Physical science in the twentieth century found that the world was full of unpredictabilities . . . The history of the world is open to the future-not meaning that it's a sort of lottery, but that there are more causes bringing about the future than those that science itself describes. . . I think that's how human beings act in the world, and I don't see why God should not act in the world in that way. The step further in the argument that I take in my new book is that theologians have always been worried about the idea of God's providence as being just a cause among causes . . . because God holds the world in being. But I think it is part of the divine self-limitation or kenosis, in allowing creation to be, and to be itself, that God allows the divine providence to be as a cause among causes.
Theology has two roles.
One role is the study of the religious encounter with the sacred mystery of God, and in that sense theology is similar to science, which studies our encounter with the physical world. . Theology is the Queen of the Sciences, not in the sense that it tells the other sciences what they must think in their particular domains, but it takes their insights, humbly and respectfully and gratefully, and integrates them into a single, all-encompassing view. Q. You served on an expert advisory panel that in August submitted a report on therapeutic cloning to the United Kingdom's Chief Medical Officer. Therapeutic cloning offers one way of beginning to produce material for that purpose. . . . Many people think that using embryonic stem cells is going to be necessary, to be at least an intermediate stage toward that longer-term goal.