1. In A. Peacocke, From DNA to DEAN: Reflections and Explorations of a Priest-Scientist (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 1996).
2. Resulting in my Bampton Lectures at Oxford in 1978, published as Creation and the World of Science (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), and other publications.
3. Charles Raven was a prolific author. His most comprehensive work on science and religion is his Gifford Lectures of 1951 and 1952, published as Natural Religion and Christian Theology: First Series, Science and Religion; Second Series, Experience and Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953). There is an interesting biography by F.W. Dillistone, Charles Raven: Naturalist, Historian and Theologian (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1975).
4. C.A. Coulson, Christianity in an Age of Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953); Science and Christian Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955). D. Hawkin and E. Hawkin, The Word of Science: The Religious and Social Thought of C.A. Coulson (London: Epworth Press, 1989) includes some biographical material and a list of Coulson’s publications on science and Christian belief.
5. G.D. Yarnold, Christianity and Physical Science (London and Oxford: Mowbray, 1950).
6. A.F. Smethurst, Modern Science and Christian Belief (London: Nisbet, 1955).
7. E. Mascall, Christian Theology and Natural Science, Bampton Lectures, 1956 (London: Longman, Green & Co., 1956).
8. J.S. Habgood, ‘The Uneasy Truce between Science and Thology’, in Soundings: Essays Concerning Christian Understanding, ed. A.R. Vidler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), pp. 23–41.
9. A. Peacocke, Science and the Christian Experiment (London: Oxford University Press, 1971).
10. I. Barbour, Issues in Science and Religion (New York: Harper & Row, 1966).
11. Among others: the relation of God and time; predictability and determinism in the debates concerning possible special divine action; and how to express God’s immanence in the world.
12. P. Badham, ‘Contemporary Christianity as a New Religion’, Modern Believing, 40(4), 1999, pp. 17–29.
1. In a letter to Charles Kingsley; Life and Letters of T.H. Huxley, Vol. 1 (New York: Appleton, 1913).
2. F. Hoyle, The Nature of the Universe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1960), p. 103.
3. By the ‘world’, we shall usually mean simply all-that-is, other than God. It will carry no moral or normative undertones.
4. R. Livingstone, The Pageant of Greece (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923), p. 414.
5. In the USA, to my observation, in the intellectual and academic world, if not in the general public.
6. G. Theissen, A Theory of Primitive Christian Religion (London: SCM Press, 1999), p. 2.
7. A.L. Moore, ‘The Christian Doctrine of God’, in Lux Mundi, 12th edn, ed. C. Gore (London: Murray, London, 1891), p. 132.
1. J. Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), Book IV, XVIII, 3.
2. Ibid., Book IV, XVIII, 10.
3. J. Butler, The Analogy of Religion (1736), Introduction (emphasis added).
4. A. Sokal and J. Bricmont, Intellectual Impostures: Postmodern Philosophers’ Abuse of Science (London: Profile Books, 1998).
5. I am indebted here to a recent account by D.B. Smith of the ideas on ‘abduction’ of the American thinker C.S. Pierce (1839–1914,) in his recent book The End of Certainty and the Beginning of Faith: Religion and Science for the 21st Century (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2000).
6. N.H. Gregersen, ‘A Contextual Coherence Theory for the Science–Theology Dialogue’, in Rethinking Theology and Science: Six Models for the Current Dialogue, ed. N.H. Gregersen and J.W. van Huysteen (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, UK: W.B. Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 189–90. He is here developing, in the context of the science-and-religion dialogue, the contextual pragmatist coherence theory of M. Rescher.
7. Ibid., p. 226–7.
8. P. Clayton and S. Knapp, ‘Rationality and Christian Self-Conceptions’, in Religion and Science: History, Method, Dialogue, ed. W.M. Richardson and W. J. Wildman (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 134, 138.
9. W. Drees, ‘Ten Commandments for Quality in Science and Spirituality’, Science and Spirit, 9(4), 1998, pp. 2–4.
1. T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton (London: Faber & Faber, 1944).
2. F. Hoyle, The Nature of the Universe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1960), p. 103.
3. A. Einstein, Out of My Later Years (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1970), p. 61.
4. J. Milton, Paradise Lost, line 555.
5. Cf. A. Peacocke, Theology for a Scientific Age (TSA), 2nd edn (London: SCM Press, and Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), p. 132.
6. H.K. Schilling, The New Consciousness in Science and Religion (London: SCM Press, 1973), p. 126.
7. H.W. Robinson, ‘Hebrew Psychology’, in The People and the Book, ed. A.S. Peake (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925), p. 362.
