Varia

The Santa Fe Institute is one of my fav sites to visit to learn more about complexity and emergence.

Let us count the universes!

Beam me up, Scottie! (sorry, couldn't help it. . .)

On-line Einstein archives

Theories in physics as women you might date

Christ & multiverse theory

Very interesting article from SEED Magazine:

"Is Theoretical Physics Becoming the Next Battleground in the Culture Wars?"

Teche and doxa

Excellent column from Archbishop Chaput on the relationship between technology and the Christian faith:

"Deus ex machina: How to think about technology."

"...the vast potential of human reason..."

From the Holy Father's address to the Muslim community of Cameroon:

My friends, I believe a particularly urgent task of religion today is to unveil the vast potential of human reason, which is itself God’s gift and which is elevated by revelation and faith. Belief in the one God, far from stunting our capacity to understand ourselves and the world, broadens it. Far from setting us against the world, it commits us to it. We are called to help others see the subtle traces and mysterious presence of God in the world which he has marvellously created and continually sustains with his ineffable and all-embracing love. Although his infinite glory can never be directly grasped by our finite minds in this life, we nonetheless catch glimpses of it in the beauty that surrounds us. When men and women allow the magnificent order of the world and the splendour of human dignity to illumine their minds, they discover that what is "reasonable" extends far beyond what mathematics can calculate, logic can deduce and scientific experimentation can demonstrate; it includes the goodness and innate attractiveness of upright and ethical living made known to us in the very language of creation.

Apophasis & Falsification

Humor me for a moment. . .

Here's how the Eastern Orthodox theologian, Vladmir Lossky, defines apophatic theology:

"The negative way of the knowledge of God is an ascendant undertaking of the mind that progressively eliminates all positive attributes of the object it wishes to attain, in order to culminate finally in a kind of apprehension by supreme ignorance of Him who cannot be an object of knowledge" ("Apophasis and Trinitarian Theology," 13 in In the Image and Likeness of God).

Now, compare that definition to Popper's notion of falsification:

"Falsificationism claims that a hypothesis is scientific if and only if it has the potential to be refuted by some possible observation. . .all testing in science has the form of attempting to refute theories by means of observation. . .it is never possible to confirm or establish a theory by showing its agreement with observations. Confirmation is a myth" (P. Godfrey-Smith, Theory and Reality, 58).

In both cases, we proceed on a via negativa in order to reduce the accumlative effects of the descriptive errors that occur when we try to explain positively the object of our investigation.

What this comparsion assumes is that the objects of scientific investigation are as elusive as the object of theological investigation.

Thoughts?

Whales & Shakespeare in labs?

One of the friars here at the Angelicum is writing a dissertation on Josiah Royce. He sent me the following quote from Royce:

“For us it makes absolutely no difference in our faith about the ultimate spiritual nature of things, whether the world that we see makes our hair stand on end or not, or whether the biologists ever come to succeed in making living matter or not…Nor the truth of things be less spiritual, if we could also manufacture not only protoplasm, but whole whales or Shakespeares in laboratories.”

Not sure what I think of this. . .comments?

Big Bang, Lemaitre & scientific dogma

This semester the Angelicum's STOQ (Science, Theology & the Ontological Quest) program is offering a series of lectures entitled, "Considering Nature: from science to philosophy and theology."

The first three lectures were given by Belgian physicist and philosopher, Prof. Dominique Lambert on the basics of quantum mechanics and cosmology (general relativity, anthropic principle, etc.). During his lecture yesterday, he introduced us to an amazing Catholic priest-physicist named Georges Lemaitre.

Msgr. Lemaitre is the theorist who proposed the so-called "Big Bang theory" to explain the beginning of the universe and its subsequent expansion. He called his theory "the hypothesis of the primeval atom." Building on Einstein's discoveries and applying observational data from astronomers, Lemaitre proposed that the universe (space-time and all its material components) resulted from the explosion of a single quanta billions of years ago. Subsequent observational data from physicists and astronomers (especially Edwin Hubble) have confirmed the outlines of Lemaitre's theory. There is still debate on the particulars, especially on the nature and origin of the originating quanta.

What struck me is the history of Lemaitre's findings and Einstein's steadfast refusal to consider the theory b/c it contradicted his rather dogmatic Spinozaian notion of a closed, static universe. The story that we are usually told about science is that scientists explore all options in the pursuit of truth regardless of dogma, while the Church dictates Truth and refuses to explore options in order to defend dogma. How odd then that this century's greatest scientifc genuis is outdone by a priest!

Here's a good summary of Lemaitre's theory of the Big Bang (a label, by the way, derisively assigned by the astronomer, Fred Hoyle).

Biblical Basis for Western Science

Excellent article by Fr. Stan Jaki from InsideCatholic. . .

