NEW YORK, MARCH 8 -- Arthur Peacocke, a physical biochemist and Anglican priest who pioneered early research into the physical chemistry of DNA and has since become a leading advocate for the creative interaction of theology and science, has won the 2001 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. The announcement was made today at a news conference at the Church Center for the United Nations in New York.

Peacocke, the only Oxford University Theology faculty member to be both a Doctor of Science and a Doctor of Divinity, in 1986 founded the Society of Ordained Scientists (S.O.Sc.), an ecumenical, international order that seeks to foster the spirituality of those working as scientists and as ordained persons and to act as a bridge between the Church and science. He is a strong proponent of "critical realism," holding that science and theology both aim to depict reality and must be subject to critical scrutiny, and that neither Scripture, Church nor religious tradition can be accepted as self-authenticating.

The Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion is awarded annually to a living individual who has shown originality in advancing ideas and institutions that deepen the world's understanding of God and of spiritual life and service. It is the world's best known and largest religion prize, this year valued at 700,000 pounds sterling, about one million dollars, and the largest annual prize given to an individual. Global investor Sir John Templeton created the prize in 1972 to honor the discipline of religion in the same way that the Nobel Prizes honor such disciplines as economics, medicine and physics. The monetary level of the Templeton Prize is always set at an amount that exceeds the Nobel Prizes.

In his nomination of Peacocke to the Templeton Prize judges, Dr. David Hay of the Centre for the Study of Human Relations at Nottingham University in England wrote that Peacocke had created a new understanding of the relationship between theology and science :which has brought about an increase in our understanding of God in the contemporary world...generating a new theology for a scientific age."

The Rev. Canon Dr. Arthur Peacocke was born in 1924 in Watford, Hertfordshire, England, about 20 miles northwest of London. He had a typical Church of England upbringing though his family was not religiously active. At age 11 he won a scholarship to Watford Boys' Grammar School, which gave him a disciplined, rigorous education through wide-ranging debates on science, religion and philosophy.

These early experiences set the path for much of Peacocke's life, during which he has established an international reputation as a diligent investigator and indispensable resource with a succinct, no-nonsense style in writing and speech. He has been known to chide arguers of Creationism versus Evolution, an issue he feels has clearly been decided in favor of Evolution. His many books and lectures vigorously challenge dominant orthodoxies in a determined effort to find truth in both science and religion.

As an undergraduate, perhaps appropriately, Peacocke was an unabashed skeptic. After an adolescent evangelical phase, he became a "mild" agnostic whose contact with conservative evangelical Christianity further alienated him from "all things Christian." Yet, he hungered to make sense of fundamental issues, a quest largely unfulfilled until he heard a sermon at Oxford's university church by the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, and, for the first time, conceived of the possibility that Christianity might be intellectually defensible. World War II and post-war revelations of the horrors of Nazi concentration camps further prodded his religious thought as he sought to come to grips with the problem of evil.

In 1941, he had won an Open Scholarship in Natural Science to Exeter College, Oxford. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry with 1st Class Honors and Bachelor of Science and Doctor of Philosophy research degrees from Oxford University, Peacocke became in 1948 a lecturer in chemistry, and then senior lecturer in biophysical chemistry at the University of Birmingham in England. While there, conventional church teaching left him disenchanted. Seeking an alternative to automatic acceptance of Church or scriptural authority, he began a thorough study of theology, with the encouragement of a professor, Geoffrey Lampe. In 1960, he received a Diploma in Theology and, in 1971, a Bachelor of Divinity from Birmingham University.

In 1952, when the structure of DNA was announced in the British journal Nature, Peacocke was a Rockefeller Fellow in Natural Science working at the Virus Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley. With his colleagues in Birmingham, he was able to show that the chains in DNA are not branched, as once thought, and that the double helix exists in a solution. Later, beginning in 1959, he continued his research as a physical biochemist at Oxford.

Parallel to his scientific endeavors, however, Peacocke was investigating the relation of science and theology. He continued to demand a reasoned approach to religious tradition and dogma, and found himself drawing closer to full Christian adherence. Beginning in 1961 he served as a Lay Reader in the Church of England, but felt his inability to administer sacraments was "like trying to walk on one leg." Ten years later, he entered the Anglican priesthood, determined to live as a priest-scientist.

It was at this time that his scientific and theological pursuits tangibly merged with the publication of Science and the Christian Experiment, which he wrote while still a full-time scientist with a research group working on the physical chemistry of DNA and proteins. In 1973, the book won the prestigious Lecomte du Noüy Prize, the first global recognition of Peacocke as a leader in the new discipline of science and religion. That same year, he became Dean of Clare College, Cambridge, allowing him to pursue more fully his interdisciplinary vocation.

