Evil and Creation

David Luy

Description

"My help comes from the Lord, maker of heaven and earth."Evil is an intruder upon a world created by God and declared good. Scripture emphasizes this: laments are regularly juxtaposed with declarations of God as creator. But evil is not merely a problem for the doctrine of creation. Rather, the doctrine of creation provides a hopeful response to evil.In Evil and Creation, David J. Luy, Matthew Levering, and George Kalantzis collect essays investigating how the doctrine of creation relates to moral and physical evil. Essayists pursue philosophical and theological analyses of evil rather than neatly solving the problem of evil itself. Including contributions from Constantine Campbell, Paul Blowers, and Paul Gavrilyuk, this volume draws upon biblical and patristic voices to produce constructive theology, considering topics ranging from vanity in Ecclesiastes and its patristic interpreters to animal suffering.Readers will gain a broader appreciation of evil and how to faithfully respond to it as well as a renewed hope in God as creator and judge.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Christian theology
• Theology
• History of religions
• Christianity

Informations

• Publié par: Lexham Press
• Date de parution: 02 décembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781683594352
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 5 Mo

Extrait

EVIL and CREATION
Historical and Constructive Essays in Christian Dogmatics
Edited by DAVID LUY, MATTHEW LEVERING, and GEORGE KALANTZIS
STUDIES IN HISTORICAL AND SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY
Evil and Creation: Historical and Constructive Essays in Christian Dogmatics
Studies in Historical and Systematic Theology
Copyright 2020 David Luy, Matthew Levering, and George Kalantzis
Lexham Press, 1313 Commercial St., Bellingham, WA 98225
LexhamPress.com
All rights reserved. You may use brief quotations from this resource in presentations, articles, and books. for all other uses, please write Lexham Press for permission. Email us at [e-mail] .
Scripture quotations marked ( CSB ) are from the Christian Standard Bible ® , copyright © 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Christian Standard Bible ® and CSB ® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.
Scripture quotations marked ( ESV ) are from ESV ® Bible ( The Holy Bible, English Standard Version ® ), copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked ( KJV ) are from the King James Version. Public domain.
Scripture quotations marked ( NIV ) are from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION ® , copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Scripture quotations marked ( NRSV ) are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked ( RSV ) are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Pages 84–110 are originally from Retrieving Augustine’s Doctrine of Creation by Gavin Ortlund, copyright © 2020 by Gavin R. Ortlund . Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, PO Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515, USA. www.ivpress.com .
Pages 201–17 are from Aquinas, Original Sin, and the Challenge of Evolution by Daniel Houck, copyright © 2020 by Cambridge University Press . Reprinted with permission.
Print ISBN 9781683594345
Digital ISBN 9781683594352
Library of Control Control Number 2020943976
Lexham Editorial: Todd Hains, Lisa Eary, Abigail Stocker
Cover Design: Owen Craft
The Chicago Theological Initiative (CTI) exists to promote ecumenical scholarship and spiritual friendship among theologians within the broader Chicagoland area.
CTI is committed to the creedal inheritance of catholic Christianity and equally committed to following the crucified and risen Christ in self-sacrificial moral life.
It fosters inter-confessional and inter-institutional collaboration for the sake of advancing the theological disciplines and enabling mutual edification among Christian scholars.
In obedience to the command of the incarnate Lord, CTI hopes for full visible and confessional unity among Christians, but pursues this goal through a ministry of friendship and of mutual encouragement along the path of witnessing through teaching and scholarship to the truth, love, and mercy of Jesus Christ.
In this sense, CTI ’s mission pertains fundamentally to the evangelization of the academy so that Christian scholarship will be able to perform its task of contemplating and handing on the mysteries of faith to the next generation.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
1. Introduction
Evil in Christian Theology
David Luy and Matthew Levering
Part 1: Evil in Early Christian Sources
2. Judgment of Evil as the Renewal of Creation
Constantine R. Campbell
3. Qoheleth and His Patristic Sympathizers on Evil and Vanity in Creation
Paul M. Blowers
4. Problem of Evil
Ancient Answers and Modern Discontents
Paul L. Gavrilyuk
5. Augustine and the Limits of Evil
From Creation to Christ in the Enchiridion
Han-luen Kantzer Komline
6. Augustine on Animal Death
Gavin Ortlund
Part 2: Contemporary Explorations
7. The Evil We Bury, the Dead We Carry
Michel René Barnes
8. Creation and the Problem of Evil after the Apocalyptic Turn
R. David Nelson
9. Creation without Covenant, Providence without Wisdom
The Example of Cormac McCarthy’s The Crossing
Kenneth Oakes
10. “The Appearance of Reckless Divine Cruelty”
Animal Pain and the Problem of Other Minds
Marc Cortez
11. Recent Evolutionary Theory and the Possibility of the Fall
Daniel W. Houck
12. Intellectual Disability and the Sabbath Structure of the Human Person
Jared Ortiz
Contributors
Subject Index
Scripture Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This volume originated as a series of papers delivered in 2018 at the spring colloquium of the Chicago Theological Initiative, which took place in the Harbor House at Wheaton College. Chicago Theological Initiative is a cooperative venture involving a number of Chicago-area institutions. Accordingly, there are many people for us to thank and acknowledge. We are honored to have received financial assistance from the Carl F. H. Henry Center at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. We are indebted especially to Thomas McCall (director) and Geoffrey Fulkerson (assistant director) for their willingness to include our colloquium as part of the Henry Center’s Creation Project, which is funded by a generous grant from the Templeton Foundation. Without this funding, neither the colloquium nor this book would have been possible. In addition to acknowledging the Henry Center at Trinity, we must also express our thanks for the shared leadership and support provided by the Center for Scriptural Exegesis, Philosophy, and Doctrine at Mundelein Seminary and The Wheaton Center for Early Christian Studies at Wheaton College. We are grateful to Lexham Press for agreeing to publish this volume and especially for the work of Todd Hains in bringing it to completion. Finally, we wish to thank each of the exemplary scholars who contributed an essay for this volume.
ABBREVIATIONS
CCC
Catechism of the Catholic Church . U. S. Catholic Conference. New York: Doubleday Religion, 2003
CCSL
Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina. Turnhout: Brepols, 1977–
Civ.
Augustine, De civitate Dei
Comm. Eccl.
Commentarius in Ecclesiasten
Conf.
Augustine, Confessionem libri XIII
CSEL
Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum . Vienna: Tempsk, 1894–1900
Enchir.
Augustine, Enchiridion
GCS
Griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte
Gen. imp.
Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram imperfectus liber
Gen. litt.
Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram
Gen. Man.
Augustine, De Genesis contra Manichaeos
GNO
Gregorii Nysseni Opera Online
Hom. Eccl.
Homiliae in Ecclesiasten
Lib.
Augustine, De libero arbitrio
PG
Patrologia Graeca. Edited by Jacques-Paul Migne. 162 vols. Paris, 1857–86
PTA
Papyrologische Texte und Abhandlungen
SC
Sources Chrétiennes
Schol. Eccl.
Scholia in Ecclesiasten
Ver. rel.
Augustine, De vera religione
1
INTRODUCTION
Evil in Christian Theology
David Luy and Matthew Levering
The essays comprising this book consider evil in relation to the Christian doctrine of creation. A theological account of evil is not exactly the same thing as a response to the problem of evil, even if the former typically includes aspects of the latter. Some of the chapters in this book address the problem of evil (for example, chaps. 3 , 7 , 9 ), but the purpose of the collection as a whole is not to produce a theodicy. It is rather to reflect on the emergence of moral and physical evil from the standpoint of a particular doctrinal locus. In this introduction, we expand briefly on the nature of this task, calling special attention to the difference between a theological account of evil and a response to the problem of evil.

