Oxbridge 2008--Second Week--Cambridge

How does one summarize a week of teaching by some of the best Christian scientists, philosophers, psychologists, ethicists, poets, musicians and cultural commentators in the English-speaking world? I would have to say, inadequately, at best. From the venerable mathematical physicist and Anglican clergyman, Sir John Polkinghorne to the young American presidential speech writer and journalist, Colleen Carroll Campbell, we learned the latest scholarship on the interaction of religion, science and western culture, and in particular, how that nexus contributes to our understanding of the human self made in God’s image. I suppose a good title for the week might be, “Darwin, Dignity and Divine Action.”

Here is a bulleted summary:

Both Science and religion are concerned with the search for truth

• Science studies the world as an object (as “it”; therefore by testing)
• Religion relates to reality as a person (as “thou”; therefore by trusting)
• Science asks “how” questions
• Religion asks “why” questions
• Together science and religion provide the stereoscopic vision necessary to see reality in the world

Darwin was actually a friend of theism because his theory emphasized the presence and constant involvement of God in his creation, in contrast to the deistic idea that God created and the went away

• The secularists and atheists seized on Darwin’s work to support their ideology
• Darwin was quite reticent to present his work and especially his later work, The Decent of Man.

Mystery of suffering and tragedy (Romans 5)

• God gives his creatures the freedom to be themselves, thus his power must be “veiled” in the world
• God created a world of potentiality so that his creatures would have the freedom to perform in the creating
  
  • Shadow side = not all projects or mutations are beneficial or successful
    
    • Mutation in germ cells + natural selection = good
    • Mutation in somatic cells = cancer = bad
    • This is the biological parallel of the relationship of free will and sin/evil
      
      • Real love is predicated on the ability of the beloved to freely accept or reject the lover
      • Sin and evil result from the beloved’s opting to reject the lover (choosing self over God)

Self-concept can only come in the context of other selves and God (community)

• There is no such thing as an autonomous self – the image of God is relationship
• We are too much a culture of “rights talk” which obscures the fact that we are most fully human when we yield our rights to others (turn from being a victim and become a responsible person)
• Victimhood is the result of holding on to anger in the form of hatred
• A responsible person is motivated by love
• Our dignity is predicated on our acknowledgment of the limits placed on our abilities and will (control)
  
  • Universal moral law
  • Recognition of human sinfulness

Regardless of origins, homo sapiens is the choice of God

• God made us in his image
• It was the nature he took in the Incarnation
• It is the nature in which he will return