The keynote presenter at the 2010 CRA National Assembly, Father Denis Edwards, of Adelaide, will have a new book published early in the new year. It is one of several recent books by Fr Edwards which look closely at the relationship between ecology and faith. ...
One of the gifts we have received from the twentieth century is a picture of the Earth as a shared home. The human community of the twenty-first century can see a birth as a blue-green planet set against the darkness of interstellar space. We are able to think of our home planet in the context of the vast distances of the Milky Way Galaxy and of the roughly one hundred billion galaxies that make up the observable universe, and be led to a new appreciation of Earth's beauty and hospitality to life. We can see human beings as part of a global community, interconnected with other species and with life systems of our planet. This represents a precious new moment in human cultural history.
At the same time we are confronted by the damage human beings are doing to the atmosphere, the soil, the rivers, and the cities of Earth. It is becoming more and more obvious that if we continue to destroy the great forests and clear the bush, if we continue reckless exploitation of the land, the rivers, and the seas, if we continue to lose habitats, what we will pass on to our descendants will be an impoverished and far more sterile place. We are in the midst of a process that, if allowed to continue, will end in the destruction of much of what we have come to treasure.
Everything is interconnected ... all of this will have an unimaginable impact on human beings but it is also obviously far more than a human problem. At the centre of this book is the argument that this loss of biodiversity is a theological issue. When human beings cause the extinction of other species, they destroy creatures made by God. They damage a mode of God's self revelation. ...
So begins the introduction of Ecology at the Heart of Faith, a recent book by Fr Edwards. The back cover of this 2006 book says that Fr Edwards "helps the general reader, the preacher, the spiritual director, the student, and a theologian tear down the walls that too often separate mysticism, theology, prophecy, poetry and science".
Fr Edwards, who will be the key presenter at the 2010 National Assembly in Hobart, is a prolific writer on matters including ecology and science. Earlier books include Jesus the Wisdom of God: An Ecological Theology (2005), Jesus and the Cosmos (2004), Breath of Life (2004) and he has a new book, How God Acts: Creation, Redemption and Special Divine Action (Theology and the Sciences - Fortress Press) due out on February 1, 2010.
How does the Christian doctrine of creation square with the picture of an evolving universe we receive from science today? How do the badly predatory behavior and wasteful extinction of whole species fit in with a Christian understanding?
These and a host of related questions raised by ordinary experience are tackled in this important and original work from theologian Denis Edwards. From providence and miracles to resurrection and intercessory prayer, Edwards shows how a basically noninterventionist model of divine action does justice to the universe as we know it and also to central convictions of Christian faith about the goodness of God, the promises of God, and the fulfillment of creation. Here is wonderfully lucid theology supporting a vision of how God is at work in the universe.
For a more immediate look at Fr Edwards' writing ...
Miracles and the laws of nature
EVOLUTIONARY biology points to the way competition, predation, death and extinction are built into the 3.8 billion year history of life. This intensifies the old problem of how we think about God and God's action in the context of suffering and loss. One aspect of this discussion is that of miracles. Does God sometimes overturn or bypass the laws of nature? If so, then why not more often? The Christian tradition of miracles can seem to suggest that God occasionally and arbitrarily intervenes to save people while allowing others to perish.
In this article, I will ask how the Christian tradition of miracles is to be understood: Does it mean that God is to be thought of as miraculously intervening in the natural world to preserve some from tsunamis while allowing others to suffer them? Or are we to think of God, even the God who works miracles, as respecting and working consistently in and through the processes of the natural world? Much of the pastoral practice of the church reinforces the idea of a God who can and does intervene in an occasional way to overturn nature. I believe that an alternative theology is needed, and will suggest an approach to a theology of miracles that does not involve an interventionist view of God.
With Johann Baptist Metz I believe that the miracles that are crucial to the Christian tradition are those connected with the coming of revelation in Jesus Christ (Metz 1975, 962). I will begin with a brief exploration of miracles in the life of Jesus, using the historical work of John Meier. Then I will turn to the classical treatment of miracles in the work of Aquinas. This will lead into a discussion of the meaning of the laws of nature, taking up ideas developed by William Stoeger. Finally, in dialogue with the thought of Karl Rahner, I will suggest a view of divine action that makes room for the miraculous but without the idea of occasional intervention.
The assembly, which will take up the theme, Commitment to ecology and the following of Jesus, will be held at the Grand Chancellor Hotel, on Hobart's waterfront, from the morning of Tuesday, June 29, to the lunch-time of Friday, July 2, 2010.
