Two years into my retirement

Dear CTNS Members and Friends:                                                          

Now, two years into my retirement, I am writing you a “letter” to reflect on the background, creation and history of CTNS over the past four decades, to frame the tremendous changes at CTNS these past two years since my retirement, and to look ahead briefly to where my retirement journey will --- hopefully --- take me into vistas of research and reflection in theology and science.

As you undoubtedly know, I formally retired as the Ian G. Barbour Professor of Theology and Science and the Founding Director of CTNS in the summer of 2022.  That event marks a 40 + year journey creating national, international, and interdisciplinary research programs in theology and science with funding primarily from the John Templeton Foundation, offering new doctoral and seminary courses for over 40 doctoral candidates and hundreds of seminary students at the GTU[1], creating the CTNS Newsletter, and working with Ted Peters to create the quarterly refereed journal, Theology and Science, (the Newsletter and TS each span over twenty years). Finally, after thirty-five years as a 501(c)(3) corporation of the State of California, in 2016 the CTNS Board of Directors gifted the entire CTNS program and funding to the GTU, including the endowed Ian G. Barbour Chair in Theology and Science, the endowed annual Russell Family Fellowship in Religion and Science and the endowed annual Charles H. Townes Doctoral Student Fellowship in Theology and Science.  Thanks to God, what started as my personal vision, a hope, and a fragile dream in 1981 has beautifully blossomed into the CTNS we can enjoy today and, thanks to the funds we have raised[2], into the beckoning future.  But first, some cherished history.

My story begins with a ‘quest for understanding’ rooted in my undergraduate days at Stanford University (1964-68), where as a physics, religion, and music triple major I wrestled daily with questions about faith, reason, and the nature I love that date back to my childhood[3] and characterize my wonderous and challenging four undergraduate years at Stanford.  Could Big Bang cosmology point to and support faith in a Creator God or does a “many worlds” scenario offer a natural explanation without God? Does biological evolution celebrate life in all its species as the ongoing gifts of God’s continuous creation or challenge the religious meaning of life on earth because of its searing pain, disease, death, and extinction --- its being “red in tooth and claw”[4]?  Do the discoveries about the brain, expressed in the cognitive and neurosciences, celebrate the phenomena of human free will or challenge the traditional religious concept of the “soul”, celebrating the mind as an emergent property of the brain or reducing the mind to the mechanisms of biochemistry? And what could the Resurrection of Jesus as the first fruits of the General Resurrection (1 Cor. 15) still mean in light of the cosmic future of the Big Bang, where hopes for heaven seem banished by an endless cosmic expansion and universal lifeless freeze of elementary particles?

In my undergraduate sophomore year as I struggled with these and many related questions, Ian G. Barbour published what was to become his landmark breakthrough, Issues in Science and Religion (1966).  Issues was to change the highly contested relation of science and religion both internationally and for me personally, for it offered real hope for a path forward out of the painful alternatives of seeing science and religion as either in outright conflict or in total independence.  Instead Issues offered what Barbour was later to call “dialogue” and “integration.”[5]  I devoured the book, reading it under the tutelage of Fr. Andrew Dufner, S. J., a Jesuit and particle physicist whom I met at the Stanford Linear Accelerator.  Andy was to become a lifelong friend during the decades of creating, expanding and funding CTNS.  And a lifelong friendship with Ian was awaiting when I began teaching physics at Carleton College (1978).

After graduating from Stanford in 1968, I left --- temporally --- the usual highway to graduate education in physics to begin a four year graduate exploration of theology at the Pacific School of Religion, a member school of the GTU in Berkeley, California.  There I discovered a ‘miracle’ in the institutionalism of Christian ecumenism: the GTU is uniquely a configuration of Roman Catholic and Protestant seminaries and a doctoral program in such disciplines as scriptural studies, theology, ethics and spirituality.  The GTU thus embodies a radically new Christian ecumenical environment for those training for Christian ministry and a unique interreligious and interdisciplinary doctoral program for those preparing for an academic career.  There at PSR I met Professor Durwood Foster, a devoted student of Paul Tillich.  Under Durwood’s mentorship I read Tillich, both Niebuhrs, Schleiermacher, Barth[6], and many other theologians.  I also met Charlotte Stott in our first year course on Tillich taught by Durwood.  We were married by Durwood the following year (Dec. 20, 1969) and we have celebrated our 54^th anniversary.

Class photos of Charlotte and Bob at the PSR graduation receiving our B. D.s[7] and M. A.s in 1972.

 

After graduating from PSR, I returned to studying physics, entering the doctoral program at the University of California Santa Cruz, in 1972.  There I worked for two wonderful and challenging years in theoretical physics, focusing on General Relativity and Big Bang Cosmology with Prof. Bill Burke, a student of Cal Tech’s Kip Thorne. After my fellow doctoral student Sander Bias and I published a research article on the solution of Einstein’s Field Equations for a magnetic monopole[8] I shifted gears to experimental physics, using low temperature microwave spectroscopy with Prof. Frank Bridges to study Paraelectric Resonance in lithium-doped potassium bromide.  During these early years Charlotte and I gave birth to our two wonderful daughters, Christie (1974) and Lisa (1975).  I remember coming home from the hospital after Charlotte delivered Christie to find a baby’s sweater drying over the bathtub.  It finally really sunk in: we have a daughter in our family!

In the spring of 1978, just as I was completing my doctoral research, I found an ad in Physics Today for a “leave replacement” position in the physics department at Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota.  While I was interviewing there Charlotte met the pastor of the local United Church of Christ  and was immediately offered an associate position on the clergy staff!  We wound up spending three wonderful years in that most special town of Northfield, with its mighty river, many churches, two distinguished college campuses, playhouse for local actors, and an annual cycle of clear blue-sky summers, fall trees in full color, heavy snowy winters, and springs of endlessly thawing ice.   Christie and Lisa relished the winter snow and the summer swimming.

 

My faculty office at Carleton, 1980. Notice the Commodore Pet Computer on my desk.

