Van Huyssteen J.W. (editor) Encyclopedia of Science and Religion

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CHRISTIANITY,REFORMED,ISSUES IN SCIENCE AND RELIGION

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these “uncertain and casual” events which are the

subjects of investigation. The distinction between

explicable (“natural or necessary”) events and

events that are not yet explicable (“casual and for-

tuitous”) was proving, with more physical experi-

mentation, to be merely formal. Rather than de-

tracting from providence, the discoveries of greater

complexity and diversity were thought especially

to bear witness to divine teleological benevolence.

For example, according to Reformed theologians

like Heidegger, God’s glory is more manifest by

creation developing over a period of time (creation

continued after the singular creation out of noth-

ing) than by a supposedly instantaneous comple-

tion. This argument resurfaced later against those

who, unnerved by the discoveries of evolutionary

biology and geology, insisted on a literal interpre-

tation of the creation accounts in Genesis.

Reformed responses to nineteenth-century

science

There was a considerable range of mutual influ-

ence between Reformed thinkers and the rise of

modern geology, paleontology, and evolutionary

zoology, and two contrasting reactions developed.

The first was the reaction of two figures at Yale:

James Dwight Dana (1813–1895), professor of

geology, and Theodore Dwight Woolsey (1801–

1889), the Yale president. Both stood in the broader

Calvinist tradition tempered by the Reawakening at

the hands of Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) a cen-

tury earlier. Dana found no fundamental incompat-

ibility between the evidences for Christian doctrine

and evidences for evolution, though he disagreed

with Darwin’s theory of single-line evolution and

corresponded with Darwin about it. Dana ex-

pressed these ideas on March 29, 1890, in a lecture

entitled “The Genesis of the Heavens and the

Earth.” Woolsey warned against the threat of posi-

tivism and secularization, rather than specifically

against the work either of Charles Darwin

(1809–1882) or Herbert Spencer (1820–1903).

By contrast, the second reaction was repre-

sented by the theologian Charles Hodge

(1797–1878) of Princeton, whose particular belief

in Biblical inerrancy, including the Genesis ac-

counts of creation, led him finally to oppose Dar-

winism as he understood it. He expressed his ideas

in What is Darwinism? (1874) However, Hodge’s

apologetic counterargument, carried on with an

irenic intent not always evident in his followers,

was made with what he thought to be the tools of

a more valid scientific method. That is, while he

opposed Darwin’s findings, Hodge himself be-

lieved that scientific argument was not opposed to

the brand of Calvinism that he represented and

that was heavily shaped by the earlier work of

Francis Turretin (1623–1687).

Reformed theology and post-Newtonian

physics

With the displacement of Newtonian physics came

a new era in which the attention shifted from de-

bates over evolution and Genesis to the implica-

tions of post-Newtonian physics for Reformed the-

ology and of Reformed theology for honing

questions of scientific method. One major devel-

opment is represented by the recovery of the seri-

ousness with which theology is to be taken as a sci-

ence. Such an approach does not mean, as it did

with nineteenth-century apologetic theology, an at-

tempt to legitimate theology by arguing its similar-

ity to natural science; rather, it means considering

theology as a science in the sense that it has its

own procedures congruent with the subject matter

being studied. Although the tradition of defining

theology as a science had never died out, now

there was a recovery of the boundaries and the

mutual respect necessary to fruitful dialogue. In

this, and in many other aspects of theology and

culture, Karl Barth (1886–1968) was a leader,

though his influence in shaping the content of the

dialogue between Reformed theology and the nat-

ural sciences was indirect. It was left to others, es-

pecially the Scottish theologian Thomas Torrance

(1913–) whose study of James Clerk Maxwell

(1831–1879), Albert Einstein (1879–1955), and

Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) led him to explore

analogies between scientific knowledge and theo-

logical knowledge and between theories of relativ-

ity and dynamic redefinitions of being. Torrance

called attention to Athanasius (c. 296–373) and the

Cappadocians (Basil the Great, c. 330–379; Gregory

Nazianzus, 329–389; and Gregory Nyssa, c. 330–c.

