I will readily admit my ignorance to most things scientific. I believe I have a decent grasp on major theological themes but the convergence of the two is another story. Enter John Polkinghorne. Polkinghorne is a former particle physicist who helped advance the study of quarks and gluons (the things that make up atoms) he knows his science! However he is also an Anglican Priest, so he knows theology as well. He has written extensively on the frontier land of science and theology. I picked up a brief book entitled, Traffic in Truth: Exchanges between Science and Theology this weekend. It's in simple layman's terms but well worth a read.
In answering the question of how these two disciplines relate to one another, Polkinghorne states, "Science cannot tell theology how to answer theological questions, and theology cannot tell science how to answer scientific questions, but the two sets of answers will have to fit in with each other if they are really describing the one world of God's creation"(10).
In another section he discusses miracles and the resurrection of Jesus being the hinge of belief in miracles, even in God. Alone among the great religious leaders of world history, Jesus dies, not in honored old age surrounded by disciples resolved to continue the work of the master, but painfully and shamefully executed in mid-life, deserted by his followers. It seems like an ending in total failure. In fact, I believe that if that had been the end of the Jesus story, we would never have heard of him. He wrote no book and he would just have disappeared from history. But we all have heard of him, and so something must have happened to continue the story of Jesus beyond his death. I believe the Christian claim that that "something" was God's raising Jesus the first Easter Day (46-47).
Polkinghorne's writing is worthy of careful study as he integrates the two worlds of science and theology as he attempts to answer the questions of How? and Why? to the existence of life in this grand universe.
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