 

But by 1981 the deep, inner tug to devote my life not to a faculty position in a liberal arts college, no matter how splendid, but to the mysterious and lightening-filled skies of “theology and science”, which has haunted and beckoned me since my Dad’s sudden death in 1958 and through the years at Stanford, PSR, and Carleton, became overwhelming.  With prayerful support from dear Charlotte, I made the decision to leave the Carleton position and return home to the Bay Area, where we have lived ever since, and thus to the GTU to create CTNS. 

 

Creating CTNS[9]

With the help of an initial Board of Directors[10] including the Dean of the GTU, the Dean of the Jesuit School of Theology, Berkeley, and the Dean of the Pacific School of Religion, I created CTNS in 1981 as a non-profit California educational organization affiliated with the GTU.  We drafted the following CTNS Mission Statement: “To promote the creative mutual interaction between theology and the natural sciences.”  Our Mission includes three broad program areas: research, teaching, and public service.   I began teaching six new course each year (we were on a trimester system then).  Some were for seminary students preparing to interpret the New Testament, the Church Creeds, and the historical development of Christian theology over 2 millennia, to a new, scientifically-informed cadre of pastors and lay people.  Others were for especially skilled doctoral students who wanted to incorporate the latest in scientific discoveries and their philosophical implications into their doctoral research aimed for a growing national and international community of scholars.  I chose the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge as the logo for CTNS.[11]  It captures the goal of an “interaction” between theology and science symbolized by the Golden Gate Bridge linking San Francisco to the south and Marin County to the north.  The Bridge respects the difference between, and the separate integrity of, these communities while offering a path between them that lets people and products cross --- and in both directions.[12]

The Golden Gate Bridge (artist’s impression)

 

First, the Russell Family Research Fellowship in Religion and Science

At the outset, we created the annual “Russell Family Research Fellowship in Religion and Science” to bring internationally distinguished scholars in religion and science to the GTU. Since 1981, the annual Russell Fellows have usually been in a week’s residence at CTNS/GTU to conduct cutting edge research, teach doctoral and seminary courses, and present public lectures at the GTU and at other San Francisco Bay Area locations.[13]  In addition, the lectures of the Russell Family Fellowship and their responses were usually published in the CTNS refereed Journal, Theology and Science.  

 

Recipients include:

Brian Patrick Green — 2023-2024

"Should God Have Given Humans Technology?: Considerations of Nuclear Weapons, Space Technologies, Synthetic Biology, and Artificial Intelligence"

Kirk Wegter-McNelly — 2020-2021

A Strigilated Universe: The Cosmogonic Significance of Primordial Gravitation Radiation 

Adam Pryor — 2019-2020
Living Into our Shared Humanity: Exploring the Religious Significance of Astrobiology

Joshua M. Moritz — 2018-2019
What has Science to do with Youth Ministry?: Why Theological Engagement with the Natural Sciences is Vital for Effective and Impactful Youth Ministry

Ron Cole-Turner — 2017-2018
New Perspectives from Science on Human Origins

Hava Tirosh-Samuelson — 2016-2017
Religion, Science and Technology: Jewish Perspectives

Terrence W. Deacon and Tyrone Cashman — 2015-2016
Science, Naturalized Teleology and a Metaphysics of Incompleteness

Noreen Herzfeld — 2014-2015
More than Information: A Christian Critique of a New Dualism

Alex Filippenko — 2013-2014
Life in the Universe, Scientific and Religious Perspectives

Niels Henrik Gregersen — 2012-2013
God, Information and the Sciences of Complexity

J. K. Russell Research Fellowship / CTNS 30th Anniversary Conference — 2011-2012
God and Creation: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Perspectives on Scientific Cosmology
Alnoor Dhanani, Daniel Matt and William Stoeger, SJ, Joint Fellows

Thomas Tracy — 2010-2011
Scientific Vetoes and the "Hands-Off God": Can we Say that God Acts in History?

Francisco J. Ayala — 2008-2009
Darwin's Gift to Science and Religion

George V. Coyne — 2007-2008
Twenty Years After the New View from Rome: Pope John Paul II on Science and Religion

Celia Deane-Drummond — 2006-2007
The Evolution of Sin and the Redemption of Nature

Martinez Hewlett and Ted Peters — 2005-2006
Assessing the Case(s) for Theistic Evolution

Niels Henrik Gregersen — 2003-2004
Complexity Studies and Theories of Emergence: What Does It All Mean for Religion?
The Complexification of Nature: Supplementing the Neo-Darwinian Paradigm

Paul Davies — 2002-2003
Multiverse and Anthropic Fine-Tuning: Philosophical and Theological Implications

Archbishop Joseph Zycinski — 2001-2002
Beyond Necessity and Design: God's Immanence in the Process of Evolution

Philip Clayton — 2000-2001
The Emergence of Spirit

John Cobb, Jr. — 1999-2000
Science, Theology and Whitehead's Philosophy

Nancey Murphy — 1998-1999
Neuroscience, Mental Causation, and Freedom of the Will

Mary-Claire King — 1997-1998
Theological and Ethical Implications of Recent Research in Genetics

John Haught — 1996-1997
Science, Religion, and the Role of Metaphysics

Margaret Wertheim — 1995-1996
Women in Science, Women in Theology

George F. R. Ellis — 1994
What Does Scientific Cosmology Tell Us About God

Mary Gerhart & Allan M. Russell — 1993
Metaphoric Process as the Reformation of Worlds of Meaning in Theology and Natural Sciences

CTNS Decade Conference — 1992
Building Bridges Between Theology and Science: Beginning the Second Decade of CTNS

Holmes Rolston, III — 1991
Genes, Genesis, and God in Natural and Human History

Robert W. Jensen — 1990
Does God Have Time? The Doctrine of the Trinity and the Concept of Time in Physical Sciences

John Polkinghorne — 1990
The Church and the Environmental Crisis: Which Way Are We Heading?
God's Interaction with the World: Research Proposals by John Polkinghorne
The Challenge of Physics to World Religions

Lindon Eaves — 1988-1989
Genes, Culture and Personality: An Empirical Approach

William R. Stoeger, S.J. — 1987-1988
Cosmology and What It Tells Us About Physical Reality Philosophical and Theological Implications of Contemporary Cosmology-the Philosophy and Theology of Creation

Ernan McMullin — 1986-1987
The Viability of Natural Theology from a Roman Catholic Perspective in Light of Contemporary Science and Philosophy

Wolfhart Pannenberg — 1985-1986
The Doctrine of Creation and Modern Science

Arthur R. Peacocke, SOSc — 1984-1985
Critical Realism in Science and Religion

Philip Hefner — 1983-1984
Do the Sciences Throw Light on God's Presence in the World?

