Christological Foundations for an Ecological Ethic: Learning from Bonhoeffer

2013 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 338-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin J. Burkholder
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
World Order ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Natural Order ◽  
Moral Concern ◽  
Dietrich Bonhoeffer ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Two Kingdoms ◽  
Ecological Concern

AbstractIn an age where the church needs to foster moral concern for the environment, some are suggesting that Christian theology itself must be changed to produce this result. This article argues that such emendations are unnecessary because Dietrich Bonhoeffer, working a couple of decades before ecological concern was even seen as necessary, manages to craft a theological and ethical approach which is sensitive to ecological concern while retaining large portions of the Christian tradition. Bonhoeffer's anthropology robustly affirms humanity's connection with the natural environment and does not separate humans from the natural order. In fact, his novel approach to the image of God emphasises the necessity of human physicality and the ethical responsibility for the other, which seems to be extendable to the natural order as well. In addition, Bonhoeffer's interpretation of the command to have dominion sees the injunction as a call to be ‘bound’ to nature as a servant, not as a lord free to exploit the earth for wanton pleasure. Consequently, Bonhoeffer interprets the industrial revolution as the failure of humans to rule and serve creation well. Finally, his anthropology, unlike many in the tradition, does not extradite humans from the world, but rather situates them entirely within the matrix of interlocking relationships in the natural world. While Christian soteriology has been criticised for shifting Christian concern away from the environment and life in this world, Bonhoeffer's soteriology overcomes this criticism. Bonhoeffer vociferously repudiates two kingdoms theology in favour of a single unified reality of Christ, which unites God's work of creation and redemption into a unified whole. Furthermore, he interprets the incarnation as a robust affirmation of God's creation and thereby life in this present world. Finally, Bonhoeffer posits redemption encompassing the entire world order, rather than seeing humans as its unique constituents. Bonhoeffer's ethics of responsible action shows that humans need to evaluate not just their immediate actions, but also the long-term consequences of their actions, especially when it comes to use of the environment, both for the sake of other humans and for the sake of following Christ. Since disciples of Christ are supposed to be working towards the reality of Christ, one can conclude that Bonhoeffer's thought encourages humans to work towards the harmony that is to typify creation in the eschaton. Thus, Bonhoeffer's ethics encourages a moral concern for the environment both as a means of neighbourly love and as a means of following Christ.

Ibn Khaldun’s Theory of Social Change

1998 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fida Mohammad
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Social Knowledge ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
Ibn Khaldun ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Compare And Contrast

In this article I shall compare and contrast Ibn Khaldun’s ideas aboutsociohistorical change with those of Hegel, Marx, and Durkheim. I willdiscuss and elaborate Ibn Khaldun’s major ideas about historical andsocial change and compare them with three important figures of modemWestern sociology and philosophy.On reading Ibn Khaldun one should remember that he was living in thefourteenth century and did not have the privilege of witnessing the socialdislocation created by the industrial revolution. It is also very difficult tocategorize Ibn Khaldun within a single philosophical tradition. He is arationalist as well as an empiricist, a historicist as well as a believer inhuman agency in the historical process. One can see many “modem”themes in his thinking, although he lived a hundred years beforeMachiavelli.Lauer, who considers Ibn Khaldun the pioneer of modem sociologicalthought, has summarized the main points of his philosophy.’ In his interpretationof Ibn Khaldun, he notes that historical processes follow a regularpattern. However, whereas this pattern shows sufficient regularity, itis not as rigid as it is in the natural world. In this regard the position ofIbn Khaldun is radically different from those philosophies of history thatposit an immutable course of history determined by the will of divineprovidence or other forces. Ibn Khaldun believes that the individual isneither a completely passive recipient nor a full agent of the historicalprocess. Social laws can be discovered through observation and datagathering, and this empirical grounding of social knowledge represents adeparture from traditional rational and metaphysical thinking ...

scholarly journals Messianism and UFO Sightings as Counterfactual Strategies of Enchantment of the World