Excerpts:

Science may be a refined form of common sense, but at times all-too refined. Some basic laws of science can, of course, be fully rendered in commonsense terms. One gives the full truth of the three laws of thermodynamics by saying that, first, you cannot win; second, you cannot break even; third, you cannot even get out of the game.

Those three laws mean that ultimately all physical activity tends toward an absolute standstill. This is true even if the present expansion of the universe were followed by its contraction. The next cycle of expansion-contraction would be less energetic, and the one after that even less so. Physics, the most exact form of science, tells us, if it tells anything, that all physical processes are part of a one-directional, essentially linear process.

[. . .]

The faith was Christian in that most fundamental sense, in which the Bible holds Christ to be the only-begotten (monogenes) Son of God. When faced with that proposition, a well-educated Roman or Greek had his major intellectual shock, apart from shock relating to the moral level. For in Greco-Roman antiquity, the word monogenes was an attribute of the universe itself. Therefore, such a pagan, ready to convert, had to face up to the following choice: either Jesus or the universe was the only begotten. In other words, Christian faith and pantheism were concretely irreconcilable with one another because of the concreteness of Jesus. This is why only genuine Christian faith, and it alone, can resist the modern juggernaut of nature worship.

A belief in Jesus, in whom God created everything, is the very same belief that concretely opposes efforts to take the universe as a necessary fact that cannot be otherwise. Such efforts are apt even today to lead science into a blind alley.

[. . .]

Science owes to Christian faith the very spark that made Newtonian science possible: That science is based on the three laws of motion. Once those laws were formulated, a science was at hand which from that point on developed on its own terms, with no end to its progress, with no end to its ever new findings, and with no end to the ever new merchandise it makes available for the free, and, at times, not-so-free markets of neocapitalism.

But that irresistible progress needed a spark, the idea of inertial motion, which is the first and most fundamental of Newton's three laws.

The formulation of the first law preceded Newton by more than three hundred years. It first appears in the commentaries on Aristotle's book on cosmology, On the Heavens, which John Buridan gave at the Sorbonne around 1348. By then many other medieval philosophers had commented on that book and radically disagreed with Aristotle's claim that the universe was eternal, that the celestial sphere rotated eternally. The Aristotelian world machine is a perpetual motion machine. As such it blocks the possibility of perceiving an absolute beginning for physical motion. It was, however, this perception that sparked Buridan's insight.

[. . .]

Nothing which is non-quantitative is the business of science. But everything which is quantitative is its business. Non-quantitative aspects of existence, such as purpose, freedom, design, honesty, cannot be handled by science because they are not quantitative propositions. But every bit of matter is quantitative and therefore the business of science. Does not the Bible say that God "disposed everything according to measure and number and weight"?

Please note that the Bible does not say that measure, number and weight, or quantities in short, are everything. But the Bible says that everything has measure, number, and weight or quantitative properties. Wherever there is matter, quantities are present. This is what gives science its unlimited competence in everything material, whether living or dead. But this is also the reason for the radical limitation of science to what is material insofar as it can be measured.

Read the whole thing!

Critical realism & the Church

Andrew at Opensource theology has posted an interesting article on the use of critical realism in re-modeling our theology of the Church. Though I can't agree with everything he says, the post is well worth your consideration.

These are two excerpts:

The ‘emerging church’ project is an experiment in new forms of church. The question of what ‘church’ is, however, cannot be resolved sociologically or experimentally. Ultimately, a theological answer is required. This page was written to provide some preliminary reflection for the Future of the People of God conference with Tom Wright. It is an attempt to address some of the more theoretical questions that arise when Wright’s retelling of the story of Jesus, constructed on the basis of a critical-realist hermeneutic, is considered from a postmodern perspective.

Why do we need a new story about Jesus and the church?

Raison d’être

Modernism, through a rigorously applied rationality, has undermined the irrational grounds for faith (tradition, emotion, sentimentality, superstition). Postmodernism, through a rigorously applied irrationality, has undermined the rational grounds for faith (arguments for the truth of Scripture or the existence of God). The church, as a result, has been left without a compelling reason to exist. Recent decades have seen an increasingly urgent process of reinvention as the church has struggled to find a workable identity in a post-Christian age. The danger, now, is that ‘emerging church’ will simply prove to be one more frantic rearrangement of the deckchairs before the ship sinks for good. It is essential, therefore, that we find a way to tell the story, not least to ourselves, that will sustain – indeed, that will necessitate – the continuing presence of the church in the world.

[. . .]

