Wrestling with the Divine: Religion, Science, and Revelation (Theology and the Sciences) - Softcover

Knight, Christopher C.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0800632982 ISBN 13: 9780800632984

Publisher: Fortress Press, 2001

Synopsis

Christopher Knight uses the notion of revelation to ask whether scientifically literate people need to be as simplistic in their religion as they are sophisticated in their science. Knight extends the dialogue begun in John Polkinghorne's and Arthur Peacocke's work to explore new possibilities. Their stress on natural processes as the form of divine immanence and the locus of divine action opens the way to Knight's rethinking the psychology of religious experience as a medium of divine revelation.

About this title

From the Publisher:

FROM THE FOREWORD (pre-publication version):

It is still commonly supposed that scientific knowledge necessarily undermines religious faith. Those who hold such faith in scorn are, therefore, often surprised when they discover that many professional scientists are also religious believers. Can it be, they ask, that the psychological hold of religious belief is so strong that even scientists can become irrational when in its grip?

Sadly, the existence of scientists who are also religious fundamentalists provides at least some evidence that this can be the case. By questioning well-established scientific theory, simply because it clashes with a literalist reading of the scriptures of their faith, such people enter a world of convoluted rationality which would savour of intellectual dishonesty if it were not for the evident passion with which they pursue their goal.

The position of the vast majority of believing scientists is, however, quite different from this fundamentalist one. Far from feeling the need to question well-established scientific theory, they believe that there is nothing in that theory which is incompatible with their faith. They have learned from theologians that religious language must be understood in terms of both the culture within which any particular revelation has been received and the specifically religious meaning of that revelation.

Thus, for example, when most believing scientists read the creation narratives of the Book of Genesis, they do not see them as quasi-scientific accounts of the process by which the cosmos came to be as it is. Rather, they accept the theologians’ understanding of them as essentially poetical accounts of the purposes of God in the cosmos, expressed in pre-scientific terms because of the culture within which they were received and developed. They do not see those narratives as contradicting the scientific account of the mechanisms through which the cosmos evolved to its present degree of complexity, but rather as pointing to God as the originator and upholder of those mechanisms.

By listening to theologians and their interpreters, most believing scientists have, in this way, been able to see the fundamentalist agenda not only as scientifically futile but also as theologically unnecessary. They have not, however, simply been passive receivers of the current theological consensus. Some of the more thoughtful of them have, in fact, gone on to disagree with many of the theologians who, up to this point, have been their guides. Instead of simply accepting the common theological assertion that scientific and religious languages always refer to different realms of human experience, and that therefore any question of how they interact is a meaningless one, these scientists have suggested that a division between mechanism and meaning, though useful as an indication of the primary purposes of scientific and religious languages, should not be taken as axiomatic. For, they say, their scientific knowledge has in practice sometimes enlarged and clarified the understanding of God’s purposes and actions which they have received through the religious language of their faith. In this sense at least, they claim, the two languages are not independent of one another.

Moreover, they point out, this enlargement and clarification of theological understanding has often had the effect of making that understanding more credible than when expressed solely in traditional terms. Thus, they suggest, a “dialogue of science and theology” is not only important as a fruitful strand of intellectual endeavour. It should also, they say, be seen as an important apologetic weapon, especially in a culture in which the incompatibility of scientific understanding and religious belief is widely assumed.

The original stimulus for my own exploration of the relationship between science and theology was, in fact, the literature which has expressed this view. Inspired by the work of pioneers like Arthur Peacocke and John Polkinghorne (the former an Oxford biochemist, the latter a Cambridge physicist,) I thought that my academic background in both theology and astrophysics might enable me to play a part in the dialogue which they had fostered. When, therefore, an opportunity for study and teaching in this subject within the University of Cambridge came my way, I grasped it eagerly. It was exhilarating to think that by working in this area I might be able, like them, not only to contribute to the growth of theological understanding, but also to reassure a confused generation that traditional Christian beliefs are compatible with serious scientific commitment and knowledge.

Within a year or two of beginning systematic study of the issues, however, I found myself—rather to my consternation—becoming increasingly critical of at least some of the existing literature. Indeed, the more I explored the coherence of certain types of argument which had become widely accepted, the more I found myself drawn to different and less orthodox conclusions—ones with which many religious believers would, I knew, be less than happy.

These insights emerged in the main from two strands of the dialogue of science and theology as it then stood. One of these strands was that which had attempted to deal with the question of how we can talk coherently about the way God acts in the world. The prime question which arose for me from this discussion of divine action was one which, as we shall see, had already been broached by Peacocke. It was that of how the mode or modes of such action should be related to the nature of revelatory experience. I soon came to believe that it was in terms of human psychology that this could best be done, and I was encouraged in this by the knowledge that others, from a quite different perspective, had also thought of such experience in psychological terms. The other strand of the dialogue of science and theology which became central to my thinking was that which had attempted to explore the relationship between scientific and religious language usage. Both of these lines of exploration, it seemed to me, led naturally to a number of questions which had, despite their topicality in the wider theological community, been treated only very inadequately by those involved in the dialogue of science and theology.

About the Author:

Christopher C. Knight is Senior Research Associate at theVon Hügel Institute, St. Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge, England.

About this edition

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0800632982
• ISBN 13: 9780800632984
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 162