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Chapter 4 - The Mythopoieic Roots of Theology

from Part II - Myth and Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2024

Andrew Shamel
Affiliation:
Lincoln College, Oxford
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Summary

If a Christian account of mythopoiesis owns that not only do all things depend upon God for their being, but that ‘all things exist in Christ’, then following Ward, we can assert that mythopoiesis, as a cultural artefact, is shot through with God’s presence: it is a means by which God is revealing God’s self to us. To the degree a myth speaks truly of God it can be understood as participating in God’s self-disclosure to creation; to the degree it is enmeshed in and occluded by sin, myth speaks less truly. Following Henri de Lubac, I argue that the nature–grace distinction can be overstated and that a paradoxical affirmation of the operation of grace within nature without violating the proper autonomy of creation is necessary in order to meaningfully express how human action (mythopoiesis) apart from Christian formation can be said to speak of God (theology). The interplay of the cultural mediation of God’s grace and God’s already-there-ness in nature offers a way of speaking about mythopoiesis’ theological possibilities without necessarily resorting to a doctrine of ‘anonymous Christianity’.

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Theology and the Mythic Sensibility
Human Myth-Making and Divine Creativity
, pp. 77 - 89
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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