I would like to begin by thanking the organizers of this year’s Plenary for inviting me to introduce the topic of ecology as a “new spirituality which generates hope and life for all”.  Several  years ago I did my thesis work on Teilhard de Chardin and this was a good opportunity to revisit some of that reflection.  The invitation to a North American to reflect on ecology is, of course, particularly challenging as our industrialized society is a major cause of environmental pollution.[i]

 

Ecology

 

The term “ecology” comes from the Greek oikos, “house”, affirming respect and care for the earth as God’s creation and life’s home.  A relatively new scientific study, it assumes a spiritually grounded moral stance where all beings on earth make up one household (oikos), and benefit from an economy (oikonomia) that supports the flourishing of all forms of planetary life.  It is about the “house rules”, attitudes and technologies, behaviours as well as science, that will enable all inhabitants of the planet to thrive indefinitely.  In this context, Sallie McFague describes an ecological economy that “invites us to picture ourselves not as isolated individuals but as housemates.”  This ecological model, she continues, “claims that housemates must abide by three main rules: take only your share, clean up after yourselves, and keep the house in good repair for future occupants.  We do not own the house; we do not even rent it.  It is loaned to us for our lifetime, with the proviso that we obey the above rules so that the house can feed, shelter, nurture and delight those who move in after us.”[ii]

 

Response to the current environmental crisis presents a serious challenge to the world’s religions.  In fact, critical voices have identified religion as a significant contributor to environmental deterioration.  In particular, historian Lynn White suggests that Christian emphasis on a transcendent God and on human domination over nature has led to a devaluing of the natural world and destruction of its resources.[iii]  Yet, there is a growing body of research on the role religion might play in addressing environmental issues.  In this context, the Harvard Forum on Religion and Ecology seeks to bring scholars in the academic study of religion together with scientists, politicians and activists to foster partnerships in envisioning and implementing long range solutions to some of the most pressing environmental problems.[iv]

 

Cosmology

 

As evidence of an impending environmental disaster grows increasingly clear, human inaction and apparent lack of will to find effective ways to address the problem become more and more puzzling.  In this context, ecologist Thomas Berry affirms the importance of cosmology:

The cosmological narrative is the primary narrative of any people, for this is the story that gives to a people their sense of the universe....  All human roles are continuations, further elaborations, expansions, and fulfillments of this story.  So any creative deed at the human level is a continuation of the creativity of the universe.[v]

At the moment, he suggests, we are in difficulty because the foundational story that has been at the heart of Western civilization and culture has lost its power.  In brief, the lack of a compelling cosmology impedes action.

 

Traditional Christian cosmology has its source in the first three chapters of Genesis.  Biblical scholars agree that the account of creation given in Genesis 1 reflects the context of the Babylonian exile.  In the Babylonian epic of creation, the world is created from the remains of a monster goddess.  Humanity is a lowly, primitive creature compelled to serve the gods so that they may rest. The Bible, on the other hand, unequivocally declares the whole of creation to be good.  Humanity is created in the image and likeness of God and called to share God’s sabbath rest.  A similar view is found in Genesis 2 which presupposes a desert milieu where a rather anthropomorphic God forms humanity (adam) out of dust (adamah) and then, plants a garden and places adam in it “to till it and keep it.”  Commentaries on this familiar text have often found in it an argument for female subordination which seems to contradict the evident equality of the sexes in Genesis 1.  Recent exegesis, however, suggests that Genesis 2, like Genesis 1, depicts a basic male/female equality.  The Hebrew term adam (2:7) is generic and until the differentiation of male and female, ish/ishah, (2:23) occurs, it refers to one creation incorporating two sexes.  In light of these studies, the assertion of male dominance occurs within the context of a divine judgement on human disobedience and is a distortion of the harmonious relationship envisioned in the covenant formula of Genesis 2:23.  A rethinking of the dominance of male over female suggests a similar re-evaluation of humanity’s relationship to the rest of the created world.  Thus, rather than endorsing the supremacy of either the male or the human, these creation stories implicitly condemn the whole domination/subjugation pattern of relating.[vi]  Thus, contemporary exegesis offers new insights into the meaning of the biblical narrative; yet, the text continues to reflect a basically static cosmology.

