Understanding Of Creation Research Articles

Theology in its Spatial Turn: Space, Place and Built Environments Challenging and Changing the Images of God

AbstractSpace and place have been marginalised or even absent in theology for long periods of its history. Christian theology, hereby, mirrors a strong characteristic of the so‐called ‘Western culture and its history’, which consequently has placed time over space. In the twentieth century's last years, however, space/place reflections have moved out from the margins to several sectors of sciences and the humanities in what has been summarised as ‘the spatial turn’. Spatial metaphors and the central image of the Earth as ‘our home’ are at the heart of environmentalism. This article starts with a discussion whether the spatial turn represents just a new theme or a necessity at theology's own depth and argues for the later. Theology's reflections about space and place provide a deep challenge and an urgent necessity for theology to become aware of its embeddedness in the existential spatiality of life. Thereafter its first section presents in detail those approaches that recently have regarded the theme of space and place explicitly as a central dimension of theology. Among the profiled approaches we find reflections about themes such as the space of Creation, God's spatiality, the loss of place, and spiritual practices as well as justice, redemption and aesth/ethics in the built environment and the ecological city. A second section maps some of the substantial subthemes in the dynamically emerging agenda. Among the many themes we find are God in the city, lived religion, architecture, eco‐feminism, geography and religion, land, new religiosities, pilgrimage, movement and mobility. In general one can identify two directions of theology in its spatial turn: on the one hand theologians explore what Christian images and practices in space and at place mean for theology's classical questions; on the other hand, they move, slowly but safely, into other discourses by experimenting with theological contributions to other disciplines and public discourses. This article shows how a constructive understanding of theology, which does not only focus on religion's destructive capacity, is fertilised and assisted by the self‐critical reflexiveness in academic theology that embeds the space/place reflection in a broader ecological horizon. Thanks to the embedding of theology in a broader ecological perception and understanding of Creation, the new plastic and spatial theology increases it strength to operate on different scales of nature, society and culture. The overview ends with an open question: Can space set free theology?

Liturgie as fontein van die lewe: ’n Oorsigartikel oor die kosmiese kartering van Gordon W Lathrop se boek, Holy ground: A liturgical cosmology

Liturgy as the fountain of life: A review article on the cosmic mapping of Gordon W Lathrop’s book, Holy ground: A liturgical cosmologyAn interpretative review is given of the recently published book by Lathrop, which completed his trilogy on liturgy. Lathrop succeeded in bringing two previously disparate themes, that is faith and cosmos, together in a cosmological liturgy. This review interprets Lathrop’s exposition within a postliberal theological framework and seeks to add value to liturgy and our understanding of reality. A believer grows up under a “sacred canopy” of faith and values. Liturgy now plays the role of providing congregants with co-ordinates to map their position on this earth and under the sky. A Christian liturgy depends on the Biblical understanding of creation, which in turn, is both derived from ancient myths and the inverse thereof. This gives us not only place and time in this cosmos, but a global responsibility towards nature as well. The Christian sacraments therefore lead to an ecological engagement.

Cosmology, Cosmic Evolution, and Sacramental Reality: A Christian Contribution

From the Christian perspective, creation exists through the Word of God. The Word of God does not create God again but brings forth the absolute “otherness” of God: creation. The nature of God is to exist. God is existence as unity in the diversity of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The gift of created existence reflects the triune nature of the Word of God. It is synthesis of diversity into unity that creates. Nature brings forth new existence by unifying what it already brought forth previously. Therefore, the creative process of nature is self‐similar and nonlinear: self‐similar because at all levels it is synthesis that brings forth novelty; nonlinear because the properties of the new unities are not present in their (isolated) elements. The new properties of the wholes, however, do not destroy the properties of the parts. Rather, the elements integrated into new wholes become creatively transformed. This is because the parts become carriers of the whole, which transforms the parts through its presence. The parts become and express the qualities of the whole, qualities that the parts do not possess in isolation. Synthesis, therefore, transforms the parts creatively, because synthesis is creative. The qualities of the parts become “elevated” because the whole becomes present in and through the parts. The understanding of creation as the result of sequential, creative transformations offers a glance into the mystery of the Word of God present in the Eucharist. Here, too, the elements of bread and wine are not destroyed but elevated, creatively transformed into the Word of God. The elements (bread and wine) become the carrier of a transcendent “quality,” the Word of God. From this perspective, creation and the sacrament of the Eucharist illuminate each other. This is because the Word of God that creates the otherness of creation and the Word of God present in the Eucharist is the same.

