Christian Faith and the Earth project

This document expresses the provisional views of the editor of the group on the theme that is addressed in the group. The aim of this document is to stimulate further discussion in the group.

A bibliography of contributions in current ecotheology on this theme will be post when ready.

The purpose of this document is to offer some reflections on the theme of this group. These reflections articulate my own position on the theme and are clearly shaped by the reformed tradition within which I stand and also the South African context in which I work. I hope that this document will provide a position paper to which other members of the group can respond. It may also provide a sense of direction for the eventual report of the group – for which I will be responsible as editor for the group. However, I am not trying to capture the state of the debate in ecotheology on the theme here or any consensus within the group (which is not yet feasible). Instead, I merely wish to clarify my own position – for myself and for others.

The document is shaped by my current major research project entitled “The Earth in God’s economy”. This is a long term research project registered at the University of the Western Cape in which I am investigating the ways in which seven “chapters” of the narrative of God’s work are related to one another – namely 1) creation, 2) evolutionary history, 3) the emergence of humanity, human culture and sin, 4) God’s providence, 5) the history of redemption, 6) the formation of the church, its ministries and missions, and 7) the consummation of God’s work on earth.

For the sake of convenience I will first offer a number of statements that capture the whole argument. The rest of the document provides elaboration on and background to some of these statements. These background texts are pasted together from various of my own earlier articles. While extensive references are given the full bibliographic details are not provided here. I have not offered comments on the themes of creation, redemption and consummation on their own, but these may follow later.

1. The term “God’s economy” refers to the narrative of the work of the triune God. It follows from the term “economic trinity” that has been used in the Christian tradition to indicate what Christians can confess about the person of the triune God as this may be derived from the work of God in history.

2. One may identify the following seven “chapters” in this narrative of God’s work: 1) creation, 2) evolutionary history, 3) the emergence of humanity, human culture and sin, 4) God’s providence, 5) the history of redemption, 6) the formation of the church, its ministries and missions, and 7) the consummation of God’s work on earth. The term “chapter” suggests that there is indeed a narrative sequence through which these themes are related, but that this order is not chronological or necessary – in the same way that chapters in a novel may be ordered in quite different ways.

3. The relationship between two of these themes, namely creation and redemption has often been distorted. In the history of the Protestant tradition there has been, until recently, a tendency to marginalize the theme of creation and to regard it merely as a stage on which the drama of God’s redemptive interaction with human is being played out.

4. This tendency is related to what Jürgen Moltmann has described as the “retreat from cosmology into personal faith” in Protestant theology – following the emergence of modern cosmology through the work of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and later Darwin.

5. The relationship between creation and redemption has often been distorted in other theological traditions as well. In contemporary ecological theology there is tendency in some circles to move away from a theological preoccupation with sin and redemption in order to focus on a theology of creation instead. Matthew Fox, for example, describes this reorientation in terms of the category of “original blessing”. There is indeed a tendency in contemporary ecological theology to underplay theological reflection on God’s redemption.

6. There is a clear need for more balanced theological reflection on the relationship between creation and redemption so that full justice can be done to both these themes. This is suggested not least by the environmental crisis and especially the looming catastrophes associated with climate change – where Christians would hope and pray for God’s redemptive involvement in history.

7. The need to relate the themes of creation and redemption is recognised, in a very different form, in African theology. This is evident from the question raised by Mercy Amba Oduyoye (2000:75): “Is the God of our redemption the same God of our creation?” This question is born from the African quest for identity: What is the continuity between a pre-Christian African notion of the creator God and the Christian message of redemption in Jesus Christ that took root in Africa following the work of Western missionaries?

8. While the theme of creation is often subsumed under redemption in Protestant and evangelical theologies, there are similar tendencies in other theological schools to subsume one of the chapters of God’s work under another. In Catholic theology the temptation is to subsume the whole story under the doctrine of the church. In many twentieth century theologies, theology has become a response to the theodicy problem so that both creation and redemption tend to be subsumed under the doctrine of providence or in some cases merely under evolutionary history. In response to such suffering, yet other theologies subsume everything under the mission of the church, that is, under the social agenda of the church, for example in terms of the ecumenical notions of “Life and Work”, “Church and Society” and “Ecclesiology and Ethics”, or in terms of theological models such as being a church “for” others (Bonhoeffer) or a “servant model” of the church (Avery Dulles). In secularised societies yet others pursue the same social agenda but eventually see no real need for the church in this regard.

9. This suggests the need to do justice to all the chapters of God’s work, to find a way of linking or integrating these themes without following in the trap of an all too tidy and rigid theological system. My own proposal in this regard is threefold, namely a) that there is indeed an underlying narrative logic that can help to balance these themes with one another, b) that these themes all come to fruition under the consummation of God’s work and c) that the task of theological reflection is to tell the fragments of this story that we have available in such a way that the interplay between all seven the chapters are maintained through an act of “juggling”.

10. This proposal may be contested by others. Some would find no such logic at all and would prefer a more radical postmodern play of signifiers. Others would seek to ground this narrative in anthropology, in the history of religions or in epistemology. Yet others would focus on the person of God instead of the work of God. They would suggest that the only logic underlying the Christian faith is a trinitarian logic and that the person of God is always “more’ than the work of God – in the same way that a person’s identity can never be fully captured in a narrative of their life, not even in a lengthy autobiography. They would therefore not impose a strong sense of a narrative logic on the interpretation of these themes.

11. To balance these themes with one another would require a more detailed investigation of each theme, but then in such a way that all the other “chapters” are present when any one theme is discussed. The task of this working group of the Christian faith and the earth project is to explore only three of these themes, namely creation, redemption and consummation.

12. Several contemporary theologians have suggested that three aspects of God’s acts of creation may be distinguished, namely creation “in the beginning”, continuing creation and the eschatological new creation. This distinction is indeed helpful to maintain the interplay between the other “chapters” of the narrative of God’s work.

13. There remains much dispute, also in contemporary ecological theology on how the relationship between these aspects of God’s creative involvement may be understood. Again, there seems to be a tendency to subsume the one under the other. This requires further reflection on each of these aspects.

14. It is helpful to emphasise the redemptive thrust of God’s creative interaction with the world with reference to all three these aspects. This is also well-attested in the biblical roots of the Christian tradition. However, this insight may be pushed so far as to undermine the primordial and eschatological distinction between Creator and creation – and therefore a theology of creation itself. This has been one criticism against process theology.

15. There is a widespread consensus in contemporary ecological theology that the Christian message of redemption should not be reduced to the redemption of (some) human beings from the earth. Instead, what is at stake in God’s work of redemption is the redemption of the earth and indeed of the whole of creation. This suggests a need to understand redemption as an expression of and a continuation of God’s creative interaction in the world. One may therefore characterise creation as being redemptive and redemption as being creative. However, this insight may also be pushed to far if redemption is not adequately tied to the legacy of human sin, oppression, alienation and the immense human and indeed planetary suffering that that entails.

