I was recently privileged to spend some time with my good friend Dean Nelson while he (preparing to write a biography) interviewed Professor John Polkinghorne on his home turf in Cambridge, England. Polkinghorne is the retired president of Queens’ College and one of the world’s most distinguished mathematical physicists. He is also an ordained priest in the Church of England and has written for many years endeavoring to synthesize insights from science and theology. He was selected to deliver the Gifford Lectures, the highest honor given thinkers who work within what may be broadly labeled the philosophy of religion, and he recently received the prestigious Templeton Prize. On a personal level, now an octogenarian, Professor Polkinghorne was remarkably alert, gracious, and generous with his time as he guided us about the sites in Cambridge that had been the setting for his life.
Further indicative of his stature in academic circles is the fact that he was asked to deliver the distinguished Terry Lectures at Yale University in 1996. These lectures serve as a handy introduction to Polkinghorne’s thought and are available in Belief in God in an Age of Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, c. 1998). As he explains it: “The book presents a series of variations on a fundamental theme: if reality is generously and adequately construed, then knowledge will be seen to be one; if rationality is generously and adequately construed, then science and theology will be seen as partners in a common quest for understanding” (p. xiv).
We no longer live in the “Age of Reason” when absolute “certainty” regarding the essence of the physical or metaphysical world was proclaimed. Rather: “Amid the ruins of the Cartesian search for certainty, science and theology can proclaim, in their different ways, that there still can be found a reliable understanding of reality, verisimilitudinous rather than absolutely true, attained through the exercise of creative human powers rather than by logical deduction, backed by experience but not simply read out of it” (pp. 97-98). While embracing neither the absolutism of the Enlightenment nor the relativism of today’s Post-modernism, “there lies the critical realist approach to knowledge, ever open to correction but persuasive that its power to make sense of experience derives from its correlation with reality. Both science and theology offer support to this middle ways of intellectual enquiry” (p. 98).
To Polkinghorne, “the fundamental content of belief in God is that there is a Mind and a Purpose behind the history of the universe and that the One whose veiled presence is intimated in this way is worthy of worship and the ground of hope” (p. 1). As a scientist who worked in fundamental physics, credited with playing a major role in the discovery of quarks and gluons, he is awed by the “wonderful order” of the universe that can be described in “elegant mathematical” theorems. Mathematicians invariably talk about “discovering” the inner lineaments of the cosmos, more real and substantial than matter itself. So to Roger Penrose, “’There is something absolute and “God given” about mathematical truth’” (p. 127). “This use of abstract mathematics a technique of physical discovery points to a very deep fact about the nature of the universe that we inhabit, and to the remarkable conformity of our human minds to its patterning. We live in a world whose physical fabric is endowed with transparent rational beauty” (p. 2). Understanding this world, physicists like Einstein, “in making their great discoveries, were participating in an encounter with the divine” (p. 4).
Along with the fundamental realities examined by physicists are the equally important realities discerned by musicians and ethicists. The beauty of Bach’s Mass in B Minor is as Real as the waves and particles of light. Our inner awareness of moral obligations is as Real as the power of gravity. The basic instinct to adore and worship is as Real as the bees’ desire for nectar. We simply live in a rich and variegated world, with alternate ways of discerning its basic texture, within which, Polkinghorne insists: “Theism presents an adequately rich basis for understanding the world in that it readily accommodates the many-layered character of a reality shot through with value” (p. 19).
This leads him to a persuasive comparison between the ways scientists and theologians think. Both begin with data, evidence, reports—physicists with phenomena such as apples falling from trees, theologians with credible descriptions of events such as Christ’s messages and Resurrection. Then comes an analysis of the data—whether Newton formulating the law of gravity or theologians such as St. John writing the great prologue to his Gospel. Finally, there is a summarization, a scholarly consensus regarding what seems fundamentally true—the role of gravity in the formation of the universe, the decisions regarding the nature of Christ at the councils of Nicea and Chalcedon. In view of this process, basic to both science and theology, Polkinghorne concludes: “It does not trouble me that one cannot find articulated in the New Testament the developed Christian doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. Instead one finds accounts of the foundational events and experiences that set the Church out on the road to the discovery of such doctrines, together with those brilliant provisional insights, such as the Pauline Lordship formula, which are the initial engagement with, but not the completion of, a seeking to come to terms with the new knowledge stemming from the new phenomena of Christ” (p. 37).
