Content area
Full text
Faith, Science, and Understanding By John Polkinghorne New Haven, Yale University Press, 2000. 208 pp. $19.95.
All those who have been involved in thinking through the implications of scientific perspectives on the world for theological affirmations have had to take seriously into account the methodology and ideas of the well-known physicist-theologian John Polkinghorne in his many books published over the last decade and a half. In the present volume, he collects together a variety of papers and lectures that may not be widely accessible and that include some of his further thoughts. He groups them into three sections: the first, on a number of key issues in the interaction of science and theology; the second, on the thorny problem of special, divine, providential action in the light of the scientific account of the processes of the world; and the third, on his assessments of the contributions of some significant thinkers (Wolfhart Pannenberg, Thomas Torrance, and Paul Davies) to the dialogue between the sciences and theology.
The first two chapters address the general issue of the now much-- disputed role of theology in the modern university. Polkinghorne justifies this by an account-one persuasive at least to theists-of how theology can provide an overarching, comprehensive framework for the multiple university quests for intelligibility. One can doubt, however, not least because of his appeal to the role of revelation in theology, whether his exposition would be convincing to the many nontheists in...