How God relates to the world lies at the heart of the most intense
debates in modern theology and philosophy. Movements of Nouvelle
Théologie, process theology, radical orthodoxy, modern Trinitarian
theology and postmodern theology (i.e. Jean-Luc Marion) all seek to
reconsider God’s relation to the world as a corrective of what they
perceive as problematic. Of particular significance is the recent
revival of the theology of participation, as promoted by Radical
Orthodoxy in UK and Hans Boersma in North America. Facing excessive
secularism and fragmentation of the modern Western world, Radical
Orthodoxy and Boersma resort to the pre-modern theology of
participation as the way forward. Relying heavily on Platonism,
however, their participatory theology, as critics pointed out, tends
to compromise the intrinsic goodness of the creation. In this book, Ge
proposes that a distinctively Christian theology of participation
anchored in creatio ex nihilo, developed by Augustine and brought to
the fore by Aquinas, provides a more promising solution which not only
secures the unity of things in God but also the goodness of creaturely
plurality. Since participation in its origin is a solution to the
problem of the One and the Many, Ge employs Gunton’s framework of
the one and the many in his discussion of Augustine and Aquinas’s
theologies of participation. By reshaping their concepts of
participation in the light of the doctrine of creation, Ge argues,
these thinkers have profoundly transformed the metaphysics of
participation, making it finally more suitable for describing the
unique relationship between God’s unity and creaturely plurality.
This Christian metaphysics of participation is not only an advance on
Radical Orthodoxy and Boersma, but also superior to competing theories
of reality such as pluralism and reductionist physicalism. The book
will also bring out implications for modern science-religion
dialogues, the core of which concerns how God relates to the world.
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Creation as Participation in Augustine and Aquinas
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781793629111
Publisert
2021
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
Bloomsbury USA
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter