TY - CHAP
T1 - Progress, theology, and climate change
T2 - Creating pandaemonium when working for paradise
AU - Sollereder, Bethany
PY - 2024/7/10
Y1 - 2024/7/10
N2 - This chapter challenges the notion that we have progress in theology or in science. For early scientists, one of the goals of science was to restore the conditions in the Garden of Eden: conditions of peace, plenty, predictability, and immortality. Progress in science was a return, not a journey forward into the unknown. As science secularized, the sense of a return was lost, but a majority of scientific research continues to pursue the abovementioned goals, although without limitation or a sense of arrival since there is no return. Ironically, our limitless search for Paradise through science has created the conditions where the Holocene climactic norms have been overturned, imperilling the possibilities of creaturely flourishing for much of the biosphere. In light of that frame of reference, can we call the works of science progress? Similarly, I argue that theology changes in relation to the culture, but like music, it would be impossible to call newer forms of theology progress just as it would be impossible to call contemporary music progress over Mozart or Bach.
AB - This chapter challenges the notion that we have progress in theology or in science. For early scientists, one of the goals of science was to restore the conditions in the Garden of Eden: conditions of peace, plenty, predictability, and immortality. Progress in science was a return, not a journey forward into the unknown. As science secularized, the sense of a return was lost, but a majority of scientific research continues to pursue the abovementioned goals, although without limitation or a sense of arrival since there is no return. Ironically, our limitless search for Paradise through science has created the conditions where the Holocene climactic norms have been overturned, imperilling the possibilities of creaturely flourishing for much of the biosphere. In light of that frame of reference, can we call the works of science progress? Similarly, I argue that theology changes in relation to the culture, but like music, it would be impossible to call newer forms of theology progress just as it would be impossible to call contemporary music progress over Mozart or Bach.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85197051803&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - https://www.routledge.com/Progress-in-Theology-Does-the-Queen-of-the-Sciences-Advance/Peels-Sollereder-van-den-Brink/p/book/9781032623214?_gl=1*1cblsqt*_gcl_au*MTgxMDA0NDQ1Mi4xNzIwNTMxNDc4*_ga*MTEwODIzMTI5Ny4xNzIwNTMxNDc5*_ga_0HYE8YG0M6*MTcyMDUzMTQ3OC4xLjEuMTcyMDUzMTcyOS42MC4wLjA.
U2 - 10.4324/9781032646732-17
DO - 10.4324/9781032646732-17
M3 - Chapter
AN - SCOPUS:85197051803
SN - 9781032623214
T3 - Routledge Science and Religion Series
SP - 219
EP - 237
BT - Progress in Theology
A2 - van den Brink, Gijsbert
A2 - Peels, Rik
A2 - Sollereder, Bethany
PB - Routledge
CY - London
ER -