Towards a Creational Theology of Religions

Author(s):  
David Cheetham

The final chapter will draw on the elements from the foregoing chapters in order to outline a possible creational theology of religions. Underpinning the constructive enterprise will be the doctrine that has pervaded the book’s key reflections: creatio ex nihilo. The chapter will attempt to redirect into the context of creation and createdness some of the common philosophical and theological themes in debates on religious plurality. This is an exercise in philosophical theology rather than pure philosophy. The Sabbath is at the heart of a creational interfaith spirituality. Wisdom and blessing is cross-cultural and is the profound aspect that gives creation its ‘depth’ and vivifies the immanent. The creation, through its gifted creativity, wisdom, and worship, exceeds human and religious boundaries.

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-78
Author(s):  
Djonly J. R. Rosang

The creation of the universe, according to the Holy Bible has actually done as said in Genesis 1-2. However, there are some people who are still struggling in order to search for the reason to question the process of how is this universe actually began, so that they will look for scientific consideration to find the “theoretical justification” over the biblical truth. This writing aims to give an answer to the gap theory in Genesis 1:1-2. The author, through the study Genesis 1:1-2, the result of this study concluded as follows. First, there is no exegesis background that is strong enough for gap theory to give an assumption that there was an unmeasurably period of time or age in the creation of the universe. Second, a biblical statement, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth ... for in six days the LORD made heaven and the earth” (Gen. 1:1; Ex. 20:11) is an ultimate fact of God’s power and majesty in creating the earth from nothing to existence with His Word (creatio ex Nihilo). Third, the doctrine of world’s creation must be the foundation of faith that is tested in the authority of God’s words (2 Tim. 3:16) and the entire creation of God which become the medium of scientifical activity in the history of humanity must be according to the biblical perspective. Fourth, The statement of Genesis 1:1 appears to be refutation toward various scientific theories and human’s philosophic perspective that are opposite the biblical truth (Gen. 1-2, Ps. 33:4-9).Pernyataan Alkitab tentang penciptaan alam semesta sebenarnya sudah tuntas sebagaimana dikemukakan dalam Kejadian 1-2. Namun ada saja orang yang berusaha mencari alasan untuk mempertanyakan proses terjadinya alam semesta ini, sehingga mencoba mencari pertimbangan ilmiah untuk menemukan “pembenaran teoritis” atas kebenaran Alkitab. Tulisan ini bertujuan untuk memberi jawab terhadap teori celah (gap theory) dalam Kejadian 1:1-2, melalui studi biblika penulis mengemukakan argumentasi paham teori celah, dalam kajian metode induktif terhadap studi teks Kejadian 1:1-2. Hasil studi ini disimpulkan bahwa: Pertama, bahwa tidak ada dasar eksegesis yang kuat bagi teori celah untuk memberi ruang bagi asumsi adanya rentang waktu periode atau zaman yang tak terukur dalam proses penciptaan semesta. Kedua, pernyataan Alkitab, “Pada mulanya Allah menciptakan langit dan bumi ... dalam waktu enam hari lamanya” (Kej. 1:1, Kel. 20:11) adalah suatu fakta Alkitab yang tak terbantahkan sebagai tindakan kemahakuasaan dan keagungan Allah menciptakan dunia dari yang tidak ada menjadi ada dengan firman-Nya (creatio ex nihilo). Ketiga, doktrin penciptaan harus menjadi landasan iman Kristen yang  diuji dalam otoritas Firman Allah yang berkuasa (2 Tim. 3:16) serta dunia ciptaan Allah dan segala isinya menjadi arena kegiatan ilmiah dalam lintasan sejarah manusia haruslah berdasarkan perspektif Alkitab. Keempat,  pernyataan penciptaan Kejadian 1:1 merupakan sanggahan terhadap berbagai teori ilmu pengetahuan dan pandangan filsafat manusia yang bertentangan dengan kebenaran Alkitab (Kej. 1-2, Mzm. 33:4-9).


Author(s):  
Samuel Lebens

This chapter explores the medieval debate about the nature of creation. It compares and contrasts arguments of three major schools. The first school suggests that the universe had no start, and that God’s work of creation is, accordingly, continuous and with no beginning. The second two schools suggest that the creation had a beginning but differ as to whether God created the universe out of nothing, or out of some primordial matter. Bringing these arguments into conversation with contemporary philosophy and cosmology, this chapter finds in favor of an original creation from nothing.


Author(s):  
David Cheetham

In the well-worn debates about religious pluralism and the theology of religions there have been many different rubrics used to account for, comprehend, or engage with the religious other. This book is chiefly a work of Christian theology and seeks to bring the doctrine of creation and the theology of religions into dialogue and in so doing it comes at things from a different direction than other works. It contains an extensive exploration of the doctrine of creation and asks how it might intervene distinctively in these discourses to produce a new conceptual and practical topography. It will consider interreligious engagement from the perspective of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo that forms the dominant view in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions. In the course of the book’s narrative, there will be close consideration given to anthropology (i.e. creaturehood), the quotidian and wisdom, the idea of ‘sabbath’, human action, and work, and vivifying the immanent through a consideration of some representative phenomenologists. The book will develop these ideas in a more practical direction by considering sacraments and rituals in the public sphere as well as attempting to describe the kind of ‘creational politics’ that might bring traditions into dialogue. Whilst these themes will challenge more conventional ways of considering relations between religions, such themes—because they are different from concerns commonly found in the literature—can also be profitably engaged with across the spectrum of opinion (i.e. exclusivist or pluralist etc.). Thus, whilst the position adopted in this work is creatio ex nihilo, part of the motivation is to review the ways in which this focus helps to broaden rather than limit the discussion.