In both science and theology Polkinghorne adopts the stance of a “critical realist.” Whereas Immanuel Kant divorced the phenomenal and noumenal worlds, leading to a pervasive skepticism in many academic realms (dubbed a “Kantian fog” by Polkinghorne), working scientists cannot but assume their congruence. Doing so requires a metaphysical decision that can be illustrated and defended through the successful endeavors of theoretical physicists: there is a Real word whose inner essence may be described in mathematical terms. That being so, there is no reason to discount reasonable inferences from what is empirically observed to non-empirical explanations of events. Similarly, there is no necessary reason, if one allows the reality of a creative Mind, to exclude the possibility of miraculous processes or events, the Supernatural working within the natural. As one of the elite corps of physicists who discovered quarks, Polkinghorne notes that they are “not only unseen” but utterly “invisible in principle.” Traces of their activity may be discerned, “but not the entities themselves. To borrow language from theology, we know the economic quark but not the immanent quark” (p. 122). He declares: “I am fully persuaded of the reality of the quark structure of matter. I believe that it makes sense of physical experience precisely because it corresponds to what is the case. A similar conviction grounds my belief in the invisible reality of God” (pp. 122-123).
To answer the question “does God act in the physical world” Polkinghorne says “yes.” But though “human beings act in the world through a combination of energetic physical causality and active information . . . God’s providential interaction with creation is purely through the top-down input of information” (pp. 71-72). Minimally, one may hold that there is a higher power that preserves in being all that is, confining Him to a passive role in regards to creation. But one may, with scientific respectability, affirm much more, for if one takes “the psychosomatic view of human nature” he advocates, “then God cannot interact with the psyche without also interacting with the physical process of the world, since we are embodied beings” (p. 55).
Still more: “In unprecedented circumstances, it is entirely conceivable that God will act in totally novel and unexpected ways. That is how I try to understand claims about divine miracles, a subject . . . of central importance to a Christian thinker because of the pivotal role played in Christ’s resurrection’” (p. 73). Since our soul is the “form” of our body, God cannot simply speak to our soul without simultaneously touching our body. So exactly how God works within His world, precisely what kinds of causation may be accredited to Him, tantalizes Polkinghorne, but he believes, given some of the spectacular breakthroughs in quantum physics, that “an ontological openness, permitting us to suppose that a new causal principle may play a role in bringing about future developments” (p. 62).
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
John Polkinghorne has recently refurbished many of his earlier positions in Quantum Physics and Theology: An Unexpected Kinship (New Haven: Yale University Press, c. 2007). He stands, quite comfortably, with a foot in both camps, for he believes that “there are significant degrees of cousinly relationship between the ways in which science and theology conduct their truth-seeking enquiries into the nature of reality” (p. x). Both scientists and theologians search for truth. Thus they share a common goal: discerning what really is, the ultimate nature of Reality. It is amazing that man understands something of the Mind of God through scientific inquiry. Indeed, “this remarkable human capacity for scientific discovery ultimately requires the insight that our power in this respect is the gift of the universe’s Creator who, in that ancient and powerful phrase, has made humanity in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27). Through the exercise of this gift, those working in fundamental physics are able to discern a world of deep and beautiful order—a universe shot through with signs of mind” (p. 8).
The world of physics is endlessly fascinating to Polkinghorne, but he also admits that scientific work “does not affect my life in any significant way outside the pursuit of intellectual satisfaction in the study or the laboratory. In contrast, my belief that Jesus Christ is the incarnate Son of God has consequences for all aspects of my life, as much in relation to conduct as to understanding. Religious belief is much more demanding than scientific belief—more costly and more ‘dangerous’, one might say” (p. 13). The Mind—the Word—that shaped the Cosmos appeared in human form in Christ Jesus, and seeking the Truth as revealed in Him leads to three basic questions: “(i) Was Jesus indeed resurrected on the third day, and if so, why was Jesus, alone among all humanity, raised from the dead within history to live an everlasting life of glory beyond history? (ii) Why did the first Christians feel driven to use divine-sounding language about the man Jesus? (iii) What was the basis for the assurance felt by the first disciples that through the risen Christ they had been given a power that was transforming their lives in a new and unprecedented way?” (p. 31).
