Quotes by John Polkinghorne

About John Polkinghorne:

John Charlton Polkinghorne is an English theoretical physicist, theologian, writer and Anglican priest. A prominent and leading voice explaining the relationship between science and religion, he was professor of Mathematical physics at the University of Cambridge from 1968 to 1979, when he resigned his chair to study for the priesthood, becoming an ordained Anglican priest in 1982. He served as the president of Queens' College, Cambridge from 1988 until 1996.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Science cannot tell theology how to construct a doctrine of creation, but you can't construct a doctrine of creation without taking account of the age of the universe and the evolutionary character of cosmic history.

John Polkinghorne

I was very much on the mathematical side, where you probably do your best work before you're forty-five. Having passed that significant date, I thought I would do something else.

John Polkinghorne

I'm a very passionate believer in the unity of knowledge. There is one world of reality - one world of our experience that we're seeking to describe.

John Polkinghorne

If the experience of science teaches anything, it's that the world is very strange and surprising. The many revolutions in science have certainly shown that.

John Polkinghorne

Bottom up thinkers try to start from experience and move from experience to understanding. They don't start with certain general principles they think beforehand are likely to be true; they just hope to find out what reality is like.

John Polkinghorne

Chance doesn't mean meaningless randomness, but historical contingency. This happens rather than that, and that's the way that novelty, new things, come about.

John Polkinghorne

Of course, nobody would deny the importance of human beings for theological thinking, but the time span of history that theologians think about is a few thousand years of human culture rather than the fifteen billion years of the history of the unive...

John Polkinghorne

Of course, Einstein was a very great scientist indeed, and I have enormous respect for him, and great admiration for the discoveries he made. But he was very committed to a view of the objectivity of the physical world.

John Polkinghorne

People, and especially theologians, should try to familiarize themselves with scientific ideas. Of course, science is technical in many respects, but there are some very good books that try to set out some of the conceptual structure of science.

John Polkinghorne

It is the faithfulness of God that allows epistemology to model ontology.

John Polkinghorne

Whitehead reacted strongly against the idea of God as a cosmic tyrant, one who brings about everything.

John Polkinghorne

However, as the Eastern churches have always maintained, through Christ creation is intended eventually to share in the life of God, the life of divine nature.

John Polkinghorne

Theologians have a great problem because they're seeking to speak about God. Since God is the ground of everything that is, there's a sense in which every human inquiry is grist to the theological mill. Obviously, no theologian can know everything.

John Polkinghorne

Evolution, of course, is not something that simply applies to life here on earth; it applies to the whole universe.

John Polkinghorne

After all, the universe required ten billion years of evolution before life was even possible; the evolution of the stars and the evolving of new chemical elements in the nuclear furnaces of the stars were indispensable prerequisites for the generati...

John Polkinghorne

The physical fabric of the world had to be such as to enable that ten billion year preliminary evolution to produce the raw materials of life. Without it there would not have been the chemical materials to allow life to evolve here on earth.

John Polkinghorne

At present, too much theological thinking is very human-centered.

John Polkinghorne

I think it's very important to maintain the classical Christian distinction between the Creator and creation.

John Polkinghorne

So Whitehead's metaphysics doesn't fit very well on to physics as we understand the process of the world.

John Polkinghorne

Yes, I was a parish priest for five years. I was a curate in a large working class parish in Bristol and the Vicar of a village in Kent.

John Polkinghorne

Author Bio

  • NameJohn Polkinghorne
  • DescriptionPhysicist and priest
  • BornOctober 16, 1930
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionPhysicist; Theoretical Physicist
  • AwardsFellow Of The Royal Society; Knight Commander Of The Order Of The British Empire; Templeton Prize