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-109
Author(s):  
Piotr Urbanowicz
Keyword(s):  
Technological Progress ◽  
New World ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
World Order ◽  
Common Denominator ◽  
New World Order ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common

Summary In this text, I argue that there are numerous affinities between 19th century messianism and testimonies of UFO sightings, both of which I regarded as forms of secular millennialism. The common denominator for the comparison was Max Weber’s concept of “disenchantment of the world” in the wake of the Industrial Revolution which initiated the era of the dominance of rational thinking and technological progress. However, the period’s counterfactual narratives of enchantment did not repudiate technology as the source of all social and political evil—on the contrary, they variously redefined its function, imagining a possibility of a new world order. In this context, I analysed the social projects put forward by Polish Romantics in the first half of the 19th century, with emphasis on the role of technology as an agent of social change. Similarly, the imaginary technology described by UFO contactees often has a redemptive function and is supposed to bring solution to humanity’s most dangerous problems.

Known by God: C. S. Lewis and Dietrich Bonhoeffer

2005 ◽  
Vol 77 (4) ◽  
pp. 343-352
Author(s):  
Brian S. Rosner
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
The Other ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Human Relationship ◽  
Dietrich Bonhoeffer ◽  
Introductory Essay ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Pastoral Value ◽  
The Image Of God

Whereas knowing God is central to every version of Christian theology, little attention has been paid to the other side of the divine-human relationship. This introductory essay approaches the subject via the brief but poignant remarks of two twentieth-century authors appearing in a work of fiction and in a poem. If C. S. Lewis recognizes the primacy of being known by God, Dietrich Bonhoeffer helps define it and underscores its pastoral value. Both authors accurately reflect the main contours of the Bible’s own treatment. Calvin’s view of the image of God, which T. F. Torrance defines as ‘God’s gracious beholding of man as his child,’ may be of assistance in defining what it means to be known by God.

Laws of God or Laws of Nature?

2019 ◽  
pp. 58-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Natural Order ◽  
The World ◽  
Divine Commands ◽  
Theological Understanding ◽  
Will Of God

The appeal to laws of nature as an explanatory principle is often regarded as fundamental to naturalism. Yet when the idea that there were immutable, mathematical laws of nature first rose to prominence in the seventeenth century it was deeply connected to a theological understanding of natural order. Descartes thus imagined laws of nature to be divine commands, and attributed their immutability to the immutability of their divine source. For Descartes, Boyle, and Newton, the invariable uniformity of nature was understood as a consequence not of God’s withdrawal from the world, but of his direct and incessant engagement with it. It followed that the world was to be investigated empirically, because this was the only way in which the otherwise inscrutable will of God could be discerned. Over the course of the following centuries, however, laws came to be reimagined as simply observational generalizations, or brute features of the natural world.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Strachan Donnelley
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Alfred North Whitehead ◽  
Natural Order ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Direct Experience ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Fly Fishing ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
Essential Unity ◽  
The Mind

This book is written with the knowledge that serious cancer will foreshorten the author’s life. It is an expression of a life of exploring ideas and nature. And it is an affirmation of the essential unity of human beings and a natural order that is valuable and good. Following Alfred North Whitehead, this order can be called “nature alive.” The author has been shaped by an impulse to explore the life of the mind and the recognition of his own fundamental ignorance. The writing and contents of the book are shaped by two themes. One, “living waters,” centres on the direct experience with the nonhuman world, particularly fly-fishing, and is a metaphor for the fact that the natural world is fluid and dynamic, not completed and static. The second theme is “magic mountains,” which refers to the influence that important philosophical thinkers have had on the author’s thinking and self-identity. Each chapter in the book is designed to reveal the development of this tradition of questions and ideas and to invite readers to carry that dialogue further in their own lives and minds.

