Issues in Science and Theology: Global Sustainability: Science and Religion in Dialogue (Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology, 7) 3031417992, 9783031417993

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Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology

Michael Fuller Mark Harris Joanna Leidenhag Anne Runehov   Editors

Issues in Science and Theology: Global Sustainability Science and Religion in Dialogue

Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology Volume 7

Series Editor Michael Fuller, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK Editorial Board Lotta Knutsson Brakenhielm, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden Grzegorz Bugajak, Institute of Philosophy, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University, Warsaw, Poland Dirk Evers, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Halle/Saale, Germany Mark Harris, University of Edinburgh, Oxford, UK Antje Jackelén, Church of Sweden, Uppsala, Sweden Roland Karo, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia Javier Leach, Facultad de Informática, Departamento de Sistemas Informáticos y Computación, Universidad Complutense Madrid, Madrid, Spain Hubert Meisinger, Evangelische Kirche in Hessen und Nassau, Zentrum Gesellschaftliche Verantwortung, Mainz, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany Lluis Oviedo, Teologia, Antonianum University, Roma, Italy Fabien Revol, Catholic University of Lyon, Lyon, France Knut-Willy Sæther, Religious Studies, Volda University College, Volda, Norway Tom Uytterhoeven, KU Leuven, Onze-Lieve-Vrouw-Waver, Belgium

This series comprises biennial volumes produced by the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology. Each volume will contain approximately 12-15 papers, which are edited by an expert panel. Each volume offers a ‘state of play’ perspective regarding the area of dialogue between science and religion being considered, looking both at the current situation and at likely further developments within that area. They aim to lay the fruits of current research in specific areas before the wider science-and-religion community, and the general public.

Michael Fuller • Mark Harris Joanna Leidenhag • Anne Runehov Editors

Issues in Science and Theology: Global Sustainability Science and Religion in Dialogue

Editors Michael Fuller School of Divinity, New College University of Edinburgh Edinburgh, UK Joanna Leidenhag School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science University of Leeds Leeds, UK

Mark Harris Faculty of Theology and Religion Radcliffe Observatory Quarter Oxford, UK Anne Runehov Faculty of Theology Uppsala University Trelleborg, Sweden

ISSN 2364-5717     ISSN 2364-5725 (electronic) Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology ISBN 978-3-031-41799-3    ISBN 978-3-031-41800-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41800-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Preface

The European Society for the Study of Science and Theology (ESSSAT, for short) holds an international conference on a topical theme in the science-and-religion dialogue roughly every two years: the ‘European Conference on Science and Theology’ (ESCT). ECST moves around Europe’s prominent centres of study in the field, and in 2022, it was our great pleasure to meet in Ålesund, Norway, where we considered one of the most urgent issues of our day: global sustainability. This volume presents some of the highlights from that conference (ECST XIX), held 4–8 May 2022  in the Scandic Parken Hotel in Ålesund under the banner of ‘Global Sustainability – Science and Religion in Dialogue’. Since the Brundtland Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development – Our Common Future (1987) – sustainability has become one of the most talked-about concepts in the contemporary human world, especially in political debates concerning ecology and the future of our planet. How can we develop our technology, our culture, our economy and our systems of political decision-­ making so that our local and global ecosystems can achieve a human-ecosystem equilibrium? More widely, how might the continued development of our human species be sustained in such a way that it does not threaten the future of generations still to come, but might even allow them to flourish alongside their natural habitats? But, while discussions of sustainability have obviously tended to focus on technology and politics, sustainability has long been identified as also comprising a cultural and spiritual crisis. Not only the natural and human sciences, but the humanities – and also religion  – must come into the picture as we seek to build a sustainable vision of nature which includes humankind. Religion – and theology, its analytic lens – must therefore play a key part in our societies’ discussions on sustainability. Against a backdrop of consumerism and exploitation of our planet’s natural resources in modern times, we now understand that nature is not only a finite and fragile economic resource, but is also a realm of resonance and meaning in which we are embedded. We might aspire to act at an objective distance as responsible stewards but we find ourselves inextricably entangled on every level. Our societies’ commitments to sustainability therefore have fundamentally moral and theological roots which must be exposed and examined. It v

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was the aim of ECST XIX to bring the task up-to-date from the perspective of the science-and-religion conversation. Unlike the previous conference (ECST XVIII), which was held partly online because of the Covid-19 pandemic, by May 2022 European society was emerging cautiously from successive phases of lockdown, and the Ålesund meeting was therefore the first time for several years that many participants had been able to meet in person in a large gathering. The palpable sense of relief that society was beginning to return to some semblance of normality after the strictures and the tragic deaths of the previous two years, coupled with the glorious environment of the Norwegian fjords, made for a highly memorable meeting. Approximately 60 short papers were delivered in person at the conference, along with 5 plenary talks from leading figures in scientific, theological and social aspects of sustainability. This volume attempts to capture the spirit of the conference, as well as presenting the current state-of-the-art in science-and-religion perspectives on global sustainability. As ESSSAT’s President, it is my great pleasure to thank organisers and sponsors of the conference. ESSSAT expresses its gratitude to the local organisers in Ålesund, led by Knut-Willy Sæther, and to the cooperation of Volda University College, NTNU Ålesund and Molde University College. In addition, the conference could not have taken place without the sponsorship of Sparebanken Møre and the support of the Research Council of Norway, to whom we are greatly appreciative. Finally, we wish to express our gratitude to the staff of Springer for their cooperation on this volume and our book series. Thank you all! Oxford, UK April 2023

Mark Harris

Introduction

In March 2023, as this book was in preparation, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published the final part of its sixth assessment report.1 The report was described thus: ‘In sober language, the IPCC set out the devastation that has already been inflicted on swathes of the world. Extreme weather caused by climate breakdown has led to increased deaths from intensifying heatwaves in all regions, millions of lives and homes destroyed in droughts and floods, millions of people facing hunger, and “increasingly irreversible losses” in vital ecosystems’.2 It is clear that our planet is already bearing the impact of anthropogenic climate change, and there is a vital need for concerted action in response to this. The call for sustainability in order to moderate the effects of drivers of climate change is therefore an urgent one, and so the theme of the nineteenth European Conference on Science and Theology – ‘Global Sustainability: Science and Religion in Dialogue’ – could not have been more timely. Some of the papers given at that conference are presented here for wider consideration. They treat this theme from a variety of perspectives, and collectively they call for action, justify that action, and offer ways in which that action may be practically effected and sustained, drawing on scientific and theological resources as they do so. We begin by looking at the practicalities behind moving towards more sustainable goals. Christian Berg sets the scene by noting that, although it has long been recognised that moves towards sustainability are essential, progress has been slow. He discusses the practical constraints on progress, some of which are due to the necessary trade-offs required by taking actions which have effects at many different levels, and some of which are due to the complex interweaving of institutions and legal frameworks at both local and international levels. Berg urges that action is

 Available online at https://www.ipcc.ch/assessment-report/ar6/ (accessed 30 March 2023).  ‘Scientists deliver “final warning” on climate crisis: act now or it’s too late’, The Guardian, 20 March 2023: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/20/ipcc-climate-crisis-reportdelivers-­final-warning-on-15c (accessed 30 March 2023). 1 2

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required from a variety of different players, and he puts forward various principles which might enable such action to be concerted, and hence effective. Willem B. Drees asks how calls for sustainability might be justified. He notes the various authorities to which appeal might be made in addressing this question: science, philosophical ethics, religious traditions (although any drawing on these is likely to be selective), or some over-reaching global worldview to which all people may give consent. Drees finds all these bases for appeal wanting. He urges that it is in the messiness of political processes, rather than in appeal to preconceived systems, that consensus may be found for ways forward. As Drees puts it, ‘the best option might be to live with disagreements, pragmatically solving problems, one by one. In this process, we may call for sustainability, given the urgency of issues and their potential impact, even though we do not have a theoretical justification of this concern. Not everything that is important is philosophically justified’. Ernst M. Conradie asks the question: What is it that needs to be ‘sustained’ in the face of the climate crisis? He explores the roots of the modern term ‘sustainability’ in the World Council of Churches meeting in Bucharest in 1974, and looks at the changing nuances which the word has taken on since then. The Churches have seen sustainability as a matter of social justice: Conradie reflects on the compatibility, or otherwise, of this concept with the dominant political realities of the past half-­century and concludes that ‘The term sustainability has become confusing and such confusion plays into the hands of a business as usual approach’. He advocates a ‘conversion’ of people’s hearts and minds if a long-term change in our habits, not least those regarding fossil fuel consumption, is to be effected. Lluis Oviedo and Sara Lumbreras explore some of the thinking about theology and ecology that has taken place in the Academy in recent years. They urge that the dynamics of values, as propounded by Christianity (in common with other religions), offer a way of generating and understanding a motivated response to questions of sustainability, through calling people and institutions to consider the practical courses of action which they can take in order to expedite it. They also draw attention to the ways in which theological thinking must change and develop in order for the calls it issues to be heeded; and they urge that theology should connect itself more with other disciplines, and with movements which aim at ensuring more sustainable development. What is needed is a systemic understanding of religion, society, and culture, where religion develops its function in connection with other social systems. The next group of contributions take historical approaches to the issue of sustainability. Axel Siegemund charts the changing ways in which Christian theology has viewed both nature and technology. He argues that in the past the natural world has been seen as the locus of sin and corruption, with technology being seen in a spiritual light – as a means of ameliorating this corruption through human effort. Latterly, however, technology itself has come to be seen as iniquitous, with a corresponding exaltation of ‘unspoiled’ nature, and attempts to re-sacralise the natural world. Siegemund urges that technology need not be seen in a negative light. Rather, if humans are, in Philip Hefner’s expression, ‘created co-creators’ with God, then technology may be seen as something far more positive  – and, moreover, as

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something which can be a part of the solution to modern concerns around environmental sustainability. Perhaps technology might even regain a theologically-­ informed role. Two chapters address the historian Lynn White’s celebrated ascription of responsibility for the climate crisis to Western Christianity. In his 1967 paper ‘The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis’, White maintained that modern Western science and technology are rooted in Christian understandings of the natural world, and of humankind’s relationship to it as one of ‘dominion’. It is these understandings, White urged, that have led to the present crisis. In response to this critique, Josef Quitterer explores the rationale behind White’s approach, locating it in the assumption that there is a dualism between humankind and nature, with the latter being seen in purely objective (rather than ‘sacred’) terms. Quitterer suggests that a new form of causal explanation, based on the idea of the dispositions (or powers) of entities, might undermine this dichotomy, and constitute an important new way of seeing nature and natural causes – thereby opening the way to more ecologically friendly ways of viewing the human-nature relationship. Jason Stigall turns to the biblical narrative on which an understanding of humanity’s ‘dominion’ over nature is founded, and suggests that it might better be interpreted in terms of a ‘therapeutic trust’ placed by God in humankind – that is to say, a trust which is aimed at ‘promoting the trustee’s trustworthiness’. Such a theological reading, Stigall suggests, offers a way of motivating Christians to greater effort in addressing ecological issues, and also has the potential to exercise cross-denominational appeal – an important matter in contexts where climate change has become a matter with strong political implications. Knut Alfsvåg maintains that the roots of the present crisis are to be found in the Industrial Revolution. This assumed a particular attitude towards the manipulation of nature that stemmed (at least in part) from the theology of that time. He suggests that resources enabling us to interrogate such a theology may be found in the thinking of premodern commentators; and he draws particularly on the writing of Johann Georg Hamann, an eighteenth-century critic of Immanuel Kant, in order to develop a ‘creation theology’ which stands against what may be considered the anthropocentric and instrumentalist views which coloured the Enlightenment. Alfsvåg thereby points towards resources within the Christian tradition which can enable us to develop alternative visions for our relationship with our planet. There follows a sequence of chapters exploring the complex relationship between human beings and the natural world. Fabien Revol addresses the issue of human uniqueness, noting that this has often been thought of in terms of an immutable human essence. He draws on the idea of continuous creation in order to integrate an evolutionary perspective into this idea, seeing the current state of humanity as something which, though stable, has evolved over time (and which may, indeed, continue to evolve). Revol shows that a different understanding of human uniqueness may emerge from such considerations  – one which better locates humanity with the earth’s ecosystem, and which offers a fresh perspective on humans as a part of that ecosystem, having particular responsibilities towards it.

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A key aspect to global sustainability must surely be that it enable human flourishing. Chris Durante explores what such flourishing might mean, and the human behaviours that might militate against it, which have been dubbed ‘ecological sin’. He finds in the writings of Maximus the Confessor an approach to the natural world which values it as revealing something of God, through the divine energies manifested within it; and he suggests that in the notion of biomimicry we may find a means of ascribing norms to nature, which help us to think more clearly about the ways in which the behaviour of humankind transgresses these norms. Durante urges that we must find ways of valuing and relating to the ecological and biological systems existing on our planet, and refrain from transgressing the boundaries which those systems impose upon us. Roland Cazalis similarly calls for us to achieve an appropriate embedding of the human species in the biosphere of which we are a part – a biosphere which unfolds itself after its own logic, through evolutionary means. He urges that this has pedagogical implications, in particular with regard to the teaching of so-called STEM subjects; and he maintains that religious and cultural institutions have an important part to play in achieving such a re-thinking of our place in nature, if it is to have lasting and life-enhancing effects. Modernist outlooks have often been considered to ‘desacralise’ the natural world. But as an important paper by Jaime Tatay points out, in practice Sacred Natural Sites (SNSs)– locations which have been considered by local communities to be of particular spiritual significance – persist down to the present day; and it is even the case that some new SNSs have been created in recent years, within secular contexts. Tatay points out the complex interplay of religious, political, cultural and institutional factors that surround SNSs, and urges that in promoting ecological interests they represent an important coming-together of both scientific and religious perspectives. Mark Graves draws on the work of psychologist Dan McAdams to suggest a ‘pragmatic pan-experientialist interpretation of nature’. He argues that the presence of human beings within nature confers upon it the characteristics of being an actor (since it responds to pressures which humans place upon it) and an agent (since nature acts and interacts with human beings). This generates fresh insights into any theological or other personification of nature, as Mother Earth or Gaia, for example. Graves’ insights here might valuably inform our ongoing reflections on the relationship between humankind and our planetary home. But how might we respond in practical terms to the challenges presented by contemporary ecological concerns? Gerard J. Ryan suggests that one way is through ‘ecological accompaniment’. He analyses this notion against a backdrop of the phenomenon of loneliness (a phenomenon exacerbated, for many, during the covid-19 crisis); for, as Ryan observes, ‘[t]he experience of loneliness problematizes sustainability by cutting off ties of social affiliations and belonging’. Ryan observes that loneliness constitutes a pastoral challenge for ecclesial communities, but that it is a challenge that may be addressed through prayer; and he asserts that prayer may be a means of drawing people into a commitment to ecological accompaniment. Just as the isolation imposed by the Covid-19 crisis led many to seek

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solace in nature, so the prayerful encounter with a person’s environment can lead to a fresh appreciation of it, and to an awareness of our individual responsibilities in relation it. Ryan notes that one locus of loneliness is found in places where people are confined. Hannah James focuses on such places as she offers reflections on the idea of sustainability through a consideration of the ‘greening’ of prisons. She notes that discussions around the ‘sustainability’ of prisons have tended to promote also the societal norms which sustain them; and she urges that the application of concepts from liberation theology might have a contribution to make to such discussions, both through acknowledging the role which Christian theology has played in generating the system through which societies incarcerate their citizens, and through refocussing discussions of ‘freedom’ with respect to prison inmates in terms of both internal and external freedoms. James Thieke explores a topic which can sometimes be related to loneliness: anxiety. He finds an important resonance between environmental ethics and the words of Jesus to his disciples telling them not to worry about the future. It is such worry, Thieke maintains, that underpins those human relationships with nature which seeks to wrest from it as much as is possible, in order to guard against future misfortunes – an attitude which has driven the current ecological crisis. Exploring this idea in conversation with Daniel Quinn’s novel Ishmael, Theike urges that Jesus’s words direct his followers to live a life in dependence on God’s providence – and that this should correspondingly direct people towards a sustainable lifestyle. Our volume concludes with further theological reflections, from a variety of different perspectives. Tom McLeish observes that there has in recent years been a sea-change in the academic study of science and religion. Twentieth-century writers in this field were often motivated by apologetic intentions, and sought to bring together science and theology as separate academic fields: more recently, there has been a move towards the development of a theology of science, which uses theological tools to explore the ‘human, societal, political and teleological framing of science’. McLeish notes various practical projects which have been advancing such a theology of science, in the UK and the USA, and urges that this may prove to be a way of energising scientific and theological communities alike to respond to issues around sustainability. Ximian Xu uses an idea developed by the Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck: that human beings have an ontology rooted in their being ectypes related to the archetype of God. Xu notes that this leads to an understanding of human ontology as both ‘being’ and ‘becoming’, and that morality may be seen as emerging from such an understanding, as the human ectype conforms more fully to the divine archetype. He relates this to the ‘Technological Singularity’ predicted by researchers in the field of Artificial Intelligence, noting the implications of this in terms of its playing down the status of human beings as biological creatures, and urging the value of such an ectypal ontological understanding in enabling responses to be made to it. Xu suggests that research on embodied AI may point to a way in which a ‘technomoral’ future may emerge, in which humans steer technological change through their embodying the moral qualities of the divine archetype. In this way, Xu

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urges, humankind might be sustained through any technological singularity which may lie before us. Berge Traboulsi offers a reflection from the perspective of the Greek Orthodox Church. Noting that this can sometimes appear slow to react to external drivers, he urges that the Church may yet be an effective partner for ecological change, by linking Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to the liturgy and theology of that tradition. This may involve something of a ‘paradigm shift’, but Traboulsi notes that the groundwork for such a shift already exists within the Orthodox tradition, and he urges that ‘[t]he Orthodox Church needs to turn its new SDGs’ theology into praxes, and vision into reality’. Writing from an Islamic perspective, Nadeem Haque offers a commentary on the idea of ‘Ecolibrium’, a vision which sees the dynamics within the Earth’s biosphere as being founded on the Quranic concept of Mizan (balance). He discusses four ‘ecological recognitions’ which must be borne in mind when developing this idea: these acknowledge the world as the creation of God, held in trust by humankind and requiring the establishing of a proper relationship between humans and other living creatures. In this way, an approach to sustainability may be developed which is deeply embedded in Islamic tradition. That global sustainability should be a priority in our thinking today is widely acknowledged. How, exactly, we can best respond to the challenges that it sets before us raises a number of complex, yet pressing, questions. The sciences must surely play a role in enabling us to achieve a greater degree of sustainability in our relationship with our planet; but they cannot in and of themselves offer us the inspiration and the motivation required to achieve it. In bringing to bear resources from philosophical, historical, and theological perspectives, the contributors to this volume shine a variety of lights on ways in which we might ‘tread more lightly’ within our fragile environment. In offering these reflections to a wider public, in the Academy and beyond, we trust that they may be found valuable in addressing the crisis that currently besets our world – and in finding practical responses to it. University of Edinburgh Edinburgh, UK

Michael Fuller

Contents

1

Is Sustainability Utopian? Complex Challenges and Concrete Action Principles��������������������������������������������������������������    1 Christian Berg

2

Justifying Sustainability: Scientific Necessity, Sacred Duty, or Political Process?����������������������������������������������������������   17 Willem B. Drees

3

What, Exactly, Needs to Be Sustained Amidst a Changing Climate?������������������������������������������������������������������   25 Ernst M. Conradie

4

 How Can Theology Contribute to Our Sustainability Goals? ������������   41 Lluis Oviedo and Sara Lumbreras

5

Environmentalism, Sustainability, and the Meaning of Technology��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   53 Axel Siegemund

6

Desacralizing Nature Through a Deflationary Concept of Causation, and the Search for Alternatives������������������������   61 Josef Quitterer

7

Entrusted with Creation: God’s Therapeutic Trust in Humanity for Creation Care����������������������������������������������������   69 Jason Stigall

8

 The Theological Preconditions of a Sustainable World View��������������   81 Knut Alfsvåg

9

 The Dignity of the Human Person Through the Theology of Continuous Creation ��������������������������������������������������   89 Fabien Revol

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10 Flourishing  – Now and for the Ages to Come: Discerning Ethical Wisdom in the Book of Nature ������������������������������  101 Chris Durante 11 Humanizing  the Biosphere’s Internal Logic������������������������������������������  113 Roland Cazalis 12 The  Sacred in Nature Conservation: A European Perspective������������  125 Jaime Tatay 13 A  ppraising Nature: A Pan-Experiential Approach to Nature’s Agency ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������  137 Mark Graves 14 E  cological Accompaniment: From Connectivity to Closeness in an Age of Loneliness������������������������������������������������������  149 Gerard J. Ryan 15 The  Paradox of Sustainable Prisons: How Liberation Theology Might Contribute to the Question of Environmentally-­Friendly Prisons��������������������������  161 Hannah James 16 Birds,  Lilies, and the Gorilla: An Eco-­theological Reading of Jesus’ Teachings in Conversation with Daniel Quinn ������  171 James Thieke 17 New  Opportunities for Church Action Towards Sustainability in the Light of Alternative Theological Narratives for Science ��������������������������������������������������������  179 Tom McLeish 18 Human  Sustainability in the Age of Technology: A Theological Proposal on Technomoral Human Futures ������������������  187 Ximian Xu 19 Eastern  Orthodoxy and Glocal Sustainability: Towards Shaping a Modern Church Organizational Culture ������������  197 Berge Traboulsi 20 Ecolibrium:  The Quranic Paradigm for Global Sustainability ����������  211 Nadeem Haque Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  221

Contributors

Knut Alfsvåg graduated from MF School of Theology in 1980, taking his doctorate in 1995. He has taught at Kobe Lutheran Theological Seminary from 1989, as associate professor of Systematic Theology in the School of Mission and Theology (1999–2003), research leader (2003–2005), associate professor (2005–2009) and professor (2009–). Since 2016 the School of Mission and Theology has been part of VID Specialized University. Christian Berg is a keynote speaker and coach for almost all fields of (corporate) sustainability in a broad variety of industries. He is also visiting professor for Corporate Sustainability at Saarland University and honorary professor of Sustainability and Global Change at Clausthal University of Technology. Earlier in his career, he led the global sustainability function within SAP’s business consulting. As a political advisor, he led the task force for Sustainable economic activity and growth within German Chancellor Merkel’s future dialogue (2011–2012). He holds degrees in physics, philosophy, theology and engineering. Roland Cazalis is currently lecturer and researcher in the Department of ‘Sciences, Philosophies, Societies’ of the University of Namur (Belgium). He earned his doctorate in Biochemistry at the University of Granada, Spain, in 1999, and his doctorate in Theology at the University of Louvain-­la-­Neuve, Belgium, in 2016. In his work he focuses on plant biochemistry, biomathics, and science and theology. Ernst  M.  Conradie is a senior professor in the Department of Religion and Theology at the University of the Western Cape, where he teaches systematic theology and ethics. His research is in the intersections between Christian ecotheology, systematic theology and ecumenical theology. His most recent monograph is Secular Discourse on Sin in the Anthropocene: What’s Wrong with the World? (Lexington, 2020).

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Willem B. Drees is academic secretary for the Humanities and Social Sciences of the Royal Holland Society for Sciences and Humanities (KHMW), and professor emeritus of Philosophy of Religion and Ethics (Leiden University, NL) and of Philosophy of the Humanities (Tilburg University, NL). He has served as the editor of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science and as president of ESSSAT, the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology. His publications include Beyond the Big Bang: Quantum Cosmologies and God (Open Court, 1990), Religion, Science and Naturalism (Cambridge University Press, 1996), Creation: From Nothing Until Now (Routledge, 2002), Religion and Science in Context: A Guide to the Debates (Routledge, 2010) and What Are the Humanities For? (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Chris Durante is an associate professor of Theology at Saint Peter’s University in New Jersey; a fellow of the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics and Human Rights; and in 2021 he was a fellow of the New Visions in Theological Anthropology initiative of the Science-Engaged Theology project of the School of Divinity at St. Andrews University. Professor Durante’s primary research and teaching interests are in religion, ethics, and science and society broadly construed to include: political and moral theology; ecumenical and interfaith dialogue; and ecological and bio-medical ethics. His scholarly publications have appeared in academic journals such as the Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies, the Journal of Medical Ethics, the Journal of Church and State, and the Journal of Religious Ethics. Michael Fuller is a lecturer in Science and Religion at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and Vice-President for Publications of ESSSAT. He has published widely in the field of science and theology, and his research interests also include theology and literature, and theology and music. He recently edited the volume Science and Religion in Western Literature: Critical and Theological Studies (Routledge 2023). Mark Graves earned his PhD in Computer Science at the University of Michigan and completed his postdoctoral training in genomic and moral psychology, before undertaking additional graduate work in systematic and philosophical theology. He has published over 60 technical and scholarly works in computer science, biology, psychology and theology, including 3 books. Nadeem Haque is a researcher at the Institute of Higher Reasoning (IHR), based in Toronto, and a professional engineer practicing in Ontario, Canada, in the field of Building Science. His recent publications include the co-authored Ecolibrium: The Sacred Balance in Islam (Beacon Books, Manchester, 2022) and Microbits: A New Unified Physics (Optagon Publications Ltd., Toronto, 2021). Hannah James is Ph.D. candidate at the University of St Andrews in the Logos Institute. In the 2021–2022 academic year, Hannah was also a participant in a ‘cross-training’ fellowship that has given her the opportunity to explore the relationship between theology and psychology/neuroscience on the topic of forgiveness. Her primary research areas are in Karl Barth’s theology, restorative justice, accountability, forgiveness and reconciliation.

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Sara Lumbreras is a professor at the ICAI School of Engineering of the Universidad Pontificia Comillas. She is currently deputy director of Research Results at the Technological Research Institute and co-director of the chair of Science, Technology and Religion. She is the author of more than 50 academic publications and has directed or participated in more than 20 projects with private companies and public institutions. Her research focuses on the development and application of decision support techniques to complex problems, including optimization and Artificial Intelligence, mainly applied to sustainability in the energy sector and to healthcare. Tom McLeish FRS, was a professor of Natural Philosophy in the Department of Physics and the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York, UK.  His interdisciplinary research extended from the science of soft matter and biological physics to the history of medieval science, science and theology, and science and literature. His books include Faith and Wisdom in Science (OUP 2014), The Poetry and Music of Science (OUP 2019) and Soft Matter  – A Very Short Introduction (OUP 2020). Lluis  Oviedo is a full professor of Theological Anthropology at Antonianum University, Rome, and invited professor at the Theological Institute of Murcia (Spain) for questions of religion, society and culture. He has published books on theological views of human and social issues, and is co-editor with Anne Runehov of the Encyclopedia of Sciences and Religions. Currently he edits the Springer Series New Approaches to the Scientific Study of Religion and the bibliographic bulletin Reviews in Science, Religion and Theology. His research focuses on the new scientific study of religion and its theological impact, and issues about secularization and the credibility of Christian faith. Josef Quitterer studied Philosophy and Theology at the University of Regensburg and at the Gregorian University in Rome. In 1994 he received his doctorate in Philosophy from the Gregorian University. In 2001 he habilitated in Christian Philosophy at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Innsbruck (Austria). He has been visiting professor at the Gregorian University in Rome, at the University of New Orleans (USA) and at the Graduate School of Philosophy and Theology in Sankt Georgen (Frankfurt a. M.  Germany). Since 2001 he has been an associate professor of Philosophy at the University of Innsbruck. From 2005 to 2013, he was head of the Department of Christian Philosophy, and from 2017 to 2021 dean of the Faculty of Theology, at the University of Innsbruck. The main focus of his research lies in the field of philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, social philosophy and philosophy of science. Fabien Revol is doctor of Theology, doctor of Philosophy and has a master’s degree in Biology of Populations and Ecosystems. He is the head of the Interdisciplinary Ethics Center of the Catholic University of Lyon. He is co-responsible for the interdisciplinary research pole ‘Integral Development, Ecology and Ethics’ of the Research Department of his University. He published two articles in Zygon in 2020, and one in Theology and Sciences in 2021, on ‘Continuous creation’, his domain of expertise.

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Gerard J. Ryan joined Regis-St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology, Toronto School of Theology, University of Toronto, in 2020, having completed his doctoral studies in the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford. His studies were supervised by Professors Werner G.  Jeanrond and Graham Ward. Prior to arriving at Regis, Gerard was a visiting research fellow at Trinity College Dublin. He is the director of Basic Degree programmes at Regis College, and in 2021, he received a grant from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion to explore the science of loneliness and religion. His current research explores recognition theories and vulnerability studies as resources for a theological understanding of mutual accompaniment and the science of loneliness and religious belief. He is the author of Mutual Accompaniment as Faith-Filled Living: Recognition of the Vulnerable Other (Palgrave MacMillan 2022). Axel Siegemund is an engineer for Urban and Industrial Water Management and professor for Interdisciplinary Research Areas at RWTH Aachen University. His main research interests are relief action and disaster management, intercultural theology and ethics of technology. Jason Stigall is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Divinity at the University of St Andrews, writing his thesis on The Nature of Faith and Second-Personal Knowledge of God. He previously took an M.A. in Philosophy at Georgia State University and an M.A. in Theology at Asbury Theological Seminary. He is the author of ‘Conceptualizing divine trust’ (Religious Studies, 2022) and ‘God as Creator’ in The T&T Clark Encyclopedia of Christian Theology. Jaime  Tatay SJ, is a forest engineer and theologian working at Universidad Pontificia Comillas (Madrid). His research interests focus on sustainability, sacred natural sites, environmental ethics and the science and religion interface. He is cochair of the Cátedra Hana y Francisco J. Ayala de Ciencia, Tecnología y Religión. James Thieke recently received his Ph.D. in Science and Religion at the University of Edinburgh. His research focuses on the way Chalcedonian Christology can inform science-and-theology discussions on humanity. His most recent publications include ‘Energies and Personhood: A Christological Perspective on Human Identity’ in the journal Zygon, and ‘Christology, Psychology, and Participation: A Model for Relating Psychological and Theological Understandings of Humanity’ in M. Fuller, D. Evers and A. Runehov (eds.), Creative Pluralism? Images and models in science and religion (Springer, 2022). Berge Traboulsi is an Associate Professor at Haigazian University, Beirut-Lebanon. He earned his Doctorate in Theology from the National University of Athens, Greece (1997). He has participated in many international conferences, given many academic and public lectures, and written many articles. He teaches on world religions, intercultural studies and ethics. Lately, he is interested and engaged in reforming the Eastern Orthodox Church.

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Ximian  Xu is Kenneth and Isabel Morrison Post-doctoral Research Fellow in Theology and Ethics of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh. His latest monograph is Theology as the Science of God: Herman Bavinck’s Wetenschappelijke Theology for the Modern World, published in 2022 by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. He is currently working on a project on theology and AI ethics.

Chapter 1

Is Sustainability Utopian? Complex Challenges and Concrete Action Principles Christian Berg

Abstract This paper explores why sustainability is so hard to achieve, although the concept has been discussed for several decades. Following the ‘Brundtland Report’ in 1987, the world community agreed on the general concept of sustainability at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. Furthermore, the UN General Assembly adopted the Agenda 2030 with its 17 concrete sustainable development goals which are to be reached by 2030. Notwithstanding these agreements, humanity is anything but sustainable, yet. On the contrary, humanity is exceeding planetary boundaries in several ways. Why is progress towards sustainability so difficult? This paper will argue that there are many barriers to sustainability of different kinds. Some barriers are related to the character of physical reality, while others stem from the set-up of the main institutions in politics, the market system, or legal systems etc. Systemic change will only occur by addressing several of these barriers in a coherent way. However, in the absence of any global steersperson the paper will argue that individual actors (individuals, corporations, governments etc.) need to be supported by concrete principles for sustainable action, of which some will be discussed. Keywords Agenda 2030 · Barriers to sustainability · Planetary boundaries · Principles for sustainable action · Sustainable development · Sustainable development goals (SDGs)

Introduction The concept of sustainability has experienced a remarkable career. To be sure, the verb to sustain and the continuous form sustaining have been used for a long time. The noun, however, has entered the English language rather recently. The C. Berg (*) Clausthal University of Technology, Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Global Sustainability, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41800-6_1

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HarperCollinsPublishers unabridged German dictionary in its 3rd edition from 1997, for instance, contains more than 280,000 entries and lists sustain, sustainable, sustained, sustaining  – but does not specify sustainability. The reason is that the concept of sustainability  – or, often used synonymously, a sustainable development – has entered the political arena rather indirectly, following the final report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, the ‘Brundtland Report’ in 1987. It was a decisive insight of the report that environmental and societal issues are inextricably interwoven (WCED 1987). As Gro Harlem Brundtland said in her Foreword: ‘the ‘environment’ is where we all live; and ‘development’ is what we all do in attempting to improve our lot within that abode. The two are inseparable’ (ibid.: 14). Moreover, the WCED report not only marks sustainable development as a concept which integrates ‘environment’ and ‘development’. It also integrates national and global as well as present and future perspectives. A ‘new development path was required, one that sustained human progress not just in a few pieces for a few years, but for the entire planet into the distant future. Thus “sustainable development” becomes a goal not just for the “developing” nations, but for industrial ones as well’ (WCED 1987: 20). The report then characterizes a sustainable development in a way which became very influential as the ‘Brundtland definition’: ‘Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (WCED 1987: 24). This is the background for today’s understanding of the concept of sustainability, containing an environmental, a social, and an economic dimension. The prominence which this concept enjoys today is certainly related to the urgency of the related topics. Only 5 years later, in 1992, the world community concurred on the concept of sustainable development as a goal for humanity. For the first time, the world agreed on a sustainability agenda (cf. Berg 2020: 136). This global consensus, however, was facilitated by the vagueness of the concept and the absence of concrete goals and operational details. The Rio Declaration contains hundreds of requests (indicated by phrases containing ‘should’) but not a single concrete and measurable goal within a defined timeframe (cf. ibid.). It took another 23 years, until 2015, for the UN General Assembly to proclaim the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. While the agreement in Rio became possible by the vagueness of the concept in the absence of concrete measurable goals, the 2030 Agenda makes up this leeway with its 17 concrete goals and 169 corresponding targets for the year 2030 (UN 2015). As important as these goals and targets are, in light of the situation of today’s world, they read like wishful thinking. For instance, the very first target calls for eradication of ‘extreme poverty for all people everywhere’ by 2030. Being already halfway through the period to 2030, not even the achievement of this single target seems possible. Similarly, the climate crisis, without any doubt one of the most severe threats humanity has so far experienced, is still not being effectively addressed by current policies – contrary to the (legally binding) accords of the ‘Paris Agreement’ (i.e. the final document of the COP21). There is both an ambition gap and an execution gap. While the former

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marks the gap between the agreed emission reduction goals (which were compatible with the Paris agreement) and the aggregated nationally determined contributions, the latter alludes to the difference between the communication of political goals and their execution in practice. Despite decades of discussion of sustainable development, despite the global agreement on this concept in Rio de Janeiro 1992, despite numerous conferences and rock-solid scientific evidence that substantial changes are needed, despite the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda – humanity is ‘on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator’, as the UN General Secretary António Guterres said during COP 27 in Sharm El Sheik (Guardian, Nov 7, 2022). In a nutshell, agreement on sustainable development was already reached 30 years ago, measurable targets were acknowledged in 2015 – and yet humanity’s path is anything but sustainable. Can we ever hope to reach sustainability? This is the background for the question to be addressed in the following, in which I will sketch main ideas of my book Sustainable Action. Overcoming the Barriers, a recent report to the Club of Rome (Berg 2020).

Sustainability – An ‘Exhausted’ Concept? Given the long academic and public discourse on sustainability and the limited success it has had so far – to say the least – one can wonder whether sustainability is a viable concept at all. Maybe sustainability is utopian? Three different critiques of the concept of sustainability shall be sketched in the following, which respond to this hiatus between ambition and execution, followed by some general considerations about the degree of certainty we can have about sustainability.

Abandon the Concept of Sustainability? One of the pioneers of sustainability, Dennis Meadows, co-author of The Limits to Growth, the first report to the Club of Rome (Meadows et al. 1972), questioned the concept of sustainability some 20 years ago. Meadows stated that it would be too late for sustainable development, and that we should rather strive for ‘survival development’ (D. L. Meadows 2000, 147 f.). Other authors argued similarly and proclaimed the end of the concept of sustainability: Benson and Craig rather propose the concept of resilience instead. It is time to move past the concept of sustainability. The realities of the Anthropocene (Crutzen 2002) warrant this conclusion. They include unprecedented and irreversible rates of human induced biodiversity loss, exponential increases in per-capita resource consumption, and global climate change. These factors combine to create an increasing likelihood of rapid, nonlinear, social and ecological regime changes. The recent failure of Rio 20 provides an opportunity to collectively re-examine – and ultimately move past – the concept of

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sustainability as an environmental goal. We must face the impossibility of defining – let alone pursuing – a goal of ‘sustainability’ in a world characterized by such extreme complexity, radical uncertainty and lack of stationarity’ Benson and Craig (2014: 777).

Ingolfur Blühdorn, a German social scientist, calls sustainability ‘exhausted’: it can no longer function as ‘road map for a structural transformation of socially and ecologically selfdestructive consumer societies’ (Blühdorn 2017: 42). With all due respect to the arguments of these authors, should we abandon the concept of sustainability simply because we have so far not been successful in realizing it? Maybe we have underestimated the inertia of systems, the resistance to change, the lack of institutional support for cross-sectoral, cross-disciplinary initiatives. That should stimulate the search for better, more effective approaches but not lead to abandoning the goals themselves.

Abandon Liberal Democracy? The global environmental issues of today were primarily caused by the liberal democracies of the west. Moreover, these countries not only bear a significant responsibility for the global crises, they have apparently not yet managed to implement effective measures for mitigating them. For this reason, some authors, predominantly from East Asia, call for more authoritarian intervention of the state. The liberal democracies of the West would not provide suitable governance models for sustainability. Chandran Nair, for instance, in his book The Sustainable State, advocates strong interventionist governments to shape the future (Nair 2018). Nair acknowledges China’s great potential in tackling issues which the western countries have so far not come to grips with – although he does not want to justify China’s policies. How could such suggestions be responded from a liberal western viewpoint? The diagnosis is certainly correct: the western countries as the main contributors to the current crises have not yet managed to tackle these challenges effectively. However, especially in light of the geopolitical rivalry of systems, the western answer to such claims can only be found in a newly balanced relationship of freedom and the common good. John Stuart Mill once stated: ‘The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it’ (Mill 1869, 27). The way to a humane, prosperous life for humankind in harmony with nature cannot be paved with inhumane measures – thus disqualifying any dictatorship. As I expressed it elsewhere: We cannot work for peaceful and liberal societies for tomorrow if we sacrifice them today. We need to protect and defend our basic personal liberties – not just for us, but also for those already deprived of them. It is the complex interrelation of the state’s role and personal liberties which warrants further investigation. Since only the state can provide the framework in which personal liberties can be realized, one of the most critical questions of sustainability is to what extent the state may (need to) limit personal liberties for the sake of the common good – and how the latter is to be determined’ (Berg 2020: 6).

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Call for More Radical Action The frustration about the lack of progress towards emission reduction, about failing policies for sustainability, about progressing deforestation of rain forests, extinction of species and many other disastrous hotspots, drives an increasing number of people into climate activism. Movements like ‘Extinction rebellion’ or ‘Last generation’ are seeking public attention by provocative campaigns, street blockades or gluing themselves to famous pieces of art in museums etc. The activists might surely have the best intentions and their protests guarantee broad media coverage. However, the effect might be counterproductive to the activists’ agenda. Those who have not yet grasped that humanity is confronted with a substantial climate crisis will not be convinced by such campaigns. On the contrary, they might turn to those populists who deny any of these problems and claim that it is only a ‘corrupt elite’ which is the root cause of all societal issues. There is an alarming and increasingly active group of ‘climate deniers’ in many countries which cannot be countered by empirical evidence or further scientific reasoning but needs to be understood in sociological or psychological, if not religious, terms (e.g. Jaspal et al. 2016; Hobson and Niemeyer 2012).

Can We Really Know What Is Sustainable Long-Term? Considering the precise implications of the Brundtland definition of sustainability, we must admit that we can never really be sure whether something is sustainable or not, simply because we can never exactly know which actions or measures would ‘compromise the ability of future generations to meet their needs’. There are many historic examples of misconceptions about future developments. Even so called ‘experts’ are not immune to this failure. In 1883, for instance, Thomas Huxley, the then Royal Fisheries Inspector declared ‘that the cod fishery … and probably all the great sea fisheries, are inexhaustible; that is to say, that nothing we do seriously affects the number of the fish. And any attempt to regulate these fisheries seems … to be useless’ (Huxley 1883). Today we know better. What does that imply for the concept of sustainability and how we can potentially promote it? Well, we might not exactly know whether today’s measures and policies will increase future generations’ ability to meet their needs, but we know quite well how succeeding generations’ ability to meet their needs will be seriously harmed: by destroying our common livelihoods. Therefore, a necessary condition for not impeding the ability of future generations to meet their needs is to stay within planetary boundaries, since the likelihood for irreversible developments and runaway effects, by definition, increases sharply if these boundaries are exceeded (Rockström et al. 2009; cf. Berg 2020: 23). Therefore, advancing sustainability will have to start by avoiding the non-sustainable. This is the starting point for investigating barriers to sustainability. Why are we not more sustainable? There are several reasons.

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Barriers to Sustainability The problem with the current state of humanity’s non-sustainability is that it is rooted in diverse reasons of different kinds. There are several distinct barriers to sustainability. Some of these barriers are related to the character of our world, others to our natural laws, others again to our condition as humans, etc. For instance, sustainability as a multi-dimensional challenge will always involve trade-offs. We simply cannot get all that we want, because some goals exclude each other. This is a largely neglected issue of the 2030 Agenda, which will be discussed in a subsequent section. Another group of barriers relates to the character and shape of our institutions. The way we organize the market, the way we structure our juridical or political systems is, of course, not given by nature but the result of more or less conscious human decisions. Therefore, while humanity can certainly not change natural or societal laws, the set-up of the main societal institutions can, at least in principle, be changed. Finally, I conceive of a third category, which I call Zeitgeist-dependent barriers. Zeitgeist, a German loan word in English, describes the ‘general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era’ (Merriam-Webster 2019). Accordingly, a couple of sustainability barriers are Zeitgeist-dependent, which means they stem from a general trend of current times, namely acceleration and consumerism. In the following, we will discuss a few examples to illustrate the complexity of the circumstances.

 ognitive Limitations – As an Example of a Barrier Within C the Human Condition One of the barriers due to our human nature are cognitive limitations. As humans we can hardly imagine exponential developments. This is exemplified in Fig. 1.1. The three sections show two identical graphs, one linear and one exponential, but different degrees of magnification (in the first graph the exponential graph is indistinguishable from the x-axis). Depending on which section of the graphs one focusses on, one will get quite a different view on how the line and the exponential curve relate. Close to the origin, the linear graph does seemingly grow more rapidly than the exponential one – but by further zooming out one can see that the exponential function beats every linear development. This circumstance illustrates a barrier to sustainability because it is hard to motivate people for action towards a sustainability transformation in light of the long time intervals related to the dramatic, non-sustainable changes in the earth system. Figure 1.2 shows several earth system and socio-economic trends in the period between the years 1750 and 2000. These trends are significant and alarming but as such not really experiential on a personal level, making it difficult to argue that it is urgently needed that humanity changes its course. During the Corona pandemic some people did not want to adhere to the safety measures because there was still

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Fig. 1.1  Linear and exponential growth. All figures show the same two graphs – one linear, one exponential – even with the same scaling of the coordinates. The only difference between the three figures is the represented range. (Source: Berg 2020: 52)

Fig. 1.2  Socio-economic and earth system trends for different factors. (Source (Berg 2020: 54), data taken from Steffen et al. (2015))

capacity on the ICUs, not realizing that the infections of today might become the ICU patients of tomorrow. In the case of earth system trends, the time-lag between a measure and its consequence is, however, much longer. It is not just weeks but years or decades.

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Social Inequality – As an Example of a Social Barrier Two British epidemiologists, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Picket, studied ‘health and social problems’ in several countries around the world (Wilkinson and Pickett 2011). They defined ‘health and social problems’ by nine statistically available parameters, which were, among others, a lack of trust in society, a low life expectancy, obesity, homicides, teenage pregnancies, and imprisonment rates. They aggregated these parameters to one quantity and plotted this quantity against the wealth of a society, measured in national income per person. No obvious relation was visible. There are rich countries with significant problems (e.g. USA) while others have a similar amount of problems but are much poorer (e.g. Portugal). On the other hand, countries like Norway are similarly wealthy as the USA but do not even get half the score at the problems index. The result is quite different when the index of health and social problems is plotted against the income inequality. There was a remarkable correlation. The more unequally the income was distributed, the higher the score of health and social problems. The most equal income distribution showed Japan and the Scandinavian countries, followed by the Benelux countries, with Portugal and the USA at the other extreme. What is the relation to sustainability here? Significant health and social problems in the present age obviously impede worries about problems of future generations. Strong income inequality does therefore pose a barrier to sustainability.

I nstitutional Barriers – Related to Market, Politics, Legal Systems The word ‘institution’ specifies not only an established organization or corporation but also ‘a significant practice, relationship, or organization in a society or culture’ (Merriam-Webster 2022). The thesis argued here is that the dominant societal institutions of our western world do not sufficiently account for the needs of future generations. The way we organize, for instance, the market system, the political system or the legal system reflects neither the narrowness of the earth’s natural resources nor the capacity of ecosystems to cope with the aftermaths of our industrial metabolism.

Market Failure Environmental economists have long studied situations in which market mechanisms do not work. They call them market failure. For instance, natural resources per se do not have a price and their exploitation is always related to intervention into natural cycles, and often ecosystems, with corresponding harmful effects for which

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nobody compensates. Similarly, burning fossil fuels and emitting greenhouse gases contributes to the climate crisis, affecting the entire world community (with varying degree, of course) and causing problems today and tomorrow which somebody will eventually have to pay for. In other words, costs are being ‘externalized’, which means they will not be covered by those who produced the problem but by others who have not been involved. A solution suggested by environmental economics is putting a price tag to carbon emissions, for instance by taxation. To be sure, such taxation would require that the external costs are properly and sufficiently calculated and the money collected will be used for mitigating the problems, in this case for mitigation of climate change and /or adaptation to it. Such measures of internalizing external cost are surely addressing the problem of external environmental and social costs. However, this will not avoid the externalization problem per se and it does also exhibit several challenges. First, a carbon tax obviously only addresses (carbon) emissions. Even if other greenhouse-gases were also covered by such a tax, there are many more environmental and social issues for which this tax would not have any effect. Loss of biodiversity or violation of labor rights or human rights, for example, would not even be touched by a carbon tax. Second, such a taxation system would be most effective if it were applied globally, and any regional taxation regimes would imply competitive disadvantages for those under taxation. This is an up-to-date issue in European politics, which the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism tries to address (cf. European Commission 2021). And thirdly, even if a global approach could be decided it is quite obvious that any global policy taxing carbon emissions would be extremely difficult to enforce – simply because there is no global police, and the close supervision of the earth’s entire land and ocean surface is simply not possible.

Insufficient Global Governance for Global Issues This leads to another institutional barrier, the lack of effective global governance for global issues. Issues of (non-)sustainability are global in nature. The climate crisis, ocean acidification, loss of biodiversity, the large bio-geo-chemical cycles of phosphorus and nitrogen – these are all global environmental issues which require action on a global scale. Many social issues are also of global relevance, and often also related to environmental ones. Migration, global inequalities, organized crime, human trafficking and many more cannot be addressed by national policies alone. This global nature of our dominant issues calls for effective global mechanisms addressing them. There are, of course, several institutions and organizations which operate globally. However, they are not really effective in addressing the global challenges mentioned, for several reasons. First, as mentioned above, international laws and regulations are difficult to enforce because there is no global police, prosecution and jurisdiction. Serious damage to marine ecosystems as well as local communities is done, for instance, by

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illegal, unreported or unregulated (IUU) fishing. Ships operating under so called ‘flags of convenience’ use illegal fishing techniques (e.g. far too small mesh sizes) and disregard fishing regulation, their crew stays at sea for months in slavery-like conditions, the illegally caught fish is processed and packaged at sea, official documents are forged and the fish then enters European markets as ‘legally imported fish’. IUU fishing is, of course, illegal by definition but nobody seems to care and it is hard to control and stop such activities. A second challenge for an effective global governance is that global governmental organizations like the UN, the WTO, or the Bretton Woods Institutions (IMF and Worldbank) have different agendas which are not aligned with each other. For instance, the WTO’s agenda is to promote international trade. The WTO considers environmental or health issues only on the consumer side but not on the production side. Two products which are identical in their qualities but were produced differently must be treated in the same way  – although one might be produced in an environmentally friendly way, the other not. The WTO currently does not allow discrimination against the environmentally harmful products, as long as their product quality is identical. Third, not all institutions with global entitlement are also accepted by all countries. The International Criminal Court in The Hague, for instance, is not supported by the USA, Russia, or China – all permanent members of the UN Security Council, and all nuclear powers. A general question is whether the dominant global players will ever submit to international agreements or jurisdiction if it opposes what they consider their self-interest. Recent trends towards unilateralism impede the acceptance of international treaties and agreements even more. Fourth, there are still whitespaces in international law. Since a proper functioning of the market system is prevented by monopolies, several jurisdictions ensure the development of monopolies through corresponding competition authorities. Such authorities are lacking on a global scale, and due to geopolitical rivalry among different countries it seems unlikely that they will be finally established.

Insufficient Legal Systems to Account for Future Issues A third kind of barrier to be mentioned here is related to our legal systems. Since national jurisdictions vary considerably, only some generic remarks can be made here. Legal systems are inherently and by design more stable and more long-lasting than political agendas or public debates. On the one hand, this benefits the stability of the state and public institutions. On the other, however, it is a challenge if new topics or themes enter the public arena and need to be addressed and institutionalized by laws and regulations. As discussed above, sustainability has long been discussed as a political topic but to date it is rarely institutionalized in legal systems. Issues of sustainability will hardly get the same institutional, budgetary, or political

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recognition or authority to that given to issues of finance, economy, labour, or defence. An effective way of institutionalizing sustainability would be the constitutional anchoring of a sustainability principle. ‘An independent expert council with constitutional power could supervise the sufficient implementation of this principle in the legislative process and could issue a suspensive veto in case of serious doubts. Such a council would be the advocate of the needs of future generations’ (Berg 2020: 163).

Principles for Sustainable Action History teaches that large societal transformations can hardly be attributed to just one reason. Societal transformations (e.g. industrialization) are the result of the concurrence and interdependence of several independent circumstances and events, like changing socio-economic circumstances, new technologies, charismatic leaders, military victories etc. Consequently, any transformation to sustainability will also have to build on the concurrence of several different factors and developments. Moreover, the sustainability transformation is the first transformation in the history of humankind which has to be brought about intentionally, simply because the planetary boundaries will have to be respected. But how could such a transformation be triggered? First, it is important to understand all the different dimensions within systemic adjustments. For this reason, a comprehensive analysis of the barriers to sustainability is extremely important. The analysis sets the basis regarding how the current frameworks need to be adjusted to allow for the sustainability transformation needed. However, who would be in charge of such an adjustment? There is certainly no global steersperson. No single person or authority could induce the synergistic concurrence of all the different changes needed. Moreover, the systemic view does not really support concrete action. For instance, the systemic view of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, with their 169 targets, does not really answer how individual actors can contribute to the achievement of those goals. In some cases it is not too difficult to deduce measures for individual actors. In case of SDG 13, for instance, ‘Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts’, it is pretty clear what is implied: get rid of fossil fuels. In many other cases, however, it is not as easy. What can be done against poverty (SDG 1) and hunger (SDG 2)? There are quite different views on the question of how poverty can be fought. The two economists Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, who had studied the nature of poverty for several years, were awarded with the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2019. They conclude their book ‘Poor Economics’ by acknowledging that economists and other experts seem to have ‘very little useful to say about why some countries grow and others do not’ (Banerjee and Duflo 2011: 267). Banerjee and Duflo compare the two positions of Jeffrey Sachs and William Easterly. While the former sees the poor caught in the ‘poverty trap’, which could only be escaped by considerable support from the outside, the latter argues that

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Official Development Assistance is not the solution but the problem, because people would then become lethargic, corruption would blossom and economic development would be prevented. If not even the experts agree on how certain goals can be reached, how can individual actors know how to facilitate the sustainability transformation? From this it can be suggested that we should start with the actors, and the question of how their concrete actions can be supported (Berg 2020). Goals are important because they tell us where we ultimately want to be. But they do not give directions, at least not in the confusing scenarios we are currently facing. In these cases, we need direction, we need to know which of the paths ahead brings us closer to our goal. This is exactly where the idea of action principles comes into play. A principle is ‘a comprehensive and fundamental law, doctrine, or assumption’ (Merriam-Webster 2023). An action principle would therefore be a fundamental doctrine which guides one’s action. A principle for sustainable action would then be such a fundamental doctrine which helps to identify the more sustainable of different alternatives. A prominent example of such an action principle would be Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative: ‘Act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law’ (Kant 2002, G4:421). The generic nature of this imperative guarantees its universality. Yet, this universality is the reason why it does not really help when you need to know which action is more sustainable. The more universal a principle is, the more difficult it is to apply to concrete situations. The more concrete a principle is, on the other hand, the less likely it is that it is universally correct. ‘Buy local’, for instance, is a good advice in many cases. But the carbon footprint of a domestic apple increases considerably if it is consumed ‘at the wrong time’. If the apple had to be stored in an air-conditioned warehouse for half a year, the carbon footprint of an imported apple might actually be lower. Therefore, the principles for sustainable action suggested below aim to combine concrete support on the one hand with general applicability on the other. Furthermore, one can distinguish different categories of action principles, responding to the primary effect a principle will have. Some principles are related to nature, which means that their deployment will have an effect on our natural environments. Other principles target at us as human individuals, still others at society. A final group of principles has a special focus on systems. One of the principles from each group will subsequently be explained.

 atural Principle: Prefer Local, Seasonal, Plant-Based N and Labor-Intensive Food As the ‘buying local’ example above illustrates, buying local food is not always a climate friendly option. However, if one adds to this a few more criteria, one can be pretty sure of choosing the more sustainable of two alternatives. If ‘buy local’ is

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complemented by ‘and seasonal’ this downside will be addressed. By adding two further criteria, plant-based and labor-intensive, one can be relatively sure to purchase climate friendly, (relatively) healthy, labor intensive (thus creating jobs!) food (cf. Berg 2020: 220 f., Ledgard et al. 2011).

Contemplation as a Personal Principle Contemplation has always been held in high esteem in most occidental schools of thought ever since the ancient Greek philosophers. Major streams of ancient Greek philosophy appreciated contemplation, often much more than action. The bios theoretikós, the ‘theoretical life’, was considered to be the fulfilment of earthly life, the ultimate form of living, whereas the bios praktikós, the ‘practical life’, was rather disregarded. To be sure, the Christian doctrine of the incarnation was a strong provocation of any (Neo-) Platonic demotion of matter and practical work. Moreover, Benedict of Nursia’s Ora et labora explicitly valued practical work. However, even this paradigm, which became very influential for the subsequent monastic tradition, started with ora, prayer, a form of contemplation. This appreciation of contemplation declined with the rise of modern science and technology, when the vita activa dominated over the vita contemplativa (Arendt 1998). Action, efficiency, and output were more appreciated than contemplation, effectiveness and process. Efficiency is also a driving force behind capitalism. That is why technology and capitalism became natural allies, and their instrumental rationality has ever more dominated modern societies to this day. It is not surprising that with the rise of industrialization, capitalism also thrived. The growth paradigm of capitalism has dominated the process of industrialization, which brought such a developmental boost to the societies of the Global North – huge leaps in life expectancy, health, wellbeing, prosperity etc. However, there are ‘Limits to Growth’ (Meadows et  al. 1972). The consumerism of the Western countries, which thinkers like Erich Fromm had already challenged in the 1970s (Fromm 1975), is being massively exported to emerging and developing economies. The mode of having, which Fromm criticized, not only fuels this consumerism. Its consequences are also socio-ecological disasters of unprecedented scale. It is high time to rethink this western consumerism and to propose attractive alternatives to it. Those who have mostly contributed to today’s crises, and are still enjoying a much more prosperous life than people in the global south, should be at the forefront in suggesting and practicing alternatives to consumerism. It is here where the past appreciation of contemplation needs to be rediscovered.

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John Rawls’ Difference Principle as a Society Related Principle Strong social inequalities correlate with a high index of health and social problems and can thus be seen as a barrier to sustainability, as discussed above. This poses questions of distributional justice: what is a fair distribution of goods? What is a fair distribution of chances for a happy life? John Rawls presented a theory of justice (Rawls 1971) which suggests a procedural approach to answering these questions on a rational basis. Rawls acknowledges that people have different chances, due to genetic preconditions, talents, circumstances of upbringing, environmental influences etc. Furthermore, throughout life people have different experiences of luck, suffer different strokes of fate etc. This explains why chances and goods are unevenly distributed. Rawls elaborates that every rational person would have to acknowledge that these differences are purely accidental and are not the result of any personal merit. Therefore, it is a principle of fairness to mitigate purely accidental disadvantages, which some people have experienced. Rawls suggests a principle of distributional justice according to which inequalities would only be acceptable if they are combined with the greatest benefit for the least privileged (principle of difference). Furthermore, it needs to be ensured that positions and posts are open to everybody under fair conditions (principle of equal opportunities) (Rawls 1971; 1978). Considering significant inequalities both within many societies on national levels as well as between different societies internationally, Rawls’ principles can help determine the fairness of laws and regulations on a national level. They can also support discussions about fair terms, e.g. for trade, on an international level. Finally, they can also function as guides for evaluating questions of intergenerational justice.

 aintain or Increase Option Diversity as a System M Related Principle A final principle to be discussed here is system related, i.e. it can be applied to almost any system: ‘Maintain or increase option diversity’. That means that none of the actions an actor performs should decrease the number of options available in the future. The main reason for considering this is the existence of ‘path dependencies’. A path dependency describes a situation in which one activity or event constrains future activities, sometimes even in the distant future. For instance, the use of nuclear energy creates nuclear waste which will have to be safely stored for a million years, forcing future generations to ensure corresponding protective measures and thereby constraining their option diversity. Similarly, a newly established coal power plant will burn coal during its lifetime, which implies corresponding amounts of greenhouse gases emissions (unless the carbon dioxide is captured and stored), thereby accelerating global warming. This does, of course, also constrain future options considerably. While only moderate adaptations would have been needed if

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humanity had started with effective emission reduction measures thirty years ago, any further delay in emission reduction will narrow down the room to maneuver for future action. Drastic measures will be needed in the future to prevent further warming, including geo-engineering measures like solar radiation management. In order to prevent such scenarios, and avoid future agents being strongly constrained by today’s decisions and policies, a good principle is to keep or increase the diversity of options for future action.

Conclusion Humanity’s transformation towards sustainability is more needed than ever. Decades of public discussion and several political agreements have not prevented us from exceeding planetary boundaries in an alarming way. One might well ask whether sustainability is ever possible, whether sustainability is nothing but a utopian quest. Consequently, some authors even challenge the concept of sustainability as such. However, it has been argued here that the concept of sustainability is nevertheless needed, and that the gap between ambition and execution can be explained by the numerous barriers to sustainability. These barriers need to be carefully analyzed and jointly addressed in order to transform our main systems and progress towards sustainability. However, the required systemic change cannot be triggered by any single global steersperson – there is none. Therefore, change will have to be triggered by myriads of actors, be they individuals, organizations, corporations, or states. Their synergistic action can facilitate the transformation. It is important, however, that those multiple actors act towards the same goals in coherent ways. That is why principles for sustainable action are essential, as they address the various actors at the point of concrete decisions. If many actors on different levels follow such principles in a similar way, systemic changes will also become possible.

Bibliography Arendt, H. 1998. The human condition. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press. Banerjee, A.V., and E. Duflo. 2011. Poor economics. A radical rethinking of the way to fight global poverty. New York: Public Affairs. Benson, H.M., and R.K. Craig. 2014. The end of sustainability. Society and Natural Resources 1 (6): 777–782. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2014.901467. Berg, C. 2020. Sustainable action. Overcoming the barriers. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Blühdorn, I. 2017. Post-capitalism, post-growth, post-consumerism? Eco-political hopes beyond sustainability. Global Discourse 7 (1): 42–61. https://doi.org/10.1080/23269995.2017.1300415. Collins German-English, English-German dictionary, unabridged. 1997. 3rd ed. by Terrell P. et al., Glasgow/New York: HarperCollins Publishers. Crutzen, P.J. 2002. Geology of mankind. Nature 415: 23. European Commission. 2021. Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union, Carbon border adjustment mechanism, Publications Office.

