Arthur Peacocke
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Arthur Peacocke | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Arthur Robert Peacocke 29 November 1924 Watford, England |
| Died | 21 October 2006 (aged 81) Oxford, England |
| Spouse |
Rosemary Mann (m. 1948) |
| Children |
|
| Church | Church of England |
| Ordained | 1971 (deacon · priest) |
| Academic background | |
Sir Cyril Hinshelwood[1] | |
| Influences | |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | |
| Sub-discipline | |
| School or tradition | Theological critical realism[6] |
| Institutions | |
| Doctoral students | David Fell |
| Main interests | Relationship between religion and science |
| Notable works | Theology for a Scientific Age (1993)[8][9] |
Arthur Robert Peacocke
Biography
Arthur Robert Peacocke was born in
He taught at the
From 1973 until 1984 he was
In 1984 he spent one year as Professor of Judeo-Christian Studies at
He had been Select Preacher before the
Among Peacocke's numerous subsidiary appointments he was the President of the Science and Religion Forum from 1995 until his death, having previous been chairman (1972–78) and Vice-President (1978–92). He became an academic fellow of the
Peacocke was awarded the Lecomte du Noüy Prize[16] in 1983. He received honorary doctorates from DePauw University (DSc 1983) and Georgetown University (DLittHum 1991). He was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in 1993.[8][9] In 2001 he was awarded the Templeton Prize.[17]
Arthur Peacocke married Rosemary Mann in 1948.[8] They had a daughter, Jane (born 1953), and a son[8] who is the distinguished philosopher Christopher Peacocke. They also have five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Peacocke died on 21 October 2006 in Oxford.[8][9]
Research in biochemistry
Although Peacocke is best known today for his work in theology (see below) he also published more than eighty papers in biochemistry, particularly in relation to acridines,[18] spectroscopy[19][20] and enzymology.[21]
Peacocke's views
Peacocke self-identified as a panentheist, which he was careful to distinguish from being a pantheist.[22]
He is perhaps best known for his attempts to argue rigorously that
Arthur Peacocke describes a position which is referred to elsewhere as "front-loading", after the fact that it suggests that evolution is entirely consistent with an
According to Peacocke, Darwinism is not an enemy to religion, but a friend (thus the title of his piece, "The Disguised Friend"). Peacocke offers five basic arguments in support of his position outlined below.
Process as immanence
The process-as-immanence argument is meant to deal with
Chance optimising initial conditions
The chance-optimizing-initial-conditions argument runs as follows: the role of chance in biological evolution can be reconciled with a purposive creator because "there is a creative interplay of 'chance' and law apparent in the evolution of living matter by natural selection."[25] There is no metaphysical implication of the physical fact of "chance"; randomness in mutation of DNA "does not, in itself, preclude these events from displaying regular trends of manifesting inbuilt propensities at the higher levels of organisms, populations and eco-systems."[26] Chance is to be seen as "eliciting the potentialities that the physical cosmos possessed ab initio."[27]
Random process of evolution as purposive
The random-process-of-evolution-as-purposive argument is perhaps best considered an adjunct to the process-as-immanence argument,[citation needed] and a direct response to Johnson's continued references to evolution as "purposeless". Peacocke suggests
that the evolutionary process is characterized by propensities towards increase in complexity, information-processing and –storage, consciousness, sensitivity to pain, and even self-consciousness… the actual physical form of the organisms in which these propensities are actualized and instantiated is contingent on the history of the confluence of disparate chains of events, including the survival of the mass extinctions that have occurred.[28]
Natural evil as necessity
The natural-evil-as-necessity argument is meant to be a response to the classic
Jesus as pinnacle of human evolution
The Jesus-as-pinnacle-of-human-evolution argument proposed by Peacocke is that
the actualisation of [evolutionary] potentiality can properly be regarded as the consummation of the purposes of God already incompletely manifested in evolving humanity .... The paradigm of what God intends for all human beings, now revealed as having the potentiality of responding to, of being open to, of becoming united with, God.[29]
Similar propositions had previously been put by writers such as
Relationship between theology and science typology
In the introduction to The Sciences and Theology in the Twentieth Century,[30] Peacocke lists a set of eight relationships that could fall upon a two-dimensional grid. This list is in part a survey of deliberations that occurred at the World Council of Churches Conference on "Faith, Science and the Future", Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1979.
- Science and theology are concerned with two distinct realms
- Reality is thought of as a duality, operating within the human world, in terms of natural/supernatural, spatio-temporal/the eternal, the order of nature/the realm of faith, the natural (or physical)/the historical, the physical-and-biological/mind-and-spirit.