Constructing Identity with Dreamstones: Megalithic Sites and Contemporary Nature Spirituality

2007 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phillip Charles Lucas
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
World System ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Natural Order ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Communal Identity ◽  
Sacred Places ◽  
Construction Of Identity ◽  
Interpretive Process

For growing numbers of people, the postmodern construction of identity includes the search for a spirituality that reconnects them with the natural world and fosters activity that protects the ecosystem and its many forms of life. Practitioners of this "nature spirituality" construct their identities using a large toolkit of symbols, myths, histories, rituals, sacred places, and beliefs. The megalithic sites of Western Europe constitute one element of this toolkit. This paper considers the ways these sites are interpreted and experienced in the nature-spirituality subculture and how these interpretations and experiences help individuals construct empowering identities that tie together their spiritual and ecological commitments. This interpretive process is occurring outside the control of governing elites, ecclesiastical authorities, or dominant religious institutions. It is at root an exercise in both individual and communal identity construction, a movement of resistance to a world system that has lost its secure moorings in the natural order.

A Brief Historical Review of Western Approaches to Energy Design before Professionalism

2013 ◽  
Vol 365-366 ◽  
pp. 1289-1293
Author(s):  
Juliet Landler
Keyword(s):  
Role Models ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Integrated Design ◽  
Historical Review ◽  
Integrated Approach ◽  
Design Approach ◽  
Western World ◽  
Building Industry ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Integrated Design Approach

For the last two decades most professional architectural and engineering associations have encouraged their members to embrace an integrated design approach to improve and minimize the energy flows through buildings, cities and the broader ecosystem. While the integrated design approach often is portrayed as relatively novel approach, the reality is that it is only since the rise of professionalism in the Western world that the building industry developed a disjointed approach to energy design in the built environment. Previously the professions of architecture and engineering were intertwined, and the architect-engineers of antiquity, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment still can serve as role models for how building industry professionals can take a unified approach to design even considering the complexities of modern building techniques. This paper attempts to provide a brief historical review of the integrated approach to energy design that many architect-engineers took before the industrial revolution.

Martin Luther, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Political Theologies

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. DeJonge
Keyword(s):  
Political Theology ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Social Ethics ◽  
State Power ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Dietrich Bonhoeffer ◽  
Lutheran Theology ◽  
Two Kingdoms

Contemporary political theology often defines itself against Lutheran social ethics, which is portrayed as politically disengaged and overly deferential to state power. At the same time, contemporary political theology often embraces the Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer as an exemplary political theologian. This incongruity is generally resolved by distancing Bonhoeffer from his tradition, at least on matters of political theology. But Bonhoeffer’s political theology was thoroughly Lutheran. Throughout the years of his political-theological engagement, from the Nazi rise to power in 1932–1933 to the drafting of Ethics and related writing in 1940–1943, he participated in ongoing conversations within Lutheran social ethics on the issues of, among others, the two kingdoms and the orders. In the process, he critically appropriated these elements of Lutheran thinking into an especially dynamic and christocentric framework that in turn informed his positions on various issues such as the church’s proclamation against the Nazi state and the ecumenical church’s witness for peace. Bonhoeffer is an example of Lutheran political theology, one that suggests the need to revise at least the more sweeping judgments about Lutheran theology as inherently incompatible with political engagement.

Thomas Aquinas' Eco-Theological Ethics of Anthropocentric Conservation

Horizons ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Patrick McLaughlin
Keyword(s):  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Ethical Concern ◽  
Natural Order ◽  
Moral Concern ◽  
Theological Ethics ◽  
Nonhuman Animals

This essay explores the much-debated question regarding the extent and viability of Thomas Aquinas as a theological source for expanding Christian ethical concern for the nonhuman creation, particularly nonhuman animals. This exploration focuses on the intersection of two foundational issues in Aquinas' theological framework, nature and teleology, as well as the effects of this intersection in Aquinas' work concerning nonhuman creation. From these examinations, I suggest that Aquinas can provide significant contributions for augmenting concern for the welfare of nonhuman animals because his theological framework demands that humans preserve the natural order through conservation. However, Aquinas' ecotheological ethics of conservation is foundationally anthropocentric and only permits indirect moral concern for the nonhuman world.

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