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Fromm, E. 1975. To have or to be. New York: Harper & Row Publishers. Guardian, The. 2022, Nov 7., https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/07/cop27-­ climate-­summit-­un-­secretary-­general-­antonio-­guterres. Accessed 7 Dec 2022. Hobson, K., and S. Niemeyer. 2012. “What sceptics believe”: The effects of information and deliberation on climate change scepticism. Public Understanding of Science 22 (4): 396–412. Huxley, T. 1883. Inaugural address at opening of Fisheries Exhibition. https://mathcs.clarku.edu/ huxley/SM5/fish.html. Accessed 3 Jan 2023. Jaspal, R., B.  Nerlich, and K. van Vuure. 2016. Embracing and resisting climate identities in the Australian press: Sceptics, scientists and politics. Public Understanding of Science 10: 807–824. Kant, I. 2002 (1785). In Groundwork for the metaphysics of morals, ed. Allan W.  Wood. New Haven/CTM London: Yale University Press. Ledgard, S.F., M. Lieffering, A. Zonderland-Thomassen, and M. Boyes. 2011. Life cycle assessment – A tool for evaluating resource and environmental efficiency of agricultural products and systems from pasture to plate. Proceedings of the New Zealand Society of Animal Production 71: 139–148. Meadows, D.L. 2000. Es ist zu spät für eine nachhaltige Entwicklung. Nun müssen wir für eine das Überleben sichernde Entwicklung kämpfen. In Zukunftsstreit, ed. W.  Krull, 125–149. Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft. Meadows, D.L., D. Meadows, J. Randers, and W.W.I.I.I. Behrens. 1972. The limits to growth. A report for the Club of Rome’s project on the predicament of mankind. London: Earth Island Ltd. Merriam-Webster.com. 2023. Dictionary, s.v. ‘principle’, ‘institution,’ and ‘Zeitgeist’, https:// www.merriam-­webster.com/. Accessed 3 Jan 2023. Mill, J.S. 1869. On liberty. London: Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer. Nair, Ch. 2018. The sustainable state. The future of government, economy, and society. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Rawls, J. 1971. A theory of justice. Belknap: Cambridge, MA. Rockström, J., W. Steffen, K. Noone, A. Person, et al. 2009. A safe operating space for humanity. Nature 461: 472–475. Steffen, W., K. Richardson, J. Rockström, S.E. Cornell, I. Fetzer, et al. 2015. Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet. Science 347: 1–17. United Nations (UN). 2015. Transforming our world: The 2030 agenda for sustainable development (A/RES/70/1). New York: United Nations. Wilkinson, R., and K. Pickett. 2011. The Spirit level. Why greater equality makes societies stronger. New York/Berlin/London/Sydney: Bloomsbury Press. World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED). 1987. Our common future. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 2

Justifying Sustainability: Scientific Necessity, Sacred Duty, or Political Process? Willem B. Drees

Abstract How might we justify calls for sustainability? Drawing on science expects too much from science, as science is indifferent to human concerns. The issue is ‘too big’ for philosophical ethics, as its fundamental approaches do not undergird the interests of future generations. Moral reflection in the context of ecology involves a value-laden understanding of humans in relation to the wider world, a worldview and ethos, a religion. If one uses a particular religious framework, e.g. by speaking of a ‘scared duty’, this may be helpful for insiders. But does selective use of a tradition fail to justify sustainability, given the plurality of interpretations within each tradition and the plurality of traditions? Some have attempted to develop a religious framework that aspires to be universally acceptable. However, a project such as Journey of the Universe inflates the role of humans and expects more of science and the humanities than is justified. Generally speaking, such grand narratives treat policy disagreements as ‘theoretical’ disagreements. They are, however, ‘practical’ disagreements on values and interests. Hence, we cannot avoid the need for messy political processes. Keywords Anthropocentrism · Democracy · C. Geertz · Greening of faith · M. Hulme · Pluralism · Religion and ecology · Religious naturalism · Science · L. Sideris · Sustainability

Introduction How might we justify calls for a sustainable common future? That is the abstract question I want to address here. W. B. Drees (*) Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Global Sustainability, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41800-6_2

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Raising the question is not intended to challenge the seriousness and urgency of climate change, loss of biodiversity, exhaustion of natural resources, and the like – and, hence, the need for appropriate policies, locally and globally. While writing this contribution I assume that we agree we ought to arrange our lives such that there is a viable future for humanity and for the rich diversity of life on this planet. The question is posed here as a philosophical question: How might one argue for such an obligation? Does it suffice to appeal to science? Do moral theories provide sufficient guidance? Do we need religious traditions or a global religious-naturalist narrative? Can we avoid the messy political process of negotiating different interests? By considering potential resources one might appeal to, this is also a reflection upon the character of the sciences and of religious traditions, in the light of ecological concerns. And hence it is a reflection on the role of theoretical and metaphysical discourse, and the importance of ‘practical’ approaches in philosophy, religion and science. To anticipate a potential misunderstanding: ‘Practical philosophy’ is not practical in the ordinary sense of the word, but addresses issues of practice, of human actions and the moral values and political preferences that guide human actions. A classic example of considering these two philosophical orientations side by side is provided by the titles of two major works of Immanuel Kant, the Critique of Pure Reason (theoretical philosophy, originally 1781) and his Critique of Practical Reason (ethics, originally 1788).

A Scientific Necessity? The natural sciences show the extent of climate change and loss of biodiversity. For climate change, the reports of the IPCC are a strong example; for biodiversity, there are similar studies. Collecting data, analysing patterns, uncovering underlying causal mechanisms, and developing models and scenarios is fascinating and valuable work. However, even when one acknowledges the overwhelming strength of these studies, one may still raise a non-scientific question: So what? Why should we care? One way to understand the cross-cultural success of the natural sciences in the modern period is to recognize that this success is realized by exercising self-­ restraint. Empirical and mathematical approaches are intertwined, while political and personal preferences are granted at best heuristic significance. The main philosophical distinction that is in play here, is the one between description and prescription, the is-ought distinction. To come to a conclusion that is to guide human actions, we need more than just the knowledge provided by the sciences; we also need moral orientation. One might argue that morality itself is the product of our evolutionary past. There certainly is an evolutionary history of pro-social behaviour, just as there is an evolutionary and historical trajectory that results in the remarkable mathematical skills that humans have. However, the justification of a mathematical theorem is independent of such human history; it needs a formal rather than a historical argument.

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Contingent truths of evolutionary and cultural history do not deliver the timeless truths of mathematics. And so too, it seems to me, for ethics. The rise of the human practice of making judgements in terms of right or wrong, good or evil, is a historical issue, but the justification of such judgements is a philosophical challenge, that requires a different kind of reflection – perhaps along the lines developed by the philosopher Immanuel Kant, seeking the pre-conditions of knowledge and of action. But then, in contrast to mathematics, there is less consensus on fundamental ethical principles, and thus a greater challenge (e.g., Kitcher 2011: 206). But that is not the issue for this paragraph; the more limited issue here is that moral justification is neither provided by science nor by a scientifically adequate description of the rise of morality in the course of human evolution and history. One might also argue that the natural process has brought forth a complex reality that has value due to its rich complexity and diversity. The philosopher Holmes Rolston thus speaks of ‘Genetic Values: Diversity and Complexity in Natural History’ (1999: 1–53). This is the first part of his book Genes, Genesis and God: Values and their origins in natural and human history, which ends by speaking of ‘the grace of life renewed in the midst of perpetual perishing, generating diversity and complexity; repeatedly struggling through to something higher, a response to the brooding winds of the Spirit moving over the face of these Earthen waters’ (1999: 370). But why speak of ‘higher’? Why value diversity and complexity? The particular appreciation of reality Rolston presents goes beyond the descriptive and explanatory work done by the sciences. In relation to our topic, the way we justify calls for sustainable policies, geology might provide a good example. A geologist counts history not in years or centuries but in thousands if not millions of years. Such a scientist might point out that there have been periods in the climate’s history when the atmosphere and the conditions at the Earth’s surface were rather different. Within such a purely scientific perspective, concern for a sustainable future shows an anthropocentric bias – as it singles out conditions that are sustainable for humans – even when the concern is ecological in scope, as human sustainability depend on the climate and on services provided by ecosystems. Hence, drawing on science alone to justify our response to climate change demands too much from science.

A Moral Obligation? Can we draw on philosophical ethics to justify our concern for sustainability? A basic principle such as Kant’s categorical imperative states that humans should act according to maxims that could be universal law, valid for all humans. Moral responsibility has its place in human communities. Hence, John Passmore’s title speaking of our Responsibility for Nature. Not a moral obligation ‘to nature’, as if ‘nature’ were a moral actor. We do not find a river that overflows morally deficient, even though it may have a negative impact on humans living on its banks. Our

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actions have an impact on nature as well, and in consequence potentially also on other humans. The impact on nature is one we, humans, can understand and hence modify intentionally. Knowledge and the possibility of meaningful action generates ‘moral responsibilities, a notion which has no application outside the human species’ (Passmore 1980: xii). And if sustainability is considered as a moral obligation we owe other living humans, ‘climate justice’ may well be a major theme. How to account for future generations? A young couple that voluntarily decides not to have children is not failing morally. The existence of future persons is not a moral obligation for anyone, but arguments for sustainability need future persons. Hence, ‘sustainability’ needs a grander vision that values the continuity of human history. The concern is ‘too big’ for theories in philosophical ethics. Moral reflection in the context of ecology seems to require a ‘philosophy of history’, a vision of a potential future, and hence an understanding of humans in relation to the wider world, a worldview, and an appropriate ethos – two components central to ‘a religion’, according to the anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1966: 3; see Drees 2010: 68). Might our religious traditions provide the wider perspective we need, for instance by understanding ourselves as creatures among other creatures? Can we draw on religions to justify appropriate morality in times of ecological challenges, and to motivate us to behave accordingly?

Sacred Duties? The book series Religions of the World and Ecology, initiated by John Grim and Mary Evelyn Tucker, selects elements of various religious traditions that may inspire adherents to become ecologically engaged. This series is one example, alongside others, of a Greening of Faith, to borrow a book title (Carroll et al. 1997). As one specific example, we may consider Lynn White’s 1967 article ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis’. White, a historian of medieval culture, science and technology, observes that an exploitative attitude was stimulated by Western Christianity in conjunction with agricultural technologies such as the plough. He builds upon guilt to make an argument for the contemporary relevance of religions: ‘Since the roots of our trouble are so largely religious, the remedy must also be essentially religious, whether we call it that or not’ (White 1967: 1207). Within the Christian tradition, he highlights Saint Francis, who substituted for the idea of humanity’s rule of creation ‘the equality of all creatures’. Thus, White proposes ‘Francis as a patron saint for ecologists’ (ibid.). It is fine, of course, to choose Francis of Assisi as a role model. He can be seen as a contrast to Benedict, the founder of monastic orders that combined prayer and work, ora et labora. European monasteries in the Middle Ages transformed wildernesses such as swamps into farmland. But if one can choose one’s exemplary figures, one should realize that ‘the tradition’ does not function as a moral resource, but rather as a repository of stories, exemplars and ideas, some of which can be selected as helpful for the message one wants to convey. The moral message is not

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justified by the weight of ‘the tradition’, but rather, the tradition is selectively appropriated and revised in light of present challenges. In ‘religion and science’ those challenges are mostly modern knowledge; in ‘religion and ecology’, ecological concerns. Over time, the selection of authoritative texts and the ways in which these are interpreted has changed, as did the exemplars and authorities recognized. In new circumstances, religious traditions provide images and symbols that express that which is deemed valuable at that time. The religious repertoire allows us to give expression to our worldview and ethos, and may be drawn upon to motivate us; it is formative, even when it is presented as normative. It serves as a language, that allows for the expression of different experiences and priorities. Human communities may use a religious repertoire to justify their ethos by embedding it in a certain worldview. Now that ‘sustainability’ has become a major concern, religious views are articulated so that they become supportive of a ‘green’ ethos. Within a religious community one may come to see human care for the earth as a sacred duty. But this works only for those who share that particular understanding of that worldview and ethos. A religious framework provides a way of speaking and perceiving that follows the ethos its adherents have, rather than providing a fundamental justification for it.

A Global Religious-Naturalist Narrative? Ecological challenges regard us all. Given their global character, it may seem desirable to develop a shared framework, a worldview that might provide guidance for us all. Given the diversity of particular religious traditions, this seems to bring us back to the sciences. In relation to ecology, there is the rise of naturalistic religious visions, such as ‘the evolutionary epic’, combining an evolutionary perspective (biology) with a desire for stories that may provide orientation, an epic. An example is Journey of the Universe, a film and multimedia project overseen by Mary Evelyn Tucker, a religious studies scholar, and Brian Swimme, an evolutionary cosmologist. They present scientific information in the form of a grand evolutionary narrative, weaving together scientific knowledge and humanistic concerns, thereby seeking to evoke wonder and a sense of connectedness and responsibility. They thus present a science-based creation story for our time (Tucker and Swimme 2006–2021; Tucker 2019). Such a turn towards a new cosmology as a science-based and morally motivating creation story has been challenged by Lisa Sideris in her book Consecrating Science: Wonder, Knowledge and the Natural World (2017). Whereas in those grand narratives wonder seems to be mediated by scientific knowledge, putting scientists in a priestly role, Sideris prefers to see wonder as rooted in immediate personal experiences, in all their diversity: Rachel Carson is a major inspiration for her. As Tucker tells a big story, she draws on her knowledge of the world religions to offer myths and metaphors that may promote ecological consciousness. In contrast to such a use of human traditions as resources, Sideris positions the humanities as

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critical discourse, as posing questions, as challenging the visionary discourse, as probing beyond the general ‘humanity’ to the plurality of humans, with conflicting interests, views and values. This is a critical engagement that is also typical of the humanities. Hence, different attitudes towards the use of cultural resources in such grand story telling may reflect different views within the humanities (Drees 2021: 169  f.). In religious terms, Sideris gives priority to prophetic voices rather than priestly ones. She thinks we should be far more modest in envisaging the human place in the cosmos. According to Sideris’s analysis Tucker ‘insists that the worldview at the heart of the Journey is not anthropocentric but what she [Tucker] calls anthropocosmic. Anthropocosmism is defined by Tucker in this form as the understanding of ‘the human as that being who completes the cosmos’ (my [Sideris’] emphasis). … Anthropocosmism, then, is no garden variety anthropocentrism. It is anthropocentrism on steroids’ (Sideris 2019: 446). In the grand narrative, science is used to offer moral orientation and motivation. To speak of it as a journey or an epos, gives the presentation coherence and focus, even a sense of a destiny. But this seems to overdo the marginal role of humans and the contingent nature of evolutionary development. By anchoring its overarching story in a naturalistic understanding of reality, such a religious naturalistic vision is asking more of the scientific image than it can provide. Transitioning from a descriptive analysis to a moral injunction is called by philosophers the ‘naturalistic fallacy.’ It is politically problematical as well, as it treats disagreements as if those regard our understanding of the way the world is, thus passing by underlying differences in values and interests. It treats the challenge as a theoretical one, to be resolved by a better view of reality, rather than as a practical one, about our actions and the values and preferences that guide those.

Political Processes and Practical Philosophy Philosophically there does not seem to be a valid theoretical argument from knowledge, accepted by almost all well-informed and reasonable persons, to normative conclusions. Neither science nor a science based grand epic suffices to justify a demand for sustainability. Particular religious traditions do combine worldviews, views of the way things are, with an ethos, an affective relationship with reality and moral orientation within that context. However, given the diversity of human religious traditions these do not deliver a shared, global ethos either. Mike Hulme, author of Why We Disagree on Climate Change (2009) gave a subsequent contribution to Zygon the title ‘(Still) Disagreeing about Climate Change: Which Way Forward?’ (Hulme 2015). As he argues, the most appropriate venue seems to be a deliberative, democratic, political process, within which we draw on science to develop scenarios, in relation to which we articulate and develop our moral intuitions, while seeking to come to conclusions on appropriate actions, even though underlying views, interests and preferences may be different.

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Conclusion In this essay I have argued that we should not expect too much from science as a resource for a view that provides a worldview that is normative as well as descriptive and explanatory. Using science as insight to develop a stance in theoretical philosophy is an attempt to fill the gap left by pre-modern metaphysics, using science or a science-based view to take its place. Such a theoretical interest is widespread in ‘religion and science’, but perhaps we should not succumb to the temptation. Though agreement in the sciences is more widespread that in almost any other domain of human activity, this is less the case when it comes to interpretations of science, or the articulation of worldviews that aspire to be science-based or at least consistent with the best available knowledge. This is even more the case when it comes to religious views, whether informed by science or in conflict with consolidated scientific insights. Pluralism within traditions and across traditions is a given. Thus, rather than seeking agreement on ideas (theoretical philosophy), the best option might be to live with disagreements, pragmatically solving problems, one by one. In this process, we may call for sustainability, given the urgency of issues and their potential impact, even though we do not have a theoretical justification of this concern. Not everything that we may find important needs to be philosophically justified.

Bibliography Carroll, J.E., P. Brockelman, and M. Westfall, eds. 1997. The greening of faith: God, the environment, and the good life. Hanover: University of New Hampshire. Drees, W.B. 2010. Religion and science in context: A guide to the debates. London: Routledge. ———. 2021. What are the humanities for? Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Geertz, C. 1966. Religion as a cultural system. In M. Banton, Anthropological approaches to the study of religion. London: Tavistock, 1–46; reprinted in Geertz, The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973. Hulme, M. 2009. Why we disagree about climate change: Understanding controversy, inaction and opportunity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2015. (Still) disagreeing about climate change: Which way forward? Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 50 (4): 893–905. Kitcher, Ph. 2011. The ethical project. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Passmore, J. 1980. Man’s responsibility for nature. Ecological problems and Western traditions. 2nd ed. London: Duckworth. Rolston, H., III. 1999. Genes, genesis and god: Values and their origins in natural and human history. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Sideris, L.H. 2017. Consecrating science: Wonder, knowledge, and the natural world. Oakland: University of California Press. ———. 2019. Wonder sustained: A reply to critics. Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 54 (2): 426–453. Tucker, M.E. 2019. Journey of the universe: Weaving science with the humanities. Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 54 (2): 409–425.

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Tucker, M. E., and B. Swimme. 2006–2021. Journey of the Universe. https://www.journeyoftheuniverse.org/. Accessed 23 May 2022. White, L. 1967. The historical roots of our ecological crisis. Science 155 (3767, 10 March), 1203–1207; reprinted in R.S. Gottlieb, ed., This sacred earth: Religion, nature, environment. New York: Routledge, 1996: 184–193.

Chapter 3

What, Exactly, Needs to Be Sustained Amidst a Changing Climate? Ernst M. Conradie

Abstract This essay explores the roots of the word sustainability with reference to a WCC conference held in Bucharest in 1974. It traces various subsequent shifts in the meaning of sustainability, both in secular and in ecumenical discourse. It raises the question whether it is indeed sustainability that is needed in a time like this – or perhaps resilience, or even conversion? More specifically (as per the title) it asks what it is that is worth sustaining, not only whether or how or for how long it can be sustained. This requires circumspection given budgetary constraints and ideological distortions. On this basis it offers some suggestions on what Christian theology can contribute to multi-disciplinary discourse on global sustainability. Keywords Adaptability · Bucharest · Climate change · Conversion · Development · Limits · Planetary boundaries · Resilience · Sustainability · Sustainable livelihoods · World Council of Churches

A Word About Words There is a delightful children’s story entitled The Land of the Big Word Factory by Agnès de Lestrade (2009), with beautiful illustrations by Valeria Docampo. The story goes that there is a country where people scarcely talk to each other because they have to pay for every word used. Put concisely, they have to choose their words carefully. There is a huge factory producing pieces of paper with words that have to be purchased and swallowed before they may (or can) be pronounced. Some words (those that are often used) are more expensive than others: some are simply unaffordable while others are cheaper. The rich buy lots of the words while the poor look for pieces of paper with words, thrown away by the rich in the garbage. In spring E. M. Conradie (*) University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Global Sustainability, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41800-6_3

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there are special sales of cheap words but many of them (like hermeneutics and semiotics!) are hardly ever used and are thus of no use. The rest of the enchanting story is about the poor boy Daniel who is in love with Hanli but literally cannot afford to say that to her while the rich Heiko is lavish in his declaration of love. In the Christian tradition the word / Word is both powerful and precious. Accordingly, God created through Word and Spirit. God’s word calls Abraham, Moses and many prophets, even though, at times, God’s word became scarce. More significantly, God’s own Word who became animal flesh and blood (so that the Word swallowed bread and fish), dwelled in Nazareth, announced the coming reign of God, called for the transformation of the social and religious order and was silenced by the reigning powers. The Word was banned, one may say, but could not be supressed. Christian theology nevertheless struggled to do justice to the interplay between word, flesh and Spirit, between speaking and remaining silent. More often than not theologians became a wordy, word-impoverished bunch (see Tracy 1981: 389). Remarkably theology nevertheless managed to ‘sell’ some of its profound words to the general public. These include words such as charisma, economy (οἰκονομία τοῦ Θεοῦ), conversion (μετάνοια), (God’s) mission (μαρτυρία), God’s vision (visio Dei), delivery (atonement), justification (of paragraphs, if not of sinners!), liberation and service (διακονία). The world of business gobbled up these words and sold them back to Christianity with a heavy ‘Value Added Tax’. A significant word sale took place around 1974 when the word ‘sustainability’ was coined. One of the most significant early public uses of the term was at a conference hosted by the World Council of Churches on ‘Science and Technology for Human Development’ held in Bucharest from 24 June to 2 July 1974. From there it quickly entered both ecumenical discourse and global environmental discourse. It is now enshrined in the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. In this contribution I will suggest that this may have been a word sale that has gone wrong, that the word sustainability has become subject to confusion both in the public sphere and in ecumenical discourse. Although the word sustainability has become almost sacrosanct I will (bravely or foolishly) consider the question whether it may have to be dropped altogether or at least used sparingly. I suggested something similar regarding the word ‘development’ as close associate (Conradie 2017), not to mention the older ideals of ‘progress’ (perhaps the single most dominant idea of Western civilization)1 and growth (the dominant assumption of capitalist economies). I will wonder out loud whether it is indeed sustainability that is needed in a time like this – or perhaps resilience, or even conversion? I will ask what, exactly, is it that needs to be sustained amidst a changing climate? Indeed, what on earth does the word sustainability actually mean? Like Augustine’s reflections on time, the more one thinks about sustainability the less clear it seems to be become.  See the comment by Jürgen Moltmann (1985: 28): ‘Progress is no longer an expression of hope, as it was in the nineteenth century; it is a fate to which people in industrialised countries feel themselves condemned.’

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As the story would have it, because the word sustainability is used so frequently its share price has been rising steadily. I will therefore sow some suspicion on behalf of the poor boy Daniel in the story as to whether ‘sustainable development’ is not sold to the people of the Global South who now have to pay a considerable price for that.

The Bucharest Conference (1974) The Bucharest conference concluded a five-year study programme on ‘The Future of Man and Society in a World of Science-Based Technology’. It was organised by the WCC sub-unit on ‘Church and Society’ with the cooperation of the ‘Commission on the Churches’ Participation in Development’ (CCPD) and the secretariat for Urban Industrial Mission (UIM). Many of the concerns that led to the establishment of ESSSAT a decade later were already present there. The list of 130 participants from 44 countries makes for interesting reading, including Charles Birch, Manuel Castells, Langdon Gilkey, Sam Kobia, Dimitru Staniloe, Heinz Eduard Tödt and Lynn White. There were only a handful from the Global South, even though there was an obvious sensitivity for issues of development, justice and sustainability. One may say that the conference was a response to the shock waves elicited by the famous Limits to Growth report to the Club of Rome published in 1972 and also the OPEC oil embargo of 1973. It took place a month or two before the third World Population Conference, also in Bucharest, 19–30 August 1974. The challenges posed by population growth were acknowledged but not prioritised. There was a recognition that the use of technology promised increasing material progress and quality of life, controlling the vicissitudes of nature and enhancing economic security. However, the finiteness of resources and the environmental impact of the use of the full range of technologies (including nuclear power and nuclear weapons) prompted questions on prevailing expectations for progress and development and what the future may yield. The dream of unlimited wealth for all was in jeopardy. This failed strategy was one of increasing the production of wealth instead of sharing the already existing wealth. This underlying recognition prompted reflection on issues of justice, sharing, asceticism, freedom, liberation, fair trade, sustenance, and more. The most significant concept introduced at the conference was that of a sustainable society. It was born from the recognition that a point may be reached where ‘the benefits of more material production and the material demands of an increasing number of people no longer outweigh the negative effects of this growth on the non-material dimensions of the quality of life’ (WCC 1974: 12). However, such negative effects may become evident only after a lengthy delay, so that a decision is needed on a planning horizon. According to the report, worldwide quality of life needs to be enhanced by material growth among the poor whereas stabilisation and possibly contraction is required among the affluent.

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The report then explains what a ‘robust, sustainable society’ entails, namely one where everyone can feel secure that their quality of life can be maintained or improved. It identified four characteristics of such a sustainable society: • First, social stability cannot be obtained without an equitable distribution of what is in scarce supply or without a common opportunity to participate in social decisions. • Second, a robust global society will not be sustainable unless the need for food is at any time well below the global capacity to supply it, and unless the emissions of pollutants are well below the capacity of the ecosystem to absorb them. • Third, the new social organization will be sustainable only as long as the rate of use of non-renewable resources does not outrun the increase in resources made available through technological innovation. • Finally, a sustainable society requires a level of human activity which is not adversely influenced by the never ending, large and frequent variation in global climate (WCC 1974: 12). In essence, therefore, the report concludes, ‘the sustainable society will be one with a stable population and with a fixed material wealth per person, a society actively pursuing quality of life in basically non-material dimensions such as leisure, service, arts, education and sport’ (WCC 1974: 12). The report continues to speak of the need for a transition to a sustainable society and believes that, from a perspective of faith, churches should take the first step in that regard, also in the hope that human ingenuity can overcome obstacles generated by further material expansion (WCC 1974: 12). On this basis it identifies various steps towards such a transition to a sustainable and just society (WCC 1974: 13). It imagines that to be one where a needsbased minimum is established throughout the world, also in ‘developed’ countries, but also a maximum level of consumption to be determined ‘in accordance with what can be produced without destroying the environment or using a disproportionate amount of the limited world resources’ (WCC 1974: 30). It therefore challenges the objective of maximal growth as measured by Gross National Product and proposes instead the objective of Gross National Welfare. This implies a minimum standard of living for all people with equality as the final goal given the then unequitable distribution of resources. Remarkably, it seeks ‘a reduction in the consumption of material goods to a specified maximum: a) in developed countries where the standard of living is distinctly higher than the minimum standard of living; b) in developing countries where small groups consume at developed countries standards’ (WCC 1974: 19). The details of the environmental problems encountered in the mid-1970s are of course by now long outdated, even if they were at the time quite prescient. There is, for example, a section on the human impact on the climate of the earth where the long-term consequences of carbon emissions were envisaged ‘within the next fifty

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to a hundred years’ (i.e. 2024–2074!).2 The report addresses numerous issues related to science and technology, the use of technological power to dominate and oppress, the need for technology transfer, quality of life, standard of living, a critique of the objective of maximal economic growth, a minimum standard of living for all humans, the need for an overall (but differentiated) reduction in the consumption of material goods, especially in ‘over-developed countries’ (WCC 1974: 30), economic disparities, economic dependence, unemployment, housing and human settlements, urbanization, the notion of private property, multi-national corporations, international trade relations, and ‘a concept of development that is not based alone on economic growth’ (WCC 1974: 30). The report acknowledges many impediments to hope but nevertheless expresses faith in God’s providence that opens up new possibilities even where these seem to be closed off by inequality, injustice, war and environmental degradation. The report finally recommends a five-year study process to explore the theological implications of a sustainable and just society. Notably, it also calls, in the light of the environmental crisis of that time, for self-examination on the side of science and technology and of Christian theology. It notes that ‘Science-based technology has been the instrument of this crisis, endangering life without knowing whether it has the means for countering future threats. Science has developed into an instrument of domination for the exploitation of nature and the mobilization of human resources. Theology, in pursuing the doctrine of dominium terrae has opened the door to thoughtless exploitation and destruction’ (WCC 1974: 36). It calls for a ‘creative dialogue’ between theologians, scientists and philosophers of science on the following: • The world-view projected by modern science and technology, the assumptions and attitudes underlying and fundamental to it, and the extent to which theological and ideological factors have influenced it. • The attempts to overcome the rupture between nature and history as conceptualized in philosophical and theological thought. • The extent to which the alienation of the self from others and from the rest of creation arises from the objectifying and manipulatory tendencies in modern science and technology.

 The recommendations of the report on climate change are in hindsight quite remarkable: ‘We recommend that the WCC in its further deliberations of industrialization take account of the possible effects of human activity on climate, and explore the ethical issues involved, especially the just distribution of technological and industrial productive capacity. Because climate is a global resource determined in large part by processes in the atmosphere and the oceans (which recognize no national boundaries) and because activities may soon reach the point of producing climate changes (inadvertently, and perhaps at locations far removed from the source of disturbance), the churches should urge governments to present for adoption by the United Nations’ General Assembly a resolution declaring the weather and climate system to be a global resource for the benefit of all humanity and establishing an international advisory mechanism to consider weather and climate modification problems of potential international concern before they reach critical levels’ (WCC 1974:11). 2

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• A re-examination of the scientific quest for truth in the light of the social-­cultural, political conditions which provide the framework for the orientation of scientific work. • The theological search for a comprehensive concept which overcomes the fragmenting theologizing in relation to God, creation, humanity and the Church (WCC 1974: 36). The Bucharest conference of 1974 clearly influenced the adoption of the agenda ‘Towards a Just, Participatory and Sustainable Society’ (JPSS) as formulated by the Nairobi Assembly of the WCC (1975). It fed into the major conference on ‘Faith, Science and the Future’ hosted by the WCC sub-unit on Church and Society at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology (1979, see Abrecht 1980), and a hearing on nuclear disarmament, with the report Before it’s Too Late (1981, see Abrecht and Koshy 1983) affirming that nuclear war can never be just or justifiable since nuclear war is unlikely to remain limited. The motto of JPSS was rephrased at the WCC’s Vancouver Assembly (1983) in the call for ‘Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation’ (JPIC) – which provided the agenda for the Conciliar Process from 1983 onwards. The theme of JPIC has elicited considerable debate on the claims for conciliarity, the deliberately (?) vague notion of ‘integrity of creation’ and the diverging priorities assigned to one of the key terms over the others (i.e. over economic injustices, violent conflict and environmental destruction). This debate culminated at the World Convocation on JPIC held in Seoul in 1990 (Niles 1992) and fed into the Canberra Assembly (1991) which adopted as its theme the prayer ‘Come, Holy Spirit  – Renew the Whole Creation’ (see Kinnamon 1991). I will return to ecumenical discourse on sustainability below, for the moment merely noting that the term sustainability was soon enthusiastically adopted – and adapted – in secular debates.

Secular Discourse on Sustainability What does sustainability actually mean? It is not possible to provide any adequate overview of secular discourse on sustainability from 1974 to let us say 2015 when the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals were adopted. My purpose here is to note some important shifts in the debate (see also Conradie 2020: 47–78). At first discourse on sustainability focused on non-renewable resources, following the report on Limits to Growth (1972). The question was how to sustain economic production for an increasing human population given that such resources are by definition limited (including minerals and also uranium, but for all practical purposes oil, coal and gas) and would therefore at some point run out of supply. Responses to this question explored matters of efficiency, including energy efficiency, the replacement of such resources through technological innovation, stabilising the human population, and austerity measures (tightening the belt) by capping

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per capita resource consumption. Each of these measures would help to stretch the use of such non-renewable sources until alternatives can be found that can indeed be sustained. If so, the question shifts to how long the use of non-renewable resources can be sustained. The Limits to Growth report understandably elicited a heated debate since it challenged deeply held assumptions about the need for sustaining economic growth. This need was assumed across the spectrum of socio-economic paradigms with socialists differing from capitalists only on how the production of wealth can be distributed towards a more equitable world. It also challenged the core assumptions of development discourse, namely that so-called ‘developed’ countries should assist so-called ‘developing’ countries to become self-sustaining in the production of material wealth. That prompted numerous further debates on the role of trade relations (GATT), management, education, technology, markets and marketing, but the need for sustained economic growth could not be questioned. In short, the question now shifted from the more technical question as to how the use of resources can be sustained toward the question whether economic growth can be sustained. However, by the time that the Brundtland report on Our Common Future (1987) was published, the debate on sustainability had already shifted from the use of non-­ renewable resources to the sustainable use of renewable resources. It was at first counter-intuitive but the problems posed by using renewables such as soil (for food production), water, forests and fish proved to be more intractable. The basic problem is posed by the rate of biophysical throughput that could lead to habitat destruction and therefore the loss of biodiversity and species extinction. This led to the recognition of the role of the carrying capacity of the land and of the planet as a whole and hence to the notion of an environmental footprint. The metaphor of carrying capacity suggests the load that a boat can in this sense ‘sustain’ – so that the question becomes what the maximum load may be (indicated by the plimsoll line) before the boat becomes unstable and at some point will necessarily sink (see Rasmussen 1996). The rate of biophysical throughput also had implications for sustaining the development paradigm. In response, the Brundlandt report mainstreamed the term ‘sustainable development’. In its famous definition sustainability is understood as the use of resources to attend to current needs without compromising the ability of future generations to attend to their own needs.3 It remains an unashamedly anthropocentric concept (see Hopwood et  al. 2005: 139). The concept of sustainable development remained sufficiently vague to allow for a broad consensus without resolving the core question, namely how the tension between wealth production and

 This widely cited definition of the World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland report) reads in full: ‘Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It contains within it two key concepts: the concept of “needs”, in particular the essential needs of the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment’s ability to meet present and future needs’ (Brundlandt 1987, Chapter 2, §1). 3

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ecological stability can be addressed. The report’s constructive response assumed the need for a five- to tenfold increase in the size of the global economy to meet such current needs while allowing for social-economic development.4 It gradually became clear that there is no direct correlation between resource consumption (or energy use) and economic growth. Insofar as economic growth implies a growth in biophysical throughput it cannot be sustained (see Ekins and Jacobs 1995). However, if economic growth is focused in the knowledge sector, increasingly using digital technologies, it can, at least in principle, to some extent be decoupled from resource consumption through a process of dematerialisation. There is evidence of ‘doing more with less’ but one crucial reality check is the curve of annual carbon emissions – which is still tending upwards5 even if energy intensity is being reduced.6 Not surprisingly, the Brundtland report also led to a heated debate. Some accused the concept of sustainable development as a way of greening neo-liberal capitalism. Leonardo Boff (1997: 67), for example, concludes that sustainable development is an oxymoron that only leads to confusion; it does not symbolise a new way of looking at the world (see also Castillo 2019). Others regarded it as a contradiction in terms insofar as it assumed economic growth, more specifically a growth in biophysical throughput. Development premised on such growth cannot be sustainable.7 Given conflicting development paradigms and the alleged ‘failure’ and ‘downfall’ of ‘development’ as a vision for society (see Sachs 2019), it adds to the confusion to simply add the qualifier that such development now needs to be sustainable. The question is therefore whether sustainability is subordinated to the growth imperative (dubbed weak sustainability) or whether the production of wealth is indeed limited by planetary boundaries (dubbed strong sustainability).  See the following formulation in a section of the Brundtland report on ‘Producing more with less’: ‘Given population growth rates, a five- to tenfold increase in manufacturing output will be needed just to raise developing world consumption of manufactured goods to industrialized world levels by the time population growth rates level off next century’ (§66). 5  The unpalatable truth is that greenhouse emissions have been rising steadily since 1990, also in industrialised societies – despite the temporary declines caused by the global financial crisis in 2008 and the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. See the annual Carbon Budget produced by the Global Carbon Project at its homepage (https://www.globalcarbonproject.org/). See also the latest report by Working Group III in the IPCC AR6 report. 6  See the latest IPCC report: ‘Global energy intensity (total primary energy per unit GDP) decreased by 2% yr-1 between 2010 and 2019’ (IPCC 2022 §B.2.4). The relative decoupling of economic growth from CO2 emissions is driven by improved energy intensity as illustrated by the Kaya decomposition. For details see again the 2021 Carbon Budget by die Global Carbon Project. 7  This is confirmed by Pope Francis (2015) in Laudato Si′: ‘In any event, if in some cases sustainable development were to involve new forms of growth, then in other cases, given the insatiable and irresponsible growth produced over many decades, we need also to think of containing growth by setting some reasonable limits and even retracing our steps before it is too late. We know how unsustainable is the behaviour of those who constantly consume and destroy, while others are not yet able to live in a way worthy of their human dignity. That is why the time has come to accept decreased growth in some parts of the world, in order to provide resources for other places to experience healthy growth’ (§193). 4

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Nevertheless, the focus on sustainable development remains the dominant approach to sustainability as is evident from the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg (2002) and the United Nations’ current Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). For the sake of collaboration between governments, business and industry and civil society it seems that the united agenda focuses on how the seventeen goals can be reached and how that can be measured in terms of targets such as the Human Development Index. There may be some gains in terms of poverty reduction and this does serve as a counter to unmitigated industrialised growth, but the danger is that this comes at the cost of rising inequality elsewhere and ecological destruction (see the analyses by Hopwood et  al. 2005, Sutcliffe 1995). The concept of sustainable development seems to be taken for granted and the mantra of sustainability regarded as sacrosanct as long as this can be situated under conditions of globalization. In the interim two further shifts took place in discourse on sustainability. At the Rio Earth Summit (1992) the focus was not only on the need for development but also for environmental justice. The concept of ecojustice was coined in ecumenical circles to express the link between economic injustices and the disproportionate impact of environmental destruction on those who are already poor and marginalised (see Hessel 1992). The ‘eco’ in ecojustice thus refers to the common root ‘oikos’ in the words economy and ecology. In North America the concern was on the adverse effect of toxic waste management on people of colour and hence the link between racial and environmental injustice. Among Indigenous people around the world the focus was on the colonial conquest of land, the impact of resource extraction and the loss of ancestral homes. Elsewhere the focus was on the plight of farmworkers on large commercial farms or on the plight of urban slum-dwellers experiencing the side-effects of economic growth. There is more to this than a utilitarian calculus of an unequal distribution of benefits and costs. It gradually became clear that economic inequality exacerbates the perceived need for economic growth with the affluent protecting their competitive advantage, the middle classes seeking to keep up with the Joneses, while the aspirations of the poor are to imitate the life-­ styles paraded by the middle class (see Conradie 2009). There is no rising tide that lifts all boats (see Rieger 2009). For every ebb there is a flow. If there is a trickle-­ down effect in the production of wealth, a trickle-up effect is even more evident in the distribution of wealth. The Covid-19 pandemic grossly exacerbated inequalities in terms of wealth, employment, education and access to health (Goldin 2022: 11–83). This is clearly a matter of justice, and not only to all humans. But it also becomes a matter of whether social tensions due to inequality can be sustained and at what costs. This may rightly be called the Anthropocene conundrum: how to equalize resource consumption across the world within sustainable limits, without assuming that the middle class (and the poor!) need to copy the lifestyles of the consumer class. This conundrum can only be resolved through environmental collapse or through globally coordinated efforts towards economic equality (see Lewis and Maslin 2018: 390). As Anton Rupert, for long the richest person in South Africa, once put it: if the poor do not eat, the rich will not be able to sleep. The distortions, inequalities and injustices that are tolerated in socio-economic systems can be

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maintained for a while, but if these are exacerbated, this will inevitably cause social instability and unrest – as is abundantly clear in contemporary South Africa. In this way economic inequality, a globalised manifestation of apartheid disguising its racist roots, must be regarded as a major threat to sustainability (see Jenkins 2013: 43–45, SACC 2009). The IPCC wisely speaks of a common but differentiated responsibility to address climate mitigation and adaptation. However, it is the inequality in (historic) carbon emissions and the disproportionate impact on so-­ called ‘least developed countries’ (LDCs) and ‘small island development states’ (SIDS) that continue to undermine both the Paris Agreement and the Glasgow Climate Pact.8 The other shift has to do with the absorption capacity of the biosphere, namely the ability of ecosystems to absorb the waste products of an industrialised economy. Everything can in principle be recycled but this takes time as this is subject to chemical processes that cannot be altered. This is not merely about municipal and toxic waste management or about addressing the long term challenge of nuclear waste. It is also the absorption capacity of the oceans and the atmosphere with regard to gases leading to ozone depletion, and especially the emission of greenhouse gases. This became internationally recognised through the Montreal Protocol (1985) and the Kyoto Protocol (1997). The rest of the story is playing itself out in the annual Conferences of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention of Climate Change. It soon became clear that the annual (increase in) carbon emissions cannot be sustained without jeopardising the global economy. Instead, there is a need to actually reduce carbon emissions to reach net zero arguably by 2050. This requires reaching a peak in annual carbon emissions, followed by a rapid decline. To achieve that goal remains elusive.9 Decoupling economic growth from carbon emissions is important but will not suffice. Note that the underlying question around sustainability again shifted. It is no longer whether, how or for how long the use of fossilised energy can be sustained. It has become a question of how the energy basis of the global economy can be transformed from fossil fuels to sustainable alternatives arguably within the space of 60 years from 1990 to 2050, of which the first thirty years was more important than any subsequent decade. Remarkably, at least since COP15  in Copenhagen  See the latest IPCC report: ‘GHG emissions trends over 1990–2019 vary widely across regions and over time, and across different stages of development … Average global per capita net anthropogenic GHG emissions increased from 7.7 to 7.8 tCO2-eq, ranging from 2.6 tCO2-eq to 19 tCO2­eq across regions. Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have much lower per capita emissions (1.7 tCO2-eq, 4.6 tCO2-eq, respectively) than the global average (6.9 tCO2- eq) …’ (IPCC 2022 §B.3.1). 9  See again the latest IPCC report: ‘Global GHG emissions are projected to peak between 2020 and at the latest before 2025 in global modelled pathways that limit warming to 1.5 °C (>50%) with no or limited overshoot and in those that limit warming to 2 °C (>67%) and assume immediate action. In both types of modelled pathways, rapid and deep GHG emissions reductions follow throughout 2030, 2040 and 2050 (high confidence). Without a strengthening of policies beyond those that are implemented by the end of 2020, GHG emissions are projected to rise beyond 2025, leading to a median global warming of 3.2 (2.2 to 3.5)°C by 2100’ (IPCC 2022 §C.1). 8

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(2009) this led to the recognition of social limits (see already Rasmussen 1975), namely the limits of societies not only to adapt to rapid social change but also to introduce such changes – which requires considerable political will and voter support. Moreover, it also requires a shift in cultural aspirations. The issue is therefore not only sustainability but also adaptability, about the social mechanisms that are available to induce voluntary social change and to do so timeously. Part of that question is whether the world’s religions can make any difference. This emphasis on absorption capacity has been taken further through a report entitled Global Change and the Earth System: A Planet under Pressure (Steffen et al. 2004). This is associated with the notion of planetary boundaries introduced through the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) in the context of Earth system science.10 This has led to the identification of nine planetary boundaries that define ‘a safe operating space for humanity based on the intrinsic biophysical processes that regulate the stability of the Earth system’ (Steffen et  al. 2015: 737). The assumption is that these boundaries describe a state of the earth system that does not risk destabilizing the Holocene epoch within which human civilizations emerged (Steffen et al. 2015: 747). One could say that the question is indeed one of sustaining, but then in the sense of extending a particular epoch within the geological timescale. If a transition to the so-called Anthropocene epoch is recognised as already there or inevitable, the question becomes one of sustaining as much continuity as possible with the Holocene conditions that allowed (human) civilizations to flourish. The implications of planetary boundaries for policy making have been picked up in the social sciences through discourse on a so-called ‘doughnut’ or ‘life-belt’ economics11 that defines a safe operating space between minimum requirements for sustainable livelihoods (the foundation) while not exceeding ecological boundaries (the ceiling). This is portrayed as a disc with a hole in the middle (thus a doughnut or life-belt). The twelve social foundations are inspired by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and include food security, health, education, income, peace and justice, political voice, gender equality, housing, social networks, access to energy and to water. Accordingly, an economy may be considered ‘prosperous’ when all twelve social foundations are met without overshooting any of the nine ecological ceilings. In short, a society needs to sustain itself but its ways of doing so also need to be sustainable. In my view this should also prompt questions around what it is that is supposed to be sustained. This requires circumspection given budgetary constraints

 The term ‘Earth System’ is defined by Frank Oldfield and Will Steffen in the following way: ‘In the context of global change, the Earth System has come to mean the suite of interacting physical, chemical, and biological global-scale cycles (often called biogeochemical cycles) and energy fluxes which provide the conditions necessary for life on the planet.’ (See ‘The Earth System’ in Steffen et al. 2004: 7). 11  The concept and associated diagram was developed by economist Kate Raworth in an Oxfam paper entitled ‘A Safe and Just Space for Humanity’ (2012) and developed in her book Doughnut Economics (2017). 10

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and ideological distortions. To say human life or even life in general would be deliberately vague. Our current use of resources? A consumer-driven middleclass lifestyle? Industrialised capitalism? Western civilisation? Indeed, what is worth sustaining? In other words, what institutions (universities and their conferences), forms of culture (mega-sports events, tourism), initiatives (extra-terrestrial explorations) or practices (driving automobiles, access to central heating, eating meat and fish), are important enough to maintain even though they may contribute to a high carbon footprint? Each of these can be maintained if less waste is produced somewhere else in the system so that the system as a whole can still absorb such waste. For that, some sacrifices have to be made somewhere. At a family level this is easily understood, namely to allocate more financial resources for a birthday party than for an ordinary family meal – as long as the total costs remain within the family’s annual budget.12 We, rich and poor alike, readily save some funds for the special occasion. The problem here is that the costs of a large carbon footprint have to be carried unwillingly by those who have not been part of the decision making processes, including non-human animals. Since the carbon footprint of some (countries) is excessive and since this pattern is being (carbon) copied for the sake of ‘development’, there seems to be a widespread inability or unwillingness to stay within a carbon budget (cumulative carbon emissions) that would be sustainable in a narrowly described sense, i.e. one where carbon emissions can be fully absorbed through land use (photosynthesis) alone (and not through the atmosphere or the oceans or, I daresay, geo-engineering). Put proverbially, the family’s annual budget may show a deficit in a particular year, or longer if there are some reserves, but at some point trouble looms. The deepest problem is that countries with high annual carbon emissions demand (since it is dependent upon nationally determined contributions) the biggest share of any proposed budget, leaving little if anything for the rest. At the same time rising economies (with increasing carbon footprints) and so-called ‘least developed countries’ demand their fair share of the budget by using the available fossil fuels to elicit economic growth. The only solution then seems to be to make the budget larger, i.e. the remaining total number of gigatons of carbon that may collectively still be emitted. That can be done but that translates into higher expected temperature rises, e.g. a 2.5 instead of a 2 or a 1.5 degree Celsius world – with all the implications that may hold.13

 Note here the IPCC’s observation: ‘Globally, the 10% of households with the highest per capita emissions contribute 34–45% of global consumption-based household GHG emissions …, while the middle 40% contribute 40–53%, and the bottom 50% contribute 13–15% (high confidence)’ (IPCC 2022 §B.3.4). 13  For details in this regard, see again the annual Carbon Budget produced by the Global Carbon Project. 12

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Continued Ecumenical Discourse on Sustainability Since Bucharest (1974) and Nairobi (1975) there has been considerable ecumenical engagement with issues of sustainability. Despite some ambiguity, there is widespread ecumenical support for the concept of sustainability. One may say that such support follows already from its etymological roots in the Latin sus-tenere (to hold), i.e. to hold up, to carry the weight, to keep something from falling or sinking, to carry on, to support, to allow something to continue for a period of time. The supporting role of the biophysical environment may be unproblematic except where this is explained in anthropocentric terms as if the earth is there merely to support, i.e. to provide resources for human activities. Theologically, one may say that such an emphasis on sustaining is best rooted in the doctrine of providence. God as Father sees ahead (pro-videre) what we may need in order to care for us. God as Mother nourishes and sustains us. Ultimately, it is God’s mercy, God compassion that sustains us, forever (Conradie 2017). Given experiences of suffering, this raises the theodicy problem: Why, then, does it seem as if God does not care? Given experiences of injustice and oppression, this question becomes more acute. It is only God’s justice that can sustain the world in the long run. But given experiences of widespread destruction, this raises the fear that God’s justice also implies God’s punishment. In response, the recurring theme of Psalm 136 is that God’s loyalty (‫ )חֶ סֶ ד‬endures ‘forever’ (‫)עֹולָם‬. This is precisely not a category that can be taken for granted or captured in any formula – as is illustrated in the various verses of the Psalm, in changing circumstances, amidst contestation, always open to conjecture. Nevertheless, ecumenical discourse on sustainability has become more a matter of ‘ethics’ than of ‘ecclesiology’ (see Best and Robra 1997). In some contexts, wherever there is an eagerness to cooperate with government, business and industry and other role players in civil society, the concept is embraced enthusiastically, nowadays with specific reference to the UN’s seventeen SDGs. In other contexts, there seems to be some hesitation regarding secular assumptions about sustainability. The qualifier sustainable may be retained but it depends to which other concept sustainability is attached to. Bucharest and Nairobi focused on a sustainable society. The assumption was that the ‘boat’ should not be overloaded in terms of material goods, that there should be a baggage allowance per person, also for those who take up rooms in the business class. Does that allow for ecumenical support for sustainable development? That clearly depends on the assumptions about what such ‘development’ entails. There is significant interest in ‘theology and development’ but also diverging views on the goals and mechanisms for such development. An ecumenical consultation held at Bossey in 1992 clearly expressed reservations about the underlying assumption that economic growth can be sustained, and described sustainable growth as ‘a contradiction in terms’, admittedly with a question mark. In response, scholars such as Larry Rasmussen (1996) and David Wellman (2001) shifted the focus to cultivating sustainable communities. The fragmentation of society suggests the need for moral

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communities in order to foster moral formation (Rasmussen 1993). Social cohesion is then regarded as necessary for such communities to sustain themselves. Others are attracted to the notion of sustainable livelihoods, especially in rural communities, given the need not only for food relief, but also for food security, food governance and food sovereignty.14 The notion of sustainable livelihoods is best understood not merely as yet another paradigm within development discourse but as an alternative umbrella concept. This means that development may be regarded as an aspect of livelihoods and not vice versa (see De Gruchy 2015). One may also speak more intimately of sustaining communion with reference to the sustenance provided by the bread and wine shared amongst each other through participation in the Holy Communion (Conradie 2001).

Some Concluding Reflections What, then, should we do with the word ‘sustainability’? Should Christians buy that back from the ‘word factory’ knowing that its price has escalated significantly given the popularity that it has gained since 1974? Should one swallow the word even though it has become ‘hard to swallow’, given the many layers of connotations attached to it? My sense is that it would be premature to drop the word completely, but it would also be unwise for the poor boy Daniel to invest too much in it to express his love for Hanli. One does not need to sustain love; it is love that sustains. Ironically, the one special word that Daniel has kept for Hanli is the word ‘more’. He uses it at the end of the story to ask for more kisses – not more words or more money or more economic growth. Let me offer some bold conclusions in terms of what Christian theology can contribute to multi-disciplinary discourse on global sustainability. • Under conditions of poverty, malnutrition, a lack of access to primary health care and adequate education there is a need for ‘development’, but to name it accordingly has become too misleading given the widening digitalised gap and levels of unemployment. ‘Survival’ would be more honest, perhaps brutally so. • There remains a local need to talk about sustainable livelihoods (sustenance) and, globally, about the carrying capacity of the ‘boat’ (or if going upwards the ‘lift’ or the ‘cable car’) of the global economy – but then with the implication that some passengers would need to discard some of their luggage. • The term ‘sustainability’ has become confusing, and such confusion plays into the hands of a ‘business as usual’ approach. Sustaining industrialised capitalism

 The University of the Western Cape where I am based hosts a ‘DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security’ to which students in religion and theology contributed various postgraduate projects. See https://www.uwc.ac.za/study/all-areas-of-study/centres/centre-of-excellence-infood-­security/overview (accessed 27 April 2022). 14

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• •

•

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or industrialised socialism is not possible insofar as it assumes growth in biophysical throughput. I hope that some form of civilisation can be sustained but to take that for granted by only asking how it can be sustained is to endanger any such notion of civilisation. There is not only a need for stability but also for adaptability and flexibility to confront random fluctuations. Stability may seem to be a typical characteristic of ecosystems (as Aldo Leopold’s famous maxim suggests), but adaptability is even more important over the long term, while rigidity is the road to extinction. The term ‘adaptability’ is a necessary one, but the slogan ‘adapt or die’ is hardly of any theological concern. It may be maintained, but only if spending patterns per capita to enable such adaptation are factored in. There is a widespread need for the virtue of resilience despite the many obstacles in acting locally  – and acting globally. In prophetic and apocalyptic forms of Christianity this is radicalised by the ‘even though’ of harsh realities  – even though the fig tree does not blossom (Habakkuk 3:17). What is needed now is social transformation, in biblical terms a metanoia, a change in our ways of thinking and in the habits of our hearts. Romans 12:2 actually speaks of a metamorphosis, not merely a change in form. The test is whether this can yield a transformation of the energy basis of the global economy away from fossil fuels to renewable alternatives (and possibly the reduction of energy usage) within a period of 60 years from 1990 to 2050, of which the first thirty years was the most significant.

In short, then, I suggest that sustainability cannot be the only relevant norm and has to be complemented by equity, frugality, justice, peace and resilience. It would not do to ‘swallow up’ such terms in a broadened or alternative notion of ‘sustainable development’. For the moment it is necessary to maintain the tangible tensions between such concepts.

Bibliography Abrecht, P., ed. 1980. Faith, science and the future in an unjust world, volume 2: Reports and recommendations. Geneva: World Council of Churches. Abrecht, P., and N. Koshy, eds. 1983. Before it’s too late: The challenge of nuclear disarmanent. Geneva: World Council of Churches. Best, T.F., and M.  Robra, eds. 1997. Ecclesiology and ethics: Ecumenical ethical engagement, moral formation and the nature of the church. Geneva: World Council of Churches. Boff, L. 1997. Cry of the earth, cry of the poor. Maryknoll: Orbis Books. Brundlandt, G. H. (ed). 1987. Report of the world commission on environment and development: Our common future. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/5987our-­ common-­future.pdf. Accessed 11 April 2022. Castillo, D.P. 2019. An ecological theology of liberation: Salvation and political ecology. Maryknoll: Orbis Books. Conradie, E.M. 2009. Christianity and a critique of consumerism: A survey of six points of entry. Wellington: Bible Media.

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———. 2017. Is it not God’s mercy that nourishes and sustains us … forever? Some theological perspectives on entangled sustainabilities. Scriptura 116: 38–54. ———. 2020. Secular discourse on sin in the Anthropocene: What’s wrong with the world? Lanham: Lexington Books. De Gruchy, S.M. 2015. Keeping body and soul together: Reflections by Steve de Gruchy on theology and development. Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications. de Lestrade, A. 2009. La grande fabrique de mots. Brussels: Alice Éditions. Ekins, P., and M. Jacobs. 1995. Environmental sustainability and the growth of GDP: Conditions for compatibility. In The North, the South and the environment. Ecological constraints and the global economy, ed. V. Bhaskar and A. Glyn, 9–46. London: Earthscan Publications. Francis (Pope). 2015. Laudato Si: On care for our common home, Encyclical Letter. Vatican City: Liberia Editrice Vaticana. Goldin, I. 2022. Rescue: From a global crisis to a better world. London: Sceptre. Hessel, D.T., ed. 1992. After Nature’s revolt. Eco-justice and theology. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. Hopwood, B., M.  Mellor, and G.  O’Brien. 2005. Sustainable development: Mapping different approaches. Sustainable Development 13: 38–52. IPCC. 2022. Summary for policymakers. In Climate change 2022: Mitigation of climate change. Contribution of working group III to the sixth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. https://doi. org/10.1017/9781009157926.001. Jenkins, W. 2013. The future of ethics: Sustainability, social justice, and religious creativity. Washington: Georgetown University Press. Kinnamon, M., ed. 1991. Signs of the spirit. Geneva: World Council of Churches. Lewis, S.L., and M.A.  Maslin. 2018. The human planet: How we created the Anthropocene. London: Penguin Books. Moltmann, J. 1985. God in creation: An ecological doctrine of creation. London: SCM Press. Niles, D.P., ed. 1992. Between the flood and the rainbow. Geneva: World Council of Churches. Rasmussen, L. 1975. The future isn’t what it used to be: ‘Limits to growth’ and Christian ethics. Lutheran Quarterly 27: 101–111. ———. 1993. Moral fragments and moral community. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. ———. 1996. Earth community earth ethics. Maryknoll: Orbis Books. Raworth, K. 2017. Doughnut economics: Seven ways to think like a 21st-century economist. London: Penguin. Rieger, J. 2009. No rising tide: Theology, economics and the future. Minneapolis: Fortress. Sachs, W., ed. 2019. The development dictionary: A guide to knowledge as power. London: Zed Books. South African Council of Churches. 2009. Climate change – A challenge to the churches in South Africa. Marshalltown: SACC. Steffen, W., et  al. 2004. Global change and the earth system: a planet under pressure. Berlin: Springer. ———. 2015. Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet. Science 347 (6223): 736–747. Sutcliffe, B. 1995. Development after ecology. In The north, the south and the environment: Ecological constraints and the global economy, ed. V.  Bhaskar and Andrew Glyn, 32–58. London: Earthscan Publications. Tracy, D. 1981. The analogical imagination: Christian theology and the culture of pluralism. London: SCM Press. Wellman, D.J. 2001. Sustainable communities. Geneva: World Council of Churches. World Council of Churches sub-unit on Church and Society. 1974. Report on ‘science and technology for human development: The ambiguous future and the Christian Hope’. Anticipation 19 (November 1974): 2–43.

Chapter 4

How Can Theology Contribute to Our Sustainability Goals? Lluis Oviedo and Sara Lumbreras

Abstract Religion has a responsibility in the addressing of environmental issues and the promotion of sustainability. The involvement of religious leaders such as Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama in environmental causes highlights the significance of religion in sustainability. However, there are questions about how institutionalized religion and theology can contribute to a sustainable world system. This paper provides a general perspective and guidelines on how Religion, in dialogue with Science, can contribute to our sustainability goals. Theology must become more contextually aware and offer clear guidance to individuals. A partnership between theology and science is necessary to distinguish between constructive and destructive beliefs, both fields having their own unique competencies. In the face of the climate crisis, theology has the potential to educate and inspire its followers to adopt attitudes and lifestyles that lead to a more sustainable future. Religion gives a purpose and justification for making the necessary sacrifices for a sustainable system. This can only be achieved if theology establishes connections with other fields, including technology and the humanities, and initiatives focused on sustainability. This requires a comprehensive understanding of the interplay between religion, society, and culture, with religion playing a role in conjunction with other social systems. Keywords Beliefs · Conscience · Function of religion · Sustainable systems · Values

L. Oviedo (*) Antonianum University, Rome, Italy e-mail: [email protected] S. Lumbreras Universidad Pontificia Comillas, Madrid, Spain e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Global Sustainability, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41800-6_4

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Introductory Remarks Many religious leaders and theologians have assumed a decided commitment for environmental causes. We have Pope Francis dedicating an entire encyclical to sustainability (Laudato si’ (Francesco 2015)) and Bartholomew I, the leader of Orthodox Christians, being referred to as the ‘Green patriarch’ and stressing the environmental concerns deeply rooted in Christian tradition (Theokritoff 2017: 116). Fazlun Khalid and other Islamic leaders have stressed the importance of nature in the Quran, starting a stream of Islamic eco-theology that is spreading in the Muslim world (Khalid 2010: 707–716). The Dalai Lama is vocally supporting the environmental cause and making a point, for instance, of offsetting the carbon emissions of his trips (Ambrose 2007: 16–18). Religious leaders are, according to some, the ultimate influencers, with a larger audience and deeper engagement than other similar figures (Torabi and Noori 2019: 344–355). In this landscape, some voices still ask what institutionalized religion and theology can provide relating to this issue. Indeed, some scepticism could be justified, since traditional theology, even if incorporating a model of the natural word and ideas about sustainability as a whole, has not been vocal about the environment or sustainability until these issues have become part of the common dialogue. We assume the broadest possible view when trying to discern what renders a society, culture or institution more or less sustainable. This is perhaps a good point to start the discussion: whether some religions, and especially the Christian faith, have historically contributed to more sustainable structures, or whether their influence in this matter has been less significant. From a historical point of view, for instance, can we say that the Roman Empire as a complex and articulated system was more sustainable than the model that Christian faith could inspire later, and that needed many centuries to work? Moving to modern times, again the question arises about how much this faith could contribute to more sustainable social systems, considering the three essential dimensions to sustainability: environmental issues, social issues, and governance. As can be seen, the idea of sustainability provides a new heuristic to better understand the role and function of Christian churches, and their theological efforts. In any case, the issue does not concern so much our past, but the present and our future. In this sense, the question becomes more pressing: to what extent do Christian faith and theology contribute to a sustainable world system? This is actually a highly complex concept, with many factors and dimensions involved, and such complexity and articulation places it beyond or besides the reach of religious means. The challenge of sustainability is in itself interdisciplinary, and any attempts at tackling it must incorporate multiple perspectives. In the case of religion, it has been argued that its role must incorporate giving support to civic-minded scientists, mainly by supplying moral dimensions or advice in persuading religious constituencies. For others, the main line of work should be the construction of worldviews that are appreciative of nature and where sustainability is understood as a key value (Jenkins and Chapple 2011: 441–463).

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For some, however, it is not intuitive to analyse sustainability from a religious perspective. Sustainability is technically complex, belonging to the category dubbed ‘wicked problems’ or ‘problems that cannot be treated with linear, analytic approaches’ (Copeland 2016: 730). This would mean that religion could be just one of the facets that need to be analysed in the problem. In addition, religion is confined to the group of believers that participate in it, while sustainability is a global challenge that incorporates the whole of humanity, so any of its perspectives would necessarily be limited. An answer to the perceived theological limitations can be found when we pay more attention to the human factor involved – together with many others – in such complex systems. It is obvious that the political, economic and technical issues move in a different area, but at the same time it is our conviction that ignoring the human factor would entail a serious neglect that could render ineffective any attempts to tackle the general challenge. Indeed, it is not just a technical or political issue, but a very broad process that requires the engagement of the hearts and minds of all human subjects involved in that development. In this sense, we need to pay more attention to aspects like beliefs, values and attitudes that contribute to increasing a conscience focused on ensuring a sustainable future, and how religious faith can assist in encouraging such beliefs and values. Theology needs to engage in this task to connect our core traditions with these needs and to show how much they need to be assumed in the articulation of a concrete theology of salvation, and not just one ideal and abstract soteriology. The present short essay will, first, offer a succinct review of the published literature to better explore the territory and to spot the main developments. Second, it will engage in a short revision of the historical dimension, as it is interesting when we try to better discern the meaning of Christian faith, values and institutions for the present issues. In the third section we will try to engage more theologically with the issue of the future of humanity, a topic clearly involved in the issues at stake. The fourth section will connect theology and beliefs to belief systems, as they clearly play a role in the current crisis.

Reviewing Available Sources The published literature on theology and ecology is immense, and it would be difficult to cover all of the rich tradition that has developed since the seventies, to became a standard theme in the eighties and to achieve a strong academic status. A good example is offered in three article reviews on books published between 2010 and 2015 (Watling 2014; Pedersen 2015; Copeland 2016). Several reviewed books overlap in these excellent reviews. The point is that theology has brought to maturity several models or approaches in order to deal with the current environmental crisis, and has established itself as a key interlocutor in the ongoing conversation regarding environmental issues. We can organize those contributions in two or three big areas: first, studies that are more theologically driven and that provide a broad

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case for Christian engagement in that field: second, essays more ethically oriented, and hence more committed to the attitudes and actions that should be encouraged in this new context; and third, a more fuzzy area that could be designated as broadly ‘spiritual’, and that may be placed somewhere in the middle between the theological and the practical dimensions. We do not lack theological arguments to justify an attention and commitment to environmental issues, like persistent pollution and climate change. Even if this is a relatively new issue, with scarce references in Christian Revelation and the Great Church Tradition, nevertheless it becomes relatively easy to find motives and connections that can support a theological case for environmental concern and care. Several views have been collected in the quoted reviews and books, as they try to better integrate the cosmological dimension, as part of the Christian message of salvation; or as they try to rethink and better adjust a dominant anthropocentric paradigm. The idea of a theology of creation, and an upgrading of Christian anthropology which is able to expand the concept of ‘subject of salvation’ to encompass the present and the future of humanity (and even other creatures) appear quite frequently. Not the isolated person, not even the whole of humanity, but animal species and the planet as a whole are now called to benefit from Christian announcement of salvation. The ethical motives clearly point to what can be deduced from such a new framework, at the same time that priorities and means are better described. The theological case for environmental concern is widely documented and does not need further development. However, the more recent emphasis on sustainability possibly adds new nuances and calls for some updating. We know that this alternative concept is more demanding, since it includes dimensions that have been ignored in the ecological cause: beyond the environmental issue, social issues and governance come to the fore as deeply rooted in designing a sustainable future. Theologians might consider these recent developments less interesting when the main issue continues to be climate change and the disasters we are already experiencing as a consequence. The Catholic Magisterium has launched the ideas of ‘integral ecology’ and ‘common good’ in the Pope’s Encyclical Laudato si’, which covers similar ground, as the central tenet of that document is that ecological issues cannot be detached from social justice and respect for life. In our opinion, the strong emergence of the idea of sustainability requires some re-assessment in theology and some adaptation to the new conditions that such a program represents. Several studies have already tried to make sense of that program from a more social-scientific perspective, stressing connections between religion and dynamics that contribute to sustainable attitudes. Indeed, they are interested in assessing to what extent religious bodies or communities can contribute to that most needed cause. Several published analyses show that religions provide moral guidance and values that determine behaviour and decisions in many areas relevant for a sustainable future (Kahle et al. 2015; Koehrsen 2015, 2018; Bomberg and Hague 2018; Leal Filho et al. 2019; Ives and Kidwell 2019; Silvern and Davis 2021).

