Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: the cosmological imperative
- Part I An archaeology of createdness
- 1 The architecture of createdness
- 2 The metaphysics of createdness
- 3 Cosmological fragments
- Part II Scriptural cosmology
- Part III Eucharistic wisdom
- Conclusion: cosmology and the theological imagination
- Select bibliography
- Index of biblical citations
- General index
1 - The architecture of createdness
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: the cosmological imperative
- Part I An archaeology of createdness
- 1 The architecture of createdness
- 2 The metaphysics of createdness
- 3 Cosmological fragments
- Part II Scriptural cosmology
- Part III Eucharistic wisdom
- Conclusion: cosmology and the theological imagination
- Select bibliography
- Index of biblical citations
- General index
Summary
La gloria di colui che tutto move
per l'universo penetra e risplende
In una parte più e meno altrove.
The glory of him who moves all things
Penetrates the universe and shines
In one part more and in another less.
Dante, Paradiso, canto IThe project of constructing a new theology of the createdness of the world can usefully begin with a reflection on world-views from the past which achieved this same aim, though in ways deeply alien to us today. But the cosmological sense-world is constructed of diverse impulses and ideas in a complex unity of sense-inputs, presuppositions, ideas and imagination. The reconstruction of an implicit cosmology in the pre-modern period is a particularly demanding task, therefore, which entails the analysis of fields as diverse as astronomy, the arts, metaphysics, semiotics and epistemology, all of which can be said to interact in distinctive ways in the formation of what we might call ‘the sense of a world’. In the following chapter, two different cosmological structures will emerge. The first is cosmology by extension, which placed heaven in the heavens, at a point far removed from the earth, but in a field of extension that was continuous with it. This is perhaps most difficult for us to understand today though it was, arguably, the most foundational aspect in the formation of medieval perception with its ideologies of heaven as site of our highest values and ultimate destiny. The second is cosmology by participation.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Creativity of GodWorld, Eucharist, Reason, pp. 15 - 28Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004