Science challenges faith to seek fuller understanding, and faith challenges science to be socially and ethically responsible. This book begins with faith in God the Creator of the world, and then expands our understanding of creation in light of Big Bang cosmology and new discoveries in physics. Examining the expanding frontier of genetic research, Ted Peters draws out implications for theological understandings of human nature and human freedom. Issues discussed include: methodology in science and theology; eschatology in cosmology and theology; freedom and responsibility in evolution and theology; and genetic determinism, genetic engineering, and cloning in relation to freedom, the comodification of human life, and equitable distribution of the fruits of genetic technology. The dialogue model of relationship between science and religion, proposed in this book, provides a common ground for the disparate voices among theologians, scientists, and world religions. This common ground has the potential to breathe new life into current debates about the world in which we live, move, and have our being.

Scientists, philosophers and theologians have wrestled repeatedly with the question of whether knowledge is similar or different in their various understandings of the world and God. Although agreement is still elusive, the epistemology of critical realism, associated with Ian Barbour, John Polkinghorne and Arthur Peacocke, remains widely credible. Relying on the lifetime work of philosopher Ernan McMullin, this book expands our understanding of critical realism beyond a permanent stand-off between the subjective and objective, whether in science or theology. Critical realism illuminates the subject and the objectively known simultaneously. Responding to criticisms made against it, this book defends critical realism in science and theology with a specific role to play in our understanding of God.

In celebration of Alister E. McGrath’s sixty-fifth birthday in 2018, this Festschrift aims to highlight him as a lauded scholar, who exemplifies an interface of science, theology, and religion. It comprises works by McGrath’s theological allies and colleagues from diverse ecclesial homes including Graham Ward, Oliver Crisp, Tony Lane, Sung Wook Chung, Randall Zachman, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Jonathan Wilson, Jeffrey P. Greenman, Robert Kolb, Sister Benedicta Ward, Michael Lloyd, Bethany Sollereder, and Patrick Franklin. Critical but appreciative is the posture with which these contributors engage the wide range of McGrath's own scholarly pursuits and publications. This volume, edited by Dennis Ngien, covers these themes that are central to the life and witness of the church: atonement, Christology, Trinity, eschatology, mission, Reformation, science, nature, culture, evangelism, and theodicy—there is much to ponder and reap here. Readers will join with the contributors and pay tribute to McGrath who has risen to a life of significance as a scientist turned theologian, professor, author, Christian apologist, and churchman.

This timely and fascinating work addresses questions of ultimate concerns for Christian believers by clarifying what religious believers’ statement “God creates” means in relation to the mechanistic determinism of science enthusiasts and the New Atheist Movement. Drawing from the methodological works of C.S. Peirce, Bernard Lonergan, and Wolfhart Pannenberg, the book creatively shows how the old science-theology conflict, or “warfare”, can be turned into one of collaboration or rapprochement. Using the works of these three thinkers, it departs from the common practice of treating the field of science-theology as an abstract mainstream theology. The book takes a stand on contextual theology, treating the problem posed by Richard Dawkins and his fellow New Atheists as one in need of a creative solution. It also suggests that the dialogue between science and theology must take seriously the experiences and challenges from different social and cultural contexts. The text shows how these experiences can lead to the kind of creative theological thinking we see in the works of Pannenberg and Lonergan, who both explicate, not only how an understanding of an evolutionary universe is compatible with the Christian doctrine of creation, but also how a methodological comparison of science and theology reveals a common concern for human understanding and openness to divine agency.

This Element examines the science-theology dialogue from the perspective of Eastern Orthodox Christianity and provides a critique of this dialogue based on six fundamental aspects of that theology: (i) Its understanding of how philosophy may authentically be used in the theological task; (ii) Its understanding of the use and limitations of scientific and theological languages; (iii) Its understanding of the role of humanity in bringing God's purposes to fulfilment; (iv) its sense that material entities should be understood less in materialist terms than in relation to the mind of God; (v) Its Christological focus in understanding the concept of creation; (vi) Its sense that the empirical world can be understood theologically only when the 'world to come' is taken fully into account. It is argued that Orthodoxy either provides an alternative pan-Christian vision to the currently predominant one or, at the very least, provides important new conceptual insights.

A Scientific Theology is a groundbreaking work of systematic theology in three volumes: Nature, Reality and Theory. Now available as a three volume set.

This reader brings together carefully selected material from a wide range of authors on the relationships between science, religion and theology.....It samples the recent literature on the challenges to religion posed by both modern physics and evolutionary biology as well as exploring the relationship between scientific and theological approaches.....Topics include models of interaction between science and religion, historical reflections on the 'conflict thesis', scientific and theological methods, creation and modern cosmology, uncertainty and chaos, creationism and evolutionary theory, the anthropic principle and design, and the challenge of reductionism.....Contributors include Ian Barbour, Michael Behe, Richard Dawkins, John Habgood, Mary Hesse, T.H.Huxley, Alister McGrath, Arthur Peacocke, John Polkinghorne, Michael Ruse, Keith Ward and Fraser Watts.

The second volume of an extended and systematic exploration of the relation between Christian theology and the natural sciences, focussing on the examination and defense of theological realism