Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-xm8r8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-14T07:28:42.007Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘The Firmament Sheweth His Handiwork:’ Some Scientists' Reflections on Theology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Michael Fuller
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

There still appears to be a firm view in the minds of many people that science and religion are somehow inescapably opposed to one another. On the one hand (such a view might allege), to be a scientist means that one can’t take religion seriously: on the other, to be a religious believer one has to sit light to many of the findings of science, either quietly ignoring them or perhaps even flatly denying their validity. Anyone saying that modern science and Christianity are quite compatible is often looked at askance, as though either his or her science, or his or her theology, or both, must be suspect. However, a growing number of theologians are now writing about the theological implications of science; and, in addition, some scientists are also providing more or less explicit comments on the theological implications of their work.

This should not surprise us. In his recent book Art and the Beauty of God, Bishop Richard Harries makes the remark that ‘All works of art, whatever their content, have a spiritual dimension,’ in that they can provide us with comfort or solace. It is surely also true that all the sciences necessarily have a theological dimension, in that they all investigate one aspect or another of the material universe, and, Christians believe, that universe is itself, in some sense, the creation of God. We ought therefore to expect to discover something about the Creator in our analysis of the creation, whether we conclude, at one extreme, with the deists, that God somehow initiated the Big Bang and then abandoned the cosmos to get on with it; or whether we conclude, at the other extreme, that the universe may be regarded as being so intimately connected with its originator that it is reasonable to call it in some sense the Body of God.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 76 , Issue 899 , December 1995 , pp. 535 - 541
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Harries, R., Art and the Beauty of God (London: Mowbray, 1993), p. 101Google Scholar.

2 The idea of the cosmos as the body of God has been developed in lantzen, G., God's World, God's Body (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1984)Google Scholar and McFague, S., The Body of God (London: SCM, 1993)Google Scholar.

3 For recent work by these authors, see Peacocke, A., Theology for a Scientific Age (London: SCM, 1993)Google Scholar and Polkinghorne, J., Science and Christian Belief (London: SPCK, 1994)Google Scholar.

4 See, for example, Dawlcins, R., The Blind Watchmaker (London: Penguin, 1988)Google Scholar, and Atkins, P., The Creation (London: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1981)Google Scholar.

5 Eccles, J. C., Evolution of the Brain: Creation of the Self (London: Routledge, 1989), p. 176Google Scholar.

6 Eccles, Evolution of the Brain, p. 237.

7 The philosophical aspects of Eccles' views are developed in Popper, K. R. and Eccles, J. C., The Self and Its Brain (London: Routledge and Regan Paul, 1983)Google Scholar.

8 See Dennett, D., Consciousness Explained (London: Penguin, 1992)Google Scholar.

9 Eccles, J. C.. The Human Psyche (London: Routledge, 1980), p. 252CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 For a fuller account of the relationships between Jung's thought and traditional theology, see the author's ‘C. Jung, G.: Scientist–Theologian?’, Theology, XCV, 1992, p. 270Google Scholar.

11 C. G. Jung, Collected Works (CW), vol. 9 (ii), paragraph 98 (2nd Edition, 1968). All references to CW are to the translation by R. F. C. Hull and others (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul), the dates of publication of each volume being indicated. All references to CW are to volume number followed by paragraph number.

12 C. G. Jung, CW 9(ii), 79.

13 C. G. Jung, in a letter of 1945 quoted in White, V., God and the Unconscious (London: Collins Fontana, 1960), p. 89Google Scholar.

14 C. G. Jung, CW 5. 128 (2nd Edition, 1967).

15 C. G. Jung, CW 11, 531 (2nd Edition, 1969).

16 C. G. Jung, CW 5, 89 n. 29.

17 c.f. Bryant, C., Jung and the Christian Way (London: Darton, Longman and Todd 1983)Google Scholar and the appendix to the same author's The Heart in Pilgrimage (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1980)Google Scholar.

18 Davies, P., God and the New Physics (London: Penguin, 1990), p. ixGoogle Scholar.

19 Davies, P., The Mind of God (London: Penguin, 1993), p. 231Google Scholar.

20 Davies, The Mind of God, p. 190.

21 Davies, The Mind of God, p. 220.

22 Davies, P., Are We Alone? (London: Penguin, 1995), pp. 90–91Google Scholar.

23 Davies, The Mind of God, p. 232.

24 Davies, God and the New Physics, p. 223.

25 Davies, The Mind of God, p. 215.

26 Davies, God and the New Physics, p. 229.

27 Tipler, F., The Physics of Immortality (London: Macmillan, 1995), p. 329Google Scholar.