So, oft in theologic wars The disputants, I ween, Rail on in utter ignorance Of what each other mean, And prate about an Elephant Not one of them has seen!.... So concluded this year's Toon Memorial Lecture in Pusey House Oxford given on the 17th of May 2018 under the title Elephants and Anglicans to the sound of Church Bells: Just how central is the place of the Prayer Book for Anglicans and the future of the Communion? By The Revd. Canon Alistair … [Read more...]
St George’s Chapel Windsor
There is no one place more deeply connected to the monarchy in Britain, aside from Westminster Abbey, than Windsor Castle and the Chapel of St. George.Just how much of that history weighed upon Meghan Markel as she then was during her recent wedding to HRH Prince Harry now Duke of Sussex is unclear, but it could hardly be more profound.Kings Henry VIII and Charles I are buried beneath the Quire and elsewhere lieEdwards IV (1483), VI (1484) and VII (1910);George III (1820), … [Read more...]
Persecution of Christians: Recent Overview Reports detail a deteriorating picture
“In terms of the numbers of people involved, the gravity of the crimes committed and their impact, it is clear that the persecution of Christians is today worse than at any time in history.” So began the presentation by Aid to the Church in Needof their most recent global overview report on Christian persecution Persecuted & Forgotten? – A Report on Christians Oppressed for their Faith.This report went on to point out that not only are Christians more persecuted … [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...]
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...]
Thomas Aquinas on Lent I
When He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He was afterward an hungered. (Matt. iv. 2.)I. AUGUSTINE says that it is the highest religion to imitate what we worship, so that, when Our Lord fasted, we ought to imitate Him in fasting.We worship God Almighty. We worship the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. We worship the Word made Flesh, Jesus Christ. Worship unites us to the object of worshiping. Our object is Jesus Christ because He is the Way to the Father. Through Him, we … [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...]