THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY IN UNCOVERING THE MATRIX OF HUMAN MORALITY

Abstract. Theology and the life sciences are mutually dependent on one another in the task of understanding the origin and function of moral behavior. The life sciences investigate morality from the perspective of the historical and communal dimension of humanity and point to survival as the primary function of human behavior. A Christian ethic of self-sacrifice advances the preservation of the entire human and nonhuman creation and should not, therefore, be objected to by the life sciences. Religion, however, is more than a survival mechanism. It points to a preserving agency beyond humanity and prevents the life sciences from reducing life to its strictly biological side.     

THE FUTURE OF TEILHARDIAN THEOLOGY

Abstract. The impossibility of predicting the future allows us only to indicate which theological developments seem to be needed. These developments concern our changing perception of the world, which requires a reversal in our understanding of God's Creation, from its most imperfect beginnings to its unforeseeable future. The passing of evolution from the biological to the human level has opened moral dimensions that must be explored. Rather than return to the beginnings of the church, theology needs to try to understand Christian faith within evolution, to reinterpret the past in the light of the new. In evolution, no final doctrine is possible. The necessity for doctrine creates a constant tension with the necessity of its revision. New truth must be paid for by suffering. The need is for a coherent theological vision of Creation, Redemption, and God's action in the world. Teilhard's metaphysics of union may be the key to it. In this view love becomes the central force of creation, which in Teilhard's view opens into an eternal future in God: in its final stage, evolution becomes Christogenesis.     

BIOLOGY AND THE THEOLOGY OF THE HUMAN

We will consider two Christian responses to the enormous advances in recent years in the connected sciences of genetics, evolutionary biology, and biochemistry, a dualist one by Pope John Paul II and an “emergentist” one by Arthur Peacocke. These two could hardly be more different. It would be impossible within the scope of a brief comment to do justice to these differences. What I hope to do instead is more modest: to draw attention to troublesome ambiguities in some of the key concepts on which discussions of human uniqueness depend, to recall very briefly some of the difficulties philosophers have encountered in their attempts to define the relation of the human powers of mind to the material capacities of body, and finally to ask what the theological significance of all this is.     

EMPIRICAL THEOLOGY IN THE LIGHT OF SCIENCE

Abstract. Empirical theology stands in contrast to science insofar as it seeks to understand the nature and source of human fulfillment and insofar as science seeks to understand the world and human beings regardless of the implications of that knowledge for human welfare. However, empirical theology is like science insofar as it affirms a dynamic, relational naturalism; accepts limitations of the human knower, thereby making all knowledge including religious knowledge tentative; seeks causal explanations as well as religious meaning; and argues that a key criterion for justifying ideas is their ability to explain experience already had and to predict new experiences in Lakatosian-type progressive research programs.     

COSMOLOGY AND THEOLOGY: THE REEMERGENCE OF PATRIARCHY

Abstract. Recent developments in cosmology have enticed several thinkers to follow leads from cosmology into new possibilities in theology and philosophy. Thus, we have seen an increasing number of books and essays offering proposals for creative relations between theology and cosmology. New constructions for theology are appearing that lead us toward a new rationality in theological thinking. This rationality seems especially familiar for anyone working in feminist thought, not so much as a repristination of Enlightenment philosophy and its strongly patriarchal overtones, but rather as a new form of postmodern patriarchy that grows out of revolutions in cosmology, mathematics, and quantum physics. This sense should be tested especially by comparing these new “theologies” with other feminist visions or alternative perspectives. This comparison will not only uncover signs of a reemergence of patriarchy within the new cosmologies, but will also suggest ways in which new cosmological views can both provide a source for new creative thinking in theology and be sensitive to the best of feminist thought.