Technology shapes every aspect of contemporary life, but George Pattison argues that thinking about God offers a creative counter-movement to the dominant technological culture. His argument is applied to questions of ethics, university study, the arts, and urban living.

The rapid advancement of technology has led to an explosion of speculative theories about what the future of humankind may look like. These "technological futurisms" have arisen from significant advances in the fields of nanotechnology, biotechnology and information technology and are drawing growing scrutiny from the philosophical and theological communities. This text seeks to contextualize the growing literature on the cultural, philosophical and religious implications of technological growth by considering technological futurisms such as transhumanism in the context of the long historical tradition of technological dreaming. Michael Burdett traces the latent religious sources of our contemporary technological imagination by looking at visionary approaches to technology and the future in seminal technological utopias and science fiction and draws on past theological responses to the technological future with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Jacques Ellul. Burdett’s argument arrives at a contemporary Christian response to transhumanism based around the themes of possibility and promise by turning to the works of Richard Kearney, Eberhard Jüngel and Jürgen Moltmann. Throughout, the author highlights points of correspondence and divergence between technological futurisms and the Judeo-Christian understanding of the future.

Over the last several decades, technology has emerged as an important area of interest for both philosophers and theologians. Yet, despite his status as one of modernity's seminal thinkers, Søren Kierkegaard is not often seen as one who contributed to the field. Kierkegaard and the Question Concerning Technology argues otherwise. Christopher B. Barnett shows that many of Kierkegaard's criticisms of "the present age" relate to the increasing dominance of technology in the West, and he puts Kierkegaard's thought in conversation with subsequent thinkers who grappled with technological issues, from Martin Heidegger to Thomas Merton. Barnett shows that Kierkegaard's writing, with its marked emphases on personal "upbuilding," stands as a place where deeper, non-technical modes of thinking are both commended and nurtured. In doing so, Barnett presents a Kierkegaard who remains relevant--perhaps all too relevant--in today's digital age.

There is widespread understanding of the close connection between religion and the ecological crisis, and that in order to amend this crisis, theological resources are needed. This monograph seeks to contribute to this endeavor by engaging the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. His theology is particularly suitable in this context, due to its open-ended nature, and to the prophetic and radical nature of the questions he was prepared to ask--that is why there are many other attempts to contextualize Bonhoeffer's theology in areas that he himself has not directly written about. In this monograph, Steven van den Heuvel first of all addresses the question of how to translate Bonhoeffer's theology in a methodologically sound way. He settles on a modified form of the general method of correlation. Then, secondly, van den Heuvel sets out to describe five major concepts in Bonhoeffer's work, bringing these into critical interplay with discussions in environmental ethics and eco-theology. In making the correlations he thoroughly describes each concept, situating it in the historic and intellectual background of Bonhoeffer's time. He then transposes these concepts to contemporary environmental ethics, describing what contribution Bonhoeffer's theology can make.

In Kierkegaard and Modern European Philosophy: An Introduction Michael Weston argues that, despite being acknowledged as a precursor to Nietzsche and post-Nietzschean thinkers such as Heidegger and Derrida, the radical nature of Kierkegaard's critique of philosophy has been missed. Weston examines and explains the metaphysical tradition, as exemplified by Plato and Hegel, and the post-metaphysical critiques of Nietzsche, Heidegger and Derrida. He shows how Kierkegaard's ethical critique of philosophy undermines the former and escapes the latter. He considers another ethical critique of philosophy, that of Levinas, before identifying ethics as the non-philosophical site where philosophy can be criticised. Kierkegaard and Modern European Philosophy: An Introduction argues that, by refusing to allow philosophy jurisdiction over ethics and religion, Kieregaard's critique applies as much to modern continental thought as to the metaphysical thought it seeks to undermine.

Through close analysis of the historical and conceptual roots of modern science and technology, Brian Brock here develops a theological ethic addressing a wide range of contemporary perplexities about the moral challenges raised by new technology.