++++++++++++++++++++++++++
ARCHIVE.
For a list of all my published posts:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Blog
entries beginning with #101 are not essays but minimally-edited notes and
reviews from the files I've collected over the last few decades. I no longer
have the time and energy needed to sort out and put together into decent
essay-form the many varied ideas in these files, but I would like to share them
with all who are interested.
If
you have questions and think I might help, you're welcome to send me a
note: sam@macspeno.com
===
Post
#140 is an April,
2004 review of Paths from Science towards God: The End of All Our Exploring by Arthur Peacocke (Oneworld
Publications, Oxford. 2001)
Peacocke
is a British biochemist, noted (if I remember correctly) for his work on the
physical structure of DNA. He is also an Anglican priest. His bio says “founder
and former Director of the Ian Ramsey Centre at the University of Oxford, and
winner of the 2001 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.”
His
attempts here (in this “Paths” book) to deal with the relationship between
science and religion are far and away the best I’ve seen. Many such efforts are
still at the stage of asking whether religion and science are compatible (as in
“Can a Christian believe in evolution?”).
Peacocke’s
work is much more sophisticated. He makes two main points. One is that, to be
credible, religion not only has to take into account the worldview of modern
science but that it also has to be as reasonable as modern science. His second
main point is a delight for me: there is a significant convergence between the
contemporary evolutionary worldview and the basic perspectives of the
Judeo-Christian tradition.
The
situation is complicated, however. As Peacocke says, modern Western science was
born of a Greek mother and an Islamic midwife, and for many centuries, science
and religion were seen to be distinct but compatible areas of knowledge. But
since the time of Newton and the Enlightenment, the gap between reason and
revelation has widened considerably, and in the last 150 years, since Darwin,
it has become unbridgeable.
On one
hand, intelligent educated people (who may have little scientific information,
yet share in the general cultural orientation to scientific rationality) find
the perspectives of religion less and less meaningful. They vote with their
feet and the traditional churches are increasingly empty.
On the
other hand, conservatives and fundamentalists opt to reject scientific data and
the reasoning that goes with it; they adhere, instead, to religious views long
rejected by biblical scholars and theologians. Their churches are filled to
overflowing.
Peacocke’s
view is that the basic scientific worldview that has emerged in the last few
centuries is not only not incompatible with the Christian perspective but in fact
leads to it. That’s what he means by “paths” in the title of his book, Paths
from Science Toward God.
It’s an
excellent book. Not lite-reading, to be sure, but not ponderous either. It does
require close reading, however, and its British style and Anglican context are
especially refreshing. There’s no verbal fluff and little reference to Roman
Catholic or American views as the standard norms.
---
Can
religion, and specifically the Judeo-Christian tradition, be presented and
understood as being reasonable-- as reasonable as science? Can the Western
religious tradition become as acceptable to intelligent educated people as
Western science is? Peacocke’s answer is “yes,” obviously; but he goes far
beyond that. His orientation is to global humanity’s religious experience, and
his claim is that, in the light of the evolutionary worldview of modern
science, traditional biblical insights are, in fact, an especially good way to
talk about the religious meaning of life.
Contemporary
educated intelligent people will doubt that. Conservative fundamentalists will
deny it. A tremendous amount of educational work needs doing.
The
anti-scientific view opts for heavy reliance on external authority (of book,
individual or institutional organization); it also opts for matter-spirit
(body-soul) dualism, a cosmos which is static (and roughly 4,000 years old),
and a transcendent-only divinity which exists outside the world but who, on
specific occasions, interacts with it.
This
fundamentalist stance includes beliefs such as eternal hell for sinners and
unbelievers, a literal interpretation of the bible and a historical
understanding the fall of Adam and Eve. It pictures Jesus as all-knowing, and
understands his physical suffering as the payment of a debt to an angry
wrathful of God for our redemption. Most people, educated or not, religious or
not, don’t know that these are ill-formulated beliefs which religious
scholars and theologians have long abandoned.
As
Peacocke says, “What is thought by educated people to be contemporary Christian
truth lacks credibility” and so “public truth suffers.” What was accepted 150
years ago and what is seen today are, as he says, “practically two different
religions.” Today, thanks both to science and serious religious scholarship, we
see differently. And better.
His whole
point is that we need to make our own both a contemporary scientific worldview and a contemporary understanding of
Christian beliefs.
