God and Creation

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.

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).