Keywords

1 Introduction

Ever since Paul Crutzen exclaimed at a conference in Mexico in 2000: ‘we are no longer in the Holocene: we are in the Anthropocene’ the challenges posed by the impact of human development on the earth system have become a major focus for scientific research and for wider inter-disciplinary discussion. Whilst similar notions had been canvassed previously, Crutzen’s assertion has been the catalyst for globally coordinated earth systems science investigations (Angus 2016) and for a range of critical commentary by philosophers, social scientists, historians – and theologians. One of the key contributors to this wider debate has been Australian public intellectual Clive Hamilton. Hamilton has been a forthright participant in several debates about the meaning of the proposed Anthropocene with several books, including Requiem for a Species (2010), Earthmasters (2013) and most recently Defiant Earth (2017), as well as high profile engagement in debates about the notion of a ‘good anthropocene’. Hamilton’s contributions have been distinguished by his close attention to the development of earth systems science and an open-ness to the deeper theological and metaphysical issues raised by the advent of the Anthropocene.

However whilst Hamilton gestures towards a theological perspective in Defiant Earth he is ultimately dismissive of Christian theology. I suggest that he does so because he remains embedded within what Charles Taylor has called ‘the immanent frame’ of contemporary western modernity and is thus closed to the possibilities of an alternative ‘transcendent frame’: an alternative explored somewhat tentatively by Taylor in the final chapter of his book A Secular Age. Following Taylor, in this paper I outline a ‘Trinitarian frame’ implicit in Taylor’s discussion and briefly discuss its incorporation of ecological challenges over the past half century, before reflecting on how it might shape theological responses to the emergent challenges of the Anthropocene identified by Hamilton.

2 The Major Themes of Defiant Earth

In Defiant Earth Hamilton certainly makes some strong claims. He argues that the advent of the Anthropocene, as conceptualised by the coalescing of earth system sciences, represents a major (epochal!) rupture in both the earth system itself and in the project of modernity that is responsible for this rupture, particularly with respect to its entrenched dualism between nature and culture. Hamilton is dismissive of the responses of both hyper-technological modernists and ecocentric greens. He also argues that we need to embrace a ‘new anthropocentrism’ that, whilst it disavows the anthropocentrism that sees nature only in relation to human interests, recognises the pivotal role that humanity as a ‘super agent’ must now play in navigating a radically humanised planet. To support this we need a new human ontology, which overcomes the transcendentalism of enlightenment humanism and fully recognises that we are the emergent products of the immanent potentialities of matter realised through the increasing complexity of material forms. It also requires a new story (beyond that of enlightenment modernity) that locates our present human condition within the larger context of planetary history. Finally, in the face of the daunting challenge posed by the advent of the Anthropocene, Hamilton fears that we (as a collective ‘super agent’) lack the ethical and spiritual resources needed to sustain the deep cultural, political and technological changes needed for a peaceful transition.

3 Critical Questions

These are big claims and whilst provoking various criticisms they have helped to open up a productive inter-disciplinary dialogue about the deeper meanings of, and appropriate responses to, the advent of the Anthropocene. Some of the critical questions needing further exploration include:

  • ∗ Does Hamilton confuse epistemological and ontological issues when he links the advent of the Anthropocene itself with the emergence of earth system science?

  • ∗ In his appeal to the authority of earth system science and his dismissal of social constructivism, does Hamilton lack a sufficiently hermeneutical approach that can better articulate the relationship between science and its social contexts?

  • ∗ Does he overstate the extent to which the Anthropocene represents a displacement of, rather than a shift within, the culture of technological modernity?

  • ∗ Does his focus on humanity as a super agent blur the differentiated responsibility of different nations and classes?

  • ∗ Do his ‘Irenaean’ reflections on human freedom adequately address the moral predicament of late modernity, including the depth of human evil driving the world towards the edge of destruction?

  • ∗ In his discussion of the spiritual and ethical resources needed, why has he failed to consider the perspective of virtue ethics and its institutional expressions?

