IntroductionFootnote ²

One of the most prominent global features of recent decades has been the turn to questions of ecology.Footnote ³ Deterioration in the quality of the planet’s physical systems is evident in a range of interconnected phenomena such as rapid rates of deforestation, desertification, soil salinity, loss of biodiversity, over-fishing, shortage of fresh water and, particularly, climate change. Ecological questions are often discussed primarily, even exclusively, in relation to technological solutions and changes in regulatory policy at national or international levels. Such responses will often be an appropriate part of addressing these issues, but in isolation may have neither the breadth nor depth to fully explore or redress complex and multi-faceted issues raised by phenomena such as climate change. At a deeper level, ecological questions often pose a fundamental question: how, and for what purpose, are human beings to live on a planet whose physical, life-maintaining systems, are threatened? By their nature ecological questions are often complex and transdisciplinary in scope. They cannot easily be restricted to the spheres of science or governmental policy because their compass points towards broader aspects of life including ethics, spirituality, and the meaning of existence. While a varied range of responses from diverse branches of human thought and endeavour can contribute to the discussion, the discipline of theology, with its focus on ultimate meaning and purpose, can be especially pertinent. Although there is some truth to accusations that Christian teaching has at times accepted, endorsed, and even encouraged attitudes and behaviour which have been destructive of the natural world,Footnote ⁴ this partial truth must be held against the fact that Christian texts and traditions also contain rich and extensive resources – not least in relation to the doctrines of creation and incarnation − which can be brought to bear on ecological questions.

In recent decades a number of theologies have been explored in pursuit of their ecotheological potential. Celia Deane-Drummond has discussed the ecological significance of the theology of Jürgen Moltmann, Denis Edwards that of Karl Rahner, Paul Santmire that of Augustine and other Patristic thinkers, Thomas Berry that of Aquinas. Here a similar attempt is made to explore the ideas of the Anglican biochemist, theologian and priest Arthur Peacocke (1924–2006). Peacocke is pre-eminently known as one of the founders of, and a very significant contributor to, the theology-science dialogue of recent decades. Peacocke’s life-work of dedication to this dialogue represents a significant wider trajectory in the Anglican tradition whereby thinkers have engaged confidently and optimistically with their current intellectual and social context, exemplified in thinkers such as F.D. Maurice, Charles Gore and his fellow Lux Mundi contributors, and William Temple. Peacocke appreciated what he considered to be Anglicanism’s ‘distinctive feature’ of the joint authority of Scripture, Tradition and Reason.Footnote ⁵ His position in the Anglican spectrum is catholic, sacramental, and with a leaning towards mysticism. For Peacocke, engagement with his contemporary milieu specifically involves drawing on insights from biochemistry, quantum science and the theory of evolution in order to develop a theology which strongly coheres with scientific knowledge. While much attention has, rightly, been given to the science-theology content of Peacocke’s work, this essay pursues a lesser known (though not unrelated) path of exploring the ecological implications of Peacocke’s theology.

Peacocke did not claim to be an ecological theologian, and does not usually make the ecological meaning of his theology a central focus. It is true that Peacocke at times discusses issues such as the finite capacities of the earth, the dependence of human beings on the environment, global warming, and the compounding of population and technology which, he considers, threaten to render planetary ecosystems unstable.Footnote ⁶ He also refers to thinkers such as Celia Deane-Drummond and Sallie McFague whose work has a specifically ecotheological content, and he cites major contributors to early environmental discourse such as Barbara Ward, René Dubos and Rachel Carson. Peacocke has also influenced a number of thinkers closely associated with ecotheological work. Celia Deane-Drummond dedicates one of her books to him, and he is cited by Ernst Conradie and (often) by Denis Edwards.Footnote ⁷ However, these more explicit ecological references and connections are relatively infrequent in Peacocke’s theology and usually take a secondary place to his main theme of science and faith.Footnote ⁸

Even though he does not self-identify as an ecological theologian, there exists an innate, albeit usually implicit, ecotheological substance in Arthur Peacocke’s works. Here I will select two of Peacocke’s ideas which, I will argue, are significant for ecological theology.

