What does it mean to be human in an age of science, technology, and faith? The ability to ask such a question suggests at least a partial answer, in that however we describe ourselves we bear a major role in determining what we will become. In this book, Philip Hefner reminds us that this inescapable condition is the challenge and opportunity of Homo sapiens as the created co-creator. In four original chapters and an epilogue, Hefner frames the created co-creator as a memoirist with an ambiguous legacy, explores some of the roots of this ambiguity, emphasizes the importance of answering this ambiguity with symbols that can interpret it in wholesome ways, proposes a partial theological framework for co-creating such symbols, and applies this framework to the challenge of using technology like artificial intelligence and robotics to create other co-creators in our own image. Editors Jason P. Roberts and Mladen Turk have compiled eight responses to Hefner's work to honor his scholarly career and answer his call to help co-create a more wholesome future in an age of science, technology, and faith.
Philip Hefner is a theologian and poet. He is professor emeritus of systematic theology at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. Jason P. Roberts is senior lecturer of Christian theology and affiliate faculty of the Sustainability Certificate Program at the University of Georgia, Athens. Mladen Turk is professor and chair of the religious studies department at Elmhurst University.
Part 1 Created to Be Creators: Human Becoming in an Age of Science, Technology, and Faith Philip Hefner Chapter 1 Created to Be a Creator Chapter 2 Human Creating-What Does It Matter? Chapter 3 Created Co-Creator: Symbol of Human Becoming Chapter 4 Created Co-Creator: The Theological Framework Epilogue: The Greatest Challenge: The Created Co-Creator Creates a Co-Creator Part 2 Co-Creating, Extended Responses Chapter 5 The Created Co-Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer: Extending Symbols of Human and Divine Relating Jason P. Roberts Chapter 6 Creativity, Co-Creating, And the Moral Community Karl E. Peters Part 3 Co-Creating, Continued Chapter 7 Created to be a Co-Creator: The Cosmic Meaning of Being Human Ted Peters Chapter 8 Knowing our Place: In the Image of God, at Home in the Cosmos Anna Case-Winters Chapter 9 Icons and Images: Seeing all of Creation as Created Co-Creators Ann Milliken Pederson Chapter 10 Institutions and the Created Co-Creator Gregory R. Peterson Chapter 11 The Crisis of Technological Civilization Ted Peters Chapter 12 Is Creative Skepticism Possible? Preliminary Considerations about Conditions of Knowledge, Symbol, and Weather Anything Matters Mladen Turk
