Ted Peters, “Natural Science and Theology of Nature within Public Theology,”
in Public Theology in Global Currents: Prophetic Critique, Democracy in Civil Society,
and Science-Religion Dialogue, eds., Paul S. Chung and Craig Nessan, 2027. 4
Natural Science and Theology of Nature
within Public Theology
By
Ted Peters
Abstract. Science is public. For the Christian theologian to construct a theology of nature, the construction must take place within the public domain. This chapter tracks the movement from a scientific interpretation of nature through critical analysis to the construction of a theology of nature replete with meaning, purpose, and hope for fulfillment. One implication is this: the public theologian’s worldview initiates and sustains an ecological ethic based on the vision of a just, sustainable, participatory, and planetary society.
Today’s public theologian tries to lift and carry a heavy burden. The bundle the public theologian shoulders includes addressing politics, economics, race, justice, culture, ecology, and every other meaning-making enterprise both locally and planetarily. It includes Planet Earth, and the healing needed for our home planet to enjoy a just, sustainable, participatory, and planetary society. So, I take pause when I hoist upon the public theologian’s back one more weighty task. I hesitate to add to the workload. Yet I must.
This addition is natural science. To make it more complicated, the public theologian should not take natural science at face value. Rather, natural science must be filtered through a critical strainer, and, with critically screened science, the public theologian can proceed to cook up a theology of nature. Yes, a theology of nature informed by science yet not reducible to science.
Natural science tantalizes our taste for truth in much of what functions as common sense in global public discourse. Almost imperceptibly, scientific assumptions and expectations are so baked into common sense – the sense we hold in common — that their distinctive tastes are almost indiscernible. This means, among other things, that science is public. The church theologian must become a public theologian to construct a theology of nature.
“Public theology,” writes Paul S. Chung, “necessarily engages in the science-religion dialogue about ecological awareness and the scientific understanding of the Earth and creaturely life” (P. Chung 2016, 199).[1] A pre-thought-through and ready-to-hand theology of nature, accordingly, prepares the public theologian to address ecological awareness and environmental responsibility. In addition, the voice of a theology of nature contributes to discourse clarification on what counts as genuine knowledge. Still further, a theology of nature contributes undergirds moral arguments raised in fields such as genetics, artificial intelligence, space travel, and weapons research.
As Heinrich Bedford-Strohm reminds us, the public theologian “develops both critical and constructive perspectives” when entering into discourse in the public square (Bedford-Strohm 2010). So, in what follows, I would like to track the movement from a scientific interpretation of nature through critical analysis to the construction of a theology of nature replete with the meaning of creation and redemption.[2]
Natural Theology versus Theology of Nature
To be clear, what I am asking for is something other than a natural theology. Natural theology as we have inherited it attempts to demonstrate divine traits built into nature that tell us about God as creator. Rational proofs for God’s existence have tralatitiously been included on the natural theology menu. To be sure, this has been a noble and respectable field of theological inquiry. And it should continue.
Yet the purpose of natural theology obliquely or directly is to support revealed theology by appeal to supporting natural evidence. The direction runs from public knowledge toward ecclesial knowledge. It provides secular buttressing for faith commitments. As such natural theology is valuable to the church theologian.
The direction taken by the public theologian, however, is the reverse. Public theology begins within the church and then spreads outward toward the world beyond the church. “The Church is her true self only when she exists for humanity,” wrote Dietrich Bonhoeffer from his prison cell (Bonhoeffer 1953, 1959, 166). A generation later, Jürgen Moltmann would add that “Theology must abandon its confinement to church, belief and the inwardness of the heart, so that with all others it may search for the truth of the whole, and the salvation of a torn and disrupted world” (Moltmann, Science and Wisdom 2003, 7).
In the train of Bonhoeffer and Moltmann, Rudolf von Sinner and Ronaldo de Paula Cavalcante remind us that “the Christian religion is a public religion, in the sense of transmitting its message to a wider public, taking interest in the well-being not only of its members, but of those that are not part of a church or community” (Sinner and Cavalcante 2012, 2).
With this in mind, I frequently describe public theology as conceived in the church, critically developed in the academy, and offered to the wider culture for the sake of the common good (Peters, The Voice of Public Theology 2023). By common good I refer to what can be commonly understood as the shared good. In short, the value of a theology of nature is found in its illuminative power for the culture beyond the cathedral’s front steps.