To answer these questions, to get at the truth revealed by Jesus, requires theological reasoning that is much akin to scientific reasoning. You take the evidence as given, try to develop meaningful hypotheses, and then establish reasonable convictions. Both scientific and theological understandings develop through time as thoughtful practitioners ponder the evidence. “As in quantum theory, so in Christian theology, much greater significance came finally to be recognized than had been apparent at the start of the process of searching for truth” (p. 55). Thus Polkinghorne carefully investigates the claims regarding Christ’s Resurrection, finding (along with his friend N. T. Wright) the New Testament accounts quite credible. The tomb really was empty. The miracle of miracles actually occurred.
Given the great miracle, the second question that concerns Polkinghorne (why did early Christians make divine claims for the Christ) finds its answer. Moved by the miracle, “the first generation of Christians produced three of the greatest figures [Paul; John; the author of Hebrews] ever in the history of theological thought. Their brilliant insights have shaped the form of Christian theology in the manner that the believer will see as the result of providential inspiration by the Holy Spirit, guiding the use of individual human gifts” (p. 68). Only the sheer factiticity of the Resurrection explains the intellectual profundity and power of the New Testament apostles.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
For an easy introduction to the totality of John Polkinghorne’s work, it is advisable to pick up Questions of Truth: Fifty-one Responses to Questions about God, Science, and Belief (Louisville: Westminister John Knox Press, c. 2009), co-written by Polkinghorne and his good friend and former student, Nicholas Beale. Tony Hewish, a Nobel Prizewinner in Physics, says (in the book’s affirming foreword) that he shares Polkinghorne’s view “that science and religion are not in conflict—they are, in fact, complementary, and both are vital for the deepest understanding of our place in the universe” (p. xi). Both physicists and theologians believe in a very real world that proves ultimately most mysterious. “The ghostly presence of virtual particles defies rational common sense and is nonintuitive for those unacquainted with physics. Religious belief in God, and Christian belief that God became Man around two thousand years ago, may seem strange to common-sense thinking. But when the most elementary physical things behave in this way, we should be prepared to accept that the deepest aspects of our existence go beyond our common-sense intuitions” (p. x).
The first of the book’s seven sections, “Leading Questions,” sketches the issues to be addressed. Central, of course, are questions regarding the relationship between science and religion. Importantly, scientists do not deal singularly with “facts” while theologians toss off immaterial “opinions.” The main difference between the two disciplines is this: “Science is concerned with the question, How?—By what process do things happen? Theology is concerned with the question, Why”—Is there a meaning and purpose behind what is happening?” (p. 7). Both want to understand, in different but complementary ways, Ultimate Reality, and inasmuch as “science are both concerned with the search for truth, they are friends and not foes” (p. 8).
Questions concerning “The Concept and Existence of God” constitute the book’s second section. Polkinghorne politely dismisses the atheistic polemics of the highly-acclaimed and acerbic biologist Richard Dawkins, whose The God Delusion primarily demonstrates his unwillingness to “seriously engage with the arguments for religion or the existence of God, and some of the points he makes are ludicrous” (p. 28). Especially irritating to a professor of mathematical physics, it’s clear that along with “most biologists of his generation, Dawkins does not appear to be comfortable with detailed calculations” (p. 46). Polkinghorne fully embraces the strangely paradoxical nature of the world of quantum physics, where quarks and gluons are believed to be real though perceived only indirectly, and where the bafflingly mysterious “dark matter and dark energy” constitute “over 90 percent of the universe” (pp. 29-30). To think, with popularizing atheists, that “’nothing can be true unless it is well-understood scientifically’ is ludicrous” (p. 30).
