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8
pointing from the world to God."
29
Polkinghorne finds justification in his dialogue with science and theology for employing a biological
explanation for the question of origins. In biology, the concern is with "the processes and occurrences of the
physical world, in particular those of evolutionary biological history."
30
This aspect moves the point of discussion
from
the ground rules to the cosmic game itself, as it has actually been played out on planet Earth.
[Therefore,] the task is to accept the scientific story at its own level but to propose an alternative
metainterpretation of that story, read out from the belief that behind it lie the creative purposes of
God. Because of the complexity of the biological story, the argument now being discussed has to
point from God to the world. In other words, we are no longer concerned with natural theology but
with a theology of nature.
31

Polkinghorne formulates his cosmology based on his subtle move from natural theology to a theology of
nature as follows:
The laws of nature are so designed that they will lead to the coming-to-be of self-conscious and
God-conscious beings. However, the precise form of these beings was not laid down by divine
decree from all eternity but it results from the operations of chance, the historically contingent
development of that fertile endowment, bringing it to a particular fruition. The universe is not
Gods puppet theatre in which a predetermined script is being inexorably enacted, but it is the
arena of improvization in which creation is allowed ,,to make itself, to discover and realize its
potentiality through the shuffling explorations of possibility. The costliness and blind alleys of
evolution are the necessary price to be paid for this open, exploratory creation."
32

As Polkinghorne unpacks his cosmological insights, the nature of his hermeneutic begins to show itself. He
justifies his position as critical realist on the basis of three primary factors:
33
(i) his position as a theologian which necessarily demands his ability to recognize different levels
of reality, e.g., scientific, aesthetic, moral, and religious experience and which is verified
scientifically by Bohrs theory of complementary;
29
Science and Theology, 77.
30
Ibid.
31
Ibid., 77-78.
32
Ibid., 79.
33
Science and Theology, 14-16. Cf. Alister E. McGrath, Nature: A Scientific Theology, vol. 1 (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001).