 |
Faith, Science, and Understanding is a book by John Polkinghorne which explores aspects of the integration between science and theology. It is based on lectures he gave at the University of Nottingham and Yale and on some other papers.
|
Faith, Science, and Understanding is a book by John Polkinghorne which explores aspects of the integration between science and theology. It is based on lectures he gave at the University of Nottingham and Yale and on some other papers.
It was published in 2000 by Yale University Press ISBN 0-300-08372-6 and issued in paperback in 2001 ISBN 978-0-300-09128-1. There are 17 citations in Google Scholar
In 1. Theology in the University Polkinghorne suggests that "the essential purpose of a University is the discovery and propagation of knowledge"(p4) and that universities are institutionalised expressions of the beliefs in the value of knowledge for knowledge's sake and the essential unity of all knowledge. He says that quantum theory illustrates the principle "Do not make common sense the measure of everything but be prepared to recognise aspects of reality in those modes that are intrinsic to their natures, however strange these modes may at first sight be."(p7). He argues that personal experience is a fundamental aspect of reality and that the human intuition of an infinite Reality is another fact about humanity and that one of the roles of theology is the intellectual study of the religious dimension of personal experience (p19), whilst theological metaphysics can offer a more profound understanding of reality (p22)
In 2. Motivations for Belief he rejects simplistic accounts of science, commending instead the approach of Michael Polanyi. He points out that the laws of nature operate all the time, but that understanding is only possible if we have access to regimes that are particularly transparent to our enquiry (p36) and suggests that God is always there, but there have been particular moments in history that have been unusually open to the divine presence, and that Scripture is evidence, the record of foundational spiritual experience (p37). He expounds the doctrine of the Trinity and commends John Zizioulas's Being as Communion.
In 3. The Role of Revelation he suggests that "revelation bears an analogy with the role played by observations and experiment in science" [1] and that the pursuit of simplicity through studying extreme conditions (such as Deep inelastic scattering) is an important part of science. He also suggests that the fact that the Bible is still read with attention and spiritual profit by so many people so long after it was written is a fact that should be taken into account. (p56)
In 4. Design in Biology? he discusses the Anthropic Principle and in addition to the well-explored physicist perspective he commends the explorations of Michael Denton of properties of the physical world that seem to be tuned to life's necessities [2] and the Nobel-prizewinner Christian de Duve's assertion "to Monod's famous sentence 'The universe was not pregnant with life, nor the biosphere with man,' I reply: 'You are wrong. they were.'" [3] and also discusses with caution Michael Behe's claims about irreducible complexity.
In 5. Second Thoughts he modifies some of his earlier positions somewhat, especially in relation to multiverse theory.
In 6. Kenotic Creation and Divine Action he discusses Arthur Peacocke and the nature of causality
In 7. Natural Science Temporality and Divine Action he identifies "four different metascientific accounts of the nature of time, each claiming to derive from contemporary physics" [4]
In 8. Contemporaries he discusses the ideas of Wolfhart Pannenberg, Thomas F. Torrance and Paul Davies
In 9. Science and Theology in England he sketches "the long English history of interaction between theology and science" from Robert Grosseteste via Francis Bacon, Thomas Browne and Robert Boyle, citing Charles Kingsley, Aubrey Moore and Frederick Temple who "all played an important part in welcoming the insights of Charles Darwin" [5] and noting that the great British physicists of the 19th Century "Faraday, Maxwell, Kelvin and Stokes were all men of deep religious faith" (p198). He "feels that every German theologian writes with Kant looking over one shoulder and Hegel looking over another" whereas the English "tend to enjoy a more relaxed relationship with philosophy"(p202)
John Charlton Polkinghorne was an English theoretical physicist, theologian, and Anglican priest. A prominent and leading voice explaining the relationship between science and religion, he was professor of mathematical physics at the University of Cambridge from 1968 to 1979, when he resigned his chair to study for the priesthood, becoming an ordained Anglican priest in 1982. He served as the president of Queens' College, Cambridge, from 1988 until 1996.
Frank Jennings Tipler is an American mathematical physicist and cosmologist, holding a joint appointment in the Departments of Mathematics and Physics at Tulane University. Tipler has written books and papers on the Omega Point based on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's religious ideas, which he claims is a mechanism for the resurrection of the dead. He is also known for his theories on the Tipler cylinder time machine. His work has attracted criticism, most notably from Quaker and systems theorist George Ellis who has argued that his theories are largely pseudoscience.
Jürgen Moltmann is a German Reformed theologian who is Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at the University of Tübingen and is known for his books such as the Theology of Hope, The Crucified God, God in Creation and other contributions to systematic theology. Jürgen Moltmann is the husband of Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel, a notable feminist theologian. Jürgen Moltmann described his own theology as an extension of Karl Barth's theological works, especially the Church Dogmatics, and he has described his own work as Post-Barthian. He has received honorary doctorates from a number of institutions, such as Duke University (1973), the University of Louvain in Belgium (1995), the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University in Romania (1996), the Chung Yuan Christian University in Taiwan (2002), the Nicaraguan Evangelical University (2002), and the University of Pretoria in South Africa (2017). Moltmann was selected to deliver the prestigious Gifford Lectures in 1984–85, and was also the recipient of the 2000 University of Louisville and Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary Grawemeyer Award in Religion.
Mehdi Golshani is a contemporary Iranian theoretical physicist, academic, scholar, philosopher and distinguished professor at Sharif University of Technology. He is also member of Iranian Science and Culture Hall of Fame, senior fellow of Academy of Sciences of Iran and a founding fellow of the Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics. He is a former member of the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution.
Arthur Robert Peacocke was an English Anglican theologian and biochemist.
