The Creativity of God
World, Eucharist, Reason

A reintegrated Christian cosmology, linking God and the world through the creative Word in Christ.

Oliver Davies (Author)

9780521831178, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 5 August 2004

224 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 2 cm, 0.479 kg

"Davies produces a work that is at once radical and very traditional for a Western theology--one that is well worth reading." James W. Farwell, The General Theological Seminary

We have, as a theological community, generally lost a language in which to speak of the created-ness of the world. As a consequence, our discourses of reason cannot bridge the way we know God and the way we know the world. Therefore, argues Oliver Davies, a primary task of contemporary theology is the regeneration of a Christian account of the world as sacramental, leading to the formation of a Christian conception of reason and a new Christocentric understanding of the real. Both the Johannine tradition of creation through the Word and a Eucharistic semiotics of Christ as the embodied, sacrificial and creative speech of God serve the project of a repairal of Christian cosmology. The world itself is viewed as a creative text authored by God, of which we as interpreters are an integral part. This is a wide-ranging and convincing book that makes an important contribution to modern theology.

INTRODUCTION: THE cOSMOLOGICAL IMPERATIVE
Part I. AN ARCHAEOLOGY oF CREATEDNESS: 1. The architecture of createdness
2. The metaphysics of createdness
3. Cosmological fragments
Part II. Scriptural Cosmology: 4. Speech revealed
5. Spirit and letter
6. Voice and sacrifice
Part III. Eucharistic Wisdom: 7. The abundant real
8. Wisdom of the flesh
9. Eucharistic reasoning
Conclusion: Cosmology and the theological imagination.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], Christian theology [HRCM], Philosophy [HP]