B. B. Warfield (1851-1921). A biblical inerrantist as evolutionist.

The theological doctrine of biblical inerrancy is the intellectual basis for modern creation science. Yet Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield of Princeton Theological Seminary, the theologian who more than any other defined modern biblical inerrancy, was throughout his life open to the possibility of evolution and at some points an advocate of the theory. Throughout a long career Warfield published a number of major papers on these subjects, including studies of Darwin's religious life, on the theological importance of the age of humanity (none) and the unity of the human species (much), and on Calvin's understanding of creation as proto-evolutionary. He also was an engaged reviewer of many of his era's important books by scientists, theologians, and historians who wrote on scientific research in relation to traditional Christianity. Exploration of Warfield's writing on science generally and evolution in particular retrieves for historical consideration an important defender of mediating positions in the supposed war between science and religion.

A priori willkürlich, a posteriori notwendig. Die sprachphilosophische Verschränkung von Ästhetik und Logik in Hamanns Metakritik Kants

Article A priori willkürlich, a posteriori notwendig. Die sprachphilosophische Verschränkung von Ästhetik und Logik in Hamanns Metakritik Kants was published on January 1, 2000 in the journal Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie (volume 42, issue 2).

Penser la finitude. Création, détachement et les limites de la philosophie dans l'œuvre de maître Eckhart

Starting out with a sketch of Meister Eckhart's understanding of creation, this essay analyses the epistemo- logical implications of his concept of detachment and negative theology. These implications do not only include a reflection upon the limits of the notion of reason and intellectus but they also lead to a « hermeneutic turn » which responds to these limits and which can be observed in the rhetoric of Eckhart's sermons and his preaching. Thus, Eckhart's rhetoric of detachment can be characterised as an attempt to conceive of a « philosophy of finitude » where philosophy and negative theology converge.

God, Creation, Salvation and Modern Science

AbstractThe purpose of the following paper is to show that, rather than being antithetical to the faith as based on the Old and New Testaments, natural science arose in the West in relationship to and, to a certain extent, as a consequence of the biblical theology that was integral to the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. The biblical understanding, emphasized by the reformers served to promote both a mind-set that was compatible with the development of science and a milieu in which science was enabled to evolve. The thesis is not new. As will be noted in the body of the paper, similar claims have been put forth long since by such persons as Günter Howe, Herbert Butterfield, Reijer Hooykaas and Thomas Torrance. In a real sense the thought of these scholars was anticipated by certain of the ideas propagated by Francis Bacon already at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The revival of interest in the ancient world that was the hallmark of the Renaissance served to resuscitate interest in both the writings of the ancient classical world and in the venerable sources of Christian thought as well. The rediscovery of the doctrines emphasized by the biblical documents that led to the Protestant Reformation eventually served to lead to a reorientation of the Christian mind regarding the created world. A new appreciation of the primacy of the grace of God in the biblical understanding of creation, providence, and salvation brought with it a deeper appreciation of the freedom of God in his relation with the creation, on the one hand, and of the freedom of the world in its creaturely differentiation from the Creator, on the other.

DANTEALIGERAND ULYSSES

Increase in the mind's understanding of creation and its impulse to experience the supernatural heart of things are described in the Commedia in terms of a journey through humanity to God, and no image is more central to the concept than Dante's gradual growing of spiritual wings in Purgatorio, followed by the long flight to God in Paradiso. I have already attempted to justify my conviction that this flight imagery — especially the frequent mention of the hero's ‘ali’, ‘penne’ or ‘piume’ — is not only necessitated by the theme of the mind's elevation and the literary and philosophical traditions on which the writer draws, but is also coloured by Dante Alaghieri's appreciation of a verbal coincidence of unusual relevance: ala (ali) are the first two syllables of his own surname. Dante delighted in the etymology of proper names (‘nomina sunt consequentia rerum’) and a belief that his surname held emblematic significance almost by divine design — would have further enriched his sense of a unique destiny and could have been made to serve in the poem as one more indicator that the ‘alto volo’ which he describes himself accomplishing was forewilled by God. It was in support of this etymological hypothesis that I originally chose the expression ‘Dante ALIGER’ as a particularly apt term for the flight motif in the Commedia as well as for those many figures which depend on the idea of awinged Dante. Within the poem the validity of the hypothesis can be demonstrated, I believe, by close scrutiny of Paradiso 15, while the antiquity of the association of ali with the Alighieri family itself is obvious after a glance at the illustration which accompanies this article (see my note on the illustration, pages 39–40).

The Christological Determinant in Barth's Doctrine of Creation

Karl Barth's Christological formulation has taken with increasing seriousness the participation of Christ in the creaturely mode of existence. His effort to interpret the Chalcedonian dogma concerning reality of Jesus Christ as two natures, God and man, united without confusion, change, division, or separation, has contributed to his conception of the creature as existing with its own proper mode of being and activity. We are not concerned to trace in detail in this essay the developments in Barth's thought which have led to modification in his understanding of creation. Fundamentally, Barth recognises that the theology of Crisis characteristic of the second edition of his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans so emphasised the timeless and transcendental character of revelation that it had no place for a conception of creaturely being and time as constitutive of the incarnation.