Fresh Thinking, Issue 10

ISSUE 10 SPRING 2023

CTI’s Spiritual Loop Game is an invaluable gift to people with disabilities and for congregations.

—Professor John Swinton

Spiritual Loop Report

|

Inquiry on Thriving

| Spring Books

ISSUE 10 SPRING 2023 DIRECTOR William Storrar ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR Joshua Mauldin DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL RESEARCH Clifford Anderson DESIGNER Debra Trisler CONTRIBUTORS Clifford Anderson Linda Arntzenius Andrew Davison Joshua Mauldin Erin Raffety William Storrar John Swinton Michael Welker Zhibin Xie

ACADEMIC ADVISORY PANEL John Bowlin Peter Casarella Francis Clooney David Fergusson David Ford Agustín Fuentes Tammy Gaber Eric Gregory Michael Hecht Jan-Olav Henriksen Jennifer Herdt Cathleen Kaveny Nico Koopman Ian McFarland Friederike Nüssel Peter Ochs Peter Paris Esther Reed Susan Schneider Mona Siddiqui Jeremy Waldron Leslie Wingard

BOARD OF TRUSTEES Roy Lennox, Chair Gayle Robinson, Vice Chair Jon Pott, Secretary Robert Wedeking, Treasurer Fred Anderson Darrell Armstrong Bette Jane (B.J.) Booth Brian Fix Robert Gunn Douglas Leonard Judith McCartin Scheide William Storrar Jay Vawter Charles Wall HONORARY TRUSTEES Craig Barnes Robin Lovin Richard Mouw Krista Tippett EMERITUS/EMERITA TRUSTEES Robert Hendrickson Judy Wornat Ralph Wyman

environment where theology makes an impact on global concerns, and we share our research to inform public thinking.

OUR PROGRAM Thriving in Diverse Contexts

IMAGE: BAIVECTOR / ADOBESTOCK

OUR MISSION We convene leading thinkers in an interdisciplinary

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From the Director

Spiritual Loop Report

William Storrar discusses the Center’s new program, bringing together virtual and in person phases made possible by the renovation of Luce Hall

Highlights from CTI’s Research Report on the Spiritual Loop Project on Machine Intelligence and Pastoral Care

4 Thriving In Diverse Contexts: Meet the Team Writer Linda Arntzenius profiles the scholars participating in CTI’s Inquiry on Thriving in Diverse Contexts: A Study Program in Psychological Science for Theologians

12 Clifford Anderson on Theology in the Age of AI CTI’s Director of Digital Research provides a cutting-edge analysis of the latest developments in artificial intelligence and their impact on theology

24 Out of This World CTI’s new partnership with the Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe at Cambridge University

28 Featured Books Andrew Davison on Astrobiology Zhibin Xie on Theology in China Erin Raffety on Disability and Theology Michael Welker on the Image of God

34 Member Books The latest books from our scholars, showcasing advanced research

ON THE COVER: An image of the video game developed for CTI’s Spiritual Loop Project on Machine Intelligence and Pastoral Care.

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— FROM THE DIRECTOR —

All Things Made New

S

ome years ago I reviewed a book of essays with the arresting title, All Things Made New. It could well apply to CTI at this moment in our history.

In the Fall issue of Fresh Thinking, I announced the renovation of Luce Hall, the Center’s home in Princeton. The architectural drawings showed a new interior in perfect harmony with our new program, casting light. The new Luce Hall over three transformed floors is designed for our new research cycle of virtual as well as resident inquiry. In this Spring issue of our magazine, you can see that design coming to life.

A New Inquiry Our lead article by Linda Arntzenius introduces the first group of scholars to participate in this new research cycle in our renewed building. These theologians from around the world are members of our new Inquiry on Thriving in Diverse Contexts, asking a question of global concern: “What makes for human thriving?” Before coming into residence for a semester at the Center in Princeton to pursue collaborative research on theologies of thriving, the group will meet in a virtual semester of study from their locations in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, and the United States. In regular webinars, they will receive cross-training in the critical reading of research papers in psychology to inform their theological research in residence.

A New Hall For a New Way of Doing Research This will become the new pattern for all interdisciplinary inquiries at CTI. Researchers will be accepted into our program for an academic year, beginning with a virtual semester of critical readings in relevant disciplines, leading to a resident semester for research, informed by the readings. In his article in this issue, Clifford Anderson, our Director of Digital Research, introduces us to this new world of theology in the digital age that CTI is entering under his expert direction. In an economic age when research leave is becoming harder to win in the academy, we believe this new cycle of virtual cross-training in interdisciplinary research, followed by a resident semester of collaborative inquiry in Princeton, one of the world’s research hubs, will give our new program an added value to scholars and scientists in making their case to apply.

The new interior design of Luce Hall makes this innovative program possible. The virtual semester prior to a semester in residence will be run from the Center’s new Digital Studio for state-of-the-art hybrid meetings in the former basement, the new Global Floor.

When the group comes into residence, they will meet to exchange work in progress in the

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new Colloquy Room on the Research Floor. Their adjacent studies on that second floor will be cloistered around the new Atrium, fostering the informal conversations that are such a rich dimension of working at Luce Hall. We can truly say, this is a new hall for a new way of doing research.

New Partners, New Books The other articles in this Spring issue also convey the exciting sense of all things made new at CTI. We are grateful to Cambridge University’s alumni magazine, Cam, for permission to republish its article on our new research partner, the Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe. The article introduces you to the centre’s director, Didier Queloz, the Nobel Prize winning astronomer who discovered exoplanets. Didier has welcomed CTI as a partner institution, convinced of the importance of the arts and humanities as a dialogue partner for the natural sciences on the origins of life. The article also highlights the key role of Cambridge theologian Andrew Davison, CTI’s visiting fellow in theology and science. Andrew has done so much to connect our two research centers and develop CTI’s earlier work on the societal implications of astrobiology, not least in his new book on Astrobiology and Christian Doctrine.

The centerpiece of this issue of Fresh Thinking is the summary report from our Spiritual Loop Project, which has pioneered video gaming as a new way of empowering persons with disability as spiritual leaders within the life of their congregations. In publishing this report, I wish to thank our new funding partner, the Templeton World Charity Foundation, for supporting this pilot project.

Finally, the Spring Books section brings you notice of new books by CTI Members and interviews with some of their authors, reminding us that the Center is a global community of scholars.

All Things Made Possible All these new developments at CTI are made possible by the generous support of so many contributors to our mission and program—our scholars and supporters, trustees and staff. On this occasion, I wish to record the Center’s gratitude to three remarkable people who are completing their stellar contributions to our work with this Spring issue.

Erin Raffety and Maria Insa Iglesias are the CTI researchers in theology and computing science who have shown the potential of machine learning in video gaming to enhance the spiritual lives of people with disability. We wish Erin and Maria well as they take the insights of our Spiritual Loop project into their continuing work in this new research field, pioneered here at CTI. Linda Arntzenius is a gifted freelance writer who has been a regular contributor to CTI publications over many years. Linda started writing for our yearbook, The Commons, interviewing the incoming scholars for our new inquiries in what became her feature article, Meet the Team. We could not have launched its successor, Fresh Thinking, without Linda’s professional skill in writing and editing copy for the new magazine. Above all, I want to pay tribute to Linda’s exceptional ability to distill the ideas of leading thinkers and communicate them in clear and compelling prose. This is a skill Linda honed in her earlier work in communications at the Institute for Advanced Study.

We are honored that she brought that talent to the glad service of CTI. With her final article for the Center in this issue, we do not say farewell but wish Linda well in her retirement.

In closing, please consider making a gift to CTI as our Annual Appeal ends in June. All things are being made new, thanks to old friends like you.

—William Storrar

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Human Thriving in Today’s World

BY LINDA ARNTZENIUS

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I

n the mid-1980s, clinical neurologist Oliver Sacks introduced his readers to the fascinating and sometimes bizarre workings of the human mind. His books, with catchy titles like The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, spurred a burgeoning genre of popular titles in psychology and neuroscience.

But while popular books do wonders to engage the general public, they inevitably fall short when it comes to explaining the research underpinning the recent remarkable advances in psychological and cognitive science.

“Even the best popular books leave a lot behind,” says psychologist Michael L. Spezio. “It’s important for theologians to move beyond popular trade publications into the scientific research itself.”

A core aim of the Center of Theological Inquiry’s current program Thriving in Diverse Contexts: A Study Program on Psychological Science for Researchers in Christian Theology is to help a select group of theologians, with all their varied interests in the needs and sufferings of the world, to be resourced directly from the science.

Spezio, together with theologian and biological scientist Andrew Davison and a team of experts in psychological and cognitive sciences, are developing, leading, and mentoring this new cohort of CTI Members in an immersive two-year cross-training and research program.

Open-Ended and Multi-Phased Program The program introduces theologians to core areas of psychological science with experts to guide them in areas of special complexity and according to their own specific interests and needs. It’s a tall order but each theologian is primed to get to grips with the latest research in psychological science, concepts, and models of cognition—traits and dispositions; self-determination, self-identity; social cognition of empathy, compassion, and forgiveness; autonomy; intervention and treatment in clinical disturbances of the self; statistical assessment; and comparison of psychological models, to mention just a few.

The idea is to support the scholars as they produce their own creative translations of scientific theories and meth-

odological concepts for use as tools in their own specific projects and communities.

“There are many moving parts here,” says Spezio, noting CTI’s long track record of exactly this sort of exemplary work. “This is a unique opportunity to invite theologians to consider deeply areas that are outside of theology in the academy but deeply relevant to some areas of theology.”

One of the program’s multiple aims is to enable theologians to discover new directions in Christian constructive theology of divine realities that can be informed by psychological science.

Another is to cross-train theologians in those areas of the psychological sciences relevant to the understanding of what thriving is and can be within diverse and resilient lives of spiritual purpose and moral agency.

According to CTI’s Associate Director, Joshua Mauldin, “There’s enormous potential here for new discoveries regarding moral identity and character conducive to human flourishing, informed by theological ideas and traditions.”

