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4. Creation and Epiphanic Incarnation: Reflections on the Future of Natural Theology from an Eriugenian-Emersonian Perspective
- Fordham University Press
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The tradition of natural theology could be read productively through the use of the trope of "the book of nature," insofar as natural theology regards creation as a direct manifestation of the divine and its attributes. And yet there is a sense in which nature, once endowed with revelatory power, exhibits an inherent tendency to break out of its creaturely bounds and dismiss its divinely assigned tasks, thus shaping temporality in a very special guise. Such is the case in various medieval allegories of nature in the twelfth century that consider nature not just as book but as a mirror of the human self, and even earlier in John Scottus Eriugena's On the Division of Nature. After a medieval preface the article focuses on the nineteenth-century American author Ralph Waldo Emerson as a modern author sensitive to nature's rich potential as a voice of divine proclamation. From a temporal perspective, the article analyzes Emerson's concept of nature as channeling "epiphanic" incarnation rather than serving as the static locus of creation.