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The study of Ives and Kidwell (2019) provides an interesting framework to better understand the possible connections between religion and sustainability through the dynamics of values. Indeed, religious beliefs and rituals promote and support, at different levels or scales, values that have become instrumental in dealing with these recent challenges, and in promoting essential transitions in fields like energy consumption or support for renewables (Koehrsen 2015; 2018). However, these and other studies point to the less linear or straightforward influence that religion plays in such areas. What is more, authors frequently use the term ‘complexity’ to describe the current situation and context, especially when considering empirical data and field research. To be sure, religious beliefs are deeply entrenched with political views, with cultural biases, and with economic status when we try to better discern the actual role that religious beliefs and practices play. The approach assumed by these studies if often systemic: sustainable models require a ‘systems view’ able to encompass the different factors here involved, all of them contributing, in a positive or negative way, to a more stable social and environmental fabric. The pending question focuses on the theological reception of those studies. A first step would try to include these sociologically- and culturally-oriented studies into theological attempts to show the relevance of religious faith in such areas, and even to build a more empirically infused theology, less speculative or grounded in a hermeneutic tradition. In our opinion, there is still some work to be done in order to integrate such studies and to make sense of them inside a theological frame. A more conscious program should take into account these different strands: • studies concerning the factors involved in the very complex dynamics that result in more or less sustainable societies. What does a sustainable society look like? • studies on the way religion and other belief systems contribute to more committed attitudes. How does belief influence our attitudes and behaviours towards sustainability? • sounder theological studies able to connect the current needs in our context with the Christian offer of salvation, meaning and resilience. Probably we still need to develop a research program able to highlight which factors in Christian faith, values and practices become more useful or functional regarding recently perceived threats and struggles. Several aspects come to mind besides the already explored issue of values, like: provision of meaning and hope, coping, resilience, therapeutic means, and social networking. In any case, some voices alert us to the risks of a purely functional or instrumental approach to religion (Jones and Petersen 2011; Ives and Kidwell 2019: 1360 f.). Such an approach would be theologically strange and even unable to get the true meaning of religion. However, studying properly the functionality of religion in the context of sustainability (or in any other context) should never be confused with reducing religion to those functions. We can see the practical benefits of religion while going beyond them in our understanding.

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The Historical Dimension Sustainability has evolved into a broad program that encompasses environmental issues, social concerns, and governance. The idea is very intuitive: we can distinguish between more and less sustainable organizations, living styles, and humanity as a whole. In all these cases, the distinction is applied to the present conditions but considering future states: the future developments of such social entities deeply depend on the current conditions that will determine their next stages. As can be appreciated, this concept and program entails a strong temporal dimension, in the sense that present and future are closely entrenched and are strongly interdependent: we design and improve current systems considering their future impact and durability; and those upcoming states, with their possibilities and limits, will result from the choices made in an earlier stage, often generations before. A question arises concerning to what extent this heuristic can be applied to the past evolution of societies and organizations, and how such a model can become ‘theologically informed’. Nothing prevents us from undertaking this analysis, and actually it can reveal some hidden dimensions of the historical processes and forms of cultural evolution. We can even apply a kind of ‘reverse-engineering’ to reconstruct how some social forms and cultural expressions became more enduring and resilient despite many setbacks. This approach can turn out to be quite promising when trying to discern which cultural forms have assisted in building more resistant and sustainable systems, in contrast with those that failed in preserving this main and elementary scope. The proposed program could seem like a déjà vu, or even a tautology. Indeed, it is quite close to applying the evolutionary rule: survival of the fittest variations, which are revealed only a posteriori, when we can observe which evolutionary processes appear as more successful or better adapted. In the same vein as living entities struggling to reproduce and survive, social organizations and even entire populations can be described as bodies trying to survive in the long run despite changes in their environment. The main issue, in our case, is to what extent religions as social bodies, organizations, and cultural forms are enduring and contribute to models of sustainable living. The question is not secondary. Many will remember the old thesis of Lynn White, published in 1967, claiming that Judeo-Christian religion was hostile to the environment and had become a main cause of ecological crises and unsustainable living styles, after breaking the unity between humans and natural world (White 1967; LeVasseur and Peterson 2018). This is not the only reading we can provide on this reality. In that version, the sustainability of Christian faith would be paid for by an unsustainable model of nature’s exploitation that was untenable in the long run. However, other interpretations can be conceived: the worst environmental conditions took place not as societies reached the highest religious level, but when these societies lost most of their religious intensity, or when the influence of Christianity faded away, according to many statistical figures. The ecological crisis has to do less with Christian faith and tradition and more with secularization, and possibly with

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what Max Weber called the ‘iron cage’ of modern rationality and development. The fact that industrialization took place first in traditionally Christian areas should therefore be seen as just a coincidence. In any case, we feel that Christian history can be analysed now through the lens of sustainability, being used as a kind of heuristic. In that sense, the question is whether that religious expression could have encouraged sustainable social models in the past, and in each historical period. Just as a counter-factual mental experiment, we can imagine which alternative models, besides the Christian, might have looked like, instead of the model that was dominant in Western areas. To be sure, several episodes linked to wars, persecution, and intolerance, now appear to be untenable: indeed, they needed to be corrected in later ages to allow for a more sustainable model, for Christian institutions and for the entire societies in which they were operating. We can hypothesize that Christian adaptability and cultural evolution reflected the need to create interacting models able to ensure their own survival, and that of their society – in other words, to the extent that the Christian faith could be kept and adapted to new conditions, the entire social fabric could find some enforcement and correction to avoid its worst developments and crises.

Theology and the Future of Humanity The question formerly asked about a likely theological dimension in that perspective is legitimate; actually, theology has cared since its earliest times about the tension between present and future, in an absolute or ultimate sense. We could even say the relation between past, present and future transcends the material reality of human beings, and religion being the organized form of relation with the transcendent, sustainability should not be far from its core. From this point of view, the emphasis on sustainability could be read in both senses: as a further ‘secularization’ of the original Christian message; and as a way to connect with and pursue such future concerns. In the first case, the current trends would mean a clear displacement of religious beliefs and theological analysis: the connection between present and future no longer belongs to religious faith or praxis, and still less to an engaged reflection based on ancestral promises, but to a more accurate, scientific, and technically based analysis able to highlight strengths and weaknesses in current developments, and to revealing future scenarios more or less bright or dark. What Christian Churches and theologians have been doing for many centuries now becomes a conscious task for those who assess risks, manage them, and can anticipate the outcomes from current trends in all possible areas. To religious voices are left the apocalyptic language and ideas, with some fuzzy hopes less connected to real present conditions and more to some general fears or expectations, deeply rooted in our minds and cultures. That is not the only possible way in which the ongoing trends may develop. Secularization in the West means that Christian entities have lost the monopoly they once enjoyed in the management of an ultimate expected future, and of the

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conditions giving access to it. This is true not just regarding the studies that try to better anticipate future trends and conditions, and to design present systems able to avoid the worst consequences. Traditional preaching resonates with this dynamic, as it often threatened the faithful with a catastrophic end if they did not convert. This discourse, and even this style, has now been assumed, in a secular vein, by those who warn about the big risks linked to climate change and other disastrous processes linked to the surpassing of the Earth’s sustainable limits (Dörries 2010; Jankó 2020). Furthermore, the representation of an ultimate future has gone to the hands of scientific and technical experts, like those gathered in the Future of Humanity Institute, based at Oxford University. Perhaps the most relevant – and intense – of these projects linked to the future of humanity are the ones related to transhumanist views. In their case, the future appears brighter and more promising, in clear contrast with the dark doomsayers that wave the flag of climate change and other incoming disasters. The gap between these opposing views of the future is, by the way, rooted in particular values and attitudes and attached to technology. For the techno-optimists, technology will surely develop a way out of every societal threat, including climate change. For tecno-pessimists, it is precisely technology which has led us to the doomsday scenarios that will now be impossible to avoid (Tegmark 2017; Shwartz 2021). Coming back to theology, a different approach, alternative to the secularization and religions Aufhebung (negation), is possible, one that considers a better collaboration between those two styles of future design and management. A possible approach is given by the social systems theory and the proposal to view religion as a system specialized in what Germans called Kontingenz Bewaltigung (‘coping with uncertainty’), as Niklas Luhmann claimed (Luhmann 1977). The future is always uncertain, and several social systems try to address things which present different degrees of unpredictability: politics, economy, science, education … Each system develops its own approach, for instance preventing instability, or providing means to cushion incoming shocks, or trying to better describe developments and their outcomes through statistical projections. Religious function and performance assume distinct versions: they can point to a radical change and the expectation of a transformative catastrophe, as done by the apocalyptic tradition; they can try to assuage anxieties and to hide the real danger, comforting a troubled and fearsome population; or they can encourage hope through an effective conversion that embodies the Gospel’s values and helps to fix current problems and to address incoming challenges. When we design more sustainable systems, religion can play a role not so much as doomsayer, or soothing down fears arising from catastrophic and pessimistic announcements, but rather as a convincing platform calling to personal and collective responsibility, and translating the traditional conversion’s demands into more environmental and social concerns. In this case the way religion tackles contingency or uncertainty is less by providing blind trust – God will always save us, despite our bad behaviour  – and more by calling us to change our lifestyles. The traditional invitation: ‘Unless you repent, you will all perish’ (Lk 13: 3, NRSV), resonates now as a call to assume attitudes more attuned with the need to preserve and assure a

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better future for all. The problem is how to translate into a new cultural and social context the moral codes that have always served as guidance for believers and expressed the central tenets of Christian faith: to love the Lord and our neighbour. It is clear that some stresses that were paramount in former decades lost their poignancy when compared with the new demands and urgent tasks to render our planet habitable for future generations. The ideal of love gets complemented with the conception of human beings as stewards of nature, as responsible for the preservation and benefit of the full Creation. The latter idea has been stressed as the core of the doctrine of Imago Dei by thinkers such as Middleton (Middleton 1994: 8–25). The understanding suggested here implies a sort of convergence between secular programs aimed at supporting sustainability in different social contexts, on the one hand; and the religious (Christian) program based on faith, hope and love, able to address concerns together with the greatest expectations for our future, on the other. Combining both strands we could get a post-secularized model in which both instances – secular and religious – provide mutual meaning and the reinforcement of a common interest. This view suggests that a completely secular program could probably lack impulse and motivation, as Kant observed in his moral philosophy, and as Habermas has highlighted more recently in his attempts to make sense of religion in advanced societies (Habermas 2006). This is important when we perceive the difficulty of convincing a general population and political bodies about the need to assume alternative models of growth and living. In the other direction, the proposed interaction is needed too: without a scientifically informed input about projections and future outcomes, Christian faith, theology, and Churches at large, would be unable to reformulate their hopes, to give more accurate content to conversion appeals, or even to assume a sustainable lifestyle as organizations.

The Role of Religion Regarding Beliefs and Believing We have become more aware in the last few years about the central role that beliefs and values play in any process aimed at ensuring a future for all, and not just a section of the population (after all, social justice is also a requirement for the sustainability of a society). Indeed, beliefs play a big role in all political processes. For instance, democracy stands or falls depending on how strong a population is convinced about its fairness, and the trust it places on its governing body (Sunstein 2021). The same can be said of other social processes, like the economy, the judicial system, interpersonal relationships, and even science: without enough levels of trust, shared values and beliefs, no social system can stand (Fuentes 2019). This conviction becomes more pressing when we design sustainable systems. They require very complex interactions at different levels: material, technical, managerial, economic and cultural. But a well-ingrained social system would hardly work if beliefs and values are neglected as secondary factors playing in these very entangled systems. Such a point is easy to observe when we notice that many people do not believe the scientific reports and studies warning about incoming disasters

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linked to climate change. Trust is required too when we are invited to change our lifestyles towards more fitting and less exploitative means, even at the expense of present sacrifices. Without ad hoc beliefs and values encouraging such an engagement, we cannot expect that a society will commit to limiting emissions or to consuming in a moderate way (Lumbreras et al. 2021). Now, the issue is whether religions, and especially the Christian faith, can play a role in instructing us how to believe in the right way. We are aware of many vices and biases that distort the believing process, and how difficult it becomes to believe in the right way. Here we find another case for which theology and science need to join their efforts and their specific competences: theology is in the right place to discern about constructive and destructive beliefs – or, applying the heuristic defined above, beliefs that are conducive to sustainable systems and beliefs that perpetuate unsustainable ones – after long experience conveyed by a tradition covering many centuries. Science can provide the means to distinguish between right and wrong beliefs within a proper range. Our proposal is that, after assuming the central role beliefs and values play at building sustainable societies and cultures, and after acknowledging the difficulties in overcoming negative biases, theology and science might be perceived as true partners in that task, a necessary synergy able to build a better, sustainable future.

Concluding Remarks Theology is called to exercise an adaptive effort and to become more contextually attuned, especially when incoming crises loom and people need clear answers and guidance. Theology can display a plurality of strategies and approaches, as it has done during the two millennia of Christian history. On many occasions it resorted to an apocalyptic vision which could make sense in the midst of great calamities and stress, as they were immediately understood as signs of the proximity of a radical and salvific end. On other occasions the vision applied has been the one of assuaging anxieties and offering consolation in the midst of great struggles. A third vision has been one of transformation, to adopt the typology Richard Niebuhr proposed in its landmark work Christ and Culture (1951): Christian faith able to transform culture and to render our own conditions closer to the expected ideal or model that the Gospels or the message of the Kingdom of God has imbued in our history and conscience. Before the incumbent catastrophic panorama we already perceive, Christian theology is more likely positioned to inform and motivate a general population of believers to engage in the attitudes and lifestyles that could ensure a better future for all. Religion provides a ‘why’ for sustainability, and a justification for the sacrifices that are needed in order to guarantee a sustainable system. This orientation is possible only if theology becomes more articulated with other disciplines, efforts and instances aimed at ensuring a more sustainable development, including those from the most technical fields to the humanities. This means that the

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proposed program will only make sense in a context of systemic understanding of religion, society, and culture, where religion develops its function in connection with other social systems.

Bibliography Ambrose, M. 2007. Compassion and respect: The Dalai lama talks environment. Habitat Australia 35 (3): 16–18. Bomberg, E., and A.  Hague. 2018. Faith-based climate action in Christian congregations: Mobilisation and spiritual resources. Local Environment 23: 582–596. https://doi.org/10.108 0/13549839.2018.1449822. Copeland, R. 2016. Creative adaptations in an interdependent world: Recent studies in religion and ecology. Anglican Theological Review 98 (4): 729–743. Dörries, M. 2010. Climate catastrophes and fear. WIREs Climate Change 1: 885–890. https://doi. org/10.1002/wcc.79. Francesco, Pope. 2015. Laudato si’. https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/ documents/papa-­francesco_20150524_enciclica-­laudato-­si.html Fuentes, A. 2019. Why we believe: Evolution and the human way of being. New Haven/London: Yale University Press. Habermas, J. 2006. Religion in the public sphere. European Journal of Philosophy 14 (1): 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-­019-­00657-­0. Ives, C.D., and J.  Kidwell. 2019. Religion and social values for sustainability. Sustainability Science 14: 1355–1362. Jankó, F. 2020. Fear regimes: Comparing climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic. Geoforum 117: 308–310. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.09.023. Jenkins, W., and Christopher Key Chapple. 2011. Religion and environment. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 36 (1): 441–463. Jones, B., and Marie Juul Petersen. 2011. Instrumental, narrow, normative? Reviewing recent work on religion and development. Third World Quarterly 32 (7): 1291–1306. https://doi.org/10.108 0/01436597.2011.596747. Kahle, L.R., A.  Minton, and C.-H.  Kim. 2015. Religious values as a predictor of sustainable consumption behaviours: A cross-cultural comparison. Journal of Business Research 9 (68): 1937–1944. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296315000041?v ia%3Dihub. Khalid, F. 2010. Islam and the environment–ethics and practice an assessment. Religion Compass 4 (11): 707–716. Koehrsen, J. 2015. Does religion promote environmental sustainability? Exploring the role of religion in local energy transitions. Social Compass 62 (3): 296–310. ———. 2018. Religious agency in sustainability transitions: Between experimentation, upscaling, and regime support. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 27: 4–15. Leal Filho, W., L.M.  Dahms, and A.  Consorte-McCrea. 2019. Sustainability and religion: Past trends and future perspectives. In Sustainability and the humanities, ed. W.  Leal Filho and A. Consorte-McCrea. Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­319-­95336-­6_35. LeVasseur, T., and A. Peterson, eds. 2018. Religion and ecological crisis: The ‘Lynn White thesis’ at fifty. London: Routledge. Luhmann, N. 1977. Funktion der religion. Frankfurt a.M: Suhrkamp. Lumbreras, S., L.  Oviedo, and H.-F.  Angel. 2021. The missing piece in sustainability indices: Accounting for the human factor. Sustainability 13: 11796. https://doi.org/10.3390/ su132111796.

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Middleton, J.R. 1994. The liberating image? Interpreting the imago Dei in context. Christian Scholars Review 24 (1): 8–25. Pedersen, K.P. 2015. Religious ethics and the environment: A review essay. Journal of Religious Ethics 43 (3): 558–585. Shwartz, S. 2021. Evil robots, killer computers, and other myths: The truth about AI and the future of humanity. New York: Fast Company. Silvern, Steven E., and Edward H.  Davis, eds. 2021. Religion, sustainability, and place moral geographies of the Anthropocene. London: Palgrave. Sunstein, C. 2021. This is not normal: The politics of everyday expectations. Yale: Yale University Press. Tegmark, M. 2017. Life 3.0: Being human in the age of AI. London: Penguin. Theokritoff, E. 2017. Green patriarch, green patristics: Reclaiming the deep ecology of Christian tradition. Religions 8 (7): 116. Torabi, M., and S.M. Noori. 2019. Religious leaders and the environmental crisis: Using knowledge and social influence to counteract climate change. The Ecumenical Review 71 (3): 344–355. Watling, T. 2014. Religion, ecology, science, and wisdom: Constructive dialogue on the environment. Journal for the Study of Religion Nature and Culture 8 (3): 352–367. https://doi. org/10.1558/jsrnc.v8i3.352. White, L. 1967. The historical roots of our ecological crisis. Science 155: 1203–1207.

Chapter 5

Environmentalism, Sustainability, and the Meaning of Technology Axel Siegemund

Abstract Natural science research, as well as the development of new technologies, follows a spiritual motivation that has developed since the Reformation. On the one hand, technology was to mitigate the outcomes of sin, and on the other it was about a replacement of nature. But the expectation of a better world, as well as the ongoing scientific mission, fell into crises when industrialization and urbanization led to new social challenges. The global criticism of technology developed together with a merely pessimistic theology in 20th century. Now technology became the place where sin resided; a violent act against paradise. Today we need to ask: Is Christian belief is about mourning for lost nature? Or can we create a spiritual relationship to technology, too? I suggest that we should regard technology as a realm of meaning in a secular and religious manner. We can give our artefacts, symbols and processes a spiritual meaning apart from our moral questions. We should understand that the modern emancipation of the human spirit is directed neither against nature nor against religion, but is founded in both. We, as engineers of our earth, can focus on the spiritual means of technology and engage in technology-based environmentalism, rather than be doomed to a pessimistic worldview. However, to achieve this, we need to develop a new understanding of the religious role of technology in global development. Keywords Co-creation · Engineering · Environmental humanities · Environmentalism · Technology · Paul Tillich

A. Siegemund (*) RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Global Sustainability, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41800-6_5

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Introduction From the 16th to the 18th century many theologians were spiritually motivated to undertake natural science research and invent new technologies. Until the nineteenth century technical progress was a spiritual issue (Stolow 2006: 3). The religious-like task was to mitigate the outcomes of sin in nature. This is why European societies welcomed the replacement of nature by technology. Especially liberal scientists, and also theologians, expected a better world through inventions and considered a scientific mission to be parallel to the religious one. During the twentieth century the situation changed rapidly. Industrialization and urbanization, together with new social challenges, caused a rising criticism of technology (Heidegger 2013) and progress (Latour 2004; Mumford 2010). This criticism developed in Europe first, and was later exported to Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In the second half of the twentieth century worldwide Christianity was merely pessimistic about development. Due to the environmental crisis situation, technology became the place where sin resided, whereas nature became something like a new paradise. However, the question is where the spirit can settle in a secularized techno-culture, especially when nature disappears. Is Christian belief about mourning for lost nature, or is it about joy over human capabilities? Can we create a spiritual relationship between man and his second nature, too? Or do we have to confess that the technological paradigm means a narrowed perception of reality? Is it right to expect nature to have a spiritual dimension, but technology to destroy the spirit? I suggest we should not only accept natural processes as imaging methods for belief, but also technology as a realm of meaning. Technical artifacts and processes have a spiritual dimension as we trust in them. Environmental technologies make clear that the environmental crisis is a human problem and not merely a moral problem. To produce nature and to create artifacts is not a contradiction as long as we understand that emancipation from and preservation of nature have to go hand in hand. The struggle for preservation goes ahead with decisions for sustainable technologies such as wind and solar systems. But also buildings will get a new voice, the voice of sustainable and disaster-resilient cities (Lange and Lange 2012). In this situation, can engineers focus on the spiritual means of technology or do they just wait for the next critique from theologians (Buchanan 2013)? Can the Church engage in technology-­ based environmentalism instead of innovation criticism? And can we find symbols that give meaning to environmental technologies and our own self-image?.

Creation and Human Creativity Enquiring about the role of technology in the modern world, we widely accept the idea that technology is a means for emancipation from nature. However, the so called physico-theologians from the 16th to the 18th century were motivated through the biblical creed, that God has created an inspired and meaningful world, to replace nature by a technical imitation (Krolzik 2003). The belief that nature did not happen

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to come to life by accident but through the divine will was no hindrance to the idea of improving God-intended nature through human-intended technology. According to the Christian belief in creation, both found nature and produced culture belong together. Each complements and does not harm the other. As nature was the place where sin drew power, technology became an instrument in setting human life free from sin. And technology was also the tool that allowed scientists to read the book of nature. Reading this book became as spiritual as reading the holy scriptures. In this way, the technical tools that opened up a new understanding of the world became symbols for faith and progress. In the 17th and 18th centuries the idea of an improvement of the creation according to God’s laws, a cultural and technical progress and an inner-worldly eschatological conception of salvation arose. Johann Valentin Andreae (1586–1654) outlines a world where science, research and technology play an important role. In architectural plans he addresses the requirements, crafts and production facilities which are necessary in order to enable a rationale of work processes. His buildings aim towards hygiene and functionality. Science and technology become the ‘most careful midwife of nature’ (Groh 2010: 520). All this is embedded in a theological framework to overcome the consequences of the fall of man. Andreae’s so called Christianopolis was devised for the sake of the ‘conscious use of God-created nature to contribute to the glory of the Most High’ (Groh 2010: 525). In this perspective the consequence of the fall is not only a sinful life, but a life with diseases, hunger and war. Theologians like Andreae started to compare a technical world with paradise, because technology would help humans to overcome diseases, to fight against hunger and to make the world a peaceful place. So the religious motivation for research has been in line with the understanding of nature as a means for human life as well as a challenge to this life. The invention of tools for mining and using natural resources came together with a high regard for nature; and theology became an environmental science. To praise the Lord for the nature he created and to use human creativity to provide a technical update for God’s creation was not a contradiction. In 1799 Friedrich Schleiermacher wrote: This is what we hope from the perfection of the sciences and arts, that it will transform the physical world and everything of the spiritual world that can be governed into a fairy palace, where the god of the earth only needs to utter a magic word, only to press a feather, if what he gives is to happen. Only then will every man be a freeborn, then every life will be practical and contemplative at the same time, above no one the stick of the driver will rise, and everyone will have peace and leisure, to contemplate the world within himself (Schleiermacher 2001: 158).

According to this understanding technology naturally fits into the human task of safeguarding God’s creation. Theologians can even speak about humans as ‘gods of the earth’. This means that ‘Playing God’ is not a sinful challenge of the Most High but rather a fulfillment of the creation mandate that is given to mankind. Until the nineteenth century, technical thought had a spiritual meaning in the Christian world. It was the way which God provided for humans to fulfill their responsibility in creation. This spiritual meaning caused a deep link between the humanities and engineering. The ability to reshape nature by technology was not considered in any way

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to be an interference with God’s creation. The link between human creativity and faith was also not destroyed through the criticisms of religion levelled by Darwin and Freud. With Darwin it was no longer possible to use the biblical worldview itself as a scientific revelation. With Freud it was not possible to make God responsible for each and every individual destiny. But the spiritual destiny of humanity could be technically approved. For Christians, human creativity remained a part of God’s creation, a present used for progress; and progress was wanted by God.

The Concupiscence of Reason During the twentieth century the situation changed rapidly and permanently. The first experience was the misuse of technology in the First World War. Christians understood that technological progress was not a one-way-road. It comes with two aspects, promise and threat. In the 1920s theologians started to ask whether technology could be a contradiction to the mission of creation. Throughout the whole twentieth century the idea that technology was some kind of a counter-creation spread out in the Christian world. Hanns Lilje still described technology as the indissoluble creative unity of spirit and substance. But Paul Tillich in the 1920s, and later within his Systematic Theology in the 1950s and 1960s, saw a loss of the dimension of meaning in technical rationality (Tillich 1953; 1957; 2011). Some theologians, together with philosophers like Ernst Cassirer, described a self-dynamic of technical reason beyond the scope of ethical design. Apart from ethics there is one crucial point: from an epistemological point of view, the dominance of technical cognition over other forms of cognition means that artifacts and rationality shape and limit all cognition. There is no critical distance to technology. And this makes it paradoxically easy to create a spiritual counterculture, as discussions about the digital show (Turner 2008). This point gets more and more attention because of the environmental crisis. Even though technology had become second nature to humans, their first nature did not become obsolete. But due to our technical reason we did not try to preserve that nature through technical abstinence. We rather tried to protect the first nature through the help of the second one. But there is still a missing link between technical development and the our thoughts about sustainability. How can we distinguish between the technical world and the real world when technology is the medium for our perception of reality (Franklin 1999)? We know that even environmental technology is not only the sum of the results of the actions of individuals, but its direction and dynamics is subject to social communication rules. Technology is a social construction (Hughes and Bijker 2012, cf. Feenberg 1991), and this makes the question of its meaning a social concern. We have to ask the different groups within our society for their special cultures of knowledge and belief, and for the different ways in which people use the same kind of technology.

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However, the communication within worldwide Christianity in the second half of twentieth century was totally different to the communication within engineering. In Christianity criticism of technology started in Europe and after 1950 it was exported to the young churches in Asia, Africa and Latin America. However, these churches in the so-called third world had new experiences that led them to deepen their criticisms. At the seventh World Mission and Evangelism Conference of the World Council of Churches (WCC), held in Bangkok in 1973, the concepts of ‘context’ and ‘culture’ came to the forefront. Rubem Alves described the atmosphere like this: Optimism? I didn’t notice any of that. […] Urbanization, the child of industrialization, has made big cities hell. Technology threatens the world with ecological disaster and has given the powerful new and diabolical means of destruction. Certainly secularization has destroyed many of our religious gods, but it has done nothing to drive out our political demons (Alves 1973).

This perception was in line with the understanding that the churches were called to build a counterforce. Believers fought against nuclear power, the WCC criticized capital-driven industries and local churches took part in activities against genetic engineering. Technology more and more became a means of sin and it was interpreted as a misuse of human creativity. Parallel to this, theologians started to regard and value nature in a new way. Especially after 1970 the call to preserve nature, and the fight against large-scale technologies like dam constructions and energy plants, came hand in hand. Now nature was no more the place where sin became manifest. Now it was a place of salvation. Nature became the representational counterpower against the progress of techno-culture. Theologically the situation is the opposite to that of the 17th and 18th centuries. Nature is regarded as the new paradise and the signatures of technical reason became symbols for sinful behavior. In the midst of this enlightened belief in reason, a doubt about reason arises, which is reflected theologically as a fundamental critique of the technological paradigm. The overall momentum of technology corresponds to a concupiscence of reason to which modern man has succumbed.

Disappearing Nature Today we understand why religion became a means for the re-spiritualization of nature. First, nature and religious faith disappeared through technical rationality. While nature was replaced by a new techno-culture we have not yet found a way to spiritualize this new culture. While the physico-theologians praised God for the human ability to overcome natural limitations, believers later asked for strength to work for the preservation of the vanishing creation; creation means flowers and trees, wolves and insects, but not power plants or hydro projects. The environmental crisis led to religious environmentalism instead of religiously motivated engineering. The result is twofold: First, environmentalism accuses technology of having destroyed nature. But this nature was no more a nature full of sin. According to

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traditional ideas, a technically-driven world should set humans free from sin. But now the experience was that sin came with this techno-culture. This is why, second, the absent nature became a proxy for the absent God (Siegemund 2021). Today our question is: Where can the spirit find a new home in a technically-shaped world? According to Andreae and Schleiermacher, technology itself should be the place where the spiritual meaning of human existence should arise figuratively. But this road nowadays seems to be closed, since the products of our creativity have become signs of loss and disappearance. Pope Francis in Laudato Si regards technology as creativity and power (Francis 2015: 102). He points out that man has ‘taken up technology and its development according to an undifferentiated and one-dimensional paradigm’ (Francis 2015: 106). The pope calls us to limit and direct technology, and to liberate humans from the technological paradigm. Whenever Francis values science and human creativity, he refers to John Paul II.  Francis himself seeks for an authentic humanity in the midst of the technological culture (Francis 2015: 112), but apart from it. There is no way for dealing with technology theologically. We have to limit the power of artifacts, we have to direct processes, we have to ethically control procedures. But how can we create a spiritual relationship between us and our creations when we have just one option – combating the momentum? As long as we cannot regard our creations as valuable creations of creative co-­ creators, the spirit will fail to find a new home within this techno-culture. Christianity should not go along with mourning for the transience of nature, but should instead be joyful about our capabilities. Christianity should not look like an alien in the midst of a technically-shaped world. Today’s activities to preserve nature do not mean an abandonment of the technological paradigm. Instead, we must try to protect water through engineering, preserve the soil through soil mechanics, fight for climate justice through power engineering and preserve plants and animals through smart solutions. For engineers, there is no contradiction between emancipation from nature and preservation of nature. For theologians, can the integrity of creation go hand-in-hand with its improvement?

Environmentalism in an Unfinished Universe From a religious perspective, humans have to deal with an unfinished universe and they do this through tools and technological reason (Haught 2014: 21). For Paul Tillich there was a link between being, technology, and spirit: ‘To comprehend the logos of technology, its essence, its characteristic forms of being, its relation to other forms of being, that is thus our first and most important task’ (Tillich 1988: 51). In this view, technology is not only being, but also becoming. It is not only materialistic, but also spiritual. Tillich attempts to understand technology through the essence of technical structures, and through realms of meaning. The technical function is itself one of the functions through which life creates itself under the dimension of spirit. Tillich wrote in 1927:

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We no longer have a mythos that expresses itself in symbols as past times had. We cannot determine a place for technology as they did. We can only contemplate the matter itself and interpret it and hope that in the interpretation something resonates from the hidden, symbol-­ less mythos that sustains our time and gives it meaning (Tillich 1988: 59).

Today’s Christianity understands nature as a realm of meaning, and technology – the most important cultural activity of recent last decades – as an attack on it. But is it right to expect nature to have a spiritual dimension, and technology to destroy the spirit? Having understood the difference between nature and creation, why do we accept only natural processes as imaging methods for our belief in creation? In fact, technology itself proves to be a sense-making process. Technical artefacts have a spiritual dimension as we trust in them. And this trust is an existential confidence when it comes to airplanes, nuclear systems or CO2 reducing systems. Especially environmental technologies show that our environmental problems are human problems and not merely moral problems. There are many ways in which we produce nature and a wide variety of ways to experience nature. Creating nature and creating artifacts is not a contradiction. The former archbishop of Guwahati/ Assam, Thomas Menamparampil, says that technology opens up an exciting path to development. He proposes that we should understand humans as co-creators in the universe (Menamparampil 2016, cf. Hefner 1989: 211). If the universe is really unfinished, then co-creation fits excellently to the task God has given to man. Menamparampil suggests that scientific and technological research should draw inspiration from the spiritual search. Following this path, engineers would be able to draw inspiration. But why should the stewards of the spirit reserve the same for the non-technical sphere? How might it be possible to link environmental spirituality and ‘godlike technology’ (Sachs 2011: 261) if we regard technology as a world apart from religion? Is it really true that we can observe the greatness of God only in the sight of a sky that does not include any helicopter, airplane or satellite? We rather could regard human creativity as a means to interlink the created sky to our co-created technology. And this will lead us to a new understanding of sustainability, because also in future we will ‘create’ sustainable cities only with the help of environmental technologies. From a theological perspective we have to ask, are there any inherently religious motives for the Church to engage in technology-­based environmentalism? Practically, the preservation of nature goes ahead with positive decisions for special technologies. In this situation, theology together with environmental humanities can focus on the spiritual means of engineering and on the assertions of meaning through artifacts, without blessing the weapons that destroy the planet.

Bibliography Alves, R. 1973. Mission in einem apokalyptischen Zeitalter. In Das Heil der Welt heute. Ende oder Beginn der Weltmission? Dokumente der Weltmissionskonferenz, ed. P. Potter, 241–246. Bangkok 1973, Stuttgart/Berlin: Kreuz-Verlag. Buchanan, M. 2013. Waiting for the next great technology critic. The New Yorker, October 29, 2013. https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-­of-­technology/waiting-­for-­the-­next-­great-­ technology-­critic [23 Jan 2023].

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Feenberg, A. 1991. Critical theory of technology. New York: Oxford University Press. Francis, Pope. 2015. Laudato si. Vatican City: Vatican Press. Franklin, U. 1999. The real world of technology. Toronto: House of Anansi Press. Groh, D. 2010. Göttliche Weltökonomie. Perspektiven der Wissenschaftlichen Revolution vom 15. bis zum 17. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp. Haught, J. 2014. Teilhard de Chardin: Theology for an unfinished universe. In From Teilhard to omega: Co-creating an unfinished universe, ed. I. Delio, 7–23. Orbis: Maryknoll. Hefner, P. 1989. The evolution of the created co-creator. In Cosmos as creation: Theology and science in consonance, ed. T. Peters, 211–234. Abingdon: Nashville. Heidegger, M. 2013. The question concerning technology, and other essays. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics. Hughes, T.P., and W. Bijker. 2012. The social construction of technological systems. New directions in the sociology and history of technology. Cambridge/ MA: The MIT Press. Krolzik, U. 2003. Art. Physikotheologie. In Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, vol. 6, 1328–1330. Tübingen, col. Lange, A., and J.M. Lange. 2012. Writing about architecture: Mastering the language of buildings and cities. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Latour, B. 2004. Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern. Critical Inquiry 2: 225–248. Menamparampil, T. 2016. Technology opens out an exciting path to the humans to become co-­ creators in the universe. Asian Horizons 10 (1): 33–53. Mumford, L. 2010. Technics and civilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sachs, J. 2011. The Price of civilization. Economics and ethics after the fall. London: The Bodley Head. Schleiermacher, F.  D. E. 2001 [1799]. Über die Religion. Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern, ed. by Rudolf Otto. Berlin/New York: de gruyter. Siegemund, A. 2021. Environmental sciences, apocalyptic thought and the proxy of god. In The apocalyptic dimensions of climate change, ed. J. Alber, 125–136. Berlin: de Gruyter. Stolow, J. 2006. Techno-religious imaginaries: On the spiritual telegraph and the Circum-Atlantic world of the 19th century. Globalization Working Papers 6 (1): 1–32. Tillich, P. 1953/1957. Systematic theology. Vol. 1/2. London: James Nisbet. ———. 1988 [1927]. The logos and mythos of technology. In The spiritual situation in our technical society, ed. J. Mark Thomas, 51–60. Macon: Mercer University Press. ———. 2011. Systematic theology. Vol. 3. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Turner, F. 2008. From counterculture to Cyberculture. Stewart brand, the whole earth network, and the rise of digital utopianism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Chapter 6

Desacralizing Nature Through a Deflationary Concept of Causation, and the Search for Alternatives Josef Quitterer

Abstract The historian Lynn White claims, in his seminal paper ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,’ that Western Christianity introduced a strict dichotomy between humanity and nature. This ‘dualism’, which paved the way for modern Western science, consists in the assumption that nature (unlike God and human subjects) ceases to be animated. In my paper, I discuss the following two questions: 1) Is this humanity–nature dualism an essential attribute of the Christian-shaped scientific worldview? 2) Are there alternative (non-dualistic) conceptions of the relationship between humanity and nature within the Christian-shaped framework of ‘Western’ scientific and philosophical thinking? In response to the first question, I argue that the mainstream notion of causation – the ‘deflationary concept of causation’ – indeed entails a specific view on nature, which can be interpreted as a form of desacralization: Natural processes are causally inert. As a consequence, the causal autonomy of nature disappears. In response to the second question, I present an alternative view of causation in which the inner dynamics of natural causes are vindicated. This alternative not only emphasizes the intrinsic value of natural processes relying on dispositions and powers, but also opens the door for divine and human interaction with the natural world. Keywords Agency · Causation · Christianity · Desacralization · Dispositions · Ecology · Empiricism · Explanation · Nature · Powers · Science

J. Quitterer (*) University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Global Sustainability, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41800-6_6

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White’s Thesis Human interference in the equilibrium of complex ecosystems is one of the main reasons for the environmental crisis. According to a widespread opinion, harmful human interactions with nature are based upon specific philosophical, religious or ideological presuppositions. In the literature we find the argument according to which the biblical tradition and classic Christian religious worldviews paved the way for harmful interactions with the natural environment. Lynn T. White, for example, claims in his seminal paper ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis’ that the Christian (and Jewish) tradition displays a certain ‘arrogance’ towards nature, which manifests itself through a declared superiority of humans within creation and the divine command to use and to dominate nature (White 1967). According to White, ‘Christianity in its Latin form (which includes Protestantism) … provided a set of presuppositions remarkably favorable to technological thrust’, which led to a desacralization of nature (White 1973: 58). There are many studies concerning the empirical adequacy of White’s thesis and, as far as I can tell, it remains an open question whether White’s thesis is true. As such, it is unclear in what sense Western Christians have displayed behavior which is detrimental to the environment. In my paper, I will not discuss the issue of the empirical plausibility of White’s thesis. Instead, I would like to turn our attention to the epistemological content of his argument. As a matter of fact, White does not base his thesis on statistics about the environmentally destructive behavior of Christian believers. He gives an epistemological reason for his thesis: ‘What people do about their ecology depends on what they think about themselves in relation to things around them’ (White 1967: 1205). We can therefore reconstruct his argument in the following way: Christianity in its Latin form has had a negative impact on the environment because this religion’s adherents share a specific belief or epistemic attitude concerning the relation between themselves and the surrounding nature. This epistemic attitude consists in the assumption that there is a strict dichotomy between humankind and nature – a human–nature dualism: ‘Formerly man had been part of nature; now he was the exploiter of nature. … Man and nature are two things, and man is master. … Christianity is the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen’ (White 1967: 1205). From this point of view, White’s thesis is not so much a thesis about the detrimental effect of a specific religion or its adherents on the environment, but rather a thesis about a specific conception of the relationship between humanity and nature and its effect on the environment. This relationship consists in a human–nature dualism. What does that mean? In what sense is there a dualism? If one analyzes the few arguments which White advances in his paper, the following pattern appears: The dualism between humanity and nature consists in the fact that (unlike human subjects) nature ceases to be animated:

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In Antiquity every tree, every spring, every stream, every hill had its own genius loci, its guardian spirit. […] By destroying pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects (White 1967: 1205).

Therefore, the main reason for the detrimental impact of Western Christian belief on the environment is a specific attitude concerning the essential form of nature. Nature is regarded as inanimate matter, only human beings, God and other spiritual entities are alive and causally active: ‘The spirits in natural objects which formerly had protected nature from man, evaporated. Man’s effective monopoly on spirit in this world was confirmed’ (White 1967: 1205). As a consequence, there is no need to interact respectfully with nature because it is just ‘dead matter’. Nature has lost its sacredness. I already mentioned that I will not discuss whether White’s thesis is empirically true, i.e. whether most Western Christian believers share such an attitude towards nature. I also will not address whether White’s thesis is empirically true in the sense that people who treat nature as inanimate matter tend to abuse and destroy nature – though there is a certain plausibility to it: if nature is nothing but raw material, it will be difficult to cultivate a respectful and ecological interaction with the natural world. What I will discuss are the following two questions: (1) Is humanity–nature dualism an essential attribute of the Christian-shaped scientific worldview? (2) Are there alternative conceptions of the relationship between humanity and nature within the Christian-shaped framework of ‘Western’ scientific and philosophical thinking? The main problem with White’s thesis, though, is that it is formulated in a vocabulary that is completely alien to the conceptual systems of science or the philosophy of science. This difficulty affects White’s conceptualization of the problem – humanity–nature dualism – and his search for a solution to the problem – the attempt ‘to find a viable equivalent to animism’ (White 1973: 62). For this reason, I propose a translation or reconstruction of White’s central arguments into a conceptual structure which is used and understood in the scientific discourse. What we need is a translation of White’s discomfort with the desacralization of nature – its de-spiritualization and de-animation – and a translation of his search for alternatives – the ‘viable equivalent to animism’ (White 1973: 62). If one tries to translate White’s remarks on humanity–nature dualism into the language of science and the philosophy of science, the notions of ‘causation’ and ‘agency’ seem to play a decisive role. When natural entities lose their ‘spirit’ or are no longer ‘animated,’ they lose their ability to act causally upon other entities. What is stripped from nature in humanity–nature dualism is the causal autonomy of natural entities. On the one hand, nature becomes pure matter and devoid of any proper forces with their own causal efficacy; on the other hand, the human subject, god, and other spiritual entities are distinct from nature because they alone are agents and can act causally. After this conceptual reformulation of White’s central argument, we can rephrase our two questions in the following way: (1) Do the standard Occidental causal models for scientific explanation confirm this lack of causal autonomy or agency within nature and the special (agential/causal) status of human subjects? (2) Are there

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alternative models of causation which could provide ‘a viable equivalent to animism,’ i.e. which re-establish the causal autonomy of nature and relativize the special (agential/causal) status of human subjects?

The Deflationary Model of Causation I would like to depart from what can be called the ‘standard view’ of causal explanation – the so-called deductive nomological (DN) scheme. The DN scheme has been developed to provide a model of causal explanation with a maximum of metaphysical parsimony – the ‘deflationary concept of causation’ (Stegmüller 1969: 85). It is based upon David Hume’s assumption that causality – like any other notion in science – has to be freed from metaphysical assumptions and reduced to that which can be empirically tested or observed. According to Hume, our everyday notions of cause and effect are filled with metaphysical meanings which cannot be verified – e.g. it is assumed that some power is transferred from the causative entity to the entity on which the cause has an effect. In an empirically sound conception of causation, this transfer of power cannot be tested and therefore has to be eliminated from a scientific view of causation: There are no ideas, which occur in metaphysics, more obscure and uncertain, than those of power, force, energy, or necessary connexion, of which it is every moment necessary for us to treat in all our disquisitions. (Hume 1748: §VII, Part I)

What happens if the powerful dynamics between cause and effect are stripped from causation? The only thing remaining is the regularity of the temporal succession of events. It is, though, decisive that these regularities in the natural world are not the product of some fundamental mechanisms between particulars being connected with each other. According to this view, there is nothing more profound to causal relations than regular patterns of succession. Hume puts this metaphysics-­ free conception of causality in the following way: We have sought in vain for an idea of power or necessary connexion, in all the sources from which we could suppose it to be derived. It appears, that, in single instances of the operation of bodies, we never can, by our utmost scrutiny, discover any thing but one event following another; without being able to comprehend any force or power, by which the cause operates, or any connexion between it and its supposed effect. (Hume 1748: §VII, Part II)

Even if Hume as an empiricist did not develop an explicit ontology, some ontological commitment could be drawn from his minimalist/empiricist concept of causation: it could be said that Humean metaphysics ‘is the doctrine that all there is to the world is a vast mosaic of local matters of particular fact, just one little thing and then another’ (Lewis 1986: ix). Causal connections are not a ‘glue’ binding these particulars together. The world is composed of many fundamental items, one standing independently next to the other. According to this ontological point of view, there is nothing in the natural world which could provide the properties, relations, and structures underlying natural causation and causal explanations. The

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deflationary notion of causation thus implies a causally inert nature without any inner potentials or intrinsic values, which could be used to establish causal relations. Where does the causal connection come from, if the events and particulars which are involved in the causal processes are powerless? In the case of the standard view of causal explanation, it is a logical deductive relationship between the antecedens conditions and the universal law on the one side and the explanandum on the other side, which provides the causal relation between the causing and caused entities. To give a causal explanation is nothing other than to provide the necessary and sufficient antecedent conditions. Therefore, the causal connection transcending a pure succession of events consists in man-made descriptions. As a consequence, nature loses its causal autonomy. Every causal relationship between particulars or events is shifted into the explaining, predicting, and constructing human mind. This causal understanding of nature as raw material which is supposed to be fully predictable and manipulable could be interpreted as a desacralization or disenchantment of the natural environment. We can summarize that, in the deflationary model of causation, there is a categorical difference between nature and the human subject. Nature remains powerless and causally inert, while human subjects alone can provide the necessary causal relations. The only place where we can locate causal powers is in the creative, describing, explaining, predicting, and constructing human mind. In this sense, the deflationary Humean conception of causation seems to confirm White’s thesis about the historical roots of the negative impact of modern science and technology on the environment: According to White, ‘modern technology is at least partly to be explained as an Occidental, voluntarist realization of the Christian dogma of man’s transcendence of, and rightful mastery over, nature’ (White 1967: 1206). The point is, though, that in Hume’s case it is a secular, not a Christian view of causation and causal explanation which is the reason for this negative ecological development.

The metaphysics of Powers White himself presents the spirituality and theology of Saint Francis of Assisi as an ‘alternative Christian view of nature and man’s relation to it.’ According to White, Saint Francis ‘tried to substitute the idea of the equality of all creatures, including man, for the idea of man’s limitless rule of creation’ (White 1967: 1207). It can be questioned, though, whether Saint Francis’ spiritual approach to creation can really provide an alternative to the humanity–nature dualism which – according to White – was constitutive for modern science and modern technology. What is needed would be an alternative conception of nature which can be integrated into a scientific understanding of humankind and nature. Saint Francis’ ‘idea of the equality of all creatures’ needs to be translated into a concept of natural causation which has the potential to overcome the humanity–nature dualism which is dominant in science and technology.

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For a long time, the deflationary picture of natural causality and natural laws was dominant in the sciences and philosophy of science. There is, however, a growing resistance against this empiricist concept of causation. In this critique of the Humean picture of causation, the notion of dispositional powers plays an essential role. The model of causation developed by dispositionalists is based on the notion of powers as the driving force of all causal processes. In this model, a caused effect is the result of a combination of powers which are exercised at specific levels of intensity. The effect occurs when the powers taken together reach a specific threshold which is required for a specific effect: The threshold account of causal production states that an effect is produced when some local aggregation of operative powers reaches the requisite threshold for that effect. In other words, an effect is caused when powers have accumulated to reach the point at which that effect is triggered (Mumford and Anjum 2010: 145).

What are ‘powers’? In the philosophical debate, the concept power is often used interchangeably with the concept disposition. Imagine a piece of sugar dissolving in coffee. One natural way of describing this process is to say that sugar is a substance that has the specific dispositional property of solubility and because of this disposition it dissolves once it comes into contact with (a big enough quantity of) liquid – in our case, coffee. The disposition cannot be reduced to its manifestation, because it can be assumed to exist even if it is not manifested. The basic idea of describing a thing in this way is that a substance is a metaphysically fundamental individual entity instantiating various dispositional properties in virtue of belonging to a substantial kind. By instantiating these and no other properties, the substance is in a certain way, that is, it displays a certain causal profile. When ascribing a power or a disposition to a substance, it is important to note that powers are not additional properties. Rather, describing how a substance is amounts to describing this substance as a particular having certain powers, which allow for it to enter determinate causal relations with other particulars. Take again the example of sugar dissolving in coffee. We can say that coffee is able to dissolve sugar because it exercises certain powers which correspond to the sugar’s power to dissolve in coffee. If the piece of sugar were exchanged with another object with a non-dissolvable material – a coin, for example – then coffee would still have the power to dissolve sugar but could not exercise it because it is in contact with a material for which it does not dispose of the power to dissolve it. If sugar is put into saturated water, it will still have the power/disposition to dissolve, but its power cannot be exercised in these circumstances. The question which matters for the purpose of this paper is the relationship between human agency and natural causation. As we have seen above, the deflationary concept of causation implies a strict dichotomy between a causally active human subject and a causally inert nature – a humanity–nature dualism. What is the relationship between human and natural causation in a metaphysics of powers? In dispositionalism, human agency is interpreted normally as a manifestation of mental dispositions or intentional mental powers, which consist in actions or just in the exercising of the mental power. For example, my intention to go skiing as soon as

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there is enough snow can manifest itself through the realization of my intention – my skiing on the snowy mountains. In this case, the dispositional character of the intentional state consists in a mental power which is manifested in the corresponding behavior. Or my willing power to lift my arm can be manifested through the exercising of the willing power – even if some circumstances prevent the execution of the act of lifting my arm. The point is that there is no categorical difference between mental dispositions and their manifestations (such as the willing of something) on the one hand, and the manifestation of natural physical dispositions, such as the solubility of sugar, on the other.1 Causation through mental dispositions of a human (or animal) agent is taken to be a special case of the more general causation by powers. Mumford and Anjum, for example, analyze causation through both mental and physical dispositions in terms of a combination of different powers, construing the effect as the result of an interplay between enhancers and interferers. Mental powers as desires ‘dispose an agent to act though they may not lead directly to action if they are not accompanied by appropriate beliefs and other suitable circumstances and indeed physical powers are also needed in order for an agent to act’ (Mumford and Anjum 2015: 137). Mumford and Anjum invoke the power of willing to raise one’s arm as a paradigmatic example of a mental disposition or power (Mumford and Anjum 2011: 206). Although the willing power is a necessary condition for the causal production of the action, it is not a sufficient one. This power can be effective only in combination with a set of other powers. In a similar way, sugar’s physical disposition of solubility manifests itself in the dissolving of the sugar, provided that certain other powers (such as the dissolving power of the liquid) are present and not being prevented from manifesting by any interfering powers. Starting from this dispositionalist picture of mental and physical causation, it is not difficult to sketch the picture of the interaction between agent-causal interventions and natural causes. If causation is analyzed in terms of a combination of different powers, the causal effect would occur as the result of a set of powers exercised at specific levels of intensity. The effect occurs when the powers taken together reach a specific threshold required for a specific effect. Within such local aggregations of operative powers, a ‘non-natural’ cause through human or divine agency would have no qualitatively different causal role to play compared to natural causes. The only thing it could do is interfere, prevent or enhance the manifestation of natural powers. As such, the human or divine agent’s causal power would just be an ‘additional power within the set of already existing natural powerful particulars acting upon each other’ (Gasser and Quitterer 2015: 257–258). For these reasons, dispositionalism could be seen an alternative view of causation in which the inner dynamics of natural causes are vindicated. This alternative not only emphasizes the intrinsic value of natural processes relying on dispositions and powers, but also opens the door for divine and human interaction with the  Besides the fact that some mental dispositions can be manifested in different – even opposite – directions, while natural dispositions normally manifest themselves only in one direction (see Quitterer 2020: 51). 1

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natural world. The assumption of powers not only provides a metaphysically robust explanation for natural causation that is compatible with the Christian tradition; it also enables a reassessment of the autonomy and intrinsic value of natural causation. The dispositionalist conception of natural causation leads to a reconsideration of the dignity and ‘sacredness’ of natural processes, as well as providing space for a meaningful reconstruction of the interaction between natural, human, and divine agency.

Bibliography Gasser, G., and J. Quitterer. 2015. The power of god and miracles. European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 7 (3): 247–266. Hume, D. 1748. An enquiry concerning human understanding. London: A. Millar. Lewis, D. 1986. Philosophical papers. Vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mumford, S., and R. Anjum. 2010. A powerful theory of causation. In The metaphysics of powers, ed. A. Marmodoro, 143–159. New York: Routledge. ———. 2011. Getting causes from powers. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2015. Powers, non-consent and freedom. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research XCI 1: 136–152. Quitterer, J. 2020. Active bearers: The ontology of mental dispositions. In Dispositionalism: perspectives from metaphysics and the philosophy of science, = Synthese library. Studies in epistemology, logic, methodology, and philosophy of science, ed. A.S. Meincke, vol. 417, 41–53. Cham: Springer Nature. Stegmüller, W. 1969. Probleme und Resultate der Wissenschaftstheorie und Analytischen Philosophie. Band I – Wissenschaftliche Erklärung und Begründung. Berlin: Springer Verlag. White, L. 1967. The historical roots of our ecologic crisis. Science 155 (3767): 1203–1207. ———. 1973. Continuing the conversation. In Western man and environmental ethics, ed. I. Barbour, 55–64. Reading: Addison-Wesley.

Chapter 7

Entrusted with Creation: God’s Therapeutic Trust in Humanity for Creation Care Jason Stigall

Abstract In this paper, I develop a new theological framework within the Christian tradition for understanding humanity’s vocation and relationship to creation. I argue that humanity’s vocation of caring for creation is indicative of a type of divine therapeutic trust – i.e. God therapeutically trusts humanity in care of creation with the aim of inspiring humanity’s faithfulness in that vocation. To develop this framework, I propose a theological reading of divine trust in the creation narratives of Genesis. Following, I further develop my account of divine therapeutic trust and detail how God can be said to inspire humanity’s trustworthiness with respect to the care of creation. I conclude by proposing two practical applications (and upshots) to this theological framework of Divine therapeutic trust – particularly with respect to issues of creation care, sustainability, and climate change. Keywords Creation stewardship · Divine trust · Gratitude · Therapeutic trust

Introduction In 1967, the medieval historian Lynn White published his provocative article, ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis.’ To this date, this prescient article remains one of the most cited contributions to eco-theological debates. White’s central thesis was that Western Christianity  – ‘the most anthropocentric religion the world has ever seen’ – ‘bears a huge burden of guilt’ for the abuse of the natural world by technology and industry (White 1967: 1205–1206). He references two teachings from the creation narratives in Genesis, which, he argues, pave the way for this instrumentalization of creation: (1) ‘humanity is made in the image of God’ and (2) ‘humanity has been given dominion over the earth to multiply and fill it’. White J. Stigall (*) University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Global Sustainability, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41800-6_7

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contends that these teachings undercut and replaced pagan animism, which saw the natural world as ensouled. Christian teaching, in contrast, endorsed a sort of dualism between humanity and nature and maintained that it was ‘God’s will that man exploit nature for his proper ends’ (White 1967: 1205). Regardless as to whether one agrees with White’s historical analysis, we might agree that the solution he proffers is almost paradoxical to his thesis. White (1967: 1207) posits that ‘[s]ince the roots of our trouble are so largely religious, the remedy must also be essentially religious, whether we call it that or not. We must rethink and re-feel our nature and destiny’. Interestingly, researchers in sustainability science agree that faith traditions have great potential in shifting moral and social values on environmental issues. As Hitzhusen and Tucker (2013: 368) remark, ‘most scholars of religion and ecology affirm that the world’s religions can make substantial contributions to environmental ethics’. At the level of systems analysis in sustainability science, Ives and Kidwell (2019: 1359) similarly concur, ‘religion does indeed have great capacity to effect change within society because its activities span both deep and shallow leverage points’.1 However, some theologians are less optimistic about the potential for change in the existing theological milieu and present vernacular around certain themes in eco-­ theology or environmental ethics. Take the concept of stewardship, for example. Edward Echlin lamented that stewardship ‘has not moved hearts’ and ‘easily lends itself to a detached and manipulative view of creation, with humans as chief players, and the rest of the earth community “resources” for human use and enjoyment’ (Echlin 2004: 16). Indeed, many others have levied similar critiques (and more) at the concept of stewardship and the way it is particularly ‘anthropocentric’ – as intimated by White earlier. Some theologians have worked to rehabilitate and nuance what this vocation of stewardship entails, minimally working out how to keep human dominion in check with ‘the responsibility to treat non-humans as God’s creation’ (Berry 2006: 6). All the same, ‘that human beings are called to be stewards of creation tends to be the default position within ordinary Christian groups’ (Southgate 2006: 185). In this paper, I want to offer a novel theological reading of the creation narratives, partially to cut through the terminological debates in eco-theology about the merits and problems around concepts like stewardship. However, my primary aim is to address the motivation problem raised by Echlin earlier – how do we tap into the Christian tradition’s protentional for catalysing a shift in values around the many environmental and ecological crises that we presently face? In first attempting to answer that question, I will return to the texts mentioned earlier in White’s critique  – the creation narratives in Genesis. The goal is ‘to rethink and re-feel’ theologically our nature and destiny and, more particularly, to reframe humanity’s vocation and relationship to creation in terms of divine therapeutic trust. 1  C. Ives, R. Freeth, and J. Fischer (2020: 213) understand leverage points as those parts of complex systems (e.g. social or organizational systems) that can be targeted with interventions aimed at varying degrees of change: deep leverage points address entrenched paradigms and values; shallow leverage points target change within the parameters of the system as it is.

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In summation, my goal is to generate a new theological framework out of this reading of the creation narratives in response to issues like the motivation problem. I will argue that we should understand humanity’s vocation and relationship to creation as being indicative of a type of divine therapeutic trust. Namely, God has therapeutically trusted humanity (with the care of creation), and continues to do so, with the aim of inspiring humanity’s faithfulness in that vocation. After developing this theological reading, I will further develop my account of divine therapeutic trust by detailing how God can be said to inspire humanity’s trustworthiness with respect to creation care. In the conclusion, I will propose some practical applications (or upshots) of this theological framework – particularly with respect to issues of creation care, sustainability, and climate change.

Divine Trust in the Creation Narratives of Genesis In Genesis 1 and 2, we find that every facet of God’s creation is intrinsically valuable – at each progression of creation, ‘God saw that it was good’. Turning to the narrative in Genesis 2, God creates humanity and gives them the role (vocation) of tilling and tending to a garden that God planted in Eden. In so doing, God entrusts the care of this garden to them both (the importance of this role is underscored by its repetitive mentioning in verses 2:8 and 2:15). Insofar as God values creation, God has put something that God values in humanity’s hands and care. As Annette Baier (1986: 235, 237) says of trust, an act of trust bestows discretionary power from the trustor to the trustee because the trustor’s act of relying or depending on the trustee for something puts that thing, as something the trustor cares about, within ‘striking distance’ of the trustee. These same features of trust are implicit in the creation narratives. After placing humanity in the garden, God gives the following injunction: ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die’ (Gen. 2:16–17).2 In keeping with our trust reading, the injunction in the narrative is not just a prohibition, it is an invitation to trust God. For humanity must decide how to live in relationship to God in virtue of the prohibition – to trust Him or not. On this reading, the injunction is not arbitrary, rather it seems to function as a proviso for how humanity is to live in its role as caretakers (some read, ‘stewards’) of the garden. If the divine-human relationship is predicated on care, then we have reason for God’s prohibition (death could befall humanity should they eat of the tree). Now I will readily grant that there is not much in terms of detail within the narrative that helps us understand how death follows from eating of the fruit, but understanding the injunction as an invitation to trust eliminates the need for an answer as to why God makes the prohibition – as if to say, if one had to ask for clarification, might

 Translation from New Revised Standard Version, Anglicanised (NRSVA).

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that be evidence of a lack of trust? To be fair, the number of interpretations seeking to explicate the connection between the fruit and death are legion (and we lack the space to detail some of those interpretations here). However, any rationale offered would do well to relate the injunction to humanity’s role in the garden (as we have in our ‘trust-reading’). There are a couple of remaining features of trust to identify in the narrative. Implicitly, putting the garden in the couple’s care seems to entail that God desires for the garden to be maintained (and that this care for the garden might be bound up with the couple’s own flourishing). In giving the couple the opportunity to take care of it, they are able to demonstrate their trust and trustworthiness to God. In keeping with Baier’s framing of trust, God’s act of putting humanity in the garden, to tend and keep it, bestows discretionary power to the couple. That is, God has put something God cares about ‘within striking distance’ of humanity. In so doing, it seems that God renders himself vulnerable to the couple insofar as he leaves it up to them as to whether they take care of things as entrusted to them. God’s trust in humanity is evidenced in the way he allows Adam and Eve to abide by the injunction. As Morgan (2022: 82) observes, God neither polices their actions, nor does He set up barriers to keep them from eating of the tree (as seen in Gen. 3:24 with the Cherubim and ‘sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life’). Instead, God trusts them to keep it by affording them space and opportunity to care for the garden and abide by the command on their own accord. We have said much about God’s trust, but what of humanity’s? We have already noted that God’s injunction invites humanity’s trust, but it also makes explicit the sense and degree to which they are vulnerable and it calls for a deeper trust of God. I might even speculate that the injunction creates the conditions required for humanity to have trust in God so that the relationship can not only deepen, but develop into a relationship of mutual trust and trustworthiness. Up to this point in the narrative (Gen. 2:16–17), humanity has obviously been dependent on God, but mere dependence or reliance does not meet the same threshold of risk found in trust (making oneself vulnerable in trust is the sort of risk essential for the deepening of intimate relations). Until the injunction is given, we know of nothing in the garden to which they are vulnerable. God had given humanity the discretionary power to carry out their vocation in the garden (others understand this in terms of humanity’s dominion (Gen. 1:26)), but this injunction defines a limit to their discretionary power (or dominion). Consequently, the injunction changes things because it sets a stage in which they must trust God. It also raises the stakes and heightens their reliance upon God because they can’t test the injunction as doing so would compromise God’s trust and potentially result in their death. In this, they are left to live in reliance upon God and God’s word. Interestingly, their vulnerability or risk is epistemic because they are not offered an explanation as to how they would die, should they eat of the fruit. Rather, they must rely on God, trusting in the goodwill of God’s command. We come to find that this trust is short lived in Genesis 3. The narrative shifts to a story of distrust, betrayal, and relationship fracture. But why think that the creation narratives are about divine trust if the couple were ultimately untrustworthy? Traditional Christian doctrine posits that God is omniscient. Why would God be

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said to trust the couple if God foreknew they would abuse their responsibility to care for creation? Answer: God sought to build a relationship of mutual trust and trustworthiness with humanity. The trust God offered on this reading is a type of trust that aims at inspiring another’s trustworthiness and it is tied to the trustee’s moral formation. As such, I propose that the theological import in this creation myth is a ‘trust-reading’ of the following sort. We are called to be faithful in our care for creation because God has therapeutically trusted (entrusted) the care of creation to us.

