The Moving Image: Science and Religion. Time and Eternity

Research scientist and university teacher, Anglican clergyman and warden of a great theological library, the author had previously lectured and written extensively on religious and scientific questions. In The Moving Image, originally published in 1966, he deals with a number of related problems, some old and some new, on the borderland where science, philosophy and theology meet. How does our sense of time arise, and what does it mean? Is the universe an accident and human life without purpose, or is a doctrine of creation a necessary counterpart to the teachings of evolution? What does it mean in a scientific age to claim that the eternal God works out his purpose in cosmic and organic process, revealing himself in human history? Does the classical doctrine of the Incarnation do justice to Christ’s involvement as a human person in the travail of the real world as we know it?

These and other questions are looked at afresh in the light of a carefully articulated understanding of the relation of time to eternity, which draws together the contributions of the ancient world, the insights of existentialists and linguistic philosophy, and the most recent trends in natural science. On this basis, skilfully argued and cogently presented, the author examines the problems of divine omniscience in relation to human freewill and neurophysiological determinism, and deals in a fresh manner with the great questions of Christology and the hope of eternal life. The result is a work of fascinating interest, in which bold metaphysical views are advanced with full awareness of the pitfalls to which such thinking was exposed at the time. Of interest to philosophers and theologians at the time, as well as the lay reader, today it can be read in its historical context.

The Reverand, Dr G. D. Yarnold was a distinguished scientist-theologian of the Church of England and, previously, Warden of St Deiniol’s Library (now Gladstone’s Library), Hawarden and sometime Lecturer in Physics in the University of Nottingham. He became Vicar of Llanwddyn, Oswestry, Wales in 1962.