Autopoiesis, Epigenetic Ontology, and the Politics of Divine Concursus:
Public Theology in the Anthropocene
Paul S. Chung
Abstract
This paper develops a structural‑theoretical approach to living systems and highlights the relevance of epigenetics in the age of the Anthropocene. It engages bio‑sociological analyses of life and environmental forces, examines the significance of biopower, and advances a proleptic ethics of collective responsibility. In interrogating the limitations of process metaphysics, the paper refines an epistemic theory of semantic autopoiesis ushering in a new paradigm in dialogue with Karl Barth’s theology of divine concursus and ecological thinking. Thereby repositioning the multiple realities of the minjung as embedded within broader evolutionary–ecological conditions of life..
Introduction
Significant discoveries in human evolution offer fresh insights into our origins and our connections with both living and extinct evolutionary relatives across millions of years. Given the holistic notion of evolution and the self‑organizing dynamics of cellular systems, this paper conceptualizes a public theology of science that engages biological theories of autopoiesis, chromatin remodeling, and epigenetic ontology.
Building on these insights, I refine a public theology of science through a structural theory of autopoiesis grounded in embodiment and enactive cognition, opening toward the emergence of new forms of life. This systems‑biology perspective remains crucial for collective ethical responsibility in the age of the Anthropocene.
It also facilitates a reconstruction of Barth’s theology of divine concursus within creaturely life—concursus Dei—and ecological thinking as a relational and emergent form of theism, which stands in contrast to process metaphysics. A relational and emergent form of theism addresses the multiple realities of the minjung, unfolding them alongside bio‑sociological analysis and the politics of biopower, thereby strengthening the significance of human evolution within a socio‑ecological frame of reference.
Here, meaning‑making refers to the emergent process through which living systems interpret, respond to, and transform their environments by means of autopoietic organization, epigenetic plasticity, socio‑ecological embeddedness, and theological orientation. Meaning is not imposed from outside but arises from the dynamic interplay of biological, social, and divine relationality.
Cell and Dissipative Structure
Cells—the smallest units of life—are thermodynamically open systems, continuously exchanging energy and matter with their surroundings. As open systems, they require a constant energy source, typically sustained by highly exergonic reactions that release free energy and drive the biochemical processes essential for growth, differentiation, and self‑maintenance.
Cells embody dissipative structures capable of self‑reproduction, growth, and differentiation through self‑organizing mechanisms such as replication, transcription, and translation. The concept of dissipative structures was introduced by Ilya Prigogine, the 1977 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, who advanced a transformative understanding of life emerging under conditions which are far from equilibrium. Dissipative structures reveal how thermodynamic processes can generate order and coherence, giving rise to new forms of life.[1]
This epistemic architecture stands in contrast to the central dogma of molecular biology, formulated by Francis Crick (and associated with the Watson‒Crick paradigm), which posits a linear flow of information from DNA to RNA to protein. Such a model oversimplifies the intricate cellular networks, regulatory complexity, and feedback mechanisms that are essential to the self‑referential and dynamically adaptive nature of living systems. [2]
Edward O. Wilson, a founder of sociobiology, famously asserted that “The genes hold culture on a leash. The leash is very long…,”[3] a statement that reveals both the power and the limits of genetic determinism in shaping human behavior and cultural evolution.
By contrast, the scientific theory of autopoiesis operates within self‑referential networks and embodied processes through which the organism actively brings forth its own world. Life is co‑constituted within the organism’s structural context and through its evolutionary history of interactions with other organisms and the environment.[4]
Self‑Circularity and Chromatin Restructuring
A living system operates within a self‑referential network characterized by circularity and sustained by exergonic metabolism. This metabolic activity involves catabolic pathways that break down complex molecules into simpler components, releasing free energy through the hydrolysis of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). ATP‑dependent chromatin remodelers harness this energy—derived from the cleavage of high‑energy phosphate bonds—to drive mechanical actions such as moving, sliding, or evicting nucleosomes. These repositioning activities expose or conceal specific DNA sequences, enabling compositional changes through nucleosome manipulation and making the genetic code accessible for RNA transcription.
DNA is organized within the chromatin fiber, which plays a crucial role in transducing epigenetic information into regulatory processes. These processes indirectly influence transcription, replication, and DNA repair, and in specialized cases can even lead to alterations in the DNA sequence itself. Chromatin thus functions as a dynamic interface between genetic material and cellular activity, reinforcing the self‑organizing and adaptive nature of living systems.[5]
Epigenetics and Chromatin Biology
Within chromatin biology, epigenetics refers to the study of how gene expression is regulated at the chromatin level—particularly through histone modifications—without altering the underlying DNA sequence. The term epigenetics was introduced by embryologist and developmental biologist C. H. Waddington (1905–1975) to describe regulatory mechanisms that operate “above” (epi) the level of genes during organismal development.
