Despite the awe and wonder that discoveries related to astrobiology inspire, the sheer volume and diversity of new discoveries related to space science can become overwhelming without meaningful frames of reference by which to organize our understanding of these phenomena. I suggest that a critical feature of the future of “astrotheology” relates to how it serves as an organizing correlate to astrobiology and space research. Considering that the prefix astro‐ has an amplicative and abductive effect on the fields of study to which it is applied, I contend that astrotheology implies a creative and constructive shift in how we conceptualize meaningful human being for theology that parallels how astrobiology effects a creative and constructive shift in how we conceptualize living systems.
This chapter examines how Paul Tillich’s method of correlation is challenged but potentially compatible with the questioning of binaries that occurs in new materialism. In particular it examines how Karen Barad’s agential realism, and its primordial ontological unity of the ‘phenomenon’ understood as a relation without relata, disrupts the axiomatic reliance on a distinction between self and world that underpins the method of correlation specifically and many forms of correlational theology more generally. Giving weight to Tillich’s broad understanding of existentialism and its potential connection to his account of theonomy provides a way forward that gives credence to the ‘intra-action’ that has become critical to many forms of posthumanism and new materialism.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.