CONTINGENCY IN PHYSICS AND COSMOLOGY: A CRITIQUE OF THE THEOLOGY OF WOLFHART PANNENBERG

Abstract. The concept of contingency serves to bridge the doctrine of creation and natural science in Wolfhart Pannenberg's theology. My paper first analyzes the relation of creatio ex nihilo and creatio continua. Next I suggest three categories of contingency: global, local, and nomological. Under each category I assess Pannenberg's use of physics, cosmology, and philosophy of science. Although I agree with Pannenberg's emphasis on continuous creation and on the role of science in renewing the doctrine of creation, I argue for a shift in the discussion from Pannenberg's topics to others, such as the anthropic principle, quantum physics, and thermodynamics.     

Theology of Creation and the Use of Scripture Creation,David Fergusson,Eerdmans, 2014 (ISBN 978‐0‐8028‐7196‐1), viii + 149 pp., pb $18 From Nothing: A Theology of Creation,Ian A. McFarland,Westminster John Knox, 2014 (ISBN 978‐0‐664‐23819‐3), xvii + 212 pp., pb $35

David Fergusson's recent book, Creation, overviews differing aspects of creation for a theologically‐literate but non‐specialist readership, while Ian McFarland's From Nothing: A Theology of Creation offers a sophisticated account of the meaning and theological implications of the classic doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. Although both books make constructive appeal to Scripture, I suggest that their use of Scripture indicates that their creative theological thinking is not primarily done by working through the interpretative challenges that Scripture presents. There thus remains a distance between biblically and systematically oriented theological thinking.     

CONSUETUDO CARNALIS IN AUGUSTINE'S CONFESSIONS: Confessing Identity/Belonging to Difference

The political theorist William E. Connolly reads Augustine's Confessions as an exhortation to deny the paradox of identity/difference. The paradox for Connolly is this: if one confesses a true identity, one must be false to difference, but if one is true to difference, one must sacrifice the promise of true identity. I revisit Augustine's Confessions here in order to offer a reading of their paradoxical character that contrasts with Connolly's. I will argue that Augustine's confession does not deny the paradox of identity/difference but exemplifies what it means to struggle within it. I turn to James Wetzel's work on Augustine's idea of free will and Catherine Keller's work on the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo to suggest that treating Augustine's confession as confession reveals this struggle.     

Kenotic Trinitarian Panentheism

Abstract :  The "openness of God" movement has made a bold, even courageous move away from static models of God. Yet, as the articles here by Pinnock and Bracken show, divisions remain that call for mediation. Both sides have failed to see that a closer connection is possible between process and orthodox thought. The framework is panentheism , the belief that the world is in some sense within God, even though God also transcends the world. Process thinkers are right to conceive God even more radically as the "supremely related one," yet mistaken in their belief that creation ex nihilo and trinitarian models of God are thereby excluded.     

Simplicity and Language: Bonaventure's Semiotic Asymptoticism

Luy engages in a close reading of Bonaventure's doctrine of divine simplicity. He offers this reading in light of a keen awareness of contemporary critiques of the doctrine, especially from philosophers of religion who suggest that divine simplicity either means that our human words really cannot say anything intelligible about God, or that divine properties that are surely distinct (such as justice and goodness) are in fact absolutely identical. In sum, Luy recognizes that the doctrine of simplicity challenges the intelligibility of religious language. He points out that medieval thinkers, too, recognized this challenge, but they regarded it as a salutary reminder that God is ultimately incomprehensible to finite minds, even though we can speak true things about God. In expositing divine simplicity according to Bonaventure, Luy shows that Bonaventure expects that creation itself is designed to reveal God's limitless self‐communication. Divine simplicity, then, serves to affirm divine perfection, in a manner limited by the effort of finite words to express the infinite; but divine simplicity also reflects the “semiotic universe” that allows for, and exalts in, the wondrous expression of the divine plenitude.     