Therapeutic Trust & Moral Reform Psychologists and philosophers alike observe that trust can be extended as a pro-­ social or pro-relational gesture (often bestowing some type of benefit to the trustee). Trust in these instances – whether as an appeal to relational norms or a demonstration of good faith – prompts a response, ideally reciprocity. With these considerations in mind, therapeutic trust’s aim is what distinguishes it from standard accounts of trust. That is, in therapeutically trusting another, the trustor acts with the aim (or purpose) of promoting the trustee’s trustworthiness (Jones 2004: 5). As such, these trusting actions are intentionally pro-social, and usually appear remarkably generous from the trustee’s point of view (with the aim of inspiring the trustee’s reciprocation). Consequently, philosophers often characterize therapeutic trust as having a sort-of ‘bootstrapping’ effect because it gives the trustor a reason to extend trust and it gives the trustee a reason to be trust-responsive. As Trudy Govier (1998: 173) remarks, therapeutic trust is based on the assumption that people who are explicitly entrusted with certain tasks or goods will feel an obligation to live up to the expectation of others, and [feel] guilt if they do not do so. It is based on the human desire to reciprocate goodness and to live up to what others expect.

In our ‘trust-reading’ of the creation narratives, I am proposing that God has therapeutically trusted humanity with the care of creation because God aims at promoting our faithfulness to that vocation. Nevertheless, one might quickly protest that even if we grant this ‘trust-reading’, the creation narrative is ‘a story of trust given, trust tested, and trust betrayed…’ (Holtzen 2019: 157). How can it make sense to say that God therapeutically trusted humanity, if God foreknew His trust would be betrayed? In reply, God could therapeutically trust someone – despite foreknowing they won’t be trustworthy in a particular instance – because this is a sort of voluntary trust constituted by the long-term aim to inspire and inculcate trustworthiness (even if it happens gradually over extended periods of time). Despite the risk, this sort of long-term trust is often undergirded by practical reasons for therapeutically trusting human persons. Moreover, the context for these types of interactions aren’t usually one-off trust game scenarios. In the creation narrative, the setting is the divine-human relationship, understood as a type of close personal relationship. As such, an instance of betrayal needn’t result in the

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complete dissolution of the relationship. In fact, our closest personal relationships often have relational fail-­safes and are constituted by a nexus of positive and negative interactions.3 Consequently, when the conditions are right, persons can venture (yet again) to therapeutically trust their intimates – especially when such trust is in keeping with a long-term goal of prompting a loved one to become trustworthy. In the philosophical literature on trust, therapeutic trust is often employed over long periods of time, in keeping with a long-term goal of inspiring or inculcating a trustee’s trustworthiness (e.g. as a means of virtue development, demonstrating that trustworthiness or faithfulness, in certain domains, is a habit that is gradually developed). Govier (1998: 173) observes that therapeutic trust is often employed in cases of moral development (e.g. children), reform (e.g. ‘ex-criminals [and] petty offenders’), and teaching (e.g. ‘students and employees learning new tasks’). In these instances, therapeutic trust is ‘understood as an act of entrusting’ and it can be an unobjectionable means to this sort of moral development – unobjectionable ‘provided we assume that the expectations they are encouraged to live up to are reasonable and right, and the risks to third parties are kept at an acceptable level’ (ibid.: 173). In an analogous way, we can understand divine therapeutic trust as a similar means of bringing about humanity’s moral development and reform. We see this reflected in many of the redemptive moral arcs in the sacred texts of the Abrahamic faiths – i.e. where God offers humanity the moral transformation and reform that it requires. Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables offers a commonly referenced example of the moral reform that therapeutic trust can inspire. In the narrative, a bishop offers Jean Valjean – a fugitive and convicted thief – silver, telling him to use it to live an honourable life and become an honest, hardworking man. We can understand the bishop’s action as an instance of therapeutic trust (and it inspires Jean Valjean to do just so).4 In keeping with this example, Victoria McGeer notes that therapeutically trusting someone can provide a ‘hopeful scaffolding [that] can… serve as a very powerful mechanism for self-regulation and development’, inspiring the trustee to be as the trustor already sees them’ (McGeer 2008: 249). In turn, this may motivate the trustee ‘to be more trust-responsive so that they can maintain the respect and esteem of the trustor’ (Pace 2021: 11907). Many of the benefits that therapeutic trust bestows play an important role in inspiring moral reform. Consequently, these benefits feature as part of the mechanism for explaining how therapeutic trust inspires trustworthiness. Let’s consider some other facets of the mechanism. Given that therapeutic trust’s aim is often grounded by practical reasons, it also has a quality of being voluntary. When we couple this voluntary quality with the benefits that therapeutic trust affords, these 3  Referencing social psychological research on close relationships, Zahl (2021: 348 n.55) notes that even negative emotions, like guilt, have pro-social functions to generate ‘action patterns’ that are ‘directed outward toward [relationship] reparation.’ 4  Hugo (2008), 89–90. This particular exchange in Les Miserables can be found in Part 1, Book Two, chap. XII ‘The Bishop at Work’.

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features begin to resemble a gift-like quality (or unearned favour). Moreover, when the trustee recognizes that they’ve done nothing to merit the benefits of such trust, this ‘gift-like’ feature can give rise to the feelings of obligation often associated with receiving a gift. This comparison between receiving therapeutic trust and receiving a gift points to another mechanism that can explain how therapeutic trust can give rise to trustworthiness, namely, that the benefits of therapeutic trust often generate gratitude and a desire to prove trustworthy (akin to a desire to not squander a gift).

 ratitude Mechanisms, Trust, and the Social Functions G of Gratitude Our discussion of therapeutic trust in the creation narratives connects with gratitude in two major ways. Before we discuss the connection between therapeutic trust and gratitude, let’s quickly take stock of the structural similarities that each share. Trust and gratitude are often co-present with one another. For example, when Gia therapeutically trusts Tim with X (something Gia values), the trust given to the trustee can afford Tim certain benefits. In this way the three-place structure of trust (trustor, entrusted entity, and trustee) mirrors the structure of gratitude (benefactor, benefit, and beneficiary). In therapeutic trust, these structural parallels can even overlap: the trustor can double as a benefactor and the trustee can double as a beneficiary when they receive a benefit in virtue of a trustor’s therapeutic trust. These structural similarities between trust and gratitude connect with our discussion of therapeutic trust in two major ways: (i) gratitude can serve as a mechanism which explains how therapeutic trust can inspire trustworthiness; (ii) given this close connection and wide correlation between gratitude and trust, and the fundamental nature of gratitude in the Christian tradition, I would posit that therapeutic trust, at least in virtue of this close association, is an underappreciated theme in the theology of the Christian tradition. First, gratitude is one of a few mechanisms which can explain how therapeutic trust inspires trustworthiness. This point has much support from empirical findings in social psychology. Given that therapeutic trust is voluntary and intentional, there are good reasons to anticipate that the gratitude mechanism will be operative when (a) the trustee perceives some benefit resulting from their being trusted and (b) that trust is indicative of the trustor’s benevolent intentions. In combination, the reception of that trust invokes a feeling of gratitude, motivating the trustee’s trustworthiness. This speaks to the social functions of gratitude and the ways it can be a moral motivator. Gratitude ‘[prompts] grateful people to behave pro-socially’ (McCullough et al. (2001): 252); it also ‘urges [people] to contribute to the future welfare of [their] benefactors’ Gulliford, Morgan, and Kristjánsson (2013: 311). In turn, gratitude can also function as a reinforcer,

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making the benefactor ‘more likely to repeat their benevolent acts at later junctures’ (ibid.: 311). In this way, these two social functions of gratitude can prompt reciprocity. When we combine these considerations with trust, we have an account of an important social mechanism which both explains how trust linked with benefits can inspire a trustee’s trustworthiness (in multiple ways). We can also see how gratitude, linked with other attitudes, ‘helps to build and preserve social relationships through promoting reciprocity and trust between benefactor and beneficiary’ (ibid.: 299). A second point of consideration builds upon the first. Gratitude is cited as one of the most frequently experienced emotions toward God in the social psychological literature, second only to love (McCullough et al. 2001: 263). This point bears major support from the theological literature which emphasizes the centrality of gratitude and thankfulness in relationship to God. In particular, humanity, as a creature, is among those things which receive being from the Creator ‘as a unilateral gift’ (Oliver 2017: 148). The ability to receive the gift of being is itself a gift, and reciprocity to this gift is something that creation is unable to offer the Creator. However, ‘what creatures [can] offer to God is honour and thankfulness by being most fully themselves as they have been gifted that nature by God’ (Oliver 2017: 153). Bound up in the fundamentality of the giftedness of being, we get a glimpse of what it can be like for humanity to take care of creation as they have been entrusted – i.e. to allow creation the space and opportunity to express thankfulness to God by most fully being itself.

 he Practical Applications and Benefits of This T Theological Framework In this section, I will provide the practical applications and upshots of this theological framework. I list those upshots as follows. First, I see this theological framework as a way of addressing the ‘motivation problem’ in church settings and a means of targeting ‘deep leverage points’ concerning institutional values around sustainability and other ecological issues  – at least insofar as various ecumenical bodies and denominations can influence social and moral changes and practices via inter-­institutional dynamics in concerns of creation care. This theological framework also offers a fresh way of using theological narrative to harness the Church’s potential and ‘be a powerful vehicle for progressing sustainability’ (Ives and Kidwell 2019: 1360). The second practical application of this theological narrative dovetails nicely with the first, namely this theological framework is novel and modular in the way it can be applied in various denominational settings. Let’s move on to develop how each of these practical applications link up with our theological framework and provide solutions for the problems that we have raised.

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Upshot 1 – Addressing the Motivation Problem The first practical upshot to this theological framework is that it provides a tangible way to address ‘the motivation problem’ – i.e. the general lack in systemic change in Western churches for addressing issues around sustainability and human accelerated climate change. We have already discussed the way this reading of divine therapeutic trust links up with gratitude as a powerful moral motivator. Here, I review two additional ways that this reading can help address the motivation problem. (1) It construes creation care as being vital to our virtue formation Writing on conservation and the limits of nature, Martin et al. (2016: 6105) suggest that ‘we need fundamental shifts in values that ensure transition from a growth-­ centered society to one acknowledging biophysical limits and one centered on human well-being and biodiversity conservation.’ Our theological model connects humanity’s moral transformation to the formation of virtues that also intersect with what our environment needs. Further, by identifying creation care as a divine request centered around trust, we identify a way to make value shifts that not only enable sustainability, but also foster our own moral transformation. Writing on sustainability, Ives, Freeth and Fischer (2020: 214) highlight ‘a need to explore how value shifts might enable sustainability transformation … The fostering of “virtues” is another growing field of study that relates deeply to sustainability.’ This theological framework connects well with those proposals and identifies how people’s ‘inner lives’ and the desire to live in alignment with their values can both meet the needs of environmental sustainability as well as help foster relational virtues like faithfulness. In this way, the pursuit of virtue can double as a moral motivator in adopting values that center around creation care and sustainability. (2) It offers a portrayal of the divine-human relationship that is very interpersonal and amenable to norms of reciprocity (and human response). This reframed theological reading also identifies an explicit relational undertone that has been lacking from various accounts of stewardship – interpersonal trust. Trust is often distinctively personal. Mutual trust and trustworthiness are essential elements in ideal, close personal relationships that promote the mutual flourishing of all involved. As a result, this theological reading reifies yet another way in which humanity personally relates to God. It also makes the call to faith and trust in God all the more personal, mutual, and reciprocal – the God who calls humanity to faith (via therapeutic trust) first places faith in humanity. Moreover, with respect to creation stewardship, it also identifies an implicit expectation that God has of humanity regarding creation. Recognizing that someone has placed their trust can jump-start our normative drives for reciprocity and proving trustworthy. This theological framework draws upon central themes in relationship science that seem relevant to the divine-human relationship (at least in an analogous way), namely if the divine-human relationship is one of mutual trust and trustworthiness

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(or faith and faithfulness), then humanity’s response of faithfulness is required with respect to those things for which God entrusts to us. If we fail to prove trustworthy, we allow ruptures in our relationship with God to persist; and given that the locus of salvation is at the nexus of communion with God and fellowship with creation, our flourishing cannot be divorced from that of creation. The Genesis narrative portrays a complex web of creation, in which each part is interdependent on the other for its proper function and flourishing. As such, humanity’s flourishing is bound up with creation’s, and the state of our relationship to creation.

Upshot 2 – The Modularity of Divine Therapeutic Trust The second practical application of this theological narrative dovetails nicely with the first, namely this theological framework is novel and modular in the way it can be applied in various denominational settings. This feature is arguably as important as the first because the Christian tradition is made up of a variety of denominations with diverse attitudes, theological curriculums and liturgical practices. The Christian tradition in the United States is a prime example with a spectrum of theological views – conservative, evangelical Christians have clashed dramatically with liberal Christians on many issues related to climate change (Jones et al. 2014). This theological framework of divine therapeutic trust has the potential to transcend differences in existing culture wars in the way that it can appeal to the theological intuitions of both conservative and liberal-leaning denominations. This is vital for truly harnessing the potential agency of a unified, inter-denominational effort to move and collectively shape environmental values and social behaviours. For example, the divine trust component of the narrative lends itself to the evangelical emphasis on personal faith and relationship with God as it builds on intuitions from relationship science on loving relationships. Moreover, while this theological framework aims to eschew issues concerning anthropocentrism, it is still amenable to certain understandings of stewardship which, according to Southgate (2006: 185), are still ‘affirmed in recent major documents in both the evangelical and catholic traditions’. At the same time, it is compatible with theological understandings of God that are not as dominant. Holtzen (2019), for example, offers an account of divine trust that is amenable to the open and relational theistic models of God  – which overlap with more theologically progressive contexts. Morgan (2022) offers a portrayal of divine knowledge that conveys God’s mode of knowing in a particular interpersonal domain, i.e. the interpersonal knowledge of humans. Another recent account of divine therapeutic trust (Stigall 2022) has been developed alongside more classical or neo-classical models of God (retaining divine foreknowledge). One may wonder whether this framework for divine therapeutic trust still elevates humanity’s position in the created order, i.e. whether it really does rule out anthropocentrism. I am inclined to say that the framework does not elevate humanity’s place; rather, it merely narrows focus to humanity’s interpersonal perspective with God – that is to say, it attempts to make the call to faithfulness in creation’s

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care more direct and personal. I would normally be inclined to trace a particular account of creation care within this framework – especially one that de-centralizes humanity in the relational-hierarchy of creation – however, I worry that the particulars of such an account would automatically lose ground and standing within certain theological circles. The pragmatic answer to that concern is a reiteration of what has already been said, namely that creating a theological framework which is antithetical to accounts of stewardship runs the risk of failing to even take flight. The concept of stewardship, despite its baggage, still helps to highlight humanity’s responsibility in the environmental crises that we presently face – especially humanity’s responsibility in accelerating climate change. However, despite the bleak prognosis from environmentalists and climate scientists, divine therapeutic trust is also pragmatically aimed at offering a theological picture of hope to all of humanity. That is to say, despite humanity’s awful track record in creation care, divine therapeutic trust offers a portrait of what is sometimes called ‘hopeful trust’ in a moment when the skies appear to be growing darker (Walker 2006: 70). Perhaps this is our Golgotha moment. In the face of what seems to be inevitable death and catastrophe, we find an empowering hope in a faith that calls us to faithfulness – God’s faith in us.

Bibliography Baier, A. 1986. Trust and antitrust. Ethics 96 (2): 231–260. Berry, R.J., ed. 2006. Environmental stewardship: Critical perspectives, past and present. London/ New York: T&T Clark. Echlin, E.P. 2004. The cosmic circle: Jesus and ecology. Blackrock, Co. Dublin: Columba Press. Govier, T. 1998. Dilemmas of trust. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Gulliford, L., B. Morgan, and K. Kristjánsson. 2013. Recent work on the concept of gratitude in philosophy and psychology. Journal of Value Inquiry 47 (3): 285–317. Hitzhusen, G., and M. Tucker. 2013. The potential of religion for earth stewardship. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 11: 368–376. https://doi.org/10.1890/120322. Holtzen, W.C. 2019. The god who trusts: A relational theology of divine faith, hope, and love. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press. Hugo, V. 2008. Les miserables. Trans. J. Rose. New York: Random House, Inc. Ives, C., and J. Kidwell. 2019. Religion and social values for sustainability. Sustainability Science 14: 1355–1362. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-­019-­00657-­0. Ives, C., R. Freeth, and J. Fischer. 2020. Inside-out sustainability: The neglect of inner worlds. Ambio 49: 208–217. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-­019-­01187-­w. Jones, K. 2004. Trust and terror. In Moral psychology: Feminist ethics and social theory, ed. P. DesAutels and M. Walker, 3–18. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield. Jones, R., D. Cox, and J. Navarro-Rivera. 2014. Beliefs, sympathizers, and skeptics: Why Americans are conflicted about climate change, environmental policy and science. Washington: Public Religion Research Institute. Martin, J., V. Maris, and D. Simberloff. 2016. The need to respect nature and its limits challenges society and conservation science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of The United States of America 113: 6105–6112. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1525003113. McCullough, M., S.  Kilpatrick, R.  Emmons, and D.  Larson. 2001. Is gratitude a moral affect? Psychological Bulletin 127 (2): 249–266.

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McGeer, V. 2008. Trust, hope and empowerment. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 86 (2): 237–254. Morgan, T. 2022. The new testament and the theology of trust: This Rich Trust. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Oliver, S. 2017. Creation: A guide for the perplexed. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark. Pace, M. 2021. Trusting in order to inspire trustworthiness. Synthese 198: 11897–11923. Southgate, C. 2006. Stewardship and its competitors: A spectrum of relationships between humans and the non-human creation. In Environmental stewardship: Critical perspectives, past and present, ed. R.J. Berry, 185–195. London/New York: T&T Clark. Stigall, J. 2022. Conceptualizing divine trust. Religious Studies 58 (4): 857–877. https://doi. org/10.1017/S0034412522000427. Walker, M. 2006. Moral repair. Cambridge: Cambridge University. White, L. 1967. The historical roots of our ecologic crisis. Science 155: 1203–1207. Zahl, S. 2021. Beyond the critique of soteriological individualism: Relationality and social cognition. Modern Theology 37 (2): 336–361.

Chapter 8

The Theological Preconditions of a Sustainable World View Knut Alfsvåg

Abstract To solve the problems leading to climate change, theologians, philosophers, and scientists need each other. A similar interdependence of differing perspectives was maintained by the eighteenth century literary critic Johann Georg Hamann in a critique of what he found to be the Enlightenment’s one-sidedly instrumentalist approach to nature. In their one-sided emphasis on mathematical equations as the essence of natural science, the scientists were in Hamann’s view destroying the tools whereby nature should be appreciated. The problem is not the observation and collection of empirical data as such, but the interpretation of the facts according to which they appear as collections of brute facts to be exploited by humans according to their own preferences. As the antidote to this mathematical reductionism, Hamann advocates a strong theology of creation, according to which nature essentially is seen as divine communication. Hamann is not opposed to the pursuit of truth through experiment and observation, but diagnoses the shortcomings of the modern technological approach to nature in a way that anticipates contemporary ecotheological emphases, and he draws on a rich heritage in developing an alternative perspective. He is informed both by the understanding of truth as an aspect of reality as emphasized in the thought of Plato and Aristotle, by biblical creation theology, and by the New Testament teaching of the person of Christ as the union of nature and Creator. Hamann thus shows us how a theologically informed world view can complete and adjust the scientific one in ways that are helpful even in the context of the twenty-first century. Keywords Aesthetics of nature · Johann Georg Hamann · Nature as divine communication · Nominalism · Scientific reductionism · Theology of creation

K. Alfsvåg (*) VID Sepcialist University, Stavanger, Norway e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Global Sustainability, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41800-6_8

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Introduction It is not only the climate that is changing. The debate concerning climate change has also changed the relationship between theology and science. For a long time, this relationship was characterized by theologians trying to convince scientists of the significance of the theological enterprise, often leaving the scientists quite unimpressed. This situation has changed, at least as far as the academic world is concerned. Coping with the challenge of climate change requires political action, and political action is ultimately determined by values and priorities; it is not a question of mere science. Even scientists therefore now seem to understand that for their findings to lead to action, both the public and the politicians must be informed by issues traditionally left to theologians and philosophers to investigate. Climate change has in a new way taught us that we all are in the same boat; scientists, philosophers and theologians need each other. This is the gist of the argument in a number of the contributions in Harrison and Tyson (2022). The priorities that set the scene for the modern industrial enterprise, which seems to be the main cause of contemporary anthropogenic climate change, are the unintended result of the scientific, industrial, and technological revolution that took place in Europe from the seventeenth century. Working historically, it is therefore to the world view that shaped early modern Europe that we must go to find the intellectual roots of this revolution. Europe at that time was still predominantly Christian; hence the argument that a particular type of Christian theology is the underlying cause of climate change as we now experience it (Tyson 2021). However, this was a particular form of Christianity that arguably differed from premodern, more traditional ways of interpreting the Christian faith. Finding our way forward in the sense of exploring theologically situated resources for coping with today’s challenges, we may therefore have to work our way backwards to another, arguably better informed and more sustainable way of relating Creator, creation, and the human enterprise to each other. To defend this position is the primary aim of this paper. In doing so, I will first explore the kind of Christian theology that informed the modern technological manipulation of nature. I will then proceed to questioning it by looking at an eighteenth century thinker who criticized Enlightenment rationality as it occurred and did it in a way that in my view still makes sense as a critique of the one-sidedly manipulative rationality of the Western world. Hopefully, this will help us regain tools that are relevant even in the context of the challenges of the twenty-first century.

The Nominalist Revolution In the premodern, Platonic and Christian world view, the world was considered as transparent for the transcendent, thus communicating real knowledge of itself and its unknown origin to those who listened at the right wavelength. This constituted the world’s knowability (Gerson 2009: 20–23). Considering the finite a

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manifestation of the infinite implied a certain apophatic reserve over against the possibility of exact knowledge. For this reason, our understanding of the world is from this perspective always provisional and in need of improvement. This was a world view that eventually led to an understanding both of the homogeneity of everything that is not God and of the necessity for experiment and observation for its exploration, as both are strongly emphasized in the work of the fifteenth century Christian Platonist Nicholas Cusanus (Nagel 1984; Schneider 1992). It was thus not a world view that was averse to scientific advancement. But it did not easily lend itself to the establishment of exact knowledge. Cusanus suggested experiments with weights as a possible way forward but did not conduct any such experiments (Alfsvåg 2018: 25). In the fourteenth century, Duns Scotus and William Ockham tried to solve this problem by rejecting the apophatic reserve (Schönberger 1996) inherent in all variations of Platonism and introducing the scientific ideal of univocity (Broadie 2001: 251–256). According to this way of thinking, an adequate understanding of the world will only obtain to the extent that our words have clear and well-defined references. The goal of our exploration of nature is thus not to meditate on its relation to the infinite, but to investigate the relations between objects considered to be fully defined as observed from the explorer’s point of view. The ultimate point of orientation was thus no longer determined by a doctrine of creation, but by the human capacity for knowledge. The outcome of this reorientation was a far-reaching anthropocentrism that reduced the idea of creation from being the precondition for the adequate exploration of the world to being one of its possible conclusions (Kobusch 1994: 592). This epistemological reorientation and its repercussions did not enable the growth of modern science, but it became the favoured model for its interpretation through the process that has been called the nominalist revolution (Funkenstein 1986: 27). The outcome of this revolution was the modern world view according to which the world was no longer seen as the finite manifestation of the infinite, but as a compilation of brute facts related through cause and effect relationships, fully analysable through mathematical equations. The world is thus reduced to material entities without ontological depth or inherent value, to be manipulated by humans with the necessary knowledge of how to do it (Gregory 2008). Conceptual univocity may be the condition for scientific precision, but it comes with a price, which is the dualism built into the unbridgeable difference between the knowing subject and the known world. If matter and force are all there is, what about human consciousness? If consciousness, too, is reducible to matter and force, truth disappears, and with it the idea of science as somehow related to reality.1 And if it is not, what is it? Has the problem of unknowability, which the preference for nominalist univocity was supposed to solve, simply reappeared in a new shape?

 This is the world view of eliminative materialism. For a defence of eliminative materialism, see Rosenberg 1991; for a critical perspective, see Baker 1998. 1

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Modernity has struggled with these questions to the extent that one may be tempted to think that there is no solution to be found (Liston n.d.). Interestingly, there is a thinker who as early as the eighteenth century concluded that modern science was entering an ontological and epistemological cul-de-sac and tried to remedy the situation to the best of his ability. I am here thinking of Kant’s friend and critic Johann Georg Hamann, who wrote his metacritique of Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft as it was published. In 1762, he published an essay called Aesthetica in nuce,2 where he explains his theory of perception in a way that is sharply critical of the nominalist presuppositions of Enlightenment rationality.

Hamann’s Aesthetica in Nuce3 Hamann’s presupposition is that our perception of the world is conditioned by the divine ‘Let there be light!’ of creation (194, 24–27). He is thus consciously trying to renew the premodern perspective, according to which the world is transparent for the transcendent. Creation in this way endows the created with a capacity for communication; creation is God’s communication to us through the world he has created. The interpretation of this communication is no easy task, though, and for that reason, both the scholar, the philosopher and the poet are needed. We are in the same boat; we need each other’s help. Hamann thus defends the principle of a methodological pluralism in the exploration of the world, and unfolds this defence as a critique of nominalist reductionism both in relation to biblical scholarship and the natural sciences. Both the Enlightenment biblical scholars – the forerunners of what became historical-critical Bible research  – and the natural scientists commit the error of what Hamann calls ‘the mathematical original sin’ (202, 9), i.e., they are only interested in facts and have no interest in their significance as the communication of divine presence within the area of the created (214, 10). Admittedly, there is a difference between the reality of the divine and triviality of the phenomena through which it makes itself known, but this difference is by Hamann interpreted as divine self-emptying. Compared to the eternal One, the facts of the created world seem to be nothing. The reality, however, is that these facts are the mode of divine presence as the apparent nothingness of God who fills all in all (204, 11–14) (Fritsch 1998: 11–12). Even natural science is thus seen by Hamann as the hermeneutics of nature conceived as divine revelation. This is not a critique of the understanding of science as founded on experiment and observation; on the contrary, Hamann’s understanding  Hamann 1949–1957: vol. 2, 195–217 (page and line numbers in the following refer to this edition), recently republished as an e-book by Amazon. For an English translation, see Hamann 2007: 60–95. 3  For a  more detailed discussion with  more references to  secondary literature, see Alfsvåg 2018: 71–79. 2

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of perception is strongly influenced by his reading of the works of David Hume (Alfsvåg 2018: 66). But Hamann does not accept the reduction of science to sterile computation, which he considers a kind of Gnosticism (207, 16) (Alfsvåg 2018: 75). In Hamann’s view, nature is thus flayed (206, 13) of the parts it uses to communicate with us through our sensations and passions (206, 1). He is not explicit concerning the target of this critique in Aesthetica, but elsewhere he identified it as ‘the father of the newer philosophy’, i.e., Descartes (Alfsvåg 2018: 75). Hamann has no objection to the Enlightenment principle of there being a correspondence between reason and revelation. After all, it is nothing but reasonable that reason should correspond to the reality it explores. But he does not subscribe to the Deist reduction of revelation to the limits posited by the nominalist understanding of rationality. On the contrary, Hamann expands the idea of rationality to let it correspond to the dimensions of a divinely created reality. The problem of not doing so is in Hamann’s view that it all too easily paves the way for nature being used as a mere instrument for a self-centred human dominion (Moustakas 2003: 213). The unfortunate implications of nominalism’s inherent anthropocentrism are thus clearly identified by Hamann. For Hamann, the ultimate foundation of the dignity of the created world is the incarnation. The presence of God in the world in the shape of a human being establishes an analogy between the human and the Creator which ultimately informs all creatures (206, 32). Christology thus gives us a model for exploring the reality of divine presence without having to modify our understanding of this presence according to preconceived ideas of the divine (Fritsch 1998). Hamann’s scientific ideal is thus an emphasis on an experience-based understanding of perception which still is open to a theologically and metaphysically informed appreciation of its significance.

Hamann’s Critique of Kant Hamann followed Hume in his critique of the Enlightenment’s untroubled combination of a nominalist epistemology with a realist ontology. Hume’s critique also challenged Kant, who was introduced to Hume by Hamann (Brose 2006: II, 625–641), who was among the few eighteenth century German intellectuals who were fluent in English. To regain a more stable footing for science Kant wrote his Kritik der reinen Vernunft, which was published in 1781. Hamann was not at all satisfied with Kant’s attempt at refuting Hume and wrote a critique of the Kritik which he called Metakritik über den Purismum der Vernunft (Metacritique of the Purity of Reason).4 The word ‘metacritique’ was coined by Hamann on this occasion (Betz 2009: 243). According

4  Hamann 1949–1957: 3281–289; page and line numbers in the following refer to this edition. English translation in Dickson 1995: 519–525, and in Hamann 2007: 215–218. For more detailed discussion, see Alfsvåg 2018: 95–105.

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to Dickson 1995: 21–24, this concept is useful as a general characteristic of Hamann’s thought. Hamann’s main objection against Kant is that his transcendental analysis represents an attempt at abstracting reason from what informs it, which in Hamann’s view is tradition, experience, and language (284, 9–24). Kant’s ‘pure reason’ is reason void of context,5 which in Hamann’s view is something that does not exist. Reason only works as embedded in context and experience. Science built on the foundation Kant wants to give it is thus in Hamann’s view as stable as quicksilver (285, 3–13). Kant’s attempt at taking himself out of history is a precise example of what Hamann in Aesthetica had described as the flaying of nature, and which from Hamann’s point of view can only be described as a kind of Gnosticism (285, 14–16). Hamann has, during the almost 20 years that had passed since Aesthetica, not forgotten his insistence on the necessity of cooperation between the scholar and the poet. In Metakritik he explores this idea through an investigation of the difference between an intuitive or metaphorical and a discursive or conceptual way of reasoning. The latter is according to Hamann characterized by a reduction of relational expressions to nouns which preferably should describe measurable quantities (‘because’ becomes ‘causality’). Hamann still insists that both ways of using reason have their appropriate applications. The problem of Kant, however, is that he prefers the latter with a one-sidedness that suggests the rule-governed universality of mathematics as the paradigm of rationality (Alfsvåg 2018: 99). Useful as the mathematization of nature undoubtedly is, the philologically oriented Hamann can never accept it as definitive. Knowledge is for Hamann always dependent on experiencing the world from within a specific context (Dickson 1995: 19–24), which to a large extent is defined by language (Beiser 1987: 39). But does not Hamann in this way land himself in the very problem Kant tried to solve? If there is no context-independent, transcendental subject, are not all perspectives equally valid, thus forcing us into the quagmire of endlessly competing subjectivities? No, this is according to Hamann not the case. To show that, Hamann replaces Kant’s transcendental analysis of time and space with another one, taking linguistic communication as its starting point. Time and space are for Hamann universally valid points of orientation because our concepts are shaped by the persistent influence of the senses of hearing (which implies time) and sight (which implies space) as involved in the processes of communication (286, 14–28). Hamann thus restates the point of departure of Aesthetica: it is creation as communication that precedes and grounds the existence of the knowing subject (von Lüpke 2011: 23). Nor does Hamann accept the distinction between sensation and understanding that undergirds Kant’s separation of forms of intuition from categories of understanding. Materiality (sensation) and intelligibility (understanding) are rather to be integrated according to the irreducibility and inseparability of the two natures of Christ; they are two aspects of a single process (287) (Dickson 1995: 300). Meanings of words are determined by their use (284, 25–26). There is an

 It thus represents reason’s self-deification; see Moustakas 2003: 233–236.

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anticipation of a Wittgensteinian insight here (Dickson 1995: 314). For Hamann, this sets the sacramentality of language as the basic point of orientation for any plausible world view (289, 21–22). Humans exist as addressed. They understand themselves as created beings or not at all. If this principle is not accepted, the world view will in Hamann’s view be hopelessly inconsistent. This does not leave us with an understanding of science as nothing but subjective opinion. But its conclusions will never proceed to the level where they are complete and not in need of improvement.

Theology of Creation as Philosophy of Science The universe is not a human invention. But humans are, as far as it is known to us today, the part of it that best understands it, and therefore the part that most easily succumbs to the temptation of handling it egoistically and short-sightedly. If this handling of it is to be avoided, we need an understanding of the world’s inherent value that can act as a counterbalance against the human proclivity for misusing it. In his opposition against the Enlightenment representatives of what he considered an unduly anthropocentric world view, Hamann insisted that this counterbalance necessarily will be some variation of a theology of creation. The world is a gift from an origin that is not a part of this world, and this sets the adequate parameters for humans perceiving and investigating it. We are thus liberated from the obligation of seeing ourselves as the centre of the universe. In exploring this creation-based metaphysics, the philologist and literary critic Hamann went to the classical creation narratives, first and foremost as found in the Book of Genesis, but not in a way that would let this particular way of expressing a theology of creation limit the scientific investigation. On the contrary, Hamann follows Hume in insisting on science as being one-sidedly informed by perception. There is thus no concession to any kind of religiously informed fundamentalism in Hamann, the difference between theology-based expectations and actual perception being seen rather as an example of divine condescendence. Any theology of creation worth its name endows the created world with a certain dignity, and thus entails the obligation of respecting this dignity. The significance of a theology of creation in Hamann’s view is therefore not in telling us how the world came to be, but in letting it express itself as God’s communication with us. This endows nature with a dignity that lets us approach it with care and respect. This approach is strengthened by the doctrine of the incarnation, which explores the created world as the area of divine presence. This entails an approach to nature that is informed by the richness of the scientific enterprise without being limited by it. The scholar, the philosopher, and the poet indeed need each other, and we should not let the perspective of one of them unduly limit the perspectives of the others.

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Bibliography Alfsvåg, Knut. 2018. Christology as critique: On the relation between Christ, creation and epistemology. Eugene: Wipf and Stock. Baker, Lynn Rudder. 1998. Cognitive suicide. In Contents of thought: Arizona colloquium in cognition, ed. Robert H. Grimm and Daniel D. Merill, 1–30. Tuson: University of Arizona Press. Beiser, Fredrick C. 1987. The fate of reason: German philosophy from Kant to Fichte. Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press. Betz, John R. 2009. After enlightenment: The post-secular vision of J.  G. Hamann. Malden/ Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Broadie, Alexander. 2001. Duns Scotus and William Ockham. In The medieval theologians, ed. G.R. Evans, 250–265. Oxford: Blackwell. Brose, Thomas. 2006. Johann Georg Hamann und David Hume: Metaphysikkritik und Glaube im Spannungsfeld der Aufklärung. Frankfurt a M/Berlin/Bern/Bruxelles/New York/Oxford/ Wien: Lang. Dickson, Gwen Griffith. 1995. Johann Georg Hamann’s relational Metacriticism. Theologische Bibliothek Töpelmann 67. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. Fritsch, Friedemann. 1998. Communicatio idiomatium: Zur Bedeutung einer christologischen Bestimmung für das Denken Johann Georg Hamanns. Theologische Bibliothek Töpelmann. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Funkenstein, Amos. 1986. Theology and the scientific imagination from the Middle Ages to the seventeenth century. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gerson, Lloyd P. 2009. Ancient epistemology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gregory, Brad S. 2008. No room for god? History, science, metaphysics and the study of religion. History and Theory 47: 495–519. Hamann, Johann Georg. 1949–1957. Sämtliche Werke. Wien: Verlag Herder. ———. 2007. Writings on philosophy and language. Trans. Kenneth Haynes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harrison, Peter, and Paul Tyson, eds. 2022. New directions in theology and Sciende: Beyond dialogue, Routledge Science and Religion Series. London/New York: Routledge. Kobusch, Theo. 1994. Nominalismus. In Theologische Realenzyklopädie 24, ed. Gerhard Müller, 589–604. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. Liston, Michael. n.d. Scientific realism and antirealism. Internet encyclopedia of philosophy, https://iep.utm.edu/scientific-­realism-­antirealism/. Accessed 30 June 2022. Moustakas, Ulrich. 2003. Urkunde und Experiment: Neuzeitliche Naturwissenschaft im Horizont einer hermeneutischen Theologie der Schöpfung bei Johann Georg Hamann, Theologische Bibliothek Töpelmann 114. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. Nagel, Fritz. 1984. Nicolaus Cusanus und die Entstehung der exakten Wissenschaften. Munster, Germany: Aschendorff. Rosenberg, Alex. 1991. How is eliminative materialism possible? In Mind and common sense: Philosophical essays on commonsense psychology, ed. Radu J. Bogdan, 123–143. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schneider, Stefan. 1992. Cusanus als Wegbereiter der neuzeitlichen Naturwissenschaft? In Weisheit und Wissenschaft: Cusanus im Blick auf die Gegenwart, ed. Rudolf Haubst and Klaus Kremer, 182–220. Trier: Paulinus-Verlag. Schönberger, Rolf. 1996. Negationes non summe amamus: Duns Scotus’ Auseinandersetzung mit der negativen Theologie. In John Duns Scotus: Metaphysics and ethics, ed. Ludger Honnefelder, Rega Wood, and Metchild Dreyer, 475–496. E. J. Brill: Leiden. Tyson, Paul G. 2021. Theology and climate change, Routledge focus on religion. London: Routledge. Von Lüpke, Johannes. 2011. Ohne Sprache keine Vernunft: Eine Einfuhrung in das Sprachdenken Johann Georg Hamanns. Neue Zeitschrift fur systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie: 1–25.

Chapter 9

The Dignity of the Human Person Through the Theology of Continuous Creation Fabien Revol

Abstract What if human nature were not something fixed through time? Would it make it of less worth, and would it take away that special dignity that Christians claim God gave to the human creature? There is here a key problem to build a bridge of dialogue between Christian ethics on ecological issues and libertarian ecologists on that same topic. For the latter, because nature is all flux and change, there is no such thing as a human nature. For Christian theology, however, it is a key concept founded on both philosophical and theological reasons. A theology of continuous creation can give a hand here to help Christians to assimilate an ecological view of the human being all the while still defending its dignity. Our universe is quite old but not eternal: it has a beginning and very likely an end. Through its history, which implies change, contingent events and evolution, the stability of the fundamental structures of the universe are fairly well-established; otherwise it would be a chaos where biological life could have never arisen. Even so, evolution is a very slow phenomenon, and that slowness increases with the complexity of the genetics of the being. Through the metaphysical idea that substantial forms are not immutable, they can be upgraded through informational inputs or modifications in the context of evolutionary thinking, and through the idea that those changes are very slow because stability is the very condition for the possibility of change among the living, the question of nature as the essence of a being, can be reintroduced in the debate according to the scale of time change in question. Then, time is a parameter that is called to acquire more consistency and value, whereas immutability is a concept that abstracts time and its role in the definition of dignity. Continuous creation brings then the idea that human nature is both the outcome of time and submitted to it, as well as giving it its full meaning in the midst of a divine creative project. Keywords Biological evolution · Continuous creation · Cosmology · Dignity · Ecology · Substantial form · Time

F. Revol (*) Catholic University of Lyon, Lyon, France

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Global Sustainability, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41800-6_9

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Introduction Following the idea that anthropocentrism is one of the main causes of ecological crisis (White Jr. 1967: 1205), a lot of ecologists react with the claim that there is no justification for a special dignity for humanity, that places the latter at a superior axiological level1 (Morizot 2018: 105; Ferry 1992: 37–106). It is also claimed that all living beings should have the same axiological value, or that the dignity of human beings should be sacrificed to more important considerations, such as life (biocentrism) or the Earth’s well-being (geocentrism) (Larrère 2010: 407; Hess 2015: 80–83). From a Darwinian perspective, it is argued that because of the random processes of natural selection, the human presence has no ethical meaning or value and its presence is purely contingent. Moreover, because of the flux of life through evolutionary processes, the generation of species shows no real and consistent boundaries through time to indicate the passage from a former species to a newer one (Exbrayat and Raquet 2011: 47–62). There is a historical continuum of the living flux through time and each individual is a step in the chain of changes constituting evolutionary processes. Species and other taxonomical levels are considered only as fictions of reason, to allow a discourse on the present state of evolution for differentiated beings. At a metaphysical level it is argued that there are therefore no such things as archetypes of the different types of natural beings and that this is even the case for human nature (Sartre 1996: 26–32). Accordingly, there is no such thing as a human nature that could be identified and that could bear and justify a special dignity. This is one of the main stumbling blocks existing between the libertarian ecologist2 position and that of Christians, especially Roman Catholics, who usually put the seat of human dignity in the existence of an immutable human nature that is created by God, in his own image (Catéchisme de l’Eglise Catholique 1992: 1955; Derville 2016; Communauté de l’Emmanuel 2017: 29–32; Ladaria 2020: 57; Souchard 2010: 357–370; Gueullette 2018: 305–326). There is a gap to be filled with tools of both philosophical and theological mediation. My claim is then that the theology of continuous creation constitutes a mediation for the recognition that, on the one hand, there is no such thing as an immutable nature of human being, but on the other hand, there is a stable and consistent human nature that is the outcome of the processes of a continuous creation through time – and huge amounts of time – that justifies a specific human role in the creator’s project and in the economy of salvation. Through a long stability in time, according to the fact that the physical universe has a beginning and an end, human nature can be considered relative to its function within the history of creation.

 This paper is the continuation of the discussion started in Madrid during ECST XVIII (see Revol 2022). 2  Representing the majority of political ecologist of main green party of France: ‘Europe Ecologie Les Verts’ (https://www.eelv.fr/, accessed 22/01/2023). 1

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The Challenge of Time What if human nature were not something fixed through time? Would it make it of less worth, and would it take away that special dignity that Christians claim God gave to the human creature? The problem here is to build a bridge of dialogue between Christian ethics on ecological issues and libertarian ecologists on that same topic. For the latter, because nature is all flux and change, there is no such thing as human nature. For Christian theology however, this a key concept founded both on philosophical, theological and ethical reasons. A theology of continuous creation (Revol 2020a, 2020b, 2021) can help Christians to assimilate an ecological view of human beings, while still retaining their dignity. It can do so by situating the metaphysics of the creation of the human creature in the midst of the metaphysics of the whole of creation. From Science we learn that our universe is quite old but not eternal, it has a beginning and very likely an end (Tresmontant 1966: 18). Through its history, which implies change, contingent events and evolution, the stability of the fundamental structures of the universe have established themselves; otherwise it would be a chaos in which biological life could not have been achieved (Lonergan 2000: 126–162). The evolution of the living is also a very slow phenomenon. The French philosopher Claude Tresmontant asks us to consider how classical metaphysics should be reformulated through the means of modern science, and especially information theory (Tremontant 1979: 280, Gagnon 1998: 212–215). For him, if there is a substantial form of natural beings, then it can be considered as an informational pattern. From the experience we have of the relationship between the designed patterns of human artefacts, or even from the genetic approach of biology, we can understand that information can be modified, added or deleted. Continuous creation happens through the introduction of new information within natural systems and it is what is working toward the appearance of novelties in the history of nature (Tresmontant 1961: 45). By this, it is possible to think a reset of the theory of substantial forms according as they are envisioned through time and the becoming of natural beings, especially the living. Let us assume then that substantial forms are not immutable, that they can be upgraded through informational inputs or modification in the context of evolutionary thinking, and that those changes are very slow because stability is the very condition for the possibility of change among the living. Then the question of nature, as the essence of a being, can be reintroduced in the debate according to the scale of the time change in question. From the human perspective, natural forms are massively stable and change is exceptional, which provides the basis for the building of a meaningful worldview based on the principles of stable (but possibly, although rarely, changing) archetypes and substantial forms, from which ethical principles can be worked out. Time is then a parameter that is called on to generate consistency and value, whereas immutability is a concept that abstracts itself from time and its role in the definition of dignity. Continuous creation then brings us to the idea of a

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human nature that is both the outcome of time and submitted to it, as well as giving it its full meaning in the midst of a divine creative project which is set in a finite duration of time, within the boundaries of a beginning and an end of created time.

The Criterion of Novelty There is a rationale to be understood when we want to consider what is truly created within time: the ontological meaning of a being can be defined as a novelty. Continuous creation is the theological interpretation of the surging of novelties in nature and its history. Where and when there is genuine novelty, there is genuine continuous activity of creation (Revol 2020b: 252). So, when in nature there is no genuine novelty but only variation, there is only some organization of what is already there as pre-existing: nothing has been created (Revol 2015: 148–152). On the side of the Creator, continuous creation is the action of giving new form to beings in an evolutionary process through the input of creative information. It is done by the gift of new information that can be integrated or rejected by natural entities according to their state of evolution. By the complexity of the ecological state of a natural being in its ecosystem, the network of relationships indicates what novelty is favoured and likely to happen (Revol 2020b: 265). Creatures, and the relations wherein they are included, play an important creative role too. Some novelties are welcome because they are ecologically beneficial, and some are not or are neutral and could be otherwise. So continuous creation is the tuning between divine informational outputs and a creaturely state of welcoming of new features that entails novelties within nature (Revol 2020b: 266). In a nutshell, it appears here that created novelty is the meeting of informational inputs and of ecological relationships. What is natural novelty? Biologists are far from agreeing on this matter (natural philosophers, too). It seems above all that this is not a scientific question. It is indeed that of the singularity appearing for the first time. It cannot be grasped by scientific method which is interested in recurring regularities to get results with statistical meaning (Morange 2011: 151–153). It is up to the philosopher to give it a try. But once again, there is no systematic approach to the topic. This is the reason why I hereby give my proposal. From a philosophical approach, then, it is possible to characterize novelty thanks to the historicity of nature (Morange 2011: 62; Teilhard de Chardin 1955: 41; Tresmontant 1966: 39), philosophy of the living (Jacob 1981), the role of contingency and indeterminacy (Popper 1992; Lonergan 2000: 126–162) and the philosophy of emergence (Kauffman 2008; Sartenaer 2010: 543–558). These parameters lead me to identify natural novelty by the means of five criteria, the goal of which is to understand what is ontological consistency (Revol 2020b: 260; 2015: 241–246):

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1. Novelty is a contingent and unpredictable reality. 2. Novelty is a systemic reality whose consistency is rendered by the play of constitutive interrelations. 3. Novelty is a finalized entity in a higher-level system of complexity. 4. A novelty is a reality in dynamic equilibrium, that is to say it takes place in its own temporality through structural stability. 5. Novelty is an integrated and autonomous reality capable of having an impact on its own constituents as well as on those of the environment. These are the conditions for having a creative informational sustenance and the assurance of an ontological stability. That being said, it is important to insist on the very condition of possibility of such novelty: stable pre-existing structures. Stability through time is really important if the Darwinian approach is to be taken seriously (Sagan 2008: 146). Changes and modifications are thinkable only if there is something to be changed and modified. This is the reason why Darwin insisted on the fact that structural stability is the main feature of natural entities, especially the living. It means then that those who say that there is no such thing as natures, because through time all things are brought back to the sameness of the flux and the boundaries between beings are nonexistent, do not integrate the importance of time and the slowness of natural processes. If the flux is now visible and perceptible, it is because it is possible to artificially accelerate time through speculation and imagination, reinforced by mathematical modelling and simulation by computers. I claim that the slowness of natural process is a key fact to understand that natures can be identified through the experience of long and slow time. It means that natures are not immutable but subject to very slow change through large amounts of time, and those changes are metaphysically significant when they are expressed though genuine novelties, as described in the previous paragraph. This is an occasion to re-evaluate the doctrine of haecceitas proposed by John Duns Scotus (Delio 2003: 37–39) in the 13th–14th centuries. In a scholastic setting, it was a thesis affirming the individuation of natural beings through form and not through matter. The usual scholastic metaphysical claim was that substantial form defined regularities belonging to species, but once a form finds itself incorporated in the multiplicity of material beings, the individualities are caused by matter. There is one exception, for human beings whose souls are created at procreation (Aquinas 2012: q. 90, a 4.). This doctrine allowed the differentiation of accidents from the essence of being. Duns Scotus opted for the idea that even for non-humans individual characteristics could be metaphysically essential, and correspond to the expression of substantial form. This is what is also supposed in the communication of new creative information through continuous creation, for the generation of genuine novelty. It must happen once in time before spreading into regularities borne by several beings. This is especially visible in emergent structures. So even though immutability is obsolete, durability and resistance to change through the ontological consistency of novelties through time can become the seat of axiological values such as human dignity. This consistency shares in the structured and organic order of the universe. It fits within an ecological working essential

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to the whole. At another level, it has also a theological meaning in the framework of an economy of salvation. A novelty which brings its value to the intricate and complex network of life and of being is something bearing a true ontological worth. It means then that novelty becomes the key criterion to defining a change in nature. In the anthropological field it is then important to check whether such novelties can be identified in the present state of humanity. If such novelties are spotted, we should conclude that human nature has changed somehow. So, it must be clearly identified on which criteria humanity depends. Are the observed changes genuine novelties or alterations of what is potentially already present in persons?

Theological Questions From here arise many questions that further reflection and investigation should address.

Several Human Natures? What if human evolution had stopped, at least so significantly that its evolution would not affect its fundamental form until the end of the world, because it is the only species that could master the variability and hazards of its environment (Exbrayat 2006: 36–47)? It would not mean that the human form could not change anymore, rather that the conditions are gathered to witness an end of the possible changes, thanks to technology, for a length of time long enough to join the end of the world or the end of humanity, when the time has come for whatever reason, such as nuclear war or the overgrowth of the sun. My hope though is that Christ comes back before all that. The human form could continue to evolve and change in a restricted range that would not be enough to make it into a new species incapable of interbreeding. In that case, there would be no novelties identified. One way to understand these restrictions could be in terms of Dominique Lambert’s words about plasticity (Lambert and Rezsöhazy 2007). Lambert, following the metaphysical conclusion of L’action of Maurice Blondel (1993), identifies in each entity an endowment of substantial form that is stable through time, a metaphysical core that anchors each entity to its archetype. But there is also an informational pattern that can suffer modifications within a limit that does not alter that core. Therefore, some of the features that humanity could acquire would not fall under the scope of a novelty that would change human nature. Following the way or reasoning developed in this paper, I add that this would not be understood in terms of immutability because that very core is also the outcome of a long time of continuous creation according to the above criteria.

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From a Christian eschatological perspective, let us say that, on the one hand that core might be fixed until the Judgement comes, or on the other hand, that it is still submitted to slow change towards a new kind of humanity. Then it is possible to say that human nature fulfils its role in God’s eyes. For the purpose of the theology of continuous creation, it is enough that for a time human nature was joined by divine nature for the needs of the Incarnation (Denzinger 2005: 300–303). In this case, as salvation is offered to all creatures, it is not so important to find new human species afterwards. The shape of the expected capax Dei creature has come in the present state of humanity: the work is done. More questions arise however: is it allowable, or even possible, for humans to artificially evolve with novelties, and hence a change of nature? And if there is a natural human evolution, then why should this natural evolution bringing novelties be allowed and not the artificial one? The question is to see whether the new human features involved in this evolution pass the test of genuine novelty. If not, it is not a change in nature. I however think it is difficult to achieve because for the moment I do not think that artificially induced characteristics can pass the test. In fact, biotechnologies, following a mechanistic understanding of natural processes, innovate on the model of the machine where its system is the equation of the sum of its parts (Descartes 2009: 90–91). In this context, the proprieties of the whole are equal to those of the parts. This is then predictable, and fails to fit within the definition of novelty.

Human Nature and God’s Image in Creation The issue of human dignity is connected to the dogma of the creation of humans in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26–28). What God’s image and likeness mean in a human creature is a much-debated problem (Dictionnaire critique de théologie 2007: 73–80). Does it fix one nature? Does it mean that Neanderthals, as another species, did not have the required features to bear God’s image? Does it also mean that if there is, or are, further new human species they shall not bear God’s image? This is a tricky issue. So, if there is another human species coming into existence, would its nature be different, and should its dignity then be expressed in other terms than those of Homo sapiens sapiens? Should one then come back to the Kantian proposal of one kind of feature for the designation of dignity (Kant 1996: 179–192): self-determination and free will? This last proposal is exactly what should be avoided, because of the anthropocentric burden that has been its legacy to the planet (Larrère 2010: 407), with the consequent ecological crisis. Is there another? Should one find another? Perhaps personalism can be revisited in an ecological perspective. According to Emmanuel Mounier, this puts an emphasis on the action and on the ability to make a gift of oneself in entering into relationship (Mounier 1949). This approach corrects the Kantian focus on the rationality of the human mind as a specific feature and brings more ecological tools because it includes the deep relationality of

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humankind(s) that makes them sharers of interdependence. But relationality to otherness is not specific to humanity. The ability to make a gift of oneself is much more, especially as far as this gift is inhabited by meaning. This ability is actually that which allows the fulfilment of God’s project: communion with creation through the coming of God in creation by the Incarnation.

Human Nature and Divine Incarnation Continuous creation is a process framed by two perpendicular axes (Revol 2020b: 268–269). One is the horizontal axis, the second is the vertical axis. The first is horizontal because it speaks of the non-oriented possibilities of differentiation of reality through time. The role of continuous creation is diversification (Revol 2020b: 268). Diversity of beings is an observed fact, and diversification is produced though time. Among the living it is realized through biodiversity which is the outcome of evolutionary processes. From a theological point of view, it is consistent with the mediaeval tradition that claims that the finality of creation is to reflect God’s goodness and perfection through a multiplicity of beings bearing a facet of such divine goodness and perfection (Aquinas 2012; Ia, q. 47, a. 1.). The more of these differentiated beings exist, the more the creation fulfils its end. The scientifically observed undifferentiated evolution of the living is a good news for theology in this respect, because it shows to theologians how this creative purpose is fulfilled. The second axis is scarcer and consists in the possibility that among the diversified paths of being, lie those creatures bearing God’s image, making possible the coming of God within creation through the Incarnation (Revol 2020b: 269). This again fits into the theological framework given by John Duns Scotus (Delio 2003: 10, 37–39; 2008: 53–65). He argued that God’s purpose was communion with creation. Incarnation was designated as a means for the realization of this project, even if Adam had not sinned. In this vision, the Incarnation is understood as an unavoidable step that had to include the special creature able to receive God within itself. The human being therefore bears such features and is the signal that at least one of those paths toward God’s capacity (capax Dei) has been fulfilled. Humanity as representative of capax Dei creatures has been willed and above all waited upon by God through – and actually thanks to – the contingent paths of diversification of continuous creation. It means that this capax Dei feature is what constitutes the core of human nature, its reason for existence: the ability to commune with God. As far as Revelation tells us, this ability has been best realized in human capacities, identifying a pattern which has not always existed among creatures, and that could arrive and be set through the large amounts of time that characterize the process of continuous creation through evolutionary processes. It means that the features of human beings as biological and ecological beings are not all equally important in fulfilling this goal of continuous creation. Some might be unchangeable and necessary, others are contingent.

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As said above, the process of continuous creation implies a creative cooperation through a dialogue between the Creator and the created. From God’s part it implies that God takes seriously what is to be created as new forms of created beings are proposed. Among all the possibilities of creation, only a few can be actualized and processed through time according to the evolutionary state of creation and of creatures. It means that the one and contingent path which is followed through time and history is the one to be considered in its preciousness and immeasurable worth. Because in the eschatological perspective of new creation, the actual history of creation is what is to be recapitulated, according to Saint Paul in Ephesians 1: 9. All things under the sky and on the earth are to be gathered under Christ, in his glorious body. Process theologians claim that God keeps in memory each and every moment of the history of creation for absolutely all of its creatures (Haught 2010: 99–108). This is the condition for their recapitulation: actuality of existence through history. We can go further. Then it is in God’s memory that natures of being take an eternal meaning. If human nature is to be set for eternity, it is in God’s memory after its contingent process of configuration through the works of continuous creation.

Conclusion If time is created, if novelty is genuine through time, if history is what matters for a recapitulated eschatological project, then there is no such thing as a set of immutable ideas which are the archetypes of temporal creatures, and which are also designed in advance. God takes seriously the singularity of the dialogue between creation and himself to produce beloved creatures through time. The human dignity set by its nature is genuine insofar as it has been the condition of the realization of the divine project to be united to its creation, through the capax Dei creature. This nature is characterized by the fact that it corresponds to the features of a true natural novelty which is stabilized through large amounts of time, significantly stable so that God’s creative and salvific projects are fulfilled. It is then taken into account and consecrated by God’s eternal memory for the coming of the new creation which will be eternally new. From this perspective it is still possible to keep the idea of human nature as the seat of a special dignity in the ecological debate and articulate it with a need for the recognition of intrinsic and differentiated values of created beings. This introduces the idea that values are not equal among creatures, which might fit with Aldo Leopold’s land ethics (Leopold 2001) in that it calls for recognition of the ecological contribution of beings in the midst of the complexity of ecosystems. The fact of unequal differentiation gives weight to the ecological services given by such entities so that the classic hierarchy of superiority explained by perfection of form should be revisited and transformed to express perfection according to ecological necessities.

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Among humans, now very difficult questions should be met. In an ethical reflection, are current human evolutions in terms of gender issues and of sexual modalities concerned with the novelty criterion of continuous creation? I am not ready to answer.

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Morange, M. 2011. La Vie, l’évolution et l’histoire. Paris: Odile Jacob. Morizot, B. 2018. L’écologie contre l’Humanisme. Sur l’insistance d’un faux problème. Écologie et Humanités, Essais Revue interdisciplinaire d’Humanités 13: 105–120. Mounier, E. 1949. Le personnalisme. Paris: PUF. (Coll Que sais-je? 395). Popper, K. 1992. Un univers de propensions, deux études sur la causalité de l’évolution (Coll. Tiré à part). Trans. Alain Boyer. Combas: Éditions de l’Éclat. Revol, F. 2015. La nouveauté dans l’histoire de la nature, Herméneutique philosophique de la créativité naturelle. Paris-Lyon: Vrin-IIEE. ———. 2020a. The concept of continuous creation part I: History and contemporary use. Zygon 55: 229–250. ———. 2020b. The concept of continuous creation part II: Continuous creation: Toward a renewed and actualized concept. Zygon 55: 251–274. ———. 2021. Theology of continuous creation. Theology and Science 19 (3): 287–299. ———. 2022. From the challenge of ecology to the perspective of an accurate, christian, anthropology. In Studies in science and thelogy, ed. D. Evers, M. Fuller, and A. Runehov, vol. 18, 163–173. Halle: Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg. Sagan, D. 2008. Evolution, complexity, and energy flow. In Back to Darwin: A richer account of evolution, ed. John B. Cobb Jr. Grand Rapids, Michigan and Cambridge, U.K.: Eerdmans Publishing Company. Sartenaer, O. 2010. Définir l’émergence. Revue des Questions Scientifiques 181: 371–404. Sartre, J.-P. 1996. L’existentialisme est un humanisme. Paris: Gallimard. (Coll. Folio essais). Souchard, B. 2010. Dieu et la science en questions. Ni créationnisme ni matérialisme. Paris: Presses de la Renaissance. Teilhard de Chardin, P. 1955. Le Phénomène humain. Paris: Seuil. Tremontant, C. 1979. La Crise moderniste. Paris: Seuil. Tresmontant, C. 1961. La Métaphysique du christianisme et la naissance de la philosophie chrétienne, problèmes de la création et de l’anthropologie des origines à saint Augustin. Paris: Seuil. ———. 1966. Comment se pose aujourd’hui l’existence de Dieu. Paris: Seuil. White, L.W., Jr. 1967. The historical roots of our ecological crisis. Science 155 (3767): 1203–1207.

Chapter 10

Flourishing – Now and for the Ages to Come: Discerning Ethical Wisdom in the Book of Nature Chris Durante

Abstract Adopting the view that divine revelation is not limited to scripture but also occurs in the ‘book of nature,’ this essay seeks to contribute to the development of a new vision of human flourishing by reviving and reformulating Maximus Confessor’s theology in the context of the contemporary life sciences. Maximus held a two-book approach to revelation, wherein the divine will is revealed through both scripture and nature. If divine revelation may be ‘read’ in the ‘book of nature,’ then it follows that investigations into the ways in which living organisms and living ecosystems thrive and flourish ought to inform our understanding of what flourishing is and what it means for humans to flourish as natural creatures. Yet, what type of exegesis would be required for theologically reading the ‘book of nature’? I will argue that this requires the development of a new ‘hermeneutics of nature’ in which empirical, rational, and spiritual modes of inquiry work in tandem in our pursuit of wisdom and the good life as we strive to ensure a sustainable future for humanity and our earthly kin with whom we share our planetary home. Keywords Archbishop Welby · Book of nature · Ecology · Ethics · Flourishing · Maximus Confessor · Natural law · Patriarch Bartholomew · Pope Francis · Revelation · Science-engaged theology

Introduction The world is currently experiencing the destructive effects of climate change as we are simultaneously witnessing a decline in global biodiversity on such a large scale that some scientists are calling it a ‘mass extinction’ event. Furthermore, the two most recent reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change C. Durante (*) Saint Peter’s University, Jersey City, NJ, USA e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Global Sustainability, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41800-6_10

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(IPCC)  respectively affirm that these tragic phenomena are the result of human activities and that such catastrophic climactic events are indeed occurring with greater frequency. Given the fact that it is we humans who are responsible for such environmental destruction, the time is ripe for humanity to re-examine who we believe we are as a species as well as how we ought to relate to the natural world. In the first joint statement ever to be put forth mutually by the pontiffs of the Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, in September 2021 Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, Pope Francis and Archbishop Justin Welby claimed, ‘The current climate crisis speaks volumes about who we are and how we view and treat God’s creation’ (Bartholomew, Francis and Welby 2021: 3). Seeing as COP26 took place in the Fall of 2021 – a year that marks the sixth anniversary of both Laudato Si′ and the Paris Agreement, as well as Bartholomew’s thirtieth anniversary as Ecumenical Patriarch – I believe the three pontiff’s words are especially salient because they remind us that the climate crisis is not simply a matter of getting the policies right and implementing them correctly, but that the global environmental crisis is first and foremost a matter of how we envision the good life for our species and nature’s relationship to us within that life. To this end the environmental crisis is not simply a political problem or a technological problem but is the result of deeper moral and ontological crises humanity is experiencing insofar as we are failing to see the goodness and value inherent within nature as well as the fact that we come from and may have something to learn from natural ecological systems. Almost foreshadowing our current era, the patristic theologian Maximus the Confessor had claimed that: ‘Creation is the accuser of the ungodly’ (Maximus 1995: 211) and even went as far as to say that ‘by means of the visible [natural] world we should understand whence we came, what we are, for what purpose we were made and where we are going’ (Maximus 1995: 147). Does this mean that Christian theology ought to be drawing upon the natural sciences in its understanding of human nature and the meaning of created life itself? Further, if natural creation is indeed accusing us, as Maximus claimed, and as the three pontiffs seem to suggest, what is nature saying to us? And, how do we go about listening to, and deciphering, such messages? Ultimately, if the human-induced climate crisis does indeed reveal truths regarding who we are as a species, is it possible to engage in moral and ontological interpretation of the data garnered by environmental scientists? These are some of the questions I will raise and set out to answer in this essay, with the hope that in doing so we may enrich our perspective on who we are and what living the good life entails.