16. The Christian message of redemption is understood in several conflicting ways in the wider Christian tradition. It remains helpful to describe these differences in terms of three theories of atonement / redemption, namely as a) as God’s victory over the forces of evil, death and destruction on the basis of the resurrection of Jesus Christ – including healing in the case of sickness, victory amidst military threats, rescue from threats to safety, rain in the context of droughts, feeding in the context of famine, liberation from political and economic oppression, overcoming the impact of disasters (including environmental disasters), the establishment of good governance amidst anarchy and corruption, exorcism from the power of evil spirits and pervasive ideologies and, finally, new life (resurrection), even in the face of death itself; b) as reconciliation in a context of alienation, with specific reference to the cross of Jesus Christ, which becomes possible on the basis of a liberating word of forgiveness – in the context of personal relations, in terms of inter-group conflicts (labour disputes, war, civil war, colonialism, apartheid), in economic transactions where debt is incurred, in terms of jurisprudence in order to address injustices through a word of legal pardoning or amnesty, and in religious terms with reference to the relationship between God and humanity (typically using these same metaphors to describe the healing of such a relationship); and c) as finding an inspiring example to follow in order to cope with the demands of life and of society and to adopt a caring ethos (or sometimes merely to find personal fulfilment) – typically with reference to the life, ministry, parables, wisdom, suffering and death of Jesus Christ, but also with reference to the judges, kings, prophets and priests of Israel and to the saints, martyrs, church leaders and theologians in the history of Christianity – where these examples are then codified in moral codes, books of wisdom, catechisms and even in a bill of rights.

17. These differences are also reflected in contemporary ecological theology. There are many who follow the track of liberation theology to emphasise the need for the liberation not only of humans from oppression but indeed of the whole of creation. Many Western theologians adopt a modern notion of salvation as “moral influence”, especially for ethical reflection on various environmental concerns. In contemporary ecological theology there is comparatively little interest in the understanding of redemption in terms of the forgiveness of sins. Very few have explored the ecological significance of the doctrine of justification.

18. It is in my view possible to integrate the insights of all three these notions of redemption with each other. This may be done on the basis of a distinction between addressing the consequence of sin (evil) and the roots of evil (human sin). Accordingly, one may suggest that the gospel addresses a) the evil consequences of human sin (God’s acts of liberation from oppression, victory over evil, destruction and death, based on the message of resurrection), b) the roots of such evil in human sin (sinners are forgiven by God through grace, manifested in the cross of Jesus Christ) and a way of life for the present in order to ensure a sustainable future (epitomised in the incarnation, life and ministry of Jesus Christ, who demonstrated the full intent of God’s law). It may be appropriate to emphasise one of these notions of redemption more than others in a particular context. Nevertheless, without an analysis of the very roots of suffering, oppression and chaos, namely in human alienation from God, a Christian theology of redemption will remain shallow.

19. In the previous century Christian eschatology has moved to the forefront of theological attention. This has also led to immense confusion. The myriad of eschatological approaches tends to inhibit a clear and inspiring vision of hope for the earth in an age of ecological anxiety. It has also led to a paradoxical tension between hope, the central theme of any Christian eschatology, and eschatological reflection itself. In such a context we apparently do not know what we hope for, only that we hope or, even worse, that to hope is rather important.

20. I have argued previously that Christian hope responds to three distinct aspects of the human predicament, namely human sin, finitude in time (mortality and transience) and the limitations of human knowledge and power in space. The primordial Christian hope for redemption from sin has been extrapolated in the Jewish-Christian tradition to address the problem of mortality (the hope for the resurrection of the dead) and also to the overcome the limitations of human knowledge and power (the hope to be united with God). An adequate notion of the eschaton requires an integration (but not a conflation) of these aspects of the human predicament.

In ecumenical literature there emerged over the last decade or two a trend that may now be called an “oikotheology”.[1] The root metaphor for this theology is the notion of the “whole household of God”. The power of this metaphor lies in its ability to integrate three core ecumenical themes on the basis of the Greek word “oikos” (household) – which forms the etymological root of the quests for economic justice (amidst the inequalities and multiple injustices that characterise the current neo-liberal economic order), ecological sustainability (amidst the degradation and destruction of ecosystems) and ecumenical fellowship (amidst the many denominational and theological divisions that characterise Christianity worldwide).

The discipline of economics reflects on appropriate laws or rules (nomoi) for the household; on the art of administering the global household. The science of ecology gathers knowledge on the “logic” (logos, the underlying principles) of the same household, that is, the incredibly intricate ways in which ecosystems interact to ensure the functioning of the biosphere. The earth, our planet, is indeed a single oikos. The word oikos is also the root of oikoumene, the whole inhabited world. Christian communities live from the conviction that the whole household (oikos) belongs to God and has to answer to God’s economy.[2] Larry Rasmussen explains the links between economy, ecology and the ecumenical movement by referring to the notion of oikos (household):

Creation is pictured as a vast public household. The English words “economics”, “ecumenics,” and “ecology” all share the same root and reference. “Economics” means providing for the household’s material and service needs and managing the household well. But the word also has a theological meaning. One of the classic theological expressions for brining creation to full health is the unfolding drama of “the divine economy” ... One of the marks of that economy is shared abundance. “Ecumenics” means treating the inhabitants of the household as a single family, human and nonhuman together, and fostering the unity of that family. “Ecology” is knowledge of that systematic interdependence upon which the life of the household depends. And if English had adopted the Greek word for steward (oikonomos), we would immediately recognize the steward as the trustee, the caretaker of creation imaged as oikos.[3]

In a number of recent contributions[4] I have indicated how the notion of the whole household of God may serve as an ecumenical root metaphor for a wide variety of other theological themes as well – an ecological doctrine of creation based on the indwelling of God’s Spirit in creation, an anthropology of stewardship (the oikonomos) or one of being “at-home-on-earth”,[5] a Christology affirming that Christ is the cornerstone of this house (Eph 2:20),[6] a soteriology and an ecclesiology focusing on becoming members of the “household of God” (Eph 2:19-22), alternatively an ecclesiology based on the notion of being sojourners (paroikoi) who are precisely not at home (yet),[7] an understanding of the Eucharist as the table fellowship of the household gathered together, the need for God’s Word spoken at the table, and an eschatology expressing the hope that the house which we as humans inhabit (the earth) will indeed become God’s home.[8] It has also been used for a pastoral theology toward the edification of the household (oikodomé),[9] and an ethics of eco-justice,[10] inhabitation, homemaking, hospitality and sufficient nourishment.[11]

In ecumenical discourse on “Life and Work” and on “Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation”, the household of God serves as a theological root metaphor to reflect on a number of ethical themes: the integrity of the biophysical foundations of this house (the earth’s biosphere), the economic management of the household’s affairs, the need for peace and reconciliation amidst ethnic, religious and domestic violence within this single household, a concern for issues of health and education; the place and plight of women and children within this household and an ecumenical sense of the unity not only of the church, but also of the whole of humankind and of all of God’s creation, the whole inhabited world (oikoumene).

It should be clear that the household of God as a theological root metaphor has considerable strengths. It builds on and provides impetus to the widespread recognition (especially in indigenous and ecological theologies) of the theological significance of place (and not only of time) and locality.[12] The metaphor of the household of God will appeal to families who treasure a sense of homeliness and those (often women) for whom homemaking constitutes a major part of their daily lives. Perhaps it will also appeal to those, for example in Africa, who have been denied a home: (environmental) refugees, the homeless waiting upon some housing scheme, those who were forcibly removed from their ancestral homes (also under apartheid in South Africa), street children, battered women, (potential) rape victims for whom “home” is indeed a dangerous place and all those who have not found a place where they can feel at home. It may also be applicable to countless species whose habitat has been invaded for the sake of human interests. Clearly, although the earth does not provide a home for all yet, the yearning of Christian hope is that all God’s creatures will find a lasting home in God’s household.