ATP‑dependent protein complexes facilitate chromatin remodeling by repositioning nucleosomes—histone octamers wrapped with DNA—along the DNA strand. Each nucleosome represents a single repeat unit, composed of eight histone proteins and approximately 146 base pairs of DNA wrapped around them in two left‑handed turns, forming the characteristic “beads‑on‑a‑string” structure. The histone octamer consists of two copies each of histones H3 and H4, and histones H2A and H2B, forming a highly organized structure essential for chromatin compaction and gene regulation.[6]
Given this mechanism, two primary epigenetic processes are recognized: DNA methylation and the modulation of chromatin structure through histone modifications. Methyl groups can be added directly to DNA, forming epigenetic marks that typically reduce transcriptional activity. Regulation also occurs through covalent modifications to histone tails—for example, acetylation generally increases chromatin accessibility and promotes transcription, whereas methylation often represses gene expression, at times silencing it altogether.
Experiential factors—including environmental toxins, maternal behavior, psychological or physical stress, learning, drug exposure, or psychotrauma—can actively influence the chemical and three‑dimensional structure of DNA paired with complementary bases (A with T, and G with C) within the central nervous system (CNS). Epigenetic mechanisms in the CNS shape gene expression patterns that contribute to neural plasticity, behavior, and long‑term physiological outcomes.[7]
Epigenetic mechanisms, including DNA methylation and histone acetylation, are fundamental to synaptic plasticity—the ability of synapses to strengthen or weaken over time. Together, chromatin remodeling and epigenetic regulation orchestrate gene‑expression patterns vital to cognitive brain function, highlighting the intricate molecular interplay that supports learning, memory, and neural adaptability.[8]
Evolutionary change in living systems is best understood as a consequence of their circular organization, embedded within fundamental self‑referential processes and operating through an epigenetic interface with the socio‑ecological landscape. From this perspective, an epistemological reversal emerges: the cellular network “holds the genes on a leash,” effectively overturning the one‑way causal flow assumed in genetic determinism.
Autopoietic Organization and Chromatin‑Remodeling Structures
In exploring the relationship between living systems and dissipative structures, I seek to redefine the autopoietic network through the lens of a structural theory of conserved core processes—specifically examining how chromatin‑regulating structures function analogously to downward causation in the cellular life processes of organisms. This approach highlights how chromatin remodeling contributes to the self‑referential, adaptive, and recursively organized nature of living systems.
This framework also addresses certain limitations in the systems theory of German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, whose model—framed within the autopoietic principle of cybernetics—emphasizes self‑referential communication and functional differentiation. Luhmann’s theory does not incorporate Francisco Varela’s account of the embodied mind, the enactive bringing‑forth of a meaningful world, or the epigenetic factors that permeate biological life.[9]
According to Varela—drawing deeply on the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau‑Ponty—brain and mind cannot be separated from intersubjective, embodied life, for they arise through structural coupling with the environment. Through the “flesh of the world,” one perceives and understands the lived body, a body always already shared with the world itself. The visible body is imbued with an invisible life history, forming the basis of intersubjectivity or inter-corporeality. This insight carries theological significance: the Word made flesh, in which the visible is permeated by the invisible.[10]
Inter‒corporeality, understood within a relational‑emergent framework, can indeed function as a phenomenological grammar for assumptio carnis, insofar as the Incarnation grounds embodied relationality in divine self‑giving. Likewise, inter‑corporeality provides a phenomenological analogue for concursus Dei, understood as a shared field of action, reciprocity, and co‑presence in which divine and creaturely agencies interrelate without competition or collapse.
If the Word becomes flesh and the Spirit is poured out upon all flesh, then living systems themselves become sites of divine relationality. The Spirit’s embodiment in human life is not physical in a reductive or materialist sense, but holistic—shaping the ensouled body through relational presence, moral agency, and the emergent dynamics of embodied life. In this sense, the Spirit may be understood as operative within autopoietic living systems, animating their relational openness, adaptive creativity, and capacity for self‑transcendence.
On the other hand, a relational‑emergent approach to autopoiesis resonates with punctuated theories of evolutionary life, in which deep structural constraints and facilitated variation shape an organism’s adaptive possibilities through its ongoing interaction with the environment.
Leading American systems biologists Marc Kirschner (Harvard Medical School) and John Gerhart (UC Berkeley) argue that cellular life is organized through hundreds of conserved core processes that structure cellular architecture. Their theory is framed within the concept of punctuated equilibrium, in which long periods of evolutionary stasis are interrupted by brief bursts of innovation. Within this model, cellular innovation emerges through the interplay of conservation and diversification, giving rise to new organismal structures, behaviors, and forms of somatic adaptability.
The core processes function as a kind of deep structure, remaining relatively stable across evolutionary time and representing the “equilibrium” or “stasis” phases of development. Organisms evolve by reusing conserved core processes through weak and indirect regulatory connections. For example, DNA‑binding proteins such as histones help organize chromosomes, while DNA polymerase is essential for replication, repair, and recombination.
