God the Creator: On the Transcendence and Presence of God

Robert Cummings Neville

feb 1992 · State University of New York Press

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God the Creator provides a detailed exposition of a conception of God as the creator of everything determinate. It does not defend an established conception such as the Thomist, the Calvinist, or the Process theological idea, but rather elaborates the ancient theme of creation ex nihilo in a new form appropriate to the contemporary world.

Part one is a rigorous philosophical development of the idea of God as creator ex nihilo, arguing that an adequate solution to the problem of the one and the many demands such a conception. This part includes a dialectical examination of contemporary and classical theories of being.

Part two asks how one can have knowledge of the kind of God described previously; it deals with experience, analogy, and dialectic.

Part three applies the conception developed in part one to fundamental religious conceptions such as the object of worship, the nature of religion, and the practices of private and public religious life. It presents theories arising from the conception of creation ex nihilo for the interpretation of religious concern, conversion, faith, certainty, solitude, bliss, service, liturgy, providence, evangelism, dedication, reconciliation, brotherhood, discipline, the integration of public and private religion relative to other dimensions of life, freedom, love, and glory.

Though the language arises from the Christian tradition and expresses an orthodox strand of that religion, the argument weaves throughout the concerns of many world religions.

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Robert Cummings Neville is Professor of Philosophy, Religion, and Theology at Boston University and is Dean of the School of Theology. He is the author of Behind the Masks of God: An Essay toward Comparative Theology; The Puritan Smile: A Look toward Moral Reflection; Reconstruction of Thinking; Recovery of the Measure: Interpretation and Nature; The Tao and the Daimon; and A Theology Primer, all published by SUNY Press.