268 Roberts
were quite different. For example, Donald D. Evans, an infl uential profes-
sor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, invoked linguistic analysis
to defend the claim that “there are fundamental differences between reli-
gion and science.” Evans held that whereas science consists of a body of
impersonal and empirically testable assertions, religion is “self- involving,”
both expressing a commitment to a relationship with the divine and in-
terpreting particularly meaningful experiences as manifestations of “di-
vine revelation.”^32THE RE- MERGING OF THE SPHERES
Although the view that science and theology should remain separate com-
manded the allegiance of a sizable number of opinion leaders in the twenti-
eth century, many religious thinkers insisted that the natural world served
as an appropriate object for theological refl ection. In the period between
the two world wars the Cambridge University philosophical theologian
F. R. Tennant emphasized that scientifi c descriptions of natural phenom-
ena could serve as useful resources for the construction of a theistic in-
terpretation of reality. A few scientists also espoused that idea. Probably
the most popular and infl uential of these was Sir James Jeans, a Fellow
of the Royal Society who taught applied mathematics at Princeton and
Cambridge before deciding to use his wealth to support a career as an
independent scholar. In work published during the early thirties, Jeans,
noting that the “new physics” of relativity theory and quantum mechan-
ics differed signifi cantly from the materialistic, deterministic, and mecha-
nistic cosmos envisioned by late- nineteenth- century scientifi c naturalists,
argued that the cosmos was “more like a great thought than like a great
machine.” Jeans believed that a “universal mind,” which he also called
“the Great Architect of the Universe,” had not only designed the natural
world but retained control of it.^33
During the third quarter of the twentieth century, a growing number
of Christian intellectuals dissented from the notion that science and the-
ology could be meaningfully detached. Many of these thinkers possessed
professional credentials in both areas. For example, in 1953 Arthur F.
Smethurst, an English cleric who possessed a PhD in geology, denounced
the idea of imposing “an ‘iron curtain’ between the world of nature and
the realm of the spirit” on the grounds that this would “produce not only
distrust but actual misunderstanding and confusion of thought between
the two.” Religion, he insisted, “by its very character must be concerned