John Polkinghorne

The doctrine of creation of the kind that the Abrahamic faiths profess is such that it encourages the expectation that there will be a deep order in the world, expressive of the Mind and Purpose of that world__ Creator. It also asserts that the character of this order has been freely chosen by God, since it was not determined beforehand by some kind of pre-existing blueprint (as, for example, Platonic thinking had supposed to be the case). As a consequence, the nature of cosmic order cannot be discovered just by taking thought, as if humans could themselves explore a noetic realm of rational constraint to whichthe Creator had had to submit, but the pattern of the world has to be discerned through the observations and experiments that are necessary in order to determine what form the divine choice has actually taken. What is needed, therefore, for successful science is the union of the mathematical expression of order with the empirical investigation of the actual properties of nature, a methodological synthesis of a kind that was pioneered with great skill and fruitfulness by Galileo.

As a consequence, scientists who are carefully reflectiveabout their activity do not instinctively ask the question __s itreasonable?_ as if they were confident beforehand what shaperationality had to take. We have noted how __nreasonable_, inclassical Newtonian terms, the nature of light turned out tobe. Instead, for the scientist the proper phrasing of the truth-seeking question takes the form, __hat makes you think thatmight be the case?

Inthe scientific community, the adjective __heological_ is some-times used pejoratively to refer to a vague or ill-formulatedbelief. I believe this usage to be very far from the truth. It sad-dens me that some of my colleagues remain unaware of thetruth-seeking intent and rational scrupulosity that character-ise theological discourse at its best.

If we are seeking to serve the God of truth then we should really welcome truth from whatever source it comes. We shouldn__ fear the truth. Some of it will be from science, obviously, but by no means all of it. It will sometimes by perplexing, how this bit of truth relates to that bit of truth; we know that within science itself often enough and we find it outside of science as well. The crucial thing is to be honest.

The widespread success of science is too significantan issue to be treated as if it were a happy accident that we arefree to enjoy without enquiring more deeply into why this isthe case. Critical realist achievements of this kind cannot be amatter of logical generality, something that one would expectto be attainable in all possible worlds. Rather, they are an ex-perientially confirmed aspect of the particularity of the worldin which we live and of the kind of beings that we are. Achiev-ing scientific success is a specific ability possessed by human-kind, exercised in the kind of universe that we inhabit. I believethat a full understanding of this remarkable human capacityfor scientific discovery ultimately requires the insight that ourpower in this respect is the gift of the universe__ Creator who,in that ancient and powerful phrase, has made humanity in theimage of God (Genesis 1:26_27).

I'm a very passionate believer in the unity of knowledge. There is one world of reality - one world of our experience that we're seeking to describe.

Chance doesn't mean meaningless randomness, but historical contingency. This happens rather than that, and that's the way that novelty, new things, come about.

Science cannot tell theology how to construct a doctrine of creation, but you can't construct a doctrine of creation without taking account of the age of the universe and the evolutionary character of cosmic history.

I also think we need to maintain distinctions - the doctrine of creation is different from a scientific cosmology, and we should resist the temptation, which sometimes scientists give in to, to try to assimilate the concepts of theology to the concepts of science.

If the experience of science teaches anything, it's that the world is very strange and surprising. The many revolutions in science have certainly shown that.

Of course, Einstein was a very great scientist indeed, and I have enormous respect for him, and great admiration for the discoveries he made. But he was very committed to a view of the objectivity of the physical world.

Claims for theoccurrence of miraculous events will have to be evaluated ona case-by-case basis. There can be no general theory to coverthe character of unique events, but the refusal to contemplatethe possibility of revelatory disclosures of an unprecedentedkind would be an unacceptable limitation, imposed arbitrarilyon the horizons of religious thought.