The Questioning Christian

The Nicene Creed as Data Table

Written by

D. C. Toedt III

in

From The Faith of a Physicist (p. 6), by the Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne, a particle physicist turned Anglican priest, Templeton Prize winner, and Fellow of the Royal Society:

For me, the Nicene Creed is not a demand for intellectual surrender to a set of non-negotiable propositions; instead it represents the summary of insights and experience garnered from the founding centuries of the Church’s history. … To eschew the use of this material would be to act as foolishly as did those savants who declined to look through Galileo’s telescope. Opportunities for gainint insight are not wilfully to be refused.

Polkinghorne doesn’t address some of the issues of New-Testament reliability about which I’ve commented in this space. But his overall approach, that of a scientist attempting rigorously to assess and explain the observational data, is very appealing.

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One response to “The Nicene Creed as Data Table”

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    Anonymous

    Dr. Polkinghorne’s quest as a “scientist attempting rigorously to assess and explain the observational data” may place him in the same category as “those savants who declined to look through Galileo’s telescope”.
    The leading edge of science now demands that all observers acknowledge the presence of information as an element of the universe. As with matter and energy, all seem tied together with information. What this means is that matter is now being considered simply as a form of organized information.
    This information, however, if not identified as such, remains “unobservable” to even the most diligent and well meaning of scientists. Science is certainly the understanding of the natural world. But as William Dembski writes, science is no longer “about understanding the world solely in terms of material processes.” Modern science has pointed to it time and again of late- there is more than observable physical laws to our existence.
    The implications of this concept are huge to science and theology. From where did the information originate? What force is acting upon our system? The most logical answer for many brave scientists is this- an entity outside of this closed system in which we exist. The source of the information is supernatural.
    This worldview explains much that happens and exists within it. It explains the source of DNA, as well as the level of unpredictability in string theory and all of physics. It even explains the resurrection as a supernatural force vector acting upon “natural” laws from beyond our closed system.
    This worldview also affirms much. It affirms the authority of scripture, and the near-universal belief in some sort of god. Only one god, however, offers a detailed account of creation and a theology to support it. The more quickly all of modern science acknowledges the existence of information from a source outside our observable universe, the more quickly humanity will find the truth and, ultimately, its true purpose.

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