Similarly, theologians speaking of God indirectly, often through analogies, may have equal credibility, for they are trying to understand, using different means, the same universe and its Maker. Indeed, the ancient Christian conviction that God created, ex nihilo, all that is has received remarkable confirmation within the past 50 years from physicists positing the “Big Bang.” Still more: even the “intrinsic unpredictabilities of quantum mechanics and chaos theory can be seen theologically as gifts of a Creator whose creation is both orderly and open in this way” (p. 43). Add to this the “fine tuning” of a universe that seems too intricately designed to be explained by sheer chance. Physicists currently postulate six “fundamental constants” with “astonishingly accurate” parameters. “As Tony Hewish once remarked, the accuracy of just one of these parameters is comparable to getting the mix of flour and sugar right to within one grain of sugar in a cake ten times the mass of the sun” (p. 44). Perhaps it just happened! More likely, it was carefully planned!
That the universe reveals an “anthropic fine-tuning” key is discussed in the books first appendix, a more technical section wherein Polkinghorne assesses the mathematics embodied in the fundamental laws of nature. When you consider the truly astronomical numbers involved, and you acknowledge that “if any of these numbers were appreciably different from their presently observed values, not only would there be no life on Earth but there would, as far as anyone can tell, be no prospect of intelligent life anywhere in the universe” (p. 101), you are justified in believing that only a divine Mind could have called it into being.
In the second appendix, the brain-mind mystery is explored. Polkinghorne takes seriously the biblical proclamation that we are made in God’s image. The very fact that we can reason mathematically and understand many incredibly complex phenomena affirms the radically different status enjoyed by man, vis-a-vis the rest of creation. He labels his position “dual-aspect monism,” but as I discussed this with him he acknowledged that there is probably little difference between his view and my own Thomistic dualism. What he believes is that “the brain is not a fully deterministic system” (p. 118). There is a spiritual aspect—a mind—that transcends the mechanical functions of the brain. The information (or the ideas taking form in art and music and ethics) in our minds cannot be reduced to material entities. Unfortunately, we too often use mechanical metaphors when describing the world or explaining how we think, whereas we now know that “most of the real world is composed of systems that are cloudlike and inherently unpredictable” (p. 126). So too the inner realm of our thoughts, wherein we find “finely balanced decisions taken in regions with highly connected neurons—that are required to support our fundamental experience of true free will” (p. 131).
To get highly technical, but powerfully persuasive, Polkinghorne explains why our thoughts are not pre-determined by matter-in-motion: “There are about 300 billion stars in our galaxy, but very few of them are in direct contact with each other. But contrast, on average each of the 100 billion neurons in your brain is in direct contact with about 10,000 others. Each connection differs in detail, and the exact biochemical and indeed quantum state of each neuron is different. Thus in principle there are about 100 billion to the power of 10,000 different possible ways in which a single neuron could be connected to the rest of the brain, and even if we assume that in practice only 0.01 percent of the other neurons are eligible for connection, the number of possible interconnections for a single neuron would be around 107000, and for the brain as a whole there would be a set of possible interconnections of about 1011 to the power of 107000. This, of course is why the idea of genetic determinism of the brain is so absurd—there is not nearly enough information in the genome to specify such connections” (p. 134). In view of what we now know about the intricacies of the brain, “it is now clear that we are not prisoners of our atoms, molecules or genes. Our intuitions of freedom are real. How we use this awesome gift from God is central to the question of what it means to be human” (p. 137).
***********************************************************************
REEDINGS . . .
Notes on Books by Gerard Reed
September 2009 Number Two-hundred and one ***********************************************************************
Quantum Physics and Theology
I was recently privileged to spend some time with my good friend Dean Nelson while he (preparing to write a biography) interviewed Professor John Polkinghorne on his home turf in Cambridge, England. Polkinghorne is the retired president of Queens’ College and one of the world’s most distinguished mathematical physicists. He is also an ordained priest in the Church of England and has written for many years endeavoring to synthesize insights from science and theology. He was selected to deliver the Gifford Lectures, the highest honor given thinkers who work within what may be broadly labeled the philosophy of religion, and he recently received the prestigious Templeton Prize. On a personal level, now an octogenarian, Professor Polkinghorne was remarkably alert, gracious, and generous with his time as he guided us about the sites in Cambridge that had been the setting for his life.