Reason
works in all aspects of culture, Peacocke points out. “Detectives,
archeologists and plumbers all use the same basic methods. Science just does it
more systematically.” The issue is whether popular religious belief can allow
itself to be open to truth and revise its perspectives: can it be free,
critical, and not rely on external authority? Can it take into account what has
been learned since 1850, and go with tentative explanations which best fit the
data-- just as science does?
The
public knows that science can be validated and that authoritarian religious
claims can not. Science’s focus is the intelligibility of world; religion’s
focus is the world’s meaning. To be credible, belief has to be as intelligible
as science. Belief, like science, has to be reasonable; i.e., based on
experience. Religion needs to be able to justify itself in terms of content not
source. The great need is for religion to outgrow its dependence on external
authority and an external divinity.
Christianity
has, in fact, continually adapted to contemporary experience and changing
circumstances. St. Paul adapted the original Jewish experience of Jesus to the
understanding of diaspora Jews. St. John’s gospel adapted it to the Hellenistic
worldview. The “two Gregorys” and St. Basil (the famous Cappadocian fathers)
adapted it to Neo-platonism in the 4th century. And in the Middle Ages, Albertus
Magnus and Thomas Aquinas adapted it to Aristotle.
But
Christianity did not adapt well to the Newtonian and Darwinian perspectives; it
did not reformulate its vision in terms of the modern scientific worldview. That
gap began to be closed, however, since 1950 in the academic world; but those
efforts have never filtered down to the people in the pews. They and the public at large
remain unaware that what their understanding of the Christian perspective needs
to be updated.
---
In the
contemporary convergence of science and religion there are three areas of
updating that need to be considered: 1) our understanding the world as it is,
2) our understanding the world as a cosmic evolutionary process, and 3) our
understanding of communication to the world from its source.
Chapter
3: World as it is. [STASIS]. WHY ANYTHING? There must be a Source, utterly
other, mystery, abyss, ultimate, self-existent; somehow containing diversity
and rationality and being at least personal. [I.e., the wo-wei, no-thing-ness from which comes
every thing, Mother of all that is....]
NB
Swimme-Berry’s goal of the cosmos: “fullness of differentiation, the deepest
subjectivity and the most intimate communion.”
Peacocke’s
statement that there must be a source as the answer to why is there anything
ISN’T sufficient. It gives an answer to “Where did it come from?” but not to
“What’s it FOR?” I.e., what’s missing here is relationship (communion) and I
think it precisely this lack which causes Peacocke to say “we can’t know
anything about the eschaton.” If source is at least personal, and produces
diversity and subjectivity, it surely also is interested in
relationship/communion. Surely....
TIME.
Thought of as a linear sequence to which God is present at every point. A good
model, but not valid if future doesn’t yet exist (and so is not yet knowable
except in terms of what’s possible). Need: to understand the Ultimate as not
outside time but relating to us (and all) within it.
Time has
a direction; entropy is time’s arrow. Clearly, new things emerge, new levels of
complexity result (the brain and human consciousness included), which are thus
aspects of the cosmos. I.e., aspects of the Ultimate manifesting and remaining
steadfast (faithful in the OT sense: merciful) as new things emerge.
This is
the basis for any eschatology, but no facts are available [says Peacocke, while
I think it may be possible to reason to some eschatological realities just as
it’s possible to reason to some fact re the Ultimate based on the existence of
the world. Something like: if things exist as manifestation of the Source, they
will persist.]
ONE and
MANY. World is unity and diversity, with levels of complexity, each new level
of organization not reducible to lower level things. There is sociology,
psychology, biology, chemistry, physics... none of which is reducing to lesser
organized level. Wholes act differently than their parts. New entities not
needed (life added to matter, psyche/mind/spirit added to body).
[NB:
Neither is there needed an entity “culture” added to human social groupings; it
is “simply” their activity at a complex level, just as mind-soul is complex
activity of brain-body and life is complex activity of organized matter. I.e.,
what emerges isn’t a new thing so much as a new complexity of activity. {Thus
church, eucharist and transfigured cosmos can be understood as new emergent
levels of activity to humanity and culture and thus cosmos.}]
WHOLE-PART
(TOP-DOWN) CAUSATION. There are many dissipative systems, where order emerges
from chaos: boiling water, genes, social activities, economics, etc. The newly
emerged whole has its own ways of acting, not reducible to the parts of the
whole. If creation is a whole, its source is acting from within it. No need for
external intervention, from outside.
INFORMATION
FLOWS FROM WHOLE TO PARTS. Science points in this direction for seeing world as
a whole [“interconnected meaningful whole”], a system of systems, which is the
Ultimate’s manifestation. Unpredictable events would be so even, then, to the
Ultimate.
