Kevin Sharpe, Sleuthing the Divine: The Nexus of Science and Spirit (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), xi + 180 Pps., $16.00.
Kevin Sharpe is Professor in the Graduate College of the Union Institute, Cincinnati, OH., and Associate Director of Research at the Ian Ramsay Centre, Oxford University, England. He has published numerous journal articles regarding the inter-relation of science and theology, and holds doctorates in mathematics and religious studies. Moreover, he is editor of the Fortress Press series, ‘Theology and the Sciences’.
Sharpe seeks to answer numerous questions in this text, such as Who is God?, What is God like?, Where can God be found?, and why do so many people claim a different conception of God? Interestingly, outside of the preface, Sharpe no longer uses the term God. In its stead, he chooses to speak of the ‘divine being’, which immediately, according to him, eliminates cultural prejudices, religious particularities, and common parlance. In addition to avoiding the term ‘God’, he also avoids the term theology, opting instead for ‘spiritual thinking’ or ‘spiritual ideas’. Nevertheless, the novel vocabulary usages aside, he seeks to reconstruct the divine reality (i.e. ‘God’) with significance by asserting firstly that it (the masculine pronoun is here intentionally avoided) is a real entity, and secondly that it interacts, thoroughly, with the secular culture (which denies, then, the position of the total ‘otherness’ of God).
Since I deem the first two parts of this text to be the most original contributions to science and theology by Sharpe, I will focus this review upon salient points from them. In chapter one, ‘Scientific and Spiritual Thought: Their Mutual Relevance’, Sharpe asserts the mutual relevance (i.e. both ways) of scientific and spiritual thought. He in fact promotes a neutral position in regards to authority and truth in the world, noting that both sources of truth are profitable, although he leans to the secular side as the primary dispenser of truth. He unabashedly asserts that the picture of the divine, in contemporary society, must take its root from the secular and scientific domains. Whereas he accedes to the notion that science aptly describes all phenomena in the natural world, he recognizes the need for religious anecdotes to enter the conversation when questions of ‘purpose’ enter the conversation (10). This nevertheless considered, science describes how the divine works (13). In furtherance of his belying of the total ‘otherness’ of God, Sharpe invokes Tillichian overtones in asserting that the divine is the ‘underlying whole’ that produces all things (28). Perhaps, Sharpe suggests, the divine is the underlying order, whose unfolded wholeness expresses divinity.
In chapter four, Sharpe turns to questions regarding the subuniverse, which leads him into dialog with various physicists. He notes that many physicists imagine something more basic than the Big Bang, its products, or the physical laws of the universe (33). This ‘something’ at least consisted of four things, Sharpe asseverates, in dialog with William Drees: the laws of physics, the three dimensions of space, the conditions of the universe at t0 (i.e. the initial moment), and the existence of the universe (34). In making a connection to the divine, Sharpe notes that it and the universe hold both logic and fruitfulness in common. Moreover, he asserts that the divine causes each object within the universe to perpetuate, and gives existence to each object at every moment of its existence, which promotes a tightly bound relation between the’ creator’ and its ‘creature’. The divine, then, continually produces each item, each relationship, and each feeling of the created object(s), which it does through the unfolding of the potential that is the divine itself (39). One may perceive, then, that natural law(s) receive their validity from their attachment to the divine.
As a result of this attachment to the divine, Sharpe emphasizes in chapter six that the divine does not disrupt the conservation laws of science, which would rule-out any attestation of the miraculous by default. After all, we expect the divine to act consistently within the universe and respect its integrity. Thus, the divine can act only in accordance with the laws of nature (48). He suggests that the nonlocality advocated by physics is one such manner in which the divine may act within the universe in such a way. Consequently, the divine interacts with its creation from moment to moment, and not only from-to-time, as traditional belief seemingly posits (66). In an important note, Sharpe does not think that the divinity exists independently of the universe which is its creation (67). Whereas one can pick up characteristics of a panentheistic relation of God and the world within this text, Sharpe apparently dislikes this view, and opts instead for a thoroughly immanent divine entity (72–73).
In a notable criticism, I dislike how broadly Sharpe paints the Charismatic movements in reference to their spirituality. At various points, he intimates, if not directly stipulates, that they immerse themselves in the experiential to the exclusion of the scientific-secular manner of investigation. On the contrary, I see numerous charismatic and charismatically-inclined scholars in today’s environ that are engaging both secular and traditionally religious authorities of truth in their ‘philosophizing’. For example, one could look at Amos Yong for a developing pneumatic perspective toward the science and religion dialog. Moreover, one could reference Thomas J. Oord for information regarding the relation of science and Spirit. This reservation aside, Sharpe is rather well-versed in the latest developments of science, and I thus recommend this title for those who are inclined toward the conversation of science and religion. This text can be viewed as a discourse of how religion is affected by contemporary science. Note that those who adhere to dogmatic tenets of faith may be proverbially put-off, however, by numerous of the positions that Sharpe presents herein. However, I deem texts that do such to be especially profitable reads, and I posit that you would come to the same conclusion by consumption of this title.
Bradford McCall
Regent University, Virginia Beach, VA