- Science and theology are interacting approaches to the same reality
- Accuracy of this view is widely and strongly resisted among those who otherwise differ in their theologies
- Science and theology are two distinct non-interacting approaches to the same reality
- The idea that theology tries to answer the question why, while science tries to answer the question how
- Science and theology constitute two different language systems
- Each are two distinct "language games" whose logical pre-conditions can have no bearing upon each other according to late-Wittgensteiniantheory
- Each are two distinct "language games" whose logical pre-conditions can have no bearing upon each other according to late-
- Science and theology are generated by quite different attitudes (in their practitioners)
- the attitude of science is that of objectivity and logical neutrality; that of theology personal involvement and commitment.
- Science and theology are both subservient to their objects and can only be defined in relation to them
- Both are intellectual disciplines shaped by their object (nature or God) to which they direct their attention. Both include a confessional and a rational factor.[31]
- Science and theology may be integrated
- Science generates a metaphysic in terms of which theology is then formulated
- For example, Alfred North Whitehead's metaphysics forms the basis of process theology
See also
- Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford
- List of scholars on the relationship between religion and science
- Open theism
- Philosophical theology
- Religious naturalism
- Theological critical realism
- Theophysics
References
Footnotes
- ISSN 1081-7727. Archived from the original(PDF) on 16 February 2013. Retrieved 1 September 2020.
- ^ Russell 2017, p. 3.
- ^ Peacocke 1991, p. 483.
- ^ a b Hefner 2001, p. 234.
- ^ Hefner 2001, p. 234; Peacocke 1991, pp. 482–483.
- ^ Du Toit 1997, pp. 70–71; McGrath 2010, p. 210; Smedes 2012, p. 592.
- ^ a b Du Toit 1997, p. 68.
- ^ a b c d e f g Polkinghorne, John (6 November 2006). "Canon Arthur Peacocke". The Independent. London. Retrieved 27 August 2020.
- ^ a b c d Polkinghorne 2013, p. 886.
- ^ Craine 2019.
- ^ a b Smedes 2012, p. 589.
- ^ a b c Schaab 2007, p. 6.
- ^ McGrath 2010, p. 210; Smedes 2012, p. 589.
- ^ McGrath 2010, p. 210.
- ^ McGrath 2010, p. 210; Schaab 2007, p. 6; Smedes 2012, p. 589.
- ^ a b c Muray 2008, p. 93.
- ^ Craine 2019; Polkinghorne 2013, p. 886; Smedes 2012, p. 589.
- .
- S2CID 4164149.
- S2CID 20990622.
- .
- ^ Arthur Peacocke, "PATHS FROM SCIENCE TOWARDS GOD : The End of all our Exploring", metanexus.net. Accessed 12 December 2022.
- ^ Peacocke 2001, p. 473.
- ^ Peacocke 2001, p. 474.
- ^ Peacocke 2001, p. 475.
- ^ Peacocke 2001, p. 476.
- ^ Peacocke 2001, p. 477.
- ^ Peacocke 2001, p. 478.
- ^ Peacocke 2001, pp. 484–485.
- ^ Peacocke 1981, pp. xiii–xv, xviii.
- ^ E.g., Torrance 1969.
Bibliography
- Craine, Anthony G. (2019). "Arthur Peacocke". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 25 August 2020.
- Crockford's Clerical Directory (97th ed.). London: Church House Publishing. 2001. p. 578.
- Debrett's People of Today (12th ed.). London: Debrett's Peerage. 1999. p. 1522.
- Du Toit, C. (1997). "The Contribution of Arthur Peacocke to the Science–Theology Debate". Skrif en Kerk. 18 (1): 67–85. ISSN 0257-8891.
- ISBN 978-0-8028-2414-1.
- ISBN 978-1-405-18790-9.
- Muray, Leslie A. (2008). Liberal Protestantism and Science. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-33701-7.
- Peacocke, Arthur, ed. (1981). The Sciences and Theology in the Twentieth Century. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. ISBN 978-0-268-01704-0.
- ——— (1991). "From DNA to Dean". Zygon. 26 (4): 477–493. ISSN 0591-2385.
- ——— (2001). "Welcoming the 'Disguised Friend' – Darwinism and Divinity". In ISBN 978-0-262-66124-9.
- ISBN 978-0-19-967154-0.
- ISSN 1474-6719.
- Schaab, Gloria L. (2007). Creative Suffering of the Triune God: An Evolutionary Theology. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-532912-4.
- ISBN 978-1-118-25650-3.
- Torrance, Thomas F. (1969). Theological Science. London: Oxford University Press.
Further reading
- ISBN 978-0-281-04945-5.
- ISBN 978-90-429-1521-3.
External links
- Arthur Peacocke some biographical notes on the ISBN 978-0800627591)
- Arthur Peacocke and Humanity's Place in Cosmic Evolution
- Society of Ordained Scientists article by him
- Daily Telegraph obituary