Ian G. Barbour — 1982-1983
Toward a Theology of Technology

Andrew Dufner, S.J. — 1981-1982
Science, Theology & Spirituality

 

Next the Charles H. Townes Graduate Student Fellowship

CTNS established the “Graduate Student Fellowship” in 2005 to help support doctoral students of academic excellence at the GTU working in theology and science.  The Fellowship was renamed the “Charles H. Townes Graduate Student Fellowship” in 2006 in recognition of Dr. Townes' work with physics graduate students at UC Berkeley and his generous and longstanding support of CTNS. In 1964 Dr. Townes received a Nobel Prize in Physics for his role in the discovery of the maser and the laser.  He served on the CTNS Board of Directors for over two decades and he was a participating scientist in the CTNS Program SSQ (see below). (For the naming of the Fellowship and a list of recipients of the Fellowship please see https://www.ctns.org/research/charles-townes-fellowship.)

 

Creating the CTNS Website and the Refereed Journal, Theology and Science

In 1983, Bonnie Johnson, our Program Administrator, working with other staff and Board members, created the first CTNS Website, featuring dedicated pages for news about our research, teaching, and public service events, as well as for other local and international events in science and religion. While access to the website is free of charge, we soon added a publication available only to Members, the CTNS Bulletin.  While the Bulletin was not formally a refereed publication it regularly included essays by leading scholars in science and religion.[14]  During these years, a GTU doctoral student in science and religion and Director of CTNS was usually the editor of the Bulletin.

Twenty years later we created a new refereed, interdisciplinary Journal, Theology and Science, and published the first volume in Spring, 2003.  At a summer conference in Heidelberg the previous year Ted Peters and I began formulating plans for morphing the Bulletin into the journal Theology and Science with the help of Whitney Baumann, one of our doctoral students.  By the following year we had drafted a statement on our editorial policy, gathered an Editorial Advisory Board, found a publisher (Taylor & Francis[15]), arranged for CTNS members to receive Theology and Science in both print and online as part of their membership fees, thus beginning a series of printed volumes that now stretches ~ 3 feet across my top bookshelf![16]

 

Creating and Administering Four Major International JTF-funded Programs.

In 1987, just 6 years after CTNS was founded, Sir John Templeton created the John Templeton Foundation (JTF).  Over the coming decades JTF would fund a vast portfolio of programs in theology and science as well as in a variety of fields and interests, although it regularly referred to them as addressing “Humility Theology.”[17] Over these years, CTNS created grant proposals and received funding from JTF for a variety of programs, including three major international and inter-religious programs:

 

The “Science and Religion Course Program (SRCP; 1998-2002)”

The Science and Religion Course Program (SRCP) with Ted Peters as its Director, offered up to 100 annual awards of $10K each on a highly competitive basis for new courses, or improvements on existing courses, in science and religion from faculty in universities, colleges, divinity schools and seminaries around the world.  Funding for the SRCP program was $12.7M plus course awards of over $3M.

SRCP Lectures in Mainland China, 2002, including PI, Ted Peters (third from left), Bob Russell (to Ted’s right), and Francisco Ayala (second on Bob’s right). 

 

“Science and the Spiritual Quest” (SSQ; 1995-2003)

Science and the Spiritual Quest (SSQ) brought dozens of internationally distinguished scientists from many world religions to offer public presentations on how the practice of science is, for each of them, a spiritual experience. On July 20, 1998, SSQ was featured on the cover of Newsweek magazine, receiving an estimated 50 million hits. Funding totaled $5M.  W. Mark Richardson was the Project Director for SSQ 1 (1995-1998) which focused on Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.  Philip Clayton was Project Director for SSQ2 (1999-2003), which expanded the religions to include Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, and other religious of the world.    

Mark Richardson (Left) and Philip Clayton (Right)

SSQ made the cover of Newsweek Magazine in 1998.  JTF reported it had over 50 million hits!

 

“Science and Transcendence: Advanced Research Series” (STARS; 2005-2008)

Science and Transcendence: Advanced Research Series (STARS) brought together small interdisciplinary research groups of scientists and religious scholars to explore the ways science points beyond its technical boundaries to the transcendent and thus how it sheds light on ultimate reality.  Grants totaling $1.3M were awarded a variety of STARS team for their ground-breaking research. Funding totaled $1.5M + $1.3M in research awards. [18] I served as Principal Investigator of STARS.

 

"Virtuous AI: Human Culture, Artificial Intelligence, and Virtue" (VAI; 2022-Present)

Following these major JTF program, in 2022 we received a grant from JTF for an international online research project titled “Virtuous AI?: Human Culture, Artificial Intelligence, and Virtue” (VAI).  This project focuses on three core questions raised by the exponentially expanding impact of AI on human culture:

• How and to what extent will AI influence human culture and its evolution?
• Can AI assist humans in the acquisition of virtue? 
• And Is AI itself capable of virtue? And if so, are those virtues shared with or distinct from human virtues?

This past summer, 2023, we convened three online international conferences held in eastern and western locations (Seoul, Berkeley, and Rome) that reflected their scientific, religious, philosophical, and social cultures.  60 scholars participated in these international conferences, each lasting four days.  We are now in the process of producing several academic publications, a variety of electronic / media resources for our CTNS website, new seminary and doctoral courses based on the VAI products for seminary and doctoral students at the GTU, and video material for the new GTU media website, GTUx. The new Barbour Chair and CTNS Center Director, Dr. Braden Molhoek, is the Project Director for VAI (please see more on Braden below in “2022: A Landmark Transition for CTNS”). I am the Principal Investigator.

VAI: 2022 and continuing!