395) whose relational understanding of God’s tri-

une nature has provided material for discussions

between theologians and contemporary physicists.

Representative of the discussion is Torrance’s

Transformation and Convergence in the Frame of

Knowledge (1984). James Loder and James Neid-

hardt pursued this line further, as did Harold Nebel-

sick from the perspective of a historian of science.

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See also

CHRISTIANITY; CREATIO CONTINUA; CREATIO EX

NIHILO

Bibliography

Gabriel, Ralph H. Religion and Learning at Yale: The

Church of Christ in the College and University,

1757–1957. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University

Press, 1958.

Gregersen, Niels H., and van Huyssteen, J. Wentzel, eds.

Rethinking Theology and Science: Six Models for the

Current Dialogue. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans,

1998.

Hepburn, Ronald W. “Philosophical Ideas of Nature.” In

Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 5, ed. Paul Edwards.

New York: Macmillan, 1967.

Heppe, Heinrich. Die Dogmatik der Evangelisch-re-

formierte Kirche (1861), ed. Ernst Bizer. Neukirchen

Kreis Moers: Buchhandlung des Erziehungsvereins,

1935. English edition: Reformed Dogmatics, Set Out

and Illustrated from the Sources, trans. G. T. Thomp-

son. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker House, 1950.

Loder, James E., and Niedhardt, W. James. The Knight’s

Move: The Relational Logic of the Spirit in Theology

and Science. Colorado Springs, Colo.: Helmers and

Howard, 1992.

Nebelsick, Harold P. The Renaissance, the Reformation,

and the Rise of Science. Edinburgh, UK: T&T Clark,

1992.

Rudolph, Enno. “Wissenschaft.” In Evangelisches Kirchen-

lexikon, 3rd edition, Vol. 4. Göttingen, Germany: Van-

denhoeck and Ruprecht, 1996.

Torrance, Thomas F. Transformation and Convergence in

the Frame of Knowledge: Explorations in the Interre-

lations of Scientific and Theological Enterprise. Grand

Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1984.

Torrance, Thomas F. The Christian Frame of Mind: Rea-

son, Order, and Openness in Theology and Natural

Science. Colorado Springs, Colo.: Helmers and

Howard, 1989.

E. DAVID WILLIS

CHRISTIANITY,ROMAN

CATHOLIC,ISSUES IN

SCIENCE AND RELIGION

The most distinctive features of Roman Catholicism

that influence the religion-science dialogue are its

hierarchical and authoritative structure and its

emphasis upon the rational foundations for reli-

gious belief. Many of the divisions that have oc-

curred within Christianity in the course of history

have their origins in one or both of these charac-

teristics of Roman Catholicism. The history of the

interaction within Roman Catholicism between sci-

ence and religion has been dominated by its hier-

archical structure. On the other hand the insistence

on reason as fundamental to the relationship of

human beings to the universe and, therefore, to

the creator of the universe has played an important

role in the birth of modern science and provides a

platform for the dialogue between the belief sys-

tem of Roman Catholicism and other disciplines,

especially science.

Views of nature

The Catholic belief system includes the fundamen-

tal affirmation that nature has a rational structure

which human intelligence is capable of probing

and, in fact, is driven to probe. The basis for this

affirmation lies principally in the Johannine tradi-

tion of the Logos. John the Evangelist confronted

early Christian belief with the world of Greek phi-

losophy. In addition, early Christian reflection

upon lived, historical events, especially those

recorded in John’s Gospel, sees in such events the

insertion of God’s plan, thought, and word into the

universe. Thus John’s use of the word Logos, in-

herited from the Greeks: “The Word (Logos) of

God became flesh.” This revelation, which the

Judeo-Christian tradition believes is spoken by

God through his chosen spokespersons, has enor-

mous consequences for one’s judgment upon sci-

entific knowledge of the universe. The Judeo-

Christian experience affirms emphatically the

enfleshment of the divine and, since God is the

source of the meaning of all things, that meaning

too becomes incarnate.

