A RAFT THAT FLOATS: EXPERIENCE,TRADITION, AND SCIENCES IN GUSTAFSON'S THEOCENTRIC ETHICS

Abstract. Although James Gustafson's use of the Christian Bible and tradition is not fully displayed in the essays published here, Bible and tradition are a crucial part of a composite rationale, which includes experience and the sciences, for his theocentric ethics. Gustafson's theocentric ethics employs the sciences to back, inform, and correct the Christian tradition and offers grounds for respecting the natural piety and morality of “nonreligious” persons while explaining and justifying why Christians draw on major themes and metaphors from their tradition that should penetrate their piety and morality. His proposal should reorient the thinking of theological ethics more than it has thus far.     

FROM CRITICAL REALISM TO A METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH: RESPONSE TO ROBBINS, VAN HUYSSTEEN, AND HEFNER

Abstract. Critical realism is a problematic philosophical doctrine that unnecessarily complicates attempts to relate theology and science. A more satisfactory approach employs the scientific methodology of Imre Lakatos for the reconstruction of theology along scientific lines. Theological research programs would automatically include auxiliary hypotheses of both theological and scientific origin.     

CHRISTIAN HUMANISM AND PSYCHOTHERAPY: A RESPONSE TO BERGIN'S ANTITHESES

Abstract. Secular and religious values of psychotherapists influence the process of psychotherapy. The psychologist Allen Bergin has pointed out several major antitheses between values of secular psychotherapists and their religiously oriented clients. The present essay is a response to Bergin's antitheses, on the one hand, and to humanistic psychology, on the other, from the point of view of a Christian humanism. Karl Rahner's theological anthropology is proposed as one possible foundation for an explicit articulation of the relationship between psychotherapy and religion, and as a means to address apparently divergent values of psychotherapists and religious believers.     

COSMOLOGY FROM ALPHA TO OMEGA: RESPONSE TO REVIEWS

I gratefully acknowledge and respond here to four reviews of my recent book, Cosmology from Alpha to Omega. Nancey Murphy stresses the importance of showing consistency between Christian theology and natural science through a detailed examination of my recent model of their creative interaction. She suggests how this model can be enhanced by adopting Alasdair MacIntyre's understanding of tradition in order to adjudicate between competing ways of incorporating science into a wider worldview. She urges the inclusion of ethics in my model and predicts that this would successfully challenge the competing naturalist tradition in contemporary society. John F. Haught weighs the alternatives of viewing divine action as objective versus subjective and of divine action at one level in nature or at all levels. He asks whether physics is fundamental to nature, arguing instead that metaphysics should be considered as fundamental. Michael Ruse assesses occasional versus universal divine action, the problems raised to divine action when it is related to quantum mechanics, and the way these relations exacerbate the challenge of natural theodicy. As an alternative he suggests viewing God as outside time and acting through unbroken natural law. Willem B. Drees discusses my use of the bridge metaphor for the relation between theology and science, the implications when science is inspired by theology, the role of contingency and necessity in the anthropic principle/many-worlds debate, and the challenge of cosmology to eschatology with the ensuing problem of theodicy.     

TRACING A TRAJECTORY

Abstract. Theology and ethics intersect with sciences at different points depending upon whether the scholars involved are interested in, for example, general epistemological issues or practical moral judgments. The intersection affects theology and ethics in different ways, depending upon various commitments or resistances on the part of theologians. The author surveys his own writings to show how openness to the sciences has had an impact on various phases of his work and what issues remain somewhat unresolved.     

ON TWO ISSUES IN SCIENCE AND RELIGION: A RESPONSE TO DAVID GRIFFIN

Abstract. In responding to David Griffin's critique of my book, Issues in Science and Religion , I suggest that most of the points which he initially presents as differences between us concerning reduction and emergence are resolved in the second half of his article. I spoke of the emergence of higher-level "properties" and "activities," rather than "entities," but my analysis of whole and parts is similar to his, although it was perhaps not always clearly articulated. We agree also that Alfred North Whitehead's God is involved in every event in ways which avoid the problems of the supernatu-ralist "God of the gaps," but we differ as to whether God's action might be taken into account in a new "post-modern" science.     