 

Our Crowning Research: The Vatican Observatory/CTNS Collaboration on “Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action” (VO/CTNS: 1990-2008)

In 1987 Dr. George Coyne, S. J., Director of the Vatican Observatory in scenic Castel Gandolfo, Italy[19], was commissioned by Pope John Paul II to create a major interdisciplinary research conference on theology and science which would include a formal Papal Audience.  In consultation with the Observatory’s cosmologist Dr. William Stoeger, S. J., George first held a planning meeting near Krakov, Poland.  Bill suggested that George invite me to lead the meeting and help draw up plans for the conference in Rome and the Papal Message which would occur that Fall.[20]

The papers from the Castel Gandolfo conference were published in Physics, Philosophy and Theology: A Common Quest for Understanding[21] (“PPT).  This “PPT” volume included the eloquent Papal Message from Pope John Paul II on the need for a fruitful dialogue between science and religion.  According to Notre Dame philosopher Ernan McMullin, the Pope’s message “may well be the most important Roman statement on (the relations of science and religion) since Pius XII’s address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1951.”[22] The following sentence from the “Message” captures the essence of John Paul II’s vision for this dialogue: 

Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.  Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish.[23]

Following the success of PPT the Vatican Observatory invited CTNS to co-sponsor a series of international research conferences based broadly on the topics of PPT and to be held in alternate years in Castel Gandolfo, Berkeley, and Kraków. The series produced five scholarly volumes with ninety chapters from over fifty distinguished scientists, philosophers, historians, and theologians. They spanned a diversity of topics in contemporary systematic and philosophical theology exploring fundamental theories and groundbreaking discoveries in the natural sciences. Special attention was given to the theological concept of divine action in relation to the sciences. I served as the General Editor of the VO/CTNS series.  Chang In: Please move the pictures side by side with George and me on the right side.                    

 

The Vatican Observatory, Castel Gandolfo, Italy (Left) / With George Coyne, S. J., VO Director 

 

The resulting five publications each focused on the problem of divine action from a particular scientific perspective as suggested by their titles[24]:

Quantum Cosmology and the Laws of Nature, edited by Robert Russell, Nancey Murphy, and C. J. Isham (1993);

Chaos and Complexity, edited by Robert Russell, Nancey Murphy, and Arthur Peacocke (1996);

Evolutionary and Molecular Biology, edited by Robert Russell, William Stoeger S.J., and Francisco Ayala (1998),

Neuroscience and the Person, edited by Robert Russell, Nancey Murphy, Theo Meyering, and Michael Arbib (1999), and

Quantum Mechanics, edited by Robert Russell, Philip Clayton, Kirk Wegter-McNelly, and John Polkinghorne (2002). 

 

We then convened a conference to assess the accomplishments of the series and to imagine the next steps for a new series.  The results were published in the “capstone” volume,

Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action: Twenty Years of Challenge and Progress edited by Robert Russell, Nancey Murphy, and William R. Stoeger, S. J. (2008).   

 

A multi-year grant from a San Francisco Bay Area foundation helped support the Center's partnership with the Vatican Observatory.

The Cover of the "Capstone" Volume / William R. Stoeger, S. J., (left) and Nancey Murphy (right) at a Vatican Observatory/CTNS conference 

 

The VO-CTNS collaboration then took up the problem of theodicy in the context of natural evil: the problem of reconciling suffering caused by natural processes with divine action and God’s goodness.  The first volume focused on physics and cosmology. The resulting publication, Physics and Cosmology: Scientific Perspectives on the Problem of Natural Evil, was edited by Nancey Murphy, Robert John Russell and William Stoeger, S.J. and published in 2008.  Future conferences were sketched out to target natural evil in evolutionary and molecular biology, including suffering, disease, death, and extinction.  We hope to develop this series in the future, taking up where the first volume left off.    

 

Faculty Activities

1. My Faculty Appointment at the GTU

I was first appointed “Adjunct Professor of Theology and Science in Residence” by Dean Claude Welch in 1982 and over the decades I was advanced to Associate and then to Full Professor in 2006 by Dean Judith Berling). These years at CTNS have issued in nineteen book publications, with several translated into Spanish, Arabic, or Korean), over sixty essays / chapters in books, dictionaries, and encyclopedias, and over 50 essays in journals. 

These include:

Physics, Philosophy, and Theology: A Common Quest For Understanding, edited by Robert J. Russell, William R. Stoeger, S. J., and George V. Coyne, S. J. (Vatican Observatory – Vatican City State, 1988, Distributed by University of Notre Dame Press).

Cosmology from Alpha to Omega: The creative mutual interaction of theology and science, Robert John Russell (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008),

Time in Eternity: Pannenberg, Physics, and Eschatology in Creative Mutual Interaction, Robert John Russell (Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press 2012),

 

The VO/CTNS series of seven volumes on “Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action” mentioned above.

During these years I have created and developed a variety of doctoral seminars and seminary M. Div. and M. A. Courses, many in conjunction with Ted Peters (Professor of Systematic Theology, Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary):

My colleague of nearly 40 years, Professor Ted Peters

 

Doctoral Seminars:

Advanced Seminar in Theology and Science (recently: Theology and Science Research) with Ted Peters, 1991, 1999, 2003, 2006, 2009 – 2016, and 2022

Astrotheology & Astroethics with Ted Peters and Chris Hansen (T. A.), 2014 With Ted Peters, 2018

Barth's Development: 1914-1932 with Tim Lull and Ted Peters, 1993

Christian Theology & Natural Sciences Since 1965: I with Ted Peters, 2016

Christian Theology & Natural Sciences Since 1965: II with Ted Peters, 2017

Cosmology and Eschatology with Ted Peters, 1997

Divine Action and Chaos in Nature, 1995

Einstein in Philosophical and Theological Significance, 1987

Evolution and Christian Theology with Mark Richardson, 1997

Evolution, Evil and Eschatology, with Ted Peters, Gaymon Bennett and Marty Hewlett, 2008

