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Revelation is a huge stumbling block for scientists. What perspective do you give on the revelation?

I think there's a tremendous misapprehension in many scientists's minds. They think the revelation is some sort of unquestionable authority. You shut your eyes, grit your teeth, [and] believe six impossible things before breakfast, because you're told that's what you've got to do.

They don't want to do that, nor do I. I don't want to commit intellectual suicide. I'm trying to persuade my scientific friends that I have motivations for my religious beliefs just as I have motivations for my scientific beliefs.

Revelation is the account of those particular events and people in whom the divine presence has been most clearly revealed and discerned. They are like critical experiments, so to speak. So I see the Bible as the laboratory notebook of the spirit in the way that a scientist notes down the results of his or her experiments in the laboratory.

What is divine self-limitation and how does it work itself out?

I think it's an extremely important idea, which, in the twentieth century, became pretty dominant in many forms of theological thinking. And it's this: That when God brings into being a creation, because God is a God of love, God allows creatures to be themselves, indeed to make themselves.

That's how we might theologically understand an evolving universe. Creation is not God's divine puppet theater in which God pulls every string, but God allows creatures to be themselves. That means that not everything that happens will be in accordance with God's will. I don't think that God wills the act of a murderer. But, of course, because God has given free will to human beings, God allows murders to happen. I also actually think that God does not will the incidence of a cancer, but God allows that to happen in a world in which malignancy is an unavoidable possibility.

Divine self-limitation is important to me because it is the sort of relationship a loving God would have with creatures: to share with them rather than to dominate them. I think that God interacts with the world but does not overrule it. It also explains … the deepest theological problem, which is the problem of the existence of evil and suffering in the world.

What is the current relationship between the scientific community and the theological community?

There's quite a brisk conversation going on. I think the difficulty is that the scientists are wary of religion. A great many scientists can see that science by itself is not enough. But they are wary of religion because they think it is based upon unquestioning authority. Theology has to be a bit more up front in exhibiting that it doesn't have all the answers put up its sleeve, but it, too, is in the search for truth.

One of the big differences between scientific faith in that sense and religious faith in another sense is that religious faith involves commitment of the whole person. I believe in quarks and gluons very strongly, actually, but it doesn't affect my life in any very critical way. I can't be a Christian without it affecting my life in all sorts of ways. There is moral demand in religious belief as well as an intellectual demand, which does make it more costly, more challenging, and in the end more worthwhile.

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November (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46