Ecological Sin: Missing the Mark of Flourishing Patriarch Bartholomew has been dubbed the ‘Green Patriarch’ for his many efforts to promote environmental causes and help cultivate an authentic sense of care and moral responsibility for natural creation over the course of the past 30 years. He has claimed:

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For humans to cause species to become extinct and to destroy the biological diversity of God’s creation … For humans to degrade the integrity of Earth by causing changes in its climate, by stripping the Earth of its natural forests, or destroying its wetlands … for humans to contaminate the Earth’s waters, its land, its air, and its life, with poisonous substances … These are sins (Bartholomew 1997).

In what may be considered an early instantiation of the ‘greening of religion’ (see Taylor 2016), the words cited above were uttered back in 1997 during a speech Patriarch Bartholomew gave in Santa Barbara California, and has since become known as his proclamation of ‘ecological sin.’ Patriarch Bartholomew’s idea has come to influence a number of thinkers both within his church as well as others; the most prominent of whom has been Pope Francis, who cites Patriarch Bartholomew in his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’ and who, in 2019, called for the inclusion of ‘ecological sin’ within the catechism of the Catholic church. Yet, what does it mean to commit sins against nature? What does sin have to do with the environment? One may ask: ‘Isn’t sin about breaking God’s laws? And, since there are clearly no explicitly “environmental laws” to be found within the scriptures or historical canons of Christianity, or even the other Abrahamic faiths for that matter, how can it be possible to transgress a law that does not seem to exist?’ Well, this all depends on how one defines ‘sin.’ While many people tend to think of ‘sin’ as ‘breaking divine commandments,’ this common conception is largely due to the influence of legalistic interpretations of moral theology. While ‘law’ – divine, natural, and human – undeniably has a place in the moral paradigms of all of the Abrahamic religious traditions, and may be found within other theistic systems of thought, we must neither overlook nor downplay the ways in which the concept of sin operates in more interrelational and virtue-oriented approaches to ethics. This is because rules do not make sense outside of the context of relationality and ethical codes, and precepts and principles become unintelligible if divorced from a vision of what constitutes the Good. Bearing this in mind, it is important to note that the Greek word used for ‘sin’, which is ‘amartia’ (άμαρτία), does not necessarily convey the notion of ‘breach’ nor does it inherently connote any moral legalism. ‘Amartia’ literally means to ‘miss the mark’, or ‘to fail to achieve a goal’. Within the Greek Christian literature from the Classical through the Hellenistic to the Late Antique periods and beyond, we find the notion of amartia being used to indicate personal or collective failure to live properly. In other words, on this reading, to ‘sin’ is to behave in ways that either fail to bring the agent flourishing as an individual, due to an imbalance within the internal mental life of that person, or to behave in ways which create some type of imbalance between the agent and the larger community; and which therefore negatively affect that community’s ability to flourish. What I wish to highlight is that the concept of ‘sinning’ as ‘amartia’ does not primarily imply a breach of law but rather speaks to the ways in which we relate to one another, to the natural world, and to the divine. To this end, ‘sin as amartia’ is a deeply relational ethical concept. When understood through the conceptual lens of amartia, these ecological sins represent the variety of ways in which humanity is missing the mark in terms of living out a way of life in which the needs of humans and nature are properly balanced and which will lead to their mutual flourishing. Regardless of one’s religious

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affiliation, or even lack thereof, I believe this notion of ‘environmental sin,’ or ‘ecological sin,’ can offer insights into how to conceptually frame the ethical dimensions of humanity’s relationship with the natural environment, and may prove to be an especially attractive concept for religious environmentalists of all faiths. If we take the time to pause and reflect on what most of us say we actually value – which I gather many might say is: ‘prosperity’, ‘success’, ‘a well-lived life’, or ‘flourishing’ – I believe we would come to realize that the ways in which we have been pursuing such goals have been missing the mark. I say this because all too often the aim of ‘prosperity’ is pursued through ever-expanding, and ecologically deleterious, forms of economic development, and our vision of the ‘good life’ is too commonly characterized by excessive modes of consumption; each of which fuels the other creating a vicious cycle of ecological decline. Once we acknowledge that we are bio-physiologically dependent upon the health and wellness of other species, and our shared ecosystems, for our own health and thriving, we can more easily recognize that this alleged ‘path to prosperity’ does not actually contribute to our longterm flourishing and well-being as a species. We naturally desire flourishing and well-being, and strive to have lived well and tend to believe we are indeed endeavoring toward these ends when we engage in the aforementioned economic and consumptive activities. Yet what we often fail to realize is that unsustainable growth and non-regenerative consumption practices that create non-revitalizing waste are antithetical to the ways in which we witness life’s flourishing in the living systems of the natural world. This leads us to misconceive the means of attaining our presumed goals of flourishing and success as we imperil the planet in the process.

Viewing Nature as Revelatory As is the case with other forms of monotheism, the Greek Orthodox tradition, from which Patriarch Bartholomew speaks, believes that the natural world is divinely created yet, unlike some forms of monotheism, it also believes that the entirety of the natural world is permeated by divine energies that are living and active within every biotic and abiotic existent in the cosmos. Although Orthodox Christianity does not go so far as to claim that the cosmos is itself divine – which would imply a form of pantheism – it does assert a form of panentheism, whereby the essence of the divine mysteriously transcends the cosmos, or is at least elusive to human knowing. To borrow a phrase of the philosopher of mind Collin McGuinn (1989), we could say that humanity is ‘cognitively closed’ to the divine essence, while being able to perceive the workings of the divine energies operative in the natural world. This enables Orthodox Christian theologians to maintain a distinction between the divine and the created in a manner that does not forsake the idea of divine immanence in favor of divine transcendence, or vice versa. Rather than viewing the ‘transcendent’ and the ‘immanent’ as polar opposites, from this panentheistic perspective divine transcendence is immanently present within all of created existence and is that which perpetually imbues the natural world with its regenerative vitality.

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Consequently, within most of eastern Christian theology, it is not only the ‘book of scripture’ that is believed to contain divine revelations, but the ‘book of nature’ is also revelatory of the divine will. St. Maximus Confessor of Constantinople, a saint recognized by the Orthodox, Catholic and Anglican churches, went so far as to claim that both books are equal in value and suggested that, while some may receive wisdom from reading scripture, others will receive divine wisdom from being attentive to the teachings found within the natural world itself (Maximus 2018: 31). In agreement with Andrew Louth, ‘much of the vision of St. Maximus can be rethought in terms of current science’ (Louth 2013: 70). This is significant because it enables the development of a naturalistic understanding of ‘natural law’ in which empirical methods may be afforded a crucial role within theological reflection insofar as divine revelation is not confined to the textual book of scripture but is also present within the natural world. Nevena Dimitrova describes the extent to which Maximus’ views may be described as empirical, writing: we deduce the existence of God and of the creative, teleological logoi of everything that exists from our eyesight and natural law. Eyesight directs us to beautifully configured, visible things … while natural law leads us from visible and well-ordered beings to their creator … According to Maximus … natural law (φυσιχός νόμος) is composed of natural energies and activities of the soul that have their beginning in the sensory realm but are directed toward reason and the mind (Dimitrova 2016: 60).

This implies that our contemporary scientific methods and technologies may be used to help us discern the principles of nature and come to a deeper understanding of nature’s laws insofar as we are now capable of empirical observation on micro and macro levels that were impossible in the past. Further explaining Maximus’ epistemology, Louth writes: human beings are logikos, the adjective from logos, usually translated as ‘rational’ but really connotating something much broader and deeper. One could say human beings, as logikos, are capable of discerning meaning … they are capable of discerning the logoi of creation, the whole depth of meaning that can be found in creation in all its manifold splendor (Louth 2013: 64).

In addition to performing what is commonly referred to as scriptural exegesis, Maximus also practiced and endorsed a form of meditative reflection upon the natural world that he called ‘natural contemplation’ (θεορία φυσικέ), in which the practitioner thoroughly uses her sense perception to experientially submerse herself into, and derive wisdom from, the living natural surroundings in which she dwells. For Maximus, this is how one is capable of ‘reading’ the book of nature. In regard to this point it is worthy to note that the Greek word empeirikos (εμπειρικός), means ‘experienced’ and is the root of our English word ‘empirical.’ If we can say that scientists, especially those whom are attentive to the vitality and wisdom of the subjects and living systems they are empirically observing, have been reading the book of nature, then we quickly come to realize that what they discover may not simply be ontologically important for understanding the nature of life but may also be conveying ethical insights into the precepts prescribed by the ‘natural law.’

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Offering an account of his experience of mindfully observing an ecosystem, the biologist David Haskell expresses a sentiment that is strikingly similar to Maximus’ when he writes, Extended contemplative engagement with place gave me a thorough schooling in my limitations. This was an education in the structure of knowledge, a spur to further investigation, and an invitation to humility … These limitations of my unaided senses were a bodily reminder of human evolutionary ecology … Even the most sophisticated microscopes and sequencers give only a partial sketch of life’s community, a reminder of ignorance (Haskell 2020: 126-127).

The sense of humility that Haskell expresses in his statement is deeply aligned with Maximus’ theistic understanding of natural contemplation, and is a reminder that the epistemic and hermeneutical lenses through which we view nature crucially affect what we are capable of learning from it. Louth makes this point well when he writes: we can only understand the logoi of the cosmos if we renounce any attempt on our part to understand the world as material for human exploitation and seek to see it as expressive of the Logos of God. Maximus’ doctrine of the logoi of creation is not simply a way of expressing the immanence of the divine will but is also … a way of human understanding that has its own ascetic demands of patience and objectivity (Louth 2013: 66).

To this end, natural contemplation entails an askesis of sorts (or practicing a form of psycho-spiritual exercises) and as such, requires the cultivation of the virtues of humility, patience, and objectivity that can help guide the observer of the natural world as she seeks to discern wisdom from it. Insofar as natural contemplation involves the use of sense perception as well as contemplative spiritual exercises, if practiced along with empirical methods of scientific investigation, it may offer a means of devising a mode of inquiry into the natural world that is capable of overcoming the shortcomings associated with either the mechanistic and reductionist models of scientific inquiry or the intellectual abstractions of philosophical rationalism, and which may help us develop a more holistic and robust phenomenological approach to knowledge that incorporates spiritual, rational as well as empirical modes of experience and understanding into its purview. If, as Maximus claims, the natural law is to be found within the principles and processes of the natural world itself, we could therefore argue that the natural law is discovered through empirical observation of, coupled with contemplative meditation upon, the natural world rather than through our ability to construct logical systems and behold abstract proofs. From such a perspective, it is not simply within the rational constructions of our own subjective minds that we will discover the moral precepts that will lead us toward an authentic state of flourishing and the vitality of life. Rather, it is toward the natural world that we must turn for our moral guidance on how to live in such a manner that we can simultaneously attain wellbeing for ourselves, our fellow creatures, and the planet we are called to care for. In this way the natural law becomes understood through the use of our sensory, rational, noetic and imaginative capacities working in tandem.

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This is an area of Maximus’ thought that can used to create a bridge between Christian natural law thinking and newly emerging scientific fields, such as biomimicry, that seek to learn from and not simply about the natural world. Biomimicry is the idea that humans can learn from the wisdom inherent within nature and thereby imitate natural principles and processes as a means of understanding the ways in which human behavior can be more concordant with the natural world (Benyus 2002). Janine Benyus, one of the earliest proponents of biomimicry, describes working in biomimetic science as ‘the conscious emulation of life’s genius’ (Benyus 2002: 4–5). Reflecting on Benyus’ work in relation to Maximus’ understanding of natural law, Elizabeth Theokritoff has suggested that: The awareness that we inhabit a meaning-filled world intended to serve as our teacher and guide rather than a pool of natural resources, is itself a powerful incentive to treat it ‘reasonably’ and with restraint … Consider the approach today called: ‘biomimicry,’ which is described as taking ‘nature as a mentor: based not on what we can extract from nature but on what we can learn from it’ (Benyus, 1997). We should note that this does not involve only technologies that are sustainable, but also a process of ‘quieting’ and ‘listening’ before ‘echoing’ Nature in our actions … (Theokritoff 2017: 232).

Although biomimicry is usually discussed in the context of technological design, when we begin to reflect upon the ways in which various systems of life naturally function and flourish we may realize that we have something to learn from the natural world in regards to how we ought to be designing our social systems and our collective conduct so that they are more conducive to cultivating a sustainable form of human civilizational flourishing.

Nature as Normative: A Canon of Natural Laws While distinct from Maximus’ Orthodox Christian understanding of creation, biomimicry shares Maximus’ belief that nature is normative and may be able to assist us in our task of discerning precisely what the precepts of the natural law are. For instance, Benyus delineates what she refers to as: ‘A canon of nature’s laws, strategies, and principles’ (Benyus 2002: 7). This ‘canon’ is based upon observations and reflections on the ways in which natural eco-systemic life operates and regenerates itself and consists of nine precepts, which are: 1. ‘Nature runs on sunlight’ 2. ‘Nature uses only the energy it needs’ 3. ‘Nature fits form to function’ 4. ‘Nature recycles everything’ 5. ‘Nature rewards cooperation’ 6. ‘Nature banks on diversity’ 7. ‘Nature demands local expertise’ 8. ‘Nature curbs excess from within’ 9. ‘Nature taps the power of limits’ (Benyus, 2002: 7).

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Refraining from providing a robust moral analysis and ethical discussion of Benyus’ ‘canon of nature’s law’ herein, by way of conclusion I would like to offer some preliminary thoughts on what a natural law approach to ecological ethics that take’s this canon seriously might look like. While I will comment on all nine precepts, I would like to focus on the importance of the idea of limits mentioned in the last precept. 1. Nature runs on sunlight: The source of energy humans ought to use to power our technological artifacts should be renewable, just as the source of energy natural ecological and biological systems use is itself is renewable. 2. Nature uses only the energy it needs: This principle is deeply aligned with the cardinal virtue of temperance, otherwise known as self-restraint, which for the Patristic thinkers, such as Maximus, was part and parcel of the ethical life. Knowing what the necessities of life are as well as knowing how to cultivate one’s own self-restraint based upon knowledge of the natural limits of one’s self and circumstances so that all have their basic needs met was a defining feature of what was considered ‘temperate living’ in the ancient and medieval periods and ought to come to inform how we live in modernity. 3. Nature Fits Form to Function: Fitting form to function implies that there ought to exist a teleological dimension to our technological designs, developments and their application in that functionality presupposes an end, or goal, that the function itself is intended to serve. Once we come to realize that we can produce more ecologically synergistic modes of development. 4. Nature recycles everything. This notion implies that wastefulness is itself a vice, or misses the mark when it comes to the pursuit of flourishing. In a positive formulation, we could say that nature does not take anything for granted in that it treats nothing as valueless ‘waste,’ or ‘refuse,’ but rather finds a use for everything and in doing so recognizes that there is at minimum an instrumental value to everything that exists. 5. Nature rewards cooperation. The idea that nature rewards cooperation is highly conducive to the communitarian ethic of traditional Christianity and implies that it is through cooperative endeavors that life, and hence humanity, flourishes. 6. Nature banks on diversity. This principle implies that pluralism is itself an inherent feature of natural flourishing. From an ecological perspective we may venture to argue that species diversity, and the plurality of niches filled by each species, is itself necessary for the flourishing of the biosphere. From a Christian theological perspective, the Divine is Itself a plurality that is simultaneously a singularity, and therefore we could say that any communal life emulating the Divine Life ought also be one characterized by a unity-in-diversity. 7. Nature demands local expertise. This principle implies that that we ought not overlook the importance of local traditional forms of knowledge as well as the idea that we ought to promote forms of economic and agricultural localism. Such views harken back to figures like Basil of Ceasarea and find a modern expression in the principle of subsidiarity, found within Catholic Social Teaching.

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8. Nature curbs excess from within. This principle seems to again conjure up the virtue of temperance or moderation, yet the distinctive element of this principle is the qualifier ‘within,’ which ties together moderation and subsidiarity, or localism, by illustrating that it must be the local community itself that curbs excess. This implies that in order to be ecologically virtuous, so to speak, neither an individual person, nor a community of persons, ought to rely solely on external powers, such as non-localized governing bodies, for the impetus to act moderately. 9. Nature taps the power of limits. This principle implies that as both persons and communities we ought to recognize that part of our strength is knowing our personal, communal and environmental limitations, and hence cultivate the prudence, or practical wisdom, to know how to use our limits, or at least remain cognizant of such limits, in our pursuit of flourishing and the good life. This is especially pertinent when we reflect upon global civilization’s existence on a planetary scale. For instance, climate scientists have discovered a number of boundaries and thresholds of biospheric climate regulation and ecosystem vitality. Such boundaries may be said to be the limits that any reasonable being ought not exceed if they wish to flourish and ensure the continuance of our species; two goals that have been largely unchallenged in the history of theological ethics, and which are commonly accepted by even the most scripturally oriented religious thinkers. In more than a metaphorical manner, such biospheric boundaries and ecosystem limitations may themselves be thought of as the ecological parameters of permissibility to human action that we ought not exceed or surpass if we are to achieve the good and live well. When we strive for excellence we must do so with the recognition that we are bio-physiologically embodied inhabitants of a living planet. Like the concept of ‘sin,’ the idea of ‘transgression’ is commonly thought of as violating a command, yet it may also be thought of as exceeding a limit, or overstepping a boundary. When trying to wrap our heads around the idea of ‘transgression’ and how it relates to the notion of ‘ecological sin’ it would make more sense to shift our thinking away from legalistic modes of interpreting these terms and instead think about the various planetary boundaries we have discovered by studying the natural world itself. For instance, in addition to the biospheric tipping-points and the now well-known planetary temperature threshold of 1.5 °C to avoid disastrous climate change, there exist planetary boundaries, which unlike the biophysical thresholds that represent points of ‘no return’ have been set to indicate levels of change to the earth system that once reached would afford global societies enough time to change their ways and avoid catastrophe. Earth-systems science indicates that these planetary boundaries are: biosphere integrity (otherwise known as biodiversity loss), biogeochemical flows (otherwise known as phosphorus and nitrogen cycles), land-system change, freshwater levels, and atmospheric aerosol levels (Steffen et al. 2015). Together these boundaries represent the optimal state of the global environment as it has existed within the Holocene, the geological epoch in which humanity originated and developed, and which is the only state of the Earth that humanity has ever known. While some

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scientists have proposed that we are now entering what has been dubbed the ‘Anthropocene,’ scientists warn that if we fail to maintain a Holocene-like state of biospheric stability we are likely to create conditions that will be far less favorable to human existence and which will drastically alter life on Earth as we know it, if not bring its demise.

Conclusion When understood in light of that which we have learned from our scientific studies of the book of nature, we may say that to exceed the planetary boundaries is to transgress the natural limits set for us during the Holocene; the epoch in which humans have originated and managed to flourish and thrive. We may think of the Holocene theologically as the era in which humans were bestowed with the gift of life and opportunity to flourish. We must value and relate to ecosystems and other species with gratitude for nature’s services and reverence for nature’s laws. To knowingly transgress these planetary boundaries is to directly disregard the wisdom to be found within the laws of nature, and as such may be said to be a form of disrespecting their divine author. Humanity must not allow itself to continue to act as harbingers of death for natural creation but rather we must seek to become its compassionate caretakers and life-sustaining stewards when it is in trouble, and better co-inhabitants with the other species with whom we share a common earthly oîkos, or home.

Bibliography Bartholomew, Ecumenical Partiarch. 1997. Address at the Environmental Symposium, Saint Barbara Greek Orthodox Church, Santa Barbara, California. https://apostolicpilgrimage.org/ the-environment/-/asset_publisher/9b108Swk2KIh/content/religion-science-the-environmentsymposium-vi-the-amazon-river-source-of-life-statement/3200849a7.html (accessed 13.8.23). Bartholomew, Patriarch, Pope Francis and Archbishop Welby. 2021. A joint statement for the protection of creation. https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/pont-­messages/2021/ documents/20210901-­messaggio-­protezionedelcreato.html Benyus, J. 1997. Biomimicry: Innovation inspired by nature. New York: Morrow. ———. 2002. Biomimicry: Innovation inspired by nature. New York: Harper Perennial. Confessor, Maximus. 1995. First  – Fifth century of various texts. In The Philokalia vol. 2, ed. G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware. London: Faber and Faber. ———. 2018. On difficulties in sacred scripture: The responses to Thalassios. Trans. Maximos Constas. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press. Dimitrova, N. 2016. Human Knowledge According to Saint Maximus the Confessor. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock. Francis. 2015. Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home. Haskell, D. 2020. Contemplative studies of the “natural world”. In Living earth community, ed. Sam Mickey, Mary Evelyn Tucker, and John Grim, 123–132. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers.

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Louth, A. 2013. Man and cosmos in St. Maximus the Confessor. In Toward an ecology of transfiguration, ed. John Chryssavgis, Bruce Foltz, and Patriarch Bartholomew, 59–72. New York: Fordham University Press. McGinn, C. 1989. Can we solve the mind-body problem? Mind 98 (391): 349–366. Steffen, W., et al. 2015. Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet. Science 347 (6223): 736–747. Taylor, B., et  al. 2016. Lynn white Jr. and the greening-of-religion hypothesis. Conservation Biology 30 (5): 1000–1009. Theokritoff, E. 2017. The vision of St. Maximus the Confessor. In Companion to religion and ecology, ed. J. Hart, 220–236. Oxford: Wiley.

Chapter 11

Humanizing the Biosphere’s Internal Logic Roland Cazalis

Abstract There is a background noise in the world that humanity must endeavour to achieve a sustainable ecosystem for the generations to come. The intention is there; it remains to transform it into action. To achieve this goal, we propose to develop a new model of sustainability by humanizing the mathesis at work in the functioning of the biosphere, and which provides its robustness. In other words, coupling the pragmatism of the biosphere with human ethics opens a perspective that empowers humans to be actors in the history of life dynamics. This study lays the groundwork for such a model, and highlights the key notions it underlies and the mental attitudes it requires. However, such a perspective requires radical changes in behavior and a true conversion. To make this happen, we need the know-how of religions, spiritualities, and humanities, and institutions that are experts in humanity and have the pedagogy for transforming interiority. Indeed, the long-term effort required for the transition to sustainability will be successful only through the path of inner transformation. Keywords Biosphere · Creativity · Doughnut · Energy · Humanities · Interiority · Language · Mathesis · Network · Redundancy · Religion · Residue · Resilience · Symbiosis

Introduction For some decades now, we have been sensing, at least in the most economically developed countries, that humanity is reaching a turning point in its history. Indeed, humanity now hankers for another horizon different from capitalism stricto sensu, i.e., the ownership of the means of production and exchange by a prosperous R. Cazalis (*) University of Namur, Namur, Belgium e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Global Sustainability, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41800-6_11

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minority. This is not a return to Marxist or anarchist ideas, but an aspiration that should be attributed to cultural evolution. The collateral effects of capitalism, such as sovereign debt, the anthropogenic contribution to climate change, and the energy transition, i.e., the gradual shift of global energy use from fossil-based sources to a zero-carbon system, thwart this aspiration. They urge us to find immediate solutions, when humanity would rather have time to find the most natural, i.e., the least expensive solutions. Naturally, if wishing to suppress the market for the moment is illusory, we can at least aim to reduce inequalities by making the poorest the Archimedean point, according to John Rawls’s proposal (Rawls 1971: 261–265, 284). Nevertheless, this perspective clashes with more liberal positions that want to reduce the role of the state to regulatory functions, and have more freedom for entrepreneurship, precisely in order to increase public wealth that would benefit all. It is therefore legitimate to ask whether the aspiration of a more meaningful society will find its locus in one of the two previous poles, or in more nuanced or intermediate positions. Because of the urgency, political decisions must be made without delay, and not only to adjust a few parameters. The ideal would be to make decisions that address the above challenges while accommodating the aspiration for a more spiritually developed society. To achieve this, there is an alternative model of sustainability that has proven to be robust and resilient. This model is not derived from any political ideology or school of economics. It is the internal logic at work in the biosphere as a community of living beings. The biosphere is a structure, a science and a pragmatism all together, which we describe by logic or mathesis. The latter emerges according to the events that punctuate the biosphere’s evolutionary history. We humans play an active role in the biosphere. Indeed, according to Hobbes (1994: 1, 17, 109), thanks to language humans can fathom notions such as right and wrong, fair and unfair. Education plays a key role in ensuring that differences in these concepts do not lead to conflict. In other words, we can develop a new model of sustainability by humanizing the mathesis of the biosphere, i.e., by connecting its pragmatism with human ethics. The goal of this humanization is a kind of reconciliation and pacification of relations within the living world. This study lays the groundwork for such a model, and highlights the key notions it underlies and the mental attitudes it requires.

Thinking in Terms of Networks The living world, as we know it, emerged and maintained itself by transforming the abundant potential energy in the environment into a usable form. The problem of energy is a recurrent one. It has been an issue since the emergence of life, and will undoubtedly continue to be so. Bacteria and archaea practiced different forms of chemosynthesis and colonized all biotopes. They are the living beings best adapted to our planet. This success could have stayed there forever. However, evolution towards more complex and voluminous entities implied changing the model of energy acquisition. Indeed, if these new entities had to synthesize ab initio their own

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organic carbon and nitrogen, then this activity would be incompatible with complexity, since it would be too costly. Some transaction would be necessary even at the level of microorganisms, because the cost is often too high for an organism to be completely self-sufficient. The solution for real biology in the history of evolution was to link the emergence of complexity to the energy that is considered as organic matter. This solution was both pragmatic and unpretentious. To start with, it established a form of solidarity between the species. This implied consuming some individuals from one group of species for the growth of other individuals from another group of species, without endangering either of them. In other words, this loss was only costly at the level of the individual. Consequently, the hierarchical network became the solution to the equation raised by an evolutionary perspective. The biosphere, seen as a community of interdependent strata, shows its efficiency and resilience because it is still functional after over 3.5 billion years of existence. It has experienced the rise in complexity and has not yet said its last word in terms of its evolution. There is no ideology behind the choices that have been made, not even a green ideology, but only pragmatism and viability. If the biosphere had a project, then the only questions that would seem to run through its evolutionary process would be, ‘what is feasible? What is the best way, and probably the only way, to achieve it?’ When we step back from this organization, we see the biosphere is indeed a doughnut-shaped network, rather than a chain (Fig. 11.1). The doughnut’s body is the interactions between the different organisms. The hole into the doughnut is the space where life is not possible because of the absence of connections, as if life would result from a jump over the void. The outer edge is a zone where theoretically other connections can be added, unless the doughnut has reached its limits. Jagers’ Operator theory provides some insights on this matter (Jagers op Akkerhuis 2010). The organisms are on the inner edges, and transfer inorganic matter into organic matter, while the fully heterotrophic organisms are positioned towards the outer edges. The network structure naturally suggests that the center is necessary for those that are far from it and who must take care of the center in order to preserve the balance. Otherwise, the system collapses, except for those on the inner edges, because they have more autonomy. Thus, forgetting that each group is part of a larger and correlated whole leads to behaviors that disrupt the biosphere. Each group’s economy is therefore already inscribed in the very structure of the network in order for the latter to remain viable. It is obvious that there is a correlation between the position in the network and the individuation process intensity. When individuals become subjects, they will not only refuse to be extracted but also to extract, preferring to be autonomous for the sake of equity. However, this alternative is not viable because of its cost. Nevertheless, in the biosphere there are no ostracisms of species. Consequently, this ostracism still remains outside the logic of the biosphere. It is important to smooth out this form of sentimentality or ideology in order to rise up to the level of the biosphere, so as to be in phase with its dynamics, which makes us what we are. Except that we contest the dynamics that allowed the emergence of the human species …

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Fig. 11.1  Sketching the biosphere structure as a doughnut network, with the autotroph microorganisms (white nodes), the mesotrophic organisms (grey nodes) and the fully heterotrophic organisms (black nodes)

The biosphere’s economy also includes the density and size of each group. In this regard, the human species exhibits some levels of decorrelation with respect to the other living species. Since the Neolithic period, as the human population increased, we understood it to be necessary to create artificial isolates for harvesting in order to maintain the biosphere’s local balance. However, maintaining the balance became more difficult due to a set of factors, including need-production decorrelation, biosphere depletion, and their cascading collateral consequences. Today, humanity is at a critical moment of its history. It has reached a technical stage where it can reasonably envisage the continuation of its off-planet journey, a prospect that is symbolized by NASA’s Artemis projects. At the same time, mankind has to face an episode of cyclic climatic variation on Earth that punctuates the history of our planet (National Academy of Sciences 2020). This episode differs from the others because of its amplification due to human activity. The time has come to take stock of the resources that are available to face these two challenges, and which condition the future of our species. Settled in the logic of consumerism, humanity thinks of the biosphere in terms of a chain, in which it is obviously the final link of the energy produced. It overlooks the nexus logic that requires feedback and coupling for the dynamics to be sustainable. However, our perspective of considering energy as an unlimited quantity that does not require any coupling for its production, results in consumption and pollution going hand in hand. Now, to inhabit the biosphere amounts to settling in the dynamics that have brought the living world to the stage it has reached. Among the solutions that have allowed biological evolution to flourish, three suffice to outline the landscape: symbiosis, redundancy, and language. Symbiosis refers to mutualizing the work of energy production between two or more organisms so that each one brings a complementary contribution to the know-­ how of others. The protagonists’ integration level can be very high until it reaches the endosymbiotic state of mitochondria and chloroplasts in the eukaryotic cell.

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Without such an interpenetration level, no organisms could have reached their current level of development because of its prohibitive cost. Humanity is an exploratory species. Even in the sedentary phase that it experiences through its presence across the globe, it continues its exploration mentally. It does so through science and technology, or in person in the vicinity of Earth, in the international space station. It also does it through its numerous avatars, such as the Martian mission Curiosity, the James Webb telescope, or the previous Voyager programs. As soon as it is a question of personal exploration of the conditions that require from the crew a certain degree of energy autonomy, then the symbiotic reflex resurfaces by itself. Indeed, the supply is no longer possible because of the explorers’ distance from Earth, as in the Artemis projects. Moreover, it is enough to see how we should design the habitat of the first lunar colonists in the Artemis project (Cazalis 2021: 75–96) where the plant-human mutualism becomes a necessity. This habitat is not a utopia. The feasibility and effectiveness have been tested and validated in various bio-regenerative life supports on Earth, as in the case of the Soviet/Russian BIOS-2 projects in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia and more recently, the Chinese Lunar Palace 1 at the Beihang University in Beijing, where the bio-­ regenerative life support system effective closure was tested (Fu et  al. 2016). In other words, all these experiments provide a large amount of data on plants’ behavior in an integrated closed-loop system. They help validate that in situ plant production effectively plays its expected role in the ecosystem in a ground-based environment. Indeed, this production should provide a balanced diet, ensure the release of enough oxygen and the absorption of carbon dioxide, and support the full water cycle. We can develop this concept in cities where urban farms are being developed. Symbiosis is obviously the ultimate system. Nevertheless, successfully establishing a coupling between the system producing work and those capable of recovering this work and transforming the latter into energy is already a commendable achievement. One example is the use of wind created by vehicles on busy roads and the creation of turbines that produce electricity (Somnath et al. 2019). Another coupling is the use of heat from data centers and urban vertical farms to heat buildings, swimming pools, etc. (Velkova 2016). Previously, this heat was dissipated by air conditioning, a system that consumes energy and produces heat. Other couplings are possible on a smaller scale. Thus, thinking in terms of networks helps to end energy waste when the production and transformation systems are decoupled. Isolated systems are vectors of entropy. Redundancy is another solution retained by the history of biological evolution and a typical feature in the structure of life. Redundancy is the contrary of optimization, which is the norm in engineering. Optimization is a plus at the technical level, when the environment is also highly technical and able to compensate easily for accidents that may occur. However, when the local infrastructures are not adequately equipped and adapted to handle the unexpected contingencies of the advanced technologies under use, then this optimized technology can prove to be counterproductive at the slightest incident. In contrast, in social structures, and in spoken language,

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redundancy brings resilience to the system, and more adaptability because of the suboptimal structure. Our society, shaped by techno-science, tends to apply this principle everywhere, including in social structures, by saving means, but to the detriment of the quality of life and social fluidity. Consequently, society must be a mix between optimality and redundancy to make optimality flexible and adaptive. This requires some mental revolution regarding the values instilled in STEM students’ minds. Symbiosis and redundancy are assets in the alternative sustainable model we propose. The model integrates wildlife and does not hesitate to raise the taboo problem of human overpopulation that makes the territory of wildlife increasingly more obsolete. The new zoonoses are probably the symptoms of this problem (UNEP 2020). Humanity’s cohabitation with wildlife is a critical area where the coupling of pragmatism with ethics finds its best expression. In a first aspect of cohabitation, we assume that the future of wildlife is not the zoo. Climate change is leading to changes in behaviors. In the same way, the awareness that the planet is a limited territory must lead to behavioral changes. We cannot rely on marine or extra-­ planetary migrations to deal with this reality in the immediate future. On the other hand, we have enough science and statistics to provide guidance and advice by continent, and even by country, to achieve a balanced human population. Laissez-­ faire is not a solution. One invention of evolution, that is language, makes the second aspect of the cohabitation possible. Animals produce several pheromones, volatile or non-­volatile chemical signals that have powerful effects on potential prey and the scent-mark of their territories, alongside the reproductive physiology and behaviors of females and males (Thoß et al. 2019). For example, the pyrazine analogs were recently identified as kairomones in the common gray wolf (Canis lupus), one of the top predators in the Northern Hemisphere. The odor of a pyrazine cocktail induces the avoidance of deer in the experimental area and elicits vigilance behavioral signals (Osada et al. 2015). Consequently, chemical language is an important means of communication within wildlife. Mastering this language will help humans communicate with wildlife in a peaceful way to manage relationships and be able to share the same territory. For wildlife, where sharing the same area is a cause of conflict, we can draw on trials with elephants. Wright et al. (2018) showed that an organic formulation containing honeybee pheromones safely repelled elephants. We could test this pathway using the dominant wolf males’ secretion analogues to repel their conspecifics in certain territories. Nevertheless, the alternative sustainability model goes to the very end of the spectrum. Indeed, preventing elephants from destroying crops or causing other damage, or preventing wolves from attacking sheep herds, both amount to assuming that elephants and wolves have a territory of their own, free of crops or grazing areas for livestock. Thinking in terms of networks helps to integrate living beings into a viable unit that safeguards the requirements of diversity. This state of mind enables us to connect systems by reducing the entropy inherent to their isolation. It provides solutions that pacify relationships within the biosphere.

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Embedding Creativity into a Cycle The living being appears as a durable event, because it maintains itself. It can grow by establishing material or symbolic relations with its environment. Therefore, all living beings are creative according to the needs that are inherent to the group they belong to. Therefore, creativity is probably one key element that best characterizes living things. Human creativity differs from the creativity of the rest of the biosphere in several ways. Here, we only mention two aspects. Schematically, we can say that other organisms create from dust to dust. In other words, their artifacts, whatever the starting materials are, return to dust through biodegradation (Fig. 11.2). Note that these are also organisms that demolish everything they have built. Indeed, building/ deconstructing, producing/consuming, anabolism/catabolism are pairs that embody the balance that the biosphere creates. In this way, the biosphere is a system that tends to maintain the entropy variation constant in the long term through recycling. Creativity among human beings differs from that in other living beings because it produces artifacts that no longer enter the biosphere’s recycling logic at the end of their useful life. There is a residual R. The R-factor is a symbol of humanity decoupling from the biosphere. For example, the consumption/need ratio which classically, and in the best-case scenario, tends towards unity in wildlife, increases in humans, because an intensification coefficient (that is, pleasure) affects consumption. In the end, this mechanism results in a syndrome of accumulation. As a result, climate change requires finding alternative energy sources to fossil energy to mitigate the accumulation of carbon dioxide. We have developed atomic energy, photovoltaic energy and even modern eolian energy. This leads us, for lack of anything better, to store radioactive waste with a half-life of many generations. We also have

Fig. 11.2  Sketch of natural and human creativity. Natural artifacts (A) from the initial blocks (O) eventually cross the biodegradability threshold again (BT line). Human artifacts (B, C, D), when they do not emulate the natural counterparts, remain as residues (R) without crossing the BT line. When R is not kept mobile in a cycle, it remains active in the environment for better or for worse

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to store the materials used in photovoltaic cells, as well as the composite materials that make up the turbines and blades of wind turbines, because we have not yet developed a technology capable of recycling them into inert substances. These materials are therefore immobilized in the form of active remains. Our apparent decoupling from other members of the biosphere requires gleaning more science and technology and more creativity in order to emulate a dust-to-dust creativity, since the latter is the most efficient at the moment. We operate with artificial materials that are not immediately degradable by the technology of the biosphere. In our processes we must therefore include a principle, so that the R-factor is not the terminal chain of our activity while it is still active. It must remain mobile. From this observation, we could argue that the logic within the biosphere leans towards the evolution of the living world, its adaptation or diversification. The living world must remain in a sub-optimal state to enter one of these paths. This paradox of organic reality is probably not applicable to metallic or composite materials. Thus, human creativity separates the materials used from the purpose of their use, whereas these two aspects are intertwined in natural creativity. However, human creativity contributes to cultural evolution and vice versa by virtue of the impact of our own artifacts on our psyche. Some artifacts can lead to stagnation in the evolutionary process when they make society enter a futile cycle, which is typical of the consumer society. This is why we postulate that the horizon of cultural evolution outlines patterns of happiness. The periods of futile cycling would have the specificity of arousing the aspiration to this happiness, which would mean that human society has its own principle of resilience to get out of the rut when it is dragged into it. In the current development models, human creativity does not have a defined purpose. It follows the lines of opportunity offered by events that trigger the resolution of particular problems. Then, human creativity draws benefits from technological advance through the latter’s wide range of possible uses, including uses that are worthless from a social point of view, thus increasing the offer/need disequilibrium. More frequently, it creates artificial needs to generate a trade that has no other purpose than consumption, which we classify as a futile cycle. In the alternative model we put forward, human creativity has a horizon that is shaped by cultural evolution and points towards some form of happiness. Like natural creativity, we must consider it in the long term and think globally about the biosphere, even if the action is at a local level.

From Interiority to Sustainability To move away from the models of development in place and reach the model that we propose, we must transition through an intermediate period. The latter will be the appropriate ground for the wisdoms, religions, arts and humanities to play their traditional, but always new, roles of educators. They will have to appeal to the consciences of the population, the entrepreneurs and the decision makers.

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These cultural institutions have the advantage of not being competitors of either states or companies. They do not defend any particular interests. As experts on human nature and world history, their function could somehow raise our awareness of the common good as we consider the way to happiness. We can envisage their actions on two levels, since they have a large surface of exposure to the population through schools, temples, youth organizations, etc. The first level of intervention aims at what is logical and rational. We must undertake it with the younger generation, since it is on their shoulders that future sustainability rests, and consider that these young people are also children of their epoch (Shiner et al. 2021). An adapted pedagogy is necessary to trigger the motivation to project themselves into a biosphere landscape. Consequently, there is work to be done together to highlight the items of the internal logic of the biosphere. Then, it will be necessary to become aware, together, of the specificities of the human species within the biosphere in light of its cultural evolution. Finally, it will be necessary to think in terms of networks and coupled systems, and go towards the mastery of wildlife’s biochemical language to be able to communicate with it, and ultimately pacify our relationship with it. The first level of intervention of the above-mentioned institutions with the youth is the very discovery of this model and its validity. This latter aims to provide humans with a way to play their full role within the biosphere by contributing to its resilience. Nevertheless, this level is not enough to achieve adherence to the model. Indeed, the changes it requires are of the order of a conversion. Public authorities are probably not aware of the depth of the behaviorial transformations required at this historical turning point of human civilization. Such transformations deal with very concrete aspects of life, such as housing, transportation, material goods, family, leisure, and so on. In fact, we must operate a change of interiority, in other words, the transformation can only come from within. No ecological or sustainability ideology has the power to galvanize the general public to consent to this change in behavior over the long term. In this sense, ideology is like idolatry, a system that consumes a lot of energy with no efficiency. Therefore, we will not solve our problems by relying only on what is rational and logical. We need other mediations. Our lengthy management of the Covid-19 crisis, despite the technology we had to handle it at record speed, is partly due to the lack of additional mediations. Indeed, sustaining efforts has its limits. After a certain stage, the public ends up rebelling or adopting attitudes often against its own interests, encouraged by a counter-power exercised by anonymous Members of Parliament from social networks. The least costly context for persevering in an action is conviction or adhesion. In this perspective, institutions must offer the general public pathways that lead them to this state of mind. We propose new spiritual exercises as achievement motivation training programs to enact this intrinsic drive. Without this practice, which transforms people internally and creates lasting support, brute force will be required to make changes under the pressure of events. In this case, the weakened population of society will suffer the greatest harm once again. Such a scenario is avoidable, because we know what to do. Moreover, aspirations for happiness and thinking in terms of the biosphere go hand in hand.

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Conclusion The human species occupies a particular position within the biosphere network because of its symbolic dimension and decoupling from the whole. For a long time, humanity has pursued its ends using and even abusing the planet’s resources and living beings, including other humans. Short-term and local visions dominated entrepreneurship. The time of relative peace in the West since the end of the Second World War led to the development of the consumer society, which, for a time, gave the impression that we had become a contented society. Nevertheless, something deep inside us refuses to establish a sound balance between the well-being that consumerism provides and an indestructible desire of happiness that urges us to go further. Moreover, the environmental and economic consequences of previous behaviors require us to leave behind the practices that have brought humanity to the present critical situation. To face the future with confidence, we need a model of sustainability and a method for humanity to consent to the long-term effort that this shift requires. The model cannot be a variant of the pattern that has led us to the situation we are now in. We need to think radically differently. The wisest attitude is probably to turn to the logic that has led the living world to its evolution stage, and to take advantage of it. The model we propose here, by underlining some items, precisely consists in humanizing the mathesis at work in the functioning of the biosphere, and which provides its robustness. Thus, coupling the pragmatism of the biosphere with human ethics opens a perspective that empowers humans to be actors in the history of life dynamics, and to exercise fully our originality by contributing to the resilience of the biosphere rather than to its destruction. Such a perspective requires radical changes in behavior and a true conversion. Consequently, we will not achieve sustainability only through technical innovations. To achieve this conversion, we need the know-how of institutions that are experts in humanity and have the pedagogy for transforming interiority. These millenary institutions are religions, spiritualities, and humanities, which have some knowledge of the human being, and the appropriate methods to engage the individual in the path of transformation. These institutions will have to adapt spiritual exercises or propose new ones in order to lead the general public on the path of inner transformation. Inwardness is the most powerful lever capable of turning the tide of humanity by guaranteeing the long-term effort required for the transition to a peaceful state of relations within the biosphere. Living in peace within the biosphere is the way to achieve peace with the natural elements.

Bibliography Cazalis, R. 2021. Plants under the moonlight: The biology and installation of industrial plants for lunar settlements. In The human factor in the settlement of the moon: An interdisciplinary approach, Space and Society, ed. M. Boone Rappaport and K. Szocik, 75–96. Cham: Springer.

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Fu, Y., L. Li, B. Xie, C. Dong, M. Wang, B. Jia, et al. 2016. How to establish a bioregenerative life support system for long-term crewed missions to the moon or Mars. Astrobiology 16: 925–936. Hobbes, T. 1994. Leviathan, with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668. [Edition and introduction by Edwin Curley]. Indianapolis: Hackett. Jagers op Akkerhuis, G.A.J.M. 2010. The operator hierarchy. A chain of closures linking matter, life and artificial intelligence. Alterra Scientific Publications: Radboud University Nijmegen. National Academy of Sciences. 2020. Climate change: Evidence and causes: Update 2020. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/25733. Osada, K., S.  Miyazono, and M.  Kashiwayanagi. 2015. The scent of wolves: Pyrazine analogs induce avoidance and vigilance behaviors in prey. Frontiers in Neuroscience 9: 363. https://doi. org/10.3389/fnins.2015.00363. Rawls, J. 1971. A theory of justice. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Shiner, R.L., C.J. Soto, and F. De Fruyt. 2021. Personality assessment of children and adolescents. Annual Review of Developmental Psychology 3: 113–137. Somnath, S.M., G.R.  Abhishek, S.  Channabasavana Gouda, B.M.  Kavya, and Kruthi Jayaram. 2019. Power generation on highway using vertical Axis wind turbine and solar energy. International Journal of Engineering Sciences & Research Technology 8 (6): 232–240. Thoß, M., K.C. Luzynski, V.M. Enk, E. Razzazi-Fazeli, J. Kwak, I. Ortner, and D.J. Penn. 2019. Regulation of volatile and non-volatile pheromone attractants depends upon male social status. Scientific Reports 9: 489. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-­018-­36887-­y. United Nations Environment Programme and International Livestock Research Institute. 2020. Preventing the next pandemic: Zoonotic diseases and how to break the chain of transmission. UNEP: Nairobi. Velkova, J. 2016. Data that warms: Waste heat, infrastructural convergence and the computation traffic commodity. Big Data & Society 3: 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951716684144. Wright, M.G., et al. 2018. African bush elephants respond to a honeybee alarm pheromone blend. Current Biology 28: R761–R783.

Chapter 12

The Sacred in Nature Conservation: A European Perspective Jaime Tatay

Abstract Despite the secularization of European society, the sacredness motif still illuminates cultural dynamics, allowing us to better understand the value attributed to the natural world and the multiple meanings projected onto it. Through a review of the conservation literature on European Sacred Natural Sites, I explore these dynamics. The findings show that the perception of ‘the sacred’ is, in some cases, enormously resilient and has survived the passage of time despite profound political, demographic, and institutional changes. In other cases, it is able to mutate and transform its meaning, hybridizing with new environmental sensibilities or with political, indigenous, or nationalistic interests. Finally, in an arguably new postsecular context, ‘the sacred’ also emerges, and is created anew, in unexpected places. This research serves as a starting point to explore more deeply the relationship between nature conservation and diverse perceptions of the sacred. Keywords Europe · Holy · Indigenous community conserved areas · Nature and culture · Nature conservation · Protected areas · Sacred natural sites · Science and religion · Secularization · Sustainability

Introduction Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCAs) and Sacred Natural Sites (SNSs) are valuable biocultural hotspots and important areas for nature conservation (Berkes 2009). Over the past two decades, they have been growing attention in academic, management, and political fora. The relevance and the implications of the sacred nature of these sites for the multiple actors involved J. Tatay (*) Universidad Pontificia Comillas, Madrid, Spain e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Global Sustainability, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41800-6_12

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in their management have been widely acknowledged across the world (Wild and McLeod 2008). Paradoxically, biologists, conservationists, social scientists, and Protected Areas (PAs) managers  – who often have no theological training or have a strictly instrumental view of the role of the sacred  – have paid much more attention to SNSs than theologians and religious studies scholars (Posey 1999). This could be the reason why the terms ‘sacred’ and ‘holy’ are often used in the conservation literature in simplistic, binary, and dichotomous ways, i.e., as that which is opposed to the profane and related to the wild. This view of the sacred limits the potential to include other intangible values in nature conservation and excludes relevant stakeholders. Moreover, since the sacredness motif tends to be predominantly associated with taboos, bans, and regulations of community-­ managed resources (Colding and Folke 2001), the complexities and ambiguities surrounding the diverse dimensions of the sacred and the holy, and their multiple meanings, have not been researched in depth. Few previous works have specifically examined a topic that has profound implications for conservation as well as for the communities inhabiting these sites. Focusing on European SNSs, I aim to fill that gap by unravelling the different conceptualizations and hidden assumptions of the sacred in the literature. I will argue that ICCAs and SNSs are not only important biocultural reservoirs and efficiently community-managed resources or ‘commons’ (Ostrom 1990), but sources of meaning and community identity as well. These sites and landscapes were used and managed wisely because they were inhabited and held as sacred. Many different natural settings and landscapes have been sacralized, de-­ sacralized or re-sacralized over the centuries, with their meanings shifting over time. Today, this is still the case across the world, where most PAs are considered worthy of respect and protection – in a word, sacred – even in highly secularized societies. A more dynamic and nuanced view of the sacred could become a powerful source of value, inspiration, and motivation for conservation. The sacred is not only an intangible resource, but also a source of meaning that fosters spiritually and aesthetically motivated behaviors which can provide a solid ground for environmental ethics and conservation policies. In the quest to conserve our threatened global biocultural diversity, partnerships are increasingly the tool of choice among states and international environmental agencies such as UNEP or IUCN. Religion and science, arguably two of the most powerful cultural forces of our time, can learn from each other and work together in order to preserve the natural world, our common home (Francis 2015). The growing call for co-management of SNSs by local custodians and conservationists shows that they can become partners in the current global quest for sustainability. In relation to nature conservation, science and religion can converge in practice, not only in theory; but first we need to understand their historical interaction.

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 cience and Religion in the Conservation Literature: S From Conflict to Dialogue to Partnership Ian Barbour (1990) famously established a fourfold typology in the relationship between science and religion: conflict, independence, dialogue, and integration. In relation to nature conservation, the interaction between scientific and spiritual views on nature has evolved towards dialogue and, increasingly, towards the realization of a necessary partnership. However, prior to the 1990s, there was an almost total absence of references to the spiritual dimension in conservation literature. This absence was not only due to a lack of interest in religion, but also to the deep-seated scientific conviction in the irrationality of spiritual beliefs and the negative role they may have played in environmental degradation. The oft-quoted article by Lynn White (1967) represented the opinion of a significant share of the scientific community during that period. In short, religion was either ignored or rejected in the scientific literature on nature conservation. By the end of the twentieth century, however, the perception began to shift, and spirituality was increasingly perceived as a key element in traditional societies, where religious beliefs –particularly taboos and bans associated with specific sites and iconic species – have always played a key role in the perception and management of natural resources (Colding and Folke 2001). As De Pater et al. have recently argued: ‘Over the past twenty years much has changed in terms of recognizing the importance of spiritual values in the conservation of forests, nature, and biodiversity. Even the postmodern sciences which study this phenomenon in practice have seen a considerable paradigm shift’ (De Pater et  al. 2021: 205). Today, both institutional religions and a wide range of spiritual traditions are considered central elements of any culture. There is a growing awareness of the need to incorporate values and beliefs into management. For instance, Fikret Berkes (2018), who coined the term ‘sacred ecology’, has investigated the importance of local and indigenous knowledge as a complement to scientific ecology. Anthropologist Graham Harvey (2006) has also studied the implications of many different animist worldviews and lifestyles for environmentalism. From a legal perspective, John Studley recently noted that ‘although conservationists recognise the biodiverse significance of most sacred natural sites, the role of spiritual agency by other-than-human-persons is not well understood’ (Studley 2018: 148). In his opinion, management of SNSs and ICCAs should include not only science-based criteria and expertise, but a type of ‘spiritual governance’ (ibid.). These recent developments not only reflect the change of attitude in the scientific community, but the need for developing co-governance strategies in which the multiple stakeholders involved in nature conservation are incorporated. Public servants, conservationists, and managers of PAs face many pressures. Caught in ideological

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battles between competing and often incompatible interests, they look for guidelines to simplify decision-making (Wild and McLeod 2008). So do legal scholars and jurists. However, as Taylor and Geffen have acknowledged, ‘few of them are equipped to deal with the religious dimensions of the conflicts over which they must preside’ (Taylor and Geffen 2004: 56). Since the academic literature on SNSs has increased significantly over the past two decades I will focus only on European sites, for three reasons. First, Europe is arguably the most secularized continent in the world, a region where the dynamics of the sacred at play in SNSs stand in stark contrast to the dominant, science-based PAs management paradigm. Second, Europe is also a region where SNSs have been under-researched, compared to Africa, Asia, or America, where most of the studies have been conducted (Zannini et al. 2021). Third, the 19th European Conference on Science and Theology, ‘Global Sustainability – Science and Religion in Dialogue’, provided the impetus to write this article.

Methods and Data Extraction I performed a preliminary review of the SNS literature to grasp the meanings, understandings, and dynamics of ‘the sacred’ in the conservation literature in Europe. For the collection of bibliographic data, the electronic searches were made in January 2022 using the SCOPUS database and considering only academic, peer-­ reviewed journals. SCOPUS includes smart tools to track, analyze, and visualize research. Using this database, I ensured the anonymous review of the articles by at least two specialist reviewers. The search string used in the query was the following: (“sacred natural site*” OR “natural sacred site*” OR “sacred grove*” OR “sacred forest*” OR “church forest*” OR “sacred tree*” OR “sacred mountain*” OR “holy mountain*” OR “sacred cave*” OR “sacred landscape*” OR “sacred landform*” OR “sacred spring*” OR “sacred river*” OR “sacred lake*” OR “sacred fish” OR “sacred commons” OR “holy well*”) AND (“conserv*” OR “preserv*” OR “protect*” OR “sustain*” OR “ecol*” OR “environment*” OR “bio*”) AND (“Europe” OR “Spain” OR “Italy” OR “Portugal” OR “France” OR “Belgium” OR “Holland” OR “Ireland” OR “England” OR “Scotland” OR “Wales” OR “Germany” OR “Switzerland” OR “Austria” OR “Norway” OR “Sweden” OR “Finland” OR “Poland” OR “Hungary” OR “Croatia” OR “Slovenia” OR “Serbia” OR “Albania” OR “Luxemburg” OR “Rumania” OR “Bulgaria” OR “Moldavia” OR “Greece” OR “Slovakia” OR “Czechia” OR “Estonia” OR “Latvia” OR “Lithuania”)

The search resulted in an initial list of 63 articles. After screening the titles and the respective abstracts, only 11 articles explicitly addressed the meaning of the sacred in nature conservation, and 9 of them were published in the past 5 years (Table 12.1).

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Table 12.1  Scholarly papers analyzing the role of the sacred in SNSs in Europe Authors Tekic and Watkins (2010)

Country Croatia

Mantsinen (2020)

Finland

Kraft (2010)

Norway

Frascaroli (2013, 2016)

Italy

Scriven and O’Mahony (2020)

Ireland

Tatay-Nieto and Muñoz-­ Igualada (2019)

Spain

Heinapuu (2016); Päll (2021)

Estonia

Marini et al. (2021)

Greece

Houlbrook (2021)

Britain and Ireland

Creating sacredness

Reenacting sacredness

Mutating sacredness

Key insights Forbidden groves created by the French administration of Croatia (1805–1813) represent a centuries-old fundamental form of Dalmatian woodland management. Recently created Finnish Karelian orthodox pilgrimages are reproducing and reinventing an imagined past, creating and sustaining a sacred landscape. A case of a SNSs constructed outside the context of organized religions. Sacredness is being constructed in Norway using secular laws as the primary basis for definitions of the sacred. A high proportion of ancient SNSs in Central Italy are located in natural areas and often display ecological features that highlight their important conservation role. Based on a countrywide survey of SNSs it is also arguable that they complement official PAs. Different religious meanings are (re)inscribed in spaces through the performance of annual events in a post-secular context. Pilgrims’ embodied practices are fundamental to continuing definitions of these locations as sacred places. Many SNSs in Spain are placed in well-preserved natural areas (Natura 2000 network), some of them playing a human-related added value for the most emblematic National Parks. Local religious devotions have made preservation possible. Traditional SNSs (focal points in agrarian vernacular religion) have been transformed in modern Estonian culture. Some sites have accrued new significance as national monuments or tourist attractions and the dominant way of conceptualizing these sites has changed. Old beliefs and taboos in relation to sacred forests are increasingly neglected. However, collective action for the preservation of the forests has been achieved under various governance regimes that transformed through time traditional religious taboos into modern conservation approaches. Coin-trees are natural places of pilgrimage in Britain and Ireland which have sustained themselves as sacred centers for decades or centuries and have undergone numerous recontextualizations, adapting themselves to the religious and cultural changes of their surroundings.

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 he Dynamics of the Sacred in the Conservation Literature T on SNSs in Europe The preliminary literature review suggests that studies of European SNSs testify to the importance ‘the sacred’ still plays in some PAs and to the growing academic interest in its role. Although a significant number of former sacred sites – such as trees, forests, rivers, wells, rocks, caves, shrines, chapels, hermitages, and monasteries – have been either abandoned, de-sacralized, or evicted across Europe over the course of the past centuries, their lure, memory, and history still permeate the way local inhabitants perceive these places and their surroundings (Scriven and O’Mahony 2020; Tatay 2021). The steady growth in the number of pilgrims along the Camino de Santiago in Spain since the 1990s is probably the best example of a ‘sacred geography’ come-back, despite the spiritually ambiguous character of the revival (Oviedo et al. 2014). Alongside the Camino and many other local, regional, or international pilgrimage routes in natural settings, the significant overlap between SNSs and Natura 2000 – a European network of protected core breeding and resting sites for rare and threatened species, and some rare natural habitat types – has also been shown in several studies (Frascaroli 2013; Tatay-Nieto and Muñoz-Igualada 2019), suggesting SNS networks have played, and still play, a significant role in nature conservation. Yet this is not a story that belongs to the past. In some cases, new sites are emerging outside the traditional, institutional venues, although more often there is a mutation or re-sacralization of former SNSs that acquire new meanings. Tse has argued that ‘the task of geographers who deal with religion is to reveal spaces, places, and networks as constituted by grounded theologies, performative practices of place-making informed by understandings of the transcendent’ (2014: 202). SNSs are places where such ‘grounded theologies’ of the sacred, whether secular or religious, are at play. I will now analyze the different dynamics of the sacred taking place in these spaces to examine how both secular and religious ‘grounded theologies’ interact with modern conservation interests (Fig. 12.1).

Re-Creating the Sacred in New SNSs Tekic and Watkins (2010), while studying the evolution of Croatian forests, discovered that the formerly called sacri boschi, or forbidden groves (zabranjen gaj in Croatian) – a form of Dalmatian woodland management – have survived different administrations over the course of two centuries. Originally, however, the groves were not sacred sites as such, but areas of woodland created and set apart by the French administration (1805–1813) for the purpose of guaranteeing the provision of timber. The term ‘sacred’ was, thus, instrumentally used to promote conservation and prevent local communities from making use of those groves. Many of these forests have recently been declared PAs (branjevina).

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Fig. 12.1  The dynamics of the sacred in European SNS

In Finland, Teemu Mantsinen (2020) has explored how a new type of pilgrimage is creating and re-producing a sacred landscape in Finnish Karelia near the Russian border. In his own words, these pilgrimages, much like the ancient ones, combine ‘various motives, goals, and participants through a similar construction of the sacred landscape, with rituals of finding and creating the sacred in and for the landscape with personal experiences and stories of the imagined past’ (Mantsinen 2020: 7). The re-created past is constructed in the present through shared rituals and narratives in natural settings  – what Mantsinen calls the seeking of ‘sacred traces’  – thus building and sustaining a sacred landscape that may or may not include traditional Christian symbols. In a similar vein, a decade earlier, Siv Ellen Kraft (2010) studied the ‘making of a sacred mountain’ in northern Norway. Her research analyzed the complex process of constructing a SNS outside the traditional context of organized religion. Using secular laws as the primary basis for definitions of the sacred, Kraft argues that ‘sacredness’ is currently being constructed in Norway employing non-traditional religious sources and discourses: environmentalism, nature romanticism, indigenous spirituality, and media culture. In the mountain which both Sami people and northern Norwegians claim to be sacred – Tromsdalstind – judicial discourse seems to have substituted ritual. For the latter, the sacred has become a ‘cultural resource’ related to wild nature and friluftsliv usage; for the former, ‘the recent interest in “sacred places” may also be connected to processes of Sami nation building and […] pan-indigenous discourse’ (Kraft 2010: 59).

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Reenacting the Sacred in Ancient SNSs Of course, there are still many SNSs across Europe that have been well preserved over the course of the centuries, especially in predominantly Catholic areas of the continent, where the reformation was less successful and many sites were not abandoned, expropriated, or desacralized until recent times. Fabrizio Frascaroli (2013) has analyzed the link between sacredness and natural areas in Central Italy, showing that some sites and strands of Catholicism are associated with natural settings more frequently than others are. Nonetheless, a high proportion of the overall sites could well be considered SNSs, since they display ecological features that highlight their historical and key conservation role up to the present. Today, in some regions, Frascaroli highlights that ‘abandoned SNS have become an important part of official PAs’ (2013: 599). However, in another countrywide study of Italian SNSs, a group of researchers led by Frascaroli does not recommend including SNSs within legally PAs. They argue that ‘inclusion in PA can lead to discontinuing some of the human activities that are key to maintaining cultural landscapes’ (Frascaroli 2016). The sacredness of SNSs is reenacted through liturgies, pilgrimages, and rituals performed by local communities, a form of ‘governance mechanism’ inherent to sacred sites that policies should support and help revitalize, but not interfere with, when these are still in place (as it is still the case in several Italian SNSs). Tatay-Nieto and Muñoz-Igualada (2019) have also discovered that a number of shrines, hermitages, monasteries, and pilgrimage routes in Spain are located within or near Natura 2000. As is the case in Italy and many other European countries, ‘despite the increasing secularization, the rapid depopulation of rural Spain over the second half of the twentieth century, and the disconnect between urbanites and their surrounding landscape’ (Tatay-Nieto and Muñoz-Igualada 2019: 12), religious beliefs, liturgies, and devotions  – often related to what the authors call ‘nature-­ related Marian titles’  – helped preserve those SNS. Therefore, according to the researchers: ‘Understanding how nature-based religious devotions, rituals, and symbols have shaped a particular sacred landscape can inform policies that build on existing local traditions, practices, knowledge, and institutions’ (Tatay-Nieto and Muñoz-Igualada 2019: 12). However, even when sacredness is reenacted and kept alive over generations in natural settings, it is never immutable or static; it evolves over time.

Mutating Meanings of the Sacred in Former SNSs Recent studies from Estonia, Greece, Britain, and Ireland also express how the meaning of the sacred in SNSs is not fixed, but rather dynamic and can mutate significantly over the course of time. For instance, Ott Heinapuu (2016) and Lona Päll (2021) have analyzed from a historical, semiotic, and literary perspective the way SNSs in Estonia – mainly ancient sacred groves, fountains, and wells – have recently

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acquired new significance as tourist destinations and legally PAs. Heinapuu estimates that one in eight traditional SNSs have already been recognized as national monuments. Moreover, he found out that some of the rituals performed around SNSs in the agrarian, pre-Christian era, remain alive, like offerings to the sites, and some of the ‘formative landscape practices’ that have the potential to transform the meaning of a SNS are still at play, including visiting these places in numbers big enough to leave visible human trails, ‘making ritual bonfires; giving as offerings non-perishable and non-organic objects like coins or other metal objects with the taboo of removing them on pain of contracting an illness; ritually cutting crosses into holy trees to commemorate the dead’ (Heinapuu 2016: 167). In a conflict over the meaning of the SNS analyzed by Päll – the Paluküla Hill – multiple narratives and syncretic, nature-related practices were also identified. Päll, like Heinapuu and Kraft, argues that the plan to transform the hill into a ski resort was approached through a combination of ‘national, religious, and bureaucratic categories associated with cultural heritage discourse’ (Päll 2021: 213). These studies highlight the dynamic character of SNSs and their shifting meanings. In Greece, Valentino Marini et al. (2021) have analyzed the different processes acting upon a sacred forest in Epirus (Greece) using Ostrom’s social-ecological systems framework. Their research shows that, despite profound demographical, economic, political, and institutional changes, over the past 300 years the sacred grove has been of major importance to the adjacent local community who acts as its custodian. Even if old beliefs and taboos are increasingly neglected ‘due to modernization, rural depopulation, and change in community’s structure, norms, and codes […] collective action for the preservation of the forest has been achieved under various governance regimes that transformed through time traditional religious taboos into modern conservation approaches’ (p.  1). Here again we see how the understanding of the sacred mutates over time, its meaning being transformed and translated into legal environmental protection. Ceri Houlbrook (2021) has described a similar dynamic in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. As in Greece and Estonia, despite the declining influence of the Church and the weakening faith in the power of saints and their holy wells, the malleable and mutable character of SNSs has been transferred to nearby trees, the so-called ‘coin-­ trees’ often standing beside the wells. Again, even if most of the holy wells were desecrated, dried up, or simply fell out of use, their sanctity – and the ritual tradition that kept them alive – survived. As Houlbrook puts it, these are ‘natural places of pilgrimage which have sustained themselves as sacred centres for decades – in some cases, centuries – and have, during that time, undergone numerous recontextualisations, adapting themselves to the religious and cultural changes of their surroundings’ (Houlbrook 2021: 63). In short, SNSs blur the nature-culture distinction and should not be conceptualized as pristine or wild nature, nor as strictly religious places, but rather as ‘cultural products’ or complex, hybrid, dynamic socio-cultural institutions with shifting meanings attached to them over time. In some cases, they can be created anew.