Enzymes act as biological catalysts that accelerate reactions by binding substrates at their active sites and releasing transformed products. Enzyme adaptation involves regulating enzyme synthesis through transcription, while allosteric sites enable feedback inhibition or activation. Across the cellular network, such regulatory linkages evolve as conserved core processes assemble into mechanisms that support adaptive—including psychological—responses. In cellular signaling, or signal transduction, metabolic cues can be converted into different types of regulatory signals, such as proteins binding to DNA. These interactions operate through feedback loops in which conserved processes integrate with metabolic networks to generate functional diversity.[11]
Through weak and indirect regulatory connections, these mechanisms generate new phenotypes and enable facilitated variation, producing viable and adaptive novelty in response to environmental interactions. A structure‑oriented theory of facilitated variation and innovation does not contradict the autopoietic model of self‑referential circularity in input–output relationships and structural coupling throughout the evolutionary history of interaction and co‑constitution.
Chromatin remodeling represents a conserved core process involving the alteration of chromatin structure to regulate fundamental cellular functions—such as gene expression, DNA replication, RNA transcription and translation, and cell division. A structure‑oriented theory of facilitated variation aligns with the role of chromatin remodeling as a conserved core process that regulates essential cellular activities while working in tandem with post‑translational modifications that recruit DNA‑repair proteins and reshape chromatin architecture.
An autopoietic theory of epigenetic lifelines serves as the conceptual anchor for a meaning‑making paradigm grounded in autopoietic embodiment and epigenetic ontology. It provides the structural basis through which living systems generate significance by integrating the punctuated theory of the living organism at the cellular level with a broader account of relational emergence. In contrast to reductionism or genetic determinism, this framework demonstrates a new paradigm of organismic becoming that highlights a shared ethics of lifelines within the socio‑ecological landscape.
Epigenetic Ethics, the Anthropocene, and Minjung
Epigenetic ethics becomes essential in the age of the Anthropocene, and a public theology of science must attend to the contexts in which human actions are driving global change, resulting in mass extinction and the loss of biodiversity. The Anthropocene, a term proposed by Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen, identifies a new geological epoch shaped by anthropogenic activity. The burning of fossil fuels (through technology and infrastructure), the combustion of biomass, and land‑use changes (through agriculture and urbanization) are reshaping planetary systems and producing widespread dysbiosis. These activities also include the increased use of pesticides, plastics (derived from oil), and other contaminants that pollute oceans, air, and soil, generating transformations at a planetary scale.[12]
While most ozone is located in the stratosphere—where it protects life on Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation—a small amount is also needed in the troposphere for the atmosphere’s self‑cleaning capacity. Nitrogen oxides from human-made sources can damage both stratospheric and tropospheric ozone, and atmospheric chemistry demonstrates how local emissions can produce global effects. Particular attention must be given to the troposphere, the layer of air that directly interacts with the biosphere and is the arena in which weather and climate processes unfold.[13]
Loss of biodiversity has a direct impact on human health, particularly through its effects on the microbiota of humans, soil, and other species. These interconnected microbial ecologies shape physiological resilience and vulnerability, generating epigenetic effects that influence human life and the integrity of socio‑ecological systems.
A structural theory of autopoiesis becomes compelling only when reconstructed within an epigenetic framework—linking microscopic adaptation to the macro‑dynamics of the global climate system. This epistemic stance calls for a discourse of auto‑sympoietic politics that advances epigenetic understanding in relation to the Anthropocene syndrome: the interrelated crises of planetary health, including climate change, loss of biodiversity, and pollution.
Poverty and socioeconomic vulnerability in the peripheries are often imposed by the metropolis, intensifying destructive forms of environmental degradation against weaker creatures and the fragile web of biodiversity. The cutting of rainforests, the pollution of seas and rivers, and cascading ecological harms ultimately rebound like a boomerang upon the metropolis itself.
Public theology of science finds its conceptual grounding in the Torah (Lev 25–26) and in the sabbath of divine ecology (Jer 25:11; 29:10), articulated within the context of Babylonian captivity as a framework for renewing dialogue with nature and planetary health. It advances an advocacy of living systems and ecological thinking, challenging Minjung theology to engage more deeply with ecosystems and biological structures. The life of planet Earth has been degraded into the poverty‑stricken reality of the minjung—victimized by social, political, and economic systems of domination that exploit the earth and other living creatures for profit, control, and oppression.
In the Anthropocene, the minjung is not only the socially marginalized human community but also the ecologically devastated lifeworld itself. These two forms of marginalization—natural and socio‑historical—interpenetrate and reinforce one another.
