Remembering John Polkinghorne - Alister McGrath

Well, joining me on the show now is Alistair McGrath from Oxford University and he's here to talk about theologian and scientist John Polkinghorne who died recently at the age of 90. Alistair, welcome along to the programme. Tell us a little bit firstly, did you know John, you know, did you spend much time together during the course? Yes, I did get to know him quite well. In fact, I got to know him back in 1979 and the circumstances were actually quite interesting because I was then training for ministry in the Church of England and we heard this bombshell announcement that John Polkinghorne, a professor at Cambridge, had resigned his chair to begin training for ministry at the Church of England and he and I were fellow students at the same institution training for ministry together. We got to know each other because both of us had interest in science and religion. So, in fact, he used to be known by some of his students as Polky Dot, not Polkinghorne, because he'd quite often wear a rather snazzy polka dot tie, which I was very impressed by. That's brilliant. And so, you first of all knew him, obviously, as a physicist. So, tell us a little bit of what you know about his career up to that point before he made this rather shocking announcement he was going into the church. What was his area before that? Well, his area really was mathematical physics and he was, I suppose, quantum theorists, his way of describing what he was doing. And he simply achieved eminence very, very quickly. But as he himself, you know, once said, you know, the problem is if you're a mathematician, you peak when you're about 45. In other words, all your best work is behind you. And I always had the sense that John felt that it was time to make a break and do something new. And actually, he did that in a remarkable way. What particularly were his sort of, what was the nature of his work? What were perhaps some of the things you really contributed to when it came to theoretical physics? Well, I think there are a number of things that people will single out as being particularly important. I think that people will, in effect, say that he'd be very, very well remembered for developing the kind of agenda you find with Paul Dirac and people like that. And it's actually very difficult to summarise this briefly for a lay audience. But what I would say is that Polky Horn really did establish himself as a leader in the field, developing this theme, these themes about the mathematical representation of reality. And that, of course, is a leading theme in his writing on science and religion. But another thing which I see him picking up from this period is this very strong sense that if something is beautiful, there's a good chance it's going to be right, you know, with scientific theory, or indeed a way of thinking about reality such as that offered by Christianity. In terms of his Christian faith, was that something he had sort of from childhood, as far as you're aware? Was it something he embraced more, you know, as an adult? Well, John was a member of KIKU, the Cambridge Interfaith Christian Union, and that suggests he was committed that he would have been towards the evangelical end of the spectrum. And of course, his wife Ruth, who he met while he was at Cambridge, was also a member of the KIKU. So they're both mathematicians. So obviously, they formed a rather nice friendship, which, of course, lasted until her sad death some time ago. But I would say that John had a real commitment to the Christian faith, not just a nominal commitment, but an active commitment. And actually, looking back at some records I came across about students of Cambridge back in the early 1950s, John would have hung out with people like Charles Coulson and others, who in effect were very, very engaged in this question of how on earth you held together your science and your faith. So if you like, it's not just he was very active as a Christian, he was very concerned, how do you hold together issues of science and faith? This goes way back to the middle of the 1950s. It's interesting. So he would have been at Cambridge around the time C.S. Lewis was there as well. Do you know if their paths ever crossed or is that? He never talked about that. I mean, I have to say that there are points when I lecture on Paul Kehoe where I say, I see a similarity with Lewis and I see it in several ways, one of which is accessibility. And another is something which hasn't been made or enough has been said about it. I think it's that he is actually very, very good at answering questions ordinary people were asking. But I don't think I saw any real relationship with Lewis. Certainly, he read his books. At the time John was doing his physics, you know, and really in that area, was there the sort of battle that we've seen in more recent years, the supposed contradiction between science and faith? Was that something people were talking about even back in the 50s when he was doing his science? If you talk to students at Cambridge in the 50s, they will say that the kind of the default position was that science and faith were incompatible. So there was a sort of sense of this. Now, actually, John did mathematics as his first degree and then switched to physics for his doctorate. So I suppose you could say as a mathematician, he was kind of in such a slightly different place. But certainly the intellectual environment was that science and religion were just not things a thinking person could hold together, which is why actually it's how John would meet up with other Christians who were scientists to try and figure out how best to do something about this. So if you like, maybe they were huddling together for intellectual warmth, but they were also trying to work out how on earth can we deal with the questions our culture is asking about the relation