THE MODERN INVENTION OF “SCIENCE‐AND‐RELIGION”: WHAT FOLLOWS?

I am grateful to the four reviewers of The Territories of Science and Religion for their careful and insightful readings of the book, and their kind words about it. They all got the central arguments pretty much right, and thus any critical comments are not the result of fundamental misunderstandings. While there are some common themes in the assessments, each reviewer, happily, has offered a distinct perspective on the book. For this reason I will deal with their comments in turn, but with a focus throughout on a generally expressed concern about the broader implications of the book's historical analysis, and what positive or concrete proposals might follow from it.     

The political theology of Fichte’s Staatslehre: immanence and transcendence

Given its use of religious concepts and language, it is tempting to class Fichte’s rarely discussed Staatslehre as a political theology. I argue that the Staatslehre can be classed as a political theology because of the way in which it can be understood in terms of the concepts of immanence and transcendence. The concept of immanence applies to Fichte’s account of history in particular. Fichte himself allows for a moment of transcendence at the very beginning of history. I argue that the concept of transcendence is also implicit in the Staatslehre in relation to some problems faced by Fichte’s own account of the role of the Zwingherr in the historical development and actualization of right and moral freedom, despite his attempt to avoid introducing theologically based explanations of political concepts at this stage of his Staatslehre.     

Christian protesters for democracy in Taiwan: a study of two American missionaries under Taiwanese martial law

Christians played a significant role in the course of Taiwan’s self-determination movements and the pro-democratic Tangwai movement during the 1960s and 1970s. While most researchers laid their focus on the Presbyterian Church ministers, the stories of Methodist pastor Milo Thornberry and Catholic priest Ronald Boccieri have rarely been mentioned. Thornberry helped Peng Ming-min to escape the country and Boccieri sheltered Chen Chu in his parish church. Consequently, the two American missionaries were listed as personae non gratae and expelled from the island by the Kuomintang (nationalist) regime. Although they were involved in the respective political incidents to different degrees, they had some things in common: compassion for native Taiwanese, concern for social justice and human rights, and conviction in witnessing to the gospel by non-violent action and fighting against injustice. This article uses interviews, autobiographies, memoirs, Foreign Ministry archives and newspapers to recount their stories that have not appeared in the historiography of their churches. It discusses how the Catholic and Methodist Churches maintained harmonious relations with the government for the benefit of their evangelistic work during the period of martial law. Finally it looks into the reasons why the two missionaries dared to disobey their churches’ official positions and the Washington government’s instruction that expatriates in Taiwan should not interfere in local politics.     

Semiclassical Theism and the Passage of Planck Times

This paper models God and time in the framework of modern physics. God bridges and simultaneously exists in (1) a universe with infinite tenseless time and (2) a created parallel universe with tensed time and a point origin. The primary attributes of God are inexhaustible love, inexhaustible perception, and inexhaustible force. The model also incorporates modern physics theories that include relativity, the conservation of energy, quantum mechanics, and multiverse geometry. For example, creation out of nothing and divine intervention are subject to physical processes and likewise nomological possibility. I will call this model semiclassical theism.     

Embodying the sacred and profane: how temporal empires,narratives of salvation,and the prison regime value bodies in the United States

Although analyses of the ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ tend to remain within the discipline of religious studies, categories of sacrality and profane-ness actively shape and label all bodies in the United States. Combining theories of the sacred and profane with formulations of race, gender and sexuality, I investigate the social de/valuation of specific bodies at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. During each period, three structural factors influence these categorisations: empires of hegemonic social time, dominant Christian narratives of salvation and the role of prison. A comparative analysis demonstrates both continuity and specificity in producing sacred and profane bodies.     

Joan as Jesus: A Feminist Theological Analysis of Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc

The aim of this article is to explore Carl Theodor Dreyer's portrayal of Joan of Arc in his film The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) as a female Christ‐figure. At the same time I argue that the film can serve as an important dialogue partner in ongoing christological discourse. The conclusion is that Dreyer's Joan provides a vivid image of Jesus Christ that challenges our fixation on Jesus’ maleness, and helps us to understand better what we really mean when we claim that God, dressed in flesh, became human, like us, female or male.     

THE NATURALIZATION OF SCRIPTURAL REASON IN SEVENTEENTH‐CENTURY EPISTEMOLOGY

Several scholars have claimed that the decline of revealed or Scriptural mysteries in the early Enlightenment was a consequence of the trajectories of Reformed theology in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Reformed theology's fideistic stance, it is claimed, undermined earlier frameworks for relating reason to revealed mysteries; consequently, rationalism emerged as an alternative to such fideism in figures like the Cambridge Platonists. This article argues that Reformed theologians of the seventeenth century were not fideists but re‐affirmed Medieval claims about the eschatological concord of reason and revealed mysteries. Furthermore, the article suggests that early Enlightenment attitudes to religious mysteries owe more to innovations in Socinianism and Cambridge Platonism than to mainstream Reformed theology.     

Nunca Más

This article highlights efforts to promote peace and reconciliation in Guatemala. One of the reconcilers has been Rigoberta Menchú, receiver of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992. The clergy and laity of the Roman Catholic Church have worked to ensure that the atrocities and violence the people suffered in the past would not happen again – nunca más (never again). The murder of Bishop Juan José Gerardi reveals not only the crimes of the military, but also the resolute commitment of the church in the process toward peace, reconciliation, and the healing of the nation.     

EXTINCTION,NATURAL EVIL,AND THE COSMIC CROSS

Did the God of the Bible create a Darwinian world in which violence and suffering (disvalue) are the means by which the good (value) is realized? This is Christopher Southgate's insightful and dramatic formulation of the theodicy problem. In addressing this problem, the Exeter theologian rightly invokes the Theology of the Cross in its second manifestation, that is, we learn from the cross of Jesus Christ that God is present to nonhuman as well as human victims of predation and extinction. God co‐suffers with creatures in their despair, abandonment, physical suffering, and death. What I will add with more force than Southgate is this: the Easter resurrection is a prolepsis of the eschatological new creation, and it is God's new creation which retroactively determines past creation. Although this does not eliminate the theodicy question, it lessens its moral sting.     

The Ecumenical Movement and 1968

The year 1968 is remembered as a turning point in ecumenical history: the 4th Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Uppsala appeared to mark the end of the era of early ecumenism and the beginning of a new era. This article questions this understanding of “Uppsala” and examines the reasons for such a mythologization of the assembly through analyzing its themes and conflicts in a twofold way. First, the analysis shows the connection between the students' revolts of 1968 and the assembly. Second, the article draws on the assembly's main theme, “Behold, I make all things new,” and the key aspects of ecumenical renewal discussed at the assembly: the new relationship between the WCC and the Roman Catholic Church, the WCC's commitment to development issues, liberation from racism, and the churches' role in political conflicts. While these themes became a symbol for identifying the assembly with a groundbreaking ecumenical change, the article argues that this change had already begun in the early 1960s, and that the assembly at Uppsala was more the medial and visible expression of this continuing ecumenical turbulence than its source.