Prolegomena to a Catholic Theology of God between Heidegger and Postmodernity

New opportunities for discourse about God have arisen, along with new challenges to the mainstream Catholic theology of God. In order to take advantage of these opportunities, a truly contemporary Catholic theology of God must critically appropriate three 'events' which have affected its approach to the subject matter: (1) Heidegger's periodizing critique of ontotheology; (2) the 'contemporary' viewed as the arena of contention between modern and postmodern claims; (3) the presence of the Kingdom of God and the revelation of the nature of God in the person and work of Jesus Christ, which alter our understandings of time and being. The present essay sketches a program for an authentically Catholic response to the issues raised by these occurrences, emphasizing the Catholic commitment to incarnation and sacramentality and the necessary effort to retrieve redemptive images of God from modernity, despite the present tendency of some postmodern theologians and philosophers to dismiss aspects of the past as unusable.     

以儒辨天与以佛辨天：晚明佛教丛林对天主教义的论难

明万历年间。西方天主教的传入中国及其对佛教的批评,使佛教丛林面临异质宗教的极大挑战。基于护法维教的宗教立场,晚明丛林展开了破辟天主教的思想论辨。其代表僧人为云栖袜宏、密云圆悟、费隐通容、罗川如纯等。其破辟天学的方法立场,主要为以天辨天、以儒辨天与以佛辨天,表明儒佛圆融、儒佛调和论的深入。丛林对天主教义中的天主论、人性论、灵魂说、天堂地狱说等内容展开的破辟及其思想论战,为佛教复兴增添了新的现实内容。     

The Question of God in an Age of Science: Constructions of Reality and Ultimate Reality in Theology and Science

Both science and theology have lately faced a crisis of authority. Their shared realization of the extent to which knowledge is underdetermined by the data and socially constructed provides a kind of common ground for reconsideration of their respective methods of inquiry as well as of the status of the claims they have warrant to make. Both fields are now consciously and critically employing a models approach. This article proposes criteria for assessing models and applies the criteria to one model from each field. The model of understanding evolution as a struggle for existence is considered from the field of science, and the traditional model for understanding the God-world relation as that of a king's relation to his kingdom is considered from the field of theology. Each of these models is evaluated with respect to its credibility, religious viability, and moral adequacy. In each case an alternative analogy is proposed and argued for.     

Philip Clayton,God and Contemporary Science [Edinburgh Studies in Constructive Theology]

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -     

Sociobiology and Human Nature: A Perspective from Catholic Theology

This paper addresses a nonspecialist audience on how sociobiological accounts of human nature might be relevant to Christian theology. I begin with some confessional remarks to clarify what I mean by Christian theology and how I understand it to be related to science. I indicate briefly why sociobiology might be of interest to theology and then move on to sketch some ways in which sociobiology might relate to theological ethics. My basic point is that sociobiology is directly relevant to theological ethics in its understanding of evolved human emotional predispositions but not in its normative reflection proper.     

Theology and Science

Abstract

The active engagement between science and religion is one of the preeminent ways in which we explore the sanctity of the world and the world reveals the sacred to us. Using Karl Rahner's concepts of transcendental/categorial causality and everyday mysticism, this paper enters into dialogue with the scientific insights of Stephen Hawking and Andrew Newberg, engaging the mystery of the cosmos and the mystery of the human person as an avenue to experiencing the mystery of God. In doing so, theology is challenged by scientific insight to a mysticism that engenders a less ontocentric and more humbly apophatic approach.