There are two further questions that I suggest are particularly relevant for theological engagement with Hamilton’s account of the Anthropocene. The first is Hamilton’s account of the role of technology. On the one hand he is clearly aware of the need to go beyond a purely instrumental view of technology and to recognise the imaginative power of the ‘technocratic paradigm’ (with reference to Laudato Si’). Yet on the other he doesn’t adequately address the unfolding ontological nihilism inherent in the progressive ‘technologising of everything’ most dramatically evident in the Anthropocene and in the roll out of pervasive digital technology. There is now a considerable literature (including theological literature) on this point, much of it drawing on Heidegger’s account of ‘the question of technology’ (Heidegger 1977; Thiele 1995: 192–204). As Neil Turnbull observes:

In the 20th century technology emerged as a taken-for-granted background to many traditional forms of human life. As such, it formed a new habitus that was formative of attitude and character and became the basis for the emergence of ‘the new man’ of Henry Ford and his Marxist celebrants. By these lights, at the beginning of the 21st century we can see that our century will almost certainly be the first century of ‘ubiquitous technology’, the era when technics becomes universalised for the first time as the new measure of all things. Although the overall philosophical significance of this shift remains unclear what does seem readily discernible is that it signifies that the older Kantian a priori (of the modern transcendental subject) is now emerging as a technical a priori; and as it becomes prior rather than posterior to human action modern technology presents itself as a transforming ontology that takes human thought action away from the simple instrumentalities and practicalities of mundane tool use. As something transcendental rather than empirical, as what conditions rather than as a simple condition, modern technics has emerged as a basis for a new sense of history as an ordered chaos of accelerating technologically-conditioned events, a history where cultural value is increasingly measured in terms of modern technology’s ability to create new senses of transcendence associated with speed, power and precision (Turnbull 2015: 9–10).

The second question is why, given Hamilton’s open-ness to religious transcendence particularly evident in Requiem for a Species (2013) and in various subsequent occasional essays, is he so dismissive of a Christian vision, notwithstanding his significant engagement with theological ideas in Defiant Earth?

4 Charles Taylor and the Importance of ‘Interpretive Frameworks’

In response to this latter puzzle I want to draw on Charles Taylor’s account of ‘inescapable frameworks’ in Sources of the Self (1989: 3f) and social imaginaries in A Secular Age (2007: 171f). In his interpretation of modern secularity in A Secular Age Taylor probes beyond ‘secularisation’ as a decline of religious belief and practice and the separation of church and state to focus on the shift in what he calls ‘the conditions of belief’ in which the once taken for granted centrality of God has been replaced by the immanent frame of secular humanism: a social imaginary centred on the notion of human autonomy and embedded assumptions of a disenchanted world, a buffered self, a contract view of society, and a linear view of time (2007: 542).

Taylor’s approach helps us to both appreciate the depth of modern secularity, inasmuch as the deeply embedded immanent frame constitutes the taken-for-granted setting for believers and non-believers alike (2007: 594), and yet to also recognise the continuing ‘eruption’ of the collective desire for transcendence within seemingly radically secularised cultures (2007: 530). His genealogical account of the emergence and diffusion of the immanent frame is also useful in challenging the widely held ‘subtractionist’ claim that this has been the result of the triumph of secular reason (2007: 22, 157, 573), although his claim that the imaginative beginnings of the emergence of the immanent frame are to be found within a reform movement within Christendom itself have been challenged by various historians (Jager 2010; Butler 2010; Sheehan 2010).

What is not clear in Taylor’s account of our modern secular condition is whether he simply wants to defend a place for religion – or transcendental experience – within the hegemonic conditions of the immanent frame, or whether he wants to open up the possibility of an alternative frame centred on a renewed vision of the transcendental sources of life and being. It is only after arguing that inhabiting the immanent frame does not necessarily entail a commitment to the closed world system of exclusive humanism (2007: 555f) that Taylor rather tentatively explores efforts to imagine an alternative ‘transcendent frame’ (2007: 729f). I suggest that in accepting the hegemony of the immanent frame, Taylor also fails to adequately recognise the ontological significance of modern technology and in particular the ways in which the ongoing technologising of the world, evident in both the advent of the Anthropocene and an emerging techno post-humanism (Allenby and Sarewitz 2011), makes visible the deep nihilism of the immanent frame of technological modernity (Brassier 2007). Recognising this makes reframing modernity beyond the immanent frame not a utopian possibility but an urgent task.