Like all metaphors, the notion of the “household of God” has certain limitations. Since any notion of the household is necessarily a form of social construction, it can easily be employed to serve the interests of patriarchs (the proverbial paterfamilias), possessive parents, the propagation of preconceived “family values”, the restriction of slaves, women and children to the private sphere, or the domestication (!) of emancipatory struggles.[13] Many a dictator has tried to portray himself as a “family man”. In pluralist, industrialised societies the influence of the household is often restricted to the sphere of the private or to recreation after hours. The use of the oikos metaphor may therefore unwittingly reinforce the marginalisation and privatisation of Christian witness in society.

Alternatively, the inclusiveness of the notion of a household may be expanded to such an extent that it has no boundaries – unlike any particular household. The application of the anthropomorphic notion of home to non-human species is not by itself problematic since other species also engage in house-building activities. However, ecosystems do not, strictly speaking, provide a house for species, but a habitat to thrive in.[14] If a household can offer no sense of belonging inside and can exclude nothing on the outside, then it would become virtually meaningless and would no longer offer any sense of being at home. The household with its fenced vegetable and fruit garden epitomises the human need for surrounded social and moral space. Indeed, housing typically precedes life. The enclosure does not only define and protect; it also demarcates an open frontier describing the identity of the household but on that basis also the possibility of communication with what lies outside the enclosure.[15]

The narrative of God’s work, as outlined in Christian witnesses, is a story with an audacious scope, typically told in mainly seven “chapters” which would, in a simplified form, include at least the following:

1) The triune God’s resolve to create “in the beginning”, “out of nothing”, or better, out of the overflowing love of God;

2) God’s presence in the evolutionary history of the cosmos and of the earth itself, leading to the (late) emergence of humanity on the scene – on the late afternoon of the sixth day, after God had a siesta, as has been suggested;[16]

3) The history of human culture, in the joys and sorrows of everyday life, through grandeur in the spheres of governance, the economy, architecture, technological innovation, education, literature, art and religion, but also in all its misery, understood in the Christian tradition especially in terms of the devastating impact of human sin on earth;

4) God’s providence in history, keeping the “whole world in ‘his’ hands”, guiding the course of history, interacting with (human) agents, notwithstanding the impact of sin and evil;

5) The history of redemption and the promise of future redemption, told in multiple ways by the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and through the apostolic witnesses to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth;

6) The formation of the church – its worship, sacraments, ministries[17] and missions – and the subsequent history of the Christian tradition, for better but often also for worse; and

7) The expected completion, fulfilment or consummation of God’s labour, “on earth as it is in heaven”, culminating in the banquet of the “Lamb that was slain”, in the “feast of the Sabbath”, in the renewal of God’s good creation.

These themes should be understood as a Christian interpretation of a history that is shared with others. There are many different versions and perspectives on this history. The story may be told from the perspective of science, but also from palaeontology, religion, culture, art, philosophy, politics, economy, a women’s perspective, a specific cultural group’s perspective, etc. To understand this multilayered story one may use the image of a palimpsest where one text is partially effaced to make room for writing another.

Christians find the clue to the meaning of the history of the entire cosmos in the life, ministry, suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. They see in this story the clearest indication of the human predicament and of God’s involvement in history. They ascribe what has happened in the person and work of Jesus the Christ to the work of Godself. Moreover, they see in the person of Jesus Christ the self-disclosure of God.

This core Christian confession is in itself interpreted as a story, told in the Nicene Creed with astonishing scope and brevity – the one who is “eternally begotten of the Father … became incarnate from the virgin Mary … was crucified under Pontius Pilate … rose from the dead …. ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father … (and) will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead …”.

It is important to stress that this portrayal of narrative of God’s work offers a particular reading of the same narrative also investigated by contemporary science and other disciplines. Many contemporary theologians interested in ecological concerns have drawn insights from the story of the universe itself as told by contemporary science. Only during the last few decades have scientists been able to reconstruct this story as a single narrative, connecting the insights of astrophysics, astronomy, geology, evolutionary biology, palaeontology, archaeology and various branches of human history with each other, as if in a somewhat disjointed relay race. This story is told in many books on popular science. One well-known example is The universe story: From the primordial flaring forth to the ecozoic era, written by Brian Swimme, a mathematician with poetic flair, together with Thomas Berry, a Catholic priest and self-confessed “geologian” and for many the guru of the environmental movement.[18]

One of the most remarkable insights of contemporary science is that the whole cosmos is inherently historical. Everything, including the “laws of nature”, is subject to change. Feminist theologian Sallie McFague comments that ours is a dynamic, unfinished, “story-shaped universe.”^{^[19]} Catholic theologian John Haught observes that scientists have become story-tellers:

Science has increasingly and almost in spite of itself taken on the lineaments of a story of the cosmos. The cosmos itself increasingly becomes a narrative, a great adventure ... The most expressive metaphor for what science finds in nature is no longer law, but story ... as a result of developments in physics and astronomy, we discern the inherently narrative character of all physical reality. Scientists, in spite of much initial resistance to their new task, have now become story-tellers. The cosmos they describe is no longer just a set of laws, but a narrative the quest for whose outcome is perhaps the major intellectual and spiritual inquiry of our time.[20]

In the theological cosmology of medieval Christianity,[21] the Hebraic vision of creation was expressed within a neo-Platonic and a Ptolemaic worldview.[22] The synthesis of scholastic theology integrated the notions of God, the world and humanity in a system of harmonious relationships. This cosmology provided some security and stability to the medieval corpus Christianum. Within this “symbolic universe” the medieval social order received an ultimate theological justification, an absolute legitimacy and a universality of scope.[23] In this self-contained, static, highly structured and hierarchically ordered[24] cosmology, the whole world and its network of relationships could find ultimate meaning and security in a God who “holds the whole world in his hands.”

The story of the fragmentation of this theological cosmology is as complicated as the history of Europe since that time.[25] Among the many factors contributing to this process, one may mention the following: the almost tangible sense of cosmic insecurity caused by the Black death[26], the technological advances throughout the Middle Ages, the development of a Franciscan interest in observing the “book of nature”, the purely theoretical postulate of the unlimited character of the universe (1440) by Cusanus[27], the political and economic impact of the Reformation, the explorations and exploitations of new worlds by Columbus and others, the new astronomy of Copernicus[28], Galileo and Kepler,[29] the new empirical mode of inquiry introduced by Bacon[30], the rationalism of Descartes's and, eventually, the comprehensive mechanical view of the universe of Newton's. The harmonious medieval synthesis of God, the world and humanity and the sense of security provided by this cosmology was gradually lost in this process.[31]

The famous questions raised by Luther (Where can I find a God of grace?), the Heidelberg Catechism[32] (What is your only comfort in life and in death?[33]) and Descartes[34] (Where can I find a point of departure which is beyond doubt?) reflect this new cosmological insecurity.[35] In their different forms these questions relate to the problem as to where humanity may find a place, an anchor in an infinite cosmos that could no longer be based on a divinely guaranteed order. These questions reflect the insecurity of a world within which the system of harmonious relationships between God, the world and humanity have become obscure.

