Any impartial observer looking at today's world could be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that modern science and theology are incompatible. Although the actual percentage of modern scientists who are atheists is in dispute, I think most people would agree that the percentage is higher amongst this elite group than it is amongst the general population. In particular, the atheist v believer debate has polarised around the Darwinian theory of evolution v creationism.
Science and theology have not always been mutually antagonistic, however. There was a time when it was acceptable to combine the two in trying to gain an understanding of life, the universe and everything. (One example that comes to my mind is the Magi of Matthew's gospel who appear to have been astronomers who saw signs from God in the stars). Certainly the ancient Greeks, Egyptians and Babylonians saw no reason to keep separate their beliefs in divine beings from their understanding of physics. Four hundred years before Christ, Plato taught that the physical world was the result of a divine craftsman who formed the universe based on a rational and mathematical plan. It is from Plato that Science gained its fundamental principle that everything is governed by laws which can be discovered and understood by mankind.
As Christianity spread and took roots throughout most of the known world the study of nature was seen as the "handmaiden of theology", which is to say that gaining more understanding of nature merely brought one closer to God, the creator. By the thirteenth century, when an interest in biology and botany was on the increase, philosophers believed that increased scientific knowledge would complement theological understanding, help with interpretations to the Scriptures and cause non-believers to be converted. For many years to come, those who revealed the secrets of nature or came up with scientific philosophies or revelations believed that it was God who had revealed the truth to them, and saw no reason not to see theology as the highest form of science.
In the thirteenth century Thomas Aquinas argued that theology and the science philosophy of the ancient Greeks should be studied together, and that whilst they might sometimes come to different truths, they could not ultimately contradict each other since both human reason and divine revelation were gifts from God.
Interestingly the departure from the view that theology and science are complementary was in part thanks to Martin Luther who argued for a separation of the two worlds of faith (central to theology) and reason (central to science). Taken to the extreme this implies that your Christian beliefs should not impact on your beliefs about the physical world because the two are unrelated. Over the next five hundred years theologians concentrated more on faith and redemption and less on understanding God's relationship with nature, and scientists distanced themselves from matters of faith in order to maintain a purely rational view of the world.
Of course, as time went by there were some men who were able to unite scientific breakthroughs with faith in God. In the seventeenth century Isaac Newton published his ground breaking ideas on gravity. He believed he was a servant of God who had been chosen to reveal truths of nature to humankind. He argued that as the sustainer of the physical world God was a necessary presence in the world.
There were also devout theologians who saw God's work particularly clearly in nature, such as the Revd Gilbert White, father of ecology, who in the eighteenth century revolutionised our understanding of the interdependence of plants and wildlife. And there were ones who were equally passionate about matters science and theological such as Joseph Priestley, the dissenting clergyman who is credited with discovering oxygen.
However, the last five hundred years or so have seen a growing divide between science and theology to the extent that they are considered to either conflict with each other or else belong to such widely differing disciplines that they cannot be compared at all, let alone be compatible (NOMA).
And then into the breach (quietly) rode quantum physics; the study of sub-atomic particles. As a recent BBC article following the announcement that physicist Bernard d'Espagnat had won The Templeton Prize says:
The theory suggests to some serious scientists that reality, at its most basic, is perfectly compatible with what might be called a spiritual view of things.
Specifically d'Espagnat argues that quantum physics shows us that reality is ultimately "veiled" to us. In his book Veiled Reality d'Espagnat showed how significant experiments over the past decade have not backed up conventional scientific reasoning. The answers that quantum physics provide are forcing scientists to question our most basic concepts of space, object and causality.
What is behind the veil? D’Espagnat talks of a higher power:
I would accept calling it God or divine or Godhead but with the restriction that it cannot be conceptualised for the very reason that this ultimate reality is beyond any concept that we can construct.
Has it taken hundreds of years of scientific exploration to reveal what Job originally told us: that God is beyond our understanding?
In conclusion, Rabbi Peter Haas says it best in an article about one of the few modern scientist theologians, John Polkinghorne:
The internal debates within the theology-and-science guild will finally be valuable only if they contribute to a realization throughout our culture that we are on the brink of new paradigms for understanding reality, and that those paradigms require the efforts of both scientists and theologians.
Comments