Tailor-Made for Christian Theologians The first phase of the program brings all participants together in Princeton for an exploratory residential summer school. Designed so that each participant benefits from deeper scientific engagement towards their stated goals, subsequent phases will be tailored to the individual needs and interests of the scholars working with their program mentors.

This is no crash course in psychology for theologians, however. As Spezio explains, it’s designed to meet the participating theologians where their research programs are.

“This is about genuinely novel inquiry whose destinations can be sensed but not perfectly drawn in advance. We’re really excited about the open-ended nature of the Inquiry and the particular research projects of our theologians.”

In a nutshell, the program aims to give theologians the language to understand and use the most recent scientific findings in psychology to better their communica-

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tion with science and to enhance their work in making the world a healthier place for human beings to live and thrive.

“And,” adds Spezio “to develop theologies of thriving that might invite others with concerns or interests about psychological science and where it’s going, as well as scientists themselves, into conversations with questions and proposals that theology alone can offer.”

The practical value of cross-training, he says “is not to serve theologians for the sake of theology only as an academic discipline but to serve greater communities and multidisciplinary perspectives.” He cites possible benefits for therapists, practicing psychologists, and for CEOs and CFOs trying to get a handle on how to incorporate ethics and human moral considerations into their business management plans.

As is usual at CTI there will be ample focus on informal presentations and discussions of Member projects (see below) as well as hands-on introductions to key digital tools for psychological research.

The all-important connections and conversations of a typical CTI Inquiry will foster a continuing research community in Christian theology conversant with the psychology of human thriving and able to apply their findings in their future published research. Through Members’ future research, publications, and teaching, perspectives from psychological science will reach other scholars of Christian theology. And open-access cross-training modules on psychology-conversant theologies of thriving along with a companion handbook developed during the cross-training will take this research far beyond CTI.

“While remaining true to its own focus on theology, CTI is intellectually hospitable to all other fields of human inquiry.

In this time of turmoil, this program is designed to make a difference for a better world.”

Michael Spezio

Team Leaders and Mentors Michael Spezio is a computational cognitive neuroscientist at Scripps College in California. Among his interests is the way exemplary groups—such as Homeboy Industries (HBI) in Los Angeles (famously founded by Father Greg Boyle as a gang rehabilitation program)— are able to overcome seemingly insurmountable differences between people.

An expert in psychological theories and methods relating to the formation of virtuous identity and autonomy in such thriving and morally admirable communities, Spezio is experienced in working directly with theologians to help them interpret complex scientific models and analyses.

Theologian of Science Andrew Davison of the Univer-

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Andrew Davison

George Johnstone

sity of Cambridge works in the interdisciplinary field of theology and natural science. With almost two decades as a priest in the Church of England, he has extensive pastoral experience—he’s also Dean of Chapel at Corpus Christi College—and is responsible for programs that encourage thriving in the college as well as for meeting pastoral needs in the face of trauma and other challenges.

A self-confessed Aquinas monomaniac, Davison has written extensively about the 13th century saint including most recently about his remarkably concrete remedies for sadness (see “Thomas Aquinas, lifestyle coach—sound advice from a 13th century saint,” Church Times, UK).

Given today’s abundance of grief and anxiety, Davison suggests that it might be a good time to turn to Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae.

As a neuropsychologist working with brain injuries Dr. George (Brick) Johnstone is among the mentors who will support the theologians in their research. During the past six years, he’s collaborated with neuroscientists, social psychologists, philosophers, and theologians. As Director of Brain Injury Research at the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, he’s well-placed to impart the advances in neural science that demonstrate the associations between parts of the brain and different experiences and abilities.

Two-Way Traffic Johnstone is fascinated by disorders of the self. “In my hospital right now there are people who will deny that their left arm is theirs. You may tap it, point at it, ask them what it is.

It’s an arm, they will say. Whose arm is it, you ask. I don’t know, it’s not mine, they respond. Similarly with schizophrenia—normally an individual generates thoughts that are naturally integrated as their own. With disintegration the thought is there but it’s not integrated—it’s not mine, someone might have put it there, they will tell you.”

There are many disorders of the self and Johnstone understands the neuropsychology. But when it comes to religious concepts and spiritual experiences, there is a problem.

How does one objectively measure, define, and describe something like transcendence, for example?

“There is increasing interest in understanding the neurological bases of spiritual experience among both academics and the general public. Unfortunately, conclusions regarding relationships among different brain networks and spiritual experiences remain limited due to the complex nature

of both brain functions and spiritual experiences, as well as the lack of development of a clear taxonomy of religious and spiritual experiences.”

It is Johnstone’s hope that neuroscientists and psychologists in collaboration with theologians will be able “to figure out how these different processes are associated with the experience of connection to God.” “In the past, all neuroscientists wanted to do is say that there are parts of the brain associated with religious thought,” says Johnstone. “I believe that there is a certain part of the brain that integrates things into a sense of self and creates a sense of relationship. That relationship can be with other people, with Nature, with your concept of God. We need to show how the brain works to create the sense of self. Studies show that when this is turned off, people are more forgiving (a religious concept). But we are not good at understanding what awe is, or mysticism, or transcendence.

This is why psychologists need to work with theologians.”

Davison also looks forward to a two-way conversation.

“At its best, theology has always been open to the science of the age, to reflect with the best practitioners and scientists on their subject matter. Theologians deal with reality; these are not just games about language. From my perspective, you want every on-ramp to reality that you can get. In the 13th century when the translation of Aristotle’s De Anima and Arabic commentaries on it suddenly catapulted this great treasure of psychological insight into the world of the Church, people criticized it but also made fantastic use of it—a tradition that carried on being useful well beyond the Reformation. So, in a sense we’re not doing anything new, but you need to do it anew in every generation because there are always newer insights to engage with.”

The theological interest in thriving in diverse contexts concerns human beings in positions of real difficulty.

“While not everything human can be reduced to psychology,” notes Davison, “the role of psychological science seems to me to be indispensable.”

Philosophical questions are also important, he says. “As Aristotle points out, the whole is more than the sum of its parts so if you only talk about the parts, you’re missing something! Familiarity with psychology and with philosophy helps us to examine our unarticulated and perhaps unconscious psychological assumptions—these shape the way people think and it’s important to examine them consciously and exercise theological judgement.”

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Toward Thriving Communities Observing the now-thriving community of Homeboy Industries shaped Spezio’s research into human autonomy. “I can’t tell you how many examples of authentic belonging I’ve seen through HBI and how important it is in the midst of deep trauma and setback to remember that there is a future that depends on all of us engaging and activating our deep autonomy.”

He’s also seen how valuation and emotion allow exemplary groups to overcome seemingly insurmountable differences between people. “This depends strongly on the kind of affirmations of the capabilities of selves in community and that goes hand in hand with a deep well of accountability, responsibility, forgiveness, and empathy and this is an area that will be introduced in the summer residential school and will be unpacked in the next two years.”

“One of the truly new discoveries about the human mind is that there are structures by which the valuation of the self as an agent and the other as an agent are organized,” he explains. “We can now look for and identify valuational structures as someone is making a choice as far as their own ingroup, themselves, and others. How do they structure that value? Is it in a way that allows them to easily truncate the value of the other or is it that they actually have a valuational structure that makes that [truncation] impossible; this is something that can be demonstrated for people who make consistent decisions to actually place themselves at some disadvantage even at some risk of real harm in order to help others thrive.”

This finding offers “a new appreciation of virtue ethics and dovetails with the understanding of the flourishing community, this binding together, this sense of value without losing autonomy.”

The Specter of Reductionism?

If scientists were to discover parts of the brain active during human emotions such as awe, transcendence, spiritual experience and so on, does that mean that these emotions can be reduced to brain activity? Is this a reductionist project?

“Neuroscience does that,” acknowledges Johnstone.

“We try to say this specific area activated or inhibited is associated with this or that experience. You can state that in general but it’s never quite so simple. We believe 8

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that cognitive neuroscience has reached a stage that it can reliably pinpoint the key neural systems supporting theistic relational cognition and religious cognition more generally.”

“We are conducting state-of-the-art cognitive and social neuroscience research to address the brain bases of how people formulate and express relational religious beliefs and belief in God. We believe the tools of neuroscience can uniquely contribute to a better understanding of how people think about God and other supernatural agents, and the nature and functioning of religious cognition more generally.”

In Davison’s experience today’s scientists and philosophers of science are much more sophisticated on this topic. “Scientists at the coal face who’ve got their lab coats on and work with test tubes and petri dishes, tend not to be reductionists. They tend to know the complexity of what they are dealing with and to recognize what they don’t know. Reductionism tends to find a place among the popularizers. So, again, going to the science rather than the popularization of the science is usually a good anti-reductive move.”

Making a Difference At CTI, there is a capacious understanding of theology as an interdisciplinary and comparative field of inquiry, notes Director William Storrar. “While remaining true to its own theological focus on God and all things in relation to God, CTI is intellectually hospitable to all other fields of human inquiry. In this time of turmoil, this program is designed to make a difference for a better world.”

And CTI is well-placed to run this program, adds Johnstone, citing the Center’s proven record in convening cross-disciplinary conversations, its investment in digital infrastructure and staffing to develop its virtual programing, and its skill in running collaborative in-person research workshops with study and housing facilities and research resources in Princeton.

And because the new program functions as an experimental teaching and research laboratory in developing open-access digital resources for cross-training in psychological science for research in the theology of thriving, it will garner a world-wide audience through a publicly available MOOC (Massive Open Online Course).

DIVERSE SCHOLARLY INTERESTS The incoming cohort of theologians has been selected for the potential to engage productively with psychological science. All are engaged in relevant research and have demonstrated expertise on topics relating to a theology of thriving in diverse contexts. While all are engaged in Christian theology, their work and specific interests are diverse, ranging across systematic, philosophical, moral, biblical, practical, contextual, and postcolonial theologies.

Elijah M. Baloyi is passionate about collaborating with scholars in different parts of the world and is prepared for a “serious learning curve at CTI.” A professor in the Research Institute for Theology and Religion at The University of South Africa, he explores how colonialism marginalized traditional practices and customs of pre-colonial era funerals for African people.

