An Ecological Christian Anthropology

At Home on Earth?

Ernst M. Conradie

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351958998
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Teologia e religione
• Sous-sujet: Religione

What is the place and vocation of human beings in the earth community? This is the central question that this contribution towards a Christian ecological anthropology addresses. In ecological theology this question is often answered by the affirmation that 'We are at home on earth'. This affirmation rightly responds to the widespread sense of alienation from nature, to the anthropocentrism that pervades much of the Christian tradition and to concerns about the scope of environmental devastation. This book challenges the affirmation that we are at home on earth, examining natural suffering, anxieties concerning human finitude and especially the pervasiveness of evil. The book investigates contributions to ecological theology, South African and African theology, reformed theology and contemporary dialogues between theology and the sciences in search of a thoroughly ecological Christian anthropology.

Chapter 1

Introduction: Toward an ecological
Christian anthropology

1.1 Anthropology in an ecological context: At home on earth

Ecological theology may be regarded as a next wave of contextual theology. It joins liberation theology, black theology, feminist theology, womanist theology and various indigenous theologies in the quest for a theology which can respond to the challenges of our time. While all theologies reflect the contexts within which they are situated, contextual theologies are, for better or for worse, attempts to articulate and address their social contexts self-consciously and explicitly.

Ecological theology is an attempt to retrieve the ecological wisdom in Christianity as a response to environmental threats and injustices.¹ At the same time, it is an attempt to reinvestigate, rediscover and renew the Christian tradition in the light of the challenges posed by the environmental crisis. Just as feminist theology engages in a twofold critique, that is, a Christian critique of sexist or patriarchal culture and a feminist critique of Christianity,² so ecological theology offers a Christian critique of the cultural habits underlying ecological destruction and an ecological critique of Christianity. In other words, ecological theology is not only concerned with how Christianity can respond to environmental concerns; it also offers Christianity an opportunity for renewal and reformation. James Nash suggests that an ecological reformation of Christianity implies that there are significant flaws in the Christian tradition – else a reformation would not be necessary. It also implies that these flaws can be corrected – else a reformation would not be possible. He adds that reformation is fortunately not something alien to the Christian faith — as the protestant axiom of ecclesia reformata semper reformanda indicates.³ Or, in the more vivid imagery of Joseph Sittler, theology ‘must be reconceived, under the shock of filth, into fresh scope and profundity’.⁴

Ecological theology should not be reduced to environmental ethics as a subdiscipline of Christian ethics. Environmental ethics will tend to remain the specialised field of interest of a small group of scholars and activists. An ecological ethos touches on virtually all aspects of life and has implications for all ethical subdisciplines (i.e. social, political, economic, business, medical, sexual, or personal ethics). There is also no need to add environmental concerns to an already overcrowded agenda of local churches and ecumenical bodies. Instead, the entire life and praxis of the church should include an ecological dimension and vision. Contributions towards an ecological theology cover a wide range of other themes. Almost every aspect of Christian theology has come under the spotlight in the process: biblical studies, biblical hermeneutics, the history of Christianity in its many traditions and forms of expression, Christian doctrine, Christian virtues and values, preaching, ministry, pastoral care, Christian education, Christian mission, and a theology of religion.

Ecological theology certainly requires a reinvestigation of Christian doctrine. It cannot be narrowly focused on a reinterpretation of creation theology only, but also calls for a review of all aspects of the Christian faith, including the trinity, God as Father, creation, humanity, sin, providence, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, salvation, the church, the sacraments and Christian hope. In my view, there are especially four crucial areas where Christian piety has often inhibited an environmental ethos, spirituality and praxis, namely a worldless notion of God’s transcendence, a dualist anthropology, a personalist reduction of the cosmic scope of salvation and an escapist eschatology.⁵ Any ecological theology will remain shallow unless an adequate response to these four problems can be provided. Ecological theology has to be more than environmental ethics or a revisited theology of creation.

In many ways anthropology forms the crux of any ecological theology. The environmental crisis calls for urgent reflection on the relationship between humanity and nature, or, more precisely, on the place of humanity within the earth community.⁶ Although the environmental crisis affects natural eco-systems more directly, it is not primarily a crisis pertaining to nature but to the dominant and increasingly global economic system and the consumerist cultural values supporting it. Or, as Larry Rasmussen observes, ‘Earth’s distress is a crisis of culture. More precisely, the crisis is that a now globalizing culture in nature and wholly of nature runs fully against it’.⁷ It is a pathological sign of cultural failure and bankruptcy which requires a new vision and discernment of the place, status, role and responsibility of human beings in the community of life.