Among his other major publications in this area are Creation and the World of Science (1979), which established further his international reputation, Intimations of Reality: Critical Realism in Science and Religion (1984), Theology for a Scientific Age (1990, 2nd edition 1993, including his 1993 Gifford Lectures), God and the New Biology (1994), From DNA to DEAN: Reflections and Explorations of a Priest-Scientist (1996), God and Science: A Quest for Christian Credibility (1996), and Paths from Science Towards God: The End of All Our Exploring (scheduled for April 2001).

Besides founding the Society of Ordained Scientists, of which he is now Warden-Emeritus, in 1985 Peacocke initiated the Ian Ramsey Centre for the Interdisciplinary Study of Religious Beliefs in Relation to the Sciences, including Medicine, at Oxford. The center's namesake, a former Bishop of Durham and philosopher of religion, had in the early 1960s urged the cooperation of Christian theology with other disciplines for its own intellectual integrity and to help solve contemporary ethical dilemmas. Peacocke also initiated the establishment of the UK Science and Religion Forum and the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology.

In remarks prepared for the news conference, Peacocke said, "The search for intelligibility that characterizes science and the search for meaning that characterizes religion are two necessary intertwined strands of the human enterprise and are not opposed. They are essential to each other, complementary yet distinct and strongly interacting -- indeed just like the two helical strands of DNA itself!" He added, "Science is the global language and possession of our times and it is time, especially now at the beginning of this first century of the new millennium, for thinkers and adherents of all religions to engage creatively with the universal perspectives of the sciences."

Peacocke joins an illustrious group of professional scientists who have won the Templeton Prize, including physicist and theologian Ian Barbour in 1999, astrophysicist Paul Davies in 1995, physicist Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker in 1989, and Benedictine monk and professor of astrophysics Stanley L. Jaki in 1987. Last year the prize was given to Freeman J. Dyson, a physicist whose futuristic views have consistently called for the reconciliation of technology and social justice.

Among the best known recipients of the prize are the Rev. Dr. Billy Graham in 1982, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in 1983, and Watergate figure Charles Colson who received the prize in 1993 for his work in founding Prison Fellowship. Mother Teresa received the first Templeton Prize in 1973, six years before she won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Peacocke lives in Oxford and has been married for 52 years to the former Rosemary W. Mann who, from being a headteacher of a church school, went on to be one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools with national responsibility for the education of young children. They have two children, Christopher, a professor of philosophy, and Jane, an Anglican priest and educator.

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CONTACT:Donald Lehr (212) 967-8200

STATEMENT BY REV. CANON DR. ARTHUR PEACOCKE At the Templeton Prize News Conference, March 8, 2001

To be presented with a prize of this prestige, designated as for "Progress in Religion," is both an exhilarating and a humbling experience -- exhilarating because it represents an assurance that my own, somewhat unusual, path in the last few decades, unswervingly supported by my wife, has indeed not been misdirected -- humbling both because I "stand on the shoulders of giants" who preceded me in the dialogue between science and religion and because I am but part of a growing corporate endeavor of inquiry in this field and one I shall now have the means to enhance. This great enterprise is now global and engages professional theologians, scientists, historians and philosophers in the academic world and is the concern of those of many faiths, and of none. It has been stimulated by the support of the Templeton Foundation, so generously and wisely promoted by Sir John's munificence that also provides this magnificent Prize, for the award of which I warmly thank the Trustees and Judges.

I have often been asked something like this: "How is it that you, a research scientist involved in the early work on the exciting structure of DNA, could have become so interested in what many think of as the opposite of science, religion, that you should not only be a member of the Church but even become a priest in it?" My response is that the search for intelligibility that characterizes science and the search for meaning that characterizes religion are two necessary intertwined strands of the human enterprise and are not opposed. They are essential to each other, complementary yet distinct and strongly interacting -- indeed just like the two helical strands of DNA itself! I came only gradually to this understanding by persistently asking the question "Why?" as my scientific training had rightly impressed upon me.

One only knows what science is really about by doing research. I recall vividly in my early days as an investigator into the physical chemistry of biological systems asking myself, "Why should the concepts and thoughts I am deploying actually work at all in explaining the results of my experiments?" and indeed, "Why is there anything at all for the scientist to study?" These are questions about meaning, and progress in religion is about having a more and more comprehensive understanding of particular realities and of that Ultimate Reality, the Source of all Being and Becoming, who, in English, is named as 'God.'

