KARL PETERS: THEOLOGY AS A CONFESSING DISCIPLINE

Abstract. Karl Peters's book Dancing with the Sacred brings together his insights from evolutionary biology and ecology, world religions, and process thought into an integrated autobiographical reflection on his thoughts, teaching, and life. The book simultaneously engages readers in their own reflections about religion and science and reminds them that their reflections are freighted with moral responsibility. For Peters, self‐understanding correlates with understanding the world. The celebration of diversity coincides with the universal concerns that all face living together on this planet. Our future depends on how we live in the present tense.     

ALTRUISM: TOWARD A PSYCHOBIOSPIRITUAL CONCEPTUALIZATION

Altruism, defined here as a regard for or devotion to the interest of others with whom we are interrelated, is pitted against two other dispositions in human beings: nepotism and egoism. We propose that to become fully human is to become more altruistic. We describe how altruism is mediated by our physiology, is expressed in our psychological development, is evolving in our social institutions, and becomes the moral communities that enforce our sense of right and wrong. A change in any one of these influences changes our disposition—changes who we are and what we do—potentially making altruism more possible in the world.     

GEORGE TYRRELL AND KARL RAHNER: A DIALOGUE ON REVELATION

The reality of revelation was one of the fundamental questions that occupied 1 Tyrrell as a writer until he died on 15 July 1909. The centenary of his death is an opportune time to engage this English Modernist in a dialogue with Karl Rahner on the subject of revelation. Tyrrell insists on the primacy of the interior experience of revelation. An exaggerated emphasis on inner religious experience, however, led him inevitably to a separation of the interior dimension of revelation from its verbal expressions and doctrinal formulations.
Rahner also affirms the primacy of the originating inner experience of God but stresses at the same time the intrinsic unity between this transcendental revelation and its categorical, historical dimension. Revelation corresponds to the symbolic nature of the addressee. The Mystery of the Incarnation is the point of reference for understanding God's self-communication. The fullness of revelation has been realized in the indissoluble and irreversible unity of the Divine Logos with the Man Jesus.     

INTRODUCTION: TOWARD A METAPHYSIC OF MEANING

We introduce a two‐part collection of articles (Part 2 to appear in the September 2010 issue) exploring a possible new research program in the field of science and religion. At the center of the program lies an attempt to develop a new theology of nature drawing on the philosophy of C. S. Peirce. Our overall idea is that the fundamental structure of the world is exactly that required for the emergence of meaning and truth‐bearing representation. We understand the emergence of a capacity to interpret an environment to be important to the emergence of life, and we see the subsequent history of biological evolution as a story of increasing capacities for meaning making and meaning seeking. Theologically, we understand God to be the ground of all such meaning making and the ultimate goal of the universe's emerging capacity for interpreting signs. Here we explain our reasons for seeking a new metaphysical framework in which science and theology may each find a home. We survey the contributions to the two‐part collection, and we suggest that the interdisciplinary collaboration from which these have arisen may serve as a methodological model for the field of science and religion.     

THINKING TOWARD A FUTURE

Abstract. Ian Harbour's Ethics in an Age of Technology provides an indispensable overview of the field of ethics and technology—an overview that gives balanced views informed by science, philosophy, and religion and that provides encyclopedic coverage of a variety of issues and methods typical to them. Barbour makes communication possible between two fields often at odds in our culture. Part 2 of the book relates the values introduced in Part 1 to three specific areas of technology: agriculture, energy, and computers. The book pays superficial attention to gender issues. Its focus is on planet Earth; the universe and models of the future are only implicit.