The future hastens towards us, with challenges, but also possibilities and ambiguities: Artificial Intelligence, biotechnology, transhumanism, virtual realities, social and ecological changes, and a throng of ‘posts’: post-pandemic, post-Christendom, post-democracy, post-Western, post-Whiteness, post-orthodoxy—even, some suggest, post-human.
Christian Scripture and tradition have long provided resources for an orientation toward the future (promise and fulfilment; messianic expectation; resurrection, return, redemption and the renewal of creation). This orientation also poses the question: what might future theology and future biblical scholarship discover, consider, and contribute? What about future practical theology, future ethics, future contextual or constructive theology, future political theology, and even future historical research? What new methods might emerge? What exegetical and doctrinal questions might preoccupy us? What might future pedagogy and formation entail?The aim of this conference theme is to provoke reflection on what future theology in its various disciplines might say and do, as well as what its future context might look like. A major emphasis for the conference is that theology might be a creative, constructive, and contributory voice, speaking hope-fully into public discourse, the academy, and its ecclesial domains.
Our keynote speakers for ANZATS 2022 are Willie James Jennings (Yale University; formerly of Duke and Fuller) and Victoria Lorrimar (Trinity College, Brisbane). It is anticipated that Professor Jennings will address questions of race, theology, contextuality, and pedagogy in future perspective, while Dr Lorrimar will draw on her research specialisms in biotechnological human enhancement, theological anthropology and eschatology to stimulate further conversation and imagination. https://anzats.edu.au/conferences/anzats-2022/