God didn't produce a ready-made world. The Creator has done something cleverer than this, making a world able to make itself.
John PolkinghorneScience cannot tell theology how to construct a doctrine of creation, but you can't construct a doctrine of creation without taking account of the age of the universe and the evolutionary character of cosmic history.
John PolkinghorneTheologians have a great problem because they're seeking to speak about God. Since God is the ground of everything that is, there's a sense in which every human inquiry is grist to the theological mill. Obviously, no theologian can know everything.
John PolkinghorneNevertheless, all of us who work in quantum physics believe in the reality of a quantum world, and the reality of quantum entities like protons and electrons.
John PolkinghorneWhitehead reacted strongly against the idea of God as a cosmic tyrant, one who brings about everything.
John PolkinghorneTheology differs from science in many respects, because of its different subject matter, a personal God who cannot be put to the test in the way that the impersonal physical world can be subjected to experimental enquiry. Yet science and theology have this in common, that each can be, and should be defended as being investigations of what is, the search for increasing verisimilitude in our understanding of reality.
John Polkinghorne