Genes, Genocide and Theodicy with Ted Peters, 2003

History of Theology: 1914 - 1965 with George Griener, 2008

History of Theology: 1914 - 1965 with Richard Schenck, 2010

History of Theology: 1914 - 1965 with Ted Peters, 2011

History of Theology: 1965 to the Present with Alejandro Garcia-Rivera, 1999

History of Theology: 1965 to the Present with Ted Peters, 1996, 2004, and 2006

Methods and Doctrines in Contemporary Theology II with Ted Peters, Spring 2012

Natural Science in an Interreligious Context with Ted Peters and Rita Sherma, Spring 2018

Nature, Theology and Spirituality with Mark Richardson, 1998

Paul Tillich and Wolfhart Pannenberg with Ted Peters, 2007

Paul Tillich: Systematic Theology with Ted Peters, 1998

Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action with Mark Richardson, 1993

Physics, Philosophy and Theology, 1991

Physics, Philosophy and Theologywith John Polkinghorne, 1990

Quantum Physics: Philosophical and Theological Perspectives with Peter Degen, 1989

Quantum Physics: Philosophical and Theological Perspectives with Kirk Wegter-McNelly, 2002

Resurrection, Eschatology, and Scientific Cosmology with Ted Peters, 2001

The Trinity Today with Ted Peters, 1999

Theology, the Person & Neuroscience, with Mark Graves, 2005

Theology of Tillich, with Ted Peters and Greg Love, 2015

Tillich and Pannenberg, with Ted Peters and Patricia Codrone, 2007

Time and Eternity with Ted Peters, 2010, with Ted Peters and Hyung-Joo Lee, 2021

Various Special Reading Courses

 

M. Div. / M. A. Courses:

Christian Theology and Natural Science, 2015

Christian Theology and Natural Science with Joshua Moritz, 2012

Christian Theology and Natural Science with Adam Pryor (Newhall Scholar), 2009 and 2011

Christian Theology and Natural Science with Nathan Hallanger (CTNS Program Director), 2007

Christian Theology and Natural Science with Daren Erisman (Newhall Scholar), 2006

Christian Theology and Natural Science with Kirk Wegter-McNelly (Newhall Scholar), 2000, 2002, and 2004

Christian Theology and Natural Science Part 1, 1991

Christian Theology and Natural Science Part 2, 1992

Christian Theology and Natural Science with Ted Peters, 1990

Christian Theology and Natural Science with Hyung-Joo Lee, 2022

Christology and Science with Ted Peters and Jamie Randolph, Spring 2013

Current Thought in Science and Religion with Francis Baur, Ted Peters, Ben Reist and Surjit Singh, 1982

Current Thought in Science and Religion with Ian Barbour, 1983

Current Thought in Science and Religion with Phil Hefner, 1985

Current Thought in Science and Religion with Arthur Peacocke, 1986        

Discernment and Nature: Christian Spirituality with Science and Religion with Elizabeth Liebert and Nancy Wiens St. John (Newhall Scholar), 2002

Eschatology and Cosmology, with Ted Peters and Junghyung Kim, 2011

Human Genetics, Ethics, Theology with David Cole and Richard Randolph, 1993

Introduction to Science and Religion for Church Ministry with Mark Richardson and CTNS Staff, 1997

Introduction to Religion and Science, 1985 and 1986

Introduction to Religion and Science with Ted Peters and Braden Molhoek, 2023

Mathematical and Physical Models in Theology, 1983

Nature, Theology and Spirituality with Mark Richardson, 1998

Pannenberg’s Systematic Theology with Ted Peters, 1998

Philosophy of Science and Theological Inquiry with Nancey Murphy, 1984

Physics and Eastern Thought with Durwood Foster, 1981

Revolutions in Physics, 1982

Science, Religion and Ethics: Bioethics in light of Theology and Science with Braden Molhoek, 2017

Scientific Cosmology in Theological Perspective, 1994

Technology, Environment and Human Values, 1989

Technology, Environment and Human Values with Judith Scoville (Newhall Scholar), 1993

Technology, Environment and Human Values with Carol Tabler (Newhall Scholar), 1991

Technology, Environment and Human Values with Andrew Dufner, 1982

Theology and Science, 1981, 1984, and 1990

Theology of Arthur Peacocke, 1985

Theology of Thomas Torrance, 1982

Time and Eternity with Ted Peters, 1988

Whitehead, Science and Religion with Forrest Hartman, 1990

 

2. My GTU Doctoral Students

I am delighted with the many GTU doctoral students on whose dissertation committees I served over these past four decades, in many cases as the Chair of their Dissertation Committee. In this list of their areas of research, ST=Systematic Theology; PT = Philosophical Theology; Chr. Spirit. = Christian Spirituality; DTE indicates the newly formed “Department of Theology and Ethics”)

Former Doctoral Students	Area	Year Graduated
Dr. Nancey Murphy	ST	1987
Andrew Porter	PT	1991
Duane Howard Larson	ST	1993
Wesley John Wildman	ST	1993
Judith Nelson Scoville	Ethics	1995
Gregory Scott Cootsona	ST	1996
Kim Alaine Rathman	Ethics	1996
Carol Ruth Jacobson	ST	1997
Lou Ann Gertrude Trost	ST	1998
Noreen Herzfeld	Chr. Spirit.	2000
Fred Russell Sanders	ST	2001
Richard Oliphant Randolph	Ethics	2003
Kirk Wegter-McNelly	ST	2003
Nate Hallenger	ST	2006
Jamie Haag	ST	2006
Chris Doran	ST	2006
Nancy Wiens	Chr. Spirit.	2007
Joshua Moritz	ST	2010
Junghyung Kim	ST	2011
Dr. John King	ST	2015
Dr. Oliver Putz	ST	2016
Daekyung Jung	ST	2016
Sungho Lee	ST	2016
Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P.	ST	2016
Alan Weissenbacher	ST	2016
Hun Cho Yu	ST	2016
Chris Hansen	ST	2018
Effindi Sunur	DTE	2018
KyungRae Kim	DTE	2018
Ki Wook Min	DTE	2021
Myoung-Ho Sin	DTE	2021
Bright David	DTE	2022
Donghwi Kim	DTE	2023

 

Current Doctoral Students	Area
Hyung-Joo Lee	DTE
Jamie Fowler	DTE
Lwan May Oo	DTE
Charissa Jaeger-Sanders	DTE
Chang In Sohn	DTE

 

Selected locations of conferences where I have lectured:

Atlanta, Georgia

Beijing, China

Canberra, Australia,

Carmelite Monastery, Maryland

Castel Gandolfo, Rome, Italy

Claremont, California

Concordia College, Minnesota

Cracow, Poland

Freising, Munich, Germany

Geneva, Switzerland,

Georgetown University, Washington, D. C.