In the last five decades it has been the natural sciences that have unveiled new intellectually beautiful and dazzling vistas. We are the first generation of human beings to have solid evidence of the origin of our cosmos and of human life and this has to affect the kind of meaning we can find in our existence in it. We can now ask "Why should the cosmos be of such a kind that from the Hot Big Bang some 10 billion years ago, there should emerge by natural processes human persons with creativity, free will and a sense of beauty, truth and goodness -- a Mozart or Shakespeare, a Buddha, a Jesus of Nazareth, and you and me!"

Progress in religion can come only when the religious quest engages creatively with such new scientific perspectives. It has been my chief objective to initiate and facilitate the opening up of new dimensions in the religious quest by bringing together scientists, theologians, historians and philosophers -- and some who master more than one of these disciplines. I have, with the growing support of others, been able to do this locally mainly at Oxford, and earlier at Cambridge; nationally in the UK; and internationally in Europe.

I was especially encouraged to find, at first within the Church of England and then in other Christian churches, a growing number of scientists who were also ordained as priests or ministers and who wished to express their double vocation both to their faith and to science. Together twelve of us formed a new kind of dispersed Order with its own Rule -- the Society of Ordained Scientists which now has as full members 79 men and women from seven different denominations and five countries. They constitute a sign in living experience as well as in hard thinking of the fruitfulness of the interaction between science and religion.

For science, as it now plunges ever more deeply into the physico-chemical basis of life, of reproduction and even of thinking, increasingly needs a framework of reference that can take account of the integrity and meaning of personal life. The community of science needs the meanings that religion unveils.

But the process is reciprocal and mutual. For religion itself can progress only if it is willing to open up new horizons by reflecting on these scientific vistas and the new challenges to traditional affirmations that they provoke. It has led me not only to a revision of some traditional Christian ways of putting things but also to an increasing depth in understanding of my core convictions and to new ways of expressing them positively. For progress in religion is not so different from that in science -- a surer insight into and experience of reality.

Science is the global language and possession of our times and it is time, especially now at the beginning of this first century of the new millennium, for thinkers and adherents of all religions to engage creatively with the universal perspectives of the sciences. In exploring together these expanding frontiers with the sciences they could begin to understand and respect each other more. And, if we do not cease from this joint exploration, we shall find not only that we shall arrive anew at the spiritual bases from which we have severally set out but also that, through this progressive intertwining of our intellectual and spiritual quests for both intelligibility and meaning, we shall know those places for the first time.

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CONTACT: Donald Lehr (212) 967-8200

BIO: REV. CANON DR. ARTHUR PEACOCKE

The two great forces in Arthur Peacocke's life, science and theology, have both been largely informed by a single motivation: the desire to know the truth. It is a desire framed by intense research, wide-ranging inquiry and a healthy dose of skepticism. And just as the chemistry of life requires the double helix of DNA, spirituality and science have provided the vital essence for Peacocke, who has had a distinguished career, first as a physical biochemist, then as a theologian who is also an Anglican priest.

Born in 1924 in the town of Watford, 20 miles northwest of London on the edge of the Hertfordshire countryside, the Rev. Canon Dr. Arthur Peacocke was a naturally curious boy who had a conventional Church of England upbringing. As was customary in early 20th century England, his father, a butcher, and his mother, a homemaker, left school when they were teenagers. He would have opportunities they never had. When he was 11 he gained a scholarship to the local Watford Boys' Grammar School and attended there through 1942 during the war. That year, with the encouragement both of his parents and of his grammar school teachers, he entered Exeter College at Oxford by winning an Open Scholarship in Natural Science.

Oxford exposed Peacocke to a new rich cultural environment. Oxford's chemistry school was one of the most outstanding in the world and the physical chemistry laboratory included several Fellows of the Royal Society. The Oxford Finals Honour School that he entered consisted of four solid years of chemistry, with an emphasis on research. Enjoying a full cultural and social life at Oxford, he played rugby football and rowed on the college teams, and even served as the secretary of the University's English Club, a position which allowed him to entertain such authors as Rebecca West and Dylan Thomas. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry with 1st Class Honors from Oxford University in 1946, along with a Bachelor of Science, a research degree.

During these years, Peacocke considered himself to be a "mild" agnostic. Conservative evangelical Christianity with which he came into contact drove him further away from "all things Christian." His duties as a college scholar, however, included weekly attendance at the college chapel, although he remained skeptical.

