Account Of Creation Research Articles

Fish, Fetishization, and Faith in the Arctic Ocean

The ocean is a site of energy, space, movement, depth, and extraction. The biblical creation account begins there, with the energy of movement of the Spirit over the Deep. The exploitation of the ocean can be read as a desecration of the Deep, of divine presence and creativity, where beings of the deep roam. Many of these beings are beyond human knowledge, known only to the Creator. Many disturbances of the ocean floor and ocean dwellers have already occurred; penetrating even deeper into the ocean is a form of sacrilege. Extractive politics in the Arctic Ocean and in Northern Sápmi continue following decades of overfishing, poaching, and repression of indigenous coastal traditions. The Sámi tradition and ecological theologies offer a different way of looking at coastal and ocean regions. As tools to counter the calls for endless extraction, we offer narratives that highlight the importance of the coastal Sámi oral tradition and a decolonial ecotheology of a protective apophasis of the Deep. Countering extraction involves rejecting a hermeneutics of commodity fetish that distorts the ocean and those that live and travel within it by framing them as endlessly extractable. This article seeks to resist the extraction of oceanic waters and remind us of ways to respect ocean-dwelling species, the ocean, and ourselves in a time where we are facing the sixth great extinction.

The Hypostasis of the Archons 1–18 Revisited: The Genesis Account of the Good Creation as a Trap by the Jealous Demiurge

The confrontation between Greek philosophy and the Biblical heritage has led to a wealth of different currents, varying from Christian and Jewish neo-Platonism to religious convictions that proclaim a complete rupture between creation and the highest hidden god. Although this rupture has its roots in a Platonic concept of a demiurge who as a lower divinity is supposed to be responsible for creation, in Gnosticism this chasm has been deepened to become no less than an abhorrence for embodied “material” existence, together with sheer contempt for the demiurge who is described as jealous, foolish and blind. Freeing the divine element/spark from the imprisonment in matter, an imprisonment concocted by this jealous demiurge, is the general aim of many Gnostic tracts. In the Hypostasis of the Archons, wisdom from above, surprisingly often gendered as female, but not as embodied, serves as a redeemer figure, named Sophia. This has led to an exegesis of revolt in which Eve becomes the source of this higher Wisdom, strengthened by the serpent of the Biblical story of Paradise, who likewise symbolizes this higher Wisdom.

The Seven Transparent Days: Account of Creation and Experience of Faith Meditation by Silja Walter, O.S.B. (review)

The Seven Transparent Days: Account of Creation and Experience of Faith Meditation by Silja Walter, O.S.B. (review)

The Darwinian Theory of Evolution and Creation Account of Genesis: Contradiction or Complementary?

The question of the origin of humans has been fiercely contested for a long period. One perspective is the creation model, which asserts that the Universe and all its components emerged through the deliberate actions of God, driven by design and purpose. Conversely, the evolution model posits that the Universe’s formation occurred solely through mechanistic processes, devoid of any supernatural intervention. Narrowing the scope to humanity, the evolution model contends for the gradual evolution of the human species through a process of descent with modification from an ancestor shared with apes, while the creation model proposes the direct creation of humankind by God in his image. Certainly, the implications either model has on human dignity are very important for human existence. Whether God created humankind directly or through evolution from an ape-like ancestor has a bearing on human dignity. It raises, for example, the question as to whose image humanity bears: God’s or apes’? The way one answers this question will definitely affect his or her human-divine and human-human relationships. A literary research approach was used to gather data from books, articles, and dissertations. The data were critically examined to consider the arguments for either side of the debate. It was found out that both biblical and scientific data may allow for variations within a particular species (microevolution) but not the production of one species from another (macroevolution). The findings suggest that the creation model must be accepted with its attendant implications for human dignity. Keywords: Evolution, Creation, Human Dignity, Origin

Providence and Science in a World of Contingency: Thomas Aquinas’ Metaphysics of Divine Action

Providence and Science in a World of Contingency: Thomas Aquinas’ Metaphysics of Divine Action

Providence and Science in a World of Contingency: Thomas Aquinas’ Metaphysics of Divine Action

Providence and Science in a World of Contingency: Thomas Aquinas’ Metaphysics of Divine Action

Trinity and Creation: Bavinck on the Vestigia Trinitatis

Trinity and Creation: Bavinck on the <i>Vestigia Trinitatis</i>

Augustine of Hippo on Nonhuman Animals

Abstract This article presents a cross-contextual examination of St. Augustine's views concerning nonhuman animals. It aligns seemingly disparate conclusions of previous studies by considering both material and metaphorical nonhuman animals across Augustine's writings and by integrating the role he assigns to them into his broader metaphysical framework. While Augustine is found to assign instrumental value to all aspects of material creation, nonhuman animals are shown to carry a particularly complex significance due to their proximity to humans in his hierarchical account of creation.

