Introduction
The world has in recent years witnessed convincing evidence of environmental change, in particular climate instability: increasingly frequent and extensive instances of wild fire in many countries, ice thaw in polar regions, and the inundation of Pacific Islands are only the most striking instances. The global reach of a destabilized climate is evident not only in relation to geography but to domain or discipline. It is hard to identify a single sphere of social, political, cultural or intellectual endeavour that could on its own initiate and enact appropriate responses to such a complex ecological issue as climate change, given its wide-ranging consequences such as famine, violence and human displacement.
Christian thought contains significant resources that can be brought to bear on ecological questions, and the wide denominational spread of ecological theology is testament to the broad reach of ecological issues within the tradition. Ecclesial responses to the ecological crisis include Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical letter Laudato Si’, varied and frequent statements by the ‘Green Patriarch’ Bartholomew II, and influential Anglican thinker and former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.Footnote 2
Ecological theology has been identified with various typologies, characteristics and principles.Footnote 3 One well-known set of ecojustice principles is articulated in the Earth Bible series.Footnote 4 These principles (and the entire Earth Bible series), are worthy of attention because they adopt a scholarly and critical stance, articulating the ‘new type of theology of nature’ called for by Peter Scott which affirms a triangular paradigm comprising, and integrally holding together, God, humankind, and the non-human natural world.Footnote 5 The Earth Bible series resists the tendency sometimes found at the more popular end of the eco-theology spectrum to portray all and any Christian text or tradition as essentially Earth-friendly, a tendency which minimizes or avoids the challenges presented by problematic ideas or texts. The Earth Bible series avoids anachronistically reading medieval figures such as St Francis, Meister Eckhardt, Julian of Norwich and Hildegard of Bingen in a way which, in the view of at least one thinker, can too readily identify their understanding with the contemporary ecological perspective and fails to take into account differences and ambiguities between medieval and contemporary worldviews.Footnote 6 The Earth Bible series acknowledges the ecological ambiguity in the Christian tradition, and the volume’s editor, Norman Habel, both in this series and elsewhere, identifies scriptural texts that are ‘grey’ or ecologically problematic, urging that such texts be read in a way which involves ‘suspicion, identification, retrieval’.Footnote 7
Of the Earth Bible’s six principles, three are used here because they resonate with some themes in William Temple’s thought. First, the principle of intrinsic worth claims that the entire bio-physical world – the universe, Earth and all its components – has intrinsic worth or value. This contests the ecologically problematic view that the natural world is merely an instrument or resource. Second, the principle of purpose provides a theological and spiritual perspective, suggesting that all of existence is part of a dynamic cosmic design within which each piece has a place in the overall goal of that design. Against pessimistic approaches which deny any sense of ultimate purpose in the cosmos, this principle asserts the religious claim that the universe is to be seen not just as ‘nature’ but as ‘creation’ and therefore as containing, expressing or revealing an ultimate reality. Third, the principle of interconnectedness sees Earth as a community of interrelated living things that are mutually dependent on each other for life and survival so that what happens to one part of the created world influences other parts. This fundamental tenet of the ecological ethos counters the approach of modernity which has emphasized the separation of reality into differing categories whereby entities can be explored and utilized in isolation from other entities.Footnote 8
A number of theologians whose work resonates broadly with the ecological sensibility expressed in the Earth Bible principles have drawn on diverse Christian thinkers. Celia Deane-Drummond discusses the ecological promise of Jürgen Moltmann, Denis Edwards of Karl Rahner, H. Paul Santmire of Augustine and other Patristic thinkers, and Thomas Berry of Aquinas. This essay follows that model by exploring the thought of William Temple (1881–1944), a distinguished thinker and Archbishop of Canterbury. Three themes in Temple’s work, especially as expressed in his concept of the ‘sacramental universe’, resonate with the principles of ecological theology mentioned above: Temple’s understanding of the world as sacramental coheres with the eco-theological claim that the material world is inherently valuable; his argument that the meaning of the sacramental universe is supremely expressed in the Incarnation connects with the eco-theological principle that reality reveals a purposive aspect; and his broad, interdisciplinary scope resonates with the eco-theological principle that the Earth is characterized by interdependence and interconnectedness.