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Final Remarks As Europe’s wildest places receive an increasing number of visitors and become more precious, efforts to protect them are intensifying. However, such efforts can precipitate conflict as different stakeholders – managers, civil servants, custodians of SNS, local inhabitants, and visitors – express different views and compete over tangible and intangible resources, livelihoods, and even the very meaning of those places. Religious worldviews, spiritual beliefs, and devotional practices are key elements of culture and are often entangled in subtle ways with secular understandings in such disputes. As Scriven and O’Mahony have recently argued, sacred sites ‘emerge and re-emerge in ongoing located processes of performance, history, vernacular religion, and contemporary social and political themes’ (Scriven and O’Mahony 2020: 1). ‘These processes generate the meanings and understandings which support, enhance, and unsettle the (re)creation of these spaces as sacred’ (Scriven and O’Mahony 2020: 11). The recent spatial turn in religious studies (Chappel 2020) and the relational turn in biodiversity conservation are helping widen the conceptual frame to include biocultural conservation, social justice, well-being, and spirituality. ‘Inclusive conservation’ (Raymond et al. 2022), which seeks to acknowledge the diversity of values, interests, and visions of multiple stakeholders could learn from the centuries-old experience of SNSs and their institutional arrangements. It could also draw new insights from the complex and dynamic character of the sacred, its capacity to mutate, adapt to new cultural contexts, and create new meanings. As Marini Govigli et al. conclude: ‘In the field of SNS, this can correspond to adaptive policy frameworks that depart from static sacredness to dynamic conservation strategies for the SNS and its socio-ecological values […] policies on SNSs need to consider the interconnectedness between all element systems and between the micro-scale (each individual site, with its own specificities) and the macro, landscape, scale’ (Marini et al. 2021: 9). The studies analyzed here represent only a small sample of how, despite the secularization of European society, the sacredness motif still illuminates cultural dynamics that allow us to better understand the value attributed to the natural world and the multiple meanings projected onto it. The perception of ‘the sacred’ is, in some cases, enormously resilient and has survived the passage of time despite profound political, demographic, and institutional changes. In other cases, it is able to mutate and transform its meaning, hybridizing with new environmental sensibilities or with political, indigenous, or nationalistic interests. Finally, in an arguably new postsecular context, ‘the sacred’ also emerges and is created anew in unexpected places. These considerations will require more research and may serve as a starting point to explore more deeply the relationship between nature conservation and diverse perceptions of the sacred. This is a topic that, in Europe, requires further investigation.

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Bibliography Berkes, F. 2009. Community conserved areas: Policy issues in historic and contemporary context. Conservation Letters 2: 19–24. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1755-­263X.2008.00040.x. Chappel, J. 2020. The logic of sanctuary: Towards a new spatial metaphor for the study of global religion. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 88: 15–34. https://doi.org/10.1093/ jaarel/lfz106. Colding, J., and C.  Folke. 2001. Social taboos: “Invisible” systems of local resource management and biological conservation. Ecological Applications 11 (2): 584–600. https://doi. org/10.2307/3060911. De Pater, C., B. Elands, and B. Verschuuren. 2021. Spirituality in Forest Management: A Conceptual Framework for Empirical Research. JSRNC 15 (2): 204–228. http://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.41999. Francis, Pope. 2015. Encyclical letter Laudato si’ on care for our common home. Rome: Editrice Vaticana. Frascaroli, F. 2013. Catholicism and conservation: The potential of sacred natural sites for biodiversity management in Central Italy. Human Ecology 41 (4): 587–601. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10745-­013-­9598-­4. ———. 2016. Shepherds, rituals, and the sacred: A biocultural view of the non-modern ontologies of folk shrines and devotions in Central Italy. Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology 20 (3): 272–285. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685357-­02003005. Harvey, G. 2006. Animism. Respecting the living world. New York: Columbia University Press. Heinapuu, O. 2016. Agrarian rituals giving way to romantic motifs: Sacred natural sites in Estonia. Sign Systems Studies 44 (1/2): 164–185. https://doi.org/10.12697/SSS.2016.44.1-­2.10. Houlbrook, C. 2021. Sustaining and substituting the sacred: Coin trees in Britain and Ireland. Folklore 81: 63–80. https://doi.org/10.7592/FEJF2021.81.houlbrook. Kraft, S.E. 2010. The making of a sacred mountain. Meanings of nature and sacredness in Sápmi and northern Norway. Religion 40 (1): 53–61. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.religion.2009.08.011. Mantsinen, T.T. 2020. Pilgrimage as a reproduction of sacred landscape in Finnish Karelia and the Russian border zone. Temenos – Nordic Journal of Comparative Religion 56 (1): 7–32. https:// doi.org/10.33356/temenos.89107. Marini, V., et al. 2021. From religion to conservation: Unfolding 300 years of collective action in a Greek sacred forest. Forest Policy and Economics 131: 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. forpol.2021.102575. Ostrom, E. 1990. Governing the commons. The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511807763. Oviedo, L., S. de Courcier, and M. Farias. 2014. Rise of pilgrims on the Camino to Santiago: Sign of change or religious revival? Review of Religious Research 56: 433–442. Päll, L. 2021. The role of place-lore in environmental conflict discourse: The case of Paluküla sacred hill in Estonia. Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics 15 (2): 198–220. https://doi. org/10.2478/jef-2021-0024. Posey, D.A., ed. 1999. Cultural and spiritual values of biodiversity. London: UNEP and Intermediate Technology Publications. Raymond, C.M., et  al. 2022. Inclusive conservation and the Post-2020 global biodiversity framework: Tensions and prospects. One Earth 5: 252–264. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. oneear.2022.02.008. Scriven, R., and E. O’Mahony. 2020. (Re)inscribing meaning: Embodied religious-spiritual practices at Croagh Patrick and our Lady’s Island, Ireland. International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage 8 (4): 1–13. https://doi.org/10.21427/fwx6-­ps31. Studley, J. 2018. Indigenous sacred natural sites and spiritual governance. The legal case for juristic personhood. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429455797. Tatay, J. 2021. Sacred trees, Mystic caves, holy wells: Devotional titles in Spanish rural sanctuaries. Religions 12 (3): 183. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12030183.

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Tatay-Nieto, J., and J. Muñoz-Igualada. 2019. Popular religion, sacred natural sites, and “Marian Verdant Advocations” in Spain. Religions 10 (46): 1–15. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10010046. Taylor, B., and J. Geffen. 2004. Battling religions in parks and Forest reserves: Facing religion in conflicts over protected places. The George Wright Forum 21 (2): 56–68. Tekic, I., and C.  Watkins. 2010. “Sacred groves”: An insight into Dalmatian forest history. Šumarski 7–8: 337–346. https://doi.org/10.31298/sl.145.7-­8.3. Tse, Justin K.H. 2014. Grounded theologies: “Religion” and the “secular” in human geography. Progress in Human Geography 38 (2): 201–220. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132512475105. Wild, R., and C. McLeod. 2008. Sacred natural sites. Guidelines for protected areas managers. Paris: IUCN-UNESCO. Zannini, P., et al. 2021. Sacred natural sites and biodiversity conservation: a systematic review. Biodiversity and Conservation 30: 3747–3762. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-021-02296-3

Chapter 13

Appraising Nature: A Pan-Experiential Approach to Nature’s Agency Mark Graves

Abstract To what extent does Nature have agency? Differing conceptions of nature’s agency can affect how a person relates to nature, and that in turn, may affect how nature responds to human action. Aspects of nature clearly both do and do not have agency: animals, including humans, do; while rocks do not have what is generally considered agency. The scope of what is studied in the natural sciences is relevant in examining nature as a whole, though Nature has not-yet-investigated aspects, too. Drawing upon Dan McAdam’s psychological distinction between actor, agent, and author, I distinguish analogous options for Nature depending upon dispositionalism, pan-experientialism, and pan-psychism. Theologically, nature as a whole has significance as the result of Creation, and considering the resulting intrinsic agency has implications of ongoing Creation (creatio continua). Using pan-experientialism as a minimal presumption, I argue that human self-reflection as a part of nature suffices for humans to consider nature (as a whole) as agentic. Briefly, the ability of any agentic part of nature (e.g., humans) to reflect upon that part (themselves) in relation to the entirety of nature (even if incompletely understood) affords nature agency (given at least pan-experientialist assumptions). Keywords Agency · Dan McAdams · Dispositions · Donald Gelpi · Metaphysics · Natural theology · Pan-experientialism · Pan-psychism · Pragmatism · Social and personality psychology

M. Graves (*) Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Global Sustainability, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41800-6_13

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Introduction To what extent does Nature have agency? Although Nature as person has some cultural (and legal) substance (e.g., Mother Earth and legal personhood of rivers), a close examination of Nature’s agency also has implications for ecological sustainability. Differing conceptions of nature’s agency can affect how a person relates to nature, and that in turn may affect how nature responds to human action. Aspects of nature clearly both do and do not have agency: animals, including humans, do; while rocks do not have what is generally considered agency. The scope of what is studied in the natural sciences is relevant in examining nature as a whole, though Nature has not-yet-investigated aspects, too. Theologically, nature as a whole has significance as the result of Creation, and considering the resulting intrinsic agency has implications of ongoing Creation (creatio continua).

Nature’s Agency I argue that human self-reflection as a part of nature suffices for humans to consider nature (as a whole) as agentic. Specifically, the ability of any agentic part of nature (e.g., humans) to reflect upon that part (themselves) in relation to the entirety of nature (even if incompletely understood) affords nature agency (even though nature may elsewhere lack that self-reflection). My argument proceeds as follows: 1. I use psychologist Dan McAdams’ (2013) distinction between actor, agent, and author to distinguish between agency and the human narrative capacity to consider oneself in relation to nature as a whole. 2. Drawing upon social-cognitive theory, I claim human appraisal of nature endues nature with a residue of human motivation that extends nature’s dispositions sufficiently for nature as a whole to be considered an actor. 3. I then argue that the authorial capacity of humans as an aspect of nature gives nearby nature agency. 4. Using a pragmatic pan-experientialist interpretation of nature, I examine the extent of how human authorial appraisal effects nature as a whole. 5. Finally, I reconsider human agency within this framework to identify its dependence upon and responsibility toward nature’s agency. The argument depends upon two incremental assumptions about nature. The first is that nature has a dispositional capacity, and the second is that nature has a pan-­ experiential capacity. Dispositions refer to how things in nature have intrinsic inclinations or tendencies to respond to stimuli in certain, repeatable ways. Pan-experientialism claims that all matter is capable of experience in some way, which contrasts with the broader view of pan-psychism, the belief that mind, or a mind-like capacity, is fundamental to reality. Pan-psychism is sometimes associated

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with a proto-consciousness, but from the pragmatic philosophical perspective I take on pan-experientialism, experience depends upon interpretation of an encounter, which could be understood semiotically from a purely material perspective. The aim is to clarify psychological categories for anthropomorphized Nature given plausible philosophical assumptions. This also identifies sufficient philosophical assumptions for anthropomorphizing Nature as actor or agent. If the dispositional and pan-experiential assumptions of nature are true, then I argue human-influenced nature (as a whole) can be (epistemically) considered an actor and an agent, respectively. The assumptions are used to extend what happens temporally on Earth (or cosmologically close to Earth) categorically to nature as a whole. This argument identifies minimal assumptions for nature to be considered an actor or agent and works out the consequences for two plausible metaphysical assumptions. It also clarifies the human psychological characteristics sometimes projected onto nature and characterizes the metaphysical assumptions that would be needed for the anthropomorphizing of nature as actor and agent. In addition, the argument draws upon pragmatism to elucidate a significant difference between pan-­ experientialism and pan-psychism: in pan-experientialism, nature’s encounters of humanity remain localized in spacetime but the interpretations of those encounters can spread categorically, in what C. S. Peirce calls synechism. Rather than ascribe some type of mental capacity to nature, as in pan-psychism, only the disposition to interpret in some way (e.g., influenced by humanity) needs to be an aspect of nature, for nature as a whole to have agency.

Actor, Agent & Author Psychologist Dan McAdams’ (2013, 2018) distinction between actor, agent, and author distinguishes between agency and the human narrative capacity to consider oneself in relation to nature as a whole. He studies the formation of identity and identifies three levels of its variation in personality: dispositional traits, which are fairly stable through adulthood; characteristic adaptations, which include beliefs, motives, goals, values, and desires and which vary throughout one’s life; and narrative identity, which are the stories one constructs to give one’s life a sense of unity and purpose, and he summarizes these as self as actor, agent, and author. Simplistically, dispositional traits generally depend upon internal genetic and physiological predispositions, early childhood development, and other social factors forming a stable core to one’s self. Conversely, characteristic adaptations are more circumstantial, and subjective, depending upon one’s social, historical, and cultural context as it influences how one apprehends reality and responds to the reality one finds at hand. As for narrative identity, one forms a story about oneself that gives meaning and coherence to one’s behavior over time. This story is affected by one’s dispositions and circumstances and by one’s goals and aspirations, and the story provides top-down coherence to the bottom-up stable and circumstantial factors.

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The three capacities of the self emerge over time in human development with an actor incorporating social interaction into a stable core, an agent having motivations, and an author depending upon autobiographical narratives. The actor acts with respect to stable dispositions, generally responding similarly across similar stimuli. An agent brings to bear various cognitive and affective psychological structures in its behavioral responses, which may vary depending upon internal motives, external circumstances, and their interactions. Interactions include, for example, what the agent perceives is afforded by its environment given its current goals. Narrative identity organizes personal continuity by developing a reflective sense of self, with which the person identifies, thought the stories and sense of self are also influenced by the broader culture. For Nature, considering it as an actor requires it to have dispositions that interact with human society. Nature’s agency would require it to have something like motives and purposes that drive nature’s action and adapt over time depending upon circumstances and context as it responds to the human (or other) reality it encounters. Although not pursued in this paper, nature as an author would require nature to have sufficient awareness of itself to create narratives involving itself. Human narratives of nature partially fulfill that requirement, and certain pantheisms or pan-­ psychisms might ascribe that narrative identity to nature as a whole.

Human Agency Makes Nature an Actor Drawing upon social-cognitive theory, I claim human appraisal of nature endues nature with a residue of human motivation that extends nature’s dispositions sufficiently to be considered an actor. Cervone (2008: 91) models behavior as an interaction between ‘enduring mental representations’ (e.g., schemas) and ‘dynamic evaluations of the meaning of encounters’, where people appraise, or judge, objects and encounters in light of their motivations. Their embodied response to the appraisal then affects their emotional response. Cervone’s theory of Knowledge and Appraisal Personality Architecture (KAPA; Cervone 2008) builds upon social-­ cognitive theories that a person’s behavior is best predicted from a person, situation, and their interaction (Jayawickreme et al. 2021). The person includes knowledge and dispositions that generally depend upon prior experience, are structured to respond to expected future situations, and are selected based upon one’s motives or goals. For a particular situation, the person appraises or evaluates the situation in a way that depends upon that person’s motivations, purposes, and existing knowledge structures. Because people are a part of nature, our appraisals and responses affect nature, and the repetition of those appraisals over a variety of situations endows nature with responses to fundamental human motivations. Those responses make nature an actor with dispositional traits responding to human motivations. For example, some moth species have changed the genetics of their color due to human pollution (Cook 2000), becoming darker to avoid standing out to predators, which could be

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considered a response to human motivations that prioritize industry over clean air. Nature acts in response to human motivations. This endues nature with a residue of human motivation that extends nature’s dispositions sufficiently to be considered an actor. The idea that nature has dispositions goes back at least to the eighteenth-century Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards who characterized ‘being’ in terms of tendencies that govern and bring about certain type of events and actions under certain circumstances (Lee 2000). Modern philosophical investigations, beginning with Prior et  al. (1982), distinguish between dispositions and their causal bases, and investigate dispositions as a predominant, if not primary, ontological category. Dispositions are used here with psychological, natural, and metaphysical meanings, and the relationship is that natural dispositions require metaphysical support for them, and that humans are inclined, e.g., through evolution, to attend to and have dispositions (as a part of nature), which results in their psychological relevance (Graves 2017). For nature to have dispositions as an actor, those dispositions must interact with human society, and human repeated motivated behavior suffices to create dispositions in nature that respond to human society.

Human Authoring Makes Nearby Nature an Agent Moving from nature as actor to agency, I argue the authorial capacity of humans as an aspect of nature gives nearby nature agency. For nature to have agency, within McAdams framework, it must have something like motivations in order to orient its apprehensions and responses toward something like needs, values, or goals, with respect to humans. McAdams framework is useful for distinguishing those motivated and purposeful aspects of nature from human authorial intent. When a playful dog catches a thrown ball or stick, it has a motivated purpose to retrieve. Although many dog breeds have traits leading to retrieving, and circumstances like tiredness or remembered experiences of the thrower may also affect behavior, dogs do not reflect upon whether retrieving is an essential aspect of their identity, so dogs lack authorial capacity. The claim here is that human reflection upon identity, with authorial intent, endows nature with something like purpose and motivation. How does Nature acquire these purposes and motives? Briefly, human authoring of identity incorporates nature as an actor and also projects something like a purpose or value onto Nature. When people narrate the story of their lives, the narrative often includes an aspect of nearby nature. For example, one may enjoy visiting parks, walking on beaches, hiking, or, alternatively, enjoy urban environments and feel ambivalent toward wilderness. Wildlife or domesticated animals might influence one’s identity as would preferences to live geographically close to mountains, oceans, plains, or savannahs. Forms of nature play roles in a person’s narrative identity, with some forms actively included and others explicitly excluded. This authorial intent in one’s autobiographical narrative incorporates nature as an actor and also projects something like a purpose or value onto Nature. One aspect of

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making nature agentic is a person ascribing various purposes to nature based upon that person’s identity. Human agency then involves nature in those purposes. How does Nature gain a purpose? In other words, how does human ascribing a purpose to nature result in nature actually having a purpose? It happens (to nearby nature) through human action, since human action is always in some sense purposeful. In enactive and ecological psychology, perception is intrinsically purposeful. One apprehends one’s world in terms of how one can act upon that world, or what the world affords to perceiver (Gibson 1979; Noë 2004; Lobo et al. 2018; McGann et al. 2020). When a person perceives and acts upon the world, these identity-driven, agentic actions result not only in physical consequences but also in communicating human purposes to nature, in a certain (semiotic) sense. These physical and communicated consequences affect nature’s dispositions, e.g., through genetic changes. Nature gains purposes with respect to a person or more generally to the human species. If a person cuts a tree to make furniture, nature gains the purpose of providing wood for furniture. In addition, these perceived purposes can be formalized as “ends”, such as by Aristotle or Aquinas’s teleological philosophy of nature that formalized these purposes for natural kinds as natural law. How does Nature gain motives? By acting in response to human motives, purposes, and motivated and purposeful perception and action. Human agency endows nature with dispositional traits, and human authorial intent extends those tendencies to having purposes or values, at least with respect to human existence on Earth. Nature not only acts in response to human motivations, it has purposes or values that drive its own actions. These human-influenced motivating factors may align with human intent, e.g., holding up a roadway on the side of a steep mountain, or counter the intent, e.g., in a road slide, but nevertheless, one can meaningfully examine nature as agent in a human-influenced world. This gives nearby nature agency. Note, this also clarifies over- or under-ascription of human characteristics to nature by demonstrating nature’s agency, which for example bacteria seeking glucose demonstrate, but does not ascribe authorial intent, free will, or consciousness to nature. Nature can have purposes and motivated actions without needing to reflect upon whether those are essential to its identity. Like a dog retrieving a ball, nature does not need to choose among aspects of a multi-faceted identity to act, but can undertake motivated action, with some variation due to circumstances. Given the present working understanding of agency, then nearby nature has it. The next, more speculative, step investigates what theories of nature would support the ascription of agency beyond immediate human influences.

Pan-Experiential Effects on Nature as a Whole Now, using a pragmatic pan-experientialist interpretation of nature, I examine the extent of how human authorial appraisal effects nature as a whole. This depends upon the existence of dispositions in Nature. So far, I argued human narrative identity results in nearby nature’s agency, which could clarify cultural constructs, such

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as Mother Earth or Gaia. And, as I argued above, human agency makes Nature an actor in McAdams’s classification (not just as nearby nature, but as a whole) because it has dispositions that have responded to human motivations. This requires only a weak claim that something like dispositions exist, that they exist in the universe, and if a certain kind of disposition exists somewhere in the universe, then it exists in the universe. Fundamentally, the continuity of the universe  – as opposed to a multiverse, for instance – suffices to expand the existence of a dispositional trait from a local region of Nature to Nature itself (at least categorically, if not causally). The categorical continuity suffices for dispositions, which may lie dormant in their long-­ lasting existence, similar to human personality traits that may only be expressed under certain circumstances. However, the characteristic adaptations of agency respond to the circumstances at hand and are thus limited to situations where direct causal or energetic interactions could occur. For some philosophies of nature, this limitation to direct engagement would thwart human existence from impacting nature’s agency as a whole, though I claim there is a line across which ‘thicker’ philosophies of nature do allow an analogous categorical expansion of nature’s agency to Nature as a whole. The remainder of this point is attempting to define a line across which one can extend agency from nearby nature to Nature as a whole. There are several philosophical candidates for understanding nature’s dispositions (Prior et al. 1982; Mumford 1998; Gelpi 2001; Raslau 2022). Mumford and other philosophers, in particular, examine the nature of dispositions, though I draw upon Don Gelpi’s use of dispositions within his pragmatic theory, as he situates them within a pragmatic understanding of experience. Gelpi (2001) develops a metaphysics of experience that results in a pan-­ experiential interpretation of nature. Drawing upon C. S. Peirce’s pragmatic and semiotic philosophy (Peirce et  al. 1992; Parker 1998), experience consists of encounter and interpretation (Smith 1968; Edwards 1983). The predominance of interpretation leads to Peirce’s philosophy sometimes being characterized as pan-­psychism (Skrbina 2017), though Gelpi’s refinement of Peirce eschews that broader ascription of psychism to reality (in part due to Gelpi’s argument against Whitehead’s subjective prehension in favor of the pragmatist objective idealism). Although Peirce considers matter as effete mind, Gelpi’s turn to experience refines interpretation and interpretive tendencies as dispositional, drawing upon Jonathan Edwards dispositional theology (Gelpi 2001; Lee 2000; Graves 2008, 7; Graves 2017). In this pan-experiential approach, the encounters are localized but the interpretations spread, in what Peirce calls synechism, which identifies the spreading of regularities through nature’s continuous whole. The shift from dispositional philosophy of nature to a pan-experiential one enables the spreading not only of some kind of disposition but specifically interpretative dispositions to Nature as a whole. The attributions to Nature of actor and agent thus depend upon Nature’s capacity for dispositions, and interpretive dispositions, respectively. Using Gelpi’s pan-experientialism, three steps are needed to characterize how human authorial appraisal affects nature as a whole. First, how does human authorial appraisal affect nearby nature? Second, does the limitation of causality to

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localized spacetime restrict the categorical ascription of interpretive dispositions to nature as a whole? Third, if not, then how does that local categorical aspect affect nature as a whole? Consider the authorial appraisal of those scientists who discovered new ways to interpret electromagnetism and atomic structure, and who created radio waves and nuclear explosions. Those individuals’ appraisal of nature and self-identity as scientists resulted in these intents and interpretative tendencies spreading from Earth and having a possible range of intragalactic effects. The range of intragalactic effects depends upon whether creatures exist on other planets who are capable of interpreting the signals we have emitted into space. If causal factors were not limited to spreading at the speed of light, then we could generalize immediately to nature as a whole. Although dispositions in general are categorical, a more careful analysis is needed to examine if the disposition to interpret humanity’s interstellar signaling could be limited to our nearby galactic space. In the example of a playful dog retrieving a thrown stick, the dog has that disposition regardless of whether anyone ever throws a stick to it, but if human activity throws far-from-entropic signals into space, can that tendency to retrieve exist farther away than humanity can throw? Imagine for a moment that other planets might have something like ‘scientists’ who have the ability to signal into space and interpret received signals. Consider three scenarios: (i) In the universe, scientists only exist on Earth; (ii) Some other planets have ‘scientists’, but it is rare and never occurs in adjacent galaxies; and (iii) Many other planets have ‘scientists’, and occasionally those planets exist nearby each other, sufficiently close for signals to be identified. Each of these three scenarios would result in three respective types of agency for nature as a whole. In the first scenario, nature would only respond agentically in a localized space around Earth. In the second scenario, nature would have pockets of interpretive tendencies and agency, even though the ‘scientific’ interpretation that another civilization exists would never actually occur; and in the third scenario, interpretive tendencies would spread through intragalactic signals and occasionally become actualized. (In this scenario, I assume a practical limit to identifying signals would be that they occur within the same galaxy.) In all three scenarios, nature has some type of agency, so any limitation is not due to the spreading of interpretative tendencies or nature’s categorical agency, but to humanity’s knowledge about the type of nature’s agency and possibly to the actual affect the spreading tendencies have.1 The spreading of those interpretive tendencies through nature’s continuity (synechism) supports considering Nature as having agency, because human authorial appraisal effects Nature’s interpretive tendencies as a whole, even if we lack knowledge of nature’s agency elsewhere in the universe. So the limitation of

 For religious implications of this kind of semiotic analysis, see Graves (2018).

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causality to localized spacetime does not affect the categorical ascription of interpretive tendencies to nature. Because the tendency to interpret in a certain way has arisen at least once and could arise in multiple places and spread throughout the universe, we can ascribe agency to nature as a whole, even though we lack knowledge of the type of agency or the effect it might have in distant parts of the universe. The key assumption from pan-experientialism is that nature has a continuity that supports ascribing any interpretive dispositions to nature as a whole. Under this condition, then human authorial appraisal suffices for some type of natural agency, even though the actual interpretations may only occur in localized regions of spacetime. This clarifies that a slightly weaker form of pan-experientialism might suffice for nature’s agency. Nature as a whole does not need to have interpretive experiences to have agency; nature must exist as a whole and with the possibility to form dispositions based upon human, or similar, authorial appraisal. Thus in the weak pan-experientialism, particular experiences can remain localized as long as the possibility to have experiences pervades nature as a whole.

Human Responsibility Finally, I reconsider human agency within this framework to identify its dependence upon and responsibility toward nature’s agency. Human agency has potentially far reaching effects on Earth, our galactic region, and Nature as a whole, thus it behooves us to consider carefully the effects our actions may have ecologically, cosmically, and theologically. In selecting phenomena in one’s world to incorporate within one’s narrative identity, one can identify oneself not only as a national or global citizen but also as a cosmological and universal one. This identity affects one’s motivations and the ways in which one appraises the world, and thus Nature’s agency can also affect human responses in our encounters, aligning or countering Nature’s purposeful motivations. Thus, human authorial self-reflection as a part of nature suffices for humans to consider nature (as a whole) as agentic, and creates a responsibility for us to recognize our effect on Nature  – not just locally, but on Nature as a whole. Considering nature as pan-experiential, or weakly pan-experiential, has theological implications, too. Human authorial appraisal – as affected by purpose, motives, and identity – affects all of creation, at least the possibilities for how creation may unfold. (For example, humanity has eliminated the possibility that ‘scientific’ interpretations would never occur in the universe.) Theologically, the combination of pan-experientialism and some type of nature’s agency could serve as a foundation for a minimalist natural theology, and analogous investigations into what is needed for nature’s authorial appraisal or identity could structure richer natural theologies (considering psychological categories as theological metaphors). In addition, with a panentheistic or open/relational theism, what happens in nature has theistic implication beyond creation. An examination of nature’s ‘psychological’ agency and narrative identity can structure investigations into how nature mediates human presence

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to the divine. In a weak pan-experientialism, is nature simply waiting until some localized space forms dispositions that can be raised categorically to nature as a whole? If so, then human interpretations would become nature’s experiences, and perhaps even contribute in some way to the experiences of the divine.

Conclusion I have shown that human self-reflection as a part of nature suffices for humans to consider nature (as a whole) as agentic. Dan McAdams’ psychological framework distinguishes between actor with dispositional traits, agency with motives and goals, and the human authorial capacity to consider oneself in relation to nature as a whole. Considering human appraisal of nature using social-cognitive theory shows that appraisal of nature endues nature with a residue of human motivation, which extends nature’s dispositions sufficiently for Nature to be considered an actor. Extending the consequences of considering humans as agent to include the authorial capacity of humans demonstrates that nearby nature has agency. A pragmatic pan-­experientialist interpretation of nature enables expanding that analysis from nearby nature to show how human authorial appraisal effects nature as a whole. Finally, reconsidering human agency within this framework identifies its dependence on nature’s agency and our responsibility toward nature’s agency. The ability of human agency (as a part of nature) to reflect upon that ourselves in relation to the entirety of nature (even if incompletely understood) affords nature agency and clarifies the extent of Nature’s personification. Acknowledgements  Thank you to Helga Synnevåg Løvoll and Knut-Willy Sæther for early conversations about the framing and topic of the paper and to Flavius Raslau and Timothy Reilly for comments on an earlier version of the chapter.

Bibliography Cervone, D. 2008. Explanatory models of personality: Social-cognitive theories and the knowledge-­and-appraisal model of personality architecture. In The SAGE handbook of personality theory and assessment, Vol 1: Personality theories and models, 80–100. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, Inc. Cook, L.M. 2000. Changing views on melanic moths. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 69 (3): 431–441. Edwards, D. 1983. Human experience of god. New York: Paulist Press. Gelpi, D.L. 2001. The gracing of human experience: Rethinking the relationship between nature and grace. Collegeville: Liturgical Press. Gibson, J.J. 1979. The ecological approach to visual perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Graves, M. 2008. Mind, brain, and the elusive soul: Human systems of cognitive science and religion. Aldershot/Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

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———. 2017. Habits, tendencies, and habitus: The embodied soul’s dispositions of mind, body, and person. In Habits in mind: Integrating theology, philosophy, and the cognitive science of virtue, emotion, and character formation, ed. G.R. Peterson, J.A. Van Slyke, K.S. Reimer, and M.L. Spezio, 281–299. Leiden: Brill. ———. 2018. ET, call church! In Astrotheology: Science and theology meet extraterrestrial life, ed. T.F. Peters, M. Hewlett, J.M. Moritz, and R.J. Russell, 245–268. Eugene: Wipf and Stock. Jayawickreme, E., W. Fleeson, E.D. Beck, A. Baumert, and J.M. Adler. 2021. Personality dynamics. Personality Science 2: 1–18. Lee, S.H. 2000. The philosophical theology of Jonathan Edwards. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lobo, L., M. Heras-Escribano, and D. Travieso. 2018. The history and philosophy of ecological psychology. Frontiers in Psychology 9: 2228. McAdams, D.P. 2013. The psychological self as actor, agent, and author. Perspectives on Psychological Science 8 (3): 272–295. ———. 2018. Narrative identity: What is it? What does it do? How do you measure it? Imagination, Cognition and Personality 37 (3): 359–372. McGann, M., E.A.  Di Paolo, M.  Heras-Escribano, and A.  Chemero. 2020. Editorial: Enaction and ecological psychology: Convergences and complementarities. Frontiers in Psychology 11: 617898. Mumford, S. 1998. Dispositions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Noë, A. 2004. Action in perception. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Parker, K.A. 1998. The continuity of Peirce’s thought. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Peirce, C.S., N. Houser, C.J.W. Kloesel, and Peirce Edition Project. 1992. The essential Peirce: Selected philosophical writings. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Prior, E.W., R.  Pargetter, and F.  Jackson. 1982. Three theses about dispositions. American Philosophical Quarterly 19 (3): 251–257. Raslau, F.D. 2022. Nature’s powers and God’s energies. Zygon 57 (1): 60–83. Skrbina, D. 2017. Panpsychism in the West (revised edition). Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press. Smith, J.E. 1968. Experience and god. New York: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 14

Ecological Accompaniment: From Connectivity to Closeness in an Age of Loneliness Gerard J. Ryan

Abstract In this paper, I shall argue that faith communities contribute toward the sustainability of our shared home by developing and prioritizing ecological accompaniment as part of an overall and re-imagined pastoral care for humanity and our common home. As such, my proposal expands the parameters of accompaniment from persons and communities to the material world, and its inhabitants. This interrelational habitation is what Pope Francis calls ‘an integral ecology’. Ecological accompaniment, therefore, is profoundly social and interdisciplinary in its recognizing the relationality and interdependency of all life. To contextualize my proposal, I draw attention to the intellectual and pastoral formation of future priests and lay ministers in ways that expose them to the transformative encounter between science and religion. Specifically, I explore loneliness as an interdisciplinary endeavor between science and religion in building together sustainability in our shared home through ecological accompaniment. I contend that one of the inhibitors to sustainability is loneliness, which I understand to be an unsolicited experience of social isolation. Given the link between the environment and the social sphere, attending to social isolation is necessary for ecological accompaniment. In making this claim explicit, I shall engage with current scientific research on loneliness in proposing a scientifically informed theological engagement with loneliness and its effects on persons and communities. Religious actors or institutions can promote environmental sustainability directly through activities and statements, like the papal encyclical Laudato si. But religion also contributes to how faith communities accompany ‘the lonely other’ and how the academic study of theology prepares religious ministers to attend the lonely other. Appreciating that persons form and are This paper was supported by AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) through their DoSER (Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion) programme: The Science for Seminaries Seed Grant initiative. G. J. Ryan (*) Regis College, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Global Sustainability, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41800-6_14

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formed by culture, I draw attention to the development of faith communities within our rural and urban contexts. To illustrate this point locally, I target loneliness in our ecclesial and secular communities. While loneliness is experienced in a particular way by people or groups, it has universal reach as an epidemic. This paper’s overall position is that for our rural and urban societies to achieve greater sustainability, these communities will need to nurture and promote social interaction and the establishment of meaningful bonds of connectivity to closeness. Our task is urgent in these days of the post Covid-19 pandemic and its lingering presence and effects, for loneliness is not simply a human experience and condition. The effects of loneliness span physical and psychiatric dysfunctions and psychosocial risk factors. Loneliness can problematize one’s relationship with others, habitation, and God. Consequently, I maintain the creation of a ‘Loneliness-Resilient Culture’ by promoting a way of encountering life through spiritual and social support. Specifically, I shall prioritize spiritual and humanistic resilience through mediation and participatory prayer as an intervention of ecological accompaniment to strengthen sustainability. In this paper, meditation is a practice of remembering and reflecting for a more profound encounter of relationality in our common home. Meditation as a human practice for religiously orientated persons and humanists is envisioned within a social and relational context, suggesting that meditation is not simply a personal activity in pursuit of specific meaning but is fundamentally communal. For a Christian, meditation is a pathway toward a spiritual encounter with Christ as the defining meaning in response to the question of discipleship. Keywords  Ecological accompaniment · Formation · Loneliness · Meditation · Pastoral care · Vulnerability · Resilience

Introduction In this paper, I argue that ecclesial communities contribute toward the sustainability of our shared home by reflecting upon and prioritizing ecological accompaniment as part of an expanded and re-imagined pastoral care for humanity and our common home. The theological turn toward ecology has gained momentum in recent years. For example, Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato si’, has provided a significant moral and spiritual authority to the discussion of ecology and sustainability of the created world. Indeed, Francis’ attention to ecology and our planet has inspired a renewal within theology itself. Consequently, theologians and members of ecclesial communities have heard the urgency of the environmental challenge. Scholars, teachers, and spiritual ministers are utilizing theology as a resource to contribute to the broader discussion of ecology and sustainability. One such scholar, Jürgen Moltmann, recently signaled the significance of what he terms ‘the ecological turn’ (Moltmann 2016: 3). For him, this new theological direction is an urgent and necessary dimension for theological thinking and praxis. The term ‘praxis’ entered the theological arena with purpose in the 1980s (Jeanrond

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1985: 136–45). Theology pursues in every generation emerging insights into the precise pastoral significance of language in how it expresses theological knowledge and, equally, how such language is informed by the care for others in ecclesial communities and in the public square. Moltmann’s insistence on an always updated theological way of proceeding emerges from the precariousness that persons, non-­ linguistic animals, and our common home presently experience: ‘We are standing today at the end of the modern age, and at the beginning of the ecological future of our world, if our world is to survive’ (Moltmann 2016: 5). Contextualizing knowledge and praxis facilitates an exposure to the living situations of persons and communities and encourages greater dialogue and discernment toward achieving more compassionate engagement with God, neighbour, and our common home with its manifold inhabitants. As humanity holds sway in what may be an innovative age for theology with its commitment to ecology and with its subsequent infusion within Christian praxis, there are a variety of ways by which one might develop theological research and pastoral application from an ecological turn. As Moltmann notes, anthropology and the doctrine of creation are two such avenues by which theologians may explore ecology and its relationship to faith. His preferred route, however, in exploring the relationship between theology and ecology is the development of a ‘biblical Sabbath of the land’ (Moltmann 2016: 6). This new theological approach aims at fostering respect for our common home. The Jesuit theologian and Secretary for the Service of Faith for the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) James Hanvey also signposts the Sabbath as a theological resource for exploring ecology and faith through a theology of creation (Hanvey 2018: 1029). He notes that God’s resting on the Sabbath is not a cessation of divine agency but a ‘transposition into a new mode’ of relationality whereby humans are invited to participate in God’s labour of loving and healing our common home (Hanvey 2018: 1030). Hanvey’s understanding of Sabbath communicates that Divine invitation for Christians to participate in God’s graced activity in our world. In experiencing ecological accompaniment’s generative and transformative labour, Christians constructively contribute to a wider sense of participation in God’s divine activity in the world. In stating my focus on human participation, I consider what helps realize such a capacity and engagement. Or to put it another way, I am identifying the importance of affectivity for participation. As Graham Ward notes, ‘Praxis is both the acting that issues from a believing and the acting that issues in coming to believe’ (Ward 2016: 276). One can, for instance, explore the human potential of involvement in terms of human power, intelligence, ingenuity, creativity, and the strength of labour that is physically available to many people and communities. In this paper, however, I consider what helps persons and communities participate in a time of rest, a cessation of labour, pain, anxiety and the loneliness felt by persons and groups. As such, I prioritize encounters with the natural world and prayer as a form of praxis that allows retrospective meditation on one’s experience in our common home. My approach to praxis and its affective expressiveness takes specific human attributes as a given, such as persons as finite, limited and exposed to the risk of harm

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and injury. Second, and consequently, it assumes that persons are also vulnerable beings. The experience of Covid-19 has underscored human finitude and vulnerability as universal features of what it means to be human in our world today. It is not an overstatement to note that loneliness is an overall outcome of limitation and vulnerability. During the global pandemic, physical, social, and emotional distancing intensified the prevalence of loneliness across our communities (Landmann and Rohmann 2022: 63). Helen Landmann and Anette Rohmann suggest that physical loneliness remained consistent with varying intensities during Covid −19 contact restrictions. Yet they also note that physical loneliness did not overwhelm or persistently dominate the affective and emotional lives of those contributors to their research. Their study reinforces, however, the adverse effects of loneliness, and that resilience is achievable during an experience of physical loneliness.

Ecological Accompaniment: Bodily Vulnerability and Participation in Rendering God Visible One such context that promotes resilience is ecological accompaniment. In the subsequent paragraph, I shall explain the term ecological accompaniment. First, I point out what I consider a thread of identity that binds our humanity with Christ’s. In doing so, I am locating ecological accompaniment within a broader Christian context to underscore that ecological accompaniment has a tangible and transcendental dimension. It is the feature of mystery or divine presence as recognized through faith-filled living and prayer that revolutionizes ecological accompaniment as more than a human enterprise. Heike Springhart makes this connection with God and humanity: ‘The point of God’s humanity in Jesus Christ is the vulnerable situation of his birth and the situation of radical vulnerability on the cross, and the risk of incarnation that God takes in Jesus Christ’ (Springhart 2017: 387–288). Springhart, in sourcing St. Paul, makes an explicit connection between Christ’s and human vulnerability. As Paul notes: ‘[We are] always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be visible in our bodies’ (2 Cor 4: 10). Springhart’s comprehensive presentation of bodily vulnerability facilitates a contextualization of physical loneliness and its effects on understanding and relating to questions of human ontology and theological enquiry. The threading of bodily vulnerability between the created and the creator underscores not so much human ontology weighed down by limitation but rather that our human bodies and our accompanying vulnerabilities ‘is the visualization of the life and death of Jesus’ (Springhart 2017: 388). Significantly, the process of rendering Christ visible in our world is possible through ecological accompaniment, where in our physical distancing from other persons, we experience God’s care through ecological accompaniment as experienced in the natural world.

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Before I define ecological accompaniment, it is helpful to locate and explain the more general use of the term accompaniment. For many sectors, including denominations and NGOs representing a Christian ethos, or other faith traditions or more humanist-orientated organizations, the term accompaniment is utilized to characterize the quality of engagement between the institution and its clients. I first encountered the term and practice of accompaniment at L’Arche, which is a not-for-­profit social service agency that creates and operates supportive communities for people with intellectual disabilities (Ryan 2022). For Christians, ecological accompaniment is an opening to explore the resourcefulness of the term accompaniment for theology’s efforts to participate in a more expansive and inter-disciplinary conversation about sustainability. At the same time, Christians ought to be confident that theology as an academic discipline offers much in probing its relationship to ecological accompaniment. For theology, as an interdisciplinary enquiry, contributes along with other spheres of knowledge to the question of sustainability in our time. Theology, as a critical and self-critical discipline, probes the adaptability of terms to determine their potential for addressing issues of human concern. Moreover, as an enquiring and searching progressive discipline, theology has had long-standing advocates, including the Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner: Theology is a theology that can be genuinely preached only to the extent that it succeeds in establishing contact with the total secular self-understanding which [a person] has in a particular epoch, succeeds in engaging in conversation with it, in catching onto it, and in allowing itself to be enriched by it in its language and even more so in the very nature of theology itself (Rahner 2012: 8).

The present ecological crises facing humanity and our common home requires an adaption of the term accompaniment, freeing it from the limitations of anthropocentrism. Such an expanded understanding and practice of accompaniment is concerned with a twofold target: supporting the sustainability of all living life and our common home.

 he Struggle of Loneliness and the Absence T of Relational Connectivity The challenge for any disciple of Jesus Christ is not a simple identification with and support of a more comprehensive and current presentation of accompaniment, for situations and events may disturb one’s ability to be present to others. In suggesting this expanded reach in repairing and sustaining life and our planet, I identify what I consider to be a common and ever dominating state of life afflicting one’s capacity to participate in ecological accompaniment and aid the sustainability of life itself: Loneliness.

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Theology, therefore, ought to target a present foundational human predicament, which is the fear and realness of loneliness. Noreena Hertz presents the challenge facing humanity as it grapples with loneliness: Even before the coronavirus struck, this was the Lonely Century. But the virus has thrown into even starker relief just how uncared for and unsupported so many of us feel, not only by friends or family but also by our employers and the state; how disconnected so many of us are, not just from those to whom we are most intimately bound but also our neighbors, our work colleagues, and our political leaders (Hertz 2021: 228).

For loneliness holds a direct threat to inter-personal connectivity and intimacy. The experience of loneliness problematizes sustainability by cutting off ties of social affiliations and belonging. In what follows, I shall offer a scientifically informed definition of loneliness for theology, and I will argue that while sites of loneliness have been a historical feature of managing and reprimanding of individuals by groups and the state, I shall also pay special attention to the recent domestication of loneliness during the Covid-19 pandemic. In conclusion, I shall offer prayer as a resilient personal and communal response to both preventing and remedying loneliness and bolstering resilience through ecological accompaniment. While loneliness is not a new term to measure the quality of one’s social connectivity, due to Covid-19 it is now a more familiar one, more expected, and more pervasive (Russell et al. 1980). Before the Covid pandemic, sites of loneliness were discrete places of suffering, for many were ashamed to self-­identify as lonely. To do so makes public a perceived  – whether founded or not  – relational failure or an inability to be loved and desired. For many people, given the stigma attached to loneliness, it remains a privately experienced phenomenon and, thus, more dangerous in its outcomes for persons and communities. For a minority, the experience of loneliness is normative given the social isolation imposed upon them by a governing body or authority structure. Here, I recall such sites of loneliness as detention centers and experiences of solitary confinements (Kaba et al. 2014: 442–7). Despite the mainstream knowledge of the existence of these institutional sites where social distancing regulations from other inmates are lived in extreme forms of isolation, there remained little public concern for the experience and effects of loneliness lived by such inmates (Haney 2020: 130). Indeed, the experience of loneliness for such vulnerable persons fails to generate any substantial and sustainable public sympathy and concern.

Loneliness a New Frontier of Pastoral Care For most people, such sites are known conceptually but remain unknown places of experience and rarely feature on their horizons of concern. The pandemic, however, domesticated sites of loneliness within our very cities, towns, rural lands, homes, ecclesial communities, and our very interiorities. At a human level, we experience

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loneliness in various contexts: societal, psychological, emotional, physical, spiritual, ecclesial, and even theological. For instance, there has been a theological loneliness endured by the First Nations peoples in Canada, whose own spiritual traditions and ways were dismissed by church and state, favouring a more European anchored theological foundation and cultural worldview. No matter the context of loneliness or any mitigating factors aiding and abetting one toward loneliness, the increasing prevalence of loneliness and its multi-­ dimensional structures requires that loneliness be a targeted pastoral and ethical concern for ecclesial communities. For pastoral care to seek out the lonely other, theology requires a more interdisciplinary informed understanding of loneliness to best care for and show concern for those who are lonely. Through an interdisciplinary approach to Covid-19, theology, in turn, gives back to society something of its own resources that contributes toward human sustainability: gratitude for God, the people of God, the world, and all its inhabitants. I propose prayer as one such resource in aiding the sustainability of individual lonely bodies and communities. In its reverence for God, humanity, all forms of life, and the created world as an affective and spiritual praxis, prayer transforms individuals into persons committed to ecological accompaniment. Indeed, once such tangible expression of care in this regard is the way persons and communities attend to our common home and its inhabitants through ecological accompaniment, whilst at the same time our common home comforts humanity. I shall present the Jesuit Examination of Consciousness Prayer as a Christian resource (Williams 2012: 143–156). I resource this prayer in building personal and communal sustainability, albeit in a specifically adapted form for our purposes, as a prayer of Ecological Accompaniment. Before turning to prayer as an expression and practice of ecological accompaniment, I will first explore recent understandings of the term loneliness by scientists.

 oneliness as an Opportunity for Interdisciplinary Research L and Care It is important to acknowledge that there are challenges in exploring loneliness in either a strictly theological manner or an interdisciplinary one, given the lack of a singular and universal definition of loneliness (Alberti 2019: 18–20). Because loneliness is individually felt, its implications and invasiveness depend also on many pre-existing factors. For instance, if one lives alone and is elderly, the experience of loneliness might be more acutely felt during the Covid-19 lockdowns. Given the variables that come with any person and their respective environmental contexts, it is increasingly more urgent that all ministers of care and compassion have knowledge of loneliness and become proficient in targeting it, ensuring more comprehensive pastoral care in their respective ecclesial communities.

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Yet, a working definition of loneliness is necessary for delineating the term and acquiring a general knowledge of the experience of loneliness. Benefiting from the recent scientific study of the word, Stephanie Cacioppo et al. resource a previously utilized definition of loneliness: ‘Loneliness corresponds to a discrepancy between an individual’s preferred and actual social relationships’ (Cacioppo et  al. 2015: 238–239). Moreover, they draw out the far-reaching implications of loneliness: ‘This discrepancy then leads to the negative experience of feeling alone and/ or the distress and dysphoria of feeling socially isolated even when among family and friends’ (Cacioppo et al. 2015: 238–239). Loneliness, as is now known, is a pervasive medical condition in societies across the globe. Indeed, persons living with strong social associations can also experience loneliness. In resourcing science to explore further best practices in accompanying those who experience loneliness, knowledge of the dimensions of the experience is necessary. Cacioppo argues for three aspects of loneliness: intimate (absence of a loved one), relational (lack of quality friendships or family connections), and collective (the social associations one relates to). The contention in introducing loneliness to the question of sustainability underlines my argument that any efforts toward achieving sustainability require attention to loneliness and its dimensions. To illustrate, of the many public health recommendations during the various Covid lockdowns, one concerned the advice that people should go out and connect with their neighborhoods and nature. The reasoning behind this practice was the recognition that our common home, whether an urban or rural dwelling, has the resources to care for persons and communities.

 New Relational Manner: Ecological Accompaniment A and Sustainability As I previously signalled, I propose accompaniment, and more specifically ecological accompaniment, as a term that captures the dynamism of connectivity and intimacy in achieving sustainability. I understand accompaniment as a disposition of availability to the other – person, communities, non-linguistic animals, or common home – as presence. This companionship manifests in various ways, from listening, sharing, and recognizing others’ lives and our common home. Thus, this way of being present positively contributes to one’s sense of a meaningful life and future. In proposing accompaniment as a relational manner toward achieving sustainability of life and our common home, I am suggesting a most human activity. Julia Kristeva narrates the transformative capacities of accompaniment, commenting that ‘The acceptance and the accompaniment of the person in the situation of disability expresses the desire of men and women, together, to overcome the most insurmountable of fears – the one that confronts us at our limits as living beings’ (Kristeva 2015: 121). One might identify in her words an endorsement of accompaniment as a universal human response to finitude and limitation. Whilst the

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challenge of sustainability expresses the precariousness of our times, any repairing and restoring of lives and our planet demand an acknowledgement of our radical dependency upon the global human family and our common home. In drawing from Mary Watkins’ presentation of accompaniment, one can expand the resources of accompaniment available to persons to include the natural world by her development of the term accompaniment to include an ecological dimension (Watkins 2019: 246–286). For her, ecological accompaniment is simply an accompaniment with people’s natural and built environments. In exploring the resourcefulness of ecological accompaniment for a more comprehensive and re-imagined program of pastoral care, I return first to the term accompaniment, having previously signposted its importance for sustainability. Our common home has rural and urban aspects – one question emerging from the pandemic is whether loneliness is more prevalent in rural areas than in urban areas. Recent scientific studies in Canada suggest no significant difference in urban and rural experiences of loneliness. Whether a future lay minister or priest is ministering within an urban or rural sector, loneliness is almost equally prevalent in both locations. The challenge, therefore, is to propose and promote an ecological accompaniment that is a resource in both rural and urban settings. New forms of immediacy and connectivity were proposed during the pandemic, such as reconnecting with one’s neighbourhood, whether rural or urban. The natural world and the very habitations of residence became anchoring sites of comfort. Yet, the human body that sought out urban or rural streets and trails for consolation and reassurance was a grieving and lonely body. The lonely and grieving body emerged as a vulnerable person. Moreover, the vulnerable person is also an enduring figure in embodying an account of humanity that adapted to the ever-changing public health advice and directives. The challenge before ecclesial communities is to make available a contemplative experience of ecological accompaniment that savors the transformative and caring power of one’s habitation and sees the natural world as a genuine experience of grace. I am suggesting a spiritual and interdisciplinary praxis for the faith-filled person that makes them available disciples and participants in ecological accompaniment – facilitating prayerful participation in such accompaniment in the natural world. The traditional Jesuit Examination of Consciousness has five steps, which are adapted for the purposes of ecological accompaniment. Through memory, one becomes aware of God’s presence; one reviews the day from a disposition of gratitude; one pays attention to emotions, times when one feels lonely and vulnerable, and times when one feels consolation and care; one is present to a time in the day when one experienced loneliness and struggled to recognize the sustainability sourced in nature that allowed a resilience within that feeling of social isolation; and one locates oneself in one aspect of that day and asks for the grace or insight to recognize how one’s habitation cared for one’s vulnerable body, mind, emotions and spirit through an experience of ecological accompaniment. In conclusion, I have suggested a two-pronged process of ecological accompaniment. First the experience of exposure and encounter with our natural habitat in its rural and urban dimensions. The experience of walking through one’s city streets,

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experiencing both its beauty and poverty, contributes to a sense of belonging and connectivity. Yet, any encounter of connectivity with one’s habitat may not be a closeness with one’s environment. This paper’s adapted Jesuit examination of consciousness is a resource that can aid in that movement from connectivity to closeness. For it provides a contemplative and discerning retrospective look back on one’s encounter with one’s habitation. As a resource, it has utility for both personal and communal meditation, reflection and discernment, for the examination of consciousness can be undertaken by an individual or group. My proposal, however, adapts the template of the Jesuit examination of consciousness for the specific purposes of creating an examination of consciousness for ecological accompaniment. This prayer-filled retrospective reflection and discernment allows for a deeper savoring of the experience in one’s habitat. In this meditation in our common home, loneliness transforms into an opportunity for grace, where a new relational manner of being in the world is envisioned and lived through ecological accompaniment.

Bibliography Alberti, F.B. 2019. A biography of loneliness: The history of an emotion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cacioppo, S., A.  Grippo, S.  London, L.  Goossens, and J.  Cacoppo. 2015. Loneliness: Clinical import and interventions. Perspectives on Psychological Science 10 (2): 238–239. Haney, C. 2020. Solitary confinement, loneliness, and psychological harm. In Solitary confinement: Effects, practices, and pathways toward reform, ed. J.  Lobel and P.  Scharff Smith, 129–148. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hanvey, J. 2018. Laudato si and the renewal of theologies of creation. Heythrop Journal 59 (6): 1022–1035. Hertz, N. 2021. The lonely century: How to restore human connection in a world that’s pulling apart. New York: Currency. Jeanrond, W.G. 1985. Toward a critical theology of Christian praxis. The Irish Theological Quarterly 51 (2): 136–145. Kaba, F., A.  Lewis, H.  Venters, S.  Glowa-Kollisch, J.  Hadler, D.  Lee, H.  Alper, D.  Selling, R. MacDonald, A. Solimo, and A. Parson. 2014. Solitary confinement and the risk of self-harm among jail inmates. American Journal of Public Health 104 (3): 442–447. Kristeva, J. 2015. A tragedy and a dream: Disability revisited. In Carnal hermeneutics, ed. R. Kearney and B. Treanor, 115–127. New York: Fordham University Press. Landmann, H., and A. Rohmann. 2022. When loneliness dimensions drift apart: Emotional, social and physical loneliness during Covid-19 lockdown and its associations with age, personality, stress, and well-being. International Journal of Psychology 57 (1): 63–72. Moltmann, J. 2016. The future of theology. Ecumenical Review 68: 3–13. Rahner, K. 2012. Foundations of Christian faith: An introduction to the idea of Christianity. Trans. W. V. Dych. New York: Crossroad Publishing Company. Russell, D., L.A. Peplau, and C.E. Cutrona. 1980. The revised UCLA loneliness scale: Concurrent and discriminant validity evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39 (3): 472–480. Ryan, G. 2022. Mutual accompaniment as faith-filled living: Recognition of the vulnerable other. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

14  Ecological Accompaniment: From Connectivity to Closeness in an Age of Loneliness 159 Springhart, H. 2017. Vulnerable creation: Vulnerable life between risk and tragedy. Dialog: A Journal of Theology 56 (4): 382–390. Ward, G. 2016. How the light gets. In Ethics I. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Watkins, M. 2019. Mutual accompaniment and the creation of the commons. New Haven/London: Yale University Press. Williams, M. 2012. Stepping into mystery: Four approaches to a spiritual life. Ottawa: Novalis Publishing.

Chapter 15

The Paradox of Sustainable Prisons: How Liberation Theology Might Contribute to the Question of Environmentally-Friendly Prisons Hannah James Abstract Dominique Moran and Yvonne Jewkes have pointed out a dilemma in our modern sustainability discourse: it lies in the concept of ‘green’ prisons. They call attention to the reality that conversations around sustainability within the prison-industrial complex often serve to sustain the system itself. This is because the concept of sustainability is generally viewed to be a good thing (and often is a good thing), but in their context within the prison system, sustainability initiatives can also be a distraction from the harsh realities of prison. For them, sustainability is something that should be considered in the prison industrial complex because prisons are energy-intensive facilities, but not without due attention to the philosophy of prisons as well. Thus, the primary intention of this paper is to look at a theology of prisons, or rather, a theology for the abolition of prisons; for according to Moran and Jewkes, this would be the most sustainable option. I will examine the tenants of liberation theology with special attention paid to a definition of liberation. For some scholars, liberation is merely an internal experience; however, the Christian Scriptures witness to Jesus’ concern for the physical state of his community, and thus, we ought to take his command to ‘free the captives’ in a literal way. Keywords Abolition · Freedom · Green prisons · Liberation theology · Mass incarceration · Sustainability

H. James (*) University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Global Sustainability, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41800-6_15

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Introduction Amongst the many organizations that have shifted to sustainable practices in the recent past, we find the prison-industrial complex converting to a model of what has been coined ‘green prisons.’ At first glance, this may appear to be unproblematic. As Moran and Jewkes (2014: 345) suggest, US prisons are extremely resource-intensive facilities. They perhaps most closely resemble large hospitals, in that they operate round the clock, are densely occupied, and consume more energy on an annual basis than typical commercial or residential buildings. Many correctional facilities also consume more water per square metre than standard building types, and their functional requirements in terms of security make conventional energy-­ saving measures challenging to implement.

Thus, with consideration to the amount of energy that prisons are using, it is fair to say that something should change within the prison-industrial complex in order to preserve the environment. With that being said, Moran and Jewkes conclude that the political conversations that are happening today about sustainable and ‘green’ prisons are ultimately sustaining the penal complex just as much as – if not more than – the environment, for these conversations often overlook the fact that the most obvious way to reduce the energy usage of prisons would be to reduce the number of people incarcerated. Thus, for them, if we truly care about sustaining the environment, we must also consider the necessity of prisons more broadly and contemplate the underlying philosophy and/or theology of prisons in this day and age. According to Moran and Jewkes (2014: 348), the most sustainable option would be to eliminate the prison-industrial complex altogether, if such a conclusion may be supported philosophically and pragmatically. In this paper, then, I will pick up where Jewkes and Moran left off, and discuss a theology of prisons, and more specifically, a liberation theology for the abolition of prisons. Unfortunately, some Christian theologies have contributed to the reality of mass incarceration, and thus, in order to attempt to dismantle this system, we must replace these problematic Christian ideologies with theologies of liberation. I will argue that one of the most helpful ways to move towards a liberation theology is to properly define liberation – as that which is first and foremost a physical transformation, rather than merely an internal state of freedom. I will subsequently argue that God has designed human beings for physical freedom in order to serve God and one another, and thus, when we limit the liberation of God to the confines of our minds and souls, we are diminishing human dignity and flourishing. As it so happens, a liberation theology that supports physical human freedom is also gospel for the environment. In order to successfully argue this thesis, I will first explore the findings of Jewkes’ and Moran’s articles on the paradox of sustainable prisons. After aligning ourselves with their insights, we will then turn to a discussion of liberation theology, which will help us to answer their own questions about the purpose of prisons and how the discussion of this purpose will contribute to a more truthful conversation about the sustainability of the environment.

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The Paradox of Sustainable Prisons Moran and Jewkes published two articles about the paradox of ‘sustainable prisons’ in 2014 and 2015, respectively. They helpfully discuss the origin of the term ‘sustainability’ and how it has evolved into the buzz word that it is today. In 1987, the World Commission on Environment and Development released the Brundtland report, in which the phrase ‘sustainable development’ was originally coined. It was defined as a process which ‘meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (8). As Moran and Jewkes (2014: 346) have rightly suggested, however, the meaning of ‘sustainable development’ has since been highly contested and politicized, ultimately eliciting confusion for those who do and do not support sustainable practices. Similarly, the term ‘green’ or ‘going green’ is ‘perhaps even more arbitrary in terms of its intuitive nature, and assumed meanings’ (Moran and Jewkes 2014: 347). Be that as it may, the notion of green prisons is frequently used and may best be defined as a prison that is ‘first and foremost a resource-efficient building, which might or might not contain associated inmate programming’ (Moran and Jewkes 2014: 349). Some prisons, particularly in the northern European region, are leading the way in green prison design for the benefit of both the environment and inmates. For example, on an island in the Oslo fjord, the prison Bastøy is both environmentally friendly and facilitates education and training for its inmates, thus contributing towards their rehabilitation. ‘In order to limit its environmental impact, it uses solar panels, wood-fired heating and strict recycling systems’ (Moran and Jewkes 2014: 351). Additionally, ‘the prison farm is organic, the prison recycles its own waste, and there is “a constant focus on minimizing CO2-emissions”’ (Moran and Jewkes 2014: 351). With this design, the prisoners also ‘learn to manage the island woodland to preserve the wood supply both as a source of renewable energy, and to undertake maintenance of the prison buildings’ (Moran and Jewkes 2014: 351). This is an example of a green prison at its best, but most of the sustainable developments made in the US and UK are very far from this model. In fact, some modifications made in US and UK prisons in the name of sustainability actually harm those who live there – both physically and psychologically. For example, the authors suggest that they themselves observed ‘an unforeseen effect of the efficient insulation and building materials used’ in the construction of a UK prison (Moran and Jewkes 2015: 459). During their fieldwork in the summer of 2014, they visited a prison facility that did not allow for sufficient airflow during the warmer months, despite the fact that the prison was built with sustainability in mind. The thermal efficiency of the building is such that, with limited natural ventilation, the summer indoor environmental quality led to uncomfortable conditions for prisoners and staff alike… While blankets may be distributed to prisoners in cold weather, prisons do not lend themselves to flexible ventilation when the temperature is hot, and prisoners (and staff) are ‘at the mercy’ of the building to a greater degree than, for example, office workers who can open a window, or go outside during their lunch break (Moran and Jewkes 2015: 459).

