
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, April 21, 1990                   TAG: 9004210255
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By GEORGE W. CORNELL Associated Press
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SCIENTISTS, THEOLOGIANS COMPLEMENT EACH OTHER

Scientists and theologians seem to be getting along better these days. Although their insights differ, a growing sense has emerged lately that they complement - and need - each other.

They deal with utterly different aspects of reality: science with the mechanics of existence and religion with its purpose.

This sometimes has caused misimpressions that they are contradictory, which resulted, to some extent, in their being seen as mutually exclusive rivals, particularly in past centuries.

But congruence of the two fields, each in its own bounds, was indicated in recent interchanges between scientists and religious scholars. They didn't dispute each other, but cited respective values.

"Both the contemporary scientific account and the age-old Biblical account assume a beginning," Harvard astronomer Owen Gingerich told a colloquy on origins at the Episcopal Church's Washington National Cathedral.

Describing the prevailing scientific concept of the "big bang" in which a super-dense dot of pure energy exploded into all that exists, hurling it into the emptiness of space, he said:

"This is indeed a thrilling scenario . . . And its essential framework, of everything springing forth from that blinding flash, bears a striking resonance with those succinct words of Genesis 1:3: `And God said, Let there be light'."

However, he said science and religion differ fundamentally in their objectives: science concentrating on "how" nature works, and Biblical faith focusing on "who" designed it and why.

Noting that science has come to see all its theories as provisional, and not "final truth" and that everything science learns is drawn from nature, Gingerich said, "I find some of these circumstances of nature impossible to comprehend in the absence of supernatural design."

Walter Brueggemann, an Old Testament scholar of Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga., said both science and theology are "being recast in ways that make conversation possible and even important."

He said both fields recognize "that we are faced with a mystery, before which our probing explanations are always penultimate."

In the past, he said, both theology and science, in trying to counter each other, made "absolutist" and monopolistic claims that created a false conflict between them.

by CNB