The God of Covenant and Creation: Scientific Naturalism and its Challenge to the Christian Faith

Larry Chapp develops a true "theology of nature" that begins and ends with strictly confessional Christian warrants. He begins by showing how modern naturalism arose out of a theological matrix and how it lost its way specifically as naturalism as soon as it rejected that theological matrix. Indeed, modern naturalism is not so much a-theological as it is a rival theology to that of the Church. All claims of ultimacy, including those of natural science, have inherently theological orientations embedded within them - however unconsciously. Therefore, what confronts us in the modern world is not so much a choice between a non-theological naturalism and a theological naturalism. Rather, what confronts us is a choice between two rival theologies - one agnostic and a-theistic in its implications while the other is revelocentric and Christian.

Larry S. Chapp, Ph.D. An expert in the theology of the late Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. His most recent publication "Deus Caristas Est and the Retrieval of a Christian Cosmology," appeared in the Fall, 2006 issue of Communio: International Catholic Review. Currently, he is Professor of Theology at DeSales University in Center Valley, Pennsylvania.