God and Creation in Christian Theology: Tyranny or Empowerment?

Original Publication: Blackwell Pub, 1988Reprint: Fortress Press, 2005How can Christian theologians reconcile claims of God's sovereign power with the creatures' own capacities for free action? Recent speculation insists these two claims are incompatible. God's unconditioned omnipotence implies a repression of the creatures' initiatives. The self-determining, productive powers of creatures can be regained only by altering the traditional hyperbole of the theologian's claims for God's agency. The argument of this book proposes that traditional Christian talk of this sort is coherent when it conforms to certain rules for discourse about the transcendence and creative agency of God. The author makes the case that arguments to the contrary distort the import of traditional Christian claims. Using an approach to the study of theology that emphasizes its linguistic complexities and its function for Christian communities, the book documents how theological discourse on this topic is continuous across differences of philosophical persuasion, practical agenda, and denominational affiliation, and how this discourse is disrupted in modern times.