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Polkinghorne's Gifford Lectures turned out to be a highly original exploration of the Christian tradition. Published as The Faith of a Physicist: Reflections of a Bottom-Up Thinker, the lectures look at key phrases from the Nicene Creed from the perspective of a fully credentialed member of the contemporary scientific community.

"We believe," begins the creed. What does that mean in this postmodern world? Who is this "One God, the Father Almighty"? Can we still affirm that God is the "Maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen," after a century of Darwinism and Big Bang Cosmology? Who is the "One Lord, Jesus Christ," who "for our sakes … was crucified under Pontius Pilate," yet "rose again"? Can a scientist credibly affirm that Jesus "became incarnate of the Virgin Mary and was made man"? What of the Holy Spirit who has "spoken through the prophets"? Are there grounds, after a century of inexorable scientific advance, to "look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come"? Can a mind trained to find exotic mathematical symmetries hidden within the cloudy world of the quantum find unshakable truth in fourth-century theological affirmations?

Polkinghorne examines the creed as if it were a scientific theory, always asking, "What is the evidence that makes you think that this might be true?" Mindful, of course, that the creed was not formulated as a scientific theory, and that it certainly cannot be reduced to one, he nevertheless suggests that there are good, solid bottom-up reasons to accept the Nicene formulations.

Take the New Testament accounts of the bodily resurrection of Jesus, a doctrine often rejected as incompatible with contemporary scientific understanding. From his bottom-up examination of the biblical texts, Polkinghorne finds sufficient reason to believe that the resurrection accounts speak of an actual historical event. Placing the resurrection in the broadest possible context, he sees it not as a divine intrusion into the present world order but rather as a "historical anticipation of the eschatological destiny of the whole of humankind." For Polkinghorne the resurrection is believable, based on the evidence, and ultimately satisfying in the way that it helps to make sense of a world that many of his colleagues find pointless and absurd.

In 1989 Polkinghorne returned briefly to academia as president of Queens' College, at the University of Cambridge, and then retired in 1996. Queen Elizabeth knighted him in 1997, for distinguished service to science, religion, learning, and medical ethics.

In the spring of 1997 I taught a seminar on Polkinghorne in which students at Eastern Nazarene College read several of his books and met weekly for discussion. We were delighted that the subject of the course spent the last week of the semester with us. Polkinghorne, still very much the parish priest with a pastoral interest in people, graciously embraced the students and their questions. We set up a debate on the existence of God with the atheistic Harvard philosopher W. V. O. Quine (now deceased), considered by many to be the greatest philosopher of the last half of the 20th century. God came off very well in that debate, which was televised on local cable tv. Polkinghorne also delivered an outstanding lecture to a packed house in our student center auditorium, for which he received a standing ovation (the first time this had occurred in our distinguished lecturer series).

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May 21 2002, Vol. 46, No. 6