TIME, THERMODYNAMICS, AND THEOLOGY

Keywords: A theological approach to understanding time and change in a modern way must consider the relationships between thermal physics and time as elucidated during the past century and a half. The fact of temporal change, including death and decay, has been a religious problem since antiquity, so that some traditions have simply attempted to transcend the world of change. However, a major current of the Christian tradition has seen change as a fundamental aspect of God's creation, and one with which God becomes identified in the Incarnation. This implies approval of history, as having an ultimate value, rather than transcendence of it.
We examine thermodynamics, and especially its Second Law, in order to understand more precisely the issues of temporal change. The Second Law states a universal tendency toward increasing disorder, and several implications of this law are discussed. Of particular significance, however, is the work of Prigogine and others on nonequilibrium thermodynamics, drawing attention to such phenomena as the enhancement of chemical reaction rates and the formation of "dissipative structures" in nonequilibrium situations. Such possibilities may be of considerable importance for understanding chemical and biological evolution.
These ideas can be included in an evolutionary picture in which, following Teilhard de Chardin, the Body of Christ is seen as the future of evolution-an "ultimate dissipative structure" in which the world of time and change is united with God. Suffering, death, and decay receive their meaning from the future. Within this framework it is therefore possible to believe that the material world of history may be part of the eschatological future and that science provides hints, though not predictions, of how that may happen.     

SOCIOBIOLOGY, ETHICS, AND THEOLOGY

Abstract. The topic of sociobiology and ethics opens up a range of questions that have to do with important relationships: between the history of nature and human being, between biological evolution and psychosocial evolution, between is and ought , between language usages in one domain and another. The task of ethics is properly to discern what sociobiology has to tell us about the fundamentals of life and persuasively to direct our actions in accord with those fundamentals, in a manner that is consistent with our essential humanity. From the theological perspective all of this transpires within the creative will of God.     

NATURE, TECHNOLOGY, AND THEOLOGY

Abstract. Modern technology presents new challenges and possibilities to the environment and life on earth. It is argued that ecology as the science of the earth as a whole cannot provide the means for making technical decisions pertaining to the environment. An alternative means is suggested in which modern technology provides the medium for communicating with nature, so that a dialogue, an intruding in and listening to nature, becomes the basis both for seeing modern technology in a new light and for living with modern technology in a new way. Some theological ramifications are also explored.