Bookkeeping: Reconciling God’s Words & Works

Historically the Church has faced numerous moral, philosophical, and spiritual challenges to majority or even consensus interpretations of Scripture. Evolution is regarded by many not only as a significant challenge to orthodoxy but even as decisive evidence favoring naturalism and atheism. Others regard it as fertile ground for theological reflection that not only coheres with but supports orthodox, Christian belief. Is evolution friend or foe of the faith? In this talk, Michael Murray will consider a thirteenth-century challenge to orthodoxy, the resolution of which proves instructive to contemporary Christian scholars, who are tasked with the responsibility of negotiating the boundary between the book of God’s word and the book of God’s works.

Biography

Michael Murray (PhD, University of Notre Dame) is Senior Vice President of Programs at the John Templeton Foundation. His recent publications include Philosophy of Religion: The Big Questions (with Eleonore Stump), Reason for the Hope Within, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (with Michael Rea), Nature Red in Tooth and Claw: Theism and the Problem of Animal Suffering, The Believing Primate: Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Reflections on the Origin of Religion (with Jeffrey Schloss), Divine Evil?: The Character of the God of the Hebrew Bible (with Michael Rea and Michael Bergmann), and a translation of G. W. Leibniz’s Dissertation on Predestination and Grace.