Engaging the Doctrine of Creation

Matthew Levering

Description

Distinguished scholar Matthew Levering examines the doctrine of creation and its contemporary theological implications, critically engaging with classical and modern views in dialogue with Orthodox and Reformed interlocutors, among others. Moving from the Trinity to Christology, Levering takes up a number of themes pertaining to the doctrine of creation and focuses on how creation impacts our understandings of both the immanent and the economic Trinity. He also engages newer trends such as ecological theology.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Christian theology

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 18 juillet 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781493410286
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2017 by Matthew Levering
Published by Baker Academic
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.bakeracademic.com
Ebook edition created 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-1028-6
Scripture quotations are from the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1965, 1966 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Dedication
To Bishop Robert Barron
Contents
Cover i
Title Page iii
Copyright Page iv
Dedication v
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. Divine Ideas 29
2. Divine Simplicity 73
3. Creatures 109
4. Image of God 145
5. Be Fruitful and Multiply 193
6. Original Sin 227
7. Atonement 273
Conclusion 309
Bibliography 319
Scripture Index 355
Name Index 359
Subject Index 367
Back Cover 373
Acknowledgments
Among the many people I need to thank, first is David Augustine, now a doctoral student in systematic theology at Catholic University of America. David was my research assistant for the past three years here at Mundelein Seminary, and he became a dear friend. Among other things, he did the bibliography for this book and helped make major stylistic changes in the conclusions that made them much more readable.
Portions of this book were delivered at conferences, and earlier versions of chapters 5 and 7 have appeared in print (as have a small portion of chapter 3 and a section of chapter 6). A few paragraphs about Augustine and the New Atheists in the book’s introduction will appear in a festschrift for Fr. Matthew Lamb, edited by Thomas Harmon and Roger Nutt. At a conference in which his former doctoral students honored Fr. Lamb, I delivered a keynote lecture on the divine ideas that formed the basis for chapter 1. Susan Waldstein gave me helpful insights during and after the conference. Chapter 2 began as a lecture at a conference on divine simplicity that I organized with George Kalantzis at Wheaton College. At the conference, papers by Brian Daley, SJ, Michel Barnes, David Luy, Marcus Plested, Keith Johnson, Paul Gavrilyuk, and Tom McCall challenged and instructed me, and their influence is found throughout chapter 2 even when my position ends up differing from theirs. Robert Wilken’s keynote lecture at a conference organized by Christopher Thompson and David Meconi, SJ, inspired the section on Basil in chapter 3—as did the presence of Paul Blowers at that conference. In chapter 3, the section on the analogy of being began as an invited response to Michał Paluch, OP, at a conference hosted by the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, California, and organized by Bryan Kromholtz, OP; see my “Response to Michał Paluch’s ‘Analogical Synthesis: An Impossible Project?,’” Nova et Vetera 14 (2016): 609–17. Chapter 5 began as a keynote lecture at the Thompson-Meconi conference on creation. It was improved by critical comments given me by Marie George during and after the conference (though I think that she would still disagree with my position). A version of chapter 5 has been published as “‘Be Fruitful and Multiply, and Fill the Earth’: Was and Is This a Good Idea?,” in On Earth as It Is in Heaven: Cultivating a Contemporary Theology of Creation , edited by David Vincent Meconi, SJ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 80–122. The discussion of Jonathan Edwards and Thomas Aquinas that appears in the last section of chapter 6 took shape through the kind invitation of Kyle Strobel, who introduced me to Edwards: a version of this section appeared as “Jonathan Edwards and Thomas Aquinas on Original Sin,” in The Ecumenical Edwards: Jonathan Edwards and the Theologians , ed. Kyle C. Strobel (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015), 133–48. Chapter 7 derives from a lecture given at Biola University under the friendly auspices of Oliver Crisp and Fred Sanders. It benefited from Ben Myers’s paper at the same conference and from his gentle criticisms; and I also owe thanks to Eleonore Stump, Michael Horton, and Bruce McCormack for their contributions to the conference. A version of chapter 7 has been published as “Creation and Atonement,” in Locating Atonement: Explorations in Constructive Dogmatics , edited by Oliver D. Crisp and Fred Sanders (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2015), 43–70.
