Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical

In five books, Donald Crosby has sketched out in some detail how nature, both as process and structure, can junction as the ultimate religious object. He understands nature to unfold in morally ambiguous ways, but argues accepting the necessary truth of ambiguity is no obstacle to existential religious faith. Such faith is given particular content through sensuous religious symbols. He distinguishes the religious rightness of ambiguous nature from moral rightness. Although the purposes of living things establish relational values in nature, moral rightness for humans must largely be established on grounds other than nature. My assessment of Crosby’s accomplishment in these books is generally appreciative, but I raise questions about his notion of religious symbols and suggest that for his Religion of Nature to become a live option, grounds of morality need to be more clearly folded into his metaphysical and religious framework.

In responding to Walter Gulick’s discussion of my writings on Religion of Nature, I stress the pervasive moral ambiguity of nature as a focus of religious commitment andpoint to a similar ambiguity in all of the religious ultimates known to me. I take issue with one aspect of Gulick’s interpretation of the Book of Job. I insist on a balance between discursive and non-discursive modes of expression in religion and warn against excessive and misleading literalism. I explain my views on the natures and relations of aesthetic and religious symbols, and welcome Gulick’s comments on how the symbolism of the Trinity in Christianity can be related to Religion of Nature. I endorse his statements about the close relation of aspects of my work to some key ideas of Michael Polanyi.

I respond to Gulick’s review of Crosby’s work and raise questions having to do with (1) the merits of abstract accounts of religious observance, (2) the viability of nature as an object of religious devotion, and (3) the correspondence between religious truth and moral truth, I also critically examine Gulick’s efforts to supplement Crosby’s work and suggest Gulick’s appropriation of Christian concepts and imagery may require reconsideration,

Practical theologian James E. Loder engaged in a sustained 40+ year conversation with some of the most significant figures in science in the 20th century to construct a neo-Chalcedonian practical theology with enormous implications for both the science-theology dialogue andfor the Church’s witness to the Gospel in a scientific world. This essay focuses primarily on how Loder engaged and appropriated the post-critical epistemology of Michael Polanyi for his own critical and constructive proposals for use in the theology-science dialogue. Loder’s proposal is based on the analogia spiritus—the relationality that governs and guides divine-human knowing and being The essay encourages those working in the science-theology dialogue to engage Loder’s work as a whole, in part by including an annotated bibliography of Loder’s relevant works.