David Clines has some good things to say about the implications of postmodernism for biblical studies in an article called ‘The Pyramid and the Net’. The whole article is worth reading, but the following paragraph is enough to illustrate the tension between modern and postmodern approaches to the text:

If the modern is interested in what texts say, the postmodern is interested in what texts do not say. It is their silences, their repressions, their unexpressed interests, the social, religious and political ambitions that they screen from us, that we are concerned with in a postmodern age. We do not discount the project of exegesis; we might even sometimes, though not on principle, regard it as foundational. But it is the point of departure for more grown up questions about texts, for questions that go beyond mere meaning. The trouble with meaning as the goal for the study of texts is that it restricts the scholar to recapitulating the message of the text. You do not find scholars of a ‘modern’ persuasion saying, This is what my text means, and personally I do not believe a word of it. Mostly they think their job is done when they have said again, in their own words, what their text has already said. But in my opinion, any scholar who has ambitions of being a real human being cannot let it go at that, but has to involve herself or himself with the text, and not take refuge in critical distance (however necessary critical distance might be as a heuristic device). At the very least, the critic in a postmodern age will need to be asking, What does this text do to me if I read it? What ethical responsibility do I carry if I go on helping this text to stay alive?

Nevertheless, I think there are a number of ways in which we might establish a more constructive interaction between these two processes.

1. Both critical-realism and emerging church have developed, to some degree, as reactions against what is perceived to be a certain inaccuracy or inauthenticity within traditional evangelicalism with regard to its intellectual substructure and share a similar critique of it.

2. The current crisis of confidence and the growing willingness (born largely from desperation) to experiment with new forms of church have created the sort of opening needed to channel a more realistic understanding of Jesus, of his mission, and of the nature and purpose of the church into the mainstream. There appears to be a large group of believers who are open to new ways of thinking and willing to explore a new discourse of faith.

What is needed is a usable, public hermeneutic that does not merely serve the interests of an unthinking pre-emptive dogmatism. The challenge here is in the words ‘usable’ and ‘public’. Such a hermeneutic must be consistent with the standards and methods of ordinary rationality, which is likely to reflect an oscillation, rather than a conflict, between modern and postmodern habits of thought, and must be allowed to shape popular, and not merely scholarly, Christian discourse. To put it in Wright’s terms, the portrait of Jesus that is emerging from ‘Third Quest’ scholarship needs to have an impact at ‘pew-level’ and at ‘street-level’ (Who was Jesus?, 16).

3. An historically oriented hermeneutic presents what is probably the most effective means of deconstructing the controlling paradigms of modern evangelical interpretation while, at the same time, offering the possibility of re-constructing an alternative narrative coherent and powerful enough to motivate a recognizably ‘evangelical’ commitment and hope.

4. A critical-realist hermeneutic gives priority to the historical and theological referents behind the text. In that sense it is pragmatic. In this way we may hope to avoid both the modern preoccupation with abstracted propositional truth and the postmodern distrust of the texts and of the project of exegesis.

A critical-realist hermeneutic is the product not of church practice and teaching but of scholarly investigation. This has certain advantages. One is that we may hope to reduce the gulf that has opened up between biblical scholarship and the thought-world of the church. Another is that it will allow for a more tentative, open-minded management of the truth. We come much closer to the standpoint of postmodernism if we recognize that truth is always an emergent value and cannot be separated from the complex, unpredictable process of coming to understand.

5. Both critical-realism and postmodernism encourage a heightened interpretive self-consciousness, a stronger awareness of the difficult nature of the relation between reader and text. The Bible does not constitute an inert, unambiguous body of truth: it is complex, intricately related both to its own world and to the world of the reader, inescapably subject to interpretation. While critical-realism is always at risk of falling back into positivism, on the other side of postmodernism it becomes the means by which we take the reader’s engagement with the text with the utmost seriousness because it accepts the possiblity of finding truth again.

6. On the face of it, Wright’s insistence on the historicality of the gospel narratives runs counter to the postmodern distrust of purported historical knowledge, but it may be in its particularity that the story about Jesus finds its plausibility within the framework of a more suspicious epistemology. The history of dogmatic interpretation has always moved from the particular and concrete to the abstract and universal and has then re-imagined the historical starting point in universal terms. Postmodernism resists the dogmatic argument, but it may be possible to return to a more confidently reconstructed historical narrative and restate its inherent truthfulness in a way that does not ignore the limitations and difficulties of historiography. Biblical theology arose originally out of concrete, particular, historical narratives. The convergence of Third Quest and postmodernism allows, and requires us, to repeat that process.

7. If the critical-realist investigation of Jesus can be developed towards the idea of a post-eschatological church, there is a huge potential for constructing a highly integrated programme and spirituality for the church. In The Meaning of Jesus (208-225) Wright argues, on the basis of a critical-realist retelling of the story of Jesus, for an integration of four areas of Christian experience: spirituality, theology, politics and healing. This sort of ‘holistic’ approach sits well with the postmodern aversion to dualism (cf. N.T. Wright, New Tasks for a Renewed Church, 7-8).

