The topic of creation has long fascinated biblical scholars and theologians. Countless monographs and treatises approach the topic in a variety of ways and from myriad perspectives. With the expanding ecological crisis coming into fuller view and occupying the thoughts of many scientists today, the time has come to reexamine and critique how Christian biblical scholars and theologians think about and teach the doctrine of creation. The natural world has suffered too long under the yoke of human anthropocentrism, hierarchy, patriarchy, and egocentrism. Only when humans come to understand themselves and the other-than-human in a radically new way will the shackles that bind all creation be broken, giving way to the full flourishing of all life. Daniel P. Horan's groundbreaking study offers a much-needed critique of how biblical scholars’ and theologians’ interpretations and understandings of Genesis 1−2 have often led to a deepening of anthropocentrism and hierarchy in our contemporary world.

Part I of the study opens with a searing yet balanced critique of two of the most popular models of creation, namely, the dominion model and the stewardship model. Horan rightly points out that much of today's Christian imagination still bears the marks of these two models of creation that, with the rise of industry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, led to the assumption that certain individuals are unique. This assumption, in turn, led to the persistence of hierarchical dualism, the problem of alterity, the development of disengagement and disassociation on the part of humans toward other humans and other-than-human creatures, and the absence of a robust eschatology.

Part 2 explores new resources for a community of creation theology. Here Horan draws heavily upon the thought and work of Elizabeth Johnson. These new resources include a kinship model of creation, selections from Scripture—especially from the books of Genesis, Psalms, Prophets, Romans, and Colossians—whereby interpreters give new meanings to familiar texts. Based on these new understandings of selected biblical texts, Horan then argues for a new paradigm, specifically, the community of creation that bespeaks of an intended mutuality and the interrelationship of all creation.

The most striking and creative chapter of this study is the conclusion. Here Horan offers a hermeneutic of theological imagination and explores postcolonial theory and planetarity. He draws heavily on the thought and work of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, who is unapologetically critical of the discipline of theology. Spivak's secular proposal invites people to reimagine the planet where humans are decentered. For Horan, then, the real question is “whether or not we human beings elect to ‘hear’ what the rest of creation says” (213). He argues that “to hear other-than-human creation is to restore a sense of anthropological and epistemological humility that our experience is in fact one among many valid experiences and that our place is one located alongside our creaturely kin within the cosmic community of creation” (213).

If we as biblical scholars, theologians, and educators of the next generation of thinkers and leaders wish to change existing oppressive paradigms and transform how we think about creation and how we view ourselves in creation, then this well-researched study is a must-read for anyone who is about the noble work of liberation. Horan moves us into the twenty-first century and into the heart of creation. Dare we go there?