Faith & Spirit Quote by John Polkinghorne

A physicist-theologian is quietly detonating a whole style of religious power politics. Polkinghorne’s line isn’t just an abstract preference about divine attributes; it’s a targeted rejection of a God who functions like an all-controlling causal mechanism, the metaphysical equivalent of a dictator issuing orders to the universe. The phrase “cosmic tyrant” is doing a lot of work: it smuggles in moral judgment (tyranny is not merely strong leadership, it’s illegitimate coercion) and reframes a common devotional instinct - “God causes everything” - as ethically suspect.

The context is Whitehead’s process philosophy, built partly as a revolt against classical theism’s emphasis on omnipotence conceived as unilateral control. Whitehead, and Polkinghorne following him, want a world where genuine novelty, freedom, and relationality are real features of reality, not stage props. If everything is “brought about” by God, then human agency becomes decorative and suffering becomes, at best, a planned feature. Calling that God a tyrant exposes the hidden cost of tidy providence: it can make evil look like policy.

Polkinghorne’s subtext is also scientific. A physicist lives with indeterminacy, open systems, and emergent complexity; the universe does not behave like a puppet theater. So the intent is constructive as much as critical: to make belief intellectually survivable in a modern cosmology and morally tolerable in a world that contains randomness, tragedy, and choice. The God being defended here persuades rather than compels - less emperor, more partner - and that shift is the argument.