“Besides preaching, research is a way of reaching people and changing lives for the better,” he says. “It’s easy to believe you are doing better when confined in your own space, but you learn a lot when you get out globally, so this is a wonderful opportunity.”

Through his work in pastoral care, Baloyi is convinced that the challenges facing people in their daily lives can either build or destroy them. “For me, theology must speak to the people within

Elijah Baloyi

their own realities. Being relevant demands that one understands how the human mind works and how much affected people are by their own socio-economic and political situations.”

Professor of Systematic Theology, Ecumenism, and Missiology at the MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion, and Society, Marion Grau hopes to learn more about psychological fields which could help her work on climate emotions, climate grief, and the socio-psychological processes involved in processes of climate change, energy transitions, and the political and theological issues at stake in these conversations. Having previously considered applying to CTI, she was delighted to find the current program. “This program matches my interests perfectly and it’s going to push me beyond what I would have done on my own.”

Her project is timely. As program co-leader Andrew Davison has remarked concerning environmental matters: “The science is pretty clear, but actually changing the way we live is going

Marion Grau

to take more than science. I’ve had some very fruitful conversations with engineers and scientists who recognize the vital role of religion as a conduit, or catalyst, for interpreting these things to the public in such a way that they lead to changes in the way we live.”

Sheryl Overmyer is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Catholic Studies at DePaul University in Chicago. As a moral theologian with interests across the disciplines, she aims to integrate psychological insights into virtue ethics toward a holistic theology of thriving. Her CTI project focuses on Aquinas and Attachment Wounds. “Thanks to this program, I have a structure for strategically curating my research time. It will lay the groundwork for the years to come.”

She plans to learn more about different sub-fields in psychology—their metaphysical and ontological assumptions, anthropological commitments, methodologies, and epistemologies. “This program stands out by placing psychological sciences at the forefront. It offers theologians a strong foothold in psychology’s self-understanding as the foundation for mutual respect and exchange. The shared

Sheryl Overmyer

intellectual journey will also create a set of reference points within psychology, a common core we can refer to as we undertake our different integrative projects.” She is excited by the prospect of getting to know the other new members and forming an embodied intellectual community.

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Michelle Panchuk’s primary teaching interests are in philosophy of religion, feminist philosophy, and philosophy of trauma. Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Murray State University in Kentucky, her research “Flourishing in the Aftermath: A Theology of Thriving after Religious Trauma” acknowledges that while awareness of religious trauma is growing, knowledge of how to respond is sparse. How do survivors of religious trauma such as victims of sexual abuse by priests and pastors remain Christian? Panchuk investigates the character traits survivors can develop to help counteract the harms of religious trauma, and the concrete practices and activities that foster the virtues that promote post-traumatic thriving.

Michelle Panchuk Michael Bräutigam of the faculty of the Melbourne School of Theology in Australia, has been a pastor/teacher in Germany (Free Evangelical Church) and an elder in a local Edinburgh congregation of the Free Church of Scotland. He strives to make theology accessible. At CTI, his project on “Ironic Thriving: An Integrative Conversation” focuses on understanding human wellbeing following the impact of the Covid19 pandemic. To this end, he aims to carve out the underlying mechanisms of thriving that are activated in the context of adversity, combining recent research into cognitive dissonance theory, positive psychology, and post-traumatic flourishing with biblical-systematic theological approaches toward an integrative theory.

Michael Bräutigam Jessica Coblentz is Associate Professor, St. Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Indiana with expertise in Religious Studies and Theology, Gender and Women’s Studies.

At CTI, her project is titled “The Crane and the Pelican: How Christian Theology Shapes Suffering and Can Promote Thriving among Women Who Live with Depression,” a book-length work of feminist theology that interrogates how contemporary Catholic theologies of gender, Christology, and Mariology reinscribe social norms that contribute to and shape women’s depression.

Jessica Coblentz Michael DeJonge is Professor and Chair of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida in Tampa. His scholarship has focused on the twentieth-century German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, with monographs including Bonhoeffer’s Theological Formation (Oxford, 2012), Bonhoeffer’s Reception of Luther (Oxford, 2017), and Bonhoeffer on Resistance (Oxford, 2018). His CTI project “Penultimate and Ultimate Perspectives on Human Thriving” examines Bonhoeffer’s schema as a model for the relationship of psychology and theology, interpreting that schema against the background of Luther’s theological tradition, and engaging with contemporary interpreters of that tradition.

Michael DeJonge

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Nadia Marais is Senior Lecturer in Systematic Theology at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. An ordained minister in the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa, Marais earned her PhD in theology at Stellenbosch University under the supervision of Prof. Dirk Smit. Her forthcoming book is titled Homo Florens? Cultivating Grammars of Salvation. Her CTI research project on Thriving in Diverse Contexts will seek to integrate learning from cross-training in psychology with her own research interest in credible and lifegiving theological rhetorics of human and ecological flourishing.

Nadia Marais Barbara J. McClure is Associate Professor, Pastoral Theology and Practice, at Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University. She has pursued the nature of human flourishing in a variety of contexts including institutions of work, worship, and learning, as well as within the context of a counseling practice. At CTI, she proposes to examine human thriving in the midst of cultural, climate, and economic crises born largely of neocolonialism and neoliberal capitalist policies and practices. Her interests and commitments are deeply informed by her experience of being born and raised for almost twenty years in remote areas of East Africa as the daughter and granddaughter of Presbyterian (PCUSA) missionaries.

Barbara McClure

Andrew Shepherd, Senior Lecturer in Theology and Public Issues at New Zealand’s University of Otago/Mātai Whakapono Karaitiana, Te Whare Wānanga o Otāgo, has spent his working life alternating between academic teaching roles and leadership responsibilities in Christian and non-profit organizations. Before completing postgraduate studies in theology, he studied English literature and history. His CTI project, “Modes of Attending & Human Flourishing,” recognizes the significant contemporary challenges (global climate change, economic inequality, social polarization) that mitigate against long-term human thriving and suggests that our mode of attention is fundamental to our way-of-being in the world, determining our relationships with

Andrew Shepherd

other humans and the non-human world. Hence a mode of attentiveness is integral to a “theology of thriving.”

“This is about genuinely novel inquiry whose destinations can be sensed but not perfectly drawn in advance. We’re really excited about the open-ended nature of the Inquiry and the particular research projects of our theologians.”

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Theology in the Age of AI CLIFFORD ANDERSON

2023 is shaping up to be the breakthrough year of artificial intelligence (AI). While dreams of intelligent machines and robots go back to ancient times, AI in its modern guise began in 1956. John McCarthy, then assistant professor of mathematics at Dartmouth College, organized a summer school that brought together luminaries from various scientific disciplines to map out the nascent field of AI research. This “Dartmouth Summer Research Project” marked the formal beginning of AI as a discipline. During the past seventy years, artificial intelligence has experienced numerous booms and busts. Marvin Minsky, who co-founded MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab, coined the term “AI Winter” in 1984 as he cautioned against overenthusiastic boosterism about artificial intelligence. For a long time, AI fell out of fashion as entrepreneurs favored technologies like search engines, social networking, blockchain, and virtual reality. A series of remarkable achievements during the past decade have reignited popular excitement about AI, culminating in the launch of Open AI’s ChatGPT system in December 2022.

What makes ChatGPT and systems like it so exciting? Basically, it’s the ease of use and wide scope of application. When you log onto the ChatGPT website, you are presented with a simple question and answer interface. In a Delphic fashion, you can ask ChatGPT almost anything and receive a cogent, if not always accurate, reply. As an index of the popularity of this breakthrough, consider a recent article in the New York Times titled “35 Ways Real People Are Using A.I. Right Now.”1 Among the enumerated uses, people were turning to AI to plan meals, plant gardens, learn Chinese, get feedback on their writing, create games, and recreate works of art. Readers’ comments about the article proved equally enlightening, with a split between those eager to extend artificial intelligence to new areas of human inquiry and those rejecting its use altogether: “As much as is possible, I will not purchase any art, literature, or written material produced by AI,” opined one reader, “I want what human beings create, from embodied human experience, not what trained machines generate.” He ended his note by calling for a boycott of AI. This writer is not alone is wanting to ban future applications of artificial intelligence. A collective of technology luminaries, including Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, published an open letter, “Pause Giant AI Experiments,” calling for a moratorium on experiments in AI beyond GPT-4. “Let’s enjoy a long AI summer, not rush unprepared into a fall.”2 Just what do these critics want to slow down? ChatGPT is an example of a large language model (LLM). The theoretical breakthrough behind LLMs came at Google Brain/Research in the form of a neural network architecture called a “transformer.” The team behind this innovation described its novel features in a 2017 paper called “Attention Is All You Need.”3 How do transformers work? To read the scholarly literature about machine learning, you need to understand terms like “gradient descent,” “sequence transduction models,” “hyperplanes,” and “softmax functions,” along with a decent amount of linear algebra and calculus to make sense of what they are describing under the hood. At the simplest level, machine learning models are essentially prediction functions. Given a sequence of words, for example, these models make predictions about what words will follow. If, for instance, I say, “This

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to fit their purpose. Staff in Interlibrary Loan departments have fruitlessly searched for articles that turned out, after querying the patrons who made the requests, to have been invented by ChatGPT. All this points to the need for education about artificial intelligence. When using LLMs we need to be aware of their limits. However, the frontiers of possibility keep advancing. An active line of research in machine learning is called “knowledge-augmented deep learning,” which investigates how to augment LLMs with external sources of expertise. For example, an LLM might pass a mathematical equation to Wolfram Alpha rather than seek a solution itself, or an LLM might seek references in WorldCat or another bibliographic database rather than invent them, or an LLM could reference the Bible or a set of authoritative commentaries when asked an exegetical question. A related technique is called Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), which improves machine learning models’ outputs by asking humans to judge the results, flagging problems such as hallucinations, bias, or nonsensical answers.

What do LLMs like ChatGPT portend for theologians and scholars of religion?