According to Barth, God’s rest signifies divine immanence within creation—particularly God’s creatio continua, which grants freedom and a measure of creaturely autonomy through divine concursus. This can be reinterpreted as God acting as primary cause and the world as secondary cause in genuine cooperation and correlation. The luminosity of the creaturely world—the cosmos and nature—possesses its own rights, truth, and speech as gifts bestowed by the Creator: “The world… is also… a text which may be read and understood, and at the same time its own reader and expositor.”[14]
This epistemic position enables a deeper engagement with the discourse of the world as text, reader, and expositor—understood through the lens of autopoiesis and self‑reference within the structural coupling of self‑reference, other‑reference, and environment. God and the world co‑exist through the divine freedom of grace given to creation; the truth of the creature is relativized, yet God simultaneously institutes and integrates this creaturely truth within an evolutionary–ecological framework that acknowledges the significance of the natural sciences grounded in empirical observation, investigation, and mathematical logic.
A paradigm shift occurs when Barth sharply distinguishes the classical metaphysical principle operari sequitur esse (“action follows being”) from an epistemological reversal, esse sequitur operari (“knowledge of being follows from act”).
In this epistemological rupture, we know God’s being only through God’s free act of covenant/creation, revelation, and reconciliation in Jesus Christ— “the partisan of the poor,” who stands in solidarity with those who are lowly in this world and establishes table fellowship with publicans and sinners, the ochlos/minjung, the agenēs (1 Cor 1:28), the massa perditionis.[15]
Given this conceptual revolution, a new form of life is brought forth through the correlation of reconciliation and creation—a co‑constitutive dynamic in which divine concursus continually works through the cosmos, eschatologically open to God’s everlasting love in freedom. In the intelligible and intelligent cosmos there abides an unfathomable mystery: a creaturely reality bound by law yet freely active in the immanent and emergent course of life through rhythm, contrariety, regularity, and freedom—an autopoietic mystery that becomes the theatre of the gloria Dei.
In Barth’s provocative claim in CD IV/4, God’s name is already holy in every creaturely particular. God’s glory is objectively present in the world and establishes an objective knowledge of God (Rom 1:19). This is why Barth can ask—almost with poetic astonishment—whether God’s name is not holy “in every blade of grass and every snowflake” (IV/4, 121). Creation is not a neutral backdrop but a sacramental field of divine presence.
In the petition “Hallowed be thy name,” we are given a mandate to resist all forms of destruction, domination, or indifference; to care for creaturely life; to preserve its integrity; and to protect vulnerable ecosystems. This ecological ethic is intertwined with Barth’s critical analysis of biopolitical and chthonic forms of dominion, as well as his critique of political Leviathan, the capitalist economic order, and technological exploitation.[16]
At this juncture, I reframe a relational‑emergent episteme for scientific public theology by reconfiguring the theory of divine concursus, the universal role of the Holy Spirit, and the ecological attitude implied in double agency within a network‑field ontology. God grounds and enables emergent processes without being reduced to them or absorbed into the process. A theory of divine concursus is compatible with, and conceptually enriched by, emergent autopoietic life, because God grants creaturely life freedom, autonomy, and creativity for co‑creation.
Such conceptual articulation supports a pan‑en proleptic account of divine concursus and the holistic Spirit in a world‑embracing experience of relational, emergent, and proleptic consummation (1 Cor 15:28). This stance strengthens a sense of participation in God’s ongoing creative work rather than dissolving agency into process. All things participate in God, who is more than the world through Christ’s final redemption rather than metaphysical union. The eschatological consummation within God’s final Rest affirms that all is in God as participation, who is all in all
Barth’s scientific public theology, understood in relational and emergent form, opens constructive space for dialogue with East Asian minjung theology—particularly its emphasis on co‑agency and concursus within an evolutionary–ecological horizon. In this dynamic world, there is no becoming without perishing, yet no perishing without new beginning, in the unbroken and never‑ceasing cycle and rhythm of an intelligible and intelligent creation.[17]
Ecological thinking about living systems reconfigures the fundamental thesis of the minjung as the subject of history by situating it within the broader horizon of natural history. God’s economy of redemption does not separate history from natural history, as expressed in St. Paul’s eschatological vision in which all creatures groan and travail in pain while anticipating the future glory of the new heaven and the new earth. In hope, the whole creation has been groaning and will be liberated from its bondage to decay, awaiting with eager expectation the new being of the children of God (Rom 8:18–23).
This paradigm refines our understanding of the minjung as collective subjects shaped by impersonal forces and ecological pressures, calling forth a new form of life grounded in a discourse of alternative and integral modernity—one that advances a post‑Eurocentric vision rooted in postcolonial reparative justice and the common good. Where the minjung, including nature, lives and flourishes, the whole society and the planet flourish accordingly.
Bio‑Sociology, Biopower, and Human Evolution
The organization of living systems unfolds through continuous interaction with the environment via structural coupling, responding dynamically to socio‑ecological factors. Epigenetic processes are closely tied to intergenerational responsibility. When a methyl group is added to DNA, the resulting epigenetic marks regulate cellular identity, guide developmental pathways, and shape responses to environmental stimuli. These marks on DNA and histones can be copied and transmitted from parent to daughter cells, enabling transgenerational effects.