On this matter I am following sockdolager Ian G. Barbour, putatively the father of the contemporary field of Science and Religion. According to Barbour writing in 1966, theology “must take the findings of science into account when it considers the relation of God and [humanity] to nature, even though it derives its fundamental ideas elsewhere” (Barbour 1966, 415).
If we ask our theology of nature to engage in worldview construction, we might learn something valuable from Shia theologian Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Nasr critiques the existing worldview presupposed by natural science, because it is narrowly materialistic and reductionist. We only understand nature, according to Nasr, when we understand nature as God’s creation. “Islam refuses to accept the legitimacy of any science that would study the cosmos in forgetfulness of God” (Nasr 2006, 59). The public theologian should ask: if we construct a worldview inclusive of all that science tells us about nature as God’s creation, would this be illuminative outside the church on matters pertaining to the common good? I believe we should answer affirmatively.
Discourse clarification on the Limits of Science
The public theologian must first critique science. What deserves critique? Not the methodology of the scientist. Nor the new knowledge produced by science. Our friends in the white coats in laboratories working tirelessly night and day have found an efficient way to produce new and invaluable knowledge about the natural world. Both the church and the wider society need to thank our scientists repeatedly for their achievements in expanding our knowledge and providing lifesaving and life-enhancing technologies.
The theologian’s critique is aimed not at the methods but at the invalid ontology that is sometimes added on to these methods. When the scientist touts a materialist or reductionist ontology, the scientist is no longer doing science. Rather, what we spot here is scientism as an ideology.[3] It is the obligation of the public theologian to make this clear through ideology critique (Ideologiekritik). Let me offer three observations to help clarify how the public theologian can clarify scientific discourse.
First, the all-too-frequent and unwarranted move from methodology to ontology is fallacious.[4] What we call ‘methodological reductionism’ or ‘methodological materialism’ is an exclusionary principle which permits the scientist to focus on one and only one target, namely, physical causation. This focus on physical causation has proven to be protein and productive. The critique the theologian makes is this: it is improper to translate methodological materialism into metaphysical or ontological materialism. It is unscientific and misleading to posit that physical material and only physical material make up what we call ‘reality’.
Second, ontological materialism excludes what we know intuitively to be real, namely, consciousness and culture. Ontologies based upon evolutionary biology, for example, attempt to reduce our minds to our bodies, our thoughts to our brains, and our spirits to our physiology. This galls philosopher of science, Thomas Nagel. “Physico-chemical reductionism in biology is the orthodox view, and any resistance to it is regarded as not only scientifically but politically incorrect” (Nagel 2012, 5). Any worldview we construct would be incomplete unless it integrates subjectivity, mind, and consciousness as well as other spiritual dimensions of reality. “Materialism is incomplete even as a theory of the physical world, since the physical world includes conscious organisms among its most striking occupants” (Nagel 2012, 45). In brief, the public theologian can shine a light on this anti-reductionist stance taken by philosophers of science who place scientific research within a larger context of consciousness and culture.
Third, scientific methodology relies on assumptions that science itself cannot prove. The scientist must assume, for example, that the physical world operates rationally according to rationally discerned laws. The scientist as scientist cannot answer the foundational question: why is this the case? To answer the foundational question requires appeal to first principles. For first principles, we turn to the philosopher or theologian.[5]
Michael Epperson and Elias Zafiris, for example, tell us what it looks like from the perspective of the philosophy of science.
A fundamental explanation of nature constructed via the method of deduction, such as that instantiated in the hypothetico-deductive scientific method, is impossible. This is because the categorical first principles at the base of any deductive scheme are always necessarily presupposed. Science, for example, cannot explain the logical order—i.e., account for its existence—since the language and methodology of science necessarily presuppose this order (Epperson and Zafiris 2013, 14-15).
When the scientist proceeds to work unreflectively with materialistic assumptions, the scientist is relying upon a form of faith. Unproven faith. The task of the public theologian, borrowing from the philosopher of science, is to make this clear in public discourse.
These three clarifications are like spices in the public theologian’s recipe which could be baked into what I dub discourse clarification.[6]Critically, the public theologian polices public conversation, affirming sober rational deliberation while making transparent veiled ideology and self-serving dogma.