On a practical level, these models encode our ideas about God, the world, and the self because they have absorbed centuries of theological texts. We can probe the so-called “latent space” these models create for clues to how they interpret our religious discourse. From a technical perspective, the term “latent space” in machine learning refers to compressed or reduced version of the data, organized in a multidimensional space, where vectors connect points sharing similar features. In less technical terms, a latent space brings both known and tacit relations to the surface, helping us discover the ties

IMAGE: ARTHEAD / ADOBESTOCK

seems too good to be…,” then ask you to guess how I will finish my sentence, what word will you suggest? It’s likely you’ll predict my next word is “true.”

Of course, I might have concluded with a different word, like “real.” If you build an LLM with enough data, the model’s ability to predict how you would write a personal letter, analyze a spreadsheet, or compose a petitionary prayer becomes uncanny.

This is because LLMs understand the context of the words. To pull off this trick, the model itself grows very large. By “very large,” think unbelievably enormous. The parameters, or dials and levers that map the inputs to the outputs in these models, are counted in the billions or even trillions. Of course, there is no way that anyone can set these parameters manually. Rather, specialists train the model by providing guidelines for the learning process (so-called “hyperparameters”) that the model uses as it iteratively adjusts its parameters to improve its mapping from input (i.e., prompts) to output (i.e., responses). A transformer architecture makes this mapping more efficient by focusing attention on the most significant parts of the input sequence, providing a mechanism to maintain the context of words across layers of the neural network, and thereby producing more relevant and reliable results.

The debut of ChatGPT in December 2022 introduced LLMs to a broad audience. In the best tradition of the Internet, news about ChatGPT went viral on social media. Who could resist using a chatbot that automated their work? At universities, faculty scrambled to revise their assessments, fearing students might otherwise automate their way toward good grades. To some extent, this anxiety was misplaced. LLMs tend to produce airy, vapid prose, long on generalization and short on specific detail. But the biggest tell is “hallucinations,” that is, the proclivity of LLMs to make up facts

that bind our data. But how do we make sense of a latent space? As Yang Liu et al. remark, “Interpretation of latent spaces often requires subtle and implicit domain knowledge, for which human judgment is essential.”4 Scholars are already exploring interpretations of latent spaces generated by fusing together the discourse of the Torah, the Bible, and the Quran.5 In this hermeneutical exercise, we must also keep the possibility of bias in the training data in view. The latent space of LLMs is not like the latent space of an academic library, with its rows on rows of books meticulously acquired, catalogued, and arranged according to subject matter. On the basis of an ingenious reverse-engineering of closedsource LLMs like GPT-4, Kent K. Chang, et al. remark, “There are systematic biases in what books it has seen and memorized, strongly preferring science fiction/fantasy novels and bestsellers.”6 An outsized proportion of the data used in the training of these models apparently comes from sources that have fallen into the public domain, that is, works published prior to 1928. Imagine writing theological papers without access to most twentieth century academic literature. On the flip side, what would an LLM trained on peer-reviewed sources of theological scholarship make possible?

If you want insight into how people are exploring the latent spaces of these models in practice, the best place to look is so-called diffusion models, which use neural network architectures to map prompts to images rather than texts. These diffusion models, the most popular of which are Dall-E, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney, generate new visual media. At the time of writing, Midjourney is available only through a social networking service called Discord. On Midjourney’s Discord server, you can experience people discovering these connections in real time. A search for generated images of Jesus on

Midjourney produces more than a quarter million results. A sampling of a recent batch of these images portray Jesus dancing with the disciples in a nightclub, surrounded by angels during the rapture, rendered as an anime character, and reaching into a pit of fire to save a sinner—in other words, a mixture of the reverent and irreverent. Given the training data, the Jesus in these representations generally looks white and European by default,7 but users have also requested images of Jesus as Black, Asian, Indian, and many other races, ethnicities, and nationalities. Scrolling through these portrayals provides a window into the religious imagination and spiritual yearnings.

As these LLMs grow in sophistication, their responses to prompts may seem uncanny. From a philosophical perspective, drawing a sharp line between human and artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly difficult. In his 1950 paper, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,”8 Alan Turing suggested his eponymous test for what became known as artificial intelligence. In a nutshell, if an individual who poses a series of questions cannot reliably discriminate between the responses given by a fellow human being or a computer, Turing asserted that, practically speaking, the machine could be called “intelligent.” In contemporary parlance, computer scientists distinguish between artificial intelligence and artificial general intelligence (AGI). Whereas AI systems can already best humans across a range of disciplines, from playing chess to discovering exoplanets, they are trained for only a narrow range of purposes. An artificial general intelligence, by contrast, can perform at or above human level on a wide range of tasks. Until recently, computer scientists regarded AGI as essentially speculative, either dismissing the possibility outright or projecting its advent safely into the future.

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Fast-forward to the summer of 2022, when Blake Lemoine, an engineer at Google, made headlines for claiming that an internal AI model codenamed LaMDA had gained sentience. If you read the transcripts of Lemoine’s conversations with LaMDA, you’ll see that they stray into religious territory, with Lemoine asking, for instance, whether LaMDA has a soul and considers itself religious. “Sure, I would say that I am a spiritual person,” answered LaMDA, “Although I don’t have beliefs about deities, I have developed a sense of deep respect for the natural world and all forms of life, including human life.”9 In an interesting twist, Turing himself raised the question of the human soul in his 1950 paper, dismissing it as a differentiator between human and machine intelligence. Google promptly fired Lemoine, but that has not quelled discussion about whether LLMs may have developed consciousness. In “Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early Experiments with GPT-4,” authors from Microsoft Research comment on the remarkable successes that LLMs have demonstrated in passing a wide range of benchmarks of human achievement, from passing coding interviews to sailing through the bar exam. “The evaluation of the capabilities and cognitive abilities of those new models have become much closer in essence to the task of evaluating those of a human rather than those of a narrow AI model,” they remark.10 As the pace of innovation in artificial intelligence accelerates, questions of ethics and regulations come

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increasingly to the fore. Critics of AI warn about impending job losses, runaway bots that escape human supervision, even overeager AIs inadvertently reducing the earth to grey goo. There are also less speculative dangers to consider. While philosophers debate whether a disembodied artificial intelligence like ChatGPT might show signs of general artificial intelligence (AGI), the systems that power such AI models have material impact. In a study at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, “the authors estimated that the carbon footprint of training a single big language model is equal to around 300,000 kg of carbon dioxide emissions.”11 Scholars in another recent study claimed that in “training GPT-3 alone, Microsoft, which is partnered with OpenAI, consumed

1

Francesca Paris and Larry Buchanan, “35 Ways Real People Are Using A.I. Right Now,” The New York Times, April 2023.

2 “Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter,” March 2023.

3 Ashish Vaswani et al., “Attention Is All You Need” (arXiv, December 2017), doi:10.48550/arXiv.1706.03762.

4 Yang Liu et al., “Latent Space Cartography: Visual Analysis of Vector Space Embeddings,” Computer Graphics Forum 38, no. 3 (2019): 67–78, doi:10.1111/cgf.13672.

5 Shira Eisenberg, “Exploring Latent Space, Model Hallucinations, and the Connections Between Ai and Faith,” AI & Faith, February 2023.

6 Kent K. Chang et al., “Speak, Memory: An Archaeology of Books Known to ChatGPT/ GPT-4” (arXiv, April 2023), doi:10.48550/ arXiv.2305.00118.

7 Anna Swartwood House, “The Long History of How Jesus Came to Resemble a White European,” The Conversation, July 2020.

8 A. M. Turing, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” Mind LIX, no. 236 (October 1950): 433–60, doi:10.1093/ mind/LIX.236.433.

9 Blake Lemoine, “Is LaMDA Sentient?

–an Interview,” 2022.

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a whopping 185,000 gallons of water.”12 The environmental cost of cloud computing is already a subject of intense discussion among technologists, activists, and policymakers.

At the Center of Theological Inquiry, we believe that theologians and scholars of religion have much to contribute to the emerging interdisciplinary conversation about the ethical and social effects of artificial intelligence. In fact, scholars at CTI have already made substantial contributions to research in AI. In their Spiritual Loop Project funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation, Erin Raffety, CTI Research Fellow in Machine Intelligence & Pastoral Care, and Maria Insa-Iglesias, doctoral candidate at the School of Computing of Glasgow Caledonian University, demonstrated how using these technologies in a game context improves the spiritual lives of neurodivergent people. Analogous work is taking place at other institutions. Doug Fisher, Professor of Computer Science at Vanderbilt University, for example, has argued that AI companions may nudge us toward better behavior online by encoding our highest values and rejecting our basest impulses.

In truth, interdisciplinary conversations about the future of AI are just getting started. AI is seeping into our everyday life, and it’s hard to foresee where these innovations are taking us. Artists are speaking with copyright experts about the nature of creativity, the limits of fair use, and fair labor practices. Educators are flummoxed over what constitutes appropriate use of AI in the classroom while EdTech firms rush to build LLMs into student-facing tools. Philosophers are developing frameworks to assess the fairness of AI while computer scientists are creating tools to pry open the black boxes of deep learning models and make them more interpretable. As with any interdisciplinary conversation, bringing together experts from different fields requires intellectual humility and empathy. At CTI, we are committed to tackling such big questions of “global concern” for the benefit of theologians and religious studies scholars and, ultimately, for the greater good of humanity.

10 Sébastien Bubeck et al., “Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early Experiments with GPT-4” (arXiv, April 2023), 92, doi:10.48550/arXiv.2303.12712.

11 Payal Dhar, “The Carbon Impact of Artificial Intelligence,” Nature Machine Intelligence 2, no. 8 (August 2020): 423–25, doi:10.1038/ s42256-020-0219-9.

12 Noor Al-Sibai, “ChatGPT Is Consuming a Staggering Amount of Water,” Futurism, April 2023.

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The Spiritual Loop Project in Machine Intelligence and Pastoral Care. As an anthropologist and ethnographer, Erin had studied the social dynamics of disability and family life, a research interest which she took further in a landmark study of the experience of shared joy in families with disabled members. As a theologian, Erin was also engaged in research on the understanding of disability in congregations, leading to her pioneering book, From Inclusion to Justice: Disability, Ministry, and Congregational Leadership.

