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The Environment's Role in Deconstructing and Reconstructing
Theology and Religion
By Matthew Fox
When one considers the intimate relationship between Creator and Creation,
one is struck by how late and how reluctantly the church has come to the
environmental table. There must be reasons for this, and exploring these
reasons may help us not only to unleash religion's pent-up power for action
vis-a-vis the environment but also to renew religion itself. It would
be a happy irony indeed if the ecological crisis were the stepping-stone
to a spiritual and religious renaissance.
Following are some issues that come to mind that are forced upon theology
and religion by the current state of eco-crisis.
- The reduction of a Trinitarian Godhead to a single Person of the Trinity.
What I would call Jesusolatry has so overtaken much of mainline (and
all of fundamentalist) Christianity that, in historical terms, we can
ask: Isn't this heresy, the loss of God the Creator and God the Spirit,
to the extreme situation of God the Redeemer?
For scientists tell us about Creation, as Aquinas said:
“A mistake about Creation results in a mistake about God.” Why do we swamp
ourselves with biblical scholars – as if all revelation is in a
4,500 year-old book and not in Creation itself? We are flooded with examples
of mistakes about Creation still alive and well in theology and church
circles, of which only the latest is the homosexual conflagration.
There is no question that we have not been exploring God the Creator
in seminaries and in theology to the extent that we lack scientists on
our faculties. For scientists tell us about Creation, as Aquinas said:
“A mistake about Creation results in a mistake about God.” Why do we swamp
ourselves with biblical scholars – as if all revelation is in a
4,500 year-old book and not in Creation itself? We are flooded with examples
of mistakes about Creation still alive and well in theology and church
circles, of which only the latest is the homosexual conflagration. The
question is a scientific one, not a biblical one: Does Creation and therefore
the Creator make homosexuals homosexuals? All indications are positive.
And homosexual populations are found not only among two-legged ones but
among many other species as well (74 being the last count I have seen).
- It is not only God the Creator who has been shortchanged in modern
theology, but also God the Spirit, and that includes the mysticism of
religion. Mysticism is our experience of the Divine as in
the psalmist's song: “Taste and see the Lord is good.” Mysticism is
about tasting, but neither our seminaries nor our church structures
have mined our mystics for their rich, rich teachings about humans and
nature. From Julian of Norwich to Thomas Traherne, from Hildegard of
Bingen to George Herbert, from Meister Eckhart to Walt Whitman, from
Thomas Aquinas to Annie Dillard, from Nicolas of Cusa to Rachel Carson,
From Dante to Wordsworth and William Blake, we are gifted with poets
of the soul who speak the truth of the sacredness of our lives, bodies
and the rest of creation. But without a Theology of the Spirit and without
a Wisdom theology – so banished by the patriarchal mentality of
the modern era – we don't have a clue about the theology of
ongoing creation and ongoing Incarnation and ongoing resurrection
that lies behind all intuition about the sacredness of being.
- In Christianity, the archetype for mysticism is the “Cosmic Christ.”
While the quest for the historical Jesus has preoccupied modern scholarship
for two hundred years and has reached a fruitful climax in our time,
where, oh where, is the research on the Cosmic Christ? Is the Cosmic
Christ studied in our seminaries and theological literature? One cannot
study it if one is working exclusively from a left-brain perspective,
for the Cosmic Christ, like its Eastern counterpart, the Buddha Nature,
is the Divine Image ( Imago Dei ) found in all beings. It is
the image and likeness of the Divine in all things. It requires
heart work to encounter it.
- The anthropocentrism of ecclesial titles like “People of God” is appalling.
The “People of God” nomenclature is not only excessively tribal (“my
tribe is God's people and yours is not”) but is equally ugly in its
anthropocentrism. What about the four-legged people? The cloud people?
The tree people? The winged and finned people? Are they not also integral
to the love of the Creator? Western religion has so much to learn in
this regard from indigenous peoples as well as pre-modern thinkers who
understood Spirit to operate in the whole of creation and
not just as an element of anthropology. Spirit is about cosmology
more than psychology – as Aquinas testified when he said:
“Spirit means our capacity to relate to the totality of things.”
All flesh is holy , including the flesh of
the universe, the flesh of the earth and its systems and human flesh –
for they are one flesh deriving from the very same origin in the original
fireball. Flesh can no longer be a scapegoat for our sins of greed and
inattentiveness to other species and to generations of humans yet to be
born.
- But are we teaching cosmology? The new cosmology teaches us that all
matter in the universe is frozen or very slowly moving light and that
therefore we do not have to create any longer a competition between
matter and spirit. But have we drawn conclusions from this important
teaching? One is this: All flesh is holy , including the flesh
of the universe, the flesh of the earth and its systems and human flesh
– for they are one flesh deriving from the very same origin in
the original fireball. (See my “Blessings of the Flesh” litanies in
my book, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh .) Flesh
can no longer be a scapegoat for our sins of greed and inattentiveness
to other species and to generations of humans yet to be born. If, as
Thomas Berry asserts, “ecology is functional cosmology,” then surely
we need to be learning and teaching the new cosmology. Are we doing
this? Are adults learning it and teaching it in our schools, homes,
media, churches, synagogues and mosques? Are we worshipping in the context
of cosmology? If not, why not?
- What do we mean by “salvation?” Salvation from what? From the earth?
From this life? From our in-laws? From fear? From guilt? From whom?
Thomas Aquinas offers a meaning of the term “salvation” that is truly
appropriate for an ecological era when he says: “Salvation means first
and foremost preserving things in the good.” Notice how this-worldly this
meaning of salvation is. “Preserving things in the good” –
since blessing is the theological word for goodness, salvation means passing
blessings on to other generations. The blessings of healthy water, air,
soil, species, bodies, minds, spirits. How are we doing on this score?
How is religion interfering (the prophetic task) in the wrongdoing?
- The return of Wisdom literature and the feminist mind-set that comes
with it ought to contribute significantly to a resurrection of a creation-centered
consciousness. The fact that the historical Jesus came from this tradition,
a fact finally being recognized by scripture scholars who have often
chased down the trees at the expense of the forest, ought to help to
inspire us all to look more deeply at the Spirit's work in on-going
creation and creativity (yes, in evolution). Wisdom, after all, “plays
with God before the formation of the world,” and it is this play that
is the substrate for creativity of all kinds – ours and the rest
of creation. Much of evolution is about play and with it, trial and
error.
These are a few of the ecclesial and theological issues that must be
deconstructed and reconstructed if religion is to be part of the solution
to the ecological disaster our species faces along with the rest of the
earth community. The disaster we face is in many respects a human-driven
disaster. It is we who are mostly responsible for wiping out rainforests,
decimating oceans and rendering species extinct to the tune of 25,000
yearly. It is we who must put a stop to it.
Ecology remains the most pressing moral issue of our time. Forces of
persuasion would like to put it on a back burner especially during presidential
election time. But we do so at our own peril and that of the sacred and
God-given beauty of this planet.
© 2004, Matthew Fox
The Rev. Matthew Fox, Ph.D., is a postmodern theologian who serves
as president of the University
of Creation Spirituality in Oakland , Calif. He has received numerous
honors for his influential work as a spiritual practitioner and author,
including the Courage of Conscience Award by the Peace Abbey of Sherborn,
Mass. and the Tikkun National Ethics Award in recognition of contributions
made to the spiritual life of our society. Matthew is author of 25 books,
including Original Blessing and his most recent works Creativity:
Where the Divine and the Human Meet and One River, Many Wells:
Wisdom Springing from Global Faiths .
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