What Is Jonathan Edwards's Account of Creation | Oliver Crisp
Lecture Title - Jonathan Edwards on Creation In classical theology, there is an old and difficult question of whether God has a real relation to the created order. The worry is this: if God is really related to the creation (as, say, a mother is really related to her children) then this seems to jeopardize his doctrine of divine aseity. But God is metaphysically and psychologically independent of the created order (i.e., exists a se). So he cannot have a real relation to the creation. However, this poses serious conceptual problems for the Christian theologian. In particular, it generates a worry about how God can have a true relationship to his creatures if he doesn’t have a real relation to them. In this lecture, Crisp will turn to Jonathan Edwards’s idealist account of creation to see whether what he says about God’s act of creation provides resources for addressing this issue. Oliver D. Crisp (DLitt University of Aberdeen; PhD University of London) is Principal of St Mary’s College and Head of the School of Divinity at the University of St. Andrews. He is also Professor of Analytic Theology and Director of the Logos Institute for Analytic and Exegetical Theology. He is author of numerous publications, including Jonathan Edwards among the Theologians (Eerdmans, 2015), Saving Calvinism: Expanding the Reformed Tradition (IVP Academic, 2016), The Word Enfleshed: Exploring the Person and Work of Christ (Baker Academic, 2016), and Analyzing Doctrine: Toward a Systematic Theology (Baylor University Press, 2019). The Henry Center for Theological Understanding provides theological resources that help bridge the gap between the academy and the church. It houses a cluster of initiatives, each of which is aimed at applying practical Christian wisdom to important kingdom issues—for the good of the church, for the soul of the theological academy, for the sake of the world, and ultimately for the glory of God. The HCTU seeks to ground each of these initiatives in Scripture, and it pursues these goals collaboratively, in order to train a new generation of wise interpreters of the Word—lay persons and scholars alike—for the sake of tomorrow’s church, academy, and world. Visit the HCTU website: https://henrycenter.tiu.edu/ Subscribe to the HCTU Newsletter: https://bit.ly/326pRL5 Connect with us! https://twitter.com/henry_center https://www.facebook.com/henrycenter/ https://www.instagram.com/thehenrycenter/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/thehenrycenter