REMEMBERING ARTHUR PEACOCKE: A PERSONAL REFLECTION

I join others who have expressed profound gratitude for the life and thought of Arthur Peacocke. I recall some high points in my interaction with him during a period of forty years as an intellectual companion and personal friend. Some similarities in our thinking about evolution, emergence, top‐down causality, and continuing creation are indicated. Four points of difference are then discussed: (1) Emergent monism or two‐aspect process events? (2) Panentheism or process theism? (3) Creation ex nihilo and/or continuing creation? (4) Voluntary or necessary limitation of God's power? Even when we differed I have benefited immensely from our ongoing interaction.     

DIVINE AGENCY AND THE PRINCIPLE OF THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY

Many contemporary thinkers seeking to integrate theistic belief and scientific thought reject what they regard as two extremes. They disavow deism in which God is understood simply to uphold the existence of the physical universe, and they exclude any view of divine influence that suggests the performance of physical work through an immaterial cause. Deism is viewed as theologically inadequate, and acceptance of direct immaterial causation of physical events is viewed as scientifically illegitimate. This desire to avoid both deism and any positing of God as directly intervening in the physical order has led to models of divine agency that seek to defend the reality of divine causal power yet affirm the causal closure of the physical. I argue, negatively, that such models are unsuccessful in their attempts to affirm both the reality of divine causal power acting in the created world and the causal closure of the physical and, positively, that the assumption that underlies these models, namely that any genuine integration of theistic and scientific belief must posit the causal closure of the physical on pain of violating well-established conservation principles, is mistaken.     

THE LOVE RACKET: DEFINING LOVE AND AGAPEFOR THE LOVE‐AND‐SCIENCE RESEARCH PROGRAM

Abstract. Scholars of religion and science have generated remarkable scholarship in recent years in their explorations of love. Exactly how scholars involved in this budding field believe that love and science should relate and/or be integrated varies greatly. What they share in common is the belief that issues of love are of paramount importance and that the various scientific disciplines—whether natural, social, or religious—must be brought to bear upon how best to understand love. I briefly introduce the emergence of the love‐and‐science research program and note that scholars have not done well defining what they mean by love. I suggest that the present surge in love scholarship will fail to produce the positive results that it otherwise might if love is not defined well. I provide and defend a definition of love adequate for those doing love‐and‐science research: To love is to act intentionally, in sympathetic response to others (including God), to promote well‐being. To explain better what this simple definition entails, I explore its three main phrases. Love is said to have many forms, but agape is the form to which the love‐and‐science literature most commonly refers. I comment briefly on the debates about how to best understand agape, noting sixteen different definitions proposed by major scholars. I identify weaknesses in many of them and then offer what I argue is a more adequate definition of agape as intentional response to promote well‐being when confronted by that which generates ill‐being. In short, agape repays evil with good. While research on love and science requires much more than adequate definitions, I believe that the definitions I proffer can prove useful in furthering the love‐and‐science research program.