Christology and Complementarity
- 1 March 1976
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in Religious Studies
- Vol. 12 (1) , 37-48
- https://doi.org/10.1017/s0034412500008982
Abstract
A good deal has already been written on the possible relevance of Niels Bohr's principle of ‘complementarity’ to various theological issues. Bohr, himself, suggested that the concept might be useful in discussions concerning the relation of intra-mundane causality and divine providence, or that of human freedom and divine sovereignty. These suggestions have been taken up and developed by C. A. Coulson and D. M. Mackay, but they have also seriously been criticized, notably by I. G. Barbour. The principal difficulty encountered in regarding God and the world as ‘complementary’, in Bohr's sense of the term, is that Creator and creature are generally thought to be two distinct ‘entities’, in Christian ‘theism’, rather than two ‘modes’ of a single entity as ‘wave’ and ‘particle’ are two ‘complementary’ modes of an atomic object in physics.Keywords
This publication has 4 references indexed in Scilit:
- The concept of the photonPhysics Today, 1972
- Application of Bohr's Principle of Complementarity to the Mind-Body ProblemThe Journal of Philosophy, 1969
- Quantum MechanicsPublished by Springer Nature ,1967
- Complementarity in quantum mechanics: A logical analysisSynthese, 1961