The Creaturely View
What is the nature of the creaturely view? This chapter critiques some of the contemporary literature concerning the theology of creation primarily to discern what kind of vehicle it might be for interreligious dialogue. It will give some attention to the different perspectives on creation: the emanationist, pantheist, and feminist views, and so on. However, the chapter settles on a non-contrastive ex nihilo understanding or what has been called ‘the Christian distinction’. This view makes it clear that finite causal world is emphatically not a model for understanding the relationship between God and the world. The difference is of an entirely different order. The chapter argues that this ‘non-contrastive’ relationship allows one to speak of the freedom of God as well as the gift of meaning to the creation. It thus sets the stage for wisdom to speak ‘for itself’ in the immanent.