15. I should like to think this puts me in deep agreement with David Kelsey’s great book Eccentric Existence: A Theological Anthropology, vols. 1 and 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009). Kelsey observes that in modern systematic theology “ ‘doctrines of creation’ do remarkably little work.” He suggests that this is due partly to the abstract character of talk about creation, which results in creation making little difference in the broader project of Christian theology. His project is to clarify not only what it means to say we are creatures of God but also what theological and practical difference it makes to say so (vol. 1, p. 160).
16. See “Creation as Apocalyptic: A Tribute to William Stringfellow,” in my Dispatches from the Front: Theological Engagements with the Secular (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994), pp. 107-15.
17. Not only does Joe Mangina use Stringfellow’s work to great effect in his commentary on the Book of Revelation, but he also carries through more consistently than Stringfellow the idea that, although the church can and must rely on God, such a reliance “does not exclude the possibility of its receiving all manner of help from creaturely sources, providing it does not confuse the latter with the help it receives from the Creator himself.” Revelation, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2010), p. 157.
18. My chapter on Murdoch entitled “Murdochian Muddles: Can We Get through Them If God Does Not Exist?” is in my book Wilderness Wanderings: Probing Twentieth-Century Theology and Philosophy (Boulder: Westview, 1997), pp. 155-70. For Murdoch’s reflections on the Demiurge see Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (New York: Penguin, 1992), pp. 477-78.
19. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/1: Doctrine of Creation, trans. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957; repr. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004).
20. Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1959). In the foreword to the Torchbook edition of Dogmatics in Outline Barth comments on the term “systematic theology,” suggesting it to be equivalent to “wooden iron.” Accordingly he confesses he could never, as Tillich has done, write a book entitled “systematic theology.” He could not write a book under that title because a “system” is an edifice of thought constructed on fundamental conceptions selected on the basis of a philosophy by methods that correspond to those conceptions (p. 5). Page references to Dogmatics in Outline will appear in parentheses in the text.
21. David Fergusson in his article in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology puts the matter in a straightforward way when he says, “The account of creation is not primarily hypothesis about how the world got started” (p. 77). He is, moreover, certainly right to suggest that the theological and scientific accounts of the origin of the universe are different “levels” of explanation (p. 74). According to Fergusson, the former is an account of “why” and the latter asks “how.” I am not as convinced as Fergusson that the difference is so easily characterized. For theological reasons I suspect it is important to hold out the possibility that it is at least possible in principle for the “levels” to be in conflict.
22. Interestingly enough, Barth’s understanding of the relation of Trinity and creation is quite similar to Thomas’s argument that “knowledge of the divine persons” is necessary “for the right idea of creation. The fact of saying that God made all things by His Word excludes the error of those who say that God produced things by necessity. When we say that in Him there is a procession of love, we show that God produced creatures not because he needed them, not because of any other extrinsic reason, but on account of the love of His own goodness. So Moses, when he said, ‘In the beginning God created heaven and earth,’ subjoined, God said, ‘Let there be light,’ to manifest the divine Word; and then said, ‘God saw the light that it was good,’ to show the proof of the divine love. The same is also found in the other works of creation. In another way, and chiefly, that we may think rightly concerning salvation of the human race, accomplished by the Incarnate Son, and by the gift of the Holy Ghost.” Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1948), I, 32, 1, 3. I am indebted to Matthew Whelan for directing me to this text.
23. Barth puts this extremely important point this way in Church Dogmatics, III/1: “As in Jesus Christ God and man, eternity and time, converge and overlap in a temporal and time-transcending perfect willed and achieved by God, so it is in the act of creation. As God has accepted man in His Son, He has created him once and for all with heaven and earth. The fact and the way that God has acted historically cannot be mistaken in creation when we have learned to know it, as we must, in the light of the atonement, and therefore of the person and work of Jesus Christ” (p. 27).
24. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/1, p. 59.
25. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/1, p. 59.
26. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/1, p. 76.
27. Gerald McKenny observes that Barth struggled in his ethical thought leading up to the Church Dogmatics to find a place for substantive moral guidance while preserving the critical eschatological thrust of his ethics. I am sure McKenny would not suggest that Barth ever resolved that tension, but I suspect it is a tension not peculiar to Barth but to Christian theological ethics. McKenny, The Analogy of Grace: Karl Barth’s Moral Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 252. McKenny’s book is the best account of Barth’s ethics we have.
28. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/4, trans. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1961), p. 35.
29. Jean Porter, Natural and Divine Law: Reclaiming the Tradition for Christian Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), p. 169.
30. Porter, Natural and Divine Law, p. 169. Porter uses the phrase “to us” to indicate who represents the different idea of morality, but she does not tell us who the “us” is that will find Barth’s view so problematic. The same problem is indicated by her use of “we.”
31. Porter, Natural and Divine Law, p. 170.
32. Porter, Natural and Divine Law, p. 171. I confess I find this way of putting the matter confusing — that is, to suggest that the question is “not only theological but Christological.” What could Christology be