An Indian Journey through Lent, Day 37
Ecotheology and Lent
In yesterday’s diary/blog entry I covered the last week of the Anglican Church in Southern Africa’s Carbon Fast. It’s been a terrific program, I think, very practical in the way that it calls us all to simpler, more eco-friendly lifestyles. But it doesn’t start with “praxis” (practice), and neither it should. Any Christian activity should always start with God, that is, with theology. So it strikes me that I should write something about “ecotheology”, the academic discipline in which I have become a specialist and which I have made the journey to India to communicate.
My friend professor Barry Leal described ecotheology thus:
“Ecological theology, or ecotheology as it is called these days, arises from an attempt to explore the relationships between the academic disciplines of ecology and theology.”
In the discipline of systematic theology there is a doctrine of creation, but in recent centuries, and particularly in protestant circles, this has received rather less attention than it once did. Ecotheology was stimulated by the worsening ecological crisis.
“Ecology” is itself a compound word, coined in 1866 by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel from the Greek words oikos, meaning “house” and logos, meaning “word” or “study”. Therefore, ecology’s most basic meaning is the study of one’s house or home, when these words are interpreted broadly as one’s habitat or environment. However, it has taken on the more specialized meaning of
“the branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings.”
Theology is literally the study of theos, God. The medieval theologian Anselm gave the classic definition of theology:
“Faith seeking understanding.”
Gordon Dicker has expanded this to:
“the activity of a person of faith in seeking to understand that faith and its implication for his or her life.”
More recently David Tracy has further refined the praxis (practical) element of theology. His definition is:
“the attempt to establish mutually critical correlations between an interpretation of the Christian tradition and an interpretation of the contemporary situation.”
This definition includes the task of theology, which one might say more prosaically is to help people to live Christianly. Using Tracy’s definition of theology, the task of ecotheology is to establish mutually critical correlations between an interpretation of the Christian tradition and an interpretation, or reading, of ecology. **In simpler terms it is to help people to live Christianly in relation with the rest of creation. **
Ecotheology and Lent
In yesterday’s diary/blog entry I covered the last week of the Anglican Church in Southern Africa’s Carbon Fast. It’s been a terrific program, I think, very practical in the way that it calls us all to simpler, more eco-friendly lifestyles. But it doesn’t start with “praxis” (practice), and neither it should. Any Christian activity should always start with God, that is, with theology. So it strikes me that I should write something about “ecotheology”, the academic discipline in which I have become a specialist and which I have made the journey to India to communicate.
My friend professor Barry Leal described ecotheology thus:
“Ecological theology, or ecotheology as it is called these days, arises from an attempt to explore the relationships between the academic disciplines of ecology and theology.”
In the discipline of systematic theology there is a doctrine of creation, but in recent centuries, and particularly in protestant circles, this has received rather less attention than it once did. Ecotheology was stimulated by the worsening ecological crisis.
“Ecology” is itself a compound word, coined in 1866 by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel from the Greek words oikos, meaning “house” and logos, meaning “word” or “study”. Therefore, ecology’s most basic meaning is the study of one’s house or home, when these words are interpreted broadly as one’s habitat or environment. However, it has taken on the more specialized meaning of
“the branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings.”
Theology is literally the study of theos, God. The medieval theologian Anselm gave the classic definition of theology:
“Faith seeking understanding.”
Gordon Dicker has expanded this to:
“the activity of a person of faith in seeking to understand that faith and its implication for his or her life.”
More recently David Tracy has further refined the praxis (practical) element of theology. His definition is:
“the attempt to establish mutually critical correlations between an interpretation of the Christian tradition and an interpretation of the contemporary situation.”
This definition includes the task of theology, which one might say more prosaically is to help people to live Christianly. Using Tracy’s definition of theology, the task of ecotheology is to establish mutually critical correlations between an interpretation of the Christian tradition and an interpretation, or reading, of ecology. **In simpler terms it is to help people to live Christianly in relation with the rest of creation. **
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