An ‘Avowedly Materialist’ Sacramental Theology
One of the most significant aspects of Temple’s thought is his concept of the ‘sacramental universe’.Footnote 9 Temple expounds the concept in terms of a traditional Christian understanding of creation wherein God is the unifying, controlling and creative principle of all that is: it is part of God’s essential being to be Creator even though God does not depend on creation for God’s own existence.Footnote 10 Creation is so much an expression of who God is, that creation is necessarily ‘the self-expressive utterance of the Divine Word’.Footnote 11 Because the created world is an expression of God, therefore the created world is to be seen as sacramental, with sacrament being defined by Temple in traditional terms as ‘a spiritual utilization of a material object whereby a spiritual result is effected’.Footnote 12 In this ‘high’ understanding of sacrament the spiritual meaning and power conveyed by the material process in sacramental practice is real and actual, and not merely to be seen as a stimulus to a psychological process.Footnote 13 For Temple, a sacrament is not only apprehended intellectually: it conveys ‘not only God’s meaning to the mind, but God Himself to the whole person of the worshipper’.Footnote 14
Temple argues that matter itself has a degree of value both because it is the ‘necessary condition for the actuality of life’ and because ‘spirit arises within and as part of a material organism’.Footnote 15 The material object is itself significant because it is indispensable: spirit requires a material sign in order that the spiritual effect can be created.Footnote 16 Therefore, at one level, the material object seems to be the place from which sacrament begins, which is to say that matter can be seen as prior to spirit, at least in a temporal sense.Footnote 17 However, because what is conveyed in a sacrament is Godself, it is not matter but spirit that is ultimately the beginning and the end, despite the essential role performed by the material object: ‘In the sacrament then the order of thought is spirit first and spirit last, with matter as the effectual expression or symbolic instrument of spirit. That is the formula which we suggest as an articulation of the essential relations of spirit and matter in the universe.’Footnote 18
Although Temple sees spirit as ultimate, he insists that matter nevertheless has value. In Christianity, Temple argues, matter can be controlled and subordinated but cannot be ignored, denied or denigrated.Footnote 19 Especially in the light of Christian sacramental practice, a special relationship can be said to exist between spirit and matter: although they are not equal, nevertheless ‘the spiritual and the material are intimately intertwined’.Footnote 20 This claim of a close relationship between matter and spirit in Temple’s theology implicitly resists a strongly hierarchical dualism between spirit and matter, contesting the instrumentalist approach to matter and the negative attitudes to the bio-physical world that have at times emerged in the history of Christianity. At one point, Temple hints that he would like to take his affirmation of the spirit-matter relationship further, perhaps (though this is not a term Temple uses) in what could be seen as a more panentheist direction: ‘It is from the strong assertion of both convictions together – of the reality of matter and of the supremacy of spirit – that we are led to enquire whether there is any further illumination to be gained by consideration of that element in some religions wherein the material and the spiritual are inseparably conjoined.’Footnote 21
Because it is the place in which God acts, the whole world has a sacramental character: ‘if the Personal God thus indwells the world, and the world is thus rooted in Him, this involves that the process of the world is itself the medium of His personal action’.Footnote 22 The concept of the sacramental universe in Temple’s theology therefore affirms: ‘the vital significance of the material and temporal world to the eternal Spirit’.Footnote 23 The sacramental relationship between spirit and matter provides the basis for Temple’s famous assertion that Christianity is a highly materialist religion:
It may safely be said that one ground for the hope of Christianity that it may make good its claim to be the true faith lies in the fact that it is the most avowedly materialist of all the great religions. It affords an expectation that it may be able to control the material, precisely because it does not ignore it or deny it, but roundly asserts alike the reality of matter and its subordination. Its own most central saying is: ‘The Word was made flesh’, where the last term was, no doubt, chosen because of its specially materialistic associations. By the very nature of its central doctrine Christianity is committed to a belief in the ultimate significance of the historical process, and in the reality of matter and its place in the divine scheme.Footnote 24
The claim that Christianity is ‘avowedly materialist’ may, as Stephen Spencer argues, be seen in part as ‘a deliberate rebuff to Marxism’,Footnote 25 the materialist emphasis of which was re-thought by Temple as ‘dialectical realism’. Yet at the same time, and at its most straightforward level, the materialist emphasis seems to be intended to refer to the obviously tangible and material dimension of the Christian religion – the practices of healing and feeding in Jesus’ ministry, and his Incarnation, death and resurrection, all of which are depicted and evoked in Christian sacramental practice. As Temple notes, although the use of sacramental rites is common throughout religions, it is ‘especially prominent in Christianity’.Footnote 26