Emergence, Distinctiveness and Diversity in Peacocke’s Theology of Creation and Incarnation

The first aspect of Peacocke’s work which is promising for ecological theology springs from his use of the concept of emergentist monism, a scientific understanding which undergirds his theology.Footnote ⁹ The notion of ‘emergence’ as understood by Peacocke asserts that changes in the natural world do not always involve a simple reformation of previously occurring elements.Footnote ¹⁰ Rather, during the process of evolution, points sometimes occur where something genuinely new emerges which cannot be fully explained in terms of, or entirely reduced to, the lower level from which it arose – an example would be the development of life from inert matter. There is a tendency, especially at higher levels of complexity, for new and distinctive kinds of realities to emerge in which the ‘relationships between the wholes and the parts … cannot be explicated by physics’.Footnote ¹¹ Another way of saying this is that when parts are incorporated into a system, their behaviour can be constrained in a way which can lead to ‘unexpected and unpredicted’ behaviour of the system as a whole including new, self-organizing capabilities and functions.Footnote ¹² These new distinctive organizations of matter-energy are called ‘emergent’. While ‘emergence’ is not in itself a theological concept, it has theological implications because, unlike the reductionist ‘bottom-up’ theory (in which everything is explained by the lowest level of its composition), emergence is a ‘top-down’ or ‘whole-part’ theory which allows for the claim that there exists an overarching power or purpose of some kind. Peacocke therefore contests the atheistically oriented notion of reductionism to claim that God operates in the universe in a way comparable to a whole-part influence.Footnote ¹³

One of the most important theological consequences of the notion of evolutionary emergence is that it portrays the universe as dynamic rather than static which means, for Peacocke, a strong insistence that creation is not to be thought of exclusively or even primarily as an event that occurred in the past. In line with other scientist-theologians and with process thinkers, Peacocke affirms creation as a ‘becoming’ and future oriented process.Footnote ¹⁴ Since the beginning the universe has been an ‘open system’ which allows for emergence, that is, for the fact that it is ‘still being made’.Footnote ¹⁵ It could be objected that Peacocke uses ‘creation’ ambiguously to refer both to the idea that creation is an ongoing and natural process, and to the traditional Christian claim of creatio ex nihilo. In his final work Peacocke anticipates this objection by affirming that divine creative activity has two aspects: (1) emergence which leads to novelty (creatio continua), and (2) ‘the giving of existence to entities other than the Giver’ (creatio ex nihilo).Footnote ¹⁶ Peacocke argues that because it is now understood that time is an aspect of creation, (2) has come to mean ‘the giving of existence to a process in time, such that the distinction between (1) and (2) collapses’.Footnote ¹⁷ Given Peacocke’s first career as a scientist and his substantial discussion of science in his books, it might be claimed that Peacocke gives science a priority over theology. For instance, when Peacocke claims ‘We now have to think in terms of God as Creator continuously giving existence with time to processes that have the character the sciences unveil’ this seems to support the claim that science is leading, even determining, theology. In general it can certainly be claimed that Peacocke’s work is profoundly influenced by both the content of scientific knowledge and by the scientific approach which implicitly critiques two of Christianity’s primary sources of authority (text and tradition).Footnote ¹⁸ Yet on the whole, and this is illustrated in relation to the present discussion of creation, Peacocke’s primary aim is to establish a coherence between theology and science at the deepest level.Footnote ¹⁹ Peacocke understands creatio continua as a traditional concept in Christian thought which has been reintroduced as a result of scientific developments.Footnote ²⁰ The main emphasis in the Judeo-Christian doctrine of creation, he argues, ‘is on the dependence and contingency of all entities, and events, other than God himself: it is about a perennial relationship between God and the world and not about the beginning of the Earth, or the whole universe at a point in time’.Footnote ²¹ Here as elsewhere Peacocke seeks congruence between an evolutionary understanding and traditional Christian claims about the doctrine of creation. What is primarily rejected in Peacocke’s attempt to cohere evolution and theology is not traditional Christian claims but Deism, what he calls the ‘unbalanced’ deistic picture of the eighteenth and nineteenth century of an ‘original’ creation in a static universe.Footnote ²²