In an infinite universe there would seem to be no fixed theological, moral or epistemological centre. Every position is a relative one (Moltmann 1985:142). Pascal was one of the first witnesses to express this feeling of being homeless in an endless universe: “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.”[36] Or, in the words of Toulmin (1982:221):

Once the earth was displaced so that it became one of the minor planets of the sun, instead of occupying the center of the cosmos, albeit its corrupted center, people lost their former sense of “knowing where they were” in the overall scheme of things ...[37]

The anthropocentrism of the answers provided by subsequent generations of theologians and philosophers (the humanum of humanism, the cogito of Descartes[38], the “heart” of Pascal, the ratio of the Enlightenment, the empirical evidence of empiricism, the transcendental categories of consciousness of Kant, the “feeling of absolute dependence” of Schleiermacher, the quest for existential meaning in existential philosophy, etc.) could, in principle, not provide solutions to a problem which was not merely anthropological but cosmological in scope.

This fragmentation of the medieval cosmology also led to a detachment of scientific cosmologies from theological cosmologies.[39] This was, of course, prompted by the responses of the Catholic church to the emerging theories of Copernicus and Galileo. The church desperately tried to keep the legitimacy of the old cosmological myths intact. In 1633 this led to the infamous trial and condemnation of Galileo. The sciences hereafter gradually emancipated themselves from the medieval theological cosmology. Science and theology (until recently) increasingly drifted apart.

This process had a disastrous impact on Christian theology. Christian theology has struggled to explain how the world can be plausibly viewed as God’s creation. Even today, when our children ask us: “Where is God?”, many of us still point vaguely to the heavens above even though we know quite well that God is not somewhere up in the blue sky.Christian theology could no longer provide satisfactory answers to the problems energetically posed by new generations of philosophers, astronomers and scientists. In the emerging new world, it was simply impossible to fulfill the classic task of religious cosmologies: to provide a sense of the whole and of where we fit into it, a frame of reference with ultimate explanatory power, absolute legitimacy, moral cohesion and cosmic scope.[40] Theologians who were still clinging to discredited cosmological doctrines were fighting a losing battle. Those who were enthusiastically baptizing new scientific theories theologically found themselves stranded whenever these theories subsequently became outdated.[41]

Faced with this dilemma, Christian theology found an escape route in what Moltmann (1985:34) has called a “theological retreat from cosmology into personal faith.” In an attempt to protect itself from the scientific questioning of the status of the biblical creation narratives, Christian theology tried to demarcate its own field of specialisation by detaching the doctrine of creation from cosmology.[42] Moltmann (1985:33) comments:

So all that remained was the reduction of the doctrine of creation to the personal faith which says that human beings have to put their trust in God the Creator, not in his creatures. In order to protect itself from scientific attack, the Protestant theology of modern times liked to explain faith in creation as an expression of the feeling of absolute dependence. That is to say, it was interpreted as an existential truth.

After its retreat from cosmology, theology concentrated on personal faith. “I believe that God created me ...” as Luther's Short Catechism says. Of course all belief in creation includes that personal conviction. But this personal confession of faith was now increasingly interpreted in an exclusive sense, although it was meant inclusively: for Luther goes on “together with all creatures.”

Due to the growing demarcation between science and theology, creation theology was gradually detached from (scientific) cosmologies. In this theological climate, creation theology itself has often been marginalised. In Biblical theology, due to the influence of Gerard von Rad and others, the belief in a creator God has often been regarded as a mere extrapolation of the belief in the Saviour and Liberator.[43] In systematic theology, the almost exclusive focus on the doctrine of redemption (or liberation[44]) has simply not been parallelled by new explorations of the doctrine of creation (Tracy 1994:76). There has, in fact, been an “eclipse of creation” in many twentieth century systematic theologies. Also in popular piety the diminished role of faith in creation is evident (Landes 1984:140).

As a result of these developments, Christian theology has focused increasingly on the problem of human (personal or societal) salvation or liberation. Preoccupied with the “inner agenda of guilt”, theologians became unable to respond to the “outer agenda” of ecological despair (Santmire 1989:267). Nature was regarded as the “stage” (Calvin) for salvation history only.[45] Human history alone has been seen as a sphere in which God can touch our reality, hence the natural world has more and more been considered irrelevant to theology (McFague 1991:22). At worst, redemption was portrayed as a future event whereby believers will be finally rescued from this world.[46] McDonagh (1986:62-3) comments on this escape route:

Religious thinkers withdrew their attention from wider cosmic, earthly, and even cultural concerns and began to concentrate almost exclusively on the uniqueness of the Christian story. Consequently the theology of creation was generally ignored and almost all theological inquiry was confined to the process of redemption and salvation, the personality of Jesus, the interior spiritual disciplines needed to guide the individual soul along the path of salvation, and the internal constitution and juridical status of the ecclesial community.[47]

The retreat from cosmology and creation theology eventually led to an impasse in soteriology itself. With the fragmentation of the medieval cosmology, the relationship between God, the world and humanity became obscure. Christian theology responded by desperately trying to heal the broken relationship between humanity and an increasingly transcendent God. The questions raised by Luther, the Heidelberg Catechism and others could (in principle) not be answered adequately because the insecurity which they wished to address was not only personal or societal but indeed cosmic in scope.

The relationship between humanity and the cosmos therefore remained obscure. McFague (1993:34) comments:

We have lost the sense of belonging in our world and to the God who creates, nurtures, and redeems this world and all its creatures, and we have lost the sense that we are part of a living, changing, dynamic cosmos that has its being in and through God.

In this way, the retreat from cosmology led to a major impoverishment and distortion of Christian understandings of salvation and liberation (Tracy 1994:76).[48]

In the twentieth century this legacy has continued. The following furher developments may be noted in this regard:

In dialectical theology. Following the lead of Von Rad and Barth, the faith of Israel in a Creator God was regarded as an extrapolation of its experiences of God’s redemption in history. They argued that the noetic priority lied with Israel’s experiences of God’s redemption in history. The theme of creation itself, understood as God’s work to establish order amidst the chaos (following the destruction of Jerusalem), was reinterpreted to include a soteriological thrust. On this basis the theological structure of creation as origination and redemption as restoration of the beginning was rejected. Instead, creation could be viewed as God’s continuous redemptive acts towards the telos of creation, while redemption could be understood as a creative process in which God allows something new to emerge out of a world infected by sin. This approach helped to clarify that a Christian doctrine of creation is not primarily a generalised theory about the origin of all things, but an investigation into the identity of the Creator. Creation, Oepke Noordmans argued, is not forming or making; it is a critical concept, judging all our prevailing ideas about what is natural. It is only in the crucified Christ that we discover who the Creator God is.[49] Christians believe in the triune Creator and not in “creation” itself. Nevertheless, it should be clear that any noetic priority of faith in God as Saviour cannot imply an ontic priority. Salvation can only take place within the realm of creation.

Contemporary theological movements such as liberation theology, black theology, feminist and womanist theology maintain the emphasis on redemption, but understand it in societal instead of personalist terms, that is, as liberation from oppression and victory over the many contemporary manifestations of evil. However, if the relationship between God and the world is not clarified (an agenda addressed in several ecofeminist theologies), this does not resolve the problem of understanding how the liberating praxis of the poor, oppressed and marginalised could be interpreted as God’s own action in the world. In fact, one may wonder whether theological language about God is more than just a way of providing impetus to the social agenda of the church in its struggle for “Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation.”

More recently, the theological pendulum has swung to the extreme opposite, namely to an almost exclusive interest in the theme of creation, sometimes without any particular interest in the doctrine of redemption. This is especially evident in the creation spirituality of Matthew Fox and Thomas Berry. The Western pre-occupation with sin and redemption is criticised in order to retrieve a sense of the sacredness of God’s “original blessing” (Fox 1983).