5 The Recovery and Renewal of an Alternative ‘Trinitarian Frame’

Of course, the task of re-imagining modernity within an alternative theological frame has been an important strand of the theological enterprise for some time. In recent years it has been actively pursued by a range of contemporary theologians, which includes (among others) those associated with ressourcement Catholic theology and the Communio journal (Schindler 1996); the so-called radical orthodoxy network associated with John Milbank, Graham Ward and Catherine Pickstock (Milbank et al. 1999); the post-liberal approach to Christian social and political ethics promoted by Stanley Hauerwas, and drawing in particular on the thought of John Howard Yoder (Berkman and Cartwright 2001; Weaver et al. 2014); and various neo-Kuyperians such as James K. A. Smith (2009, 2017) and others with links to the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. What these diverse theologians have in common is the way they want to contest the presumed epistemic primacy of the ‘secular’ and to recover an alternative vision of reality grounded in a Trinitarian specification of the unseen Creator God (Marshall 2000).

Following Taylor, I shall describe this project as one of recovering the ‘Trinitarian frame’ integral to Christian faith (cf. Torrance 2015). As such this frame is best understood, not as a ‘worldview’ but as a theological imaginary (Smith 2009: 63) involving three inter-dependent elements: the story (or theodrama) of salvation that unfolds in the Scriptures (Bauckham 2003); the embodied interpretation of this story within the practices of ecclesial life (Buxton 2007; Sanders 2010); and the traditions of doctrinal formulation which guide the process of ongoing improvisory narration (Bockmuehl and Torrance 2008). An important exemplar, in my view, of the recovery of the Trinitarian frame grounded in Bible’s big story that reflects the balance between immersion in the narrative text, ecclesial embodiment and doctrinal reflection has been N. T. Wright (1991, 2016).

6 Interpreting the Ongoing Development of ‘Modernity’ Within a Trinitarian Frame

The Trinitarian frame of Christian faith has never been dogmatically self-enclosed but has always been articulated through an outgoing improvisory engagement with the diverse worlds in which it has been incarnated (Torrance 2015). This of course has been particularly true in the context of western modernity, as the people of God have been challenged by developments in scientific understanding, economic and technological progress, and dramatic shifts in social and cultural life, including fundamental conceptions of human selfhood and community. The ongoing communal narration of God’s story has involved the judicious assimilation of these changes: in the reading of the central story, in the shape of its ecclesial embodiment and in doctrinal adaptation.

7 Responding to the Multi-level Challenge of the Ecological Crisis

Over the past half-century, the ecological crisis has posed a major challenge to the Christian movement’s interpretation of the Bible’s story, particularly in relation to the effective marginalisation of (and implicit disregard for) ‘creation’ by the predominant focus on human salvation. In responding to this challenge many have focused on the (re-) interpretation of the Genesis dominion mandate. Others have developed an alternative creation-centred theology. In my view, the response that has been most faithful to the Trinitarian frame of the gospel has been to recover the integral place of ‘creation’ within the theodrama of salvation: an approach exemplified by (e.g.) Paul Santmire, Ernst Conradie, Richard Bauckham, Jürgen Moltmann, Celia Deane-Drummond, Dennis Edwards and many others (Conradie et al. 2014).

8 The Narrative Vision of an Eco-Trinitarian Frame

Following the example of Conradie et al. I suggest that the challenge of ecology has been a catalyst to recover the broader vision of the unseen Creator God’s ‘creation project’ encompassing, though not restricted to, human beings (Conradie 2008). This creation project is marked by the following key elements:

  • ∗ The key to this project is the figure of Jesus, who through the tumultuous events of his life, death, resurrection and ascension is disclosed not only as the long-expected Messiah of the covenant people of Israel and the true ‘lord’ of all peoples, but also as the embodiment of that creative divine action that brought into being and continues to sustain all of creation (Colossians 1; John 1; Blowers 2012; Gregersen 2015); and also the one through whom the creation project will in the fullness of time be ultimately realised.