Some see in this religious belief the founda-

tions of modern science. A rigorous attempt to ob-

serve the universe in a systematic way and to ana-

lyze those observations by rational processes,

principally using mathematics, will be rewarded

with understanding because the rational structure

is there in the universe to be discovered by human

ingenuity. Since God has come among human be-

ings in his Son, humans can discover the meaning

of the universe, or at least it is worth the struggle

to do so, by living intelligently in the universe.

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Religious experience thus provides the inspiration

for scientific investigation.

To varying degrees this “Logos theology” is at

the roots of all Christianity. What in it is peculiar to

Roman Catholicism? In addition to the strong affir-

mation of this “transcendence become incarnate”

by the robust system of sacraments in Roman

Catholicism (shared, perhaps, also by Anglican-

ism), there is in Catholicism a long tradition of ana-

logical knowledge. This reached its peak in me-

dieval Scholasticism, and, although it has taken on

many forms, is still very prominent in Catholic

thought. It seeks to come to a knowledge of God,

the creator, through knowledge of creation. In cre-

ation, perfections are always mixed with imperfec-

tions. If, at least in thought, the two can be sepa-

rated, the perfect can then be applied to God. This

analogical knowledge is also referred to as the via

negativa because, even as one applies knowledge

of the perfect to God, one must deny that God can

be limited to this knowledge. So, the philosopher

Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274) could rightly say

upon the completion of his Summa Theologica that

“it was all straw.”

Analogy refers to a relationship of similitudes,

or of things that are similar. For instance, God is

perfect love, and that can be compared with other

kinds of love that one witnesses, such as the love

of a mother for her child, or the long-standing love

of a husband and wife for one another in a stable

marriage. But then one sees imperfections in

human love, and one must deny that these are

present in God’s love. That is the use of analogy.

The implication is that God wishes to tell humans

about himself/herself in creation. It follows, there-

fore, that a scientist, one who is also a religious be-

liever, must find in science one way to seek to

know God. Roman Catholicism in its view of na-

ture is profoundly convinced of this.

It is important to note the logical sequence

here. It is not that one comes to believe in God by

proving God’s existence through anything resem-

bling a scientific process. God is not found as the

conclusion of a rational process like that. One be-

lieves in God because God gave himself/herself to

one. Faith is a personal relationship of love with

God and God initiated gratuitously that relation-

ship. No one merited it. No one reasoned to it.

Faith is “arational.” It does not contradict reason,

but it transcends it. Once one has entered into that

relationship, one can seek to deepen it through a

scientific knowledge of God’s creation. This is a

very characteristic stance of Catholic intellectuals.

History of the interaction between science

and religion

Because of the dominant hierarchical and authori-

tative structure of the Catholic Church the history

of the interaction between science and religion will

necessarily focus upon that structure. This is not to

deny that influential Catholic thinkers, such as the

paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–

1955), the astronomer and cosmologist George

Lemaître (1894–1966), and others, have not had an

impact, but they are not typical of Catholicism in

regard to the interaction with science.

Four case histories indicate that the relation-

ship between religion and science in Roman

Catholicism has, in the course of three centuries,

passed from one of conflict to one of compatible

openness and dialogue. The four periods of history

are: (l) the rise of modern atheism in the seven-

teenth and eighteenth centuries; (2) anticlericalism

in Europe in the nineteenth century; (3) the awak-

ening within the Church to modern science in the

first six decades of the twentieth century; and (4)

the Church’s view at the beginning of the twenty-

first century. The approach of science to religion in

each of these periods can be characterized respec-

tively as: (l) temptress, (2) antagonist, (3) enlight-

ened teacher, (4) partner in dialogue.