Further indicative of his stature in academic circles is the fact that he was asked to deliver the distinguished Terry Lectures at Yale University in 1996. These lectures serve as a handy introduction to Polkinghorne’s thought and are available in Belief in God in an Age of Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, c. 1998). As he explains it: “The book presents a series of variations on a fundamental theme: if reality is generously and adequately construed, then knowledge will be seen to be one; if rationality is generously and adequately construed, then science and theology will be seen as partners in a common quest for understanding” (p. xiv).
We no longer live in the “Age of Reason” when absolute “certainty” regarding the essence of the physical or metaphysical world was proclaimed. Rather: “Amid the ruins of the Cartesian search for certainty, science and theology can proclaim, in their different ways, that there still can be found a reliable understanding of reality, verisimilitudinous rather than absolutely true, attained through the exercise of creative human powers rather than by logical deduction, backed by experience but not simply read out of it” (pp. 97-98). While embracing neither the absolutism of the Enlightenment nor the relativism of today’s Post-modernism, “there lies the critical realist approach to knowledge, ever open to correction but persuasive that its power to make sense of experience derives from its correlation with reality. Both science and theology offer support to this middle ways of intellectual enquiry” (p. 98).
To Polkinghorne, “the fundamental content of belief in God is that there is a Mind and a Purpose behind the history of the universe and that the One whose veiled presence is intimated in this way is worthy of worship and the ground of hope” (p. 1). As a scientist who worked in fundamental physics, credited with playing a major role in the discovery of quarks and gluons, he is awed by the “wonderful order” of the universe that can be described in “elegant mathematical” theorems. Mathematicians invariably talk about “discovering” the inner lineaments of the cosmos, more real and substantial than matter itself. So to Roger Penrose, “’There is something absolute and “God given” about mathematical truth’” (p. 127). “This use of abstract mathematics a technique of physical discovery points to a very deep fact about the nature of the universe that we inhabit, and to the remarkable conformity of our human minds to its patterning. We live in a world whose physical fabric is endowed with transparent rational beauty” (p. 2). Understanding this world, physicists like Einstein, “in making their great discoveries, were participating in an encounter with the divine” (p. 4).
Along with the fundamental realities examined by physicists are the equally important realities discerned by musicians and ethicists. The beauty of Bach’s Mass in B Minor is as Real as the waves and particles of light. Our inner awareness of moral obligations is as Real as the power of gravity. The basic instinct to adore and worship is as Real as the bees’ desire for nectar. We simply live in a rich and variegated world, with alternate ways of discerning its basic texture, within which, Polkinghorne insists: “Theism presents an adequately rich basis for understanding the world in that it readily accommodates the many-layered character of a reality shot through with value” (p. 19).
This leads him to a persuasive comparison between the ways scientists and theologians think. Both begin with data, evidence, reports—physicists with phenomena such as apples falling from trees, theologians with credible descriptions of events such as Christ’s messages and Resurrection. Then comes an analysis of the data—whether Newton formulating the law of gravity or theologians such as St. John writing the great prologue to his Gospel. Finally, there is a summarization, a scholarly consensus regarding what seems fundamentally true—the role of gravity in the formation of the universe, the decisions regarding the nature of Christ at the councils of Nicea and Chalcedon. In view of this process, basic to both science and theology, Polkinghorne concludes: “It does not trouble me that one cannot find articulated in the New Testament the developed Christian doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. Instead one finds accounts of the foundational events and experiences that set the Church out on the road to the discovery of such doctrines, together with those brilliant provisional insights, such as the Pauline Lordship formula, which are the initial engagement with, but not the completion of, a seeking to come to terms with the new knowledge stemming from the new phenomena of Christ” (p. 37).
