In his book Science, Theology, and Ethics, Ted Peters
has this to say about the church’s response to
postmodernism:
“So preoccupied have the church’s twentieth
century intellectuals been with making the gospel
relevant to the modern mind that they have
scarcely noticed that the modern mind itself is
now breaking down and giving way to something
new.”
This ‘something new’ is being investigated by
the New Physics, by philosophy, and — in the
absence of theological participation — by New
Age religion.
Ted Peters served as Principal Investigator at the
Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences in
the 1990s, on a grant from the US Institutes of
Health, to study theological and ethical questions
raised by the Human Genome initiative.
Peters’ struggle with the theology/science
dichotomy in his own field as a Christian systematic
theologian is evident at times in his text.
He writes that he discerns hostility on the part
of church leaders toward science — hidden behind
cloaks of prophetic self-righteousness — and he
asks whether the church wishes to greet the scientific community with open hands or closed
fists?
“What is primary is to treat scientists as they
see themselves, as researchers producing new
knowledge about physical reality. This knowledge
about the physical world then becomes data for the
theologian to assess, evaluate and incorporate into
our understanding of God’s creative and redeeming
work.”
‘Theology’ he defines as that dimension within
any religion where truth is rigorously and critically
pursued. Natural science is rigorously rational and
intellectual in character. Both science and religion
are dedicated to truth — although the overlapping
domains of truth may have separate centres.
Peters urges theologians to pull their weight
in future-oriented debate in order to contest the
ground colonised by evolutionary ideologies such
as the Intelligent Design School, and by gene
mythology.
Genetics and the neurosciences are already
challenging culture and theology in new ways.
And ‘exotheology’, he says, needs development to
provide a theological perspective on extraterrestrial
life. “One would expect… that theological leaders
would want to respond to the rise in space
consciousness by providing some intellectual
guidance”. (126)
Positions between science and religion vary
from pitched battle to uneasy truce. Peters places
himself in the ‘hypothetical consonance’ camp,
which works to identify common domains of
exploration. As an ethicist he is alongside the
theologians who (together with secular moralists)
are struggling to gain ethical control over
technological and economic forces that — if left
to themselves — would drive the human species
towards destruction.
Peters concludes that doctrines of creation are
not adequate for this struggle. Only a doctrine
of new creation — God’s redeeming work in a
created order that has somehow gone awry — will
provide the necessary clues to a new world order.
The iconoclastic transition from the Newtonian
world-view to the Einstein revolution could take
place only when science let nature speak for itself.
Equally, argues Peters, authentic theology attends to
its object — God.
Systematic theologians have taken the lead
in developing a working relationship with the
natural sciences. Peters himself belongs to the
group seeking common ground by attempting
to demonstrate overlap between scientific and
theological reasoning.
For instance, the second law of thermodynamics
seems to make nature historical. Time runs in only
one direction. Events are single and unrepeatable.
And nature is composed of events — not just
universal principles endlessly repeating themselves.
Big Bang cosmology has raised again the
reasonableness of talking about the Christian
doctrine of creation out of nothing (creatio ex
nihilo).
Peters points out that the senior generation
of today’s clergy and theologians went through
seminary when neo-orthodoxy was dominant.
The most recent generation was influenced by
“When postmodernity does draw the attention of the church...”
liberation theology. Both put a barrier between
the church and the laboratory. The first because
of its emphasis on faith (it perceived science to be
secular, neutral and objective), the latter because
of its emphasis on praxis — changing the world
instead of understanding it.
But because salvation must come from the future,
the world now needs a theology that addresses the
future.
The New Testament draws a picture in which the
age to come has intercepted the present age. Easter
brought the appearance of something radically
new. Sunday worship is therefore a participation
in a universal reality which is yet to be revealed.
What that future time will bring, and its impact on
us while we anticipate it, is the subject matter of
eschatology.
In the chapter ‘God as the Future of Cosmic
Creativity’ Peters affirms that human creativity is
tied to divine creativity.
“God does new things and we, made in God’s
image, are capable of transforming the old into the
new.”(79)
It is when science poses questions that go beyond
itself that theologians need to employ distinctly
theological resources to speak to those questions.
For instance, ‘vacuum energy’ provided the
hypothesis of a ubiquitous, exotic energy in
the universe. Theologians project significant
metaphysical implications from these findings.
Holistic thinking characterises the
interdisciplinary world of postmodernism. Its
cardinal principle is that the whole is greater
than the sum of the parts. This has the important
corollary that everything is related to everything
else.
