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5 books
Robert John Russell is founder and Director of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS). He is also the Ian G. Barbour Professor of Theology and Science in Residence at the Graduate Theological Union (GTU). He has written and edited extensively on possible scientific mechanisms of Christian belief. Russell is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. He received a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, a B.S. in physics from Stanford University, an M.S. in physics from UCLA, and an M.A. in Theology and an M. Div. from Pacific School of Religion. Russell taught physics at Carleton College and science and religion with Ian Barbour for several years before joining the GTU in 1981. His wife, Charlotte, is an associate minister at First Congregational Church, Berkeley, California.
If ours is a world of epistemic distance, then just as historical and personal events can be interpreted both theistically and atheistically, so should science, the theistically neutral epistemic tool for discovery in nature, be interpretable both theistically and atheistically. Thus ours is a world in which “theology and science” is not only intellectually possible but actually required if we are to make a scholarly and convincing case for a theistic interpretation of natural science that is more robust than its atheistic interpretation. In sum, a world created by God for the possibility of moral growth is also a world in which science is possible and a world in which the field of “theology and science” is required to produce a convincing theistic interpretation of science against its competitors.
Pannenberg understands God as Trinity to be at work in the world, both continually appearing in history as the “arrival” of the immediate future and as reaching back from the eschatological future to the Easter event in order to transform the world into the New Creation. In a breathtaking move, Pannenberg thematizes the latter as “prolepsis”: although the New Creation still lies in our future, or more correctly in the “future of our future,” the Easter event is already and normatively a manifestation in our time and history of what is the not-yet still-future eschatological-apocalyptic destiny for all the world.
Pannenberg thematizes the latter as “prolepsis”: although the New Creation still lies in our future, or more correctly in the “future of our future,” the Easter event is already and normatively a manifestation in our time and history of what is the not-yet still-future eschatological-apocalyptic destiny for all the world.