This renewed theological interest in the theme of creation is especially evident in recent dialogues between Christian theology and the natural sciences. During the last decade or two considerable theological energies have been devoted to relate the Christian doctrines of creation, providence and humanity to the insights emerging from astrophysics, evolutionary biology, the cognitive sciences and paleontology. It is interesting to note that the classic Christian message about sin and redemption receives comparatively little interest in such dialogues – except in the form of the theodicy problem of explaining the emergence of natural forms of suffering and evil and in attempts to offer a generalised account of how divine action in the world may be understood. The same tendency may also be identified in theological schools such as process theology.

The need to relate the themes of creation and redemption is recognised, interestingly enough, in a very different form in indigenous theologies, including African theology. This is evident from the question raised by Mercy Amba Oduyoye (2000:75): “Is the God of our redemption the same God of our creation?” This question is born from the African quest for identity. What is the continuity between a pre-Christian African notion of the creator God and the Christian message of redemption that took root in Africa following the work of Western missionaries?

These rather wide-ranging comments suggest that a far more thorough theological integration of the themes of creation and redemption is required. Such an integration is perhaps only possible if creation, providence, fall, redemption and eschatological consummation is understood not as separate and successive events (as was traditionally the case) but as three ongoing features of the single narrative of God's love for creation.[50] Moreover, the relationship between the Christian story and the story of the universe as told by contemporary science calls for urgent clarification. In my view, the oeuvres of Colin Gunton, Jürgen Moltmann and Arnold van Ruler, perhaps together with those of Douglas John Hall, Paul Santmire and Joseph Sittler offer the most promising sense of direction for this task.

The following comments are derived from one section of my recent inaugural lecture. This section offers some reflection in the place on the earth in the narrative of God’s work.

Firstly, it should be noted that the history of God’s labour can best be told in the form of a story. It is a narrative, an immense story, a drama. Christianity is essentially a historical religion. The God of Christianity is a God of history. Christian faith may be understood as an attempt to capture the meaning of this story, to discern the presence of God in history. Accordingly, the church is a story-telling community and Christian worship[51] is the continued recital, proclamation and celebration of this story through which the “dangerous memory” (JB Metz) of the passion of Jesus Christ is kept alive.[52] Telling the story is both an act of remembrance and, since the story is still unfinished, also of anticipation.[53] Christian theology reflects on the content and significance of this story. This does not imply that theological reflection takes place only in a narrative form. This is evidently not the case. There is room for a multiplicity of genres expressing theological reflection, including dialogue, argumentation, logical analysis, dissertation, biography, story-telling and doxology.[54]

Any such reflective attempt to understand the meaning (or the moral) of the story will never capture its full richness. It will always be relatively less adequate. It may sometimes be necessary to explain a metaphor, the plot of a film or even a joke, but such an explanation would necessarily loose the poetic power of the original. It may also be helpful to read the reflections of others on an event (perhaps a music concert or a sports event) in order to grasp its significance, but this will loose something of the excitement of being a witness to the event itself. Likewise, it may be possible to capture the content of the Christian faith in a number of propositions, but this will remain tentative and provisional. Christian doctrine is therefore nothing more than a set of condensed narratives, abbreviated stories, reminders of what should not be forgotten.[55] It is striking that in their reflections on this story scholastic, orthodox, evangelical and fundamentalist theologians have so often captured the meaning of the story in a set of abiding (propositional) truth claims than cannot do justice to the narrative structure of this story.[56] As a result they have lost a sense that this is indeed an immense story that should also capture the attention of children.

Secondly, this is a story of God’s love for and loyalty (hesed) to creation. This is the deepest intuition of the Christian faith, namely that God is a passionate God of love. There is no need here to explore how this God of love is named in Christian discourse on the triune God, on God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as Creator, Wisdom and Counsellor.[57] I will merely observe that this love may be expressed in characteristics such as God’s compassion, providing care, God’s faithfulness and God’s magnanimous grace. But perhaps the most apt description here is that of God’s joy in creation.[58] It may be true that the chief aim of humankind is to love God and to enjoy God for ever. It is also true that God is concerned about God’s own name and honour, and wishes to be worshipped and glorified. However, the Christian confession is that God is not merely concerned with Godself, but in the well-being and the flourishing of the whole of creation. The best analogy here is perhaps one of a loving parent who has received a new-born baby – with all the joy, pain, anxiety, excitement, vulnerability and open-endedness that this entails. The birth of the baby is for the parent only the beginning of a life together. Indeed, God is the Father who treasures and “keeps” every moment in time, the Mother who brings forth and nurtures new life.[59] Such love is essentially relational and can only flourish on the basis of mutual respect and reciprocity.

Thirdly, for Christians, especially in the Protestant tradition, the plot of this drama is essentially one of creativity, radical distortion and redemption, of creation and new creation, of construction, destruction and reconstruction, of freedom, oppression and liberation, of relatedness, alienation and reconciliation, of life, death and new life. The core predicament is not merely one of survival in a hostile environment, of finding food and shelter, or of overcoming pain, sickness and death. It is certainly not merely one of ignorance which may be resolved through better education, information and insight. It is also not a problem which can be resolved merely through self-help therapy. Instead, it is one of coming to terms with the destructive legacy (evil) of what Christians call human sin. To ignore or to underplay the problem of sin is to offer a shallow, superficial and unpersuasive account of the plot of this drama. This, in no uncertain terms, is the message of numerous theological movements of the past few decades – feminist theology, political theology, black theology, liberation theology, ecotheology and various indigenous theologies, to mention only a few. The environmental crisis, seen from this perspective, is one contemporary manifestation of the legacy of human sin, alongside and reinforced by domination in the name of differences of race, class, gender, culture, education and sexual orientation.[60]

This plot is best captured by the Christian symbols of the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In the dialectic tension between cross and resurrection Christians proleptically find the clue to the meaning of history.[61] The cross reminds us of the horrors of history (authoritarian rule, evil, suffering and death), counters any rendering of history as evolutionary progress and indicates that history has to be redeemed, not only completed.[62] The resurrection forms the basis of the Christian hope that history can indeed be redeemed. This dialectic between cross and resurrection also illuminates other aspects of God’s love. God’s love is one which seeks to overcome alienation. Since reciprocity cannot be taken for granted, God willingly becomes vulnerable, awaiting an appropriate (human) response. The Christian tradition has used categories such as God’s compassion, kenosis (self-emptying love), and self-risk to describe such love.[63]

In the fourth place, this is a story that is told again and again within Christian communities. It is told in word and in images, in myth and in ritual, in the celebration of the Christian liturgy.[64] It is not only told, it has to be played, performed and re-enacted. The purpose of telling the story is, of course, partly one of finding our place and our vocation within this story. While the focus of any story is typically on the past, on what has happened thus far, the rationale for telling it is to come to terms with the present and to anticipate what the future may hold. One may therefore identify an interplay between the practices of a local community and its telling of the story. The one reinforces the other. This obviously applies to Christian earthkeeping practices as well. To be engaged in earthkeeping is to tell the story in such a way that God’s love for the whole earth is evident. To tell the story of God’s love for the earth is to reinforce such earthkeeping practices. To bear witness through Christian earthkeeping is to continue telling the story of God’s love for creation in a contemporary setting.[65]

Fifthly, this is a story that may be told as a sequel over many nights, precisely because it is such an immense narrative. One may have to focus on one episode or on one theme at a time. However, it is only when an episode is embedded within the larger story that its place and significance can be appropriated. In this way, the whole set of episodes, themes and symbols reverberate with one another.[66] The problem though, is that this is by no means easy, because we know the story only in fragments and have to live from these fragments, from the crumbs of bread that we have gathered. Few theologians in the history of Christianity have dared to tell the whole story and even the greatest – let us say Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin and Karl Barth – have been severely criticised for distorting the story.