In both science and theology Polkinghorne adopts the stance of a “critical realist.” Whereas Immanuel Kant divorced the phenomenal and noumenal worlds, leading to a pervasive skepticism in many academic realms (dubbed a “Kantian fog” by Polkinghorne), working scientists cannot but assume their congruence. Doing so requires a metaphysical decision that can be illustrated and defended through the successful endeavors of theoretical physicists: there is a Real word whose inner essence may be described in mathematical terms. That being so, there is no reason to discount reasonable inferences from what is empirically observed to non-empirical explanations of events. Similarly, there is no necessary reason, if one allows the reality of a creative Mind, to exclude the possibility of miraculous processes or events, the Supernatural working within the natural. As one of the elite corps of physicists who discovered quarks, Polkinghorne notes that they are “not only unseen” but utterly “invisible in principle.” Traces of their activity may be discerned, “but not the entities themselves. To borrow language from theology, we know the economic quark but not the immanent quark” (p. 122). He declares: “I am fully persuaded of the reality of the quark structure of matter. I believe that it makes sense of physical experience precisely because it corresponds to what is the case. A similar conviction grounds my belief in the invisible reality of God” (pp. 122-123).
To answer the question “does God act in the physical world” Polkinghorne says “yes.” But though “human beings act in the world through a combination of energetic physical causality and active information . . . God’s providential interaction with creation is purely through the top-down input of information” (pp. 71-72). Minimally, one may hold that there is a higher power that preserves in being all that is, confining Him to a passive role in regards to creation. But one may, with scientific respectability, affirm much more, for if one takes “the psychosomatic view of human nature” he advocates, “then God cannot interact with the psyche without also interacting with the physical process of the world, since we are embodied beings” (p. 55).
Still more: “In unprecedented circumstances, it is entirely conceivable that God will act in totally novel and unexpected ways. That is how I try to understand claims about divine miracles, a subject . . . of central importance to a Christian thinker because of the pivotal role played in Christ’s resurrection’” (p. 73). Since our soul is the “form” of our body, God cannot simply speak to our soul without simultaneously touching our body. So exactly how God works within His world, precisely what kinds of causation may be accredited to Him, tantalizes Polkinghorne, but he believes, given some of the spectacular breakthroughs in quantum physics, that “an ontological openness, permitting us to suppose that a new causal principle may play a role in bringing about future developments” (p. 62).
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
John Polkinghorne has recently refurbished many of his earlier positions in Quantum Physics and Theology: An Unexpected Kinship (New Haven: Yale University Press, c. 2007). He stands, quite comfortably, with a foot in both camps, for he believes that “there are significant degrees of cousinly relationship between the ways in which science and theology conduct their truth-seeking enquiries into the nature of reality” (p. x). Both scientists and theologians search for truth. Thus they share a common goal: discerning what really is, the ultimate nature of Reality. It is amazing that man understands something of the Mind of God through scientific inquiry. Indeed, “this remarkable human capacity for scientific discovery ultimately requires the insight that our power in this respect is the gift of the universe’s Creator who, in that ancient and powerful phrase, has made humanity in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27). Through the exercise of this gift, those working in fundamental physics are able to discern a world of deep and beautiful order—a universe shot through with signs of mind” (p. 8).
The world of physics is endlessly fascinating to Polkinghorne, but he also admits that scientific work “does not affect my life in any significant way outside the pursuit of intellectual satisfaction in the study or the laboratory. In contrast, my belief that Jesus Christ is the incarnate Son of God has consequences for all aspects of my life, as much in relation to conduct as to understanding. Religious belief is much more demanding than scientific belief—more costly and more ‘dangerous’, one might say” (p. 13). The Mind—the Word—that shaped the Cosmos appeared in human form in Christ Jesus, and seeking the Truth as revealed in Him leads to three basic questions: “(i) Was Jesus indeed resurrected on the third day, and if so, why was Jesus, alone among all humanity, raised from the dead within history to live an everlasting life of glory beyond history? (ii) Why did the first Christians feel driven to use divine-sounding language about the man Jesus? (iii) What was the basis for the assurance felt by the first disciples that through the risen Christ they had been given a power that was transforming their lives in a new and unprecedented way?” (p. 31).