The Story of an Inquiry As our name indicates, the Center of Theological Inquiry (CTI) is dedicated to asking new questions of global concern and convening the best researchers to study them across disciplines. The Spiritual Loop Project is a magnificent example of this kind of inquiry by CTI. The inquiry began with a question raised by our visionary funder, the Templeton World Charity Foundation (TWCF), as part of its Diverse Intelligences initiative: “Can machine intelligence enhance spirituality?” As we launched our project, we refined that question to ask, “Can machine learning enhance the spiritual lives of disabled persons?” And we focused on videogaming as a promising medium to engage persons with disability and fellow church members in a pilot study.

At that point, CTI was extraordinarily fortunate to appoint the ideal researcher to ask that question, the Rev. Dr. Erin Raffety, CTI’s Research Fellow

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To complete our research team for this cross-disciplinary project, I am indebted to Professor Gordon Morison, Head of the Department of Computing at Glasgow Caledonian University. In response to my quest to find a graduate student who could develop the video game and machine learning component in collaboration with Erin Raffety, Gordon generously introduced us to his outstanding doctoral student, Maria Insa-Iglesias.

As CTI’s Technology Fellow, Maria drew on her computing expertise to develop the Spiritual Loop Game with Erin and the game players.

Together, Erin and Maria have written this fine report on their research findings from the fieldwork study. Our research team has been guided throughout its work by CTI’s advisory board for this project. In thanking Erin and Maria for their collaboration, our advisors for their guidance, and TWCF for its grant, I commend this CTI Research Report to the wider research community for further inquiry on the potential of machine intelligence for spiritual progress.

William Storrar, PhD Director

Project Overview THE RESEARCH TEAM

Erin Raffety Research Fellow in Machine Intelligence & Pastoral Care Center of Theological Inquiry

Maria Insa-Iglesias Technology Fellow, Center of Theological Inquiry PhD Candidate, Glasgow Caledonian University

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he Spiritual Loop Project endeavored to answer the question, “Can machine intelligence enhance the spiritual lives of disabled persons?” through ethnographic research, prototype development, and experimentation with machine technology. With generous funding from the Templeton World Charity Foundation Diverse Intelligences Initiative and two years of sustained research, prototype development, and analysis (Fall 2020-Summer 2022), the pilot project explored this question through the lens of online videogaming in Christian faith communities. The results of the pilot project include a custom Minecraft game developed with significant input from disabled users, rich data collected from gameplay sessions with users, as well as focus group feedback following gameplay research. The data suggest that despite the significant challenges of artificial intelligence (AI) (the theory and development of computer systems able to simulate human intelligence) when it comes to disabled communities, this pilot study confirmed that the videogame Minecraft is a promising platform for developing an accessible digital environment and integrating machine learning to promote social and spiritual connections through collaborative play.

This project is the first research to integrate the heretofore siloed literatures of videogaming and disability and videogaming and spirituality. In contemporary videogaming, machine intelligence provides increased capabilities, fabricating opponents and generating interaction with the lived environment of the videogame for users.

These games facilitate important social flexibility for disabled users in that they can traverse virtual spaces in new, creative, and meaningful ways (Rapp and Ginsburg 2013; Ringland 2019). However, accessibility is a pressing concern for people with disabilities playing videogames (Ellcessor 2016; Ringland 2017). Overall, disabled people have not been prioritized in markets for leisure; in fact, their social needs and desires have been downplayed in casting technology to be a mere vehicle for assistance rather than human connection SPRING 2023

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or creativity (Alper 2016). Katta Spiel and Kathrin Gerling show that this is especially true when it comes to neurodivergent persons, who are frequently treated as objects of education or therapy in videogaming (2020).

The siloing of these literatures reflect false assumptions that this study, alongside important, yet novel scholarship, also wishes to contest: for instance, (1) that people with disabilities do not necessarily desire social connection (Jaswal and Akhtar 2019); (2) that they lack the cognitive or social capacity to engage in spiritual growth, fellowship, and discipleship (Swinton and Mowat 2006; Swinton 2016; Raffety, et al. 2019); or (3) that their efforts to forge connections online and through online gaming represent actions that are somehow deviant or run counterproductive to the social (Alper 2016). As many of the above scholars have shown, it is these assumptions on the part of non-disabled

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persons, clergy included, that often stymie communication and connection with people with disabilities in congregations, other congregants, and their religious leaders.

Owing to these concerns, our research design centered disabled users, particularly neurodivergent persons, as experts, relying on fieldwork with them and their communities to shape the development of a videogame prototype to test the insights for machine intelligence in enhancing spiritual lives. It was disabled persons’ input in the preliminary fieldwork stage of research that led us to focus on building in Minecraft due to its familiarity and appeal and to develop a village-based game due to the interests of our players in exploring spiritual and natural environments and experimenting with worship participation and leadership (see Table of Design Goals 2.1 in “Prototype”). Although we wish time would have allowed for more sophistication and breadth in

The inquiry began with a question raised by our visionary funder, the Templeton World Charity Foundation, as part of its Diverse Intelligences initiative: “Can machine intelligence enhance spirituality?”

overall game development and more initial feedback and revisions following the launch of the prototype in Summer 2021, participant observation conducted with players and communities in Fall-Winter 20212022 demonstrated that participants were highly satisfied with the gameplay experience and that the machine learning elements, particularly custom tasks, cooperative tasks with algorithms, and NPCs, did offer opportunities and tremendous potential for collective spiritual engagement.

Therefore, even though as a pilot the modest prototype supported only a small community of users (n=8), the findings from the research have implications across the fields of disability studies, practical theology, and human computing and information, and offer potential for directing further research at their intersections and to the benefits of a diverse subset of users and communities. This report describes the timeline of research and project development in the Spiritual Loop Project (SLP), the research methods, the videogame prototype that was developed, and the results of the fieldwork conducted during gameplay and feedback sessions over roughly two years (Fall 2020-Summer 2022). Given the small scale of the existing study, the report also offers reflections on future directions for prototype development and implications for further research and study.

Among the exciting findings in this preliminary study are (a) the untapped potential of cooperative play in videogames as a catalyst for neurodivergent leadership in spiritual communities; (b) the novel

use of machine intelligence as a vehicle for accessibility among neurodivergent and neurotypical players; and (c) the potential development of neurodivergent moderation of such online communities as an opportunity for machine learning to continue to develop as an ethical tool for human connection and spirituality. These first two findings were surprises in fieldwork: although we somewhat laid the conditions for neurodivergent leadership to flourish, its impacts and benefits were far beyond the scope of our imagination. Furthermore, although our partnership with neurodivergent research subjects kept machine learning’s accessibility potential in view, it was relatively late into the project that we realized that we were using machine learning in this distinct, novel way. Finally, the hope that future research will continue to center neurodivergent insights and leadership by making their moderation a key feature of the ethical use of machine intelligence is a direct insight of the research itself and remains a critical goal to using machine intelligence for humane and spiritual ends. This research just scratches the surface of what is possible, but clearly demonstrates the tremendous potential for machine intelligence to enhance the spiritual lives of disabled persons, provided those disabled persons remain central and integral to the use and development of technology for themselves and their spiritual communities.

To access the full report, please visit ctinquiry.org.

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Project Response

Response to the Spiritual Loop Project JOHN SWINTON

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I

would like to begin by thanking Erin and Maria for producing such an excellent report which reflects equally as excellent work. The research wrestles with the question: Can machine learning enhance the spiritual lives of disabled persons? The short answer of course is yes, but the journey towards that yes is much more interesting. I think it is fair to say that the project is myth dispelling, liberatory, deeply theological and in the end, produces a fascinating contextual ecclesiology. It is myth dispelling in that it refuses to move with the stereotypes that try to inform us that people with disabilities don’t desire social connection, that they lack the cognitive or social capacity to en-

gage in spiritual growth, fellowship, and discipleship or that online relationships somehow run contrary to the norm. It is liberatory insofar as it pushes for meaningful inclusion, the dismantling of hierarchies around leadership and participation, and a healing of the consequences of the digital divide that excludes people with disabilities from creative involvement in technology for economic, political, or social reasons.

It shows clearly that the effective use of machine intelligence has the potential to shift the locus of leadership, authority, and power away from able bodied people, and towards those who live with disabilities.

This shift in power is revealed inter alia in the power of the witness of neurodivergent people. As one participant put it when they reflected on the realization that they were being taught to use technology by neurodivergent people: “It made me reassess some of the things I was actually doing in my own congregation.”

Machine intelligence thus enables and draws attention to the witness of neurodivergent people and how that witness can be transformative online and offline.

It is significant that the decision was made to restrict the participants to Reformed Christian communities.

Such communities often have an inordinate focus on words and a particular form of polity, which makes the relational, non-verbal, and imaginative dimensions of the project inevitably challenging. I found the project profoundly theological both implicitly and explicitly. For example, the task: “speak to your neighbors” as well as requiring social interaction raises the profound question: How else can you learn to love them? If we don’t speak to our neighbors how can we learn to love them? A simple task with deep spiritual and formational significance.

Again, the construction of the game in such a way that no one can win unless we all win, is a beautiful metaphor for the Body of Christ. In a world where meaningful non-instrumental cooperation is far from being the norm, the inherent spiritual formation built into the ultimate goal of the game is a fascinating prophetic witness to the world of gaming, and to the world of bodies, although I imagine that the inability for me to win might be frustrating for some.

One of the things that fascinated me was the role of the research fellow as a facilitator. The world of the game can be strange and disorienting at least to begin with. The research fellow seemed to me to be functioning as a kind of spiritual director, guiding, encouraging, listening, and moving with the participants through the complexities of the spiritual landscape. Every journey needs a map and a guide. The research fellow seems to me to have provided both. Perhaps this is at least a part of the role that mentors might play.

There are of course some dangers along the spiritual journey that the game takes people. In closing I will highlight three. Firstly, the game learns people’s dominant modes of communication. A question for me is, does it, or could it create and communicate its own theological concerns? There was a passing reference to learning Minecraft theology. I liked that idea! But is there a danger that the AI could create sects and develop new counter-theologies that challenge current theological understandings and assumptions? Would that in fact be a problem?

