Abstract
Education for environmental sustainability is increasingly highlighted as an important success factor for environmentally conscious and conscientious living, including the advancement of global poverty reduction and the attainment of developmental goals such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As such, education can be comprehended as a deeply ‘Christian’ endeavour, seeing that true Christian ‘religion’ seeks to improve the plight of the poor and needy (James 1:27), both physically and spiritually. The literature identifies some initiatives, where sustainability has been embedded within curricula in ways that have integrated the fundamentals of environmental science, spirituality and ethics. Even so, there is a paucity of initiatives that link the aforementioned foci with Christian theological, hermeneutical and eschatological perspectives. This theoretical chapter extends previous scholarship by means of a two-pronged approach, which links scientific and scriptural discursive reflections with arising opportunities for spirituality-shaped environmental sustainability. It does so with the intention of generating support for a more holistic Christian education agenda where scripturally shaped education for environmental sustainability and creation care does not remain side-lined as a fringe concern.
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Notes
- 1.
Later published in a collection of essays (Lewis 1962).
- 2.
‘According to Acts 11.26, Jesus’ disciples were first called Christians in Antioch. Elsewhere in the New Testament, the word “Christian” occurs in Acts 26.28 and 1 Peter 4.14–16. The origin of the term “Christian” is uncertain. It comprises the word “Christ,” the Greek word meaning “anointed one” (See Messiah) with an ending meaning “followers of” or “partisans of.” […] Because followers of Jesus used “saints” (2 Cor. 1.1; Rom. 12.13; Acts 9.13, 32), “brothers” (1 Cor. 1.10; Rom. 1.13; Acts 1.16), “the Way” (Acts 9.2; 19.9), “disciples” (often in the Gospels; Acts 6.1-2; 11.26), and other designations when referring to themselves, it is unlikely that the term “Christian” originated among Christians.’ (Freed 2001, p. 41).
- 3.
Houghton (2007) defines ‘Transcendence’ as ‘God’s presence outside of space and time’, and ‘the Trinity’ as ‘[a] model of God developed in the first centuries AD in which God is described as a unity but involving three persons (Father, Son and Holy Spirit).’ (p. 250).
- 4.
There are suggestions that even Albert Einstein may not have considered the existence of a philosophical creator god absurd, as the following quote suggests (translated from German): ‘If this universe in all of its million-fold order and precision were to be seen as the result of blind chance, then that would be about as credible as if a printery were to explode, whereupon all the printing-letters would fall down again in the complete and faultless form of the Duden Lexikon [most exhaustive German Dictionary of many volumes]’—Orig.: ‘Wenn dieses Universum in all seiner millionenfachen Ordnung und Präzision das Ergebnis eines blinden Zufalls sein sollte, so ist das so glaubwürdig, wie wenn eine Druckerei in die Luft geht, worauf alle Druckbuchstaben wieder herunterfallen in der fertigen und fehlerlosen Form des Duden-Lexikons.’ (Albert Einstein, cited in Poortvliet 1985, p. 167).
- 5.
cf. Albert Einstein’s famous aphorism that shows science and religion in an interdependent relationship to each other: ‘Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.’ (Randerson 2008, para. 1).
- 6.
The authors believe that if ‘God created man in His own image; [as] male and female’ (Gen 1:27, RSV), then God evidently comprises both feminine and masculine traits. See Johnson (2002) for a richer discussion on God and gendered perspectives and portrayals.
- 7.
As a caveat the report authors point out that readers are advised ‘to bear in mind that the definition of Christian in this report is very broad. The intent is sociological rather than theological: We are attempting to count groups and individuals who self-identify as Christian. This includes people who hold beliefs that may be viewed as unorthodox or heretical by other Christians. It also includes Christians who seldom pray or go to church.’ (Hackett and Grim 2011, p. 7).
- 8.
- 9.
See ‘Hyogo Framework for Action’ (Priority Area 3) (UNISDR 2007, pp. 9–10).
- 10.
For a powerful call to what she describes as ‘ecoprophetic ministry’ in the face of the current ecological crisis, see Morgan (2015, p. 174).
- 11.
The phrase ‘creation care’ or ‘care for creation’ has been used primarily by evangelicals who prefer that terminology over ‘environmentalism’ which denotes concern for the protection of nature without implying its ‘creation’ aspect.
- 12.
The origins of this quote seem to be unclear and disputed; cf., Quote investigator (2013).
- 13.