  • ∗ The Christ event thus underpins and discloses the fundamental theological terms in which we understand the nature and purpose of created reality: its sacramental ontology (Boersma 2011), teleological open-ness (Gunton 1993) and eschatological promise (Moltmann 2009). In particular, the evident entropic and creative dynamism of the world of matter, space and time is best understood in terms of a teleological open-ness towards its ultimate perfection rather than its ‘fallen-ness’ resulting from human sin.

  • ∗ Within the drama of the divine economy, humans have been given the honour of being the ‘image-bearers’ (or a ‘royal priesthood’) of the Creator God and in so doing have the task of shaping the created world as a dwelling place (as ‘temple’) for the realisation of the divine glory (Middleton 2009). In the providence of God the historical outworking of this vocation has entailed a fraught drama framed within the opposing paradigmatic figures of an autonomy asserting ‘Adam’ and the Creator-worshipping Jesus (Philippians 2).

  • ∗ The death, resurrection, ascension of Jesus and the subsequent outpouring of the Spirit is the pivotal moment in which the destructive violence of the dark powers unleashed by Adam’s way of being human is overcome and the capacity of humans to live out their creational vocation is restored.

  • ∗ The subsequent historical unfolding of the divine creation project ‘after Pentecost’ is characterised by the entangling dialectic (both creative and conflictual) between the re-constituted people of God (no longer restricted to the people of Israel but now anticipating an inclusive reconciled human and more than human world (Romans 8: 19f)) and the diverse communities, polities, economies and ecologies in which they have found themselves.

  • ∗ The unfolding of the divine creation project in human history is thus neither merely conservative, nor one of steady progress to its intended goal. Rather it is intrinsically disruptive and revolutionary, characterised by the escalating conflict between the deeply entangled opposing cities of God and Man (Ellul 1970). Arguably the eventual realisation of the divine purpose will not be by an escape of the saints from the apocalyptic climax of this conflict but through it, and in which it will be the faithfulness of the crucified one (and his people) that ultimately prevails.

  • ∗ The promise of a renewed creation or renewed heaven and earth in which the disfiguring effects of Adam’s rebellion are overcome in some kind of resurrection life remains the horizon of Christian hope. Of course what this means in relation to the ultimate destiny of this material world of which we are a part is hard to imagine, in particular whether it involves the realisation of the still latent possibilities of transcendence within the creation itself or a further sovereign act of the triune Creator God.

Of course any doctrinally-based re-narration of the Biblical theodrama is only one dimension of the task of renewing a Trinitarian frame. What is particularly crucial is that it is ‘made flesh’ in and through the eco-praxis of the people of God (cf. Jenkins 2008): both in the ‘gathering’ for eucharistic worship and in the ‘scattering’ of everyday ‘image-bearing’ lives within the structures of our late modern world (Emeleus 2016; Buxton 2007; Sanders 2010).

9 Responding to the Critical Challenges Posed by the Anthropocene in a Trinitarian Frame

There is a long way to go before this kind of eco-Trinitarian frame becomes the embodied theological imaginary of the contemporary Christian movement. Yet the advent of the Anthropocene both increases the urgency of doing so and also deepens the challenge of the ecological crisis in the ways helpfully identified by Hamilton in Defiant Earth. In the following brief reflections it is important to remember, in the light of the inherently eschatological orientation of a Trinitarian frame, that our task as Christians is in the first instance not to find ‘solutions’ (Yoder 1984) but to embody a creative engagement in and through our narratively-based ecclesial life (Emeleus 2016), whilst at the same time recognising that in the unfolding drama of post-Pentecost human history the incarnate presence of the kingdom continues to both disrupt and to heal the ordering of human affairs (O’Donovan 1999).