A breakthrough of sorts came when he attended a sermon given by the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple. Temple was among the most renowned theologian-philosophers to hold that position in the Church of England and his message had an important impact on Peacocke, who left the sermon conceiving -- for the first time -- that Christianity could be intellectually defensible. As the war ended, revelations of the horrors of the Holocaust also pushed him to consider the problem of evil. Together, these events set in motion the trajectory that would eventually make Peacocke an articulate and effective advocate of Christianity.

It was also about this time that Peacocke met Rosemary Winifred Mann, sister of an undergraduate friend in another college, who was herself a committed Christian. The two married in 1948.

Although religion was beginning slowly to enter Peacocke's life, science was still the dominant feature of his work. He had become Assistant Lecturer in chemistry at the University of Birmingham, eventually becoming Lecturer and finally Senior Lecturer in biophysical chemistry.

The early 1950s were a heady time in the emerging science of molecular biology. In 1952, the structure of DNA was announced while Peacocke was serving as a Rockefeller Fellow in Natural Science in the renowned Virus Laboratory of the University of California at Berkeley and then, later, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Peacocke and his research group at Birmingham soon had their own advances to share with the world, discovering, among other things, that the double helix of DNA exists in solution and that its chains are not branched, as had been at one time thought.

Soon, his scientific quests would lead him to assignments in Israel, as a Visiting Fellow at the Weizman Institute, at Oxford University as a Lecturer in Biochemistry and a Fellow and Tutor in Chemistry, and later in Physical Biochemistry, at St. Peters College. His research at Oxford would eventually earn him the highest Oxford degree of Doctor of Science in 1962.

Yet questions of theology continued to tug. Rejecting any automatic self-authenticating authority of either Church or Scripture, Peacocke began studying theology and the philosophy of religion and of science while at the University of Birmingham. In 1960, he was awarded a Diploma in Theology from that University. The following year, he became a Lay Reader in the Church of England.

In 1965, the same year his seminal book Molecular Basis of Heredity was published, he helped establish the British Biophysical Society, serving as its first secretary and, later, its chairperson. In 1966, he served on the editorial board of Biochemical Journal, and Biopolymers. The next year he became a member of the British National Committee for Biophysics, and in 1968 began an 15-year task editing a series of monographs on physical biochemistry for Oxford University Press.

Though Peacocke served as Lay Reader for the church for ten years, he long had felt that his lack of authority to administer the sacraments was "like trying to walk on one leg." So, in 1971, he became ordained as a priest in the Church of England. Now, the two strands of science and religion were truly interlinked in the one person.

That same year, while working as a full-time scientist at an Oxford biochemistry laboratory researching the physical chemistry of proteins and DNA, he published Science and the Christian Experiment, which examined the parallels between the scientific and theological quests. In 1971, he also received from the University of Birmingham a Bachelor of Divinity degree and, in 1973, the international Lecomte Du Noüy Prize for Science and the Christian Experiment.

Those years further evidenced his life as a "priest-scientist." In 1972, he founded the United Kingdom Science and Religion Forum. The following year, he was appointed Dean, Fellow and Tutor and Director of Studies in Theology at Clare College, Cambridge. While at Cambridge he taught courses in both the departments of Biochemistry and Divinity, a rare case in the U.K. of an academic teaching in two totally separate departments.

In 1978, he delivered the Bampton Lectures at Oxford -- later published as Creation and the World of Science -- which established his international reputation in this field and in which he also introduced the beginnings of his "critical realism" approach to religion. The view, further elucidated in his 1984 book Imitations of Reality: Critical Realism in Science and Religion, holds that Christian beliefs, including belief in God, aim to depict realities and, as such, must be held to the same critical scrutinies as research into the natural world or any other reality. In 1982, he was awarded the highest Oxford degree in theology, Doctor of Divinity, for his studies in theology -- making him a unique holder in the 20th century of both the Oxford D.D. and D.Sc. degrees for original published work.

In 1984, he returned to Oxford to establish the Ian Ramsey Centre for the Interdisciplinary Study of Religious Beliefs in Relation to the Sciences, including Medicine, named after a recent Bishop of Durham who, as a philosopher of religion, in the early 1960s urged that Christian theology must cooperate with other disciplines for its own intellectual integrity and in order to help solve contemporary ethical dilemmas.

Recognition of the spiritual aspects of living as a priest-scientist led him, with the help of others, to found the Society of Ordained Scientists, a new ecumenical dispersed Order. In 1993, he was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.