BEYOND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
For ancients and moderns alike, the question of God is deeply intertwined with the riddle of evil. “At least in the western tradition,” Herbert McCabe observes, “nothing so affects our attitude to God as our recognition of evil and suffering.” 1 In the late modern West, evil happenings in the world may seem to awaken religious skepticism. For those living downstream of Voltaire and David Hume (and in the shadow of twentieth-century atrocities), the intrusion of evil appears to call traditionally Christian notions of God automatically into question. 2 The recorded experience of Christian saints across the centuries bears witness to an alternate possibility, however. The endurance of bitter suffering can serve to deepen rather than enervate religious commitment. 3 It is true, McCabe acknowledges, that suffering may cause us to “reject God as infantile, as unable to comprehend or have compassion on those who suffer and are made to suffer in his world.” But it is also possible, he continues, that suffering may cause us to find, “as Job did, that it was our view of God that was infantile; we may in fact come to a deeper understanding of the mystery of God.” 4
The second response and existential posture described here by McCabe implies a theological construal of evil and suffering wherein the bitterness of affliction has been incorporated into the broader task of faith seeking understanding. Suffering relates to the experience of God here in two primary ways. First, it functions as a purifying agent. Existential trials bear a potent capacity to expose the superficiality of theological frameworks unable to prove their mettle in the face of calamity. 5 As Martin Luther (1483–1546) so often insisted, the true theologian is one whose religious commitments have been tested and steeled in the fires of affliction. 6 In this sense, suffering refines the church’s theological understanding. At the same time, however, suffering can achieve si