I have been asked this question so many times, I finally gave up and decided to post an explanation on my web page.

I was forced to invent the term Computational Theologist because I had to come up with a title to put on my business card. The usual titles are unspeakably boring, and non-descriptive as well.

Computational Theology is a term I invented to describe my work on the specifications of the JavaTM programming language and the JavaTM virtual machine.  Initially, my work was focused on interpretation of existing specifications.  This interpretive work had a legalistic, even talmudic flavor, and these specifications  are, so to speak, the "holy books" of the Java platform.  Hence the analogy with theology.

To be completely accurate, I should have billed myself as a Computational Theologian rather than as a Computational Theologist.

However,  I find the word  theologian  quite irregular. How many biologians, geologians or philologians do you know? Computational theology is very much concerned with preventing this kind of irregularity, which is so characteristic of natural language, from  spreading in computing systems, especially programming languages.  So I opted for the more regular expression, Computational Theologist.

Recently, I discovered that people are in fact using the term Computational Theology seriously. They mean a theology based on the model of computation. You can find out more using your favorite search engine.

I no longer work for Sun, so I’m now Computational Theologist Emeritus

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Last updated May 26th, 2017

Copyright Gilad Bracha 1997-2007