Theology and ecology

I'm afraid you'll have to wait a little longer for Freud Part III: I was all set to write it up but then I gave blood, and now I'm too woozy and nauseous to think about anything, least of all incest and cannibalism. But! It turns out that today is Blog Action Day, which means that bloggers the world over are writing about climate change. Handily, I've already co-written something, whilst working for the Jubilee Centre ages ago, so I thought it would be an appropriate occasion to share it with y'all. It was published in an Orange Paper by WorldVision in 2007, and goes along with a book I helped research and edit (I'm in the footnotes and acknowledgements!) Enjoy the article, and I'll be back next week, just as soon as I've replaced enough blood to take on Freud.

Why Christians should care for the environment

Marika Rose and Jason Fletcher

Genesis tells us that when God created the world he didn't make it instantly, with the snap of a finger or a single word; but he crafted it bit by bit, declaring it ‘good' at every stage of its development. This good creation was abundant and diverse, with plants, trees, birds, fish, and animals ‘of every kind'.

God cares for his creation
But this initial careful work of God was not the end of his intimate involvement. Throughout the Bible, he is depicted as sustaining his creation at every moment. He knows about every sparrow that falls to the ground; [1] everything holds together in him. [2] Psalm 65 says of God, ‘You care for the land and water it, you enrich it abundantly… You drench its furrows , and level its ridges; you soften it with showers, and bless its crops. You crown the year with your bounty, and your carts overflow with abundance.' The picture is of God lavishing his goodness on his creation; and the response from the earth is one of praise: ‘The grasslands of the desert overflow; the hills are clothed with gladness. The meadows are covered with flocks and the valleys are mantled with corn; they shout for joy and sing.'

The Bible paints creation not as a passive, lifeless collection of rocks and earth, but as an entity that is full of life, praise and God's glory, revealing his character and inspiring us to worship him. As Psalm 19 says, ‘The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech, and night after night they display knowledge.
'God's attitude to creation indicates that it is precious and wonderful independent of any utility it possesses for us. To love God and to be like him is to care for the things that he cares for. This alone ought to be enough to motivate us to take responsibility for the world around us.

Our interconnection with the earth

In Genesis 2, there is no one to till the ground, so God forms man (adam) from the ground (adamah) and asks him to till and to keep it. This Hebrew wordplay (adam/adamah) expresses our solidarity with the earth; we are connected to it and utterly dependent upon it for life. For this reason Psalm 139:13–15 can parallel the ‘depths of the earth' with ‘a mother's womb'. Humans are both physical and spiritual and the two ought not to be separated. To care for creation, then, is to care for a system that we are part of: in caring for the earth, we care for ourselves.

The original harmony between humans and the earth was ruptured by the fall. But even here, the interconnection between ‘adam' and ‘adamah' is reiterated. The earth becomes difficult to farm, cursed because of human disobedience. We suffer when creation suffers, and it is our sin that causes creation's suffering. [3] Most dramatically, God announces that humanity will revert to the earth upon death, a tragic reversal of the original act of creation: ‘For dust you are, and to dust you will return.' [4]

This interconnection can be seen throughout history – over and again societies have undermined their own welfare by abusing the land that they depend on for life – and can be seen today, but with a difference. Habits of consumption and energy production in the West threaten to destroy not so much our own homes and livelihoods (at least not in the short term), but those of the world's poorest people.

Servant Kingship
However, when God breathes life into Adam this sets him apart from the earth. The contrast between God making plants and animals ‘according to their kinds' with the creation of humans ‘in our image, in our likeness' implies a unique, intimate relationship between God and this part of his creation. Genesis 1:28 says that God blessed humankind and said: ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule… over every living thing'. Genesis 2 says that God created humans ‘to work it [the earth] and take care of it'. But what does this mean in practice?
The language of ‘rule' over the earth is sometimes (mis)taken as licence to treat the earth however we want, but a careful reading of the Bible rules this out. First, this language of ‘dominion' is balanced by the language of Genesis 2:15, where humans are put on the earth to work it (‘to till, serve') and care for (‘to guard, protect') it.