Polkinghorne's Complementarity

Below is the report I wrote for my science, philosophy, and theology seminar last semester. We were limited to ten pages and asked to be highly focused, thus the length and the lack of detail.

____________________________________________________________________

Preferring “a hut on the ground to a castle in the sky”:
John Polkinghorne, Critical Realism & the Complementarity of Science and Theology

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
January 21, 2009

I. Polkinghorne’s “project”

In his 2006 book, Science and Creation: The Search for Understanding, John Polkinghorne offers a brief description of his project to build a complementary relationship between science and the Christian faith that accepts “the unity of knowledge…and the attainment of a harmonious and integrated view of the nature of reality”(83). He writes: “To put it in simple and directly personal terms, my experience as a physicist and my experience as a priest have to be capable of being held together, without compartmentalism or dishonest adjustment. . .One’s instinct to seek a unified view of reality is theologically underwritten by belief in the Creator who is that single ground of all that is” (83). He goes on to argue that the evident complexity of the universe—its finely tuned order and that order’s gift for creativity—must be given an explanation that accommodates “the constituent insights of elementary particle physics and the integrating insights of aesthetics and religious experience,” including the human experience of history and our “worshipful intuitions of eternity”(83). Polkinghorne’s search for scientific/theological complementarity will have to be firmly grounded in what he calls “a tentative view of reality that holds together, in a single account, the varied subjects of our discourse”(84). The tentative view of reality that Polkinghorne champions is called “scientific-critical realism.”

II. Initial Observations

Before delving into Polkinghorne’s epistemology of truth, it would be helpful to take note of how he understands the project of finding scientific/theological complementarity. He writes in Science and Providence: God’s Interaction with the World: “Recent years have seen a resurgence among scientists of the thought that those who seek the deepest attainable understanding of the world will have to reckon with the possibility that it will be found in theism. The beautiful structure of the laws of physics—simple, yet subtle—together with the delicate balance of their operation, by which the world’s process is made fruitful, have seemed to many to speak of an Intelligence behind the unfolding evolution of the universe”(7). Of note here is Polkinghorne’s insistence that the complementary relationship between science and theology is meant to be a way of finding “the deepest attainable understanding of the world.” Unlike theologians in the Intelligent Design movement and scientists who use their art to debunk the “myths” of theism, Polkinghorne is not interested in finding ways for science to “prove” his theology nor is he interested in having God fill the explanatory gaps of his most current scientific theory.

Insisting that any explanation of the universe—its origins, purpose, continuing existence—must be a fulsome explanation, even if that explanation proves to be an ideological inconvenience, Polkinghorne frames the question of complementarity this way in Quarks, Chaos & Christianity: “Do we have to choose between [scientific and religious worldviews] or are they, instead, complementary understandings that, seen together, give us a fuller picture than either on their own would provide”(9). The consequences of answering this question with “yes, we must choose one or the other” would be fatal for both the humane curiosity of the well-educated but non-believing scientist and for those who seek wisdom in sacred books and from sacred teachers. The faithful scientist and the enlightened believer would be well-served in Polkinghorne’s view by considering the cosmos and all of its constituent elements, rational and non-rational, the experienced and the experiencer, as a single artifact with just one artist. Pope Benedict XVI has suggested that we think of the cosmos as “a 'book'. . .considering it as the work of an Author who expresses himself through the 'symphony' of Creation…” (Homily for Epiphany, 2009). And like all symphonies or poems or paintings, there is a unifying element, a single phrase or note, a color or pattern that picks up the artist’s intent and becomes the key to understanding the artifact.

Pope Benedict, in this same homily, has suggested a name for the key theme, the patterned-color, the unifying note of creation. He continues, “Within this symphony [of creation], one finds, at a certain point, that which one would call in musical language a 'solo', a theme entrusted to one instrument or to one voice, which is so important that the significance of the entire work depends on it. This 'solo' is Jesus, to whom a regal sign corresponds: the appearance of a new star in the firmament”(2009). If this appears to be entirely too theological, that is, overly reliant on a divine revelation, remember that Polkinghorne’s project in bringing science and faith together is not a dilution of the Christian faith or materialist science. As he says early on, his project must proceed “without compartmentalism and [no] dishonest adjustment”(SC, 83). This means no shying away from the hard science of physics. And it means no convenient adjustments to Christian doctrine to rid us of the mystical bits. The strength of Polkinghorne’s project rest squarely on his resistance to any sort of compromise, any sort of concession from theology to science or vice-versa. Clearly evident in his work is a foundational commitment to understanding who and what we are as rational creatures within a knowable universe describable by the best science.

