The Future Trial- The Cross Examination Book 14

In the United States of 2047, public discourse on empirical inquiry is strictly governed by the Standards Reaffirmation Act. Section $17(c)$ enforces a rigid boundary: no theological contamination may enter the discussion of frontier science. The enforcement is ruthless, led by a powerful, private legal foundation known as the Athenaeum.

Christian Cross, a fifty-four-year-old professor of apologetics at Logos University in eastern Tennessee, is no stranger to this battle. He has been tried thirteen times prior on the foundations of belief, doctrine, and truth—and each verdict has been a defense acquittal.

Now, the fourteenth and final indictment has arrived. The domain is the future.

The government charges that Cross’s teachings have contaminated the public understanding of artificial intelligence, transhumanism, gene editing, astrobiology, and the simulation hypothesis by introducing theological categories like the imago Dei, the Logos, and bodily resurrection. Led by the brilliant and formidable prosecutor Charles Frey, the state seeks to silence theological reasoning for good.

Supported by an unlikely alliance—including Dr. Imogen Tarrant, a recently converted Cambridge AI safety researcher; Sister Cassandra Lyle, a Dominican philosopher; and Father Demetrios Stavros, a Greek Orthodox priest—Cross must step into a Knoxville federal courtroom for a three-week televised trial that will decide what kind of public reason the Republic will keep, and what it will let go.

Written to stand alone, The Future Trial is a gripping, intellectually profound courtroom drama that confronts the ultimate question: What makes a person?