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As they suggest, some prisons may be ‘worthy of awards for their thermal design, but (this example at least) may well be regarded as an infringement of human rights’ (Moran and Jewkes 2015: 459). In sum, then, sustainability modifications can be done well and can be done poorly as demonstrated in these two examples, and the authors suggest that this is reflective of the underlying prison philosophies that exist in the US and UK as opposed to that of northern Europe. Moran and Jewkes (2014: 352) contend that for the US, in particular, there is a retributive model of justice in place, in which prisoners are supposed to undergo suffering, ‘not only through the loss of freedom, but also by virtue of prison conditions, which should be of a worse standard than those available to the poorest free workers.’ With that said, the authors conclude that even the best and ‘greenest’ prisons – like that of Bastøy – are still prisons: institutions designed to keep people locked away from their broader communities. And thus, for these authors, in order to change the sustainability practices in the penal complex (which should include the possibility of dismantling the system altogether), we must first examine the underlying philosophy – or, in this case, theology – of prisons. To this task we will now turn.

Why Theology? Why do we need a theology to speak to the reality of mass incarceration? As Joshua Dubler and Vincent Lloyd (2019: 3) argue, the answer to this question is because Christian theology has contributed to mass incarceration in the first place. In their own words: ‘the systematic criminalization of certain American lives is a product of racial capitalism, settler colonialism, and patriarchy, but it also takes place in the long shadow cast by Christ on the cross’ (Dubler and Lloyd 2019: 3). Theologian Mark Lewis Taylor holds a similar view. For him, it is not that all religious practices or expressions are sources that have contributed to mass incarceration, but for him, the kind of theology that idealizes Jesus’ torture and death has, indeed, contributed to our current reality (Taylor 2014: 173–174).1 For Taylor (2014: 173–174), this theology needs to be ruptured along with the prison-industrial complex. Moran and Jewkes are correct, then, in suggesting that the penal system’s design, including its vision for sustainable alternatives, is led and limited by its underlying philosophy and theology. As we have suggested in the introduction, in order to dismantle the kind of theology that supports mass incarceration, we need to reconfigure a theology of liberation in its place. Dubler and Lloyd (2019: 8) rightly argue that in order to face the issue of mass incarceration, ‘a secular, pragmatic frame isn’t enough.’ For them, we need to go to the root of the problem – the underlying theology of mass incarceration. By starting here, we can then offer a ‘transformative vision of what justice is and what it must become’ (Dubler and Lloyd 2019: 8). In the remaining portion of  Feminist theologians such as Wendy Farley, Dorothee Soelle, and Katie Cannon have also challenged the traditional atonement discourse in which God the Father needs to punish and kill his son in order for God’s justice to be satisfied.

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this paper, I will attempt to describe a liberation theology that is good news for the oppressed and incarcerated. As we will find, this is also good news for the earth.

A Theology for the Abolition of Prisons In the first place, I will suggest that there is not a single theology for the abolition of prisons. There are many theologians who have creatively offered solutions to the reality of mass incarceration in which we find ourselves.2 With that said, the tradition of liberation theology, in particular, most obviously captures God’s desire for freedom in the lives of the poor and oppressed. It is a tradition that translates immediately into social action. Katie Cannon (2001: 14) defines ‘liberation ethics’ in the following way: Liberation ethics is debunking, unmasking, and disentangling the ideologies, theologies and systems of value operative in a particular society. ‘How’ is it done? By analyzing the cultural, political and economic presuppositions and by evaluating the legitimate myths that sanction the enforcement of such values. ‘Why’ is it worth doing? So that we may become responsible decision makers who envision structural and systematic alternatives that embrace the well-being of us all.

This definition speaks to the systematic evils that liberation theologians must address, and Cannon is clear that we act in accordance with this tradition for the sake of the poor and oppressed – for those who have not been given fair treatment and equal status in our society. Liberation theology is also Scripturally-oriented, as it closely follows Jesus’ mission statement in Luke 4. Jesus stated that ‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor’ (vs. 18–19). With that said, there are some theologians for whom liberation is taken to be a more personal, internal experience. Thus, it will be the task of the remaining portion of this paper to demonstrate why this definition should be rejected in favor of a more physical and external expression of freedom. By embracing a physical expression of liberation, I contend that we will be more closely aligned with the hope of Jesus’ ministry and we will more effectively achieve sustainability for the environment and our communities.3

 Amy Levad’s Redeeming a Prison Society: A Liturgical and Sacramental Response to Mass Incarceration (2014), is a particularly helpful and creative approach to the issue of mass incarceration. 3  Due to the limits of time and space, this paper will not be able to go into detail about what it means to be a ‘sustainable community.’ At a basic level, however, I mean that families, friends, and neighbors suffer significantly when one of their members is incarcerated – not only emotionally, but also financially. As a result of weakened family units and communal relations, it is more likely that other members of the community will act through illegal means to attempt to resecure themselves. 2

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Defining Liberation In the evangelical Christian movement, in particular, there are many theologians who have defined liberation/freedom as an internal transformation – one in which a person is freed from the sins they have committed rather than freed from the physical structures which oppress them, or in which they participate to oppress others. I would argue that internal freedom is a part of the gift that Jesus has given us through his life, death, and resurrection, but Jesus also demonstrates a desire for people’s physical circumstances to change, as he suggests in Luke 4. Salvation is not merely a future reality in which our souls are ‘saved’ from hell in the afterlife but a present call to Christians to bring heaven to earth. Sadie Pounder is one theologian who argues for liberation as a primarily internal experience. In her article, Prison Theology, she cites a Christian educator, Chris Barbera, and liberation theologian, Gustavo Gutiérrez, in support of her view. She quotes the following from Barbera: ‘A person in prison who becomes accountable for their actions is no longer in bondage to their crimes. Becoming released from the bondage to a crime or past negative action frees the soul of punishment. A free soul is rehabilitated’ (Barbera 2007: 129). Then, from Gutiérrez, she quotes his definition of liberation as a ‘personal transformation by which we live with profound inner freedom in the face of every kind of servitude’ (Gutiérrez 1988: xxxviii). Ultimately, for her, ‘[l]iberation in prison theology means freedom from many things, but not, understandably, from the accountability and responsibility of a person fulfilling a fair and just sentence of the law. Law, too, is a gracious gift of God in the service of life and God’s creation’ (Pounder 2008: 282). By her view of liberation, a person can be physically incarcerated but internally freed from the guilt of their crimes, and the latter is more important. Mark Taylor points out that this belief is widely held amongst conservative prison ministries in the U.S., and as a result, the wider institution of the prison-­ industrial complex remains unchallenged. He cites the Prison Fellowship Ministries CEO Chuck Colson as a prime example, for Colson widely preaches about the internal transformation that Christ offers us in our acceptance of salvation. Moreover, Colson believes that this type of transformation is the most important ‘crime-­ prevention strategy,’ and thus, evangelism is the key to lowering rates of incarceration. As Taylor (2014: 178) puts it, the aim of these types of ministries is to ‘promote a “born again” experience in which Jesus’ sacrificial death is received by prisoners as their new inner life. Then, with individuals becoming Christians, social problems will automatically be solved: inequality, systematic injustice and group conflict.’ It is not unfair to say that this view is naïve at best and evil at worst, for they are remaining complicit in the oppression of millions of Americans, even if they are freeing the prisoners’ ‘souls.’ As I have suggested, Jesus’ discussion of freedom, on the other hand, is very much focused on the physical reality of his community. While there may be some aspects of Jesus’ ministry that are spiritual or transcendent, Jesus also directly challenged the social reality in which he lived – raising up the status of the poor and

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oppressed, of women and uneducated fisherman; healing those who were outcast from society; building community and fellowship with other races and genders; and stepping outside traditional Torah interpretation. Moreover, in the Beatitudes as presented through Luke’s gospel, Jesus is clear that the poor, the hungry, and the depressed are blessed in the kingdom of God (Luke 6: 20–26). Their physical reality will be changed. Be that as it may, proponents of both views may wonder about the pragmatism of supporting the freedom of prisoners. We might think this to be a lovely sentiment, but what happens when serious wrongdoing occurs? Shouldn’t justice be achieved through punishment or isolation from one’s community? Here, too, Jesus offers us a vision of reconciliation and rehabilitation. Jesus preached love and forgiveness; He emphasized restoration over retribution.4 Moreover, the Scriptures testify to the reality that such a strategy is, indeed, effective for ‘crime-prevention,’ as Colson puts it. The story of Zacchaeus is a particularly helpful image of a criminal who was given the freedom to right his wrongs and reconcile with his community, and this is an opportunity that all people deserve to have. As Stephen Pope (2014: 186) suggests, Salvation came not only to Zacchaeus but also to his entire ‘household.’ It is not about ‘going’ to heaven but living in an entirely new set of relationships. Forgiveness is thus not a matter of one’s soul being ‘wiped clean’ but about seeing oneself in a new way and living accordingly. Zacchaeus’ transformation is not only interior but also flows into his material and social existence.

Theologians like Pounder, then, are correct to prioritize the accountability that should happen for those who have committed wrongdoing; however, she is wrong to assume that the way in which the U.S. government has designed accountability is directly given by God. In many, if not most, cases the sentences that offenders are given are not just or fair. Any sentence that involves a person being sent to a prison where rape and violence are norms of life, where guards and correctional officers assert power over inmates through derogatory statements and physical violence, where inmates are constantly under surveillance and threatened with isolation is emphatically not a just sentence, even if one may experience ‘internal freedom.’ Instead, as Soltis and Grimes (2021: 112) argue, true accountability presupposes freedom. In their own words: ‘True accountability and transformation requires the use of one’s freedom and agency, not the deprivation of them.’ In sum, then, liberation is needed for rehabilitation and transformation, and this physical liberation is declared first and foremost in Jesus’ mission statement of Luke 4. That human beings should be set free from oppression, including the oppression of incarceration, is at the fore of Jesus’ ministry. Therefore, theologians and larger prison ministries that prioritize internal freedom and do  While there are certainly places within the New Testament that speak to a coming judgment that may seem to imply retribution on God’s part, I would contend that the self-revelation of Jesus Christ in his life, death, and resurrection may give us confidence that God’s overarching purposes for the world are for reconciliation, not retribution. 4

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not challenge the wider institution that places people in cages is not consistent with the good news of Jesus – that God will break every yoke and set the captives free.

Conclusion In this essay, I have discussed Moran and Jewkes’ proposal that the sustainability conversation around the prison-industrial complex has primarily served to sustain the organization itself, rather than the environment. In the process, too, we are not only sustaining (slightly less) resource-intensive facilities, but also sustaining a harmful practice for millions of people all over the world. For these researches, in order to more truthfully discuss how we as a society may have a ‘green’ criminology, we must first discuss the underlying philosophy and/or theology of prisons. I have picked up the baton at this point to discuss why a theology of liberation can contribute to this conversation. In the first place, Christian theology has contributed to the reality of mass incarceration, and thus, as Christians, we must take responsibility for this and attempt to replace these oppressive theologies with Jesus’ message of liberation. Jesus’ message very much focuses on the physical reality of freedom for his hearers, and as seen in the story of Zacchaeus, this freedom actually allows for accountability, reconciliation, and transformation. As a result of this definition, I conclude that, as Christians, we ought to advocate for sustainable developments in our criminal justice system – not through ‘greener’ prisons and mass incarceration, but through the abolition of prisons, restorative justice, and a prioritization of accountability amongst the members of our community.

Bibliography Barbera, C. 2007. Toward a Christian prison theology. Dialog: A Journal of Theology 46 (2): 128–130. Cannon, K. 2001. The womanist theology primer: Remembering what we never knew: The epistemology of womanist theology. Louisville: Women’s Ministries Program Area, National Division, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Dubler, J., and V. Lloyd. 2019. Break every yoke: Religion, justice, and the abolition of prisons. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gutiérrez, G. 1988. A theology of liberation, history, politics, and salvation. Maryknoll: Orbis Books. Levad, A. 2014. Redeeming a prison society: A liturgical and sacramental response to mass incarceration. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Moran, D., and Y. Jewkes. 2014. “Green” prisons: Rethinking the “sustainability” of the carceral estate. Geographica Helvetica 69 (1): 345–353. ———. 2015. The paradox of the “green” prison: Sustaining the environment or sustaining the penal complex? Theoretical Criminology 19 (4): 451–569.

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Pope, S. 2014. The role of forgiveness in reconciliation and restorative justice: A Christian theological perspective. In Restorative justice, reconciliation, and peacebuilding, ed. J.J. Llewellyn and D. Philpott, 174–196. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pounder, S. 2008. Prison theology: A theology of liberation, hope and justice. Dialog: A Journal of Theology 47 (3): 278–291. Soltis, K.G., and K.W. Grimes. 2021. Order, reform, and abolition: Changes in Catholic theological imagination on prisons and punishment. Theological Studies 82 (1): 95–115. Taylor, M.L. 2014. Christianity and US prison abolition: Rupturing a hegemonic Christian ideology. Socialism and Democracy 28 (3): 172–188. World Commission on Environment and Development. 1987. Our common future, the Brundtland Report. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 16

Birds, Lilies, and the Gorilla: An Eco-theological Reading of Jesus’ Teachings in Conversation with Daniel Quinn James Thieke Abstract Biblical commentators have noted the lack of attention paid by contemporary eco-theological thought to Jesus’ teachings in the Synoptic Gospels. Mark Harris argues that understanding the theme of discipleship in Jesus’ teachings can provide a productive way forward. This approach focuses on human action and how the outlook and practices associated with discipleship can inform a contemporary Christian ethic of sustainability. This paper spotlights one crucial aspect of discipleship – the eschewing of worry about the future due to dependence on God’s providence and the anticipation of the kingdom – through conversation with the thought of Daniel Quinn. Quinn, by drawing a contrast between two types of human lifestyles – Takers and Leavers – argues that anxiety over the future contributes to a lifestyle that has created our contemporary global ecological crisis. Quinn’s critique of this lifestyle culminates with a reference to Jesus’ teachings found in Matthew 6 and Luke 12 about how God takes care of the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, and how the disciples should not worry about the future. This paper examines these relevant Gospel passages and argues that this command to not worry about the future provides a theological foundation for sustainable human living. Keywords Discipleship · Ishmael · Luke · Matthew · Daniel Quinn · Sustainability · Synoptic gospels

Introduction Several biblical commentators have noted the lack of attention paid by contemporary eco-theological thought to the teachings of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels (Harris 2022: 211). Foremost among reasons for this neglect is the lack of explicit J. Thieke (*) University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Global Sustainability, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41800-6_16

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references to the value of the non-human natural world in these texts – however, an arguably greater concern is the anachronism of reading contemporary ecological values into these ancient texts, especially when the Synoptic Gospels reveal a distinct worldview (ibid.: 211). Rather than focusing merely on positive valuations of non-human nature in biblical texts – and thus risking the anachronism of attributing contemporary environmentalist concerns to biblical authors – Mark Harris argues that understanding the theme of discipleship in Jesus’ teachings, and how that theme fits into the texts’ cosmic-eschatological vision of God’s kingdom, can provide a more productive way forward. This approach focuses on human action and how the outlook and practices associated with discipleship can inform a contemporary Christian ethic of sustainability. Following this approach, in this paper I bring certain teachings of Jesus into conversation with the thought of Daniel Quinn, particularly as found in his novel Ishmael (1992), which won the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award for creative solutions to global environmental problems. For Quinn, one fundamental driver of our contemporary ecological crisis is anxiety over the future: eschewing worry over the future is a crucial step toward living sustainably. Likewise, in certain Gospel teachings which are specifically highlighted by Quinn, Jesus commands his disciples to not worry about the future. This paper examines these relevant Gospel passages and argues that this command to refrain from worry is not only a key aspect of Jesus’ message of discipleship in the Synoptic Gospels, and a crucial aspect of Christian theological reflection, but becomes a central environmentalist message when interpreted through Quinn’s perspective. Discipleship is characterized by a total dependence on God’s providence and the imminent anticipation of the kingdom (Harris 2022: 221) – as such, viewing discipleship through Quinn’s thought gives it a clear and forceful environmental application. I will thus argue that the command to refrain from worry about the future provides a theological foundation for sustainable human living.

 atthew 6:25-34 – Implications for an Ethic M of Christian Discipleship Jesus’ teachings against anxiety are most notably found in and discussed from Matthew 6:25-34, in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount: the command to ‘not worry’ frames the passage, repeated three times, each with reasons for heeding it, famously through comparison with the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, whom God feeds and clothes respectively (Bauckham 2009: 78). Richard Bauckham notes that to be oppressed by anxiety over one’s food and clothing, the basic needs of survival, would have been the norm for most people in Jesus’ time (ibid.: 79). He writes that humans ‘may easily suppose that it is up to them to provide themselves with food. This is the root of the anxiety about material needs that Jesus is showing to be unnecessary’ (ibid.: 83).

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The provision of food for humans is actually up to God, as humans live in total dependence on God’s providence – Jesus’ teachings assure this fact by citing God’s care for all living creatures (ibid.: 82). Rather than simply being illustrative images, Bauckham sees Jesus’ reference to the birds and lilies as reinforcing biblical creation theology: Creation theology is absolutely necessary to the point being made: that Jesus’ hearers do not need to worry about their basic needs for survival. They can take away this lesson only by understanding themselves to belong to the community of God’s creatures along with the birds and the wild flowers. The examples from nature are thus not mere illustrations that can be dispensed with as soon as the lesson is learned. They are integral to the way the world must be seen if Jesus’ disciples are to live without oppressive anxiety (Bauckham 2009: 84).

Adrian Leske also emphasizes this essential point by highlighting the covenantal and prophetic themes in these teachings: Jesus’ preaching of the kingdom announces a reality in which all humans are called to depend on God. He writes, ‘When one is in proper relationship with God, there is no reason for anxiety since God supplies whatever is needed to live as a member of God’s kingdom’ (Leske 2002: 19). This dependence on God should not be confused with passivity or laziness, as if the solution to anxiety is to stop working – rather, as Leske notes, Jesus’ teaching is pointing towards his hearers’ status as the restored covenant people, who now possess a new way of life in God. Within this renewed relationship with God, one must trust that God will provide food, drink, and clothing (ibid.: 21). Bauckham argues that freedom from anxiety comes from recognizing ourselves as continuous with God’s good creation, respecting our own limits as human recipients of nature’s bounty, and trusting in God completely (Bauckham 2009: 86–8). Such a way of living is active and present-focused, acknowledging ourselves as being in the hands of God rather than worrying about securing our own future fate. Several of the teachings in Luke 12 – in which the teachings of Matthew 6:25–34 are repeated – also speak toward rejecting anxiety over the future and instead trusting in God: these include Jesus’ warning, ‘Do not fear those who kill the body’ (Luke 12:4); Jesus’ reassurance, ‘Do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows’ (7); and the Parable of the Rich Fool (13–21), which contains a rebuke to those who amass material goods for future security. While many have seen the environmental potential of Jesus’ teachings against anxiety over the future – for instance, Leske sees Matthew 6:25–34 as fundamentally about interconnectedness, and maintains that these teachings have an ecojustice call for humans to rediscover their place within God’s dependent creation (2002: 26–7) – it is even more important to note that these teachings also reflect the central theme of discipleship in Jesus’ ministry. Mark Harris, noting that discipleship is a prominent theme in the Synoptic Gospels, argues that discipleship is more useful to environmental discussions than the more common term ‘stewardship.’ While stewardship can imply ‘managerial anthropocentrism,’ discipleship is Christocentric, and emphasizes service, a total dependence on hospitality and providence, and alertness until the day of salvation (Harris 2022: 221). As such, Jesus’ teachings in Matthew 6:25–34 against anxiety are not an outlier or one-off in his ministry, but rather they speak to its very center: placing one’s trust and hope totally in God.

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Even the eschatological focus on the kingdom in the Synoptic Gospels provides an environmental ethic  – Harris writes: ‘Although the physical earth may not be renewed until the kingdom arrives in full, this does not preclude a present imperative for ecological ethics, just as it has never precluded a present imperative for any ethical concern in Christian history’ (Harris 2022: 225). As Jesus’ parable of the watchful steward in Luke 12 makes clear (a parable which, notably, follows Luke’s presentation of Jesus’ teachings on the birds and the lilies), the imminent expectation of the kingdom entails right action in the present, for ‘Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes’ (Luke 12:43). The command to refrain from worry about the future is not a call to reject responsibility, but to a present focus on being wholly committed to and prepared to receive God. A focus on the present instead of anxiety over the future is advocated by the work of Daniel Quinn, to which this paper now turns, as essential to humanity’s ability to live sustainably on the earth.

Daniel Quinn: Takers, Leavers, and Anxiety over the Future Quinn’s novel Ishmael is structured as a dialogue between a gorilla (the titular Ishmael) and his pupil (the first-person narrator) on how to save the world from environmental destruction – Bron Taylor calls it an articulation of ‘the most prevalent cosmogony found within radical environmental subcultures’ (Taylor 2010: 78). In it, Ishmael distinguishes between two types of human lifestyles, which he calls ‘Takers’ and ‘Leavers’ (Quinn 1995: 41), a dichotomy which persists as a focal theme through Quinn’s later works. Ishmael notes that ‘Takers’ and ‘Leavers’ can be seen as less-pejorative labels for the historical designations of ‘civilized cultures’ versus ‘primitive cultures’ respectively (ibid.: 39). For Quinn, the difference between Takers and Leavers can be most quickly summarized by the narrator’s characterization of the premises of their lifestyles: Takers believe (and act accordingly) the world belongs to humanity, while Leavers believe that humanity belongs to the world (ibid.: 239). Throughout Ishmael and his later works, Quinn distinguishes Takers and Leavers based on their cultural stories, or the way they understand the relationship between humanity, the world, and the gods – one could say that there is a spiritual difference between Takers and Leavers, which Quinn aims to tease out, that underlies all other tangible differences. Takers believe that humans are exempt from the laws governing the rest of natural life, such that humans are not meant to live like other animals (Quinn 1995: 119). For Takers, humans are meant to conquer and rule the non-­ human world, and thus treat the world as a foe (ibid.: 82–4). To survive, they must accumulate and hoard food and wealth, such that food in Taker societies is owned and kept under lock and key (Quinn 1998: 39). The Taker practice of totalitarian agriculture, in which all life that is not capable of use for human food production must be killed and replaced by food, thus brings ecosystems, as well as other human cultures, to destruction (Taylor 2010: 78–9). Such a cultural mythology leads to a

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self-captivity of its adherents – those within Taker cultures who do not participate in the Taker story do not get fed (Quinn 1995: 36–7). In a relatively short time-scale within human history (Ishmael dates the birth of Taker culture to the Agricultural Revolution in the Neolithic, ibid.: 152), Takers have brought the world to the brink of environmental collapse. Leavers, by contrast, believe that humans are subject to the laws governing natural life, and that exempting humanity from these could only lead to humanity’s self-­ destruction (Quinn 1995: 246). The Leaver lifestyle is thus about letting the rest of the community of life live and thrive, with humans as a participating member of that community. As such, Leavers practice hunter-gathering, herding, agriculture, or any mix of food acquisition, as there is no one right way of living in accordance with nature (ibid.: 250). Rather, Leaver peoples accumulate a received wisdom about how to live through generations that is tailored to their specific culture (ibid.: 206). For Leavers, humans must live in ‘the hands of the gods,’ a phrase Quinn uses to emphasize that Leavers live and depend on nature’s bounty as much as all other animals (ibid: 229). Leaver cultures thus live sustainably on the Earth, and have lived as such for hundreds of thousands of years, prior to their near extinction at the hands of the Takers (ibid.: 248). A crucial aspect of Quinn’s argument at the climax of Ishmael is that Takers must overcome an inherent horror and revulsion at the Leaver lifestyle (Quinn 1995: 219). The Taker lifestyle is fundamentally unsatisfying – Ishmael calls it a ‘megalomaniac’s fantasy’ (ibid.: 147), in which a culture of greed, crime, cruelty and mental illness has been bought at the price of enmity with the rest of the world’s life – and yet both Ishmael and the narrator note that few Taker people would willingly reject the Taker lifestyle and adopt a Leaver lifestyle (ibid: 208–9). The narrator argues that the Leaver lifestyle appears like a never-ending nightmare of terror and anxiety over one’s survival, despite Ishmael’s observations that studies of contemporary huntergatherer groups reveal little anxiety among them (ibid.: 229). What drives the Taker lifestyle, and its fear and hatred of the Leaver lifestyle, is a desire for control over one’s own life stemming from this anxiety over survival (ibid.: 227–9). And it is precisely this Taker attitude that has created our global ecological crisis – by jumping out of the hands of the gods and trying to put survival completely into their own hands, viewing themselves as exceptions from the rest of the natural world, Takers become outlaws and enemies of nature, destroying the natural world like an enemy. Quinn’s critique of the Taker lifestyle culminates with the narrator making an explicit reference to Jesus’ teachings found in Matthew 6 and Luke 12: Far and away the most futile admonition Christ ever offered was when he said, ‘Have no care for tomorrow. Don’t worry about whether you’re going to have something to eat. Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, but God takes perfect care of them. Don’t you think he’ll do the same for you?’ In our culture the overwhelming answer to that question is, ‘Hell no!’ Even the most dedicated monastics saw to their sowing and reaping and gathering into barns (Quinn 1995: 228).

Despite Quinn’s frequent critiques of Christianity (and most other religions) elsewhere (Taylor 2010: 79), his inclusion of these particular teachings of Jesus at this point in the narrative illustrates an affinity between them and the Leaver story of

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‘living in the hands of the gods.’ These particular teachings of Jesus strike at the heart of the Taker anxiety over survival. Heeding them could thus promote sustainable living, as Jesus is essentially instructing his disciples to live like Leavers. But even more crucially, the removal of anxiety over the future could be understood, per Quinn’s ideas, as the key element in converting the Taker mindset to the Leaver mindset. As argued above, Quinn’s use of these particular teachings for environmental purposes is not idiosyncratic, and the teachings themselves are not outliers Jesus’ ministry but rather embody its very heart, even the heart of the Christian faith. As such, these particular teachings of Jesus in Matthew 6 and Luke 12 have enormous environmental value, and they can thus serve as the basis for a Christian ethic of sustainability.

Concluding Thoughts and Implications To conclude, the teachings of Jesus against anxiety are not peripheral to the concerns of Christian theology. Rather, they become embodied after Christ’s death in the theological understanding of the Resurrection. Consider John Meyendorff on the significance of Matthew 6:25–34 for Christian ethics: Here lies, it seems, the right approach to ethics, as it is found in the New Testament, which can easily be explained away as unrealistic paraphrases unless one takes seriously the idea that the teachings of Jesus are addressed to those who are free from death and from struggle for survival. Indeed, such precepts as ‘Do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat, or what you shall drink … Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap … Consider the lilies of the field …’ sound like sentimental or emotional exhortations only, unless they reflect a real experience of victory over death, which liberates Christians from the most common dependence upon food (or money) and enables them to ‘give,’ rather than being concerned about ‘receiving’ (Meyendorff 1989: 498-9).

This quote reveals how the commands against anxiety are crucially tied to the victory over death won by Christ’s death and Resurrection. Christ’s Resurrection has removed the fear of death, and thus a Christian anxiety over survival is unfounded. Rather, the Christian needs to take seriously the call to depend completely on God’s providence and thus to live a lifestyle that requires no anxiety over survival. Rather than worrying over food and clothes, the Christian now eats the body of Christ and clothes herself in Christ (Gal 3:27), such that she triumphs over death with him. If this sounds extreme, then we might do well to note, as Bauckham does, that our ‘consumerist society’s addiction to excess’ is also extreme (Bauckham 2009: 86) – the lengths we traverse to assure our survival are, as Quinn notes, a ‘megalomaniac’s fantasy,’ and, in fact, our anxiety to control our survival is ultimately ensuring our demise. How then, against this destructive anxiety, can engaging Jesus’ teachings with Quinn’s thought inform a Christian ethic of sustainability? Hilary Marlow argues for three key areas in which biblical texts can inform contemporary ethics: 1. The ascription of value to non-human creation; 2. Grounding reasons for morality in relationships with God; and 3. Making interpersonal relationships and community a priority (Marlow 2009: 275). It is the second of these which is most clearly pertinent

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to Jesus’ teachings on anxiety – as the command to refrain from worry proceeds out of total dependence on God – and yet it becomes clear how the other two ways are also addressed by these teachings. As the Parable of the Rich Fool in Luke 12 makes clear, the hoarding of the bounty of the Earth  – which Quinn identifies as a key component of Taker culture, practiced due to fear of death – is terribly misguided, as humans should instead look to be ‘rich toward God’ (Luke 12:21). As Meyendorff notes above, Christians can be free to ‘give’ rather than worry over ‘receiving’ in their interpersonal relationships precisely because of their confidence in God’s victory over death. This is why Harris’s use of the term ‘discipleship’ is so helpful, as it encompasses human responsibility to God first, but then also by extension to other humans and the non-human creation. Harris argues that we should recognize environmental disregard as sin, and then build from Jesus’ discipleship ethics with environmentalism in mind (2022: 225). This approach is magnified by Quinn’s thought, as his dichotomy between Takers and Leavers highlights the nature of this sin of environmental disregard by drawing out several of its motivations – anxiety over the future, loss of control, the desire for survival at all costs – leading Quinn to enjoin his readers to eschew these fears for a life ‘in the hands of the gods.’ While Quinn’s thought may not be expressly Christian, his enjoinder is highly consistent with how the Christian disciple’s trust in God affects all aspects of her life, including her relationship with the non-human creation – his novels reveal the importance of this trust for the health of the planet and human sustainability. Jesus’ teachings on anxiety, exemplifying the Synoptic Gospels’ theme of discipleship, thus provide a Christian framework for living in total dependence on God’s providence. In Quinn’s thought, this results in humans living in accordance with the laws of life, and provides a sustainable basis for humans to live and thrive. Quinn’s ideas thus give a radical environmental force to Jesus’ teachings to ‘not worry’ that reveals them not only to be central to discipleship and Christian theology, but also to be crucial to inspiring human ecological action.

Bibliography Bauckham, R. 2009. Reading the sermon on the mount in an age of ecological catastrophe. Studies in Christian Ethics 22 (1): 76–88. Harris, M. 2022. Synoptic gospels. In The Oxford handbook of the bible and ecology, ed. H. Marlow and M. Harris, 211–227. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Leske, A. 2002. Matthew 6.25-34: Human anxiety and the natural world. In The earth story in the new testament, ed. N.C. Habel and V. Balabanski, 15–27. London: Sheffield Academic Press. Marlow, H. 2009. Biblical prophets and contemporary environmental ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Meyendorff, J. 1989. New life in Christ: Salvation in orthodox theology. Theological Studies 50 (3): 481–499. Quinn, D. 1995. Ishmael. New York: Bantam Books. ———. 1998. My Ishmael. New York: Bantam Books. Taylor, B. 2010. Dark green religion: Nature spirituality and the planetary future. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Chapter 17

New Opportunities for Church Action Towards Sustainability in the Light of Alternative Theological Narratives for Science Tom McLeish Abstract A current and very positive movement in ‘science-engaged theology’ is a change of emphasis from questions of apologetics in the light of the persistent but illusory ‘conflict narrative,’ towards the positive development of sets of ideas, narratives and exegeses under the heading of a ‘Theology of Science.’ So, rather than ask questions around how, for example, epistemological methodologies in science and theology can be reconciled, the programme asks how the capacities, imagination, and results of science can be understood within theological analyses of the human condition, and what this implies for the framing of, and interaction with, science by the wider community. The present contribution asks in what ways this fresh and theologically-informed reframing of science might be recruited in the service of a church, or of religious communities generally, to be more effective in catalysing a practical transformation to a sustainable global economy. Keywords Church engagement · Contemplation · Science and poetry · Sciencehumanities · Theology of science · Wisdom

Introduction A current and very positive movement in ‘science-engaged theology’ is a change of emphasis from questions of apologetics in the light of the persistent but illusory ‘conflict narrative,’ towards the positive development of sets of ideas, narratives and

Tom McLeish passed away before the publication of this work.

T. McLeish (*) University of York, York, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Global Sustainability, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41800-6_17

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exegeses under the heading of a ‘Theology of Science.’ So, rather than ask questions around how, for example, epistemological methodologies in science and theology can be reconciled, the programme asks how the capacities, imagina­tion, and results of science can be understood within theological analyses of the human condition, and what this implies for the framing of, and interaction with, science by the wider community. Historical approaches have recovered, for exam­ple, notions of the effectiveness of experimental method as arising from a Christian understanding of Fall and Grace (Harrison 2015); theological approaches such as ‘radical orthodoxy’ have urged routes to a ‘re-enchantment’ of nature without losing sci­ence’s gifts (Harrison and Milbank 2022); work drawing on the Biblical Wisdom has outlined a reconciliatory teleology of science (McLeish 2014), as well as ways in which science could be reconnected to contemplative practice (McLeish 2021). The present contribution asks in what ways this fresh and theologically-informed reframing of science might be recruited in the service of a church, or of religious communities generally, to be more effective in catalysing a practical trans­formation to a sustainable global economy. First, the common, participatory and human tradition of ‘practical wisdom’ can address the widespread disjunction between the scientific community and wider publics and politics by supporting a valid lay-science that supports a wider and more confident engagement with the science of sustainability and emphasises afresh the role of imagination in science itself. Second, a reconciliatory and healing framing of ‘science-wisdom’ motivates an appreciation of responsibility that can be earthed in local action, as well as global voice. Third, a robust theology of the human condition as created co-creator (Hefner 1993) underpins a radical reshaping of the ecological concept of a human-stewarded world that refuses to retreat into comfortable platitudes but demands difficult deci­sions. Fourth, the original deployment of multiple literary forms in science (e.g. in the early modern period) including poetry, dialogue, epistle and drama (Preston 2015), can be theologically re-enacted within faith communities in ways that draw the energies of the arts in support of science-informed action towards sustainability. Examples are given in each case of practical local-church experience of each aspect of a theology of science towards sustainability.

Towards a Theology of Science The direction of the wind filling the sails of the science-theology inter-discipline has been rapidly shifting. The latter half of the twentieth century saw a resurgence of serious writing by influential scientists-turned theologians and theologically-­reflective scientists, mainly in the US and the UK (Arthur Peacocke, John Polkinghorne, Donald MacKay and Ian Barbour are examples). The cardinal direction of the concerns that these thinkers tackled were arguably motivated, if not explicitly concerned with, apologetic questions. The largely materialistic post-war narrative dominant in the west drove an urgent response to physical reductionism, causal agency, determinism, and the social construction of ethical narratives that implied a marginalisation, if not an exclusion, of theistic worldviews in general, and religious practice in particular. Later moves in the humanities were no more inclusive of theologically-orthodox or

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neo-orthodox thinking, de-emphasising as they did the very communities of practice and shared nature of those narratives central to theologically-defined communities. The ‘post-modern’ preference towards individual readings witnessed a detachment from a mutual experience of materiality, and from even a critical realism, that even the non-confessional literary scholar George Steiner termed the ‘Broken Contract’ (Steiner 1989). In consequence, the potential for theological thinking about science to address these questions of disciplinary fragmentation at the least, and the mining of new resources for a holistic engagement with the world, continued to be frustrated in favour of boundary disputes and negotiations. Extreme examples generated the discourse of the ‘Science Wars’ (Sokal 2008). More recent thinking signifies new directions that have been described as ‘After Science and Religion’ (Harrison and Milbank 2022), or as a move from ‘Theology and Science’ to a ‘Theology of Science’ (McLeish 2014). Rather than tackling the relational questions of boundaries between theology and science (or religion and science, adding the elements of praxis, community and history), a less-defensive interdisciplinary attitude is allowing the exploration of the mutual consequences of the disciplines on each other, as well as an emergent ‘Scientific Theology’ (McGrath 2003) and a ‘Theology of Science’. The former recognises that there is great richness for theology’s core interests of systematics, hermeneutics, theological ethics, and more, from the very possibilities opened up by science. The latter explores the urgent human, societal, political and teleological framing of science using the tools uniquely offered by theology, as advocated recently in the light of sociological and anthropological impasse, by Latour (2008); or by Fiddes’ (2013) and McLeish’s (2014) appeals to Hebrew Wisdom in the late-modern predicaments of the humanities, and sciences, respectively. One of the rivers of thinking in this new landscape is a renewed appraisal of Creation-theology that takes its leave of ‘natural theology’ as a passive lens of divine nature, in favour of an active and participatory theology of human free action in imago Dei. A wisdom-based theology of science offers fresh resources for deploying and more widely sharing science, and creation itself, as divine gift (Jaeger 2020, Oliver 2018).

Lessons from the History of Science One of the overgrown and obscured pathways within science itself that this new confidence in a Theology of Science has begun to reveal is a renewed appreciation of the vital role of imagination. Downplayed at the early-modern founding of the European scientific academies, ‘fancy’ was outlawed by their early adjutants, such as Thomas Sprat of the Royal Society, who urged the readers of his History of the Royal Society (1667) to ‘separate the knowledge of Nature from the ideas of Rhetoric, the devices of Fancy or the delightful deceit of Fables.’ The story of science since then, at least in the way that it is publicly presented, has adopted a dry prosaic form to portray a predominantly deductive and logical method that eschews the uncontrolled imagination of any sort, including the poetic, and certainly the theological. Such public framing of science as fact, without call on imagination, is

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at least partly responsible for the disconnect between professional elites and public audience in engagement, confidence and contemplation of science (McLeish 2021). The irony of such a pretence to purely deductive, rather than inductive, method so early in the history of modern science is that its celebrated cornerstone – the development of experimental method itself – now serves as a locus classicus of the role of theological imagination within science (Harrison 2007). As Margaret Cavendish (1668) articulated so well, the notion that any contrivance so artificial, simplified and disconnected as an experiment could hope to teach us anything about the natural, complex and multiply-connected material world, constitutes an over-optimism deserving only of consignment to the fire of a Blazing World (the title of her 1666 novel). Yet Francis Bacon was able to draw upon a theology of Fall and Grace (itself a development of medieval natural philosophy) that turned this negative expectation on its head, providing that imaginative energy commonly required by any major scientific leap in the face of ‘obvious’ fatal objections (Harrison 2007). There are many other examples of explicit (and more implicit) work of the theological imagination in the generation of scientific ideas (for which, of course, there is no ‘method’) both before, and after, Bacon’s time. The astonishing early fourteenth century simultaneous double-discovery of the rainbow’s geometric optics by Theodoric of Freiburg and Kamal al Din al Farisi was, in Theodoric’s case, directly inspired by the great Hebrew nature-poet of the Lord’s Answer to Job (McLeish 2021, Crombie 1953). In twentieth century physics, the cosmos-wide application of Einstein’s field equations by Fr. George Lemaître drew on a confidence-inspired imagination that resulted explicitly from his theology, as he wrote: ‘The believer perhaps has an advantage of knowing that the riddle possesses a solution, that the underlying writing finally comes from an intelligent being, and consequently that the problem proposed by nature has been posed in order to be solved, therefore, that its degree of difficulty is presumably measurable with the present and future capacities of humanity’ (Godart and Heller 1985: 174). The encompassing of the entire universe by a cosmogenic mathematical model even had, in the pivotal De Luce (On Light) of Robert Grosseteste, a high-medieval (and theologically-motivated) precedent, of which Lemaître may well have been aware (Bower et al. 2014).

A Participative Geometry of Relationship in the Imago Dei Before exploring ways in which a more explicit and publicly-engaged theology of the scientific imagination might be deployed in addressing the current challenges of the sustainable Earth in the Anthropocene, it is worth exploring its sources a little further, as these have been quietened for so long. The conditional rationality of the world, as articulated by Lemaître in a Thomist tradition (and reappearing consistently in the post-war phase of ‘science and religion’ e.g., in Whitehead’s Science and the Modern World (2021)), is necessary, but not sufficient for a mandate for human action in and of the material world, nor does it provide the energy required

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to deliver it. For these, rationality must be combined with both a relationality, to define the call to action, and a pneumatology, to provide potency to respond to it. The essential three-way relationality between Creator, human, and the material world has been given aesthetic perspective by David Bentley Hart (2003) as the ‘metaphysics of participation.’ The sheer mystery of how human minds are able to participate in the rationality of creation, though the construction of an image of that created order, becomes a participation in the analogy of being that itself explicates the notion of humans created in imago Dei. As Hart puts it, ‘Between the desert of absolute apophaticism and immobile hypotaxis of absolute cataphaticism stands the infinity, the unmasterable parataxis, of analogy, at home in an endless state of provisionality and promise’ (Hart 2003: 311). The participation of humans in the analogy of being is to imply a radically different perspective onto the world and God than that of the tradition of natural theology. For in a relation of participation, the human gaze onto the world shares, by analogy and in image, that of the divine. In this sense it is perfectly opposed to any anticipation of perceiving the divine nature through the lens of the world (as in traditional natural theology): rather, the divine gaze enters the world through the participation of the human. Such a theology of participatory science is both apophatic, in that God is hidden ‘behind’ the human gaze onto the world, and cataphatic, in its shared infinity of possibility and promise, as well as in the surprising divine imminence that this ‘geometry of participation’ implies (McLeish 2014). The central biblical expositions of this relationship of gaze are, in the Hebrew Bible, the Hymn to Wisdom of Job 28, and in the New Testament, the Hymn to Christ Creator in Colossians. For further comparative analysis see McLeish and Wilkinson (2002), but the recollection of the Job chapter’s juxtaposition of the divine gaze into the ‘weight and measure’ of the world with the celebration of the miner’s art, by which only humans may perceive the Earth ‘transformed beneath by fire,’ is enough to make the point. This Joban ‘projected’ sense of the participatory human image of God resurfaces repeatedly in apophatic theology, from Gregory of Nyssa’s The Life of Moses, through Eriugena’s Periphysion, Nicholas of Cusa’s De Visione Dei, and in late modern theologies of the created creator, such as that of Philip Hefner (1993).

From Theology to Sustainable Practice At first, such a reframing of where science sits as an enabling gift within a participative and relational theology of God, human and nature, appears very far from practical consequence. Yet recent experience indicates otherwise. There is, after all, an understood and apostolically sanctioned concordance between a renewed mind and the life of the Spirit in regard to the calling of the church. So, it should not be a surprise to find that some of the most imaginative and practical experiences of church life in regard to sustainable relationship between humankind and our earthly home have been rooted in a renewed, relational, theology.

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At the level of foundation and policy, Pope Francis’ influential encyclical, Laudato Sí, is of its necessary length largely in order to establish a relational and narrative theology for its recommendations: ‘God’s gift, our human sinfulness, and the everlasting covenant sealed by the Spirit, promising a vision of renewal to the ends of the earth’ (Cloutier 2015). In the UK context, the Durham- and York-based project Equipping Christian Leadership in and Age of Science (ECLAS)1 has, over the last 7 years, brought scientists, theologians and senior church leaders (bishops and those with equivalent degree of oversight from non-episcopal denominations) together in conference over major scientific questions, while providing resources for their churches to conceive and realise practical projects engaging with science. The combination of the three perspectives at leadership level, together with the encouragement of church community action, has proved unexpectedly powerful, especially as the methodology has not eschewed depth of contribution from any field. One consequence is that theologically-trained senior pastors are invited principally to contribute from their theological ‘strong suit’ rather than merely to receive into a ‘deficit’ of scientific knowledge. The intense discussion generated around issues of sustainability and earth science has resulted in a number of church community initiatives at a range of geographical scales. From a travelling ‘Gaia’ exhibition, launched by Norwich Cathedral, to a local Gloucester churches programme on ‘Science, Faith and Creation Care,’ the practical aspects of projects have always sprung from local exploration of theological thinking. Furthermore, the evidence additionally points to a far from superficial appetite: the Creation Care Collective2 is a US-based initiative that has developed an interdenominational and non-profit approach to deliver a 3-year course for participating churches. A shared experience of theological reading, discussion and learning together, like the ECLAS examples, but over a much longer time-frame, Creation Care Collective is proving a model example of a locally-devised sustainability project. Crucially, the project’s context has enabled them to identify a necessary element of social justice, gender, racial and intersectional healing into their approach, resonating with both Laudato Sí and with the implications of a relational theology of the human and the Earth. A final, and refreshing, discovery from experiences of science- and theology-­ informed work within churches of ECLAS, is that such an approach to community-­ embedded science tends to bypass the historical amnesia toward creativity briefly referred to above. In the same way that Christian communities experience a natural affinity to both practical and contemplative science, they do so by drawing on a much richer set of resources than is traditional in academic science. Song, art, reflective prose, theatre and poetry are experienced not as simply communication exercises, but intrinsic to the methodology of the projects. The ‘Alive in Hope’ project in Litchfield cathedral used the ancient stone space of the nave to host visual  See https://www.eclasproject.org  See https://creationcarecollective.org

1 2

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arts, sounds and music, together with experiments. The imaginative ‘Messy Church’ movement took a similar multiply-creative approach within an outdoor setting, while a project in healthcare at Great Yeldham explored story-telling as a means of exploring science through faith in personal journeys. The spontaneous exploration of such a rich diversity of creative channels, stimulated in a church setting by setting free a theologically-informed relational vision of humanity within creation, should not be surprising. For the very theological and historical sources we have been drawing on to lay the foundations of such a theology of science do precisely the same. The great creation texts of Job, for example, constitute the finest poetry in the Hebrew Bible (Alter 2011), while creation psalms ubiquitously categorise the Earth’s dynamical response to its gifted energies as musical.3 Before the prosaic formulation of scientific journal reporting, from the late seventeenth century, scientific writing was as likely to be published in the form of poetry (Preston 2015); it was not mere whim that gave as profound a thinker as Goethe (1817) the insight that science and poetry had a forgotten common origin. It may prove to be the church that assists the scientific community in recalling that ancient source, and in a way that energises and resources the urgent path to a sustainable world.

Bibliography Alter, Robert. 2011. The art of biblical poetry. Philadelphia: Basic Books. Bower, Richard G., et  al. 2014. A medieval multiverse? Mathematical modelling of the thirteenth century universe of Robert Grosseteste. Proceedings of the royal society a 470: Article Number: 20140025. Cavendish, Margaret. 1668. Observations upon experimental philosophy. 2nd ed. London: Anne Maxwell. Cloutier, David. 2015. The theological heart of Laudato Sí. Commonweal Magazine (June edition). Crombie, A.C. 1953. Robert Grosseteste and the origins of experimental science 1100–1700. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Fiddes, Paul. 2013. Seeing the world and knowing god. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Godart, Odon, and Michael Heller. 1985. Cosmology of Lemaître. Tucson: Pachart Publishing House. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. 1817. On morphology (Zur Morphologie). Quoted in Goethe’s botanical writings (1952), Oxford: Oxbow Press, 171–172. Harrison, Peter. 2007. The fall of man and the foundations of science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2015. The territories of science and religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harrison, Peter, and John Milbank, eds. 2022. After science and religion: Fresh perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hart, David Bentley. 2003. The beauty of the infinite. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Hefner, Philip. 1993. The human factor. Evolution, culture and religion. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

 E.g. Isaiah 55:12, 1 Chronicles 16:33, Psalm 98:8.

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Jaeger, Lydia. 2020. The twin truths of divine imminence and transcendence: Creation, laws of nature and human freedom. In Issues in science and theology: Nature – And beyond, ed. M. Fuller et al., 41–56. Cham: Springer. Latour, Bruno. 2008. “It’s development, stupid!” or: How to modernize modernization. In Postenvironmentalism, ed. Jim Procter, 17–25. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. McGrath, Alister. 2003. A scientific theology (3 vols). London: T&T Clark. McLeish, Tom. 2014. Faith and wisdom in science. Oxford: OUP. McLeish, Tom C.B. 2021. The re-discovery of contemplation through science. Zygon 56 (3): 758–776. McLeish, Tom, and David Wilkinson. 2002. After an apologetics of conflict: Biblical exegesis for a creation theology of science. In New directions in theology and science: Beyond dialogue, ed. P. Harrison and P. Tyson, 147–169. Abingdon: Routledge. Oliver, Simon. 2018. Every good and perfect gift is from above: Creation Ex Nihilo before nature and culture. In Knowing creation (vol. 1), ed. Andrew B. Torrance and Thomas H. McCall. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Preston, Clare. 2015. The poetics of scientific investigation in seventeenth-century England. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sokal, Alan. 2008. Beyond the Hoax: Science, philosophy, and culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sprat, Thomas. 1667. History of the Royal Society of London, for the improving of natural knowledge. London: The Royal Society. Steiner, George. 1989. Real presences. London: Faber and Faber. Whitehead, Alfred North. 2021 [1925]. Science and the modern world. Cambridge: Open Road Media.

Chapter 18

Human Sustainability in the Age of Technology: A Theological Proposal on Technomoral Human Futures Ximian Xu

Abstract This paper seeks to trade on the Reformed archetype-ectype thinking to account for an ontological foundation of human sustainability in the age of technology. According to the technological Singularity, machines will eventually triumph over humans. As a result, human sustainability relies solely upon technology, and humans should transcend their biological conditions. By contrast, Reformed archetype-ectype thinking brings forth an ectypal ontology, which offers a holistic understanding of the human being and grounds human sustainability in the reality of the whole human person as the ectype and image of God. This holistic anthropology implies that human embodiment plays a significant role in human sustainability. From this vantage point, technology should not be seen as competing against human biological conditions. Rather, it extends human interaction with the physical world and strengthens human sustainability to create technomoral futures by embodying the moral quality of the imago Dei. Keywords Archetype-ectype · Human embodiment · imago Dei · Reformed ontology · Technological singularity Human sustainability refers to the human capacity to endure. Whilst speaking of human sustainability, attention is normally drawn to ecological crises, climate change, and environmental issues. Much ink has been spilt on how capable humans are of enduring in the face of these issues. However, with the development of technology, we confront the question of how humans are capable of enduring in view of the challenges posed by technology. The rapid progress of technology, such as artificial intelligence (AI), cybernetics, and biomedical technology, seems to imply that humans will eventually be substituted by machines and that human existence is likely to be undermined because of our reliance upon technology in the future. Such points of view are closely associated with a worldview created by the technological Singularity (TS), which is a vision or philosophy that has superhumanity as its X. Xu (*) University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Global Sustainability, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41800-6_18

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essence and anticipates an age in which machines triumph over humans. In this light, the TS implicitly turns down sustainability of humanity per se under the auspice of technology. Humans are only capable of enduring with the aid of technology. In responding to the TS’s challenge, I seek to address the following question: to what extent and in what sense are humans capable of enduring in the face of rapid technological progress? This paper will argue that human sustainability in the age of technology rests in the reality of the human being as the ectype of God, which lays an ontological foundation for a technomoral future. In the technological age, the human capacity to endure can be enhanced by technological advances in such a way that human morality can be embodied in our interaction with the world. I proceed to explain the ontology underlying TS, followed by an elaboration on Reformed ectypal ontology of humans. Finally, I shall spell out human sustainability in relation to technomoral futures that are underpinned by ectypal ontology, with a particular eye to the deployment of AI in human life.

TS’s Ontology Although Vernor Vinge (30–31 March, 1993) coined the term ‘technological singularity’ in 1993, the TS’s core meaning came into play in cosmology more than six decades ago. According to Ronald Cole-Turner, the term ‘singularity’ in cosmology referred partly to a future world where ‘the very laws of physics’ cease to be effective. He then infers that this cosmological notion of singularity may conceptually underpin the idea of a TS (Cole-Turner 2012: 788). As such, TS basically implies a future world that is radically different from the current one. Vinge (2013: 366) refashions ‘singularity’ with the qualification of ‘technological,’ pointing us to human-machine relationships in the future. TS’s essence is superhumanity. ‘A central feature of strongly superhuman entities’, he argues, ‘will likely be their ability to communicate at variable bandwidths, including ones far higher than speech or written messages’ (Vinge 2013: 373). With an emphasis on informational communication, Vinge is convinced that an amplified intelligence will lead humans to a post-Singularity world. In the age of the TS, humans are able to transcend their own intelligence, which restrains the speed of human-human communications. Vinge’s conceptions of the TS and post-Singularity were expanded and became popular via Ray Kurzweil’s work. Kurzweil (2005: 9) maintains that the ‘Singularity will represent the culmination of the merger of our biological thinking and existence with our technology, resulting in a world that is still human but that transcends our biological roots.’ Vinge pays attention to the amplification of human intelligence, whereas Kurzweil stresses the transcendence of humanity over biological conditions. By liberating humans from biological limitations, Kurzweil envisions that the TS will help human beings to gain immortal life.

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In Kurzweil’s expansion and reformulation of Vinge’s conceptions of the TS and superhumanity, we perceive the TS’s ontological presupposition, which is comprised of two pivotal aspects. First, the TS’s emphasis falls on the use of technology in improving, enhancing, and transforming human biological conditions to attain superhumanity. This idea of enhancement is widely received. A relevant instance is moral bioenhancement. Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu (2012: 412–413), two leading proponents of biotechnological enhancement of human morality, envisage the God machine, ‘the most powerful, self-learning, self-developing bioquantum computer,’ which can monitor and modify all human thoughts, beliefs, and intentions to make right moral decisions. They are convinced that such a computer can enhance human conditions so as to create a moral superhumanity. The idea of moral superhumanity or biotechnological enhancement of human morality has invited criticism from theological quarters. Simeon Zahl (2019: 216–228) suggests that biotechnological enhancement is prone to lift human biological limitations and downplay the everlasting necessity of divine grace in human sanctification and moral life. We will turn to this subject later to illustrate how the ectypal ontology sets a scene for technomoral futures while appreciatively deploying technology in human life. Enhancing human biological conditions to attain superhumanity is characteristic of transhumanism and posthumanism. For transhumanists, current human nature is malleable in the sense that contemporary technoscience can improve human nature and broaden human potential. As Nick Bostrom (2005: 4) observes, ‘Transhumanists hope that by responsible use of science, technology, and other rational means we shall eventually manage to become posthuman, beings with vastly greater capacities than present human beings have.’ Although Russel Blackford (2010: 178) clarifies that the strand of transhumanism advocated by Ray Kurzweil is not generally accepted within the transhumanist movement, Bostrom’s remark shows a trans/ post-humanist conviction that progress in technology will eventually make humans capable of enduring by transforming biological conditions with the aid of technology. It is in this sense that TS’s ontology is reflective of the belief that machines will triumph over humans. Second, with an emphasis on superhumanity, the TS prioritises human becoming such that human biological conditions are not essential to the being of humans. With the aid of technology, the TS brings to light a human evolution that is, to borrow Noreen Herzfeld’s (2011: 591–601) words, ‘human directed’ and reluctant to ‘accept our bodily limitations.’ In tandem with the belief that machines will triumph over humans, such a human-directed evolution brings forth an ontology that human becoming takes precedence over human being through transformation of human nature. Whilst the being of humans fades away, the idea of human becoming undermines the possibility of determinate human nature insofar as human embodiment is not the sine qua non of the understanding of being human. Grounded in its optimistic position towards technology, TS proponents ‘have a trump card: the notion that exponential technological advance is rewriting all the rule books’ (Boden 2016: 154). That is to say, human nature and being can be rewritten through human becoming.

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In short, TS produces an ontology that human becoming overshadows human being. In this way, human sustainability lies in the idea that humans have to continue to become and eventually need be transformed into either cyborgs or machines. The human capacity to endure does not have anything to do with humans but rather is utterly determined by technology. Humanity in se does not have anything as an ontological foundation of human sustainability insofar as all things in and of humans can be changed and transformed. If this is the case, questions arise: can we still speak of the being of humans? Is it still possible to define the reality of being humans in the post-TS age?

Ectypal Ontology In order to address the above two ontological questions, I draw on the Reformed theology of archetype-ectype to construct an ectypal ontology in opposition to the TS’s ontology. Archetype (ἀρχέτυπος) literally means the ultimate exemplar or pattern. Ectype (ἔκτυπος) refers to a copy, replica, or reflection of the ultimate pattern. In Reformed traditions, the archetype-ectype thinking is not esoteric. From the sixteenth century onwards, the archetype-ectype thinking has occupied a significant place in Reformed theology and other Protestant traditions. It was Franciscus Junius (1545–1602), John Calvin’s student, who distinguished between archetypal theology (theologia archetypa) and ectypal theology (theologia ectypa) for the first time. Junius (2014: 107–113) contended that while archetypal theology refers to God’s self-knowledge, ectypal theology refers to all knowledge of God revealed to creatures. The essential difference between archetypal and ectypal theology lies in that [ectypal theology] is created, it is dispositional; nor is it absolute except in its own mode, but rather finite, discrete, and divinely communicated. It is, as it were, a true and definite image of that theology [archetypal theology] which we have explained is uncreated, essential or formal, most absolute, infinite, at once complete, and incommunicable (Junius 2014: 117).

The distinction made by Junius shows that since its inception, the archetype-ectype thinking has emphasised the qualitative distinction between the Creator and creatures, displaying a strong ontological flavour. The ideas of archetypal and ectypal theology, along with their differences, became a key theme in Protestant theological writings of the post-Reformation era. Yet, most theologians wrote of archetype and ectype in theological prolegomena. Few theologians deployed the archetype-ectype thinking in constructing a theological anthropology. One exception was Francis Turretin (1623–1687). In Institutio Theologiae Elencticae (1679–1685), a standard textbook for Reformed theological education in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Turretin (1992–1997: 5.10.3) argued that the human being is the image and ectype of God who is the archetype. Yet, he neither unpacked the meaning of ectype in relation to the image of God, nor

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spelled out the ontological implication of archetype-ectype thinking for theological anthropology. The Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck (1854–1921) took a further step to use the ontological implication of the archetype-ectype thinking to account for the being of humans. For the purpose of this paper, I will concentrate on how he leverages the ideas of archetype and ectype as the conceptual instrument through which to spell out human ontology. In so doing, we can see that ectypal ontology underpins human sustainability. Bavinck elucidates the archetype-ectype thinking in tandem with the imago Dei. He contends that the whole human being, encompassing both the soul and the body, does not have or bear the imago Dei but rather is the imago Dei (Bavinck 2004: 530). In order to flesh out the ontological meaning of ‘is,’ he draws on archetype-­ ectype thinking. Bavinck (2004: 532) argues: ‘“Image” expresses that God is the archetype and the human being is the ectype; “likeness” adds that this image corresponds in all parts to the original.’ On the one hand, coupled with the imago Dei, the archetype-ectype thinking indicates that the human psychosomatic unity is predicated upon the fact that the human being is created as the ectype of God. As such, human ontology should be articulated with an eye both to the human body and soul. The significance of both the body and the soul rests with the ontological connection between God and humans. On the other hand, Bavinck trades on archetype-ectype thinking to highlight the ontological chasm between God and humans. He also argues elsewhere that God is ‘the imago increate or archetype’ and that the human being is ‘the imago creata or ectype’ (Bavinck 1928: 493). Bavinck reformulates this ontological distinction between the archetype and the ectype with ‘being’ and ‘becoming.’ He contends: “The idea of God itself implies immutability. … He cannot change for better or worse, for he is the absolute, the complete, the true being. Becoming is an attribute of creatures, a form of change in space and time’ (2004: 158; emphasis added). In this light, becoming is not predicated of God but rather is characteristic of humans. To Bavinck’s (2004: 549–554) mind, human becoming is related to human morality insofar as the imago Dei  – albeit that it includes both spiritual and physical dimensions – refers primarily to the spiritual and moral quality of human nature. As God’s ectype, human beings should continue to become moral in order that they can correspond in all parts to God by exhibiting God’s attributes. Furthermore, inasmuch as the human person who is the imago Dei ‘corresponds in all parts’ to the archetype who is the divine being, the idea of being must feature in human ontology, albeit that the human person is not immutable. As such, human ontology is being-and-becoming (Bavinck 1909: 140). A question may arise here: does human becoming take precedence over the being of humans, or the other way around? Given that the whole human person is the imago Dei and the ectype of the immutable divine being, it suffices to say that the being of humans must be prioritised over their becoming. From this vantage point, we can see that archetype-ectype thinking lays an ontological foundation for human sustainability in confrontation with the TS’s challenges. With an emphasis on the machine’s triumph over humans in the future, the TS envisages that humans can create a post-Singularity future through their becoming under the auspices of

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technology. From this, it can be inferred that the human capacity to endure can only be actualised through becoming, and we cannot but speak of humans becoming sustainable rather than human sustainability. In fact, archetype-ectype thinking exposes ontological questions lurking in the TS: is there anything in humanity that can serve as a solid foundation for the human capacity to endure? Is humanity per se sustainable? In the light of the TS, the being of humans and the imago Dei alike will eventually fade away in the age of technology. If this were the case, what can guarantee human sustainability?

The Sustainability of the Ectype My argumentation hitherto puts a spotlight on a contrast: the TS emphasises human becoming through technology in order to make humans capable of enduring, whereas the archetype-ectype thinking stresses the precedence of being over becoming, implying that, instead of technology, the being of humans underlies human sustainability. The TS eventually makes human sustainability reliant upon technology such that humans may even need be transformed to be cyborgs or machines, which undermines the significance of human biological conditions. In this light, humans de facto become incapable of enduring insofar as human embodiment is part of the meaning of being human. Human ontology constructed on the ground of the archetype-ectype thinking is an antidote to the TS’s overestimation of becoming. Human sustainability rests in an ectypal ontology – the human person’s identity as the ectype of the divine archetype – which means that human capacity to endure is, in essence, the sustainability of the ectype. Grounding human sustainability in this ectypal ontology brings forth two crucial implications. First, from the perspective of ectypal ontology, technology cannot transform the being of humans insofar as it is merely the result of human ectypal creative work. The fact that human being is the imago Dei and the ectype that corresponds in all parts with God means that the human being does emulate God’s creativity in an ectypal sense. Specifically, God creates out of nothing, but humans create out of something. Human artefacts are always derived from what God has already created. If the being of humans – which was created out of nothing – can be changed and is overshadowed by becoming through technology, then one could assert that human creation out of something is on par with God’s creation out of nothing. Philip Hefner’s idea of created co-creator may be drawn on to support the TS’s ideal of transforming humanity to be more sustainable. Hefner (1993: 27) claims that ‘[h]uman beings are God’s created co-creators whose purpose is to be the agency, acting in freedom, to birth the future that is most wholesome for the nature that has birthed us’. He affords us a conceptual apparatus through which to understand how humans, as created co-creators, participate in God’s continuing creation. Gregory Peterson (2004: 829; emphasis added) remarks that the prefix co- in co-­ creator ‘implies not simply that we are creating in and of our own right but that our

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creative acts are in cooperation with God’s creative acts in a way that suggests partnership rather than subordination.’ Yet, Peterson’s remark is at odd with Hefner’s (1993: 39) own sentiment that the term ‘co-creator’ in no way implies human ‘equality with God the creator’. It is apparent that for Hefner the idea of created co-creator is indicative of human partnership with God in subordination. Viewed in this light, rather than backing the TS’s ideal, the concept of humans as created co-creator, in fact, sits well with ectypal ontology and ectypal understanding of human creation. This ectypal ontology does not overthrow technology; nor does it lead to a pessimistic position toward technological advancement. Instead, it endows technology with profound theological significance. In light of ectypal ontology, technology is embedded with a mission related to God’s whole creation. To put it in Stephen Monsma’s (1986: 8) words, ‘we are to develop technology in such a way that the blessings, riches, and potential God has put in creation are allowed to flower’. Ectypal ontology brings to light the contributions that technology can make to human sustainability. That is, technology is conducive to the actualisation of God’s blessings to all creation, such that the human capacity to endure can be strengthened. Human sustainability rooted in ectypal ontology gives birth to the second implication: ectypal ontology foregrounds the technomoral future in relation to the human capacity to endure and to human embodiment. Unlike the TS’s emphasis on ontological becoming, ectypal ontology underlines human moral becoming and recognises the significance of the human body in human life. This is so because the imago Dei indicates the psychosomatic unity of the human being. Ectypal ontology gets around the TS’s mishandling of human biological conditions and opens up a way to include the human body within sustainable technomoral futures. The human capacity to endure lies in how humans can make use of technology to enhance their moral life in an embodied way. In what follows, I will draw on recent research on embodied morality in relation to AI. In the 1980s, AI research had a paradigm shift towards embodiment. Rather than being preoccupied with virtual AI systems, researchers adopted the embodied approach to constructing an embodied AI artefact, say AI robots, in the physical world. This paradigm shift was caused by a general dissatisfaction with the classical approach, one that could not deal with problems such as sensations, locomotion and other issues that are related to embodiment (Pfeifer and Iida 2004: 2–4). This paradigm shift is largely concerned with technical issues. With the introduction of embodied cognition theory into AI research, much attention becomes drawn to embodied AI as an embodied moral agent. Specifically, embodied cognition theory suggests that real cognition must be practiced in a physically embodied way and in the world of physical objects because cognitive activities take place through interaction with physical objects and agents. As a result, ‘a moral agent may need to be embodied in the world, have access to emotions or emotion-­ like information, and have an awareness of social dynamics and customs if it is to function properly in many contexts’ (Wallach and Allen 2009: 118; also see Ziemke 2007: 167–179). This idea of embodied moral agency plays a role in understanding AI’s place in human communities from a moral perspective.