‘It is Not Good for the Human to be Alone…’ (Gen. 2:18): yhwh Elohim Among the Weeping Gods of the Ancient Near East

Abstract Regarding the creation account in Genesis 2–3, D.M. Carr observes that this text freely repurposes prior cosmological traditions, and so it is a case of a ‘fluid adaptation of its Near Eastern precursors…’ (Carr, [2020], 52–53). Building on his discussion, this article analyzes an ane motif that has not been linked to Genesis 2–3 yet, i.e., the formation of humanity from divine tears or in the wake of divine laments. Known in various configurations from Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Greek sources, this motif includes tears of a god or gods either as a generative substance in the making of humans or as a driving force for their origins. In light of these traditions, this article considers the pronouncement ‘It is not good for the human to be alone’ (Gen. 2:18), arguing that it is a variation on the ‘divine tears’ myth. As such, this pronouncement addresses a multi-faceted form of ‘aloneness’ in the emerging cosmos.

The Origin of Humanity and Evolution: Science and Scripture in Conversation

The Origin of Humanity and Evolution: Science and Scripture in Conversation

Development of word count data corpus for Hindi and Marathi literature

India has a huge diversity of languages, and Hindi and Marathi are the most spoken languages in the northern and western parts of India. Hindi and Marathi have more than 528 million and 83 million speakers, respectively. The paper describes the development of the Hindi Word Corpus (Hindi WordCorp) and the Marathi Word Corpus (Marathi WordCorp), reporting the frequency of single words (1-gram) used in written texts of the respective languages using the bag-of-words model (BoW). The word frequencies are provided for eleven decades (pre-1920, 1920 to 2020). These texts include books (fiction, non-fiction, history, autobiographies, etc.) and magazines. Academic and reference books were not used. The Hindi WordCorp and Marathi WordCorp used 640 and 712 texts, respectively. An analysis was employed to check whether the texts used were enough to stabilize the rank-order of the total frequencies of the words. Zipf's and Heaps’ law coefficients indicated the sufficiency of the texts. Researchers in various areas like linguistics, social sciences, text mining, machine learning, etc., can use the dataset to answer research questions about language and culture. Some demonstrative examples are provided for using the datasets in the two languages. The dataset is made available on an open data repository. The paper is an account of dataset creation for Hindi and Marathi WordCorp. Hence, no empirical results or conclusions are made based on the data created. A WebApp named Indian Languages Word Corpus (ILWC) has been developed for users. Future directions for text mining and language models are discussed.

Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas III by John F. Wippel

Reviewed by: Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas III by John F. Wippel Cecilia Trifogli Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas III. By John F. Wippel. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2021. Pp. 317. $65.00 (hard). ISBN: 978-0-8132-3555-0. This volume is the third collection of essays on Aquinas’s metaphysical thought by John Wippel, an eminent scholar of Aquinas. It consists of nine substantial essays, which Wippel completed after the publication of his monumental work, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas (2000), and which were originally published as journal articles or book chapters. In a forty-page Introduction, Wippel offers a detailed outline of each of the essays, which provides a helpful guide to their reading. The essays cover topics central to Aquinas’s metaphysical thought: the subject of metaphysics (chap. 1), the preambles of faith (chaps. 2 and 5), the distinction of essence and esse (chap. 3), the Fourth Way (chap. 4), the unity of substantial form (chap. 6), the cognitive status of the separated soul (chap. 7), the metaphysics of evil (chap. 8), and the composition of angels (chap. 9). In the essay on the subject of metaphysics Wippel first draws an important distinction between a prephilosophical notion of being and the metaphysical notion of being as being, that is, being as the subject of the metaphysics. He points out that, according to Aquinas, there is a corresponding distinction between the intellectual processes by which we discover these two notions. Wippel then devotes special attention to the most difficult side of this distinction: the discovery of the metaphysical notion of being. He argues that the negative judgement Aquinas refers to as separatio and contrasts with abstractio is the relevant cognitive process. Wippel is well aware that his interpretation is not universally accepted, and he takes into account alternative views on this controversial topic. He offers a convincing defense of his interpretation by providing an accurate assessment of the textual evidence in support of it. The general issue addressed in the two essays about the preambles of faith is that of the harmony between faith and philosophy or reason. Wippel’s crucial concern in the first essay is to reach an accurate understanding of what Aquinas means by a preamble of faith. According to Wippel’s careful reconstruction of Aquinas’s scattered remarks on this topic, a preamble of faith is a truth about [End Page 343] God that can be discovered by natural reason and is logically presupposed by articles of faith. In other words, preambles of faith provide the rational foundation that Aquinas thinks is required for faith. Wippel also points out that, while Aquinas’s standard examples of preambles of faith are the claims that God exists and that he is one, there is textual evidence for the inclusion of eleven other theological truths in this category. In the second essay on this topic Wippel investigates Aquinas’s view about the preambles of faith as applied to the specific case of creation. The question addressed here is, which parts of Aquinas’s account of creation are preambles of faith and which are articles of faith? This is indeed a question of crucial importance. Wippel points out that in order to answer this question we need to be clear about what Aquinas means by creation. Aquinas’s discussion of creation ex nihilo indicates that he distinguishes two meanings of creation. According to both meanings, creation is a production of something from no preexisting subject and involves the priority of nonexistence to existence. The difference between the two meanings is in the notion of priority involved: according to the first meaning, the priority is in order of nature, not necessarily in the order of time, whereas according to the second meaning, the priority is in the order of time. The distinction is approximately that between the possibility of eternal creation and temporal creation. Aquinas maintains that creation in the first sense can be proved philosophically, and it is indeed a preamble of faith. And the article of faith of which it constitutes the immediate rational foundation is temporal creation, which cannot be proved philosophically. Wippel then turns to the...

Naturalism Fails an Empirical Test: Darwin’s “Dangerous” Idea in Retrospect

AbstractIn his theory of evolution by natural selection, Charles Darwin provided a plausible alternative to Christianity’s creation account of human origins. In response, the Christian botanist Asa Gray suggested that the variation that drives evolution might be generated by God. Darwin rejected Gray’s hypothesis, invoking philosophical naturalism, a hallmark scientific paradigm. Darwin’s conclusion was reached on ideological grounds rather than empirical ones. I frame the question of the source of biological variation in a way that is accessible to modern experimental science and trace historical advances in biology that have accumulated to favor Gray’s theistic view. In particular, I show that empirical evidence collected subsequent to Darwin’s time contradicts the assumption of randomness in the mutation process, and thereby undermines the basis for his invocation of naturalism in the origins of biological variation.

