This chapter focuses on the core issues concerning the doctrine of creation that were debated by early scholastic theologians. These include the view that God brought the world into being from nothing; that God created everything, all at once; and that creation occurred at the beginning of time.

This chapter describes how the Caribbean Court of Justice is embedded within colonial legacies that have affected regional political norms and legal culture. It shows the CCJ’s decisions are characterized by moderate deference, infrequently ruling in favor of states and typically eschewing restrictive interpretation. More deference, however, is observed through the Court’s remedial orders. The chapter links the CCJ’s tendency to not defer to its intermediate political constraints. Specifically, the CCJ’s strategic space is shaped by high formal independence that is partially offset by homogeneous state preferences. These factors combine to affect the Court’s legitimacy and signal when state resistance might be feasible and credible. In particular, the CCJ defers more when states are clearly aligned. The Court’s nondeference is facilitated by the Court’s practices of persuasive argumentation and public legitimation. The chapter also suggests the CCJ’s support network lacks the robustness necessary to account for its moderate deference.

This chapter describes how the creation and functioning of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights are shaped by the colonial past and its impacts on political norms and legal culture. It shows the ACtHPR’s decisions are characterized by minimal deference, as it commonly rules against states, abstains from restrictive interpretation, and issues intrusive remedial orders. The chapter connects the ACtHPR’s nondeference to its subtle political constraints. Specifically, the Court has a broad strategic space due to its relatively high formal independence and politically fragmented membership. These factors combine to enhance the Court’s legitimacy and suggest that collective state resistance is impracticable. Yet following exit from aspects of the Court’s jurisdiction, the Court defers more. The Court’s nondeference is facilitated by the Court’s practices of persuasive argumentation and public legitimation. The chapter also suggests the African Court’s support network cannot fully account for the observed minimal deference.

This chapter describes how the East African Court of Justice is rooted in colonial legacies, which affect regional political norms and legal culture. It shows the EACJ’s decisions are characterized by substantial deference, frequently ruling in favor of states and relying extensively on restrictive interpretation. Less deference, however, is observed through the Court’s remedial orders. The chapter draws linkages between the EACJ’s deference and its pervasive political constraints. Namely, the EACJ’s strategic space is narrowed by weak formal independence and moderate political fragmentation. These two factors combine to undermine the Court’s legitimacy and imply that state resistance is feasible and credible. A significant episode of prior resistance also suggests states could execute future resistance. To the extent the Court does not defer, the chapter reveals how persuasive argumentation and public legitimation facilitate nondeference. Last, the chapter illustrates how the Court’s support networks insufficiently account for its substantial deference.

The author’s exposition of the gospel message takes the form of a homily addressed in part to an audience located elsewhere, suggesting a comparison with early Christian letters. The author is clearly influenced by the letters of Paul, while comparison with the letters of Ignatius and the fragments of Valentinus’s letters bring to light significant contrasts that help to locate the Gospel of Truth more accurately within the early Christian literary landscape.

Keywords and images are deployed to communicate the gospel message that, in the person of Jesus, the divine Father has made himself known in a world otherwise lost in error and illusion. Its readers are taught to regard themselves as the elect, called out of darkness into light.

Chapter 4 turns to Cyril’s response to Julian in Against Julian. It provides an extensive overview of the narrative structure behind Cyril’s arguments against Julian. After surveying the setting, characters, and plot that frame Cyril’s arguments, it examines two leitmotifs that are crucial to Cyril’s reasoning and then provides examples of “narrative moments” in Against Julian. In broad outlines, the chapter reviews the well-known contours of emerging orthodoxy in the early church. But as a focused analysis of Against Julian, it also provides broad coverage of a text that has been understudied to date and further illustrates how a “narrative structure” lies implicit in something like a polemical treatise. It shows, finally, that despite Cyril’s exemplary status with most Christian communities he still had unique and idiosyncratic perspectives, some of which play noteworthy roles in Against Julian.

The chapter explains the process of building Meaning Networks and Systemic Networks, as described in chapter 6, for four semantic fields inspired by the concept of material process and a further two semantic fields inspired by the concept of relational process. The fields are: Change, Creation, Location_change, Possession_transfer, Equivalence, Logical_relation. For each semantic field, the constructions are described as they relate to one another. Their significant features are identified and expressed in Systemic Networks. The distinctions or choices between the constructions are modelled in taxonomies or Meaning Networks.

