The manifest strength of the medieval period has always been the ways in which particular thinkers negotiated the twin criteria of reason and faith. What seemed to the Enlightenment a weakness appears to our time as a virtuoso performance. Less well-known in the West has been the inherently interfaith and intercultural character of the discussion.

This collection of essays, which originated in 1987 at a symposium titled "God and Creation: An Ecumenical Symposium in Comparative Religious Thought," is devoted to the doctrine of creation in the three Western monotheistic faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. For the first time scholars from all three traditions investigate the historical and constructive aspects of this doctrine within an ecumenical environment. Several important comparative dimensions, especially on the relation between creation and emanation, have been highlighted in new ways. While some dimensions of the problematic were shared, notably the Aristotelian challenge of an eternal universe, others turn out to be specific to different traditions.

About the Author

David B. Burrell, C.S.C., is the Theodore Hesburgh C.S.C. Professor emeritus in Philosophy and Theology at the University of Notre Dame.. He is the author of many books, including Towards a Jewish-Christian-Muslim Theology (2011), Friendship and Ways to Truth (University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), and Knowing The Unknowable God: Ibn Sina, Maimonides, Aquinas (University of Notre Dame Press, 1986).

Bernard McGinn is the Naomi Shenstone Donnelley Professor emeritus of Historical Theology and History of Christianity at the Divinity School, University of Chicago. He is the author of several books, including most recently, Mysticism in the Reformation, 1500-1650 (2017).

Reviews

"A gem of a book that no student of Abrahamic faiths in general or of Islam in particular can afford to miss. God and Creation marks a major contribution to comparative religious thought as well as to the doctrine of divine creation in the monotheistic traditions. . . . One fervently hopes that this remarkable book soon becomes available as a paperback so that it can reach the hands of eager students instead of collecting dust on the bookshelves of wearied specialists." -Muslim World Book Review

"God and Creation is an important contribution to comparative religious thought in general and to serious theological reflection on the doctrine of divine creation in Judaism, Christianity and Islam in particular." -Temple University

"The doctrine of creation is the issue under consideration in God and Creation, the collection of papers and responses originally delivered at a symposium held at the University of Chicago and the University of Notre Dame in 1987. The symposium aims at, and to a remarkable extent, succeeds in fostering conversation between the three great Western traditions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, on some ways in which the doctrine of creation has functioned in each." -America

Book Information
ISBN 9780268010201
Author David B. Burrell
Format Hardback
Page Count 340
Imprint University of Notre Dame Press
Publisher University of Notre Dame Press
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 21mm