Hearing the Word, Seeing the World: ‘Creation’ in Christian Theology and in Contemporary Science

‘The whole earth is a living icon of the face of God’  (St John of Damascus, Treatise)

Summary

The goal is to cultivate and nourish in the local congregation a more theologically mature, culturally informed, and spiritually fruitful engagement with scriptural and scientific teaching about ‘creation’ (understood as the production or emergence of the universe, of living beings, and of human beings). In pursuit of this goal, we will explore a number of cosmological, biological, and anthropological issues emerging from a close reading of Genesis 1, taking account of how this text has informed Christian teaching on creation and how it might be understood in view of the latest deliverances of the natural sciences. And because Christian theology does not speak of creation in isolation, but considers creation as the work of the triune God who keeps faith with the world, bringing it to its proper destination. We will also have occasion to ask how Christian teaching about God’s sustaining and redeeming work relates to scientific discussion of the conditions under which the universe exists and evolves.

Key Questions

1. How should the scriptural identification of God as the creator of all things and scriptural depictions of God’s creative work inform the church’s worship and witness?
2. How does scripture license theological claims and interact with scientific enquiry about the origins and destiny of the world?
3. Are there distinctly Christian ways in which to characterise the practices and the deliverances of contemporary science?
4. Can science be undertaken or performed ‘Christianly’? Need it be?

Continuing work