A response to Professor Moltmann

Abstract

This paper is a response to Professor Moltmann’s 2011 Boyle Lecture ‘Is the world unfinished? On interactions between science and theology in the concepts of nature, time and the future’ (Theology, November 2011). I discuss three issues. First, I take up the question of the relation of science and theology, arguing that though they may share an interest in nature neither is hermeneutically neutral, which has serious implications. Second, I raise cautiously the question of how we may provide an account of time that makes sense of the reality of the past? Third, I ask whether Professor Moltmann’s use of spatial language to describe God’s self-limitation in the incarnation is to be understood as being literal or metaphorical?