It should therefore not be surprising that theologians have so often contorted the story in some or other way. My suspicion is that theologians typically tend to subsume one episode of the story under another and therefore fail to do full justice to the story. In each case this has serious repercussions for the way in which the place of the earth within the larger story is understood.

My intuition is that the all the episodes may come to fruition in the story’s ending, in the hope for the consummation of all things.[67] In the eschaton, the goodness of creation is affirmed and the predicament of sin is addressed at the same time.[68] However, this may also account for the immense confusion that characterises the Christian eschatologies of the last century. The myriad of eschatological approaches tends to inhibit a clear and inspiring vision of hope for the earth in an age of ecological anxiety.[69] It has also led to a paradoxical tension between hope, the central theme of any Christian eschatology, and eschatological reflection itself. In such a context we apparently do not know what we hope for, only that we hope or, even worse, that to hope is rather important.

Finally, it should be noted that this story remains incomplete. We cannot tell this story from God’s perspective from a privileged vantage point where the end of the story is already known to us. We do not know how the story will end (that would amount to eschatological creationism[70]). We tell the story from within the midst of history. This implies that those who live by this story lives within it.[71] As in any other story, we can anticipate where the story is heading towards. Such anticipation accounts for much of the excitement in hearing a story, reading a book or watching a film, because our expectations may be confirmed or we may be surprised by new developments. As in other stories there are clues that help us to discern the plot, but these clues are not sufficient to be able to predict how the rest of the story will unfold. That would be too facile and joyless. For Christians, the life, ministry, suffering, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ provide the clearest clues to the meaning of God’s story.

Perhaps theological reflection on the story of God’s labour may best be described as an act of juggling where attention to any one theme has to be balanced by attention to the others. To subsume any theme under any other would be to catch that one and to let all the others fall. It seems to me that this act of juggling requires a way of seeing, a certain eschatological vision. This, I suggest, is a vision of God’s creative, protective, nurturing, corrective, innovative and vindicating love for and loyalty to all of creation.[72]

[1] In addition to the many ecumenical contributions in this regard, see also the doctoral thesis by Warmback (2006) who explores resources for the construction of an “oikotheology”, drawing especially from the earthkeeping initiatives in the Anglican diocese of Umzimvubu in South Africa.

[2] Meeks (1989) speaks of God as “the Economist” to describe the way in which God is redeeming the world (through the nomoi of Torah and gospel) and its implications for the economy.

[3] Rasmussen 1994:118.

[4] See especially Conradie 2007. In this essay I investigate the question how the metaphor of the household of God may be employed in an ecclesiological context to re-describe the nature and mission of the church in society. I argued that the use of household imagery in ecological, economic and ecumenical discourse has led to considerable confusion on the parameters of such a household. Is the house that we are called to inhabit that of the Christian family as a household of faith, the (local) church, the ecumenical church, the “wider ecumenism” of the unity of all humankind, the management of the house in the global economy, or the whole biosphere as a household of life? Although the root (oikos) is present at all these levels, it is not clear what the “house” includes and excludes in each case and how it is constituted (by God, by faith, through ecumenical fellowship, by society, by offering a planetary habitat for humans, etc). More specifically, I investigated the place and mission of the church within the larger household of God. This was done with reference to ecumenical discourse on “Ecclesiology and Ethics”, to the contributions of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth and to a number of recent African ecclesiologies.

[5] The earth is a habitable house that human beings inhabit. This was already captured neatly by Karl Barth: “Because it is dry one can live on the earth; because it has been covered with plants one can live from the earth. Future creation will be the furnishing of this house as a dwelling. But the twofold work of the third day is that of making the house a house.” See Barth (CD 3.1, 1960:143), also quoted in Welker 1999:40. See also Müller-Fahrenholz (2002:86) on the notion of an “enoikische Selbstverständnis” suggesting an anthropology of “inhabitation” instead of “domination”. There are numerous contributions toward a theological anthropology which focus on the need for humans to recognise that they are “at home on earth” (for an overview, see Conradie 2005:6-7, 26-40). For a critical engagement with such discourse, while staying with the root metaphor of the household of God, see my An ecological Christian anthropology: At home on earth? (Conradie 2005).

[6] There is a tendency in ecumenical discourse on the oikos metaphor to move away from a Christological focus towards a pneumatological orientation. This is especially evident in Konrad Raiser’s influential work Ecumenism in transition (1991). Raiser explores the need for a paradigm shift in ecumenical theology from a “narrow” Christological focus towards a “broader” pneumatological orientation which would supplement (but not replace) the earlier paradigm.

[7] See Müller-Fahrenholz (1995, 2002) but also various contributions on the notion of the church as resident aliens (paroikia). Accordingly, the church is a community of “aliens and strangers” (paroikoi and parepidemoi), without citizen rights, in the world (1 Peter 2:11). Müller-Fahrenholz (1995:110) regards an emphasis on the paroikía character of the church as an important corrective which becomes necessary whenever the primary ecodomical task of the church is threatened. He says: “There is an undeniable tension between oikodomé and paroikía. Whereas the former implies purpose and creativity, the latter tends towards separation of earth and heaven and fosters an escapist spirituality. But this need not be the case. The notion of paroikía is useful in underscoring that the followers of Christ can only be strangers in a world that rejects them. ... Ecodomical communities cannot be at peace with the violent powers that threaten to throw the world into chaos; rather they must seek to correct and transform a world in crisis.”

In a South African reformed contribution, Flip Theron (Theron 1997:257) acknowledges, with specific reference to Müller-Fahrenholz, that the emphasis on the paroikía character of the church may foster an escapist spirituality, but simply adds that this does not need to happen. By contrast, Theron insists that the metaphor of the church as paroikía in society is of fundamental (instead of corrective) importance for an understanding of the nature of the church since it is (for him) a function of the eschatological character of the church. He thus recalls that, “The English ‘parish’, the Dutch ‘parogie’ and the German ‘Pfarrer’ which derive from this word (paroikía), still remind us that the church consists of ‘resident aliens’. Training a ‘Pfarrer’ involves training a ‘foreigner’. The education of a parson, implies training for a paroikía” (Theron 1997:257). He eloquently warns against the danger of the church becoming a mere reflection of society: “Quite understandably the church is always tempted to lay another foundation than the ‘one already laid’ namely the crucified Christ (1 Cor 3:11). That happens when it becomes fascinated by the isolated form of creation in stead of focusing on the trans-forming and therefore critical character of the creative Word of the cross. It then loses its paroikía character and becomes nothing more than a reflection of society. The salt has lost its saltiness. ‘It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men’ (Matt 5:13)” (Theron 1997:261-262).

[8] See especially Moltmann 1985, 1996 and my Hope for the earth (Conradie 2000 / 2005) which employs the distinction between “house” and “home”, suggesting that the earth is the house which we as humans inhabit, but that it is not our home yet. Christian hope may be interpreted as the hope to be at home with God, on earth as it is in heaven.

