Is the world unfinished? On interactions between science and theology in the concepts of nature,time and the future

Abstract

This paper is the text of Professor Moltmann’s 2011 Boyle lecture. In it he explores interactions between theology and the sciences. It proceeds from the Cappadocian insight that the world is ‘readable’ both in ‘the Book of Books’ and in the ‘book of nature’. The empirical concept of nature corresponds to the theological concept of creation, between which there is no contradiction. This leads to a reflection on the nature of time, and in particular the differences between times ‘past’ and ‘future’, the former fixed, the latter open. The lecture concludes by reflecting that, in eschatological perspective, nature presents itself as a being with a history open to the future.