Human Beings as a Part of the 'Flesh of the World': Philosophico-Theological Foundations for a Dialogue between Progressive Protestantism and Animism (in Slovenian) (original) (raw)
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Judging Nature: Christianity and the Religions of Nature
Ethical and spiritual nature-rhetoric is increasingly significant in late-modern personal and political discourse. Notions of human wellbeing, aspiration and fulfilment are frequently correlated to certain conceptions of nature and the natural. The novelty of the modern feeling for and cultural construction of 'nature' 2 often escapes notice, and yet the influence of naturerhetoric on the formation of late-modern cultural and individual identities can hardly be overestimated. But the modern feeling for the natural world sponsors a deeply problematic understanding of 'nature' and cannot coherently articulate the good of either the human or nonhuman worlds. Most theological literature responding to the natural world dwells on a few central areas of contention: anthropocentrism, dominion, covenant, stewardship, ecospirituality, animal ethics and so on, neglecting to examine the ideological inheritance of our construction of nature, the way it is used in contemporary discourse to inform and orient the modern self and its search for the good. 27 th September 2012 3 I defend here a theological approach to the natural world that takes as central its moral significance to us, its role in our construction of the good. 3 It is the perception and election of certain goods, particularly those defining and governing goods Charles Taylor names 'hypergoods', that organise, structure, and orient our language about our selves and the world. 4 Taylor shows that outside language about what is good for us, what is the good we are aiming for and locating ourselves in relation to, what we hope for and desire, we cannot negotiate the world. Accordingly I engage the question of the meaning and character of the natural world from the point of view of our search to orient ourselves to the good, an angle which exposes what is really going on in secular discourses about 'nature', namely that the physical, biological environment is being enthroned as the locus of value and meaning in a way which is both dangerous and useful to theology. This brings into focus the unique resources of Christian faith to read the natural world truly, because it has a moral-critical power which derives from its having rejected the living earth as the final moral and spiritual axiom. This is vital, because once we have established that our relation to and interpretation of the natural world is best understood through the lens of our search for the good, for what governs and directs moral and spiritual aspiration, then the violence, waste, and conflict of the natural world become intensely problematic for us. Both Christian and non-Christian constructions of the nonhuman world often neglect to recognise and respond to its extreme moral ambiguity. But apart from an acknowledgement of nature's brokenness, neither the moral vacuity of construals of the natural world which position it as the governing and normative context for human life, nor the critical and unique contribution of Christian orthodoxy to understanding nonhuman nature, become apparent.
From Worlds of Possibles to Possible Worlds: On Post-nihilism and Dwelling - DasQuestões, 2021
The goal of this paper is to challenge the objections raised by scholars in the Environmental Humanities to the use of “the spiritual” as a mediating resource between humankind and the beleaguered planet we live on. It does this in two ways. First by arguing that the incubi they want to exorcise by placing a “cordon sanitaire” around the spiritual can be withstood without resorting to anything as radical as its complete exclusion. Second, by showing that the interest of such an initiative has nothing to do with promoting theistic supernaturalism or the intention of belittling humankind. Its interest lies in its “instrumental value”. In other words, the point is to adopt a “consequentialist standpoint” to assess the worth of various ways to address our climate change emergency and consider what works and what does not. If after an unprejudiced assessment it is determined that applications of the spiritual can be engineered which help in fostering improved Man-Nature relations – and do so without being Trojan horse for “metaphysical hoaxes” and “totalising métarécits” –, it is the rejection of the spiritual that ceases to be valid. To prove there is nothing farfetched about the idea, this paper looks at the role given to the spiritual (to daimonion) in archaic Greece and the way it promoted an “entente cordiale” between humankind and humankind’s Other. I show that it was able to attain this result by submitting both humankind and its non-human Other to a “cosmodicy” which constrained both to (1) relate and interact with one other on an “I-Thou” basis and (2) to make seeking the felicity of one a function of seeking the felicity of the other.
Religion and Ecology: Towards a Communion of Creatures
Lynn White Jnr.’s much quoted and variously anthologised article “The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis, ” first published in Science in 1967, constitutes one of the earliest forays into the field that has since become known as the Environmental Humanities. White’s article effectively reframed the consideration of environmental problems, hitherto taken to be the preserve of the natural sciences, as pertaining also to the cultural realm of beliefs, values, and the narratives that bear them, by tracing the emergence within medieval Catholicism of what subsequently became the dominant ethos of human transcendence of, and mastery over, ‘nature’ within euro-western modernity. Linking a shift in the reception of a canonical text (the Bible) to the development of new relations and technologies of production (the heavy iron plow) in response to particular environmental conditions (the clay soils of Northern Europe), White’s analysis not only raised new questions about the aetiology of ecological crisis: it also modelled a new methodology that recognised non-human entities as historical agents. Importantly for the purposes of this chapter, White also argued that “since the roots of our crisis are so largely religious, the remedy must also be essentially religious, whether we call it that or not.” (1996: 14) While I consider the causality of most major environmental, or ecosocial, problems to be more multi-facetted than White’s punchy conclusion allows, I am persuaded that the study of religion and ecology, as I will outline in this chapter, has much to contribute to the work of the environmental humanities. Moreover, the growing endeavours that have since been initiated, not only by religious scholars, but also by religious leaders and communities, some in the context of inter-faith dialogue and activism, to “rethink and refeel our nature and destiny” (1996: 14) with a view to countering environmental degradation, suggests that religion has a valuable role to play in advancing sustainability and moving towards what I propose to call (with reference in particular to Christian ecotheology) the “communion of creatures”. Tragically, however, this is occurring at a time when the rise of militant religious fundamentalism is escalating inter-specific violence, reducing our capacity to work together to address the major sustainability challenges that we face globally, and helping to bring religion per se into disrepute. As I will demonstrate here, then, countering fundamentalism is a further key component in the ecological renovation of religious thought and practice.