This chapter poses the most difficult objection for the instrument doctrine, in particular as Aquinas conceives of it. For Aquinas, a created cause, Christ’s humanity, produces divine effects as an instrumental cause. But the tradition has affirmed that God alone is the cause of grace in the soul, and no created cause can produce grace. John Duns Scotus puts this objection to Aquinas’s account of instrumental causality, and this chapter argues that the criticism appears to succeed. If a created cause participates in the production of grace, as Aquinas argues, then Scotus argues that Aquinas fails to maintain the distinction of natures and powers in Christ basic to Chalcedonian Christology. For Christ’s humanity is taken up into God’s power and brings about the deification of the human person immediately, something only divine power can do. The ground is prepared for a response to this objection in the following chapter.

Chapter 5 examines the Second Way, which starts from observing an ordering of efficient causes in the world and concludes to a first uncaused cause, which is God. After giving the translation and premises of the Second Way, I briefly compare the First and Second Ways and then look at what efficient causation involves for Aquinas. The rest of this short chapter considers the Big Bang as a rival account of the origin of the universe to invoking a divine nature. The chapter closes by briefly considering a multiverse.

This introduction assesses a range of popular and scholarly attitudes toward the current state of American democracy, identifying in them a dominant theme of modern democratic theory, namely, an aversion to conflict. Just as John Rawls believed democratic societies to be perennially threatened by a “mortal conflict” between comprehensive doctrines and their “transcendent elements not admitting of compromise,” and so proposed a theory of liberal order aimed at preempting, containing, and resolving these conflicts, so contemporary critics perceive the intractable disagreements and polarizations of American political culture to be only corrosive and destabilizing. They propose strategies for achieving social cohesion grounded in a sense of national unity, shared history, or common identity more fundamental to difference. Many religious persons and traditions exhibit a similar aversion to conflict, believing it to indicate some form of sin, injustice, or moral error. I question this presumption that conflict is inherently vicious, ruinous, or violent, and begin to sketch an alternative view of conflict as basic to human creaturehood and potentially generative for social life.

This chapter outlines a historiography of the papacy and the environment and begins with several observations. First, papal approaches to the environment are shaped by the historical evolution of the papacy itself. Second, notions of environment and environmentalism are varied across secular, religious, and, by extension, papal discourse and action. Relatedly, these pluriform conceptions are influenced by locations that include geographic, epistemological, and socio-cultural. Thus informed, the chapter engages two distinct periods. The first is the sixth to the sixteenth centuries, wherein papal approaches to the environment were variously shaped by notions of wilderness, classical natural history, anthropocentrism, monastic spiritualities and activities, and expanding ecclesial infrastructure and temporal power. The second period begins with global industrialization around 1750 and continues through to today. Therein, papal environmentalism is especially expressed in modern Catholic social teaching that began with Leo XIII in 1891 and continues through Francis I, especially Laudato si’ in 2015.

Covenant, community and communion are ways in which God’s means and God’s ends are identical. Covenant is not the ‘Plan B’ after the failure of creation in the fall; it is the fulfilment of the reason for creation, and the anticipation of the true covenant, the incarnation itself. God’s love for Israel goes far beyond any instrumental goodwill: Israel is God’s child, God’s spouse, God’s companion forever. Communion is the centre of the Christian faith: being with but also being together. Communion and community name the two aspirations of church. The one is about being in, and bringing others into, relationship with God; the other is about relating civilly, cordially and sacrificially with one another, and attending to the things that need doing to function humanly. When Jesus talks of the realm of God, he is talking about this communion and community becoming a reality for all people.

The debate about Christ’s incarnation, and the intention behind the incarnation, is wide-ranging and far-reaching. It concerns God’s purpose and the exercise of God’s will; the identity of Christ; the reason for creation; the nature of salvation; and the destiny of humankind. The thirteenth-century Franciscans had a particular perspective on these questions, characterised by their twin emphasis on creation and incarnation. Rupert of Deutz pointed out that if the incarnation was subject to the fall, God must have intended the fall. He countered that God had always intended the Word to have an earthly role in the divine plan for the chosen people. Figures such as Bonaventure, Grosseteste and Duns Scotus amplify and qualify these issues, and Scotus concludes that Christ would have come in the maximal glory of creation – even if there had been no fall.