Science and Creation: The Search for Understanding

“For far too long the science-religion debate has been dominated—even

clouded—by questions of biological evolution thrown up in the nineteenth

century, while the transformation of the physical world in the twentieth has

often seemed strangely irrelevant. This book epitomizes a welcome trend to

redress the balance. . . . [It] is to be warmly recommended to all who seek

to enrich the dialogue between science and theology.”—C. A. Russell, Science

& Christian Belief

John C. Polkinghorne, internationally renowned priest-scientist, addresses

fundamental questions about how scientific and theological worldviews

relate to each other in this, the second volume (originally published in

1988) of his trilogy, which also included Science and Providence and One World.

Dr. Polkinghorne illustrates how a scientifically minded person

approaches the task of theological inquiry, postulating that there exists a

close analogy between theory and experiment in science and belief and

understanding in theology. He offers a fresh perspective on such questions

as: Are we witnessing today a revival a natural theology—the search for God

through the exercise of reason and the study of nature? How do the insights

of modern physics into the interlacing of order and disorder relate to the

Christian doctrine of Creation? What is the relationship between mind

and matter?

Polkinghorne states that the “Remarkable insights that science affords

us into the intelligible workings of the world cry out for an explanation

more profound than that which it itself can provide. Religion, if it is to take

seriously its claim that the world is the creation of God, must be humble

enough to learn from science what that world is actually like.The dialogue

between them can only be mutually enriching.”