God, Genetics, and Event Phenomenology

Abstract

Abstract:In the classical Christian theological understanding, God and time are tightly interwoven (e.g. time and eternity, the Incarnation, and liturgy) and inform how we comprehend the presence and absence of the Incomprehensible in our day-to-day lives. Yet the classical Christian understanding of temporality does not take into account scientific discoveries pertaining to time, and how this influences our experience of temporality. It is within the fabric of God and time that this paper will bring together the concept of time in event phenomenology and biology, namely genetics, to construct a more robust understanding of temporality, a genetic-event model of temporality, that avoids the classical Christian issues of temporal/eternal antinomy, mind soul location, metaphysics of transcendence, or transcendental epistemology. Thus, providing an original approach to how we think about God today in a culture that seeks answers from science, as well as religion. This paper will discuss the usefulness of the geneticevent model in theology, in science, and in the dialogue between theology and science, demonstrating that these two ways of knowing can benefit each other.