An opportunity to view a series of talks online and think about the content.
The latest in the series of online short courses provided by the Scottish Episcopal Institute will take place throughout Advent, looking at Creation Theology.
The course, led by the Very Rev Stephen Holmes, Provost of St Ninian’s Cathedral, Perth and Associate Tutor at the Institute, is made up of four roughly 40-minute video’s with questions for reflection or discussion. We will explore our theology of Creation.
Previewing the talks, Dr Holmes said: “We live in an environmental crisis. Although many Christians are responding to it in creative ways, there has recently been a neglect of the theology of creation in the Western Churches which has obscured a distinctively Christian response to the crisis. Taking their shape from the 1982 Scottish Liturgy these four sessions aim to outline the main elements of a faithful and orthodox Christian theology of creation which can speak to our contemporaries. The basic structure is taken from traditional Catholic theology, but this is filled out using the insights of poets and theologians such as Kathleen Raine, Maximos the Confessor, Elizabeth Theokritoff, Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Gerard Manley Hopkins. That I have naturally turned to poets, Eastern Orthodox theologians, and an Islamic philosopher, to help outline an adequate theology of creation, and have found the contribution of Pope Francis helpful but limited, suggests that we in the Western Churches have work to do here. The lectures are just a start, an invitation to you to think and pray. I hope they will give a foundation for action, but also counter environmental despair for the earth is the Lord’s and the real heroes in this story are the angels and Mary, the Mother of God.”