Second, while the language of ‘dominion' does imply some degree of power or authority, it begs the question of how that power and authority should be exercised. Our rule, as his image bearers, is to be modelled after God's rule. Not only does he delight in his creation, but he takes care of the meek and does justice for the orphan and the oppressed. He is the shepherd King who promises, ‘I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak.' [5] Moreover, we ought also to remember Paul's exhortation: ‘Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but make himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant'. [6] To rule over the earth in a way that reflects God's character, then, demands of us service and humility, not exploitation and selfishness.

God's promises for the future
Our attitude to the earth is affected not only by the way we view God's original intentions in creation, but also by our view of God's promises for the future and for the ultimate redemption of our sin-ridden world.

One popular view of Christianity is that this means escape from the world into a purely spiritual heaven, but this is far from the biblical picture of ‘the end'. As in the creation narratives we saw that care for creation is also care for ourselves as inescapably physical creatures, so in the promise of redemption we see that some form of ongoing bodily existence is integral to what we will be.

In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul discusses at length the importance of physical resurrection, and we see a picture of the similarity and difference that will mark our resurrection bodies.

Similarly, the promises of the Bible point to a ‘new heaven and new earth' [7] – a renewal and transformation of this creation. Romans 8 says that creation waits ‘with eager expectation' for the time when it will be ‘liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God'. At that time the desert and the wilderness will blossom and praise God; [8] rivers and streams will flow in the desert; [9]all creation will rejoice. [10]
In Jesus' ministry we see God's promised future breaking into the present as Jesus heals and feeds people as well as forgiving their sins. The good news that Jesus proclaims is for all creation, and his promise is of the redemption of all things.

Right relationships
Jesus summarises God's will like this: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind' and ‘love your neighbour as yourself'. [11] In other words, the sum of the will of God for us is that we would have perfect relationships with God and with others. A concern for getting our relationships right is the essence of Christianity.

As in the parable of the Good Samaritan, having right relationships with our ‘neighbours' means we must take care of their bodies as well as their souls, and in order to do this we must take care of the earth. Environmental destruction has consequences for people around the world and down the generations; the call to love our neighbour extends to our children and grandchildren, and beyond.

This focus on the concerns of others is also captured in the biblical concept of justice (Hebrew: mishpat). Far from being some abstract concept of fairness, mishpat is all about the way we conduct each and every relationship. It highlights our duties and responsibilities towards others, and is particularly invoked in the Bible in the context of oppression of the poor and vulnerable. Are we meeting our obligations to the poor? Or do we need to re-examine our habits of consumption?

Failure to care for creation is a failure to conduct our relationships in the way God wants us to; it is a failure of justice and of love.

Implications for climate change
Many of the things we do as a society which damage the earth have their roots in broken relationships or a failure to prioritise relationships over things.

We travel further to work than ever before, and increasingly do so alone in our own cars. This affects not only the climate, but also our relationships with those around us. American sociologist Robert Putnam estimates that for every ten minutes of additional commuting time, there is a corresponding ten per cent decrease in our social interactions. A concern for relationships challenges the hypermobility of our society.

Carbon emissions from home energy use have risen most significantly because of the increase in single-occupancy homes. For a wide variety of reasons, for which we all as a society are responsible, people increasingly live alone. What does this tell us about the quality of our relationships as a society? What could be done to strengthen relationships in families and communities?

The most significant proportion of our household carbon emissions in the West comes from consumption, which in many areas (e.g. communication, recreation, clothing and footwear) has tripled over the past few decades. Jesus says that ‘the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil', and we see this too in our society. Our lives become more about owning ‘stuff', as we buy into the belief that more things will make us happier, that we can forge our identity by the things we buy; and our desire to acquire not only distracts us from the most important thing – investing in our relationships – it also all too often overrides our desire for justice for the poor, or any consideration of the effect of our lifestyles on the environment.