In neuroepigenetics, environmental factors can trigger epigenetic changes in the brain—particularly in dendrites, which branch like trees to receive signals from other neurons. Nuclear epigenomic marks are especially significant for shaping and regulating synapse‑specific plasticity, functioning as key mechanisms in the modulation of memory and learning.[18]
In an age shaped by the Anthropocene and its intergenerational ethics, it is essential to prevent the dangerous radiation emitted from high‑level nuclear wastes—such as spent fuel rods and radioactive effluent—which remain hazardous due to their radiotoxicity, long‑lasting effects, invisibility, and the impossibility of neutralization. As one analysis notes, “A main effect that was expected from nuclear conflict is that giant smoke plumes from large‑scale fires submerge the world into darkness, similar to some of the super‑volcano eruptions or asteroid impacts that changed the fate of the Earth in prehistoric times.”[19]
Bio‑sociology examines biological plasticity within social contexts, highlighting the dynamic and reciprocal interplay between biological life and sociocultural systems, where environmental, political, and historical forces shape embodied experience and agency.
In fact, “History is not just a product of selection, determined by the external environment or competition; it is also about the deep structure and history of societies. It includes their organizations, their capacity to adapt, their capacity to innovate, perhaps even their capacity to harbor cryptic variation and diversity.” [20]
This systems‑biology stance reinforces an innovative view of evolution, providing foundational evidence for diversity (cryptic variation, innovation), complexity (deep structure, organization), emergence (adaptive and innovative capacities), autopoiesis (self‑referential organization), epigenesis (context‑dependent expression), and bio‑sociology (societal structures shaping evolutionary trajectories).
This biological inquiry provides a conceptual framework for an organismic view of life in which living beings “make a path by walking,” setting the course of their unfolding life‑history within the epigenetic landscape. [21] Development is both embodied and enacted through continuous interaction with environmental influences.
In a sociopolitical context, epigenetic factors are mobilized within a politics of biopower, which operates through governmentality to regulate and discipline the body. Michel Foucault argued that the body came to be understood as imbued with the “mechanics of life,” serving as the foundation for biological processes and becoming subject to a wide range of interventions, surveillance practices, and regulatory controls. Biopower thus functions by acting upon the biological substrate of human existence—circulating through public health regimes, reproductive policies, medical classifications, and risk management—so that life itself becomes the object of political rationality. These include measures related to reproduction, birth and mortality rates, public health, life expectancy, and longevity—what Foucault terms the biopolitics of the population.[22]
However, unlike Foucault’s formulation, biopower does not necessarily equate to state power or the unilateral imposition of violence upon the human body. Instead, it calls for a bio‑sociological analysis of the effective history of the epigenetic domain and sociocultural stratification—an approach that can inform public policy aimed at improving the lives of those exposed to vulnerability and systemic inequality.
A sociological analysis of biopower within an epigenetic framework integrates a state‑centered biopolitical standpoint and its modes of governmentality with the bio‑sociological construction of environmental issues, thereby strengthening a collective ethic of responsibility and care for humanity and the web of life. In fact, biopower is always eco‑biopower within the bio‑sociological domain and epigenetic ontology.[23]
A discourse of bio‑sociology examines how epigenetic factors operate within socio‑cultural stratification across race, gender, economic status, and power relations, while repositioning the complex of lifelines within an ecological–evolutionary system. This approach offers a new model of the interface between science, religion, and society and constitutes a core component of the meaning‑making research program. This model not only integrates scientific and theological perspectives but also provides a structural pathway for understanding how meaning is generated, negotiated, and transformed within complex living systems.
Process Philosophy and Politics of Divine Action
My structural theory of autopoiesis examines a tension within Whiteheadian process philosophy: the claim that causal efficacy—the felt inheritance of past actual occasions—constitutes the primordial mode of experience. This concept becomes increasingly difficult to sustain when confronted with contemporary biological and phenomenological accounts of complexity, self-reference, and embodied meaning.
In the mode of causal efficacy, Whitehead refers to the direct perception of antecedent actual occasions as exerting causal influence—both upon the percipient subject and upon the relevant events within the presented locus.[24]
Actual entities are drops of experience, complex and interdependent, and the world is made up of the final real things. There is no “going behind” actual entities to find anything more real. Thus, God is an actual entity—a primordial creature—while God’s consequent nature arises from his physical prehensions of derivative actual entities. The ontological principle reads: “no actual entities, then no reason.”[25]
Whitehead’s atomistic conception of actual entities is difficult to sustain in light of quantum field theory, where particles are not discrete ‘occasions’ but excitations—localized vibrations or energy bubbles—within continuous quantum fields. There is no ontological atomism at the most fundamental level of physical reality.
