Abstract
Eschatology and the Technological Future
by Michael S. Burdett
Routledge Studies in Religion. New York: Routledge, 2015. 252 pp. $140.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-1-138-82633-5.
The rapid advancement of technology has led to an explosion of speculative theories about what the future of humankind may look like. These “technological futurisms” have arisen from significant advances in the fields of nanotechnology, biotechnology, and information technology and are drawing growing scrutiny from the philosophical and theological communities. This text seeks to contextualize the growing literature on the cultural, philosophical, and religious implications of technological growth by considering technological futurisms (such as transhumanism) in the context of the long historical tradition of technological dreaming. Burdett traces the latent religious sources of our contemporary technological imagination by looking at visionary approaches to technology and the future in seminal technological utopias and science fiction, and draws on past theological responses to the technological future with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Jacques Ellul. Burdett’s argument arrives at a contemporary Christian response to transhumanism based on the themes of possibility and promise by turning to the works of Richard Kearney, Eberhard Jüngel, and Jürgen Moltmann. Throughout, the author highlights points of correspondence and divergence between technological futurisms and Judeo-Christian understandings of the future.
Creation in Crisis: Science, Ethics, Theology
by Joshtrom Kureethadam
Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2014. 352 pp. $50.00. ISBN 978-162698-100-3.
When we speak of the “environmental crisis” facing the planet, we reduce the coming catastrophe to a physical problem. Joshtrom Kureethadam seeks to extend the current understanding of what is truly an ecological crisis to include ethical and spiritual perspectives. The author argues that the crisis is not merely an environmental problem, but is truly “eco-logical”—a discourse about our common home (oikos) in nature. In its careful incorporation of the latest science related to issues such as environmental degradation, pollution, climate change, and food production, this book also enters into dialogue with various disciplines in understanding the contemporary ecological crisis.
Decreation: The Last Things of All Things
by Paul J. Griffiths
Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2014. 396 pp. $69.95 (cloth). ISBN 978-1-48130-229-6.
Death is not the end―either for humans or for all creatures. But while Christianity has obsessed over the future of humanity, it has neglected the ends for nonhuman animals, inanimate creatures, and angels. In this volume, Paul J. Griffiths explores how orthodox Christian theology might be developed to include the “last things” of all creatures. He employs traditional and historical Christian theology of the last things to create both a grammar and a lexicon for a new eschatology. Griffiths imagines heaven as an endless, repetitively static, communal, and enfleshed adoration of the triune God in which angels, nonhuman animals, and inanimate objects each find a place. Hell becomes a final and irreversible separation from God―annihilation―sin’s true aim and the last success of the sinner. This grammar, Griffiths suggests, gives Christians new ways to think about the redemption of all things, to imagine relationships with nonhuman creatures, and to live in a world devastated by a double fall.
Time in Eternity: Pannenberg, Physics, and Eschatology in Creative Mutual Interaction
by Robert John Russell
Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012. 512 pp. $49.00. ISBN 978-0-268-04059-8.
Robert John Russell, one of the foremost scholars on the relation of Christian theology to science, explores Wolfhart Pannenberg’s treatment of time and eternity in relation to mathematics, physics, and cosmology. Time in Eternity is the first book-length exposition of Russell’s approach to the “creative mutual interaction” between theology and the natural sciences. This approach first calls for a reformulation of theology in light of science and then for the delineation of possible topics for research in science drawing on this reformulated theology.
Science and Religion in the Twenty-First Century
edited by Russell Re Manning and Michael Byrne
London: SCM, 2013. 256 pp. $56.00. ISBN 978-0-3340-4594-6.
Despite the upsurge in public interest in science-and-religion provoked by the so-called “new atheist” attacks on religion, there has been surprisingly little publicly accessible and informed discussion of the central issues at stake in contemporary work at the interface of science and religion. This book fills this gap by providing a snapshot of what is really at stake in contemporary interactions and debates between scientists and theologians. What the collection shows, above all, is the vibrant complexity of discussions in science-and-religion. Old models of conflict between the two disciplines no longer hold; but neither do the alternative comprehensive models of independence, dialogue, or integration. What emerges instead is a complex set of relations between science and religion in the twenty-first century. Contributors include Keith Ward, Jürgen Moltmann, John Hedley Brooke, Celia Deane-Drummond, and John Polkinghorne.