In Peacocke’s thought, because the universe is emergent and dynamic, everything that comes into being must be, in part, oriented towards discontinuity, novelty and distinctiveness. The world is characterized by energy, abundance, relationality and differentiation in which, as is suggested in Gen. 1, God takes pleasure, seeing it as ‘good’. Diversity is at the heart of reality, therefore, argues Peacocke, ‘…we now have to escape from our anthropocentric myopia and affirm that God as Creator takes what we can only call delight in the rich variety and individuality of other organisms for their own sake’.Footnote ²³ The richness and variation narrated in Genesis echoes the evolutionary story of the emergence of diverse forms of matter and life. Peacocke’s brief ‘Genesis for the 21st Century’, written in a style reminiscent of Genesis 1 and John 1, tells a scientific-theistic story of the universe and the evolution of life, emphasizing its mysterious and awe-inspiring quality.Footnote ²⁴ His approach unites the understandings of science with the claims of theology, thus overcoming their sometimes rigid separation in the era of Modernity. In Peacocke’s understanding of creation, the mechanistic and deterministic views of the Enlightenment and Modern eras cede to a more organic and indeterminate understanding of the unpredictable, complex, inter-related and diverse character of the universe, an understanding which yields for Peacocke ‘a perspective which is of a beauty and an all-embracing scope that, when fully apprehended, dazzles the mind and heightens the sensibilities’.Footnote ²⁵

Peacocke’s affirmation that complexity and variety are at the heart of creation coheres with the ecological affirmation of biological diversity (biodiversity) which refers to ‘the variety, variability and processes of life at all levels, from the genetic to the biosphere’.Footnote ²⁶ The differentiation which characterizes the natural world is biologically necessary for the flourishing of an ecosystem because it is diversity within an ecosystem which makes it stable, robust and sustainable, allowing it to better withstand changed circumstances. Hence a loss of biodiversity is a key mark of ecological degradation.Footnote ²⁷ Our present time is characterized by severe loss of biodiversity and concern to redress it. In the view of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, currently ‘biodiversity and ecosystem services are declining at an unprecedented rate’.Footnote ²⁸ Biodiversity loss is one of the targets (7B) of the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals.

Biodiversity seems to have an integral relationship to life itself. Diversity of biota is crucial for an ecological ethos and is a main theme in what is often seen as the Environment Movement’s seminal work – Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring Footnote ²⁹ – which describes and laments the loss of biodiversity which had already occurred at that time due to the use of agricultural chemicals. At the very least the richness of experience provided by the varied and abundant natural processes makes for a world which is at once interesting and variable yet also inevitably painful and violent. The question of ‘natural evil’ is beyond the scope of discussion here, except to note that Peacocke’s response to both ‘natural’ and human/moral evil is to see creation as something which is costly to God, and to portray God as suffering ‘in, with, and under the creative processes of the world’.Footnote ³⁰

From a prudential, human-oriented stance, loss of biodiversity is a problem because it can result in a lessened aesthetic/spiritual experience, in the extinction of plants with medicinal potential, and a reduced genetic variation which can impact food supply. Theologically, loss of biodiversity has ramifications which exceed anthropocentric and prudential concerns. If, as Peacocke asserts, the cosmos is continuously created and sustained by God, then, we are necessarily called to help it to flourish rather than be agents of its destruction. As Australian ecotheologian Denis Edwards says, the diversity and abundance of the created world arises from the diversity and abundance of the Trinity, therefore: ‘… to destroy habitats and bring about the extinction of species in an arbitrary way can only be seen as a terrible sin against the Creator’.Footnote ³¹ Peacocke’s emergentist theology of creation resonates with the ecological theology of Edwards and others which names human-caused loss of biodiversity as a sin and thereby claims it as a theological issue.

The idea of emergence not only informs Peacocke’s theology of creation, but also his theology of the Incarnation. Following the thought of Teilhard, Peacocke sees Jesus Christ as fulfilling or completing the creative work of God in the cosmos. Although something of the divine nature is, arguably, revealed in the diversity and abundance of creation, in itself this is, arguably, morally neutral or ambiguous as it is silent on what might be understood about the divine nature in the violence and loss that are also part of creation (the possum preyed on by the wedge-tailed eagle for example). The partial revelation of divine nature in creation occurs more fully in the Incarnation. God’s presence and meaning, argues Peacocke, were expressed in Jesus in an especially clear way. In his full openness to God and in his self-offering love, Jesus Christ is the distinctive consummation of God’s ongoing purposes in the evolution of humankind:

Peacocke assigns a very high status to Jesus as the one who mediates creation and unites humanity and divinity. God expresses Godself in a ‘top-down’ way in the figure of Jesus Christ who is ‘the supreme exemplar and original archetype’ of God’s action of calling human beings.Footnote ³³ Peacocke sees Jesus as both continuous with humanity and the natural world, and also as discontinuous because of the distinctiveness of his relation to God.Footnote ³⁴ Further, this combination of continuity and discontinuity is found in ‘the emergent character of the natural world’ hence according to Peacocke it can be said that ‘In Jesus the Christ a new reality has emerged and a new ontology is inaugurated.’Footnote ³⁵ Jesus is so distinctive, Peacocke argues, that in him the evolutionary process is ‘lifted on to an entirely new level’ and he can therefore, in one sense, be described as ‘the summit of evolution’.Footnote ³⁶ The creation of something new in Jesus Christ might even metaphorically be described, says Peacocke, in terms of a ‘new species’ in a way which parallels what occurs in biological mutation.Footnote ³⁷

Peacocke’s affirmation of the variety and distinctiveness of the created world is readily comprehensible to a contemporary pluralistic and ecological worldview. Yet his argument concerning the distinctiveness and particularity of the event of the Incarnation is perhaps potentially more difficult to assert today in a plausible way. The suspicion of absolutes and the fact of religious plurality in postmodern culture have made the high claim for the event of Jesus Christ (an unavoidable claim for Peacocke and, surely, for Christian faith) somewhat vulnerable and problematic. Arguably, Peacocke overcomes this difficulty by emphasizing that difference is not only a feature of the historical event of the Incarnation, but of the underlying reality of creation itself. Peacocke stresses that it is not only the case that Jesus was remarkable, rather that the created world is also remarkable, and that the Incarnation is not to be seen as a distinctive event in a monochrome world but as an event which expresses and reflects the novelty and diversity which characterizes the created world. In Peacocke’s emergentist theology the doctrines of incarnation and of creation resonate with and reinforce one another to manifest divine meaning:

Peacocke’s emergentist theology can be utilized to form a bridge between on the one hand Christian thought and on the other a secular-materialist worldview which is sometimes evident in parts of the environmental movement and in the naturalistic approach of science in general. It is compatible with Christian thought because it utilizes the doctrines of creation and incarnation to affirm the diversity of the divinely created world and the distinctiveness of the event of the Incarnation. It is compatible with an ecological sensibility because it draws on scientific knowledge to affirm the diverse character of the natural world. By endorsing the claims of cosmological and evolutionary theory, the broad scope of Peacocke’s thought is accessible to an ecologically and scientifically informed culture in a way which avoids the spiritually and religiously denuded path of scientific naturalism. Peacocke’s emergentist ideas extend from science into the sphere of theology, endorsing the value of distinctiveness and diversity in relation to creation and incarnation in a way which resonates with the ecological principle of valuing biodiversity.

The Value Ascribed to Matter in Peacocke’s Theology of Creation and Incarnation

In addition to emergentist monism, Arthur Peacocke identifies two further components (more specifically theological than is the case with emergence) as foundational for his thought: theistic naturalism and panentheism.Footnote ³⁹ Together, theistic naturalism and panentheism undergird Peacocke’s claim that the material world warrants a high status in Christian thought.

The term ‘theistic naturalism’ may sound oxymoronic, or at least paradoxical, yet Peacocke conjoins the two concepts. His theology is naturalistic in the sense that it utilizes the revelations of science to assert that the universe operates in a regular way, being closed to any non-natural forces. Yet the assertion that the world is to be seen in naturalistic terms does not need to imply that reality is either simple or purposeless. Drawing on the thought of David Griffin, Peacocke distinguishes between ‘sensationalist-atheistic-materialistic’ naturalism (which he rejects) and a more minimalist version of naturalism where ‘nature is all there is’ (which he accepts). In contrast to scientific naturalism, Peacocke’s naturalism affirms the existence of God and states that the natural laws which govern the world are ‘themselves actions of God, who continuously gives them existence’.Footnote ⁴⁰

For Peacocke the cosmos not only operates through chance occurrences and distinctive, emergent events, it also ‘involves an extremely complex web of cause-and-effect relations; … every event occurs within this web, having causal antecedents and causal consequences; and … every event exemplifies a common set of causal principles’.Footnote ⁴¹ The scientific evidence of the law-like nature of the universe, along with Peacocke’s more open understanding of naturalism (‘nature is all there is’) lead him to acknowledge and affirm the traditional Christian assertion that there is a creator God who is real, personal, and has purposes for the world.Footnote ⁴²