SCIENCE,RELIGION, AND ETHICS: A RESPONSE TO MICHAEL J. REISS

The respondent agrees with Michael Reiss's general diagnosis of the rudderless state of ethics in our modern society, but not with all of his account of its causes or possible solutions. Scripture has always been limited in terms of direct moral commands, and secular ethics has, since Aristotle at least, been influential in directing Christian understanding of the “good life.” Ethics must be based in biology, but evolutionary biology can tell us more readily what is, than guide us into “what ought” to be. Christian teaching classically emphasized moral formation, grounded in the understanding that we are creatures of a good Creator. We have our being as gift, and human life flourishes when oriented to the Good.     

A RESPONSE TO DAVID HOLLENBACH AND SOHAIL H. HASHMI

Irene Oh affirms that religious freedom, faith, and reason, as David Hollenbach suggests, are subject matters that offer promising platforms for interreligious dialogue between Christians and Muslims. The need for cross‐cultural understanding is imperative especially given the current political climate, in which world leaders can easily exacerbate existing tensions through the misapplication of such terms. Sohail H. Hashmi addresses the need to discuss women's rights as part of a larger discussion on human rights in Islam. Oh concurs and notes that Sayyid Qutb's remarks on women in the United States serve as a starting point for clarifying women's agency in Islam.     

RELIGIOUS HYPOTHESES AND THE APOPHATIC,RELATIONAL THEOLOGY OF CATHERINE KELLER

In one of its most urgent folds, Catherine Keller's Cloud of the Impossible juxtaposes negative theology with relational theology for the sake of thinking constructively about today's global climate of religious conflict and ecological upheaval. The tension between these two theological approaches reflects her desire to unsay past harmful theological speech but also to speak into the present silences about the (perhaps im)possibility of a future that is not only to be feared. Suffusing Keller's Cloud is the related (perhaps im)possibility of living out one's life in conversation with a religious tradition having accepted the nonknowing character of its wisdom. Here, I develop the notion of “hypothetical faith” as an epistemic posture that commits itself to some particular religious tradition even as it acknowledges the unverifiability of that tradition's deepest truths. Understood as operating at the opposite end of the testability spectrum from science, religion‐as‐hypothesis provides a way of saying and unsaying one's tradition at the same time.     

CONFESSIONS OF A PRACTICING NATURALISTIC THEIST: A RESPONSE TO HARDWICK,PEDERSON, AND PETERSON

Abstract. In my response to the comments of Charley Hardwick, Ann Pederson, and Greg Peterson, I continue the narrative, confessional mode of my writing in Dancing with the Sacred. First, I sketch some methodological decisions underlying my naturalistic, evolutionary, practical theology. I then respond to the encouraging suggestions of my commentators by further developing my ideas about naturalism, mystery, creativity as God, the place of ecological responsibility in my thinking, sin, and eschatology. I offer suggestions as to how I might widen the practical applications of my theology beyond environmental and medical ethics to other areas of moral responsibility in relation to the creative process. I do all this with much appreciation for the care and careful critical reflection that my commentators have devoted to my thinking.     

FROM BELIEF TO UNBELIEF AND BACK TO BELIEF: A RESPONSE TO MICHAEL RUSE

Abstract. Michael Ruse's rejection of religious belief is questioned at two levels. First, on the metaethical level of analysis, evolutionary ethics cannot account for moral behavior that is based on a "strong version" of the Love Command. Second, agnosticism is discussed as a form of belief. Insights from religious forms of life that are inclusive, pluralistic, and expansive are contrasted with exclusivistic, closed, and fundamentalist forms of religion in order to develop criteria for "genuine religion." Theistic agnosticism is presented as a prolegomena to belief.     

HIGH SCIENCE AND NATURAL SCIENCES: GREEK THEOLOGIANS AND THE SCIENCE AND RELIGION INTERACTIONS (1832–1910)

What was science for the Orthodox Greek theologian of the nineteenth century? How did it feature in his (theologians were all men at the time) own work? This article is an attempt to describe the science and religion interactions by placing Greek Orthodox theologians of the nineteenth century in the center of the historical narrative, rather than treat them as occasional deuteragonists in the scientists’ historiography. The picture that emerges is far more complicated than one of antagonism, indifference, conflict, or coexistence. Greek theologians saw themselves as scientists and treated theology as a positive, rational science. They developed strategies to delineate their disciplinary borders and safeguard their identity as expert scholars by harnessing their university and academic credentials. For that reason, they had to invoke famous German and other Western theologians, while ensuring that they were seen as true defenders of Orthodox Christianity. The idea of science was an integral part of this achievement.     

