Table of Contents
Foreword xi
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xvii
1 God in the Teaching and Life of Jesus 1
God in the Teachings of Jesus 2
Jesus' Actions as Clues to Understanding Divine Action 16
2 God in Early Christianity 23
The Cosmic Christ 23
Universal Salvation 25
The Trinity and the Divinity of the Incarnate Word 29
The Humanity and Divinity of Jesus Christ 36
3 From the Middle Ages to Modernity 41
Anselm and Existence as Participation in the Divine Being 41
Thomas Aquinas and Secondary Causes 44
Nicholas of Cusa and the Coincidence of Opposites 46
Luther and the "Crucified and Hidden God" 51
Friedrich Schleiermacher and Religious Experience 54
4 What We Can Learn from Contemporary Physics and Cosmology 63
Relativity Theory 64
Quantum Theory 68
Implications for Theology 75
5 What We Can Learn from Biological Evolution 81
Darwin's Discovery 81
The Roman Catholic Response to Evolution 86
DNA and the Relation of All Forms of Life 88
The Origin of Life and Complexity Theory 89
The History of Life and Mass Extinctions 93
Implications for Theology 97
6 The God of Possibility and Empowerment 105
The Doctrine of Creation out of Nothing 106
How Might We Understand God's Creative Activity? 110
God's Restraint, Humility, and Self-Limitation 117
Existence as Participation in the Divine Life 119
7 How Does God Act? 123
Criteria for a Theory of Divine Action 123
The Religious Ground of the Theory and Types of Divine Action 125
How God Influences Events 127
The Test against the Religious and Theological Criteria 133
The Test against the Scientific Criteria 140
8 The God Who Heals and Saves 149
God's Reception of the Universe into God's Own Experience 150
The Divine Attributes 152
The Complementarity of God and the World 158
Divine Knowledge and Divine Judgment 161
Universal Salvation 164
The Problem of Evil 168
The Uniqueness of the Work of Jesus Christ 171
9 The Trinity and Christology 175
The Trinity 175
Christology 186
Conclusion: Eschatology and the Incomprehensibility of God 193
Recommended Reading 199
Index 201
