It has been one year now since the God, Science, and Humanity" Conference on Feb. 10, 2018, sponsored by The Prayer Book Society at St. Francis Church in Potomac, MD. The purpose of the event was to renew our Christian imaginations from within the Great Tradition of Christianity for better constructive engagement with the many challenges posed by our secular and technological social order, especially those associated with a perceived conflict between science and Christian faith. The … [Read more...]
Advent-Epiphany “Word” Series
I have always been fascinated by language and words. Words are special. They enable interpersonal communication. They also enable the articulation of the intelligibility of the world. They are essential to our life as human beings. The Word we receive from God is also special. We speak of the Bible as God's Word. We also speak of Jesus as God's Word, His Logos, the Word-made-flesh through Whom the words of the Bible come alive.During Advent 2002 through Epiphany 2003 I had written a … [Read more...]
The Word of Mystery
Since the start of Advent, we have been following a series of reflections on the theme of “Word”. Words convey truth, knowledge and love. They have content, express meaning, and enable communication. They provide an essential connection with the world and between human beings that is uniquely human. Yet when all is said and done, words are not fully adequate to the task. This limitation is certainly familiar to practitioners of my profession, physics. Words fail adequately to convey the strange … [Read more...]
The Word of Silence
Words provide a necessary and powerful means by which we communicate with one another and are a crucial aspect of ordinary life. God also communicates to us through His Word. Yet there are times when God seems not to speak, where His Word is silent. The prophet Amos tells the people of Israel, “Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord God, “When I will send a famine on the land, not a famine for bread or a thirst for water, but rather for hearing the words of the Lord.”(Amos 8:11) This is … [Read more...]
The Word of Light
Today marks the opening of the Church’s season of Epiphany, which focuses on the coming of Jesus as God’s servant to fulfill the ancient prophecy: “I will also make You a light of the nations so that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” (Is 49:6; echoed in Acts 13:47) The word Epiphany comes from a Greek word that literally means to shine upon, and is associated with the manifestation of God’s salvation to the gentile world. Light is an apt symbol to convey the multifaceted reality … [Read more...]
The Word of Love
One of our deepest human needs is to love and to be loved. We are not made to live our lives alone. John Donne expressed this poetically when he wrote “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” Surely part of the meaning of being made in God’s image is that our lives are to reflect in some way the inner life of God as a Trinity of Persons in a relationship of love with one another. We flourish best as part of a community where love of … [Read more...]
The Word of Truth
And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14) Let me extend a hearty Christmas greeting to all who are reading this “Word” series. I would like to share a few thoughts about the truth within the Christmas story. Many today still ask the skeptical question of Pontius Pilate: “What is truth?” (John 18:38). In the ordinary sense of the word, truth has to do with what is real, indicating … [Read more...]
The Word of Hope
“For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things will not be remembered or come to mind. “ (Is.65:17)As we come to the last Sunday of Advent, we have been through a time of preparation, of anticipation, for celebrating the Christmas season. One word that I always associate with Advent is hope. Human beings seem to have an almost inexhaustible capacity to hope. It is an enduring theme of world’s literature. The Advent Scripture readings have spoken of the hope of … [Read more...]
The Word of Joy
The Psalmist says “O come, let us sing for joy to the LORD, let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation.”(Ps. 95:1) Have you ever noticed that there is one pink candle among the three purple ones in the Advent wreath? The purple ones symbolize the penitential emphasis of Advent, calling us to turn from our sinful ways. By contrast, the pink candle symbolizes joy. The 3rd Sunday of Advent has traditionally been known as gaudete Sunday, from the Latin word for “rejoice”. We are reminded … [Read more...]
The Word of Judgment
Let us continue our Advent reflections on the theme of “Word”. The Church has historically viewed Advent as a penitential season, reminding us of our great need of redemption from lives of futility and darkness. Although God’s Word is life giving and creative, Scripture paints an unflinchingly realistic picture of human nature, and confronts us with our deceptive hearts and lying tongues. In short, left to ourselves, we do not flourish as human beings in a life of love of God and neighbor, but … [Read more...]
The Word of Life
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. … Through Him all things were made.” These familiar yet powerful words open the gospel of John. As we enter into the new liturgical year this Advent, looking forward to the coming of that Word as an infant in a manger, I would like to offer a series of reflections on the theme of “Word.” They are based on a series I did for Advent-Epiphany 2002-2003 when Senior Warden at Truro Church in Fairfax, … [Read more...]
God Science and Humanity Colloquium on 10th February in Potomac
This one day conference will run from 10 a.m. till about 4 p.m. when Evening Prayer will follow and it will include a boxed luncheon of good quality.It will be held at the Church of St Francis Potomac near Washington DC, and will bring together several notable experts includingDr. William Phillips Nobel Laureate in Physics and recipient of the Albert A. Michelson Medal from The Franklin Institute, based at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) & … [Read more...]
