4
- ability to reach "versimiltudinous" conclusions that will
continue to stand in the "circumscribed domain" in which
they have been thoroughly tested
- "transpersonal reality of God" is not open to manipulation
or putting to the test
However, he asserts, "Christian theological discourse is not cut and dried, utterly prescriptive and allowing
no room for subsequent intellectual manoeuvre. On the contrary, it encourages a diversity of contributions, while at
the same time it sets limits to the range of possibilities that the Church can recognise as adequate to its
experience."
11
Polkinghorne notes that the limitations placed upon theological interpretation are due to "theologys
quest for motivated belief rather than indulging in unbounded speculation; they are the theological equivalents of the
requirements of empirical adequacy that set limits to the range of acceptable scientific theories," i.e., Christian
theology is a "bottom-up response to religious experience, the search for motivated beliefs."
12
On the basis of his scientifically based hermeneutic, Polkinghorne rejects classical interpretations of natural
theology, which were built around the proofs for the existence of God.
13
Thus natural theological discourse takes
place, first, on the basis of "insight rather than proof,"
14
i.e., empirical evidence. Martin Heidegger, speaking of
these proofs, notes that "for centuries philosophy has taught that there are four causes" (the causa materialis, the
causa formalis, the causa finalis, the causa efficiens).
15
Heidegger wryly adds: "Certainly for centuries we have
acted as though the doctrine of the four causes had fallen from heaven as a truth as clear as daylight. . . . For a long
time we have been accustomed to representing cause as that which brings something about."
16
The church of the
medieval period (and beyond) maintained a firm belief in the Aristotelian causes as the foundation for its inductive
11
Ibid., 42.
12
Ibid., 42-43.
13
Science and Theology, 71; cf. One World: The Interaction between Science and Theology, 41.
14
Ibid.; cf. One World: The Interaction between Science and Theology, 42.
15
Martin Heidegger, "The Question Concerning Technology," in The Question Concerning Technology and
Other Essays, trans. and intro. William Lovitt (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1977), 6.
16
Ibid., 6-7.