Science and religion definitely mix for the physicist priest who won the $1 million Templeton Prize, as Patrick Comerford reports.
A leading physicist who resigned as Professor of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge University in 1979 to become a priest in the Church of England has won a $1 million (€1.134m) prize for his work on science and the relationship between science and religion.
The Rev Sir John Polkinghorne (71) is this year's recipient of the Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities. The prize - a revamped version of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion - is one of the most lucrative international awards in any field. Founded by Sir John Templeton, it is larger than the Nobel Prizes to underscore Templeton's belief that spiritual discoveries are more important than other human endeavours.
Mother Teresa of Calcutta won the first Templeton Prize in 1973, six years before receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. Other recipients have included the veteran evangelist, Rev Billy Graham; the prison evangelist, Charles Colson; and the Russian author, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Sir John will receive his prize from the Duke of Edinburgh at Buckingham Palace next month.
The John Templeton Foundation narrowed the focus for this year's prize to reflect the emphasis on science and religion in its other programmes: science was the speciality of the past three years' winners and of six earlier ones.
Speaking after this year's prize was announced in New York, Sir John Polkinghorne said science and religion both "believe that there is a truth to be sought and found, a truth whose attainment comes through the pursuit of well-motivated belief".
Science, he said, studies "the processes of the world, while religion is concerned with the deeper issue of whether there is a divine meaning and purpose behind what is going on". Both pursuits are valid, he believes.
Sir John is an expert in particle and mathematical physics. He surprised his colleagues in Cambridge when he resigned in 1979, at the age of 49, to begin theological studies for ordination in the Church of England ministry.
During five years in parish ministry in the dioceses of Ely, Bristol and Canterbury, he wrote his first book about science and faith, The Way the World Is. He returned to Cambridge in 1986 as dean and chaplain of Trinity Hall, and in 1989 became president of Queen's College. He was knighted in 1997.
The bestseller among his many books, The Quantum World (1984), treated science for the non-specialist. Yet he regards his most important work as The Faith of a Physicist (1994), which defends the rationality of belief in each article of the Nicene Creed.
Sir John Polkinghorne, a lifelong Christian believer, holds to a more orthodox personal theology than most of the previous Templeton winners specialising in science. His many books applying scientific habits to Christianity result in a modern and compelling new exploration of the faith.
In his newest book, The God of Hope and the End of the World, Sir John begins with a flat statement: "The universe as we know it today emerged from the fiery singularity of the Big Bang, some 15 billion years ago . . . In about five billion years time, all the core hydrogen will be exhausted and the Sun will then swell to become a red giant, burning any life surviving on Earth into a frazzle in the process".
However, his approach to the fundamentals of Christian orthodoxy using the skills of a rigorous scientific mind, demonstrate that the truth of science and the truths of Christian faith are not polar opposites but can present a broader understanding of God's purpose.
Of course, for most people, the ultimate issue is not what happens in five billion years, but their own death in the much nearer future. Science does not offer hope for life after death. "Theology bases its postmortem hope on a reality inaccessible to scientific investigation, the faithfulness of the living God," he writes.
'THEOLOGY claims that what is ultimate is not physical process but the will and purpose of God the Creator. God's purpose will no more be frustrated by cosmic death on a timescale of tens of billions of years than they are by human death on a timescale of tens of years."
Sir John asserts: "Human beings possess a significant intuition that in the end all shall be well." This hope has some scientific grounding. At bottom, however, our hope rests in our belief in a faithful Creator and upon the unique value of each human being, he says.
• Rev Patrick Comerford is an Irish Times journalist and an Anglican priest.
E-mail: theology@ireland.com