Throughout the 1990s and into the new century, Peacocke has pursued his dual calling through lectures, seminars and writing, publishing among his many books and papers, God and the New Biology, Theology for a Scientific Age, From DNA to DEAN, and God and Science: A Quest for Christian Credibility. In April 2001, Oneworld, Oxford, will publish Paths from Science Towards God: The End of All Our Exploring.

Peacocke and his wife, Rosemary, have been married for 52 years and live in Oxford. Rosemary became a head teacher of a church school and went on to be one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools, with national responsibility for the education of young children. Their son, Christopher, born in 1950, is a professor of philosophy. Their daughter, Jane, born in 1953, is an Anglican priest and an Advisor in Religious Education.

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CONTACT: Donald Lehr (212) 967-8200

A SELECTION OF BOOKS BY ARTHUR PEACOCKE Summarized by Arthur Peacocke

This list includes books written by Arthur Peacocke on various aspects of the relation between religion and the sciences. It does not include books with shared authorship, or books edited by Arthur Peacocke.

Science and the Christian Experiment (Oxford University Press, London, 1971) 207 pp.

I wrote this book while I was still a full-time scientist with a large research group (12 scientists) working on the physical chemistry of DNA in an Oxford biochemistry laboratory and having a heavy teaching load in the university and as a tutorial Fellow in Physical Biochemistry of St. Peter's College, Oxford. It arose directly from my increasing recognition that the exploratory and experimental nature of scientific research is paralleled by that of the "religious" or, rather, the theological quest. Hence the book began by comparing the scientific and theological enterprises and then gave an account of the then quite new scientific perspectives, broadly the "epic" of cosmological and biological evolution (broadly still that of today). The last major section reviewed the theological enterprise in the light of those perspectives of science (chapters on "God and the cosmos," "Man, evolution and Christ," "Matter in the theological and scientific perspectives," etc.) This book was awarded the International Lecomte du Nöuy Prize in November, 1973.

Creation and the World of Science (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1979) 371 pp.

This was my first really major book in this field, the result of my being able to concentrate my thinking in my post as Dean of Clare College, Cambridge, when -- although still engaged in scientific writing and having a base in the Department of Biochemistry -- I was not running an experimental research group. The book was the extended and expanded form of the eight Bampton Lectures of 1978 which I had delivered in Oxford, traveling across from Cambridge. These are well known, indeed prestigious, lectures given in alternative years at the University Church. The book began with an extensive survey of historical and contemporary issues in the general relationship of religion (Christianity in this case) and the sciences. It went on to consider the new cosmology and was, in fact, the first publication to consider the theological implications of the "anthropic principle" which draws attention to the way certain features of the universe are exactly those needed for life to appear. It also took "head on" the theological implications of the role of chance in biological evolution, by then enriched by our understanding of mutations as random changes in DNA. Again, this was the first theologically informed analysis of this problem in the light of the new "molecular biology" and was much quoted, not least for my use of a musical image to express how divine creation was consistent with an apparently random process. It was also one of the first (perhaps the first) theological publication really to grapple with the "selfish gene" interpretation of biological evolution by Richard Dawkins and with the sociobiology of E.O.Wilson. It related all these perspectives to the nature of humankind (still called "man" then, in accord with both biological and UK custom!) and to the claimed nature of Jesus in mainline incarnational Christian theology. I think (I am prejudiced) that it formed a creative synthesis in re-interpreting the theology in the light of the science. The book also had a major section on human relations to the environment and of the rich resources of religious perspectives for inducing appropriate attitudes to it. A shorter version of all this material appeared in 1983 in a Japanese translation of lectures I had given on these themes in Japan, entitled in English "God's Creation and the World of Science." This book established my international reputation in science and religion.

Intimations of Reality: Critical Realism in Science and Religion (University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, 1984) 89 pp.

This short book, the printed form of the Meldenhall Lectures I had given in 1983 at de Pauw University, was widely read because it addressed the controversial issues, hot at the time and still continuing to some degree, of the status of both scientific language and theological, religious language. I argued that both aim to refer through metaphor, images and models to actual realities and that there are many parallels in the two enterprises -- so continuing the theme of my first book (Science and the Christian Experiment) -- but in a much more philosophically sophisticated and carefully argued manner. It was widely quoted and, I think, was influential in establishing a critical (non-naive) realist understanding of religious language.

Theology for a Scientific Age: Being and Becoming -- Natural, Human and Divine (Fortress Press, Minneapolis, SCM Press, London, 1993) 432 pp.