Furthermore, “autopoietic self‑circular metabolism does not unfold as a sequence of discrete experiential ‘occasions,’ but as a continuous, recursive, and self‑referential process. Whitehead’s event‑atomism cannot adequately describe the dynamic, nonlinear, and emergent organization of living systems.
However, contemporary molecular biology challenges the linear model of inheritance presupposed by Whitehead’s account. In the example of DNA–RNA transcription, causation is not a simple transmission from a past actual occasion (DNA) to a present one (RNA). Instead, gene expression is modulated by: histone proteins, chromatin remodeling complexes, epigenetic markers, RNA interference, and multi-directional feedback loops.
Chromatin dynamics and epigenetic regulation operate through continuous, context‑dependent feedback loops rather than through discrete, inherited ‘data’ from antecedent occasions. This undermines Whitehead’s model of causal efficacy as a linear inheritance of the past.
In living systems, the “past” is not inherited as a fixed datum; it is continually reconfigured through regulatory processes such as diversification, co‑constitution, and contingency. This dynamic resonates with adumbration in the phenomenological procedure, in which an object unfolds through partial profiles within the noesis–noema correlation, guided by a horizon of unfulfilled expectations (prolepsis). Such future‑oriented, recursive constitution of meaning also aligns with stochastic events—such as radioactive decay—which appear as indeterministic ruptures not derivable from past causality but emerging within an open, autopoietic lifeworld.
In process philosophy, the future is the result of present concrescence—only a realm of potential grounded in God’s initial aim, and the future inherits from the past through the prehension of antecedent data. God, conceived as “everlastingness”—neither eternal in the classical sense nor temporal in creaturely perpetual perishing—continuously receives the world into the divine life and retains all past occasions in the immediacy of the everlasting present. In this vision, the many are absorbed everlastingly into a final unity.[26]
By contrast, an autopoietic-epigenetic ontology understands the future as actively shaping the present: novelty is emergent, innovative, epigenetic, autopoietic, and anticipatory, arising through whole–part holism, self‑reference, and organizational closure.
In empirical biological processes, specific mechanisms such as chromatin remodeling, self‑reference, network interaction, and bidirectional feedback loops are nonlinear, context‑dependent, indeterministic, emergent, future‑oriented (anticipatory regulation), punctuated (facilitated variation), and self‑modifying (epigenetic plasticity).
A structural theory of autopoiesis, when applied within a cultural‑narrative framework, interrogates the Eurocentric assumptions embedded in Whitehead’s civilizational account shaped by British imperialism. This becomes especially evident in Adventures of Ideas, where Whitehead’s evolutionary metaphors—“growth,” “generality,” “progress,” and the “arrival of the fittest”—retain residues of nineteenth‑century historicism and Social Darwinism. His treatment of Carthage, for instance, reproduces colonial tropes of the “noble savage.”
Following Plato’s Greek‑centric speculation and myth in Republic (Book 6)—a narrative shaped more by cultural prejudice than by historical accuracy—Whitehead argues that the Carthaginians sacrificed their children to Moloch as an act of religious propitiation—an example he interprets as inherited brutalities of instinctive behavior. “The growth in generality of understanding makes such savagery impossible in corresponding civilizations to-day.”[27]
Concepts such as prehension, concrescence, and the creative advance risk functioning as a metaphysical metanarrative that absorbs cultural difference into a single Eurocentric framework, thereby obscuring the asymmetries of power, violence, and colonial domination that shape actual historical processes. Whitehead’s civilizational narrative—shaped by Greco‑Roman teleology and British imperial historicism—limits the applicability of his metaphysics within postcolonial, ecological, and evolutionary frameworks.
Despite my critique of Whitehead, I still value his concept of the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, especially when interpreted through the sociological lens of finite provinces of meaning and multiple realities—dimensions that process theologians routinely sidestep in the name of scientific naturalism or postmodern process theology. [28] Rather than abandoning Whitehead, I relocate his insight into a theory of fallacy situated within a regime of epistemic suspension or problematic interrogation, directed toward the postmodern stronghold of the incommensurable that arises from the postmodern condition’s outright rejection of metanarrative.
In fact, the critique presented here does not reject process philosophy outright. Rather, it calls for a post‑Whiteheadian revision that integrates autopoietic self‑reference—recognizing that living systems enact, rather than merely inherit, their worlds through embodied feeling. Biological realism, understood in terms of networked processes, incorporates dissipative structures and epigenetically modulated causation. Phenomenological embodiment situates meaning within lived, intentional, and culturally mediated experience, bringing forth a world while also attending to the Anthropocene syndrome and its implications for planetary health and healing.
In light of the politics of divine action, I propose the concept of embodied autopoiesis through proleptic intentionality along with collective forward‒looking responsibility, situated within the open horizon of the lifeworld and manifested in all conscious acts. The person, though not yet fully determined, is responsible, free, and ethical—engaged in the search for meaning, participating in discourse, and actively constructing the world around them.