All of these relational and environmental problems are challenged by the holistic message of the gospel. For example, the biblical images of the Sabbath and Jubilee proclaim the equal value of all people, the importance of limitations upon the accumulation of wealth and spirals of debt, the importance of rootedness in place, the importance of family and community relationships, as well as the importance of rest for all people and for the earth. The gospel paints a vision of a society that is relationally and environmentally sustainable.

If we are to take the gospel seriously, we must recognise its demands over every area of life and over every relationship. It requires of us an integrated understanding of mission that neither neglects evangelism and the need for repentance and faith in Christ, nor the need for radical action to address the problem of climate change, nor the need for social reform to address the underlying structural factors that make it more difficult for us to live the life God intends for us.
But the message of the gospel is, above all, good news. Contemporary accounts of climate change often offer serious cause for concern and little hope. Christian hope for the future is not an excuse for apathy, but ought instead to provide us with the motivation to engage positively with our communities, in the expectation that God will be faithful to his promise to one day ‘reconcile to himself all things' [12] and that, in the meantime, he delights to use his people as the agents of his redemptive activity.

[1] Matt. 10:29
[2] Col. 1:16–17
[3] Rom. 8:19–20
[4] Gen. 3:19
[5] Ezek. 34:16
[6] Phil. 2:5–7
[7] Rev. 21:1
[8] Isa. 35:1–7
[9] Isa. 41:17–20
[10] Isa. 55:12
[11] Matthew 22:37-39
[12] Col. 1:120

Morna Hooker Part 3 – 2 Thessalonians

Thought I'd forgotten, did you? Ha! No, I was just waiting til you'd let your guard down before hitting you with the next installment of Hookerian wisdom. Boom! Here we go:

2 Thessalonians closely resembles 1 Thessalonians in both its format and its topic, but its actual teaching is substantially different – so much so that some have argued that the two letters actually contradict one another. The structure is very similar; the themes are the same; it sounds like Paul: but is it written by Paul or someone deliberately imitating him (these arguments go on and on in New Testament studies, because, let’s face it, how can you really prove it one way or another?). If the two letters are contradictory, then perhaps that could mean that it wasn’t written by Paul, or maybe by Paul after he had changed his mind; or maybe the two letters actually don’t contradict each other after all.

If 2 Thessalonians was written by an imitator, they were being pretty cheeky: warning the letter’s recipients not to be alarmed by letters falsely claiming to come from Paul (2:2) and saying that parts of the letter were written by Paul’s own hand (3:17). Is it by a Paul who has changed his mind? Also tricky: 2;5 says, ‘Don't you remember that when I was with you I used to tell you these things?’ suggesting that Paul at least thinks he’s being consistent. Maybe they’re not inconsistent after all. 2 Thessalonians emphasises the wrath of God more than 1 Thessalonians (1:8-10), but then the writer of 1 Thessalonians clearly took God’s wrath seriously too. Perhaps the two letters are not contradictory, but simply have different emphases.

The beginning of chapter 2 makes it clear that there’s some kind of rumour circulating in the Thessalonian community: it looks like people are worried that they’ve missed the return of Jesus. Paul (let’s just assume he did write it for the sake of ease) tells them to chill out: various things have to happen before Jesus will return. He seems to have some sort of eschatological timetable in mind, and this is one of the contrasts with 1 Thessalonians, where the day of the Lord comes suddenly, and we need to be on our guard. Perhaps 1 Thessalonians got them a bit overexcited and now Paul is trying to calm them down? It’s not unprecedented to talk both about the immanence of the Day of the Lord and also the idea that various things need to happen first: a similar tension can be found in, for example, Mark 13.

