Testing Scripture, by John Polkinghorne

Chapter Two

1. “How can we square this picture of a vengeful God with the one given us by Jesus, who tells us to love our enemies? The simple answer is that we cannot. I believe that response to this dilemma demands the recognition that the record of revelation contained in Scripture is one of a developing understanding of the divine will and nature, continuously growing over time but never complete, and quite primitive in its earliest stages. Only slowly and falteringly could progress be made in Israel towards gaining a fuller comprehension of the reality of God.”

- How does Polkinghorne’s explanation provide a sensible description of scripture’s eventual development?

2. “Clearly very great development had taken place in between Joshua and Second Isaiah, and who can doubt that it had resulted from a deeper and truer understanding of God and God’s ways? Accepting this enables us to acknowledge the crudities and atrocities present in early Scripture without being driven to discard belief in the spiritual value of the Bible. We can recognize within it an unfolding process of insight and understanding as God’s nature was progressively revealed.”

- How does this development mirror our personal growth in faith?

3. “This developmental perspective on Scripture also helps to explain many of the apparent contradictions present in its pages. Often passages in the canonical text, presented as if they were a unity, have in fact been formed by intermingling material drawn from a variety of sources, composed at different times and, therefore, reflecting different stages of development. In Israel there was a continual reworking of key narratives, a task which extended over centuries. The process of identifying and dating the sources involved is a matter of scholarly activity and debate.

- How does this apply to the creation accounts in Genesis 1 & 2?

4. “The Old Testament contains material spanning perhaps a thousand years, but the New Testament is much more temporally compact. I believe that all, or almost all, of its books were written before the end of the first century. Probably the earliest Christian writing available to us is Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, composed about the year 50. (The crucifixion was in either 30 or 33.) There would have been a preceding period of oral transmission in a culture where this skill was commonly and carefully exercised, and possibly there were some early written sources now lost to us.”

- How are the Old and New Testaments similar and dissimilar?

5. “It is significant that the Church preserved the multiple perspectives offered by the four Gospels, rather than attempting a conflated harmonization. It was soon recognized that the Gospel of John had a different character from the other three.”

- How do you understand the arrangement of the synoptic gospels (first three gospels) compared to John’s gospel?

6. “Perhaps the strangest book of the New Testament is the Revelation of John. In fact, because of this it had some difficulty in gaining a place in the canon. Revelation illustrates the mixed character of Scripture as hope and horror mingle in its pages. There are deeply moving pictures of the worship of heaven (ch. 4 etc.). There is a profoundly hopeful conclusion (21.1–22.7). But there are also terrifyingly brutal descriptions of divinely inflicted punishment (the sequences of seals, trumpets and plagues in chapters 6–10 and 16), presented as manifestations of the wrath of God. The failure of subsequent generations to recognize that these apocalyptic images of divine vengeance arose in the particular context of a time of intense persecution, and that they should be evaluated as human responses to that situation rather than as unalterable expressions of the timeless divine will, has had a baleful influence on much subsequent Christian thinking. No book of the New Testament has been more unfortunate in its interpretation and influence than Revelation.”

- Describe your experience with reading Revelation. 

7. “The unfolding process of developing theological understanding that we find in the Bible has continued beyond the confines of Scripture itself. The fundamental experiences and insights of the New Testament period led eventually to the Christological and Trinitarian conclusions of the Church Councils of the fourth and fifth centuries. The Fathers had sought to draw the boundaries within which they believed orthodox Christian thinking needed to be contained if it were to be a true witness, but there has remained a need for further exploration and reflection. Those who believe in the continuing work of the Holy Spirit (John 16.13) will not find this surprising. The role of development, within Scripture and after it, depends upon the fact that revelational disclosure is primarily personal rather than propositional, living and not petrified.”

- How is the Holy Spirit continuing this “revelational disclosure” through the Church today? 

- How do you understand your role?

