Learn More

About the Challenge

Until recently theologians knew nothing of the enormity of time and its corresponding immensity of space. Hence the unprecedented scope of the task. Its depth and breadth simply relegate questions of compatibility between science and religion or the debate whether the first two chapters of Genesis mandate a literal account of how creation happened to the sidelines.

To do justice to these grandiose dimensions, Christian theology needs to come up with commensurate sets of metadata capable of encompassing both the deep history and anticipatory drama that still unfolds in the natural world.

Regarding the divine/human relationship, a Christian theology to be relevant must also account for the ultra-recent arrival of the genus Homo in cosmic history including the discovery that consciousness emerged hundreds of millennia before the appearance of modern humans.  

To encourage the Christian community to make the new and profoundly altered view of creation their own, I have written Cosmos and Revelation: Reimagining God’s Creation in the Age of Science. 

About the Book

Cosmos & Revelation

This provocative sketch takes the reader on a journey of discovery. After a brief theology of revelation, the story begins with a fresh reading of Genesis 1 and 2 based on Hebrew and Aramaic sources that uncovered two dynamic multilayered texts, neither mandating a literal interpretation nor justifying the denial of modern cosmology.

The next seven chapters, by interlacing examples and reflections, open several pertinent vistas of the new landscape allowing readers to intuit for themselves the vast dimensions the Christian imagination is called to embrace in the age science.

Overall, the book proceeds from the rationale that if God has indeed brought forth an intelligible world for us to explore through scientific research, those who profess this faith ought to, as a minimum, allow scientific findings to expand their theological horizon, ranging in scope from galactic star nurseries to the wonderland of living cells. A German Edition is in Preparation.

Learning Still More About the Challenge

Although the task before us is urgent and the impact of its neglect far-reaching, the churches show little appetite for engaging the profoundly altered panorama of God’s creation. Blinkered by a tradition-bound view of creation, they fail to see the significance of this new dynamic understanding of the world.

Yet, this new horizon keeps beckoning the Christian imagination to adapt to the breathtaking creativity and awesome grandeur of the Creator revealed in scientific discoveries.

Adapting, however, means venturing beyond the current compatibility debate between of Christianity and science.

Rather, it means expressing its faith in the God of creation no longer in terms hundreds of years out of date but in modern metaphors and images that reflect real findings of modern science including the dramatic unfolding of the created world.

What others have said about Cosmos and Revelation!

“Peter Stork displays immense and broad understanding of many aspects of science and theology. His plea is for Christians to glory in scientific understanding of the cosmos and rethink the tired perspectives of ancient theologians.”

P.C.

“It is a grand work and breaks much new ground, as well as consolidating much that needed to be gathered in the one volume. Thank you for both undertaking this broadening of our understanding, and for sharing it.”

D.B.

“I congratulate you on the completion of a very, very worthwhile enterprise.”

P.G.

“What can I say! Incredibly well written. Got half-way through and was enthralled at your scope and the significance of your work. Please see this through to its end. It is a very relevant contribution – and so important both to the Church but also to humanity as a whole as we try to map a way through the upcoming challenges.”

I. A.

“Stork’s search for coherence in reimagining God’s creation guides him into cosmology and astrophysics, chemistry and biochemistry, and evolutionary anthropology and neurology, along with religious studies, biblical interpretation, and theology. Brooding over Stephen Hawking’s question—‘What breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?’—electrifies the author’s greatly expanded vision of the Creator and of creation as a cosmic event, in whose finely tuned beginnings and complex history human existence is astonishingly deeply rooted.”

Raymond Canning
Honorary Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Theology and
Philosophy, Australian Catholic University

Do You Want to Know More About Me?