Heidelberg, Germany

Kansas City, Missouri

Maryville Collee, Tennessee

New York City, New York

Nobel Conference XXXIII, St. Peter, Minnesota

Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

College of Wooster, Columbus, Ohio

Rome, Italy

Ryukoko University, Kyoto, Japan

Stanford University, California

Seoul, South Korea

Syracuse University, New York

Tokyo, Japan

Tulane University, New Orleans

University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Los Angeles

University of Notre Dame, Indiana,

University of San Francisco, California

 

3. A festschrift honoring my work

In 2006, Ted Peters and Nathan Hallanger published a festschrift honoring my work, entitled God’s Action in Nature’s World (Routledge Science and Religion Series).  Authors included Ian G. Barbour; Philip Clayton; George V. Coyne, SJ; Paul Davies; Nathan Hallanger; Heup Young Kim; Nancey Murphy; Arthur Peacocke; Ted Peters; John Polkinghorne; William R. Stoeger, SJ; Charles Townes; Lou Ann Trost; Noreen Herzfeld; Wentzel van Huyssteen; Kirk Wegter-McNelly; Wesley Wildman.  The book included a list of all my publications to date! https://www.ctns.org/publications/books/gods-action-natures-world-essays-honour-robert-john-russell

 

4. Funding CTNS: Creating the Ian G. Barbour Chair and working towards our Institutional Endowment through a Matching Grant from JTF

While administrative funds and overhead from our major grants helped support the CTNS staff for many years, long term permanent funding has always been our goal.  Thus we turned to a wider range of possible donors who could offer help in raising permanent support for endowing what would become the Barbour Chair and the Russell and Townes Fellowships[25]. We contacted people who had previously been associated with CTNS, including former and current members, friends, Russell Fellows, Townes Fellows, graduate students.  Before this, however, Ian Barbour won the Templeton Prize!

1. Ian G. Barbour wins the Templeton Prize and gifts $1M to CTNS, helping us create the Ian G. Barbour Chair in Theology and Science.

In 1999 Ian Barbour won the Templeton Prize.  From the Prize money Ian made an extremely generous gift to CTNS of $1M and he agreed to let us use these funds however we wished, including to create and name the Ian G. Barbour Chair in Theology and Science at CTNS.  The CTNS Board decided on the latter.  I was incredibly honored by being named the first holder of the Barbour Chair by the CTNS Board.  

As a sign of my respect and gratitude for Ian’s outstanding intellectual leadership in helping create the field of theology and science starting in the 1960s, I edited a festschrift for Ian in 2004: Fifty Years in Science and Religion: Ian G. Barbour and his Legacy.[26] It included 22 chapters by such authors as Niels Gregersen, Nancey Murphy and me on Ian’s contributions to methodology, Philip Clayton on God and nature, William R. Stoeger, S. J., on physics and cosmology; W. Mark Richardson and Ted Peters on evolution, anthropology, and neuroscience; Roger L. Shinn and Christopher Southgate on technology and the environment; John B. Cobb, Jr on process theology; Anne M. Clifford on Roman Catholic theology; Paul O. Ingram on Buddhist theology; and most rare for him, Ian’s own autobiographical essay, “A Personal Odyssey." https://www.ctns.org/publications/books/fifty-years-science-and-religion-ian-g-barbour-and-his-legacy   

Ian G. Barbour, winner of the 1999 Templeton Prize. 

CTNS now funds the Ian G. Barbour Professor in Theology, Science, Ethics, and Technology, thanks to Dr. Barbour’s generous gift.

 

2. Capital Campaign for the $400K matching grant from JTF

In 2008 we were awarded a $400K 1-to-1 matching gift from JTF that would match what we raised for the Barbour Chair by covering 5 years of our operating expenses while we were fundraising.  By the close of the JTF grant we had raised $410K!  We also raised additional money for the Barbour Chair from donors, foundations and church-related organizations. Between Ian's gift, the matching grant, and the Barbour Chair Campaign, over 1.6 million dollars were raised for the chair. 

In 2014 the CTNS Board decided that CTNS should become an internal Program of the GTU, including giving the GTU the funds raised for the Barbour Chair and the two now-endowed fellowships (Russell Family Fellowship and Charles H. Townes Fellowship). 

Professor Charles H. Townes, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1964.

 

3. In 2016 a $1.3M program support grant from JTF

In support of our transition from a separately incorporated organization to an internal Program of the GTU in 2016, CTNS received an amazing gift from JTF: $1.3M to support all our programmatic costs for 5 years, thus allowing us to leave our market investments untouched.  The result was a ~30% increase in our market value, moving our invested net worth to ~ $3M.  At last we were an internal Program of the GTU.

 

4. CTNS’s amazing staff

I am deeply thankful for the highly talented and dedicated staff who have helped create and administer the grants, Fellowships, and Theology and Science, especially the following:

CTNS Program Directors:

Nate Hallanger*

Richard Randolph*

Mark Richardson*

Lou Ann Trost*

CTNS Senior Administrative Staff:

Robin Ficklin-Alred

Bonnie Johnston

Melissa Moritz

Braden Molhoek*

Tom Ross*

Theology and Science and Bulletin publications:

Whitney Bauman*         TS Managing Editor

Jamie Haag*                 TS Managing Editor

Nate Hallenger*            TS Book Review Editor

Joshua Moritz*             TS Managing Editor

Ted Peters                     TS Founding Co-Editor

Oliver Putz*                  TS Book Review Editor

Alan Weissenbacher*    TS Managing Editor

Richard Randolph*        Bulletin Editor

Mark Richardson*         Bulletin Editor

Tom Ross*                    Bulletin Editor

Lou Ann Trost*              Bulletin Editor

Donghwi Kim*              TS Book Review Editor

*GTU Doctoral Students

 