of science and faith. It's interesting that ultimately he felt this call to go into ministry specifically in the Anglican Church. Many people might have felt you're best off sort of staying within the scientific community, making your influence there rather than sort of moving out into essentially pastoral ministry and all the duties that are involved with an Anglican parish. So what was behind his reasoning for doing that? Well, others had done this before. You see, John Habgood was a Cambridge research scientist who actually left science behind after his doctoral work because he felt science wasn't very good at engaging the real questions, the ones people were asking. Now, John stayed in the academic world for much, much longer, but I think actually there are two things I do notice from his writings. One is a sense my best work is now done. Why not go out on a high? But also this sense that he felt he had something that he could offer in a different field. In other words, he thought a lot about science and religion. He hadn't published really anything. He began to in the 80s, but he clearly had been thinking about this. My own guess from conversations we had is that actually he saw a pastoral ministry as being very important in terms of service, but not just a pastoral ministry, but also an intellectual ministry to try and help others who were troubled by the same questions as he was. So in that sense, did he see himself as, I suppose, taking the whole area of science and faith into the public domain, especially to other Christians? He felt he could do that more effectively through this vocation of priesthood. That's a very interesting question because I have to tell you that I felt he was making a mistake by going into parish ministry. He was a Cambridge professor. He ended up serving as a curate in a small church, and then he went and served as the incumbent of another small church. If you talk to anybody who's an incumbent, they are overwhelmed with administrative work. So I felt, is this really right? But what I would say is that it's absolutely clear that he's able to use that time to develop the skill of being able to speak to ordinary people coherently and passionately. So what you could say, I guess, is that his time working in parishes made him learn the language of ordinary congregations and deal with questions they were asked. Now, we know that from his own writings that John did not see himself as having any intentions returning to the academic world. He really saw himself as going into ministry, and that's what he wanted to do. But of course, his friends at Cambridge had other ideas, and they said, it's time to come back. And what did that return look like, ultimately? I mean, obviously, he did spend a certain amount of time in local pastoral parish ministry. What did his return to some form of academia look like? Well, he did. I mean, basically, his final parish ministry was in Kent, in a rather nice parish near Canterbury. But obviously, you know, Cambridge needs chaplains, it needs deans of chapel, and he was a known name. And eventually, the suggestion was made, he should come back to Cambridge as dean of chapel at Trinity Hall in Cambridge. So after a couple of years in parish ministry in 1986, he went back to Trinity Hall. And he went back, I have to say, to do a role, which would have involved more interaction with students than with ordinary people. But nevertheless, I think that he had clearly learned some skills in the parishes that he was able to bring to that short period of ministry at Trinity Hall. And then what happened next was that, as you know, every Oxford and Cambridge college has a head of house. And what they are, what they're always looking for is somebody who's academically serious, but actually has wider gifts. And so John was asked to become president of Queen's College, Cambridge three years later, in 1989. And I have to say, that's a remarkable achievement. So actually, I mean, when he retired in 1996, he basically had a glittering academic career, you know, he'd been a professor at Cambridge and head of house. And that's very significant. Yes, quite, quite extraordinary. What would you say, you know, were his, was his influence at that time, obviously, having that significant oversight of both the student body and the academics as well at Cambridge? Well, John was a diplomat and a pastor. And so actually, that came out quite clearly, his dealings with people. I think having talked to people who, you know, served under him during his time at Queen's College, you know, the memory of him is of a warm hearted, pastorally concerned person, who everybody knew was academically very, very good, but actually came across as a rather nice person. I think that's a rather nice tribute to be able to pay to him, I think. But of course, at the same time, he was very, very active in the field of science and faith. And I would say that by 1990, he was the go to person, you know, in effect, you know, if you want to talk to somebody serious about science and faith, he was the person you would ask. And I think there were two things that really came out very, very clearly. One was that he had this very accessible speaking style. Now that may again, be the result of his time in parish ministry where he learned you had to speak in a certain way. But it was also I think he almost intuitively knew the questions people wanted to talk about and had answers for them, which I assume he had worked through himself, both in his time as a student, and then of course, in parish ministry. So he was a very, very able person. The other thing to say, of course, is that John was very orthodox as a Christian theologian. And in the field of science and religion, you had other people like Ian Barber in the States or Arthur Peacock here in the UK, who actually were much more liberal in their approach to