The Creativity of God: World, Eucharist, Reason

by Oliver Davies

• ISBN13: 9780521831178
• ISBN10: 0521831172
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780511207112
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-08-30
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• More Book Details

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

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.