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Wendell Wallach and Shannon Vallor (2020) together explore how embodied virtues can address the question of human-level AI (artificial general intelligence) and artificial superintelligence. Their article is directed at theories of human-level AI and superintelligent systems, without discussing the possibilities of these AI systems. A discussion on this subject is beyond the scope of this paper, and I will focus attention on Wallach and Vallor’s view of embodied virtues in relation to AI machines. Wallach and Vallor (2020: 383) suggest that human-level AI and superintelligent systems can be made safe and do not threaten humankind provided that something like human embodied moral virtue and character can be actualised in AI. This is so because moral phenomena are embedded with moral meaning that is intertwined with the moral agent’s embodiment. Hence, they maintain that ‘[a]rtificially intelligent systems are likely to suffer significant deficits of moral competence without the embodied faculties that humans enact to cultivate and sustain their most reliable reservoirs of moral ability: their virtues’ (ibid.: 405). Wallach and Vallor examine embodied virtues in relation to AI from different perspectives. For example, they suggest that moral reflection reminds us of the importance of human embodiment. Moral reflection means the capacity an agent possesses to ‘take a higher-order normative position’ to her own desires, actions, motivations, and other aspects of moral life (Wallach and Vallor 2020: 402). Moral reflection shows how the agent defines something vicious and wants to be better. Yet, Wallach and Vallor (2020: 402) insist that human moral reflection also includes the idea that humans ‘reflectively desire to be the better version of ourselves that we currently are not.’ This self-reform is closely related to the agent’s genuine life (e.g., the connection with a community) and thus necessitates ‘embodied capacities’ (Wallach and Vallor 2020: 402). Hence, a morally reliable AI system must be engineered with the replication of ‘embodied moral experience’ (Wallach and Vallor 2020: 405). Wallach and Vallor’s argument for AI’s embodied virtue helps to bring to light the relationship between ectypal ontology and technomoral futures. That is, ectypal ontology underpins human sustainability and, consequently, underlines the importance of human embodiment for technomoral futures. In contrast with the TS’s ontology, ectypal ontology stresses that human beings continue to become moral without downplaying their biological bodies. From this we can draw two implications. First, the moral quality of the human being as the imago Dei can be embodied via technology to create sustainable life and society. In other words, the psychosomatic significance of the imago Dei implies that its moral quality should be related to human embodiment. Second, technology can extend human embodiment to enhance human moral agency through interaction with physical objects and environments. As such, technology is a tool with which humans can extend their moral quality proceeding from the imago Dei. A case in point is the smart thermostat. Some companies have successfully developed AI thermostats to keep homes warm and comfortable while saving energy. The embedded AI system can monitor heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. For example, while the heating system is working, the user will be notified

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via the mobile application if windows are open. In this instance, technology helps humans to make a moral decision in their physical interaction with the environment (closing windows or turning off the heating system) to perform their responsibility to care for the earth. Indeed, it is the AI thermostat system that monitors and interacts with the environment. Nonetheless, this interaction can be viewed as delegated insofar as human interaction with the environment dominates in the decision-­ making of AI thermostats. On the other hand, AI thermostats visualise human physical interaction with the environment in a digital way (e.g., room temperature, air quality index, and humidity in a room) and make humans more sensitive about changes in their environment. To be sure, AI thermostats enhance human capacities to make a moral decision in building a comfortable environment, showing their care for other creatures.

Conclusion This paper has explored human sustainability from an ontological perspective. By retrieving Reformed ectypal ontology, I have brought to light the implausibility of the TS’s ontology that downplays human biological conditions and makes humans reliant upon technology. In this light, the human capacity to endure has nothing to do with humanity per se. Ectypal ontology provides a holistic understanding of the human person and pays attention to the human embodiment in relation to human sustainability. That is to say, human biological conditions play a significant role in human sustainability in the age of technology. Moreover, ectypal ontology helps us to get around technosolutionism  – that is, technology is the only saviour  – while speaking of human sustainability. Humans do not become sustainable through technology but rather are capable of enduring regardless of progress in technology. Nonetheless, ectypal ontology does not undermine the value of technology. Instead, the idea of humans as the created ectype of God steers technology towards a proper goal  – that is, humans are capable of enduring by embodying the moral quality of the imago Dei with technology to create technomoral futures.

Bibliography Bavinck, Herman. 1909. The philosophy of revelation: The stone lectures for 1908–1909. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co. ———. 1928. Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, Tweede Deel. 4th ed. Kampen: J. H. Kok. ———. 2004. Reformed dogmatics, volume 2: God and creation. Trans. John Vriend. and edited by John Bolt. Grand Rapids: Baker. Blackford, Russell. 2010. Trite truths about technology: A reply to ted Peters. In H±: Transhumanism and its critics, ed. Gregory R. Hansell and William Grassie, 176–188. Philadelphia: Metanexus. Boden, Margaret A. 2016. AI: Its nature and future. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Bostrom, Nick. 2005. Transhumanist Values. Journal of Philosophical Research 30 (Supplement): 3–14. Cole-Turner, Ronald. 2012. The singularity and the rapture: Transhumanist and popular Christian views of the future. Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 47 (4): 777–796. Hefner, Philip. 1993. The human factor: Evolution, culture, and religion. Minneapolis: Fortress. Herzfeld, Noreen. 2011. Human-directed evolution: A christian perspective. In The Routledge companion to religion and science, ed. James W.  Haag, Gregory R.  Peterson, and Michael L. Spezio, 591–601. London: Routledge. Junius, Franciscus. 2014. A treatise on true theology: With the life of Franciscus Junius. Trans. David C. Noe. Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books. Kurzweil, Ray. 2005. The singularity is near: When humans transcend biology. London: Viking Penguin. Monsma, Stephen V., Clifford Christians, Eugene R. Dykema, Arie Leegwater, Egbert Schuurman, and Lambert Van Poolen. 1986. Responsible technology: A christian perspective. In Monsma, ed. V. Stephen. Grand Rapid, MI: Eerdmans. Persson, Ingmar, and Julian Savulescu. 2012. Moral enhancement, freedom, and the god machine. The Monist 95 (3): 399–421. Peterson, Gregory R. 2004. The created co-creator: What it is and is not. Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 39 (4): 827–840. Pfeifer, Rolf, and Fumiya Iida. 2004. Embodied artificial intelligence: Trends and challenges. In Embodied artificial intelligence, ed. Fumiya Iida, Rolf Pfeifer, Luc Steels, and Yasuo Kuniyoshi, 1–26. Berlin: Springer. Turretin, Francis. 1992–1997. Institutes of Elenctic Theology. Trans. George Musgrave Giger. 3 vols., edited by James T. Dennison Jr. Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing. Vinge, Vernor. 1993. The coming technological singularity: How to survive in the post-human era. VISION-21 symposium, 30–31 March. ———. 2013. Technological singularity. In The transhumanist reader, ed. Max More and Natasha Vita-More, 365–375. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Wallach, Wendell, and Colin Allen. 2009. Moral machines: Teaching robots right from wrong. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wallach, Wendell, and Shannon Vallor. 2020. Moral machines: From value alignment to embodied virtue. In Ethics of artificial intelligence, ed. S. Matthew Liao, 383–412. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zahl, Simeon. 2019. Engineering desire: Biotechnological enhancement as theological problem. Studies in Christian Ethics 32 (2): 216–228. https://doi.org/10.1177/0953946819827138. Ziemke, Tom. 2007. The embodied self: Theories, hunches and robot models. Journal of Consciousness Studies 14 (7): 167–179.

Chapter 19

Eastern Orthodoxy and Glocal Sustainability: Towards Shaping a Modern Church Organizational Culture Berge Traboulsi

Abstract Eastern Orthodoxy has an ecclesiastical, social, and cultural impact on the lives of numerous communities and individuals worldwide. At the religious level, the Church is liturgical; the Eastern Orthodox faithful live ‘heaven on earth’ in her liturgical worship. At the secular level, the Church is social; Church members along with some faith-based organizations play an active role in the world. Eastern Orthodox Christians, like all citizens of the world, need to be motivated and engaged, through words and works, in practically sustaining the earth, its resources and its inhabitants. The Eastern Orthodox Church, like many religious and secular nonprofit organizations, is an important partner that can collaborate with other stakeholders in order to achieve, partially and selectively, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in an attempt to turn our world into a better place where there is less pain, less sorrow, and less sighing. Consequently, the Eastern Orthodox faithful need to have a paradigm shift, i.e. a change of mind, a change of heart, and a change of practice in their living of the Eastern Orthodox faith and its sustainable praxes in this world. Thus, this paper will focus on three main issues: first, developing a modern Eastern Orthodox theology about SDGs; second, shaping a compatible church organizational culture that reflects the ethos of SDGs; and third, providing some productive guidance and practices about certain SDGs at a glocal (global + local) level. Keywords Change · Church organizational culture · diakonia · Eastern orthodoxy · Paradigm shift · Praxes · SDGs

B. Traboulsi (*) Haigazian University, Beirut, Lebanon e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Global Sustainability, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41800-6_19

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Introduction Eastern Orthodoxy has an ecclesiastical, social, and cultural impact on the lives of numerous communities and individuals worldwide. At the religious level, the Church is liturgical; the Orthodox faithful live ‘heaven on earth’ in her liturgical worship. At the secular level, the Church is social; Church members along with some faith-based organizations (FBOs) play an active role in the world. Eastern Orthodox Christians, like all citizens of the world, need to be motivated and engaged, through words and works, in practically sustaining the earth (the environment), its resources (the economy) and its inhabitants (society). The Eastern Orthodox Church, like many religious and secular non-profit organizations, is an important partner that can collaborate with other stakeholders in order to achieve, partially and selectively, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted in 2015 (UN n.d.), in an attempt to turn our world into a better place where there is less pain, less sorrow, and less sighing. Consequently, the Eastern Orthodox faithful need to have a paradigm shift, i.e. a change of mind, a change of heart, and a change of practice in their living of the Eastern Orthodox faith and its sustainable praxes in this world. Thus, this paper will focus on three main issues: first, developing a modern Eastern Orthodox theology about SDGs; second, shaping a compatible church organizational culture that reflects the ethos of SDGs; and third, providing some productive guidance and practices about certain SDGs at a glocal (global + local) level.

Orthodox Theology and SDGs Comprehensive studies on Eastern Orthodox Theology and SDGs are rare. This is not to say that Eastern Orthodoxy was historically indifferent towards life-­challenges and their respective interrelated life-changing goals stated in the five categories of SDGs as follows: –– People/society goals: 1 (no poverty), 2 (zero hunger), 3 (good health and well-­ being), 4 (quality education), 5 (gender equality), 6 (clean water and sanitation); –– Prosperity/economy goals: 7 (affordable and clean energy), 8 (decent work and economic growth), 9 (industry, innovation and infrastructure), 10 (reduced inequality), 11 (sustainable cities and communities), 12 (responsible consumption and production); –– Planet/environmental goals: 13 (climate action), 14 (life below water), 15 (life on land); –– Peace goal: 16 (peace, justice, and strong institutions); and –– Partnership goal: 17 (partnerships for the goals). The SDGs pyramid may remind us of (1) the Earth Charter and its principles, i.e. (i) respect and care for the community of life, (ii) ecological integrity, (iii) social and

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economic justice, and (iv) democracy, nonviolence, and peace (Earth Charter Initiative 2001); and (2) Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, i.e. (i) physiological needs, (ii) safety needs, (iii) love and belonging needs, (iv) esteem needs, and (v) self-­ actualization needs (Mcloed 2007/2022). It is noteworthy that several Eastern Orthodox scholars and theologians have examined various social issues, such as mission (Bria 1996; Vassiliadis 2013), science (Nesteruk 2003; Buxhoeveden and Woloschak 2016; Knight 2020), ecology (Theokritoff 1994, 2001, 2021; Chryssavgis 2012; Nantsou and Asproulis 2021), human rights (Yannoulatos 1984; Hellali 2013; Clapsis 2016), politics (Kalaitzidis 2012; Bigović 2013; Stoeckl et al. 2017), war, peace, and violence (LeMasters 2011; Stoyanov 2014, 2016; Hamalis and Karras 2017), ecumenism (Kalaitzidis et al. 2014), and feminism (Farley 2012; Belonick 2012). However, there were no comprehensive Church documents that refer to main social challenges and relevant principles, beliefs, and values, prior to the publication of the ‘Encyclical of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church’ in 2016 and ‘For the Life of the World: Towards a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church’ in 2020. The former mentions the following headings: ‘The family: Image of Christ’s love towards the Church’; ‘Education in Christ’; ‘The Church in the face of contemporary challenges’; ‘The Church in the face of globalization, the phenomenon of extreme violence and migration’; and ‘Church: witness in dialogue’ (Holy Council 2016). The latter focuses on the following titles: ‘The Church in the Public Sphere’; ‘The Course of Human Life’; ‘Poverty, Wealth, and Civil Justice’; ‘War, Peace, and Violence’; ‘Ecumenical Relations and Relations with Other Faiths’; ‘Orthodoxy and Human Rights’; and ‘Science, Technology, and the Natural World’ (GOARCH 2021). Eastern Orthodox individual and collective religiosity is practical. It is based on a two-dimensional love – the first two great commandments: the love of God and the love of others – the neighbor and the enemy (Mt. 5:43–45). Jesus encouraged his followers to be ‘the salt of the earth’ and ‘the light of the world’, saying ‘let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven’ (ESV, Mt. 5:13–16), following Jesus’ Golden rule which reads ‘so whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets’ (ESV, Mt. 7:12). Needless to emphasize that God desires ‘mercy, and not sacrifice’ (KJV, Hos 6:6); this mercy, as an expression of love and not duty, is to be mirrored in dealing with the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the sick, the naked, the prisoner, and the least of Christ’s brethren (Mt 25:34–40). Furthermore, doing the will of the Father (Mt 6:10; 7:21) is essential; ‘faith without works is dead’ (ESV, Jas 2:26). St. Paul developed Jesus’ approach emphasizing that speaking in tongues, prophetic powers, understanding of all mysteries and all knowledge, persecution, and relinquishing all properties are useless without love (ESV, 1 Cor 13:1–3) which is the greatest virtue (ESV, 1 Cor 13:13). The early Church had a communitarian approach to wealth and social welfare: ‘they had everything in common’ (ESV, Acts 4:32). The Church adopted several interrelated terms from the Judeo-Greek context, such as diakonia (i.e. philanthropic care and praxis), philanthropia (i.e. the love of human person, agape), and philadelphia (i.e. brotherly love). The Church was called to practice diakonia inclusively

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and without discrimination since ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus’ (ESV, Gal 3:28). According to Njoroge, ‘Loving one brother, which was denoted by the concept of brotherly love “Philadelphia” meant not only expressing emotional empathy but fulfilling the divine call of philanthropy’ (Njoroge 2021: 152). Eastern Orthodox theologians discussed two important concepts pertaining to diakonia and liturgy, i.e. ‘liturgy before liturgy’ and ‘liturgy after liturgy’. The former is based on Jesus’ teaching ‘leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift’ (ESV, Mt. 5:24): the latter is reflected in many Church Fathers’ and theologians’ teachings, such as St. John Chrysostom (Homily 20 on 2 Corinthians) who considered that the ‘altar is composed of the very members of Christ, and the body of the Lord is made your altar … When then you see a poor believer, think that you behold an altar: when you see such an one a beggar, not only insult him not, but even reverence him, and if you see another insulting him, prevent, repel it’ (Schaff 1889). Within this context, Ware considered that peace, sacrifice, and love are interconnected; peace is neither individual nor isolated, it is ‘social and communal’ and ‘we are to be at peace with the total universe’ (Ware 2011). Thus, reflecting on ‘Let us go forth in peace’ – a phrase from the Eastern Orthodox liturgy – he stated that the words of this phrase ‘are not a comforting epilogue, they are a call to serve and bear witness … We should return to the world after the Liturgy, seeing Christ in every human person, especially in those who suffer … we are to return to the world not just with our eyes open but with our hands strengthened’ (2014). In other words, Ware is calling Christians to translate the Eucharistic mystery into practical social action where ‘Thanksgiving has to become evangelism’ and ‘doxology has to become diakonia’, since ‘Christian love teaches us not only to give our brothers and sisters spiritual gifts but material gifts’ (Ware 2011). In fact, God ‘knows the secrets of the heart’ (ESV, Ps 44:21), and God’s judgement, according to Ware, will reflect people’s choice of good or evil and where they want to be. He confirmed that ‘the lost in hell are self-condemned, self-enslaved; it has been rightly said that that the doors of hell are locked on the inside’ (Ware 1979: 181). Furthermore, it is notable that humans ‘are not saved from the world but with the world and therefore the animals share with us the path of salvation’ because they ‘are part of our prayer and worship’ (Ware 2018). The Eastern Orthodox Churches face many challenges, especially in turning religious and theological words such as kerygma, didaskalia, diakonia, martyria, and koinonia into social works. Simply put, it is not about asserting a strong belief that the Church should be a pioneer in human rights and social work or even that she must develop a ‘practical ecclesiology’, free from corruption but rich in integrity, humility, simplicity, caring and compassion: it is, rather, about how to willingly do so in practicing this ecclesiology. For instance, the Eastern Orthodox faithful pray in the Litany of Peace to the Lord ‘For peace in the whole world’, ‘For seasonable weather, the abundance of the fruits of the earth and peaceful times’ (Orthodox Prayer Book 1986). People may wonder if prayers are indeed efficient tools, or even if they are usually answered in achieving peace (SDG 16). Moreover, how will the

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Church be able to ‘end poverty in all its forms everywhere’ (SDG 1) or to ‘end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture’ (SDG 2)? Furthermore, how do the Churches and their educational institutions provide their learners with ‘inclusive and equitable quality education’ (SDG 4)? Besides, when will the Eastern Orthodox Church ‘achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls’ (SDG 5) for the service of female priesthood? Finally, living ‘heaven on earth’ through Orthodox liturgy (Ware 1993: 264–265) or being disengaged from the world through monasticism and mysticism (Chryssavgis 2020), are insufficient, if not perplexing, for the Eastern Orthodox Christians, clergy and laity, in caring for God’s creation. Consequently, they have to work hard, individually and collectively, to the greatest extent, in order to restore the fallen world and to attain to the likeness of God by loving God and His creatures.

Eastern Orthodox Church Organizational Culture and SDGs Studies on the Eastern Orthodox Church as a nonprofit organization are uncommon. Eastern Orthodox theology considers that the Church is ‘a theanthropic organism, i.e., an invisible and visible reality’ (Alevisopoulos 1994: 60); however, it does not ‘neglect the earthly organization of the Church’ (Ware 1993: 240). An organization, according to Draft, is a ‘social entity’ that is ‘goal directed’, ‘designed as deliberately structured and coordinated activity systems’, and is ‘linked to the external environment’. It is ‘made up of people and their relationships with one another’ (2001: 5). A nonprofit organization is a ‘human-change agent’ whose ‘product is a changed human being’, such as ‘a cured patient, a child that learns, a young man or woman grown into a self-respecting adult; a changed human life altogether’, wrote Drucker (1990: xiv). Organizations have cultures: ‘the cultural dimension is central in all aspects of organizational life’, considered Alvesson (2002: 1). There are various definitions of what an organizational culture is. Deal and Kennedy outlined it briefly as ‘the way we do things around here’ (1982: 4). Schein defined the culture of a group as ‘a pattern of shared basic assumptions that was learned by a group as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems’ (2004: 17). Moreover, he considered that ‘all group and organizational theories distinguish two major sets of problems that all groups, no matter what their size, must deal with: (1) survival, growth, and adaptation in their environment; and (2) internal integration that permits daily functioning and the ability to adapt and learn’ (Schein 2004: 18). Actually, organizations may have multiple cultures and subcultures that focus on the following elements: achievement, action, adaptability, aggressiveness, caring, change, cohesion, consistency, control, creativity, details, effectiveness, efficiency, externalization, fairness, flexibility, innovation, inspiration, integrity, internal cohesion, internalization, involvement, learning, making a difference, mission, outcome,

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passion, people, precision, profitability, risk, rule, safety, service, stability, survival, teamwork, and transformation. These characteristics may be reflected in various organizational elements, such as structures, policies, incentives, metrics, and above all, leadership and followership (cf. Smith et al. 2014: 63). Organizational culture is understood, described, and analyzed through various metaphors, such as compass, social glue, and affect-regulator (Alvesson 2002: 29–38). The Iceberg Model of Hall (1976) is a widely used analogy. Above the surface, we spot observable phenomena, such as traditions, customs, rituals, and behaviors. Under the surface, we have to uncover less visible values (pivotal and peripheral), norms and attitudes; and deeper, other invisible elements, such as assumptions, beliefs, habits of thinking and perceptions. It is important to note that ‘organizational culture has a powerful effect on the performance and long-term effectiveness of organizations’ (Cameron and Quinn 2011: 5). The Eastern Orthodox Church is no exception: she has her historical organizational culture that reflects, in various attributes and degrees, many of the aforementioned elements as well as some dimensions such as individualism and collectivism, reality and symbolism, rationality and emotionality, traditionalism and liberalism, and akribeia (Gr. ἀκρίβεια, i.e., precise/strict adherence to the standards) and economia (Gr. οἰκονομία, i.e., leniency) in living faith, hope, love, mercy, and compassion in the world in general and in the ecclesiastical community in particular. Unfortunately, the current church culture has been dominated, for centuries, by various traditionalistic subcultures, mainly shaped by liturgical services, monastic spirituality, Byzantine imperial mindsets and praxes, inadequate leadership, and operational incompetence, to name a few. As a result, it looks rigid and stagnant and, to a certain extent, anti-change, anti-reform, anti-modernism, and resistant to flexibility, adaptability, and dynamism, all of which make change more difficult. Consequently, changing the current organizational culture of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and reframing and developing it to be dynamic, productive, useful and SDGs-oriented, is becoming necessary, urgent, inevitable, and of primary importance. However, this transformational change requires great exertion, time, and complex strategies and tactics that transcend the traditional and hierarchical (top-­ down) approach to organization change where ‘change starts at the top’, ‘efficiency comes from control’, and ‘prediction is possible’, even if traditional approaches may work sometimes! The attempt at change needed at present requires the adoption and implementation of a complex adaptive model where the participation of many stakeholders, along with their creative solutions and unpredictable outcomes, is vital (Olson and Eoyang 2001: 2–6; see also Schabracq 2007). Changing Church organizational culture requires changes of behavior. The Eastern Orthodox faithful need to have a paradigm shift, i.e. a change of mind, a change of heart, and a change of practice in their living of the Eastern Orthodox faith in this world. Change, in general, requires several interrelated elements, such as leadership, vision, strategies and resources. More precisely, change needs motivation, desire, knowledge (theoretical and practical), awareness (education and communication) and training, trust, negotiation and agreement, participation and involvement, empowerment, removal of obstacles, high tolerance for change,

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cooperation and action, short term wins, facilitation and support, resources (human, natural, and capital), and maintenance (cf. Kotter and Schlesinger 2008; Sudbrink 2015). These practices must aim (i) to strike a balance between worshiping God and working in the world and reconstructing society, (ii) to release parochial church life (pastoral and spiritual) from some aspects of monasticism at the three levels of any organizational culture: ‘artifacts’ (i.e. overt elements such as language, style, myths and stories), ‘espoused values’ (e.g. goals, philosophies, and justifications), and ‘underlying assumptions’ (e.g. taken-for-granted beliefs, thoughts, behaviors, and feelings) (Schein 2004: 25–36) that do not serve the communal life of the society, and (iii) to abandon some traditional church practices that are not compatible with the developed theology of SDGs and its practical implementation. This transformational process can be accelerated through advocacy, literacy, integrity, motivation, ambition, participation, awareness, diversity, creativity, innovation, action, efficiency, empowerment, responsiveness, partnership, cooperation, justice, responsibility, transparency, and accountability that must be clearly expressed in values, mindsets, and behaviors conducive to a healthy church organizational culture which intends to mirror the integrated SDGs’ mindsets and deeds. The Eastern Orthodox Church, like many other religious and secular organizations, is an important universal partner who can collaborate with other stakeholders, such as NGOs and civil society, businesses, governments and parliamentarians, international and local agencies, the private sector, academic institutions, intergovernmental organizations, philanthropic organizations, and donors and foundations, in order to achieve the SDGs. They all need, cooperatively and collaboratively, to continuously plan, do, check, act (Edwards Deming’s PDCA Wheel/Cycle) in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world. According to UN-IATT and EC-JRC, three elements are vital for human progress within various international, national, and subnational contexts: science (i.e. ‘the pursuit of knowledge’), technology (i.e. ‘the practical application of knowledge’) and innovation (i.e. ‘the new way of producing, delivering, or using goods and services’) (STI). Moreover, the main characteristics of an STI for SDGs roadmap include the following: ‘goal-­ driven, focussed and prioritised’, ‘informed by evidence, experience and foresight’, ‘financed, localized and action-oriented’, ‘coherent and owned by key actors’, and ‘dynamic’ (UN-IATT and EC-JRC 2021: 12, 18–19). Finally, this is easier said than done, but it is possible; change in the Church is often slow, painful and hard, and gradual, and impossible to materialize in a short period, here and now!

Orthodox Praxes and SDGs Success stories and learned lessons about the role of the Eastern Orthodox Church (faithful and organizations) in SDG implementation are not well known worldwide. Many organized philanthropic practices were recorded in Church history; they took many forms known as kala erga (Gr. καλά ἔργα, i.e. good works) that must be done, by clergy and laity, with altruism, pleasure, love, justice, and universal solidarity.

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They were sponsored by emperors and imperial family members, churchmen, and lay people. We mention inter alia the following practices: taking care of the sick, the weak, the meek, the humble, the poor, the widows and the orphans; offering goods, money, and personal services to the needy and underprivileged; distribution of inheritance to philanthropic causes; looking after shipwrecked sailors, aged slaves, homeless people and prisoners; establishing and/or supervising orphanages, nursing homes for old people, refuges for asylum seekers in cases of injustice and arbitrary power, and hospitals for lepers; providing bath services for hygiene reasons; burying strangers and foreigners; helping impoverished women and prostitutes; offering hospitality, accommodation and food to guests and strangers; and providing free healthcare services (Belopopsky 2004; Constantelos 2007; Herrin 2013; Prodromou and Symeonides 2016; Njoroge 2021). These good works varied from one diocese to the other, in variety, type, quantity, and quality according to their resources. The Church Fathers had diverse opinions about doing charity work and donating. Whereas some, like St. Maximos the Confessor (C 6–7th), insisted on the essentiality of unlimited giving, others, like St. John Chrysostom (C 4–5th), advised that wealth should be distributed ‘with economy’ and that donations should be regulated ‘according to the wants of those who solicit relief’ (Constantelos 2007). St. Cyril Phileotes (C 12th) opposed aid ‘for the able bodied or lazy, because they thereby deprived those in genuine need’ (Herrin 2013: 305–306). It is worth noting that Church’s diakonia shrank over the centuries due to various political, social, financial, and ecclesiastical reasons, and thus the Church’s life became limited to its liturgical and spiritual services. Modern diakonia practices are not different from the old ones at both micro and macro levels. Chehadeh wrote about charitable work at the Eastern Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch (GOPA), The Department of Ecumenical Relations and Development (DERD), mainly in Syria during its war crisis, under the slogan ‘Faith in Actions’ in light of the ‘Good Samaritan’ parable (Lk 10:25–37), the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the ‘Core Humanitarian standard’. He clarified that GOPA-DERD decided to help the most vulnerable Syrians through various sectors that include Protection (care of elderly people, Gender-based Violence (GBV), Child Protection (CP) and Psychosocial Support (PSS), Education, Medical and Mental Health, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), Shelter, Distribution of Food and Non-Food Items, Livelihoods, just to mention a few (Chehadeh 2021:183–184).

Moreover, Vicovan stated how the Romanian Orthodox Church established social and medical institutions, e.g. canteens and bakeries; hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, and dental offices; foster care homes for the elderly; houses and daycare centers for children; centers for mothers with children or for women who face domestic violence; social welfare offices and community services, educational institutions, cultural services (kindergartens and afterschool groups); protected dwellings; information, counselling and resources centers; family-type centers; emergency centers for homeless people and victims of

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domestic violence and human trafficking (2021:165). Jovic reflected on diakonia in Serbia in the twentieth century and discussed some historical circumstances that led to a prejudice which considered that ‘the Orthodox Church has been understood as disinterested in the social work and concerned more with mysticism, detached from the troubles of the world’ (Jovic 2021: 345). In summary, the socialist Yugoslavia ‘at least theoretically took care of all the social needs of its inhabitants, and did not tolerate social activism of the Church even if it was humanitarian’ (ibid.). Later, following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the various wars in Yugoslavia, and ‘decades of silence and isolation, the Church was not ready for the wars, sanctions, the destruction of the country, extreme poverty, refugees, and new political figures’ (ibid.). Moreover, the Church ‘is not allowed to play a more conscious and conscientious role in the public space through its critique of political and social realities. If the Church does so, then it unmasks peace and becomes a disruptor, i.e., ‘an enemy’ of a secular society’ (ibid. 2021: 348). Jovic warned that the Church might cover the crippled political system by anesthetizing social injustice, and maintaining and supporting it in the name of love (ibid. 2021: 348). However, he stated: ‘Diakonia needs courage and effectiveness in the negotiations with governments’ (ibid. 2021: 350). Finally, he recommended that the Church should express ‘the truth of her being’ by caring for the common good through: (a) self-consciousness for the world; (b) philanthropia (a central organization); (c) education (religious education, confessional and multi-religious faced); (d) progress of relationships (the progress of science); (e) human dignity (laws on bioethical issues, e.g. the dignity of the dying); and (f) diakonia of peace (to promote cooperation and religious plurality) (ibid. 2021:350–351). The Eastern Orthodox Church needs to turn its new SDGs’ theology into praxes, and vision into reality. More precisely, the faithful, clergy and laity, should be committed and involved more in social work and philanthropic diakonia than in some liturgical practices. Thus, church leaders need to acquire expertise in social working, volunteering, and fundraising beside their theological, spiritual, and pastoral services. Needless to say, Church cooperation with local partners is inevitable. The 17 SDGs, their 169 targets and 232 indicators (UN 2017), the hundreds of approved good practices and the many successful implementations, stories and lessons from all over the world, may spark solutions to various problems and challenges. These goals can be a glocal (global + local) framework, an accurate compass and good roadmaps to stakeholders, and useful benchmarks against which SDGs practitioners and actors measure their plans and achievements (cf. International Council for Science 2017; UN 2022). Needless to say, the Church and her diverse social organizations may be subject to corruption (e.g. lack of transparency, illicit money flows, accounting fraud, injustice, favoritism) which may lead to distrust, harm, pain, and damage. Gutmann considered that ‘It is difficult to hold individual agents accountable for abusing their entrusted power for private gain. Understanding the causes and potential remedies of corruption in religious organizations is important, also because religion serves as a source of legitimacy and authority for many political regimes’ (2015: 154).

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Finally, it should be openly stated that it is a utopian dream or wishful thinking to hope that SDGs will be completely, perfectly, and permanently implemented by 2030 or any other year in the future. Consequently, wars (geostrategic, ideological, economic, religious etc.), poverty (absolute, relative, situational, generational, rural, urban etc.), pollution (space, air, water, soil, light, noise, mind etc.), illnesses and diseases (infectious, deficiency, hereditary, physiological), epidemics and pandemics, climate change and the causes and effects of global warming, damaging technological and economic industries, as well as all types of destructive elements to society, biodiversity, and ecosystem will not perish; they will be there until the end of time. Moreover, the Eastern Orthodox Church, like any other religious denomination and like universal, regional and sub-regional organizations, is not in any position to impose its vision, ideology, discourse, and praxes over the whole world. The maximum that the Eastern Orthodox Church and faithful can achieve, like many strong or even weak stakeholders, is to ‘turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it’ (ESV, Psa 34:14), try to reduce harm and show compassion, cope with disasters, ‘strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees’ (ESV, Isa 35:3), and to spread awareness and educate people on SDGs’ theories and praxes. Simply put, neither is the Eastern Orthodox Church able to implement the SDGs, nor will the implementation of SDGs at the universal, macro, meso, and micro levels bring us ‘a new heaven and a new earth’ (ESV, Rev. 21:1). Finally, it is crucial to emphasize that walking the walk as well as talking the talk, at both internal and external Church levels, safeguards not only Eastern Orthodoxy in general, but the future of humankind and the world in particular.

Conclusion In conclusion, being ‘here and now’ entails that the Eastern Orthodox Church: (1) promotes the universal Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at both global and local levels in respect to the 5 Ps, i.e. people, planet, peace, partnership, and prosperity; (2) develops productive practices related to all dimensions of the SDGs, i.e. social, economic, environmental, and cultural, their respective targets, their interlinked and multidisciplinary challenges, and their means of implementation, follow-­up and review; and (3) delivers various community services, mainly in the fields of philanthropy, environment, social care, health care, education, reconciliation and peacemaking. It is noteworthy that SDGs will not completely be achieved in the future – since heaven cannot be lived permanently in an ever-changing and corrupt world! However, the joint efforts of all religious and secular stakeholders in moving towards the SDGs will definitely turn our world into a better place where there is less pain, less sorrow, and less sighing. Finally, the Eastern Orthodox Church is called to live the right belief through the right worship and the right lifestyle, at the right place and time, in order to be among those placed on the right of the King (Mt 25:31–40).

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Stoyanov, Y. (2016). 7 Norms of war in Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Retrieved from https:// www.walterdorn.net/pdf/World-­Religions-­and-­Norms-­of-­War_Ch7-­EasternOrthodoxChristia nity_2009.pdf. Accessed 10 Feb 2023. Sudbrink, L. 2015. The five steps of change. Retrieved from https://www.amanet.org/articles/the-­ five-­steps-­of-­change/. Accessed 14 Mar 2022. Theokrioff, E. 2021. A worshipping Cosmos: The Eastern orthodox liturgical tradition and its ecological implications. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heAGSmeo120. Accessed 10 Feb 2023. Theokritoff, E. 1994. The Orthodox church and the environmental movement. Retrieved from http://www.goarch.org/ourfaith/ourfaith8024. Accessed 10 Feb 2023. Theokritoff, E. 2001. Creation and salvation in orthodox worship. Ecotheology 10: 97–108. UN. 2017. Work of the statistical commission pertaining to the 2030 agenda for sustainable development – Resolution adopted by the general assembly on 6 July 2017. Retrieved from https:// documents-­dds-­ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N17/207/63/PDF/N1720763.pdf. Accessed 15 Mar 2022. ———. 2022. SDG good practices: A compilation of success stories and lessons learned in SDG implementation. Retrieved from https://sdgs.un.org/sites/default/files/2022-03/SDGs%20 Good%20Practices%20-%20second%20edition%20-%20FINAL%20FEB092022.pdf. Accessed 15 Mar 2022. ———. n.d.. The 17 Goals. Retrieved from https://sdgs.un.org/goals. Accessed 15 Mar 2022. UN-IATT and EC-JRC. 2021. Guidebook for the preparation of Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) for SDGs roadmaps. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. Retrieved from https://sdgs.un.org/sites/default/files/2021-­06/GUIDEBOOK_COMPLETE_V03.pdf. Accessed 15 Mar 2022. Vassiliadis, P., ed. 2013. Orthodox perspectives on mission. Oxford: Regnum Books International. Vicovan, I. 2021. Diakonia and social assistance in the theology and practice of the Romanian orthodox church. In International handbook on ecumenical Diakonia: Contextual theologies and practices of Diakonia and Christian social services—Resources for study and intercultural learning, eds. G. Ampony, et al., 163–167. Retrieved from https://www.ocms.ac.uk/wp-­ content/uploads/2022/02/Diakonia-­Handbook-­Whole-­2b.pdf. Accessed 13 Mar 2022. Ware, K. 1979. The orthodox way. London: Mowbray. ———. 1993. The orthodox church. London: Penguin Books. Ware, K. 2011. For the peace from above: the Understanding of peace in the new testament and the Orthodox Liturgy. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMzvBjlISfc&list= RDLVboVsO7Xy8SE&index=5. Accessed 13 Mar 2022. ———. 2014. Let us go forth in peace. Retrieved from https://iconandlight.wordpress. com/2014/02/26/let-­us-­go-­forth-­in-­peace-­bishop-­kallistos-­ware/. Accessed 13 Mar 2022. ———. 2018. On compassion for animals and the Orthodox church. Retrieved from https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=heTC_6eujEQ. Accessed 13 Mar 2022. Yannoulatos, A. 1984. Eastern orthodoxy and human rights. International Review of Mission 73 (292): 454–466.

Chapter 20

Ecolibrium: The Quranic Paradigm for Global Sustainability Nadeem Haque

Abstract In this paper, it is shown that the Quranic system does not separate the ‘religious’ from the ‘sacred’: everything is sacred in the sense of being deeply honoured and respected as the creation of God. The Quran is centralized on the concept of al-mizan (the Arabic word for ‘the balance/equilibrium’). This is the key to realizing the Equigenic Principle as a corrective for the wayward human behaviour that is creating havoc and destruction on the Earth. The Equigenic Principle is defined and is illustrated to be the fulcrum for three other ‘ecognitions’ (ecological recognitions): ‘Ownership of God’, ‘Sentient Species Communities’ and ‘Personhood’. In fact, the concept of affinity and the four ecognitions are the basis for restructuring a human relationship with the cosmos  – in other words Ecolibrium: the Sacred Balance in Islam. To achieve global sustainability, it is illustrated that all these concepts assist in modulating our attitudes and behaviour towards nature not only in degree, but also in kind. It is hoped that this approach, termed the ‘Quranic Paradigm’, will help restore both vitality and direction to an uncompromising holistic approach toward nature and the sustenance derived thereof in our crucially pivotal century. Keywords Affinity · al-mizan · Consciousness · Ecognitions · Ecolibrium · Equigenic · Global sustainability · Macroevolution · Quran · Quranic paradigm

Introduction Ecolibrium is that system envisioned which produces global sustainability based on the Quranic Paradigm, not only for Muslim societies but globally, because the Quran – held by Muslims to be a revelation from God – addresses the totality of humanity and not just ‘Muslims’. Also, logically speaking, a claimed global N. Haque (*) Institute of Higher Reasoning, Oakville, ON, Canada

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Global Sustainability, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41800-6_20

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approach’s effectiveness becomes limited if it is not realized or applied universally, and in fact would be a contradiction in terms. This paradigm possesses several key features that would bring about crucial global sustainability, through a rational and integrated belief system. In current parlance, an extended concept of global sustainability can be defined as sustainable development for humans, animals and the environment/ecology, that is sustained over multiple generations globally, and which tries to maintain, without force, physical or psychological threat, the health of all these entities and systems, or to enhance them, in an organic and egalitarian manner without elitism, speciesism or ‘racism’, so that an altruistic society emerges. The Quranic Paradigm that engenders global sustainability turns out to be a formula that one could derive using logic and the observation of nature, but one which is spelled out in the Quran for our benefit, once we study the Quran deeply and extensively. What is this specific formula which, if utilized, would produce global sustainability as defined above? The Quranic Paradigm has been explored and discussed in great detail in the recently published book Ecolibrium: The Sacred Balance in Islam (Haque et al. 2021). This paper focuses on the main concepts pertaining to ‘sustainability’ extracted from this book, to provide the basis of this formula.

Defining the Formula for Global Sustainability: Ecognitions It might appear strange to many that a ‘religion’ has a formula to deal with human development and behaviour; however, the plain fact is that the Quran deals explicitly with cause and effect relations in all spheres of life. From the Quran, many relations can be deduced, and global sustainability is certainly one of them. The basic formulaic relationship for global sustainability derived from the Quran is as follows:



global sustainability  implementing  ecognition 1  ecognition 2  ecognition3  ecognition 4 



The philosophical justification and basis for Islamic human, environmental and animal advocacy consists of the following principles, which recognize and uphold inherent ecological values as derived from the Quran: ‘ecognition’ stands for ecological recognition (Haque and Masri 2011). We shall also be examining some key ingredients that make up this formula: one could say they are the ‘constants’ of this formula, analogically speaking. Ecognition 1: All Creation is a Trust from God The Quranic view is that we human beings, as finite and dependent creatures, cannot lay claim to being the ultimate owners of things in nature. In fact, our right to use the natural resource is only in the sense of usufruct – as if one had been given the right to use another’s property with the clear understanding that one would not damage, waste or destroy its substance. The Quran, moreover, points to a Singular Intelligence as the Originator and Creator of the Universe. Logically speaking,

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nature does not have a conscious self by which it is organizing its ‘self’ toward a future state, and this organization is therefore attributed to a Creator: humankind is given only temporary stewardship – ‘khilafah’ – of the natural world. Therefore, humankind is responsible and accountable for any of the abuses of the Earth’s life forms or of natural resources. If nothing belongs to us and everything is held in trust, then we are accountable as trustees to the Owner, in all humility. The dominion of the galactical and inter-galactical systems belongs to God; and God has the power over all things (3:189).

In Quran 33:72, the trust of the one God’s ownership was offered to humankind, but foolishly and unjustly, humans have not lived up to the expectations of this accepted and sacred responsibility. Ecognition 2: Equigenic Rights Do Exist and Must be Maintained We have become so used to thinking in terms of human rights that we tend to ignore the rights of other creatures and of nature in general. These domains are ultimately indivisible, as evinced by the ‘Equigenic Principle’, that is, the equality and balance inherent in nature. What is the meaning of ‘Equigenic? The word ‘equigenic’, coined in the book From Facts to Values (Banaei and Haque 1995), is derived from ‘equi’, meaning equal, and ‘genic’, meaning start of change. This terminology of Equigenic Rights – which form the Equigenic Principle – was developed to distinguish such concepts from ‘natural rights’, which tend to portray nature, in Hobbesian guise, as being ‘brutish’. In From Facts to Values, after spending over 100 pages on the subject/concept, it was proven that rights are not synthetic but absolute and derived from the balances in nature, when nature is examined rationally (that is, by recognizing its pre-existing interconnections). The measure of the health of society is a measure of how close we are to realising this principle. Unfortunately, though, in the nominal Muslim world, with the un-Quranic depreciation of the rational worldview over the last few hundred years, the ‘book’ (Quran) and the ‘balance’ of which the Quran itself speaks (57:25), have not been seen as a reflexive part of each other. In Islam it is inherent that nature is the primary revelation, and the Quran is a mirror of such. This realization has immense implications for how society ought to structure itself and deal with the myriad other creatures that inhabit the Earth. To deal with the environment, we need to develop an outlook which is well-­interconnected and does not therefore bifurcate knowledge into sacred and non-­sacred, for concern towards the environment makes everything sacred, in the sense of deeply and intrinsically respecting nature. The Quran, as such, deals with all spheres of life and has an interwoven structure for creating a healthy supra-­community (a community of integral communities) in which all economic, sociological, legal and technological systems are integrated in a proper way. These interlinked systems evolve from a socio-ecological foundation of balance – al-­mizan. Indeed, the very notion of ‘rights’, in connection with animals and nature, still conjures up a perception which seems incongruous for many, because humans have disconnected themselves from the realisation of proper interconnectivity between nature and society. In fact, most human societies around the word have lost touch with such a balance.

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The universe itself then, was created as a test to see who would perform the best in deeds, that is, who would abide by the laws of God, the first of which is not to upset the pre-existing balance, or Equigenic Principle: It is He (God) who has created the expansive universe and established the balance (al mizan)  – so you may not disrupt it (55:79) … for the maintenance and development of sentient life forms, both human and non-human (55:10) … and the Balance [has been created] so that human beings may behave with equity (57:25).

According to the Quran, then, human beings are to be neither dominant nor subservient to nature. Rather they are to act as integral parts of the patterns in the fabric of nature. Humans are not unique, therefore, as sentient forms of life, as other animals also possess sentience, but they are, unlike the rest of the animals, a class of species in the cosmos who can either be creative or destructive in nature. They are responsible for the safekeeping of the intrinsic balance of nature. The Quran reminds people that all the components of the ecosystem have a unique function; each part plays its unique role in the ecological cycle. In Fig. 20.1, the path to peace with the central concept of Mizan (Balance) is depicted, where the causal connections to peace are universal, logical and immutable: Reason

Cognizant

Notice Design

Put things where they belong

Mizan

Justice

Peace

Fig. 20.1  The path to peace (i)

With the Islamic approach, the basis of which is the Equigenic Principle, man is not anthropocentrically judged to be at the centre of the universe. Rather, nature is seen as our teacher, teaching us reflexively how we should teach it. Indeed, reflecting on the expanding universe, and the diversity of the life forces within it, we can certainly observe a panoramic display of remarkable order and consistency in its laws. Such harmonious order is maintained throughout the Earth’s domains by the structure of the extremely delicate balances in the physical universe, where plants and animals have been designed to be ingeniously adapted to their respective niches. There is indeed a fragile equilibrium, whereby even a minute change would disrupt the balances in this dynamically interrelated scheme of existence.

The Equigenic Use of Technology From the Quranic perspective, global sustainability is hinged crucially on how we utilize and develop technology. The Quranic technology, based on al-mizan, would be focused on cyclical components that integrally connect to the grand cycles of nature. What is more is that this focus would make us learn more about the technology of nature, which is infinitely superior than man-made technology. This is because Muslims are reminded of the verse in the Quran that says that God is the

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best of the Creators (Quran 23:14). In essence, the true nature of technology is the technology of nature and we must therefore learn to develop with the rhythms, structural patterns and cycles that maintain the diversity and dynamically flowing balance of nature, or balances in nature. Ecognition 3: All Nonhuman Animals Live in Communities. The Qur’an seals the biological parity between humans and the rest of the species: There is not a nonflying and two-winged flying (water/carbon based) creature, but they are in communities like yourselves (6:38) God has appointed, precisely established and positioned the Earth (both the planet as a whole and the Earth’s crust itself) for the maintenance and development of sentient life forms – both human and non/human (55:10).

This refers to the realization that animals indeed dwell in communities that must be respected in their own right because of Ecognitions 2 and 4. It is after all the community structure of animals that creates the balance in nature. We neglect this at our own peril, undermining global sustainability. Human beings, being part of nature and part of the communities of nature, are supposed to form a Supra-Community, by integrally interconnecting their community with animal communities. Ecognition 4: All Nonhuman Animals Possess Personhood. Human beings tend to regard themselves as being special because they feel they are uniquely endowed with intelligence, self-awareness, higher communication abilities, and a soul. Using such assumptions humans often trample upon other species because they think nonhumans do not possess such abilities, or if they do, they exist in a primitive state. The Quranic outlook reveals to us, though, that these assumptions are incongruent with reality, and that great untapped knowledge exists, in relation to such a nonhuman context, that could lead to a revolution in the largely discordant relationship between man and nature. In the book Ecolibrium: The Sacred Balance in Islam, it is shown that in the Quran animal communication is described for ants and birds, showing them to have sophisticated forms of communication akin to human language. In this area, as in many others, linguists have not reached the far-flung conclusions in the Quran but appear to be approaching it. In Ecolibrium, examples of sophisticated language having sentential structures and import are provided. Respect for personhood is important because it is that and the role of the ‘person’ which comprise the community. The person shapes the community as well as being shaped by the community.

A New Economics: Equigenical Economics – Equi-nomics Equi-nomics (Haque et  al. 2021: 173–183) is a new approach to economics, geared towards maintaining the Equigenic Principle. It is an economic system that is able to foster the development of the four ecognitions (ecological

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recognitions) by expanding ecognitions 3 and 4 to include human communities and human individuals, forming the Quranic Paradigm. These, therefore, would comprehensively embrace both nature and humanity, leading ultimately to justice and peace. There are certain indices that can be utilized to measure the degree of Equigenicity of Society (via the Equigenic Index). It is not enough then, from an Islamic perspective, to think in terms only of human rights, ignoring the rights of other creatures. The Equigenic Principle refers to the use of nature as the foundation of rights realized when human beings, using reason (that is, by properly interconnecting things), recognize the dynamic balance in nature. Indeed, the measure of the health of a society is a function of how close we are to the application of this principle. The basic equations of Equinomics are: Health of Society = 1 – Socio-environmental Deficit Socio-environmental Deficit = Amount of Deviation from the Equigenic Principle

Rise of the Ecological Age In a chemical reaction, or a world-class beverage, a formula implies specific ingredients, transformation and precision. Likewise, without following the precise concepts and precepts outlined above we cannot achieve global sustainability, or a high level of such sustainability, because the outcome requires a series of logical realizations and actions. Ecognitions 1 and 4 cannot be fully understood without understanding the concept of ‘Rabb’. In turn, this term cannot be fully understood without understanding that it refers to two realities: Consciousness sustained and directed/teleological macroevolution of all species, including humans. It has been illustrated through recent research by this writer on the Quran, and on the origination of life, that all life, including that of humans, has evolved from water and clay. As a consequence, everything is related to each other, through the convergence of origin – including humans: there is no exceptionalism in this. In addition, all consciousness is derived from the Consciousness – and also consciousness is accessed-with-sustainment from God. In the Quran, this ‘access’ is alluded to in the following verse, paraphrased: They ask you about the ruh (consciousness). Say: it is a command from God – in order to know it, you need a lot of knowledge, but of that knowledge you have been given a little (17:85).

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The basis of the Quranic Paradigm is that God or Allah is the one who sustains creation, and within that sustenance it is the human being who is to uphold the trust. The prime attribute of the creator, and one which has been used the most number of times in the Quran, is the Arabic word mentioned before: rabb, translated as either ‘Lord’ or ‘Sustainer’ depending on the context. However, and at root, ‘rabb’ actually means ‘the fosterer of things from one stage to another until it reaches a stage of completion’, including co-evolution within ecological systems. Rabb = common evolution of humans and all other carbon-based entities on earth + common source of consciousness for all entities, carbon or non-carbon based. This meaning of God as ‘the fosterer’ was explained by the 11th to twelfth century CE Arabic linguist and Quranic commentator, Raghib al-Isfahani. The implications of this are illustrated in Fig. 20.2. RABB (SUSTAINER): Cause of common Origin of Consciousness and macroevolution AFFINITY: Realization that all entities are imagined creations accessing the same Consciousness to gain individualized consciousness, and are related due to macroevolution EMPATHY: Naturally developed due to closeness from Affinity COMPASSION: Naturally developed from Empathy (action) JUSTICE: Concern due to compassion motivates a person to establish justice (resultant) PEACE: Can only arise from justice Fig. 20.2  The path to peace (ii)

Given all these factors, therefore, due to mental and dexterous abilities, that is, the ability for humans to use their hands to create and develop things, the entire universe has indeed been created for testing highly intellectually capable carbon and non-carbon based entities (human and extraterrestrial life forms (Haque and Shahbaz 2015)) to see if they can choose to minimize going against the equigenic flow (concepts and energies, physical and mental leading to and maintaining al-­ mizan) and to see who can choose to develop the equigenic flow and affinity. In Fig. 20.3, the self-reinforcing and interdependent quality of both these concepts is illustrated through the Equifinity Engine.

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INPUT Four Integrated Ecognitions

OUTPUT EQUIgenic Flow

Taqwa - Al-Rabb (Awareness of the Sustainer)

AfFINITY

Global Sustainability

THE EQUIFINITY ENGINE

Fig. 20.3 Global Sustainability Concepts for the twenty-first Century and Beyond: ‘The Equifinity Engine’

Taqwa (of One God) means consciousness, in the sense of being acutely and expansively aware. In this case, it is taqwa of an attribute of the Creator (Rabb). Analogically speaking, if the engine ceases or ebbs away, so do the Equigenic Flow and Affinity, diminishing or destroying global sustainability. As such, the Equifinity Engine is the driver of global sustainability.

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In fact, intrinsic human nature, reason, the book of the universe and the Quran between them weave a seamless fabric of a teleological and equigenical cosmos. For Lewis Mumford said: The cycle of the machine is now coming to an end … man is at last in a position to transcend the machine, and to create a new biological and social environment, in which the highest possibilities of human existence will be realized, not for the strong and lucky alone, but for all co-operating and understanding groups, associates and communities (Edwards 1959: 380).

When we realize the essential formulaic principles of global sustainability, we can envision that this unique route is indeed embedded in the principles of Ecolibrium: The Sacred Balance in Islam – the Quranic Paradigm.

Bibilography Banaei, M., and N. Haque. 1995. From facts to values: Certainty, order, balance and their universal implications. Toronto: Optagon Publications Ltd. Edwards, T. 1959. The new dictionary of thoughts: A cyclopedia of quotation. Bangalore: The Standard Book Company. Haque, N. 2009. From microbits to everything: Beyond darwinism and creationism: Volume 3: The evolutionary implications. Toronto: Optagon Publications Ltd.. Available at https:// www.academia.edu/38349135/From_Microbits_to_Everything_Beyond_Darwinism_and_ Creationism_Vol_3_The_Evolutionary_Implications. Accessed 30 Aug 2022. Haque, N., and Masri, Al-Hafiz B. A. (2011). The principles of animal advocacy in islam: Four integrated ecognitions. Society and Animals, 19: 279–290. Available at https://www.animalsandsociety.org/wp-­content/uploads/2016/05/haque.pdf. Accessed 30 Aug 2022. Haque, N., and Shahbaz, Z. 2015. Extraterrestrials and Intraterrestrials in Islam. Nexus Magazine 225 (Aug.  – Sept.), 57–61 and 82. Available at https://www.academia.edu/38459607/ Extraterrestrials_and_Intraterrestrials_in_Islam. Accessed 30 Aug 2022. Haque, N., Al-Hafiz B.A. Masri, and M. Banaei. 2021. Ecolibrium: The sacred balance in islam. Manchester: Beacon Books. Muslim, M., and Haque, N. 2007. From microbits to everything: Universe of the imaginator, volume 2: The philosophical implications. Toronto: Optagon Publications Ltd.. Available at https://www.academia.edu/38368823/From_Microbits_to_Everything_Universe_of_the_ Imaginator_VOLUME_2_The_Philosophical_Implications. Accessed 30 Aug 2022.

Index

A Accompaniment, x, 150–158 Agenda for Sustainable Development, 2 Al Farisi, K., 182 Al-mizan, 213, 214, 217 Andreae, J.V., 55, 58 Animism, 63, 64, 70 Anthropocene, 3, 33, 35, 110, 182 Anthropocentrism, 22, 78, 83, 85, 90, 153, 173 Anxiety, xi, 48, 50, 151, 172–177 Archetype, xi, 90, 91, 94, 97, 190–192 Aristotle, 142 Artemis project, 116, 117 Artificial intelligence (AI), xi, 187, 188, 193–195 B Bacon, F., 182 Baier, A., 71, 72 Barbera, C., 166 Barbour, I., 127, 180 Bartholomew, I, 42, 102–104 Bauckham, R., 172, 173, 176 Bavinck, H., 191 Beatitudes, 167 Benedict, St., 20 Benyus, J., 107, 108 Berkes, F., 125, 127 Bible, 84, 183, 185 Biodiversity, 3, 9, 18, 31, 77, 96, 101, 109, 127, 134, 206 Biomimicry, x, 107

Biosphere, x, xii, 34, 108, 109, 114–116, 118–122 Book of nature, 55, 101–110 Bostrom, N., 189 Brundtland report, v, 2, 31, 32, 163 C Camino de Santiago, 130 Carbon tax, 9 Causation, 62–68 Cavendish, M., 182 Climate change, vii, ix, 3, 9, 11, 18, 19, 22, 34, 44, 48, 50, 71, 77–79, 82, 101, 109, 114, 118, 119, 187, 206 Community, religious, 21 Complexity, 4, 6, 19, 42, 45, 92, 93, 97, 115, 126 Contemplation, 13, 105, 106, 182 Conversion, viii, 26, 48, 49, 121, 122 Covid-19, vi, x, 32, 33, 121, 152, 154, 155 Creation, ix, xii, 20, 21, 44, 49, 54–59, 62, 65, 69–79, 82–84, 86, 87, 90–98, 102, 103, 105–107, 110, 117, 134, 138, 145, 151, 166, 173, 176, 177, 181, 183–185, 192, 193, 201, 212, 217 Creation, continuous, 90–98 Creativity, 54–59, 119–120, 151, 184, 192, 201, 203 Cusanus, N., see Nicholas of Cusa D Dalai Lama, 42

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Fuller et al. (eds.), Issues in Science and Theology: Global Sustainability, Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41800-6

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Index

222 Desacralization, 62, 63, 65 Diakonia, 199, 200, 204, 205 Discipleship, 172–174, 177 Disenchantment, 65 Dispositionalism, 66, 67 E Earth system science, 35 Ecolibrium, xii, 211, 212, 215, 217, 218 Ecology, v, viii, 20, 21, 43, 44, 62, 70, 106, 127, 150, 151, 199, 212 Ecology, sacred, 127 Ectype, xi, 188, 190–195 Embodiment, 189, 192–195 Emergence, 44, 92, 114, 115 Enhancement, 189 Enlightenment, the, 82, 84, 85, 87 Eschatology, 55, 95, 97, 172, 174 Ethics, viii, xi, 18–20, 56, 70, 91, 97, 103, 108, 109, 114, 118, 122, 126, 165, 172–174, 176, 177, 181 Ethics, environmental, 70, 126, 174 Evolution, 19, 46, 47, 90–92, 94–96, 98, 114–118, 120–122, 130, 141, 189, 217 F Flourishing, x, 72, 77, 78, 101–110, 162 Francis of Assisi, St., 20, 65 Francis, Pope, 32, 42, 58, 102, 103, 150, 184 Fromm, E., 13 G Geertz, C., 20 Genesis, 19, 69–73, 78, 87 Geology, 19 Gospels, synoptic, 50, 171–174, 177 Gratitude, vi, 75–77, 110, 155, 157 Gregory of Nyssa, 183 Grosseteste, R., 182 Gutiérrez, G., 166 H Hamann, J.G., 84–87 Hanvey, J., 151 Harris, M., 171–174, 177 Hart, D.B., 183 Harvey, G., 127 Haskell, D., 106

Hefner, P., 59, 183, 192, 193 Hertz, N., 154 Herzfeld, N., 189 Holocene, 35, 109, 110 Hugo, V., 74 Hulme, M., 22 Hume, D., 64, 85, 87 Huxley, T., 5 I Image of God (imago Dei), 49, 69, 181–183, 190–195 Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCAs), 125–127 Industrialization, 11, 13, 47, 57 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), vii, 18, 101–102 J Jesus Christ, 152, 153, 167 Job, 182, 183, 185 Junius, F., 190 Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation (JPIC), 30 K Kant, I., 18, 19, 49, 85, 86 Kurzweil, R., 188, 189 L Language, vii, 1, 21, 47, 63, 86, 87, 114, 116–118, 121, 151, 153, 203, 215 Lemaître, G., 182 Leopold, A., 39, 97 Leske, A., 173 Liberation, 26, 27, 162, 164–168 Liberation theology, xi, 162–168 Loneliness, x, xi, 150–158 Louth, A., 105, 106 M MacKay, D., 180 Mathesis, 114, 122 Maximus Confessor, 105 McGuinn, C., 104 Meadows, D., 3, 13 Meditation, 106, 151, 158 Menamparampil, T., 59

Index Metaphysics, 23, 64–68, 87, 91, 143, 183 Moltmann, J., 26, 150, 151 Monsma, S., 193 Motivation problem, 70, 71, 76–78 N Networks, 35, 92, 94, 114–118, 121, 122, 129, 130 Nicholas of Cusa (Nicholas Cusanus), 83, 183 Niebuhr, R., 50

223 Scotus, D., 83, 93, 96 Secularization, 46–48, 57, 132, 134 Sideris, L., 21, 22 Sin, viii, x, 55, 57, 58, 84, 102–104, 109, 177 Sprat, T., 181 Springhart, H., 152 Steiner, G., 181 Stewardship, 70, 77–79, 173, 213 Studley, J., 127 Sustainable development goals (SDGs), xii, 11, 26, 30, 33, 35, 198–206 Swimme, B., 21 Symbiosis, 116–118

O Ockham, W., 83 P Panentheism, 104 Paradigm shift, xii, 127, 193, 198, 202 Passmore, J., 19 Paul, St., 97, 152, 199 Peacocke, A., 180 Peterson, G., 45, 46, 192, 193 Plato, 13, 82 Pluralism, 23, 84, 108 Polkinghorne, J., 180 Pollution, 44, 116, 140, 206 Posthumanism, 189 Pounder, S., 166, 167 Prayer, x, 13, 20, 151, 152, 154, 155, 200 Prisons, green, 162–164, 168 Q Quinn, D., 171–177 Quran, 42, 211–217 R Rabb, 216, 217 Rahner, K., 153 Rawls, J., 14, 114 Revelation, 44, 56, 84, 85, 96, 105, 211, 213 Rolston, H., 19 S Sacred Natural Sites (SNSs), x, 125–134 Sacredness, 63, 68, 126, 129, 131, 132, 134 Schleiermacher, F., 55, 58 SCOPUS database, 128

T Technological singularity (TS), xi, xii, 187–195 Theodoric of Freiburg, 182 Theokritoff, E., 42, 107, 199 Theology of science, xi, 180–181, 185 Tillich, P., 56, 58, 59 Transformation, 4, 6, 11, 12, 15, 26, 39, 50, 74, 77, 117, 121, 122, 162, 166–168, 189, 202, 216 Transgression, 109 Transhumanism, 189 Tresmontant, C., 91, 92 Trust, ix, xii, 8, 48–50, 59, 69–79, 173, 177, 202, 212, 213, 217 Tucker, M.E., 20, 21, 70 U United Nations (UN), 2, 3, 10, 26, 33, 198, 204, 205 V Vinge, V., 188 W Ward, G., 151 Ware, K., 200, 201 Welby, J., 102 White, L., 20, 27, 46, 62, 63, 65, 69, 70, 90–98, 127 Wisdom, 101–110, 120, 175, 181, 183 World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), v, 2, 31, 163 World Trade Organisation (WTO), 10