Miikka Niiranen, "Does the Contingency of Creation Rely on the Incarnation, on the Trinity, or Both? Gunton and Torrance on the Christian Origins of Features of Natural Sciences," Kerygma und Dogma 65, no. 4 (2019): 294-315
Niiranen, Miikka. "Does the Contingency of Creation Rely on the Incarnation, on the Trinity, or Both? Gunton and Torrance on the Christian Origins of Features of Natural Sciences." Kerygma und Dogma 65, no. 4 (2019): 294-315
From the author: "The overall aim of my dissertation is to take part in the discussion about the relationship of theology and the history of science. My approach in this article is to use Gunton's and T. F. Torrance's accounts to map out ten properties of creation that characterize the Christian doctrine of creation. After establishing that these properties really are essential in the characterisation, my goal is to use them in assessing a further hypothesis which I have come up with. This hypothesis says that a scientist's subscription to these properties contributes to the birth and progress of science. As test cases for the hypothesis, in future articles I use the work of Isaac Newton and James Clerk Maxwell to find out whether their subscription (or lack thereof) to the properties and the contribution can be detected in their work."
There are at least ten essential properties of creation in the works of Thomas Torrance and Colin Gunton. I claim that these ten form a solid foundation for what can be used as a hypothesis when assessing the influence of Christian belief on the rise of science. But Torrance and Gunton differ on the theological basis of the idea of the contingency of creation: the former assigns it to the Incarnation, the latter to the Trinity. I suggest that Gunton is closer to truth, but also that their views should be merged to gain a more complete understanding of the underpinnings of the essential properties of creation.
In German:
Es gibt mindestens zehn wesentliche Eigenschaften der Schöpfung in den Werken von Thomas Torrance und Colin Gunton. Der Artikel stellt dar, dass diese zehn eine solide Grundlage für eine Hypothese zur Bewertung des Einflusses des christlichen Glaubens auf den Aufstieg der Naturwissenschaft darstellen. Torrance und Gunton unterscheiden sich allerdings in Bezug auf die theologische Begründung der Idee der Kontingenz der Schöpfung: der erste ordnet sie der Inkarnation zu, der zweite der Trinität. Der Artikel legt nahe, dass Gunton näher an der Wahrheit ist, aber auch, dass ihre Ansichten miteinander verknüpft werden sollten, um ein vollständigeres Verständnis von den wesentlichen Eigenschaften der Schöpfung zu bekommen.
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