Ian Barbour first studied science, then religion, but instead of concluding that the two are in eternal conflict, he helped create an academic realm where they share common ground.

Dr. Barbour, who was 90 when he died on Dec. 24 in Minneapolis, earned a doctorate in physics at the University of Chicago and then a divinity degree from Yale, and he never abandoned his passion for scientific exploration or his place in the pew. He embraced the complexities of evolution and the Big Bang theory, of genetics and neuroscience. He also embraced Christianity. He was a devoted parishioner at First United Church of Christ in Northfield, Minn.

In 1999, when he won the Templeton Prize, a prestigious award given annually to “a living person who has made exceptional contributions to affirming life’s spiritual dimension,” he said it was missing the point to focus on the supremacy of one over the other, to read either religious texts or scientific findings as comprehensive in their capacity to explain existence.

“If we take the Bible seriously but not literally,” he said in his acceptance address, “we can accept the central biblical message without accepting the prescientific cosmology in which it was expressed, such as the three-layer universe with heaven above and hell below, or the seven days of the creation story.”