It was first published in a shorter form by Blackwells, Oxford in 1990 (with the last subtitle as "...-Natural and Human"). I was invited to give (a notable challenge, for they too are prestigious!) the 1993 Gifford Lectures at St. Andrews University and the final, enlarged version of this book incorporated these. It was, and in a way still is, my magnum opus. The issues of earlier volumes had all developed a vast literature and the way one can think of God acting in the world consistently with scientific perceptions, in the light of chaos and quantum theory, had become a highly controversial field. I took the opportunity of developing a view of my own -- that God works in a "whole-part" manner to influence events, analogous to the way complex systems as a whole affect the behavior of their parts. In the second and third Parts of the book I expounded both divine and human "being and becoming" which led me into a detailed revisionary account of Christian beliefs in order to render them consistent with the new perspectives that the sciences are providing. This book was awarded a 1995 Templeton Prize as an "Outstanding Book on Religion and Science."

God and the New Biology (Dent, London, 1986; reprinted Peter Smith, Gloucester, Mass., 1994) 198 pp.

In this volume I tried to bring up to date all the issues arising from the continuing intense debates about the "selfish gene," sociobiology and ethics for religious thought concerning creation and the nature of matter and of the human person. Its most significant feature was that these reflections were prefaced by a careful analysis of the whole question of reductionism, especially in relation to biology -- I argued strongly against the views of certain molecular biologists, such as F.H.C. Crick, that "biology is nothing but physics and chemistry" and that the human person can be reduced entirely to biological descriptions.

From DNA to DEAN -- Reflections and Explorations of a Priest-Scientist (Canterbury Press, Norwich, UK, 1996) 220 pp.

This was a very different kind of book. Its first chapter, from which the main title of the book is taken, is a kind of religious-cum-scientific autobiography in which I explain where "I am coming from" and "where I am aiming to go" in my various activities and thinking. The bulk of the book consists of 22 short reflective pieces, stemming from addresses I had given in college chapels in Oxford and Cambridge and it concludes with three longer exploratory essays into the ongoing relation between religion and science. It has been regarded as much more accessible to the general reader than my more theological, academic earlier works.

God and Science -- A Quest for Christian Credibility (SCM Press, London, 1996) 94 pp.

This small book, based on lectures given in South Africa and the Gifford Lectures at St. Andrews University, was written for those who are aware of living in a scientific age and would like to discover a credible form of Christian belief which they can make their own. Its stance, which is where I think most people in Western societies are today, is that of "understanding seeking faith," rather than the usual "faith seeking understanding," which a great deal of Christian writing on science and religion turns out to be. Again this was meant for the general reader, rather than the specialist.

Paths from Science Towards God: the End of All Our Exploring (Oneworld, Oxford, April 2001) 192 pp.

This book, also for a general readership (it has a Glossary of less familiar terms and a Supplementary reading list), reflects on the spiritual quest in the new world of science and makes radical suggestions for the re-vitalizing of the theological enterprise in this context. In this mode, it goes on to explore from science towards God and takes account of new vistas, challenges and questions arising from the sciences. This gives me an opportunity to present my conclusions about the results of extensive debates over the years about many issues in this field, for example, the way God can be conceived of acting in a world increasingly elucidated by the sciences. The interwoven theme of the book is the thought expressed in T.S. Eliot's famous lines from Little Gidding about not ceasing from exploration and so arriving "where we started" and then "knowing the place for the first time." Hence the last section of the book, in reflecting on "the end of all our exploring," expounds various creative ways of thinking of God's presence and activity in the world as seen by the sciences -- some of these ways being innovative and relatively new, but others involve a much needed rebirth of some traditional images.

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CONTACT: Donald Lehr (212) 967-8200

FACT SHEET: REV. CANON DR. ARTHUR PEACOCKE

1924 -- On November 29, Arthur Robert Peacocke is born in Watford, Hertfordshire, about 20 miles northwest of London, the son of Rose Elizabeth (Lilly) and Arthur Charles Peacocke, who had left school, as was customary in their times, at 14 and 11 respectively. Although members of the Church of England, their allegiance is nominal rather than active.

1935-42 -- Receives a Hertfordshire Scholarship to Watford Boys' Grammar School which he attends while London is being bombed.

1942-45 -- By means of an Open Scholarship in Natural Science, enters Exeter College, Oxford and studies chemistry for four years. While there plays rugby and rows and serves as Secretary of the University English Club, entertaining such authors as Rebecca West and Dylan Thomas.