To answer these questions, to get at the truth revealed by Jesus, requires theological reasoning that is much akin to scientific reasoning. You take the evidence as given, try to develop meaningful hypotheses, and then establish reasonable convictions. Both scientific and theological understandings develop through time as thoughtful practitioners ponder the evidence. “As in quantum theory, so in Christian theology, much greater significance came finally to be recognized than had been apparent at the start of the process of searching for truth” (p. 55). Thus Polkinghorne carefully investigates the claims regarding Christ’s Resurrection, finding (along with his friend N. T. Wright) the New Testament accounts quite credible. The tomb really was empty. The miracle of miracles actually occurred.
Given the great miracle, the second question that concerns Polkinghorne (why did early Christians make divine claims for the Christ) finds its answer. Moved by the miracle, “the first generation of Christians produced three of the greatest figures [Paul; John; the author of Hebrews] ever in the history of theological thought. Their brilliant insights have shaped the form of Christian theology in the manner that the believer will see as the result of providential inspiration by the Holy Spirit, guiding the use of individual human gifts” (p. 68). Only the sheer factiticity of the Resurrection explains the intellectual profundity and power of the New Testament apostles.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
For an easy introduction to the totality of John Polkinghorne’s work, it is advisable to pick up Questions of Truth: Fifty-one Responses to Questions about God, Science, and Belief (Louisville: Westminister John Knox Press, c. 2009), co-written by Polkinghorne and his good friend and former student, Nicholas Beale. Tony Hewish, a Nobel Prizewinner in Physics, says (in the book’s affirming foreword) that he shares Polkinghorne’s view “that science and religion are not in conflict—they are, in fact, complementary, and both are vital for the deepest understanding of our place in the universe” (p. xi). Both physicists and theologians believe in a very real world that proves ultimately most mysterious. “The ghostly presence of virtual particles defies rational common sense and is nonintuitive for those unacquainted with physics. Religious belief in God, and Christian belief that God became Man around two thousand years ago, may seem strange to common-sense thinking. But when the most elementary physical things behave in this way, we should be prepared to accept that the deepest aspects of our existence go beyond our common-sense intuitions” (p. x).
The first of the book’s seven sections, “Leading Questions,” sketches the issues to be addressed. Central, of course, are questions regarding the relationship between science and religion. Importantly, scientists do not deal singularly with “facts” while theologians toss off immaterial “opinions.” The main difference between the two disciplines is this: “Science is concerned with the question, How?—By what process do things happen? Theology is concerned with the question, Why”—Is there a meaning and purpose behind what is happening?” (p. 7). Both want to understand, in different but complementary ways, Ultimate Reality, and inasmuch as “science are both concerned with the search for truth, they are friends and not foes” (p. 8).
Questions concerning “The Concept and Existence of God” constitute the book’s second section. Polkinghorne politely dismisses the atheistic polemics of the highly-acclaimed and acerbic biologist Richard Dawkins, whose The God Delusion primarily demonstrates his unwillingness to “seriously engage with the arguments for religion or the existence of God, and some of the points he makes are ludicrous” (p. 28). Especially irritating to a professor of mathematical physics, it’s clear that along with “most biologists of his generation, Dawkins does not appear to be comfortable with detailed calculations” (p. 46). Polkinghorne fully embraces the strangely paradoxical nature of the world of quantum physics, where quarks and gluons are believed to be real though perceived only indirectly, and where the bafflingly mysterious “dark matter and dark energy” constitute “over 90 percent of the universe” (pp. 29-30). To think, with popularizing atheists, that “’nothing can be true unless it is well-understood scientifically’ is ludicrous” (p. 30).