  • ∗ A cosmological challenge: The dominant theme of the ecology movement over the past half-century has been that we need to see ourselves as embedded within the web of life and to respect and protect the integrity of threatened ecological systems. The advent of the Anthropocene reinforces this, but also locates us within a larger geological and cosmological horizon. In so doing it confronts us more forcibly, not just with a disrupted global ecology, but with our insignificance within a universe that is incomprehensively vast in space and time (Davies 2016) and with the fact that that we are the contingent products of a seemingly profligate and purposeless cosmic and biological evolutionary processes. This challenge to human significance is tempered by the diffusion of an emergentist world view that points to a very different understanding of materiality itself (cf. Torrance 2005) and which has prompted the development of ‘big history’ accounts that seek to integrate human history within the larger history of an evolving cosmos (Christian 2011).

These cosmological challenges have of course long been the focus of rich reflection and debate within scholarly theology and science circles. Perhaps the most prominent advocates for a progressive evolutionary cosmology have been Thomas Berry and his contemporary interpreters Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim. More recently and in response to the ‘big history’ project, Ted Peters (2017) and John Haught (2017) have also taken up the challenge of locating human affairs within the larger narrative of cosmic history. Others, most notably Lisa Sideris, have been much more critical of the ‘sacralising’ of the epic of evolution and of the ‘big history’ project (Sideris 2015a, b; Hesketh 2014).

However, these scholarly discussions have had limited impact at the level of congregational life where either fundamentalist or NOMA responses prevail, severely inhibiting the ongoing development of a biblical ‘cosmic imaginary’ integral to the Christian drama. Perhaps a fruitful way of overcoming this is through a clearer recognition of how the larger cosmic frame expressed in Genesis 1 and elsewhere actually functions within the covenantal ordering of the people of God (Enns 2012). As well being more faithful to the way in which the Bible’s story actually works, this also points to the need to engage with our contemporary cosmic challenge within the particular places and circumstances in which a congregation is situated: a ‘grounded-ness’ exemplified by Australian writer Ann McGrath in her approach to big history through engagement with the recognition of long-term indigenous habitation of this continent (McGrath 2015).

  • ∗ An anthropological challenge: For Hamilton the advent of the Anthropocene both reinforces the need not only for a post-Cartesian (and post-enlightenment) recognition of our ecological embeddedness both practically and ontologically, but also for assuming our crucial role as a collective humanity (a ‘super agent’).

As I have indicated earlier, a parallel shift has been taking place in eco-theological thinking in terms of what it means to be ‘formed in the image of God’, such that the traditional notions of ontological distinctiveness have been modified by a focus on our particular calling within the community of created beings to be God’s image-bearers (Wright 2010; Moritz 2013): a shift in theological anthropology that also foregrounds our ontological continuity with the wider world of living things (Deane-Drummond 2012). Hamilton’s argument about the special responsibility of humans within the Anthropocene helps to draw out what is implicit in this shift: the inherently technological nature of human being (Graham 2006), and thus to recognise that technological world-building is central rather than peripheral to our human vocation as God’s image-bearers (cf. Drees 2002). This has significant implications for the ways in which the diverse practices of ‘ordinary’ Christians in their everyday domestic and professional lives might be re-imagined more sacramentally (Borgmann 1992; Gaillardetz 2000) and thus be able to counter the pervasive technologisation of life that lies at the heart of the pathology of the Anthropocene.

  • ∗ A geo-political challenge: Hamilton’s argument about the responsibility of ‘humanity’ as a ‘super agent’ both for producing the emergence of the Anthropocene and for collective adaptive responses has been criticised for blurring the particular responsibility of the affluent capitalist west (should it be called a ‘Capitalocene’?). Yet the practical reality is that some more effective form of global governance beyond the present UN system is urgently needed, perhaps building on the UNFCCC and UNSDG processes and the Future Earth-based proposals for ‘earth governance’ (Griggs et al. 2013) and framed within a more genuinely cooperative ‘global imaginary’ (Pope Francis 2015). This is a daunting challenge, not only because of the gridlock of the present system of global governance, but also because of the tectonic shifts taking place within the US-centred post-WW II international order (McCoy 2018).

