We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Arthur Peacocke, a biochemist turned theologian, accepted Christ's personal resurrection but not his bodily resurrection from the grave. He argued from Paul's silence about the discovery of the empty tomb, from Christ's sharing fully in our human condition, and from the irreversible processes of nature. John Polkinghorne, a physicist turned theologian, has maintained that Paul's view of resurrection implies an empty tomb, that Christ's resurrection from the grave has revealed the transformed destiny of matter, and that, for good reasons, God can suspend and change the laws of nature. In Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's vision of an evolving world, Christ's resurrection from the grave released a new force of love and revealed the spiritual destiny of matter. With Polkinghorne he shared a hope for the transformation of the universe, a process initiated by the glorious raising of Jesus’ crucified body.
1 Peters, Ted, Russell, Robert J. and Welker, Michael, eds. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2002)Google Scholar.
2 Peacocke, Arthur, Theology for a Scientific Age (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), pp. 279–88, 332Google Scholar.
3 One can express the Second Law in terms of ‘entropy’, which represents the degree of disorder or randomness of the constituents of any closed system. The entropy of an isolated system can only increase but will never decrease.
4 Peacocke, Theology for a Scientific Age, p. 281.
5 Polkinghorne, John, The God of Hope and the End of the World (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 74Google Scholar.
6 Pannenberg, Wolfhart, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, trans. Bromiley, G. W. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1994), p. 159Google Scholar.
7 Polkinghorne, John, The Faith of a Physicist: Reflections of a Bottom-up Thinker (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), pp. 163–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also id., ‘Eschatology: Some Questions and Some Insights from Science’, in Polkinghorne, John and Welker, Michael, eds., The End of the World and the End of God: Science and Theology on Eschatology (Harrisburg, Pa.” Trinity Press International, 2000), pp. 29–30Google Scholar.
8 Polkinghorne, The God of Hope and the End of the World, 74–76, 113–16.
9 Peacocke, Arthur, Creation and the World of Science (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), p. 353Google Scholar; italics mine.
10 Peacocke, Theology for a Scientific Age, p. 344; italics mine.
11 Ibid., p. 384; italics mine. In the ‘Supplementary Notes’ to the paperback reprint of Creation and the World of Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar, Peacocke showed that he remained ‘sceptical’ about ‘the transformation of this actual world’ held by ‘those who believe that, in the resurrection of Jesus, his actual physical body was transformed to a new regime or mode of existence based on the assumption that the accounts of the empty tomb are historical and have this implication’. He still did not see this position about the transformation of Jesus’ body to be ‘essential to the primitive, historical, apostolic affirmation and experience “he is risen”’ (p. 383); italics original.
12 Chardin, Pierre Teilhard de, Science and Christ, trans. Hague, René (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), pp. 27, 35Google Scholar.
13 Ibid., pp. 75–76.
14 Ibid., pp. 63–64.
15 Chardin, Pierre Teilhard de, Human Energy, trans. Cohen, J. M. (London: Collins, 1969), p. 32Google Scholar.
16 See Mooney, Christopher F., Teilhard de Chardin and the Mystery of Christ (London: Collins, 1966), pp. 120, 135Google Scholar; and Faricy, Robert, All Things in Christ: Teilhard de Chardin's Spirituality (London: Collins, 1981), pp. 13–31Google Scholar.
17 Lampe, Geoffrey W. H., The Resurrection (London: Mowbrays, 1966), pp.59, 97, 99Google Scholar.
18 Peacocke dedicated a whole chapter to the incarnation as ‘Divine Being Becoming Human’ (Theology in a Scientific Age, pp. 290–311).
19 See O’Collins, Gerald, Jesus Risen: An Historical, Fundamental and Systematic Examination of Christ's Resurrection (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), p. 192Google Scholar.
20 Gwynne, Paul, ‘Why Some Still Doubt that Christ's Body Was Raised’, in Kendall, Dan and Davis, Stephen T., eds., The Convergence of Theology (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2001), pp. 355–65, at p. 360Google Scholar.
21 See Peacocke, Arthur, God and the New Biology (Gloucester, Mass. Peter Smith, 1994), pp. 116–27Google Scholar.