Applying Discourse Clarification to Evolutionary Biology, Sociobiology, and Evolutionary Psychology
Scientists, apparently, have now provided society with a biological explanation for racial injustice, war, and genocide. Should we thank our scientists? Not quite yet. Perhaps we should take a moment to think through what is purported to be scientific knowledge about human behavior. We will find, I believe, that what appears to be scientific is in fact pseudo-science perpetrated by ideological reductionists.
Let me share at the outset a couple of my own assumptions that frame the discussion to follow. First, as I grant when taking up this question in a previous work, I begin with the assumption that a Darwinian model of biological evolution will, upon investigation, turn out to be compatible with Christian anthropology. I do not share a conflictual predisposition on this issue, according to which the success of a biological explanation for human behavior would diminish a theological explanation and vice versa. I do not expect theology to automatically gain if science loses in the race to provide explanatory adequacy. Rather, I assume that, if genuine science provides us with an accurate picture of human biological history and human nature, we will find it to be consonant with the best insights of the Christian tradition (Peters 2008, 22).
My second assumption is that fields such as sociobiology and evolutionary psychology could very well provide illumination on the bio-chemical components to human behavior, especially human sin and violence. It is obvious that what the theologian calls sin includes impulses that seem to originate in physical needs for survival. I am open to what might be proffered by legitimate scientific research.
Now, with these assumptions in hand, let us move to the fields of evolutionary biology, sociobiology, and evolutionary psychology. What do they offer the public in the way of understanding human nature?
The exciting field of sociobiology along with its second-generation child, evolutionary psychology, appear to be based on Charles Darwin’s respected theory of biological evolution. But is this in fact the case? The public theologian needs to investigate for two reasons. First, the attempt by these post-Darwinian fields to explain human behavior in terms of genetic determinism appears to be reductionistic. Upon closer examination, the attempt is in fact reductionistic. It reduces consciousness and culture to gene expression and, even more suspiciously, to gene replication.
Secondly, we might narrow the scope of our investigation to something that matters to the theologian, namely, sin, evil and suffering. Sociobiologists and their disciples imply if not assert that our human propensity for tribalism, bloodshed, and genocide is genetically determined. Could this be right? If we buy this purported scientific theory, will it serve the common good?
Evolutionary psychologist Robert Wright, for example, vends his own genetic explanations for love, family and tribal exclusion along with everything else that guides consciousness and culture. This includes the proposition that original sin can be explained genetically as an extension of Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection, otherwise known as the survival of the fittest. “The roots of all evil can be seen in natural selection and are expressed (along with much that is good) in human nature. The enemy of justice and decency does indeed lie in our genes” (Wright 1994, 151). One theologian, Gregory Peterson, scratches his head when assessing this apparent scientific idea. “In sociobiology, original sin becomes naturalized, providing both an origins story and an account of human behavior” (Peterson 2004, 273). Does Wright’s naturalistic explanation for sin constitute practicing theology without a license?
The Progenesis of Sociobiology and Evolutionary Psychology
The progenitors of sociobiology and its heir apparent, evolutionary psychology, are Oxford’s Richard Dawkins and Harvard’s Edward O. Wilson. These two provided the initial model within which additional research and expansion have been spreading for decades. The initial model, according to Wilson in his Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, begins with a definition of the field: sociobiology is the systematic study of the biological basis of all social behavior. The hard-core center of this model, according to Dawkins, is the concept of the selfish gene (Dawkins 1976, 1989).
Selfish gene theorists posit that the driving force of evolutionary biology as well as human culture is the same driving force that underlies all genetic activity. What is that driving force? It is DNA which wants to replicate itself. Not gene expression. Rather, gene replication.
The incessant and aggressive advance of intact DNA sequences provides the explanatory principle for the history of all life on our planet. And for the behavior of all organisms. And, finally for all consciousness and culture. Even ethics and religion. Gene activity, for example, uses morality and religion in culture to further the survival of aggressive DNA sequences. No longer is it species that evolve. It is DNA that evolves.
DNA replication explains everything without remainder. It is the DNA sequence (or gene in the loose sense of the word) which employs reproduction for the purposes of its own perpetuation into future individuals and gaining protection through the establishment of new species that will carry on this particular genetic code. The adjective “selfish” applied to “gene” indicates the hegemony over biological development exercised by DNA self-replication.