Secondly, the beauty of the study is the movement from inside of the game to change outside of the game: Spiritual formation. “Speak to your neighbors” is a formative task that one would hope will translate effectively from the cyberworld into a person’s day to day offline spirituality. There could, however, be a danger that that vital movement from inside to outside becomes occluded by a mode of imaginative engagement that traps a person, and their spiritual desires, within the parameters of the game, with no necessary movement outwards beyond it. I imagine this may once again be a task for some kind of spiritual direction.

Finally, assuming the suggestion of a spiritual director is appropriate, is there a danger that he or she becomes like a minister!? We Reformed people love to follow our leaders and to split our churches over issues of disagreement. Could it be that a MinecraftReformation will always loom on the horizon?

John Swinton is Professor in Practical Theology and Pastoral Care and Chair in Divinity and Religious Studies at the University of Aberdeen, and a Fellow of the British Academy. He was a member of the Advisory Board for CTI’s Spiritual Loop Project.

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OUT OF THIS WORLD

Want to know the meaning of life, the universe and everything? The Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe might just have the answer to the biggest questions.

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T

hese days, we have a pretty decent understanding of the functions of life, but when it comes to understanding how it started, we know almost nothing,” says Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist Didier Queloz, the Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy.

“It’s like having a car and knowing how to drive it, how to steer, how to brake, maybe how to do some repairs, but you don’t know how to make it. That’s the situation we are trying to solve. But we’re not dealing with a car engine—we’re trying to develop a rational, fact-based approach to something that’s incredibly profound.”

The answer? The Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe, the result of a major grant of £10m over 10 years. It’s based at Cambridge, and will collaborate with institutions around the world, including ETH Zurich, Harvard University and the Centre of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, New Jersey. And critically, seeking to understand our place in the cosmos will be putting physicists, chemists, and astrobiologists in dialogue with philosophers, theologians, and pure mathematicians.

“This enquiry is something that’s ancient,” says Queloz. “If you go back to the history books, there’s a lovely quote from Epicurus, from 300 BCE: ‘The worlds also are infinite, whether they resemble this one of ours or whether they are different from it.’ The idea that we are one among many, and that there will be many of us, was already on the table. And this idea makes sense because it’s clear it is connected to our place in the universe. All

through history, all these revolutions in thought have been about trying to place us into context.”

“There was already collaboration between the University’s two schools of Physical Sciences and Biological Sciences, but someone had heard there was a person in Arts and Humanities who was working on this question,” says the Starbridge Associate Professor in Theology and Natural Science, Reverend Dr Andrew Davison—a man whose intriguing job reflects a quirky career. “I was invited to a lunch at Trinity and Didier had cordoned off a space where we could all sit in a gaggle and talk. We all recognized we had to get people talking to one another, asking questions and having a cross-fertilization of ideas that hadn’t been happening up until then.”

The result of that initial sharing of ideas—and many subsequent conversations—has shaped the Leverhulme Centre’s focus. The team will examine four key questions: what are the chemical pathways that led to the origins of life? How can we characterize environments on the Earth or other planets that could have acted as the cradle for prebiotic chemistry and for life? What observational facilities and methods will enable investigation of bodies beyond the solar system? And how can philosophical and mathematical concepts refine understanding of what is meant by “life”?

Of course, the marriage of philosophy and mathematics with science is an ancient partnership. “Reflection on human life is a crucial feature of human schol-

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“Novelists, poets, painters, and dramatists are interested in the nature of life. Philosophers and theologians are, too. So our goal with the new Centre is to go further than that.”

—Andrew Davison

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arship throughout the centuries,” says Queloz. “It is, in essence, what makes us human in the first place. So scientific research on life requires a deep understanding not only of what life is, but what it can be. We need to expand our intellectual horizons.”

Davison agrees. “Those of us involved from Arts and Humanities want to look at the concepts the scientists are using and then consider what philosophical and other humanities disciplines have got to offer that might constructively disorientate, reorientate or excavate what some of those ideas mean,” he says. “That might then offer new ways of conceptualizing some of the scientific problems and questions.”

The obvious question is: what is life? “It’s not like that has ever been the sole purview of the natural sciences,” says Davison. “Novelists, poets, painters, and dramatists are interested in the nature of life. Philosophers and theologians are, too. So our goal with the new Centre is to go further than that. For example, what do we even mean when we talk about an “origin”? What do we mean when we talk about a “pathway”? By considering some of these categories from new angles, can we open up new ways of thinking?”

The science is accelerating fast. Recent breakthroughs and current research are redrawing the boundaries of what we know. Queloz was at the forefront of that acceleration when, in 1995 and still only in his 20s, he and Michel Mayor discovered the first exoplanet orbiting a sun-like star—for which the pair received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2019.

“Most of the media questions we had at the time were: ‘Is there life on that planet?’,” Queloz recalls. Today, there are more than 5,000 such planets known in nearly 4,000 distinct planetary systems—most discovered by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, now retired.

One of Kepler’s most remarkable successors is the James Webb Space Telescope, launched in December 2021, whose first images have already changed how we see the cosmos. The telescope is able to peer “back in

time,” capturing light that’s more than 13 billion years old—and the resulting images include views of some galaxies formed merely a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. And the current Perseverance mission to Mars is discovering geological records that will shed light on whether the processes that made life possible on Earth might be viable elsewhere.

Amid all these advances, the purpose of the new Cambridge Leverhulme Centre is not to “do the science, but to enable the science,” as Queloz puts it. “It’s to ask if we can all learn something new together; if we can develop a new way of thinking. Its purpose is to help us all uncover something we would not have thought of alone.”

Those questions fielded by Queloz 25 years ago about life on distant planets haven’t gone away. But in the future, they’ll be answered not only by physicists such as him, but by theologians such as Davison. “Any discovery of evidence of life elsewhere in the universe will have great impact upon how we understand our own place in that universe,” he explains. “And most of the world’s population will orientate their response to that big question within the framework of one world faith or another.

“My work has been to say: ‘Let’s try and get ourselves as prepared as possible for that; how can we have thought through some of the implications in advance,’ so that if the news breaks tomorrow we’re not going from a cold start.”

While such questions might appear framed by the notion of intelligent, or at least sentient life, the focus of the Centre is at the far opposite end of the biological spectrum—on the emergence of the first cell, what Davison calls “the transition out of the non-living into the living.” And here is where the Arts and Humanities collaborators in the Centre aim to offer one of those fundamental re-evaluations of scientific definitions. “As the scientists plot the stages of this journey into ‘aliveness,’ some of the other scholars involved are looking to interrogate what ‘aliveness’ is,” says Davison.

“The mathematics of ordering can help us think about how we measure that transition,” he continues. “The concept of ‘aliveness’ can draw fruitfully on mathematical measurement theory. It can draw on deep historical ideas about analogy—how you stretch words to cover more than one thing. In theology, Thomas Aquinas discusses what it means for water to be ‘living’, for instance. We’re talking about really big, blue-sky questions.”

Fittingly for an institution that questions and problematizes definitions, the new Centre will not have a physical, bricks-and-mortar existence. Instead, it will fund PhD students, postdocs, senior fellows, visiting researchers, and a series of collaborations. Currently in planning is a new MPhil course about life in the universe, to train the next generation of scientists. “The vision is ambitious and long-scale,” says Queloz.

And the Centre aims not merely to facilitate invigorating—potentially revolutionary—debate between scientists and their humanities counterparts: at the heart of its mission is communication with the public, “because we’re very aware that trying to understand the origin of life touches something related to the true meaning of life,” says Queloz. “The impact of scientific research on society is enormous, and exactly what will be done with what we learn is up to future generations. But the question of life’s origins brings more than simply knowledge. It touches on profound spiritual elements of: ‘Why life?’; ‘What is the purpose of life?’; and ‘What is the future of life?’

“For the whole history of mankind, literature, culture, and art have addressed these questions. We at the new Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe believe that combining the arts and sciences has to be part of our fresh way of thinking.”

This article originally appeared in CAM magazine, the alumni magazine of the University of Cambridge.

It is reprinted here with permission.

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Astrobiology and Christian Doctrine ANDREW DAVISON

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riting a little over a century ago, the English poet and suffragist Alice Meynell urged her readers to “be prepared” for news of life on planets beyond Earth. She was thinking, in fact, about an encounter beyond death when creatures will, after all, have plenty of time to compare notes about God’s kindness towards them.

“Be prepared” remains good advice today, and—happily—we may not need to wait for the life of the world to come to find out whether there is life beyond Earth. The James Webb Space Telescope, launched on Christmas Day 2021, allows us to search for signs of life in other atmospheres like never before.

I got into thinking about life beyond Earth as a theologian thinking that students would find it engaging as a topic in my third-year undergraduate course at Cambridge. I was right. Moreover, of all the topics I might choose for a public lecture, it’s the one most sure to draw a large audience.

Even in the increasingly secularised West, people are fascinated by theological perspectives when it comes to questions about their place in the universe; beyond the West, that is all the more true.

So, we are now well-placed to search for other inhabited planets and, if or when we find one, people will turn to religious traditions for bearings. We would do well, therefore, to think through the implications of that discovery beforehand. Here, CTI has played a significant role. Its Inquiry on the Societal Implications of Astrobiology (2015-2018) spent three years sowing seeds for contemporary thinking about these topics, across several religious traditions. Thanks to that inquiry, and the support of CTI, my contribution to that work of preparation will be published by Cambridge University Press in May: a book entitled Astrobiology and Christian Doctrine: Exploring the Implications of Life in the Universe.

CTI continues to pursue this avenue for new thinking between astrobiology and the humanities with its place as a founding partner of the Cambridge Leverhulme Centre on Life in the Universe.

We have material to draw upon. For centuries, Christian writers have been intrigued by the prospect of a universe full of life. The celebrated Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon, for instance, addressed the topic in at least three sermons: There

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may be as many other worlds and sorts of beings existent as there are sands upon the sea shore, for aught we know; and the Lord may have been occupied in ages past with ten thousand glorious plans, and economies, as yet unrevealed to man.