General

General Christopher T. Begg, Fred W. Guyette, Thomas Hieke, Brian J. Meldrum, and Isaac M. Alderman 1. [Noah's Ark; Genesis 6–8; Exod 2:3] Bartosz Adamczewski, "Noah's Ark and the Ark of the Covenant," ColT 91 (2, 2021) 5-19. The similarities between Noah's ark and the saving boat in the Mesopotamian flood accounts are widely known, as are those between the former and the boat in which the infant Moses is released into the Nile (Exod 2:3). However, the connections between Noah's "box" and the "box (ark) of the testimony" have not received adequate scholarly attention hitherto. My article explores these connections on both the linguistic and the conceptual level. It likewise investigates the function of these connections as hypertextual links of the Genesis flood account to earlier Israelite writings, the Books of Deuteronomy and Joshua in particular. [Adapted from published abstract—C.T.B.] *2. [Childlessness among Nigerian Christians] Solomon Ademiluka, "Taking a Holistic View of the Biblical Perspectives on Childlessness: Implications for Nigerian Christians and the Church in Nigeria," HTS 77 (4, 2021) 1-10 [see Editor's Notes, p. 367]. Some Christians believe God's plan is for everyone to have children. They are tempted to conclude that barrenness is a punishment from God. Perhaps this view can be found in the OT, but that does not give us the whole picture of what the OT teaches about the meaning of marriage. God does give children as a blessing, but God does not necessarily give children to every husband and wife. In the ANE, when a woman became a mother, a high degree of honor was conferred upon her. Abraham and Sarah were childless for many years. Sarah perceived this as such a serious matter that she wanted her maidservant Hagar to bear a son for Abraham, whom they named Ishmael. Later, however, Sarah did have a son of her own. They named him Isaac, and he became Abraham's heir (Genesis 16 and 21). Hannah also wanted children, and she was vexed until she gave birth to Samuel. See A. Abasili, "Hannah's Ordeal of Childlessness: Interpreting 1 Samuel 1 through the Prism of a Childless African Woman in a Polygynous Family," OTE 28 (3, 2015) 581-605. However, when we look at the account of creation (Gen 2:4-25), God identifies Adam's problem as loneliness, and that is why God creates the woman—for companionship. When he sees Eve, Adam exclaims, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh!" Nowhere in Scripture does it say that the woman was created to bear children for the man. See also K. T. Magnuson, "Marriage, Procreation and Infertility: Reflections on Genesis," Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 4 (1, 2000) 26-43; and the book by C. Moss and J. Baden, Reconceiving Infertility: Biblical Perspectives on Procreation and Childlessness (2015).—F. W. G. 3. [Proust and Prophets; Samuel–Kings] A. Graeme Auld, "Of Proust and Prophets: Samuel, Elijah, and Charles Swann," Expository Times 133 (4, 2022) 154-58. The recent discovery of a much shorter draft of Marcel Proust's multivolume novel À la recherche du temps perdu (1913–1927) might suggest a partial analogy with the composition-history of the Books of Samuel and Kings in the Hebrew Bible as I envisage it. Thus, while Proust's draft makes no mention of the novel's main character in its final version, my [End Page 1] proposed earlier version of Samuel–Kings is silent about the figures of Samuel and Elijah, who dominate the text we know today. [Adapted from published abstract—C.T.B.] 4. [Death by Stoning in the Hebrew Bible and Post-Biblical Traditions] Shaul Bar, "Death by Stoning in the Hebrew Bible and in Post-Biblical Traditions," OTE 34 (3, 2021) 789-805. Different modes of death appear in the Hebrew Bible, among which we find stoning as a form of execution. Since the person is already dead, why does the Bible go to such lengths in describing this manner of death? In proposing an answer, I begin by examining the cases which describe...

Genesis and Job: A Cosmic Conversation in Conflict

The creation account of Gen 1:1–2:3 is only one of several accounts featured in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. The one account that most closely matches its cosmic orientation is the poetic description of creation given in Job 38–41. Nevertheless, both accounts are worlds apart regarding how they describe creation and what they find most important about creation. Their theological and literary differences make for a lively intertextual conversation, as entertained in the interpreter’s imagination. Let the dialogue begin.

Nathan J. Chambers. Reconsidering Creation Ex Nihilo in Genesis 1

Nathan J. Chambers. <i>Reconsidering Creation Ex Nihilo in Genesis 1</i>

Sabbath as creation care

The priestly account of creation in Gen 1:1-2:3 provides the basis for the weekly Sabbath, centering the command to rest in God’s creative activity. The Ten Commandments not only require that servants be allowed to rest but also extend this requirement to those animals that are dependent on and work for humans (Exod 20:8-11; Deut 5:12-15), connecting the Sabbath to both social justice and creation care. The Sabbath principle is connected to care for the poor in laws that extend the pattern of rest from days to years. After 6 years of work, slaves are released (Exod 21:1-6; Deut 15:12-18), debts are forgiven in a universal seventh year (Deut 15:1-11), and fields are left fallow for the poor of the land and the beasts of the field every seventh year (Exod 23:10-11). The Holiness Code (Lev 17-26) uses the Sabbath principle as an organizing factor in Israel’s life and calendar. For the Holiness Code, the Sabbath year is a Sabbath of the land. The Sabbath Year is a call to creation care for the earth itself, and, should humans fail in their duty, God asserts that the land will be allowed its Sabbaths without humans.

