A Theologian of Renewal

In an age torn apart by the culture wars between science and religion, Catholic theologian John Haught has a better way. Here, EnlightenNext offers a glimpse inside the prodigious mind and heart of a man who has looked into the future and seen a new face of God.

Carter Phipps and John Haught on Evolutionary Theology.

John Haught's most recent book, God and The New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens, prompted Carter Phipps to approach him last spring for an interview. To Phipps' surprise, Haught's responses "...hinted at a much deeper and broader theological agenda - to define and articulate a new vision for the religious impulse in the twenty-first century." Haught refers to this new vision as "evolutionary theology" - joining other thinkers, teachers and philosophers attempting to "articulate, understand and ultimately define a truly post-traditional spiritual worldview that could survive and thrive in a scientific age."

On the influence of Teilhard de Chardin: "Teilhard was one of the first scientists in the twentieth century to become aware that the universe is a story. It's not just a place of imperfection, what Galileo called 'the sink of all dull refuse', caricaturing the Platonic view. No, the universe is a place of creativity and becoming, a place of becoming more. Teilhard knew astronomy and he knew some physics and he knew the history of science and he knew what the Galilean revolution implied. It meant that we could no longer look spatially to somewhere else to find the perfection that we're looking for. We have to look toward the future. The future became for Teilhard the place where we lift up our eyes and our hearts to have something to aspire to."

On a new conception of God for our time: "The consciousness of our age calls out for a God principle that lives not just in the wondrous beauty of nature, or the eternal stillness of the present moment, but in the unknown creative potential that exists in the mysterious space of the future."

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