Sarah Coakley on the theological implications of "evolutionary dynamics"

Prof. Rev. Dr. Sarah Coakley

Students of theology know that since their inception in 1888, the Gifford Lectures delivered in the Scottish universities of Edinburgh, St. Andrews, Glasgow, and Aberdeen have featured some of the most notable figures in systematic theology (e.g., Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Jürgen Moltmann) and have yielded some of the most significant published contributions to the field. Thanks to my friend and fellow Baptist theologian Mark Medley, I've learned that lecture handouts, lecture texts, and YouTube videos from the 2012 Gifford Lectures delivered by Sarah Coakley are available online on a page hosted by the University of Aberdeen. Coakley's lectures on the theme "Sacrifice Regained: Evolution, Cooperation and God" explore the implications of recent developments in the mathematical study of “evolutionary dynamics” for ethics, metaphysics, the philosophy of science, and theology.

I've followed the work of Anglican theologian and priest Sarah Coakley since the 2003 publication of her book Re-Thinking Gregory of Nyssa in the midst of her tenure on the faculty of Harvard Divinity School. Now the Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity and Deputy Chair of Arts and Humanities at the University of Cambridge, she is currently at work on an envisioned multi-volume systematic theology I've been eagerly anticipating for a few years. Its first volume, God, Sexuality and the Self: An Essay on the Trinity, is set for publication by Cambridge University Press in September 2013. In the meantime, I'll enjoy working through these Gifford Lectures along with readers of Ecclesial Theology.