theology. And John felt, in effect, he was traditional. He believed in the Incarnation, he believed in the Trinity, was very, very clear about the importance of the Bible, and he could see ways of weaving these all together in terms of science and faith. So the sense in which an awful lot of people trusted him because they felt, this man is on the same page as me, I can listen to him. Yes, absolutely. And when it came to the ways he put that across to a lay audience and to his scientific peers, how did he put the science and faith together? You know, so when the person, I don't know, sitting around the high table at Cambridge would say, John, how can you, as a man of science, possibly believe that a man came back from death to life in the resurrection? I mean, what sort of an answer would you expect John to have given at that point? I haven't heard him answer that question, I have to say. But he does touch on it in some of his books. And basically his argument is, look, you cannot actually predetermine what history is, what did happen. You have to kind of figure out what was going on. But his basic approach, which I think is very, very sensible and very, very accessible, is to say, look, science and Christianity are different ways of trying to make sense of our world. They do it in different ways. But actually, they're doing the same job, and there are points of overlap between them. And you welcome these points of overlap. But nevertheless, you retain the distinctiveness of both science and Christianity. I think for me, one of the really important things here is there's been some research work done, which shows very, very clearly that when people are trying to work out whether science and faith are compatible or not, they tend not to think about the ideas on their own. They tend to think of people who manage to hold them together. And they'll say, well, look, if he or she can do it, I can do it too. And of course, John Polkyhorn was a living exemplar of somebody who was able to hold these together. And people would say, well, look, he's intelligent, he did it, maybe I can do it as well. And we do need those kinds of examples, don't we? I think that's partly why people like Polkyhorn, and I dare say yourself as well, as to have been an inspiration to many people, because you've been able to hold being rigorous in terms of your science with being absolutely orthodox in terms of your Christian faith and not seeing that there's a contradiction between the two of those. I suppose, I mean, was John in any way an inspiration for your own sort of journey, you know, in science and faith? And of course, you yourself were ordained at one time, I can't remember exactly when that was, though. So was it at a similar time? Or obviously, John and I were ordained roughly around the same time. That's right. I was a little bit earlier than him. And, but when I went back to start teaching, which is in 83, 1983, you know, one of the things I wanted to do was find ways of hunger, science and faith. And I wasn't teaching in that field, I was thinking about it. And it took me a long time to get the point where I thought I could teach in the field. But I read Polkyhorn's first book in this field, The Way the World, I think it came out in 84, I think I may have read it about a year or two later. But when I read it, I thought two things. A, this man knows what he's talking about. And B, he writes so clearly, you know, I just thought, you know, this guy keeps going. And he did, of course, he published rather a lot of books. You know, I just thought this is this is very significant. And in fact, just checking my own books, in response to thinking about John, I quote him a lot, I have to say. And the reason I quote him a lot is because he's so good, so accessible. He's the kind of person who gives you a beautiful quote you can put into a book, and it kind of lightens up the text a lot. What kind of particular things did you find he helped to illuminate? I mean, I'd be interested to know, for instance, whether how he put together his obvious admiration for the universe and the nature of it, cosmology, the big man cosmology that was obviously kind of coming, you know, developing significantly over the 50s and 60s, as he was really at the centre of his scientific career. Did he see that in some ways connecting strongly with a God hypothesis? What was the way he put things together in that sense? John's approach was that of a scientist rather than a theologian. And if you're a scientist, you're saying, what is the theory that actually makes the most sense of things? You might use criteria like simplicity or comprehensiveness. And one of the things that John would regularly say, both in his talks, but also in his published writings, is that an orthodox Trinitarian faith gives you this way of looking at the world, which actually fits all these things in. It's intelligible, it's comprehensive. And for Poplar, this was just a very important resonance between Christianity and the way the world is. He uses the word congruence a lot. If you like, the world is congruent with what Christianity thinks it ought to be. I tend to use the word resonance more, but that's because I come from a different form of science than he does. But nevertheless, he's absolutely right, and he really developed that point. Another thing he said, which is really helpful, is that science raises a lot of questions it can't answer using its own methods. And he therefore would in effect say that we have an opportunity here to show how Christianity can answer these questions, which are rightly asked by science, but actually they can't answer by themselves. So he was very much someone who invited scientists to think about the limits of their own disciplines. And you say he was also invested in the idea of the beauty of science, in the sense of the beauty of the theories that