“A New Hope for Eschatology in Cosmic Perspective: Beyond the Predictions of Standard Big Bang Cosmology,” With a response by Dr. Robert John Russell

In the 1960s-1970s, Big Bang cosmology became the standard model for describing the history of our universe by successfully explaining numerous astronomical observations, including the recession velocities of galaxies, the cosmic microwave background radiation, and the ratio of helium atoms to hydrogen atoms over the universe. However, at the same time, its prediction brought significant challenges to Christian theology in various aspects. One of the most important challenges is the conflict between its prediction for the future of our universe and the expectation from Christian eschatology. If our universe ends with “freeze or fry,” as Big Bang cosmology predicts, it apparently conflicts with the New Creation expected from Christian eschatology in which a “new heaven and earth” will be ultimately established by God. According to Christian eschatology, God’s redeemed creatures are to enjoy eternal life in the ultimate future, not a heat death. This apparent conflict leads Christian theologians to expect that there must be some transformation of the universe that lies above and beyond the predictions of standard Big Bang cosmology. With this theological conviction, Dr. Hyung-Joo Lee proposes exciting new ideas about the universe relying on the quantum field theories that have been developed recently to supplement the original Big Bang cosmology. According to Dr. Lee, the quantum nature embedded in our universe allows us to retrieve eschatological hope by opening up a new possibility of overcoming the predictions of standard Big Bang cosmology.

Rev. Dr. Hyung-Joo Lee recently earned a Ph.D. in theology from the Graduate Theological Union with his dissertation entitled “Our Inflationary Big Bang Universe as Creation, as the Ground for Redemption, and as Characterized by Intra-Physics Emergence” under the supervision of Profs. Robert John Russell, Ted Peters, and Philip Clayton (May 2025). He also holds a Ph.D. in physics from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) for his research on a cosmological model based on supersymmetric quantum field theory. He is currently working as an editorial research assistant at CTNS.