In his detailed study of the origins of modern

atheism, Michael Buckley concludes that it was,

paradoxically, precisely the attempt in the seven-

teenth and eighteenth centuries to establish a ra-

tional basis for religious belief through arguments

derived from philosophy and the natural sciences

that led to the corruption of religious belief. Reli-

gion yielded to the temptation to root its own ex-

istence in the rational certitudes characteristic of

the natural sciences. This rationalist tendency

found its apex in the enlistment of the new sci-

ence, characterized by such figures as Isaac New-

ton (1642–1727) and René Descartes (1596–1650),

to provide the foundation for religion. Isaac New-

ton marks the real beginning of modern science.

Although the Galileo case, as it is called, provides

the classic example of confrontation between sci-

ence and religion, it is really in the misappropria-

tion of modern science by Isaac Newton and oth-

ers to mistakenly establish the foundations for

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religious belief that the roots of a much more

deep-seated confrontation can be found. From

these roots, in fact, sprung the divorce between

science and religion in the form of modern athe-

ism. Thus, science served as a temptress to reli-

gion. The certainties born of the scientific method

gave birth to the desire for identical certainties as a

foundation for religious belief. That desire was rad-

ically misplaced and led to a lengthy period of mis-

understanding between religion and science.

Certain episodes during the nineteenth century

reveal aspects of the second movement—anticleri-

calism. Its influence on the development of the re-

lationship between science and religion in Catholi-

cism are described by Sabino Maffeo in the second

edition of his history of the Vatican Observatory. In

fact, the founding of the Observatory in 1891 by

Pope Leo XIII is set clearly in that climate of anti-

clericalism, and one of the principle motives that

Leo XIII cites for the foundation of the Observatory

is to combat such anticlericalism. However, after

having shown clearly the prevailing mistrust of

many scientists for the Church, he terminates the

document in which he established the Observatory

by stating:

. . . in taking up this work we have put be-

fore ourselves the plan … that everyone

might see that the Church and its Pastors

are not opposed to true and solid science,

whether human or divine, but that they

embrace it, encourage it, and promote it

with the fullest possible dedication

(quoted in Maffeo, p. 315 ff.)

Although the historical circumstances did not

provide a healthy climate for a dialogue between

religion and science, the founding of the Vatican

Observatory, even if couched in triumphalistic

terms, proved to be a positive contribution to the

dialogue, both at the time of its foundation and in

its subsequent history.

When one speaks of the awakening of the

Church to science during the first six decades of

the twentieth century, one is really speaking of the

personage of Pope Pius XII. The Pope had an ex-

cellent college-level knowledge of astronomy and

he frequently discussed astronomy with re-

searchers. However, he was not immune to the ra-

tionalist tendency and his understanding of the

then most recent scientific results concerning the

origins of the universe led him to a somewhat con-

cordant approach to seeing in these scientific re-

sults a rational support for the scriptural, and de-

rived doctrinal, interpretation of creation. It was

only, in fact, through the most delicate but firm in-

terventions of Georges Lemaître, the father of the

theory of the primeval atom that foreshadowed the

theory of the Big Bang, that the Pope was dis-

suaded from following a course that would have

surely ended in disaster for the relationship be-

tween the Church and scientists.

The specific problem arose from the tendency

of Pope Pius XII to identify the beginning state of

the Big Bang cosmologies, a state of very high den-

sity, pressure, and temperature, which was, at that

time, thought to have occurred about one to ten bil-

lion years ago, with God’s act of creation. Lemaître,

in particular, had considerable difficulty with this

view. Although he was a respected cosmologist, he

was also a Catholic priest, and, since solid scientific

evidence for his theory was lacking at that time, he

was subject to the accusation that his theory was re-

ally born of a spirit of concordism with the religious

concept of creation. In fact, it was only with the dis-

covery in 1965 of cosmic background radiation that

persuasive scientific evidence for the Big Bang be-

came available. Lemaître insisted that the primeval

atom and Big Bang hypotheses should be judged

solely as physical theories and that theological con-

siderations should be kept completely separate.