It is at this point that a connection can be made between Temple’s sacramental universe and the eco-theological assertion that God is in some way involved in, matter, and that matter is thereby inherently valuable. The importance given to matter is perhaps the most ecologically significant aspect of Temple’s sacramental universe. The assertion of the sacramental in Temple foreshadows a similar assertion in a good deal of eco-theological discourse in the last fifty years.Footnote 27 This connection should not be over-stated: Temple’s writings represent his era, and there is little or no overt commonality between his thought and some of the contemporary ways of rethinking matter such as the ‘new materialisms’. Similarly, the strong focus on the human in comments such as ‘The revelation given in the majesty of the starry heavens may be perfect in its kind, though its kind is markedly inadequate; the revelation given through the reason and conscience of men is more adequate in kind, but in that kind is usually imperfect’,Footnote 28 have little in common with the more bio-centric emphasis found in some eco-theological discourse. Even Temple’s insistence that spirit has an ultimate priority over matter might be said, from some eco-theological perspectives, to fail to affirm the value of matter sufficiently strongly, for instance when he says that: Matter ‘is created by … the Divine Spirit … to be the vehicle of spirit.’Footnote 29 And at times, Temple’s thought can even appear to support a more instrumentalist approach (for example: ‘The way to be spiritually effective is not to ignore matter but to use it’).Footnote 30 Yet, overall, Temple’s concept of the sacramental universe is highly supportive of the eco-theological understanding that what is material has a value which exceeds its instrumental worth. Because matter is indispensable, because it exists in inextricable relationship with spirit, and because it conveys spiritual power, Temple’s overarching claim is of ‘The vital significance of the material and temporal world to the eternal Spirit’.Footnote 31 It is significant that Temple already notes the tendency, which decades later would be developed rather strongly in ecological philosophy and theology, of twentieth-century science coming to question an overly sharp distinction between matter and life/mind.Footnote 32 Further, Temple notes that his argument for the unity of spirit and matter goes against a tendency seen in both science and some parts of religion towards bifurcation.Footnote 33 Temple’s sacramental understanding provides substantial support for the eco-theological principle that the Earth and all its components have intrinsic worth.
The Religion of the IncarnationFootnote 34
The Incarnation occupies a prominent place in Temple’s theology and lies at the heart of the sacramental universe he expounds. As Suggate notes, ‘Temple believes it is the Christian faith, and centrally the Incarnation, which is the master key to making sense of the universe’.Footnote 35 The three works which best express the theology of Temple’s early and middle writing career (Mens Creatrix, Christus Veritas, and Nature, Man and God) articulate a strongly Christocentric metaphysic, reflecting the way that the Incarnation has often been assigned a central position in Anglican thought. This is especially evident in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, well exemplified in the Anglican volume Lux Mundi (1889) which sought to retrieve what the contributors understood to be the focus of the early church fathers on ‘the cosmological significance of the Incarnation, its purpose “to gather together all things in one”’.Footnote 36 Rowan Williams notes the way that in Anglican theology ‘the image of incarnation, the fusion of heaven and earth, the spiritualizing of matter, has proved [a] wonderfully resourceful … tool for making sense of a sacramental community with a social conscience and a cultural homeland’.Footnote 37
In Temple’s thought the doctrine of the Incarnation not only holds a central position, it also reinforces and parallels the doctrine of creation: ‘Only if God is revealed in the rising of the sun in the sky can he be revealed in the rising of a son of man from the dead’Footnote 38 not only assumes a relationship between spirit and matter but between creation and incarnation. Because Christian sacraments always point to the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Temple claims that ‘The supreme Christian Sacrament is the Incarnation itself’.Footnote 39 As the supreme sacrament, the Incarnation has an ecclesial and historical meaning which is seen in terms of ‘a group of men and women who were imbued with a new spiritual power’.Footnote 40 But its meaning also extends beyond the church to the entire created world – the Christian experience that fellowship with Christ is fellowship with God ‘coincides with what we are led to expect by the analogy of the whole Creation’.Footnote 41