III. The Question(s)

In order to lay a foundation for discussing critical realism, it is necessary to unpack the initial question asked in Quarks, Chaos & Christianity: “Do we have to choose between [scientific and religious worldviews] or are they, instead, complementary understandings that, seen together, give us a fuller picture than either on their own would provide”(9) Two features of this question must bear the weight of immediate investigation: “complementary understandings” and “fuller picture.” Taking these two features separately, we have:

a. “complementary understandings”: In what sense can we say that radically different (even opposing) worldviews complement one another? This question is really more about what the divergent fields of inquiry have in common rather than a question about how they differ. Obviously, any attempt to explicate the differences between scientific inquiry and theological inquiry will produce different answers; but, will this meeting of the “minds” at a crossroads of discovery produce a complementary worldview? How does science and/or theology define what one means when one, as a scientist or theologian, says, “I understand X”? This question is much more than a question about the certitude of a propositional truth claim. What is at stake here is one’s allegiance to an epistemology, a whole way of taking in, making sense of, digesting, and using that which one is given as the most likely, given circumstances, of the One we call “true.” How does each come “to know the truth about X”? Assumed here, of course, is that “truth” is a knowable quality of X, or that some knowable quality of X can be said to be true. With this assumed, how do theologians and scientists separately or together come to a knowledge of a truth about X?

b. “fuller picture”: In what sense can we say that each worldview provides a complete picture without the other? A less than complete picture? Science and theology are both capable of providing comprehensive descriptions of the world as each defines the world. However, as competing descriptions of the world, each is complemented by the other in “filling out” a description that encompasses the material and the mental, the spatio-temporal and the spiritual, the developmental and the divine. Does the search for creating a “fuller picture” imply that there limits on the breadth and depth of our understanding regardless of which worldview we take? In other words, is this “picture” framed? If so, by what and how? As a methodological premise this question admits that any comprehensive description of the universe is going to be “the fullest possible picture at this moment,” reserving the prerogative of either the scientist or the theologian or both together to declare an expansion in the description. That both these disciples are concerned with exploring the “frame” of the description as we have it is best situated in a discussion of Polkinghorne’s preferred notion of truth.

Critical realism, as an epistemological frame for acquiring knowledge and understanding truth, serves Polkinghorne’s project quite well precisely because as a theory of truth-finding, critical realism is welcomed among theologians and scientists alike. Polkinghorne writes, “. . .I see there to be a cousinly relationship between the ways in which theology and science each pursue truth within the proper domains of their interpreted experience. Critical realism is a concept applicable to both, not because there is some kind of entailment from method in one to method in another. . .but because the idea is deep enough to encompass the character of both these forms of human search for truthful understanding” (QPT, 15). Seeking after and acquiring this “truthful understanding” must begin by coming to terms with what we mean by “truth.”

III. Truth per se

Up until roughly the early modern period, the sciences of theology and natural philosophy shared a notion of truth that was best formulated by Thomas Aquinas as: "Veritas logica est adaequatio intellectus et rei"(ST.I.21.2). Brian Davies has rendered the Latin here to mean “truth consists in the matching of mind and reality”(254). Truth in this sense is not a quality possessed by the thing and apprehended by the mind nor it is the categorical imposition of the mind on the thing, rather truth here is understood to be an “adequating” relation between the mind and the real. Adaequatio describes the accommodation of the mind to the thing as the thing really is, but at the same time the thing’s intelligibility to the mind is accommodated to the mind by the mind’s limits. Thomas writes:

Now the mind, that is the cause of the thing, is related to it as its rule and measure; whereas the converse is the case with the mind that receives its knowledge from things. When therefore things are the measure and rule of the mind, truth consists in the equation of the mind to the thing, as happens in ourselves. For according as a thing is, or is not, our thoughts or our words about it are true or false. But when the mind is the rule or measure of things, truth consists in the equation of the thing to the mind; just as the work of an artist is said to be true, when it is in accordance with his art. (ST.1.21.2)

Clearly, according to Thomas, truth is not a quality to be apprehended nor a state of mind preceding apprehension. “Truth” is the relation of the measuring and ruling mind to the measured and ruled thing and vice-versa. Truth is neither found “in the thing,” objectively speaking, nor is truth merely invented by the mind. CR is an attempt to give us adequate knowledge of a mind-independent reality, but that knowledge is nonetheless dependent on the presence of a functioning human mind. Polkinghorne approvingly quotes Michael Polanyi from his book, Personal Knowledge: “Comprehension is neither an arbitrary act nor a passive experience, but a responsible act claiming universal validity. Such knowing is indeed objective in the sense of establishing contact with a hidden reality. . .” (QPT, 6).