While an undergraduate is a "mild" agnostic, although attends chapel as part of his scholarship duties. Contact with conservative evangelical Christianity alienates him from "all things Christian." Later attends a sermon at the University Church by the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, which, for the first time, allows him to conceive of Christianity as intellectually defensible and is encouraged in this by contact with the Student Christian Movement. The ravages of World War II, including the revealed horrors of the Nazi concentration camps, force him to come to grips with the problem of evil.

1946 -- Receives Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry with 1st Class Honors, and a Bachelor of Science research degree from Oxford University.

1946-48 -- Does research for his doctorate at the Oxford Physical Chemistry Laboratory with physical chemistry Nobel Laureate, Professor Sir Cyril Hinshelwood.

1948 -- Receives D.Phil. degree from Oxford University for research into the kinetics of bacterial growth. Marries Rosemary Winifred Mann, the sister of an undergraduate friend. They eventually have two children, Christopher, born in 1950, and now a professor of philosophy, and Jane, born in 1953, and now an Anglican priest and Advisor in Religious Education to Cheshire.

Becomes Assistant Lecturer in Chemistry at the University of Birmingham, later becoming Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer in Biophysical Chemistry until 1959.

Becomes disenchanted with the usual presentations of Christian belief, rejecting any automatic authority of Church or Scripture per se. Instead, he seeks a more informed approach and starts studying theology and the philosophy of religion.

1951-52 -- Named Rockefeller Fellow in Natural Science at the University of California at Berkeley, at the distinguished Virus Laboratory, and at the Physical Chemistry Department of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In 1952, the structure of DNA is announced in the British journal Nature.

1952 onwards -- His physico-chemical work on DNA at Birmingham shows that the double helix exists in solution and that its chains are not branched.

1956 -- Named Visiting Fellow at the Weizman Institute, Rehovot, Israel and works with the famous physical chemist, Aharon Katchalsky.

1959 -- Appointed Lecturer in Biochemistry at Oxford University and Fellow and Tutor in Chemistry, and subsequently in Physical Biochemistry, at St. Peter's College.

1960 -- Receives Diploma in Theology from the University of Birmingham.

1961 -- Begins ten years as a Lay Reader for the Church of England, but finds not being authorized to administer the sacraments "like trying to walk on one leg."

1962 -- Receives higher degree of Doctor of Science from Oxford University for his research in physical biochemistry.

1965 -- Founder member and Secretary of the British Biophysical Society and, in 1969, its Chairman. Molecular Basis of Heredity published (with J.B. Drysdale).

1966 -- Serves as member of the editorial board of the Biochemical Journal and of Biopolymers.

1967 -- Member of the British National Committee for Biophysics (until 1974).

1968 -- Editor of a series of monographs on Physical Biochemistry for Oxford University Press (until 1983).

1969 -- Serves as a member of the Archbishops' Commission on Christian Doctrine, until 1976. The Commission publishes "Thinking about the Eucharist" and "Christian Believing."

1971 -- Ordained in the Church of England as a "worker-priest," in his case a priest-scientist, with no wish to be a "clergyman." Publishes Science and the Christian Experiment while he works as a full-time scientist at an Oxford biochemistry laboratory researching the physical chemistry of DNA and proteins. The book outlines the parallel nature of scientific and theological quests. Awarded a Bachelor of Divinity degree by the University of Birmingham.

1972 -- By bringing together those in the United Kingdom interested in the relation of science and religion, he founds and becomes chairman of the U.K. Science and Religion Forum which meets annually, later serving as Vice President from 1981 to 1995, then Honorary President, to date.

1973 -- Appointed Dean, Fellow and Tutor and Director of Studies in Theology at Clare College, Cambridge, a post he holds until 1984. While at Cambridge teaches courses in the Divinity Faculty on the interaction of science and theology, and on physical biochemistry in the Biochemistry Department, a rare case in the UK of an academic teaching in two completely different departments.

Awarded the Lecomte Du Noüy Prize for Science and the Christian Experiment. Becomes an associate editor of Zygon, The Journal of Religion and Science.

1974 -- Osmotic Pressure of Biological Macromolecules published (with M.P. Tombs).

1976 -- Serves as Hulsean Preacher at Cambridge University with the sermons published in 1977 as From Cosmos to Love (with J. Dominian).

1978 -- Delivers Bampton Lectures at Oxford University -- published as Creation and the World of Science in 1979 -- only the second time in the 20th century, after Eric Mascall in 1958, that the relationship between science and religion is treated in these lectures. The book, which establishes his international reputation in science and religion, marks the first time a publication considers the theological implications of the role of chance mutations in evolution and of the "anthropic principle," which examines how certain features of the universe are exactly those needed for life to appear.

