Shaping the Field of Theology and Science: A Critique of Nancey Murphy

Nancey Murphy is a key second-generation figure in the field of religion and science. Through a variety of responsibilities, some of which are reviewed here, she has worked as a discipline builder over the last fifteen years. After trying to convey the general spirit of Murphy's work, the author focuses on five areas where readers might resist her conclusions, including her "postmodern" theory of scientific (and religious) knowledge and truth, her treatment of theology and science as "separate but equal," and her defense of physicalism.     

J. Wentzel van Huyssteen: Refiguring Rationality in the Postmodern Age

In his three books J. Wentzel van Huyssteen develops a complex and helpful notion of rationality, avoiding the extremes of foundationalism and postmodern relativism and deconstruction. Drawing from several postmodern philosophers of science and evolutionary epistemologists who seek to devise a usable notion of rationality, he weaves together a view that allows for a genuine duet betweenscience and theology. In the process he challenges much contemporary nonfoundationalist theology as well as the philosophical naïveté of some cosmologists and sociobiologists.     

CRITICAL REALISM REDUX: A RESPONSE TO JOSH REEVES

This article combines an appreciation of several themes in Josh Reeves's Against Methodology in Science and Religion: Recent Debates on Rationality and Theology while arguing in favor of critical realism. The author holds that critical realism manages to combine the objective truth reached through inference and especially cognitive acts of judgment as well as the various, contingent historical contexts that also define where science is practiced. Reeves advocates a historical perspective, but this article claims that in order for critical realism to be credible, a philosophical perspective must be maintained.     

The Soul is Alive and Well: Non-reductive Physicalism and Emergent Mental Properties

Non-reductive physicalism denies the soul's existence, arguing that cognitive functions emerge from evolutionary processes. Focusing on Nancey Murphy, this paper argues that non-reductive physicalism has an inadequate conception of causality. Murphy defends downward causation, but like many modern and postmodern philosophers, she pays insufficient attention to the metaphysics of causality. Drawing on Thomistic philosophy, this article maintains that lower-level entities like neurotransmitters lack the causal power necessary to produce higher-level cognitive operations. In defending emergence, Murphy performs a metaphysical sleight-of-hand through which cognitive powers inexplicably appear. The paper ends by urging contemporary thinkers to develop richer metaphysical understandings of causality, and to use them to enhance the dialogue between religion and science.     

Politics and Miracle: Radical Democracy and Non-Interventionist Divine Action

This paper elucidates Nancey Murphy's theology of special divine action in order to show its unique coherence as well as explore some political implications of this theory. Besides showing itself to be a fruitful conceptualization of both “the miraculous” and the natural world, this paper argues that Murphy's insights can be extended to address a pressing question in contemporary political theology: the nature and function of power in increasingly pluralistic societies. The upshot, drawing on the connection between conceptualizations of miracle and sovereignty made by Carl Schmitt, is that Murphy's non-interventionist theory of divine action at the quantum level “fits” with an equally non-interventionist account of political authority from below, at the level of an active, democratically engaged citizenry.     

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.     

Murphy on Postmodernity, Science, and Religion

Nancey Murphy claims that a shift in "thinking strategy" from modern to postmodern modes of thought makes it easier to exhibit the intellectual respectability of theology vis-à-vis the sciences. Her case for this proposition depends on modernist interests, most notably in systematizing the sciences for reasons that have their origin in Plato's divided line.     

After Lakatos

The work of the philosopher of science Imre Lakatos has been highly influential upon scholars of science and religion, especially persons who want to demonstrate how theological inquiry may meet the intellectual standards of science. I first argue against Lakatos' position, showing how it fails to meet its own ambitions of providing clear and public criteria for assessing scientific theories. I then argue that the same weaknesses will manifest themselves in the work of his followers, using Nancey Murphy's early work as an example. I conclude by affirming Murphy's recent shift towards Alasdair MacIntyre's theory of rationality.     

MAINTAINING RESPECTABILITY: RESPONSE TO NICHOLAOS JONES

Nicholaos Jones argues that theology is not a respectable discipline because of its inability to meet the standards of contemporary science. Although Jones makes a bold claim, I suggest that he has not made his case by focusing on the question of defining science and metaphysics appropriately, the analysis of the literature he cites, and his central claim that theology presupposes the absolute certainty of God.