Book Review: Resting On The Future

Written on: October 1, 2019

Thank you to Sr. Barbara Harrington for sharing her thoughts on a book about cosmic consciousness.

The interview of John Haught in the Winter Issue of LCWR’s Occasional Papers piqued my interest, so I ‘bought the book,’ that is, Haught’s 2015 book, Resting on the Future: a Catholic Theology for an Unfinished Universe. If you are interested in a “booster-shot” for Cosmic Consciousness, this book is for you, too.

Haught’s basic message is repeated in numerous enlightening ways throughout this fairly dense work: The universe is unfinished; its long history is a drama in which we are situated in our own times; it has a process for becoming, and its on-going future (he speaks of a ‘multiverse’) is a subject for our cosmic hope.

He emphasizes the need for a promise-based, biblical approach, as children of Abraham, with God not as governor, but as goal.

Haught extensively challenges scientific naturalism as well as the Christian sense of an initially finished and perfected universe. The author refers frequently to Darwin and relies heavily on Teilhard de Chardin, Bernard Lonergan and Karl Rahner to support his contention that “From Darwin on, a still-unfinished cosmic process can give a new zest to moral aspiration.”

Haught’s book is well worth the effort. It’s more expensive that most spiritual reading but full of inspiring statements for those who espouse cosmic hope.

This entry was posted in From our Sisters and tagged: Bernard Lonergan, biblical approach, cosmic consciousness, cosmic hope, Darwin, God, John Haught, Karl Rahner, LCWR, moral aspiration, multiverse, Occasional Papers, Resting on the Future, scientific naturalism, Teilhard de Chardin, unfinished universe