Faith and Wisdom in Science
by Tom McLeish
New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. 304 pp. $29.95. ISBN 978-0-1987-0261-0.
“Can you count the clouds?” asks the voice of God from the whirlwind in the book of Job. McLeish takes a scientist’s reading of this ancient text as a centerpiece to make the case for science as a deeply human and ancient activity that is embedded in some of the oldest stories told about human desire to understand the natural world. Drawing on stories from the modern science of chaos and uncertainty alongside medieval, patristic, classical, and biblical sources, Faith and Wisdom in Science challenges much of the current “science and religion” debate as operating with the wrong assumptions and in the wrong space. Its narrative approach develops a natural critique of the cultural separation of sciences and humanities and suggests an approach to science that can draw on theological and cultural roots. Following the theme of pain in human confrontation with nature, it develops a “theology of science” that recognizes how both scientific and theological worldviews must be “of ” each other and in separate domains. Science finds its place within an old story of participative reconciliation with a nature in which we begin as ignorant and fearful but learn to perceive and work within wisdom. Surprisingly, science becomes a deeply religious activity. There are urgent lessons for education, the political process of decision-making on science and technology, our relationship with the global environment, and the way that both religious and secular communities alike celebrate and govern science.
Creator God, Evolving World
by Cynthia Crysdale and Neil Ormerod
Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013. 184 pp. $18.00. ISBN 978-0-8006-9877-5.
Cynthia Crysdale and Neil Ormerod present a robust theology of God in light of supposed tensions between Christian belief and evolutionary science. An intelligent and accessible defense of the compatibility of classical theism with the evolutionary worldview, this volume is an important and provocative contribution to the debate. It clarifies a number of confused assumptions in an effort to redeem chance as an intelligible force that interacts with stable patterns in nature. By clarifying terms often used imprecisely in both scientific and theological discourse, the authors make the case that the role of chance in evolution neither mitigates God’s radical otherness from creation nor challenges the efficacy of God’s providence in the world. Finally, this view of God and the evolving world yields implications for our understanding of human action. Moral agency, even God’s work of redemption, unfolds according to an ethic of risk rather than by the quick fix of determinative control.
Jesus Without Borders: Christology in the Majority World
edited by Gene L. Green, Stephen T. Pardue, and K. K. Yeo
Majority World Theology Series. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014. 200 pp. $20.00. ISBN 97-0-8028-7082-7.
Though the makeup of the church worldwide has undeniably shifted south and east over the past few decades, very few theological resources have taken account of these changes. This first volume in the emerging Majority World Theology series begins to remedy that lack, bringing together select theologians and biblical scholars from various parts of the world to discuss the significance of Jesus in their respective contexts. Offering an excellent glimpse of contemporary global, evangelical dialogue on the person and work of Jesus, this volume epitomizes the best Christian thinking from the majority world in relation to Western Christian tradition and Scripture. The contributors engage throughout with historic Christian confessions—especially the Creed of Chalcedon—and unpack their continuing relevance for Christian teaching about Jesus today.
Spirit of God: Christian Renewal in the Community of Faith
Edited by Jeffrey W. Barbeau and Beth Felker Jones
Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Academic, 2015. 267 pp. $25.00. ISBN 978-0-8308-2464-9.
While the age of the Holy Spirit began with Pentecost, the twentieth century saw an explosion in the Spirit’s work through the remarkable growth of Pentecostalism and the changing face of global Christianity. Despite these surprising developments, and the undeniable significance of the Holy Spirit throughout the life of the church, pneumatology too often remains a subject of misunderstanding and neglect.
These essays, gathered from the 2014 Wheaton Theology Conference, provide an ecumenical exploration of the Holy Spirit’s person and work in biblical, historical, doctrinal, and practical perspectives. In addition to essays on Augustine, Aquinas, creation, and salvation, the volume features important contributions on the current shape of global Pentecostalism. Oliver Crisp, Timothy George, Kevin Vanhoozer, Geoffrey Wainwright, Michael Welker, and Amos Yong are among the fourteen contributors.