Beginning with Jesus: Recovering a Christ-Centred Theology in Dialogue with Contemporary Science

This article proposes a Christ-centred framework for constructive dialogue between Christian theology and contemporary science. Its central claim is that Christian theology should begin with the person, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, while scientific inquiry should be respected as the disciplined investigation of natural processes. Conflict arises when theology is used as a substitute for scientific explanation, or when science is expanded into a total metaphysics that dismisses questions of meaning, value, and transcendence.

Drawing on biblical studies, historical theology, philosophy of science, and contemporary science-and-religion scholarship, the article distinguishes ultimate explanation from proximate causation, critiques both interventionist popular religion and reductive scientism, and develops a theology of creation that can acknowledge lawful regularity, contingency, suffering, evolution, and cosmic history.

It argues that natural disasters should not ordinarily be interpreted as discrete divine decisions, and that Christian discipleship is measured primarily by conformity to the life and teaching of Jesus: love of God and neighbour, mercy, truthfulness, humility, justice, and care for the vulnerable.

The resulting model is neither anti-scientific nor deistic. It understands creation as genuinely ordered and dynamically unfolding, while confessing God as its transcendent source and eschatological fulfilment. Such a framework offers a credible public theology for churches seeking intellectual honesty, spiritual depth, and moral clarity in a scientific age.