Creation as the Initiation of an Open History
THE SEARCH TCD Colloquium, ‘A New Look at the End Times’ has drawn together biblical insights from the study of apocalyptic texts, diagnoses of contemporary attitudes towards the future especially among college students, scientific analyses and theological positions on divine and human agency in the face of impending climate disaster, pandemics and war.
THE SEARCH TCD Colloquium, ‘A New Look at the End Times’ has drawn together biblical insights from the study of apocalyptic texts, diagnoses of contemporary attitudes towards the future especially among college students, scientific analyses and theological positions on divine and human agency in the face of impending climate disaster, pandemics and war. Just as the scale of these threats calls for the greatest accuracy in examining the scientific and political scenarios, it is equally necessary for systematic theology and ethics to assess models of Christian thinking. How can the interpretation of biblical sources and subsequent doctrinal developments sharpen our ability to spot problems and identify levels of action?
As a university discipline in dialogue with other subjects in the humanities and the sciences, theology is distinct from statements by churches and ecumenical bodies. Their relevance for civic and state actors, such as in the process of the COP21 Paris Agreement, can hardly be overestimated. Yet academic theology has its own role to play and a mission which it can fail to fulfil if it supports concepts of God and the human subject, nature and history, church and state that will endanger rather than foster cooperation. A theology that considers itself able to replace individual disciplines like sociology, or that downgrades them as market-led pursuits in need of theological critique, does not respect its own history, in which it has always recognised the autonomous sphere of the world.
* Full article available in printed copies.
Maureen Junker-Kenny
was Professor of Theology in the TCD School of Religion, and Head of School, and is now a Fellow Emerita fellow of TCD.