Book Review: From Nothing: A Theology of Creation

Abstract

From Nothing: A Theology of Creation. By Ian A. McFarland. Louis- ville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 2014. xvii + 212 pp. $35.00 (paper).Recent years have seen a renewed interest in, and focus on, the role of the doctrine of creation within systematic theology. North American Anglicanism is no exception to this trend. In 2012, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church passed Resolution A136, which focused on creation in light of the relationship between science and Christian faith, and commended the Catechism of Creation as a tool for congregational study. Unfortunately, the Catechism of Creation left much to be desired as a theological text. Its casual readers may be left with the impression that Christians must choose between either a version of process theology or creationism of the sort unique to contemporary American debates on the origins of the material universe and of humanity.Ian McFarlands compact but rich retrieval of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo offers another way forward, engaging with recent developments in the physical and biological sciences through the lens of the Christian tradition. McFarland, whose previous work has involved theological anthropology as well as Christology, is most recently the author of In Adam's Fall: A Meditation on the Christian Doctrine of Original Sin. His latest effort thus follows the trajectory of his previous work, reaching beyond the Fall to the moment of creation. At the same time, however, From Nothing is not ultimately concerned with temporal questions of origins. Instead, McFarland focuses primarily on the dogmatic function of creatio ex nihilo as a Christian proposal about the character of God's relationship to the world (p. xiv).Crucially, this God is not an abstract or universal prime mover, but the Triune God known and revealed in Christ. McFarland argues that the doctrine of creation cannot function as a ?forecourt of the Gentiles,' a means by which Christians can find common theological ground with non-Christians at a generous remove from the more knotty questions associated with topics like atonement, original sin, or the (p. xii). McFarland eschews these attempts to speak in a kind of theological Esperanto, relying instead on a grammar that is emphatically and irreducibly Christian, and grounding his argument in the doctrine of the Trinity through the role of the Word in creation described in John 1. As he explains in the preface, The church's doctrine of creation from nothing is best understood in the context of the specifically Christian doctrine of the Trinity and, still more specifically, as a corollary of the belief that Christ is the one in whom all things were created (Col. …