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An exploratory spiral

Jeremy Craddock on a life lived between science and theology

From Physicist to Priest: An autobiography
John Polkinghorne

SPCK £15.99 (978-0-281-05915-7)
Church Times Bookshop £14.40

“I LOVE WRITING. It is one of my favourite occupations,” says John Polkinghorne in his 30th book. “You have to decide what you actually believe and want to say.” He writes in “an exploratory spiral”, revisiting the subject in order to say something new, or because there is another way of saying it; and he sometimes publishes more than one book in a single year.

He begins, of course, with his childhood. His elder brother died during the Second World War while on duty in the RAF. When war ended, the young John had the good fortune to go to a good school that prepared him for Cambridge, where he studied under the great physicist, Paul Dirac. He worked with Murray Gell-Mann and Richard Feynman in the US, and eventually taught Martin Rees, who is now Astronomer Royal and President of the Royal Society. All three are fascinating writers themselves. Polkinghorne describes Gell-Mann and Feynman in Beyond Science (1996).

Polkinghorne was not the first to work in science and theology. Russell Stannard had published a year before he did; Tom Torrance and Ian Barbour earlier still. But Polkinghorne, Barbour, and Arthur Peacocke were the trio of scientist-theologians who set the pattern. Inspired by them, posts now exist in science and theology in many universities.

Polkinghorne clearly enjoyed his time as Professor of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge, and his award of FRS. His speciality was the idea that protons and neutrons were largely empty space, occupied by yet smaller particles called quarks and (he regrets) gluons. But he gave up that work to be ordained, becoming a curate in Cambridge, and then Vicar “in the Blean”.

He was appointed Dean of Trinity Hall — and that was when writing theology took off. Then he became President of Queens’. He refers to his KBE (knighted Anglican clergy do not use the title “Sir”), and to enjoying committee work. Sadly, his wife Ruth, who had given him so much support, died last year, with her husband and children at her bedside.

I have one criticism. He still dislikes panentheism, despite approving (in Science and Creation, 1998) of Moltmann’s saying, “‘Creation outside God’ exists simultaneously in God, in the space which God has made for it in his omnipresence.” That’s a view that is consistent with the Jewish medieval idea of zim-zum — an internal withdrawal of God who has no outside edge. Now, I thought that was panentheism. We need another book.

The Revd Jeremy Craddock was a forensic scientist.

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