God Arises
The Challenge of The Qur’an
~ 315 ~
centuries ago, as having arrived at the quintessence
of the matter. Just as the Arabic language seems to
have been crystallised at a particular point in time—
in fact, at the moment of divine revelation, so also
does sciences seem to have been arrested in its
course, the Quran having the final say on matters
which for centuries lay beyond man’s knowledge
and which still, in many important cases, elude
man’s intellectual grasp. The most significant of
these is the origin of the universe.
It is interesting to note how this theory of the origin
of the universe affected a group of Chinese
graduate students who were pursuing their studies
at the University of California under government
sponsorship. Some twelve members of this group
went to the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church
of Berkeley and asked to have a Sunday School
Class arranged for them—not that they wished to
become Christians, as they explained quite frankly,
but because they wanted to learn to what degree
Christianity had influenced American culture. This
being a rather special type of class, the pastor
arranged for the mathematician and astronomer,
Peter W. Stoner, to organize and instruct it. Just four
