Science in Theology: Encounters between Science and the Christian Tradition
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
If we wish to understand ourselves and the world in relation to God, what contribution to our understanding should we expect from a Christian tradition with its roots in the Bible, and what should we expect from the natural sciences?
Neil Messer sets out five types of answer to that question. The responses range from the view that the Christian tradition has nothing to contribute, through various forms of dialogue, to the claim that science is irrelevant to theological understanding. This classification scheme is illustrated and tested by extended explorations of three topics in the science and theology field: how to think about God's action in the world, how to make theological sense of the suffering and destruction involved in the evolution of life, and how theology should respond to the scientific study of religion. The classification offers a way to understand and evaluate these debates, and the discussion of specific examples demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of each type of approach.
The book concludes with suggestions for how readers might use this scheme to guide their own work on science and theology. For students and researchers in science and theology, this book offers three things: a tool for understanding specific debates in science and theology, critical surveys of some of the most important debates in the field, and a concise guide to ways of setting up encounters of theology with science.
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- Explores five approaches to the relationship of Christianity and science
- Demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of each type of approach
- Includes suggestions for how readers might use this scheme to guide their own work on science and theology
- Setting Up the Dialogue
- Divine Action and Contemporary Science
- The Problem of Natural Evil after Darwin
- Evolutionary, Cognitive and Neuroscientific Studies of Religion
- Concluding Reflections: Using the Five Types
Neil Messer’s book develops a typology of ways in which science-theology encounters might be set up, tests the typology on three important debates in science and theology and draws some conclusions about how science-theology encounters should be conducted. I recommend it to scholars interested in this promising interdisciplinary field.
—Robert John Russell, Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, Graduate Theological Union, USA
With characteristic clarity of expression, this book is essential reading for students beginning to contemplate the wide array of research literature in theology and science. The author refuses to accept the adequacy of standard treatments of methodology in this field and gives readers the needed analytical tools to assess key concepts and contested debates.
—Celia Deane-Drummond, Laudato Si’ Research Institute, University of Oxford, UK
Neil Messer is ideally qualified to undertake this helpful and much-needed survey of approaches that relate scientific disciplines to approaches in Christian theology. He works through a number of important examples with sensitivity and precision. The book will be of enormous assistance to instructors and students alike.
—Christopher Southgate, University of Exeter, UK
- Title: Science in Theology: Encounters between Science and the Christian Tradition
- Author: Neil Messer
- Publisher: Bloomsbury
- Print Publication Date: 2020
- Pages: 208
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
- ISBNs: 9780567689818, 0567689816
- Resource ID: LLS:SCIENCEINTHEO
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2023-03-02T22:10:26Z