Polkinghorne explains why CR is so attractive to scientists and theologians alike. In his book, Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science and Religion, he writes: “The adjective [in the phrase ‘critical realism’] is necessary because something more subtle than naïve objectivity is involved. . .The noun [‘realism’] is justified because the best explanation of persistent scientific explanatory power and technological success is that science succeeds in describing, within the acknowledged limits of verisimilitude, the way things actually are”(3-4). In other words, scientists get a consistently workable means of explaining physical phenomena and theologians get a critical apparatus that allows for the movement of the divine among the physical. And both get a unified epistemology that is larger than all their prejudices combined.

IV. Truth from science

What contributions does Polkinghorne see science making to the building of the complementary relationship between faith and reason? Without a doubt Polkinghorne is a thorough-going advocate for the scientific method of uncovering truth. However, he is quick to point out that this method is not always what we need it to be: “The trouble with the simple view of scientific method is that it does not take into account the sophisticated web of interpretation and judgment involved in any experimental result of interest […] Experiments are always theory-laden. The dialogue between observation and comprehension is more subtle and mutually interactive than is represented by the simple confrontation of prediction and result […] Our scientific seeing is always ‘seeing as’”(OW, 9). Despite this oversimplification by some, Polkinghorne points to the ability of the scientific method to make accurate predictions, to describe mathematically material properties not available for inspection to the senses, and the explanatory power that comes with the predictions and the maths.

If we follow Thomas and understand truth as an “adequating relationship” between mind and reality, then we can say that science provides the mind with reliable tool for “measuring and ruling” the real.

V. Truth from theology

Polkinghorne, as a scientist, is quite comfortable with the role he has assigned to science in this project of complementarity. Where does faith and theology come in? He writes, “The view of theological enterprise which I would wish to defend is summed up in a splendid phrase of St. Anselm: fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding. Thus conceived, theology is reflection upon religious experience, the attempt to bring our rational and ordering faculties to bear upon a particular part of our interaction with the way things are”(OW, 28). Theological reflection then is to be brought to bear on “the way things are.” Science will tell us how things really are in so far as they exist as material objects. Theology will tell us how those existing things mean; that is, our religious faith will provide us with all we need to understand how these existing things come to be meaningful for us. Earlier, we read Pope Benedict XVI calling Jesus the “solo” of the cosmic symphony—the one consistent note, the patterned-color, the first and last of the whole composed piece. Beyond the poetics of the moment, the Holy Father is pointing out that Jesus, fully-human and fully-divine, is the paradigm figure for bridging ostensibly unbridgeable gaps. As faithful men and women who treasure science’s ability to explain the otherwise inexplicable, we have in Christ an exemplary figure that shows us how to place the human mind graced by God “in front of” reality and see not only what is really there, objectively speaking, but also see and understand why what is there is there, subjectively speaking, speaking as one purchased by Christ.

VI. Complementarity?

At the very root of the complementarity Polkinghorne wishes to construct is this hard reality: “Religion is our encounter with divine reality, just as science is our encounter with physical reality”(QCC, 118). In so far as we are dealing with the really real, that is, an encounterable reality of some sort, the philosophical tools of critical realism provide for us a way of describing how the human mind encounters, collects, and understands any objectively existing reality. Facts about an objectively existing reality are held in the human mind as knowledge, and to the degree that this knowledge “matches” the real, we can say that what the mind knows is true. Polkinghorne is convinced that a judicious application of the critical realist epistemology in thinking through the relationship between science and theology would yield a wonderfully complementarity and provide those interested with many years of worthy research projects and fruitful discoveries.

Comparing and contrasting each field, Polkinghorne writes: “Theology shares the lack of power to manipulate and interrogate its material with all other forms of intrinsically personal knowledge. This contrasts with the power of testing inquiry possessed by the impersonal mode of scientific investigation […] Scientific knowledge is concerned with generalities—what all can find if they choose to look. In consequence, it has a repeatable, and so shareable, character to it. Personal encounter is always idiosyncratic, because each individual is unique. We may find analogies in the experience of others but never identity”(SC,104). By adhering faithfully to the core methods of science and theology, the seeker wishing to take advantage of complementarity, will find analogies that point to, open up, spread around all the wisdom possible for the human mind to comprehend. The materialist defeat of religious faith will not give us a godless universe. It will only give us an inexpressible longing for the divine. The religious defeat of materialist dogma will not give us a universe immaculately explicated in biblical terms. It will only give us a stunted vocabulary for coloring the heavens and no more than our twenty fingers and toes to count the stars.

Works Cited

Davies, Brian and Brian Leftow. Aquinas: Summa theologiae, Questions on God. Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Polkinghorne, John. One World: The Interaction of Science and Theology. SPCK, 1986.