BRAIN,
MIND, PERSON. Person conscious awareness isn’t a thing, an entity, but an
activity at a very complex level of organization. Our own uniqueness [abyss,
mystery] as persons who act via our bodies gives some idea of how the Ultimate
acts via (from within) the world.
Again,
just as we persons communicate with one another via the things of the world, so
the Ultimate which is “at least personal” can communicate with us via the
things of the world too.
---
Chapter
4: World evolving. [DYNAMIS]. EVOLUTION. Jewish-Christian-Muslim beliefs all
come from a static world [of Babylonian cosmology], such as Fall of Adam and
redemptive-debt paid for by physical sufferings.
The
dynamic worldview of modern-evolutionary science challenges this static perspective.
It can be seen as threatening, but it is in fact a stimulus to creativity and
growth toward a globally acceptable theology.
Darwin“ism”
and the new cosmology show us a dynamic world and thus a dynamic creator. A
theology that doesn’t adapt to this new situation is dead; can only become
extinct.
TIME-SPACE/MATTER-ENERGY...
LIFE... PERSONAL CONSCIOUSNESS... DURATION. In all this, are pre-human
life-forms only by-products of the process? Or do they have value in
themselves? Are they somehow manifestations of the Ultimate that are good and
of significance in ways that we can hardly begin to make sense of.
NATURAL
SELECTION. Not a struggle for survival, especially or even figuratively (says
Peacocke), but involves things like good adaptability to environment, best use
of food resources, best care of young and good social cooperation. Deaths of
individuals is pre-requisite for genetic advance. No need for outside
intervention for any of this.
CHANCE
AND NECESSITY. There’s not just chance but also regularity (patterns, laws), so
that life and psyche are inevitable, given enough time.
HUMANS.
Because there was no golden age in the past and no “Fall”, the “work of Christ”
needs to be re-thought in terms of forward movement, evolutionary
transformation. The real issue is “Where should we be moving?”
ETHICS
(BEHAVIOR). That social behavior is based on genes is a relatively new idea,
but it’s an obvious aspect of evolution.
TRENDS??
Definitely. [Peacocke presents what in Swimme-Berry terms are called “diversity”
and “subjectivity” but he doesn’t seem to see communion as an evolutionary
goal.]
SUFFERING.
Pain is inevitable result of nervous system and brains (needed for personal
consciousness) and higher things need to incorporate lower into themselves.
Older needs to give way to allow for new.
GOD AND
WORLD. Thus, suffering is unavoidable and the only reasonable thing is to think
the creator suffers via its expression as world. Since all birth and creativity
takes much effort/pain, we by our suffering share in the creator’s suffering.
As
co-creative creators, we share in the suffering of the creator in its
self-giving (“self-emptying,” says Peacocke) which IS the world’s evolutionary
development. This self-giving suffering is CREATIVE ACTIVITY, and somehow
overcomes the evil which comes from human freedom.
RISK.
Question: If creation is the Ultimate’s expression, what is being manifest by
human evil? Answer: That freedom from the intentions of the creator is part of
the intentions of the creator. Somehow, freedom even from the intentions of the
creator, is a good. And thus human evil is somehow part of the intentions of
the creator and in that sense somehow itself a good.
Whatever
could that good be? The world’s source suffers via the world and via human freedom
risks its own intentions, in demonstration of how willing it is to give itself.
[How wonderfully this understanding is imaged in the epitaphios thrinos icon as image of the lamb slain
from the foundation of the world!]
The
primordial sacrifice is the creator’s self-giving even to risking its own
intentions being violated.... Something like that. But there is also a
gnostic/Gnostic interpretation, that the Ultimate as creator screwed up in
wanting/needed evil due to human freedom. [No easy answers, still!]
---
Chapter
5: God’s action in the world. PROBLEM. Judeo-Christian tradition believes God
acts in world. How, without interfering from the outside? Question of how the
Ultimate can act without interfering has been seriously studied in last 20 years;
study instigated by Vatican Observatory (1987 Berkeley Center conference) is
light-years away from popular Christian belief in miracles.
POST-MEDIEVAL
VIEWS. Asks “What’s there? How do those things relate? Are there patterns?”
This led to sense of mechanistic predictability, especially via Newton,
astronomy, etc. But predictability is not as easy as once thought, on many
levels (such as chaotic systems and quantum events).
WHOLE-PART
INFLUENCE. Maybe the Ultimate influences the world in a whole-part (top-down)
way; the action would be from within itself but as it is in relation to world;
which is the LOGOS concept. People have believed God does communicate. How can
we understand it?