Galileo and Darwin

There are two episodes in the history of the inter-

action between Catholicism and science that merit

special attention. The cases of Galileo Galilei

(1564–1642) and Charles Darwin (1809–1882)

have, at least in the popular mind, become myths

that are thought to exemplify the interaction.

In view of Galileo’s increasing promotion of

Copernicanism the Congregation of the Holy Of-

fice of the Catholic Church in 1616 issued a decree

that declared that the Copernican theory that the

sun moved was absurd in philosophy and hereti-

cal, and the theory that the Earth was not immov-

able was absurd in philosophy and suspect of

heresy. These carefully honed distinctions between

philosophy and religious belief reveal the exagger-

ated rationalism of Catholicism at that time. Philos-

ophy, of course, referred to the philosophy of na-

ture, what people today call physics. Heretical

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meant that the philosophy contradicted Scripture.

The physics was that of Aristotle; Scripture was

limited to the literal meaning and to the under-

standing of the Church Fathers. On both accounts

the decree was, by hindsight, grossly in error. This

is touted as a conflict between science and reli-

gion, but of all things it was clearly not that. Sci-

ence was never a partner in the discussions.

Galileo’s telescopic observations, which convinc-

ingly supported Copernicanism even though they

were not proofs, were never subjected to discus-

sion. Furthermore, religion in the name of Scrip-

ture was not a principal protagonist. A philosoph-

ical conviction that Aristotle was correct led to an

insistence on a literal interpretation of Scripture.

Uncritical and untested convictions about the na-

ture of the universe dominated the scene on the

part of the Church. In 1633 Galileo was con-

demned to house arrest for life because he had dis-

obeyed, by his publication of the Dialogue, a pri-

vate edict given to him in 1616, as a consequence

of the above decree, not to support Copernican-

ism. A final judgment upon this case must be that

the Church erred gravely at that time in not allow-

ing an internationally renowned scientist to pursue

his research. It did so because its authoritarian

structure embraced a renunciation of reason. Aris-

totelian natural philosophy was the standard, not

because it was reasonable but because it was

imbedded in all Catholic theological thinking of

that epoch. A fracture had occurred between rea-

son and authority, two basics of the Catholic way.

The case of Darwin is different; in confronting

Darwinian evolution, it was Catholic doctrine that

was at stake. There are two fundamental doctrinal

assertions that appeared to be under attack: The

human being is a special creature, in whose origins

God directly intervenes; and the supernatural can-

not be reduced to the natural.

Since the time of Darwin, as biological, chem-

ical and physical evolution became ever more ac-

ceptable scientifically, the Catholic Church has

struggled to understand its doctrinal heritage in

light of the new science. On October 22, 1996, a

message of John Paul II on evolution was received

by the members of the Pontifical Academy of Sci-

ences on the occasion of a meeting sponsored by

the Academy on The Origin and Evolution of Life.

This message is in continuity with the posture of

openness characteristic of modern Catholicism.

Whereas the encyclical of Pope Pius XII in 1950,

Humani Generis, considered the doctrine of evo-

lution a serious hypothesis, worthy of investigation

and in-depth study equal to that of the opposing

hypothesis, John Paul II states in his message:

Today almost half a century after the pub-

lication of the encyclical [Humani Generis],

new knowledge has led to the recognition

that the theory of evolution is no longer a

mere hypothesis.

The Pope wished to recognize the great strides

being made in the scientific knowledge of life and

the implications that may result for a religious view

of the human person. For him, however, some the-

ories of evolution are incompatible with revealed,

religious truth. These include materialism, reduc-

tionism, and spiritualism. But at this point the mes-

sage embraces a true spirit of dialogue when it

struggles with the opposing theories of evolutionism

and creationism as to the origins of the human per-

son. And this is obviously the crux of the message.