I close with very special thanks to Dr. Carl York, physicist and long-term member of the CTNS Board.  Carl came to CTNS on a weekly basis for over three decades to participate in our staff meetings and give me seasoned confidential advice on all issues germane to our long-term goals and strategies.  He sat in on many of my classes on theology and science, occasionally giving a lecture on physics or cosmology. He and his wife Mary Nell traveled to Castel Gandolfo for one of our VO/CTNS conferences.  He oversaw our tri-annual budget preparations for the Board.  He initiated the creation of our employee retirement plan and our medical insurance plan.  He and I created the budgets for our three multi-million dollar JTF grants. As Chair of the Board for a second time he guided CTNS from being an Affiliate of the GTU to becoming an internal Program of the GTU. Most of all, our close personal friendship has been a trusted source of wisdom and joy for me. I never made a major decision regarding CTNS without asking for his advice!

Dr. Carl York, CTNS Board Chairman who oversaw our transition to becoming a Program of the GTU.

 

The Transition of CTNS from an Affiliate of the GTU to an Internal Program of the GTU

The $3.1M gift from JTF allowed us to undertake a dissolution of CTNS as an independent non-profit affiliated with the GTU and become an internal program of the GTU.  Hence we transferred all our holdings to the GTU, including the Barbour Chair, the Russell and Townes Fellowships, and our funds to staff our journal, TS.  We believe becoming an integral part of the GTU, whose history dates back to the early 1960s and which has always included a commitment to Christian ecumenism, inter-religious dialogue, and interdisciplinary programs, is the ideal home for CTNS --- a vision I first discovered when I entered PSR in 1968.

Celebrating the CTNS Transition: GTU President Riess Potterveld, Rev. Charlotte Russell, and me.

 

2022: Introducing Dr. Braden Molhoek as the new Barbour Chair and CTNS Director following my retirement in June, 2022

I am delighted to conclude this letter by celebrating the appointment of Dr. Braden Molhoek as the new Ian G. Barbour Assistant Professor in Theology, Science, Ethics and Technology at the GTU and the new CTNS Director following my retirement in June, 2022.  Braden’s appointment by the GTU marks a landmark expansion of our mission in interdisciplinary research, teaching and public service to explicitly include ethics and technology along with theology and science[27].  It reflects the four goals of our search process which was completed in 2021:     

1) Ensure academic continuity in theology and science at CTNS broadly conceived to guarantee the GTU’s ability to continue to attract outstanding candidates for the Ph. D. in theology and science and to support the continued publication of Theology and Science, now in its 20th year. 

2) Expand our interdisciplinary reach beyond theology and science to include ethics and technology, broadly conceived. This will allow us to attract outstanding candidates for the Ph. D. in ethics and technology and to seek additional sources of program grants beyond those in theology and science.  Our current international, interreligious and inter-disciplinary research program, Virtuous AI?, with funds of ~$455K from JTF, embodies just such an expansion[28].

3) Ensure programmatic continuity and institutional ‘memory,’ and reward commitment to CTNS and its mission, by an internal promotion within our staff. 

4) Maintain financial stability by drawing conservatively on the current CTNS endowment, including the Barbour Chair and the Russell Family and the Charles H. Townes Graduate Student Fellowships.

Dr. Molhoek is an ideal candidate to take up this broad and complex mantle.   His academic track record includes his remarkable work in moral philosophy, bioethics and Christian theological ethics, his extensive involvement in theology and science, his teaching in applied ethics at Santa Clara University and the GTU, and his publications and lecturing at numerous international and national conferences over the past several years.

Braden entered the Ph.D. program at GTU in ethics and social theory in 2005 with a distinguished academic background.  As an undergraduate he was magna cum laude at Ohio Wesleyan University where he majored in both genetics and religion, wining the University’s Founder’s Award for Expository Writing for his senior thesis on the topic of religious perspectives on embryonic stem cell research. Braden completed an M. T. S. at Boston University School of Theology cum laude with a major in Philosophy, Theology and Ethics and with Wesley Wildman (one of my former doctoral students) as his advisor.  He received a Certificate in Science and Religion from the Boston Theological Institute, taking courses from Tom Shannon in bioethics.

In 2007 he won CTNS’s annual Charles H. Townes Graduate Student Fellowship for outstanding research in theology, science and ethics. He also received Honorable Mention and 3^rd place at the Zygon Student Symposiums in 2011 and 2013 respectively.   

Braden’s dissertation, “Reinhold Niebuhr’s Theological Anthropology in Light of Evolutionary Biology: Science Shaping Anthropology Shaping Ethics,” explores Niebuhr’s understanding of original sin and original righteousness in light of insights from biology. It also suggests how these changes could affect the role of friendship in virtue ethics as well as ethical approaches to biotechnology.  

Braden graduated from the GTU in 2016.  Since then he and I created and team-taught the course RSST4100, “Science, Religion, Ethics: Bioethics in Light of Theology and Science,” to upper division M. Div. and entering doctoral students.  Braden has also taught courses at Santa Clara University, including Software Ethics and Ethical Issues in Bioengineering at the School of Engineering. At CTNS he has been a respondent for the Russell Family Fellowships in 2015, 2018, 2020, and 2023, has presented at CTNS Student Showcases in 2014, 2016, and 2017, and gave a public forum in 2013. 

Braden’s presentations at regional, national, and international events and his publications underscore his growing academic accomplishments. In addition to presenting at Zygon Student Symposia in 2011 and 2013, he also presented at conferences in 2017 and 2018 hosted by the Saskatchewan Center for Science and Religion and the 2018 and 2019 Christian Transhumanist Association Conferences. Aspects of his 2016 dissertation were presented at a 2017 conference in Oxford co-hosted by the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion and the International Society for Science and Religion. In 2018 at the London College of Notre Dame, he took part in a conference on Practicing Science: Virtues, Values, and the Good Life hosted by the University’s Center for Theology, Science & Human Flourishing. In 2019 he took part in the Annual Ethics Symposium at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, presenting on AI and Transhumanism.