Testing Scripture, by John Polkinghorne

Chapter One

1.  “To use an analogy that comes naturally to me as a scientist, the Bible is not the ultimate textbook in which one can look up ready-made answers to all the big questions, but is more like a laboratory notebook, in which are recorded critical historical experiences through which aspects of the divine will and nature have been most accessibly revealed. I believe that the nature of divine revelation is not the mysterious transmission of infallible propositions which are to be accepted without question, but the record of persons and events through which the divine will and nature have been most transparently made known.”

- How does Polkinghorne’s perspective on scripture align with yours?  How does it compare with the position of other churches?

2.  “The Word of God uttered to humanity is not a written text but a life lived, a painful and shameful death accepted, and the divine faithfulness vindicated through the great act of Christ’s resurrection. Scripture contains witness to the incarnate Word, but it is not the Word himself. Its testimony is that ‘The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only Son, full of grace and truth’ (John 1.14).”

- How is this definition most useful in confronting the various misinterpretations and abuses surrounding The Word?

3.  “A central task for the Christian interpreter of Scripture is to discern what in the Bible has lasting truthful authority, rightly commanding the continuing respect of successive generations, and what is simply time-bound cultural expression, demanding no necessary continuing allegiance from us today.”

- Where do people get hung up on this task today? 

- How does one acquire such necessary discernment skills?

4.  “In the early Christian centuries, the Church Fathers often sought to recognize four levels of meaning present in the Bible, essentially the literal, the moral, the symbolic and the spiritual.”

- Define each of these and then discuss their relevance and application in both ancient and current times.

6.  “The notion of an inerrant text is inappropriately idolatrous, but merely to regard Scripture as an antiquarian deposit that does not need to be taken too seriously today would be an equally grave mistake. Scripture, together with the worshipping experience of the Church and its accumulated traditions of insight, as well as the exercise of our God-given powers of reason, together form the context for Christian thinking and living.”

- How does the first statement identify cultural norms today?

- How does the second statement align with your faith journey?

Physics of the Future, by Michio Kaku

Chapter Nine

Our final chapter illustrates a fictitious day in the life of someone in 2100.  Much of this resembles our impressions of television’s memorable cartoon show, “The Jetsons.” 

Discuss the technology/physics behind the scenes in each section:

- JANUARY, 2100, 6:15 A.M.

- THE OFFICE

- HOME AGAIN

- THE WEEKEND

- THE DATE

- NEXT FEW MONTHS

- A YEAR LATER

Kaku closes with this scenario:

“And then you take out an old, worn book from your back pocket, and read to her the words of someone who died more than 100 years ago. It reminds you of the challenges facing humanity before it attains a planetary civilization. Mahatma Gandhi once wrote:

The Roots of Violence:

Wealth without work,

Pleasure without conscience,

Knowledge without character,

Commerce without morality,

Science without humanity,

Worship without sacrifice,

Politics without principles.”

- How will the Bible be read and applied in the year 2100?

Physics of the Future, by Michio Kaku

Chapter Eight

1.  Kaku introduces our chapter with this thesis: “All the technological revolutions described here are leading to a single point: the creation of a planetary civilization. This transition is perhaps the greatest in human history. In fact, the people living today are the most important ever to walk the surface of the planet, since they will determine whether we attain this goal or descend into chaos.”

- What would this planetary civilization consist of, structurally? 

- What pieces (political, financial, etc.) would need to be in place to achieve this broad, encompassing status?

2.  Kaku notes that we are about 100 years away from achieving Type I status as a civilization. 

- Review and discuss the signs of this emerging transition:

•   The Internet is the beginning of a Type I planetary telephone system.

•   A handful of languages, led by English, followed by Chinese, are rapidly emerging as the future Type I language.

•   We are witnessing the birth of a planetary economy.

•   We are seeing the rise of a planetary middle class.

•   The economy, not weapons, is the new criterion for a superpower.

•   A planetary culture is emerging, based on youth culture (rock and roll and youth fashion), movies (Hollywood blockbusters), high fashion (luxury goods), food (mass-market fast-food chains).

•   The news is becoming planetary.

•   Sports, which in the past were essential in forging a tribal and then a national identity, are now forging a planetary identity.