The organism is DNA’s way of making more DNA, according to sociobiologists. If you think that an egg is a chicken’s way of making more chickens, think again. Why? Because the reverse is the case. A chicken is an egg’s way of making more eggs. Organisms and populations of organisms are transport vehicles for DNA sequences to attain their own immortality through replication. “We, and all other animals, are machines created by our genes,” writes Richard Dawkins (Dawkins 1976, 1989, 2).
Reproductive success is the goal of genes in making transport machines, such as us humans. “Successful genes are genes that, in the environment influenced by all the other genes in a shared embryo, have beneficial effects on that embryo. Beneficial means that they make the embryo likely to develop into a successful adult, an adult likely to reproduce and pass those very same genes on to future generations” (Dawkins 1976, 1989, 235).[7]
DNA sequences compete with one another for immortality. “Genes are immortals, or rather, they are defined as genetic entities that come close to deserving the title” (Dawkins 1976, 1989, 34). The organism will die. The species might even go extinct. But the DNA sequence – the selfish gene – will go on indefinitely.
The concept of “survival-of-the-fittest” coming from Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin is now applied to the fittest DNA sequence, not to the organisms or species that live longer than competitors. Reproductive fitness now refers to the achievement of a particular genetic code to produce organisms that reach reproductive age, produce babies, and thereby perpetuate their genetic code into immortality. If organisms compete with one another, and if one population decimates a competitor, then the genes of the victor live on. The winning genes will have defined themselves as more reproductively fit.
This, in brief, is the model pursued by sociobiologists and their heirs, evolutionary psychologists, who attempt to explain consciousness and culture in terms of DNA replication.[8]
Discourse Clarification on Selfish Gene Theory
What is taking place within the sociobiological model is that agency is being removed from the organism and located in the gene, or more accurately, in the DNA sequence. This is not necessarily a moral understanding of “selfish,” because it describes a natural drive for replication at any and all cost. For Richard Dawkins, the idea of the selfish gene explains why we have selfish people. This, despite the fact that philosophers of biology such as Michael Ruse note that selfish genes do not necessarily cash out as selfish people (Ruse 2008).
Has science explained sin? Sociobiology makes the fall into sin look worse than a Calvinist refusing to call his dog a “Good Boy!” The more common observation of the theologian is that humans are ambiguous, capable of great sin but also great compassion. “Human beings have greater capacities for goodness than sociobiology admits,” is the observation of esteemed Roman Catholic bioethicist Stephen Pope (Pope 2007, 242). The sociobiologist looks more pessimistic than the theologian would grant.
Suppose we ask whether empirical research supports the selfish gene theory? No. At least not yet. After fifty years, empirical evidence is insufficient to support the hypothesis that genetic or even biological appeals can be explanatorily exhaustive. “It is fair to say that at present we really know little about the complex genetic, environmental, and epigenetic contributions to complex human behaviors such as altruism, conformer (indoctrinability), spite, learning, and sexual orientation,” observes Joseph Graves, evolutionary biologist at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University, nicknamed the “Black Darwin” (Graves 2025, 83).
Referring to Richard Dawkins, theologian Joshua Moritz drives this point home with a sledgehammer.
Molecular biology is clear that the gene-centered view of biological reality offered by Dawkins, his successors, and his Neo-Darwinian forebears is no longer empirically warranted, and thus no longer an adequate account of the complex and mysterious evolutionary world in which we live (Moritz 2008, 187).
Even if the selfish gene theory sounds good as a hypothesis, without empirical evidence to support it we have no reason to incorporate it into a theology of nature.
Turning from Dawkins back to Wilson, Graves fears that Wilson relies less on empirical evidence and more on a Machiavellian philosophy of human nature. Wilson’s idea is that “human beings increase their Darwinian fitness through the manipulation of society” (Wislon 1975, 548). This, according to Graves, “indicates one of the deepest misconceptions within his thinking. This idea betrays his view that human nature was essentially selfish, relying on a genetic reductionist program discussed in the book’s introduction. The degree to which individuals see society as whole and other individuals as objects of manipulation has been identified. It is called the Machiavellian phenotype” (Graves 2025, 84).