The dialogue progresses in the following way:

(1) The Church holds certain revealed truths con-

cerning the human person; (2) Science has discov-

ered certain facts about the origins of the human

person; (3) Any theory based upon those facts that

contradicts revealed truths cannot be correct. Note

the antecedent and primary role given to revealed

truths in this dialogue; yet note the struggle to re-

main open to a correct theory based upon the sci-

entific facts. The dialogue proceeds between these

two poles. In the traditional manner of papal state-

ments, the main content of the teaching of previ-

ous popes on the matter at hand is reevaluated.

And so the teaching of Pius XII in Humani Generis

that, if the human body takes its origins from pre-

existent living matter, the spiritual soul is immedi-

ately created by God. Is the dialogue therefore re-

solved by embracing evolutionism as to the body

and creationism as to the soul? It must be noted

that the word soul does not reappear in the re-

mainder of the dialogue. Rather the message

moves to speak of “spirit” and “the spiritual.”

If the revealed, religious truth about the

human being is considered, then there is an onto-

logical leap or an ontological discontinuity in the

evolutionary chain at the emergence of the human

being. Is this not irreconcilable, wonders the Pope,

with the continuity in the evolutionary chain seen

by science? An attempt to resolve this critical issue

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is given by John Paul II’s statement in his 1996

message that:

The moment of transition to the spiritual

cannot be the object of this kind of [scien-

tific] observation, which nevertheless can

discover at the experimental level a series

of very valuable signs indicating what is

specific to the human being.

The suggestion is being made, it appears, that

the ontological discontinuity may be explained by

an epistemological discontinuity. Is this adequate

or must the dialogue continue? Is a creationist the-

ory required to explain the origins of the spiritual

dimension of the human being? Are we forced by

revealed, religious truth to accept a dualistic view

of the origins of the human person, evolutionist

with respect to the material dimension, creationist

with respect to the spiritual dimension? In the last

paragraphs concerning the God of life, the mes-

sage gives strong indications that the dialogue is

still open with respect to these critical questions.

The dialogue at the beginning of the twenty-

first century

Although there are many others, the sources for

deriving the most recent view from Roman

Catholicism concerning the relationship of science

and faith are essentially three messages of John

Paul II, two of them given in 1979 and 1986 to the

Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and the third in

1988 to the Vatican Observatory. The public has

emphasized the statements made by the Pope con-

cerning the Copernican-Ptolemaic controversy of

the seventeenth century. In his statements con-

cerning Galileo the Pope essentially does two

things: He admits that there was wrong on the part

of the Church and apologizes for it, and he calls

for a serene, studious, new investigation of the his-

tory of that time. However, there are matters that

are much more forward-looking and of much

more significance than a reinvestigation of the

Galileo case.

Especially in the 1988 message, given on the

occasion of the tricentennial of Newton’s Principia

Mathematica, John Paul II clearly states that sci-

ence cannot be used in a simplistic way as a ra-

tional basis for religious belief, nor can it be

judged to be by its nature atheistic or opposed to

belief in God.

… Christianity possesses the source of its

justification within itself and does not ex-

pect science to constitute its primary apolo-

getic. Science must bear witness to its own

worth. While each can and should support

the other as distinct dimensions of a com-

mon human culture, neither ought to as-

sume that it forms a necessary premise for

the other. (quoted in Russell et al., p. M9).

The newest element in this view from Rome is

the expressed uncertainty as to where the dialogue

between science and faith will lead. Whereas the

awakening of the Church to modern science dur-

ing the papacy of Pius XII resulted in a too facile

an appropriation of scientific results to bolster reli-

gious beliefs, Pope John II expresses the extreme

caution of the Church in defining its partnership in

the dialogue: “ … Exactly what form that (the dia-

logue) will take must be left to the future” (quoted

in Russell et al., p. M7).