Theology in its Natural Environment: Issues, Implications and Directions
New Blackfriars, 1986
This article was originally presented (in a modified form) to the continuing seminar on Pastoral Theology of the Catholic Theology Society of America at its 1985 annual meeting. There, and here, it is intended to be the starting point for a discussion and reflection on the nature and significance of a theological process which is playing an increasingly important role in the life of the Catholic Church and other Christian bodies. We refer to it as 'theology in its natural environment'. It is also variously called indigenous theology, contextual theology, local theology, practical pastoral theology, or theological reflection. The variety of names and of methods all point to an essential quality of theology in its natural environment, its specificity or particularity in terms of a concrete community whose essential unit is the small group.'
SPIRITUAL ECOLOGY: APreliminary SKETCH Philip Merklinger
Philosophy & Theology
The aim of this paper to introduce to the reader two concepts: the concept of the "philosophy of spirituality" and the concept of "spiritual ecology." First, I show how the philosophy of spirituality allows for a broader, more holistic way of understanding the living complex of relations existent among the various religions and spiritualities of the world. I then show how the concept of "spiritual ecology" opens up for us the possibility of appreciating the inner integrity and truth of ways of spirituality not our own.
Awakening to a Spirituality that responds to the Ecological Crisis
When Thomas Berry commented on the contribution of Teilhard de Chardin to theology, he asserted that “Teilhard … (1881-1955) gave expression to the greatest transformation in Christian thought since the time of St. Paul”1. Berry argued that Teilhard “was the first person to describe the universe as having, from the beginning, a psychic-spiritual dimension as well as a physical-material dimension”. Closely associated with this claim is another achievement of Teilhard – a repositioning of the human within the epic of evolution – that is, that humanity is derived from billions of years of cosmic evolution. If we awaken to this new cosmological perspective, we can tell the evolutionary story of both the physical-material as well as the psychic-spiritual dimension of creation, and how humanity, in all its dimensions, is inextricably linked to that story. Furthermore, with both Teilhard and Thomas Berry, we reawaken to the creative dimension of Christ, the Logos, who has been part of creation from its inception4. This can radically alter our understanding of the spiritual dimension of humanity and the sacredness of creation. The theological support for this new cosmological understanding of spirituality and Divine presence can inform an effective response to two of the main causes of our current ecological crisis – that humans perceive themselves as isolable from the rest of the Earth community, and that humans have lost an appreciation for the sacredness of creation. This paper will present certain biblical, Christological, pneumatological, and eco-theological support for Teilhard’s and Berry’s assertions, and demonstrate how adding a creation-centred understanding of Christian spirituality reintegrates theological anthropology into the universe story and reawakens us to the sacred dimension of God’s good Earth.
2011
Reading Schleiermacher's Speeches might give rise to different experience of religion. It appears that the more important issue today is not the identity (being), but the communality and sociality, for communality is a 'space' where one's being is able to move in its 'becoming'. The importance of experience is now considered much more than before. In this article the emphasis on one's experience and its connectedness with that of others is refreshed and further elaborated. Schleiermacher's ideas question the traditional patterns of (Christian) communities, which to some extent have implanted uniformity, dogmatism and oppressions, as being responsible for the emergence ofindifferentism today. Community, as Schleiermacher has pleaded in the Speeches, must be fluid and broadly inclusive. The immediate selfconsciousness is depicted in the moment of 'listening'—the world might have been blinded by appearances and made deafby the voices, but there remains the process of listening. Maybe a time for a 'listening' religion? A 'listening' religious community?
Phenomenological Spirituality and its Relationship to Religion
Forum Philosophicum, 2020
This paper develops a phenomenological account of spirituality that can help us think more broadly and deeply about religion and its role in our lives. It begins by explaining spirituality as a supra-subjective force that shapes a subject’s intuitive engagement with the world (Section I). Then, it shows that such a spirituality is affective in (and affected by) cultural expression (Section II), by way of historically situated institutions or traditions [Stiftungen] (Section III). The last step of the paper will be to connect this account of spirituality to our understanding of religion by articulating four distinct levels of phenomenological analysis that will have emerged in the discussion of spirituality and showing that each of these levels must be accounted for in a distinct way if we want to offer a full-fledged philosophy of religion (Section IV). In so doing, we will see that this account of spirituality potentially helps us see a broader range of things that could count as “...