We don’t need ecotheologians to remind us that a global imaginary is an integral aspect of Trinitarian faith. Indeed, the outworking of the global vision of the gospel has been an important feature of the Christian movement, particularly over the past two centuries (Walls 1996; Jenkins 2011). Yet the constructive witness of this missionary-driven Christian globalism has been undermined and inhibited by: the legacy of past conflicts within Christendom (Radner 2012); the problematic association of various Christian traditions with European colonialism and, in our more post-colonial times, with expressions of reactionary nationalism; and the de-politicising interpretation of the gospel that has meant accommodation to, rather than prophetic witness against, vested interests that impede ‘the care of our common home’ (Eggemeier 2014; Pope Francis 2015). This means that the development of a post-colonial ‘theopolitical imagination’ within congregational life will need to go beyond support for traditional forms of ‘overseas missions’ to address the constructive task of shaping a more equitable and ecologically sustainable world order (Cavanaugh 2003; Waalkes 2010). This may seem to be too abstract for parochially oriented congregants, yet it doesn’t take much to become aware of the deep entanglement of our everyday lives in the present global system: for example in the endemic presence of exploitative supply chains in the production of the array of consumer goods we take for granted. Perhaps deeper engagement with these issues can be the catalyst for a re-discovery of the anti-imperial nature of the global kingdom of our crucified lord.

  • ∗An ethical/moral challenge: Along with many others, Hamilton rightly highlights the critical importance of the moral and ethical resources needed to motivate and sustain an emerging global civil society able to catalyse an effective response to the Anthropocene. I suggested that in going beyond his inadequate response we needed to consider two critically important issues: the discursive and institutional conditions needed to foster the development of (eco-) civic virtues (Dobson and Bell 2005); and what to make of the increasing nihilistic destructiveness of endemic human evil.

With respect to the second issue, many Christians still view ‘sin’ in moralistic and individualistic terms and are thus blind to the entrenched systems of evil that have their deeper roots in the idolatrous failure to honour and worship the triune Creator God, the consequent distortion of humanity’s vocation, and the significance of the death of Jesus as the overcoming of the ‘dark powers’ of human history and the liberating restoration of this vocation (Wright 2016). With respect to the first, despite the renewed theological focus on the ecclesial development of the virtues (Hauerwas 1981; Wright 2010; Fitzmaurice 2016; Williams 2011), the theological emphasis placed on being saved by grace alone and the clerically-centred nature of ecclesial community has inhibited the intentional fostering of ecclesial virtue, both personal and political, in much of the Christian movement.

  • ∗ An existential challenge: There is a very real possibility that the advent of the Anthropocene, manifested in runaway climate change and collapsing aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, will be a catalyst for the collapse of industrial civilisation (Tonn and Don MacGregor 2009). Whilst the dominant discourse continues to be optimistic about humanity’s collective capability to adapt, there are also many who believe that some form of civilisational collapse is now inevitable (Ophuls 2012; Motesharrei et al. 2014; Ahmed 2010; Oreskes and Conway 2014; Wallace-Wells 2017).

Whilst many recognise that we live in a time of increasing ‘existential risk’ (Bostrom 2001; Spratt and Dunlop 2018), of course no one can be sure about what lies ahead: whether global civilisation will collapse, and what forms of post-collapse human habitation might emerge. Neither is it clear as to how to respond to the dreadful prospect of an impending ‘perfect storm’ that may destroy the conditions of civilised life. Most continue to hope and work for a successful ecological transition whilst others advocate preparing for a post-civilisation world (cf. Monbiot and Kingsnorth 2009).

Notwithstanding significant theological reflection on ‘what lies ahead’ (Skrimshire 2010), neither of the main popular Christian responses to the prospect of civilisational collapse – a fundamentalism that welcomes the apocalypse as the gateway to the return of Christ and the rapture of the saints, or a complacent providentialism that assures us that God is in control – are at all helpful. By contrast, the vision of a Trinitarian frame finds hope in the unfolding biblical theodrama with its escalating ‘apocalyptic’ conflict between the presence of Christ’s kingdom and the reactive dark powers in which God’s kingdom will prevail, not by escape from a ruined earth, nor by divine intervention from above, but through the ongoing faithful and suffering witness of the people of God continuing to make present the triumph of the crucified (Moltmann 1974).