"For God So Loved the World": An Incarnational Ecology

In an age where ecological devastation threatens our very existence, Christian theology can send us mixed messages about our relation to the earth. Revisiting the doctrine of the Incarnation and the two natures of Jesus as explicated in the Council of Chalcedon, we find rich resources for claiming an incarnational ecology. A non-anthropocentric look at Scripture reveals that God's covenant is with all creation, and that humans and creation belong together. The Incarnation is the fulfillment of this covenant, and of God's love for all life. Christ gathers all to himself, and all life partakes of redemption. In the Incarnation we are called to participate in God's ongoing creative activity in the earth's redemption and renewal. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. " John 3:16 "Christ recapitulates all of creation. " Irenaeus of Lyons Introduction At the beginning of the twenty-first century we are facing ecological devastation on an unprecedented scale. The earth is getting hotter and stormier, water and soil are getting increasingly scarce, critical habitat is being lost. From the visible pollution of our air and water to massive toxic waste dumps to species extinction, the planet is facing assaults from human activity as never before. To compound the problem, the decline in the natural systems that sustain life and the rising aggregated social demand due to population and consumption increases are on a collision course. This makes the environmental crisis one of the most pressing and immediate problems of our age. In the now-famous words of Daniel Maguire, "if present trends continue, we will not. "1 The crisis state of our planet has been recognized for decades as a problem that has serious-one might say dire-implications for human and ecological health. For the last forty years, environmental concerns have involved scientists, engineers, lawyers, architects, urban planners, writers, poets, artists, and ethicists as well as government at all levels, businesses, nonprofits, hospitals, and schools. In short, it has involved practically everyone, except the churches. For too long, churches have failed to take account of our destruction of the environment and recognize it as the profound issue of faith that it is. Happily, this is finally changing, and churches across different faith traditions are getting involved. Faith communities are recognizing that, even more than a problem for public health, public policy, a sustainable economy, or even ethics, the state of our planet reflects a crisis of spirit. The reality that we are in a planetary crisis raises essential questions about the relationship between humans, nature, and God, and how these relationships are understood as a matter of faith. Increasing numbers of theologians and ethicists are rising to this challenge as they open up long-held beliefs and doctrines, test assumptions, and seek guidance from their faith in navigating this crisis. Many theologians are seeking to uncover problematic strands in the tradition and reclaim lost or suppressed elements of Christian faith that can provide fresh understandings and serve as an ethical foundation for praxis applications of an earth ethic. Christian ecological theology2 as a focus of scholarship is only a few decades old, and has developed certain strands of thought and approaches more than others. I have found that the emphasis of scholarship has tended to be on cosmology and creation theology, with less discussion of Jesus, or on an explicitly Christological approach to our environmental crisis. Thus my central project here is to examine the doctrine of the Incarnation, as it is foundational to Christian belief and a matter of emphasis for Anglicans, in light of the ecological threats we are facing. How does our understanding of Jesus as both fully human and fully divine shape and orient our relationship to the earth? …