•   Tourism is one of the fastest-growing industries on the planet.

•   Likewise, the falling price of intercontinental travel is accelerating contact between diverse peoples, making wars more difficult to wage and spreading the ideals of democracy.

•   The nature of war itself is changing to reflect this new reality.

•   Nations will weaken but will still exist in 2100.

•   Diseases will be controlled on a planetary basis.

3.  “There are groups, however, that instinctively resist the trend toward a Type I planetary civilization, because they know that it is progressive, free, scientific, prosperous, and educated”…including Islamic terrorists and dictators, to name a few.

- Who else might be included on this list today?

4.  A Type II civilization will probably be at peace with itself. Since space travel is so difficult, it will have remained a Type I civilization for centuries, plenty of time to iron out the divisions within their society. By the time a Type I civilization reaches Type II status, they will have colonized not just their entire solar system but also the nearby stars. By the time a civilization reaches Type III status, it will have explored most of the galaxy. The most convenient way to visit the hundreds of billions of planets is to send self-replicating robot probes throughout the galaxy.

- Why are these transitions so difficult for us to fathom?

5.  Kaku describes the resurgent efforts of SETI.  “It is conceivable that we may, within this century, detect signals from an intelligent civilization in space.  We have to introduce two new types of civilizations. The first is an ‘entropy conserving’ civilization, one that uses every means at its disposal to control excess waste and heat.  The second civilization, an ‘entropy wasteful’ civilization, continues to expand its energy consumption without limit.”

- How might awareness of entropy affect our attitudes & actions?

6.  “The transition between our current Type 0 civilization and a future Type I civilization is perhaps the greatest transition in history. It will determine whether we will continue to thrive and flourish, or perish due to our own folly. This transition is extremely dangerous because we still have all the barbaric savagery that typified our painful rise from the swamp. Peel back the veneer of civilization, and we still see the forces of fundamentalism, sectarianism, racism, intolerance, etc., at work. Human nature has not changed much in the past 100,000 years, except now we have nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons to settle old scores. However, once we make the transition to a Type I civilization, we will have many centuries to settle our differences.”

- How might the Christian Church lead the way?

7.  “So the true power of science is that it enables us and empowers us—giving us more options. Science magnifies the innovative, creative, and enduring spirit of humanity, as well as our glaring deficiencies. The key, therefore, is to find the wisdom necessary to wield this sword of science. As the philosopher Immanuel Kant once said, “Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.” In my opinion, wisdom is the ability to identify the crucial issues of our time, analyze them from many different points of view and perspectives, and then choose the one that carries out some noble goal and principle.”

- If all wisdom comes from God, as persons of faith confess, what role might Biblical wisdom play in guiding our future?

Physics of the Future, by Michio Kaku

Chapter Seven

1.  Kaku begins by noting, “Soon, the rise of science and technology in Europe began to weaken the power of China and the Ottoman Empire.  The answer to the question “What happened?” is clear. Science and technology happened. Science and technology are the engines of prosperity. Of course, one is free to ignore science and technology, but only at your peril. The world does not stand still because you are reading a religious text. If you do not master the latest in science and technology, then your competitors will.

- How has the Church fared in the midst of such historic upheaval?

- What have we learned from our bumps & bruises along the way?

2.  In the near future (present to 2030), Kaku notes, “So the evolution of computers is not a mystery; it is following the well-worn path of its predecessors, like electricity, paper, and running water. But the computer and the Internet are still evolving. Economist John Steele Gordon was asked if this revolution is over. ‘Heavens, no. It will be a hundred years before it fully plays out, just like the steam engine. We are now at the point with the Internet that they were with the railroad in 1850. It’s just the beginning.’”

- How might this evolution affect our personal & profession lives?

3.  “Thomas Friedman writes, ‘The early 21st century saw a boom, bubble and now a bust around financial services. But I fear all it will leave behind are a bunch of empty Florida condos that never should have been built, used private jets that the wealthy can no longer afford and the dead derivative contracts that no one can understand.’ But in spite of all the silliness that accompanied the recent crash, the irony here is that the wiring and networking of the world will take place after the crash of 2008. The heyday of the information revolution is yet to come.”