Infinity Machines and Creation Ex Nihilo

In this paper a simple model in particle dynamics of a well-known supertask is constructed (the supertask was introduced by Max Black some years ago). As a consequence, a new and simple result about creation ex nihilo of particles can be proved compatible with classical dynamics. This result cannot be avoided by imposing boundary conditions at spatial infinity, and therefore is really new in the literature. It follows that there is no reason why even a world of rigid spheres should be eternal, as has been erroneously assumed, especially since the time of Newton. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Alterity in Simone de Beauvoir and Emmanuel Levinas: From Ambiguity to Ambivalence

This article is meant to stage an encounter, a kind of rendezvous, between Emmanuel Levinas and Simone de Beauvoir regarding how alterity seems to enable an ethical relation for Levinas while closing one for Beauvoir. I will argue that Beauvoir's reading of Levinas on “the other” is not a charitable one, and the ethical ambivalence in Levinas's notion of alterity can motivate the praxis Beauvoir seeks for undoing social forms of oppression. I will start with Beauvoir's interpretation of alterity as “feminine otherness” in Levinas's ethics that, for her, originates in the violent perspective of male privilege. Then I will move to Levinas's response to this critique in a set of interviews with Philip Nemo, and to consideration of how a more charitable reading of alterity, understood as a sort of ambivalence in the structure of subjectivity, creates a close proximity between Levinas's and Beauvoir's ethics of action. I contend that both Beauvoir and Levinas respectively developed their ethics of action, either of ambiguity or of ambivalent alterity, in order to free thought from the absolute seriousness with which normative standards are held.     

Emilie du Châtelet on the Existence and Nature of God: An Examination of Her Arguments in Light of Their Sources

Many commentators have suggested that the metaphysical portions of Emilie du Châtelet's Institutions de physique are a mere retelling of Leibniz's views. I argue that a close reading of the text shows that du Châtelet's cosmological argument and discussion of God's nature contains both Lockean and Leibnizian elements. I discuss where she follows Locke in her arguments, what Leibnizian elements she brings in, and how this enables her to avoid some of the mistakes commonly attributed to Locke's formulation of the cosmological argument. I show that while du Châtelet accepts the causal principle ex nihilo nihil fit, she does not utilize Locke's stronger causal principle. I also discuss her use of the principle of sufficient reason in both improving the Lockean cosmological argument and in proving the attributes of God.     

Generation,interiority and the phenomenology of Christianity in Michel Henry

In this paper I focus on a central phenomenological concept in Michel Henry’s work that has often been neglected: generation. Generation becomes an especially important conceptual key to understanding not only the relationship between God and human self but also Henry’s adoption of radical interiority and his critical standpoint with respect to much of the phenomenological tradition in which he is working. Thus in pursuing the theme of generation, I shall introduce many phenomenological-theological terms in Henry’s trilogy on Christianity as well as how he understands the relationship between phenomenology and theology. In the final sections of the paper, I turn to positively defining Henry’s notion of divine generation and examine the theological implications of it in light of his confrontation and rejection of the doctrine of creation in the book of Genesis found in his book, Incarnation: une philosophie de la chair. Humans are not created but are eternally generated, a bold claim that brings Henry to the brink of a kind of interiorized pantheism or Gnostic dualism. Finally, I offer some critical comments specifically about Henry’s doctrine of generation in light of the tension between auto-affection and hetero-affection and thus how one might think “after Henry” in light of the basic Augustinian theological distinction between self and God and the intentionality of faith opened up by that distinction.     

Chaos Theology: A New Approach to the Science-Theology Dialogue

Comparison of the concepts of creation from chaos and creation out of nothing ( creatio ex nihilo ) leads me to reject the latter for several reasons: it is not the biblical concept, and it presents serious conceptual, scientific, and theological problems. Chaos theology is outlined under the headings creation from chaos; chaos and contingency; chaos, evil, and creativity; chaos and incarnation; chaos and eschatology. It is shown to be well suited for the science-theology dialogue by some examples of its application to aspects of cosmic and biological evolution: initial mystery, separation and ordering; chaos and entropy; contingency and fine-tuning of the universe; purpose and progressiveness in evolution; and complexity theory and chaos events.     