See also DARWIN, CHARLES; GALILEO GALILEI; SCIENCE

AND

RELIGION, MODELS AND RELATIONS; TEILHARD

CHARDIN, PIERRE

Bibliography

Buckley, Michael J. At the Origins of Modern Atheism,

New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1987.

Hesse, Mary B. Models and Analogies in Science. Notre

Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966.

John Paul II. “Message to the Pontifical Academy of the

Sciences,” October 23, 1996. Published in the original

French in L’Osservatore Romano, 23 October 1996.

English translation available in Origins (Washington,

D.C.: Catholic News Service) 26, no. 22 (14 Novem-

ber 1996).

Lemaître, George. “The Primeval Atom Hypothesis and the

Problem of Clusters of Galaxies.” In La Structure et

L’Evolution de l’Universe. Bruxelles, Belgium: XI Con-

seil de Physique Solay, 1958.

Maffeo, Sabino. The Vatican Observatory: In the Service of

Nine Popes, trans. George V. Coyne. Vatican City: Vat-

ican Observatory Publications, 2001.

Pedersen, Olaf. The Book of Nature. Vatican City: Vatican

Observatory Publications, 1992.

Pius XII. Humani Generis: Encyclical letter concerning

some false opinions which threaten to undermine the

foundations of Catholic doctrine, August 12, 1950. In

Acta Apostolicae Sedis, Vol. 44. Vatican City: Ti-

pografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1950.

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Pontifical Academy. Discourses of the Popes from Pius XI

to John Paul II to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

Vatican City: Pontificia Accademia Scientiarum,

Scripta Varia 66, 1986.

Russell, Robert John; Stoeger, William R.; and Coyne,

George V., eds. Physics, Philosophy, and Theology: A

Common Quest for Understanding. Notre Dame, Ind.:

University of Notre Dame Press, 1988.

Teilhard De Chardin, Pierre. The Phenomenon of Man,

trans. Bernard Wall. New York: Harper, 1959.

Turek, J. Georges Lemaître and the Pontifical Academy of

Sciences. Vatican City: Vatican Observatory Publica-

tions, 1989.

Wallace, William A. The Modeling of Nature: Philosophy

of Science and Philosophy of Nature in Synthesis.

Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America

Press, 1996.

GEORGE COYNE

CHRISTOLOGY

In the Septuagint, the Hebrew word Messiah is

translated Christos, the anointed one. Since the

Christian community believed that Jesus of

Nazareth was the anointed one, Christology is then

the teaching about Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ.

Prior to Jesus, there were various Jewish hopes of

a new age, often involving intermediary or re-

deemer figures. The Christian community focused

these hopes in Jesus of Nazareth, and conse-

quently proclaimed him as the Christ. In the sec-

ond century, Ignatius could then talk about “our

God, Jesus Christ” (Eph. 18:2; Rom. 3:3) implying a

unity between God and Christ. Christians believe

that the reason for this elevated status of Christ

comes through his resurrection because, as Paul

claims, “if Christ has not been raised, then our

proclamation has been in vain and our faith has

been in vain” (1 Cor. 15:14).

For Christians, Jesus’ resurrection indicated a

duality of the risen one. Jesus “was descended

from David according to the flesh,” but he was also

“declared to be Son of God with power according

to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the

dead” (Rom. 1:3–4). Through his resurrection Jesus

became the Son of God who stands beside his Fa-

ther and participates in the power the Father dele-

gated to him. According to Christians Jesus became

the Lord of all and the resurrection became the

foundation of Christology.

The Christian belief that Jesus is the Christ en-

tails a connection between Christology and the ori-

gin, structure, and destiny of the physical world. In

the opening sentences of John’s Gospel, a re-

phrasing of the Genesis priestly creation account

occurs. “In the beginning was the Word [Logos],

and the Word was with God, and the Word was

God. He was in the beginning with God. All things

came into being through him and without him, not

one thing came into being” ( John 1:1–3; cf.Gen.