The need to understand the proper place of humanity within the earth community⁸ is certainly one of the most pertinent issues raised in ecological anthropologies (Christian or otherwise). The way in which this question is formulated places other anthropological questions within a specifically ecological context.

Many classic anthropologies focused on questions such as: What constitutes the human person? What distinguishes human beings from other animals? The lack of specialisation in the human physique? The ability of humans to develop tools (fire!) for themselves? Human labour? The capacity of the human brain? Human reason? Self-consciousness? Selfhood?⁹ Human freedom and self-determination? Imagination? Culture? Human laughter, that is, the willingness of humans to laugh at themselves?¹⁰ Morality? Language? The human soul? Religion? How should the notion of being the image of God be understood – often evoking the same range of possible answers? How should the relationship between body, mind and soul be understood?¹¹ Are humans created as mortal beings or can the immortality of the human soul be defended theologically?

With the modem turn to the subject it was assumed that to be a human person is to be a centre or ‘subject’ of consciousness who is both a knower of ‘objects’ and an autonomous self-constituting moral agent, that is, one who is not subject to a ‘heteronomous’ law.¹² A different set of questions emerged on this basis: How can we come to authentic self-knowledge? Who is this being who asks all these questions?¹³ This modem turn to the subject stimulated some more explicitly theological questions too: What makes it possible for human beings in their finitude to know the infinite God? How can a human being be both an autonomous, self-constituting subject and radically dependent on God at the same time?¹⁴ Who are we as human beings that God considers us? Or even better: Who is the God who takes notice of us?

With the postmodern deconstruction of the autonomous subject the ‘death of the subject’ has been announced. This raised the question as to whether we can still speak of ourselves as self-determining autonomous subjects, whether in a Renaissance, humanist, Cartesian or Kantian sense? In response to this question, Michael Welker argues that, despite its considerable strengths, the modem notion of the autonomous subject ‘... fails to grasp the authenticity of the unique corporeal and sensual person. It also underestimates the contextuality of morality and the mutability of rationality’.¹⁵

Various contextual theologies have also insistently criticised the preoccupation with the subject in modem theology as fatally flawed because ‘... it reflects a Western, male, bourgeois status that has the requisite surplus of time beyond what is needed to sustain life, but only as the fruit of other people’s oppression’.¹⁶ In the context of liberation theology, feminist theology and indigenous theologies another set of anthropological questions has been articulated: How are human beings constituted by the structures of society and how can they transform such societal structures from within? How should the relationship between different human genders be constructed (feminist and ecofeminist theology)? How can a sense of a community to which all humans belong be retrieved?¹⁷ Indeed, how is a human person constituted given the multifaceted emphasis on the material situatedness of human existence in terms of cosmological (Copernicus), ecological, biological (Darwin), gendered (feminism), psychological (Freud & Jung), economic (Marx),¹⁸ linguistic (Saussure, Wittgenstein, Derrida), socio-biological (E. O. Wilson) and neurological contexts?

The way in which these anthropological questions are formulated and the contexts within which such questions typically emerge, suggest the need for some hermeneutical suspicion, since the questions may well determine theological positions on such questions. Since anthropology is a theme discussed in a wide range of disciplines – cosmology, palaeontology, evolutionary biology, medicine, sociology, psychology, the cognitive sciences, the social sciences (including history, political studies and economics), philosophy and the arts – it seems inevitable that the conversation partners of theological discourse will establish what aspect of the human condition will be highlighted. Anthropology clearly means different things to people participating in different discourses.

The sheer multiplicity of these questions also suggests that we remain a mystery to ourselves. As Daniel Migliore observes, ‘We are rational and irrational, civilized and savage, capable of deep friendship and murderous hostility, free and in bondage, the pinnacle of creation and its greatest danger’.¹⁹ We are a curious kind of animal. We are our own most vexing problem (Niebuhr).²⁰ Being human poses a question which we have collectively been unable to answer. Or, as Eberhard Jungel suggests, being human constitutes an answer to a question which continues to elude us.²¹

In ecological anthropologies the legitimacy of these questions is not necessarily denied, but they are now raised within an attempt to understand the place of humanity in the earth community. This is bom from a new appreciation for the situatedness of human beings within the larger earth community, for the need for a sense of place.²² Sallie McFague gives the following three reasons for a theological retrieval of space and place: a) Space is a leve...