Enriching our Vision of Reality

Theology And The Natural Sciences In Dialogue

Alister McGrath

• Publisher: SPCK Publishing
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780281075447
• eBook ISBN: 9780281075454
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

In this exceptional volume, Alister McGrath writes for scientists with an interest in theology, and Christians and theologians who are aware of the importance of the natural sciences. A scene-setting chapter explores the importance of the human quest for intelligibility. The focus then moves to three leading figures who have stimulated discussion about the relationship between science and theology[LC1] in recent years: Charles Coulson, an Oxford professor of theoretical chemistry who was also a prominent Methodist lay preacher; Thomas F. Torrance, perhaps the finest British theologian of the twentieth century; and John Polkinghorne, a theoretical physicist, theologian and Anglican priest.

The latter part of the book features six parallel 'conversations' between science and theology, which lay the groundwork for the kind of enriched vision of reality the author hopes to encourage. Here, we are inspired to enjoy individual aspects of nature while seeking to interpret them in the light of deeper revelations about our gloriously strange universe.

'Enriching our Vision of Reality is elegant, erudite, and animated by a constant enthusiasm for its subject. There is everything here – science, theology, philosophy, biography, even some poetry – all enlisted to help us to see the world as it is, both more clearly and with greater delight.'
The Revd Dr Andrew Davison, Starbridge Lecturer in Theology and Natural Sciences, University of Cambridge, and Fellow in Theology at Corpus Christi College

Part 1

SETTING THE SCENE

1

Intelligibility and coherence: the Christian vision of reality

The topic of this book is the relation of the natural sciences and Christian theology. It is a subject of no small importance, given the high profiles of both science and religion in contemporary cultural debates and discussions, and the growing realization that religion is not disappearing from public life, despite the confident prophecies of the New Atheism. Yet a mere pragmatic recognition of the importance of these issues is not enough. Any discussion of the relation of the natural sciences and Christian theology must be located within a framework of understanding that helps us position them both. We need a big picture of reality that does more than simply create space for science and theology but allows the nature, limits and benefits of their interaction to be grasped.

Theories and big pictures: some initial reflections

There is growing interest across intellectual disciplines in retrieving this notion of a big picture – a rich way of seeing things that aims to frame and hold together the elements of our experience and observation, bringing a sense of stability and coherence to life and thought.1 The New Testament speaks of the ‘mind of Christ’ (1 Corinthians 2.16; Philippians 2.5), a pattern of communal thinking about life and the world that is disclosed in Jesus Christ as God incarnate.2 From the outset, Christian theologians realized the potential of their faith to generate and sustain a greater vision of life. C. S. Lewis famously declared that his Christian faith allowed him to make sense of every other aspect of his rational and imaginative life – including the natural sciences. This is beautifully expressed in his signature affirmation (now inscribed on his memorial stone in Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey): ‘I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it, I see everything else.’3

Before we begin to engage the question of theories and big pictures of reality in more detail it will be helpful to reflect briefly on the more general issue of their importance. What use are they? What advantages do they confer? And how can they go wrong? The important point to appreciate here is that it is deeply human to search for a big picture or a larger narrative of life, including our place in the universe. Whether this is right or wrong, good or bad, it is deeply embedded within our nature as human beings. Many of those who deny having any theories or beliefs about life – such as some representatives of the New Atheism4 – actually turn out to have implicit theoretical commitments or assumed beliefs, which are simply treated as self-evidently true and hence requiring no justification of any kind. One of the motivations for the anger directed by some New Atheists against their many critics is that the process of criticism has exposed the vulnerability of their core beliefs, which they unwisely treated as facts.

There are two fundamental benefits of a big picture, which we shall explore throughout this book, especially in this chapter. First, it gives us a way of seeing the world that brings it into focus and allows it to be seen more clearly. Second, a good theory shows how things are interconnected, allowing us to place events and observations within a web of meaning. A good big picture thus discloses – but does not invent – both the intelligibility and coherence of reality.

Yet there are potential dangers to such an approach, of which three are of particular importance. The first is that a theory can easily make us blind to certain things, which we fail to see because we believe there is nothing to be seen. The New Atheism is probably the most obvious example of this problem. Its dogmatic insistence that there is no God, and its rhetorical demonization of those who believe in God as deluded fools or dangerous lunatics, generates a fundamental disinclination within the movement to give serious consideration to the idea that the world might point towards God or that it might make more sense from a theistic viewpoint.

The second is that we become so fixated on the intellectual pattern that we find in theories that we lose sight of the greater wonder and beauty of the universe itself that these theories represent or describe. The Christian novelist Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957), for example, from time to time found herself wondering whether she had fallen in love with the intellectual pattern she found in Christian theology, which led her to lose sight of the central figure of her faith – Jesus Christ (see p. 111). When rightly understood, theory is not an end in itself; it is a means of enriching our delight and grasp of what it represents. When wrongly understood, it leads to an overthinking of things, in which we end up focusing on provisional and partial representations of reality rather than an untamed and undiluted reality itself.

Yet there is a third cause for concern here: the risk of excessively ambitious or dogmatic theory-driven readings of nature. We might think, for example, of Arthur Koestler (1905–83), whose commitment to a Marxist-Leninist ideology in the 1930s led him to see the world in a simplistic and highly politicized way. In his autobiography, Koestler describes his own gradual movement away from his youthful ideological certainties about the world to a reluctant recognition of its obscurity and resistance to definitive interpretation.