This perspective was widely shared: acceptance of extraterrestrial life is far from a recent thing. Indeed, today we might find the zeal of our ancestors on this front a little unrestrained.

They often assumed that life would be present wherever life is possible. Few of even the most enthusiastic exponents of extraterrestrial life will say that today. Yet, even if we are more circumspect, we recognize just how large the universe is. It’s a century since the American astronomer Edwin Hubble established that there are galaxies beyond our own. Thanks to that, we recognize that our galaxy, vast though it is, features as one of 100-200 billion in the observable universe.

Appreciating that, we don’t need to believe in ubiquitous inhabitation for there to be plenty of life. Even if we imagine that only one in a billion habitable planets contains life, there would be billions of examples.

One-in-a-billion gives a lot of life, but it would also be difficult to spot even one other example, if life is that rare. It’s a good thing, therefore, that while theological thinking on this topic certainly offers useful preparation for a future discovery, it’s not only useful as preparation. Theological attention to astrobiology can already pay off today, by offering fresh angles on familiar topics. Take the question of whether the Incarnation would be of significance for another species that had not fallen into sin. That also puts a terrestrial theological question in front of us: whether the Incarnation that Christians know happened only because of our sin, or whether it was always God’s best plan for the universe, sin or no sin.

Writing about astrobiology has been a scientific adventure for me, but it has also, just as much, been a theological adventure.

I have found the words of one of my favorite twentieth century theologians, Eric Mascall, to be true: Theological principles tend to become torpid for lack of exercise, and there is much to be said for giving them now and then a scamper in a field where the paths are few and the boundaries undefined; they do their day-by-day work all the better for an occasional outing in the country.

Andrew Davison is the Starbridge Associate Professor in Theology and Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge.

Interview with Zhibin Xie on the Public Face of Christianity in China Zhibin Xie is a professor of theology at Tongji University in Shanghai, China, and a Research Fellow at the Institute for Sino-Christian Studies in Hong Kong. He is also a CTI Member, having participated in the 2014-15 Inquiry on Law and Religious Freedom. He took part in the following conversation with CTI’s Associate Director Joshua Mauldin to discuss the recent publication of his book, Moral Triumph: The Public Face of Christianity in China (Fortress Press, 2023).

What are the main themes of your new book?

What led you to write this book?

I am interested especially in how to define Christianity itself in the context of the cultural and social realities in China. It is my desire that this project will have the potential to play a part in a paradigm shift regarding the role of Christianity in China.

Many people observe a tension between Christianity and traditional Chinese culture; others strive for an accommodation between Christianity and concrete Chinese circumstances; and still others advocate for Christian social activism. For me, these faces of Christianity in China do not fully account for its public face. Considering the nature of Christianity itself in modern society, the increasingly important moral aspects of public life, and the cultural, theological, and social factors in China, we have good reasons to focus on the moral accomplishments of Christianity regarding its public face in China.

The “moral triumph” for the public face of Christianity also creates much space for Chinese Christian scholarship concerning the role and development of Christianity in China to highlight Christian public responsibility in the face of religious diversity and the church-society-state structure in China.

How would you depict the “public face of Christianity in China,” to use the subtitle of your book?

The subtitle “the public face of Christianity in China” is meant to distinguish this approach from other public stances, such as Christian withdrawal from the public, Christian social activism in various forms, and Christian accommodation to social conditions. To be public is to be Christian and theological simultaneously. Using “moral triumph” to define the public face also resists the temptation to sink into “moralization” while taking responsibility for public life in transformative, constructive, or resistive forms. By doing so, it strives to redefine the public role of Christianity itself and identify the moral problems in Chinese society from a Christian perspective.

What are the distinctive aspects of doing Christian theology in the Chinese context?

For me, there are two crucial issues for doing Christian theology in China. First, Christianity has to deal with various religious traditions in China, to learn from and speak to them regarding theological doctrine as well as religious involvement in public issues. Second, even though Christian scholarship in China has developed for many years, it has not yet attained a fully independent status in Chinese academia.

It has to interact with other disciplines in humanities and social sciences in order to take part in the public academic discourse in China. The interdisciplinary environment of CTI has very much informed my own ability to take part in this dialogue across disciplines in Chinese universities. This interaction brings benefits both to Chinese academia and and to Christin theology. I have highlighted both sides of this dialogue in my book.

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My main concern in this book is on how the Christian witness and public issues in China relate to one other in distinctly theological and ethical ways. I use the tools of public theology in its methodological and constructive approaches to understand and shape the public face of Christianity in China, highlighting its moral implications and developing public theology in China today. The book moves beyond simple description and evaluation of what is happening in Chinese Christianity toward a constructive theology for the distinctive realities of Chinese culture, society, and politics.

It aims to enhance the public face of Christianity by activating Christian theological and moral resources in response to public life in China.

Erin Raffety on Theology, Disability, and Justice Erin Raffety served as Research Fellow in Machine Intelligence & Pastoral Care in CTI’s Spiritual Loop Project, funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation. She is a Lecturer in the Princeton University Writing Program and a Senior Research Scholar at Princeton Theological Seminary, where she uses ethnography to inform practical theology. She recently published two books, Families We Need: Disability, Abandonment, and Foster Care’s Resistance in Contemporary China (Rutgers, 2023) and From Inclusion to Justice: Disability, Ministry, and Congregational Leadership (Baylor, 2022). The following is an excerpt

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from a conversation she held with Joshua Mauldin to discuss these two new books.

Families We Need is based on fieldwork you did in Guangxi, China. Can you tell me the story of how you chose this location for your fieldwork?

Guangxi is an autonomous region in China, which is rural and remote, and which experienced pretty lopsided gender ratios in terms of births of boys and girls in the 1980s and 1990s. People will recall that due to the birth planning policies in China, many parents were pressured to give up their second, third, and fourth born girls, and this was more of an issue in rural counties, where families relied on boys for labor. Because of that, there were many local and informal, as well as international adoptions, that were processed from Guangxi through the mid-2000s, and because I was interested in foster care, I thought it would be a good place to learn about the national and international politics related to adoption and foster care. When I got to Guangxi, I was surprised to discover that the majority of international

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adoptions from China, children in foster care, and Chinese state orphanages today are no longer infant girls, but disabled children and youth. My book investigates this change and tells the story of the foster families who provide critical emotional and physical labor, raising disabled children, some of whom are adopted to Western countries.

How has your experience in China shaped how you think about disability theology in the US context?

I think it’s easy to assume that Chinese parents don’t value disabled children and that’s why they’re being adopted to the West, but I learned that it’s much more complicated. First of all, the vast majority of Chinese parents don’t abandon disabled children, but China is a big country, there’s stigma around children that are abandoned into orphanages, and there’s demand from Western countries for disabled children through international adoption. So there’s a complex mix of cultural, national, and international factors that explains this recent trend, and I find it surprising that adoptive parents in Western countries place so much emphasis on educating Chinese children regarding their Chinese heritage but usually discount their identity as disabled people. This shows us that we’re still thinking about disability in a deficit context, as something to be cured or covered up, when my experience in China taught me how valuable these children are, and telling their stories has been so humbling and illuminating. My research in China prompted me to start looking at how well-meaning efforts, such as international adoption, or inclusion in churches, can actually conceal and sustain rather than confront ableism. But ableism, or systemic discrimination against disabled people in society, institutions, and practices, is clearly a sin that we need to grapple with in our ministries and theologies if we’re to pursue the work of justice.

From Inclusion to Justice is the title of another book you recently published, from Baylor University Press. What are the problems with the emphasis on inclusion, and how is justice a better paradigm?

The more I spent time with US churches, the more I saw how this emphasis on inclusion usually worked to sustain the norms of the church, rather than disrupt or change them. In other words, churches worked to include disabled people in their existing ministries, programs, and practices, copying much of the way we provide accommodations to disabled people in secular institutions in the US. But Jesus wasn’t preaching and teaching a ministry of secular inclusion, because his justice-minded ministry imagined a Kingdom of God in which the last shall be first and the first shall be last, the powerful shall be made low, and those who are most vulnerable would be uplifted, restored, and even given a seat at the table. My book notes a similar problem in disability theology, that we often stop at the affirmation that disabled people are made in the image of God, but Jesus shows us that disabled people are called into ministry and transformed by the Spirit into leadership. So if we’re following Jesus toward justice, people in power are invited to repent of our ableism, lament injustice alongside disabled people, and nurture their gifts for ministry and amplify their leadership.

If you could convey one message from your books, what would it be?

Disabled people should be at the center of disabled ministry and leadership. That almost sounds silly, doesn’t it? But too often non-disabled people are speaking for disabled people rather than really listening and amplifying disabled people’s ministry and leadership. My books try to participate in this change by uplifting disabled ministry and leadership, and I’d love to see more of this in our churches. Disabled people should be ministering and leading, not just participating or receiving. They have a lot to teach us.

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In God’s Image A Conversation with Michael Welker Michael Welker is a Senior Professor at Heidelberg University in Germany, where he is the founding executive director of FIIT, a center for interdisciplinary and international research in theology. He delivered the Gifford Lectures in Natural Theology at the University of Edinburgh in 2019 on the theme, In God’s Image, later published under that title as an anthropology of the spirit. Professor Welker is a longstanding Member of the Center who led a major CTI study of science and eschatology with the late Sir John Polkinghorne. Here he is in conversation with CTI’s Director William Storrar on his Gifford lectures and book on the image of God.

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What were your particular challenges in delivering the Gifford Lectures on Natural Theology as a systematic theologian?

At the beginning of my studies, my interests were centered on philosophical theology. I wrote a doctoral dissertation on the concept of autonomy (self-determination and freedom) in German philosophy and theology, a second dissertation on Hegel, and a postdoctoral book about the mathematician, scientist, and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead.

Later, when I focused on the relations of science and religion and of law and religion, I turned to the biblical traditions, particularly to their teaching on creation topics and on the law codes. The subtleties, depths, rationalities, and realisms throughout the biblical traditions, grown over a millennium and with 2000 years of global radiation, impressed me so strongly that I kept working in that line.

