Soteriology, Eschatology and Cosmology: Resolving the Dissonance and Providing a Lens.

Recent studies of the relationship between science and religion yield a growing scholarly consensus over the compatibility of each category's truth claims, but there is continued dissonance in the relationship between the truth claims of cosmology and eschatology. On the one hand, cosmologists claim that the world ends in catastrophe; on the other hand, theologians working on eschatology claim that it is moving towards renewal and new creation. Recent scholarship responds to this dissonance by emphasising the bodily resurrection of Jesus. There is, however, another possible resolution to this dissonance that also provides an interpretive lens for understanding cosmology: using the Christian doctrine of soteriology as an analogy for eschatological claims. Through a comparative analysis of its own narrative with the narrative of cosmology, the Christian doctrine of soteriology lends a new perspective to the cosmological-eschatological dissonance while also providing a larger interpretive lens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]