creation

I cherish Thanksgiving for its cultural institutionalization of the practice of gratitude. And because there are no gifts and few cards.

The same week the European Organization for Nuclear Research announced the discovery of a new sub-atomic particle—which may be the missing puzzle piece for physics’ theory of everything—we also learned that some 46 percent of poll respondents hold “creationist views of human origins.” I might not be as incensed as Katha Pollitt is, but I’m distressed by this poll.

Reconciliation requires relocation. To see the effects of our food choices, we have to get close to the land.

What might God have to say about the creatures most people don’t think of as lovable?

Is John 1 a midrash on the creation story and the song of creative Wisdom? If so, its writer has infused it with profoundest joy.

The new Century editorial
offers that if the Republicans nominate Rick Santorum for president,
his regular rhetoric about poverty might challenge President Obama to
engage him on it--giving voters a chance to hear two different analyses
of the problem instead of, you know, not hearing about it all.

Somewhat more quixotically, I've found myself wondering whether there's an opportunity as well in Santorum's recent claim that environmentalism amounts to a "phony theology." Stephen Prothero's reaction is to challenge Santorum's desire to draw who's-a-real-Christian lines; Rachel Tabachnick's is to trace the "phony theology" line to the influence of the Cornwall Alliance.

Good
points both, but what interests me here is that Santorum's comments
point to one of the basic theological questions for Christian
eco-engagement: Is the emphasis on human membership in the wider
creation or on human responsibility for it?

In this splendid book Belden Lane has made a double contribution—to the
reordering of our perspectives on creation and to our understanding of
the Reformed tradition as a contributor to this reordering.

Early modern versions of the argument from design relied upon a simple analogy: the universe looks like an artifact, which implies a maker. But as David Hume pointed out, one would need experience observing universes being made to judge that the analogy holds true.

We labor under the illusion that if the clock stopped between creation and Fall or between Fall and redemption, they would make sense on their own. But nothing could be more misleading.

Creation has long been a neglected child in biblical-theological studies; it is ground often left to creationists and naysayers. Only in recent years has the Bible's creation theology been addressed in a major way, not least because of the impact of the environmental movement.

Followers of the media furor about evolution and God imagine that they have to choose between Darwinian theory and belief in divine providence. The most vociferous current contestants in this debate are either atheistic supporters of evolutionary theory or Christian supporters of the riposte position known as intelligent design. I suggest that there is a way to avoid this false disjunction altogether. New discoveries about the phenomenon known to evolutionary theorists as cooperation give us fresh reasons to regard evolutionary theory and classic Christian theism as entirely compatible—indeed, richly and convincingly so.