 

Advances in science and technology over the past century have produced an explosion of information about the universe.  While astronomers scan the length and breadth of outer space, physicists explore the inner workings of sub-atomic particles and waves.  At both macro and micro cosmic levels, this research confirms the vastness of space and time, the underlying unity of the universe, the dynamic interplay of chaos and creativity.  There is a growing scientific consensus about the expanding universe that originated in a burst of energy some fifteen billion years ago and about the evolving earth community that has become conscious in the emergence of the human.  In an emerging universe, physicist Brian Swimme says, “time’s dynamic reveals itself in an ongoing creativity”, everything is “genetically related”, and “interconnected”. “Every being on earth is implicated in the functioning of the earth as a whole; and the earth as a whole is intrinsic to the functioning of any particular life system.”[vii]  Further, he cites the three basic laws of the universe as differentiation, subjectivity, and communion.

The fact that this new scientific cosmology is empirically-based enhances the possibility of its becoming a transcultural foundational story and invites a religious response.  Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was among the pioneers in this kind of reflection which allows him to affirm a spiritual dimension in cosmic evolution and a cosmic dimension in Christian spirituality. Through an analysis of the relationship which exists between the psychic and the physical aspects of reality, he detects a law of complexity-consciousness.  This law, when viewed within the framework of evolutionary time or duration, reveals a continuous growth in consciousness through a succession of more and more complex forms.  Further, there is no reason to suppose that the evolutionary process has been brought to a halt with the advent of humanity through the critical point of reflection.  Rather, the process of increasing complexity and consciousness might be expected to continue as human society provides a milieu which enables numerous individuals to reflect, to combine their reflective efforts and so, to increase the scope and clarity of reflection.  In applying the law of complexity-consciousness to humanity, however, Teilhard is aware of human autonomy and warns of an organic crisis in evolution: “There is a danger that the elements of the world should refuse to serve the world – because they think; or more precisely that the world should refuse itself when perceiving itself through reflection.”[viii]  He hopes his proposed synthesis of faith and evolution will support the continued progress of humanity.  It is possible, he claims, to believe simultaneously and wholly in God and in the world, each through the other.

 

Christian Perspectives

 

In an evolving universe, cosmos becomes cosmogenesis and religious concepts formulated in an earlier more static worldview no longer fit.  In response, Christian theologians will seek not only to explore the meaning of the new cosmology in relation to the doctrine of creation but also to reinterpret central beliefs and teachings through the lens of contemporary experience.  This can be seen as either a threat or an opportunity.  For some, the new cosmology seems a contamination of religion and a cause of moral breakdown.  Others are enthusiastic about the possibility of revitalizing traditional views and practices in images and language that speak to the 21^st century.

 

Both traditional and new cosmologies hold that God is the source of all that exists and is present to all creatures.  How God acts and is present is, however, quite different.  In traditional cosmology, for example, God intervenes as an external cause to bring all creatures into being.  In the new cosmology, God is seen as an internal cause, an immediate presence in the unfolding of the entire universe.  According to Cletus Wessels, “This way of understanding creation gives us a deeper personal awareness of the intimate presence of God within us and of the internal unity between the human person and the entire human race.”[ix]  As she considers the question of divine action in a world of chance and random events, Elizabeth Johnson finds great potential in Thomas Aquinas’ idea of participation.  “One of the strengths of Aquinas” vision,” she notes, “is the autonomy he grants to created existence through its participation in divine being.”  “This is a genuinely noncompetitive view of God and the world.  According to its dynamism, nearness to God and genuine creaturely autonomy grow in direct rather than inverse proportion.”  In this system of thought, then, “Omnipotence unfailingly manifests itself not as coercive ‘power over’ but as sovereign love which empowers.”  Further, God’s self-limitation of omnipotence is a free and voluntary act of love.[x]

 

