In 1979, John Polkinghorne resigned from the Chair of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge to train for the Anglican priesthood.
Since then, he has become well-known through his prolific writings which explore the positive relationship between science and Christian theology.
His books include The Way the World Is (Triangle, 1983, revised 1992); Science and Creation (SPCK, 1988) and Science and Providence (SPCK, 1989); Science and Christian Belief; Reason and Reality (SPCK, 1991); Quarks, Chaos and Christianity (SPCK, 1994). He has also written The Particle Play (Freeman, 1979), and Rochester Roundabout: The Story of High Energy Physics (Longman, 1989).
Science and Christian Belief is ambitiously structured in terms of the clauses of the Nicene Creed: each chapter surveys arguments and general considerations relevant to the truth of each particular clause. In Quarks, Chaos and Christianity, Dr. Polkinghorne summarises concisely his stimulating views on the wide range of topics covered previously, e.g. the nature of science, the nature of religion in general and Christianity in particular, various understandings of God, creation, 'chance and necessity', human freedom of choice, moral evil, suffering, prayer; time and eternity, miracles, Jesus' death and resurrection, the new creation.
In general, Dr. Polkinghorne interacts with a wide range of theologians, scientists and philosophers. His ideas continue to provoke debate.
Science and theology
Dr. Polkinghorne affirms the account of science given by the chemist-turned-philosopher, Michael Polanyi, who, in seeking to overcome the drastic Enlightenment bifurcation between faith and reason, drew explicitly on Augustine's method of 'faith seeking understanding' and spoke of science as involving 'personal knowledge' and 'commitment'. This incorporates 'critical realism', which is the implicit, though often not articulated, working philosophy of most practising scientists, who believe themselves to be learning about the actual structure and processes of the real world. Thus, in a 'hermeneutical circle', scientists commit themselves to belief in the rationality of the world in order to discover what form that rationality takes.
Dr. Polkinghorne also argues for a form of critical realism in theology, and will have none of the caricature which sets science and theology against one another as real knowledge versus intellectual imprisonment within a priori opinions, or reasonableness versus obscurantism. Theology is to be found with science in the same spectrum of rational inquiry into the nature of reality: they are intellectual 'cousins under the skin' (Reason and Reality, pp. 4, 19). They differ in the particular aspects of that reality they are exploring, and the mode of exploration: the physical world (through manipulation and discovery) or its Creator and Redeemer (through encounter and revelation).
These are welcome emphases in the current climate of both persistent scientism (Richard Dawkins; Peter Atkins) and the epistemological scepticism or relativism stirred up in the 'hermeneutical morass' of post-modernity.
Turning to the encounter between science and technology, this for Dr. Polkinghorne is one of 'fruitful inter-action, not mutual friction' (Science and Creation, p. 97). Theology's gift to science is to answer questions arising from science which are not scientific in character (e.g. the intelligibility of the physical world; design arguments); science's gift to theology is to tell it what the world is actually like (e.g. cosmic origins and possible futures; openness and regularity reflecting 'chance and necessity') (Reason and Reality, chapter 6). Here one begins to question the extent to which scientific theories are controlling the discussion, and to ask what roles are accorded to revelation and Scripture.
Revelation and Scripture
Dr. Polkinghorne rejects an approach to the Bible which he characterises as treating it as a 'divinely-guaranteed textbook of propositions'. He claims that it should be read in a different manner, and that the 'presence of clash and contradiction' within it is fatal to the 'textbook theory' (Reason and Reality, pp. 61, 67). It seems that by such a 'theory' he not only refers to excessively literalistic approaches, but also caricatures the traditional evangelical view (which is not mentioned in a recognisable form).
Dr. Polkinghorne resists what he calls a 'propositional-cognitive' view of revelation and Scripture, along with a 'cultural-linguistic' view which bypasses questions of truth, and prefers 'personal' as the most appropriate category: the Infinite reveals himself to his finite creatures supremely in the person of Christ. 'Authoritative' and 'inspired' Scripture has an 'evidential role' possesses 'symbolic richness', exhibits 'semantic indeterminancy', is 'the vehicle of a personal encounter, demanding a response', and 'does actually succeed in speaking to us across the centuries' (Reason and Reality, pp. 64, 65, 67).
This approach to Scripture, which draws particularly on John Barton and David Tracy, is ambiguous and somewhat existentialist. The personal and propositional should not, and indeed cannot, be set in opposition: because revelation is personal, it is also propositional, although it is more than propositional. Evangelicals will want to affirm a personal-propositional view of revelation, including a carefully-formulated doctrine of Scripture.
