www.therecord.com.au
03 NOVEMBER 2022
Edition #407
ARCHBISHOP COSTELLOE: WE ARE CREATED IN THE IMAGE OF THE LIFE GIVER, AND THE CREATOR.
UNDA Chancellor, the Hon Chris Ellison, Perth Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB, Perth Hebrew Congregation Chief Rabbi Daniel Liebermann, Perth Islamic community Teacher and Leader Sheikh Muhammed Agherdien and UNDA Vice Chancellor, Professor Francis Campbell, with UNDA Student Representatives on Thursday 27 October. PHOTO: MICHELLE TAN.
By Grant Taylor and Jamie O’Brien
The idea that people of faith have a shared responsibility to protect “our common home” was the theme of this year's Abraham Day event hosted by the University of Notre Dame Australia in Fremantle. The interfaith event, held last Thursday 27 October, brought together leaders of Western Australia’s Muslim, Jewish and Christian communities - which all share a common origin Abraham - to focus on issues that unite them and strengthen the bonds of friendship. During the panel discussion, Perth Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB spoke about the story of Genesis and how people we are created in
the likeness of God to be “stewards of the world”. “At the end, the way the story presents itself, it has as the culmination of God's creative activity, the creation of humanity,” Archbishop Costelloe said. “My experience of teaching primary school children, is that, if you share this particular story with them, and then you say to them, ‘What sort of God is being talked about?’ they'll say something like, ‘Well it’s a God who makes stuff.’ “We would put it in a slightly more sophisticated way, but ultimately, those young people would be right. We have a kind of a litany or a poem, which speaks very powerfully as God as a creating God, as a lifegiving God. That's important to keep in mind,” Archbishop Costelloe
explained. “Bec ause af ter God created everything else in this first creation story, He creates humanity. And it says, God created humankind in the divine image and likeness.” Archbishop Costelloe continued by explaining that there is then a phrase that has caused a lot of trouble over the long period of the Christian interpretation, “and God said, ‘Be fruitful, and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it’.” “Often people will look back to that particular that last phrase ‘and subdue it,’ and see there the roots of much of the ecological crisis that we now face today,” Archbishop Costelloe highlighted. Full Text available at
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