8. Following J.C. Puddefoot, ‘Information and Creation’, in The Science and Theology of Information, ed. C. Wassermann, R. Kirby and B. Rordoff (Geneva: Edition Labor et Fides, 1992), p. 15.
9. Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), sense II.
10. Ibid., sense I.3.
1. Genesis 2:7 (NRSV).
2. Genesis 3:19 (NRSV).
3. M.J. Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (New York: Free Press, 1996).
4. C. de Duve, Vital Dust (New York: Basic Books, 1995); ‘Constraints on the Origin and Evolution of Life’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 142, 1998 – pp. 1–8.
5. F. Temple, The Relations between Religion and Science (London: Macmillan, 1885). The actual quotation is: ‘God did not make things, we may say, no, but He made them make themselves.’
6. The Independent, 25 January 1999.
7. A.R. Peacocke, Creation and the World of Science (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979) – henceforth CWS. See, in this context, pp. 67–72.
8. Such quantities include the actual strengths of the four forces that operate in the universe (gravitational, strong and weak nuclear, electromagnetic), the electronic charge, the velocity of light, Planck’s constant, various particle masses, the mass of the universe, and many others. For details see J. Barrow and F. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
9. See, for example, the confidence in the existence of a ‘multiverse’ expressed by Michio Kaku, a co-founder of ‘string field theory’, which unifies quantum and relativity theory, in a lecture in the BBC World Service series ‘The Essential Guide for the 21st Century’, reported in The Independent, 19 January 2000.
10. Genesis 1:31 (NRSV).
11. C. Darwin, The Origin of Species, 6th edn (London: Watts & Co., Thinkers Library, 1929), pp. 97–8.
12. Romans 6:23 (AV).
13. J. Monod, Chance and Necessity (London: Collins, 1972).
14. For example, in my ‘Chance, Potentiality and God’, Modern Churchman, 17, 1973, pp. 13–23: also in Beyond Chance and Necessity, ed. J. Lewis (London: Garnstone Press, 1974), pp. 13–25.
15. Howard van Till, ‘The Creation: Intelligently Designed or Optimally Equipped?’, Theology Today, 55, 1998, pp. 349, 351.
16. S.J. Gould, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History (London: Penguin, 1989).
17. S. Conway Morris, The Crucible of Creation: The Burgess Shale and the Rise of Animals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
18. Recalling Laplace’s famous response to Napoleon, who had asked him if he needed God to explain his physics: ‘I had no need of that hypothesis.’
19. Genesis 1:31 (NRSV).
20. For example, in Proverbs 8:27–31, quoted on p.155.
21. J. Milton, Paradise Lost (1667), 1.22.
22. Romans 8:19–22 (NRSV).
23. A. Pope, An Essay on Man, Epistle ii, 1.28.
24. Revelation 13:8 (AV).
1. For details see ‘Supplementary reading’ (p.191).
2. J.P. Crutchfield, J.D. Farmer, N.H. Packard and R.S. Shaw, ‘Chaos’, Scientific American, December 1986, p. 48.
3. Excluding quantum-theory considerations and assuming that the future does not already exist for God to know, as argued earlier (pp.37ff.).
4. The limit as trajectories become infinitely close together is called the ‘strange attractor’ in the mathematical theory of chaos.
5. The trajectory of the wave function is controlled by the deterministic Schrödinger equation.
6. N. Saunders, in ‘Does God Cheat at Dice? Divine Action and Quantum Possibilities’, Zygon, 35, 2000, pp. 517–44; and quoting from D. Jones, ‘Daedalus: God Plays Dice’, Nature, 385, 1997, p. 122. This issue of Zygon also contains articles by C.S. Heinrich, P.E. Hodgson and J. Koperski dissenting from the hypothesis of special divine action at the quantum level.
7. Saunders (note 6) argues that there are only four broad ways in which God might conceivably influence the outcomes of measurements on quantum-mechanical systems: (1) God alters the wave function between measurements; (2) God makes God’s own measurement on a given system; (3) God alters the probability of obtaining a particular result; and (4) God controls the outcome of measurements.
Saunders’s careful analysis shows that (1) is not only a highly interventionist action but that, at the point of measurement, there would be no guarantee that the result intended by God would be obtained. So does God then, as it were, ‘switch off’ indeterminacy to get the desired result? Moreover the time evolution of such a system is entirely deterministic, governed by the Schrödinger equation, and if it is still to be valid cannot allow the introduction of an entirely new component wave function. So (1) seems unlikely.