- What are the grounds for Kaku’s optimism here?

4.  By midcentury (2030 to 2070), “as technologies evolve, they create abrupt changes in the economy that sometimes lead to social dislocations. In any revolution, there are winners and losers. This will become more evident by midcentury. We no longer have blacksmiths and wagon makers in every village. Moreover, we do not mourn the passing of many of these jobs. But the question is: What jobs will flourish by midcentury? How will the evolution of technology change the way we work?”

- How does Kaku respond to these two questions?  Do you agree?

5.  “This also means that entire industries, such as entertainment, are undergoing a profound upheaval.”

- How will we evolve as consumers of entertainment?

6.  By the far future (2070 to 2100), Kaku predicts, “These new technologies that we have been discussing in this book are so powerful that, by the end of the century, they are bound to have an impact on capitalism itself.” These include: perfect capitalism; mass production to mass customization; mass technology as utility; and targeting your customer.

- How will each of these changes affect our economy?

7.  So far, we have asked only how technology is altering the way capitalism operates. But with all the turmoil created by the advances in high technology, what impact is this having on the nature of capitalism itself? All the turmoil that this revolution is creating can be summarized in one concept: the transition from commodity capitalism to intellectual capitalism. What is replacing commodity capitalism is intellectual capitalism. Intellectual capital involves precisely what robots and AI cannot yet provide, pattern recognition and common sense.

- How will this shift impact jobs?

- How will we prepare tomorrow’s leaders?

- How will the nations of the world share intellectual resources?

Physics of the Future, by Michio Kaku

Chapter Six

1.  Hollywood television and movies make space travel look so easy.  Who knew it was really so complicated?  In the near term (present to 2030), Kaku discusses the current state of affairs with our space program.  While advancements are meager, at best, there is small progress on the horizon. 

- What are the main challenges to locating and identifying other “earth-like” planets? 

- What is the “Goldilocks Zone?”  Why is Europa different?

2.  “While robotic missions will continue to open new vistas for space exploration, the manned missions will face much greater hurdles. This is because, compared to manned missions, robotic missions are cheap and versatile; can explore dangerous environments; don’t require costly life support; and most important, don’t have to come back.”

- What are the primary obstacles to manned space missions?

- What roles have politics and funding played in recent decisions?

           

3.  Kaku acknowledges, “The task of establishing a permanent presence on the moon faces many obstacles.”

- What are some of these obstacles?

4.  By midcentury (2030 to 2070), a mission to Mars may be in progress.  Yet, the challenges are numerous.

- Specifically, how do concerns about water and atmosphere affect potential trips to Mars?

5.  Kaku notes that by midcentury, we might have opportunity to engage in space travel via tourism (and lots of $$$).

- What’s our progress with space tourism so far?

 6.  Kaku notes that in the far future (2070 to 2100), “nanotechnology might even make possible the fabled space elevator. Like Jack and the beanstalk, we might be able to climb into the clouds and beyond. We would enter an elevator, push the up button, and then ascend along a carbon nanotube fiber that is thousands of miles long. This could turn the economics of space travel upside down.”

- All elevator jokes aside, why is this such a difficult project?

7.  “By the end of the century, even despite recent setbacks in funding for manned space missions, scientists will likely have set up outposts on Mars and perhaps in the asteroid belt. Next, they will set their sights on an actual star. Although an interstellar probe is hopelessly beyond reach today, within 100 years it might become a reality. The first challenge is to find a new propulsion system. Several designs and propulsions systems have been proposed for an interstellar craft:

“Solar sail, nuclear rocket, ramjet fusion, and nanoships.” 

- Discuss the mechanics of each.

8.  Kaku concludes, “Given the fact that earth will be the home of humanity for centuries to come, this raises another question:

- How will civilization itself evolve?

- How will science affect our lifestyle, our jobs, and our society?

- Science is the engine of prosperity, so how will it reshape civilization and wealth in the future?

- Your thoughts on these?