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Christ, Nature, Sociality: Dietrich Bonhoeffer for an Ecological Age

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Peter Scott
Peter Scott
Affiliation:
Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education, PO Box 220, The Park Campus, The Park, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire GL50 2QF
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Extract

Two general tendencies can be detected in theological enquiries on nature, ecology and the environment. The first tendency stresses the inadequacy of ‘traditional’ or mainstream Christianity to engage with the crisis in human relations with non-human nature. The positions under this tendency draw on other resources—process thought, the writings of Teilhard de Chardin, the ‘common creation story’ of the natural sciences—to construct anew the Christian contribution to the healing of our relations with damaged nature. For this tendency, standard Christian responses such as reinterpretations of dominion as stewardship presuppose the distinction of humanity from non-human nature. Such unrevised constructs thereby remain part of the problem rather than part of the resolution.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , November 2000 , pp. 413 - 430
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2000

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References

1 See, among others, Cobb, John B., Is it Too Late? A Theology of Ecology (Beverley Hills, California: Bruce, 1972)Google Scholar; McDaniel, Jay B., Of God and Pelicans: A Theology of Reverence for Life (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989)Google Scholar; McFague, Sallie, The Body of God: An Ecological Theology (London: SCM Press, 1993)Google Scholar; McFague, , The Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age (London: SCM Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Ruether, Rosemary Radford, Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth-Healing (London: SCM Press, 1994).Google Scholar

2 The best example known to me of such a reinterpretation is Hall, Douglas John, Imaging God: Dominion as Stewardship (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans and New York: Friendship Press, 1986).Google Scholar

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9 I have opted for this order as a way of avoiding misconceptions: the ‘lay’ understanding of nature stems from attention to the rural, the wilderness, animals, etc. which are commonly understood to be other than humanity. To begin with anthropology is, implicitly, a criticism of the restriction of nature to its ‘lay’ use. See Soper, Kate, What is Nature? Culture, Politics and the non-Human (Oxford: Blackwells, 1995), pp. 156, 180–209.Google Scholar

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21 It would be a mistake at this point to think that Bonhoeffer understands the natural, in its independence, to be independent of Jesus Christ. Although Bonhoeffer does not employ the ‘orders of preservation’ language of his writings of 1933—see Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, pp. 90–1; ‘A theological basis for the world alliance’, No Rusty Swords (London: Fontana, 1970), pp. 153–169—that which is creaturely (‘now natural’) remains directed towards ChristGoogle Scholar. ‘The natural is the form of life preserved by God for the fallen world and directed towards justification, redemption and renewal through Christ’ (Bonhoeffer, Ethics, p. 122).

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24 Bonhoeffer, , Letters and Papers from Prison, p. 282.Google Scholar

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30 Creation and Fall, p. 34; Christology, pp. 49, 65; in Sanctorum Communio, Bonhoeffer proposes God as the mediator in the encounter between I and Thou rather than Christ (p. 37): indeed, although the very important phrase ‘Christ existing as community’ is to be found here, the argument itself is not Christological, but speaks rather of the presence and mediation of God (see Feil, The Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, pp. 61f.). Thus discontinuities, as well as continuities, can be identified in Bonhoeffer's writings: the Christocentric concentration pertains only from 1933: in Christology, we have a clear account of the Christocentric concentration: the threefold encounter of the human nature of Jesus Christ affirms historical embodied self in community (see Green, Clifford, ‘Sociality and church in Bonhoeffer's 1933 Christology’, Scottish Journal of Theology 21 (1968), pp. 416–434).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Bonhoeffer, , Sanctorum Communio, pp. 160f.Google Scholar

32 The title of a book by Clifford Green: see note 11. I am following Green's interpretation of Sanctorum Communio: Bonhoeffer is centrally and fundamentally concerned with sociality, not solely with ecelesiology.

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34 Bonhoeffer, Christology, pp. 39–59; Jones, L. Gregory, ‘The Cost of Forgiveness: Grace, Christian Community and the Politics of Worldly Discipleship’, in Floyd, Wayne W. and Marsh, Charles (eds), Theology and the Practice of Responsibility, p. 151Google Scholar; cf. Marsh, Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 67.

35 Jones, , ‘The Cost of Forgiveness: Grace, Christian Community and the Politics of Worldly Discipleship’, p. 151.Google Scholar

36 Bonhoeffer, , Christology, p. 60Google Scholar; the parallels are not exact; but see Green, , ‘Sociality and Church in Bonhoeffer's 1933 Christology’, pp. 428–431.Google Scholar

37 The language of centre and boundary/limit is, of course, a renewed application of the pro nobis and extra nos terminology reviewed earlier; as these terms are used in the explication of the socio-ethical form of God's presence in relation and otherness (conventionally, immanence and transcendence), they occur frequently in Bonhoeffer's writing: see, for example, Creation and Fall, pp. 47f.

38 Bonhoeffer, , Christology, p. 65.Google Scholar

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43 Cf. Kaufman, Gordon D., ‘A Problem for Theology: the Concept of Nature’, Harvard Theological Review 65 (1972), pp. 340–348.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44 Cf. Hardy, Daniel W., ‘Created and Redeemed Sociality’, in Gunton, C. E. and Hardy, D. W. (eds), On Being the Church (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1989), pp. 21–47.Google Scholar

45 Yet we must note immediately an important limitation to Bonhoeffer's terminology: the concept of the state, although not unimportant, requires extension. The history of humanity includes economic and cultural activity, as Bonhoeffer well knew. Today Christian responsibility is not only to the state but also to the wider civil society beyond the state.

46 Floyd, Wayne Whitson, ‘The Search for an Ethical Sacrament: From Bonhoeffer to Critical Theory’, Modem Theology 7:2 (1991), pp. 188–189.Google Scholar

47 Rasmussen, , Earth Community, Earth Ethics, p. 299.Google Scholar

48 See my ‘Nature in a “world come of age”’ for more detail on ‘non-religious interpretation’ in the theology of nature.

49 I am grateful to William H. Lazareth, Alistair McFadyen, Lawrence Osborn, Stanley Rudman and Francis Watson for their perceptive comments on an earlier version of this paper.