The Trinity and an Entangled World

the trinity and an entangled world

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The Trinity and an Entangled World

Relationality in Physical Science and Theology

Edited by

John Polkinghorne

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge, U.K.

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© 2010 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

All rights reserved

Published 2010 by

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

2140 Oak Industrial Drive N.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49505 /

P.O. Box 163, Cambridge CB3 9PU U.K.

Printed in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The trinity and an entangled world: relationality in physical science and theology /

edited by John Polkinghorne.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-8028-6512-0 (pbk.: alk. paper)

1. Religion and science.

2. Physical sciences — Religious aspects — Christianity.

I. Polkinghorne, J. C., 1930-

BL240.3.T75 2010

261.5¢5 — dc22

2010013889

www.eerdmans.com

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Contents

Introduction vii

John Polkinghorne

The Demise of Democritus 1

John Polkinghorne

The Entangled World: How Can It Be Like That? 15

Jeffrey Bub

Quantum Physics: Ontology or Epistemology? 32

Anton Zeilinger

A Self-Contained Universe? 41

Michael Heller

An Introduction to Relational Ontology 55

Wesley J. Wildman

Scientific Knowledge as a Bridge to the Mind of God 74

Panos A. Ligomenides

Relational Nature 93

Argyris Nicolaidis

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The Holy Trinity: Model for Personhood-in-Relation 107

Kallistos Ware

(Mis)Adventures in Trinitarian Ontology 130

Lewis Ayres

Relational Ontology: Insights from Patristic Thought 146

John Zizioulas

Relation: Human and Divine 157

Michael Welker

A Relational Ontology Reviewed in Sociological Perspective 168

David Martin

Afterword: “Relational Ontology,” Trinity, and Science 184

Sarah Coakley

Contributors 200

Index 205

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Contents

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Introduction

John Polkinghorne

In its exploration of the physical world science has increasingly found thatconcepts of atomism and mechanism, useful though they undoubtedly arefor some purposes, are nevertheless unable to express fully the character ofphysical reality. A methodological reductionism, decomposing complexentities into simpler constituent parts, has often proved an effective strat-egy for investigation in science, but this is by no means always the case. Itseems that nature fights back against the supposition of the ontologicaladequacy of a purely atomistic point of view. The history of twentieth-century physics can be read as the story of the discovery of many levels ofintrinsic relationality present in the structure of the universe.

In chapter 1, John Polkinghorne surveys the wide range of phenomenathat have led to this recognition of holistic connectivity in the physicalworld. In chapters 2 and 3 respectively, Jeffrey Bub and Anton Zeilinger payparticular and detailed attention to one of the most remarkable phenom-ena of physical relationality, the property of quantum entanglement. Inthe subatomic world, interaction can bring about states that have to beconsidered as a single unified system, even though composed of constitu-ents that may spatially be widely separated. Zeilinger emphasizes that insuch entangled states, what is known with certainty is not the individualproperties of constituents but the relationships existing between them.

In chapter 4, Michael Heller explores a new approach to cosmologicaltheory that is based on the mathematics of noncommutative geometry.According to this view, at the deepest level of physical reality there are onlyglobal properties and our apparent experiences of localized space and timeemerge as approximations to this more subtle physical reality.

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These scientific insights and discoveries are of obvious relevance tometaphysical and theological accounts of reality. Yet one must recognizethat there is no simple logical entailment between physics and metaphys-ics, or from science to theology. The discoveries of science constrain, butdo not determine, the shape of more comprehensive thinking, rather asthe foundations of a house constrain, but do not uniquely determine, theedifice to be built upon them. For instance, the nature of causality is ametaphysical issue not settled by physics alone, even if the latter’s great ex-planatory success does not encourage the thought that all that is involvedis a mysterious and inexplicable constant conjunction. The point is madeclearly enough by the fact that there are both indeterministic and deter-ministic interpretations of quantum theory, both being of equal empiricaladequacy. The choice between them has to be made on metascientificgrounds, such as judgments of economy, elegance, and lack of contrivance.The relation between the physical insights presented in the first four chap-ters of this book and the discussions in the chapters that follow has todepend upon some form of alogical discernment of degrees of cousinlyconnection, of a kind that might be characterized by words such as “reso-nance,” “consonance,” “analogy,” “mutual influence,” and the like. Ac-cordingly, this book offers a variety of options for how relational ontologymay be understood when considered in the broadest context and the deep-est manner.

In chapter 5, Wesley Wildman proposes to use a concept of causality asthe common factor in considerations of relationality, though he admitsthat there are forms of relationship (value, conceptual, logical) that requireelaborated argument under his rubric. Wildman identifies five metaphysi-cal types of causal theory: participation (in which he locates Trinitariantheology); pratiya-samutpada (based on the Buddhist doctrine of anatta);process (following the thought of A. N. Whitehead); semiosis (derivedfrom the thought of C. S. Peirce); and implicate-order (arising out ofD. Bohm’s deterministic interpretation of quantum theory). In chapter 7,Argyris Nicolaidis shows how a physicist finds the Peircean approach par-ticularly illuminating.

