ABSTRACT

Robert John Russell has taken the lead in carefully articulating the possibilities and limitations of interdisciplinary dialogue, focusing specifically on theology and the natural sciences for more than twenty years. Russell's methodology is best illustrated in a recent and ambitious interdisciplinary case study which explores possible interdisciplinary links between the bodily resurrection' of Jesus Christ, Christian eschatology, and scientific cosmology. Russell starts out by identifying the resurrection of Jesus as a challenging shared research trajectory for Christian theology and science. Christian theology should be able to claim a democratic presence' in interdisciplinary conversation. Epistemic hierarchy' refers to the claim that the sciences and the humanities, including theology, can be placed on a series of hierarchical epistemic levels that reflects the increasing complexity of the phenomena they study. A postfoundationalist approach to interdisciplinary dialogue reveals the way we live and reflect on our lives as deeply embedded in historical, cultural, and conceptual contexts.