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Theology for a Scientific Age: Being and Becoming - Nature, Divine and Human
This second, expanded edition of Arthur Peacocke's seminal work now includes the author's Gifford Lectures, as well as a new part three, in which he deals roundly with the central corpus of Christian belief for a scientific age. "Distinctively theological commitments are being rethought in light of scientific apprehensions of nature."--Ted Peters, Zygon.
448 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
About the author
Arthur Peacocke
22 books6 followersBritish theologian and biochemist. Taught Biochemistry at the University of Birmingham and the University of Oxford. In 1971 he was ordained Anglican priest. Winner of the 1983 Lecomte du Noüy Prize and the 2001 Templeton Prize. In 1993 he was appointed Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.
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October 14, 2024
AN “EXPOSITION OF THE BASIC ESSENTIALS OF THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION” INFLUENCED BY THE SCIENCES
Arthur Robert Peacocke (1924 –2006) was an Anglican priest, theologian, and biochemist. [NOTE: page numbers below refer to the 438-page paperback edition.]
He wrote in the Preface to this 1990 book, “The understanding of the world which is evoked by the contemporary natural sciences is commonly taken in the West to be inimical to, or at least subversive of, religious belief in general and Christian belief in particular. I am convinced that this widely accepted view is mistaken and that the myth of the gulf between Christian theology and the natural sciences is debilitating to our culture while impoverishing the spiritual and personal life of the generations who have come to believe it. Study of this interaction… has impelled me to evolve a theology that has been refined… in the fires of the new perceptions of the world that the natural sciences have irreversibly established. Such a theology needs to be consonant with, though far from being derived from, scientific perspectives on the world.” (Pg. viii-ix)
He explains, “The need now is for theology to develop the application of its criteria of reasonableness in a community in which no authority would be automatic (for example, of the form ‘the Church says,’ ‘the Bible says,’ etc.) but would have to be authenticated intersubjectively to the point of consensus by inference to the best explanation. This needs to be combined with an openness to development as human knowledge expands and experience is further enriched.” (Pg. 17)
He observes, “new forms of matter arise only through the dissolution of the old; new life only through death of the old.” (Pg. 63) He continues, “it is chance operating within a lawlike framework that is the basis of the inherent creativity of the natural order, its ability to generate new forms, patterns and organizations of matter and energy. If all were governed by rigid law, a repetitive and uncreative order would prevail: if chance alone ruled, no forms, patterns or organizations would persist long enough for them to have any identity or real existence and the universe could never be a cosmos and susceptible to rational inquiry. It is the combination of the two which makes possible an ordered universe capable of developing within itself new modes of existence. The interplay of chance and law is creative.” (Pg. 65)
He suggests, “from a purely naturalistic standpoint, the emergence of pain and its compounding as suffering as consciousness increases seem to be inevitable aspects of any conceivable development process that would be characterized by a continuous increase in ability to process information coming from the environment… it must be emphasized that pain, suffering and death are present in biological evolution, as a necessary condition for survival of the individual and transition to new forms long before the appearance of human beings on the scene. So the presence of pain, suffering and death cannot be the result of any particular human actions, though undoubtedly human beings experience them with a heightened sensitivity and, more than any other creatures, inflict them on each other.” (Pg. 68-69)
Later, he adds, “We cannot avoid concluding that the pain and suffering consequent upon vulnerability are the inherently necessary price that has to be paid for consciousness to emerge with its associated cognitive powers… our inner awareness and sense of selfhood both enhance our ability to survive as individuals and as a species and, at one and the same time, snatch from us the fruits of a happiness that is available to a merely animal consciousness.” (Pg. 79-80)
He argues, “the postulate of the existence of God as the Ground of Being has become a respectable, though disputed, response to the mystery-of-existence question, ‘Why is there anything at all?’ … a quantum field that undergoes these fluctuations (the quantum ‘vacuum’) is not, strictly speaking, simply ‘nothing at all.’ ITS existence still calls for explanation of some kind---in the sense that it need not have existed at all with its particular properties, namely those represented by quantum theory. There is a need too to explain the existence of the mathematical laws by which the properties and transformations of this quantum field can be elucidated and made intelligible and coherent.” (Pg. 101)
He says, “the affirmation of the existence of God as the supremely rational Creator is strengthened and its truth rendered more, rather than less, probable by the increasing success of science in discovering the inherent, but in content ever-surprising, rationality of the cosmos.” (Pg. 104)