“There is a soteriology1 implicit in holism…
if we think holistically we will not only reflect
reality better but we will also heal the lack of
wholeness.”(83)
Holism in its twentieth century form was
developed by the South African philosopher Jan
Smuts, who identified that ‘the pull of the future’ is
as essential to the life of an organism as ‘the push of
the past’. Peters’ thesis is that God creates from the
future, not the past: “God is continuing to bestow
upon us a future, even at this very moment.” (86)
Although the future is largely inscrutable,
revelation of the end can be discerned in the
ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Peters includes a discussion of the Bohm project,
which delves into the sub-quantum level of physics
and finds that answers are to be found as much
in philosophy as in physics. David Bohm raises
a scientific voice on behalf of the widespread
yearnings for wholeness that characterise the
emerging postmodern consciousness.
“When postmodernity finally does begin to
draw the belated attention of the church, we
can expect that one of the first things systematic
theologians will do is search for a philosophical
system that is both authentically postmodern and
potentially compatible with the Christian faith. At
that time Bohm’s scientific theory will quite likely
be considered as an aid to theology in a manner
parallel to the roles previously played by the
systems of Aristotle and Whitehead.” (116)
Dualism served to separate human consciousness
from the world process and resulted in a
fragmentation of the sense of reality. The new
physics has brought us to the brink of a new
postmaterialist era which is currently contested on scientific, philosophical and cosmological fronts.
On the basis of this post-modern consciousness,
ethical decisions which affect the future of the
world are being made.
Peters discusses major ethical questions of
genetics; abortion; patenting DNA; cloning; the
gene myth; therapy and the Human Genome.
•Is meddling with nature ‘playing God’? “(T)o presume that human technological intervention violates God’s rule is to worship Mother nature, not the creator…”2
•On cloning: — “The unique relation of a person to God is not determined by DNA. It is determined by God’s active grace, by God’s desire to love us as we are.” (169)
•On stem cell research: — “The genetic potential for making persons is virtually ubiquitous. In principle, it lies in every cell of every human body.” (187)
•On ‘designer children’ and a biological underclass: — “Already the population of Down’s Syndrome people in the USA is dropping, making this a form of eugenics by popular choice.” (196) “Jesus… spent so much of his time with the disabled… it seems that no disciple of Jesus could lightly acquiesce to the wholesale aborting of this group of people.”
19720
Peters writes that the American ethical psyche is
schizoid on the issue of choice. On the one hand
it is committed to the libertarian vision which
assumes that each of us is born free and that the
ethical or political task is to prevent criminals
or government from eclipsing this freedom. In
complementary contrast the egalitarian vision
assumes that we are imprisoned by cultural
prejudices, economic forces or political structures,
so that the ethical and political task of government
is to liberate us. (205)
“The colossal mistake we in America currently
make is that we are relegating values and morality
to the personal or private sector…. Goodness is
being reduced to personal preference.” (256)
“Ethics is the discipline which asks about what is
good or bad, right or wrong. It is not concerned
primarily with public acceptability.”
“To think ethically, then, is to begin with a vision
of the unity of the whole human race united over
time as well as space. It is to live as a world citizen.”
(265)
Peters uses the issue of hazardous waste (some
nuclear waste remains toxic for 250,000 years) to
focus on an understanding of the common good
which must necessarily include future generations.
Finally Peters examines the concept of
resurrection through the lens of philosophy, science
and theology. He makes the observation that most
of the peoples of the world do not accept the
scientific naturalist position that when once you
are dead you are simply dead. From Plato to the
New Age notion of universal mind, theories of an
afterlife are abundant.
“There is a deep cleavage between European
culture and Indian-based religion that often
goes unnoticed. What the Eastern heirs to the
Upanishads view as the equivalent to eternal life,
namely, the escape from ego existence into the
oblivion of the infinite, appears to those of us
in the West with our strong egos and essentially
materialistic disposition as eternal death.” (298)
He suggests ‘everlasting’ as a more westernuser-
friendly concept than ‘infinity’ — one that
includes our future.
Peters’ final point and central thesis is that
human destiny is inseparable from cosmic destiny.
“The key to understanding the resurrected body
is placing it within the broader horizon of God’s
promised new creation.” (315)
The dialogue model pursued by Peters is
searching for an actual advance in the human
understanding of reality. In Australia, Ted Peters
cites Paul Davies, Mark Worthing and Denis
Edwards as world leaders in the emerging field of
Theology and Natural Science.
The Ashgate Science and Religion Series, of which
this book is one, is aimed at academics and graduates,
but it is a pity to restrict such an energising text to
academia. If you can work out what “ontological”
and “epistemology” mean it is worth making the
effort to read this important book.
Science, Theology and Ethics by Ted Peters,
Ashgate Science and Religion Series, Ashgate
Publishing Ltd, 2003, pp 347. Rrp $49.50 ISBN
0754608255
Maggie Helass is Editor of Common Theology
1 Theory of salvation. 2 Hessell Boiuma, Christian Faith, and Medical Practice
(Grand Rapids: William B Eerdmans, 1989), 4-5