. Thanks so much for joining us, Matt. Thanks for having me. Such a pleasure. Steve, as ever, a joy to co-host this with you and a big thank you to our listeners as well who have joined us today. We'll be back with you in a couple of weeks' time or so with another wonderful guest who we'll be able to ask.
00:24:11
Speaker
similar questions to about their life and faith and walk in the world with Jesus. So thanks so much for listening and we look forward to joining you soon.