A BOOK exploring our place in the Creator’s masterpiece.
A BOOK exploring our place in the Creator’s masterpiece.
God’s very created order lays the ground for the answer to the question we all ask: what am I here for? God creates. God invites us to subcreate with what He has made. And God meets us in the work.
We realized a huge number of the challenges we face as people would be so much easier if we could internalize this dynamic. So we approached a dozen of our favorite theology teachers and asked them to contribute one chapter to our year, explaining to us one big idea; one piece of the puzzle. Then we planned a whole year of stories and conversations (face to face and on our podcasts) to help us dwell on those big ideas together.
The result is what you see here. It’s a tour, guided by world-class teachers and storytellers, through the relationship between the Creator and His subcreators. In the journey, we hope you can seek a clearer answer to His call on your life.
Media inquiries (interviews, guest op-eds/excerpts, etc.)
Listen to sample podcast interview (see below)
We realized there were about 20 books we wish everyone would read related to creation theology—and we were friends with most of the authors. So we asked them to provide a chapter introducing our community to a specific key idea. You can reach each chapter and get a sweeping introduction to creation theology…manageably!
Prologue: Whose Story Are We Telling?
Jessica Hooten Wilson
Introduction: Seeking Our Place in the Created Order
Brian Brown
The Relationship of Earth to Heaven
Hans Boersma
Matter and Its Creator
Paul Buckly
Time and Its Creator
Jane Clark Scharl
Adorning Space and Time as God’s Image
Peter J. Leithart
Gratitude: The Foundation of Human Creativity
Leslie Bustard
The Art of Memory
Heidi White
The Art of Cultivation
Grace Olmstead
The Art of Naming
Marilyn McEntyre
The Art of Subcreation
Matthew Clark
Why We Create: The Eucharistic Life
Jeromie Rand
Epilogue: The Call of Creation As Worship
Anthony Esolen
Listen to our Imagination Redeemed podcast episodes dialoguing with the book (start at the bottom to work your way through chronologically). Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast app.
Understanding the dignity and responsibility inherent in the role of naming not only allows us to better understand our relationship with the created order, but also our relationship with God, the first Creator and Namer.
In this episode, Glenn Paauw shows us how the movement of the biblical narrative is always toward God entering into our time more and more deeply.
In this episode, Heidi White explores the posture that can enable Christians to be conservers of the goodness and beauty they’ve inherited, and restorers of things that have been broken.
Matthew Clark reads his chapter on subcreation. When we understand it properly, our subcreation is a middle act between God’s first creation and His second—and the culture we build together becomes, as Andy Crouch put it, part of “the furniture of eternity.”
Christina Brown and Amy Lee share about the art of gardening and God's story.
In this episode, Brooke McIntire reads Gracy Olmstead's essay exploring how a posture of cultivation equips us to create as God made us to create.
In this lecture, Heidi explores the two different attitudes we can have toward the past, and how each needs the other in order to healthily live in the present.
In this episode, Brooke McIntire shares this month's essay by Heidi White on mythmaking, and the questions surrounding creation as an act of shared memory.
Malcolm Guite makes the case that Christ's incarnation is the spark of Christian creativity.
In this episode, Brian kicks off this month's theme of "Imago Dei" by sharing Peter Leithart's essay Creators Imaging the Creator, which explores the hinge question of our "Why We Create" series: what does it mean to be human?
Brian welcomes back writer and storyteller Leslie Bustard to talk about how to cultivate thankfulness, and how it helps us to live well in the present moment.
After the conversation with Corey about how Bergson's theory of time influenced the literature of Lewis and Eliot, Jane and Corey take us into T.S. Eliot's poem The Four Quartets to show us an example of these ideas in the text.
Join Brian, Jane, and special guest Corey Latta as they dig deeper into the philosophies that influenced Lewis and Eliot's theology of time, and consequently some of their most famous works like The Screwtape Letters and The Four Quartets.
Join Brian in a conversation with Ned Bustard about time travel, Doctor Who, and the big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff.
What if time is more than the passing of moments? What if it’s a gift to help us find meaning?
How should we, who have had eternity opened to us, approach the realities of living in a time-bound world that still wrestles with evil?
Brian reads Hans Boersma’s essay on how to live in the created order so that we can better know the Creator Himself.
God's workmanship and His character are crackling through every fiber of the world that we live in.
Creation is redeemed, not abandoned, because creation tells the story of God’s glory in its own unique way. Brian shares Paul Buckley's essay to help us better understand how to read the "book of Creation."
Brian and Heidi tee up a big question: what’s the relationship between eternity and what I do with my time now?
In which we kick off the 2022 season with an introduction to creation theology, and an explanation of everything that is to come this season.
Imagine a person who understands the Great Story so deeply that they can see its meaning in every aspect of their lives. It plays out in the stories they tell their children. The way they feast, and grieve, and garden. The way they create and cultivate. How they respond to twists and turns in the larger culture.
Imagine they understand how to share this rich tapestry of meaning with others.
Now imagine a community, a microculture filled with such people. Such communities have withstood and redeemed difficult circumstances for two thousand years. Because through everything, they can remember who they are—and pass that memory on to their children.
The mission of the Anselm Society is a renaissance of the Christian imagination—we exist to cultivate just such a culture within the church in our time.
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Do you or your organization want to partner on this? Email us at anselmsociety@gmail.com.
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