Religious Faith Strengthened by Science
BY REV. RICHARD RANDOLPH, PH.D., SENIOR PASTOR, CHRIST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH
In the Summer issue of 55+, I talked about three different ways in which science and faith could relate to one another. In this article, I will discuss how the wave/particle duality in quantum mechanics has actually strengthened and deepened my faith as a Christian.
Growing up in the Christian faith, I didn’t think much about the Christian claim that Jesus was both fully human and fully Divine. In Divinity School, this became a real stumbling block for me. We tend to draw a sharp dichotomy between the Divine and the human; the sacred and the physical; how can they be both. I wrote several papers on the topic. Ultimately, one of my professors said, “It’s just a mystery. We can’t explain it or fully understand it. We must just accept this doctrine on faith.”
I’m not the only person who struggles with this “mystery.” Outside the Christian faith, the claim that Jesus was both fully Divine and fully human is just a show-stopper. My Muslim friends find this claim completely nonsensical.
I never really resolved this dilemma of faith throughout my early ministry. While in school for my doctorate, I took a course on science and religion and began to learn about quantum physics. One of the classic issues in quantum physics is called the “wave-particle light duality.” Light takes on two completely different forms, depending upon the experiment being performed. When light is shone through two slits in a metal plate and then captured by a photographic plate immediately behind the metal plate, light clearly looks like a wave. On the other hand, when light is bounced off of a metal plate, the ricochet clearly looks like a bunch of particles. Reflecting on this theory, I realized that it could offer a metaphor as I tried to understand, and accept, that Jesus could be both fully human and fully Divine at the same time.
I have worked from the perspective of Christianity because that is my faith-tradition, which I know best. At the same time, I believe that most of what I have claimed would be reasonable within other religious traditions.
Have questions?
Contact Richard Randolph at Christ United Methodist Church by email at richard.randolph@christumclinc.org, or by phone at 402-489-9618.