Creation and Religious Pluralism

In the literature labelled ‘theology of religions’ there have been many different theological rubrics used to account for, comprehend, or engage with the religious other. Much of this literature has been concerned with soteriological concerns and has offered variations on the ‘exclusivist, inclusivist and pluralist’ paradigm through the lense of the Trinity, Christology, pneumatology, ethics, ecological well-being, liberation and so on.

This book seeks to come at things from a wholly different direction. It considers religious pluralism from the perspective of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions. Whilst the opening part provides an overview of the doctrine in recent literature, the remainder limits its focus to themes of anthropology (i.e. creaturehood), the quotidian, the idea of ‘sabbath’, and vivifying the immanent through a consideration of phenomenology. Moreover, parodying pluralistic ontologies, it proposes a concept called the ‘transcategorial phenomenal’ which denotes the way the ineffable may function within the phenomenology of creation itself. The book further develops these ideas in a more practical direction by considering ritual in the public sphere, human work and representational politics. Whilst these themes will challenge more conventional ways (see the ‘paradigm’ above) of considering relations between religions, such themes – because they are different from concerns commonly found in the literature – can also be profitably engaged with by people from the across the spectrum of opinion (i.e. exclusivist or pluralist etc.).

The first part provides a discussion of the doctrine of creation, creation in comparative perspective (i.e. other religions), and an engagement with thinkers who have looked at things from an inter-religious perspective. Secondly, although the book seeks to draw together its themes around understanding possible platforms for inter-religious engagement, its discussions of the quotidian, ritual, human work and vivifying the immanent (phenomenology) also offer original considerations of these topics in their own right. Finally, the book seeks to present an original overall proposal for a creational theology of religions.