A robust theology of nature must take evolutionary biology into account when formulating an anthropology, to be sure. But the theologian need not swallow uncritically all the bad tastes of unwarranted scientism, reductionism, or pseudo-theology. “Moralists and theologians certainly ought not to lose sight of the evolutionary development of life, and the necessary biological conditions for human society,” revered theological ethicist James M. Gustafson reminds us. But this does “not necessitate a Wilsonian theology, or a Wilsonian ethics” (Gustafson 2/1979, 45). In short, the theologian should remind the scientist to stick to the science and refrain from practicing theology without a license.
In sum, our discourse clarification regarding sociobiology comes from both scientific and theological directions. Scientifically, genetic reductionism is not widely accepted among scientists for empirical reasons. The evidence is not there. In addition, emergent properties over evolutionary time signify the arrival of something new. Who we are as human persons is not exhaustively pre-determined by genetics or any other similar causation. Because there is a God of grace, we can expect an open future. This strongly suggests that Darwinian evolution can be interpreted in a way that is consonant with biblical eschatology.
What about emergence theory?
Here are two respected evolutionary theorists, Terrence Deacon and Ursula Goodenough, trying to return us from the sociobiological detour to the main evolutionary highway.
Not only is this [the selfish gene theory] misreading inherently depressing, and religiously sterile; it also misses the point. Genomes are in fact the handmaidens of emergent properties, not the other way around….The whole point of life is to generate emergent properties that, if successfully executed, have the additional feature of permitting transmission of genomes….It is traits that rule; genes follow in their wake. (Goodenough and Deacon 2006, 859-860).
The public theologian can benefit from the likes of Deacon and Goodenough by connecting their concept of emergence with the prophetic promise that God will do new things. God will create “a new heaven and a new earth” (Isaiah 65:17). The future can be different from the past; and our gracious God promises that the entire creation will undergo transformation.
Emergence within the scientific discussion is one way we can identify precursors within creation to transformation of creation. Robert John Russell, founder of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences in Berkeley, puts it forcefully. “The long sweep of evolution may not only suggest an unfinished and continuing divine creation but even more radically a creation where theological status as ‘good’ may be fully realized only in the eschatological future” (Russell 2008, 221-222).[9]
Jumping the Big Hurdle with Neighbor Politics
When running the course of discourse clarification, the public theologian will find the path partially blocked by a frustrating hurdle. That hurdle is the shambolic chaos regarding the rule of reason in today’s public discourse.
Theology builds on a scaffolding of respect for knowledge and a thirst for truth. The present global crisis in politics, however, has replaced sturdy reliance upon knowledge with verbal calumny, alternative facts, and ideological intimidation. We have entered a post-truth cultural era. How high might the public theologian have to jump to clear the hurdle?
Constructing a theology of nature, is a rational enterprise that relies upon a cultural framework that reveres facts, reason, and truth. Science can provide culture with a morality of knowledge that helps frame facts, reason, and truth. But only if facts, reason, and truth are honored. Recently the world has woken up to a new epoch within which science has been replaced by pseudo-science; rational deliberation has been uprooted by state sanctioned believing; and sober policymaking has been perverted into protection for the rich and powerful.
Lutheran systematic theologian Craig Nessan recognizes the problem and offers a way over the hurdle, namely, neighbor politics. Here is the hurdle.
After the postmodern arises post-truth, hyper-individualized construction of truth claims‚ and the closing of ranks among the like-minded. The breakdown of genuine democratic process stymies the possibility of compromise toward an approximation of the common good (Nessan 2021, Kindle 209).
Neighbor politics is the way to leap over the hurdle.
Neighbor politics…aims not at the theocratic imposition of biblical teaching as law of the land and public policy. Rather, neighbor politics aims to translate the practices of Jesus into a political agenda that persuades others through publicly accessible reasoning and by building coalitions with people who share these convictions, regardless of their religious convictions.
The focus of neighbor politics shifts away from implementing the “truth” of its theological convictions toward public reasoning that prioritizes policies that best address the concrete needs of neighbors. Furthermore, in order to attain a rule of law that is fair and equitable to all persons, a neighbor politics pays special attention to the welfare of those on the margins, who may be treated with less regard than those with greater wealth, status, or privilege” (Nessan 2021, Kindle 224).