He notes, “God’s action as Creator is both past and present: it is continuous… In this respect, God has to be regarded as related to created time as the continuously creating Creator. Thus it is that the scientific perspective obliges us to take more seriously and concretely than hitherto in theology the notion of the immanence of God as Creator---that God is the Immanent Creator creating in and through the processes of the natural order.” (Pg. 105)
He states, “If we had only the sciences to go on, we would have no reason to predict or expect the arrival of personhood on the scene in homo sapiens, to suppose that the world could have persons in it at all. The subjectivity of our self-conscious personhood is quite unpredictable from even our present states of sophisticated science… once persons have arrived something quantitatively new has appeared. A real boundary is encountered by the natural sciences at the threshold of personality… It seems, therefore, that the universe has through its own inherent processes… generated a part of itself which, as persons, introduces a distinctively new kind of causality into itself, namely that of personal agency.” (Pg. 110-111)
He summarizes, “God has created a universe in which… certain situations have unpredictable outcomes and in which it is the existence of such situations that enables propensities towards complexity, consciousness and freedom to become actualized in the universe on the surface of the Earth, at least. God…has … in his acts of creation implicitly limited himself from knowing the particular outcomes of certain processes and also, as a consequence, his power over them.” (Pg. 126)
He acknowledges, “On this interpretation, then, the future does not yet exist in any sense, not even for God; God creates each instant of physical time with its open, as yet undetermined, outcomes, fecund with possibilities not yet actualized. If the future does not yet exist for God, any more than it does for us, there is no question of God seeing ahead what the future is going to be, even though he can still have purposes to implement in that forthcoming future. That does not preclude God in his omniscience… from knowing comprehensively, in a way not open to us, not only what these possibilities might be but also their relative probabilities of occurrence.” (Pg. 131)
He says of miracles, “But because God is GOD, does God allow himself occasionally to be free to set aside, as it were, the self-limitations of his relation to his creation to communicate with humanity in some unique way for a special purpose? Whether or not God has done so is a question of the evidence, which we recognize would have to be exceptionally strong historically to be convincing.” (Pg. 211)
Later, he adds, “In the case of the ‘nature miracles’ the probabilities are stacked against their historicity.” (Pg. 273) He states, “it is then impossible to see how Jesus could be said to share our human nature if he came into existence by a virginal conception of the kind traditionally proposed.” (Pg. 277) The resurrection, on the other hand, “was a genuine psychological experience… within the consciousness of these witnesses.” (Pg. 280)
He suggests “the need for a re-appraisal of biological death. This we now know did not enter human existence as a result of the action of anyone (or two) human individuals…. as in the literalistic interpretation of the Adam and Eve myth---but is actually the means whereby God has enabled new forms of life to be created through evolution, long before human beings appeared. Moreover… there was no ‘golden age’ of a state of human perfection from which the humanity known to paleontology, archaeology, and history could honestly be said to have ‘fallen.’ … Any account of this ‘work of Christ’ that is to be credible today must surely take these new perspectives on human origins and history into its system at a very fundamental level.” (Pg. 248)
He argues, “the religious experience of humanity is to be seen as constituted of a trial-and-error and conjecture-and-refutation process of interaction with that Reality, of encounter with God. For if that Reality exists, if there is a God, there could be nothing more important for humankind than to come into the most comprehending and comprehensive relation with him/her/it. For the establishing of such a relation would surely then be the basic condition for humanity to flourish both individually and as a species.” (Pg. 252)
He concludes, “It has been my hope that this approach might encourage genuine inquirers to take with utter seriousness at least the putative reasonableness of the claim that in Jesus the Christ there has been a revelation in incarnation of the God who is eternally the transcendent-immanent Creator whose fundamental nature is best described as that of Love. And… that Jesus the Christ is the consummation both of the creative work of God in evolution and of the revelation of God made to the people of Israel; that in and through him … God can also effect in them a re-orientation of their self-understanding and a transformation of their relation to God; and that thereby they can begin to become what God intended them to be and become, namely, one with God, in harmony with God’s own self and purposes in the world.” (Pg. 336)
Theologically conservative Christians may be dismayed by a number of Peacocke’s positions; but more theologically “progressive” persons may find a great deal to ponder and appreciate in his books.
Arthur Robert Peacocke (1924 –2006) was an Anglican priest, theologian, and biochemist. [NOTE: page numbers below refer to the 438-page paperback edition.]
