The Future of Creation Order

Several ICS Senior and Junior Members attended the 2011 Christian Philosophy Conference titled "The Future of Creation Order" which was held at the VU University in Amsterdam last month, and participated in significant ways, representing ICS well.

Senior Member Lambert Zuidervaart presented two keynote lectures and served on the concluding panel at the conference. Lambert's lecture "Re-Ordering Truth" asked how a robust reformational conception of truth might change how we talk and think about creation order. His lecture "Macrostructures and Societal Principles" proposed a normative and structural critique of western society, building on Abraham Kuyper's notion of an "architectonic critique" of the social order. Lambert was joined on the concluding panel by Professors Nicholas Wolterstorff (Yale University), Eleonore Stump (St. Louis University), and moderator Gerrit Glas (VU University Amsterdam).

Senior Member Bob Sweetman was one of a number of people asked to give papers reflecting on Vollenhoven's legacy in philosophy. His paper "Reading Pre-modern Philosophers after Vollenhoven" dealt with evaluating what is useful and what is problematic in Vollenhoven's readings of ancient and medieval philosophy. Bob presented a few historiographical modifications in order to do better justice to the struggle for faithfulness that animated patristic and medieval Christian thinkers in their philosophical work.

Senior Member Doug Blomberg presented a paper titled "In Order to Learn", in which he argued that creational order is necessary for learning to occur and to be beneficial. However, change in the environment and change in the person are also prerequisites for learning, so there is always an interplay between constancy and contingency, between creational order and human responsibility.

Senior Member Nik Ansell presented a paper titled "For the Love of Wisdom", and Junior Member Joe Kirby presented a paper titled "Technology and the Christian Ground-Motive".