[9] In his stimulating study, God’s Spirit: Transforming a world in crisis, Geiko Müller-Fahrenholz developed the notion of “ecodomy”, derived from the Greek word oikodomé. Ecodomy is the art of inhabiting instead of dominating the earth, our house. Müller-Fahrenholz (1995:109) explains: “In its literal sense this term refers to the building of the house, but its meaning can be extended to any constructive process. So the apostle Paul uses the word for the building up of Christian communities. He calls his apostolic mission a service to the oikodomé of Christ (2 Cor. 13:10). He reminds members of Christian communities that they should behave towards each other in the spirit of oikodomé (Rom. 14:19). They are called to use their specific gifts and talents (charisms) for the oikodomé of the Body of Christ (Eph. 2:21), just as they are reinforced and strengthened by the pneumatic energy of this body.” Müller-Fahrenholz subsequently calls on Christian congregations to become ecodomical centres and to form ecodomical networks and covenants which can respond to the demands of the contemporary world. The calling of the church is to become partners in God’s ecodomy. Oikodomia is therefore not “‘Gemeindeafbau’ im parochialen Sinn, sondern ‘Hausbau’ mit ökumenischer Reichweite” (2002:87).

[10] The term “ecojustice” is often used in ecumenical discourse to capture the need for a comprehensive sense of justice that can respond to both economic injustice and ecological degradation. Ecojustice within the household of God is for example stressed in the study document on Alternative Globalization Addressing Peoples and Earth produced by the Justice, Peace and Creation team of the WCC (2005). The term “ecojustice” was coined by William Gibson and popularised by Dieter Hessel. See especially Hessel 1992.

[11] See the eloquent description of what “home” entails by Douglas Meeks (1989:36): “Home is where everyone knows your name. Home is where you can always count on being confronted, forgiven, loved, and cared for. Home is where there is always a place for you at the table. And, finally, home is where you can count on sharing what is on the table.”

[12] The category of space / place emphasises the rootedness of all forms of life and highlights the relationship between the issues of ecology (inhabited space) and justice (the control over space). See Bergmann 2007.

[13] The crucial question is therefore how oikos and polis (political power and rule) are related to one another and how both of these are related to kosmos. See Meeks 1989:8.

[14] As Michael Welker (1999:144) observes, the image of the earth as a house does not take the self-productive activity of the earth into account. This is, in fact, already evident from the earth’s own agency according to the first creation narrative in Genesis. Earth is portrayed not so much as a house but rather as an active empowering agent which brings forth life.

[15] See Moltmann 1985:144. As Konrad Raiser (1991:88) suggests, the ecumenical household “constantly displays this duality between boundary and openness, independence and relationship, rest and movement, the familiar and the alien, continuity and discontinuity.”

[16] See Van de Beek 1987:46.

[17] For one exposition of Christian ministry from a feminist and an African women’s perspective, see the postgraduate thesis by Lutasha Abrahams (Ndesi) (2006).

[18] See Swimme & Berry 1987.

[19] McFague 1993:105. Se also Moltmann 1985:197ff.

[20] Haught 1993:62, 122.

[21] For a brief description of the medieval theological cosmology, see Wilkinson 1991:129-132. For a fuller description, see the comprehensive work of Wildiers 1973.

[22] Toulmin (1990:68) argues that explicit cosmologies did not play any central role in medieval Christian theology. Since Augustine, the focus has been on the human failure to maintain the moral order. The spiritual disciplines and the message of salvation addressed this problem. It was only during the time of the Renaissance that the recovery of classical texts reawakened the concern with cosmology. However, this paper argues that the moral order of medieval theology was built on the foundation of a Ptolemaic cosmology. When this cosmology was undermined the moral order and the theology of salvation was also undermined.

[23] See Berger & Luckmann's (1967:112f) classic analysis of symbolic universes.

[24] According to Wildiers (1973:136f), theologians in the Middle Ages had no doubt that God created a perfect order in the universe. God is a God of perfect order. Cosmos is therefore synonymous with order. We simply need to look at the “book of nature” to discover this order. Sin may be regarded as the disturbance of this order and redemption and eschatology as the restoration of this order.

[25] Oberman (1986:25) describes the late Middle Ages (before the dawn of the protestant reformation) also as “the Age of Crisis” in every conceivable sphere. The synthesis provided by Scholastic theology was already beginning to crumble. (see Oberman 1986:25-32).

[26] According to Berry (1988:125), two distinct responses to the plague emerged: one looked towards a religious redemption from this tragic world and the other towards greater control of the physical world to escape its pain. These two approaches still exemplify modern tendencies (towards a purely religious community or towards scientific knowledge, technological control and industrial power).

[27] This postulate sowed the seed of the fragmentation of the medieval cosmology. If the universe itself could be conceived of as unlimited (and not limited, closed, and hierarchical), its centre is everywhere, its circumference nowhere and its relationship with an infinite God obscure (see Wildiers 1973:154-156).

[28] The most revolutionary aspect of the theory of Copernicus was perhaps not his claim that the sun is at the center of planetary motions but that this theory attempted to describe reality itself. This constituted a move away from the Platonic conception of cosmology as the contemplation of the mind to a cosmology based on the senses. This new mode of observation and the search for empirical evidence featured increasingly in the work of Kepler and Galileo (see Wilkinson 1991:148-9).

[29] See the detailed discussion of Wildiers (1973:160f) on the impact which these three astronomers had on the fragmentation of the medieval cosmology. Wildiers (1973:189) otes the remarkable fact that an astronomical paradigm shift eventually led to a complete revolution in Western culture. Ruether (1992:33) adds: “Not only did the heliocentric view shift the entire focus of reality from an earth-centered world to one where the earth was a minor planet circling around the sun, but it also destroyed a whole moral and spiritual system that had been built on this earth-centered view.”

[30] See the brief assessment of Bacon by Swimme and Berry (1992:230): “Francis Bacon (1561-1626) ... established the basic pragmatic orientation that envisaged the scientific venture as serving human welfare, giving to science its commission to besiege the natural world until nature would give up its secrets in the service of the human.”

[31] See Oberman (1986:25-32) for details on this process.

[32] See Kehm's comments (1992:199) on the anthropocentrism of the Heidelberg Catechism: “The Heidelberg Catechism has been praised for its pronounced personalizing of the meaning of the doctrines of the Christian faith. Beginning with the answer to the first question, the leitmotif of the catechism is that 'everything must fit his purpose for my salvation' ... Whatever 'pastoral' benefit may be provided by such teaching, an individualistic or, at best, tribal view of salvation and an anthropocentric view of the world are what it communicates.”

[33] The historical context in which the Heidelberg Catechism (1563) was written was one of great political, military, ecclesial and religious turmoil (Exalto s a:9). It was the time of the Counter-Reformation, of protracted religious wars and of vehement theological controversies among Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists and Anabaptists. The fragmentation of the corpus Christianum and the medieval theological cosmology understandably led to anxiety and insecurity. The questions raised by Luther and by the Heidelberg Catechism therefore did not merely reflect a need for a purely personal or quasi-existentialist sense of comfort.

[34] See Toulmin (1990:56f) for an illuminating discussion of the trauma caused by the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) as the background to Descartes's philosophy. Toulmin argues that the appeal of the “quest for certainty” in Descartes' rationalism should be understood as a desperate and somewhat reactionary attempt to cope with the anxiety, trauma and chaos of the early seventeenth century. By 1648, the collapse of the old world order became evident. Descartes and Newton laid the foundations for a new cosmology based on mathematical certainty (Toulmin 1990:83).

