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Cognitive Science and Christian Theology

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Soul, Psyche, Brain: New Directions in the Study of Religion and Brain-Mind Science

Abstract

Concerns about the impact of scientific discoveries on Christian theology have been a reality for at least 400 years. From Copernicus and Galileo came the first major challenges to humanity as the imago dei and its home as the center of God’s purpose-filled creation. Subsequent discoveries compelled theologians to rethink everything from the meaning of miracles to the creation story itself. Again and again, doomsayers and scientific reductionists decreed the demise of religion under the burden of scientific “truth.” Yet religion survived and theologians carried on the task of interpreting doctrine in light of a rapidly changing world. But today, say some, theology might finally collapse under the weight of science.This is so because the cognitive sciences offer a challenge to so many aspects of theological reflection. As science uncovers the ways in which neurochemistry affects the mental life, serious questions arise about what it means to say we have a soul, that humanity is created in the image of God, that we sin yet have free will, that we can encounter the divine through prayer, mystical experience, and revelation, even to say that there is a personal God.

Cognitive science challenges our complacent theological claims about human nature and the human relation to God. It challenges but need not threaten, and if we listen closely and think deeply, our theological understanding will be the richer for it.

—Peterson 1997, p. 627

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Authors
  1. Charlene P. E. Burns
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Kelly Bulkeley (Visiting Scholar)

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© 2005 Kelly Bulkeley

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Burns, C.P.E. (2005). Cognitive Science and Christian Theology. In: Bulkeley, K. (eds) Soul, Psyche, Brain: New Directions in the Study of Religion and Brain-Mind Science. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403979230_9

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