From Divine Action to Divine Presence: The Next Step in an Integrated Cosmology of Science and Theology

Abstract

One of the challenges facing contemporary theologians has been an increasingly perceived rift between the disciplines of theology and scientific cosmology.  A common narrative maintains that the incompatibility of these disciplines is a result of the rise of modern science during which the doctrinal claims of theology as they relate to our understanding of the universe as a whole were disproven.  Within this narrative framework, theology is reduced to issues of human experience and moral life.  In contrast to this myth, this paper establishes the claim that the perceived rift between theology and cosmology is not merely due to the advances of modern science but also to particular philosophical and theological developments in the realms of epistemology and the social imaginary.  Furthermore, the author suggests that these sources of the exclusion of cosmology from theological discourse indicate a need for the development of an Irenaean cosmological framework in which the Eucharistic tension between the simultaneous presence and absence of Christ is upheld.