From a Christian perspective, an emerging universe in which everything is genetically related and interconnected, invites reflection on the cosmic presence of the incarnate Christ.  One approach is that of Teilhard de Chardin.  For him, the fundamental process of unification in God through Christ becomes a “Christogenesis” in which the mysteries of creation, incarnation and redemption are logically as well as historically related.[xi]  Through the incarnation, God is immersed in the evolving universe in the form of a historical person capable of stimulating and sustaining the love which is intrinsic to the establishment of personal relations.  It is a particular event which may also be regarded as a “specially heightened expression of a process having ‘cosmic’ dimensions.”  Thus, the incarnation signifies Christ’s “definitive hold” on the universe.  Having materialized himself within a space-time continuum, Christ is “so engrained in the visible world” that he cannot be extracted from it without “rocking the foundations of the universe.”[xii]   Humanity becomes capable of experiencing, discovering, and loving God in the whole length, breadth and depth of the world in movement.  This, Teilhard says, “is a prayer that can only be made in space-time.”[xiii]

 

For the followers of Christ, moral choices are linked to the world reversing values of the reign of God which has been inaugurated in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  A world of right relationship in which compassion, mercy and forgiveness are structural realities, the reign of God is to be lived and proclaimed with convincing power.  Yet, the absence of rightness in current human-earth relations is increasingly evident.  In this context, moral reflection is beginning to assert the intrinsic value of the natural world.  Nature with its own inherent value before God is being recognized as the new poor and action on behalf of justice is being widened out to embrace other species, seeking a vibrant communion in life for all.[xiv]  Economic oppression, racism, sexism, and abuse of the earth are all seen to be linked.  In addition to homicide, suicide, and genocide, the evils of ecocide, biocide, and geocide, are affirmed.  Thus, the Philippine Bishops have named preservation and protection of the planet as “the ultimate pro-life issue.”[xv]  Pamela Smith sees the keystones of environmental ethics in terms of “a wide-ranging reverence for life and commitment to the common good.”  As Catholics, she notes, the greatest motivation for an ethic of reverence for life as including all that is may, ultimately, “be our sense of the sacramental.”[xvi]

 

A New Spirituality for Religious Life

 

In a series of presentations on earth spirituality, Elaine Prevallet discusses widening and deepening religious commitment in service of life.  She begins with a reflection on the survival instinct, that deepest instinct for life which is shared by plant, animal and human species, and expressed in the urge to possess, in the sexual drive, and in the exercise of power or control.  Each vow represents a human intention to align the fundamental, instinctual energy with the pattern seen in creation.  Poverty addresses the reciprocity, interdependence and frugality natural to every living thing.  Celibacy addresses the channelling of sexual or connective energy into non-biological creativity and responsibility for the good of the whole.  Obedience addresses the fidelity of each living organism to fulfilling its own role (niche) within the earth community.  Each vow involves both resistance to cultural norms and creativity in inventing alternate lifestyles coherent with planetary needs. Thus, Religious will seek to design new earth-friendly and justice-oriented ways of living that give counter-cultural witness to how humans can live in harmony with the whole creation.[xvii]

 

For Alexandra Kovats, the cosmic principles of differentiation, subjectivity (autopoiesis), and communion provide a context for re-visioning and re-naming the three evangelical vows.  Differentiation, the cosmic principle that names the rich variety of differences observable in the universe is linked to the vow of poverty.  Since this vow primarily concerns relationships with the gifts of creation, Kovats suggests that it might be renamed as the vow of cosmic reverence.  This vow challenges Religious to relate to all of God’s creation with reverence and to honour the rich diversity of life.  The vow of chastity focuses on the commitment to love and refers specifically to relationships with other human beings.  Since the cosmic principle of communion relates explicitly to interdependence, this vow might be re-named as the vow of hospitality and solidarity.  This vow calls Religious to live in justice, right relationship, with all our sisters and brothers.  In light of the principle of subjectivity (autopoiesis), which refers to the creative dynamic enabling each being to become itself, the vow of obedience might be re-named as the vow of creativity.  Through this vow, Religious are challenged to right relationship with personal and communal creative energies for the sake of co-creating the reign of God in this time and culture.[xviii]

 

Conclusion

 

An ecological spirituality calls Religious to work with the larger earth community in shaping an integral planetary process.  It will focus on the recovery of human intimacy with all participants in the universe of being.  It offers a new form of prophetic ministry with practical as well as mystical implications.  Such an ecological spirituality will contribute to the transition from a non-viable to a viable mode of existence for the planetary community.  Without it, there may be neither life nor hope for any on this our earth home.