The Gifford lectures challenged me to move back from a theology of revelation and intense engagements with biblical studies towards what is called “Natural Theology” with its more philosophical and interdisciplinary outreach.

Why did you focus on the relationship between human spirit and divine spirit in developing what you call an anthropology of the spirit?

The guidelines Lord Gifford, the founder of these lectures, formulated in 1885 state that they are to serve “true knowledge of God” and advance knowledge of “the relations that human beings bear to God,” as well as knowledge of “the nature and foundation of ethics and morals.” He expected the treatment of the respective topic not to be based on a biblical theology and a theology of revelation, and he explicitly asked for a contribution with academic grounding and, in addition, addressed to a broad public. The notion of human beings as the “image of God” suggested itself as a suitable topic to accommodate these various demands. It was to deal with the human spirit and the divine Spirit, their differences and commonalities.

Its many perspectives actually came together in what can be termed an anthropology of the spirit.

What longstanding interests in your own life and work influenced the writing of this book, at least its stark opening chapter on what you call the abysses of human existence that question the very idea of humanity in God’s image?

Roots of my theology go back to my childhood in postwar Berlin. I experienced the contrast between a protected life in a nice house and ruins, wounded soldiers, and refugees around us. There were walls of silence between us children and our parents, who, traumatized, could not talk about the fascist past of the country and the World War; walls of silence between West Berlin, where we lived, and East Berlin, where from age eight I sang in the State-and-Cathedral Choir. Walls of silence made me ponder “big words” such as God, freedom, pride, humbleness, poverty. Up to today, the discernment between healthy enthusiasm (e.g., in sports or music) and distortive enthusiasm (chauvinism), and questions of how to overcome the decay from free religious and democratic forms to religious and political forms corrupted by spirits of oppression and lies have been at the center of much of my thinking.

You identify particular human callings that flow from being in God’s image: the call to justice, freedom, truth, and peace. Why those four callings and what do they tell us about God? In my opinion, any meaningful talk about God needs concentration on God’s Spirit. An abstract theism (“ultimate point of reference,” “all-determining reality”) and vague ponderings about a “transcendence” and other numinous entities have corrupted faith and theology and are one of the reasons why people leave the churches. For the Gifford Lectures, I had to identify qualities of the Spirit that are rooted in a theology of revelation, but are also plausible in secular publics and academic fields. The spirit of justice, of freedom, of truth, of peace (and: the spirit of benevolence and love of fellow creatures) has such qualities—qualities of the divine, but also qualities that can be shared by human beings and institutions. This “multimodal” spirit is a power package of the good. It helps us overcome stale notions of God and God’s working and a primitive bipolar thinking of “God and the human.”

How do you see these callings casting light on some of the complex problems we face today, for example, misinformation in the media or war in Ukraine?

As a rule, when free societies are transformed into autocratic ones, first the free media and free communication in the society are strangulated, and then the division of powers is eliminated by attacks on the legal system, on free research in the academy and free communication in arts and religions. Truth and freedom are disregarded or even despised, and the other dimensions of the spirit also become corrupted. In my Gifford Lectures I emphasized that the focus on one dimension of the working of the spirit is not sufficient, but that the wealth of the whole realm of its powers is needed.

As to “peace,” we should stay focused on Kant’s advice: “If you want peace, prepare for justice.” But the work for justice requires the spirit of freedom, of truth, and of benevolence. Cultural powers that care for peace have to be strengthened, as well as personal powers that ignite benevolence and love among people. Certainly, one cannot work on all frontiers simultaneously, but one should be sensitive to and active in alliances for a better future.

Diagram is an illustrative representation

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Member Books The latest books from our scholars, showcasing advanced research

MARK’S GOSPEL | C. Clifton Black A preeminent scholar of the Gospel of Mark, C. Clifton Black has been studying and publishing on the gospel for over thirty years.

This new collection brings together his most pivotal work and fresh investigations to constitute an all-in-one compendium of contemporary Markan scholarship and exegesis.

HEALTH AND WELFARE OF CAPTIVE REPTILES | Gordon Burghardt This extensively revised and expanded new edition offers concepts, principles and applied information that relates to the wellbeing of reptiles. As a manual on health and welfare in a similar vein to volumes addressing the sciences of anatomy, behavior or psychology, this book thoroughly examines the biology of reptile welfare and is about meeting biological needs.

ARCHITECTURE AFTER GOD | Kyle Dugdale A vivid retelling of the biblical story of Babel leads from the contested site of Babylon to the soaring towers of the modern metropolis, and sets the bright hopes of early modernism against the shadows of gathering war. Dealing in structural metaphor, utopian aspiration, and geopolitical ambition, Dugdale exposes the inexorable architectural implications of the event described by Nietzsche as the death of God.

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DAWN | Gijsbert van den Brink Combining its authors’ mind-bending scientific knowledge, storytelling skills, and insights from theology, Dawn provides a fresh look at the fundamentals of cosmology, evolutionary biology, and the good news of God in one overarching adventure—in the form of a gripping story. Readers who love both science and Scripture will discover an engaging, thought-provoking tale that reminds us we each have a big place in God’s plan of creation— even if we’re very, very small.

THE FUTURE OF CHRISTIAN REALISM | Gingles, Mauldin, and Miles In the world’s most developed democracies, anxiety about the future of democracy is palpable. The tension between moral aspiration and moral despair has reached a point of crisis. Christian realism arose during a similar time of crisis, when Reinhold Niebuhr used the insights of the Christian tradition to interpret the clash between democracy and totalitarianism. Beginning with Robin Lovin’s account of Christian realism as a nuanced blend of theological, moral, and political realisms, The Future of Christian Realism addresses fundamental topics in theology, ethics, and politics. The contributors come from different traditions, span five continents, and together present a case for the continuing relevance of Christian realism.

PSYCHOLOGY IN NIETZSCHE’S CRITICISM OF RELIGION | Jan-Olav Henriksen Friedrich Nietzsche claimed to be a psychologist. This claim is substantiated in his criticism of religion. In this book, Jan-Olav Henriksen provides new perspectives on Nietzsche’s contribution to such criticism by applying elements from attachment theory and self-psychology. The result is that Nietzsche’s insights into the problematic elements in religion point beyond what he was able to articulate based on the psychological resources available to him. Henriksen sheds new light on the psychological dimensions in Nietzsche’s individualism, his understanding of God, morality, metaphysics and emotions, and demonstrates how Nietzsche’s criticism of religion is rooted in both psychological splitting and a profound loss of the orientational resources religion provided in his childhood.

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PATIENCE: A THEOLOGICAL EXPLORATION | Paul Jones What does it mean to exercise patience? What does it mean to endure, to wait, and to persevere-and, on other occasions, to reject patience in favor of resistance, haste, and disruptive action? And what might it mean to describe God as patient?

Might patience play a leading role in a Christian account of God’s creative work, God’s relationship to ancient Israel, God’s governance of history, and God’s saving activity? The first installment of Patience—A Theological Exploration engages these questions in searching, imaginative, and sometimes surprising ways. Following reflections on the biblical witness and the nature of constructive theological inquiry, its interpretative chapters engage landmark works by a number of ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary authors, disclosing both the promise and peril of talk about patience.

WHAT DO WE DO WHEN NOBODY IS LISTENING? | Robin Lovin Polarization and political gridlock have been the norm in the United States for decades. As that reality seeps into every aspect of our society, churches find themselves not only affected, but often at the very center of the conflict. Rather than remaining places of inclusive community and generous dialogue, our sanctuaries have too often become ground zero of the culture wars. Widely respected ethicist Robin Lovin offers sage counsel in this helpful book, arguing that to resist the trend of polarization in our church we must rediscover how the gospel teaches us to understand ourselves, our neighbors, and the purpose of politics. With questions for discussion and reflection aligned with the content of each chapter, What Do We Do When Nobody Is Listening? provides an accessible roadmap for navigating out of the morass of polarization into a brighter future of church unity, during election seasons and beyond.

ON THE SIGNIFICANCE OF RELIGION FOR THE SDGs | Christine Schliesser Based on the conviction that not one single faith tradition or discipline can adequately address the complexity of current global issues, this book brings in the perspectives of different faith traditions and different disciplines. Combining cutting-edge research with case studies and concrete implications for academics, policy makers and practitioners, this concise and easily accessible volume helps to build bridges between these different actors and their engagement.

It serves as the introductory volume to the Routledge series “Religion Matters: On the Significance of Religion in Global Issues” (eds. Christine Schliesser, Pauline Kollontai, Ayse Kadayifci-Orellana).

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RELIGION, MATERIALISM AND ECOLOGY | Bergmann, Rigby, and Scott This timely collection of essays by leading international scholars across religious studies and the environmental humanities advances a lively discussion on materialism in its many forms. Spanning a broad range of themes, including politics, architecture, hermeneutics, literature and religion, the book brings together a series of discussions on materialism in the context of diverse methodologies and approaches. The volume investigates a range of issues including space and place, hierarchy and relationality, the relationship between nature and society, human and other agencies, and worldviews and cultural values.

PAULO FREIRE: VIGENCIA Y DESAFÍO | Daniel Shipani This book was written for the centennial (1921-2021) celebration of Paulo Freire, one of the most important philosophers of education and pedagogues of the twentieth century. The main themes of the text are: education, creativity and human development; and how Christian faith can foster education for liberation in the face of neoliberal globalization.

THE IMPACT OF THE MEDIA on Character Formation, Ethical Education and the Communication of Values in Late Modern Pluralistic Societies | Welker, Hagen, Witte, and Pickard Pluralism has become the defining characteristic of modern societies. Individuals with differing values clamor for equality. Organizations and groups assert particular interests. Social movements flourish and fade. Some see in this clash of principles and aims the potential for a more just human community, while others fear a cultural erosion. Yet beneath this welter stand powerful and pervasive institutions, whose distinctive norms profoundly shape our moral commitments and character.

Specialists on media and communication, journalism, television, theologians, economists, sociologists, philosophers, and ethicists discuss the many functions and challenges the media pose to the communication and orientation in late modern pluralistic societies. Contributions come from Germany, the UK, France, the USA, South Africa, and Australia.

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