He wrote in the Preface to this 1990 book, “The understanding of the world which is evoked by the contemporary natural sciences is commonly taken in the West to be inimical to, or at least subversive of, religious belief in general and Christian belief in particular. I am convinced that this widely accepted view is mistaken and that the myth of the gulf between Christian theology and the natural sciences is debilitating to our culture while impoverishing the spiritual and personal life of the generations who have come to believe it. Study of this interaction… has impelled me to evolve a theology that has been refined… in the fires of the new perceptions of the world that the natural sciences have irreversibly established. Such a theology needs to be consonant with, though far from being derived from, scientific perspectives on the world.” (Pg. viii-ix)
He explains, “The need now is for theology to develop the application of its criteria of reasonableness in a community in which no authority would be automatic (for example, of the form ‘the Church says,’ ‘the Bible says,’ etc.) but would have to be authenticated intersubjectively to the point of consensus by inference to the best explanation. This needs to be combined with an openness to development as human knowledge expands and experience is further enriched.” (Pg. 17)
He observes, “new forms of matter arise only through the dissolution of the old; new life only through death of the old.” (Pg. 63) He continues, “it is chance operating within a lawlike framework that is the basis of the inherent creativity of the natural order, its ability to generate new forms, patterns and organizations of matter and energy. If all were governed by rigid law, a repetitive and uncreative order would prevail: if chance alone ruled, no forms, patterns or organizations would persist long enough for them to have any identity or real existence and the universe could never be a cosmos and susceptible to rational inquiry. It is the combination of the two which makes possible an ordered universe capable of developing within itself new modes of existence. The interplay of chance and law is creative.” (Pg. 65)
He suggests, “from a purely naturalistic standpoint, the emergence of pain and its compounding as suffering as consciousness increases seem to be inevitable aspects of any conceivable development process that would be characterized by a continuous increase in ability to process information coming from the environment… it must be emphasized that pain, suffering and death are present in biological evolution, as a necessary condition for survival of the individual and transition to new forms long before the appearance of human beings on the scene. So the presence of pain, suffering and death cannot be the result of any particular human actions, though undoubtedly human beings experience them with a heightened sensitivity and, more than any other creatures, inflict them on each other.” (Pg. 68-69)
Later, he adds, “We cannot avoid concluding that the pain and suffering consequent upon vulnerability are the inherently necessary price that has to be paid for consciousness to emerge with its associated cognitive powers… our inner awareness and sense of selfhood both enhance our ability to survive as individuals and as a species and, at one and the same time, snatch from us the fruits of a happiness that is available to a merely animal consciousness.” (Pg. 79-80)
He argues, “the postulate of the existence of God as the Ground of Being has become a respectable, though disputed, response to the mystery-of-existence question, ‘Why is there anything at all?’ … a quantum field that undergoes these fluctuations (the quantum ‘vacuum’) is not, strictly speaking, simply ‘nothing at all.’ ITS existence still calls for explanation of some kind---in the sense that it need not have existed at all with its particular properties, namely those represented by quantum theory. There is a need too to explain the existence of the mathematical laws by which the properties and transformations of this quantum field can be elucidated and made intelligible and coherent.” (Pg. 101)
He says, “the affirmation of the existence of God as the supremely rational Creator is strengthened and its truth rendered more, rather than less, probable by the increasing success of science in discovering the inherent, but in content ever-surprising, rationality of the cosmos.” (Pg. 104)
He notes, “God’s action as Creator is both past and present: it is continuous… In this respect, God has to be regarded as related to created time as the continuously creating Creator. Thus it is that the scientific perspective obliges us to take more seriously and concretely than hitherto in theology the notion of the immanence of God as Creator---that God is the Immanent Creator creating in and through the processes of the natural order.” (Pg. 105)
He states, “If we had only the sciences to go on, we would have no reason to predict or expect the arrival of personhood on the scene in homo sapiens, to suppose that the world could have persons in it at all. The subjectivity of our self-conscious personhood is quite unpredictable from even our present states of sophisticated science… once persons have arrived something quantitatively new has appeared. A real boundary is encountered by the natural sciences at the threshold of personality… It seems, therefore, that the universe has through its own inherent processes… generated a part of itself which, as persons, introduces a distinctively new kind of causality into itself, namely that of personal agency.” (Pg. 110-111)
He summarizes, “God has created a universe in which… certain situations have unpredictable outcomes and in which it is the existence of such situations that enables propensities towards complexity, consciousness and freedom to become actualized in the universe on the surface of the Earth, at least. God…has … in his acts of creation implicitly limited himself from knowing the particular outcomes of certain processes and also, as a consequence, his power over them.” (Pg. 126)
He acknowledges, “On this interpretation, then, the future does not yet exist in any sense, not even for God; God creates each instant of physical time with its open, as yet undetermined, outcomes, fecund with possibilities not yet actualized. If the future does not yet exist for God, any more than it does for us, there is no question of God seeing ahead what the future is going to be, even though he can still have purposes to implement in that forthcoming future. That does not preclude God in his omniscience… from knowing comprehensively, in a way not open to us, not only what these possibilities might be but also their relative probabilities of occurrence.” (Pg. 131)
