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Edward Schillebeeckx's Creation Theology as a Resource for Ecological Ethics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2013
Abstract
As the global community becomes increasingly attuned to the disastrous consequences of our long-standing environmental prodigality, Christians and Christian theologians are cultivating theological and ethical responses to the ecological crisis with the goal of fostering life-giving understandings of creation and ecophilic lifestyles. While many theologians and ethicists have heeded this call to read the signs of the environmental times, Schillebeeckx's creation theology remains an underutilized resource for developing an ethical response to this contemporary crisis. This article seeks to offer Schillebeeckx's theology of creation as fertile soil for nurturing an ecological ethic. This article highlights Schillebeeckx's growing ecological concerns, illustrates the connection between Schillebeeckx's theology of creation and his ecological consciousness, and transposes Schillebeeckx's emerging ecological themes into the register of environmental ethics. This ecological ethics emphasizes co-creativity with God in creation, ecological asceticism, following Christ's creational praxis, and actualizing the present practice of the coming kingdom of God.
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References
1 Schillebeeckx, Edward, Church: The Human Story of God (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 238–39Google Scholar.
2 Among the scarce scholarly resources, the most extended engagement with Schillebeeckx's theology of creation is in Phillip Kennedy's work, both in his introductory text Schillebeeckx, Outstanding Christian Thinkers Series, ed. Brian Davies (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1993) and in his essay “God and Creation” in The Praxis of the Reign of God: An Introduction to the Theology of Edward Schillebeeckx, 2nd ed., ed. Hilkert, Mary Catherine and Schreiter, Robert (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002), 37–58Google Scholar). This collection also contains chapters on Schillebeeckx's theological context, method, experience and revelation, Jesus Christ, salvation, spirituality, the church, ministry, and eschatology.
3 Boeve, Lieven, Depoortere, Frederiek, and van Erp, Stephan, eds., Edward Schillebeeckx and Contemporary Theology (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2010)Google Scholar.
4 Mary Catherine Hilkert, in the introduction to the second edition of The Praxis of the Reign of God, writes that Kennedy's Schillebeeckx first drew attention in the academic world to the importance of creation in Schillebeeckx's work and resulted in the inclusion of his chapter on God and creation for the second edition (“Introduction,” The Praxis of the Reign of God, xix–xxx, at xxvGoogle Scholar). As she explains, the publication of Schillebeeckx's Church (1990), with its emphasis on the ecological crisis, sensitized Schillebeeckx's commentators to the importance of creation in his theology and thus created a need for a chapter devoted to this topic in the second edition of this book (ibid., xxi). (The first edition was published in 1989).
5 A distinction is made here between a creational and ecological theology. A creational theology is one that views humanity and the natural world through the lens of creation theology, beginning with the creator God and asking how being creatures of God affects our identity, role, and interactions in the world and transforms our theological understanding. An ecological theology starts with the contemporary experience of ecological crisis and proceeds ethically (considering our identity, role, and interactions in the world in light of this crisis) and theologically (considering how our conceptions of the major loci of theology are altered by our experience of ecological crisis).
6 Kennedy, , “God and Creation,” 58Google Scholar. In this essay, Kennedy also seems to be unaware of the rapidly blooming field of ecological theology when he comments that most contemporary theologians have avoided the topic of creation: “Schillebeeckx has not followed the general trend of neglecting the theology of creation” (ibid., 39).
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9 Jacko's five elements of a Schillebeeckxian ecological spirituality are: the subject of spirituality—the human person, the locus of spirituality—creation, the content of spirituality—mystical, political, and ecological action, the norm and criterion—Jesus, and the goal of spirituality—a new creation (Jacko, , “Schillebeeckx's Creation-Based Theology,” 148Google Scholar). She also high lights three particularly helpful elements of Schillebeeckx's theology for thinking about humanity's relationship to the environment: his understanding of the human subject as dynamic, relational, ecological, and eschatological (ibid., 148); creation as the location of theology (and for her purposes, spirituality) (ibid., 153); and salvation as holistic, global, and including ecological wholeness (ibid., 156–57).
10 For Jacko, this mystical/political-ecological action is seen in the dialectic between religious reflection and social action, paradigmatically enacted in the liturgy. In articulating what she means by social action for an ecological spirituality, she mentions protesting unjust, inhumane, and ecologically-damaging practices and engaging in life-giving, just, and ecologically-sound practices (ibid., 153–54).
11 It is also significant to note here that Jacko's 1990 essay does not make reference to Schillebeeckx's newly published Church (published in 1989, first translated into English in 1990). She does note in her dissertation that she had the opportunity to speak with Schillebeeckx in person regarding his soon-to-be-released Church (Jacko, , “Salvation in the Context of Contemporary Secularized Historical Consciousness,” 124Google Scholar). Church, Schillebeeckx's most environmentally-conscious text, which culminates in ecological concern in its fifth and final chapter, must be included in any account of his ecological concerns. Thus, Jacko's work deserves updating to reflect Schillebeeckx's late work.
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18 “Parent of creation” is not an image Schillebeeckx uses but one that befits his theological project, emphasizing creation as other, born of God but independent, loved by God but free to act.
19 Schillebeeckx distinguishes between creation and “protology” and argues that protology is an eschatological projection onto the past of our future hope. We see this, for example, in Genesis 1 and 2. Creation, instead, is a statement about God's ongoing relationship with the world (Schillebeeckx, , I Am a Happy Theologian, 67Google Scholar).
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34 Ibid., 243.
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69 This is an image also used by Orthodox Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) of Pergamon. In a statement printed in the United Nation's journal Our Planet, he commends just such an environmental asceticism: “An ‘ecological asceticism’—if we may coin such a term—always begins with deep respect for the material creation, including the human body, and builds upon the view that we are not masters and possessors of this creation, but are called to turn it into a vehicle of communion, always taking into account and respecting its possibilities as well as its limitations” (John [Zizioulas] of Pergamon, “‘Ecological Asceticism’: A Cultural Revolution,” Our Planet 7/6 [1996], http://www.unep.org/ourplanet/imgversn/76/pergamon.html).
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73 The U.S. Catholic bishops in their document also turn to Jesus' life and consider his praxis as model for right ecological action.
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