During the pandemic he presented virtually as part of the 2021 Annual Meeting of the European Academy of Religion and at the Science & Religion Series 2022-2023 Evolution and the Human Species: The Challenge of Transhumanism and Posthumanism, organized by the Angelicum Thomistic Institute.

Braden has also presented at the American Academy of Religion in 2012, 2018, and twice in 2023. He also was a panelist discussing the “Virtuous AI?” grant at an ISSR session at AAR in 2023.

In addition to moderating the three online conferences CTNS hosted in summer, 2023, as part of our ongoing “Virtuous AI?” Grant funded by JTF, Braden presented a paper at the first of three conferences on how AI affects the practice of the human virtues of prudence and justice. He also represented CTNS and the “Virtuous AI?” grant with two participants from the Berkeley VAI conference at the 2023 ISSR conference in the UK.

Many of these presentations led to publications. These included expanded versions of presented papers as book chapters: "Possible consequences of AI and transhumanism: health concerns surrounding unemployment, second class citizenship, and religious engagement," in Hrynkow, C. (Ed.), Spiritualties, ethics, and implications of human enhancement and artificial intelligence, Vernon Press, 2020 and Student Mental Health, Job Concerns, and Issues in Academic Publishing:  “Stifling the Acquisition of Virtue and the Possible Perpetuation of Injustice in the Pursuit of Science,” in Virtue and the Practice of Science: Multidisciplinary Perspectives. His presentation from the U.S. Army Ethics Symposium was published in the peer reviewed National Security Studies Journal Interagency, as part of a special issue, “Engineering Telos: Flourishing in the Context of AI and Transhumanism,” InterAgency Journal 10, no. 3 (August 28, 2019): 85–92.

Braden also has an article in a special issue of Theology and Science on Gene Editing and Virtue: “Raising the Virtuous Bar: The Underlying Issues of Genetic Moral Enhancement,” Theology and Science 16, no. 3 (June 2018): 279-287. He has also published two articles in the peer reviewed journal HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies on transhumanism and AI.

In 2022 and 2023 Braden was part of the fifth two-year cohort of the international program, “Sinai and Synapses Fellows”. This is an interfaith fellowship of people interested in the relationship between science and religion and drawing from a variety of perspectives and vocations. I know he found the opportunity to engage with people from other faith traditions and fields of study to be quite fruitful.

Returning to my focus on CTNS, Braden has worked on the CTNS staff since November of 2005, gaining invaluable administrative skills and responsibilities.  As a CTNS Program Associate, Braden’s responsibilities included a variety of areas: accounting and payroll, institutional taxes, providing detailed budgets and advice for the CTNS Board of Directors, constructing and managing the budget for our Templeton Foundation STARS grant (~$3M).  Most importantly, Braden was instrumental in our achieving the complex and successful transition for CTNS in 2016 from an independent non-profit California corporation since 1982 to an internal Program of the GTU.  Increasingly over the years leading up to my retirement Braden has served as a closely trusted advisor to me in all aspects of CTNS administration. Now with Braden as the new Barbour Assistant Professor of Theology, Science, Ethics and Technology, and the new CTNS Director. I am confident that CTNS is in great hands!  Personally, Braden is a delight to work with both in academic and in administrative contexts and he is strongly committed to the Berkeley church community, being an active member of First Presbyterian Church, Berkeley.

In sum, it is clear that Braden is truly the ideal choice to be my successor at CTNS/GTU.  He is already a highly valued member of the GTU doctoral faculty and the GTU Center Directors, and he has the academic and the administrative skills, experience and dedication to lead CTNS successfully into the future with our expanded program in theology, science, ethics, and technology, one which will be secured financially in part by our growing institutional endowment at the GTU. 

Dr. Braden Molhoek, Ian G. Barbour Assistant Professor of Theology, Science, Ethics and Technology, Director, CTNS.

 

Concluding Comments

Now in the Summer of 2024, I look back on these past four plus decades with a sense of deep joy, immense gratitude, and genuine astonishment thinking of all the lives I’ve been invited to touch --- from inquiring audiences in conferences across the US and around the world to readers of my publications in books and journals, all the faith journeys of GTU seminary students in formation for the ministry, all the doctoral students whose interdisciplinary scholarship I’ve helped form (many of who have gone on to tenured positions and with doctoral students of their own; I joyfully call this second generation of doctoral students my “intellectual grandchildren”); and all of the GTU faculty I’ve learned from and taught with.  I am deeply proud and humbled by the continuing contribution to theology and science worldwide by all of them. 

1. Topics for future research.

With retirement putting administration and fund raising in the ‘rear view mirror,’ I look forward to the “golden years” ahead when I can spend focused time in pulling together many of the threads of my research and writing for several future publications.  Here, in the quiet of my home study with an unencumbered view of the Golden Gate Bridge, and occasionally in our new CTNS office in the GTU Hewlitt Building, I can at last focus, intensively, on what I consider to be some of the outstanding problems for Christian theology and natural science. [29] 

2. Endless gratitude for Charlotte:

In looking back on my life I am above all thankful to God for the abiding love of my life: my wife Charlotte.  Words cannot adequately express my gratitude for her love and encouragement, and for our fifty-four years of marriage.  She actively participated in envisioning and creating CTNS, she served on the CTNS Board since the outset, she has given vision and leadership to our major fund-raising campaigns, and she has hosted over forty celebrations of the annual Russell Family Fellowships at our home.  After graduating magna cum laude from seminary, she has followed her call to Christian ministry and for some fifty years before her recent retirement years she served four churches in Northfield, Santa Cruz, Piedmont, and Berkeley as their Associate Pastor.  She and I have joyfully raised two wonderful daughters, Christie and Lisa.  I celebrate our marriage in 1969, stretching back and rooted in our first meeting in Durwood Foster’s class on Paul Tillich at the Pacific School of Religion in the Fall of 1968.

I will end this Letter with the wonderful words of Dag Hammerskjold, Secretary General of the United Nations:

“For all that has been, thank you.  For all that is to come, yes!” [30]