 

 

ENDNOTES

 

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[i] Jerome C. Glenn and Theodore J. Gordon, 2006 State of the Future, United Nations University Centre, pp. 1-7,  identifies a number of variables.

 

[ii] Sallie McFague, “New House Rules: Christianity, Economics, and Planetary Living,” DFdalus 130 (2001), 125-140.

 

[iii] Lynn White, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” Science 155 (1967), 1203-1207.

 

[iv] A series of ten conferences held at Harvard University from May 1996 through July 1998 examined the topic of religion and ecology from the perspective of ten major religious traditions: Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Indigenous traditions, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Shinto and Daoism.  These gatherings generated an eleven volume series of books on World Religion and Ecology.  Bringing together specialists who examine contemporary social and environmental problems from a religious perspective, these books are a clear step forward in the process of identifying ecologically pertinent resources within each tradition.  In a similar vein, the Canadian Forum on Religion and Ecology was launched at the University of Toronto in March 2004 and May 24-26, 2007 is the date of the inaugural conference of the European Forum for the Study of Religion and the Environment to be held in Bamberg, Germany.

 

[v] Thomas Berry, Evening Thoughts: Reflecting on Earth as Sacred Community (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 2006), p. 59.  Berry, a Passionist priest who calls himself a geologian, is a major contributor to the field of ecology and an advocate for the development of a new cosmology or a new universe story.

 

[vi] The interpretation of Genesis 2-3 reflects the exegesis of Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978), pp. 72-143.

 

[vii] Brian Swimme, “Science: A Partner in Creating the Vision,” in Anne Lonergan and Caroline Richards, eds., Thomas Berry and the New Cosmology (Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 1987), pp. 86-89.  For a more recent discussion of the integral functioning of the universe, see the description of holon theory in Cletus Wessels, Jesus in the New Universe Story (New York: Orbis Books, 2003), pp. 48-59.

 

[viii] Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, Bernard Wall, trans., (London: Fontana Books, 1959), pp. 253-254.  The law of complexity-consciousness is summarized on pp. 328-338.

 

[ix] Wessels, op cit., p. 59.

 

[x] Elizabeth Johnson, “Does God Play Dice? Divine Providence and Chance,” Theological Studies 56 (1996), 3-18.

 

[xi] Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “Christianity and Evolution: Suggestions for a New Theology,” “Introduction to the Christian Life,” in René Hague, trans., Christianity and Evolution (London: Collins, 1971), pp. 182-183, 155.

 

[xii] Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “My Universe”, in René Hague, trans., Science and Christ (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), p. 61.

 

[xiii] Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, p. 325.

 

[xiv] Elizabeth Johnson, refers to a kinship model which “sees human beings and the earth with all its creatures intrinsically related as companions in the community of life.” Women, Earth and Creator Spirit (New York: Paulist Press, 1993), p. 30.

 [xv] Catholic Bishops of the Philippines, “What is Happening to our Beautiful Land?” in Drew Christiansen and Walter Grazer, eds., “And God Saw That It Was Good”: Catholic Theology and the Environment (Washington: United States Catholic Conference, 1996), p. 317.

 [xvi] Pamela Smith, “Keystones of Environmental Ethics,” LCWR Occasional Papers, (Summer 2003), 13-21.

 [xvii] Elaine Prevallet, In the Service of Life: Widening and Deepening Religious Commitment (St. Louis, MO: Loretto Earth Network, 2002), pp. 23-51.

 [xviii] Alexandra Kovats, “Re-Visioning the Vows Holistically,” LCWR Occasional Papers, (Summer 2003), 23-30.