In my youth, I regarded the universe as an open book, printed in the language of physical equations and social determinants, whereas it now appears to me as a text written in invisible ink, of which, in our rare moments of grace, we are able to decipher a small fragment.5

Koestler’s account of his disenchantment with the theoretical certainties of Marxism-Leninism makes fascinating reading. In the end, however, his problem was not that he recognized the need for a theory to understand the world but his dawning realization that he had chosen the wrong theory. We all need some sort of theoretical framework – however modest, provisional and correctable – for making sense of nature, history and life. Whether consciously or unconsciously, we all see life through theoretical spectacles that shape what we see and – perhaps more importantly – what we fail to see. That’s why it matters to get the theory right.

Throughout this book I shall be defending the view that the Christian big picture of reality is defensible, useful and trustworthy – above all, in making sense of the successes and limits of the natural sciences, and offering an enriched vision of reality that goes beyond that offered by the rigorous application of the scientific method. Along the way we shall deal with a series of important issues and concerns, including those noted above.

So where should we begin? Perhaps the most obvious starting point is to celebrate the natural sciences and reflect on their deeper implications – including their limits.

Science is great – but we need more than this

Science is one of humanity’s most significant and most deeply satisfying achievements. I fell in love with it when I was a teenager and have never lost a sense of delight in the scientific study of nature. Yet though I loved science as a young man, I had a sense that it wasn’t complete. Science helped me to understand how things worked. But what did they mean? Science gave me a neat answer to the question of how I came to be in this world. Yet it seemed unable to answer a deeper question. Why was I here? What was the point of life?

The question is whether the natural sciences can help us engage with these deeper issues, which Karl Popper famously framed in terms of ‘ultimate questions’.6 For Popper, these were existentially significant questions, rooted in the depths of our being, yet which transcended the capacity of the natural sciences to answer. The physicist John Wheeler (1911–2008) argued that our scientific observations at best yield only an ‘island of knowledge’ in an ocean of uncertainty.7 There are limits to science’s capacity to answer fundamental philosophical questions of value and meaning, partly reflecting limitations on the part of the tools we use to explore reality and partly the nature of physical reality itself.

So why don’t we just limit ourselves to the relative security of this small island of knowledge? There are two obvious answers. First, we sense that there is more that can be known and are restless until we find it. We find strange objects washed up on the shoreline of our island, possibly pointing to mysterious unknown worlds beyond its coast. And perhaps more significantly, the kind of knowledge to be had on this island is existentially inadequate. It doesn’t answer the really big questions of life. That’s why the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset (1883–1955) argued that we need more than the partial account of reality that science offers.

Scientific truth is characterized by its precision and the certainty of its predictions. But science achieves these admirable qualities at the cost of remaining on the level of secondary concerns, leaving ultimate and decisive questions untouched.8

Ortega suggests that human beings need an ‘integral idea of the universe’ that possesses existential depth and not merely cognitive functionality. Science has a wonderful capacity to explain how the world works, while nevertheless failing to satisfy the deeper longings and questions of humanity. For Ortega, the great intellectual virtue of science is that it knows its limits, which are determined by its research methods. At its best, science will only answer questions it knows it can answer on the basis of the evidence and thus avoids the kind of inflationary speculation to which theologians and philosophers are prone.

Yet there is a problem here: human beings want to press beyond the point at which science must stop, if it is to remain faithful to its methodological commitments. Ortega concedes that there is no arc of evidence that securely and unequivocally links the empirical world and some transcendent reality. Yet he invites us to imagine an arch linking two stone pillars. Part of the arch has collapsed. Yet in our mind’s eye we can still see the trace of its original arc and make the now imaginative, but once real, connection between the two pillars. So it is, he suggests, with the worlds of experience and meaning, science and faith. We can see that there is a link and follow it through in an act of imaginative embrace, rather than logical analysis.

For Ortega, ‘we are given no escape from ultimate questions. In one way or another, they are in us, whether we like it or not. Scientific truth is exact but it is incomplete.’9 We feel impelled to ask deeper questions about meaning and try to find a big picture that makes sense of life as a whole.10 To be true to ourselves, we have to follow these roads and see where they lead.

Scientists are human beings and thus are naturally prone to ask these fundamental questions, just like everyone else. So what happens if science cannot answer them? Science is very good at taking things to pieces. Yet analysis is not enough; we need to weave together the various elements of our world in order to perceive the big picture. That’s why we need an enriched vision of reality that consolidates and expands what science can tell us about reality. Science can fill in part of the big picture of the universe; but it leaves empty significant expanses of this canvas. Yet we feel that we need more than this partial picture if we are to lead meaningful lives.

The great physicist Albert Einstein (1879–1955) explored this point in a landmark lecture given at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1939 on the general theme of ‘science and religion’. It is a classic piece from one of the world’s landmark thinkers and merits close reading. Noting that, until quite recently, it was widely held that ‘there was an irreconcilable conflict between knowledge and belief’, Einstein pointed out how this view needed to be challenged. Conceding that ‘convictions can best be supported with experience and clear thinking’, Einstein then made a remarkably perceptive comment: ‘those convictions which are necessary and determinant for our conduct and judgments cannot be found solely along this solid scientific way.’11

Einstein insisted that the natural sciences were outstanding in their sphere of competence. Yet he cautioned that ‘the scientific method can tea...

Table of contents

• CoverImage
• About the author
• Title Page
• Imprint
• Contents
• Preface
• Part 1: Setting the scene
• Part 2: Science and theology: three practitioners
• Part 3: Theology and science: Some parallel conversations
• Conclusion
• Notes
• For further reading
• Charity