In chapter 6, another scientist, Panos Ligomenides, explains that hefinds most helpful the pantheistic concepts of Benedict Spinoza, identify-ing the divine with the deep structure of the universe (deus sive natura).This kind of cosmic religion is quite common among scientists and it wasembraced by Albert Einstein, who said that if he had a God it was indeedthe God of Spinoza.

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John Polkinghorne

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The next three chapters are concerned with the insights offered byTrinitarian theology, with its understanding of the triune God whose es-sential being is constituted by the perichoretic exchange of mutually inter-penetrating love between the three divine Persons. In chapter 8, TimothyWare offers a review of patristic Trinitarian theology. Contemporary as-sessments of this classic resource for Christian theology have recently pro-duced a degree of revision in the judgments made. Earlier thinking hadtended to draw a distinction between the theologies of the Eastern andWestern churches, with the former being held to accord priority to the ac-knowledgment of the Three before moving to the discussion of the unityof the One, while the latter’s thought was considered to move in the oppo-site direction from the One to the Three. It is now quite widely recognizedthat East and West are closer to each other than this approach suggests.Consequently a more balanced account is being proposed, giving prece-dence neither to relationality over being nor to being over relationality.Certainly a vigorous debate is in process on these issues, and chapters 9and 10, by Lewis Ayres and John Zizioulas respectively, offer the reader ac-cess to this current discussion.

This volume deliberately concentrates its attention on the connectionbetween thinking in the physical sciences and matters of wider interpreta-tive concern, without in any way wishing to imply that important sourcesof insight are not to be found also in biology, anthropology, and sociol-ogy. The next two chapters endeavor to redress the balance of our book alittle. In chapter 10, the systematic theologian Michael Welker draws oninsights from child development studies to argue for a complex accountof the nature of relationship, transcending simple notions of transactionsbetween “two points of reference.” In chapter 12, David Martin uses ex-amples drawn from sociological studies to argue for a charismatic ele-ment in human relationships that will only find its complete fulfillmenteschatologically.

In an Afterword, Sarah Coakley offers some reflections on Trinitarianrelationality, and on the philosophical analysis of the concepts of relationand causation. These are offered partly as a contribution to carry the dis-cussion further beyond the confines of the present book. Coakley discernsthree phases in the twentieth-century development of Trinitarian theol-ogy. In the first (Lossky, Barth, Rahner) the focus was on opposing an En-lightenment dismissal of theological metaphysics. In the second phase(Zizioulas), it was atomistic individualism that had to be combated. Thelatter was a move that proved congenial to some scientists and it has served

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Introduction

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to encourage a positive interaction between science and theology. Many ofthe authors of this volume have been influenced by this development, butthere has also been a third phase of reaction to it, which Coakley sees asrepresented in these pages by Ayres and, to a degree, by Ware. The conclu-sion of her theological analysis is that one can see “signals of the end of amandatory Enlightenment clamp on speculative metaphysics about the di-vine,” a judgment in which all the other authors of this volume will surelyconcur. Finally, Coakley emphasizes the complexity of philosophical de-bate about the concepts of relation and causality. Her final challenge is toask the question, “Why three?”

A wide-ranging study of this kind faces terminological difficulties andconceptual problems. Fundamental to the discussion are terms such as“causality” and “relationality,” which have a multivalent character, varyingin their precise meanings according to the contexts in which they are beingemployed. Certainly there does not seem to be a simple univocal definitionof these key words that would cover the whole range of the book. Instead,the authors access a portfolio of connected meanings, related to each otherby something like a Wittgensteinian “family resemblance.” For example,there are contexts in which the idea of causality involves a significant tem-poral element (cause preceding and bringing about an effect), which inother usages will be lacking (the Creator’s causal sustaining of creation; theTrinitarian concept of the Father as the eternal fount of being of the Sonand the Spirit). It is important to recognize this necessary semantic flexi-bility and not to insist on stipulating a single limited meaning. Similarly,the concept of relationship needs to be flexibly employed. Electrons as ex-citations in a common electron field; quantum entanglement; the gravita-tional interaction of Sun and planets; human kinship; Creator and cre-ation; the Trinitarian mutuality of perichoresis — these are all properly tobe thought of as forms of relationality, in a degree of mutual congruencewith each other despite their obviously very different proper characters.

Finally, one might enquire what light one might reasonably expectphysics to be able to shed on metaphysical or theological matters. We havealready acknowledged that its influence will not be such as to determine fi-nally the issues raised in that wider discourse. Instead, it can offer the pos-sibility of a source of supportive consonance with more ambitious ac-counts of reality. Moreover, the practice of physics encourages theexpectation that, just as physicists in their own domain have foundrelationality to be more extensive and more surprising in its character thanprior expectation would have led them to anticipate, so philosophers and

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John Polkinghorne

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theologians should be open to the possibility of unexpected discovery andcounterintuitive insight.

The papers that constitute the chapters of this book were presented anddiscussed at two conferences supported by the John Templeton Founda-tion. All the authors are grateful for this generosity and for the considerableassistance we have received from Dr. Mary Ann Meyers of the Foundation.

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Introduction

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The Trinity and an Entangled World

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