GOD IS GREAT, GOD IS GOOD: JAMES ASHBROOK'S CONTRIBUTION TO NEUROETHICAL THEOLOGY

Abstract. James Ashbrook's work has not only clarified issues in brain and belief, it has offered intriguing suggestions for ethics. The relevance of neurotheology to ethics is evident if we assume that ethics entails, in part, concerns about character, responsibility, and the art of living.     

THE FAULT IN US: ETHICS,INFINITY, AND CELESTIAL BODIES

Catherine Keller's Cloud of the Impossible knits together process theology and relational ontology with quantum mechanics. In quantum physics, she finds a new resource for undoing the architecture of classical metaphysics and its location of autonomous human subjects as the primary gears of ethical agency. Keller swarms theology with the quantum perspective, focusing in particular on the phenomenon of quantum entanglement, by which quantum particles are found to remain influential over each other long after they have been physically separated—what Albert Einstein and his collaborators recklessly dismissed as “spooky action at a distance.” This spooky action, Keller suggests, reroutes process thought—classically concerned with flux—to a new concern with intransigence—particularly the intransigence of the ethical relationship. Attending to the ethical urgency of the Other, she leaves process theology in a position of susceptibility to the moral imperative posed by the marginalized, the victimized, and the oppressed. This essay argues that although the ontological work of Keller's book productively integrates quantum physics into process theology, the ethical dimension of relationality is left cold in the quantum field. This is because, contra the ethical framework of contemporary deconstruction, which, following Emmanuel Levinas, sees ethical relationships as emerging out of a dynamic of infinite distance, moral connection has nothing to do with the remote reaches of the quantum scale or the macro‐scale limits of space—nothing to do with “infinity” at all. Ethics emerges out of a much messier landscape—the evolved dynamic of fleshy, finite, material bodies. Rather than seeing ethical labor as a matter of physics, my contention (and here I think I am arguing with, rather than against Keller) is that interdisciplinary undertakings like Cloud of the Impossible are ethical disciplinary practices, re‐acquainting us with the non‐sovereignty of the self in order to open up new habits of relating rather than spotlighting ethical imperatives.     

ISLAM AND ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS: TRADITION RESPONDS TO CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES

Abstract. Mounting globed environmental challenges beg for cross-cultural discussions that highlight underlying cultural values regarding nature. This paper explores the insights of Islamic scholars as they examine the interaction of Islamic culture and the West. The Western worldview that separates religion and science, value and fact, in particular differs from Islamic tradition, which sees all facets of life and affairs as interconnected by virtue of their common source—the Creator. As traditional Islamic values have been abandoned to adopt modern Western technologies, environmental problems have intensified in the Muslim world. Islamic scholars urge a return to Islamic ideals that reflect a sacramental view of the physical universe, and they champion the revival of an Islamic science that synthesizes empirical study and symbolic cognition.     

COMMENTS ON SIX RESPONSES TO DEMOCRACY AND TRADITION

This paper is a rejoinder to papers by Sabina Lovibond, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Sumner B. Twiss, G. Scott Davis, M. Cathleen Kaveny, and John Kelsay on the author's recent book Democracy and Tradition. The argument covers a host of topics, ranging from epistemology and methodology to human rights, the common law, and Islamic ethics.     

RESPONSE TO PAPERS FOR “ETHNOGRAPHY,ANTHROPOLOGY, AND COMPARATIVE RELIGIOUS ETHICS” FOCUS

The Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR) project represented here through papers by Thomas Lewis, Aaron Stalnaker, Hans Lucht, and Lee Yearley (with responses) was motivated by the judgment that the trend toward a focus on virtue ethics, with attendant concern for techniques of forming selves, creates an opportunity for a dialogue with ethnographers. I argue that the CSWR essays neglect social and institutional considerations, as well as overdrawing the distinction between “formalist” and virtue approaches to the study of comparative ethics.