ABSTRACT
Given the discussion in the previous chapter, how might a theology developed from within the context of creation proceed? If the metaphor of original duality between God and the world set up by ex nihilo provides the metaphorical support-system for the Western tradition of the subsequent splits between, spirit and matter, history and nature, mind and body, epistemology and ontology, and into the post-modern discussion of culture and nature, then what happens when post-colonial and post-modern thinkers begin to challenge this split? Furthermore, as I have argued throughout, this very split provides the foundation for the domination of one side of the duality over the other. In terms of the God/World relationship, God is held over and above the world in omni-theologies and in a reversal of this equation, materialistic reductionist understandings of the world are held over and above God.2 The reduction of either side of the equation is, I argue, a reduction of the fullness of experienced life to a concept, in other words, a reifi cation of the lived life that humans experience in evolving naturecultures or in the ongoing process of continuing creation.3 This reifi cation process can also be identifi ed as the process of colonization: the forcing of sameness and unity onto the globe.