I'm afraid that, brief though it is, that's all I have to offer you on this particular epistle. More on other letters later, though I'd just like to point out that most of the above is about whether Paul really wrote 2 Thessalonians, rather than interesting commentary on the letter itself, and this, dear readers, is largely why I moved away from biblical studies in my theological journeyings: because I just don't care that much, even when taught by someone as sharp, funny, and eccentrically wonderful as Morna Hooker.

Photo Credit: Lawrence OP on Flicker

Morna Hooker: Introducing Paul, part 2b - 1 Thessalonians

Paul’s pretty tactful in his ethical exhortations. He talks about sanctification, which is a very Jewish theme. He starts out by talking about what the Thessalonians shouldn’t do i.e. sexual immorality, i.e. the pagan sexual behaviour they were into until recently. Interestingly, Paul encourages the Thessalonians to ‘live quietly’ - not exactly what he did while in Thessalonica, but he’s special, right? He encourages them to work with their hands which maybe suggests that they were all so excited about their new faith that they were sitting round chatting theology rather than going to work.

Some of the Thessalonians have died already and they’re a bit worried about this – clearly Paul hasn’t had a chance to talk to them about death yet. One of the big Paul debates is about whether Paul was expecting Jesus to come back at any moment (instead of in, say, 2,000 years and counting), and this bit suggests that he might. He plays down the significance of death because it’s not final, and he clearly imagines the believers being with Jesus in some sense even after their death.

In chapter 5, Paul returns to ethics. There’s another summary of the gospel message. Paul likes saying that God and/or Christ did something in order that something might happen to believers – in this case, life. What does it mean that Christ died for us? It can’t be a straightforward substitution (he died, we live), because Paul say we live with Christ.

The final section of 1 Thessalonians offers some general ethical advice. Paul refers to particular people who, while without official titles, are clearly leaders in the Thessalonian community. This probably refers to these leaders. Paul ends with a nice summary of the letter’s theme in 5:23:

May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Morna Hooker: Introducing Paul, part 2a - 1 Thessalonians

1 Thessalonians is probably the earliest of Paul’s letters (although it might be Galatians instead). How do we date the letters? Tricky. We could do it according to the development of Paul’s theology, but this is very subjective. We could do it by references to Paul’s itinerary, but we know that he didn’t always stick to his original plans. In the end, we usually have to fall back on what Acts tells us. According to Acts, Thessalonica was the first place Paul visited, which makes sense in terms of its geographical location. Paul was probably only there for about two weeks before getting kicked out – not a long time in which to start a church.

Why does Luke tell us that Paul started out preaching in the synagogue if Paul himself is so insistent that he’s an apostle to the Gentiles? Well, Paul would have needed a base during his time in Thessalonica, so it would probably have made sense to find one in the Jewish community from which he could preach to the ‘righteous Gentiles’ - the non-Jewish people who hung around the synagogue. Eventually, Paul got kicked out of Thessalonica and would have left a very new group of newly converted ex-pagans. Understandably, he was a bit worried about having to leave them, so sent Timothy to check on them. Timothy returned with a good report, but Paul was still nervous, so wrote them a letter. Chapters 2 and 3 remind the Thessalonians of Paul’s last visit and what’s been going down since. The letter as a whole is mostly ‘a long sigh of relief’ because they haven’t regressed to their naughty pagan ways, but it also addresses a couple of points Paul’s still concerned about: eschatology and ethics.

1 Thessalonians follows the classic Greek letter form:

Name of sender: Paul and his team

Recipient: The church in Thessalonica in God the Father. The ‘in’ (‘en’ in Greek) is a bit odd – it can mean in, by or with, taking its meaning from the context. It probably means that the Thessalonian church was brought into being by God the Father and Jesus Christ.

