This Christian ecotheology volume navigates the theological imaginary toward ecological relevance, appealing to scholarly audiences with firm potential for graduate-level courses. The book highlights senior scholars and represents an international research project that started in 2007 as a steering committee and finished with a 2012 South African conference. Most articles gesture toward ecumenical universals and prioritize perspectival reorientation in implementing material changes. Coauthored by volume editors, the first chapter summarizes an ecological “reformation” in theology.
Chapters 2 to 4 address Trinity, incarnation, and pneumatology. Denis Edwards engages Athanasius’ apologetics on God's “radical immediacy” (17), divine beneficence as primary creative force, and “dynamic, eternal fecundity” (19) in Trinitarian interactions. Counting nature with humanity in salvific potential, Edwards builds on an ancient voice, locating God's wisdom in creation's revelatory, incarnational diversity. Celia Deane-Drummond examines deep incarnation, building on Niels Gregerson and Elizabeth Johnson, using Hans Urs von Balthasar's theo-drama and the Gospel of John's ontological and historical Jesus. Deep incarnation points to a Christological cosmos, imbuing not only Jesus or humans, but also plants and animals with imminent, incarnate meaning. Sigurd Bergmann's chapter names the Holy Spirit as ecologically salvific, as “giver and liberator of life” (52). Bergmann locates spirit in spaces, considering animistic associations, Cappadocian theology, and biblical, indwelling spirit.
Chapters 5 to 7 offer studies of salvific justice, suffering, and home. Interpreting creation as God's household, Ernst M. Conradie attends to ecotheologies of “creation, salvation, and consummation” in God's work. He emphasizes creatura, both as natural and as humanly constructed environment. Conradie helpfully names eschatological hope disconnected from Earth and human well-being as cheap hope, escapist and nonredeeming (74). Christopher Southgate considers suffering, flourishing, and care, through, for example, “evolutionary theodicy,” linking genetic diseases to inherent suffering in evolution. Southgate asserts that God walks with creaturely flourishing and suffering, while all creatures might find heaven. Peter Manley Scott inquires into metaphorical and literal senses of earthly home, from paradisiacal origin to dwelling place. Scott embraces Conradie's Eden-exile-New Jerusalem progression, proposing “re-homing” as a salvific turn. Scott locates home in an eschatological future place, yet distinct from utopian or heavenly ideals or a “totality of being home everywhere” on Earth (135).
Chapters 8 to 10 cover ministry, ethics, and liturgy. Clive W. Ayre names “earth mission” documents and Earth-positive ministries and activities, including a cross generating solar energy in Queensland. He concludes with public theology, asking, “Is God a temple-dwelling, institutional God or a tent-dwelling, mobile God” (156)? Presenting trends and Catholic examples, Deane-Drummond paints environmental ethics from broad brush to detailed precedent. Though prior to 2015's watershed of Catholic environmental leadership, the essay's moral arc leans toward the justice done by Pope Francis I through Laudato Si’. Further, she outlines praxis toward a “new ethos,” to quell “anthropogenic evil” and enhance “environmental virtues” (173–74). Addressing liturgy, Crina Gschwandtner highlights sacred spaces, psalmic praises, sacralized movements, and eschatological embrace of heaven on earth. Gschwandtner presents eco-traditions like land and creatures as participating in God's praise, the sacramental earth, and a Sabbath “feast of creation.”
The final two chapters chart methodological directions toward liberative ends. Heather Eaton examines Christian ecotheology and the scholarly field of religion and ecology, comparing defining horizons and challenges. Eaton asks, “What are we trying to salvage? Christianity? The Earth? Our beliefs? Our families? The human community? The biosphere? The ‘divine milieu’?” (205). Investigating primary, shaping questions, Eaton critiques ecotheologies that leave salvation and creation uncomplicated by embodied, interconnected, lived realities within Earth's wonders. Kim Yong-Bock's piece offers refreshing boldness, highlighting conviviality and Christian liberation through revisioning Jesus the Galilaean from Asia, critiquing technocracy and global market economics, and extracting practical and symbolic systems from such entrenched problems. Despite generalizing East Asian symbols, Yong-Bock centralizes Christian meaning, asserting God as “the purpose and destiny of all creation” (227). Although reminiscent of syllabi problematically including “others” at the end, Yong-Bock's essay completes the book with creative revisioning, perhaps giving liminality a place of honor.
The collection shepherds academic, theological, and ministerial conversations toward facing ecological despair with thorough theological grounding. Beyond doctrinal concerns, Ayre, Eaton, Deane-Drummond, and Yong-Bock balance theologies with laudable attention to praxis and interdisciplinarity. Despite presuppositions that theology determines behavior, ecotheological studies could face eco-crisis with further materially relevant work. Even as the seas rise, the skies change, creaturely diversity narrows, and the land becomes increasingly barren, ever-renewing life stems as much from concrete works as from perspectival hope.
