Here is the second in my current series of guest blogs. This is from David Horrell (Exeter) who writes about the recent publication 'Ecological Hermeneutics' which he co-edited with Cherryl Hunt, Christopher Southgate, and Francesca Stavrakopoulou.
"It’s pretty clear that environmental issues of one sort or another will remain at the centre of global political and ethical concern for the foreseeable future. Despite a disappointing outcome at Copenhagen, and a certain wave of scepticism, climate change remains a key issue calling for decisive and coordinated action. This week in the UK, the papers have carried news of a new report analysing the costs of sustaining biodiversity and preserving species and habitats. Although, as with climate change, the costs of acting are huge, the costs of not acting are, in the long run, far more massive, and the report calls for economic incentives and market structures to prioritize the preservation of biodiversity. All this is reason enough for theologians to engage with questions about environmental ethics. Yet an equally pressing reason is the suspicion, long voiced as a criticism, that the Christian tradition has contributed to our crisis, by fostering attitudes of superiority and indifference towards the earth.
Between 2006 and 2009, a three year project at the University of Exeter, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, studied uses of the Bible in environmental ethics (see here). The project aimed to examine the kinds of appeal to the Bible made in relation to environmental issues, to assess the critical questions about the impact of the biblical tradition on Christian views of the environment, and to develop creative readings of the Bible that would help to reconfigure Christian theology in ways appropriate to the challenges of our time.
As part of this project, a wide range of international scholars were invited to reflect on various aspects of ecological hermeneutics: the ecological potential of the various biblical texts and traditions, the twists and turns of the history of interpretation and their pro- or anti-environmental implications, and the directions and challenges for a contemporary ecological appropriation of the Bible. These essays are now published in this volume just published by T&T Clark and edited by David Horrell, Cherryl Hunt, Christopher Southgate, and Francesca Stavrakopoulou: Ecological Hermeneutics: Biblical, Historical and Theological Perspectives. A few examples from the biblical perspectives are John Barton’s essay on the Prophets, Richard Bauckham’s on the Gospels, and Vicky Balabanski’s on the cosmic Christology of Colossians. The section on the history of interpretation includes Francis Watson’s essay on Irenaeus, Mark Wynn’s on Aquinas, Paul Santmire’s on Luther, and Andrew Louth on the Eastern Orthodox tradition. Finally, in a section on contemporary hermeneutical possibilities, Harry Maier writes about the greening of American Fundamentalism, while Ernst Conradie sets out some broad parameters for an ecological hermeneutic. Ellen Davis, known for her work on an ecological reading of the Old Testament, describes ‘this wonderful volume’ as offering ‘perhaps the best small collection of resources… for reworking and developing a Christian theology of the created order’, while Denis Edwards comments that it is ‘an excellent book and one that is much needed’. Elaine Wainwright, a participant in the important Earth Bible project based in Australia, comments that ‘the essays within this volume demonstrate the rich variety of approaches and engagement with text and tradition that constitute emerging ecological hermeneutics’. There are two other major publications to emerge from the Exeter project: David Horrell, Cherryl Hunt, and Christopher Southgate have co-authored a book called Greening Paul: Rereading the Apostle in an Age of Ecological Crisis, to be published by Baylor University Press later this year. And David Horrell has written a short book for the series Biblical Challenges in the Contemporary World, The Bible and the Environment: Towards a Critical Ecological Biblical Theology. This will be published by Equinox this year. A flavour of the project’s work can also be found in the essays in Theology 112 (May-June 2009)."
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