Greeting

Thanks: This is the Christianised version of the Greek letter form, thanking God instead of the letter’s recipient.It's meant to remind the Thessalonians what it is they just converted to and is possibly the earliest summary of the basic Christian message we have on record. Some scholars think that Paul’s using a standard formula he got from somewhere else, but Hookers not convinced – it’s a little bit odd as a pure gospel summary, and there’s no reason why such a formula would have been circulating at the time anyway, not least because no one except Paul and his posse were preaching to pagans at that point in time. Paul isn’t reminded the Thessalonians of the gospel, but rather of their response to the gospel. Why? Partly because it’s still part of his thanksgiving to God, and partly because the conventions of Greek letter writing meant that the thanksgiving also served as a ‘contents page’ for the rest of the letter, so here Paul raises his two big themes: ethics and eschatology.

Morna Hooker: Introducing Paul, part 1

Morna Hooker is a Paul scholar (that's Paul wot wrote bits of the Bible, just in case you weren't clear). She is a legend. I have read at least one book by her, but this series of posts is going to be based on a series of her lectures that I attended.

Some of the big questions in Pauline scholarship go like this: Did Paul distort the original message of Jesus, or was he actually the best theologian, like, ever? How typical is Paul of Christian theology at the time: how much of what he writes are his how ideas, and how much does he just say what everybody else was already thinking? Is he more Jewish or more Greek in the way he thinks? How exactly does he reconcile the Old and New Covenants?

We have two main sources for information about Paul’s life: Paul’s letters, and Acts, written by Luke, who clearly thought Paul was the man (as in 'you da man' rather than 'stick it to The Man.' Much Paul scholarship revolves essentially around the question of whether Paul is da man or The Man). Acts is mostly about Paul, but there are problems because Luke doesn’t really tell us much about his theology: where he speaks, he doesn’t sound very much like the theologian who wrote the Pauline letters, and Luke’s clearly concerned with trying to show that Christianity really isn’t that politically dangerous, honest: Paul, da man, is no threat to Caesar/Rome, The Man. It’s difficult to tell, as a result, how reliable Acts is, not least because Luke and Paul sometimes recount the same incidents but in contradictory ways (compare Galations 2 with Acts 15).

What can we be sure about?
Well, Paul probably did used to be called Saul, although Paul is the Roman version of Saul so he might just have used that when hanging out with Romans, rather than as a result of a dramatic name-change post-road-to-Damascus. It’s plausible that he was born in Tarsus, as he’s clearly familiar with Greek rhetoric, which he could have picked up there, and he may well have got his familiarity with Jewish exegesis from being trained in Jerusalem.

Which letters did Paul actually write?
This is a hot topic in the world of biblical studies. In the 19^th century, F C Baur argued that Paul only wrote Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Galatians, because they were the only four letters that mentioned justification by faith, which Baur believed was Paul’s great theme. He was stupid (though how much more stupid than any other person who tries to work out who wrote which letter is up for debate). In the 1960s, a guy called A Q Morton fed all of the letters into a computer and looked at sentence length and how often ‘kai’ (Greek for ‘and’) was used, and concluded that Paul’s letters were written by five different people. He was also a moron (starting to get a hang of the tentative foundations of this way of reading Paul?).

'More sensible' people start by saying that Galatians, Romans and 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Philippians were written by Paul. Philemon’s a bit short to analyse the style, so it’s hard to be sure whether it was Paul, but then why would anyone else write it and pretend to be Paul? 1 Thessalonians is generally thought to be genuine Paul, 2 Thessalonians and Colossians maybe Pauline. Ephesians is considered more suspicious, as are the Timothys and Titus.

Does it even matter who wrote the letters?
It does if you’re trying to work out what Paul thought rather than about theology more generally (If you don't care that's totally fine, and you can join my club of people-who-think-it's-a-bit-silly-because-we'll-never-really-know). When we thought that Paul wrote Hebrews (which no one really does any more), it distorted our view of his theology as a whole. Ephesians, the Timothys and Titus were probably written by the next generation of Christians continuing Paul’s legacy – at the time it was considered fine to write under someone else’s name if you thought you were continuing their school of thought.