Possibility (2) fares no better. If God ‘makes a measurement’, presumably and questionably via an observable part of creation, then, like any other measurement on the system, the outcome is governed by the probabilities of which the unmeasured state is already compounded. So it is not possible for God to achieve any particular intended result. The result of a measurement is not determined – only its probabilities.
Suggestion (3) involves God altering the probabilities prevailing hitherto in a measurement so that the divinely intended result is more likely. Its probability will range between certainty (probability one) and impossibility (probability zero). This proposal assumes, problematically, that in some sense the probabilities exist as features of the system in question before the measurement – that they describe the nature of physical reality. Hence God would, on this proposal, be altering the nature of reality before a measurement and this involves intermittent and interventionist action on God’s part.
Suggestion (4) also involves God being involved in the process of measurement. God simply sidesteps the probabilities predicted by normal quantum mechanics and just controls the outcomes of measurement. This involves a contrary assumption to that implied by (3), namely, that the probabilities follow from the measurements and not vice versa. This would imply, as in (3), that divine action is intermittent – because if God acted directly to control the outcomes of all such measurements, then God would be conceived of as arbitrarily making sure they fit the probabilities prescribed by quantum mechanics (and that would be a very ‘occasionalist’ proposal).
From his analysis Saunders concludes, I think rightly, that (2) combined with (4), and (4) alone prove to be the most plausible proposals for ‘quantum divine action’, with only some events, some measurements, being the direct action of God. This emphasises again how episodic and very interventionist is this whole account of divine action in the world – as well as placing strong constraints on God’s actions. Moreover, these proposals need to rely on amplification of quantum events and the capacity of ‘chaotic’ processes to do this – and this capacity is itself highly problematic in the light of the unresolved problems in relating quantum mechanics to chaos theory.
8. A. Farrer, Faith and Speculation (London: A & C Black, 1967), p. 66.
9. Augustine, Confessions, VII, 7.
1. I Kings 19:12 (NRSV). The implicit paradox is well illustrated by the alternative translations: ‘a low murmuring sound’ (NEB); ‘a faint murmuring sound’ (REB); ‘a sound of gentle stillness’ (RV, footnote); and the familiar ‘a still small voice’ (AV and RV).
2. Romans 1:19–20 (NRSV).
3. See, for example, D. Hay, Religious Experience Today: Studying the Facts (London: Mowbray, 1990).
4. D. Brown, The Divine Trinity (London: Duckworth, 1985), pp. 37, 42–51.
5. R. Swinburne, The Existence of God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), p. 251.
1. D. Jenkins, God, Jesus and Life in the Spirit (London: SCM Press, 1988), p. 8.
2. Matthew 13:3 (REB).
1. Acts 17:28 (AV, NRSV). It may be of significance for our attempt here to render the idea of ‘God’ intelligible to our own times that St Paul is depicted by the author of Acts as addressing the sceptical Athenian ‘cultured despisers’ of belief in God in these panentheistic terms through this quotation from one of their own poets (possibly Epimenedes). The speeches in Acts appear to be of the genre of much literature of their time, wherein such speeches are not historical but are shaped by the author as typically representative of and appropriate to their supposed context, often a dramatic episode.
2. Though it also signifies God giving ‘spirit’, and so spiritual awareness, to humanity.
3. A. Moore, ‘The Christian Doctrine of God’, in Lux Mundi, 12th edn, ed. C. Gore (London: Murray, 1891), p. 73.
4. H. Drummond, The Lowell Lectures on the Ascent of Man (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1894), p. 428 – quoted by N.H. Gregersen in ‘A Contextual Coherence Theory for the Science–Theology Dialogue’, in Rethinking Theology and Science: Six Models for the Current Dialogue, ed. N.H. Gregersen and J.W. van Huysteen (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge UK: Eerdmans, 1998), p. 216.
5. C. Kingsley, The Water Babies (London: Hodder & Stoughton, [1863] 1930), p. 248.
6. H. van Till, ‘The Creation: Intelligently Designed or Optimally Equipped?’, Theology Today, 55, 1998, pp. 349, 351.
7. ‘Salvation’ in English is derived from (ecclesiastical) Latin salvatio, rendering Greek soteria, which means bodily health, deliverance from physical illness and danger, and from Latin salus (adjective salvos/salvus), which also has the double reference of health/welfare and of preservation/deliverance from danger.