---
Chapter
6: The sound of silence. The ISSUE: How can we understand the widespread
experience of divine communication in a way that it is not seen as something
coming from “the outside”?
REVELATION.
Human communication is always is mediated by things, including the brain. The
same must be true of divine communication.
GENERAL
REVELATION. The created in-process world itself is understood to be divine
manifestation.
RELIGIOUS
TRADITIONS. Communities and traditions have language and symbols available in
art, thought, liturgy and devotional actions, etc., that can serve as the
“things” for divine communication.
SPECIAL
REVELATIONS. Some communications seem to serve to initiate communal
experiences.
REVELATION
and RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. Note that all these distinctions (above) are somewhat
blurry, and they happen as well without as within established religious
traditions. So the issue is: Can we understand the Ultimate as communicating
personally in a top-down (whole-part) way?
The basic
idea is that the personal communication takes place no differently than from a
human person, via things and events that are perceived as meaningful.
So there
could be meaningfulness at a new level of complexity (the way there can be
consciousness from life-forms and life from non-living matter), and it would
not be reducible to sociology or psychology or biology or chemistry, etc. (Call
it “mystical”?) [OK, if what that means basically is “Not easy to talk about.”]
NB: No
intervention from outside is needed, no non-natural mediation is called for,
nothing “supernatural” is required. And it is real communication, via sounds,
images, symbols, etc. (also in terms of the conditions of the brain activity,
etc.)
[Peacocke
needs a somewhat better section on kinds of religious experience. He’s a little
vague on that; fuzzy.]
---
Part III:
Where all this takes us: attempt to validates humanity’s global religious
experience via talk about religion/theology in light of 21st c science. Five
chapters:
Plea for
openness, world as non-dual, world as sacramental; logos, sophia and the
uncreated energies; trinity, incarnation and grace.
Chapter
7: Plea for Openness. Several aspects of understanding of divine creator differ
here from the more traditional ones, including the idea that the Ultimate is
not seen as apart from but involved in the cosmic process and that the Mystery
acts on the world and communicates with human persons from within rather than
externally to the world.
For these
abstract ideas to be accessible to personal and communal belief, they need to
be enriched with images and symbols, rites and stories, art.... What’s here is
addressed not to wobbly Christians but the general educated public, aware of
science and its dynamic worldview, but often theologically uninformed.
Especially
strong is the need for a dynamic understanding of Creator relating to the world
which is consistent with what’s known from science of the cosmic evolutionary
worldview.
Church
services can only be meaningful is they relate to public truth, not to external
religious authorities or outdate biblical interpretation. If Christianity is to
be evangelical and catholic, it must be more open, radical, liberal, so that it
can be respected as public truth for all humanity.
---
2012
update: my notes
end here, except for two bits of biography and the titles of the next four
chapters:
Chapter
8: The World as Non-dual.
Chapter
9: The World as Sacrament.
Chapter
10: [participation via] Logos, Sophia and the Uncreated Energies.
Chapter
11: Humanity’s global religious experience is valid in terms of Xn
understanding of Trinity, Incarnation and Grace.
---
About the
Author: The Center's 1999 Witherspoon Lecturer, Dr. Arthur Peacocke is a widely
published biochemist and past chairman of the British Biophysical Society.
Founder and current director of Oxford's Ian Ramsey Centre, Dr. Peacocke has
devoted more than 25 years to exploring the relation of science to theology and
his work on the attendant philosophic questions earned him the Doctor of
Divinity from Oxford University. A priest of the Church of England and former dean
of Clare College, Cambridge, he is a founder of the Science and Religion Forum
in the United Kingdom as well as the Society of Ordained Scientists. His most
recent books include: Christ and Prometheus? A Quest (1988); Encountering Marx:
Bonds and Barriers between Christians and Marxists (1977); and The Faith We
Confess: Ecumenical Dogmatics (1984).
Peacocke
bio info: Dr. Arthur Peacocke was born in 1924. He is currently a Warden
Emeritus at the Society of Ordained Scientists and Hon. Chaplain and Honorary
Canon at Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford. In 1973, he was awarded the Le
Conte Du Nouy Prize, and in 1986 he became an Academic Fellow at the Institute
on Religion in an Age of Science. He is the Vice President of the Science and
Religion Forum and of Modern Church People's Union. He is also a Council Member
of ESSSAT, The European Society for the Study of Science And Theology. In 1971,
he was ordained as a priest in the Church of England.
+++
