ABSTRACT

Medieval debates over "divine creation" are systematically obscured in our age by the conflict between "Intelligent Design" Creationists and Evolutionists. The present investigation cuts through the web of contemporary conflicts to examine problems seated at the heart of medieval talk about creation. From three representative authors we learn that the doctrine of divine creation is supposed to invite understanding of the relation between artistic freedom and natural necessity, of the very essence of causality, and thereby of the nexus between experience (our world of empirical determinations) and reality (the absolute indetermination of eternal being). Most importantly, medieval scholarship shows us that the problems it addresses are originally inherent in the understanding itself, whereby the question of being emerges as inseparable from the question of interpretation.

chapter |14 pages

Introduction

chapter 2|2 pages

Theology or Philosophy? A False Dilemma

chapter 3|5 pages

A Universe from Nothing beyond Theology?

chapter 5|3 pages

Aristotle or Plato? Another False Dilemma

chapter 6|1 pages

Introduction to the Problem of Context

chapter 8|3 pages

Medieval Platonism

chapter 9|3 pages

Medieval Platonic Hermeneutics

chapter 10|4 pages

The Problem of Creation

chapter 11|5 pages

Creation from Nothing?

chapter 12|2 pages

Divine Creation as Key to Freedom

chapter 13|4 pages

What is Freedom?

chapter 14|3 pages

Emanationism vs. Voluntarism

chapter 15|2 pages

Creation and the Problem of Omnipotence

chapter 16|4 pages

Logos as Key to Creation

chapter 17|3 pages

The Essence of Human Freedom

Creation “from Nothing” as Divine Intellective Emanation

chapter 18|3 pages

Eternity and Dialogue

chapter 19|2 pages

Medieval Teachers of Freedom

chapter 21|4 pages

The Problem of Voluntarism

chapter 22|6 pages

From Intelligent Design Back to Platonism

chapter 23|3 pages

Being and Nothingness

chapter 24|2 pages

Evil

chapter 25|2 pages

Creation and Platonic Ideas