explain the universe. He evidently felt there was some congruence between this beauty and the idea of a God who creates in beautiful ways. I think that's right. I think one of my concerns has always been that certain forms of science are very, very rationalist. It's all very interesting, but it's a bit dull. And what do you do with the beauty of the world? And John found a way of doing that. And actually, it's really drawing on this idea that beauty is an indication of truth in a deeper sense of the word. And actually, I welcomed that because I've always been concerned that science often presents itself as a very abstract, very dry, very arid, very reductionist view of the world. And John found a way around that. And actually, his Christian faith gave him a framework to be able to celebrate and interpret the beauty of the world. You've been involved in a few debates with other atheist scientists over the years yourself, Alistair. What was John's approach? Did he kind of go in for sort of interventions to debate people? What was his sort of the way that he tended to do dialogue and so on? John is much more a person who tends to write about his own views, engaging in dialogue with other people. I don't think he saw himself as a debater. I think that debate is not always the most academically satisfying form of things. Very often, you find that the person you are arguing with just doesn't want to engage you. And it's very, very frustrating. I think John felt that a positive, constructive articulation of the Christian faith, in many ways, was its best defense. And that actually may be part of his legacy. As I read his books, I see this constant returning to the basically saying, here's what Christianity is, here's the difference it makes, here's why it's so interesting to a scientist. And he does criticize people who kind of adopt a very reductionist, atheist approach. But actually, that is incidental, that the main thrust is, here's Christianity, it is so good in this way. He was knighted, I think, in 1997. What particular services was that that he was being recognized for? Well, I think he actually did a lot of public service alongside his role as an academic and various things. He served on various committees in public life. He served also as a trustee of some very significant charities. And I think basically, there was a very, very clear case for rewarding him in some way. But of course, we never called him Sir John, because if you're an Anglican clergyman, you just don't do that. Well, and there were other accolades, obviously, down the line. He won the Templeton Prize as well in the early 2000s. What, though, now as we look back on his life and give thanks for it, what would you say are the things that will continue to inspire people, that will continue to influence people from the things he did and said and wrote in his own lifetime? Well, let me mention two, if I may. I'm not going to single out particular books, but two themes that I have noted and appreciated in his writings. One is that he's not a polemicist. He is, in effect, a very clear writer who is, in effect, saying, let me tell you the way it is. And actually, we can all learn from that, you know, that actually, very often, the best defense of something is not to shoot down your opponents, but it's rather to say, here is what it is. I think I've learned from that. But the other thing, which I think is very important, is that this man obviously understood people. Actually, I guess this is due to his ministry, but certainly he knew the questions ordinary people, ordinary Christian believers were asking, and he answered them in terms they could understand. He scratched where they itched. And that's the mark of someone who has, in effect, taken other people very, very seriously and said, here's what I find helpful. Does this help you? And I think that's a mark of someone who, in effect, takes other people very seriously indeed. Well, I'm sure it already has, but let's hope that many more people take up that mantle of putting science and faith together in the gracious way that John did. You've written, kindly, a tribute to John for Premier Christianity magazine. I will leave a link to that with today's show so that people can go and read it there as well. There's some other exciting news on the horizon, though, before you leave me, Alistair, which is that we're going to be beginning a new C.S. Lewis podcast that you're the regular contributor to soon. It is due to start on Monday the 29th of March, and that's one recorded with our own Ruth Jackson on a regular basis. We've actually had this waiting in the wings for a little time. Coronavirus sort of put it on the back burner for a while, but we're really looking forward to this because there are obviously a number of podcasts out there that deal with C.S. Lewis in some ways. This is the first time really, though, that we've got Alistair McGrath, one of the key people on C.S. Lewis, sitting down regularly with us to talk through his life and faith. I'm really looking forward to that. What do you hope people will gain if they're able to tune in and download the podcast over the next few months? I'll just come away feeling, hey, C.S. Lewis is really interesting. I need to go read this guy. If that happens, I will be so pleased. Absolutely. Well, I've had the pleasure of being able to listen to some of the episodes in advance, and they really are worth listening to. If you want an in-depth piece but also very accessible on C.S. Lewis, then do tune in for that. We'll make sure there are details from today's show as well, where you can go and get yourself registered so you can make sure you don't miss a thing. For now, Alistair, thank you very much for being with me and for sharing your thoughts and memories of John Polkinghorne. For now, thank you very much, and we'll see you next time. Thank you. Bye-bye.