Panentheism, the third key component in Peacocke’s thought, provides the foundation for a theology which stresses interrelationship and immanence. Peacocke considers relationship to be at the heart of reality and so, without denying that there is a distinction between creator and created, he argues that God ‘includes and penetrates the whole universe’.Footnote ⁴³ In panentheism the shift is away from the idea (often expressed in classical theism) of God being present to the world, and moves instead towards the idea of God being in the world, so that everything has existence within God. Peacocke conjoins the panentheist model with the understanding that reality comprises the interaction of the more complex and the less complex in an overall ‘system of systems’ whereby God interacts with the wholes and the parts of reality.Footnote ⁴⁴ Although he acknowledges that God is more than, therefore transcends, the natural world, Peacocke’s primary argument in panentheism is for ‘a revived emphasis on the immanence of God as Creator “in, with and under” the natural processes of the world’.Footnote ⁴⁵

Immanence and continuity are therefore seen as key aspects of reality. Thus along with the claim (derived from emergentist monism) that creation is discontinuous in some of its aspects, Peacocke also, by utilizing a naturalistic and panentheistic lens, argues that creation is continuous.Footnote ⁴⁶

In a naturalistic theology a focus on the physical world is inevitable. Taken in conjunction with a panentheistic insistence on divine immanence, it allows Peacocke to argue that the world is sacramental, having both a symbolic function (in that, in part, it expresses the mind of God), and an instrumental function (being the mode by which God’s purposes are effected). If God is omnipresent in the world, and if physical matter (as divine vehicle and expression) is so fundamental that it expresses God’s mind and purposes, then from a religious perspective the sacramental world warrants our respect and reverence. Peacocke does not claim that the world is sacred as such but argues that as the ‘vehicle and instrument’ of God’s creative action the world takes on ‘a derived sacredness or holiness’.Footnote ⁴⁷ This idea has ancient Christian antecedents: as John of Damascus said, we are to honour matter ‘because God has filled it with His grace and power’.Footnote ⁴⁸ Not only does the material world warrant our respect, we must also acknowledge its essential goodness. If we believe that God is good, then if the biophysical world expresses something of who God is then its essential goodness and value are to be acknowledged (alongside its admitted propensity towards pain and death). The affirmation of creation as the place in which God’s grace is to be found counters the negative connotations of the world which sometimes occur in Christian thought when it is oriented towards Gnosticism and Docetism.

The sacredness and value of matter is pointed to by the particular Sacraments of the Church. Taking Eucharist as the central Christian Sacrament, Peacocke says: ‘… by their character some of the central practices of the Christian faith (… the sacramental use of bread, wine, and water) predispose and point to the highest possible valuation of the natural, of the stuff of the world in its very materiality’.Footnote ⁴⁹

This high claim for created matter is also found in ecotheological literature which sees matter as intrinsically significant and valuable and contests the view of it as only instrumentally valuable. Hence the ‘Principle of Intrinsic Worth’ is the first of six ecojustice principles advocated by the Australian Earth Bible Series.Footnote ⁵⁰ Ecophilosophical discourse has focused primarily on the Earth and its entities and systems, in order to understand how they function both in order to protect human life and to attend to and appreciate the natural world for its own intrinsic value.

The notion that the Earth is sacramental and therefore has intrinsic worth challenges the predominance in Christian thought on a two-sided relationship between the human and the divine, advocating instead a triangular interrelationship of divine, human and other-than-human. The stronger relationship between humankind and the natural world which an ecological theology endorses might be developed by drawing on Peacocke’s insight that:

Peacocke’s theology invites us to an ecological rethinking of the doctrine of creation, allowing our heritage with, and dependence on, the rest of creation to influence the way we relate to the world and to God. Ecological conversion involves understanding ourselves not as a species separated from the world of nature but as truly a part of the varied and valuable biotic community.

The idea that the created material world is inherently valuable is replicated in Peacocke’s discussion of the Incarnation. For Peacocke the Incarnation is not only an event which is discontinuous, distinctive and ‘emergent’. The fully human Jesus is also continuous with the various contexts (social, historical, geographical, and biophysical) out of which he arose and which continued after his death. Jesus, like us, is constituted of universally occurring elements and has a commonality not only with all other human beings but also with the entire physical cosmos:

Thus although divine nature is partially and implicitly revealed in God’s creative acts in the natural world, Jesus is the ‘locus’ or ‘ikon’ who makes explicit God’s nature and character.Footnote ⁵³ This is done not only through Jesus’ specifically human nature but also more broadly through his material nature. The Incarnation is fully understood not only in relation to humankind but to the other-than-human parts of creation from which Jesus, and we, descended. The Incarnation points to our biophysical ancestry by throwing ‘new light on the deeper meaning of the multiple levels of the created world, since these levels were present in him and most of them came into existence through evolution well before the species, Homo sapiens, to which he himself belonged’.Footnote ⁵⁴ Peacocke’s emphasis on Jesus’ biophysical composition and evolutionary history serves to remind us that we ourselves are comprised of the same elements as the rest of the world in which we are embedded and on which we depend for our physical well-being. This confronts the automatic and exclusive identification of Jesus (and of ourselves) with the category of ‘human’ (rather than more inclusive categories such as ‘vertebrate’ or ‘carbon’). In turn, this implicitly contests the idea that humans are entitled to always and inevitably dominate the natural world and discriminate in favour of the interests of our own species over the other-than-human. There is admittedly a degree of ambiguity in Peacocke’s discourse concerning the topic of anthropocentrism, a notion which tends to be critiqued (in both its strong and weak forms) by those theologians who, unlike Peacocke, give a primary and explicit focus to ecological theology.Footnote ⁵⁵ While, as noted above, Peacocke at one point supports the need to escape from anthropocentrism,Footnote ⁵⁶ in much of his discussion of the meaning of the Incarnation, Peacocke conforms to the more anthropocentric emphases of mainstream theology, for example the capacity of the incarnation to transform humanity.Footnote ⁵⁷ Despite this tendency, the claim of Jesus’ commonality with the ‘other-than-human’ (as well as with the human) is nevertheless an important way in which the implicit content of Peacocke’s discourse contains a deeper, richer and non-anthropocentric significance which makes the study of his work from an ecological perspective important.

A Christology which focuses on the interrelatedness of Jesus with the world is somewhat novel, notwithstanding the work of Teilhard (whose focus is far more oriented than is Peacocke’s to a cosmic-spiritual ‘end point’) and the work of more recent thinkers on Deep Incarnation such as Niels Gregersen and Elizabeth Johnson.Footnote ⁵⁸ Peacocke’s work has significant implications for the physical well-being of creation. Despite the impact in the West of science and of naturalistic and materialist philosophies, Peacocke’s portrayal of Jesus’s biophysical composition in terms which compare it with the make-up of other-than-human parts of the cosmos has a striking, perhaps startling, ring to it. This may be because although scientific and atheistic naturalism may have given some grounding to a developing ecological worldview, they have also tended to emphasize the ability (both real and perceived) of humans to control nature rather than acknowledging our interconnectedness with, and reliance upon, the natural world. The acceptance that our existence is embedded in, and in many ways dependent on, the natural world, has also been slow to penetrate Christian thought. Christology has at times emphasized so strongly the fully divine nature of Jesus Christ that, intentionally or otherwise, the claim that Jesus is also a truly human and fully physical being has been diminished to a greater or lesser extent.

The fundamental meaning of the Incarnation (enfleshment/embodiment) and its normative doctrinal position indicates that there might be a central, perhaps privileged, place for the bodily and the material in Christian thought. As has often been discussed in ecotheology by figures such as Sallie McFague, Christianity is, or should be, the ‘religion of the body’: the recurrence in Jesus’ ministry of tangible, physical actions of healing and feeding, his suffering and death on the cross, his bodily resurrection, the use of physical elements by human bodies in Christian sacramental practice, and the idea of the Church as the body of Christ all point powerfully to a religion in which bodies in particular and, arguably, matter in general, warrant a far more prominent place than has often been the case.Footnote ⁵⁹

The presently depleted and languishing parts and systems of the Earth can perhaps be attended to more effectively if we can perceive the Incarnation as pointing to the connectivity between Jesus, ourselves and the material world out of which we have evolved and on which we physically depend. This would challenge the idea, implicit in many parts of Christian Scripture and thought, that the natural world is an object whose story is of little interest or worth compared to that of the human and divine subjects. To be reminded of our commonality with other animals, with plants, and with the elements that constitute the cosmos, might enable us to understand ourselves differently and to re-envision our place in relation to the world. Acknowledgement of the material and concrete dimension of Jesus can counter the tendencies of gnostic ideas (found not only in some strands of Christianity but also in some New Age spiritualities) to dualistically over-emphasize the spiritual and thereby sanction an attitude which ignores or denigrates the other-than-human parts of creation. The reminder of the physical nature of Jesus resonates with the ecological assertion of the significance of matter.