Christmas 2017: Can wonder ever end?
If our eyes do not remain closed, Christmas is a season associated with wonder. Do we ever stop to pause from our busy lives to sense the sheer astonishment of simply being here, that we are beings who are even capable of wonder: the wonder of the world, the wonder of the Christ child, the wonder of any child, the wonder that we have a welcoming home in a small corner of our most amazing and abundant cosmos populated with more than a trillion trillion stars?Can science and Christmas have … [Read more...]
Science and faith — some links and resources
The relationship between science and faith is one to which Anglicans have made notable contributions in recent times, while in addition, Anglican clergy have historically been prominent both as scientists and among those reflecting philosophically upon the issues arising.As part of the Prayer Book Society's engagement with apologetics we have featured presentations on this theme on this website by Dr Paul Julienne and in our 2017 Conference, and we are also holding a one day Colloquium, in … [Read more...]
Advent 2017: To arrive at the beginning
The end is where we start from. … And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets, Little Gidding As we come to the opening of Advent, 2017, the liturgical readings remind us of both the "last things," the Last Judgment and the new heavens and new earth, and our anticipation of "new things" in the coming of the Christ Child. The end and the beginning somehow belong together. For the … [Read more...]
Be Thankful
It is a truism that no man fully fathoms the depth of God’s love. Saintly folk do better than most, but on the whole human beings are a rather forgetful lot. Perhaps the real problem with the human condition involves a kind of forgetfulness or willful amnesia. What I mean is that we humans … [Read more...]
Audio of the Session on Science and Faith at the PBS Conference 2017
A recording of the Conference Session on Apologetics, Science and Faith addressed by Dr. Paul Julienne, the distinguished Physicist and the Society's lead blogger in this field, can be accessed below.He addressed the question:How should science and faith relate to one another?Dr. Paul S. Julienne … [Read more...]
Just what is science, after all?
"All human beings by nature desire to know." Thus goes the opening line of Aristotle's "Metaphysics" (4th century BC), the book so named because it came after the book on physics in his collected writings (meta being a Greek preposition that has "after" among its several meanings). We immediately see three obvious yet remarkable things implicit in this quite simple statement. First, "human beings" are said to be a class about which the term "all" can be predicated, implying a common nature … [Read more...]
The Recovery of Wonder
"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed." Albert Einstein wrote the above in a 1931 essay entitled "The world as I see it." Einstein went on to characterize the experience of mystery as "a knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the … [Read more...]
What the world is
Science tells us that our world is a cosmos, that is, it is a whole which we have found to be remarkably ordered according to mathematical principles that are intelligible to our human minds. This order extends from the inconceivably minute domain of elementary particles through the information-rich phenomena of life to the inconceivably vast domain of clusters of galaxies. Science has helped us see how it all is interconnected in deep ways. Many, if not most, scientists will … [Read more...]
The Feynman Challenge
Richard Feynman (1918-1988) was one of the most highly regarded physicists of the 20th Century. He had an uncanny knack for getting to the heart of a problem with simple language and insights. His work had impact not only in fundamental physics but also in offering challenges to explore new areas such as nanotechnology or quantum computing.Feynman explored the relation between science and religion in a public lecture given in 1963 at the University of Washington in Seattle. The lecture … [Read more...]
A Word to the Wise
In my work as a physicist I know the necessity of being sound in the basics. We speak of fundamental physics, fundamental particles, fundamental symmetries and so forth. If you get it wrong at the beginning, at the most fundamental level, that spells trouble ahead for greater progress. So let's cut to the chase to seek what is most basic. That is essential if we are to be fruitful in exploring the quite different domains of science and faith. The power of words I have always been … [Read more...]
Science as Liturgy
Recently I gave a talk at our daughter’s church that explored the relation between science and faith centered on the idea of “liturgy.” This familiar “religious-sounding” word comes from Greek leitourgía, having the sense of “the work of the people” or “what the people do.” In its broadest sense then, “liturgy” speaks of a set of disciplined practices and habits that define a community, a way of being. The author James K. A. Smith has written eloquently of the “liturgy of the mall” or “the … [Read more...]
Science and the Prayer Book: More than Meets the Eye.
Introducing this part of the Website and ourdistinguished author, Dr Paul Julienne, who will be heading this section We live and work in a contemporary world that is dramatically changed from the world of our ancestors—just think of communications, transportation, and medical care. The natural sciences and the technology that flows from them provide powerful streams that shape our changing world. Religion also has been and continues to be a significant force that shapes life … [Read more...]