By happenstance I ran across Arthur Peacocke’s wikipedia article which, to my dismay, intimated that he had died on October 21st of this year. The news confirmed it.

You may be wondering who the Rev. Dr. Arthur Peacocke was, and with good reason. I have never really heard his name outside of selective circles. I myself only ran across him in my research on divine action (God’s interaction with the world). Peacocke’s particular view is described as a kind of “top-down” or “whole-part” causation in which God is the mind and the world is the body, but God is totally transcendant and immanent in a way that is contrary with how the “I” does not transcend the human body ontologically. (read more here.)

Peacocke did much for the proposal that evolution and theistic belief not necessarily be at odds with each other. This is evident in books such as Evolution: The Disguised Friend of Faith?, Creation and the World of Science: The Re-Shaping of Belief, and Theology for a Scientific Age: Being and Becoming-Natural, Divine and Human. Incidentally, Peacocke was also an ordained priest in the Church of England, a founding member of The International Society for Science and Religion, the founder of The Society of Ordained Scientists, and a council member of The European Society for the Study of Science And Theology. He was also awarded the Templeton Prize (795,000 GBP or approx. 1.4 million US dollars in 2006) for Progress in Religion, which he mostly donated to the Ian Ramsey Centre at Oxford (which he founded). Other recipients have been Mother Theresa, Billy Graham, Bill Bright, and Chuck Colson. Interestingly, the award is adjusted so it exceeds the Nobel Prize.

God’s peace be with you, Arthur.