MIDWIFERY AS A MODEL FOR ECOLOGICAL ETHICS: EXPANDING ARTHUR PEACOCKE'S MODELS OF “MAN‐IN‐CREATION”

In Creation and the World of Science (1979) scientist‐theologian Arthur Peacocke asks what the role of humanity might be in relation to creation if conceived within the scientific perspective that favors the theological paradigm of the panentheistic God‐world relationship. Deeming roles such as dominion and steward as liable to distortion toward a hierarchical understanding of humanity's relation to the rest of creation, Peacocke proposes seven other roles to express the proper relationship of humanity to the cosmos in panentheistic relation to its Creator. Although each of these models has merit within a panentheistic paradigm, Peacocke and the paradigm itself suggest that the panentheistic model of God in relation to an evolving cosmos may be most effectively imaged through a model of female procreativity. In keeping with this proposal, I develop the understanding of humanity's ecologically ethical role in relation to the evolving cosmos in terms of the midwife to the process of procreation. I evaluate the efficacy of the midwife as a paradigm for ecological ethics by means of several criteria, including the propositions of the Earth Charter, “a declaration of fundamental principles for building a just, sustainable, and peaceful global society in the 21st century” (Earth Initiative 2000).     

ASTROTHEOLOGY: A CONSTRUCTIVE PROPOSAL

As we envision constructive undertakings in the field of religion and science for the next decade, the emerging agenda of astrotheology is opening up a new theater for enquiry. Astrotheology provides a critical theological response to the field of astrobiology while critically assessing exciting new research on life in our solar system and the discovery of exoplanets. This article proposes four tasks for the astrotheologian: deliberate on (1) the scope of creation: is God's creation Earth‐centric or does it include the entire cosmos? (2) the question whether a single divine incarnation on Earth suffices for the cosmos or whether multiple incarnations—one for each inhabited planet—is required; (3) whether astrobiologists and other space scientists are sticking to their science or smuggling in ideology; and (4) readying terrestrial life for contact with extraterrestrial life by enumerating issues to be taken up by astroethics.     

A PENTECOSTAL PERSPECTIVE ON ENTROPY,EMERGENT SYSTEMS,AND ESCHATOLOGY

Many contemporary theologies have given considerable attention to the inbreaking work of God whereby the Spirit imbues creation with life and vitality, but in the process the seriousness of the destructive forces that plague the world has been overlooked. This oversight not only has significant theological consequences, but it also generates a tension with scientific postulates about physical reality. Paradoxically, increasing complexity, including emergent life systems, arise in spite of the overarching conditions. I posit from a theological perspective that the Spirit acts within the world to generate pockets of organization out of disorder. The Spirit not only was present and active at initial creation but also continues to act within the cosmos, sustaining the natural order and giving rise to innovative acts of creation. The world, which groans for and anticipates transformation, experiences local decreases in entropy as proleptic events of God's inbreaking kingdom. This theological hypothesis provides the framework for considering an eschatological response to the world's decay.     

CONCEPT ART, CLONES, AND CO-CREATORS: THE THEOLOGY OF MAKING

In this essay the author compares postmodern art and the cloning of mammals and argues that they both rely upon a narrative of human creativity which sets humanity in the place of God as the only source of meaning and truth in the cosmos. The Christian tradition by contrast owns limits to human making—both artistic and scientific—which are provided by the natural order of creation and by the story of humanity as fallen, and then as redeemed by the unique reordering of reality which the original creator God makes possible in Jesus Christ. Human creativity in the Christian perspective is circumscribed by human creatureliness and this implies that Christian communities will subject aesthetic and technological invention to more careful scrutiny than does a science‐informed and industrially sustained liberal social order.     

Dreams in Buddhism and Western Aesthetics: Some Thoughts on Play,Style and Space

Several Buddhist schools in India, China and Japan concentrate on the interrelationships between waking and dreaming consciousness. In Eastern philosophy, reality can be seen as a dream and an obscure ‘reality beyond’ can be considered as real. In spite of the overwhelming Platonic–Aristotelian–Freudian influence existent in Western culture, some Western thinkers and artists—Valéry, Baudelaire, and Schnitzler, for example—have been fascinated by a kind of ‘simple presence’ contained in dreams. I show that this has consequences for a philosophy of space. According to the authors discussed, the dreamer and the player recognize that human space always means the entire cosmos.     

SEVEN CONCEPTS OF CREATION

Professor Broadie identifies for us a number of features of the account of creation in the Timaeus:
(1) The cosmos-the ordered universe in which we live is to be accounted for as a whole.
(2) The cosmos is supremely beautiful and good.
(3) The cause of the cosmos is non-physical, intelligent, good, and divine, i.e. God.
(4) God worked on pre-existent matter.
(5) God was copying an eternal paradigm.
It would, I think, be very widely agreed that these five theses are true of Plato's account and pick out its significant points.     

A Process-Ontological Account of Work

This essay offers a process-ontological account of work, addressing two challenges in particular. First, I try to show that even though the phenomenon of work is extremely diverse, all occurrences to which the word ‘work’ correctly applies — according to the current semantic intuitions of the relevant linguistic community — share the feature of being: the creation of something of value. Second, guided by this initial conceptual delineation of the phenomenon, I argue that traditional ontology would face fundamental difficulties in giving an ontological analysis of work, which can be surmounted in a Whiteheadian framework. I take Whitehead's analysis of an actual occasion as a model for an analysis of work that explains how toil (exertion of effort) can result in the accomplishment of a desired end. On this basis of this explanatory model the complex dynamicity that we experience in work as the creation of something of value can be accounted for in the well-defined terms of an ontological theory.     