As Ted Peters observes, a theory of the narrative self turns away from meta-temporal, linear conceptions of time and universal history. This perspective frames the politics of prolepsis, where the narrative self—alongside cognitive liberty—paves the way for a postcolonial selfhood imbued with justice and oriented toward the common good, standing in opposition to collective egotism. This conception of selfhood views the individual not only as a historical being but also as an eschatological pivot, recognizing the ongoing interplay between personal identity, historical context, and future potential.[29]
In theological terms, a structural theory of autopoiesis aligns with God’s concursus with living systems through ongoing creation in a reconciled world. This divine action offers a contextual coherence theory for the science-religion dialogue, as it “steers a middle path between the Scylla of radical mind-body dualism and the Charybdis of reductive physicalism.”[30]
The autonomy of the creature unfolds in its co‑existence with God, who in the praesentia actuosa—the effective and active presence—is at work in divine grace and freedom, granting the creature its own proper activity. This has nothing to do with justifying victimhood or endorsing evil; rather, God recognizes, respects, and loves the creature in a mode of cooperation and solidarity. [31] Barth’s doctrine of concursus Dei—especially when read through ecological and autopoietic lenses—implies a relational and emergent form of theism grounded in trinitarian freedom. The politics of divine concursus underscores the power of the living Word of God to decolonize the nervous system from entrenched patterns of emotion, behavior, and thought—liberating persons from oppression and dismantling systems of exclusion and marginalization.[32]
Accordingly, scientific public theology highlights an eschatology of recapitulation which, when placed within a relational‑emergent framework, becomes a proleptic field—the retroactive horizon of emergence. Creaturely life emerges as graced life within the field of divine concursus, and recapitulation functions as the eschatological attractor toward which all emergent life is drawn in the presence of the Spirit.
Recapitulation is the Spirit‑driven convergence of divine future and creaturely becoming, gathering the whole web of life into God’s eschatological transformation and enabling the world’s participation in God’s final Rest. In this sense, recapitulation becomes the eschatological grammar of public theology and carries epigenetic significance within social‑ecological contexts.
Epilogue
Scientific public theology of living systems, when reframed through the relational and emergent grammar of autopoiesis, epigenetic ontology, and concursus Dei, becomes capable of articulating a vision of life that is at once biological, ecological, historical, and eschatological. Autopoiesis discloses the creature as a self‑organizing, self‑maintaining, and structurally coupled being whose agency arises through dynamic interaction with its environment. Epigenetics deepens this insight by revealing how environments inscribe themselves into bodies, shaping vulnerability, resilience, and intergenerational responsibility. Together they illuminate the profound interdependence of systems, species, and societies—an interdependence that is not merely biological but ethical, political, and eschatologically open.
That is why I describe this new episteme as an autopoietic theory of the epigenetic interface—one that encompasses socio‑cultural stratification and the ecological life of multiple realities. As a structural anchor, it clarifies how meaning‑making emerges through the dynamic coupling of biological embodiment, epigenetic lifelines, and socio‑ecological conditions. This framework facilitates a public‑theological interpretation of biblical discourse in a relational‑emergent mode, precisely because God creates from the eschatological horizon. In this relational‑emergent theism, divine concursus—operating through the Spirit as an eschatological attractor—draws creaturely temporality into a field of anticipatory meaning, where life becomes capable of generating, negotiating, and transforming significance.
This approach breaks through the conceptual distance between Barth’s totaliter aliter and his account of God’s Sabbath rest. I reconfigure Barth’s notion of divine concursus and the eschatological preservation of creaturely life through a punctuated theory of core conserved processes understood as a field‑network that enables facilitated variation and diversification.
Such a perspective avoids reducing God to the evolutionary process while affirming that emergent life unfolds within God’s sustaining and liberating agency. It offers a relational‑ emergent account of divine action that preserves both creaturely autonomy and God’s sovereign freedom.
A relational‑emergent stance transforms a theory of divine concursus through the lenses of structural coupling and enactive performance, generating meaningful worlds. It seeks to co‑constitute new forms of life by entering into structural coupling with the lived, autopoietic systems of the minjung in both historical and ecological contexts, rather than representing them within power‑driven discourse.
The minjung—understood as a self‑organizing, self‑interpreting, and epigenetically formed subject—embodies the intersection of biological vulnerability and socio‑ecological marginalization. Their struggle discloses the wounds of history and natural history together, revealing how systems of domination inscribe themselves into bodies, communities, and ecosystems. In this synthesis, scientific public theology offers a framework in which the world is understood as an autopoietic, epigenetically responsive, and sacramentally luminous field of divine action, sustaining life, liberating the oppressed, and renewing the face of the earth.
References
Barbour, Ian G. Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues, rev. and exp. ed. New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1990.