Paul wasn’t setting out to write Scripture, he was responding to specific questions arising from early Christian communities, and so when reading him, it’s important to think about what issues he’s responding to, rather than just assuming he speaks directly to our specific circumstances. There’s a long history of theologians misreading Paul because they failed to understand this – Luther being a classic example (ooh, controversy), thinking that Paul was mostly concerned with individual salvation and that he didn’t like the Jews. D’oh.

NT Wright and the New Perspective on Paul

NT Wright is the Bishop of Durham, and a New Testament scholar, who started out mostly writing about Paul, but has since embarked on a massive multiple-volumed work about Jesus as well as Paul.

The New Perspective focuses on one of the big debates in Pauline scholarship (that's the study of Paul, not Pauline (as far as I'm aware there's no name for that – Paulineine? Anyway, who's Pauline?)): what exactly does Paul mean when he talks about justification by faith? The traditional answer would be that it means that we can't ever be good enough for God by ourselves: we'll always sin, and can't pay for our sin out of our own resources, and so justification by faith means that we have faith in Jesus, and as a result, his holiness gets credited to us – a bit like handing in someone else's work as the coursework for a module you just couldn't get your head around.

But no! says our Tom, and the New Perspective along with him. That's not what it means at all. Actually, for Israel, justification meant something different. Being less hung up that we about the nasty things we think when no one is looking, their understanding of justification is a lot less internal and individualistic, and a lot more about God's covenant with them as his people. For them, God's grace came first: he called Israel and appointed them his chosen people, and covenantal observance wasn't about passing some sort of test to get into heaven, but about being invited into the exclusive club of God's chosen people and being asked not to be an arse, or the bouncers will kick you out.

The sense in Israel at the time of Jesus was that they had, in fact, been arses – they hadn't just got too drunk, but they'd gotten off with the bouncer's girlfriend, danced naked on the table and then started a fight. So they got kicked out, into exile, and although they'd made it back to Israel, they weren't in charge any more – they were ruled by the Romans, and were not happy about that. They'd been let back into the club, but instead of the special treatment God had originally promised them, they were the glass collectors. Exile was not over. For the Jews, then, justification was about longing for the day when God would come down and say hey, what are my people doing collecting glasses? And he'd kick out the Romans and put them back where they belonged, in control of Israel. The good news that Israel were waiting for was, in fact, deeply political – it was about independence from Rome, possession of the land that God had promised them, the real return from exile, and victory over the Romans.

Everyone was looking for justification at the time of Jesus. They all wanted to know what they had to do in order to be the people of whom God would say “these people are mine; let them back in the VIP lounge.” The Pharisees thought that they could mark themselves out as VIPs by sticking really strictly to the law of the Torah. The Sadducees thought they could do it by collaborating with the Romans in order to be allowed to run the Temple. The Essenes thought they could do it by running away to the desert and leaving corrupt society behind to live lives of chastity and purity. The Zealots thought they could do it by terrorism, and by constantly trying to defeat the Romans by violent uprisings.

This is the background to Paul's writing, then, and what he says about what Jesus has done is a lot more subversive than we notice a lot of the time. Jesus, he says, is the new Emperor of everything. He rules and the Roman empire does not (Jesus is the Christ – the anointed one and therefore the King, and the Lord – the term used to refer to the Emperor). Jesus is the new king of Israel, and what he has done announces the end of Israel's exile – they're back in the VIP lounge, only this time everyone else is invited too. What do you have to do to get on the guest list? Keep the law? Scrabble for power? Escape the world? Fight the Romans? No. Just believe in Jesus. You might have expected a war, you might have expected political power and the physical land God promised, you might have expected the temple to return to the hands of the true Israel, but this is what you get instead: Christ crucified, and the kingdom of God which looks a lot like a mustard seed.