Dr. Polkinghorne comments on what for many is 'the locus classicus of the interaction of science and Scripture' - Genesis 1-3. Here, it is claimed, are 'powerful symbolic stories (myths)', which science, in making literal readings untenable, has liberated to play their proper and powerful role in Christian thought (Reason and Reality). No doubt some evangelicals (or 'evangelicals'?) will agree: others will want to raise serious exegetical, theological and methodological questions.
God and creation
Much of Dr. Polkinghorne's writing heroically grapples with the possible implications of theories of cosmological and biological evolution (which he subjects to little or no scientific critique), quantum mechanics, chaotic dynamics, etc., for the content of such important doctrine as creation, providence, miracles, the problem of evil and theodicy, God and time. Here his fellow explorers include Thomas Torrance, Jurgen Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg and Arthur Peacocke.
Dr. Polkinghorne characterises two unacceptable extremes: a cosmic tyrant who grants no true independence to his creation, and a deistic spectator who is indifferent or impotent. In seeking to avoid these, he argues for a creation which is open to the providential interaction of the Creator, where chance and necessity work together to give a machine-like universe with an intrinsic 'looseness'. The latter enables exploration of evolutionary possibilities (whether 'good' or 'bad'), and permits people and God to influence events without denying the scientific picture.
Thus, God allows human freedom, in the form of liberty of indifference (and so allows, but is not morally responsible for, humanly-created evil (free-will defence)), and also chance processes (and thus the possibility of 'natural evil' (free-process defence)). Dr. Polkinghorne resists a strong doctrine of God's sovereignty: his strong position of human freedom predisposes him to make assumptions about God's self-limitation, and, primarily on the basis of a scientific 'guess' that God allows chance events, he states explicitly that God is not totally omnipotent or omniscient (Science and Christian Belief, p. 81).
In general, the value of much of the discussion and speculation depends on one's perception, or suspicion, of the extent to which the content oversteps or ignores clear biblical constraints and teachings (e.g. the balance between divine sovereignty and human freedom; a historical Fall; the activity of evil spiritual agents). Nevertheless, whenever one feels uneasy (often in the sense of: 'well, yes - but ...'), there are immediate challenges - to articulate precisely the basis for uneasiness, and to suggest what a more satisfactory formulation might be. In some cases, a biblically well-established response is available; in others, the theological issues are more open, and may also depend on disputed scientific topics (e.g. the ontological implications of quantum mechanics).
Summary
Dr. Polkinghorne has placed us in significant debt with his books. Nevertheless, they contain a frustrating mixture of orthodox and liberalising emphases and elements. (To give another example, the centrality of the resurrection of Christ is affirmed, yet near-universalism is also favoured.) That said, there are probably few who have contributed more than Dr. Polkinghorne to the perception that 'we do not have to choose between the God of the Bible and the God revealed in the pattern and structure of the physical world' (Science and Providence, p. 99).
Theological discourse is bound to be influenced by the concepts of contemporary thought. The problem of using such concepts rightly is extremely complicated and delicate. 'As theology has necessarily made use of certain concepts of past cultures to explicate its content in places where that culture dominated, so it must consider the natural scientific habit of mind which greatly influences our thought patterns today. Only by recognising the inevitable influence of cultural concepts on theological discourse will theology be circumspect enough to avoid the pitfalls of subservience to culture, on the one hand, and irrelevance to it, on the other' (II. P. Nebelsick, Theology and Science in Mutual Modification (Christian Journals Limited, 1981).
Thus, instead of theology informing contemporary thought, or utilising contemporary thought structures to articulate its content, contemporary thought can mould, distort and imprison theology. Conversely, some modern theology (Barth's, for example) has sought to avoid the methodological problems of its scientific status and relation to the sciences in general - and the widespread exclusion from universities of the study of religion from a theological perspective (as opposed to phenomenological, sociological or psychological) mirrors the general privatisation of religion in Western culture.
Hence a major challenge to any exposition of the complex interaction between science and theology is to avoid Nebelsick's twin dangers of cultural subservience/assimilation or irrelevance. Overall, Dr. Polkinghorne's success here is variable. On some subjects he addresses, evangelicals are clearly (and legitimately) not always of one mind with him - or, for that matter, with each other. However, we should all be able to agree with Dr. Polkinghorne, that for all its importance the science-and-theology discussion is a 'second order' task which is auxiliary to, and does not afford the fundamental basis of our faith.
After ten years in university chemistry research and teaching, Dr. Philip Duce spent four years studying theology full-time at London Bible College, including a year researching a thesis on science and hermeneutics.
Home
Archives
Subscriptions
Adverts
Find a church
About us
Contact us
Site Map
Printable