Might neighbor politics put spring in the feet of the theologian of nature? Yes, if the theologian of nature can still rely on “publicly accessible reasoning.”[10]
Theology of Nature as Worldview Construction
A critical analysis of scientism is but one step on the way toward a worldview oriented around the public common good. The next step is Worldview Construction. The public theologian strives to construct a compelling picture of reality that includes meaning, purpose, and hope for fulfillment. “The reconstruction of a unified worldview” is a deep human need a theologian can meet, according to theologian Nancey Murphy and physical cosmologist George Ellis (Murphy 1996, 1).[11]
Built into this supra-scientific reconstruction is meaning, purpose, and hope for fulfillment. We Homo sapiens are much more than mere pawns in a genetic chess game. To make this clear, we need to check mate the disconsolate nihilism inherent in avoidable scientism. This can be accomplished by reframing the game on a chessboard with more than sixty-four squares. Sound science should be treated like a queen while rooks and bishops complement rather than compete with one another.[12]
Lutheran Philip Hefner along with Roman Catholics Celia Deane-Drummond and John Haught provide examples of such worldview construction that build upward from a grounding in evolutionary biology. Once we have opened the gate to the future which had been closed by genetic determinism, Philip Hefner could develop an anthropology describing the human race as God’s created co-creator. “Just as God created creatures in God’s own image, to be like God, so also God-created human co-creators are creating creatures in their image….We are, in fact, miming God” (Hefner, The Greatest Challenge: The Created Co-Creator Creates a Co-Creator 2022, 77). For Hefner, the world has a future that could be different from the past. To speak of God’s creation includes the hope for new creation, and the principle of creativity is ready-to-hand right now as God’s gift to us.
Deane-Drummond turns our gaze from what we have inherited from our evolutionary past toward what God will bequeath to us in the future. “God’s purpose in evolution and in human history is really clear only in retrospect….A Christian has one foot in history and nature and one in the hoped-for-future” (Deane-Drummond 2009, 284). That hoped-for-future is God’s promised new creation.
Similarly, Haught inspires us to anticipate God’s eschatological future.
Anticipation invites us to turn our hearts and minds toward the horizon of a redemptive rightness that has yet to arrive in its fullness. It feels anguish in the face of evil, especially injustice and violence wrought by human beings, but it trusts that the present state of the cosmic drama, of which human history is a part, is not final. Things may yet be made right. The world, after all, is still coming into being, and so it cannot be expected realistically to have already reached perfection (Haught, 2017, 161).
These theologians of nature frame what we have learned about nature from evolutionary biology within the biblical promise of God’s new creation. In public discussion, those who listen to the voice of the public theologian can consider the value, coherence, and realism of this world picture.[13]
In the secular setting outside the church walls, such a hopeful worldview can be mined for ethical riches. Specifically, the anticipation of a renewed creation provides moral warrant for the responsibility of the present generation to care for the world we have, to nourish the ecosphere on behalf of all living creatures. Extracting moral imperatives from such a worldview lifts up for us a vision of a just, sustainable, participatory, and planetary society.[14]
Conclusion
This disquisition has made the case that one task to be placed on the public theologian’s list of tasks is to construct a theology of nature. Theological construction begins by welcoming into the church’s supply chain materials drawn from the natural sciences. This welcome of secular knowledge into theological underpinnings requires quality control. By exacting discourse clarification for quality control, the public theologian carefully distinguishes authentic scientific knowledge from prefabricated ideologies such as scientism. Science, yes. Scientism, no. With this distinction in mind, the theologian does not rely on established science for load bearing pillars when erecting the superstructure of a comprehensive worldview.
The king stud in a comprehensive theology of nature is the biblical and classical doctrine of creation, including the biblical promise of eschatological new creation. Cross beams reinforce meaning, purpose, and hope for fulfillment. Ducts pipe out guidance for, among other concerns, ecological ethics.
Public theology is conceived in the church, critically developed in the academy, and offered to the wider culture for the sake of the common good. A well-constructed theology of nature already in dialogue with the natural sciences not only provides confidence in sound empirical knowledge but also inspires meaning, purpose, and hope.
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[1] The public theology of Paul S. Chung is largely inspired by Karl Barth. Nature speaks to us regarding God its creator, says Barth. “The self-witness of creation can also speak and tell of what God says, and therefore speak as from God Himself, praising and glorifying him” (Barth 1936-1962, IV/3:1/164). Because science interprets nature, science should contribute to our understanding of God as creator. “Natural science finds its significance within the regnum naturae as both text and expositor, a significance further deepened in the correlation between creation and reconciliation. This offers a model of conscription to God—particularly in addressing the role of natural science for a Christian public theology, which should listen to the lights and words as testimonies to the goodness of God revealed through scientific discovery and achievement” (P. S. Chung, Karl Barth: Gods Word in Action, 2nd ed. 2015, 241).