论阿奎那创世形而上学的三个层面

阿奎那在形而上学基础上建构创世信仰,确立创世形而上学体系。此体系包含三个层面:上帝是世界的第一原则,其本质与存在同一,即纯粹的现实活动;创造作为上帝的本质体现和神圣活动就是存在的给予;世界万物,既绝对受造于上帝,又自有其分有之在,表现为存在论上的依存性和自在性。阿奎那的创世形而上学正是对《圣经》"起初,上帝创造天地"信仰告白的哲学表达,代表了新的神学范式。     

Bulgakov's Account of Creation: Neglected Aspects,Critics and Contemporary Relevance

The article focuses on a central, yet neglected dimension of the ‘Sophia Debate’ in twentieth‐century Russian Orthodox theology: Bulgakov's panentheistic account of creation and its critique by Nikolai Lossky. Bulgakov understood the doctrine of creation to be negatively defined as creatio ex nihilo and positively defined as creatio ex Deo. Bulgakov's sophiology seeks to relate God and the world through the intermediate concept of Sophia, balancing an account of God's being in the world with an account of the world's eternal foundation in God. Lossky objected that Bulgakov's account underemphasizes novelty, contingency and the free character of creation. Lossky's objections notwithstanding, Bulgakov's version of panentheism – especially its trinitarian, antinomian and kenotic dimensions – finds significant points of contact with contemporary accounts of creation.     

Levinas in Japan: the ethics of alterity and the philosophy of no-self

Does the Buddhist doctrine of no-self imply, simply put, no-other? Does this doctrine necessarily come into conflict with an ethics premised on the alterity of the other? This article explores these questions by situating Emmanuel Levinas’s ethics in the context of contemporary Japanese philosophy. The work of twentieth-century Japanese philosopher Watsuji Tetsurō provides a starting point from which to consider the ethics of the self-other relation in light of the Buddhist notion of emptiness. The philosophy of thirteenth-century Zen Master Dōgen casts doubt on Watsuji’s commitment to reciprocal self-other relationality, showing that the idea of self-emptiness disrupts any conventional understanding of reciprocity and promotes instead other-oriented compassion. Despite interesting similarities between the ethics of alterity and Buddhist compassion, a Buddhist-influenced understanding of alterity differs from Levinas on important points, by making possible the claim that all others—human, animal, plant, and mineral—are ethical others.     

The Positive Side of Stereotypes: Jewish Anarchists in Early-twentieth-Century Buenos Aires

During the late 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, anarchism represented the most important faction of the radical left in the Atlantic world. This movement attracted a disproportionately high number of Jews. During the same period Buenos Aires became both an important magnet for Jewish immigration and one of the main centers of anarchist activism in the world. This article shows how the Jewish presence in the anarchist movement of the city became, in an amazingly short time and almost ex nihilo, so visible that it turned into a stereotype. The article then attempts to provide an explanation for this phenomenon that relies on a sociological and comparative perspective and questions notions of Jewish exceptionalism and arguments based on the eschatology and ethics of Judaism. Finally, it explores how stereotypes that function at one level as signifiers of alterity and mechanisms of exclusion, can, at another social level, promote acceptance and check anti-Semitism.     

Linguistic Alterity and the Multiplicitous Self: Critical Phenomenologies in Latina Feminist Thought

Latina feminists like Gloria Anzaldúa and Mariana Ortega have developed anti‐essentialist accounts of selfhood that are responsive to the problem of alterity and hermeneutic alienation experienced by multiplicitous subjects, understood as those who must navigate between multiple cultural norms and often conflicting interpretive traditions (due to colonial legacies and intersectional oppressions). These accounts can be fortified by examining the sense of inarticulacy that arises from having to name conditions of existence undergirded by social and historical contradictions and ambiguities—especially under the experiential stress of gendered social violence, cultural trauma, and state terror. To address phenomenological accounts of “linguistic terrorism” and the role language plays in multiplicitous accounts of selfhood, I turn to a strategic reading of Nietzsche's existential conception of the self as a living multiplicity, and to his related account of the impoverishment of language. In doing so, I argue more generally that philosophies of agency that critique agential narratives of rupture, instability, and interpretive loss (as part of liberal emancipatory projects) often do so without sufficient attunement to the ways concepts of alterity and liminality operate in North–South contexts or Latina feminist thought. I end by highlighting the critical, decolonial impetus of these concepts as responses to cultural violence.     

