CONCILIUM Editorial Directors Giuseppe Alberigo Bologna Italy Gregory Baum Toronto Canada Leonardo Boff Petr6polis Brazil Antoine van den Boogaard Nijmegen The Netherlands Paul Brand Ankeveen The Netherlands Marie-Dominique Chenu OP Paris France John Coleman SJ Berkeley, Ca. USA Mary Collins OSB Washington USA Yves Congar OP Paris France Mariasusai Dhavamony SJ Rome Italy Christian Duquoc OP Lyon France Virgil Elizondo San Antonio, Texas USA Casiano Floristan Madrid Spain Claude Geffre OP Paris France Norbert Greinacher Tübingen West Germany Gustavo Gutierrez Lima Peru Peter Huizing SJ Nijmegen The Netherlands Bas van Iersel SMM Nijmegen The Netherlands Jean-Pierre Jossua OP Paris France Hans Küng Tübingen West Germany Nicholas Lash Cambridge Great Britain Rene Laurentin Paris France Johannes-Baptist Metz Münster West Germany Dietmar Mieth Düdingen Switzerland Jürgen Moltmann Tübingen West Germany Roland Murphy OCarm Durham, NC USA Jacques Pohier OP Paris France David Power OMI Washington, DC USA Karl Rahner SJ Munich West Germany Luigi Sartori Padua Italy Edward Schillebeeckx OP Nijmegen The Netherlands Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza Hyattsville, Ind. USA David Tracy Chicago USA Knut Walf Nijmegen The Netherlands Anton Weiler Nijmegen The Netherlands John Zizioulas Glasgow Great Britain Lay Specialist Advisers Jose Luis Aranguren Madrid/Santa Barbara, Ca. Spain/USA Luciano Caglioti Rome Italy August Wilhelm von Eiff Bonn West Germany Paulo Freire Perdizes, Säo Paulo Brazil Harald Weinrich Munich West Germany Concilium 166 (611983): Project 'X' COSMOLOGY AND THEOLOGY Edited by David Tracy and Nicholas Lash English Language Editor Marcus Lefäbure T. & T. CLARK LTD THE SEABURY PRESS Edinburgh New York Copyright© 1983, by Stichting Concilium, T. & T. Clark Ltd and The Seabury Press Inc. All rights reserved. Nothing contained in this publication shall be multiplied and/or made public by means of print, photographic print, microfilm, or in any other manner without the previous written consent of the Stichting Concilium, Nijmegen (Holland), T. & T. Clark Ltd, Edinburgh (Scotland) and The Seabury Press Inc., New York (USA). June 1983 T. & T. Clark Ltd, 36 George Street, Edinburgh EH2 2LQ ISBN: 0 567 30046 3 The Seabury Press, 815 Second Avenue, New York, NY 10017 ISBN: 0 8164 2446 2 Library of Congress Catalog Card No.: 82 062759 Printed in Scotland by William Blackwood & Sons Ltd, Edinburgh Concilium: Monthly except July and August. Subscriptions 1983: UK and Rest ofthe World f27·00, postage and handling included; USA and Canada, all applications for subscriptions and enquiries about Concilium should be addressed to The Seabury Press, 815 Second Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA. CONTENTS Editorial DAVID TRACY vii NICHOLAS LASH Part I Historical New Testament Cosmology JOHN COLLINS 3 Freedom and Necessity in Early Christian Thought About God HENRY CHADWICK 8 The God of Space and Time OLAF PEDERSEN 14 The Evolutionary Shift GÜNTER ALTNER 21 Eschatology and Cosmology TSHIBANGU TSHISHIKU 27 Part II Topical Creation and Cosmos: The Symbolics of Proclamation and Participation JAMES BUCHANAN 37 Astrophysical Cosmology HERMANN BRÜCK 44 Cosmology as Myth MARY HESSE 49 vi CONTENTS The Creationist Issue: A Theologian's View LANGDON GILKEY 55 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: The Case Reopened WILLIAM WARTHLING 70 Modem Cosmology and Eastern Thought, Especially Hinduism URSULA KING 76 Part III Concluding Editorial Reflections Editorial Reflections DAVID TRACY 87 NICHOLAS LASH Contributors 93 Editorial THE 'POSITIVISM' which supposed that only the physical sciences (and disciplines which conform to their procedures) could furnish us with knowledge of the world is on the wane, although it remains influential in the popular imagination. What is taking its place, and what are the implications for theology of the recognition that scientific understanding is, as are all forms of human understanding, shaped by need, hope, time and circumstance? Since the eighteenth century theologians have tended, partly as a result of the 'anthropologising' and 'individualising' of theological · concern, to concentrate on doctrines of redemption to the neglect of doctrines of creation. But what should be the relationship between these two aspects of Christian