God After Einstein: A Book Talk with John Haught

What’s really going on in the universe?

A Message from Dr. Haught:

The point of theology, as I understand it, is to explore “the reasons for our hope” (1 Peter 3:15). After Einstein, theology cannot avoid asking whether the discovery that the cosmos is a long story with interesting outcomes may in some way give us new reasons for hope—or perhaps just the opposite. In 1916 Einstein had not yet fully realized that his general theory of relativity was bringing to light an immense and still unfinished 13.8 billion year old cosmic story. Most stories, however, are about something. What then, after Einstein, is the cosmic story about—if anything? So far, both contemporary intellectual culture and traditional Christian theology have found little if any significance, much less reasons for hope, in the long journey that nature has been on in its temporal coming-to-be. In this lecture, however, I shall be arguing—with one eye on Einstein’s science and another on his personal opinions about religion—that what has been going on in the universe is nothing less than a great awakening and that this awakening, if we examine it carefully, comes with good reasons for hope.