Seeking Answers From Science and Faith About the Final Days of Earth

Eschatology is the study of “the end times”--the end of history, the end of humankind, the end of the world. Once the exclusive concern of theologians and philosophers, the subject has attracted the attention of astronomers and physicists who debate among themselves about when the sun will burn out and whether the cosmos will collapse on itself.

John Polkinghorne, however, insists that theology--and, specifically, Christian theology--is a source of wisdom and insight that science simply cannot provide in contemplating the question of what will happen when the world finally comes to an end, as religion and science agree that it will.

“The thesis of this book is that Christian belief provides the essential resource for answering this fundamental question,” Polkinghorne says in “The God of Hope and the End of the World.” “Ultimately the issue is whether we live in a world that makes sense not just now, but totally and forever.”

Polkinghorne is a theologian and a scientist (he is a priest and a physicist), and his previous books include “Belief in God in an Age of Science” and “Faith, Science and Understanding.” His new book is a kind of summing-up of the work of the religious and scientific scholars, Polkinghorne among them, who gathered at Princeton University over three years under the auspices of the Center of Theological Inquiry to “reconsider, in the light of modern knowledge, the expression of Christian eschatological hope concerning the end of the world and concerning the fulfillment of the divine purpose for creation.”

Of course, the intellectual trapdoor under all religious discourse about the end times is the simple fact that it is purely subjective and wholly speculative--and, by definition, cannot be otherwise. That’s the real difference between science and theology, a difference that the author seems to concede--after all, we can see the distant past and outermost reaches of the cosmos with our own eyes through a telescope, but no one has yet glimpsed what Polkinghorne calls, almost longingly, “a destiny beyond death.”

Polkinghorne insists that science, too, ultimately bumps up against the unknown and the unknowable. “[B]oth science and theology,” he writes, “have to express their belief in the existence of unseen realities, be they confined quarks forever hidden within nuclear matter or be it the invisible reality of the divine presence.”

He is honest enough to concede that science and theology can never be fully harmonized, but he insists that true belief is ultimately more illuminating than the scientific method.

“[N]atural science can do no more than present us with the contrast of a finely tuned and fruitful universe which is condemned to ultimate futility,” he witnesses to his readers without a trace of irony, adding: “[T]heology bases its postmortem hope on a reality inaccessible to scientific investigation, the faithfulness of the living God.”

Indeed, when Polkinghorne shares his musings on “the life of the world to come,” focusing on what he calls “the Four Last Things: Death; Judgement; Heaven; Hell,” he exits the world of science and enters the world of metaphysics, the very same counting of angels on a pinhead that once occupied the attention of medieval theologians.

Unlike other contemporary writers who struggle to find linkages between faith and reason, religion and science, he rejects “shallow scientific triumphalism” and falls back on true belief of a very specific kind.

“Christian belief must not lose its nerve about eschatological hope,” he says. “A credible theology depends upon it and, in turn, a Trinitarian and incarnational theology can assure us of its credibility.”

Polkinghorne’s argument ultimately relies on a leap of faith that many of his readers may not be prepared to make.

But it is not faith alone that motivates the author--he declares himself unsatisfied by “implausible airy fantasies” about the end of the world and life after death, and he goes in search of a Christian eschatology that is “intelligible and defensible in the 21st century.”

Here Polkinghorne betrays a measure of chutzpah that is refreshing if somewhat at odds with his solemn declaration of faith: He demands of God a world and a world to come that make sense.

He is hardly the first mere mortal to call God to task--it’s a tradition that begins with the biblical Abraham--but his argument may remind the reader of Niels Bohr’s retort to Albert Einstein’s famous remark that God does not play dice with the universe: “Einstein,” he scolded, “stop telling God what to do!”