______________. Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science and Religion. Yale University Press, 2005.

______________. Science and Creation: The Search for Understanding. Templeton Foundation Press, 2006.

______________. Quantum Physics and Theology: An Unexpected Kinship. Yale University Press, 2007.

Benedict XVI to scientists

Pope Benedict XVI's Epiphany homily in which he makes an appeal of scientists:

Dear brothers and sisters!

The Epiphany - the 'manifestation' of our Lord Jesus Christ - is a multiform mystery.

Latin tradition identifies it with the visit of the Magi to the baby Jesus in Bethlehem, and therefore interpreted it above all as the revelation of Israel's Messiah to pagan peoples.

Oriental tradition, instead, prefers to identify it with the baptism of Jesus on the river Jordan, when he manifested himself as the only-begotten Son of the heavenly Father, consecrated by the Holy Spirit.

But the Gospel of John asks us to consider even the marriage of Cana as an epiphany, when Jesus, changing water into wine, "revealed his glory, and his disciples began to believe in him" (Jn 2,11).

What should we say, dear brothers, especially we who are priests of the new Covenant, who are daily witnesses and ministers of the 'epiphany' of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist?

In this most holy and most humble sacrament - which reveals and hides his glory at the same time - the Church celebrates all the mysteries of the Lord. "Adoro te devote, latens Deitas" – thus, in adoration, we pray along with St. Thomas Aquinas.

In this year, 2009, which is specially dedicated to astronomy, on the 4th centenary of Galileo Galilei's first observations on the telescope, we cannot fail to pay attention to the symbol of the star, so important in the Gospel account of the Magi (cfr Mt 2,1-12).

In all likelihood, they were astronomers. From their observatories, in the east relative to Palestine, probably in Mesopotamia, they noted the appearance of a new star, and interpreted this celestial phenomenon as the announcement of the birth of a new king, specifically, according to Sacred Scriptures, the king of the Jews (cfr Nm 24,17).

The Fathers of the Church ALSO saw in this singular episode narrated by St. Matthew a sort of cosmological 'revolution' caused by the entry into the world of the Son of God.

For example, St. John Chrysostom writes; "When the star came over the baby, it stopped, and this could be done only by a power that stars do not have: first, to hide itself, then to appear as a new star, and finally to stop" (Homily on the Gospel of Matthew, 7, 3).

St. Gregory Nazianzene states that the birth of Christ 'imposed new orbits on the stars' (cfr Poemi dogmatici, V, 53-64: PG 37, 428-429). Which is clearly to be understood in the symbolic and theological sense.

In effect, while pagan theology divinized the elements and the forces of the cosmos, the Christian faith, bringING Biblical revelation to fulfillment, contemplates one God, Creator and Lord of the entire universe.

It is divine love, incarnated in Christ, that is the fundamental and universal law of Creation. And this must be understood not in a poetic sense, but in a real sense.

That, too, was what Dante meant, when, in the sublime verse that concludes the Paradise section and the entire Divine Comedy, he defines God as "the love that moves the sun and other stars" (Paradise, XXIII, 145).

This means that the stars, the planets, the entire universe, are not governed by a blind force, they do not obey the dynamics of bare matter alone. Therefore, it is not the cosmic elements that must be divinized, but on the contrary, in everything and above everything, there is a personal will, the Spirit of God, which in Christ is revealed as Love (cfr Enc. Spe salvi, 2).

If this is so, then men - as St. Paul writes to the Colossians - are not slaves of the 'cosmic elements' (cfr Col 2,8), but are free, capable of relating themselves to the creative freedom of God.

God is at the origin of everything, and governs everything, not as a cold, anonymous motor, but as Father, Spouse, Friend, Brother, as Logos, 'Word-Reason', who has united himself to our mortal flesh once and for all time and fully shared our condition, manifesting the super-abundant power of his grace.

There is thus in Christianity a particular cosmological conception which found its highest expression in medieval philosophy and theology. Even in our time, this concept shows interesting signs of a new flowering, thanks to the passion and faith of not a few scientists who, in the footsteps of Galileo, renounce neither reason nor faith but value both to the utmost in their reciprocal fecundity.

Christian thought compares the cosmos to a 'book' - even Galileo said so - considering it as the work of an Author who expresses himself through the 'symphony' of Creation. Within this symphony, one finds, at a certain point, that which one would call in musical language a 'solo' [assolo in Italian], a theme entrusted to one instrument or to one voice, which is so important that the significance of the entire work depends on it.

This 'assolo' is Jesus, to whom a regal sign corresponds: the appearance of a new star in the firmament. Jesus was compared by the early Christian authors to a new sun. According to present astrophysical knowledge, we should compare him to a star that is even more central, not only for our solar system, but for the entire known universe.

In this mysterious design, which is both physical and metaphysical, which led to the appearance of the human being as the crowning element of creation, Jesus came to the world: 'born of woman' (Gal 4,4), as St. Paul writes.