The Religious Feminist Subject as Material-Discursive Circuit

Abstract This article describes three different readings of the creation story of Eve and Adam, occurring over the life span of Henny Dons, a Protestant Christian and first-wave feminist in early-twentieth-century Norway. I discuss her changing understandings of this creation account over the course of her life. More broadly I explore her approach to biblical reading (as receiving, arranging, and iterating) and how this shaped her as a religious feminist subject. I argue that what is going on in her iterated re-readings is not fully captured by the frame of self-cultivation. Rather, this religious feminist subject shows us a series of woman-word operations that receive and arrange a variety of material and discursive entities together in a circuit of “being created woman.”

Missio hominum as commissioned by missio Dei

The Christian image of God rightly goes back to the Bible as the only source of revelation. According to the creation account in the book of Genesis, God is primarily seen as the creator of heaven, Earth and humankind. Following this understanding, the International Mission Conference (IMC) in Willingen in 1952 expanded the scope of mission beyond the ecclesiastical sphere and anchored it in the doctrine of the Triadic God. In other words, the Willingen Conference correctly classified the Triadic God as the only source of mission in the world. However, the question remains as to what a person’s mandate is in relation to the missio Dei. Based on a literature review, this article introduces missio hominum as a framework that encompasses human participation in missio Dei. Selectively, the extraordinary personalities of Noah, Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul in the Bible are examined in order to validate the framework of the missio hominum as derived from the missio Dei. By its very nature, this article warrants further exploration of human involvement in the work of the missio Dei, in order to consolidate the missio hominum as an important framework for aligning human efforts with the work and ultimate goal of the missio Dei.Contribution: The contribution of this article is to deepen the reflection on the relationship between the Triadic God and human beings on the one hand and human temporal participation in the eternal economy of the missio Dei on the other. In doing so, it provides missio scholars and theologians with new insights that encompass the human mission in relation to the missio Dei.

Editor's Foreword.

Editor's Foreword Michael Blackie To celebrate Literature and Medicine's 40th anniversary, I asked four previous Executive Editors, all of whom remain actively involved with the journal, to reflect on their experiences. Anne Hudson Jones's piece, "Literature and Medicine: The First Decade," provides a detailed account of the journal's creation, what motivated the visionaries behind it, and the conversations it initiated. In "Literature and Medicine 2000–2007," Maura Spiegel and Rita Charon trace the journal's fundamental contribution to the emergence and development of illness narratives as a genre. And Catherine Belling reminds us in "Communicable (Literature and Medicine 2013–2018)" to pay attention to language, especially now that 2020 has shown us how connected culture is to biology. I also asked Book Review Editor Travis Chi Wing Lau, and Managing Editor Anna Fenton-Hathaway, to speak to their invaluable contributions to the journal's continuing success. Travis's piece, "An Editorial Philosophy of Book Reviews," reimagines the genre as conversations in which the work of caring becomes possible. And Anna's contribution, "Apprehensions of a Canon: Literature and Medicine 2013–2022," draws from nearly a decade of experience working with authors across disciplines. But it belies her importance to the journal—and to me. In the three years we have worked together, she has become a cherished colleague and an unflappable friend. My own piece, "2020 and Beyond," a collaboration of sorts with Comics Editor MK Czerwiec, outlines the changes I have made to the journal since becoming Executive Editor and looks ahead to the critical conversations about health and the body I would like to see Literature and Medicine become more active in. These reflective pieces appear in Front Matter. One final note. In her piece on the journal's beginnings, Anne recounts how Johns Hopkins University Press initially agreed to publish the journal provided its founding editors secured a guarantor to cover any production costs that exceeded the revenues it made. "The Institute for the Medical Humanities," where Anne built the field's first doctoral program, "at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston [End Page 201] agreed to sponsor the journal and guarantee payment of any financial shortfall."1 In 2020, thanks to the efforts of Anne and Catherine, the Press took complete ownership of the journal, thereby releasing Galveston of its financial obligations. This transfer is momentous. It validated the years of work the journal's Executive Editors, including Suzanne Poirier (1994–2000) and Charles Anderson (2007–2012), poured into this scholarly endeavor. My colleagues' reflections bear witness to the effort this achievement demanded of them and model for me what ensuring the journal's future requires. NOTES 1. See Jones, "Literature and Medicine," in this issue. BIBLIOGRAPHY Jones, Anne Hudson. "Literature and Medicine: The First Decade." Literature and Medicine 40, no. 2 (Fall 2022). Google Scholar Copyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press