Dr. Michael Hanby, Associate Professor of Religion and Philosophy of Science, published the lead article in an online roundtable hosted by the Theopolis Institute. Dr. Hanby’s article is titled “The Earth is the Lord’s and the Fullness Thereof: Creation ex nihilo and the ‘Rules’ for Theological Engagement with the Sciences.”
Dr. Hanby’s article is the first within a Theopolis Conversation. Over the course of a month after the article’s initial post on February 15, the Theopolis Institute posted a response to the initial article each week. At the conclusion of the month, Dr. Hanby shared a response to his previous respondents titled “There Is Nothing Outside Creation.”
Below is an excerpt from the initial article.
In brief, the “science and theology” question is not first a historical or sociological question because every attempt to post the question will tacitly presuppose an answer to the more basic questions about the nature of being (and the being of nature) in relation to God and the sort of God to which nature is hypothetically related. Beneath this question, in other words, are the still more primitive questions: Who is God? What is the world? These are the fundamental questions at issue between theology and science.
—Dr. Michael Hanby, Theopolis Conversation “The Earth is the Lord’s and the Fullness Thereof: Creation ex nihilo and the ‘Rules’ for Theological Engagement with the Sciences”
For the remainder of this essay, therefore, I will attempt to sketch an answer to these questions, to think through creation in its philosophical or metaphysical meaning—by no means its only meaning—to suggest how it might govern theological thinking about modern science and even why it is the rationally superior alternative to modern science.