[35] It is unlikely that the cosmological fragmentation caused by the Copernican revolution had an impact as early as the sixteenth century. The Heidelberg Catechism followed just twenty years after the publication in 1543 of Copernicus' work, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (published, interestingly enough by Osiander, the reformer at Nürnberg). Scholder 1990:46, 52-3 concludes: “... the consequences of the Copernican shift were not in fact obvious even to experts during the sixteenth century.” However, it is perhaps equally valid to argue that, “Copernicus crowned an era hungry for reality, groping for answers, and seeking to initiate change” (Oberman 1986:201).

[36] Pensées no. 206. Pascal preferred not even to examine the opinion of Copernicus but preferred to deal with the question whether the soul is mortal or immortal (Pensées no. 218). See Moltmann (1985:141f), Wildiers (1973:195f).

[37] See Toulmin (1982:219f, 1990:62f) for a discussion of John Donne's poem, An anatomie of the world (1611). This poem follows a year after the publication of Galileo's Sidereus nuncius (1610) and reflects the same cosmological uncertainty in a world in which “all coherence is gone”. The “new” astronomy was not only a new theory about the motion of the planets; it undermined the entire cosmopolis (Toulmin 1990:67). Also see Wildiers (1973:191) for a similar analysis of the poems of Shakespeare (1564-1616). The disorder in human society reflects the apparent cosmic disorder.

[38] The dualism of Descartes, separating humanity from nature and mind from matter, led to a fragmentation of the single unified order of the Greek notion of cosmos. The worldview of Descartes and Newton therefore no longer represents a genuine cosmos (Toulmin 1982:224).

[39] The new interest in astronomy was usually born from and motivated by theological concerns. One may even argue that the astronomers pointed their telescopes to the sky in search of traces of God. For Galileo, Kepler and Newton there was an intimate relation between theological and scientific understanding. Newton saw himself as a theologian as well as a scientist. He was describing the way in which the divine functions in the universe (Swimme & Berry 1992:227). However, the results of these investigations soon led to a tension between scientific and theological cosmologies.

[40] Durkheim argued that religions are not confined to forms of expression such as ritual, worship and doctrine. As comprehensive views on the world, religions inevitably also give rise to cosmological reflection (see Boff 1995:62).

[41] The order of the classic cosmology (and the harmony and “design” of the seventeeth-century worldview) was soon replaced by the more historic and uncertain notions of evolution and adaptation (Toulmin 1982:260).

[42] Moltmann (1985:34-5) explains the impact of this line of demarcation between science and theology in the following way:

Johannes Kepler, like Galileo after him, maintained the view that God's intention in the Bible was not to correct erroneous opinions about the world, or to save people the effort of investigation. His sole purpose was to reveal to human beings everything that was necessary for their salvation. This Reformation tendency to interpret the biblical traditions in the light of the human - and indeed personal - questions of salvation was subsequently felt to be liberating, and is occasionally still seen as such today. ... But this concentration on the salvation of the individual person also cut theology off from human ways of knowing and mastering the world. Theology's domain became the soul's assurance of salvation in the inner citadel of the heart. The earthly, bodily and cosmic dimensions of the salvation of the whole world were overlooked.

[43] Although the belief in God's salvation probably still has a noetic priority over a belief in God as creator, this noeitic priority should not be allowed to become an ontic priority (see Durand 1982:84).

[44] Liberation theologians (with some notable exceptions) have until recently also limited their concern to human well-being (see McFague 1991:22, Landes 1984:140).

[45] McDonagh (1986:62-3) asks instead: “(Is) the twenty billion years of God's creative love simply ... a stage on which the drama of human salvation is worked out?”

[46] The hope for a cosmic redemption has Biblical roots (Isa 11:6-9; 65:17, 25; Col 1:14-20; 1 Cor 15:28; Eph 1:10, Rom 8:19-22). In Western theology, expressions of this hope became relatively rare but it was kept alive in Eastern Orthodoxy. Mainline Christianity saw the world as going downhill towards destruction (Ruether 1992:237). The ecological consciousness of the last few decades has led to a re-emergence of this hope for the redemption of the world as opposed to the redemption of believers from the world (see Nash 1991:125-132).

[47] McDonagh (1986:62-3) argues that the problem could be traced back to the roots of the Western tradition in the theology of Augustine:

Since the late Middle Ages and particularly since the Reformation, there has been an almost exclusive concentration in the western theological tradition on a Fall / Redemption theology, much of which can be traced back to Augustine. This theological tradition has no adequate theology of creation. The twenty billion years of God's creative love is simply seen either as the stage on which the drama of human salvation is worked out, or as something radically sinful in itself and needing transformation. For a quite different appraisal of Augustine's ecological legacy, see Santmire (1985:55-74).

[48] The line of demarcation between theology and science also did not guarantee that Christian theology would be left untouched by emerging scientific theories: “There can be little doubt that the events symbolized by the names Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and Darwin changed forever the landscape of theological thought.” (Tracy 1994:74).

[49] Noordmans (1934:63-65).

[50] See Barbour (2002:50).

[51] See also the following formulation by Dietrich Ritschl: “(In) worship ... is celebrated the over‑arching story in which what is of lasting importance is contained and from which what is of momentary urgency can be seen ... Worship allows (the) constantly renewed attempt to envisage an overarching story of God with humanity and the whole of creation.” Quoted in Smit 2007:433.

[52] See the essay on “Public worship: A tale of two stories” in Smit 2007:425-443. He draws on a wide range of narrative theologians emphasising the narrative structure of Christian communities, worship and prayer.

[53] See Moltmann 2000:31-33. Since what is being remembered includes the suffering of the past as well as the promises of God, the orientation of the story telling is towards the future.

[54] See again Smit’s essay on Barth elsewhere in this volume.

[55] See Smit 1994:44-46, also 2007:441-442.

[56] In recent decades the narrative structure of the Christian faith has been retrieved by a diversity of contributions to “narrative theology”. The work of Edmund Arens, Hans Frei, Stanley Hauerwas, George Lindbeck, Johann Baptist Metz, H. Richard Niebuhr, Dietrich Ritschl and David Tracy, amongst many others, may be mentioned in this regard.

[57] For some provisional reflections, see chapter 6 of my Waar op dees aarde vind mens God? (Conradie 2006).

[58] See Van Ruler’s essay “Hoe waardeert men de stof” (1972) and Moltmann 1973.

[59] See Conradie (2006:241-246) for some reflections on these metaphors.

[60] See my essay on ecological reinterpretations of Christian notions of sin (Conradie 2006).

[61] On the notion of prolepsis, see the work of Ted Peters (1992), following insights of Wolfhart Pannenberg.

[62] Bauckham & Hart 1999:40.

[63] See the volume of essays on creation as kenosis edited by Polkinghorne 2001.

[64] On the significance of the Christian liturgy for reorientation, to learn to see the world through God’s eyes – with compassion – see the essay by Smit 1997.

[65] For me this is best expressed in the treeplanting Eucharists enacted within the context of Association of African Earthkeeping Churches in the Masvingo district in Zimbabwe. See Daneel 1999.

[66] It may be possible to defend a Christian rationale for earthkeeping on the basis of categories such as stewardship, God’s covenant, a sense of God’s sacred presence, God’s promises or God’s household. However, these themes become arid, less persuasive and easily marginalised if they are not embedded within the larger story.

[67] This would entail the redemption of the world and not redemption from the world. As Jürgen Moltmann (1996:260) notes, without cosmology eschatology will turn into a Gnostic myth of redemption. Instead, the consummation has to be seen as an act of creating anew.

[68] I have argued