Creation: an invitation to share God’s love
THE ANGLOPHONE debate that pitches creationisms against the empirical sciences has not helped Christians in general to rediscover all that is startlingly implied in the doctrine of creation. I do not propose in this paper to enter directly into that fray, but rather to give an account of the promise and fragility of creation, which are aspects of creation that are uncovered in, and not apart from, the dialogue with sometimes rival cosmologies. The doctrine of creation is irreducibly linked theologically to that of salvation, nevertheless it does call for a distinct treatment.2 The creation narratives set in order a multiplicity of events but they are also part of a beginning that does not belong to the sequence that it inaugurates. They point back towards an initiation that remains ungraspable. In the natural sciences too, the physical origins of the universe cannot be reconstructed empirically; they could be said to be a part of primordial time not historical time. In consequence any perceptions of convergences or rivalries between models of creation and probability in physics, for example, are not simple to adjudicate.
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Cathriona Russell
is a professor in the TCD School of Religion and a former horticulturalist, with an interest in environmental ethics and cosmology.