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1. THEOLOGY AND ECOLOGY IN AN UNFINSHED UNIVERSE
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CHAPTER ONE THEOLOGY AND ECOLOGY IN AN UNFINSHED UNIVERSE John F. Haught Holmes Rolston III, one of America’s most renowned environmental ethicists, has written that because of human factors and failings . . . nature is more at peril than at any time in the last two and a half billion years. The sun will rise tomorrow, because it rose yesterday and the day before; but nature may no longer be there. Unless in the next millennium, indeed in the next century, we can regulate and control the escalating human devastation of our planet, we may face the end of nature as it has hitherto been known. Several billion years worth of creative toil, several million species of teeming life, have now been handed over to the care of this late-coming species in which mind has flowered and morals have emerged. Science has revealed to us this glorious natural history; and religion invites us to be stewards of it. That could be a glorious future story. But the sole moral and allegedly wise species has so far been able to do little more than use this science to convert whatever we can into resources for our own self-interested and escalating consumption, and we have done even that with great inequity between persons.1 Our species, Rolston and other environmentalists agree, is ruining the natural world. We humans are destroying rain forests, allowing the soil to erode, poisoning the air, and polluting rivers, lakes and oceans. We have created a dangerous greenhouse atmosphere and reduced the protective ozone layer. And we are daily destroying many irreplaceable living species.Common sense demands that we change our ways, but apparently we need much more than common sense to fire our ethical responsibility for the earth. What we need is a vision, one that can move us to a firm and permanent commitment to ecological responsibility within the context of natural flux and cosmic evolution. Can Christian faith provide such a vision? And can theological reflection discover in tradition or scripture a groundwork for dedicated ecological action? It seems to me, speaking here as a Christian theologian , that this is one of theology’s most important contemporary chal1 2 John F. Haught lenges, especially in view of well-known accusations that Christianity is itself in some way responsible for our environmental neglect. Such a serious indictment forces us to ask whether theology can demonstrate an essential connection between Christian faith and ecological concern. Can Christian faith provide truly motivating reasons for taking care of the nonhuman natural world?2 The Australian philosopher John Passmore, for one, doubts that it can. Belief in God and the “next world,” he says, softens our sense of obligation to this world. Otherworldly piety even gives rise to an implicit hostility toward nature. The only substantial basis for environmental concern, therefore, is a radical naturalism, a belief system that sees nothing beyond the existence of the physical universe. According to Passmore, only if humans accept the fact that we are situated here on this planet in a universe barren of any transcendent governance, will we begin to take full responsibility for our terrestrial home.3 Passmore is right in characterizing much traditional Christianity as otherworldly to the point of neglecting the earth’s well-being. His complaint is justifiable, given his understanding of what Christianity essentially is. Moreover, he compels us to acknowledge that Christian theology must do a much better job of displaying whatever ecological relevance it might have than it has done so far. So, precisely how can Christian theology respond? It may begin by emphasizing that according to biblical faith the natural world is inherently good and that God has even become incarnate in the cosmos. It can point to exceptional exemplars of love of nature such as St. Francis, Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, or Gerard Manley Hopkins. It must, in all candor, acknowledge that most of our saints, poets and theologians have had little formal concern about the well-being of nature. But at the same time, it may point to the fact that several distinct kinds of “ecological theology” are now emerging. For convenience’s sake I shall call these 1) the tradition-centered (or “apologetic”) approach, 2) the sacramental approach and 3) the cosmic promise approach. The latter weaves the biblical theme of promise into the new scientific awareness of a universe still in the making. Each of these three proposals is insufficient when taken alone, but taken together they constitute a...