Transcript
Descendant grounded rationality, which gives them their consistency and authority. Again and again today, the scientist is baffled and tempted to speculate when the intelligible connections in the universe which he seeks to grasp and describe just break off and point mutely beyond themselves. He raises fundamental questions which he knows he is not in a position to answer directly or even properly to ask within the conceptual frame of his science. And yet the meaningfulness and the intelligibility of
the whole scientific enterprise are here at stake. This seems to be the issue behind Wheeler's demand for meaning physics. And his interest in the so-called anthropic principle regarding the unique place of man on earth within the expanding universe. Why is it, for example, that although physical laws are formalized in terms of probability equations, nevertheless all major physical laws are found to be utterly improbable? There must be a reason for it, which cannot be excogitated through
natural scientific operations. At an impasse like this, on the very frontiers of knowledge, the scientist can only suspend judgment and listen for a word of meaning from beyond, from a higher level. Thus it would seem right for the scientist to consider another approach to the impasse by coming at it from the other end, the other side, from the ultimate ground of order in which his controlling beliefs are anchored. Now theologically speaking, this would be an approach
within the perspective of divine revelation starting from the word of God on which the whole universe is contingent for its existence and order. Thus the scientist learns to believe, with Henry Robinson Luce, that meaning was built into life in the beginning by the creator. Physicists like W. Heitler and our own W.G. Pollard have argued convincingly that there are significant points in our scientific comprehension of the universe where the transcendent shines through, as Heitler says, or
where there are rumors of transcendence, as Pollard says, but without the mediation of any positive truth. They agree, however, that it is the human mind or spirit which constitutes the significant boundary condition within the natural world of things where it is intelligibly open to the creator and where intramundane experience and understanding may be coordinated with a higher level of experience and understanding, giving them meaning which they could not otherwise have. It is surely at such a
point where the rationality of man and the rationality of the world come together under the impact of the word of God, making them articulate beyond what they are capable of in themselves, that we may be given some insight into the inner justification of nature's laws, demanded by Einstein, or into the regulating principle demanded by Wheeler at the boundaries of contingent being and the frontiers of scientific knowledge. In this event, the mode in which knowledge of the
universe is gained in scientific inquiry, and not least the mode in which its controlling beliefs arise, would need to be coordinated with the mode in which knowledge of God arises in theological inquiry, that is, through listening to his word. Now from the theological perspective, the laws of nature are held to be permanent features of the world stamped upon it by the voice of the creator, through the word of God. As such, they are open, contingent forms
of order which derive their constancy from the word of God, and may ultimately be understood only through coordination with their resource and ground in that word. The ordered universe is to be regarded then as unceasingly contingent on God in such a way that he not only upholds and sustains it in its created reality, but makes its coherent arrangement serve his supreme purpose of love in the communion of the creation with the creator. Hence the natural order
is to be recognized, not simply as the actual order in which things happen to be arranged, but rather as the kind of order in which things ought to be arranged under the wisdom and righteousness of God. From the theological perspective, this means that the idea of chance or accident yields place to the Christian concept of contingent providential event, and that the natural order and the moral order are ontologically linked together as different forms of the one
rational order impressed upon the creation by the commanding voice of God. Now this brings us back to consider the distinctive mode in which our convictions about the essential nature of the universe come to be gained. Like our fundamental religious beliefs, to which they are akin, ultimate scientific beliefs arise in us as we listen to what is said from beyond ourselves. In the emergence of these ultimate beliefs, there takes place what St. Anselm spoke of as a
subliminal hearing of a speech, a locutio, embedded in reality, which precedes, accompanies, and shapes specific acts of scientific understanding. Now Clark, Maxwell, Einstein, and Polanyi often refer to their intuitive contact with objective reality, or their scientific intuition of the hidden intelligibility of the universe, but I would want to add that intuitive apprehension of this kind is auditive rather than perceptive in nature, akin to the mode of learning through hearing rather than the mode of learning through
seeing or observing, and that what results in this way is an intuitive correlate in the mind of the scientist of the creative address of the Word of God. When our ultimate beliefs are considered in this way, we find that their epistemological modality and their inherent force are due to the commanding Word of God. It's in such a way, such a way, that ultimate beliefs generated in us are informed with an implicit conceptual content imparted to them
by the Word of God. Now this is not information that we can derive for ourselves by tracing back our rational connections in the universe to their end in the created order, for in themselves they are They may be filled and become articulate only through correlation with the commanding Word of God when they are made to echo with a meaning and are characterized with an authority beyond what they are capable of in themselves. If this is the
case, then we must be ready at all the frontiers of knowledge where our and listen again to the Word of God in the hope of learning why nature is ordered in the way it is and not in some other way, and of penetrating into what Einstein called the inner justification of nature's law. If the logical inquiry and scientific inquiry are allowed to interrelate in this deep level, the scientist will be encouraged to give more attention to