1:1). John asserted that Jesus’ coming as the re-

deemer provides an exact parallel to the creation.

Moreover, the Logos, similar to the Jewish person-

ification of wisdom, is the mediator of this new

creation, as the Logos was the mediator of creation

at the beginning of time. In Jesus, “the Word be-

came flesh and lived among us” ( John 1:14). This

emphasis on Christ as the first-born of all creation

and its mediator is expressed again in Colossians

1:15–17, which states that Christ is not only prior to

all creation, but also that all earthly and cosmic

powers were created through and for him.

Christ is also presented as the goal of creation

and as being present in creation. Underlying

this claim, affirmed as early as Justin Martyr

(c. 100–165), is the identification of the Logos with

reason. So taught the Stoa (initially a Greek school

of philosophy), the implications of which were that

creation was understood as both reasonable and

governed by God as manifested in Jesus Christ. It

also allowed Christians to accept whatever they

found reasonable in non-Christian insights, such as

in Greek philosophy.

Paul Tillich (1886–1965) picked up this corre-

spondence of the universal and incarnate Logos in

the twentieth century. Delineating the respective

tasks of theology and philosophy, however, Tillich

states that theologians do not use the universal

Logos as their source of knowledge. Rather, the

Logos became flesh, manifesting itself in a particu-

lar historical event. The medium through which

theologians receive the Logos is not reason but the

church, its traditions and its present reality.

Although Paul did not develop general cosmic

or metaphysical speculations (1 Cor. 8:6), he did

concentrate on the meaning of Christ’s lordship.

Since Adam was “a type of the one who was to

come,” the righteousness of Jesus “leads to justifi-

cation and life for all people” (Rom. 5:18), and

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therefore nothing “in all creation” can separate

human beings from “the love of God in Christ

Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:12–39). For Paul, God ex-

alted Jesus that at his name “every knee shall bow,

in heaven and on earth, and under the earth” (Phil.

2:9–11). In and through and for Jesus all things

were created, and “by the blood of the cross” all

things can be reconciled to Jesus (Col. 1:15–20).

This means that personal salvation and the salva-

tion of the whole world are tied together.

With reference to Colossians 1:15–20, at the

Third Plenary Assembly of the Ecumenical Council

of Churches at New Delhi, India, in 1961 the

Lutheran theologian Joseph Sittler (1904–1987) re-

ferred to the cosmic Christ, claiming that “a doc-

trine of redemption is meaningful only when it

swings within the larger orbit of a doctrine of cre-

ation. For God’s creation of earth cannot be re-

deemed in any intelligible sense of the word apart

from a doctrine of the cosmos which is his home,

his definite place, the theatre of his selfhood

under God, in corporation with his neighbor, and

in caring-relationship with nature, his sister” (Sit-

tler, p. 179). Since nature and humanity are threat-

ened by annihilation, it is not plausible, according

to Sittler, to proclaim Christ as the light of the

world without incorporating the natural world into

that proclamation.

The Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de

Chardin (1881–1955) picked up the concept of a

cosmic Christ, claiming in his essay “Note on the

Universal Christ” that “the universal Christ of the

New Testament is the organic center of the entire

universe” (p. 14). If Christ is universal, Teilhard

concludes, then redemption and the fall must ex-

tend to the entire universe. Therefore the whole of

evolutionary activity is centered in a process of

communion with God.

Finally, process theology picked up the notion

of a cosmic Christ. In Christ in a Pluralistic Age

(1975), John B. Cobb, Jr. (1925– ) claimed: In the

Christian tradition “the Logos is the cosmic princi-

ple of order, the ground of meaning, and the

source of purpose, and is identified with the incar-

nate form of the transcendent reality, the Christ” (p.

71). From this he concludes: “Christ is the incarnate

Logos. As such Christ is present in all things” (p.

142). Since the Logos is the order, “Apart from

Christ there is no hope for a better future” (p. 186).