Barth, Karl. Church Dogmatics III/4: The Doctrine of Creation, eds. G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance. London and New York: T & T Clark, 2004.
______. The Christin Life, Church Dogmatics IV. 4 Lecture Fragments, trans. G. W. Bromiley. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans,1981.
Choi, Kwang-Yeon, et al. “Toward understanding the role of the neuron-specific BAF chromatin remodeling complex in memory formation,” Experimental & Molecular Medicine (2015) 47. Pp. 1-7.
Foucault, Michelle. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, vol.1, trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1978.
Gregersen, Niels H. “God’s Public Traffic: Holist versus Physicalist Supervenience,” Gregersen, Niels H, et al. The Human Person in Science and Theology. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2000. Pp. 153-188.
Griffin, David R. Religion and Scientific Naturalism: Overcoming the Conflicts. Albany: SUNY Press, 2000.
Hannigan, John. Environmental Sociology, 2nd edition. London and New York: Routledge, 1995.
Kirschner, Marc and John C. Gerhart. The Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin’s Dilemma. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.
Konieczny, Leszek. Et al. Systems Biology: Functional Strategies of Living Organisms, 2nd ed. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2023.
Crutzen, Paul J, A Pioneer on Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Change in the Anthropocene. Cham Switzerland: Springer, 2025.
Dash, Madhab Chandra and S. P. Dash, Fundamentals of Ecology, Third Edition. India, New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill, 2009.
Luhmann, Niklas. Social Systems, trans. John Bednarz, Jr. and Dirk Baecker. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995.
Maturana, Humberto R. and Francisco J. Valera, Autopiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. London, England: D. Reidel, 1980.
Merleau-Ponty, M. The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968.
Moormann, Emma, et al. Epigenetics and Responsibility: Ethical Perspectives, Bristol, U.K.: Bristol University Press, 2024.
Nobel, Denis. The Music of Life: Biology Beyond the Genome. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Paro, Renato. Et al., Introduction to Epigenetics. Cham, Switzerland, Springer, 2021.
Peters, Ted (2020), “The Struggle for Cognitive Liberty: Retrofitting the Self in Activist Theology,” Theology and Science, 18:3, pp. 410-437.
Prigogine, Ilya and Isabelle Stengers, Order Out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature. New York: Bantam, 1984.
Santos-Rolon, Carmelo. A Liberation Theology of the Brain: Neuroscience, Theology, and Decolonizing Emotions. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2025.
Sweatt, J. David, “The Emerging Field of Neuroepigenetics,” Neuron 80, October 30 (2013). Pp. 624-632.
Whitehead, Alfred N. Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. New York: The Free Press, 1978.
______. Adventures of Ideas. London, U.K.: Penguin, 1948.
Wilson, Edward O. On Human Nature. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978.
[1] Prigogine and Stengers, Order Out of Chaos, 12.
[2] Nobel, The Music of Life, 18.
[3] Wilson, On Human Nature, 167.
[4] Maturana and Valera, Autopoiesis and Cognition, 11.
[5] Paro, et al., Introduction to Epigenetics, 2.
[6] Ibid., 3.
[7] Sweatt, “The Emerging Field of Neuroepigenetics,” (2013), 624.
[8] Kwang-Yeon Choi, et al. “Toward understanding the role of the neuron-specific BAF chromatin remodeling complex in memory formation,” (2015). 1-7.
[9] Luhmann, Social Systems, 18.
[10] Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, 216, 237.
[11] Kirschner and Gerhart, The Plausibility of Life, 45, 68.
[12] Crutzen: A Pioneer on Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Change, 211–215.
[13] Ibid., viii.
[14] Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV.3.1: 141.
[15] CD II/1: 82-3. CD IV.3.2: 586-7.
[16] Barth, The Christin Life, Church Dogmatics IV. 4 Lecture Fragments, trans. G. W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans,1981), 229.
[17] CD IV.3.1: 144.
[18] Sweatt, “The Emerging Field of Neuroepigenetics,” 628-9.
[19] Crutzen: A Pioneer on Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Change, xi.
[20] Kirschner and Gerhart, The Plausibility of Life, 264.
[21] Moormann, et al. Epigenetics and Responsibility, 25.
[22] Foucault, The History of Sexuality 1, 139.
[23] Hannigan, Environmental Sociology, 2nd edition, 53-55.
[24] Whitehead, Process and Reality, 169.
[25] Ibid., 19.
[26] Ibid., 527.
[27] Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 36.
[28] David R. Griffin, Religion and Scientific Naturalism.
[29] Peters (2020), “The Struggle for Cognitive Liberty,” Theology and Science, 18:3, 427-8.
[30] Gregersen, “God’s Public Traffic,”155.
[31] Barth, Church Dogmatics III/4, 94. 102.
[32] Santos-Rolon, A Liberation Theology of the Brain.