Deep Symbols and Mythic Imagination in the Hermeneutics of Creation Texts

This article reflects on creation through the lens of different traditions of Christian scholarship, and argues for a returning of the theology of creation to its rightful place at the centre of theological discourse about God's relationship with the world—intrinsically linked to the economy of salvation and not in opposition to it. It posits a necessary re-visioning of the relationship between humanity and other-than-human creation via a re-evaluation of the epistemological function of symbol and myth, and a re-examining of the governing principles within myth typologies and their implicit axioms within creation theology. The hermeneutical insights of philosopher Paul Ricoeur and biblical exegete Claus Westermann are brought into conversation. Building on the Ricoeurian epistemological axiom that ‘the symbol gives rise to thought’, the article avers the creation imaginary as a deep and formative symbol of God's free and loving purposes enacted through different and even contesting cultures and traditions and within the whole cosmos. In imaginative dialogical rereading, the community of faith can be open to God's free and loving relationship with all creation, thus also participating in the divine work of renewing the face of the earth.     

Play,agreement and consensus

In this paper I employ the analysis of play to clarify the distinction between an agreement and a consensus, and I argue that it is the conditions supplied by the playful process that enable us to partake in the recognition and creation of truth. Gadamer's hermeneutical truth, unlike propositional truth, speaks of the interpretive act whereby meaning is recognized. This interpretive recognition of meaning is described by Gadamer as an occurrence of interpretive play orgenuine understanding. Regarding Gadamer's conception of truth as modelled on agreement rather than consensus, I demonstrate that it is in the process of play that we achieve the making and maintaining of the conditions that are necessary for agreement, and that the nature of understanding is most clearly revealed by viewing it as a playful process.     

TOWARD AN EVOLUTIONARY ECOLOGY OF MEANING

Abstract. I will discuss some of the implications of the ongoing Darwinian revolution for theology as a constructor and interpreter of human meaning. Focus will be directed toward the following issues: How should we best understand ourselves in the new, evolutionary cosmos? What are the problems with the kind of genetic reductionism espoused by neo-Darwinism? How are those problems resolved by the “relational” understanding of life made available by thermodynamics and ecology? How do we generate meaning-structures in this relationally-constituted cosmos? Finally, how do these developments enrich our understandings of responsibility—to each other and to our private conceptions of God?     

The three eras of cosmic evolution

The time‐honored concept of change seems capable of accounting for the appearance of matter from the primal energy of the Universe, and in turn for the emergence of life from that matter. As sentient beings, we, perhaps along with other advanced life forms in the cosmos, have become the collective consciousness of the Universe. Our raison d'etre is our ability to appreciate the cosmos—to wonder, to introspect, to abstract, to explain—for technological intelligence is a preeminently evolved agent of the Universe.     

TELESCOPE + MIRROR = REFLECTIONS ON THE COSMOS: UMBERTO ECO AND THE IMAGE OF RELIGION

Umberto Eco argues that a mirror image is not a sign. At best it is a double, a thing that ceases to be once the reflected object is removed. Harry Mulisch narratively suggests that mirror images function metaphorically as gateways between human suffering and the divine. And interestingly, science employs mirrors and mirror images both to turn our gaze upwards and to show us reflections of our place in the cosmos. Tying together Eco's notion of the double, Mulisch's insistence that mirror images reflect humanity's construction of the divine, and the Giant Magellan Telescope Project's cosmic images, it is my contention that modern, telescopic mirror images are much more than snapshots of the cosmos. They are constructions of human and divine meaning that—signifying—pose the question, what is reflected: the cosmos or humanity?     

Ego development in perspective: Structural stage,functional phase,and cultural age-period models

Ego development is emerging as one of the more important areas of research in developmental psychology. This paper presents a structural stage approach to ego development and distinguishes it from two other models of ego development, which are termed functional phases and cultural ages. Two subtypes are also delineated within the structural stage approach—a monodomain and a multisubdomain—and the latter is argued for. These concepts are then illustrated through an analysis of four prominent ego development theories—those of Robert Selman, Robert Kegan, Jane Loevinger, and Erik Erikson. The important similarities and critical differences of the theories are clarified, which enables the authors to present a summary integration.     

Nerve/Nurses of the Cosmic Doctor: Wang Yang-ming on Self-Awareness as World-Awareness

In Philip J. Ivanhoe’s introduction to his Readings from the Lu-Wang School of Neo-Confucianism, he argues convincingly that the Ming-era Neo-Confucian philosopher Wang Yang-ming (1472–1529) was much more influenced by Buddhism (especially Zen’s Platform Sutra) than has generally been recognized. In light of this influence, and the centrality of questions of selfhood in Buddhism, in this article I will explore the theme of selfhood in Wang’s Neo-Confucianism. Put as a mantra, for Wang “self-awareness is world-awareness.” My central image for this mantra is the entire cosmos anthropomorphized as a doctor engaged in constant self-diagnosis, in which effort s/he is assisted by an entire staff of the nerves/nurses—individual humans enlightened as Wangian sages. In short, I will argue that the world for Wang could be meaningfully understood as a mindful, self-healing body within which humans are the sensitive nerves, using our mindful awareness to direct attention to the affected areas when injury or disease occurs. We are, and must thus recognize that we are, the bold but sensitive nervous system of the cosmos, sharing (like neurons) our loving excitement, carrying out (like a medical nurse) the doctor’s orders for the self-care of our cosmic body/medical corps.