the obligatory force of his ultimate convictions and he searched for a more satisfying and meaningful order. The mysterious imperative that bears upon him from the fundamental nature of things in the universe will resonate with the creative purpose of God disclosed to his Word in such a way that an ultimate belief in the goodness of the created order will take its place in the controlling framework of his inquiries besides other ultimate beliefs in the reality, contingency, rationality,
stability, constancy, and simplicity of the universe. Now, this would mean that the moral imperative, the ought that had been banished from the realm of science in the age of reason, would have to be restored to the conceptual structure of rigorous science, not as some external parameter like Newtonian geometrical time, but as an internal parameter in the framework of scientific inquiry and formalization, just as it is now necessary for us to leave Newton behind and to build
time as an ingredient into the fundamental structure of physical law, which also raises the question of why. So it becomes necessary to include the moral ought within the structure of physical law as an essential ingredient. This recovery of the ethical imperative as an internal factor of control imports a further significant step in the advance of scientific inquiry, for it is then understood to function in an obligatory relation to the good as well as the orderly, thus
making for a more meaningful science within a reunified human culture. Now, so far as the contribution of theological inquiry is concerned, such a change calls for a far-reaching theology of nature, which would remint the concept of nature by reintegrating it with the basic Christian ideas that gave rise to empirical science in the first place. And this is best done today through conjoined inquiry between theological science and natural science as the astonishing patterns of order with
which God has endowed the world are steadily brought to light. However, I believe that such a theology of nature may be sustained only with a recovery of the full Christian framework of knowledge, for it is through the incarnation of the word of God among us in Christ that the ultimate secret of the whole created order is disclosed in the comprehensive purpose of God's love for the created order. This implies that all laws of nature, all patterns
of order in the universe are finally and satisfyingly intelligible only as they are ontologically found to be linked to the love of God, the supreme power of order. An articulate belief in the goodness and the purpose of the created order taking its place among the ultimate convictions which implicitly control all human inquiry will go far toward healing the breach and integrating human culture. Now we cannot forget that scientific and theological inquiries are pursued only within the
medium of society and with the continuous support of its community, structures and institutions. On the other hand, they have to reckon with the fact that all our human structures and institutions today are in a severely critical state. They have to reckon with serious problems that are to be traced back to the application to society of mechanistic analyses and explanations deriving from the 18th and 19th century and to the damaging splits in human life and culture resulting
from alien and inappropriate patterns of behavior imposed upon them. That is to say, scientific inquiry today, whether in natural or theological science, must struggle with a strange anachronistic perpetuation in contemporary society and a general framework of knowledge of the very mistakes which rigorous scientific inquiries had to leave behind in the course of its development. But if scientific and theological inquiries are to consolidate the kind of advance we've been discussing, they must be ready to help other
sciences overcome the radical dualisms built into their structure and recover normative convictions ontologically anchored in objective reality. Now I think here particularly, I'm begging the pardon of many people, of the backward state of moral, legal and social sciences today owing to the lack of proper ontological foundations. What they require is a fundamental reconstruction of their scientific base through a fusion of ontology and epistemology within the space-time field in which we live, similar to that which
has been brought about through general relativity in physical knowledge of the universe. Now it is just here that the advance in scientific inquiry which we'll be discussing has a great deal to contribute to them and not least to the restoration of an ontologically grounded moral imperative as an internal factor of control in the process of rigorous inquiry and formulation. That is surely an issue of supreme importance in which all sciences, natural, theological or social, must cooperate
and thereby contribute together into the development of a deeper, more coherent and meaningful order of human faith, life and thought. Now while that is the grand end which the Centre of Theological Inquiry hopes to serve, its own special objective is to really basic research that will transform the foundations of human thought and science, thus continuing in our modern world the reconstruction which early Christian theology brought about in the classical tradition of philosophy, science and culture. Although
it has constantly strayed from the Christian reorientation, that initial Christian reorientation, the development of human civilization remains infinitely indebted to it. Our specific task here then is to theological inquiry, working as rigorously as possible in harness with natural scientific inquiry, not least at the points of their deepest convergence to renew the foundations of human understanding of the living God within the objective space-time structure of the created universe where he makes himself known to us through
these words. Since theological inquiry has to do with the ontological and intelligible relation between the created universe and God in which all sciences are ultimately rooted, it is our hope here that through this institution, steady engagement in fundamental inquiry will promote the unification of human knowledge and serve the comprehensive purpose of God's love for the creation. We cannot conclude without my expressing profound gratitude to colleagues on the Board of Trustees of this institution. Several of them
are here now and will be introduced at a later convocation, but with all of you I want to express my gratitude to them for bringing this enterprise into being and bringing it this far along the way. There are two other persons to whom I want to express gratitude, our architect and our builder. I'm not sure because I don't see that far whether Michael Erdman is here or not. I think he's out on the gallery which he
didn't build. Michael, come in. And the builder, Norman Reeves. Norman, will you stand? The benediction will be given by the of the Center of Theological Inquiry. Stand, please. And now the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.