Ian Graeme Barbour was an American scholar on the relationship between science and religion. According to the Public Broadcasting Service his mid-1960s Issues in Science and Religion "has been credited with literally creating the contemporary field of science and religion."
Wolfhart Pannenberg was a German Lutheran theologian. He made a number of significant contributions to modern theology, including his concept of history as a form of revelation centered on the resurrection of Christ, which has been widely debated in both Protestant and Catholic theology, as well as by non-Christian thinkers.
In philosophy, theophysics is an approach to cosmology that attempts to reconcile physical cosmology and religious cosmology. It is related to physicotheology, the difference between them being that the aim of physicotheology is to derive theology from physics, whereas that of theophysics is to unify physics and theology.
Roger Eugene Olson is an American Baptist theologian and Professor of Christian Theology of Ethics at the Baylor University.
A Scientific Theology is a set of three books by Alister McGrath that explores the parallels between the working assumptions and methods of Christian theology and those of the natural sciences. Scientific Theology is also the "running title" of the project which gave rise to the trilogy. The work is preceded by three volumes that McGrath describes as "landmarks" in the development of his scientific theology: The Genesis of Doctrine: A Study in the Foundations of Doctrinal Criticism, The Foundations of Dialogue in Science and Religion and Thomas F. Torrance: An Intellectual Biography. The trilogy was later summarised in The Science of God. McGrath is working on a "scientific dogmatics" which will deal with the content of Christian theology following the method developed in the trilogy.
Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science & Religion is a book by John Polkinghorne which offers a "progress report" on his "search for truth. All my life I have been trying to explore reality. That exploration includes science, but it also necessarily takes me beyond it. The process of investigation has a spiral character, as tackling the issues draws the explorer inwards towards a deeper engagement with the multidimensional character of reality"
Robert John Russell is founder and Director of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS). He is also the Ian G. Barbour Professor of Theology and Science in Residence at the Graduate Theological Union (GTU). He has written and edited extensively on possible scientific mechanisms of Christian belief.
Secular theology rejects the substance dualism of modern religion, the belief in two forms of reality required by the belief in heaven and hell. Secular theology can accommodate a belief in God, like many nature religions, but as residing in this world and not separately from it.
The epistemic theory of miracles is the name given by the philosopher William Vallicella to the theory of miraculous events given by Augustine of Hippo and Baruch Spinoza. According to the theory, there are no events contrary to nature — that is no "transgressions", in Hume's sense, of the laws of nature. An event is a miracle only in the sense that it does not agree with our understanding of nature, or fit our picture of nature, or that it thwarts our expectations as to how the world should behave. According to a perfect scientific understanding there would be no miracles at all.
Physicist and Christian: A Dialogue Between the Communities (1961) is a book by William G. Pollard. Much of the attention given to the book such as its review in Time magazine has been attributed to the fact that Pollard was not only a well-respected physicist but also an Anglican priest. The book deliberately avoids specific subject matter differences, focusing on religion and science both as human communities. An important theme is the idea that human knowledge—scientific or religious—can be developed only by those, like Pollard, who have "fully and freely" given themselves to a human community, whether to the physics community or Christian community or some other, e.g., the United States Marine Corps. Also an important theme is Pollard's argument and cautions against a cultural norm in which scientific knowledge would be objective and public, on the one hand, while religious knowledge would be subjective and private, on the other.
Karl Heim was a professor of dogmatics at Münster and Tübingen. He retired in 1939. His idea of God controlling quantum events that do and would seem otherwise random has been seen as the precursor to much of the current studies on divine action. His current influence upon religion and science theology has been compared in degree to that of the physicist and theologian Ian Barbour and of the scientist and theological organizer Ralph Wendell Burhoe. His doctrine on the transcendence of God has been thought to anticipate important points of later religious and science discussions, including the application of Thomas Kuhn's idea of a paradigm to religion and Thomas F. Torrance's theory of multileveled knowledge. Mention of Heim's physical and theological concept of extra-dimensional space can be found in a 2001 puzzle book by the popular mathematics writer Martin Gardner. His concept of space has also been discussed by Ian Barbour himself, who in a review of the book Christian Faith and Natural Science and in a mention of "its more technical sequel" The Transformation of the Scientific World-View, found it to be "an illuminating insight."
Philip Clayton is an American philosopher of religion and philosopher of science. His work focuses on the intersection of science, ethics, and society. He currently holds the Ingraham Chair at Claremont School of Theology and serves as an affiliated faculty member at Claremont Graduate University. Clayton specializes in the philosophy of science, philosophy of biology, and philosophy of religion, as well as in comparative theology.
The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity is a reference work in science and religion, edited by J.B. Stump and Alan G. Padgett, and published by Wiley-Blackwell in 2012. It contains 54 new essays written by an international list of 55 authors, many of them leading scholars in the discipline of science and religion, and others new or up-and-coming voices in the field. The editors claim, "We are seeking to introduce and advance serious thinking and talking about science and Christianity, particularly as they interconnect. We are reflecting on the work of scientists and theologians, trying to find points of contact and points of tension which help to illuminate these practices and doctrines in clear, scholarly light." The book has received positive reviews in Choice, Reference Reviews, Themelios and Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith. The article by Sean M. Carroll generated significant attention when it was discussed on the Huffington Post.
In theology, critical realism is an epistemological position adopted by a community of scientists turned theologians. They are influenced by the scientist turned philosopher Michael Polanyi. Polanyi's ideas were taken up enthusiastically by T. F. Torrance, whose work in this area has influenced many theologians calling themselves critical realists. This community includes John Polkinghorne, Ian Barbour, and Arthur Peacocke.