The intimate connection between creation, incarnation and sacrament means that the Incarnation, for Temple, not only has a materialistic dimension, it also conveys universal meaning and divine purpose. It answers the fundamental question (‘why?’) posed by life in general and responded to by religion and philosophy: ‘The only principle … that will satisfy the scientific demand for complete intellectual satisfaction is the principle of Purpose.’Footnote 42 That is to say, although the relationship between spirit and matter has profound significance for the Church and for sacramental rites, it also has a far wider meaning. It has rarely been used, Temple argues, ‘as a clue to the general interpretation of the universe’.Footnote 43 Therefore, for Temple, the Incarnation is no less than the unifying principle which holds the world system together. The entire life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ expresses the full meaning that is already partially evident in creation itself. Because of its supreme ability to articulate meaning or purpose, the Incarnation is seen by Temple as the ‘meeting point’ where all aspects of life including science, art, ethics and philosophy converge.Footnote 44 The Incarnation occupies this high place because it is reasonable: although Temple accepts that reason cannot prove the Incarnation, reason nevertheless ‘welcomes it as the needed completion of its own work’ and as the ‘pivot of all true human thought’.Footnote 45 One way Temple explains the reasonableness of the Incarnation and the purposive character of the sacramental universe is through the concept of Christ as the incarnation of ‘Mind’. In Temple’s philosophical-theological schema, ‘Mind’ is the undergirding principle of reality: the natural world and its processes are ‘accounted for by the intelligent purpose of [divine] Mind’.Footnote 46 There are two creative minds: that of the human being (which builds, or creates, only incompletely) and the creative mind of God, whose revelation is ‘the foundation of all that the Human Mind can wish to build’.Footnote 47 The divine mind completes the human mind:
The creative mind in man never attains its goal until the creative mind of God, in whose image it was made, reveals its own nature, and completes man’s work. Man’s search was divinely guided all the time, but its completion is only reached by the act of God Himself, meeting and crowning the effort which He has inspired.Footnote 48
Temple’s notion that the Incarnation articulates divine purpose is not only intended to be meaningful as a philosophical or intellectual claim, but also to apply to the whole of life, with revelation occurring both through reason and conscience. As the supreme sacrament, the Incarnation therefore not only communicates God’s meaning but also conveys God’s person, which for Temple means, essentially, that it conveys God’s Love. The divine Love in the Incarnation is again paralleled in creation: ‘the Love which prompts creation is the very nature of God’.Footnote 49 Therefore, once we can perceive divine purpose to be perfectly manifested in the life and death of Jesus Christ, we can see the Spirit which is operative in Christ to be also operative in all aspects of life and in the whole of creation.Footnote 50 This gives hope to human life and makes faith and love effective.Footnote 51
It may be argued that Temple’s theological emphasis on the Incarnation shifted somewhat towards Atonement. Temple was Chair of the Anglican Commission on Doctrine’s report in 1938 which says that ‘with the security of the nineteenth century … already shattered … we shall be pressed … more towards a theology of redemption’.Footnote 52 This position may have been influenced by the view of other Commission members, but given that Temple was Chairman of the group, it presumably does at least express his own position as well. An increasing emphasis on redemption might justifiably reflect the more pessimistic outlook of the pre-World War II era, and at least one commentator has claimed that at this time ‘The era of incarnational theology begun with Lux Mundi had reached its end’.Footnote 53 However, an increasing emphasis on redemption does not necessarily detract from the claim that the Incarnation is the central event and doctrine which provides ultimate and universal meaning. Incarnation and redemption do not need to be seen as exclusive or competing terms. Rather (and especially within Anglican thought of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century) the priority of the Incarnation was so strongly asserted that it was seen to encompass, rather than exclude, other doctrines including redemption.Footnote 54 As the Commission’s report itself notes, Redemption ‘has its great place’ in Incarnation.Footnote 55
Some of Temple’s claims in relation to the Incarnation, for example that Christ is to be seen as the incarnation of Mind and that the truth revealed in Christ interprets the underlying meaning and truth of existence, support what may today be viewed as an exclusivist Christian stance, and this might make Temple’s thought somewhat inaccessible for a pluralist twenty-first-century readership. The Incarnation has been a difficult concept to grasp in a culture that remains in some ways influenced by positivist and reductionist approaches.Footnote 56 Yet it might be argued that with a postmodern shift away from ‘meta-narratives’ and towards a stronger acceptance of ambiguity or paradox, the complex nature of the Incarnation may be more strongly appreciated. The Incarnation has a pivotal role because not only is it unavoidable because it is faithful and central to traditional Christian claims, but the idea that the Incarnation conveys profound meaning or purpose also resonates with the eco-theological principle that reality reflects ultimate purpose. In the words of the Earth Bible series: ‘the universe, earth and all its components, are part of a dynamic cosmic design within which each piece has a place in the overall goal of that design’. Even though an ecological ethos per se (when this is considered apart from theology) does not necessarily assume, or articulate, purpose, it is necessarily within the compass of ecological theology to claim a cosmic design and purpose. Temple’s claim that the Incarnation is the central point within a sacramental universe and that it makes sense of, and provides a pivot for, the other dimensions of life coheres with this eco-theological principle.
