Washington National Cathedral

The Sunday Forum: Critical Issues in the Light of Faith

The Very Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd III, host

The Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne, a theoretical physicist and former canon theologian of Liverpool Cathedral, speaks with Cathedral Dean Samuel T. Lloyd III. “We’ve had scientists and theologians here at the Sunday Forum in the past, but this is the first time we’ve had a scientist who also happens to be a knight,” Lloyd says. Polkinghorne is a Knight Commander of the British Empire.

Polkinghorne has intertwined science and religious faith in his life. “I wanted to be a Christian and a scientist every day of the week,” he says, “not a Christian on Sundays and a scientist on Mondays to Saturdays.”

This scientist/clergyman perceives a type of faith at work in the scientific mind. “Though we believe in quarks, nobody has ever seen one on its own. They are unseen realities. We believe in them because they make sense of the things that we can see,” he comments. “So I think that a particle physicist believes in unseen realities in a rather similar way which I as a Christian believer believe in the unseen reality of God: because that makes sense of a more directly perceptible forms of the spiritual experience.”

Assertions about the unseen pop up everywhere, not just in religion. Scientists must be open to new and unexpected discoveries, and even to ideas that sound preposterous, if they are ever to learn how the world works.

The conversation turns to the question of evolution, which remains more controversial in the United States than in Polkinghorne’s native Britain. “I’m a creationist. I believe that the world is God’s creation. But I’m not a creationist in this curious, literal sense” that the world was created swiftly and immutably, Polkinghorne says.

In Darwin’s day, his work did not divide scientists versus the faithful, Polkinghorne points out. Some scientists decried Darwin’s ideas and some religious people accepted them. Polkinghorne describes genetic mutation, which brings about evolution, as the “ragged edge” and “shadow side” of a world that God designed to evolve, to make itself, and change.

Through his views that reconcile faith and science, creation and evolution, Polkinghorne has developed some insight into the problem of evil and suffering. The world, he says, has “nice things” and “nasty things,” as a “package deal.” Polkinghorne finds theological comfort in a mutable creation: the God of love is like a parent who raises and trains his child, eventually trusting that child to go out into the world. “The gift of love is the gift of independence, and the gift of independence is always risky,” he summarizes.

The Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne, KBE, FRS, is a renowned British physicist, an Anglican priest, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and winner of the 2002 Templeton Prize for pioneering research at the intersection of science and religion. For many years Professor of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge University in England, the Rev. Dr. Polkinghorne is the author of more than 32 books, including The Faith of a Physicist; Faith, Science, and Understanding and Theology in the Context of Science.

About The Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne, KBE, FRS

The Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne,KBE, FRS, is a renowned British physicist, an Anglican priest, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and winner of the 2002 Templeton Prize for pioneering research at the intersection of science and religion. For many years Professor of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge University in England, the Rev. Dr. Polkinghorne is the author of more than 32 books, including The Faith of a Physicist; Faith, Science, and Understanding and Theology in the Context of Science.