[2] Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen promotes the dialogue between theology and the natural sciences, because the doctrine of creation itself requires the access to reality provided by science. Specifically, the scientific worldview differs from previous worldviews within which theology worked. “This engagement happens under a radically different worldview from that of the past: ours is dynamic, interrelated, evolving, in-the-making” (Kärkkäinen 2015, 10-11).
[3] “Scientism is the belief that all valid knowledge is science,” avers Ian Hutchinson (Hutchinson 2011, 2). The public theologian should construct a worldview in which other forms of knowing are also admitted to human self-understanding in the world.
[4] “Scientism is fundamentally the transformation of the methodology of empirical science into a metaphysics, a move from the quantitative investigation of nature to the assumption that being is always quantitative. While the former is a legitimate methodology, the latter is mere ideology” (Dodds, 2012, 51.n27).
[5] Constructing a theology of nature is more than a one-way street, according to hybrid physicist and theologian, the late John Polkinghorne. “What theology can do for science is to provide answers to those meta-questions that arise from science but go beyond what science itself can answer” (Polkinghorne 1995, 63).
[6] Paul S. Chung, following Dietrich Bonhoeffer, punctuates discourse clarification with parrhesia. Rooted in the Greek, parrhesia connotes speaking freely and truthfully, even when it might be risky. “It entails a position of suspicion, or a critique of ideology, when it comes to the adaptation of the truth to each situation” (P. S. Chung 2025).
[7] Sociobiology has been augmented by evolutionary psychology. What did the latter add to the former? Input from the human brain—that is, brain input added to gene input when responding to an Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness (EEA). Adaptationism associates specific human behaviors with the result of a natural selection in periods during which those behaviors would have given our distant ancestors a survival advantage. Note the key assumptions. “There is a universal human nature, but…this universality exists primarily at the level of evolved psychological mechanisms, not of expressed cultural behaviors….cultural variability is not a challenge to claims of universality…the human mind is adapted to the way of the Pleistocene hunter-gatherers, and not necessarily to our modern circumstances” (Barkow, Cosmides and Tooby 1992, 5). Evolutionary psychologists claim that our physical brains and, hence, our minds were shaped during the decisive Pleistocene EEA thousands of years ago. Our ancestral brains were shaped during a much more primitive time in which human beings were adapting to a quite different environment than we live in today. Thus, explain evolutionary psychologists, today’s Homo sapiens suffer from maladaptation to our modern industrialized society. Our modern skulls house a stone age brain. Genes are still firmly in the driver’s seat, to be sure. Yet, the human brain has become a complex vehicle for helping to ensure reproductive fitness. I ask: why did our brain fail to adapt to city traffic and cell phones?
[8] What about sociobiological ethics? On the one hand, Wilson trumpets that the genes hold consciousness and culture on a leash, a very tight leash. He “favors a purely material origin of ethics” (Wilson 1998, 241). On the other hand, Wilson does not advocate brutal ideologies such as Social Darwinism or Eugenics. Instead of an ethic of dog eat dog, Wilson holds that our society should embrace altruism and cooperation. On what grounds? Because “cooperative individuals generally survive longer and leave more offspring” (Wilson 1998, 253). Wilson’s advocacy of social cooperation is tethered to the leash of reproductive fitness. Despite the selfish gene and survival-of-the-fittest, he contends we ought to support modern liberal values such as human rights while rejecting premodern tribalism and xenophobia. In addition to committing the naturalistic fallacy of asking the “is” of nature to provide us with a moral “ought,” is there a contradiction operative here?
[9] Youthful Copenhagen theologian Michael Agerbo Morch welcomes scientific knowledge into theological construction. “The natural sciences are valuable sources for systematic theology” (Morch 2023, 94). I’m not confident all theologians of previous generations are so welcoming. This includes Karl Barth. In developing his theology of creation, Barth found no value in incorporating knowledge of the natural world gained through science. “There can be no scientific problems, objections or aids in relation to what Holy Scripture and the Christian Church understand by the divine work of creation” (Barth 1936-1962, III/1:ix).