A Broad and Interdisciplinary Perspective
If Anglicanism has given a prominent position to the Incarnation, at least during a particular period, a further tendency of Anglicanism is its propensity to engage confidently and optimistically with the insights and challenges presented by intellectual and social trends. This tendency is especially evident in the life and works of William Temple.Footnote 57 Although the works which represent this aspect of Temple’s life and writings often refer less explicitly to his notion of the sacramental universe than is the case for the two topics discussed previously, nevertheless the sacramental universe has an especially foundational place in the Gifford lectures published as ‘Nature, Man and God’ – as Temple notes: ‘It is in the sacramental view of the universe, both of its material and of its spiritual elements, that there is given hope of making human both politics and economics and of making effectual both faith and love.’Footnote 58 The concept of the sacramental universe has a breadth of meaning and application which Temple saw as extensive not only throughout the Church but throughout the entire world.
Temple’s thought generally demonstrates a broad and interdisciplinary approach, exemplified in the stated scope of Mens Creatrix which traces: ‘the outline of the Science of Knowledge, Art, Morality, and Religion’.Footnote 59 Philosophy, in particular, is the discipline in which he was initially trained and whose influence is evident in his method of writing – Stephen Spencer acknowledges Temple’s ‘great gift of building a case logically and methodically over the course of a chapter’.Footnote 60 This engagement with philosophy is especially evident in the strong emphasis (discussed in the previous section of this essay) given to reason, which Temple often says is the criterion against which he examines all aspects of life. Although Temple acknowledges the inevitability of a tension between philosophy and religion, nevertheless he argues that there is no aspect of human experience ‘which may claim exemption from examination at the bar of reason’.Footnote 61 At the same time, despite its central importance, Temple says that reason does not exist in solitude: ‘Reason and the religious experience support one another; either without the other would be precarious.’Footnote 62
In keeping with a number of other Anglican thinkers, such as the Lux Mundi contributors, Temple’s theology on the whole coheres with, rather than ignores or contests, the ideas of natural science. In his Gifford Lectures, Temple’s starting point is discussion of the scientific understanding of the universe, and Christus Veritas draws together the cosmic meaning of creation/incarnation and the evolutionary theory of Darwin:
For our view is not that God once made the world, and thereafter watched and watches its course, but that its course is itself the object of His creative will and comprehending Mind. Hence it is necessary that just as He contemplates His own act in History as a whole, so in that same History as a process He is enacting that which eternally He creates and contemplates.Footnote 63
Here, as elsewhere, Temple fully accepts the notion that the universe has evolved through the unfolding process described by Darwin, a process within which human history itself has evolved – another common theme in Anglican thought. Although the ideas associated with evolutionary theory mostly spring from nineteenth-century scientific discoveries and theories, they also have much in common with traditional Christian claims: Michael Ramsey notes the way that evolutionary theory provides an opportunity to recover the cosmic perspective of the Incarnation which had been advocated by many of the Church Fathers.Footnote 64 At times Temple’s theology has commonality with the understandings of the universe and evolutionary development expressed by his contemporary Teilhard de Chardin.Footnote 65 The correlation Temple makes between Mind and world, his argument that Love (ultimate value) is the endpoint of evolution,Footnote 66 and his claim that even if there were no sin in the world, ‘still the Incarnation would be the natural inauguration of the final stage of evolution’Footnote 67 resemble Teilhard’s idea that the universe is heading towards an ultimate spiritual ‘omega point’.Footnote 68 In Temple’s later work in particular, an emphasis is placed on divine purpose becoming clear at a future point.
