ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that such philosophical challenges also bring with them a fresh opportunity to articulate the intuitions of the biblical tradition about Jesus’ mediation of the divine transformation of reality in our own late modern culture. The intuition that guides the doctrine of the Parousia is that the resurrected Christ mediates the advent of the promising presence of the reign of divine peace in which human becoming is liberated from death and to eternal pleasure. Students of both Christology and physical cosmology are interested in the human experience of being in the world, but they approach these phenomena in different ways and for different reasons. We can identify three pairs of philosophical concepts that are particularly important for both theology and science in the ongoing attempt to make sense of the human experience of being in the cosmos: space and time, cause and effect, and matter and spirit.