belief? In preparing this issue, it became clear to us that questions of 'cosmology' concern not only the origin and 'natural structure' of the world but also its destiny. When 'creation' and 'redemption' are too sharply separated, reflection on the latter neglects the implications of the fact that the destiny of human beings, of 'animals who hope', is inextricably bound up with the destiny of a cosmos for which we share responsibility. A further difficulty: scientific and theological understanding may not be necessarily conflictual, but neither may they be conflated into the grammar of a single discourse. Attempts to do so usually seek to 'fit' religious symbols into some !arger pattern of scientific discourse. The result has often been to understate the tragic. Especially in the nineteenth century, religious world views derived from the supposedly 'value free' descriptions of science tended to be unwarrantedly 'optimistic' in character. 'Cosmology' may mean many things. The term can refer to theological accounts of the world as God's creation; or to philosophical reflection on the categories of space and time; or to observational and theoretical study of the structure and evolution of the physical universe; or, finally, to 'world views': unified imaginative perceptions of how the world seems and where we stand in it. We therefore decided to place the initial emphasis on the history ofthe relationships between theological and cosmological doctrines. Without an attempt to 'retrieve' the history, the current state of the problem cannot be appropriately indicated. J. Collins, in the first of a group of articles which concentrates on the historical issues, emphasises the enduring validity of the insight that the question of human salvation cannot be divorced from our understanding of and relationship to the world around us. A similar consideration emerges from H. Chadwick's discussion of the relationships between freedom and necessity in early Christian thought about God. 0. Pedersen highlights the role played by theology in helping to liberate human beings from the fixed confines of the ancient cosmos only to release them into those infinite spaces in which God was not found. Once the connections between God and space had been severed the category of the temporal came increasingly to dominate scientific and theological discussion (see G. Altner). To raise the question of time is to raise the question of 'end-time'. Bp Tshishiku, therefore, discusses some developments in eschatology. J. Buchanan, in the first of a group of articles dealing with particular topics, argues for the indispensability of the symbol of 'creation' for holding in tension our sense of participation in and distinctness from the natural order of the world. H. Brück summarises developments in scientific cosmology, and insists that scientific exploration viii EDITORIAL of the 'beginning' of the universe is not tobe confused with consideration of its 'creation' by God. When cosmology and theology conflict, suggests M. Hesse, they do so because neither discourse has sufficiently acknowledged its status as symbolic construction of reality. This thesis is illustrated by L. Gilkey's reflections on disputes between 'creationism' and 'evolution'. The length of his article is due to the fact that, when another contributor had been unable to accept our invitation, Gilkey kindly agreed to locate these disputes in the broader context of the relationship between scientific and religious 'world views'. There follows an assessment of Teilhard de Chardin's contribution to our theme (s ee W. Warthling). Finally, because some Western scientists, in becoming conscious of the need to attend to the 'spiritual', have begun to look to the East rather than to Western religion, U. King has provided a Bulletin on 'Modem Cosmology and Eastern Thought'. How is the universal ( cosmic?) significance of the Incarnation to be understood in a world for which no single, all-embracing, 'scientific' cosmological narrative can be constructed? What forms of hope in God the Creator are appropriate in a world in which ideologies of 'progress' have perished? These are just two of the questions which we had originally hoped to cover, and on some of which we have touched in our 'Concluding Editorial Reflections'. DAVID TRACY NICHOLAS LASH PARTI Historical