- Tuesday, September 25, 2018
- 3:45 PM–6:00 PM
- Science Building Room 110
Stan Rosenberg, Executive Director of SCIO, will deliver a lecture entitled "Augustine's Beginning: Transitioning from Organism to Mechanism and the Idea of a Natural World."
Stan Rosenberg, Executive Director of SCIO, will deliver a lecture entitled "Augustine's Beginning: Transitioning from Organism to Mechanism and the Idea of a Natural World."
A key development in the shaping of early modern science was the concept of nature in mechanistic terms, possessing a structure that was organized and predictable. The change was deeply embedded in the theology of Augustine. In his largest commentary on Genesis, “de Genesi ad litteram,” Augustine decisively set aside the vision of the cosmos that saw all particular phenomena as a result of the will of God and rejected the enchanted world which dominated Near Eastern, Greek, and Roman cosmologies.The commentary signals a sea change that might be described as a Christianization of the cosmos, as it more thoroughly implemented the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo; it demystified nature, making it into a contingent, objective, rational structure subject to coherent and intelligible reason.
Stan Rosenberg directs Scholarship and Christianity in Oxford (SCIO) and its undergraduate visiting student programs, The Scholars Semester in Oxford and The Oxford Summer Programme. He is a member of Wycliffe Hall and the University of Oxford’s Theology and Religion Faculty, teaching early Christian history and doctrine. Rosenberg is the general editor of the book, Finding Ourselves after Darwin: Conversations on the Image of God, Original Sin, and the Problem of Evil (Baker, 2018) which includes his article, ‘Can Nature be “Red in Tooth and Claw” in the Thought of Augustine?’
At 5:00 pm in SB-110 students may remain for pizza and a Q&A conversation with Stan Rosenberg, sponsored by a grant from Bridging the Two Cultures of Science and the Humanities II, a project run by Scholarship and Christianity in Oxford, the UK subsidiary of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, with funding by Templeton Religion Trust and The Blankemeyer Foundation.
Location details
SB 110
