The song is built around the image of a river flowing through a canyon it has sculpted—an image that can easily be played out as a picture of the way that the Lord has been at work preparing a path for us in the material world, complete with signposts to his former and present activity.

Polkinghorne discusses the origins and aims of natural theology in this series. It does not offer truth, but rather a “best explanation” for the world, answering primarily meta-questions. Two such questions asked by Polkinghorne are, “Why is science possible at all?” and “What makes the universe so special?” To explore the answers, he looks at the ability of human minds to penetrate mysteries of the natural world as well as the fine-tuning of the universe necessary to produce the fruitfulness of life.

Many independent measurements have established that the Earth and the universe are billions of years old. Geologists have found annual layers in glaciers that can be counted back 740,000 years. Using the known rate of change in radio-active elements (radiometric dating), some Earth rocks have been shown to be billions of years old, while the oldest solar system rocks are dated at 4.6 billion years. Astronomers use the distance to galaxies and the speed of light to calculate that the light has been traveling for billions of years. The expansion of the universe gives an age for the universe as a whole: 13.7 billion years old. (Updated April 16, 2012)

I ask the question, “Why is the universe so special?” Now scientists don’t like things to be special; we like things to be general, and our natural anticipation would have been that the universe is just a common specimen of what a universe might be like.

As we remember the narrative that takes us from Good Friday through Easter morning, the image of a buried grain of wheat invites us into the story rather than just describing what happens in it.

Of all the blessings to be thankful for on Thanksgiving Day, none of them surpasses the riches of the eternal blessings which the Lord has bestowed on his sons and daughters in Christ Jesus.

While in common parlance we tend to think of something being “co-opted” as a bad thing and a violation of original principles or intentions, the word itself does not imply a “hijacking” so much as a divergence with connection: co-operation between one use and another.

The complex sounds in the piece are created by only five human voices over a foundation of a single cello—the entirety of the Toby Twining Music ensemble.

I wonder if the answer might lie not in our study of God but in our praise of Him.

What is the character of our creative interaction with the world—not only the material world alone, but also the spiritual one? What do we literally make of the gift we of all creatures have—to see the intricacies of the cosmos and to recognize that they point not just to a god or designer, but to the Lord who invites us into intimate relationship with Him and each other?

Just as the Lord gave Adam the task of naming the animals in the Garden, naming remains a central part of the scientific exploration of the world. But what does it mean to be “called by name”?

Fine-tuning refers to the surprising precision of nature’s physical constants, and the beginning state of the Universe. To explain the present state of the universe, even the best scientific theories require that the physical constants of nature and the beginning state of the Universe have extremely precise values.