The Son of man assumes into himself heaven and earth, Creation and Creator, flesh and the Spirit. He is the center of the cosmos and of history, because in him are united without confusion the Author and his work.

The earthly Jesus was the peak of creation and history, but the risen Christ goes beyond: the passage, through death, to eternal life anticipates the 'recapitulation' of everything in Christ (cfr Eph 1,10).

Indeed, the Apostle writes, "all things were created through him and for him" (Col 1,16). And precisely through his resurrection from the dead, he became 'preeminent in all things" (Col, 1,18).

Jesus himself affirms this, appearing to his disciples after the resurrection: "All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me" (Mt 28,18).

This knowledge sustains the pilgrimage of the Church, Body of Christ, along the paths of history. There is no shadow, however dark, that can obscure the light of Christ.

That is why, for those who believe in Christ, hope never fades, even today, in the face of the great social and economic crises which afflict mankind; in the face of hatred and destructive violence which do not cease to cause bloodshed in many regions of the earth; in the face of the selfishness of man and his pretension of setting himself up as his own god, which can lead to dangerous distortion of the divine design of life and human dignity, of family and the harmony of creation.

Our efforts to free our life and the world from the poisons and contaminations that could destroy the present and the future have value and sense - as I noted in the aforementioned encyclical Spe salvi- even if we apparently are not succeeding or appear to be impotent against overwhelming hostile forces, because our great hope is "based upon God's promises that give us courage and direct our action in good times and bad" (No. 35).

The universal Lordship of Christ is exercised in a special way over the Church. "And he put all things beneath his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way" (Eph 1,22-23).

Epiphany is the manifestation of the Lord, and by reflection, it is the manifestation of the Church, because the Body cannot be separated from the Head.

The first Reading today, taken from the so-called Third Isaiah, offers us the precise perspective for understanding the reality of the Church as a mystery of reflected light: "Rise up in splendor!", the prophet says, addressing Jerusalem, "Your light has come, the glory of the Lord shines upon you" (Is 60,1).

The Church is mankind enlightened, 'baptized' in the glory of God, that is, in his love, in his beauty, in his lordship. The Church knows that mankind itself, with its limitations and its miseries, brings to relief the work of the Holy Spirit.

She cannot boast of anything except her Lord: the light does not come from her, the glory is not hers. But her very joy that no one can take away is this: to be the 'sign and instrument' of him who is 'lumen gentium', light of the people (cfr Conc. Vat. II, Cost. dogm. Lumen gentium, 1).

Dear friends, in this Pauline Year, the Feast of the Epiphany invites the Church, and in her, every community and every single faithful, to imitate - as the Apostle of the Gentiles did - the service which the star rendered to the Magi from the East, leading them to Jesus (cfr St. Leo the Great, Disc. 3 per l’Epifania, 5: PL 54, 244).

What was Paul's life, after his conversion, if not a 'race' to bring to the peoples [of the known world] the light of Christ, and vice versa, to lead the peoples to Christ?

The grace of God made Paul into a 'star' to lead people. His ministry is an example and a stimulus for the Church to rediscover herself as essentially missionary, and to renew her commitment to proclaim the Gospel, especially to those who do not know it yet.

But, looking at St. Paul, we cannot forget that all his preaching was nourished by Sacred Scriptures. Therefore, in the light of the recent General Assembly of the Bishops' Synod, it must be reaffirmed forcefully that the Church and individual Christians can be a light that leads to Christ only if they nourish themselves assiduously and intimately in the Word of God.

It is the Word which enlightens, purifies, converts - not us, certainly. We are nothing but servants of the Word of life. That is how Paul thought of himself and his ministry: a service to the Gospel. "All this I do for the sake of the gospel, so that I too may have a share in it" (1 Cor 9,23)

And so should the Church, every ecclesial community, every bishop and every priest, be able to say: I will do everything for the Gospel.

Dear brothers and sisters, pray for us, the pastors of the Church, so that, by assimilating daily the Word of God, we can transmit it faithfully to our brothers. We too, pray for you, the faithful, because every Christian is called to Baptism and Confirmation in order to announce Christ, the light of the world, in words and with the testimony of his life.

May the Virgin Mary, Star of Evangelization, help us to fulfill this mission together, and may St. Paul, Apostle of the Gentiles, intercede for us in heaven. Amen.

Not forgotten!

Despite all evidence to the contrary. . .I have not abandoned this blog!

I've been so preoccupied with other projects that I've been neglecting it. . .

Keep checking back for updates. . .coming soon: my seminar paper on John Polkinghorne's use of "truth" as a means of establishing complementary relationships among science/theology/philosophy.

Fr. Philip, OP