He says of miracles, “But because God is GOD, does God allow himself occasionally to be free to set aside, as it were, the self-limitations of his relation to his creation to communicate with humanity in some unique way for a special purpose? Whether or not God has done so is a question of the evidence, which we recognize would have to be exceptionally strong historically to be convincing.” (Pg. 211)
Later, he adds, “In the case of the ‘nature miracles’ the probabilities are stacked against their historicity.” (Pg. 273) He states, “it is then impossible to see how Jesus could be said to share our human nature if he came into existence by a virginal conception of the kind traditionally proposed.” (Pg. 277) The resurrection, on the other hand, “was a genuine psychological experience… within the consciousness of these witnesses.” (Pg. 280)
He suggests “the need for a re-appraisal of biological death. This we now know did not enter human existence as a result of the action of anyone (or two) human individuals…. as in the literalistic interpretation of the Adam and Eve myth---but is actually the means whereby God has enabled new forms of life to be created through evolution, long before human beings appeared. Moreover… there was no ‘golden age’ of a state of human perfection from which the humanity known to paleontology, archaeology, and history could honestly be said to have ‘fallen.’ … Any account of this ‘work of Christ’ that is to be credible today must surely take these new perspectives on human origins and history into its system at a very fundamental level.” (Pg. 248)
He argues, “the religious experience of humanity is to be seen as constituted of a trial-and-error and conjecture-and-refutation process of interaction with that Reality, of encounter with God. For if that Reality exists, if there is a God, there could be nothing more important for humankind than to come into the most comprehending and comprehensive relation with him/her/it. For the establishing of such a relation would surely then be the basic condition for humanity to flourish both individually and as a species.” (Pg. 252)
He concludes, “It has been my hope that this approach might encourage genuine inquirers to take with utter seriousness at least the putative reasonableness of the claim that in Jesus the Christ there has been a revelation in incarnation of the God who is eternally the transcendent-immanent Creator whose fundamental nature is best described as that of Love. And… that Jesus the Christ is the consummation both of the creative work of God in evolution and of the revelation of God made to the people of Israel; that in and through him … God can also effect in them a re-orientation of their self-understanding and a transformation of their relation to God; and that thereby they can begin to become what God intended them to be and become, namely, one with God, in harmony with God’s own self and purposes in the world.” (Pg. 336)
Theologically conservative Christians may be dismayed by a number of Peacocke’s positions; but more theologically “progressive” persons may find a great deal to ponder and appreciate in his books.
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December 19, 2011Indeed, Jesus was born of viginal conception but never aan authentic coupled conceived baby. Hesus represents a transcendental imperviously humanity from incarnation of God's sidedness of humanity. he owns God's humanity and was an incarnation from God's will. His consciousness is of both godly and of humane. Both contextual humanity in his own bodily enity are to consummate up a holiness called Jesus.
There was a good problem in the book about Jesus's born to be a child of non sexual conceived processing. So our limited knowledge is telling us it wasimpossible but impossible situation sometimes, will be a brand-new predicatment of getting new knowledge. To get new knowledge, one should have exprienced much doubious situation. Sometimes, impossibility can lead to a new predicament of new era in humane knowledge. So this involves our being conceived as a bodily entity to enter he world as humanity. Thus, humanity is consisted of both spiritual sidedness and bodily entity to consummate a complete humane existence to be thrown into the world and to be existed as an mundane, then. So one is considered as a miracle to be human because we were born of divine knowledge such as mysterious levals from the astral plane above.
The astral planes above are not obvious infron of our sight but are existed inside our spirituality and bofily antities. So the flactuation is surging inside us all as revealled by our sightedness to be something we consider as phenomenon.
Paradoxically, we don't know how we are living on what kind of astral realm. However, the astral realm we are living in is confining us all with a safe state but what confines what? Mirroring tells us that the realm acts on us and in reverse, we also play a role in changing the fate of the realm through process of changing the route of history. Only throug History we will be able to reveal our existence as humanity ever had a finitude on earth!
There was a good problem in the book about Jesus's born to be a child of non sexual conceived processing. So our limited knowledge is telling us it wasimpossible but impossible situation sometimes, will be a brand-new predicatment of getting new knowledge. To get new knowledge, one should have exprienced much doubious situation. Sometimes, impossibility can lead to a new predicament of new era in humane knowledge. So this involves our being conceived as a bodily entity to enter he world as humanity. Thus, humanity is consisted of both spiritual sidedness and bodily entity to consummate a complete humane existence to be thrown into the world and to be existed as an mundane, then. So one is considered as a miracle to be human because we were born of divine knowledge such as mysterious levals from the astral plane above.
The astral planes above are not obvious infron of our sight but are existed inside our spirituality and bofily antities. So the flactuation is surging inside us all as revealled by our sightedness to be something we consider as phenomenon.
Paradoxically, we don't know how we are living on what kind of astral realm. However, the astral realm we are living in is confining us all with a safe state but what confines what? Mirroring tells us that the realm acts on us and in reverse, we also play a role in changing the fate of the realm through process of changing the route of history. Only throug History we will be able to reveal our existence as humanity ever had a finitude on earth!
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