8. Quoted by Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia in ‘Through the Creation to the Creator’, Ecotheology, 2, 1997, p. 15, from F. Bowie and O. Davies (eds.), Hildegard of Bingen: An Anthology. (London: SPCK, 1990) pp. 33, 91–2.
9. Ibid., pp. 12–14.
1. Thomas Traherne, Centuries, 1670; First Century (18), (28).
2. O.C. Quick, The Christian Sacraments (London: Nisbet, 1927), ch.1.
3. J.R. Illingworth, ‘The Incarnation and Development’, in Lux Mundi, 12th edn, ed. C. Gore (London: Murray, 1891), p. 132.
4. From G. Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (London: Dacre Press, 1945), pp. 112ff.
5. For further exposition of the significance of the Eucharist for contemporary Christians, see the Appendix.
1. Proverbs 3:19–20 (NRSV).
2. Proverbs 8:1–4, 22, 23, 27, 28–31 (NRSV).
3. The Wisdom of Solomon 7:23–8 (NRSV).
4. Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 1:4–10 (NRSV).
5. S.H. Ringe, Wisdom’s Friends (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1999), p. 44.
6. J.G. Dunn, Christology in the Making (London: SCM Press, 1980), p. 210.
7. C. Deane-Drummond, Theology and Biotechnology: Implications for a New Science (London and Washington: Geoffrey Chapman, 1997), ch. 6.
8. C. Deane-Drummond, ‘FutureNatural?: A Future of Science through the Lens of Wisdom’, Heythrop Journal, 40, 1999, pp. 45, 46.
9. In I Corinthians 1:24, 30 (NRSV).
10. I Corinthians 2:7 (NRSV).
11. J.G. Dunn, Christology in the Making, pp. 259, 262.
12. See Ringe, Wisdom’s Friends, pp. 48–53, where she follows a scheme of Raymond Brown.
13. John 1:1–5, 10–12b, 14, 16 (NRSV).
14. Psalm 33:69 (NRSV).
15. Note that the title ‘Son of God’ as applied to the historical Jesus is, strictly speaking, a Messianic, royal title of an earthly, albeit divinely commissioned, figure.
16. St Basil of Caesarea, St Gregory of Nyssa and St Gregory of Nazianzus.
17. V. Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1991), p. 70 (emphasis added). This distinction between the essence and energies of God is not to be confused with the distinction in Christian theology, both Western and Eastern, between the essence and nature of the Triune Godhead, on the one hand, and the three ‘persons’ (Latin personae) Father, Son and Holy Spirit of the Trinity as experienced in revelation to humanity, on the other.
18. Ibid., p. 73.
19. Ibid., p. 76.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid., p. 80.
22. Ibid., p. 88.
23. Ibid., pp. 88–9.
1. I have deliberately used the designation ‘Jesus the Christ’ rather than the usual ‘Jesus Christ’ because I wish to emphasise that ‘Christ’ is a title, from the Greek Christos, meaning ‘Anointed One’ and is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew ‘Messiah’. But this has long been forgotten so that ‘Christ’ is used almost as the surname of the historical ‘Jesus’. Hence mention of, for example, ‘the pre-existence of Christ’ and of the ‘cosmic Christ’ tends to be thought of as referring to the pre-existence and cosmic character of Jesus, the man from Nazareth. This evacuates those phrases of intelligible meaning and renders them incredible. However, what can be said to be pre-existent and cosmic in significance with respect to ‘Jesus the Christ’, as I have designated him, is none other than the pre-existence before the birth of Jesus of God the Word/Logos, who is of cosmic significance. The very name ‘Jesus Christ’ appears to have become a source of misunderstanding today.
2. John 1:14 (NRSV).
3. In my TSA, 2nd edn, ch. 13–16, and God and Science: A Quest for Christian Credibility (London: SCM Press, 1996), ch. 4.
4. Persona is translated in English as ‘person’ but the meaning is that of the mask or face of an actor rather than that of an individual consciousness.
5. A. Meynell, ‘Christ in the Universe’, in The Faber Book of Religious Verse, ed. H. Gardner (London: Faber & Faber, 1972), p. 292.
6. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses V, praef.
1. TSA, 1st edn (1990), pp. 77, and earlier in my CWS, pp. 179ff.
2. TSA, 2nd edn (1993), pp. 231–2, 252–3; see also CWS, pp. 181–2.
3. T. Chalmers, ‘The Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God’, First Bridgewater Treatise, 3rd edn, Vol. II (London: William Pickering, 1834), pp. 129–30.
4. Augustine, Confessions, Book 1[1], 1.
5. Matthew 17:7.