eBook Nature Reborn (Theology and the Sciences) ePub

...and I am grateful that author Santmire did email me with the title. For me it was a follow-up to his landmark "The Travail of Nature : The Ambiguous Ecological Promise of Christian Theology." Because of his books, I've been deep into the study of the "theology of nature," a subject I'd taken for granted. Or a subject about which I'd never thought.

How did I end up going down (or up) this path of study and research since summer 2012? It began as I'd been wondering if my nature photography — 1000s of images — might be used in more significant ways beyond slideshows about birdwatching. theme of "the gospel of nature" occurred to me after. I began to see in some creatures and landscapes a reflection of symbols and metaphors such as the most essential ones: love, justice, mercy, beauty, art, peace.... Perhaps you, too, have looked at an animal or a tree with a sense of awe and humility, and in it can be a very human archetype which causes some of us to feel interconnected.

As I read Santmire's "Travail" and "Nature Reborn" while creating a Keynote slideshow (Apple's variation on Powerpoint) for a church service, it became clear: I must know, understand, and think much more about how the Christian tradition has, in many ways, lost its original love, respect, and caring for the earth, creatures, and ecological systems. The Church must admit it has, unfortunately and undoubtedly, contributed harmful attitudes toward earth and resources. It must address how Capitalism and consumerism has driven a wedge between humanity and Mother Earth. The Christian tradition must face its part in the overuse, harm, and destruction of environment — our Home. Our Tent. Our Selves.

Just as important as recognizing Christianity's part in bringing the earth's climate closer to a tipping point is restoring — rebirthing — the theology of nature within the Church and the human heart.

The Rev. Paul Santmire (a Lutheran theologian and pastor) is wise and inspired in covering the history and envisioning the future of the theology of nature. His well-developed topics and issues brightly reflect optimism in "Nature Reborn" in as much as "The Travail of Nature" reveals a sad history of deepening alienation from nature. Rest assured (or be warned, depending upon one's tolerance of religion and scripture) Santmire shows the biblical basis for his arguments and points.

I am assured that creation and cosmos are one — an interrelated community meant to exist in peace and justice for all creatures — because the Creator made it all out of love and for delight.

so beautiful book

H. Paul Santmire is Senior Pastor or Trinity Lutheran Church in Akron, Ohio. He has written other books such as Behold the Lilies: Jesus and the Contemplation of Nature,The Travail of Nature: The Ambiguous Ecological Promise of Christian Theology,Ritualizing Nature: Renewing Christian Liturgy in a Time of Crisis,Before Nature: A Christian Spirituality,Brother Earth: Nature God and Ecology in Time of Crisis,South African Testament: From Personal Encounter to Theological Challenge, etc.

He wrote in the Preface of this 2000 book, “For more than thirty years, I have been laboring in the field of the theology of nature… now such matters are addressed in summer camps and Sunday schools… Still, we have at best only just begun. Much, although surely not all, of the new growth of interest in theology and nature appears to be superficially rooted. I hope that the story this book tells, gleaned from those many years in the field, will serve to strengthen some of this new growth, where it is promising. At the same time, insofar as some of this new growth is not so promising, I hope that this volume will help with the weeding-out process.”

He explains in the first chapter, “The argument of this book corresponds to its purpose. As a revisionist theological project, the argument that follows is deliberately and self-consciously CIRCULAR. It presupposes the faith of the classical Christian story at the center, sustained and proclaimed by the church in its worship. At the same time, circumferentially, as it were, the argument follows a course that is intended to illuminate that center from several interconnected vantage points… I seek to reclaim the Classical story historically, in its ecological and cosmic fullness, from the hands of its theological critics, focusing mainly on the work of theologian Matthew Fox… The circumferential process of reclaiming, rediscovering, retelling reenvisioning, reenacting, and reexperiencing the classical Christian story brings me full circle to a discussion of RELIVING the story ethically… These concluding explorations I project in the form of a personal testament of nature reborn.” (Pg. 9-10)

He comments on Genesis 1 & 2: “1. God has a universal history with all things: with many communities of being… 2. God places the human creature within a world of living creatures, all of whom have their divinely allotted and protected places and vocations. 3. Humans are called by God to care for the earth… 4. Humans are also called by God to live within divinely mandated limits… 5. God places the human creature in a world within a world, the human community… 6. As the divinely covenanted, universal goal for all things is ‘shalom,’ so the divinely mandated life for humans in this world is a life of shalom… 7. Since human beings have in fact turned away from God, self-conscious violence has become the de facto norm of their relationships with one another and with other creatures.” (Pg. 43-44)

He argues, “It is possible… to modify [Martin] Buber’s rendering of the I-Thou, I-It conceptuality so that it is more coherent… It is possible to speak of a THIRD TYPE of relation… I propose to call this third type of relationship an ‘I-Ens relation,’ from the Latin participle for ‘being.’” (Pg. 68-69) He continues, “With the construct of the I-Ens relationship thus before us, we now have access to the construct of a genuine ecological and cosmic conceptuality. The distinctiveness of interpersonal relationships is preserved. The Christian can still celebrate the God revealed in and through Jesus Christ as a personal God… This is the I-Thou relationship… We humans DO intervene in nature in various ways, often manipulatively… All this… falls under the rubric of the I-It relationship. Most important, for our purposes here, we can now … become advocates for, increasingly desirable relationships of mutuality and cooperation between persons and other creatures of nature. This is the I-Ens relationship… theological personalism need no longer be anthropocentric. Now it can be ecological and cosmic, conceptually as well as narratively.” (Pg. 73)

He suggests, “Righteous cooperation with nature means at least two things: intervening in the systems of nature, yes, but also doing so respectfully and creatively, attentive to nature’s own God-given structures and processes, and attentive to the divinely mandated claims of social justice. Righteous cooperation with nature happens first under the rubric of the I-End relationship, and then only under the rubric of the I-It relationship. We contemplate nature before we see to change it. We live with the trees before we seek to cut them. And when we do intervene, we do so then for good reasons. The burden of proof rests heavily on our own shoulders.” (Pg. 120-121)

He concludes, “we know that the powers of death still reign and will continue to reign until the end times arrive, and that therefore our life as the martyr church in word and deed must always be lived… under the sign of the cross… That is why a balanced, holistic theology of cosmic history must always be, under the eschaton, a theology of ‘the Crucified God,’ as Jürgen Moltmann has phrased it… Life as a Christian has never been easy… But, shaped by its ecological and cosmic ritual enactments, and buoyed by its new ecological and cosmic spirituality, this martyr church can rise to this historical occasion today, by the grace of God, to respond to what is perhaps an unprecedented calling, to love God and all God’s creatures, as one great and glorious extended family, and in so doing to be a light to the nations and a city set upon a hill, whose exemplary witness cannot be hidden.” (Pg. 128)

This book will be of interest to more “traditional” Christians interested in ecological issues.