Abstracts of the Major Articles

Aquinas tried to establish his metaphysics of creation theologically and philosophically. Crea- ting belongs to God alone, as means that it is God＇s divine action. For God, as to its essence, is nothing but pure act. The essence of creation is creatio ex nihilo, as means that God the Creator alone creates the entire world out of nothing. Since God is the giver of being, the first principle a- lone, creating is but to give being. And the creatures, as to their existence, were created by God. Although all the things come from God absolutely, they have their own participated being and good. As a new theological paradigm, Aquinas＂ metaphysics of creation was a philosophical ex- pression of the Bible sentence, namely, ＂In the beginning God creates heaven and earth. ＂     

Understanding Narratively,Understanding Alterity

Phenomenology's systematic exploration of how a world comes into existence for knowers – knowers who are often conceptualized as individual and ostensibly isolated – requires that it provide some account of the constitution of alterity. In this paper, I address this issue by arguing that we apperceive alterity in terms of the intentionality of behavior. A corollary of this argument is that the apperception of an alter as specifically human is a secondary attribution, following the primary apperception of intention. I further argue that the intentionality of behavior is understood through the projection of a narrative frame, or a “protonarrative,” onto the alter's behavior. I suggest that protonarrativity is the form that experience takes as its ontological condition. Our living is not simply known to us reflectively as protonarrative; rather, experience is lived as protonarrative.This essay is based on a paper presented at the annual conference of the Society for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences, Memphis, Tennessee, October 28–30, 2004.     

An appreciative response to Niels Henrik Gregersen's JKR research conference lecture

Abstract

Using human embryos in research remains a controversial issue, especially in Christian bioethics. Although the official Catholic stance rejects human embryonic stem cell research, Christian thinkers T. Peters, K. Lebacqz and G. Bennett support it. They endorse the 14-day Rule and argue that ex vivo embryos lack moral worth. I examine and challenge the 14-day Rule and location argument (in vivo/ex vivo). I develop a theory of holistic anthropology and intrinsic moral value for human embryos. I conclude that intrinsic moral value is not equal to full moral value, and therefore use of embryos in biomedical research is morally permissible.     

THE HOLY & WHOLLY OTHER: KIERKEGAARD ON THE ALTERITY OF GOD

In response to prevailing perceptions, I contend that Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55) conceives of the wholly otherness of God via his dialectical category of the ‘infinite qualitative difference’ between the human and the divine, initially through the self's consciousness of sin and ultimately through the self's acceptance of the gift of forgiveness. Therefore, I claim that while the common designation of Kierkegaard's God as ‘Wholly Other’ may initially evoke the alterity of sin; it is not ultimately sufficient to describe the divine alterity which Kierkegaard regards as more faithfully manifest in the ‘impossible possibility’ of forgiveness. Through this reading, I finally suggest that the ‘Wholly Other’ is not ultimately representative of God in Kierkegaard's writings and might be more faithfully supplemented by the appellation of the Holy Other.     

More Difficult to Believe? Luther on Divine Omnipotence

This article considers Luther's statement in thesis 21 of the 1545 doctoral disputation of Petrus Hegemon (1545) concerning the difficulty of belief in creatio ex nihilo , and suggests that this difficulty shapes the later Luther's theology in significant ways. The difficulty is reconstructed as a gradual movement into the mystery of the creatio ex nihilo . The first site of difficulty correlates the knowledge of creatures as particulars with the knowledge of the Creator as the source of existence. The move towards a second site is propelled by the question of inevitable death, which Luther answers by moving from material and natural generation to the resurrection and then to the creatio ex nihilo . At the third site, Luther addresses such disturbing questions as the suffering of the righteous, the historical cycle of political power, and the harshness of reprobation. He answers these questions by integrating the symmetrical biblical statements of the annihilatio and the creatio with a theological theory of divine omnipotence. God's hiddenness is understood as God's omnipotence working at the specific locations of self-negation, as well as behind the ebb and flow of historical-political contingency. Faith presses into the hidden mystery, grounded in the certainty that all things are effected by the Creator whose nature is self-giving goodness, and established by the hope that the light of glory will determine more fully the God who is to be honored above all.