An often cited reference for defining sin in the New Testament is Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32), in which the son alienates himself from his father, until he returns to his father who embraces him with unrelenting love and forgiveness.
- 14.
The term Gospel comes from old English godspell meaning ‘good news’ for Greek euanggelion which means the same.
- 15.
Scripture quotations come from various versions of the Holy Bible: New International Version [NIV] (2011); King James Version [KJV] (1987); New King James Version [NKJV] (1982); English Standard Version [ESV] (2008); Revised Standard Version [RSV] (1971), New Living Translation [NLT] (2015), as indicated in text.
- 16.
‘We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.’ (Rom 6:4, NIV).
- 17.
‘But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.’ (Rom 8:10-11, NIV).
- 18.
The experience of the oneness of creation or, in other words, the identification of the individual with the whole of reality lies, in the view of scholars of religion, at the heart of all religious experience, cf. the chapter ‘Die Entstehung von Religionen’ in Bangert (2016, pp. 13–34).
- 19.
Latin: creatio ex nihilo: ‘creation out of nothing’.
- 20.
The idea of the creatio continua was developed by mediaeval theologians such as Bonaventura, Wilhelm von Ockham and Thomas of Aquinas (Summa contra Gentiles III, 65) and later reiterated by Descartes (AT VIII, 1,13).
- 21.
For a perceptive discussion of Enlightenment thinking, see Armstrong (2009, pp. 203–226).
- 22.
On human dominion in Genesis 1-2, see Horrell (2010, pp. 23–36).
- 23.
According to the Psalmist, God plays an immediate part in creating each one of us as individuals: ‘For thou didst form my inward parts, thou didst knit me together in my mother’s womb.’ (Ps 139:1 [RSV]). Hence creation is ongoing and includes every created being.
- 24.
The abuse of creation was ironically expressed by columnist Coulter (2000) who wrote: ‘The ethic of conservation is the explicit abnegation of man’s dominion over the Earth. The lower species are here for our use. God said so: Go forth, be fruitful, multiply, and rape the planet—it’s yours. That’s our job: drilling, mining and stripping. Sweaters are the anti-Biblical view. Big gas-guzzling cars with phones and CD players and wet bars—that’s the Biblical view.’ (para. 4).
- 25.
‘Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.’ (Gen 2:19-20 [NIV]).
- 26.
‘The name—that by which the thing is summoned into the field of thought—belongs to the full existence of the thing itself’, says Skinner (1910), commenting on Genesis 1:5 (p. 20), a phrase which Walter Russell Bowie applies also to Genesis 2:19-20 in his exposition on the Book of Genesis in ‘The Interpreter’s Bible’ (Buttrick 1952, p. 498). According to ancient thinking, the naming of something is intricately interwoven with its coming into existence.
- 27.
The concept of ‘redemption’ goes back to the ancient practice according to which slaves were redeemed by a ransom payment through which the slave (re)gained his or her freedom. Similarly, according to Pauline theology, the creation is yearning for freedom from the ‘slavery of destruction’ (Rom 8:21).
- 28.
Blessed Earth (n.d.).
- 29.
The phrase ‘Kingdom of God’ (Greek: basileia tou theou) is used interchangeably (especially in the gospel of Matthew) with the phrase ‘Kingdom of heaven’ (Greek: basileia ton ouranon), both having the same meaning.
- 30.
‘When the last tree is cut down, the last fish eaten, and the last stream poisoned, you will realize that you cannot eat money.’ (Native American saying, cited in Simpson and Speake 2009).
- 31.
Resource use is very unevenly distributed in the world: Global Footprint Network (2017).
- 32.
- 33.
The Greek term ‘apocalypse’ denotes a disclosure or revelation (hence the Book of Revelation or Apocalypse), but it also connotes various end-time scenarios. Apocalyptic literature is a late Jewish and early Christian genre of texts (of mostly pseudepigraphic and apocryphal nature) dealing with eschatological visions and end-time prophecies.
- 34.
Previously published in Häring and Kuschel (1998).
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The authors wish to thank Kirsty Andersen for her copy-editorial support, and Mark Delaney for his constructive comments.
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Luetz, J.M., Buxton, G., Bangert, K. (2018). Christian Theological, Hermeneutical and Eschatological Perspectives on Environmental Sustainability and Creation Care—The Role of Holistic Education. In: Luetz, J., Dowden, T., Norsworthy, B. (eds) Reimagining Christian Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0851-2_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0851-2_4
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