Might we be witnessing the emergence of yet another variety of Thomism? In this work, Christopher Thompson expounds a ‘Green Thomism’ intended to buttress philosophically and spiritually an authentically ‘integral ecology’ (see Laudato si’, chap. 4). This endeavour, he suggests, must not be a mere parroting of Aquinas's thought; instead, it ‘can be the catalyst to situate the newest insights of ecological and environmental science within the ancient and vital conversation of the Church’ (p. 10, though his desire to ‘recover Thomistic nomenclature’ on p. 22 seemingly contradicts the former claim). Thompson's effort is only a beginning, an ‘invitation’, as he says (p. xxiv). In fact, since the book mostly derives from his previous articles, it betrays an ad hoc approach. Nevertheless, at least three themes continually resurface throughout the book.
First, believing that the ‘nature-deficit disorder’ of Catholics and non-Catholics alike represents a contemporary ‘sin of omission’, Thompson urges a Thomistic recovery of a robust theology of creation. Just as his own work responded to Albigensianism, Saint Thomas can help heal this present-day Manicheism and thus foster the ‘ecological conversion’ currently needed. In particular, the author highlights Thomas's position that human knowing depends on things, which, as created, are gifted with a meaning prior to us. As opposed to ‘a kind of post-Cartesian angelism in Catholic guise’, Aquinas presents the human person as a radically embodied knower and so always-already embedded within the created order (p. 30).
The second theme follows from the first. Authentic stewardship requires recognizing this dependency on creation and living in accord with creation's ordered, divine wisdom. Akin to Pope Benedict XVI's ‘grammar of creation’ (which oddly goes without attention in the book), this is the meaning of the natural law for Thompson. He proposes that Laudato si’ is ‘an extended meditation upon and application of the natural law’ and, constructively, an integration of the natural law within the entire created order (p. 54). Interpreting the encyclical's proposed integral ecology in this way, he submits, provides an especially fecund bridge between pro-life and pro-environmental movements (pp. 134-8). Tyrannical, violent dominance perpetually threatens both orders. While Thompson's study of the natural law is mostly theoretical, he includes a short discussion of GMOs under its auspices. Any intentional modification of a non-human creature must consider the proportionate good to be achieved by the action; otherwise, creatures cease to be ‘gifts of the Creator for the sake of the common good’ and instead devolve into ‘the mere stuff of my unbridled manipulation’ (p. 128).
Both themes undergird the third: a doxological focus. Thompson holds that ‘Integral ecology is doxology; there is no simpler way to put it’ (p. 171). Creation sings God's glory, and to steward its joyful mystery takes place within this doxological setting. As the author poetically describes it: ‘The cacophony of busyness settles into the jazz of life, as we weave a soulful tune through the accompaniment of communion—with the world, with others, with God’ (p. 140). According to Thompson, much like the precarious vulnerability enjoyed by a married couple, humans’ unbridled awe as they stand before this joyful mystery of creation provides a glimpse into the prelapsarian state of innocence (p. 41). So too, he concludes after examining Thomas's writings on religio, does this experience of grateful wonder provide an apt toothing-stone for conversing with an often-secularized environmental movement. The awesome sacramentality of creation ‘points to a Person and not a place, a Someone and not a something’, namely the Creator and the Logos through whom the Creator lovingly speaks (p. 150). That pointing remains only a timid groping in the dark until that Logos comes to us, most radically in the Incarnation and continually through the Eucharist. ‘Eucharist is the fulfillment of the practice of integral ecology’, Thompson concludes (p. 173). For him, living out this Eucharistic presence frees us from our myopic sinfulness and allows us to instead reconcile ourselves with creation and return it to Christ in thanksgiving and praise. This Eucharistic focus provides an especially promising, if underdeveloped, avenue for interpreting the integral ecology of Laudato si’.
These themes provide solid starting points for advancing a Green Thomism. Nevertheless, given the invitatory nature of this work, they are precisely that—starting points. Before we definitively add another chapter to Fergus Kerr's After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism, for now several lacunae remain for Thompson and other similarly-inclined Green Thomists. While Pope Francis clearly frames his presentation of an integral ecology through an option for the poor, that emphasis receives no consideration in this book despite Thompson's stated desire to substantiate the aims of Laudato si’. While for our Pope, following liberationist theologians like Leonardo Boff, the cry of the earth must be heard alongside the cry of the poor, Thompson does not grant the poor such a hermeneutical priority in discussing an integral ecology. The closest he comes to engaging liberationist theologians is found in a treatment of the salvation of non-human creatures, where, in a footnote, Thompson acknowledges two works of ecofeminism. A fuller investigation of these sources could nuance his Thomistically-guided separation of non-human creation from the redemptive order (p. 89), a claim on which he himself equivocates (pp. 178-9).
Thompson's programme need not be estranged from these movements. For instance, his emphasis on embodiment provides interesting overlap with ecofeminist concerns and his reflections on natural law could systematically yoke the cries of the earth and the poor together. Perhaps Thompson's failure to engage liberationist insights originates from his puzzling admonition that we have to ‘leapfrog over the postconciliar squabbles which have reduced much of contemporary Catholic intellectual life to an intramural parlor game…’ (p. 11). Any Thomism worthy of its name must stay faithful to the Angelic Doctor's synthesizing, dialogical spirit, open to any and all insights, wherever they might be found. Thompson's work prompts us to begin making such connections (including within contemporary Thomism, e.g. the work of Bernard Lonergan), and thus he successfully sets the stage for the dawning of a Green Thomism.