[10] Might Nessan’s neighbor politics dovetail with Minjung’s table politics? The term, Minjung, combines “people” (民) and “masses” (衆) or “people as they are by themselves,” connotes the poor and marginalized peoples of Korea who over centuries have sought social justice. “Minjung theology and biblical interpretation are more than postcolonial in approach. They are a potent example of original Korean thought. As such, they have much to contribute to a plurality of urgent and ubiquitous conversations around such topics as race, socialism, and religion” (Kim-Cragg 1/2022, 128). Minjung theologian Byung-Mu Ahn built on the analogy of table community, bapsanggongdongche, to construct a worldview emphasizing organic connectedness, relatedness, the body of Chris. Included in this body is the environment, our planet’s ecology. Ahn engages in a reification of God with the Kingdom of God, an incarnation of the divine, so to speak, in society and ecosphere. “The reification or incarnation of God is ‘sharing’, which is the foundation of an organic community” (Kim and Kim 2023, 12). Ahn’s vision of the Kingdom of God impels ethics; it becomes “a driving force for reforming reality” (Kim and Kim 2023, 14).
[11] Our worldview should be as big as the world. That world includes the entire cosmos. And may even include sentient life off-Earth. This suggests to Jähnichen Traugott and Andreas Losch that we expand our terrestrial eco-ethic to a cosmic-ethic. “If everything is interconnected and interrelated, then we must pay as much attention to the near, and in the future, to the more distant space environment” (Traugott & Losch, 2023, 6)
[12] Heup Young Kim at Kangnam University argues that such worldview construction should be founded on classic Asian heritage. Kim’s thesis is that “East Asian theological perspectives, as an antidote to Western modes of thinking, present an alternative paradigm that can effectively address the problems of Christian theologies due to the enduring legacy of Greek dualism (e.g., theory and praxis) and substantialism in Western thought” (Kim 2017, x). Kim wants to construct “theodao as a new paradigm of Christian theology” (Kim 2017, x). Kim conceives of “Jesus Christ as the Dao, the Great Ultimate (T’aegŭk [Tài jí], and the Being-in-Non-Being” (Kim 2017, xi). Note that Kim is not directly addressing the matter of scientism for purposes of public theology, even though he is engaged in meaningful worldview construction. However, unlike Kim, Paul Chung conceptualizes Daoist philosophy within a trinitarian framework in order to make it more amenable to the East Asian mindset. Chung elaborates the wisdom and spirituality of Dao theology from the standpoint of comparative public theology (P. S. Chung, Constructing Irregular Theology: Bamboo and Minjung in East Asian Perspectrive 2009, Chapter 2).
[13] The biblical promise turns the public theologian into a prophet. Paul S. Chung deftly and appropriately reinterprets Dietrich “Bonhoeffer to reclaim his prophetic legacy for public theology in postcolonial formation” (P. S. Chung, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Public Theology: 2025). I would like to point out that Bonhoeffer too relies upon eschatology to grasp the nature of the creation within which we all live. “The Church of Christ bears witness to the end of all things. It lives from the end, it thinks from the end, it acts from the end, it proclaims its message from the end….[Christ] is the end and therefore the new….in the fallen, old world it [the Church] believes in the new creation world of the beginning and of the end, because it believes in Christ and nothing else” (Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall 1959, 7).
[14] What about ecological ethics? Minjung theology founder Ahn Byung-Mu dubbed it sinful to privatize what should be public, to possess what should be shared. “Something that should not be privatized is publicness. The sky is public. No one can privately own the sky” (Ahn, Minjunggwa seongeso (People and the Bible) 1993, 439). Since the land belongs to God, according to the Bible, no one can possess the land without sharing. God too should be considered in terms of publicness. Nobody can claim ownership of the ineffable God in denominationally copyrighted dogma. Therefore, observe Jongman Kim and Andrew Eungi Kim, “Publicness corresponds to an ecology that cannot be monopolized by anyone” (Kim and Kim 2023, 11). Ecological ethical demands may guide doctrinal reformulation, according to praxis theology. Within the context of water justice in Korea, for example, Seoyoung Kim tells us “It is necessary to lead Christians towards believing in cosmological salvation, being concerned about a variety of alienated voices on earth and seeking a water-conscious mission” (S. Kim 2025, 184).