Similarly, theologians speaking of God indirectly, often through analogies, may have equal credibility, for they are trying to understand, using different means, the same universe and its Maker. Indeed, the ancient Christian conviction that God created, ex nihilo, all that is has received remarkable confirmation within the past 50 years from physicists positing the “Big Bang.” Still more: even the “intrinsic unpredictabilities of quantum mechanics and chaos theory can be seen theologically as gifts of a Creator whose creation is both orderly and open in this way” (p. 43). Add to this the “fine tuning” of a universe that seems too intricately designed to be explained by sheer chance. Physicists currently postulate six “fundamental constants” with “astonishingly accurate” parameters. “As Tony Hewish once remarked, the accuracy of just one of these parameters is comparable to getting the mix of flour and sugar right to within one grain of sugar in a cake ten times the mass of the sun” (p. 44). Perhaps it just happened! More likely, it was carefully planned!
That the universe reveals an “anthropic fine-tuning” key is discussed in the books first appendix, a more technical section wherein Polkinghorne assesses the mathematics embodied in the fundamental laws of nature. When you consider the truly astronomical numbers involved, and you acknowledge that “if any of these numbers were appreciably different from their presently observed values, not only would there be no life on Earth but there would, as far as anyone can tell, be no prospect of intelligent life anywhere in the universe” (p. 101), you are justified in believing that only a divine Mind could have called it into being.
In the second appendix, the brain-mind mystery is explored. Polkinghorne takes seriously the biblical proclamation that we are made in God’s image. The very fact that we can reason mathematically and understand many incredibly complex phenomena affirms the radically different status enjoyed by man, vis-a-vis the rest of creation. He labels his position “dual-aspect monism,” but as I discussed this with him he acknowledged that there is probably little difference between his view and my own Thomistic dualism. What he believes is that “the brain is not a fully deterministic system” (p. 118). There is a spiritual aspect—a mind—that transcends the mechanical functions of the brain. The information (or the ideas taking form in art and music and ethics) in our minds cannot be reduced to material entities. Unfortunately, we too often use mechanical metaphors when describing the world or explaining how we think, whereas we now know that “most of the real world is composed of systems that are cloudlike and inherently unpredictable” (p. 126). So too the inner realm of our thoughts, wherein we find “finely balanced decisions taken in regions with highly connected neurons—that are required to support our fundamental experience of true free will” (p. 131).
To get highly technical, but powerfully persuasive, Polkinghorne explains why our thoughts are not pre-determined by matter-in-motion: “There are about 300 billion stars in our galaxy, but very few of them are in direct contact with each other. But contrast, on average each of the 100 billion neurons in your brain is in direct contact with about 10,000 others. Each connection differs in detail, and the exact biochemical and indeed quantum state of each neuron is different. Thus in principle there are about 100 billion to the power of 10,000 different possible ways in which a single neuron could be connected to the rest of the brain, and even if we assume that in practice only 0.01 percent of the other neurons are eligible for connection, the number of possible interconnections for a single neuron would be around 107000, and for the brain as a whole there would be a set of possible interconnections of about 1011 to the power of 107000. This, of course is why the idea of genetic determinism of the brain is so absurd—there is not nearly enough information in the genome to specify such connections” (p. 134). In view of what we now know about the intricacies of the brain, “it is now clear that we are not prisoners of our atoms, molecules or genes. Our intuitions of freedom are real. How we use this awesome gift from God is central to the question of what it means to be human” (p. 137).
In the third appendix Polkinghorne considers the question of evolution. He regards the Bible’s creation account as a record of “deep truths, not a cookbook” (p. 139) dealing with the details of the creative process. Thus he finds no problem, as a Christian theologian, accepting the general evolutionary account of modern science. He compares evolution with gravity, a natural power that “influences everything in the universe—but is not the whole story of matter” (p. 141). One need not be a devout Darwinian, too often given an atheistic edge in popular writings, to embrace an evolutionary process with a divine dimension.
In the third appendix Polkinghorne considers the question of evolution. He regards the Bible’s creation account as a record of “deep truths, not a cookbook” (p. 139) dealing with the details of the creative process. Thus he finds no problem, as a Christian theologian, accepting the general evolutionary account of modern science. He compares evolution with gravity, a natural power that “influences everything in the universe—but is not the whole story of matter” (p. 141). One need not be a devout Darwinian, too often given an atheistic edge in popular writings, to embrace an evolutionary process with a divine dimension.