1980 -- Serves as Visiting Professor (under the auspices of the Deutsche Akademischer Austaudsienst) to Tubingen, Heidelberg, Munich and Aachen.

1981 -- Becomes Visiting Professor at the Lutheran School of Theology, University of Chicago and Bishop Williams Memorial Lecturer to Rikkyo (St. Paul's) and other Japanese universities.

1982 -- Awarded higher degree of Doctor of Divinity by Oxford University. Named editor of The Sciences and Theology in the Twentieth Century. Becomes Shann Lecturer, St. John's College, University of Hong Kong.

1983 -- The Physical Chemistry of Biological Organization published. Delivers Meldenhall Lectures at DePauw University in Indiana which are published as Intimations of Reality: Critical Realism in Science and Religion in 1984. These build on an outline of "critical realism" he had referred to during his 1978 Bampton Lectures at Oxford. This stance is characterized by "the conviction that in both science and theology we are aiming to depict reality through the use of revisable metaphors and models within the context of a continuous linguistic community." Essentially, this view, when developed, holds that investigations into the reality of God and other Christian beliefs should conform to the usual criteria of reasonableness and not be simply self-authorized by Scripture or by the Church.

1984 -- Convenes an informal consultation at Clare College, Cambridge, which leads to the biennial series of European conferences on science and theology and the formation of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology (ESSSAT). Serves as Professor of Judeo-Christian Studies at Tulane University, New Orleans. Becomes a vice president of the Institute of Religion in an Age of Science (U.S.A.).

1985 -- Becomes Founder-Director of the Ian Ramsey Centre for the Interdisciplinary Study of Religious Beliefs in Relation to the Sciences, including Medicine at Oxford. It is named after a philosopher of religion and former Bishop of Durham, England, who raised concerns in the early 1960s about the need for Christian theology to cooperate with other disciplines for its own health and integrity to help solve contemporary ethical dilemmas. Serves as director until 1988.

1986 -- Establishes and becomes first Warden (i.e., Master) of a new ecumenical dispersed Order, the Society of Ordained Scientists (S.O.Sc.). Now Warden-Emeritus. Becomes editor of Reductionism in Academic Disciplines. Named Academic Fellow of the Institute of Religion in an Age of Science. God and the New Biology published. Becomes J.K. Russell Fellow in Religion and Science at the Center for Theology and Natural Science, Berkeley.

1987 -- Edits (with G. Gillett) Persons and Personality, an Ian Ramsey Centre Symposium. Edits (with S. Andersen) the first ESSSAT-related publication, Evolution and Creation: a European Perspective. Serves as member of the Organizing Committee for the biennial conferences on science, philosophy and theology organized by the Vatican Observatory Conferences and the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences.

1988 -- Named Honorary Chaplain at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford.

1990 -- Theology for a Scientific Age, his magnum opus, published. A second edition is published in 1993. The book offers a revisionary account of Christian beliefs that render them consistent with new scientific perspectives. Becomes Catechist of Exeter College, Oxford (to 1993) and Visiting Professor at the Chicago Center for Religion and Science.

1991 -- Georgetown University confers on him the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters.

1993 -- Appointed a Member of Order of the British Empire. Gives the Gifford Lectures at St. Andrews University, Scotland, which are incorporated into the second edition of Theology for a Scientific Age and published in a shorter form as God and Science (1996).

1994 -- Named Royden B. Davis Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.

1995 -- Resumes post as Director (until 1999) of the Ian Ramsey Centre, which becomes officially part of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Oxford. With Robert J. Russell and Nancey Murphy, edits Chaos and Complexity. Named Honorary Canon at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. Acting Chaplain of Exeter College, Oxford.

1996 -- Two books, From DNA to Dean and God and Science: A Quest for Christian Credibility, published.

1997 -- Delivers the Idreos Lectures in the Science and Christianity series at Harris Manchester College, Oxford. The lectures are published as Farmington Papers and elsewhere.

2001 -- Paths from Science Towards God: the End of All Our Exploring scheduled for publication in April. The book suggests radical paths for revitalizing theology through the spiritual quest in the new scientific world. In his career, Peacocke has authored nine books, co-edited five multi-author volumes, and written 75 papers in the field of theology and general publications. Two of his books have been awarded the John Templeton Foundation Prize as an "Outstanding Book in Theology and the Natural Sciences." He has also authored 126 scientific papers and three scientific books.

2001 - Awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.