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Abstract: In response to the specter of looming anthropogenic ecological catastrophe, many Christian thinkers have begun to rethink the God/world relationship and reimagine the ontic cleavage between divinity and creation. The idea of... more
Abstract: In response to the specter of looming anthropogenic ecological catastrophe, many Christian thinkers have begun to rethink the God/world relationship and reimagine the ontic cleavage between divinity and creation. The idea of “deep incarnation”, which expands the scope of divine incarnation in an attempt to draw God and creation into closer relation, is a prevalent framework for such reimagination. Two historic, underutilized thinkers that might help deep incarnation theologians expand their own theologies and make sense of the conceptual and ethical differences among them are Neo-Platonist philosopher–theologians Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno. Working within an ecofeminist framework, this article argues that while both Cusanus and Bruno provide significant philosophical grounds for contemporary ecotheologies of deep incarnation, a Brunist perspective is preferable because of its more expansive anthropology and its more inclusive understanding of divinity.
Chapter 1 from Incarnate Earth: Deep Incarnation and the Face of Christ. Routledge, 2023.
Incarnate Earth reimagines the doctrine of Incarnation by extending the unity between Creator and creation beyond Jesus to the entire world. In dialogue with contemporary theologies of deep incarnation and the philosophy of Emmanuel... more
Incarnate Earth reimagines the doctrine of Incarnation by extending the unity
between Creator and creation beyond Jesus to the entire world. In dialogue
with contemporary theologies of deep incarnation and the philosophy of
Emmanuel Levinas, the author argues that the face of Christ is encountered in the cruciform demand for justice embodied in the creaturely finitude and
vulnerability that grounds ethics. Central to this vision is a recognition that
the religious role-functions at the heart of Jesus’ life—the revelation of God
and the redemption of the world—are performed throughout the physical
world, irreducible to humanity or one heroic representative of the species.
Thus, the human encounters the divine Christ in and as the face of any
vulnerable thing—animal, vegetal, elemental, or otherwise—not as a
transcendent being mediated through humanity. The radical nature of this
reimagination necessitates renewed discussions of ecological and animal
ethics, calling for compassionate care for all vulnerable bodies insofar as this is possible. It will be of interest to scholars of Christian theology and the
philosophy of religion, particularly those focused on ecotheology, religious
naturalism, and environmental ethics.
In telling the story of a a dog I have known, one taking place in the context of my family’s life, I hope to display ethical truths about dog ownership that I could not adequately convey in any other way.
In Laudato Sí, Pope Francis calls Catholics and all people of goodwill "to move forward in a bold cultural revolution," embodying a "revolution of tenderness" that rejects sovereign powers that perpetrate ecological violence and animal... more
In Laudato Sí, Pope Francis calls Catholics and all people of goodwill "to move forward in a bold cultural revolution," embodying a "revolution of tenderness" that rejects sovereign powers that perpetrate ecological violence and animal cruelty. The principle powers to resist in this context are the rapacious capitalist industries that annihilate and consume the more-than-human in order to maximize profit. Yet, while Francis recognizes the sinfulness of capitalist greed and condemns anthropogenic ecological and animal violence, the concrete nature of ecologically violent economies and paths toward revolution receive little attention. Francis' revolutionary ethic concerning the more-than-human must be pushed further. Insofar as modern food economies exist via unsustainable and unnecessarily cruel production methods, I argue that responsibility exists to resist and withdraw from such systems insofar as possible, re-imagining what it means to "eat well" as a path toward a revolution in global food economies. To eat well necessarily entails a willingness to sacrifice animal sacrifice, which begins taking shape-at least in a Catholic setting-through the re-imagination and reintegration of ascetic, virtuous fasting driven by justice for Earth and our more-than-human neighbors.
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Forthcoming in Saskia Wendel and Aurica Nutt, eds., Envisioning the Cosmic Body of Christ: Materiality – Incarnation – Ecology (London, UK: Routledge).
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Full Article Available from the Heythrop Journal - This article constructs an ecological theology following Emmanuel Levinas’ philosophy of religion. I suggest that the Son and Spirit express divinity through corporeal and temporal... more
Full Article Available from the Heythrop Journal - This article constructs an ecological theology following Emmanuel Levinas’ philosophy of religion. I suggest that the Son and Spirit express divinity through corporeal and temporal realities best described through Levinas’ ideas concerning the an-archy and awakening of time. Following Levinas, and theologians such as Mark I Wallace, I construct a materialist theology that blurs the line between God and corporeal bodies, positing that such an understanding of the Son and Spirit re-sacralizes nature in a way that assists Christianity in overcoming the tenuous relationship between humanity and Earth.
In this essay, I explore deep incarnation Christology. I posit that many of these Christological models offered today, while a welcome development in theology, are grounded in metaphysical anthropocentrism. Insofar as such theologies... more
In this essay, I explore deep incarnation Christology. I posit that many of these Christological models offered today, while a welcome development in theology, are grounded in metaphysical anthropocentrism. Insofar as such theologies normalize the human and ground theology within a humanist, conceptualist horizon, the idea of divine Infinity is circumscribed, and the human becomes divinized, and self-positioned as a transcendent species. Likewise, such a framework, identifying God within strict, dogmatic boundaries, posits Divinity as the alter ego of the human. To the contrary, I suggest that theology cannot be grounded within human intentionality. Although theology unfolds in representational thought, it is grounded instead in passivity, revealed outside of the subject's time, in an an-archic past and a pure future, wherein Divinity is encountered within but ultimately beyond human corporeity in affective encounters with cosmos and Earth. As such, the idea of Infinity is grounded in a time and space beyond the beginning of human consciousness. Such a model invites us to consider a God who comes to mind from beyond an impassable chasm, and thus irreducible to the human imagination. Thus, while this essay embraces the idea of deep incarnation, it re-imagines the doctrine along different lines than what is prominent today.
