The existence and role of divine action is one of the more interesting questions facing the field of science and theology today. Does God act in the physical world? If so, what does that mean for a scientific understsanding of the world, and further, what does this divine action look like from a scientific perspective? As is easy to imagine, this is a very complex question, both theologically and scientifically, because it involves the exact nature of providence, as well as the nature of our universe at its most fundamental as well as its most complex levels. The scientific side of the discussion looks at everything from quantum theory to consciousness. Here, we look at two very important pioneers in the field of Science and Religion today, both of whom are scientist-theologians. We will look at how their understandings of divne action, of the "causal joint" between God and the world, are similar and how they are different. This provides an interesting and important introduction into this fascinating area of study. It also introduces us to another aspect of the scientific side of this ongoing discussion involving the conveying of "information" to a system.
Arthur Peacocke is a major figure in the field of science and theology to whom we may look for a critical appraisal of Polkinghorne's view of quantum theory and theology. Peacocke is a scientist-theologian, with a scientific focus on physical biochemistry, who gave the 1993 Gifford Lectures. In his book, Theology for a Scientific Age, Peacocke deals with Polkinghorne on the question of openness and divine action, and it is to this discussion that we shall now turn.
Peacocke presents a picture of the world that includes "permanent gaps" in the human ability to predict events. He then poses the question, "Should we then propose a 'God of the unpredictable gaps'?" In answer he asserts that this solution to divine action would not include the fear that God would subsequently be pushed out of these gaps as scientific knowledge increases. Yet, is this where divine action should be located? It is in this location that Peacocke sees Polkinghorne's understanding of divine action.
Peacocke asserts that two conditions must be met for God to be seen to work in the unpredictabilities of the physical world. First, God's knowledge must be such that God can foreknow the unpredictable outcomes of these systems, so as to be able to fruitfully modify them. Secondly, God must then act within these unpredictabilities. Important to his understanding is that the first is a prerequisite of the second (an idea he takes issue with, and which we shall discuss below). God cannot be seen to work within the unpredicitabilities if they are not in some way predictable to Him.
Peacocke asserts that there is inconsistency in Polkinghorne's description of divine action. For Polkinghorne approvingly quotes John V. Taylor, "�If the hand of God is to be recognized in His continuous creation, it must be found not in isolated intrusions, not in any gaps, but in the very process itself." Polkinghorne is asserting the continuous and faithful nature of God's interaction with the world, which is working in the process of nature and not against it. Yet, Peacocke notes that Polkinghorne also sees the flexible processes as room for "divine manoeuvre." This leads Peacocke to assert,
"God would himself both have to be able to predict the outcome of his actions within the 'flexible process' and also actually to make some micro-event, subsequently amplified, to be other than it would have been if left to itself to follow its own natural course, without the involvement of divine action. This is the dilemma if God is conceived of as acting in some way within the processes at their micro-level, that is by the 'isolated intrusions' that John Taylor precludes."
Thus, Peacocke's critique is that in the end, Polkinghorne is appealing to "isolated intrusions" as the mode of divine action, by locating these intrusions within the unpredictable spaces of the natural world, making them fit within the process.
An important issue to raise here is the notion of God's activity as the conveying of information. Polkinghorne would assert that God's activity in the unpredictabilities is not through "isolated intrusion," or through divine manipulation of individual quantum events, but instead, that God acts through the conveying of information in a top-down manner. In Science and Providence, Polkinghorne asserts, "If God acts in the world through influencing the evolution of complex systems, he does not need to do so by the creative input of energy." This means taking chaos theory to its limiting case of zero energy, so that God is expressing holistic patterns without any communication of energy into the system. It is at this point, in the relationship between information and energy, that Polkinghorne and Peacocke are at odds. For Polkinghorne, God can communicate information to a system without the use of energy. For Peacocke, this is not the case.
In Science and Providence, Polkinghorne uses the example of a "bead at the top of a vertical smooth U-shaped wire. It can fall either way, according to how it is slightly disturbed, with no energy barrier to induce preference for one side or the other." Polkinghorne would assert that since there is no energy barrier to overcome, God is able to communicate information to the system so as to influence the drop to go one way and not the other. Peacocke wishes to agree with Polkinghorne that information may be the best way to conceive of God's input into physical systems, yet he disagrees on the relationship of energy to this input. He returns to the bead on the wire, and asserts that there must be at least one quantum of energy needed to cause the bead to go one way and not the other. "One can never escape entirely the conundrum of the 'causal joint'! Although the concept of information is clearly distinguishable from that of energy, in the real world we seem to know of no transfers of information that do not involve exchanges of matter/energy, however small relatively to the scale of the systems in question." Peacocke is led to conclude that openness in the physical world only would mean that God's activity is hidden. They would not change the nature of how we understand God to act.
For Peacocke, even though quantum theory and chaos theory posit openness, if we assert that God works in these openings, it would be to assert that this openness is in fact deterministic to God, and that God is interfering with the physical world, just in a way that we are not able to observe. Thus, Peacocke instead concludes that due to God's self-limited omniscience, and the way God chose to create the world, God does not foreknow the outcomes of these unpredictable or open events, and therefore, manipulation within these openings at the microscopic level is not how God is seen to work in the universe. Yet, Peacocke also points to this openness as important, in that they "show that the world we have is the kind that could be the matrix in which free agents could develop; and that in itself it has such a degree of open-endedness and flexibility that we are justified in attributing an exploratory character to God's continuing creative action." |