2010 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 203-224
Author(s):  
Myroslav Feodosijeviè Hryschko

The text examines Sergej Nikolajeviè Bulgakov's description of the philosopheme as thoroughly "immanent" (viz., the immanence of man qua being, such that ontology in Bulgakov becomes a conceptual analogue for immanence) and the corollary that such immanence necessarily excludes the problematic of the "creation of the world." Because of this resolute immanence and the notion that the creation of the world in the form of creatio ex nihilo requires a non-immanent or non-ontological thought and concept, the problematic for Bulgakov is approached only by a theologeme. Appropriating this argument as material for a cursory philosopheme, the text attempts to transform Bulgakov's theologeme into a philosopheme through an elision of God and dogma that overdetermines the theologeme. This philosopheme (nascent within Bulgakov's work itself, in both his hesitation to the overdetermination of immanence and the commitment to the problem of creation) would be a thoroughly non-ontological philosopheme, one that allows for the treatment of the problematic of "creation" or singular ontogenesis, yet with the corollary that this philosopheme must rely on an "ontological zero" Such a philosopheme qua ontologically empty formula nevertheless remains ontologically significant insofar as it is to evince the limit of ontology, in the ontological zero's non-relationality to ontology.


2003 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 285
Author(s):  
Celina A. LÉRTORA MENDOZA

The epistemological delimitation between philosophy and theology was one of the most interesting problems discussed in the Thirteenth Century. Discussions around the object of theology prove this. Among the authors in the first half of the two hundreds, Roberto Grosseteste shows a particular interest because he represents one of the last exponents of the monastic tradition, but already open to new problems. His -well founded- intuition of the incommensability of the philosophical and theological language takes him to postulate the «credibilia» as a proper kind of theological propositions, in opposition with the scibilia (demonstrables) of philosophy (or science, in the peripathetic sense). The first credibilia enunciated in the text revealed is the creation of nothingness, the importance of which lies in its (at least apparent) contradiction with the Aristotelian physics a model of rational knowledge. Grosseteste assumes in this case (and for all the credibilia) the need of a rational process demonstrating its «credibility» defined in terms of«probability».


Author(s):  
Lynda Coon

The final chapter of this volume explores the conversation on Jesus held between material and textual sources, where monumental works of sculpture extend salvific themes found in the lives of saints and the verses of poets. Merovingian meditations on Jesus are multivocal, reflecting the cross-cultural rhythms of a world open to and receptive of external influences, whether originating in classical or biblical texts or hailing from Mediterranean or Northern lands. In order to prove this hypothesis on the Merovingian body and the embodied savior, three works of sculpture produced during the early Middle Ages serve as sounding boards for Jesus’ earthly ministry as enacted by human players: the crucified savior featured on the seventh-century Moselkern Stele; the eighth-century Hypogée des Dunes’s sculpted relief of the two thieves crucified along with Jesus; and the so-called Niederdollendorf “Christ,” carved most likely in the seventh century. Saintly actors, such as Radegund of Poitiers (d. 587), animate three themes expressed in the sculpted sources respectively: (1) absence, (2) torture, and (3) light. The three subjects—light, torture, and absence—all point to strategies of integrating the realm of humanity within the celestial spheres, and each motif tracks different styles of meditating on Merovingian Jesus.


2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Clucas

The Animadversiones in Elementorum Philosophiae by a little known Flemish scholar G. Moranus, published in Brussels in 1655 was an early European response to Hobbes’s De Corpore. Although it is has been referred to by various Hobbes scholars, such as Noel Malcolm, Doug Jesseph, and Alexander Bird it has been little studied. Previous scholarship has tended to focus on the mathematical criticisms of André Tacquet which Moranus included in the form of a letter in his volume. Moranus’s philosophical objections to Hobbes’s natural philosophy offer a fascinating picture of the critical reception of Hobbes’s work by a religious writer trained in the late Scholastic tradition. Moranus’s opening criticism clearly shows that he is unhappy with Hobbes’s exclusion of the divine and the immaterial from natural philosophy. He asks what authority Hobbes has for breaking with the common understanding of philosophy, as defined by Cicero ‘the knowledge of things human and divine’. He also offers natural philosophical and theological criticisms of Hobbes for overlooking the generation of things involved in the Creation. He also attacks the natural philosophical underpinning of Hobbes’s civil philosophy. In this paper I look at a number of philosophical topics which Moranus criticised in Hobbes’s work, including his mechanical psychology, his theory of imaginary space, his use of the concept of accidents, his blurring of the distinction between the human being and the animal, and his theories of motion. Moranus’s criticisms, which are a mixture of philosophical and theological objections, gives us some clear indications of what made Hobbes’ natural philosophy controversial amongst his contemporaries, and sheds new light on the early continental reception of Hobbes’s work.


Author(s):  
Zhang Hong ◽  
Wei-qing Cao ◽  
Ting Li Yang ◽  
Jin Kui Chu

Abstract This paper is the second of a series of two papers which designed a new type of load balancing mechanisms for planetary gearings with arbitrary number of planets. In this paper the common expression of the non-uniform load share factor was deduced, and a function parameter:force-arm factor and their solution was given. That makes it possible that the dimensions and the ability of load equilibrium of Multi-Link Load Balancing Mechanisms can be determined. The criteria of optimum load balancing Mechanisms selection were set up with consider of the effects of turning pair clearances, and optimum mechanisms were selected among the 15 candidates obtained in Part 1. Finally, it was demonstrated that the optimum multi-link load balancing mechanisms for arbitrary number of planets had the similar topological structures and same function and performence of load equilibrium.


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