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Noted political theologian William Cavanaugh’s work challenges the modern compartmentalization of religion and politics and advocates a greater role for the church in post-secular public life. Critics of his genealogical and... more
Noted political theologian William Cavanaugh’s work challenges the modern compartmentalization of religion and politics and advocates a greater role for the church in post-secular public life. Critics of his genealogical and ecclesiological agenda argue that Cavanaugh’s work harbours an illiberal understanding of politics and a triumphalist view of the church. In this essay we collectively explore this tension by contrasting these two aspects of Cavanaugh’s writings – the critical and the constructive – with the work of two different scholars: Lithuanian-French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas, and Canadian Catholic philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan. Michael Buttrey summarizes Cavanaugh’s critique of the modern concept of religion as a transhistorical and transcultural phenomenon in The Myth of Religious Violence, connecting Cavanaugh’s critique to his efforts in Migrations of the Holy to free the church from captivity to the secular imagination of modernity. Drawing upon Lévinas’ ethics and political philosophy, Matthew Eaton suggests that violence in the political order exists regardless of who holds power, as politics and ethics are fundamentally irreconcilable notions. While justice may be achieved in a limited sense, Lévinas questions whether it is possible to discuss politics under the heading of ethics. While appreciative of certain aspects of Cavanaugh’s critique of modernity, Nicholas Olkovich argues that Cavanaugh’s genealogical propensities lead, in the limit case, to anthropological and soteriological positions that are in tension with Catholic teaching on natural law and the universality of God’s grace. Olkovich appeals to the transcultural dimensions of human knowing, choosing and religious experiencing that lie at the center of Lonergan’s transposition of Aquinas’ notions of nature and grace to offer an alternative reading of the relationship between the church and liberal democracy. Our extended discussion will close with a response by Buttrey to Eaton and Olkovich’s critiques.
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Mostly, Pope Francis’ ecological ethic has human well-being in mind: the planet must flourish so that human communities may flourish, and this is the clear motive for his comments to the European youth. Vegetarianism, to one degree or... more
Mostly, Pope Francis’ ecological ethic has human well-being in mind: the planet must flourish so that human communities may flourish, and this is the clear motive for his comments to the European youth. Vegetarianism, to one degree or another, is an extrinsic good, exemplifying the sort of concrete initiative needed to ensure the planetary health that contributes to the intrinsic value of human life by providing a context in which such flourishing is possible. Neither the suffering of Earth nor the suffering, sacrificial animal are, in his recent comments, at the heart of Francis’ promotion of vegetarianism. There is, however, implicit in Francis’ broader thought, the potential for a more expansive vegetarian theology and ethic within the context of intensive, industrialized global food systems. Francis affirms in Laudato Sí that creation and creatures bear “intrinsic value,” i.e., a goodness and moral significance irreducible to any sort of extrinsic value deriving its significance from the contributions it makes to another’s intrinsic value. The intrinsic goodness and moral value of creation and creatures suggests that Francis’ exhortation towards peaceful coexistence and respect for alterity should apply to the more-than-human world for its own sake in addition to his other concerns. I suggest then that contemporary animal food systems are problematic for Catholic theology and ethics beyond Catholicism’s typical emphasis on human dignity and development and that there are multiple reasons—rooted in the intrinsic goodness of Earth and its creatures and the profound harm our food systems inflict on each—for considering a vegetarian ethos beyond the legitimate and pressing concern of human flourishing. Through analysis of Catholic ecological thought and philosophies of value, this essay suggests a pluralistic, axiological approach to the possibility and potential of a Catholic vegetarian ethos that promotes the intrinsic value of creation and creatures as such, without exclusive attention to human flourishing. Thus, while vegetarianism is a complex ethos and is likely not universally applicable, I suggest four potential ways to approach Catholic vegetarianism as part of a broader human initiative to reimagine global food production and eating habits, emphasizing its theocentric, anthropocentric, ecocentric, and biocentric value.
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Table of Contents for the Routledge Handbook of Ecotheology, with confirmed authors and tentative titles, which is currently in development with a likely release in early 2025.
The perpetual difficulty of teaching ecological ethics is helping students deepen their relationship with Earth within the banality of the typical classroom, which feels so distant from those we wish to love. Learning to love the world... more
The perpetual difficulty of teaching ecological ethics is helping students deepen their relationship with Earth within the banality of the typical classroom, which feels so distant from those we wish to love. Learning to love the world begins, I suggest, with the interruption of this banality via visceral, face-to-face encounters with Earth’s vulnerability, which serves as the primordial ethical experience. Such experiences minimize our separation from things, facilitates the formation of normative ethical theories, and drives our re-imagination of socio-political structures toward justice. Teaching the abstract idea of ethical interruption is necessary, but a robust pedagogy for the ecologically minded classroom must include the real possibility that students come face-to-face with Earth within the course itself. In this way, students might transcend an abstract understanding of ethics and learn to love the world directly, through face-to-face relations. To explore this approach to ecological education, this article analyses the educational philosophy of Gert Biesta and the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas, both of whom understand teaching and morality as originating in alterity’s physical power to interrupt subjective sovereignty. With this pedagogical foundation in place, I engage contemporary discussions of ecological pedagogy to affirm the need for students in the ecologically minded classroom to be interrupted and taught by face-to-face encounters with vulnerable, non-human alterity. I end by examining some concrete ways educators might facilitate interruptive ethical relations within the classroom by reflecting on the experiential opportunities I offer my students when teaching ecological ethics, noting the promises and challenges of this approach.
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