The broad scope of Temple’s life and thought is also demonstrated in relation to political-social thought and action. He expounds a strongly public theology in which action in the world is seen as essential, and in which the church should be making its voice known in order to establish the Kingdom of God in political and economic aspects of life. Spencer considers that although he was familiar with Marx’s dialectical materialism, Temple’s own philosophy expresses social and political ideas in a profoundly religious way which gives central importance to the spiritual dimension (often expressed as the transcendent Mind).Footnote 69 Temple notes that he does not ‘simply advocate Socialism or Communal Ownership’,Footnote 70 although clearly social and economic change was a key theme for him. According to Owen Thomas, despite Temple’s elite parentage and upbringing, as a young man he adopted ‘socialist convictions’ which led to his being ‘placed on a list of dangerous characters’ by the British government during World War I.Footnote 71 However, the form of social concern expressed in Temple’s political discourse might most accurately be described as ‘social reform’ in the tradition of thinkers such as F.D. Maurice, Charles Kingsley and R.H. Tawney. Many of the policies Temple proposed were later introduced into Britain by governments after the Second World War, including state subsidies for housing, family allowance, free education at least to the age of 18, and a five-day working week.Footnote 72
Overall, Temple’s strong philosophical orientation, and his positive engagement with scientific and political ideas of his time indicate a polymath who sought to integrate ideas from disparate disciplines. This has some resonance with the broad, integrative, interdisciplinary approach that is characteristic of an ecological sensibility and derives from the eco-theological principle that Earth is a community of interconnected living things that are mutually dependent on each other for life and survival. Although strictly and originally the descriptor of a biological science, today the word ‘ecology’, and especially its (often over-used) derivative ‘eco-’, often refers to a broad, Earth-oriented ethos whose range extends far beyond biological science. This is evidenced in the way that an ecologically sustainable way of living is currently expounded in relation to aspects of life as diverse as architecture/building, politics, philosophy, ethics, health, travel, agriculture, indeed virtually all spheres of human life. The description of Temple as ‘a towering figure in Anglicanism with a spirituality that embraces the cosmos’Footnote 73 well expresses the broad, varied and interdisciplinary scope of his thought and echoes the expansive vision of a contemporary ecological ethos.
Conclusion
Temple’s writing naturally reflects his era, and his thought is not always immediately translatable to the present time. At times, Temple’s highly positive orientation (for example, his argument that evolution and history will lead to the emergence of absolute value, the socialist notion of progress, the trademarks of idealist philosophy, and the extension of evolutionary development from the biological to the social sphere) leads him, like Teilhard, towards an optimistic, hierarchical and progressive view which might today seem outdated. Further, Stephen Spencer detects in Temple’s writing (at times) ‘a sense of Edwardian triumphalism about the West and its civilization’.Footnote 74 An early twentieth-century emphasis on progress and on the values of the West may strike a note of dissonance for contemporary readers who are likely to be far more sceptical about the certainties and benefits of scientific, social and political progress. The current climate might also struggle to accept the strongly rationalistic tenor of Temple’s thought (the idea that the universe is a rational whole which can be comprehended). Yet it is also worth noting Owen Thomas’s claim that William Temple’s philosophy shifted, at least somewhat, to a less optimistic historical understanding and towards ‘a theistic idealistic metaphysic on the basis of a realistic epistemology’.Footnote 75
The retrieval and exploration of the thought of William Temple, especially as articulated in his concept of a sacramental universe, has some coherence with principles and ideas expressed within the eco-theological body of work that has arisen in recent decades in response to the rise of global ecological phenomena. The understanding that spirit and matter are intertwined coheres with the eco-theological principle that the Earth has inherent value. The claim that the Incarnation is the unifying principle that holds the world together and expresses divine mind and purpose affirms the eco-theological principle that reality reveals divine purpose. And the broad extent of Temple’s life and thought—its wide cultural sweep, its grounding in philosophy, its positive orientation to science and politics – resonates with the eco-theological principle of interrelatedness and demonstrates the type of public theology which is called for in the present ecological context.
It would be pointless to conjecture how Temple might have responded, theologically and politically, to the challenge of climate change, and it would be anachronistic to read an ecological orientation into his thought. There are areas of dissonance between Temple’s thought and a current ecological sensibility, and the distance between Temple’s era and our own is at times striking.Footnote 76 As Stephen Spencer notes, Temple is ‘someone of our time and also someone not of our time’.Footnote 77 Yet Temple’s fundamental insights about matter and the Incarnation, and his wide and interdisciplinary approach are relevant to the worldviews and questions of the present time. His thought is rich in eco-theological potential and might be explored further for other insights. Engagement with William Temple’s writings can be for people today ‘a challenging and fruitful experience’.Footnote 78
