This monograph argues in detail for a Christian understanding of creation in which human beings are firmly located within ‘a broader community of all God's creatures’. The rise and fall of the stewardship model of creation (which, it is argued, has shown itself unable to solve the problems associated with the dominion model that it replaced) is first rehearsed. The author then articulates the foundations for his non-anthropocentric theology of creation in scripture and tradition, and especially its development in medieval Franciscan thought (with special reference to the concept of usus pauper and the virtue of pietas) and as a ‘theology of planetarity’ (in conversation with post-colonial theory). He claims that the ‘primary impetus’ of the work is ‘to engage the theological imagination to consider anew the created order and humanity's place within it in a nonanthropocentric register’, thus providing theologians with a ‘new starting point for theological anthropology’.

Horan's first chapter traces the development of the dominion model of creation and of the imago Dei through the influence of Hellenistic and Renaissance thinking and the rise of science and technology. This is followed by a detailed exposition of the stewardship model, cataloguing its strengths and its weaknesses (among which he lists as particularly relevant what David Clough calls the ‘human separatist’ approach). Extended accounts of the positions of David John Hall and Pope Francis are then given. Despite such advocates, Horan argues that the guiding principle and ethos of the stewardship paradigm ‘is not much different from that of dominion’; for it, too, involves a mastery over the natural world and a form of ‘environmental colonialism’, which need to be tempered by a ‘more capacious eschatological vision of creation’. Surprisingly, the author reports that Lynn White, Jr., whose 1968 paper in Science kick-started the critique of the dominion paradigm, himself came to view the ‘trusteeship’ of stewardship as no more than ‘enlightened despotism’ and looked towards a more radical democratic model influenced by St Francis of Assisi.

The second part of the book develops just such a model and includes detailed consideration of elements in scripture (including Genesis) that seem to support it, as well as drawing on voices from among the ranks of classical and contemporary theologians. This last group includes many familiar British names, and although the majority of them are dealt with quite briefly it is clear from the notes in the book that they represent a rich source of arguments for the construction and defence of Horan's alternative paradigm. The present reviewer would have liked more detail here, as well as a stronger critical assessment of this paradigm's indebtedness to the Darwinian revolution. After all, it is not only in theological terms, but also in any adequate biological perspective, that humans are to be viewed ‘like the rest of creation’ and as ‘part and parcel’ of it.

The final two chapters are the most original in the book, but also the most daunting for the non-specialist. Here, Horan draws on St Francis and the ‘multifarious’ Franciscan school, especially Bonaventure, Duns Scotus and Peter of John Olivi, citing insights that he considers supportive of a revised creation theology. This is followed by the application of post-colonial theory to non-human nature – employing, in particular, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's concept of ‘planetarity’ (a concept that was conceived in deliberate contrast to ‘globalisation’). Unfortunately, this exposition will seem to many readers to be an unnecessarily wordy and obscure, and also somewhat contentious, way of thinking about and taking seriously what is patently a position of considerable theological significance: that is, ‘our inextricable place as members of and creatures always already situated within’ what Horan describes as ‘the cosmic community of creation’.

Despite these rather recondite passages (and its occasionally repetitive style), this is a thorough and painstaking work of scholarship that will be welcomed as a valuable resource by many who seek a modern and defensible theology of the status of human beings in the context of the doctrine of creation. It is likely to be valued as much as a work of reference and a guide to the literature as for its relentlessly pursued, overarching argument.