At Baker Academic, my friend and editor Dave Nelson made possible this third volume in the “Engaging the Doctrine of” series, read through the whole manuscript in its penultimate form, and gave crucial counsel for improvement. John Betz, Gregory Doolan, and David Bentley Hart read the sections of the manuscript that addressed their work, and their insights and corrections have much improved the book. Danny Houck, a doctoral student at Southern Methodist University, offered me crucial corrections for chapter 6 on original sin, and I am also in debt to Fr. Paul Stein for helpful comments on that difficult chapter. Jörgen Vijgen read chapters 1 and 6, as well as the introduction, and gave me valuable insights and corrections. Mark Spencer of the University of St. Thomas transformed the first two chapters by his brilliant and penetrating comments and criticisms; I dread to think what these chapters would have been without his help. Alexander Pierce alerted me to the significance of Ian McFarland’s work and provided other helpful tips. David Moser, now a doctoral student at Southern Methodist University, read the entire manuscript twice with an eye both to theological content and to stylistic clarity. He enhanced this book in so many ways by his extraordinary diligence and care. Lastly, during the copyediting process, David Cramer of Baker Academic (aided by proofreaders) made very helpful and welcome corrections, exhibiting a high level of theological acumen.
I am also deeply grateful to Mundelein Seminary and its excellent faculty and staff, including its rector and spiritual leader, Fr. John Kartje, and its academic dean, Fr. Thomas Baima, along with his administrative assistant Mary Bertram. I owe special thanks to James and Mary Perry, who generously endowed the chair of theology that I hold. The person who made the book truly possible—by her amazing work, her generosity and lightness of spirit, and her focus on important things rather than on things that are passing away—was my wife, Joy. “Like the sun rising in the heights of the Lord, so is the beauty of a good wife” (Sir. 26:16). Lord Jesus, bless Joy Levering for your name’s sake with eternal life, and bless our children.
This book is dedicated to a great Christian leader, a theologian with a knack for seeing the whole of the Christian faith, a spiritual master who has given his life entirely to the Lord and whose ability to serve others is therefore extraordinary: Bishop Robert Barron. Let it be said of him, “Blessed is the man who makes the L ORD his trust” (Ps. 40:4).
Introduction
Since the universe is a physical mechanism, and God plays no empirically evident role in it, does one need to postulate a “creator”? In what Roger Lundin has called “the tacit creed of contemporary intellectual life,” 1 Genesis 1–3 has long since been replaced with our new knowledge of the evolutionary development of hominids, the extinction of innumerable species, the millions of years when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and our discovery of the shocking vastness of time and space. When viewed from this perspective, does not the claim that humans are “in the image of God” (Gen. 1:27) merely exhibit yet again the familiar human need for self-aggrandizement? And if so, would it not be better to simply discard it as one more relic of—and, indeed, the anthropological counterpart to—an earth-centered cosmology that has long since been disproven? Moreover, given global population levels and the ecological crisis presently confronting us, is not God’s command to humans to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth” (Gen. 1:28) a recipe for disaster?
On a somewhat different front, granted what we know about human origins, is it really very likely that a handful of hunter-gatherer hominids in the grasslands of Africa could have committed an “original sin” that distorted the human race as a whole? Isn’t “this” just how we are? (Indeed, an “original sin” becomes even more difficult to imagine given that the first humans would presumably have inherited the genetic selfishness that is found, by nature, in all animals, rational or otherwise.) Beyond even this, why would it be reasonable to think, given the vast expanse of the universe with its trillions of stars, that the supposed creator of all would become human on earth (bearing in mind that our cosmically insignificant race lives on a tiny speck of dust in a remote corner of the galaxy) in Jesus of Nazareth and, moreover, that he would proceed to die on a cross—for our “sins,” no less—and ascend to heaven, leaving us still in a big mess, a mess that is only getting bigger, and to which, incidentally, Christians have contributed much? For that matter, why death on a cross, of all gruesome things?
In sum, what I am getting at with this litany of questions is simply this: Given our modern worldview, is it not the more reasonable course to regard the authors of Genesis 1–3—as too the later authors of Scripture (including the New Testament)—as products of their “axial age” worldview, a worldview which has little to say to educated people today? 2 Why (and here my imaginary interlocutor throws his hands up in the air with a sigh of exasperation) should we still allow these ancie